To Save a Son

by Brian Freemantle

  “But he did!” protested Franks.

  “It’s not me you have to convince, Mr. Franks. Your record, up to now, has been that of a successful businessman. Entrepreneurial, certainly. Innovative, from what you’ve told me. But also, from what you’ve told me, someone who has always shown proper care and caution. How does that character reconcile with linking yourself up with mobsters, without so much as a basic character check?” The lawyer indicated the material that had come from Chicago and Houston and which Franks had provided as he told his story.

  “I know! I know!” said Franks desperately. ‘I trusted Nicky Scargo.”

  “Then Nicky Scargo’s got to say so. He’s got to flagellate himself in the witness box and admit to some sort of biblical deception.”

  “What about the dissolution of the company!” demanded Franks. “The moment I discovered who they were I got rid of them. Doesn’t that prove my innocence?”

  “No,” said Rosenberg shortly.

  “What?”

  “The FBI advised you of your rights, before the interview began? That you could have had a lawyer present?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Okay,” said Franks, raising his hand. “Another mistake. I accept that. But I’m not guilty of anything! What have I got to be afraid of if I’m not guilty?”

  “A very great deal,” said the lawyer. “You didn’t know of me when the FBI got to you, but you did before the dissolution meeting. I want another undertaking from you, Mr. Franks. And that is that from now on you’ll do nothing, absolutely nothing at all, without first discussing it fully with me.”

  “But what’s wrong with dissolving the company?”

  “Shall I tell you how any prosecutor would present that to a jury?” said Rosenberg. “Not as proof of innocence. As proof of guilt. In little more than a day, gentlemen of the jury, of Mr. Franks knowing that the FBI had discovered what he was doing, he tried to divest himself of his criminal colleagues, people he was happy and content to front for while they washed millions of illegal dollars but from whom he tried to run when they got found out.”

  “That’s a travesty!” protested Franks.

  “It’s the obvious prosecution,” said Rosenberg. “You should have done absolutely nothing. You should have come to me. We should have waited for any prosecution to be launched and then subpoenaed Dukes and Flamini and Pascara and Greenberg and everyone else we could have thought of. Courts are theaters, Mr. Franks. Juries are impressed by the actors, so impressions are important.” Rosenberg gestured again to the material that had come from Houston and Chicago. “They look like mobsters. You don’t.”

  “You can still subpoena them, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can. And I will, if the need arises. They won’t talk, of course. They’ll invoke the Fifth Amendment. Which again would have been in our favor if you hadn’t closed up the company. While the company existed there was the chance of your appearing the dupe. Dissolved looks like you were running.”

  “I haven’t handled anything very well, have I?”

  “No,” said the relentlessly honest lawyer. “Which for me is something actually in your favor. I’ve told you how a prosecution will present it, and I’ve told you how it could be viewed by a jury, but I think you’ve behaved exactly like an honest man.” He smiled apologetically. “Please don’t be offended, but if you’d been crooked I would have expected you to be cleverer than you have been.”

  Franks laughed humorlessly. “Thanks!” he said. “Until now I’ve thought of myself as a pretty smart businessman. It’s not going to look much like that in court, is it?”

  “I’ve given you the bottom line, in everything,” said Rosenberg. “It’s the way I work, never promising anything I don’t think I can deliver. It’s bad, but it’s a very long way from being hopeless. Scargo’s file is an ace. He’ll be another, if he’s prepared to testify. Even if he’s not, that won’t mean that everything is lost. Don’t forget what I said about courts being theater. The Fifth Amendment prevents people incriminating themselves out of their own mouths. I’ve never known a jury yet who haven’t believed the point that was being put to a witness who invokes his rights. If it gets to a court and I get Scargo in the box, I can make him confirm that file to the jury by just letting him hide behind the law. The Cain and Abel bit might be more difficult, particularly as you’re married to his sister. Is there any evidence we could bring to prove that it was a split, feuding family?”

  “None,” said Franks. “Until now it’s always been close; incredibly close.”

  “So why did he do it?”

  Franks hesitated. Wasn’t it precisely a Cain and Abel situation between him and Nicky? “Competition,” he said.

  “What?”

  Franks told the other man of the perpetual contests that Enrico had set them when they were children, the constant demands that one should excel over the other, and then he recounted Nicky’s outburst at their confrontation after the summons from England.

  “Wait!” stopped Rosenberg. “This is important. The exact words, as far as you can remember them. I want the exact words!”

  Franks frowned, recollecting. “He said he was ‘sick and tired,’” he groped. “Something about being sick and tired of having me held up to him as a big tycoon. Just as he had been sick and tired of having to be as good as me when we were kids and at school.”

  “Jealousy?” said Rosenberg.

  “I suppose so.”

  “I wonder if he’d admit that in court?” said Rosenberg, more to himself than to the other man.

  “Would it be important?”

  “It’s the motive, isn’t it? Trying to involve himself with you; be as big an operator?”

  “I suppose it is,” agreed Franks.

  “A jury could accept that. Understand it.” said Rosenberg, still reflective. He came back up to Franks. “What about you?” he said.

  “Me?”

  “How do you feel about Nicky Scargo?”

  Rosenberg was very good, conceded Franks. But then that was why he’d come to the man in the first place. Complete honesty, the lawyer had demanded. And he was going to have to be completely honest in everything if he were to extricate himself. “It’s never been a feeling of jealousy,” he said. “Not a conscious feeling, anyway. But there’s always been competition, the need to prove ourselves better.”

  “Yourself better?” persisted Rosenberg.

  “I suppose so,” admitted Franks reluctantly.

  “Nicky was working for you, setting up the companies?”

  “Yes,” said Franks in further admission. He was aware that he was coloring.

  “Was that how it was? Why you went into it so openly? To get Nicky Scargo working for you?”

  “I trusted him to set up an honest deal.”

  “We’ve talked about that,” said Rosenberg, refusing to be deflected. “Were you eager—overeager to the point of ignoring business practices you would normally have followed—to set yourself up with Nicky Scargo so that you would be his boss?”

  “Yes,” said Franks, his voice hardly audible.

  Rosenberg sat back, appearing satisfied. “If this comes to court I’ll have to bring it out,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you? It provides the rationale. It doesn’t detract from the fact that you were incredibly stupid, but it makes explainable, partially at least, how it could have happened.”

  What was he going to have left at the end of all this? wondered Franks. He said wearily, “Yes, I understand.”

  “Okay. Is there anything else that I don’t know that you think maybe I should?”

  Franks considered and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” Then he said, “Yes, one thing. Waldo, the FBI man, said he wanted me to remain here, in Manhattan. I don’t know if he meant the actual city or what. My wife and family are up in Scarsdale and I want to go up there too. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”

  Rosenberg shook his h
ead. “You were bullied, weren’t you?” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Did Waldo or the other guy say where they were working from? New York office or the Washington headquarters?”

  “No,” said Franks.

  Rosenberg told his secretary to get him a number, and said, “The New York office will know, even if he isn’t attached to them. I’ll enter an undertaking as your counselor, guaranteeing your cooperation and appearance whenever requested. They can’t impose the sort of restrictions they were trying, not at this stage.”

  The telephone rang and Rosenberg lifted it, frowning across the desk as soon as he identified himself and said whom he was representing and asking to be connected to Waldo.

  “They are looking for you,” he said to Franks, hand cupped over the receiver.

  Waldo apparently came on to the line. Rosenberg said, “What!” and then, “Yes, of course. Yes. I understand. Of course we’ll come. Right away!”

  The lawyer replaced the receiver and looked across the desk, momentarily unspeaking. “Nicky Scargo’s been shot,” he announced. “He’s dead.”

  17

  They went in Rosenberg’s car, Franks hunched behind the driver, head bent. He thought they went by a park but he was only vaguely aware and didn’t know—wasn’t interested—whether it was Central Park or one of the other oases in the city. When was he going to stop being wrong! When, dear God, whoever He was, was he going to be able to see six inches beyond the end of his own nose, appreciate what he was involved in and do something right instead of wrong, for a change! He’d been wrong about the establishment of the companies and he’d been wrong about cooperating with the FBI interview and he’d been wrong in confronting the mobsters and dissolving the companies and he’d been wrong in dismissing—laughing as if it were absurd—the possibility of someone being killed. And now it had happened. Nicky was dead. Franks found it difficult to comprehend; no, not comprehend. The lawyer had spoken to the FBI and the FBI had said Nicky was dead, so he had to comprehend that. Assimilate, then. That was the word. Difficult to assimilate. He’d accepted—they’d all accepted—that the family was destroyed figuratively. But this was literally. Shot, Rosenberg had said. Dead. What would that mean? Franks asked himself, striving to understand; striving to understand properly. It would devastate Mamma and Poppa Scargo; destroy them as effectively as the bullet or bullets had destroyed their son. Maria, too. She might have gone back to her mother on Long Island, but Franks couldn’t believe that she’d ceased loving Nicky, not completely. Any more than he believed Tina had, despite everything. Both of them—Maria and Tina—were reacting to events, not to their hearts. What about himself? The question settled, giving some coherence at last to his thoughts. Nothing, he realized. Nothing, just as there’d been nothing all those years ago in the English graveyard when he’d stood over his father’s grave and tried to feel something. Not grief, at least. His awareness of what Nicky’s death meant revolved around the just-ended interview with the lawyer. “Nicky Scargo’s got to say so.” That’s what Rosenberg had said: Nicky’s evidence—even if the man hid behind the Fifth Amendment—could have saved him in front of a jury. Now Nicky wasn’t alive anymore, either to speak or to hide. Did that mean he couldn’t be saved?

  Franks wasn’t aware of the car stopping. Rosenberg had to nudge him into something like wakefulness, and Franks tried to recover, staring around, startled. There were police cars lined in an orderly fashion and a squarely solid, red brick building, which in the first few seconds Franks thought was actually Nicky’s brownstone and then immediately knew was not, because it was too square and squat.

  “It’s the precinct building,” said Rosenberg, providing the identification. “There’s a mortuary at the back. That’s where I’ve arranged to meet the FBI people.”

  Franks let the lawyer leave the car first, trailing docilely behind, wanting very much to follow and not to lead. They entered through the main door, into a bedlam of a receiving area. It appeared to be crowded with people, all shouting and arguing. There was a high, commanding desk behind which sat a sergeant and two assistants, who seemed—illogically—to be unaware of the movement and cacophony and jostling parading before them. There were uniformed officers shouting for attention and ordinary people shouting for attention and telephones ringing, demanding attention. On a bench along one wall three men sat, handcuffed, bent forward to look down at the floor; one had a bloodstained cloth around his head but didn’t seem in any pain. Franks would have thought the man should have been in a hospital. Rosenberg didn’t become one of the assembled people demanding attention. He paused, taking Franks’ arm so that the man could not be intercepted, and set off confidently along a corridor beside the reception desk. The challenge came as they drew level and were about to pass. Rosenberg’s reaction was as quick as the challenge, shouting Waldo’s name and a telephone extension number and then saying, “FBI.” The identification roused the sergeant, who focused upon them, demanded their names, and then nodded them through. Still with his hand cupping Franks’ elbow, Rosenberg continued on. It was a heaving labyrinth of a place, interlocked corridors jostled with people, all of whom appeared unaware or unconcerned of everyone around them. Rosenberg and Franks ebbed and flowed with the human wash until Rosenberg located office numbers running in the sequence he wanted. He hurried down the minor corridor, head moving as he counted off the numbers, and when he found the door he wanted thrust in without knocking.

  It looked more like a storeroom than a place in which people worked. The window faced out onto a blank wall only a few feet away, so there was little natural light, the main illumination coming from a chipped and stained fixture in the middle of the ceiling. Waldo was at an empty steel desk, sitting doing nothing, and Schultz was by a filing cabinet wedged into the corner of a wall against which was a calendar showing January, 1982. Someone had started crossing off the days but stopped at the sixteenth. The place smelled dusty and unused, like a rarely opened cupboard.

  “You Rosenberg?” demanded the obese FBI agent.

  “Waldo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Been waiting for you,” said Waldo.

  “Crosstown traffic was bad,” said Rosenberg.

  Franks stood just inside the door, offended by the exchange. Somebody had been killed—all right, somebody about whom he found it difficult to arouse any feeling, but that was a personal problem. But still, a human being. And these two men were discussing the difficulty of driving in Manhattan.

  “Mr. Franks,” greeted Waldo, nodding.

  “What’s happened?” demanded Franks, impatient with the artificial politeness.

  “Scargo’s dead,” said Waldo.

  “I know that,” said Franks, still impatient. “What happened?”

  “They got him—it was two men—in the garage.” The man paused. “You know the brownstone, on Sixty-second?”

  “Yes,” said Franks. How long ago had it been that he and Tina had stayed there and enjoyed Nicky’s and Maria’s company and considered themselves friends?

  “Scargo used to park his car opposite, in the basement garage of the apartment house. Got him there this morning. Shotguns. It’s a hell of a mess. Janitor heard the blast, but by the time he got there—he didn’t hurry, who would?—it was all over. No one there, of course.”

  Franks came farther into the room, angered by the laconic account. “It’s Pascara,” he said. “Or Dukes or Flamini. All of them. It’s got to be. Have you arrested them?”

  Franks was conscious of Schultz actually shaking his head, a gesture of sadness. “Mr. Franks,” said the FBI man, “from what the janitor says, Nicky was shot down around eight forty-five this morning. At eight forty-five this morning, Pascara and Flamini were publicly identified breakfasting at the Continental Plaza on Michigan Avenue, Chicago. David Dukes was photographed at Caesars Palace, part of a welcoming delegation to Las Vegas for the Los Angeles Lions Club. Dukes is very big in charities.
The Lions are one of his favorites.”

  “You believe they weren’t involved?”

  “Of course we don’t believe they weren’t involved,” said Waldo. “You know something we don’t that could tie them into it?”

  Franks shook his head helplessly.

  “That’s the way it’s done, Mr. Franks,” said Waldo. “You think Pascara and Flamini went to the Continental Plaza for its waffles? Or Dukes to Caesars just to be a public benefactor?”

  “Why?” said Franks. It was an empty question, really to himself, but Schultz responded to it.

  “Why don’t you tell us, Mr. Franks?” said Schultz. “Why not tell us what happened at the meeting yesterday that you had with them at Scargo’s office?”

  “You picked them up?” said Franks.

  “We picked up the telephone calls, off Scargo’s credit card,” said Waldo. “Got them at the airport. Wanted to see where they went.”

  “I’m Mr. Franks’ attorney,” intruded Rosenberg. “Is he under investigation for possible criminal proceedings?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Waldo.

  “Then I shall limit his answers.”

  “Something secret enough at that meeting to cause a man to be murdered?” demanded Schultz.

  “I can tell you the point of that meeting was to dissolve the companies running the hotels and casino in the Bahamas and Bermuda,” said Rosenberg.

  “Jesus!” said Waldo, amazed. Despite the legally imposed restriction, he said to Franks, “You told them about the investigation? About our meeting with you?”

  “Yes,” said Franks.

  “Why did you stop there?” said the overflowing man contemptuously. “Why didn’t you wait in the garage this morning and pull the trigger yourself? You killed him anyway!”

  “That’s improper!” protested Rosenberg.

  “It’s true,” said Waldo. “Don’t you think that’s true, Mr. Rosenberg?”

  “You asked us to come down to assist in your inquiries,” reminded Rosenberg stiffly.