The Sixteenth Man

by Thomas B. Sawyer

  Fran hung up the phone.

  V.J. bored in: “Wait a minute – car and cash about add up? To what?”

  Fran poured herself another cup of coffee. “I’m sorry, V.J. Dr. Packard made me promise.”

  “Oh. That – that’s just great. Okay. Wait’ll the next time you need something from me.”

  “Look, eventually you’ll understand why. It’s – well it’s one of these things that anybody that knows about it could be in danger.”

  “Uh-huh. And whaddya s’pose I’m wearing this badge for...?”

  Fran raised the coffee mug halfway to her mouth, then stopped. V.J. followed her eyes, turned.

  Her father had re-entered the kitchen, followed by the man in overalls, whose tackle box was in one hand, the other in his pocket. Norwood indicated him with a thumb-jerk. “Plumber.”

  “Plumber? I didn’t...” Fran’s voice changed slightly, as if in that instant something had become clear to her – and she wished it hadn’t. “...You must have the wrong---”

  Emile Beauchesne removed his hand from his pocket. In his fist was a Glock. The first bullet entered the middle of Fran’s forehead. The second caught V.J. just below his nose. Norwood Jeeter watched his daughter, then V.J., fall to the floor. Beauchesne turned the weapon on him. Jeeter started to protest, then gave it up. The bullet blew out the left side of his head.

  TWENTY-SIX

  1963

  Wednesday, November 27th

  When Santo DiMartini finally formed the next word, it sounded like a different voice. “How?”

  “Cops. Everywhere. And then she goes inside with Russell. Jesus, Mr. D – I dunno what to say...”

  DiMartini transferred the phone to his other hand, unlocked the desk drawer. For the nearly two years Gino Borgese had worked for the organization, it seemed the young man always had something to say – usually inappropriate. Gino was arrogant, far too quick and vocal with his judgments for DiMartini or his capo, John Ciccone, to be entirely sure he was reliable. Alex Moffat, convinced from the start that Gino was a liability, urged DiMartini to dump him. But DiMartini liked the contrast. Gino’s youth, impatience, impetuosity, offered a welcome, potentially valuable offset to Ciccone’s old-school deliberateness. Gino got things done. Additionally, there was his familiarity with the latest technology, which got him admitted for NYPD training, till his difficulty accepting authority washed him out. For better or worse, Gino was now DiMartini’s man in Moab. Hopefully, equal to it – to finishing it.

  DiMartini removed the handsome little chromed automatic from the drawer. “Anything on Russell?”

  “That’s sorta the good--- Look, what it is is, one of the guys from Reno, Moe Saperstein – he’s maybe got something. I think it’ll be better if I put him on.”

  That pompous prick, Brigadier General Walton Meade Butler III, and his ballbuster southern belle wife. Hoover’s smarmy “intermediaries.” Those self-righteous Ivy League cocksuckers from Langley, the fucking Cubans, even Johnny Ciccone. This “Russell” scumbag...

  Santo DiMartini knew it was fruitless, looking for anyone else on whom he might place even a fragment of blame for sending his only child to her death. No, it all circled back to him. For having gotten into this fucking mess in the first place. But, god, wouldn’t it be a relief to find someone? To grab onto something that might, even for a minute, make him want to go on living? He knew, quite simply, there would be no escape from this. Ever. Even if – by some truly exquisite twist of fortune – he were to personally take Russell’s life.

  Shouldering the phone to his ear, he released the clip, shoved it home.

  From his early teens onward, DiMartini had been fascinated by a singular phenomenon, endlessly repeated on the nightly news – stories about people whose routine, everyday existence would suddenly take a dramatic, irrevocable, horrible turn – either because of a lapse, or a wrong decision – after which their lives would never be the same. The gentle bus driver who, in a sudden careless lapse, runs down and kills a three year-old. The honest bank clerk who finally – one time only – yields to the lure of all that cash, and is immediately caught. The skilled doctor who, during routine surgery, makes a fatal slip. The devoted young mother distracted for an instant by a store window display; she turns to her baby carriage, and her infant son is gone. Incidents from which there is no return. No undoing.

  DiMartini never really questioned why such tales struck such a resonant chord in him, but they invariably made him shudder. He would try to identify with the people, to imagine how they could ever move beyond such devastating experiences. These occasional journeys into their heads were brief, painful; not places DiMartini wished to be. And worse, the answer was always the same. He concluded that if such a fate were ever to be his, he would have no choice but to kill himself.

  Moe Saperstein’s voice brought him back. “Mr. DiMartini, I’m sorry for your loss. Your daughter – and Johnny...”

  “Thank you. And I for you. I understand you and Parisi were close...” He ascertained that a round was in the chamber. “...I’m listening.”

  Moe cautioned that he had nothing conclusive, “...Just youknow pieces that maybe won’t fit anyways?”

  “Go on, please.”

  “Johnny, before he--- He said did I know anything about a blonde and a cowboy – and Texas...?”

  DiMartini hoped that that was all Ciccone said.

  “...Anyways, there was this rodeo bum hangin’ around Reno. Runs up markers all over town? Not big ones, but enough so’s we’re payin’ attention...?”

  DiMartini wiped a smudge off the gun. The conversation was not holding his interest. He decided to give it another few seconds.

  “Anyways, coupla weeks back he borrows five large from one of our street guys, blows it that night playin’ Hold ‘Em, and---”

  “Moe, listen. Does this go anywhere?”

  “Like I said, Mr. DiMartini, maybe, maybe not. Anyways, he bugs out next morning with this blonde? Jimoke’s name is Millgrim. So Mr. Feldman, he puts the word out...?”

  DiMartini was engaged. Partially. Saperstein’s boss, Harry Feldman ran the organization’s Reno operation.

  “...Anyways, two things happen. This Saturday it was, Mr. Feldman gets word that Friday night the blonde comes home to her old man. Then, Sunday he hears from Lennie Stark, youknow in Austin? Corpse turns up near Big Spring with a bullet in the head. No ID, but guess what? The FBI’s got his prints on file?”

  “Whatsisname. Millgrim.”

  “Yeah. Here’s where it maybe gets inneresting. Johnny Ciccone mentioned surveillance photos – the blonde and the cowboy? Well, the skinny around Reno was, the broad’s old man, Stan Brodax, when she took off, he hired a local gumshoe. So the broad – this Mrs. Brodax – and the cowboy, they’re both accounted for. But not the dick...”

  DiMartini held his breath.

  Saperstein continued, described Charles Callan. “I know him a little. Sorta shifty, but chips-down, I mean hey, a schmuck that takes that kinda case...? Who the fuck knows, y’knowwhatImean? Anyways, Mr. Feldman’s still on it, account of he wants his money.”

  “Russell, the guy that made the play. Could he be this Callan?”

  “This has got somethin’ to do with that?’

  “Could he be?”

  “Jeez, I only saw him from a distance, but – yeah, now you mention it, it’s not youknow impossible.”

  “Find out what he drives. Callan.”

  “Sure. I’ll get Reno into it.”

  “Okay. Keep Gino posted. And put him back on.” DiMartini slipped the gun back into the drawer, locked it. Bad enough in any case, that he couldn’t control the situation – he acutely disliked being dependent on someone as untried as Borgese. It would be a long time replacing John Ciccone.

  “Yeah, Mr. D...”

  “The PI sounds like the one.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Straight, Gino. You need backup?”

  “It’s your call, but I think I can
handle it. Besides, I don’t know that we got a lot of time – especially if it isn’t the PI and we gotta youknow get both of ‘em.”

  DiMartini was mildly comforted by the unexpectedly grownup response. “Okay. Make it happen.” DiMartini disconnected, immediately dialed Harry Feldman in Reno. There was a knock on the door. “Come in.”

  It was Alex Moffat. He’d been drinking, looked haggard. DiMartini waved him toward a chair. “Harry, Santo DiMartini here. Something else I want you to do for me. I need everything you can find on this private investigator...” It wasn’t necessary, but he referred to the name he’d scrawled on his pad. “...Charles Callan. Presto.”

  “Shit, it’d be easier finding a fuckin’ pit-boss’s heart.” Moe slowed the enormous Lincoln. They were several hundred yards up one of the last, desolate side roads on the lowermost end of Moab, approaching a weathered, sagging building with a faded sign: MINING & DRILLING EQUIPMENT REPAIRS.

  It was big-B boring. Gino lit another Marlboro. For the last hour, beginning at the north side of town, they had driven up one street and down the next, searching for Charlie Callan’s aqua-and-white 1954 Chevvie hardtop, for which Reno quickly provided both tag and engine numbers. Short of Moe and himself catching the sonofabitch, Gino had hoped at the very least to be bailed out of this tedium by an early walkie-talkie report of a sighting.

  All in all, however, he was rather pleased with himself, and his newly ascendant authority. He had, quite efficiently he thought, positioned men along Route 191, from Crescent Junction on the north to Monticello on the south, with others on Routes 128 and 46, thus covering virtually all of the roads into or out of Moab that did not dead-end after a few miles. But Callan – if he was their man – had either vanished or was laying very fucking low.

  Immediately past the dilapidated building were various decaying pieces of equipment used in mining, drilling. Dominating the mess were a rusting forty-foot truss-frame conveyor and a mostly-disintegrated single-boom drilling rig. Strewn about were assorted smaller items – slurry pumps, separators, a haphazard pile of tire carcasses, disorderly stacks of dented oil drums. Beyond all this, the road pretty much petered out as it wandered downslope toward the Colorado River. Moe swung the car into the lot, started to back out for the return to town.

  “Yo.”

  Moe braked, looked at where Gino was pointing. Almost concealed behind the drill rig and conveyor was a car. White and turquoise.

  Charlie had almost no recollection of the walk back to Mrs. Murck’s rooming house. He was thankful she wasn’t around when he entered, even more thankful that he’d prepared a to-do list the previous night, had laid out the requisite materials – brown paper, package tape and the like. If he hadn’t written it all down for himself, he would probably have sat on the edge of his bed staring at nothing for god-knew how long. Instead, still in shock over Nicole DiMartini’s death, the list kept him on track, enabled him to lose himself in the simple-but-essential tasks he’d outlined – changing clothes, packing his suitcase, writing a postcard to Lynnie, dividing the money into three piles, placing the bulk of it in a carton addressed to Dorothy, $50,000 in a smaller box for Phyllis, the small remainder for himself. He had just sealed the last package when Mrs. Murck knocked, he guessed so she could schmooze about the shootout at the Courthouse. He stood very still, relaxing slightly about a minute later when she went downstairs. Only when Charlie heard the front door close did he risk the few floorboard-creaking steps to the window. Peering cautiously through the curtain he watched her head for Main Street, trailing her little folding wire shopping cart. A final check of his room, a last swipe at his fingerprints with the bath towel, then he gathered up his possessions, headed downstairs.

  Charlie tossed his suitcase in the Chevvie’s trunk, placed briefcase, parcels and postcard on the front seat. In contrast to the cowboy and blue-collar looks he’d affected earlier, he was wearing his old raincoat over his suit-and-tie. Working-stiff-bland, anonymous. A couple of quick stops and he’d be on his way home. Four minutes later, he parked on Main, glanced about, tried to gain a sense of any surveillance activity. None was apparent, except for a cruising Smokey. He crossed to the Post Office.

  The gray sky had darkened noticeably by the time he returned to his car. He was reasonably certain he’d done everything possible to outsmart the pricks, to delay their identifying him, though he knew that that was merely a matter of time. Within a day or two of returning to Reno, he and Dorothy and Phyllis would need to disappear, as would his mother and Lynnie. But first he would have his showdown with Phyl, get that taken care of. Not a confrontation he was relishing.

  Gripping the Chevvie’s doorhandle, Charlie had been groping in his pocket for his car keys. Instead, his hand felt the film canister. And he froze.

  Ohhh-h-h – fuck.

  For the first time, in a rush of blinding clarity that cut through his still-intense gloom about the tragedy at the Courthouse, he saw his situation whole.

  And realized he’d been kidding himself.

  What had played out over at the Courthouse was the one scenario he had not imagined. Nor, because of his innate honesty, could he have anticipated that he would end up with both their money and the negatives. And – DiMartini’s daughter dead. It was suddenly, devastatingly obvious to Charlie that beyond the bad guys’ number-one imperative – recovering the strips of film – would be the demand for revenge. No matter what. Even if Charlie were at that moment to – say – attempt to return the negatives – anonymously or otherwise. Before completing the thought he understood that that was not do-able, and further, that he had no time. Forget a day or two. Not even an hour that he could count on – before the heavies figured out who he was – before they would go after his family – if only as a way of getting to him.

  Thank god nobody knew about Dorothy.

  He flat-out ran at the phone booth twenty feet away, fishing for change enroute, nearly knocking down a woman pushing a stroller. He blurted an inarticulate apology, slammed the door shut, stuffed a dime into the slot, dialed his home number, added the requested coins. It rang. And rang. No answer. He called Phyllis’s shop, got the cheery voice of her answering service-lady.

  Right. This is Phyllis’s husband. Please tell her she should run like hell or she’ll get killed.

  He rang off, tried his mother in Studio City. Got her service. He disconnected.

  Shitshitshit.

  Charlie returned to his car, thankful at least that he’d retained nearly $5,000. He recalled seeing a Chevrolet Agency near the south end of town.

  The large, snarling, ugly old dog was penned behind a padlocked gate, but Charlie recoiled anyway from the slobbery maw.

  Whaddya think you’re guarding, forchrissake? Who’d want any of this shit?

  Off the highway, but less than a mile from the Gaither Chevrolet Agency, the mining equipment repair facility, deserted except for the dog, seemed perfect. The operator was apparently gone for the day, or out to lunch or whatever, and from the overgrown, neglected look of the place, probably didn’t spend a lot of time there anyway. Charlie had considered, then immediately dropped, the idea of using his old Chevvie for a trade-in. Not good – for a variety of reasons. Among them, the papers. It was registered to him, supposed to be wearing the Nevada tags he’d dumped Monday night. He thought about torching it, but doing so would draw unwanted attention. No, better to simply lose the damn car in a way that might buy him a little time.

  He stood behind the big old conveyor and the hulk of what had once been a drilling machine. The narrow, U-shaped space was bounded on the other two sides by rusting 55-gallon drums. A tight fit, but if he could pull the Chevvie in there, it would be difficult to see it from the road. Charlie returned to the car, and with several back-and-forths, a few fender-scrapes, maneuvered it into position. He killed the ignition, removed his .38 from beneath the dash, slipped it into his belt. Then he opened the glove-box, placed his baseball in the briefcase. Vehicle registration, miscellaneous
paper-scraps, tire-gauge, pens, pencils, any of it – from other peoples’ business cards to Phyllis’s old grocery lists – could be traced. He wadded them, took a last brief look around, at the familiar, worn upholstery, the smoke-and-nicotine-browned headliner, cracked plastic and scratched enamel, the faded aqua carpet. And smiled. There, just below the ashtray, was the famous cigarette-burn. The result of his and Dorothy’s first kiss. One of the results, anyway.

  The beast had transported him to a lot of places he never thought he’d see.

  This was definitely one of them.

  Charlie opened the door as far as he could, swung his feet onto the ground, lit a match to the wadded the paper scraps. When they flared, he tossed them clear, stood, shuddered in the sudden, chill wind. He raised the hood, found a jagged stone with which he quickly mutilated the engine numbers. From the trunk he took his suitcase and everything that might be easily traceable: roadmaps, receipts, an old newspaper. And his screwdriver. He detached the stolen New Mexico license plates, stuffed them and the papers into several nearby oil drums. On a quick, second-thought hunch that he should travel light, he got rid of his old two-suiter as well, submerging it in a drum half-full of oily muck. He grabbed his briefcase, started trudging toward the main road. The sky was dead-gray.

  Snow began falling and, with the late afternoon chill, was already sticking to the pavement. Sheriff’s Cruisers were cruising. Charlie drove his just-purchased maroon 3 year-old Chevvie slowly north on Main Street. He hated the color, the very idea of owning such a stodgy “salesman’s car,” which made it, he decided, the ideal choice. Entirely out of character. Besides, it was a major improvement over his old one. This baby was clean, the odometer read 12 thousand miles, which he figured meant probably 25 or 30, but the defroster worked and the steering didn’t judder, at least not at the modest speeds he’d driven it thus far. The salesman had mistaken his longing glance at the flashy, loaded new ‘64 convertible in the showroom for an invitation to work him, but Charlie quickly put that one to rest. This was about survival. While awaiting the paperwork he had ducked into the service department phone booth, again tried without success to call Phyllis and his mother.