Fade to Black

by David Rosenfelt

  She laughs. “Got it. Anything else?”

  “Anything related to the drug situation at the hospital would be ideal,” I say. “And certainly anything related to Carlisle or Silva. But it’s a long shot.”

  “I’ll do my best. When are you coming home?”

  “We’re going to talk to Tartaro in a little while, so maybe I can get a late-afternoon flight.”

  “Will you come straight here? Bobo and I miss you.”

  “Try and stop me,” I say.

  I place a call to Nate, but he’s not in, so I leave a message that I’ll call him later. Then I go down to the buffet in the hotel, which is not remotely the rip-off that Roberts said it was. There is enough food there to feed the Russian Army, and not a single one of them would say nyet when presented with the chance to eat here.

  As soon as I’m finished I head outside, and five minutes later Roberts pulls up. “Big day today,” he says. “Just so you’ll know, when we see Tartaro, it’s okay with me if you shoot the son of a bitch.”

  We head for the Aria Hotel, and on the way I suggest that Roberts take a look at Harriman Hospital in terms of whether the same kind of drug thefts are taking place there that we think are going on at Bergen Hospital in New Jersey.

  “Way ahead of you,” he says, meaning that they’re already on it. Roberts is a smart cop.

  We get to the Aria and take the elevator to the top floor. According to Roberts, Tartaro has a home in Vegas but lives in the hotel almost exclusively. He has half a floor, and when we get off the elevator, we see one of Tartaro’s men acting as a security guard/bouncer.

  Roberts shows his badge to the guy and says, “You’re doing a hell of a job.” We then just walk by him, and he doesn’t try to impede us.

  “They know we’re coming?” I ask.

  He nods. “I called and spoke to Dominic Romano; he’s Tartaro’s number two. He wasn’t happy about it, but he’d never say no.”

  “Why not?”

  “He knows I’d find an excuse to bring Tartaro down to the precinct and ask the questions there. The hotel is more to his liking.” Then, “This is not our first rodeo.”

  As we approach the door, it opens and a man lets us in to what looks like a den. I suspect it’s just one room in a multi-room suite. “Hello, Dominic,” Roberts says. “Where’s your boss?”

  “Right here.” It’s a man I assume to be Tartaro who has just entered from another room. Nobody really seems into doing introductions. “Lieutenant Roberts, always a pleasure to see you. This the Jersey cop?” Then, to me, “I was there about thirty years ago, did I forget to pay a parking ticket?”

  I turn to Roberts. “You were right. He’s hilarious.”

  “So what do you want, Jersey cop? I’m busy.”

  This guy immediately gets on my nerves, as does Dominic, who stands to the side with a practiced sneer on his face. I shoot a glance to the terrace outside the sliding doors, and momentarily picture myself throwing them both over the rail and down to the street. It’s an impulse I probably should control.

  “First let me tell you what I know. Then I’ll tell you what I want.” I sit down on the couch and make myself comfortable, even though I wasn’t invited to do so. Roberts goes to a refrigerator and takes out two Diet Cokes and hands me one.

  “Make yourself at home,” Dominic says, insincerely.

  “I know about Joey Silva ordering the hit on Shawn, I know about the drug thefts from the hospitals, I know about the business you’re doing with Silva, I know about Rita Carlisle, and I know about Janine Seraphin.”

  Tartaro turns to Dominic. “What the hell is the Jersey cop talking about?”

  Dominic shrugs and fakes a derisive laugh. “Beats the shit out of me.”

  “I can’t prove any of it yet, at least not enough to take to a jury, but I’m getting close. What I care about, and what I want from you, is Silva.”

  “Silva,” Tartaro says, not as a question, but as a statement. “I don’t believe I know a Silva.”

  “Google him,” I say. “Then get me the proof I need, without implicating yourself. That’s what I want. I want Silva, not you.”

  He points to Roberts. “What about you? What do you want?”

  Roberts shrugs. “It’s his show.”

  Tartaro says, “I give you Silva, and you leave me alone?”

  I nod. “Right.”

  “Get the hell out of here.”

  “You won’t get another chance,” I say.

  “You heard him, Jersey cop,” is Dominic’s response.

  So we start to leave, and on the way out, Dominic comes up to me and says, “You’re a bigger asshole than Roberts.”

  I feel an anger probably greater than any I’ve felt since I was shot. I grab Dominic by the shirt. Then I let my arms move to his sides, and I lift him up and half throw-half push him over a chair and onto the floor.

  He jumps up and makes a motion to come toward me, but doesn’t. Not doing so is the smart move for him to make, because the next thing I’m going to throw him over is the terrace railing.

  When we get on the elevator, Roberts smiles and says, “We have self-control issues, have we?”

  I nod. “So I’m told.”

  Nate is waiting for me at baggage claim.

  “Well, this is pretty good service.”

  “We aim to please,” he says. “How was Vegas?”

  “Wild. Two days of huge buffets and elastic women. They actually have the elastic women at the buffets, which saved a lot of time. I’m exhausted.”

  “Asshole.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “We got a hit on Lewinsky’s emails,” he says.

  “What kind of hit?”

  He tells me that he’ll show me in the car, and goes off to get it. I retrieve my bag and go outside, where he picks me up. I can definitely get used to this kind of treatment.

  When I get in the car, he says, “Jessie and her people started going through the emails. They began by focusing on the period starting two months before Carlisle went missing.”

  “Personal or business?”

  “Personal, for now. Anyway, about three weeks before Carlisle disappeared, Lewinsky sent an email with just two words … William Simmons. That’s it, just the name.”

  “Who did he send it to?”

  Nate shrugs. “We don’t know. The recipient was listed with a fake name, and the account was closed the next day. So no way to know who it was.”

  “And who is William Simmons?”

  He takes a manila envelope that was on the dashboard under the windshield and hands it to me. “I’ll drive; you read.”

  So I read, and on the first page I learn that my question should have been, “Who was William Simmons?” because he is dead. And he died in Bergen Hospital nine hours before Lewinsky, the head of that hospital, sent the email consisting only of his name.

  Simmons died of a fractured skull, inflicted by an assailant who has never been found. He was homeless and spending the night in an alley behind a Hackensack restaurant when he was attacked. It was considered a random killing; Simmons was thought to have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  There are some pages that construct as best as possible the life of William Simmons, and they read as an American tragedy.

  For years William Simmons was a productive model citizen. He grew up in Fair Lawn, raised by a single mother who died when he was fourteen. He went to live with family members in Ohio, but came back to New Jersey to attend Rutgers. He graduated with a degree in business administration, and ultimately wound up having his own insurance agency.

  Simmons married and had two daughters. Life was apparently good, and Simmons seemed to be leading it the right way. He gave to charity, was active in his church, listed himself as an organ donor, and even took on a close but unsuccessful run at city councilman. Friends and neighbors described him as someone who was always there for them, ready with a smile or anything else they needed.
/>   It was six years ago that Simmons’ wife and one of his daughters were killed in an automobile accident driving on Route 80. Simmons and his other daughter were also in the car, and suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.

  A drunk driver’s car went over the center median and crashed into them head-on; they never had a chance. Simmons had vision problems, so his wife was driving, and he was a passenger. He and the surviving daughter were in the backseat.

  As so often can happen in situations like this, Simmons’s life went into an almost immediate descent, spiraling out of control. He lost his business and his home, and wound up on the streets. Those same friends and neighbors that had praised him completely lost track of his whereabouts, and apparently didn’t care enough to do anything about it.

  Then came that night in the alley that ended it all. The cause of death was a crushed skull; someone literally stomped his head into the pavement and left him there to die.

  Because Simmons was not thought to have any possessions of value, robbery was eliminated as a motive. It was thought to be a random thrill-killing, and the killer left no forensic trace. The most unusual thing about it was that it was apparently the killer that called 911 and alerted authorities to the crime.

  First responders were there within minutes, but the assailant was gone, and there was no saving William Simmons. He died at Bergen Hospital within minutes of his arrival; there was nothing doctors could do.

  The official time of death was three minutes past midnight, just nine hours before Daniel Lewinsky sent an email consisting only of his name.

  I’ve just finished reading the materials when we pull up to Jessie’s house. “Come on in,” I say. “Let’s kick this around.”

  Jessie opens the door as we approach, and her greeting is a warm one, including a significant amount of hugging and kissing. It’s far preferable to the welcome I got from Nate at baggage claim.

  “Am I the only one getting nauseous?” Nate asks.

  “I think you are,” I say.

  We go inside and sit around the kitchen table as Jessie makes coffee. She puts down some cookies as well, and Nate eyes them. “What’s in those?” he asks.

  Jessie shrugs. “I don’t know; cookie stuff.”

  “Fattening? Because some cookies contain, like, no calories. Some people are on all-cookie diets.”

  Jessie smiles. “Every time I want to lose some weight, I eat a few hundred of them.”

  I don’t take any cookies, but I give Bobo a few dog biscuits; I want to get on his good side.

  Nate puts five cookies onto his plate. Then, with his mouth full, he asks, “What do you think about William Simmons?”

  “The head of the hospital sends an email mentioning a person who died at that hospital the night before. There could certainly be a benign explanation for that.”

  “He sent it to someone who was concealing their identity, and who closed the account after getting the email. Maybe Lewinsky wasn’t supposed to have communicated that way, so they blew it up.”

  “How does it fit into our overall theory?”

  Jessie says, “It doesn’t yet. We’re going to do a full dive into Simmons’ life. At this point there’s no drug connection; but that’s not to say there isn’t any.”

  “What about the toxicology report?”

  “No drugs in his system. His uncle in Ohio said he’d never used them, that he hated them.”

  I nod. “Also get the hospital records. For all we know they’ll show that Simmons was given heavy drugs for weeks, even though he died that night. It could be a way to explain how all the drugs they took in were accounted for.”

  “Good idea.”

  “If you guys are right that this is significant, then we need to make a connection. Simmons at one point had an insurance agency; did he ever sell life insurance to any of the players? Or to a lot of other people that might have died at this hospital?”

  “He was out of that business for years,” Nate says.

  “But insurance policies live on. I doubt we’ll find anything; maybe there’s nothing to find.”

  We talk for a while longer, and then Nate says, “So what’s on television? I’m not tired at all.”

  Jessie and I look at each other, and she says, “The television is out, Nate.”

  “Then what do you have to eat?”

  “The refrigerator is out, Nate.”

  “Anybody up for three-man poker?”

  “You’re out, Nate,” I say.

  He shakes his head and stands up to go. “Did I mention that you guys make me nauseous?”

  Everything was the same as it had been in New Jersey.

  Dominic Romano met the same courier that Philly had met. He was driving the same van, and they met behind an abandoned warehouse. He was also delivering the exact same kind of package.

  Dominic was considerably more comfortable receiving the material than Philly had been. He had joined the Army coming out of high school, and served in a combat role in Iraq. So he had handled explosives; he learned how to handle and respect them.

  He also was familiar with C-4 plastic explosives, and knew without asking what the courier had to tell Philly … that this amount was more than sufficient to handle the job it was being called upon to do.

  But Dominic took nothing for granted, and once he made the required payment, he listened carefully as the courier explained the workings of the device. Once that was completed, he asked a few pertinent questions to make sure he was thoroughly confident and comfortable.

  The courier noticed the difference between Dominic and Philly when it came to their competence regarding this specific situation. He knew that the Vegas side of the operation had a substantially greater chance of success.

  But he didn’t say anything, and the truth was he and his people didn’t much care. Once the packages were delivered, they were somebody else’s property and someone else’s problem.

  Dominic made sure the package was locked away, concealed and secure, then he went back to the hotel, where Tartaro was waiting for him. They had not had a chance to talk much since the cops had been there, and he found Tartaro to be surprisingly agitated.

  “I think we should pull the plug on this thing,” Tartaro said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re being watched too carefully. The cops are all over us, and the Feds can’t be far behind.”

  “You heard them,” Dominic said. “They don’t know anything.”

  “Right now they don’t. But they know something is happening.”

  “I don’t think they do. And it wouldn’t matter anyway. They won’t be able to tie us to it. We’ve got every base covered.”

  Tartaro got angry. “How about if you stop arguing with every goddamn thing I say? Okay, Dominic? I’m not saying we cancel the sixteenth; I’m saying we wait until the pressure is off. You understand?”

  Dominic had spent enough time with Tartaro to know when it was time to back off. “I understand.”

  “Call Silva’s people and tell them. Make sure they hold off as well, and don’t let them give you any shit. When we do it, we do it at the same time.”

  “I’ll take care of it right away,” Dominic said.

  He left Tartaro, ostensibly to make the phone call to Silva. But he had no plans to make that call, even though he would tell Tartaro that he had.

  Tartaro was in the dark about it, but Lucky Linda’s Casino was going to experience a moment of very bad luck, and nothing would delay it.

  It was not the first time that Dominic disobeyed Tartaro, and it certainly would not be the last.

  I’m spending the day at Bergen Hospital.

  My first meeting is with Dr. Steven Cassel, the surgeon who admitted to me that he had an affair with Rita Carlisle, which ended shortly before her death.

  Not wanting to tangle with his protective assistant again, I’ve called ahead and learned that he is not doing surgeries today, but rather just doing office visits and rounds of his pat
ients that are in the hospital.

  He suggested that we meet in the hospital cafeteria for coffee, which was fine with me. I asked that he get the hospital records for William Simmons on the night he died, and he agreed to do so. Since Dr. Cassel is worried that I’ll reveal his affair to the public, and therefore to his unsuspecting wife, it’s fair to say that I have some leverage on the good doctor.

  We’re meeting at 10:00 A.M., so the good news is we’re able to get a table near the back, away from any other patrons who might overhear our conversation. The bad news is that the array and quality of food in this cafeteria is never going to be confused with the buffet at the Paris.

  Once we’re settled in, I ask if he had a chance to go over the William Simmons records, and he points to a small folder he has in front of him. I assume that means the records are inside. “I have,” he said. “They’re not very complicated.”

  “Were you on duty the night he was brought in?” I ask.

  “I have no idea; it was a long time ago. But I very much doubt it. In any event, I had nothing to do with his treatment. The records obviously list the doctors involved; they were emergency room personnel. Dr. Ziskind, a neurosurgeon on staff here, was called in, but there was no opportunity for him to successfully intervene.”

  “What do the records show?”

  “He was near death from a fractured skull when he was brought in; actually the skull was mostly crushed. The pressure on the brain was enormous, and it had sustained catastrophic damage; there was no possibility of survival. Based on what I see here, I’m surprised he made it to the hospital alive.”

  “Is there anything you see in there that would have gotten the attention of top management?” I ask.

  “Hospital management? Well, the man died, so certainly that isn’t a desired outcome. That’s obviously taken seriously, and there are procedures in place.”

  “I understand, but is there anything unusual about hospital protocols as they were followed in this case, anything strange or surprising in the way the hospital handled this?”