Lawyers, Guns and Money

by Bob Mayer

  “After you told them you wanted Crawford and me dead, did they tell you they wanted both of us on a boat?” Kane asked. “Was it their idea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they tell you where they wanted the boat to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it,” Marcelle said. “I passed it on to Selkis. Talk to him if you want to know anything else.”

  “He’s dead,” Kane said. “Things are spinning out of control. You know the Irish are going to do something tomorrow night, right?”

  “I have no clue what they’re doing here,” Marcelle said. “They were looking for Damon and when they couldn’t find him, they came to me. It wasn’t like I could say no to them. Especially with Damon gone.”

  “You gave them money and in exchange they agreed to kill me and Crawford.”

  Marcelle had no response to that.

  “They bought missiles with the money you gave them,” Kane said. “They’re going to blow something up. Do you care about that?”

  Marcelle barked an abrupt laugh, fueled by his desperate rage. “Why should I care? Looks like I won’t be around to see it, will I, William? Feel like a real man, right now? Ted was ten times the man you’ll never be. You should have died on that hill.”

  “There are times I think I did,” Kane said, but the words were wasted on the resurgent Thomas Marcelle.

  “The deeds,” Yazzie repeated.

  “I’ll give you the deeds,” Marcelle said. “But this is a negotiation because you need them and you can keep cutting me and I’ll never tell you. You don’t think I was prepared for this?”

  “I’m sure you were,” Yazzie said. “And that’s why we’re going to extract every bit of preparation from you. I tried easy, now we go hard.”

  The two knife men had sheathed their weapons while Yazzie spoke. They grabbed Marcelle before he could react, handcuffing his hands behind his back. One ratcheted down a chain hanging from a pully, hooking it to the links between the two cuffs.

  The chain was pulled and Marcelle was lifted off the ground as his arms rotated back unnaturally.

  Kane gave him credit that he didn’t scream as all his weight came to bear on his torqued shoulders via the arms. The toes of his shoes were just an inch from the floor as he hung angled forward. Marcelle was breathing hard, sweat on his brow as he slowly rotated in the air. A grimace of pain was etched on his face.

  “How are you enjoying negotiating?” Yazzie asked.

  “Fuck you,” Marcelle managed.

  “Cliché,” Yazzie said.

  “They may have given me up to you,” Marcelle said, a gasp for breath between every few words, “but my friends will remember. They’ll come for you. You don’t fuck with the Gentleman Bankers.”

  “Your definition of friend and mine are different,” Yazzie said. “And, if I was you, I’d leave fucking out of it when referring to those degenerates.”

  Marcelle tried to keep Yazzie in his gaze as he slowly turned. “I’ve got dirt on your Boss Crawford. I disappear, it comes out.”

  “You don’t have anything,” Yazzie said.

  A bead of sweat slid from Marcelle’s forehead to his chin, then dripped to the dirty concrete floor. “You don’t know him.” He looked at Yazzie and then the other Navajo. “None of you know him. Boss Crawford? You’ve all been played.”

  “The deeds,” Yazzie said.

  “Come here, William,” Marcelle said. “Let me tell you something. Privately.”

  Kane glanced at Yazzie, who indicated his approval. Kane stepped up to Marcelle, staring into his beady eyes, less than six inches away. He put a finger on Marcelle shoulder to stop the slow spin.

  Marcelle’s voice was harsh and low. “He’s going to kill me. I know it. You think you’re the good guy in the white hat?” He nodded toward Yazzie. “You’re on his side? You think him or Crawford are better than Damon?” He didn’t give Kane a chance to answer. “Ted’s footlocker. Get Crawford.” He raised his voice to play to the audience. “Fuck you, William Kane. May you burn in hell.” He lifted his head and spit into Kane’s face.

  Kane whispered his own secret back to Marcelle: “Toni was pregnant when Damon’s goons raped her. She lost the baby.” He stepped back.

  Marcelle’s eyes were wide in shock. “What? What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” Kane said.

  “What was that about?” Yazzie asked.

  “What?” Marcelle. “What?”

  “It was personal,” Kane said to Yazzie. “We have a history.”

  “Kane!” Marcelle screamed. “Kane!”

  Kane walked to the door to the warehouse. As he exited, he heard Thomas Marcelle still shouting his name, then it was cut off by an inarticulate scream. He knew it wouldn’t be the last.

  TOWER ONE, WORLD TRADE CENTER, MANHATTAN

  Toni was in the same seat at the bar in Windows on the World, similar drink in front of her. “You’re late.”

  “I was busy,” Kane said.

  “Anything?” she asked as Kane sat down.

  “The CIA, FBI and NYPD all seem disinterested in the potential threat,” Kane said. “Actually, the latter is a little interested but they’re close to Son of Sam so.”

  “Father,” she said.

  “I met Yazzie,” Kane said. He was staring out the window.

  “And?”

  “He’s negotiating with your father,” Kane said.

  “He found him?”

  “Yazzie traded Judge Clark for your father.”

  Toni was trying to follow, so Kane briefly recapped Gentleman Bankers, Roy Cohn and the swap, stopping before events in the warehouse. It took less than a minute. Toni didn’t appear happy about any aspect of it, nor was there any reason for her to be.

  Kane was impressed when the bartender brought him a cup of coffee and a glass of water with two ice cubes in it. “You ever need a job,” Kane told him, “there’s a diner in the Village where one is waiting for you. Corner of Washington and Gansevoort. It’s a classy joint. Interesting clientele.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the bartender politely said before moving off.

  “Where is father?” Toni asked, indicating the seriousness of the situation by forgoing a smart-ass observation on the job offer.

  “I told you,” Kane said. “He’s trying to make a deal with Yazzie over the deeds.”

  “Did he give you anything on the Irish?”

  “No. He doesn’t know much about them. He just paid them to kill me.” He gave a bitter laugh. “The ironic thing is this has nothing to do with the guns or the money that burned up with Damon.”

  Toni pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything.

  Kane turned from her and looked out the windows at the Statue of Liberty. The smog muted the view, but it was still spectacular. New Jersey, beyond, not so much as smoke stacks belched, contributing to the pollution. He spotted the latest construction amongst the swamps of East Rutherford, beyond the oil facilities. “I wonder why they still call themselves the New York Giants when they’re playing over there in the Meadowlands.”

  “Don’t fuck around with me,” Toni said.

  “I’m not.” Kane turned back to her. “Toni, this is much deeper than your father. Much worse. I’m telling you up front that I’m not informing you of things that have happened in order to protect you but blood has been spilled. And more will be.”

  “No shit.” She drained her drink and thumped the glass back down on the bar hard. The bartender swooped in with a fresh one as smoothly as he’d brought Kane’s. “He gets me at least,” Toni muttered. She began tapping a fingernail on the polished wood.

  A refrain was chanting in Kane’s mind: don’t ask. “Hey, have you done anything for Truvey?”

  “You’re not good at changing the subject. I made some calls.”

  “You know Morticia from the diner?”

  “How could I not? Hard to miss.”

  “She’s also a singer a
nd actress,” Kane said. “She could use some help too. Stop by the diner sometime and talk with her, please?”

  “Every waitress in Manhattan is an aspiring actress,” Toni said, but listlessly, her mind on family. “Sure. Truvey and Morticia. Anything else.”

  Kane changed the subject. “Can you get on the roof of this building?”

  “No,” Toni said. “The observation deck is in the South Tower. The antenna mast is on top of this building. Why?”

  Kane waved off the question. “Just thinking.”

  She didn’t ask the direct question. “What are you going to do?”

  “This is a tangled knot and I’m sitting in the middle of it.”

  “How are you going to untangle it?”

  “Only thing I can do,” Kane said. “Cut it.” He paused, then said: “I’m sorry, Toni.”

  “Will you see my father again?”

  “No.”

  “Will I?” But there was no indication she expected him to answer, nor did Kane volunteer one.

  “Ted’s footlocker,” Kane said.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s your father’s emergency rally point. Yazzie is going to be coming to you for the deeds that are in it.”

  Toni was about to respond when the bartender approached, holding up the phone. He plugged the jack in and placed it in front of Toni.

  “Yes?” she listened for a second, then hung up. “Yazzie’s already here.”

  “Shit,” Kane said. “There’s other stuff in that footlocker. Dirt on Crawford that we might need. Probably stuff on a lot of other people.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?” Toni stood. “Come on.”

  Kane followed. As they got on the elevator he began to speak. “I’ll distract Yazzie and you go in your office and get whatever’s in there out. It’s in--”

  “Hush,” Toni said.

  Mrs. Ruiz wasn’t smiling, nor was Yazzie.

  Toni flicked a hand, indicating for Yazzie to follow into her office, negating Kane’s aborted plan. The three trooped in, Kane closing the door.

  Yazzie pointed at the footlocker. “Open it.”

  Kane inched his hand toward the .45. “Be polite.”

  Yazzie looked at him. “Did you tell her about her father?”

  “I told her you were negotiating with him last I saw,” Kane said.

  “The deeds are in there,” Yazzie said to Toni. “Give them to me and we’re done.”

  “Are we?” Kane asked.

  Yazzie ignored him.

  “I’ve looked in it,” Toni said. “It’s just my brother’s medals and some letters. His full-dress coat and hat.”

  “Tar-bucket,” Kane automatically corrected her about the hat.

  “There’s nothing else—” Toni was cut off by Yazzie.

  “Open it.”

  “You didn’t say please,” Kane said. “I told you to be polite.”

  “My brothers are waiting in the sky lobby,” Yazzie said. “We can do this easy or we can do this hard. They’ll be up here in ten minutes if I don’t meet them with the deeds.”

  “Ah!” Kane said. “You’re doing Magnificent Seven.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Toni snapped. She knelt in front of the locker and spun the combination on the old lock. It clicked and she removed it. She stepped away.

  Yazzie flipped up both latches and pulled open the lid. He removed the top tray holding Ted’s medals and letters, putting it to the side. He stared at the gray full-dress coat and its row of brass buttons for a moment, then gently removed it, along with the tar bucket.

  It only took him a few moments to find what tactical officers at West Point had overlooked for four years, but he had the advantage of knowing it was there. He pried up the false bottom.

  Yazzie straightened and faced them, a legal-size manila envelope in his hands. He looked inside of it. “They were here all along.”

  “Is your ten minutes up?” Kane asked. “We don’t want your fellow warriors charging through the door with tomahawks. By the way, are you going to hang around and help me with the Irish situation?”

  “That’s your problem,” Yazzie said. “They were after you, not Boss Crawford. It was Mister Marcelle who included him in the issue and that has been dealt with.”

  “Where is my father?” Toni said.

  Yazzie walked toward the door, but paused by Kane. “I lied earlier when I said there wouldn’t be repercussions for Johnson’s death. I lied in order to achieve my goal. That is now achieved.” He faced Kane and stared into his eyes. “Blood for blood. It is the way of my people.”

  “Can it wait a day or two?” Kane said. “I’m kind of busy.”

  “There’s no time limit on blood vengeance,” Yazzie said.

  Kane moved forward, close enough that he could feel the warmth coming off the Navajo’s skin in the air-conditioned office. “What happened to it having been a fair fight?”

  “The vengeance will also be fair.”

  Kane stared into Yazzie’s dark eyes. “Then I guess we’ll eventually be taking a walk on the wild side.”

  Yazzie left without another word; the door swinging shut behind him.

  Kane went to the footlocker and looked in. There was nothing else there. “Your father said he had quite a bit in here. Something on Crawford. He wasn’t referring to the deeds. This was his cache. There had to be more than--”

  He paused as Toni raised a hand. “I thought it was strange that my father shipped me Ted’s footlocker. He’s pissed at me, he won’t talk to me, but he sends Ted’s footlocker over?” Toni went to the wet bar, pouring a drink. She drained the glass, then refilled it. “Honestly, I didn’t think to look until you mentioned my dad having his cache and, like I told you, I couldn’t think of anyone he’d trust with it. Except Ted.”

  “He didn’t trust you with it,” Kane said. “He set you up with it.”

  “He did both,” Toni said. “That was who he was. Always playing both sides. I knew Yazzie would get to him. Force him to give up the deeds. I removed everything else.”

  Kane noted she was using the past tense. “Have you looked at what you took out?”

  “It’s mostly on microfiche,” Toni said. “I haven’t had time to check it. What did Yazzie mean about blood?”

  “Not important right now.”

  “But it’s going to be,” Toni said. “The bill always comes due. Father’s certainly did.” She took a drink, then pointed with the hand holding the glass at the footlocker. “Father put his stench on everything in our life. Even Ted’s memory. He sent that to me knowing it was a ticking time bomb.” She went to her desk and sat down. “Don’t you have something to do?”

  “Yeah,” Kane said. “I gotta go.”

  Kane took the express elevator to the 107th Floor of the South Tower. He ignored the indoor observation deck and followed the escalators to the roof. He exited facing east and the tall antenna of the North Tower was to his left front. The observation deck was set back from the edge of the building, with a suicide prevention rim below it, ringed with razor wire to prevent someone from climbing onto it and throwing themselves into the void.

  The wind was gusting out of the south and the large American flag was snapping. The deck was crowded with tourists, who were more intent on snapping pictures than enjoying the view.

  Kane earned a curse in German for walking between a picture taker and his subject, but ignored it as he made his way around, corralled by the white, waist-high fencing.

  The ultimate in fields of fire.

  As he walked south along the east side of the deck, the Williamsburg, Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges straddled the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Long Island stretched off into the hazy distance.

  He reached the south edge. Governors Island dominated Upper Bay to the left. Ellis and Liberty Islands were smaller, with the Statue a toy figure from this height and distance.

  He instinctively knew the Statue of Liberty was more than three kilometers away. Not by m
uch, but he’d spent enough time on ranges and sighting in artillery fire that he had no doubt. Two miles at least, which was a couple hundred meters out of range. He’d estimated the same on the boat as they sailed out to sea with Judge Clark earlier in the day. The Tower seemed an obvious firing platform, but it was a distance from the water and would require getting the TOWs inside and up here; complications on top of complications. And out of range.

  Kane commandeered one of the binoculars set on a fixed pedestal. He zoomed in on the Statue. Then he looked at Ellis Island, reminded of what Caitlyn has said: They’ll be close.

  “’Lions and tigers and bears, oh my’,” he whispered.

  18

  Tuesday Evening,

  9 August 1977

  MEATPACKING DISTRICT, MANHATTAN

  “The Statue of Liberty,” Kane told Thao.

  The diner was empty, the floor mopped, the tables clean. Kane had a map of New York City spread out on the counter, empty coffee cups holding it down.

  “That would be terrible.” Thao was appalled, a rare display of emotion and an indication how accurately Kevin Flanagan had chosen his target.

  “It would be,” Kane agreed.

  “Where will they fire from?” Thao was looking at the map. “The Trade Center?”

  “Out of range.”

  “New Jersey shoreline?”

  Kane tapped a spot on the map. “They’re on Ellis Island.”

  “How do you know, Dai Yu?”

  “It’s the smart place. It’s where I’d be. And I saw their boat.”

  Thao raised an eyebrow. “You went to Ellis Island?”

  Kane shook his head. “From the top of the South Tower. Their zodiac is pulled up on the island. It’s covered by a tarp and in the middle of some bushes, but I know what it is.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Yes. The island looks deserted,” Kane said. “I called Pope and asked him to grab as much intel as he can. We’re meeting him at my place.”

  Thao checked the legend of the map. “Around one thousand meters from Ellis Island to the Statue.”