by Erik Carter
“Why’s that?” Dale said.
“I ran for office saying I was going to take down the city’s mob bosses, Big Paul Fair and Angelo Alfonsi. Ridding San Francisco of the two crime families was the whole basis of my campaign—and my career since. Now a member of one of those families—who I prosecuted and lost—has broken out of the nut house he was sentenced to, and no one can seem to find him. I’m looking more and more like a fool every day.”
Dale could tell that Lawton was a proud man, and by the bags under Lawton’s eyes, the last couple days had likely been living hell for him. The situation with Jonathan Fair was something no one could possibly have predicted, and heads were going to roll. By positioning himself as the city’s savior against organized crime, one of those heads could quite possibly be the DA’s.
Lawton walked to a rolling, double-sided cork board, six feet across, with images of Jonathan Fair and five other men. Dale followed.
“The Second Alcatraz. That’s what the media’s calling it,” Lawton said as he looked at the photos tacked to the board. He had a deep, smooth voice, but it had a subtle sense of veiled secrecy. He was a lawyer, after all.
Dale nodded. “So I hear. We got a half dozen guys who break out of a state mental hospital. None of them technically a fugitive from the law since all of them were sentenced as ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’ What does that mean for the DA’s office?”
“It means it’s a judicial nightmare. There’s so much gray area here, it’s like we’re living in a constant fog.”
“And I’m guessing the Fair family hasn’t been incredibly cooperative with the investigation.”
Lawton laughed heartily. “Clearly not. But they wouldn’t be able to help us anyway. Jonathan and his twin sister vanished seven years ago before he resurfaced at the first bank robbery. Name had been legally changed. He was calling himself Jonathan Logan.”
“Any leads on the sister?”
Lawton shook his head. “They’d been living in Kansas, of all places. After her brother came back to California and got himself arrested, no one saw her again. She disappeared a second time.”
“And Jonathan has multiple personality disorder, thinks he’s living in 1906 post-earthquake San Francisco.”
Lawton pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. If you’ll believe that.”
“You don’t?”
Lawton tapped a folder sitting at the corner of his desk. “Not in light of the robbery that sent him to the hospital in the first place.”
Dale picked up the folder and flipped through its contents yet again. He’d been studying it relentlessly the past two days. There were images of the bank, the dynamited vault, and a row of teller booths with a message crudely painted across them in big, jagged strokes.
“Robbery. Eight months ago. A bank in the Mission District,” Dale said, looking up. “I don’t see why the crime makes you doubt his mental condition.”
“It was an Alfonsi bank, Conley. I find it pretty coincidental that Jonathan Fair hit one of the rival family’s banks while supposedly off in la-la-land, thinking he’s living in 1906.”
Dale thumbed through the photos in the folder and looked at the image with the message again. “‘Tell the truth about the quake…’ The Great San Francisco Earthquake was a natural disaster of unprecedented scale, and we have plenty of documents and images and even film of the aftermath. So I’m wondering, what would Fair have to doubt about it?”
Walton lifted his hands. “That’s for you to figure out, history man. What I gotta figure out is why he broke these other guys out with him.”
On the board, two of the men’s images had been crossed out with masking tape Xs. The word CAPTURED had been written on each X with black marker.
Dale stepped closer to the board and examined the photo of Jonathan Fair. He was a bit of a baby-face, looking younger than his twenty-nine years. The photo was black-and-white, but Dale knew that Fair’s shaggy, mop-top hair—which was slightly tussled in the image—was reddish-brown. His complexion was fair, amusingly enough. Fair’s famous square-framed glasses rested over a pair of eyes that Dale couldn’t quite decipher. There was something enigmatic about them. Not dark. Just confusing. Dale couldn’t get a read on them. All he could sense was distrust. And a bit of fear.
Lawton ran his hand along the images. “Quite the mix of guys. All professionals, all intelligent, which I guess makes sense given they were able to coordinate the breakout. We got an Army officer, a doctor who was tried for malpractice, a renowned artist, and a businessman who everyone thought was going to be governor someday. And of course there’s Lee Kimble, a former assistant district attorney.”
“You know him?”
Walton tsked. “Know him? We were friends. Until he turned out to be a child-killer.” He looked at Dale for a moment before continuing. “But apparently insane. Now he and these other whack-jobs are out on the street. And, of course, so is Jonathan Fair. So as the district attorney who built his whole career on fighting the Fairs and Alfonsis, if I can’t bring him in, I’m toast.”
“You must have a lot of faith in Hanna Yorke, then, since you requested her personally,” Dale said.
Lawton looked out the window at the front of his office and into the hallway. Near the conference room at the end of the hall, Yorke was speaking with a couple uniformed officers.
Lawton’s eyes lingered on her for a long moment. “Yeah, I trust her.” He turned back to Dale. “You, not so much. I’m just gonna be frank with you.”
“I do have a sinister look about me, don’t I?”
Lawton snickered. “The BEI.” He said the letters slowly and with a skeptical tone. “Bureau of Esoteric Investigation. Never heard of ’em until two days ago. And I’m guessing you’ll disappear after this case and all our conversations will have never happened.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Lawton scoffed. “Feds.”
He sighed, looked Dale over, still assessing.
“An expert in history.” He leaned back against his desk, strummed his fingers on the surface, and continued to stare at Dale. Then he made up his mind.
“All right,” he said and grabbed a note from the desk, handed it to Dale. “This person’s been calling in. Non-stop. Every day. Name’s Britta Eaton. Says she’s got some historical earthquake information that can help. You handle this nutcase. My gift to you.”
“How generous,” Dale said.
Chapter Seven
It was such a curiosity. An all-glass door. But Felix had not the time to marvel. He had to hasten.
Mr. Jones had said that pounding on the glass would summon the night watchman. Felix had intended to simply bust the glass, force his way through, and then deal with the watchman. But Jones had been insistent—adamant, even—that breaking the glass would somehow trigger some sort of alarm system. Felix could not fathom how Jones could possibly be correct about this, but he acquiesced to the suggestion and gave the glass a good rapping.
Although Jones had not yet let him down, Felix was beginning to get flustered with his insistence on certain matters.
Nonetheless, after waiting a moment, the night watchman did appear behind the glass of the door. And he was a Negro. A Negro!—working in a place of such prominence, an establishment controlled by the most powerful man in the entire city.
It made Felix swell with pride for a moment, this city of his. Such humility and openness. But, again, Felix did not have the time to marvel.
The man was hulking and tall with a thick beard. He gave Felix a puzzled and slightly perturbed look as he rattled around with the locking mechanism. The door opened a crack. “Just what do you—”
Felix thrust the rag that Jones had given him over the man’s mouth. His eyes went wide for just a moment, and then his large form collapsed to the floor.
Felix rushed inside. It was the biggest bank he had ever seen. And, like so many things lately, something about the place felt strange, foreign, curious. It was as thoug
h Felix’s mind was having trouble reconciling the small details of the world around him.
The vault was in the back. He dashed across the lobby then removed the knapsack from his shoulder. He retrieved the dynamite, set it at the base of the vault’s door, lit the fuse, then sprinted to a partition a few feet away.
The fuse was short. Time was of the essence.
Though Felix had covered his ears with his hands, the noise was tremendous—a terrible, screeching roar that tore right through his flesh and bones. The marble shook beneath him, and a wave of power pushed him forward. There was a crumbling sound of stone and metal tumbling, and when the chaos seemed to have subsided, Felix looked back toward the vault.
A cloud of dust and smoke. The door was ajar, about three feet, plenty of room for him to squeeze through.
He jumped to his feet and was about to sprint to the vault, when a voice boomed from behind him.
“Stop!”
The night watchman.
Felix slowly turned around … and saw that, on the far end of the bank, the man was still lying in a motionless pile on the floor.
The voice had sounded unreal. Surreal, even. Almost like it had come from within Felix’s own head. His imagination. The stressful nature of his purpose was beginning to strain him, he knew, but he had not yet suspected that he might be slipping into mania.
He had not the time to ponder these things presently.
He darted through the mangled opening of the vault then tore open his knapsack and shuffled in as much cash as he could.
Back out the vault. One more thing to do. This was not a crime of price or passion. It was a crime of purpose.
There was a desk to the side of the lobby area with a wall of evenly spaced, square glass cubes behind it. The desk was waist-high, and there was a big, flat surface on the front.
Perfect.
He dashed to the desk, dropped to his knees, then unhooked the small canister of paint from his belt and grabbed the brush from his pocket. After quickly opening the paint, he dipped the brush and began his message with the number.
478.
Felix was no longer a reporter. While that pained him more than anything in this new life he was pursuing, he knew that he was serving a larger and wholly justified cause. And he also knew, as a former reporter, that his message would be relayed to all of San Francisco through the newspaper within a day.
And then people would begin to question 478.
Chapter Eight
Marco Alfonsi rushed down the hallway of his father’s mansion with his older brother, Matt. The tapping sounds of their dress shoes against the hardwood floor were in near synchronization. The hallway was shadowy with dark-stained wood and sconces that cast just a scant amount of muted, golden light, creating an atmosphere Marco had found creepy as a child. Drifting through the air was the fantastic aroma of his mother’s pasta alla Norma. They had been in the early stages of a late dinner. Even though there were numerous servants, his mother insisted on cooking from time to time. Traditional Italian.
But tonight’s meal wasn’t going to happen. Not after the news that had just arrived.
“What do we know?” Marco said.
Matt shook his head. “Not much yet. Just that it was one of our banks. And that it was Jonathan Fair.”
Jonathan Fair... While the whole world seemed to be looking for the man, Marco’s family had been waiting—waiting for the strike they were sure was going to happen.
And the Jonathan Fair situation would be Marco Alfonsi’s opportunity. People tended to shine during a crisis. Marco was going to use this crisis to prove himself to his father.
He looked at his brother. “Papà’s going to let me into the meeting. I know he will.”
Matt smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “I hope so, fratello. I really do.”
Matt had to look down at Marco when he spoke to him. He was three inches taller. As much as Marco disliked it, the height difference reflected the core of their relationship—Matt being older and protective of the smaller and younger Marco. Physically, Matt had taken after their father. He was square-jawed, handsome, with slicked-back, black hair. The classic gangster look. He had an athletic build and the skills to match. He’d played football in high school and even a bit in college before his knee injury. He was decisive and commanding with a deep voice.
Marco wasn’t like Matt. He liked to think he was smart, but he knew he wasn’t smart in the same way that his brother was—that degree of his hanging on the office wall. Marco hadn’t made it through his first semester of college. His physique was a mismatch to his brother as well. He was pale and thin. A bit below average height. He did have dark hair like Matt, but Marco’s was curly, oily, and already badly thinning and moving farther and farther back on his scalp. While his head was beginning to lack for hair, his arms and legs more than made up for it. Thick, black hair escaped the the cuffs of his dress shirts. Fur. More than one person had nicknamed him the Wolfman.
At the far end of the hall was a sizable lounge. It was dark inside but for the flashing light of a television, which faded in and out on the decor. The sound carried down the hall, muffled by the distance. Sitting on the couch, watching the TV, was Simona. Marco’s girl. She wore a gray mini dress that clung to her ample curves, her big boobs. She had a massive head of curly hair, jet black, and her finger- and toenails were painted bright red. The light of the television bounced off the smooth sheen of her crossed legs. She looked up and waved happily, flashed a toothy grin.
Marco gave her a half-hearted nod. If he was going to get some respect around this place, he needed his prostitute-turned-girlfriend to act a tad more refined—not wave at him like she’d just seen him from across the schoolyard at recess.
He and Marco stopped at the conference room, waited at the open door. They wouldn’t enter until asked by their father, who was sitting at the head of the table.
Angelo Alfonsi.
He was fifty-six years old, and while he was the same height as Marco, everything else about him looked more like Matt. Square-jawed. Classically handsome. His hair was slicked back like Matt’s as well, but it was more silver than black. There was a thin, white mustache on his upper lip, and his eyes were green, bewitching, and disproportionately youthful. To the people of San Francisco, he was an ever-present figure, enigmatic and often dangerous. To his enemies, he was a ruthless menace, something to be feared.
But to Marco he was simply Papà.
Sitting to the right of Papà, kept nearby as always, was his consigliere, Carlo Torrisi, an ancient, hunched man with a hawklike face, white hair, and dark, penetrating eyes. Papà’s underboss was present as well, as were five high-ranking caporegimes.
Papà made eye contact with Marco and stood up. He paused for a moment to adjust his cuffs before walking over. Papà wore expensive suits, bought exclusively during his trips to the old country, tailored immaculately. He walked around the table and approached the doorway
“Have a seat, Mateo,” he said to Marco’s brother and patted him on the shoulder. Matt entered the room.
Papà had just a hint of an Italian accent. Though Papà was born in America, Marco’s family was quite traditional and very much connected to their Sicilian roots since Marco’s grandfather first immigrated. Marco and his brother had been raised speaking both English and Italian, and Marco couldn’t count the number of times he’d been to Italy.
Papà shut the door. They were alone now, save for Simona, far away at the end of the hall.
Papà gave Marco a small, mediating smile, but Marco could tell that his father was frustrated and pressed for time.
“Not today, Marco. Not this. It’s much too important. You’re not ready.”
Marco felt the sting of injustice surge through him. “But Matt—”
“Mateo is who he is, and you are who you are. And he’s never failed me.” Papà focused in on him with those green eyes. “Your time will come to prove yourself again. But it’s not today.”
<
br /> Papà went back into the room and shut the door behind him.
Marco didn’t move. He just stared at the door.
He felt Simona’s eyes upon him and turned to see her stand up from the couch and start toward him. He waved her back down and walked to the lounge. He sat beside her and put a hand on her smooth knee.
Her big, brown, doe-like eyes looked at him with deep concern. “They didn’t take you?”
He gave her a look. She was being sweet, but he wasn’t going to grace a stupid question like that with a response.
“Aww. Soon, Marky baby. Soon.”
Marky. Her name for him. She used it incessantly. Marky, Marky, Marky...
She put her hands on either side of his neck, began giving him a shoulder rub. He let his chin drop to his chest. Her hands felt good, breaking up the tension in his muscles. Strong fingers. His mind drifted, away from his father’s condescending eyes and toward the immediate future.
“‘Soon’ is right,” he said. “I started my plan.”
Simona’s hands stopped. She craned her face around to look at him. Her eyes were open wide, pink lips in a big circle.
“What?”
Marco nodded. “That’s right. It’s begun. Soon Papà will have to respect me.”
Chapter Nine
Paulie “Big Paul” Fair had always been critical of people who self-pitied, but as he took another sip of his drink, he felt like the most despondent man in San Francisco.
He sat in his wingback chair and stared into the flames dancing about the fireplace, tears in his eyes. The rest of the lights were off, and the fire bathed him in a warm, orange glow. In his hand was a tumbler. Whiskey, twenty years old. His second glass.
He rested the glass on his knee, noting how his robust thighs completely filled the more than adequate space between the two arms of the chair. He’d always been a very large man, but even by his standards, he’d gained too much extra weight over the last several years. His wife had always been concerned about his health, and part of him felt like he owed it to her memory to lose some pounds. And he certainly wasn’t getting any younger. Lately, the strange circumstances under which he’d found himself were forcing him to reconsider many things like this, different aspects of his life. He’d been in a morose and contemplative mood.