Book Read Free

Fade to Black

Page 5

by David Rosenfelt


  “He obviously wanted to draw me into investigating Carlisle, though I don’t know why. Of course, there is still a remote chance he was telling some version of the truth.”

  “How do you figure that?” Jessie asks.

  “Well, he could have legitimately thought he might have been responsible for Carlisle, and wanted me to find out. But then he could have left himself an out by faking his identity; that way if I learned that he was the perpetrator, he could have vanished without me knowing who he really was.”

  “You believe that crap?” Nate asks.

  “No.”

  We don’t have much to do at this point, so I leave Nate to wait for more information, while I go to the coffee shop where I had breakfast with Connor, or whoever he was. I’m in luck in that the waitress who had taken care of us is there.

  “Excuse me, I had breakfast here the other day…” is how I start, but she interrupts.

  “Full stack of blueberry pancakes, sugar-free syrup, and coffee. You cleaned your plate.”

  “How did you remember that?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “It’s a gift.”

  This woman might well be out of central casting for the perfect witness. “I was here with a guy…”

  She nods. “Just coffee, black.”

  “Right. Did you recognize him? He said he’s been here before.”

  She shakes her head. “Nope. Never laid eyes on him. First time here.”

  “He recommended the pancakes,” I say.

  “Then someone told him they were good, because he’s never been in this place. I’ve been here twelve years, so unless it was before that…”

  “No, I’m sure it wasn’t. Can I talk to the owner?”

  “That’s what you’re doing,” she says.

  “You’re the owner?”

  “For the same twelve years. Don’t look so surprised.”

  I’ve run out of questions to ask her. “Your pancakes are really good.”

  “Thanks. Waffles are even better. If the guy was a regular he would have known that.”

  This conversation has erased all doubt for me; there is nothing that Sean Connor told me that was true. I would bet that he was not even an amnesia victim. When you lie about pancakes, you’ll lie about anything.

  But if he wasn’t an amnesia victim, then he was only at the group meeting because I was.

  I was the target, but I don’t know who was targeting me. And more importantly, I don’t know why.

  Nate and I aren’t glued to each other when we’re on a case.

  Unless it’s something important, or a situation that could be dangerous, we go our separate ways. It maximizes what we can get done; for example, if we are just interviewing a witness, there is no need for us both to be there.

  Nate says that we started working this way on the Liriano case, but I have no idea who Liriano is, or what his case was, and it doesn’t seem important enough to ask.

  Captain Bradley has assigned an unusually large contingent of officers to work under us, so for now Nate is going to stay back at the office and run the operation. I’m going to conduct the interviews in the field.

  My first stop is the building in Englewood where I’ve been attending the amnesia group meetings. I think it used to be an American Legion hall, but it has been taken over by a group of shrinks who use it to run support groups of various types. There is no name on the outside of the building, probably to provide privacy and anonymity to those who enter.

  There are five rooms, four of which are set up to hold group meetings. In the lobby is a schedule of the day’s activities, and I check it when I arrive. Only room number three is currently occupied, with an overeaters’ support group. I would mention that to Nate, but he’d probably kill me for doing so.

  The fifth room is for the administration office, so that’s where I head. A woman named Carla Betts is there. She is not part of the psychology staff, but she appears to do everything else. She certainly always seems to be here.

  She’s never without a smile on her face, and this time is no exception. “Hi, Doug, didn’t expect you in today. I don’t think your group is meeting.” The other thing about Carla is that she recognizes everyone and calls them by their first name. It serves to make the place seem more comfortable and unthreatening.

  “It’s not. I’m actually here on business.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you remember someone named Sean Connor? He attended some of the amnesia group sessions that I was in.”

  “Of course I remember Sean. Nice man. Your office called to ask his address. What’s this about?”

  The sketch of Sean is not ready to be shown in the media, so Carla would likely have no way of knowing what has happened. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but he’s been murdered.”

  “Oh, no.” She looks like I’ve hit her with a two-by-four.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Wait a minute … that poor man in the park? Oh, my God.…”

  I nod my confirmation, but caution her not to say anything until his identity is publicly released. Of course, there would be no harm in Sean Connor’s name getting out, since that was a fake identity in the first place. “I need to ask you a few questions about him.”

  She just keeps shaking her head in sadness, then realizes what I said and finally responds, “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you handle the intake when he first came here?”

  She nods. “Yes.”

  “Did he show you identification?”

  “No, we don’t require that.”

  “How did he present himself? What did he say?”

  She thinks for a few moments. “It was fairly typical. He gave me his name and address, and filled out the form. I have it here, because I referred to it when your office called.”

  She takes it out of the drawer and hands it to me. “As you know, these aren’t very detailed.”

  “What did he tell you about his reason for attending?”

  “That he had been in an accident and had retrograde amnesia, and that he needed help dealing with it. I don’t ask too many questions; it’s not my area. And we’re not really concerned about someone fabricating a story; there would be little reason for someone to come in under false pretenses.”

  “How did he pay?”

  “With cash; I’m positive of that. It’s unusual that someone would do that, which is why I remember it. He paid in advance for six sessions.”

  “How many did he attend?” Everyone has to sign in when they attend a session.

  “Let’s see…” She taps some keys on her computer and then says, “Three. Starting ten days ago.”

  “How many sessions have there been in that time?” I ask.

  “Probably seven or eight. I could check.”

  “I think I’ve been in three also. Can you tell me if I was in all of the sessions that he attended?”

  “I can cross-check it, sure,” she says, and does so. “He was in every session you were in, and no others.”

  The odds of him just happening to show up at the same three sessions as me are pretty steep, but it doesn’t surprise me. He was only there because I was.

  “Carla, his name was not really Sean Connor, and I doubt very much that he was an amnesia victim at all. Is there anything you can remember that he said or did that might help me figure out who he really was?”

  “I’m sorry, Doug, but I can’t think of anything. He was just a guy who said he needed help. That’s what we’re here for.”

  “We’ve got a DNA hit,” Nate says when I call in.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “I don’t know; all I know is we got a hit. In fact, the message was that we got two hits, whatever the hell that means. They’re sending me the information now. By the time you get back here we’ll have it.”

  I head back to the precinct, but I think I know what “two hits” means. It’s likely that the DNA was on two different lists, independent of each other. Most likely that
means it was in both a criminal database and a military one.

  Nate has already received the information by the time I get back. “His name wasn’t Sean Connor, it was Connor Shawn, if you can believe that. Real smart guy; if he didn’t do it that way, he would probably have had to write his new name on his arm so he could remember it.”

  “Who was he?”

  “The two hits were military and criminal,” Nate says, confirming my expectation. “He was in the Marine Corps, left with a dishonorable discharge after being court-martialed on multiple assault charges. Been living in Las Vegas ever since.”

  “What about the criminal hit?”

  “Four arrests for various offenses, none of them very nice. One conviction for domestic assault. But here’s the kicker: the latest information we have is that he works for Salvatore Tartaro.”

  “Who’s Salvatore Tartaro?”

  Nate shakes his head either in disgust or frustration, maybe both. “You think your memory deal is annoying to you? You should see it from here; it’s like somebody dropped you from another planet.”

  “Just tell me who the guy is.”

  “He’s head of a crime family in Vegas, and he used to do a lot of business with Nicholas Bennett. You know who that is?”

  I know very well who Nicholas Bennett is. He was the leading crime figure in New Jersey. You could accurately say we had been enemies; he killed a teenage boy that I cared deeply about, and he was also responsible for me being shot. He was, in my humble, unbiased opinion, a piece of shit.

  But I am responsible for him being dead, which effectively ended our rivalry.

  “Which brings us to Joey Silva?” I ask. Joey Silva is the hood who took over Bennett’s operation. Bennett was a smooth operator, a guy who fancied himself a respected citizen of charm and manners who could reliably be found at elite charity dinners. Silva, on the other hand, wouldn’t know a salad fork from a forklift.

  Nate nods. “He’s the leader in the clubhouse. If Shawn was still working for Tartaro, then he wouldn’t be here unless Silva was in the loop on it. And if Silva is involved, then we are dealing with something much bigger, and much different, than we thought.”

  “But if Silva is behind it, and Tartaro sent Shawn here, then why the hell is his head sitting in the morgue? Somebody killed him, and did it in a way to send a message. Shawn didn’t disappear; his death was engineered in a way to be as noticeable as possible.”

  “Maybe we have a war going on.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But that’s not what we should be looking at. That’s not the key factor.”

  “What is?”

  “Rita Carlisle. The only role Shawn had in this whole operation, as far as we can tell, was to bring us into an investigation of Carlisle. He was lying about the scrapbook bullshit, but what he set out to do was clear. He wanted us to look into Carlisle. And he accomplished his goal, because that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  “Captain Bradley is not going to like it,” Nate says.

  “He’ll just have to deal with it. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To his office. He asked to be updated, so we’ll update him.”

  We go to Bradley’s outer office, and as soon as his assistant tells him we’re here, he calls us right in. “I hope you’ve got something for me, because I’m tired of telling the chief it’s too early. He’s called three times already, and the last time he mentioned something about me sitting around with my thumb in my ass.”

  “We’ve got an ID on the head.”

  “Talk to me.”

  So we do; we tell him everything that we know so far. He doesn’t say a word, just listens as we tell him about Shawn, and Tartaro, and Silva.

  When we’re done he asks, “So how do you read it?”

  “Everything they’ve done has been in full daylight,” I say. “They practically … hell, they literally … begged us to come in. And the trigger is Carlisle. It has to be.”

  I expect an argument but don’t get one. Instead Bradley nods and says, “I know.” Then, “Shit.”

  “It doesn’t mean that Nicholson didn’t do it,” I say. “It just means that they want us looking at Carlisle. There could be other reasons that we don’t know about.”

  Nate says, “So they bring Shawn in from Vegas to bullshit you about his amnesia and his scrapbook. Then when he does his job, they kill him, and make sure you know that they did it. And they had to know we’d get a DNA hit, which means you’d know the whole amnesia story was faked.”

  I nod. “That seems to be where we are.”

  “What do you need from me?” Bradley asks.

  “You can contact the Feds. They may know things about Tartaro and Silva that we don’t.”

  “But then they might want to come in on this. Once the door is open a crack…”

  I shake my head. “You can finesse it and not let on why you’re asking. If need be, just tell them it has to do with an ongoing investigation of Silva. They would have no idea it’s related to Carlisle. Besides, nothing I see in the files mentions that the Feds were even involved in Carlisle.”

  He nods his agreement. “Okay. What else?”

  “Full permission to follow this wherever it goes, including Carlisle.” I’m asking because I want him to think he’s making the call, since we’ll need his support down the road. But I’m going to do it anyway, and he probably knows that.

  He nods. “You got it.” Then, “With one condition. At least for now you don’t go public with the fact that this might be about Carlisle.”

  That seems reasonable enough, especially with the “for now” attached, so we agree to it.

  Bradley has one more inspiring message for us before we leave. “Don’t screw this up.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  I’m talking to Lieutenant Zack Roberts of the Las Vegas Police Department, Organized Crime Division, and I’ve just told him that Connor Shawn has turned up decapitated in New Jersey. Roberts is expressing his surprise at the news.

  “I didn’t even know he was there,” he continues.

  “Well, I can’t speak for the rest of his body; for all I know it’s sitting in one of your casinos sucking down vodka gimlets. But his head is definitely here.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “I was sort of hoping that I would be asking the questions, and you’d be supplying valuable insight.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Let’s try it anyway. What can you tell me about him?”

  “Well, for one thing, he wouldn’t have been there on vacation. He wasn’t taking in a show or visiting the Statue of Liberty. There was no casual side to Shawn.”

  “How long has he worked for Tartaro?”

  “Well, that’s interesting, because he seems to have left Tartaro a couple of months ago. We have that on pretty good authority.”

  “So is it possible that Tartaro ordered the hit? Maybe revenge for Shawn bailing out on him?”

  “With Tartaro you never know, but I doubt it. Why do it there? Here Tartaro has the home field advantage, and there are multiple ways to arrange untimely deaths right here in Las Vegas. We invented many of them.”

  “What about the style? The decapitation and leaving the head where it could be found?”

  “That’s the other reason I doubt it; it’s definitely not Tartaro’s style. He makes people disappear, and he never invites media attention. The only way it would make any sense would be if Shawn was disloyal, and Tartaro wanted to send a message to his own people about the downside to disloyalty. But there are even problems with that.”

  “And they are?”

  “First of all, we’d probably know if there was an issue between them, if Shawn had turned on him. But more important, if Tartaro wanted to send a message to his people in Las Vegas, he wouldn’t leave the head in New Jersey.”

  “What about Tartaro’s relationship with Silva?” I ask.

  “I haven’t seen any, but
it could exist without me knowing it. Tartaro doesn’t branch out much; he’s always been pretty happy to stick close to home.”

  “He did a lot of business with Bennett,” I say, only because Nate told it to me. “They were pretty close.”

  “That was the exception,” Roberts says. “And I’m not sure ‘close’ is the word I’d use. They didn’t have pajama parties; they occasionally found business reasons to cooperate. The funny thing is that from what I understand, Silva is more Tartaro’s style.”

  By that I assume he means more prone to violence and driven by temper rather than a coolheaded, albeit deadly, businessman.

  “If Shawn was back working for Tartaro, would he have been sent into Silva’s territory without Silva knowing about it?”

  “I don’t see it,” he says. “There’s no upside to Tartaro making powerful enemies, no matter where they are.”

  “So far you haven’t done much for me,” I say.

  He laughs. “So come out here. We can go talk to Tartaro, and I’ll get you comped at the Excalibur.”

  “No thanks.”

  “I can tell you this,” he says. “If Shawn was back working for Tartaro, and if he was sent to New York, it was for something important. Because Shawn was a top guy, not someone you wasted. And if Tartaro sent him, he did it quietly.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Let’s just say we have a surveillance presence in Tartaro’s life. We have people in his organization, though not at the center of it. And we have an electronic operation as well; if Tartaro sneezes, four guys in unmarked vans say ‘Gesundheit.’”

  I debate whether to tell Roberts about my connection to Shawn, and his amnesia deception. I ultimately opt not to; he’s made it clear that he had no idea that Shawn was even here, or what his assignment from Tartaro might have been. My goal is to get information, not provide it.

  I also don’t mention Carlisle for the same reason. It wasn’t a case that made national news, so I doubt he would even have heard of it. And there seems no reason to believe he’d have insight into Connor’s relationship to it. Also, I’m trying to honor Bradley’s goal of keeping Carlisle as much out of the spotlight as possible.

 

‹ Prev