by Earl Merkel
I stood and walked to a window that looked out at one of the indoor racquetball courts.
“I understand a lot of things, Ronnie. I remember listening to an assistant attorney general you guys flew out from Washington. What was it he said? Something about how it just wasn’t the right time to act on what I brought you? Something about how ‘we’ were going to hold off, try to get more? Maybe even make a deal so ‘we’ could go after the bad guys higher up on the food chain.”
“Davey, be fair,” Santori said, and even with my back turned I could hear the admonitory tone in his voice. “What happened to you had nothing to do with our probe. You freelanced, on your own. And you took the money from those dealers.”
“You tried to squeeze a bad cop with the information I gave you,” I said. On the court below, two T-shirted women weaved back and forth, caught up in the rhythm of their own game; I turned back to mine.
“I’ll give the FBI the benefit of the doubt. I don’t really think you gave Nederlander my name, just to put a little extra twist to the screws. But I think your people drew him a picture that was just complete enough. He knew it had to come from somebody in the department. And I was his leading candidate, wasn’t I?”
I turned back to face the group. Evans had the look of a man impatient at the bickering of two strangers. Cieloczki looked uncomfortable and tried hard to look impartial. Santori was trying hard to look both unfairly accused and magnanimous.
But I was not finished.
“Fair enough; I know the rules. Still, it might have been…polite to let me know about that conversation,” I said, and heard my voice become hoarse and tight. “It might have influenced my decisions. I might have thought twice about a few things. Like meeting with a couple of low-lifes who were supposed to have half the squad on their payoff list. Certainly I might have reconsidered going in alone, right? Or putting five thousand dollars in marked bills in my pocket for evidence.”
“Or stashing it in your house,” Santori retorted, “until the county Sheriff’s Police went in with a search warrant. Three days later, Davey. Okay, you think we screwed you? Gil may not have heard all the bloody details yet, Davey. Let’s let him decide, okay?”
He kept his eyes fixed on me as he addressed the firefighter.
“Gil, a Cook County task force had been running a sting operation for six months, targeting stolen cars being cut up for parts to resell. Part of the setup was they spread the word it was a ‘protected’ operation—paid off the local law on a regular basis, right? Davey gets wind of this right after we tell him Centurion isn’t ripe enough yet. He’s feeling impatient, figures he’ll speed things up for us.
“They had a nice little chop-shop deal going—a front counter where they’d do business, with video surveillance out the wazoo. They had enough hidden cameras to broadcast a football game. In back, just in case somebody got suspicious, they had a couple of deputies in overalls with cutting torches, making sparks like they were stripping a couple of confiscated cars.
“Really, it was a beautiful setup. They had creeps from the city, all over the suburbs, you name it—all of ‘em lining up to bring in parts cut from cars they had boosted. It looked like the automotive department at K-Mart on a Saturday afternoon. Now, all of this is happening with marked money, okay? Then our boy here shows up, flashes his badge, and goes into a back room with the head guy. All this is being recorded on videotape, remember.
“Well, lo and behold, Davey tells our guy he’s the new Lake Tower bagman—asks for five grand and puts the money in his pocket.” Santori shook his head as if he hadn’t heard this story before. “Marked bills, of course. Plus, one of the county cops in the back was watching the video monitor and recognized Davey right off. Well, you combine that with the surveillance tape, and you can see how it looked. Especially when Davey neglected to turn in the cash. Or even report the meeting to his supervisor.”
“Just who was I supposed to report it to?” I spat through gritted teeth. “Who was I supposed to trust?”
Santori shrugged and put on a placating face. “Okay—you know I believe you. You were trying to get us a better case and you stepped into the toilet. And you know how much we appreciate the way you kept Centurion out of it all. Hellfire, Davey—we’re the reason you’re not in jail right now. Didn’t we get you out when we got the chance?”
Gil interrupted before I could respond.
“This isn’t helping resolve the question we’re dealing with now,” he said. “If we take the Lichtman story at face value, the missing artwork is the key. And when we find this Sonnenberg person, I don’t see how we can compartmentalize it anyway.”
“Exactly,” Evans said. “Agent Santori, we appreciate your situation. No one shares your concerns about corruption in government more than I. But you are working on a much larger canvas than we can afford to do. We have two murdered persons whose killer is at large.” Evans’s voice rose for a moment. “My God. I had met Stan Levinstein once or twice. He struck me as a decent man. He—they—didn’t deserve to die like that.”
The city manager shook his head sharply.
“No,” and his voice was firm. “We must move ahead on whatever basis is necessary to protect the lives of our citizens. Can you convince me that we can do that without following what appears to be a critical lead? No? Then I’m afraid that your Operation Centurion must take a subordinate position here.”
Santori looked around the table and found no allies. He raised his hands in a sign of reluctant acquiescence. “All right. The artwork is no longer off-limits, okay? We’ll provide whatever assistance we can—with the provision that you will protect our investigation in every possible way.”
He turned to Gil. “How do you intend to proceed?”
Gil looked at me. Are you ready to handle this like an adult? his eyes asked.
I took a deep breath. The desire to commit a felonious act on a federal officer had been strong, and the memory of it had not completely faded. But the intent was gone, at least for the moment. It was a sign, I hoped, of my late-developing maturity.
Still, when I twisted my head slightly, my neck popped audibly as the taut muscle flexed. I drew a deep breath before I spoke.
“To quote the late, lamented President Nixon, we’ll go the ‘limited hang-out route,’” I said, relieved to hear my voice sound normal.
“Gil and I will brief Bird and Posson. We’ll tell ‘em that stolen artwork may be the motive. But we keep it sketchy: one of several theories. I think maybe it’s best to keep Lichtman out of it.” I considered for a moment. “For now, at least. Let’s play it by ear. Until then, the information is attributed to an ‘unconfirmed-but-reliable’ source.”
“I don’t know much about art, let alone stolen artwork,” Gil said.
“Maybe we can help there,” Santori said. “Again, without tipping our interest in the Levinstein case itself.”
“You may have to help with a lot of the background information we need,” Gil replied. “The files I ask for from our esteemed police department seem to take a hell of a long time just to make it across the hall. And there’s been a few gaps in them that even I have picked up.”
“I can talk with Bob Nederlander,” Evans volunteered. “Perhaps a direct order to—”
“Frankly, I don’t know how productive that would be, Talmadge,” Cieloczki interrupted. “I don’t know how much I could trust the information he or his people might supply. Not while all this is unresolved.”
“What we have in federal files is yours, as far as I can make it available,” Santori said. “And there are some sources I can call and set you up with interviews. Tell me what you need, and I’ll see what we can do.”
Gil nodded. “What’s your program, Davey?”
“Finding Sonnenberg is a priority,” I answered. “From what Lichtman says, he’s most likely to have been involved with the Levinsteins at some level. I’ve looked at his file. There’s no record of violence, but he looks awfully good for the theft
. It’s up his alley. He has a couple of priors involving possession of stolen goods, including a collection of old icons he lifted from an Orthodox church a couple of years ago.”
“Know where to start looking?” Santori asked.
“We have an address for Sonnenberg that might still be good,” I said. “It’s down in the city, on Devon Avenue. We’ll have to coordinate with the Chicago PD, but that shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll use Posson and Bird for any heavy lifting we need.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Evans dryly. “As a fire chief and an acting fire marshal, you two might find it handy to have an armed police officer along.”
“Even if he or she might be working against you,” Santori added, cheerfully. I looked at him but said nothing.
The meeting was over, and we started to file out. But Santori put a hand on my arm, motioning Evans and Gil ahead. He waited until the door had closed behind them.
“Got a minute, Davey?” he asked, and pulled a small tape player from his side pocket. “There’s something I think you should hear.”
• • •
Outside, the air tasted of ozone and flashes of light danced on the far horizon. Spring was once more demonstrating its volatility, and fat drops of rain began to fall heavily from the darkness overhead. Shoulders hunched, I dashed to where I had left my car.
On the windshield, where raindrops were spotting the dust on the glass, a piece of paper folded to the size of a matchbook was tucked under the wiper blade on the driver’s side. I placed my gym bag on the hood near the windshield and made a show of patting my pockets as if looking for misplaced keys. As unobtrusively as possible, I put my other hand on the car and palmed the note.
As I drove away, I smoothed the note on my lap. In the dim glow of the lighted dashboard, I could barely make out an address, written in pencil and with a distinctive backward slant. There was no signature, but even in the near-darkness I had no trouble recognizing the penmanship.
• • •
The rains fell as they fall only in the springtime, flung from young clouds that boiled black and furious. They fired indiscriminate volleys of huge blue-white forked bolts as if to punish the earth for some imagined slight. The world was alive with the noise of it all, the thunder so close I could feel it rock the car.
The downpour beat a tattoo on the car’s roof as I waited in the far corner of the strip mall’s lot. I was at the right address, parked in the shadows cast by a tall picket-frame enclosure. I could smell the sour tang of the dumpsters behind it, even with the windows closed.
Then I jumped, startled at movement outside the glass, and suddenly Chaz Trombetta was standing beside the car. As I moved to open the door, Trombetta stopped me with an abrupt negative movement of his head. Instead, he motioned for me to roll down the window.
“You never got it from me,” Chaz said, his voice low and tight. “Hell, you never saw me—understand?”
He reached under his raincoat, and my heart raced for an instant. Then, instead of the pistol I had half expected, Chaz drew from under his raincoat an envelope. Its sides bulged against a thick red rubber band.
The rain pelted down, spotting the paper like a maiden’s tears.
Trombetta contemplated the envelope for a moment, a man taking a final look before touching flame to his last remaining bridge. Then he pushed it quickly through the window, as if posting a check written on a defunct account.
The envelope dropped heavily into my lap. Chaz Trombetta walked away in the dark without looking back.
I rolled the rubber band off and riffled through the papers inside the envelope. They were photocopies of computerized receipts, each detailing what appeared to be a transaction. I pulled one from the stack and studied it under the dim light.
There was a line of eight numbers, followed by a three-letter suffix. Below, another line of sans-serif type read “27.6 GAL,” followed by a time and date. I scanned through several more of the half-sheets in the envelope. All were similarly marked, though the numbers differed.
I had seen similar receipts before, though not for almost a quarter of a year. It had been that long since I had fueled the car assigned to me by the Lake Tower Police Department, keying the codes to activate the automated gasoline pumps behind the Municipal Center.
April 21
Chapter 15
The Everett McKinley Dirkson Building is part of Chicago’s Federal Plaza, located in the heart of the south Loop. Designed by Mies van der Rohe to be an imposing structure, the steel and glass edifice is a fitting tribute to the longtime Republican senator from Illinois who is remembered for his oft-quoted comment on government fiscal policy: ”A billion here, a billion there…and pretty soon it adds up to real money.”
The early morning crowd of federal employees had already entered by the time Gil Cieloczki, Mel Bird and I walked across the open-air expanse past Flamingo, Alexander Calder’s storklike welded-steel sculpture. It is painted a hideous red-orange, only a shade or two away from the color used to warn sailors of hazards and obstructions. Some find that too an apt metaphor, remembering another adage often used to define ‘oxymoron’: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Among the alphabet soup of helpful federal bureaucracies that call Federal Plaza home is the Chicago Field Office of the FBI.
As befits a major metropolis, the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains a substantial presence in the City of Chicago. In the Dirkson Building, the FBI occupies all of the ninth and tenth floors, only grudgingly sharing the eleventh with the Federal Communications Commission.
The Special Agent in Charge—SAC, in Bureau jargon pronounced “sack”—is an august personage. Currently, she presides over more than four hundred agents, technicians and other specialists here and in satellite offices scattered throughout the metropolitan area.
Of the fifty-six FBI field offices across the country, Chicago is considered one of the more active areas for the FBI and the Justice Department attorneys with whom they work. Everything from political corruption cases to bank robberies—the Windy City is a perennial national leader in both categories—can be found among the active case files here.
As a result, the Chicago office tends to take pains to maintain good relationships with local law enforcement departments, also recognizing that local officials usually have direct lines of communication to their congressperson—who in turn usually has the home telephone number of the attorney general on his or her speed-dialer.
We were met at the eighth floor reception area by a neatly dressed, clean-shaven man who introduced himself as Special Agent Santori. A badge clipped to his suit lapel identified the agent as a COP—Community Outreach Program—liaison officer. If Bird noticed the badge looked a little too new, or that Santori looked a little too senior for a liaison assignment, he was too awed by his surroundings to mention it.
For other, more informed, reasons, neither did Gil nor I.
“Chief Cieloczki, I’m glad you could make it in today. Hello, Mr. Davey.” The FBI officer turned to Bird. “You must be Detective Bird.”
“I’m plainclothes, not a detective,” Bird corrected. “Good to meet you.”
Santori seemed not to hear the comment. “Chief, we do a lot of work with fire departments, but it’s mainly consulting and providing lab backup on arsons,” he smiled. “This is the first time I’ve had a firefighter ask to speak to an FBI art expert.”
Cieloczki smiled back. “I’ll be honest with you,” Gil said. “I was more than a little surprised to find out you guys had one.”
We walked down a hallway chaotic with activity, Santori leading past closed office doors marked only with room numbers.
“Hey, Uncle Sammy has everything,” Santori said. “You’ve seen The X-Files.”
He turned a corner, dodging a mail cart being pushed by a woman in dark pants and a blazer that did not quite conceal her holstered Glock. “But not only do we have an art expert, we have the art expert.
�
��Gentlemen—you’re going to meet with Charlie Herndon, and there’s nobody who knows more about the criminal side of the art world. He lectures to police departments around the country, and places like the Art Institute here in Chicago ask him to consult with their experts. I heard Charlie talk at Quantico a few years back. He had a standing-room-only crowd—a lot of them were senior agents, and it takes a lot to impress those people.”
Santori stopped outside a door and lowered his voice. “A word of advice, okay? The man is a genius when it comes to his specialty. He’s been with the Bureau since the Hoover days, and he’s like an encyclopedia. But”—the agent gave us a significant look—“one thing he is not, and that’s a politician. Okay?”
Santori knocked on the door without waiting for a response and ushered us through.
The room looked smaller than it probably was, which I initially attributed to the bookshelves that lined every available inch of wall space. Then I realized I was mistaken. What made the room feel cramped was the man sitting behind the polished wooden desk of a senior civil servant. It only looked undersized because Charles Herndon was a big man.
Herndon remained seated. From the corner of my eye, I could see Gil—whose firefighter’s eye still measured people in terms of carry-weight and rescue difficulty—studying the oversized agent.
I estimated Herndon as only two or three inches shy of seven feet tall. His hands, poised over the keyboard of a desktop computer, were the size of catcher’s mitts. He was dressed in a navy blue suit jacket, a white shirt and a striped blue-over-green silk tie. His silver hair was trimmed unfashionably short; the eyes of a drill instructor broadcast a confident challenge from behind black-framed glasses.