Nate is here also, for no particular reason that I can tell. One thing is for sure; we’re not accomplishing anything.
But whatever the reasons for my being here, it turns out to be lucky, because the desk sergeant tells me that Daniel Lewinsky is on the phone. I’m surprised, because I would have thought the call would come from Ranes.
There’s a recording system for incoming phone calls, which can be activated with the press of a button. I press the button, because I want a record of everything Lewinsky has to say.
“Hello, Daniel. What can I do for you?”
“I want to turn myself in,” he says. “I want to make a deal. But it’s got to be now. I want to do it now.”
“Smart move. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“No. He’s going to kill me. I’m afraid to leave the house.”
“Who’s going to kill you?” I ask.
“Joey Silva. I’ll tell you everything. All about the drugs, how we do it. And I know people that he’s killed.”
“Okay, stay where you are. We’ll come get you. What’s your address?”
He tells me, and I know the area. It’s a very upscale neighborhood in Alpine.
“I’ll have cops there in ten minutes,” I say, and hang up.
Jessie just happens to be walking into my office as I’m ending the call, and she wants to come with Nate and me. First, we have the dispatcher get cars to the location; they’ll be on the scene much faster than we will. The instructions are to stay there until we arrive.
Nate is the Dale Earnhardt of the department, so he drives. He makes it in fifteen minutes, ten faster than I could have done it. There are six cop cars in front of Lewinsky’s house, and some neighbors standing outside. They must figure something significant is happening, and they are right.
As we walk toward the front door, Sergeant Luke Moore comes out, having seen us coming. “Where is Lewinsky?” I ask.
“Upstairs in his bedroom.”
“Bring him down,” Nate says.
Moore looks confused. “What do you mean … carry him? Forensics isn’t even here yet.”
Before I can ask the question, Moore sees the look on my face and says, “You know he’s dead, right?”
Actually, no.
We go inside and find Lewinsky upstairs, dead from a bullet hole in the back of his head. There were no obvious signs of a struggle; Lewinsky didn’t, or more likely couldn’t, put up much of a fight.
About a half hour after our arrival, Ron Ranes shows up, and we send word to allow him into the house. He’s already heard what happened, and is upset about it.
“He called us to say he was turning himself in,” I say. “Ten minutes too late.”
“He was? Why?”
“I assume it’s because you told him what we talked about.”
“I never spoke to him,” Ranes says. “I left a message for him to call me, but he never did.”
“I don’t believe a word Lewinsky said on that call.”
Nate, Jessie, and I have stopped at a diner for a very late dinner after leaving Lewinsky’s house. We hung around long enough to get the lay of the land and hear what forensics had to say, pending test results. It wasn’t very encouraging; the murder was obviously done professionally.
“You don’t? The guy said he was afraid for his life, and then he got killed. You don’t think he was scared?”
“I do agree he was scared. But that was the only part I believe.”
“Why?” Jessie asks.
“He was frightened out of his mind, right? Did you see the alarm system in that house? It was state-of-the-art. If he was that scared, it would have been activated if someone broke in, yet it never went off. There was also no sign of any forced entry, yet with his state of mind, he would have locked everything up tight and set the alarm. So he must have disarmed the alarm to let the killer in.”
“Keep going,” Nate says.
“The whole thing happened too fast. I checked; our people were there eight minutes after the call went out, which means ten minutes after Lewinsky got off the phone with us.”
“Plenty of time to get in and shoot him.”
“First of all, even if that were true, it’s quite a coincidence that they happened to be there just as he called us. But besides that, how could it have gone down? Where was he in the house when he made the call to us?”
“I don’t know,” Nate says, and then adds, “probably the bedroom where we found him.”
“Exactly. It’s not on street level, so whoever he was worried about couldn’t see him or shoot him through the window. That’s where he would have been; it would be safer.”
Jessie nods. “And the phone in that room was lying on the bed. The one downstairs was in the charger.”
“Good catch. So he calls us from the bedroom, then he goes downstairs to let them in, and they take him back upstairs to the bedroom to shoot him? Why? And all in just a few minutes? Why not shoot him downstairs?”
“Maybe they somehow got through the alarm or he left something unlocked. So they come in, find him in the bedroom, and shoot him,” Nate says.
“As unlikely as that is, he’d have heard them and closed his bedroom door. There’s a lock on that door as well, but it wasn’t broken into or jimmied in any way.”
“So you think they were there while he called?” Jessie asks.
I nod. “I think they made him call, and told him what to say. It even sounded like he was reading it. Also, I spoke to Ranes at the house; he never spoke to Lewinsky and told him what we had on him.”
Nate and Jessie think for a while, silently considering what I’ve been saying. Finally, Nate says, “You know, you’re not as dumb as you used to be. Falling on your head might have paid off; or maybe not filling up your brain with memories opened up space for it to do other stuff.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
“So the killer was standing there, holding a gun and telling him what to say. Which probably means that everything he said was bullshit.”
I nod. “Exactly.”
“And the main thing he said was that Joey Silva was trying to kill him. If that’s not true, why would they make him say it?”
“Because they want us to arrest Joey Silva for the murder.”
“So what’s our move?”
“We do not arrest Joey Silva for the murder.”
A decision on whether to arrest Joey Silva is above my pay grade.
It’s above Nate’s and my pay grades combined, even if you throw in Jessie’s salary and the money I made for those ridiculous paid talks I gave before I got back on the force.
There are two people who would have to be convinced to make such an arrest; first Captain Bradley, and then the prosecutor. Both would have to sign on. If we can get Bradley to back off, then the prosecutor will never even get to participate in the decision. But Bradley is going to be very difficult to persuade; it’s rarely in a police captain’s interest to decline to arrest a mob boss when the evidence is there.
Nate and I are waiting in Bradley’s office when he arrives at 8:00 A.M. Nate called him last night at home, updated him on recent events, and they arranged the meeting.
We start by playing the tape of the phone call from Lewinsky. As I listen to it again, I try and picture someone standing in the room, holding a gun on him as he talks. I still think I’m right about the circumstances, but I can’t be 100 percent sure.
Once the tape is concluded, Bradley says, “We got Silva. This is enough to charge him.”
We could let it go at that, and not tell Bradley what we think. He’ll take it to the prosecutor, the decision will be made, and that will be that. No one could ever look back on this and say we did the wrong thing by making the arrest.
I don’t know if I had a conscience in the past and have forgotten about it, but I have one now, and it’s causing me to tell Bradley the truth.
“I think it’s bogus,” I say. “I think Lewinsky said what he said under duress.”
“Why?” Bradley asks, and we tell him. We describe all the circumstances that make us believe that Lewinsky was saying exactly what he was told to say.
Bradley seems less than impressed. “You’re advancing a theory, and this tape is a fact,” he says, and he’s right about that. “You’re saying we let Joey Silva walk on a theory?”
I nod. “I’m saying we let Joey Silva walk, for the time being, based on our instincts and experience.”
“Experience? You can’t remember what you had for breakfast. You wouldn’t know your experience if it walked into this room and bit you on the ass.”
I decide not to punch him in the face for bringing that up; maybe I am maturing after all. “You put Joey away, and you’re playing into their hands. We’ve been—I’ve been—playing into their hands since the day Shawn showed me the damn scrapbook.”
He thinks for a few moments, not wanting to move quickly and do something stupid. “Okay. Tell me what you think is going on.”
I nod. “Look, there are two possibilities here; Lewinsky was either telling the truth in that call, or he was being coerced into lying. I don’t think he was telling the truth, but if he was, then we can arrest Silva whenever we want and hopefully put him away for years.
“Silva’s not a flight risk; we always know where he is, and we can get him at our convenience.
“But let’s say that Lewinsky was lying. Then two things can happen. One is that we figure out what the hell is going on and we get the real killer. The other is that we don’t. But I think we have a better chance if we don’t arrest Silva.”
“Why?” Bradley asks.
“Because it shakes things up, and whoever is calling these shots gets thrown off their stride. They want to put Silva away, to get him out of the way, and they’ll have to figure out another way to do it. Maybe we can watch and maybe intervene, but we can find out who benefits by him being put away, other than society.
“The way I figure it, it’s one of two people. One is Salvatore Tartaro. First his guy Shawn’s head wound up in the park, then Tony Silva’s landed on a Dumpster. Now Silva gets set up to take the fall on this Lewinsky murder, and Tartaro goes underground, we don’t know where.”
“Maybe Tartaro is making sure he stays in a safe place until Silva is put away and peace breaks out. Or maybe Silva has already hit him; we won’t know until we know. But Tartaro might stand to gain from Silva taking the fall.”
“And the other possibility is Philly DeSimone?” Bradley asks.
“Exactly. It’s no wonder they made you captain.”
“Be careful,” Bradley warns. “You may not remember what a prick I can be.”
I nod. “Thanks for the reminder. But yes, Philly DeSimone. He’s the number three man. Number two got his head chopped off, and now number one may go to prison. It’s all working out pretty well for old Philly.”
Nate asks, “With Lewinsky gone, the Silva family no longer has someone to get them the drugs. How does Philly gain by that?”
“Maybe he thinks it’s done anyway. We’re all over them, and we were all over Lewinsky.”
“And the sixteenth?” Bradley asks.
“Unfortunately, that’s where I run out of ideas. But I think we may have been making a mistake connecting whatever that is about with the drug dealing from the hospital supply. We connected the two because there is a Vegas connection to both, but maybe it’s just an example of Tartaro and Silva working on two separate things.”
“Okay,” Bradley says. “You’ve convinced me. But I’ve got to share this with the chief.”
“Will he overrule you?” Nate asks.
Bradley shakes his head. “He’s better at complaining after the fact than making proactive decisions.”
“What about Wiggins and the Feds?” I ask.
“I have to tell them about this, but Silva is our jurisdiction, not theirs.”
“So we do nothing?” I ask.
Bradley stands up and nods. “So we do nothing.”
I nod. “Good move.”
The larger and more prominent the target, the more careful everyone becomes.
When someone like Joey Silva gets arrested, especially for murder, it’s inevitably going to be a huge media story. So any prosecutor who brings such a case is not going to do so unless he or she is pretty damn certain they’re going to win.
No young lawyer dreams of one day being just like Marcia Clark or Christopher Darden.
Captain Bradley played the tape for his superior, and as Bradley predicted, the chief was not inclined to interfere with his decision not to make the arrest. Then Bradley brought Wiggins and the FBI into the loop, and they also made no effort to get him to change his mind.
What Bradley didn’t know is that Wiggins did not try to convince Bradley because there was no reason to. He had already decided to nail Silva on drug and murder charges in Federal court, and the tape would be a key piece of evidence. The Bureau would claim jurisdiction by considering it a conspiracy that crossed state lines … many state lines … all the way from Nevada to New Jersey.
Getting the Federal prosecutor to approve it would be an easy maneuver, and Wiggins pulled it off with no problem. He never mentioned the reservations that Bradley and his cops had; those were just theories and strategies, and in no way reflected the evidence.
Once the prosecutor approved Wiggins’ request to arrest Joey Silva, then they moved into the planning stage. They knew it was highly unlikely that Silva would resist, but they would not take any chances. They decided to do it in public, specifically at Patrono’s, an Italian restaurant Silva ate out at virtually every night. If he turned out not to be there that night, then they’d get him at home.
Wiggins sent an agent in plainclothes to the restaurant to sit at the bar and have a meal. He was a new guy, and certainly had never dealt with Joey, so they were certain he wouldn’t be recognized. At seven o’clock, he texted Wiggins to say that Joey had shown up with his two bodyguards, and taken his regular corner table in the back.
Since Wiggins and other agents were waiting in cars within five blocks of the restaurant, it didn’t take them long to get there. Wiggins and his partner pulled up first, leaving their car in front and going in. The two bodyguards were sitting near the door, and they stood up when they saw them. FBI agents as a rule are not hard to spot.
“Don’t do anything stupid, boys,” Wiggins said, and they walked toward Joey.
“Well, look who’s here,” Joey said. “Just in time to ruin my dinner.”
“You’re going to have to get it to go, Joey,” Wiggins said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Here’s the thing, Joey. You don’t have the right to eat dinner, but you do have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in…”
He interrupted. “What the hell are you doing? Are you arresting me?”
“Now you threw me off, Joey, just when I was on a roll,” Wiggins said, and started again. “You have the right to remain silent…”
As Wiggins was reading, he saw that the bodyguards had taken steps toward him, but they backed off when the restaurant, as if by magic, filled with agents coming in from the front and back, ten of them. No one was going to take any chances with Joey Silva.
Wiggins finished reading Silva his rights, and another handcuffed him. As he was doing so, Joey asked, “What the hell are you charging me with?”
“Drug trafficking and the murder of Daniel Lewinsky,” Wiggins said. “And that’s just the opening serve.”
“Daniel Lewinsky?” For a moment it seemed the name legitimately didn’t register with him.
Then, when it finally did, he asked, “He’s dead?”
I hear the news on the radio.
I’m on the way home, for one of the few nights in recent weeks that I’m not staying at Jessie’s. It was going to be a night of thinking about what our next move should be.
There aren’t many details, just that the FBI executed an arrest warrant on Joey Silva at a restaurant while he was having dinner. The media is reporting that the arrest concerned drug charges and the murder of Daniel Lewinsky, an executive from Bergen Hospital.
I am sure that within minutes of Joey’s arrival at the jail, he would have lawyered up. Joey Silva came out of the womb lawyered up. He wouldn’t be answering questions, that’s for sure, and I believe he will eventually be cleared, at least of the murder charge. But Joey will have a lot of time to remain silent. His arraignment will probably be tomorrow, and the judge will almost certainly deny bail, since one of the charges is murder.
All that the FBI will have accomplished is to do the bidding of whoever set Joey up, whoever really killed Daniel Lewinsky.
Within thirty seconds of the news coming on the radio, Nate calls me and asks, “Did you see what those assholes did?”
“Just now,” I say. “We’ve got to go to Plan B.”
“Let me know what that is. I didn’t even know we had a Plan A.”
As soon as I get off the phone, Bradley calls. He’s pissed off, as he should be. “I should never have played Wiggins that tape,” he says.
“You had to” is my reply, because he did. Information like that cannot be withheld.
“Yeah,” he says, and hangs up.
While Joey is stewing in jail, we’re going to have to be focusing our attention on everyone else. It’s sort of like an inbounds play in basketball, when the defense covers everybody the person with the ball can throw it to, while leaving that person unguarded. He’s standing out of bounds, so he can’t hurt anybody. Sitting in prison, Joey is in the justice system version of out of bounds.
Having narrowed it down to Tartaro and Philly DeSimone as the possible beneficiaries of Joey’s fall, that’s who we’re going to be paying attention to.
In Vegas, the job of watching Tartaro falls to Lieutenant Roberts, though his task is complicated by the fact that he has no idea where Tartaro is. He could be anywhere from the spa at the Palazzo to a makeshift grave out near Hoover Dam. I’m betting on the latter, since Tartaro didn’t strike me as the hot stone massage type.
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