by Blake Banner
“When we came to visit you in Port Lavaca, you said to me that all I had to do was, and I quote, ‘report to the relevant authorities’ and you would do the rest. From which I understood that you and Vincenzo would be duly informed of what I discovered about Mick.” He grunted. I went on. “But I step outside of New York and in twenty-four hours you’re here like a fly on shit. You’re not sitting by the pool waiting for a call from Mick’s replacement. You’re here, asking me why I am here. Explain that to me, and I will tell you what I have learned.”
He was silent for a long while. He looked sour and the dark rings under his eyes seemed to grow darker. He glanced at me a couple of times, like he was going to say something, but then looked away again. Dehan was watching him like a cat watching a mouse trying to make up its mind whether to go for the cheese. Suddenly he erupted.
“You know what? You’re a suspicious son of a bitch. It’s just, it just never crossed my mind he might have come out here, is all! But I saw the name, Shamrock—Mick was all about being fuckin’ Irish—so I thought maybe you had something. Maybe Mick had moved out here, and I guess I wanted to see the motherfucker before you carted him off to wherever. That’s all.”
“That’s all.”
“Yeah! That’s all.” He looked wounded. “You know? I’m on the right side of the law now. I cooperate with you guys. It would be nice if you would cooperate with me sometimes, instead of always being so fuckin’ suspicious.”
Dehan snorted. “Vincenzo on the right side of the law too?”
“Listen, young lady.” He wagged a finger at her. “You got a big mouth, you know that? You got a fuckin’ habit of talking when you ain’t being spoken to.”
Her eyes were hooded, and for a moment she looked dangerous. She spoke quietly. “You wave that finger at me again, Pro, I’m going to tear it off and shove it up your ass.”
“Keep talking, sister, and I’ll tell you what I’m gonna shove up your pretty little…”
“Watch your mouth!” I snarled.
His eyes swiveled to me, then back to Dehan and back to me again. He leered. “Oh, that the way it is? I didn’t mean no disrespect, Stone.”
“Is that your story? That you just wanted to see if Mick was here?”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “What else?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“So share. It’s your turn.”
“Sure.” I smiled. “The beer isn’t green. I can recommend it. Close the door on your way out.”
“You don’t want to do this, Stone.”
“You got something to tell me, Pro, tell me. Otherwise get the fuck out of my room.”
He waited a moment, then stood. He was real tall and lanky and stooping, with huge hands. With the light from the window behind him, he looked for a moment like a monster from a B movie. He turned and moved to the door. When he was there, he stopped and looked back at me. “You are going to regret this, Stone.”
I pointed at him. “I’m being patient, Pro. Right now I am respecting the status quo. But cross the line and I am coming after you and whoever is supplying you with information. Get back in your box, or the whole house of cards comes down.”
He stepped out and closed the door. After a moment we heard the sound of his Audi pulling out of the lot and fading into the distance. Dehan stared at the bedcover a moment. Then she said, “Get back in your box or the whole house of cards comes down?”
I smiled. “Nobody’s perfect.”
“Isn’t that what they call a mixed metaphor?”
“Yes. And a bad one.”
“Bad? Bad would be, I smell a rat, but I will nip it in the bud. Or, it’s time to bite the bullet and throw in the towel. But, get back in your box or the whole house of cards comes down? Man…”
“You done?”
“Maybe.”
“What did he want?”
“What did he want…?” She got off the bed, jumped up and down a couple of times, and started pacing. “He wanted information.”
“Good. What information in particular?”
“He wanted to know if we had found Mick.”
“But that’s not right, is it?”
“No, because he already had channels in place to give him that information if and when we found him. Which was the point you made to him. So he wanted to know… if we had found something besides Mick!”
I spread my hands, “Which means?”
“That he knew there was something besides Mick to find. And there was only one way he could have known that.” She stared hard at me. I stared back, feeling vaguely unsettled. She was very intense. She went on, slower, “But if he killed Mick and Maria, why the hell would he send us searching for them?” She held up her hand. “Wait! I got this. Pro doesn’t do his own dirty work. He arranges for somebody to meet Mick here. Has him whacked, and then the hit man either gets killed on the job or makes off with the stash.”
She shook her head. “No, that is too convoluted. It’s simpler than that. It was misdirection. He heard we had revived the case. He knew a thorough investigation would eventually lead back to him, and wanted to cover himself by appearing to want Mick found…”
She stared at me again and sighed. I smiled. “Go and have a shower. You’ll feel better. We’ll eat and talk over dinner.”
Twenty-Two
She called for me a couple of hours later. She had a hint of lipstick and blue eye shadow. I smiled at her as I stepped out of the room. She was looking this way and that a lot. “You’re wearing makeup.”
She looked surprised, as though she hadn’t known she was wearing it. Then she shrugged. “Yeah, you know, I sometimes, just a bit…”
“Looks nice.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
We started walking. The sun had set, and the horizon was pink and pastel blue. The sky was vast. “I’ve been thinking,” she started.
“I guessed.”
“I think we need to pin down the things we know. Right? The things we know for sure. Line them up, and then see what that says to us.”
I nodded. “Okay, that sounds good.”
“So what do we know?” She’d had her hands in her pockets, but now she pulled them out and made a gesture, like she was setting out the things we knew in front of her. “We know that Nelson and his cousins were murdered by more than one professional. So that is our firm starting point.”
“Okay.”
“We know that whoever organized the hit wanted the money but not the dope. And we know that that person also took Maria. Okay?”
“That is all good, solid reasoning.”
She stopped dead and I turned to face her. “So, at this point, we can say that we know that the person who took Maria is Mick, so by irresistible extension, we know that Mick killed Nelson.” She held up her hand. “Wait! I know what you’re going to say. Mick was with Jenny. I’ll come back to that. For now, my reasoning is sound.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
We started walking again. The smell of char-grilled steak wafted to us on the evening air along with the strains of the Eagles’ “Tequila Sunrise.” For just a moment, I felt like life didn’t get much better than this. She continued reasoning.
“What else do we know?”
We had reached Big Vern’s, and I held the door open for her to go in. She walked through, talking. “We know that Mick changed his name and came to Shamrock with Maria in his dream car. We know he left by an eccentric route that led west instead of south, and we know they were both killed in a very secluded spot in the Palo Duro Canyon.”
She paused to give the waitress our order, which was two sixteen-ounce rib eye steaks with french fries and two beers. The waitress went away, and Dehan said, “I’m nearly done.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“We know that the first person to point us unequivocally toward Mick was Pro. We know Pro wanted Mick found. And we know that as soon as Pro heard we had come here, he came running to discover what we’d found. Those ar
e the things we know for sure. The question now is, what do they say to us?”
The beers came. I sipped and said, “Well, why don’t you talk me through what they say to you?”
That was what she was hoping I’d say and pulled her chair in and leaned forward, “Right. The question that leaps out at me as the most relevant is, why would Pro want to know something he already knew?”
“Where Mick was?”
“Exactly. The only possible answer, and the simplest, is that he didn’t know. Which means one thing—he did not kill Mick with his own hands. And accepting that, it strikes at the essence of this whole case.”
I frowned, intrigued. “Explain that to me.”
“From the very start, everywhere you look, there is the suggestion of somebody who was there, killed, and then vanished without leaving a trace. You mentioned it yourself. So here is how I think it works.” She pushed up her sleeves. “The Bronx has a power vacuum. The Triads, the Sureños, and the Mob all want in, but Nelson is holding the high ground. At the same time, for the past year, Mick has been wanting to get out because things are getting too hot for him. So he and Pro make a deal.”
I nodded. “I like this, Dehan.”
Her cheeks colored, but she acted like she hadn’t heard.
“Here’s the deal. Mick, for a fee from each, informs both the Triad and the Jersey Mob of when Nelson’s game is, when he’s going to have all his takings from the rackets in the house. He arranges with each of them to turn up and eliminate Nelson, but he is going to go in first, do the job, and take the money.
“But Mick isn’t stupid. He arranges an alibi for himself with Jennifer, and instead, as we discussed before, sends in Kirk with a couple of hit men to do the job for him and take the money and Maria to his place later.”
“Why does Pro want Mick to do the hit first, before the Triads and the Mob turn up?”
She grinned and pointed at me. “Ha! That had me going, but when you think about it, it makes sense. Pro is a gangster, like Mick. And here is the sweet deal. The Mob and the Triads pay Mick into his bank, and Pro gets a cool half million in cash from Nelson. Everybody’s happy. Plus, as a result, war breaks out between the Triads, the Mexicans, and the Mob. How is that an advantage to Pro? Well, ask yourself, how’s that going to play out? Simple, the Triads are out of their territory, so they will withdraw licking their wounds, leaving the Mob and the Mexicans. The Mexicans are on their home turf, but they are disorganized and haven’t got the resources or the experience of the Mob. So they’ll end up running the show but paying tribute to Vincenzo through Pro. Everybody wins and Pro makes a cool half million for his personal retirement fund.”
“I’m impressed. So explain to me what we found today out in the canyon.”
“It comes together nicely. Pro and Mick have arranged beforehand that they will hand over the money at the Palo Duro Canyon, on his way to Mexico. Seen like that, Mick’s drive to the canyon is not a detour from his journey south, but an extension of his journey west.”
“Good.”
“Naturally Pro cannot be directly implicated in this, so he sends a guy to collect the money for him. Mick, being Mick, explains to the guy that he can’t give it to him, because he has banked it and sent it to Belize, and by the way he can kiss his sweet Irish ass. The guy shoots Mick and Maria. But before he dies, Mick shoots the guy, and ten years of rain and heat and coyotes and rats have done the rest.”
She paused and took a long pull on her beer. She was going to wipe the foam from her lip with the back of her hand but stopped and used a napkin. Then grinned. “Naturally, when Pro heard that you had driven out here of all places, he had to come and see what you’d found.”
I thought about it for a while. The steaks came and we ordered two more beers. “So how do we prove this?”
She shook her head. “We have to hand it over to the Feds. There are two states and two countries involved. We need a thorough search of the canyon, searching for bones, weapons, clothes—anything that will show that Mick, Maria, and a third party were there. Because you can guarantee that the car isn’t registered to Mick. The bones and dental records will have to be analyzed. The evidence is going to be all forensic, and we will be very lucky to be able to tie Pro into it. All we’ve got there is conjecture.”
I ate half my steak in silence, thinking. Then I said, “It works for you?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “It doesn’t work for you?”
“I think it’s a superb piece of reasoning. I can’t fault it. It’s a hell of a piece of work. I’m just asking if your gut tells you you’re satisfied with it.”
She nodded.
“Good. Then tomorrow I’ll talk to the sheriff, and we’ll hand the case over to the bureau.” I raised my glass to her. “Slánta!”
When we’d finished eating, I called the waitress over and asked her for a bottle of tequila, some lemon, and some salt. We kept it quiet, we didn’t question anybody’s Irishness, but we laughed a lot and got pretty silly. We staggered back to the motel at about eleven, softly singing old Bing Crosby songs about not being fenced in, and said good night at her door. We had a moment of silence when I held out my fist, and she punched it gently and said, “Detective John Stone, you are cooler’n all git out, and that ain’t no lie!”
I said, “Good night, pardner.”
And went quickly to my room.
Next day we both had mild hangovers, so we didn’t talk much. I asked her if she would take care of the statement to the Armstrong County sheriff, and I took the SUV back up to Ted in Texola. I stood watching him while he inspected it, muttering to himself about insurance and lost vee-hickles. As I listened to him, I remembered the way he’d been talking last time I saw him. Something that had crossed my mind then began nagging at me again, so I said to him, suddenly, “So she never brought it back, huh?”
“Puts yer premium right up, when you gotta claim fer a whole SUV.”
“Did she pay you extra for driving her back?”
“Can’t complain on the score. She was generous enough with her money. But she was plumb crazy. Hundred bucks seem fair to you, mister?”
I realized he was talking about my rental, and I gave him a hundred and ten. He seemed happy. I asked him, “Was it just the once, or has it happened since?”
He scratched his head under his baseball cap and looked like he’d never really thought about it like that before. “No, just the once. But that’s enough, ain’it?”
“Once is enough. What was that, ten years ago?”
“Got to be all of ten year, now.”
“Pretty little thing.”
“Cute as a button.”
“Mexican.”
“I’d say so, but she talked funny, like you.”
“Bronx, New York.”
“Guess so.”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Ted, you take it easy.”
I could see the Jaguar approaching through the heat haze along the road. Ted was staring at me, frowning. Dehan pulled up onto the dirt, and I walked over. As I opened the passenger door, he called out to me, “Say! How did you know all that?”
I waved, gave him the thumbs-up, and climbed into the car. And we took off back east.
Twenty-Three
New York felt cramped and overcrowded after the vast expanses of the Panhandle. The city contained a third of the entire population of the state of Texas, and right then, crawling down Simpson Street toward Dehan’s apartment, it felt like they were all there, on that street, at the same time.
She’d had the last shift driving, and I could see from her eyes that she was exhausted. So I dropped her off and told her I’d give her a call in the morning. She punched me gently on the shoulder and said, “It’s been fun. We should do it again.”
I felt pretty tired myself, but there were a couple of things I needed to take care of before I collapsed. So I threaded my way onto the Bruckner Expressway and headed for the precinct.
It was approach
ing midday as I climbed the stairs and stepped into the captain’s office. We stared at each other a moment without speaking. Then I closed the door and sat down. I didn’t like the woman, but that didn’t make what I had to do any easier.
“I’m sorry, Jennifer. We found Mick’s car and the remains of two bodies in it. The ME will confirm through dental records, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that these are the bodies of Mick Harragan and Maria Garcia.”
Her face clenched for a moment, and her eyes flooded. She sat looking out of the window, chewing her lip. I gave her a moment, then said, “The case will have to go to the Feds now. The sheriffs of Wheeler and Armstrong are both making reports, and I will have to do the same. This has to be a federal case now.”
I let that sink in, and after a moment, she nodded. “I have no axe to grind with you, Jennifer. I am not coming after you. As far as I am concerned, you are guilty of no more than an indiscretion and turning a blind eye. I think that disgraces you, and it makes you unfit for your office, but I will be satisfied if you resign, and what I know need go no further.”
She stared down at her hands. “I suppose I ought to thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just level with me on one thing. You know me. You know I will get there in the end, and it’s better you are honest with me now.”
She finally met my eye and asked, “What do you want to know?”
“Did you replace Mick with the Mob? Are you feeding Morry Levy with information?”
She frowned and shook her head. “No, John. What I did with Mick ten years ago was wrong. But I am not a bent cop, and you are welcome to investigate me. I have nothing to hide.”
“Okay.” I stood. At the door, I said, “Jennifer, because you turned a blind eye, a lot of people suffered and died—people who shouldn’t have, people who didn’t deserve to. You have to go.”
I was about ready to go home and sleep for twelve hours, but there was one more thing I had to do. I went down, dropped into my chair, and pulled out the cold case archive, the two cardboard boxes that now lived under my desk. I searched through them until I found the Sam Bernstein case. It was a very thin file. I leafed through it and studied it for half an hour; then I clipped it as an annex to the Nelson Hernandez case.