The Undertaker

by William F. Brown

  “Finished? Perhaps you are right, Major. That's why I want the kitty.”

  Hardin looked as if he had taken another unexpected hit. “The kitty? I don't know what you're talking about,” he answered, but his denial came too fast.

  Tinkerton raised the Glock again and this time he pulled the trigger. There was a soft “Phutt!” and a nine-millimeter bullet tore off the bottom half of Hardin’s right ear, before the heavy slug buried itself in the headrest of his big leather desk chair.

  “Ah! Ah!” Hardin screamed as he grabbed the side of his face and spun sideways in his chair. When he pulled his hand away, there was blood all over his fingers, running down his neck and onto his shirt. Then Tinkerton pulled the Glock back, as if he was about to give Hardin a backhand blow across the mouth, but the Senator covered his face and shrank away in stark terror. “No, not the face,” he mumbled. “Not the face.”

  Sandy turned her eyes away, but I continued to watch this horrific show, not knowing what Tinkerton would do next.

  Tinkerton lowered the Glock and laughed as he looked down at Hardin’s lap. “Why Senator, I do believe you have pissed your pants. Now get that kitty! Get it now, or by God, your precious 6:00 News face will be the last of your worries. I'll turn your brains into a fresco on that wall.”

  “No, please,” Hardin cowered, completely broken as he raised his shaking hands to fend off any more gunshots. “Please.”

  “Get it!” Tinkerton pointed the Glock at Hardin’s other ear.

  Trembling, Hardin reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He bent over and opened a side drawer in his desk. There was a steel strongbox built inside. His hands were shaking, covered with blood, as he tried to fit a small key into the lock, but he dropped the keys on the carpet.

  Tinkerton walked around to the other side of the desk and pressed the silencer against the side of Hardin's head. “No more games, open it.”

  Hardin whimpered and shook like a leaf. He picked up the keys and tried again, and then he tried a third time, before he could get the key into the lock and open the door. Tinkerton shoved him aside and reached in, pulling out a large brown alligator skin briefcase. He laid it on the desk and snapped the locks open. He slowly raised the top. I saw the briefcase was packed with stacks of hundred-dollar bills and several fist-sized blue-velvet bags.

  Tinkerton picked up one of the stacks of green and fanned it near Hardin’s ear with his thumb. “You know, Major, nothing ruins the image of a great man worse than a very ordinary vice.” He dropped the stack of bills in the briefcase and picked up one of the blue-velvet bags. It was heavy and sounded like a bagful of small stones as he tossed it up and caught it lightly in the palm of his hand. “What do we have here, Major? Diamonds?” he asked as he cocked his head, his eyes twinkling. “How much?”

  Hardin didn’t answer. His eyes were riveted on the brown briefcase as if it were his own life lying open on the desk in front of him.

  “How much!” Tinkerton screamed at him. “Three million? Five? Maybe ten?” Tinkerton smiled. “I knew you had something squirreled away, you little weasel. I knew you had a stash hidden away in here, because I can read you like a book. Even in the Marines, you always had a way out, a private little escape hatch, didn’t you?”

  “I’m a United States Senator,” Hardin whispered, his shirtfront now covered with blood. “You'll never get away with this.”

  “I would offer you a little sporting wager on that, but I’m afraid you won’t be around for me to collect.” Tinkerton grinned. “Now get up! We are going for a little walk, all of us — you, me, the rocket scientist, Miz Kasmarek, the briefcase — all of us,” he said as he turned toward me. “And no stunts, Pete. Nothing brave or noble. I’ll shoot the girl if you so much as blink wrong. And be advised, this is not the Thirty-Fifth Street El station in Chicago. I saw those cute little feet of hers in action and if one of them as much as twitches, I will put a hole in her you can run your fist through. I swear I will. Now get up and get moving, all of you.”

  Tinkerton grabbed Hardin by the arm and pushed him toward the door. We went through the dark outer office and into the hall, with Sandy and me in the lead and Tinkerton and Hardin close behind. The Senator turned toward the front of the building, but Tinkerton blocked his way. “No, no, the side door, Major. With Rico's boys gone, there is nothing out there to stop me now.”

  “What about the guards?” I asked. “They'll remember us.”

  “You really are a tourist, Pete,” Tinkerton laughed as he pointed the Glock at me. “Those rent-a-cops wouldn’t recognize Donald Duck if he stepped on their feet. So, y'all put your arms around each other like two little lovebirds and stay well ahead of me. Walk straight out the door and across the street into the park. And remember, I do know how to use this thing. Now move.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Another ‘senseless act of urban violence’…

  It was nearly midnight when Tinkerton forced us out the side door, across Delaware Avenue, and into the dark city park beyond. The walkway meandered deeper and deeper into the trees and featured the same antique, wrought-iron streetlights as in the Common in Boston. They might be quaint, but they did not shed much light. Neither did a sky full of stars or a thin, quarter moon, leaving the dark, sinister expanses between the trees and tall bushes looming like black holes.

  “Too bad you refused my offer back in Columbus, Pete. We really were the good guys.” Tinkerton was apparently still trying to win me over to ‘the dark side’. “You never struck me as one of those wild-eyed California liberals, and I assure you The Sopranos and The Godfather are a bunch of crap. When you get up close and personal with Santorini’s people, or Rico Patillo’s, or any of the rest of them, they are ignorant, unschooled scum — petty thieves, pimps, bookies, drug dealers, and killers — some of the worst, most amoral people this country has ever produced. That is why we had to smash them. It was for the good of the country, Pete. Making some of them talk gave us the proof we needed to roll up their operations and put the rest of them in jail.”

  “Zero Defects, Ralph?” I asked.

  “That's right, Zero Defects. They should be pinning a medal on me, not crying over a bunch of low-lifes like Louie Panozzo, Richie Benvenuto, Clement Aleppo, Johnny Dantonio, and all the rest. You never met them, Pete. The collective IQ of all six couldn’t have been much over one hundred. They refused to follow the simple rules they themselves agreed to, so they became breakage, that's all.”

  “Breakage?” Sandy asked. I squeezed her shoulder, hoping to shut her up, but that was hopeless as usual. “For a lawyer, you've got some real weird ideas about people.”

  “Do I? Santorini already had contracts out on each one of them, and dead is dead. This way, their numerous transgressions enabled the program's integrity to remain intact and their deaths served a higher purpose, which was much more than that ilk deserved.”

  “What about Panozzo's wife and the other women?” Sandy asked. “What were they? More breakage? Is that what they deserved too?”

  “In life, we each make our own choices, Miz Kasmarek. We choose the beds we lie in, don’t we? They picked theirs, much as you picked yours.”

  I looked over my shoulder and glared at him, but Tinkerton was not that stupid. He knew where the danger lay and he continued to point the pistol at me, knowing that would control Sandy. “Say what you like, it was our little unit that provided backbone to the entire Witness Protection Program. Not one of them left. Not one of them caved in. Not one of them recanted. Yes, that was zero defects. So which was the greater evil?”

  “You are a fool, Ralph,” Hardin mocked him. “We got rid of Santorini and all the crooked politicians and cops who protected him. Sure, we let Rico take over all his territories, but that was a temporary expedient. We control Rico.”

  “Unfortunately, Rico doesn’t look at it that way, does he?” Tinkerton shot back. “You are such a waste, Timmy. Time Magazine called you ‘The Crusading Marine’,
‘the Mob’s Senator from hell’. After all, you came up with the title “Zero Defects.” If we had stayed with it for another year we could have broken up the rest of the east coast families and put them all in jail, Patillo included. We could have done it the honest way, but that was too slow for you. The Senate wasn’t big enough. No, you wanted the White House, and you thought you could use Rico and all of his pals and connections to get you there.”

  “The White House? I don’t know what you’re smoking these days, Ralph. You need professional help.” Hardin sneered at him. “The VA has some good mental health people, maybe I can make a few calls for you. But, these theatrics with the handgun? A nobody like you? You wouldn’t dare kill me, and we both know it.”

  Hardin's last insults had pushed Tinkerton over the edge. “You lying bastard,” Tinkerton growled. “You haven’t got a shred of honor left in you, none at all.”

  Sandy and I had stopped walking. We turned and looked at them as Tinkerton swung the automatic around and backhanded the Senator across the mouth with the long barrel of the Glock. Hardin stumbled sideways and crumpled to his knees in the grass a few feet away. “No, no. God, not the face again. No,” he mumbled as a tooth fell out in his bloody hands. Tinkerton wasn’t finished. He stepped closer and raised the pistol again, but Hardin never gave him an opening. He fell to the ground and kept crawling further away, covering his head with both arms, sobbing, “No, no.”

  Tinkerton followed, taunting him. “Whatever is the matter, Timmy? Don’t you think the voters will like a pretty boy with a fresh scar and a few gaps where those pretty, white-capped teeth used to be? Take it from me, a few bruises helps focus the mind, don’t they, Pete? Maybe I can throw in a couple of burns, too?” He stared down at the cowering Senator. “Everything I did was for the program, to protect it, and to protect you, you rotten, two-faced crook! Everything. And you hung me out to dry.”

  Tinkerton was absorbed with Hardin and I knew this might be the first and only chance we would get. Should I go for him? Or, should we make a run for the bushes? I gauged the distance. Tinkerton was at least ten feet away from me. Could I get to him before he turned the gun back on us? “Now!” I whispered to Sandy, “run!” and shoved her away. She stumbled and looked back at me. “Go!” I said again and this time she did, scrambling away into the darkness.

  Before I could follow her, Tinkerton had spun around and had the gun pointed at me again. “Stop right there, Pete. I’ll drop you if you so much as twitch. I swear I will.”

  Slowly I turned and looked back at him.

  “Miz Kas-mar-ek,” he called out in a sing-song voice. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. This is a nine millimeter I have in my hand. I’ll begin shooting random pieces off young Peter here if you don’t, pieces you will surely miss.”

  I looked over my shoulder and groaned as Sandy walked back out of the bushes. She stepped next to me and put her arm around my waist with an embarrassed shrug.

  “Good girl,” Tinkerton grinned. “Now sit, both of you, right there on the grass.”

  We did what he said and I looked around, desperately hoping that a cop would come by, or maybe a jogger, or even a park bum, but we had no such luck. The park was quiet as a tomb. I managed to place myself between Sandy and Tinkerton's gun, but in the end that wouldn’t do a whole lot of good for her or for me. His big nine-millimeter slugs would rip through both of us without even slowing down.

  Tinkerton turned back to Hardin and jabbed him with the gun barrel. “The briefcase is from Rico Patillo, isn't it? He used you and the hearings to break up the Santorini Mob for him and to pump you up at the same time. You pompous fool. Even the whores over at Eighth and I Streets know what they are worth. He was paying you chump change, pocket money for him, because you were giving him all the Mob territories from the Bronx to Philly. Hell, he’d have the whole country! He’d be the head Capo, wouldn't he?

  “You’re wrong.” Hardin looked up at him, blood running down his chin and staining his white shirt. “I had it all under control; I had him under control. I would have been President and I could have controlled all of it.”

  Tinkerton almost looked sad as he stared down at Hardin. “You thought you could control him? You get the White House, what does Rico get? Does he get to pick the Attorney General? Perhaps the Director of the FBI or some section chiefs over at Justice?” Tinkerton laughed. “Of course, they wouldn't need anyone as overt as say, a Charley Billingham. Oh no, just someone completely inept, like one of those ding-a-ling college professors from the Kennedy School at Harvard. What do you figure the Capo might give you? Fifty million? Perhaps a hundred million pumped into your campaign? Rico knows you'd be a bargain at ten times the price, because he’ll be the one who has the White House, not you.”

  Hardin pushed himself up to his knees. His eyes were full of pure hatred now.

  “Ah, but there was a fly in the ointment, wasn't there, Timmy?” Tinkerton sneered. “No, three flies, actually. There was me, because I can tie a bunch of big, noisy tin cans to your tail, and then there was these two, because they can tie some cans to mine. And we can’t let that happen; we can’t leave any loose ends lying around, can we?”

  Tinkerton moved even closer, crowding him. “So what was your brilliant master plan, Major? After Rico's boys got rid of Talbott and his girlfriend, what then? What did you have planned for me? A rifle bullet? No, something more subtle. Perhaps a car accident? Been there, done that, though. A prowler in my apartment? Or a creative mugging in a dark city park? Yes, I can see it now, ‘Government Official Beaten and Shot to Death in Park Robbery’? Well, guess what, Timmy? That mugging will indeed happen, but it will happen to you, not to me.”

  The big lawyer towered over Hardin, raising the automatic and taking careful aim at the side of the Senator's head. Even in the dim light, I saw Hardin’s eyes grow wide with fear as he realized Tinkerton really did intend to pull the trigger this time. The big lawyer seemed to glow triumphantly now. All the talking and the arguing had been mere preface, so had the beating and the blood. Tinkerton needed those to humiliate the Senator. It would not do to simply kill him. If that was all Tinkerton wanted, he could have shot all of us back in the office or as soon as we entered the park. No, first he had to drag Hardin down to his own level. Then he could kill him, make it look like a street crime, and calmly walk away with at least a shred of self-respect. That was the depths to which Tinkerton had now fallen. He intended to pull the trigger and then turn the gun on us.

  Tinkerton was a good fifteen feet away from me now. If I could get to him, at least as far as his legs, I might have a chance before he turned the gun on us. If I could grab a leg and maybe knock him off balance, I could pull him down to the ground with me. It was a desperate thing to try, but I didn’t see any choice. Sandy must have had the same idea. From her knees, she swung around and tossed her heavy shoulder bag at him as if she was doing the hammer throw. I shoved her aside and went for Tinkerton, scrambling across the grass on all fours as fast as I could move. He saw the big leather bag flying at him, but he raised his arm and managed to block it. The heavy bag did knock him off balance, but that wasn’t enough. Before I got halfway to him, he had his gun arm pointed at Sandy and me again. And from his angry expression, I knew he was going to shoot.

  As the Glock lined up on my head, I heard a “Phutt! Phutt! Phutt!” as the soft, coughing sound of a silenced pistol cut through the night air of the park.

  My heart stopped. First, I figured I was dead, but I was still kneeling on the grass, no worse for wear. My eyes then went to Hardin, expecting to see him crumpled on the ground with his brains all over the grass, but he was still kneeling, terrified, but apparently he was okay, too. Then I thought of Sandy. I turned my head, terrified that Tinkerton had carried out his threat and shot her first. No, she was still sitting on the grass, also unharmed. Finally, I looked up at Tinkerton. The big lawyer's jaw hung open and his expression of total victory melted into shock and confusion. His hand went
to his chest and he looked down at three neat red holes that formed a nearly perfect triangle in the center. Blood ran thick and dark over his fingers. The Glock slipped from his fingers and fell on the grass at his feet. He wobbled back and forth. His knees buckled. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he toppled forward on the grass like a big felled oak, landing on his face only inches from where Hardin was kneeling.

  Hardin, Sandy, and I found ourselves staring at each other, then down at Tinkerton's body without the slightest clue as to what had happened to him. The big lawyer had been shot, but by whom? That was when we saw a dark, hulking figure slowly emerge from the bushes and walk toward us, backlit by the distant glow of the city. Whoever he was, his left hand leaned heavily on a cane and his right hand held a long-barreled chrome pistol that also had a silencer screwed to the end of its barrel.

  “You know, Ace,” the man finally said. “You can get yourself in some of the damnedest fixes.”

  “Oh, my God! It's Gino!” Sandy jumped up and ran to him, throwing her arms around his waist and hugging him.

  “Hey!” he growled affectionately at her. “Easy with the freakin’ leg, you ditz!”

  “Who are you?” Hardin demanded to know.

  “You okay, Sweet Pea?” Parini completely ignored the Senator as he held Sandy out at arm’s length and looked her up and down. “You ain’t hurt or nuthin’?” He went on, ignoring Hardin and ignoring me too, but I expected that. Finally, Parini looked down at Hardin. “The name's Parini, Senator. Gino Parini.”

  “Parini?” Hardin puffed, taking some newly found confidence from the fact he was still alive. “You’re Jimmy Santorini's hit man.”

  Parini glanced down at Tinkerton's body, then over at Hardin. “Given the general situation here, I’d be careful with the name-calling, if I was you.”