“Show him to my quarters, will you please?”
Detective Sergeant Frank Morrell waited in the small, Spartan room that Martinez used to steal naps in the middle of mayhem during his long shifts. He thumbed through some recent photos scattered on a small desk. They showed laborers picking coffee beans under a hot sun. One of them was of Rudy Martinez smiling while he gripped a thatched basket under his arms. Morrell paced slowly in the cluttered room. He was only months away from ending a thirty-two year career with the department, the last fifteen as a detective. Lines were notched in his face from the years of job pressure. He combed back his thin gray hair with his fingers as Martinez entered the room.
“Hello, Frank. I wasn’t expecting you, thought they’d give you the day watch this close to retirement.”
“Hell, no, they keep me on the graveyard to remind me that I want to get out. With a day job, I might hang around longer. And they wouldn’t want that. Besides, I’ve been on the shit list my whole career, why ruin a perfect run?”
Martinez laughed. “Have you talked to our patient?”
“He sounds more like a suspect. He’s still in and out, mostly out. What the hell did you give him?”
“Pain meds that will wear off soon.”
“Okay Doc, what have we got?”
Martinez led him over to the x-ray charts. “Medium caliber I’d say, .40 caliber or .38 special.”
“Can I take a look?”
“Sure.” They went to the ER cubicle where the uniform team maintained sentry. The patient was still in slumber land from the medication. The doctor pulled back the sheet covering the man’s body, careful not to disconnect the monitors and tubes. The man was well-muscled and of average height. Martinez slowly and carefully removed the tape from the bandage, which contained a small blood spot that penetrated through the gauze. The wound was round and slightly oblong, and the entrance site was clean.
“There’s no tattooing,” Morrell said, as he performed an examination of his own. “No abrasion ring, no powder burns. He was shot from at least several feet away, by a handgun, held waist to chest high by the shooter. He was shot by someone from across a room while they were face to face.” Morrell paused, then continued. “It’s a little early to be sure, but I’d say he was in a gunfight. Probably shot by a right-handed person.” He then turned to the doctor, lowered his thick eyebrows and said, “Let me ask you something, Doc.”
“Yes?”
He spoke as if he was contemplating the mystery of life. “How can this guy take a slug traveling fourteen-hundred feet per second right in the gut and still be alive? No vital organs damaged, bullet sitting harmless in his rib cage. Yet, the next guy who gets wheeled in here might die from a brain hemorrhage he got from a fall in the bathtub. What is it? Luck of the draw? A fluke? Divine providence?”
“I don’t know, Frank,” Martinez answered in an undertone, “I’ve only had three years to wonder about the same thing. You’ve had three decades and still don’t have the answer.”
A young plainclothes officer in a threadbare suit joined them, carrying a large black case and a professional thirty-five millimeter Nikon. At Morrell’s direction, he took several close-up photos of the entrance wound. Morrell stepped around the female uniformed officer to the head of the bed, and turned the patient’s head straight in order to take a facial photograph. “Print him,” Morrell commanded. The Crime Lab Technician then opened his black case and removed a blank fingerprint card, an inked pad, and a spoon-like metal device. He inked the patient’s fingertips and singularly rolled them onto the card, held in place by the spoon, a method used mostly to fingerprint corpses with non-responsive fingers. “Give that to O’Neil,” Morrell told him, “and get me those pictures ASAP. One more thing. Get a paraffin wax kit and let’s test for powder burns on his hands.”
“Yes, sir.”
Morrell turned to the senior sentry. “Stay with him, and have the precinct send someone to book him.”
“What do we book him with?” asked the officer.
“I’ll think of something.”
Lieutenant Larry O’Neil sat hunched over a wide glass-top desk and peered through a magnified lens at two fingerprint cards placed side-by-side on the desk. The rotund, ruddy-faced Irishman, wearing glasses, was one of the premier fingerprint experts in the state, with more than twenty years in the Bureau of Identification. He picked up the card on the left side and placed it on top of a foot-high stack to his left. He removed a new card from a stack on the right side, and compared it to his known sample taken from the suspect in the hospital. He had repeated this procedure for over an hour. This time, he looked back and forth at the two cards several times. He did so again. And again. He saw arches on both left thumbs. Whorls on both left index fingers. Loops on the remaining left hand fingers. Then similar matches on the two sets of right hand prints, including the palm prints that were rolled out on the bottom of the cards. He examined them a final time through his lens, then sat back in his chair and read the name on the file card that perfectly matched his unknown suspect: James J. Bratton. Male Caucasian, age thirty-three. Numerous arrests in New Orleans. Four year stretch in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
O’Neil placed the two cards containing identical fingerprints in a clear envelope. He squared the remaining stacks of fingerprint cards on his desk and handed them to a clerk for re-filing. “And get me Sergeant Morrell,” he told the clerk.
The following day Morrell returned to the hospital and questioned the suspect, who was now in a private room, still under police guard. “We know who you are, Jimmy,” Morrell told him in a friendly manner. “Now tell me why you’re here.”
Bratton inched up in the bed and winced in discomfort. “I’m not telling you shit,” he replied in a defiant tone.
“That bullet needs to come out. When it does, we’ll know the rest of the story.”
“It ain’t coming out.”
“If not, you’ll die.” Morrell lied, but Bratton had no way of knowing.
“So what? Let me die.”
Morrell’s voice changed into a brief, one man good-cop bad-cop routine. He scowled, “It’s not that easy, you asshole.”
The interview was over. Morrell had Bratton’s photograph sent to law enforcement agencies in Louisiana and adjoining states for possible identification in robberies or other shooting incidents. He quickly became a suspect in the robbery at the Commerce Bank and Trust Company of Louisiana and the murder of Officer Bobby Cazale’. New Orleans police detectives had negative results from witness interviews; they could not identify Bratton because the perpetrators had worn stockings over their heads during the robbery. Bratton fit the general physical description of the killer, but that was flimsy at best. A match of the bullet in Bratton’s body to Officer Cazale’s gun was now critical, and would give them a boilerplate case. Morrell wasted no more time trying to convince Bratton to have surgery. He charged him with being a material witness, which would hold him in the hospital indefinitely. He then sought a court order to have the bullet removed from Bratton’s body as evidence.
Withstanding more than a few roadblocks thrown in his path by Bratton’s court-appointed attorney, a judicial order was issued two days later allowing doctors to remove the bullet. Morrell scrubbed in, donned a mask and gown, and witnessed the surgeons remove a pristine, striated, .38 special caliber round nose bullet from Bratton’s chest cavity, along with a small fragment. Because of the location of the entrance wound, Bratton would have died in the bank lobby if the ammunition had been hollow-point instead of round nose. For a moment, Morrell now questioned whether indeed Bratton was the killer, since the bullet fired into Bratton was a .38 special, and Cazale’s service revolver was a .357 caliber. Both calibers could be fired from that weapon, and only ballistics tests could confirm one way or the other. Morrell briefly inspected the bullet in his latex-gloved hand, then turned it over directly to NOPD detectives who immediately transported it to their forensics laboratory. Withi
n hours, the bullet was positively identified as having been fired from Officer Cazale’s weapon.
Despite Morrell’s marathon sessions with Bratton and his attorney, the killer would make no deals to give further details of the bank robbery, his accomplices, or what happened to the stolen cash and securities. An all points bulletin issued for the Thunderbird that had dumped Bratton at the emergency room failed to produce the vehicle or its driver. The robbery/murder remained an open, high priority case for the New Orleans Police Department as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sergeant Frank Morrell, the grizzled detective, could hang up his yoke knowing that he solved the cop killer case - at least a part of it.
* * *
CHAPTER 1
Pickle Nose Willie gingerly picked up the dice shoved in front of him by Benny the stickman. He held one of the red cellulose cubes between his thumb and middle finger and spun it around, then snatched it into his hand along with its mate and shook them furiously. He threw his fist forward and opened his fingers at the same time, and the dice danced along the green felt table to the opposite side and bounced off the side board, landing face up on a four and a three. “Hah!” he shouted to no one in particular. Benny reached out with his dice rake and retrieved the red squares, and set them in the middle of the table. “This time I bet fifty,” Pickle Nose said. He peeled some bills from his fist and threw them down on the felt stretched across the converted pool table. He was a tall man in his early sixties, somewhat slouched over with rounded shoulders. The sides of his bald head was complemented by long white hair slicked back above his ears. His complexion and long, bulbous nose reddened as his excitement grew. He was usually a ten-dollar player but stepped up his bet after already making three passes with the dice. The assortment of characters crowded around the table all placed cash bets on the pass line as Benny shoved the dice back to Pickle Nose. Small stacks of money in different denominations marked the wagers of each player. Nobody dare bet against a hot shooter on a roll like this, except Suitcase Tommy, who religiously bet the wrong way no matter the shooter or the temperature of the dice.
Pickle Nose again picked up the dice and ceremoniously spun one of them between his fingers, then shook both of them and let them fly to the other side of the table. They landed on six and three, and Benny shouted, “Nine is the point,” before corralling the dice and returning them to the shooter. Another round of betting ensued as Pickle Nose picked them up and dropped them straight down from his hands and Benny quickly shouted, “No roll! Goddamn it Willie, throw them all the way against the wall or we’ll pass them to the next shooter.”
“And you’ll kiss my ass, Benny. Gimme them little computers.” Some of the men standing elbow-to-elbow around the table laughed. Others yelled for Pickle Nose to shut up and shoot.
The room was the cramped upstairs office of a banana import company near the docks in Mobile, Alabama that handled fruit cargo and gulf coast distribution. The game was run after hours by Thomas Ranzino, better known as Suitcase Tommy, a connected gambler from New Orleans, in collusion with the owner of the otherwise legitimate banana company. Ranzino had a lengthy arrest record and several felony convictions for fencing stolen property. He earned his moniker in his younger days by having a briefcase or small suitcase with him as a constant companion, which he used to display his stolen wares. Everyone smoked in the room, and it was so thick that a cloud hung only a couple of feet above the group. A single bare light bulb suspended by its wire from the twelve-foot ceiling swung slightly over the middle of the table. Besides the players and the house dealers who clutched hands full of cash to fade the bets, were standing-room guys waiting for somebody to tap out so they could squeeze into the action.
As Pickle Nose threw the dice again I was rubbed against by Suitcase Tommy, who was jammed in next to me at the table, and I felt the unmistakable outline of a handgun in his side waistband. Almost everyone in the joint, including me, was packing so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to be armed - except that he was a convicted felon, a member of the Marcello family, and the target of an ATF undercover investigation. “Six!” shouted Benny, who now quickly returned the dice as more cash piled up on the table and the players anticipated another pass from Willie. Ranzino told Benny to give him the dice.
He closely examined them, then turned to me and asked, “Waddaya think, Tony? Pickle Nose hasn’t thrown a hot hand since the Great Depression.”
“They look okay to me.”
The small crowd jeered as Suitcase Tommy said, “Not good enough.” He took a small caliper from his pocket, and looked like a science teacher as he measured each die and found them both to be exactly seven hundred and fifty one-thousandths of an inch, perfect cubes. He dumped the dice back onto the table and grunted, “Okay.” A slight cheer erupted and Benny raked the dice back to the shooter.
I slowly backed away from the table to make a phone call from a corner of the room to one of the surveillance agents who were strategically placed around the neighborhood. Pickle Nose then pointed the dice at me and said, “Don’t miss out on this, Tony, we’re making history.”
“Can’t a guy go take a piss around here?” I yelled back.
He threw the dice and almost immediately Benny hollered, “Nina! Winnah!” A shout went up from the crowd and the dealers threw more money onto the stacks, which were snapped up by the men tightly packed around the table. Betting reached a frenzy, and while everyone’s attention was on the game I quietly went to a phone that sat on a plain metal desk and dialed out.
The lead surveillance agent answered and I whispered, “Tommy’s holding. Move whenever you’re ready.” I shoved my way back to the front of the table in time to place a bet before Pickle Nose came out with the dice again. His point was six, but on the next roll he sevened out. A low, dejected grumble came from the crowd. They had just witnessed a twenty-five minute dice hand, a rarity in the gambling world, yet scoffed at Pickle Nose Willie as if he lost them money. This was a strange, greedy bunch indeed. Like the others, I counted my money after each bet as if somebody was going to take it away from me. I had run up a total of eighteen hundred dollars, not bad considering that Uncle Sam had given me only two hundred to stake the game.
I had participated in the illegal game every Saturday night and most Tuesdays for six months, gathering intelligence on a host of suspects that frequented the place. Every type of miscreant – mob guys, burglars, safe crackers, drug dealers, addicts, pimps, bikers, Neo-Nazis, pickpockets, bookmakers, Ku Klux Klan sympathizers, and career criminals - from New Orleans to Panama City floated in and out of the game. There were also tough but legitimate longshoremen, cab drivers, gamblers, and merchant seamen in the mix, many of whom routinely showed up after the last night race at the nearby greyhound dog track.
After the next shooter failed to make his point with the dice, many of the men backed away from the table. They didn’t want to lose the small fortunes luck had brought them after the dice cooled off. It was four o’clock in the morning and the game was ready to break up. I wondered where the troops were, why they hadn’t arrived yet. Suitcase Tommy Ranzino would be leaving in a matter of minutes. He instructed his dealers to close shop and stood counting his cash, which he folded into his pocket. He had an olive complexion with a heavy beard, and looked several years older than his true age of forty-five. He bore a thick cut scar on the left side of his neck, which added a sinister look to his always-serious countenance. The players milled around counting their money and congratulated themselves on catching Pickle Nose Willie’s hot hand. A muffled rumbling from the stairway leading to the office grew louder, until it sounded like a herd of buffalo wearing shoes was coming up the stairs. Then a single loud crash took down the door, which was bolted and chained. Within a second, four men, in blue fatigues adorned with ATF AGENT in gold lettering, were standing in the room holding a large iron battering ram. In another second the room was filled with agents, their guns drawn, shouting, “Federal agents with a search warrant.”
Several of the men scrambled to a side entrance, only to find it blocked by agents. A few tried to inconspicuously rid themselves of the guns and knives they had hidden in their clothing. Suitcase Tommy sidled next to me and I felt his hand inside my jacket pocket. He winked at me as he let go of his gun, and I felt its weight tug at my clothes. Unwittingly, he had just ditched his weapon to an undercover ATF agent.
Along with the other characters in the game, I was made to assume the position spread eagle against a wall and searched. At least a dozen of the men were wanted for various crimes, or like Ranzino, for being convicted felons in possession of firearms. The others were released after being checked out by the vice cops who were brought along by ATF to handle the local gambling charges. The two young agents who searched me found Ranzino’s .32 caliber automatic in my jacket as well as my .38 special caliber snub-nose revolver, which was stuck in the waistband under my shirt. They checked the driver’s license in my wallet, which identified me as Anthony Parrino. In a matter of minutes their background check on me turned up a conviction for burglary. One of them seemed to be the senior of the team and asked all the questions. I cooperated as least I could, which landed me in handcuffs so tight that my fingers turned blue. None of the agents knew me except the one in charge, who purposely ignored me. I attracted special attention since I was the only one found with two guns. My wrists were in pain as they placed me in a G-car with Suitcase Tommy and transported us to the federal holding facility at the county jail.
During the booking process I glanced all around for the agent in charge, to no avail. He was supposed to have me released from jail under the guise of posting bond after everyone had been booked, but he never showed. Because the arrest was made early Sunday morning, I was held in jail until those of us who didn’t post bond were brought before the U.S. Magistrate the next morning. I had been in worse jails working undercover, but spending that next thirty-six hours in the lockup wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, and wasn’t supposed to happen.
Assassin Hunter Page 2