“Rattle his cage.”
Lewinsky arrives at 3:00 P.M. with his attorney, Ronald Ranes.
It’s not the first time I’ve been surprised that someone who has never been charged with a crime has such apparent easy access to a criminal attorney; do people like him have them listed in their Rolodexes under J for “Just in Case”?
But Ranes is a top guy, very well respected, smart and tough. The two of them join Nate and me in an interview room with a one-way mirror so Bradley can observe. Nate and I have agreed that I will ask all the questions, and his role will be to look large and ominous. It’s a look he can manage easily.
Once we’re settled in, I inform them that the interview is being recorded and that they are free to end the session at any time. Ranes acknowledges that and says for the record that his client is here of his own free will and resents being dragged down here, that he is an upstanding citizen and deserves better treatment.
Our goal here is limited. With or without Ranes being present, there is no way that Lewinsky is going to say anything to incriminate himself. He’s far too smart for that; the table we’re sitting at would be too smart for that.
What we want to do is shake him up, to get him to take some action that we can pounce on. We have surveillance in place on his phone and emails, so if he does or says the wrong thing because we have worried him, then we’ve got him.
I identify Lewinsky and his position at the hospital for the record, and then ask, “Mr. Lewinsky, are you aware of any fraudulent activities regarding the purchase and/or dispensation of drugs at Bergen Hospital?”
He pretends to be surprised at the question, and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please answer the questions that I ask you. Are you aware of any such activities?”
“I am not.”
“Have you ever, in any manner, adjusted the hospital records showing the purchases of drugs, or the dispensation of them?”
“I have not.”
I ask the question in different forms a few more times, and each time he denies them, showing exasperation at the repetition.
“Do you personally know Joey Silva?”
“Joey Silva?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
He looks at Ranes, who nods. Then Lewinsky says, “I’ve heard the name.”
“Have you ever met him?”
He shakes his head. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Ever spoken to him?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
I then ask him the exact same questions regarding Tony Silva and Philly DeSimone, and his denials are the same. Finally he says, “These are gangsters.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” I say. “Have you ever heard the name Travis Mauer?” Mauer is the fictitious patient that supposedly received treatment and drugs at Bergen Hospital.
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“What about the name William Simmons?”
That seems to provoke a slight reaction in him, but I can’t be sure. “William Simmons?”
I nod. “That’s correct. William Simmons.”
“It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“Let me try and refresh your memory; he was a murder victim who died at Bergen Hospital.”
“Perhaps I heard his name in that context, but I don’t remember.”
I tell him that we have no further questions, and ask him if he would be willing to take a polygraph. He says absolutely not, and expresses his resentment at being treated like a criminal.
I smile and thank him for his cooperation. He responds with, “I hope that this will conclude this matter, whatever it is you’re doing.”
I smile again. “We live in hope.”
The meeting breaks up; whatever Ranes got paid for coming here today, he didn’t break a sweat to earn it.
It’s hard to know what effect, if any, the conversation had on Lewinsky. He was calm and under control; he certainly didn’t break down and blubber out a confession.
Now the ball is in his court to see if he reveals himself in a phone or email correspondence, and in Jessie’s court to monitor it.
Philly DeSimone knew all about Lewinsky’s police interview within two hours of its conclusion.
Lewinsky was scared, and he talked about it to someone he trusted and was comfortable with. And that person talked to Philly, who in turn talked to Joey Silva.
“We’ve got a small problem,” Philly said. He was not used to having conversations like this with Joey; that used to be Tony’s job. But he knew enough to know that he had to tread carefully.
“I don’t like problems,” Joey said.
“I know, Joey, but this one can be handled. The cops brought Lewinsky in for questioning.”
“What about?”
“Drugs. They think he is stealing drugs from the hospital and giving them to us.”
Joey laughs. “What did Lewinsky say?”
“He denied it, of course. But he’s worried. And he thinks we should delay our plans for the sixteenth.”
“We have the targets picked out?”
“We do,” Philly said.
Joey shakes his head. “Then no chance; we move forward. If we give in to that little twerp, we’ll never get him back under control.”
“You need to call him and straighten him out.”
“You do it.”
Philly shakes his head. “Joey, it’s got to come from you. You’re the one he’s afraid of, and he knows you’re the boss. It’s a two-minute conversation.”
Joey sighed; this was something Tony could have handled. “All right, let’s get the asshole on the phone.”
So Philly prepped Joey very carefully for what he should say, and then he did as he was told. He got Lewinsky on the phone.
“Lewinsky talked to Joey Silva,” Nate says, hanging up the phone.
It is barely three hours since he and Ranes left our office, which is even faster than I could have imagined. Now Jessie has called and says she’s got the audio of the call, ready for us to hear.
Nate and I head for her office immediately, and she says, “Here’s a surprise; Lewinsky didn’t initiate the call. Silva did.”
She presses the button, and the first voice we hear is someone answering the phone with, “Hello?”
The caller says, “You know who this is?”
There’s a delay, and a very nervous-sounding Lewinsky says, “Mr. Silva.”
“I understand you had a conversation with the cops?”
“Yes.” He seems surprised that Joey knows about that, as am I. Could they be tailing him? He continues.
“So?” Joey is proving to be quite a conversationalist.
“The police questioned me.”
“Local or Federal?”
“State. That guy Brock.”
“And they asked you about drugs?” Joey asks.
“How did you know that?”
“I know a lot of things. What did you tell them?”
“That I didn’t know what they were talking about,” Lewinsky says. “But then they asked me a couple of names.”
“Which names?”
“One of them I don’t remember; I don’t know who it is. The other one was William Simmons. He was a homeless guy who was murdered, and died in the hospital. We’ve talked about him before.”
“I don’t see no problems here. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“It’s making me nervous,” Lewinsky says.
“So be nervous. Just don’t do or say anything stupid.”
“I think we should delay our plans for the sixteenth; there’s too much risk. Maybe push it back at least a couple of weeks.”
“It goes as scheduled,” Joey says. “You worry about your end.”
“I think we should cancel it. Tony told me that…”
“Tony ain’t here no more.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just don’t think we should be doing this anymore.”
Joey laughs.
“Are you a religious guy, Lewinsky?”
“In a way.”
“Do you know the line about giveth and taketh away?”
The calls clicks off with the sound of Joey continuing to laugh at his joke, whatever the hell it means.
We contact Bradley, who tells us to come in immediately. We say that it’s best he come to Jessie’s office, and he’s here almost before we can hang up the phone. Bradley was making this a priority before, but after the meeting with the Feds, it’s inched up a few notches.
“Lewinsky received this call a few hours after he left here,” she says. Bradley listens intently, making eye contact with me when Lewinsky uses Joey’s name in the call.
When it’s finished, Bradley asks Jessie to play it again. After that, he says. “Get me a transcript ASAP.”
“You need to get this to Wiggins,” I say. “The Feds need to know this.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” says Bradley.
“There’s plenty we don’t know.”
“Well, figure it out. And then hang that son of a bitch.”
The intercepted phone conversation gives us a lot.
Even an “investigation half-empty” guy like me knows that it advanced the ball considerably, just not quite enough.
First of all, it established beyond any doubt the connection between Lewinsky and Joey Silva. Lewinsky and Joey are doing business together, and doing business with Joey cannot have a benign explanation.
It also confirms our view that this is about drugs, which is what Mitchell Galvis has been telling us all along. Joey knew instantly that we must have talked to Lewinsky about drugs; it was the first question he asked.
The other important topic was William Simmons. We knew that Lewinsky had mentioned him in that cryptic email, but we thought it could possibly be legitimate hospital business. It’s not; Lewinsky’s talking about him to Joey places the dead man in the center of this investigation. Simmons died in the hospital, but it wasn’t from cancer; he was murdered. Murder is a key part of Joey Silva’s job description.
What the conversation didn’t give us is proof of Lewinsky’s guilt, at least legally. We know what it means, and we know that he’s dirty, but it’s not a smoking gun. Just based on this, we can’t get it past a prosecutor. And if we can’t do that, then we can’t squeeze Lewinsky enough to give up Silva.
The other part of this, the scary part, is that we now have a deadline for another shoe to drop. Galvis had told me that he overheard that something was going to happen on the sixteenth, and now we have it repeated and confirmed.
That news, coupled with the terrorist implications that the FBI talked about, could be ominous. Or just as likely, it could be a day that they’re going to take a whole bunch of drugs out of that hospital. Or it could be something entirely different. We’ve got a week to find out.
I’m still inclined to discount the terrorist side of this, no matter what the FBI said. How would Joey Silva benefit from a literally explosive terrorist action, and how could it possibly help his drug business, or any other part of his business? I also think that Joey telling Lewinsky to take care of his end of things argues against terrorism. What could Lewinsky’s end of a plot like that be?
None of us understand Joey’s comment about “giveth and taketh away,” but I sure as hell didn’t like the way he said it and then laughed about it.
For the time being, we need to focus on William Simmons. I’ve read the details of the investigation into his murder, but it presents only a surface picture of his life.
The cold truth is that he was a homeless guy who fell through society’s cracks and who was believed to have been the victim of a random killing. I know the cops who handled the case, and they were professional and careful, but they didn’t exactly marshal the full force of the department on it. They checked the boxes, but I’m sure they just moved on when their caseload got full.
Nobody cared about William Simmons in life, and nobody got too worked up over his death.
But William Simmons was not just another murder victim. There was something about him that is worrying the head of a hospital and an organized crime figure, even today. There is some connection between him and Rita Carlisle’s kidnapping, and maybe between him and an impending disaster.
I think it’s time to give William Simmons the attention he should have gotten in the first place.
Jessie uses her online magic to find Simmons’s daughter, Patty, the one who survived along with him in the car crash that killed her mother and sister. She goes by her married name of Lynch, and lives in Leonia.
I call ahead, and she agrees to see us this afternoon. Nate and I go together, a reflection of the importance we’re giving to learning what the hell William Simmons could possibly have to do with this case.
We arrive at a modest house with a carefully manicured lawn that can’t be more than seventy square feet, surrounded by straight lines of neatly planted flowers. I have no idea what kind of flowers they are; roses are pretty much the only ones I can ever identify. If I wanted some enlightenment on the subject, and I don’t, Nate is the last person that could provide it.
Patty Lynch lets us in; she’s maybe twenty-five, and is wearing an apron and actually drying her hands on a kitchen towel. Two kids, maybe four and five years old, are playing with some toys in the den, with a cartoon on television.
“Come in the kitchen,” she says. “I made some coffee.” Then she turns to the kids and asks them to play nicely while Mommy is in the kitchen. They don’t respond or seem to hear her, which is okay, because they’re already playing nicely.
We sit down at the kitchen table as Patty pours coffee and delights Nate by putting out some donuts. “So you wanted to talk to me about Dad?” she asks, a little nervously. “After all this time?”
In these situations I usually do the talking, and Nate and I have agreed to the same this time. It’s just as well, since Nate’s mouth is about to be full of coffee-drenched donuts.
“Yes, we have a few questions. I’m sorry if this upsets you; that’s not our intention. But the questions are important.”
“It’s okay; I’m just curious, that’s all. It’s been so long.” Then, “Please ask your questions, maybe they’ll answer some of my own.”
We’ve decided to be straight with her, or at least as straight as we can be without revealing information we need to protect. “Your father’s name has come up in another case we’re working on, a case to which he has no apparent connection. So we’re trying to make that connection, and to do so, we need to know your father a lot better.”
“So you want me to tell you about him?” she asks.
“For now, yes. That’s a good place to start.”
“Okay. I look at it as though I had two fathers. There was the William Simmons before the accident, and the one after.”
“You’re talking about the automobile accident?”
“Yes. My mother and sister were killed, and my father and I lived. We were in the backseat, they were in the front, and the way the car was hit, that made the difference. It could just as easily have been the other way. I’m sure he would have preferred not to survive; you could easily argue that he actually died that day as well.”
She’s talking with intensity and emotion, and her voice cracks a couple of times. Nate has even put down his donut; for him that is a remarkable gesture of respect for her sacrifice.
“Before the accident, he enjoyed his life and his family. He owned an insurance agency—I don’t know how much of this you already know—and was doing well. We had just bought a new house, although we never moved in.
“He loved my mother, and adored his kids. I know I’m painting a picture that sounds idyllic and unreal, and I’m sure he had problems that he was dealing with, certainly with his vision, but he never made us feel them. He made our world safe and happy.”
“He had vision problems?”
“Terrible. He lost his eyesight over time, to the point where he was
probably legally blind, though I doubt he got tested.”
I ask her to continue, and she does.
“After the crash, it was never the same. It was like he couldn’t function in the world, and didn’t want to, but he didn’t have the courage to put a gun to his head. So instead he killed himself slowly, and everyone who cared about him had a ringside seat. But there was a fence separating us from the ring, and he’d never let us come through it.”
She takes a deep breath. “So I went to live with my grandmother, and he disappeared. I tried to reach him, to find him, but I was never able to. And I probably didn’t try hard enough, because I knew he did not want to be found.”
“Did he leave a will?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Not that I know of. He had nothing anyway, so it really wouldn’t have mattered.”
“What happened to the insurance agency? The people that had policies through him?”
“I believe the companies themselves took them over, maybe repositioned them with different agencies. He was not the insurer; he was the agent. He dealt with a lot of different insurance companies, and he wrote the policies through whichever one was best for a particular purpose.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted him dead? For whatever reason?”
“No. The only person who wanted my father dead was my father.” Then, “Are you saying his death might not have been a random killing? That someone specifically targeted him?”
I nod. “It’s a possibility.”
She shakes her head in apparent amazement. “Wow. I can’t believe anyone would have done that, or what they would possibly have to gain. Certainly not money, and I can’t imagine it being revenge. He never hurt anyone except himself.”
What I don’t tell her is that the cops doing the original investigation believed that it was the murderer who called 911 and reported Simmons’ whereabouts. That was never consistent with a random “thrill” killing, but without anything else to go on, nothing ever came of it.
Of course, part of the answer is that making that call was not consistent with any kind of killing, be it random, thrill, or premeditated. Simmons was alive when the medical people showed up; a person intent on killing would not have called them in to possibly save the victim.
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