by David Bishop
“Did Trowbridge know he had been a silent partner with Tittle?” Jack asked.
“That dickhead didn’t wanna know from nothing. Just as long as I brought him his bag of bills each month, he never asked. He got the dough and got to keep feeling superior.” Tyson finished with a snort of disgust. Then he wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“Why,” Nora asked, “why would a wealthy respected man like Trowbridge invest through a crooked cop? Come on, Artie, that’s bull.”
“It’s not bull! Them white collar guys might look, talk, and smell better than two-bit smash-and-grabbers, but they’re still crooks through and through. No matter how much they got, they always want more, particularly that asshole Trowbridge.”
Nora came back at Tyson. “That doesn’t explain why a rich crook like Trowbridge, if he is one, would invest through you.”
“Years ago I covered up a thing involving that jerkoff and a couple hookers. He was afraid that if it got out his rep would be mud. I let him go and held onto the evidence. Later, when I needed money to invest in Tittle’s Place, I went to Trowbridge to remind him he owed me. He came across on condition I get a piece for him too, but he didn’t wanna know what the investment was. When I needed dough for a slice of Donny’s club, I tapped Trowbridge again. Only that time he was eager. Why not, after the fat tax-free profits I’d brought him from his end of Tittle’s place?”
Jack slid a yellow pad across to Tyson, followed by a pen. “Write a list of the people in the Metro PD, City Hall, and the Feds to whom you’ve delivered payoffs for Tittle, Donny, or both. The amount each got, how often, and for how long.”
Sweat beaded on Tyson’s forehead. “Christ, I can’t do that.” He ran his sleeve under his nose, then across his forehead. “They gunned Tittle. They’ll kill me too. You was with the Feds, Jack. Can you get me in the witness protection program? If I stay here, I won’t make it to trial.”
“It’s all up to you, Arthur. If you don’t want to provide that information, just say so. But think about this: Until you ID them they’ll be trying to prevent you from talking. Once you’ve named them, their identities are out. They’ll be into damage control. It’s your decision though. If you don’t want to do the list we’ll call Metro and you can take it from there with them.”
Tyson sat staring at the pad, turning the pen in a tight circle with his fingers.
Chapter 48
Tyson’s list of payoffs included several detectives assigned to Metro vice, and some liquor and health department people, but Mayor Patrick Molloy and Chief of Police Harry Mandrake were not on his list.
While Tyson had been writing his list, Jack had called the two federal fugitives, Carl Anson and Joan Jensen, a.k.a. Mr. and Mrs. Clark, owners of Clark’s Janitorial. They professed no desire to again become fugitives. They agreed to come to MI at ten-thirty the next morning, Monday, knowing they would be taken into custody by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As a precaution Jack had Max take his guys off watching Tyson, and put them onto the Clarks.
Next, Jack called Suggs and requested that he come to MI and pick up Tyson. The Sergeant was none too happy about the call for this had been the first Sunday he had taken off in over a month. But after Jack filled him in, Suggs agreed to come right over.
While Jack had been talking with Suggs, he saw a note Mary Lou had left on his desk late Friday. The mayor’s office had called requesting that Jack meet with Mayor Molloy on Monday at two.
Twenty minutes later Sergeant Suggs walked in with three uniformed officers and took Tyson into custody. Jack gave Suggs the bribe list along with the tape and film of his interview of Tyson. Jack retained copies.
Mayor Molloy was behind his desk when Jack arrived the next day. His shirt open through the first two buttons, a small cross nesting in the gray hair on his upper chest.
“Hello, Jack.”
“Hello, Your Honor.”
“Last Friday, Chief Mandrake told me you’d brought in Curator Harkin for aiding and abetting in an art switch at the National Portrait Gallery. Then yesterday, I heard you asked Metro to come to your office to pick up Arthur Tyson for blackmail and murder. Now, this morning, the media has reported the FBI picked up two federal fugitives at your office. Your business is certainly booming.”
Jack smiled. “It has been busy, Mr. Mayor, but I don’t think Tyson is the end of that story.”
The mayor pinched the loose skin of his neck between his fingers, and then pulled outward before releasing it to find its own way back. “Oh! There’s more?”
“Yes, Sir. Tyson is guilty of accessory to blackmail, possibly even to murder, but he’s not the main man. As I understand it, for now, Tyson is being held only on the charges he admitted to in our interview. The blackmailings are not yet official police cases because the victims, other than Harkin, have yet to admit they were blackmailed. The two fugitives the Feds picked up agreed to cooperate about their being blackmailed. I expect there are quite a few others, but I doubt most of them will ever step forward.”
“Why not?”
“The blackmailer demanded payment only once from each victim, so when they were not blackmailed again, and having paid to protect their secrets, those victims will continue to keep quiet.”
The mayor tilted back in his desk chair, “Sounds logical, diabolical actually.”
“Mr. Mayor, why did you want to see me?”
Molloy furrowed his brow and leaned forward. “Let me get straight to it. I’ve heard you’ve been making certain inquiries about my activities. Why?”
“May I be candid?”
“I’d prefer that.”
They waited while his secretary brought in a carafe of coffee and two cups on a tray with cream and sugar. She offered to pour. The mayor waved her out. She shut the door.
“MI never set out to look into your activities, Mr. Mayor. We were looking into the death of Dr. Christopher Andujar. Toward that end we tailed his son Donny. That led us to the hotel where Donny delivered one of his lap dancers to a room occupied by you. The pictures my staff took include you and the young lady in the hall outside the room. That lap dancer, you knew her as Jena Moves, was Phoebe Ziegler, the young woman murdered a few days ago.”
“Holy Moly.” The mayor lowered his head while he dropped two sugar cubes into his cup and added cream. “I knew of the Ziegler murder, but didn’t realize she and Jena was the same woman.”
Jack looked directly into the mayor’s eyes. “Have you been blackmailed?”
“No. I have not.” His stare stayed on Jack while he first squeezed, then stroked his chin. “What made you think I had?”
“Curator Harkin was blackmailed after being videotaped having sex with the same woman. And mayors are folks criminals would love to have the goods on. Why’d you let yourself get involved with Donny and his lap dancer?”
The mayor tucked his lips inside his mouth and released them with a slight popping sound. “Mine is a common ailment, a foolish old man with an appetite for beautiful young women. Not children. Young women.” He stood, walked around his desk, and sat on the corner closest to Jack. “Give it to me straight. Will all this come out? If the press or my opponents get it, you know I’m cooked.”
“Mr. Mayor, I happen to think you’re doing a solid job. I’m not aware of anything that indicates you participated in these murders and blackmailings. If I learn otherwise, I’ll call the press myself. Still, as you’ve acknowledged, you have not conducted your personal life in a proper manner.”
The mayor nodded slowly.
“I want to ask you a question I didn’t ask Tyson because I realized you would not want it in his taped interview. I respectfully insist you answer it now. When Tyson came over to you at my firm’s open house, you emphatically shook your head no. To what were you saying no?”
“Arthur got me in the corner and with his drunken breath started pumping me to accept one of Donny’s other girls. I’d already heard it more often than I cared to, so I cut him off. I k
new why he wanted me to accept someone other than Jena. I guess I should say Phoebe. I never knew her real name. When I asked, Phoebe told me Donny was paying her to be with me. She planned to return to school in a year and needed the money. I have already put a stop to that whole thing by refusing any of Donny’s other girls. I knew it had to stop.”
The mayor looked over and, even though they were alone, lowered his voice. “Will all this go public?”
Jack gave his who-knows gesture. “You were not mentioned in our interview of Tyson. As long as I have no knowledge that you are guilty of anything other than infidelity, a personal—not societal—crime, I don’t plan to do or say anything.”
“Donny’s bribes and his fraudulent liquor license application,” the mayor said, “where he stated he owned one-hundred percent of his club will be enough to assure he’ll lose that license.”
“You can expect,” Jack said, “that Donny will try threatening you in order to hold onto his license. And it’s even more likely that Tyson will pressure you for influence with the D.A.”
Mayor Molloy sipped his coffee, his thumb through the handle with his fingers around the cup. He blinked rapidly before again revisiting his worst fear. “Should my affair with a murdered lap dancer go public, my marriage is over, along with my position as mayor. Still, having sex with consenting adults is not a crime. If anyone tries to blackmail me, I’ll tell them to go to hell.”
“Future events will confirm whether or not you keep that pledge.”
“I’ve already promised myself that.” He stood, shook Jack’s hand, and asked, “Is there anything I can do to show my appreciation?”
“Keep doing your job and keep your pants zipped.”
On his way to police headquarters on Indiana Avenue, Jack stopped to buy a new pocket knife, then at a bank to pick up some paper rolls for coins, and finally to a grocery store for some of those plastic bags that zip closed at the top. Then he called Dean Trowbridge.
“What do you want McCall?” The old man’s voice sounded like he had a mouthful of pebbles.
“Just wanted you to hear it from me, Trowbridge.”
“Hear what?” His coarse voice adding impatience.
Jack turned left and shifted his cell to his other hand. “As you probably know from the news, last night at my office Arthur Tyson surrendered himself to the Metropolitan Police Department. What the media hasn’t yet learned is that in his confession Tyson disclosed he handled some investments for you.”
“That’s a lie.” His voice quivered. “I don’t even know this Arthur Tyson.”
“Your worst nightmare has turned real. One of those investments made you a silent partner in Donny’s Gentlemen’s Club, and before that a part owner of Luke’s Place.”
The other end of the line went quiet. “There’s no way to prove that.” Jack heard him sigh, then say, “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Sure. A minute ago you didn’t even know Tyson. How does it feel knowing you helped put in business the people who defiled your daughter? That your greedy pursuit of more and more money helped make what happened to Allison possible.”
“I’m sure you’re enjoying this, McCall.” His voice cracked. “Did you call just to gloat?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Your role in all this will come out in the trials that will follow. Your daughter will learn you helped bankroll Luke Tittle’s place. The only decision you control is whether Allison hears of your involvement from you or through the media. You told me she once begged you to forgive her indiscretion. It’s now time for you to beg her to forgive your greed. Bottom line: this is about Allison, not about you. Handle it right, you blue-blooded bastard.”
Chapter 49
Jack walked into Metro P.D. headquarters a few minutes early for his appointment with Chief Mandrake. The front desk called the chief’s secretary who approved McCall coming straight back to the chief’s office.
“Hello, Jack. You’ve certainly been keeping my department busy the last couple of days.” The chief reached across his desk.
Jack shook his hand, adding his left on top of the chief’s right. “Oops, I’m sorry, Chief, I scratched you.”
“No problem.”
“We’re close to wrapping up our inquiry into the death of Chris Andujar. I wanted to bring you current.”
The chief took Jack’s coat and hung it on the coat tree in the corner, then steadied the swing of the wooden hanger that held his own coat suspended from one of the other hooks.
“First you found an art forgery,” the chief said. “Then two Federal fugitives, and now you’ve nailed Arthur Tyson for murder and blackmail. You’ve been a busy boy.”
Mandrake slipped a pink phone message memo, the only item on his desk, under the padded edge of his desk blotter. “Is all this stuff connected to Chris’s death?”
“In a way, may I?” Jack motioned toward the coffee pot on the side table.
“Of course, I should have offered.”
“Chris’s death was a loose thread. Once I pulled it everything started to unravel.”
The chief frowned. “Tyson was a bad cop, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to mixed emotions. Along with Mary Lou’s daddy, the three of us joined the force together, went through the academy together, lots of memories.”
Jack rested his cup on a coaster on the small table between the two straight back chairs that fronted the chief’s desk; he sat in one of them.
The chief got up to refill his own cup. “Arthur and I agreed long ago that we would not let our different paths be divisive among our common friends. I increasingly found that pretense a strain. To be candid, I’m relieved it’s over.” He added cream and sugar, stirred, licked the spoon, and set it to blot on a napkin next to the pot, then returned to the chair behind his desk.
“I believe,” Jack said, “the story Tyson told in my office was, for the most part, true.”
“I’ve listened to that tape. You surely don’t believe that malarkey about a blackmailer who calls himself Moriarty?” Mandrake chuckled. “That’s a bit too melodramatic for me.”
“Things just don’t add up to Tyson being the blackmailer,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“What sort of things?”
“First off, Tyson’s just not smart enough. The art forgery job is the work of a renaissance crook. That’s outside Tyson’s Neanderthal mind. Tyson’s smash-and-grab, not finesse. His story about Moriarty, he’s not capable of thinking that up ahead of time, and the man’s wholly incapable of ad-libbing it during interrogation. Tyson’s brawn not brains.”
“I have to agree with that. At the academy, Tino and I were always helping Arthur with his studies.”
“Sherlock Holmes never caught his Moriarty.” Jack grinned. “Maybe that’ll be my fate too—not catching my Moriarty.”
“Okay, for the moment,” the chief said, “let’s assume there is a Moriarty, and Tyson is not him. You got anything saying who is?”
“Some stuff, but its flimsy. I don’t want to keep you.”
“If it isn’t Tyson, this modern Moriarty is still out there.” The chief straightened the lay of his black service tie. “I told the desk to hold my calls. Maybe together we can find another thread to pull.”
“I was hoping you’d offer. I’ve been turning all this every which way but loose for so long that I’m afraid it’s become a hopeless snarl. Last week, you helped me reason out how to proceed with surrendering the federal fugitives; I hoped you might offer to do that again. A fresh mind can do wonders.”
The chief opened a desk drawer and removed a lined yellow pad. Then he leaned forward and pulled the pencil out of a writing set rooted in a purple crystal geode sitting at the front of his desk. “Shoot.”
“Well,” Jack began, “our newest client, the one Tyson admits trying to blackmail, told me the blackmailer swore and talked rough. The other marks described the blackmailer as well spoken. Moriarty would be well mannered. He would enjoy push
ing emotional buttons to satisfy his feeling of intellectual superiority. Tyson is a ruffian who would enjoy scaring his victims viscerally. The way I see it, we’ve got two blackmailers, and I’ve only caught the minnow.”
“An interesting theory. Do you figure Tyson or this possible other blackmailer murdered Chris?”
“I think Suggs got that right. Moriarty blackmailed his marks only once and Chris had already paid. Chris didn’t have to commit suicide.”
“Then why did he?”
“Like the others, Chris had expected to be blackmailed again and again. Right about then he also learned his son was involved in the sexual abuse of a young woman. In the end, Chris was out of money and full of shame.”
“What else have you got which points away from Tyson?” Mandrake asked as he repeatedly slid the pink phone memo out and back under the edge of the blotter.
“Tyson said Haviland passed on to Moriarty the tape of Jena having sex with Harkin. The way that one went down, Moriarty handled it without Tyson. And Tyson says he has a solid alibi for the night Benny Haviland was killed. So it would appear Moriarty shot Haviland, or paid the biker Rockton, or somebody else to do it.”
“Something you may not know,” the chief said, “while Tyson was still with the department, his duties included keeping track of old federal warrants, so the trail on the three fugitives does lead back to him.”
Jack shook his head. “Your department didn’t get pictures of the fugitives until a year after Tyson left the force, but even if Tyson had found the fugitives without the pictures while he was one of your detectives, it would mean he waited a long time before blackmailing them. Tyson doesn’t impress me as either patient or meticulous.”
Jack couldn’t say it because of his commitment to the mayor, but Tyson also knew about the mayor’s affair with Jena Moves, and Tyson would have blackmailed the mayor immediately.
“Tyson used his own voice to call our client, Candy Robson. To the contrary, Moriarty used various means to disguise his voice when speaking to all the other marks.” Jack walked over and put his empty cup down on the tray on the side table while he continued spelling it out for the chief. “We interviewed one mark blackmailed for the repayment of IOUs given to Luke Tittle. I think there are more of those victims out there, but the one is enough to tell us that Moriarty has Tittle’s records.”