The Undertaker

by William Brown

  “Thanks, but I think I'll pass,” Sandy said.

  “I'm sorry, I forgot you've stopped,” I apologized and waved the waiter away.

  “A glass of wine sounds good," she said. “But I don't want to start, not now, not after all I've been through. I'll bet that Joseph Phelps stuff even comes with a cork, huh? When Eddie ordered, it always had a screw top.”

  “When you date a guy from California, you get cork.”

  “Date?” she giggled. “With all that sweating and moaning, is that what you call it?” She put her hand on mine. “You're going to take a lot of work, you know.”

  After we ate, I drew a crude map on the paper tablecloth. “Here's the plan. Billingham will be coming in from the law school buildings on Sullivan on the south side of the square. I'm going over two streets, then north to the park. You go back to MacDougal and up to the park the way we came. Wait for me near the corner, while I talk to Billingham. When we're done, I'll meet you there and we'll take off to one of the subway stations to the west, okay?”

  “No, I want to go with you.”

  “Look, you're the only one who knows the truth. If they catch both of us, I'm finished, we're finished. That's why you're going to stay over on MacDougal and run like hell if it all blows up.” I put my hand on hers, caressing it lightly. “So you're going to go over to MacDougal, because you know I'm depending on you.”

  She stared back across at me for a very long time. “You really are a sneaky, manipulating bastard, Peter Talbott, aren't you?”

  She did what I asked, but she didn't like it. Since I looked more like my photo in the newspaper than she looked like hers, she insisted I take the umbrella. The three-block walk to Washington Square was one of the longest walks I'd ever taken. The street was narrow. The afternoon was dark and gloomy with rain dripping off the sycamores. I swore I saw government hit men hiding in every doorway and eyes following me from every parked car. In the 19th century, Washington Square was a green oasis and the best neighborhood in the city. A Sunday afternoon stroll there would have been all the rage, but times had changed. Now, on a rainy afternoon, I saw a totally empty playground in one corner and an equally large, fenced dog run in the other, where the X-ers took their golden retrievers and Russian wolfhounds to growl at each other. Most of the park benches had become homeless “shacks”, with cardboard and blankets draped over them.

  It was all pretty depressing stuff. Across MacDougal, at the corner with West Washington, I saw Sandy hiding in a doorway. Her eyes never left me as I took a slow lap around the perimeter of the park. I used the wide diagonal sidewalks to criss-cross it several times, but I saw nothing. Other than Sandy's dark eyes following my every move, the only serious interest I got was from the hookers near the arch and a small army of crack dealers hanging around the fountain at the center of the park.

  New York! Ya gotta love it! Where else does a city divide-up its recreational turf on such a non-judgmental basis?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Just a quiet walk in the park…

  It was 4:50. I took a seat on a wet park bench facing south toward the NYU Law School buildings, where I had a good view of the entire park. If Tinkerton's men came at me out of the late afternoon gloom, they had better come in numbers and be wearing track shoes, because they would have a tough time cornering me in all that open ground. In the distance, I heard the chime of cathedral bells and knew it must be 5:00. Shaggy college kids with long hair, book bags, and that all-important second-hand grunge look poured out of the NYU class buildings to the east like a jailbreak. After the flood of the great unwashed had ebbed, I saw another group of older and more prosperous students emerge from a building down on Sullivan and scatter. Three men dressed in top coats and business suits followed them out the doors. They crossed 4th Street and marched straight north into the park.

  Barrister Billingham was the man in the center, dressed in a stylish, mohair topcoat over a navy-blue pinstriped suit, and a red silk tie. His deep Florida tan completed the outfit, and he was right. Even if I hadn't seen him on television, there was no mistaking him for anyone else in the park. Towering above his bald head were two very large, mono-brow hulks dressed in dark, loose fitting, unbuttoned raincoats. The muscle on the left held a large, dark-green golf umbrella over Billingham's head, his arm straight out, chest high, like the Russian wrestlers carrying their flag at the Olympics. The muscle on the right had his hands in his coat pockets. What else was in there I wasn't sure, but his eyes swept back and forth like two nervous radar dishes until he picked me out of the gloom from a half-block away. He must have said something to Billingham because the lawyer looked my way and gave a brief nod as he continued on to the arch.

  I looked around the park one more time and then looked over at Sandy. Satisfied that the three men had come alone, I stood up and headed for the arch where they waited for me at the wrought iron fence at the monument's base. Flanked by the two hulks, Billingham greeted me with a pleasant smile, but there were no hugs or handshakes.

  I looked up at the inscription carved on the pediment high above us. “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair,” I read aloud. “George Washington, 1798. Which one are you, Charley?”

  A thin smile crossed his lips. “Gino said you were an irreverent smart-ass, Mister Talbott, and I have always found Gino an excellent judge of people.”

  “Yeah, a real prince.”

  “Before we begin, Harvey here has something he needs to do.” Billingham motioned to one of the beefy bodyguards. “Don't be alarmed, he won't hurt you, unless I tell him to.”

  With that, the bigger of the two hulks stepped behind me and quickly frisked me: back, sides, legs, groin, chest, neck, the works. His hands moved quickly, efficiently, and very professionally. Satisfied, Harvey nodded to Billingham. The other goon handed Billingham the green golf umbrella and the two bodyguards walked away, taking up positions far enough away, but not too far, their eyes constantly moving, scanning the surrounding area.

  “Now that I know you aren't armed or wearing a wire, we can have that little talk you wanted,” Billingham said pleasantly as we walked off down the sidewalk, side-by-side, each of us under his own umbrella.

  “I'm the one they're trying to kill,” I reminded him.

  “And for very good reasons.” He pulled what looked like a small transistor radio from his jacket pocket and turned it on. “This little gadget doesn't play any of your favorite rock music, Mister Talbott. It emits a bubble of 'white noise' that drives the neighborhood dogs crazy and renders a directional microphone useless. These days one never knows what they might have set up in a parked car, on a roof, or in some window.”

  “It's a little warm for a topcoat, isn't it, Charley?”

  He smiled. “I don't mind the extra protection, Mr. Talbott. You never can tell what the weather will bring here in the city.” He looked across the street to the west. “I assume that is Mrs. Kasmarek hiding in that doorway over on MacDougal — the attractive, young woman with the large, shoulder bag?” I made no reply. “Gino was quite smitten by her, so she must really be something. Personally, I am surprised you still have her with you. The comfort factor aside, it is very dangerous for a man in your situation to keep a companion. Inevitably, it affects one's judgment, for the worse I am afraid.”

  “Gino said that too.”

  “Gino is a very smart man. By the way, you'll be happy to know he is recovering nicely in a clinic up in Montreal.”

  “Canada? You don't take any chances do you?”

  “Not when it comes to prying little minds with unlimited budgets. By the way, I understand you and Mrs. Kasmarek saved his life. I am personally very appreciative, and I assure you it gained you some good will in other quarters as well. Gino is a lot like Harvey and Tomas over there, it will take a lot more than one bullet to kill them. Be that as it may, I assure you Mrs. Kasmarek is in no danger from us. Neither are you, Mister Talbott.” He paused and looked me in the eyes, “Bu
t I wonder how much danger are we in from you?”

  “Me? You're worried about me?” I laughed.

  He gave me another thin, cold, smile. “Please understand. Between the Justice Department and the Patillo Family over in Newark, I am not without enemies. At last count, I had two undercover police officers in my class, a boyish-looking FBI agent passing as a student intern in the department office, a new janitor, and I am not too sure about my new neighbors in Connecticut. As for the Patillos? Attorneys are supposed to be off limits, but if Rico thought for one instant that I stood any chance of getting Jimmy Santorini out of jail, he'd have a contract out on me before nightfall.”

  “An occupational hazard. You should be more careful about the clients you take.”

  “True enough,” he sighed as we continued walking around the park. “So tell me what you want. And tell me what you have that I am supposed to find so interesting.”

  “What I want is some information on Louie Panozzo. What was it that he had on Jimmy Santorini?”

  Billingham looked at me for a moment. “Suffice it to say that this meeting never took place, Mister Talbott. I spoke to my client. Frankly, I advised him that we should not talk to you, but a man can get very disconsolate when he is locked up inside a Federal Penitentiary, surrounded by all that barbed wire and knowing he will be very, very old when he finally does get out.” Billingham stopped walking, his eyes drilling into me. “But be advised, if you are playing games with him, you will learn that Jimmy has no sense of humor what-so-ever.”

  “Neither does Ralph Tinkerton,” I answered. “And if I don't stop him, it won't matter who Jimmy is pissed at.”

  We resumed our walk. Every time we crossed a new sidewalk, he led us off in a new direction, like a freighter in an old war movie zigzagging to avoid submarines. Until a few days ago, I would have thought Charley Billingham a paranoid nut, but that was when I still trusted funeral directors, doctors, and county sheriffs. I never did trust lawyers. Who does?

  “All right. You asked me about Louie Panozzo,” Billingham began his story. “He worked for Jimmy in Newark. He was not “family” or a “made man” or anything nefarious. He was merely an ordinary, nine-to-five bookkeeper, but he had access to all the financial records and all the accounting. No, that is not quite correct. They were his financial records, his “books” if you will, and he knew where every dime came from and went. That means all the drugs, women, numbers, the unions, loan sharking, money laundering, the scams, guns, booze, the bookies, the legitimate businesses Jimmy ran and the crooked ones. Panozzo had the details of everything that went into the till. More importantly, he kept “the pad”: the record of the payoffs Jimmy made to the police and half the elected and appointed government officials throughout eastern New Jersey and New York. Unfortunately, the FBI seized Panozzo on a trumped-up wire fraud charge. Instead of trusting me to get him off, he accepted a plea bargain from the U. S. Attorney and rolled over, first to that bastard Hardin, if you'll pardon my language, and then in court.”

  “I know that.”

  “Of course you do,” Billingham smiled, making me feel like a complete idiot. “And as I think you are aware by now, when Louie left Newark, he took an electronic copy of all of Jimmy's master accounting records for the past five years with him.”

  “That's what this is all about? The bean counter's books?” I asked.

  Billingham looked at me as if I was a first year law student who had just farted in the middle of one of his lectures. “No, Mister Talbott, this is not about the books, it is about power. Those records not only include the various items about Jimmy's operations I enumerated, they also include dozens of transactions with the other “families” in the Tri-state area — joint ventures, as you might call them — so those computer files can put many, many people in jail. No one knows that. Jimmy does, of course, I know it, Gino does, and now you do.”

  “Tinkerton knows too. He tried to carve them out of me with a scalpel.”

  “Not exactly. He knows the files exist and that they contain information on Jimmy's operations in New Jersey, perhaps the payoffs as well, but that is all he knows.”

  “So who has them, Charley?”

  “We had been hoping you do, Mister Talbott,” he smiled. “The Feds don't have them. If they did, they would have used them by now, and half the politicians and crooks on the Atlantic seaboard would already be in jail. And Rico Patillo doesn't have them. If he did, he would already be squeezing and muscling people.” He stopped and looked at me. “I know you are still skeptical about the value of those records, but did you ever see the “Untouchables” movie? The one with Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness and all that?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Well, in real life, when Al Capone was convicted and sent to prison, it was for income tax evasion, not the murders or numerous violent crimes he committed. It was the accountants who got him, the “bean counters” as you call them. With Louie Panozzo's accounting records, you could control a five-state area, perhaps even the government in Washington itself. That's what makes them the most explosive bits of computer code since the Manhattan Project, and whoever has them has his finger on the trigger.”

  “So it wasn't simply a matter of Panozzo holding a news conference and saying he made the whole thing up?”

  “That was pure propaganda. Do you think Jimmy Santorini would let that little weasel off the hook just because he stood up and said he didn't mean it? No, no, it was the books. It was always the books. Panozzo couldn't trade them to the Feds or to Rico Patillo, and he couldn't give them back to Jimmy, either. That was their little secret you see — Louie's and Jimmy's – and the only thing keeping him alive. As long as Louie had them, no one could touch him.”

  My mind flashed back to that night on the embalming table. “Tinkerton did.”

  “When Tinkerton learned that Panozzo was coming back to us, he grabbed Louie before he could get away. Perhaps he said something wrong, perhaps he tried to run bluff; but Tinkerton decided to torture the truth out of him. If he knew what was really on them, he would have been more careful, but Panozzo was overweight and out of shape. We assume he had a heart attack. Whatever, we know Tinkerton failed to get them.”

  “Tinkerton told me it was an accident, he went too far.”

  “That is quite likely the truth. And then you showed up,” Billingham turned and studied me. “Permit me to be blunt, Mister Talbott, but do you have them? Everyone believes you do. We can make you fabulously wealthy, and I will personally guarantee your safety and Mrs. Kasmarek's. All we want to do is destroy them. We'll even permit you to destroy them, if I can be there to watch. However, your clock is ticking. If Rico Patillo catches you first… well, you saw what he is capable of doing in Boston. He would kill you, kill her, and kill your mother, your dog, and your mother's dog, and that would be on a good day.”

  “How does Patillo figure into this?”

  “The first thing they teach a young prosecutor is to ask who benefits. So far, it is Rico Patillo who keeps coming up the big winner. Him, Senator Hardin, and your friend Ralph Tinkerton, and I would dearly love to find the link that ties them all of them together. As for the losers? Jimmy is in Marion and I'm walking around with two bodyguards.”

  “That's why you are going to help me, Charley.”

  “Me? And why would I want to do that?”

  “Because I'm your last hope. Yours and Jimmy's. I need you to pull together everything you have and everything you can find on Panozzo and his wife, Clement Aleppo, Richie Benvenuto, Johnny Dantonio, Paulie Mantucci, and their wives. I need medical records, dental records, blood types, all that stuff. I also need you to pull together everything you can find on the Greene Funeral Home, the Varner Clinic, and Oak Hill Cemetery in Columbus. Who owns them, their tax records, everything.”

  “Is that all?” He chuckled.

  “No, I need you to do a little research for me,” I said as I handed him a slip of paper.

  He opened it and read t
he names, “Skeppington, Brownstein, Pryor, and Kasmarek, Atlanta, Phoenix, Portland, and Chicago?... Kasmarek?” he looked over at the doorway.

  “I'm not keeping her around for personal comfort, Charley. They buried “the Mole” under her ex-husband's name in Oak Hill Cemetery in Columbus, and she's got proof. Louie Panozzo and his wife are buried under my name and my wife's. He won't match my Army records, and his wife won't match my wife's hospital records in California, either. They buried your other New Jersey friends under those other names. Tinkerton murdered them, and you'll find his signatures all over the records. And I think those guys barely scratch the surface. There are more graves up there.”

  Billingham stared at me, perhaps with a newfound appreciation. “You never cease to surprise, Mr. Talbott.” We had come around full circle to the arch, and I stopped. Billingham pulled a long, Cuban cigar out of his coat pocket, bit off the tip, and lit it slowly with a wooden match. As I watched his face, I could see the wheels turning.

  “You are a sharp lawyer with plenty of resources,” I told him. “Dig out the two sets of death certificates, get photos of the two sets of headstones and find a sympathetic judge. That ought to be enough to get a warrant to dig up the Talbott graves in Columbus. That should bring Tinkerton's house of cards crashing down, and give you the wedge you need to file some prosecutorial misconduct charges to get your boss out of jail.”

  “Prosecutorial misconduct?” Billingham looked down at the slip of paper, thinking. “Possibly, but it's a stretch.”

  “Really?” I reached in my pocket and handed him the Massachusetts driver's license. “Who's this guy?”