by Earl Merkel
“Sonny, Sonny,” I said, and put humor into it. “You poor schmuck. How hard do you think it is to take a piece of company stationery and fake up a letter of confirmation? Pretend for a minute we believe you. The kind of paintings that were in there weren’t worth any seven-point-five million. At a minimum, multiply that by ten—and then double that. You got caught in a big con, you dumb jerk. We tracked down a girl who was in on it. She worked at TransNational headquarters.”
“Hold on,” he said. When he spoke again, his voice was shaky. “This girl—she told you the letter was a fake?”
“No,” Gil said. “The girl is dead. In February, somebody strangled her.”
“So, you see how that looks, Sonny,” I added. “Think about the timing. You’ve admitted doing a breaking-and-entering job based on what she helped convince you was in there. Let’s say you’re playing it straight, and you didn’t find any paintings. The Levinsteins are still dead. And just a couple of weeks after the job blows up in your face, this girl gets killed, too.”
We could barely hear Sonnenberg over the wire. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “That son-of-a-bitch!”
“Why so surprised, Sonny?” I said. “You had to at least suspect that somebody had pulled a fast one. But maybe you’re just dumb enough to think that gives you some leverage. Maybe like you thought you were protected when the Levinstein job fell flat.
“Except that you had already shot your mouth off to Katya Butenkova, telling her that you were going to score big,” I said. “You were even stupid enough to say it was an art heist, and hint that ‘corrupt public officials’ were involved. You just weren’t quite dumb enough to name names.”
I gave him a moment to react; when he didn’t, I added a measure of contempt to my tone.
“Still, Katya was a lady who knew the value of the information she did have, and I guess she was already getting a little tired of you, Sonny,” I said. “So even before the job went down, she tipped off the local Russian hoods. I can imagine how you must have felt when the local Russian mob shows up to put the pressure on you, looking for a taste of the profits. Here you thought you were free and clear, no connection to the Levinstein case. Then, all of a sudden, not only do these hard guys know you were involved, they want a piece of the action you don’t even have. That’s why you’re dodging your Russian pals; that’s why you took off through the window when I came to the apartment you shared with Katya.”
“You’re a real prick, Davey.”
“Then things really spun out of control: the Russians were talking about all this,” I continued. “And inevitably, some bad people heard about it. One of them is a thug named Mikhail, who’s hanging with the local Russian Mafiyaoso. You heard he was trying to get a line on a screwup who botched a recent art heist.”
I laughed, twisting the knife. “He has your name, Sonny. It’s just a matter of time now.”
I looked at Gil and raised my eyebrows. He nodded; whether or not Sonnenberg was telling the whole truth, the priority now was to bring him in where he could, at minimum, be kept alive. He was a solid link—the only known witness we had left.
“Tell you what, Sonny—for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that we care enough about you to bring you in before your Russian friends find you,” I said. “You’re going to have to dig a lot deeper to make it worthwhile for us.”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“We could start with this one: how come all of a sudden you’re calling us? Did something change around here, that you’ve got to shop the market for somebody to keep you alive?”
“Talk English, will you? I still don’t get it.”
I made my voice conversational, almost warm. “Last time we talked, you seemed pretty confident about your situation. I seem to recall you implying that you had a friend around here. How did you put it? That my life was going to take a turn for the worse? Or did I misconstrue your comment?”
Sonnenberg tried to sound abashed, contrite; but his words came out too rushed.
“Look—I might have done some big talking. You know how it is; you were coming down pretty hard on me, and I wanted to maybe make you sweat a little, all right?”
“Not good enough, Sonny. I’m not convinced we need your help any more. See, since you and I last spoke, we’ve done a little homework here. And I’m pretty sure that we can make a case that will have both of you sharing a cell. Maybe even on death row.”
I took a chance. “You might want to start thinking about a motion for separate trials. Judges tend to throw the book at public officials who go this bad. Separate yourself, you might get lucky and avoid the hotshot down in Joliet. Though I hear a lethal injection is supposed to give you a hell of a rush, at least before your heart stops.”
Sonnenberg said nothing for a moment, and I could imagine the wheels that were turning in his mind. When he spoke, his voice was soft as an obscene caller.
“If you want your big-name public official for it,” Sonny Sonnenberg told me, “I can give him to you.”
• • •
The clock on the desk read 8:38, its subdued blue digital numerals somehow calming. Immediately upon ending the discussion with Sonnenberg, Cieloczki had hustled me upstairs to the executive offices. The room resembled a beehive during the daytime, but the assorted queens, drones and workers had left hours before.
Now, Talmadge Evans presided over an empty and quiet fiefdom.
“We’re bringing Sonnenberg in,” I said. “He heard how his girlfriend died. He knows he’s a marked man out there.”
Evans looked surprised, then dubious. “Where is he?”
“In a dark room where people try not to meet each other’s eye,” I said. “He spent the day hiding at The Lace Panty.”
“The what?”
“It’s a strip club and peep show emporium over on the west side,“ I said, straightfaced. “Open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
“Davey and I are going over there together,” Gil said. “It’s important to get Sonnenberg in custody immediately, for his own protection. The deal is he opens up completely when’s he’s safe.”
“Should we send a police car?” Evans suggested. “Would that be faster?”
Gil answered as if he was considering the question for the first time.
“Given the situation,” he said, “I think Davey and I should handle it. We can be there in twenty minutes. But, given the nature of the allegations, I felt that you should know the situation immediately. This is all about to become very, very complicated.”
Evans glanced at the clock. “That is an understatement,” he said, and his voice was low and tense. “If any of this is true, we are dealing with a catastrophe.”
“At least Santori will be happy,” Gil said, his eyes studying the ceiling of Talmadge Evans’s office. “He’s finally got somebody who can give his Operation Centurion what it needs: an informant ready to testify that a top public official is involved in multiple homicides, arson and a variety of other assorted felonies. This should make his case.”
“To be frank, that is part of our problem,” Evans said, a dark expression on his face. “We’re talking about an official of Lake Tower—the man who runs our police department. If what you believe is accurate—”
“It is,” I piped up, unhelpfully.
Evans’s look, leveled at me with a minimum of warm regard, was intended to make me reconsider further contributions to the conversation between my elders.
“If it is true,” he emphasized, “then, additionally, a substantial percentage of our police force is involved in such illegal acts as armed robbery and extortion.” He shook his head stonily. “This is a disaster for…for Lake Tower. The FBI has its agenda, but we must focus on our own priority. Santori’s investigation is, and must remain, secondary.”
Gil was looking steadily at the city manager. “What are you saying, Talmadge?”
Evans returned the firefighter’s gaze. In the moments before he spoke, I imagined th
at some kind of complicated mental calculation was going on behind the intensity of Evans’s stare. It puzzled me and was somehow troubling. Then a curtain came down behind his eyes, though whether in defeat or to conceal a hidden resolve I could not discern.
“People have already died, and there is risk that more may,” Evans said, not as if it was what he had considered saying. “If Bob Nederlander is behind this…well, we have no choice but to act in a way to preserve the safety of the public. But my point is that there may be a way to act that will also preserve the image and reputation of this city.”
“Are you suggesting,” I asked, “that we leave Nederlander in a room with his pistol and hope he does the honorable thing?”
“I’m suggesting that we do what we can to limit the damage,” Evans said with heat, “while still removing the bad apple.”
“Nederlander is corrupt,” I told Evans. “He’s been running your police department like he’s Ali Baba and they’re the Forty Thieves. He’s not just a ‘bad apple,’ Mr. Evans—he’s the center of a ring of bad cops. He’s been playing fast and loose with a fake stolen-car insurance scam for at least three years. We’ve found evidence of this insurance fraud, and Mel Bird identified a young woman we think was his accomplice inside the insurance company. We believe she also provided falsified insurance documents to Stanley Levinstein which tie Nederlander to our double homicide.”
Evans looked appalled. “You’ve arrested this woman? She can implicate Bob Nederlander?”
“She’s dead too, Mr. Evans. Her name was Rebecca Hunt, she was twenty-two years old, and she died in a parking garage with a nylon cord knotted around her throat. This was within a couple of weeks of the Levinstein murders.”
“That’s not all, Talmadge,” Cieloczki interjected. “We have strong circumstantial evidence that indicates Nederlander might be directly involved in the arson itself.”
“Evidence? What kind of evidence?”
Gil looked at me.
“Davey has…obtained…records that detail Nederlander’s use of the municipal gasoline pumps,” he said. “Specifically, it shows that Nederlander filled his car’s tank with almost thirty gallons of gasoline the morning of January 23.”
Evans looked puzzled. “He put gasoline in his car. And that proves what? That he drives a car with a large gas tank?”
“It would have to be a hell of a gas-guzzler, Mr. Evans,” I said. “You see, according to the records, he used the municipal gas pump to put in virtually the same amount—before midnight, later on the same day.”
“That’s the day of the Levinstein murders,” Cieloczki said. “It’s approximately the amount of gasoline our investigation indicates was used as an accellerant in the arson. We’ve verified he spent most of January 23 in his office, at least through midafternoon. That makes it hard to explain two fill-ups in one day. My guess, Talmadge, is that we’ve discovered why there were no gas cans found at the fire.”
“All he would need was a bucket and a length of plastic tubing if he knew how to siphon gasoline from a car tank,” I said.
Gil Cieloczki looked out Evans’s window at the Municipal Center’s parking lot. He could just make out the sign that reserved a space for the DIRECTOR - PUBLIC SAFETY. Tonight, no shiny black Navigator filled the parking slot.
“He knew how,” the fire chief said. “He told me.”
“This is just a thought,” I said. “But does anybody know where Nederlander is, right now?”
Gil looked puzzled. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
Evans shook his head, impatiently.
“Me neither,” I said. “And somebody’s been tracing Sonnenberg’s calls today. Whoever it is may know where to look by now.”
Evans looked at Gil for a long moment.
“Do whatever you must,” he said. “End this disaster.”
As we left to bring in Sonny Sonnenberg, I looked back over my shoulder at Talmadge Evans. He was staring out the window, his eyes unblinking and his face deeply furrowed. Slumped in his chair, he looked very old, almost ancient. I could almost hear the intensity of his thoughts.
But his features revealed nothing: at least, nothing I knew how to read.
• • •
In hindsight, perhaps Gil should have called for a patrol car to pick up Sonnenberg. At the least, he could have had one dispatched to stand by as backup outside The Lace Panty.
As it was, he did not. And so, by 9:11 p.m. when we arrived at the sprawling complex, there was no possibility of a witness—someone who might have seen what had happened, or recognized a familiar face among the patrons there.
All we had, as we fought through the crowd of firefighters and theater patrons milling around outside the theater, was a nineteen-year-old transvestite name William Poplouski, aka Fawn Lopez, aka Kimberly Clark, aka Poppie Tart, aka a dozen other entries on her computerized rap sheet.
Her face was smudged with soot and ash, and the beaded flapper’s dress she wore was burned through to singed flesh in several places. She also had second-degree burns on her hands and arms, which were being dressed by paramedics from the ambulance parked next to the fire pumper at the curb.
“I was standing at the urinal,” she was telling one of the medics. “Then this guy in a suit—big fellow, but not fat, you know?—he comes in and tosses something over the door of one of the stalls.”
She winced at the dressing the other paramedic was placing on her burns.
“Damn, honey—this your first night? Next thing I know, something goes ‘poof,’ and this little guy comes running out of the stall, all on fire. What else could I do? I tried to chase him down and put it out. I just couldn’t get to him fast enough.”
Gil pushed his way to the tableau.
“Where’s the other victim?” he asked the lead paramedic, but it was William Poplouski who answered.
“Where you think the poor fucker is?” she asked, and a tear washed a clean streak down her cheek. “Even when I got the fire out, I couldn’t do nothing for him.”
Gil and I looked at each other, and moved through the crowd.
Inside, the large room was dominated by a shabby, spotlighted stage. Some of the small tables and most of the chairs here had been overturned, as if the audience had left in a panicked rush.
Several firefighters were standing in a loose ring to the right of the stage, staring down at the floor and oblivious to the stench that permeated the air. As we neared, they separated and we could see what had focused their attention.
Tendrils of smoke still rose from a body, twisted and hideously charred. Bright shards of glass glinted under the spotlight’s harsh glare like sharp-edged jewels, welded by fierce flames to what had been his head and face.
There, amid the debris of the Molotov cocktail that had burst and ignited against him, lay the lifeless remains of Paul “Sonny” Sonnenberg.
April 24
Chapter 35
The Illinois State Crime Laboratory is located at 1941 West Roosevelt Road, a modern brick building on Chicago’s West Side—as the pigeon flies, only a few miles from the impressive, glass-and-steel wedding cake architecture of the James R. Thompson State of Illinois Building in Chicago’s downtown. Both are relatively new buildings, though the Crime Lab’s roof is rumored to leak significantly less.
Overall the State Crime Laboratory has benefited from its relative proximity to the State of Illinois center. But there are also a few disadvantages, including the tendency of visiting state legislators to drop in at a moment’s notice. Legislators like to know where the money is being spent, in the unlikely event a taxpayer ever has the opportunity to ask. And, being more or less human, they share the public’s general fascination with seeing the latest technological marvel on which so many tax dollars had been spent.
One such technological marvel was BMRS, an acronym that stood for Ballistics Mapping and Retrieval System. Among the forensics staff, it was pronounced “bummers.” This was not an affectionate nickname; BMRS was a fickle be
ast, as evidenced by the relative lack of hits the system had produced to date. While everybody expected that to change as more crime-scene samples were scanned into the system, BMRS had not yet engendered wild enthusiasm among the division’s forensics experts.
Which was why, on this fine April morning as Ballistics Division Supervisor Darnell Whitrow stood before a visiting contingent of Downstate legislators to detail the workings of BMRS, he reminded himself to refer to the system by its formal name rather than the unofficial pronunciation.
“I thought all you guys needed was a bullet,” said one of the visiting lawmakers, a prosperous-looking short man with a shiny balding head, “and you could trace it all the way back to the lead mine it came out of.” His Legislative District included Galena, the erstwhile hometown of U.S. Grant and, not by coincidence, once one of the premier lead-producing areas in the United States.
Darnell smiled politely.
“That’s not quite the way it works,” he said. “You probably know this from TV: a gun leaves distinctive markings on each bullet it fires. Basically, the rifling that’s cut into the barrel of a gun presses groves and leaves lands—the raised areas—on the surface of the projectile.
“Each bullet is just like a fingerprint—unique to the gun that fired it. Aside from some relatively minor differences related to wear inside the barrel, every bullet fired from a specific gun will all have the same markings.” Darnell was into his patter now, enjoying himself.
“Traditionally, we’ve used what we call ‘comparison microscopes’ when we’re trying to see if a certain gun fired the bullet. That involved optically placing two bullets side by side and examining the markings to see if we had a match.”
The forensics technician made a face. “Problem is, that meant you had to have the two bullets—or, even better, a crime-scene bullet and a suspect gun. In real life, bullets can fragment or mushroom, leaving you with only a partial pattern to work with.”