But nothing seemed to work, and his head was soon bobbing up and down, like the dog head on a backseat window doll. Shane changed the station to local news. As he approached Indian Hill, the morning news report came on, and suddenly Shane was jolted awake. As he listened wide-eyed, the announcer reported that Carson City Sheriff’s Office personnel had responded to a “gunshot with injuries” call at the Magadinno residence. Shane had no trouble staying awake for the rest of the drive.
“Who shot who?!” He wondered aloud. “There were only two guards left, and they were both watching a movie!”
Shane skipped the café and drove straight home. Once he had again cleared the parking lot and his apartment of any potential threat, Shane fired up his computer and began activating the newly placed bugs and devices. He listened intently to voices of police personnel, and the Magadinno and Alavarez families and staff discussing the incident. There had been no witnesses.
According to the other guard, Big John Galliano had walked outside to check a noise, and there was a report of a single gunshot. When the guard got to Big John, he found him dead with a gunshot wound to the head.
Shane made a quick call to Sheriff Roberts, who confirmed quietly that Big John Galliano had, indeed, died of a single gunshot wound to the head. The wound appeared to be from a small caliber rifle. No witnesses had come forth during the initial investigation. Mark said he would call Shane if he learned of anything new. Neither of them wanted to say too much on the phone. They agreed to arrange a brief meeting later in the day.
Shane continued listening to the conversations in and around the house. After a full hour had passed, and it was already nearly 9:00 A.M., he gave up and drifted off to sleep on the couch. He decided he had probably already missed Kate, and he was too tired and beat up to get back in his car and drive anywhere. Besides, he knew he looked like hell, and didn’t want her to see him that way.
During the next few days, Shane met twice with Sheriff Roberts. At their first meeting, Shane briefed Roberts about his surveillance, the sighting of the jogger, his injury, finding the card on his windshield, and his whereabouts during Big John’s demise. He gave the card to Sheriff Roberts, in a sealed evidence bag, void of any markings.
Mark informed him that Carson City Sheriff’s Office was conducting a homicide investigation, with the assistance of the FBI. He said the other guard had passed both a polygraph and Voice Stress Analyzer (VSA), and, that there were no leads in the shooting.
Mark said, “The initial conclusion, after a week of investigation, is that there is no evidence at the scene, apart from fragments of the round in Big John’s skull, and the homicide appears to be a professional “hit.” The round recovered from Big John was from a 22-250 rifle. This is the first hit I’ve ever investigated involving that caliber.”
Shane knew the caliber. The 22-250 was a small caliber, highly accurate rifle used by shooting enthusiasts and hunters. With a good quality rifle and ammunition, the caliber had tactical applications, and was also used by snipers…and professional “hit-men.” The implication of a “hit” made Shane nervous, and even more cautious, especially with Friday approaching in two days.
Shane expressed all his concerns to Sheriff Mark Roberts. “This isn’t good news, and makes me rethink the whole investigation, Mark. We already have one set of bad guys to deal with who are, arguably, the most dangerous I have ever dealt with. Now we have an unknown in the mix, willing to skillfully kill one of these guys, and we have no idea who he or she is!”
“Shane, you’re not the only one nervous. Politicians have begun to come out of the woodwork, calling me at the Sheriff’s Office to make inquiries. Most are pressing me for a speedy resolution, trying to make this go away fast. It’s very concerning to me that legislators at all levels of local, state and federal government are so anxious to put the incident behind them. Many of them I’ve never met, and some I had never even heard of until now.”
Roberts drew in a thoughtful breath, and continued. “This incident, along with the birth of Franky’s grandson, has turned on a spotlight, shining right down on the Magadinnos. And, while the press is turning up the light and dying for a story, it seems everyone else is dying to turn the light off, and move back into their dark holes, to avoid any story and the resulting fallout.”
Shane shook his head. “What fallout are they worried about specifically…if you know?”
“That would only be conjecture on my part, my friend. And that conjecture would be all the suspicions intimated between the lines in the pages of the intelligence you read. Corrupt government and law enforcement officials protecting high profile criminals are on par with the seediest and most notorious stories in history. And the reason a lot of these stories are never known, or known completely, is that government has the ability to cover them up or kill them quickly to minimize their impact. I’m afraid I don’t know any more than that …beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Shane studied Roberts and believed him to be telling all he knew. “Then can I have a list of the people putting pressure on you to bury this quickly? Maybe that will help as we go forward.”
Roberts removed an envelope from his inside jacket pocket, and handed it to Shane. He smiled and said, “At least we think alike, Shane. Be extra careful, my friend!”
As he studied the lengthy list of political inquires, and watched Roberts leave, Shane felt less sure of his abilities to conduct this investigation alone, than he had when they had begun speaking.
During the following day, Shane began the tedious business of monitoring phone calls from Hector’s phone, which Hector activated the day after Shane’s visit. Shane worked from the lounge chair in his apartment living room, while his leg began to heal. He also monitored the surveillance listening devices and cameras on his computer, using high quality headphones and multiple flat screen monitors.
He manipulated the settings on all the devices through the remote master, using surveillance software installed on his computer. When not in his apartment Shane could now monitor events and conversations as they unfolded using his cell phone.
He listened to conversations and watched videos, selecting and recording all that seemed important for 14 long hours the first day. He compiled intelligence reports as fast as he could, knowing that any pertinent information couldn’t go to homicide detectives directly, as they didn’t even know Shane existed. Any information on the Magadinno shooting would have to be given to investigators through Mark Roberts, and explained as coming from an unknown informant.
At the end of two full days, Shane had no clues about the shooter’s identity, because the cartels and syndicate had no idea who had killed Big John. The Magadinno and Alvarez families had pulled in their own informants, interrogated and threatened all their fringe contacts, and finally, in frustration, even offered a reward for any information on the shooter’s identity.
But in the end, all they could do was assign more guards and increase security at the compound. The families had developed no leads on who was responsible for the hit on Big John. They eventually settled into an uneasy routine, while Franky continued to press all his underworld sources, pocket politicians and paid-for officials, seeking more information.
Shane’s work was exhausting, but after three days, he had identified enough patterns that he was able to reduce his monitoring times, and speed through the editing more efficiently. He now knew the next day’s plans of Franky’s entire syndicate as well as Franky did. And a picture began to form of how the syndicate operated and interacted with both the Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels, and how it integrated its business with the Mexican Mafia and MS-13, among others.
Each day produced more details making the end result more predictable. For Shane it was like placing 50 small pieces each day in their places as he constructed a massive jigsaw puzzle large enough to cover a huge living room wall. Eventually the viewer would see the entire scene, and fully understand the picture it painted.
He put the most important piece
s of his work together in the form of a pyramid crime organizational chart for each group identified, along with spreadsheets of dates, times, crimes, shipments, personnel and connections between the organizations. Shane hoped the end result would mean the demise of the Magadinnos, and their stranglehold on the underworld of the Nevada State Capital and surrounding areas.
Each night, before Shane went to bed, he copied the entire day’s file, including videos, notes and conversations, from his computer onto one of two synchronized external hard drives. Each night he delivered the copied drive to the only person in town Shane knew he could trust, an old friend of Shane’s dad who was family to him, Pete Harrington.
Pete was now a practicing corporate and defense attorney, who owned a small practice in Carson City. Pete, and his wife, Claire, had been so close to Shane’s family when he and Heath were kids that they were raised as if Pete and Claire were the family’s favorite aunt and uncle. And when their parents were killed, Pete and Claire were given custody of the boys and control over their parent’s estate. They finished raising the boys as their own. They were always great parents to Shane and Heath, and the love and trust that built through the years only deepened between Shane and Pete.
Pete’s office was downtown, near the intersection of Curry and Musser Streets, in a large, old house Pete had remodeled, and now used as both an office and a home. Downstairs, Pete had a lovely turn-of-the-century period office, complete with reception area, conference room with wet bar, two meeting rooms, a small kitchen, and two bathrooms. Upstairs, Pete had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a game room (complete with regulation pool table and dartboard), a gourmet kitchen, and most importantly, a hidden walk-in safe. The house was within walking distance of the old downtown area, and its cigar shops, bars, stores, art galleries and trendy restaurants.
The old, downtown residential area was very popular with attorneys, accountants, counselors and other professionals, who restored neighborhood houses to be used for their businesses. The area transitioned from commercial and light industrial businesses along Hwy 395, to a blend of commercial and residential on the streets just one block west, and continued to almost straight residential one to two blocks further west, toward the Governor’s Mansion.
Through time, the area had become a maze of streets and alleys, making it easy for Shane to get into and out of Pete’s house on foot, without raising any suspicion, or needing to park nearby. There was a great deal of foot and vehicle traffic in this complex maze, and no one noticed much of anything, if it looked like it belonged in the neighborhood.
Pete kept Shane’s previous night’s external hard drive in his safe during the day. Pete met with Shane when he called at night to drop the primary external hard drive off for copying to a second drive. Sometimes, the meet was at Pete’s house, occasionally, at Shane’s apartment, but more often, it was at various places in Pete’s neighborhood, where the handoff was completed unceremoniously. After Pete returned to synchronize the drives, they would meet again, so Pete could return one of the drives to Shane.
On Friday late afternoons, Shane always retrieved the second external hard drive from Pete, after it was synchronized, and placed it in a safe deposit box at a local bank. The hard drive in the bank would always be up to date, minus any events over the weekend. On Monday, the process would repeat, so there were always two backup hard drives to Shane’s computer that contained all the information Shane had amassed during the investigation. Only Shane and Pete knew about the external hard drives. If anything happened to Shane, or his computer, Pete knew how to get a hard drive to Sheriff Roberts, leaving Pete an additional, complete hard drive in his own safe.
Shane suddenly thought about this routine more critically. Every night, there were three hard drives with current information: the external drive that Pete stored, the external drive that Shane updated each day before meeting Pete, and Shane’s own internal computer hard drive. Shane placed one external hard drive in the bank safe deposit box every Friday afternoon. Shane was careful to go to the bank in his “old man” disguise. No one could trace that safe deposit box to Shane, or even Daniel Lester Harrington, as the box had been rented in another undercover name Shane had used in the past.
It was unlikely anyone had followed an unremarkable old man, with a different name, to a rented, safe deposit box. Shane figured the hard drive he kept in the bank to be the safest of the three records. It was his ace in the hole. The jogger’s card had warned Shane to be careful on Friday, so was the hard drive going to the bank in jeopardy? Or could it be both hard drives, when they were synchronized, or even the computer at his apartment? He decided he might have to change the hard drive backup routine before he moved apartments.
Shane had developed a plan, should anything unusual happen to him. Upon receiving information of his demise or disappearance, he had instructed Pete to copy one hard drive to another external drive, and send the copy, with a letter Shane had already written documenting his assignment, to the U.S. Attorney General.
Pete would then go to Shane’s bank, with an authorization affidavit to the bank instructing the bank to release the contents of the safe deposit box to Pete, and retrieve the external drive from the box. Pete would send this hard drive to Shane’s friend, FBI agent in Los Angeles, Bryan Holland. If something happened to both Shane and Pete, and Shane made no contact with the bank for one month, the bank president had sealed instructions from the “old man” that would achieve this same result. And Pete’s secretary, Tasha McNight, also had sealed instructions, so in Pete’s absence, she could accomplish the task at Pete’s end.
Shane had roomed with Bryan Holland in college. The two had become fast friends, and maintained a close relationship by calls, letters and vacations through the years. Shane and his dad had stayed with Bryan often, when they would go sport fishing on tuna boats out of San Diego in the old days. When Shane became a police officer, and then worked for DEA, he and Bryan spoke weekly, and eventually worked on a task force together. Bryan was Shane’s close confidant when he left law enforcement, and had kept in touch with him at least once a week when Shane went out on his own as an operative. There were few, if any, secrets the close friends hadn’t shared.
Bryan knew that Shane was working this assignment as a deep-cover operative for the CCSO. And he knew that the targets were the Magadinno crime family and related cartels. He was prepared to launch an investigation should anything happen to Shane. And he knew he would receive a package describing the investigation in detail, if that event occurred. As far as Shane was concerned, Bryan and Pete were two of the few incorruptible, trustworthy souls he knew. They weren’t really back-up, but they were an insurance policy, of sorts…for the truth.
As Shane prepared for Friday, he thought more about the card left on his windshield. Sheriff Roberts had called and told him the crime lab had located no fingerprints, just as Shane expected. The card was blank, business card stock sold at a number of local stores. The printer was an inkjet printer of unknown origin. The font was Times New Roman 14 bold. None of this proved anything, other than the card giver was careful and likely a professional. The jogger had been careful to leave no clues, so the card was a dead end.
Now that Friday approached, the card’s warning flashed ever more clearly and frequently in Shane’s brain: “BE CAREFUL NEXT FRIDAY.”
“Was he supposed to be careful with the Sheriff, the bank, the external hard drive at his apartment, Pete, or the Magadinno surveillance?” Shane wondered.
To date, even after days of phone calls and conversations monitored at the compound, there was still no intelligence about anything unusual on Friday. Shane was frustrated and concerned that, for the first time on this assignment, a problem had surfaced he had not been able to solve. To further complicate matters, Franky and the Alvarez family now suspected a rival cartel had made the hit, knowing it would shake the Magadinnos to the core. That likely meant more unknowns in the equation, if their suspicion were accurate.
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br /> Shane turned on another video file recently collected from Franky’s office. He hit play. Franky and Hector sat together, talking quietly over a glass of wine. Shane lifted weights in his apartment while he watched.
When Hector asked Franky what rationale would explain why a rival cartel would send a warning to their families, Franky responded, “I quote Pete Clemenza.”
Shane recalled that Clemenza had been a trusted associate of fictitious mobster, Vito Corleone, in Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” movie.
Franky continued, “These things gotta happen every five years or so. It helps to get rid of the bad blood.” Franky laughed.
Hector looked confused. Shane listened intently, momentarily stopping his iron pumping.
“In the movie series, Clemenza was one of the godfather’s enforcers, you see. He routinely carried out the dirty work of retaliations, warnings, and murders, against anyone who stood in his boss’s way, or anyone who needed a reminder that the family was always in control and dangerous.” Franky beamed a wide approving smile.
“The motivation for these random acts of violence was simply…a desire to produce fear and force submission.” Franky smiled wider as he searched for words. “You gotta understand Hector, these little individual acts of violence or revenge, by themselves, can’t always be rationally explained, you see. Like terrorism at its finest, it just keeps people from feeling secure and becoming brazen. People need to be slapped occasionally, if just to remind them they are nothing. If people are allowed to feel secure they might think they can resist, and once that happens they won’t be afraid to rise up and act to protect themselves.”
The Case Page 6