Back here, we are going to be all over Philly. We’ve gotten a warrant to surveil him electronically, and we’ll have a tail on him wherever he goes.
So Nate and I need to get back to the nuts and bolts of the investigation, to keep digging until we manage to uncover something. It rarely gets us anywhere, but it certainly presents more opportunity for success than sitting on our asses and waiting for phone calls.
When I get home, I go through my notes and notice that I never heard back from Jessie on the cyber check she was supposed to do on Travis Mauer. Mauer is the guy, or non-guy as the case may be, that Mitchell Galvis used as an example of Lewinsky’s drug thefts from the hospital.
Galvis gave me Mauer’s hospital records, which showed that he had received a great many drugs in a fairly lengthy stay and post-op experience. The problem, according to Galvis, is that Mauer doesn’t exist, and was never actually at the hospital.
If we’re going to ultimately go to trial against Joey Silva or anyone else, we’re going to need to lock all of this down. Galvis’s word that Mauer doesn’t exist will not be enough; we’ll need to prove it to a prosecutor’s and jury’s satisfaction.
I call Jessie, and she says she’s heavily into it and will have information for me tomorrow. She also says that she loves me, which means I get to end the day on a good note.
I don’t sleep very well; I’m not sure if it’s because of the case, or because Jessie isn’t next to me. I’ve got a hunch that the reason might be missing Jessie, because I’ve been on the case for a while, yet haven’t had sleeping problems at her house.
I get up in the morning and call Dr. Steven Cassel at his office. His assistant, the former SS officer known now as Helen, puts me right through. Since I know about Cassel’s affair with Rita Carlisle, and since he knows that I know, he clearly has told Helen I’m to be given special courtesy.
She must hate that.
I tell Cassel that I am coming down to see him, and he doesn’t put up any resistance. I bring copies of Mauer’s records with me. Cassel is a major player at the hospital, so I can use him to get information and run interference.
“I expected to hear from you,” Dr. Cassel says once I get into his office.
“Why?”
“With that horrible news about Daniel … Lewinsky … I assumed it must have had something to do with the work you’re doing.”
I don’t say anything; I just start to open the envelope with Mauer’s hospital records inside. He continues, “But they’ve caught the killer, right? That mob guy? I saw it on the news last night.”
I ask, “Did I give you the impression that I was here to update you on the status of the investigation?”
He grins and says, “Sorry. It’s simultaneously horrible and exciting. We deal with life and death around here every day, but not quite like this.”
I nod and hand him the records. “Please take a look at these.”
So he does so, page by page. He takes so long that I think he might be committing it to memory. Finally, he finishes and asks, “What about it?”
“You see anything unusual about those records?”
“Not on a first reading. Can you enlighten me on what I’m supposed to be looking for?”
“I’m told that Travis Mauer doesn’t exist, that there is no such person. And obviously, if that’s true, then those records are fakes.”
He glances at a couple of pages again. “Then they would be elaborate fakes.”
“I need you to confirm it for me.”
“How?”
“Talk to the doctors and nurses that he’s supposed to have seen. Find out from the kitchen if they served him meals. I don’t know how this place works, but you do. You can figure it out.”
He nods. “Okay. Can I be open about it? Can I say it’s a police matter?”
“No. Make up a medical reason.”
“I don’t believe in lying, especially to people I care about,” he says.
“You had an extramarital affair with a coworker, kept it secret from everyone including your wife, and you don’t believe in lying to people you care about?”
“You’re never going to let that go?” he asks.
“When all this is over, it will be wiped clean from my mind.”
He considers this, and finally says, “Okay. I should be able to do it, but it may take a while. How much time do I have?”
“I need an answer by tomorrow.”
He shakes his head. “You’re a tough taskmaster, Lieutenant.”
I nod. “It’s part of my charm.”
When I have some downtime on an investigation, I make lists.
In this case, the downtime is involuntary; I just can’t think of anything else to do. So while I’m sitting here in my office, I might as well do the lists.
I do it in two columns. One column includes the things I know or think I know, and the other includes the things about which I don’t have a clue.
The “things I know” list is unfortunately the shorter one, and I really don’t pay much attention to it. It’s the other list, the longer one of the things I’m in the dark about, that holds the answer to this case.
Most importantly, I don’t know who has been committing these murders. Starting with Conner, then Tony Silva, and now Lewinsky, I feel like we’re being led to believe that it’s a mob war between Tartaro and Silva. But I just don’t see why they would be fighting such a war, or what they’d have to gain from it.
I also don’t know why Lewinsky would have been killed, since it likely ends the cash cow that the hospital drug flow represented. I don’t think Silva did it, but whoever did was willing to cut off the drug supply. It’s unlikely that Lewinsky was killed because he was turning himself in, because he had no reason to turn himself in. Ranes hadn’t even talked to him yet, so Lewinsky should not have been afraid he’d be arrested.
What could the FBI’s view that they had a possible terrorist case have to do with any of this?
Why would a homeless murder victim like William Simmons be something that Lewinsky and Silva would be concerned about three years later?
Where is Salvatore Tartaro?
Why did Shawn bring me into this investigation in the first place? What would anyone have to gain by our reopening the Carlisle investigation?
And maybe most important of all, what happened to Rita Carlisle, and why did it happen?
Reading this list and realizing how little I know at least leads me to one key decision; I’m going to stop making lists. It’s too depressing.
Nate and Jessie come into the room, walking quickly as if something significant has happened. “We are in the presence of a genius,” Nate says.
I shrug. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean you, asshole. I meant Jessie.”
“I sensed that. What’s going on?”
“You tell him,” Nate says, and Jessie nods.
“I looked at the hospital records for Travis Mauer, the patient at Bergen that Galvis said was an example of Lewinsky’s stealing the drugs. He said Mauer didn’t exist, remember?”
I nod. “Yes, that’s one of the things I remember.” I’ve got to stop being so sensitive about memory comments; Jessie didn’t mean anything by it.
“So he had an address, phone number, insurance information … all of that was faked. No such person.”
“That’s what Galvis said.”
“Every patient has to list someone to be notified in the event of an emergency, and in the Mauer file it was a woman named Cynthia Crowder. There was an address for her in Garfield that was a fake as well. No one who is there has ever heard of Cynthia Crowder.”
“So what’s the big discovery?”
“The phone number for her had an area code for Des Moines, Iowa. It’s a real number, but it’s not listed to Cynthia Crowder; it’s listed to Eileen Manningham. It struck me as strange that if Lewinsky was going to fake a New Jersey address he would use a Des Moines number, and a real one at that. I mean, where would
that come from?”
I nod. “Definitely strange.”
“Right,” Jessie says. “So I called Ms. Manningham and asked her about it. She told me that Travis Mauer is her brother-in-law, and lives about a mile from her in Des Moines. And get this; he was visiting friends in New Jersey when he fell and hurt his back. He aggravated herniated disks.”
“And they treated him at Bergen Hospital.”
“You’re not as dumb as you look,” Nate says, jumping in to pick up the story. “So when Jessie told me about this, I called Mr. Mauer, with the medical records in front of me. Nice guy, had great things to say about the hospital, and he confirmed everything in the records. He even thinks the listing of drugs that they gave him is accurate.”
“So the guy is real in every respect, except for his personal contact information?”
“Yes,” Jessie says. “Apparently Lewinsky, or whoever, forgot to change that one phone number when he was changing the contact information.”
Nate jumps in. “Which brings us to the question, why would Lewinsky fake records to steal drugs, if the patient actually got those drugs?”
“He didn’t,” I say.
“He didn’t get the drugs?”
“No, he got the drugs. Lewinsky didn’t fake the records.”
“Somebody did, or at least they faked the contact information,” Jessie points out.
I nod. “Right. But it couldn’t have been Lewinsky. He had nothing to gain from doing so. The only reason to conceal Mauer as a patient would have been to pretend that he got all those drugs, when they really went to Silva. But there were no drugs to go to Silva, because they went to Mauer.”
“So who changed the records?”
“My money’s on Mitchell Galvis.”
While my money may be on Galvis, I’m not betting a lot on it.
It is clearly suspicious that Galvis told me Mauer didn’t exist and was not a patient at Bergen, when in fact the opposite has been shown to be the case. But there are other conclusions to be considered before I jump to the one that makes him a bad guy.
Galvis said that Lewinsky faked Mauer’s existence, and there remains the chance that he at least changed Mauer’s identity in the hospital system. I don’t know what he would have to gain from doing so, but there’s plenty I don’t know.
Maybe Galvis was wrong. Maybe there was some kind of administrative foul-up that confused Mauer’s contact information with someone else, an innocent error that led Galvis to believe it was evidence of Lewinsky’s drug maneuverings.
Then there is always the chance that Galvis faked the information himself, simply to provide me with the information I was asking for. He could have known that Lewinsky was dirty, and therefore might have felt that by making this up, he was serving the greater good. It would also have served the purpose of getting me off his back, something he seemed like he wanted to do.
To take a more negative view of Galvis, which is to say that he is the actual drug conspirator and was simply setting up Lewinsky to take the fall, presents some problems. When Lewinsky left our office after we brought him in for questioning, he spoke to Silva on the phone.
It’s incriminating enough that Lewinsky spoke to Silva at all, but the fact is that they talked about the drugs. In my eyes that represents obvious proof that Lewinsky was dirty, so in pointing it out, Galvis was absolutely correct.
To make it even more negative, at least in terms of Galvis, it was Silva who placed the call. He already knew about Lewinsky’s meeting with us, and even knew what had been discussed. Lewinsky must have told someone, and since we had his phones covered, it had to have been in person, at the hospital. Galvis is obviously the most likely, in fact the only, candidate for that confidence. And whoever Lewinsky told, that person must have called Silva and alerted him. I should have realized this earlier.
Could Galvis and Lewinsky have been coconspirators with Silva, and Galvis was trying to push Lewinsky out so he could take over by himself? That doesn’t seem possible, because in alerting us to what Lewinsky was doing, Galvis was guaranteeing that the drug conspiracy would come to an end. Why would he go out of his way to take over an operation, if the act of taking it over rendered the operation defunct?
But the fact is, it is proving to be dangerous to be at the top of this investigation’s totem poles. Joey Silva was at the top of his organization, and he’s in jail. Tony Silva was second, and he’s dead. Salvatore Tartaro was in charge, and he’s gone. Lewinsky was the head of his area of the hospital, and he’s currently residing on a slab.
Is it “revenge of the underlings,” or just a coincidence? And does it matter at this point?
So my money is on Galvis, but I’m not giving odds on it.
There is one name that keeps bugging me: William Simmons.
Here’s a guy who was homeless, had no money, had abandoned his friends and loved ones, and who had, himself, been abandoned by society. He was as close as a human being could be to being of no consequence to anyone, probably not even himself.
So why were Joey Silva and Daniel Lewinsky discussing his apparently random murder years later? What could they have possibly been concerned about?
I kick it around with Nate, and we come up with a plan of attack. He’s going to dig into the possibility that Simmons might be representative of a larger group of victims. He’ll check into whether other people that fit Simmons’ profile were brought to Bergen Hospital; maybe we can make some sense of it that way.
One angle I haven’t really looked at is Simmons’ work life. He owned an insurance agency, which has some possible significance because insurance is all about money. Sometimes big money. The type of money that could interest Joey Silva.
Jessie finds out for me that the Simmons Insurance Agency still exists; it had been taken over by the insurance companies themselves, and eventually sold to a man named Ben Wilkinson.
I call Mr. Wilkinson, identify myself, and tell him I want to come talk to him. I guess the call is routed to him, because he says he’s out in the field, which I assume means anywhere other than his office. He asks if it can wait until tomorrow, and I say no, so he agrees to see me at his office at two o’clock. I’m a tough guy to say no to.
My next call is to Agent Wiggins of the FBI, and I tell him I want to come down to see him as well. He’d find it easier to say no to me, but he doesn’t. He says he can give me ten minutes, if I come right down.
So I’ve got a couple of meetings set for today, which has become my version of activity. I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, like I’m just trying to fill my day. This is how I’ll be when I’m retired, maybe in Florida in a community with my fellow elderly people. Busy day today … shuffleboard in the morning, and then taking the tram to the market to buy fruit in the afternoon. And then some much-needed rest.
I think my old self may be returning, because rather than talking to people, I’d rather be punching and shooting them. I just wish I knew who to punch and shoot.
Wiggins is at the Bureau’s Newark office, about a half-hour drive for me. I’m brought in to see him as soon as I arrive; his office isn’t any nicer than mine. He stands when I come in and shakes my hand, and looks at his watch before he sits back down, a silent message that the ten minutes starts now, and I’m on the clock.
“I need some help,” I say. “I need to know if you have any information on a man named William Simmons.”
His face doesn’t register any familiarity with the name. “Who might that be?”
So I tell him the story of William Simmons, or at least as much as I know about him. When I conclude, I say, “Silva and Lewinsky were talking about him, years after his death. They weren’t reminiscing about an old high school buddy. It wasn’t, ‘Hey, do you remember who Billy Simmons took to the prom?’ He was important to them.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“To help me figure out why. To go through every database you have to see if anything pops up.”
“Okay; I’
ll get it done. Is that it?” I’m sure he’s wondering why I didn’t just ask him this one over the phone, but I have another request.
“Almost. You can also tell me why you’re so interested in what we’re doing.”
“What gave you that impression?” he asks.
“You’ve been hovering over this from day one. You called Bradley when Shawn got killed. You came to see us and told us about the courier. You’ve been in touch with Roberts in Vegas a bunch of times, trying to stay on top of what he’s doing. You arrested Joey Silva when it should have been our call, and we didn’t want to. Why are you so interested in a drug case? You’re not wearing a DEA windbreaker.”
He doesn’t answer right away, and I suspect the decision he’s making is between saying something truthful and throwing me out. Finally, he says, “I don’t give a shit about your drug case, if that’s even what it is.”
“So what do you care about?”
“That courier I told you about; he wasn’t just a normal courier. He didn’t just do drop-offs, or make pickups. He was an expert in munitions; this guy could take a jar of peanut butter and some Krazy Glue and blow up Nebraska.”
“But he’s dead,” I say.
“Yeah, but he was also the guy who would be sent to educate, to tell whoever was receiving the goods exactly how to employ them. And we know that he had a plane ticket; he was going to LAX. Which means he had already done what he set out to do.”
He continues. “And there is one other thing; when he was taken out of that car wreck, he had a million five in cash.”
“Shit,” I say.
He nods. “Exactly. He didn’t get paid that money for nothing. He brought the goods, and he showed them how to use them. And that’s what they’re going to do; they didn’t pay a million five to use those devices as paperweights.”
“Let me ask you this. Is there a technical way they go about it? How would something be detonated? Remotely?”
He nods. “Almost certainly. A simple call to a cell phone number on the device.”
Fade to Black Page 18