The Mongoose Deception

by Robert Greer

  Earlier in the day he’d followed Mario Satoni from his house in North Denver to a Delaware Street bail-bonding office on the western perimeter of downtown Denver. After staking the office out for close to an hour and a half, he’d watched two men who couldn’t be mistaken for anything but cops cart off in an unmarked police car Satoni and the hot little exotic-looking number they’d followed into the building earlier. He’d followed that car to a building in downtown Denver, then called Cassias to give him a heads-up. After a follow-up conversation with his groggy, spaced-out-sounding Denver contact, Randall Maxie, who’d told him to watch out for Satoni’s lapdog, Floyd, he’d called Cassias back and been given the green light to handle everyone on his list, including the bail bondsman, Floyd.

  When Cassias had warned him in closing that it might be prudent to observe for a while rather than act, he’d countered, “I was doing this kind of work long before you took over the reins down there in Louisiana, friend. My job is to handle messes. Yours is to make sure I get my money.”

  Asserting his authority, Cassias had ended the conversation with a stern warning: “I know your pedigree. Just don’t allow your past success to fuck with my current well-being.”

  Eyeing his empty cup, Napper pushed aside the sports pages, reminding himself as he did that well-being was the order of the day—his, Cassias’s, and the organization’s. He stopped short of ordering another cup of hot chocolate after deciding that a second jolt of sugar and caffeine wasn’t worth the risk of having someone at the counter remember the color of his hair or how tall he was or that he was sitting around drinking hot chocolate on a 90-degree day.

  Perhaps, after having things fall into place so easily, he just might need a healthy dose of what twenty years earlier he would have called case hardening. Life had become too mundane, too fucking ordinary and everyday pleasant, he told himself as he left the coffee shop in a rush and walked north along Colorado Boulevard toward his car. He’d been given the okay to kill at least two people, maybe as many as four. It was time to forget the ordinariness of his life and reflect on the iron will and attention to detail it would take to pull off the killings.

  After ten initial shaky minutes, Mario Satoni reverted to his former self, enduring two hours of interrogation by an FBI tag team that included Ron Else and a seriously overweight man with busy eyebrows and mottled yellow teeth.

  With Julie running interference, even though he realized that her thoughts were still clearly with Damion, he went toe-to-toe with the seasoned agents, never acquiescing, never admitting for one moment that he’d in any way been involved in the JFK assassination or the Ducane or McPherson murders, and never cracking in the face of their rapid-fire questions. Julie intervened the half-dozen times that Else brought up Mario’s late wife, Angie, but Mario wavered, admitting finally, under the weight of his long-suffering grief, that Angie’s family had indeed had a tradition of handing out twenty-dollar gold pieces with a boxed “S” stamped on the reverse to loyal friends, family, and associates.

  When Else intimated that such a gold piece had been found among Antoine Ducane’s remains and that the coin’s presence linked Mario to Ducane’s murder, Julie stepped in with a vengeance, forcing Else to admit that the gold piece could have come from any one of a hundred sources, including long-dead family members, Rollie Ornasetti, or any number of Ornasetti’s flunkies.

  Just before the two-hour mark of the interrogation, which was taking place, to Julie’s surprise, not in Denver’s FBI offices, but in another downtown building, Julie forced the agents to admit that they couldn’t continue to browbeat Mario and hold him without pressing charges based only on the fact that some coin had been found with a dead man. Else and the other agent reluctantly huddled briefly outside the room along with Cavalaris. Ten minutes later she and Mario left, Julie with a newfound appreciation for the eighty-two-year-old former don’s guile, facility with words, and impenetrable iron-clad will.

  They hailed a cab to head back to CJ’s office, with Julie’s thoughts focused on Damion’s well-being and Mario’s centered on Else’s parting salvo to Julie: “Make sure your client’s available for further questioning, Counselor. I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

  As they got out of the foul-smelling cab in front of CJ’s office, Julie looking relieved, Mario looking exhausted, Julie’s cell phone rang. “Go on inside. I’ll take care of the fare,” Julie insisted, waving for Mario to go ahead. Recognizing the phone number on her caller ID, she flipped open her cell phone with one hand as she fumbled in her purse for a $10 bill with the other. “Julie,” she said, watching Mario head up the sidewalk to CJ’s office. Her eyebrows arched when the eager-sounding law clerk on the other end of the line said, “Becky here, and have I got news!”

  Julie stood on the curb listening, her eyes getting wider by the second as she drank in her law clerk’s words. When the cab driver called out, “Hey, lady, I’m holdin’ up traffic here; you need change?” she waved for him to take off.

  Continuing the conversation as she headed into CJ’s office, she broke into a wide grin. “Hell of a twist,” she said, mounting the front steps. “Stay on it, Becky. This could get better. Be sure and call me if it does.” She flipped the cell phone closed, shook her head, and pushed open CJ’s front door.

  As she stepped past Mario and into the small foyer that had once been her secretarial alcove to see Damion sitting in an overstuffed chair looking bored, the muscles in her throat tightened as she rushed across the foyer to embrace him. Her purse strap slipped off her shoulder and she dropped her phone. Bending down and hugging him harder than she had in years, she said, “Damion, baby, are you okay?”

  “Sure, Mom. Sure, I’m fine.”

  Teary-eyed, she stepped back, retrieved her cell phone, and said, “You should’ve left me a note this morning. Something to let me know you were going up to Pawnee Buttes. You’ve had me scared to death.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Damion said, shaking his head and looking guilty as charged. “I was going to call you, but I forgot my cell phone. After what happened last night I needed to go somewhere I could think. I know I shouldn’t have said what I did about Grandpa, and I feel terrible about getting you and CJ crosswise with each other.” Damion locked his eyes to the floor. “I never slept a wink all night.”

  Julie let out a relieved sigh and eyed Mario briefly before turning her attention back to Damion. “Neither did I. I felt a little betrayed at first, but now that I’ve had time to think things over, I know that what I was really suffering from was guilt and a healthy dose of fear. Guilt that by coming within fifty miles of someone like Mario, I might end up losing my hard-earned privilege. Fear that someone might see, if they looked close enough, who I really am: Julie Romero Madrid, the mob-connected trucker’s daughter, instead of Julie Madrid, the lawyer.”

  “But Mom, you are a lawyer,” Damion said, eyeing Julie quizzically, surprised that she’d just referred to her father as something other than a saint.

  Julie forced a wry smile. “So I am, Damion. So I am.” Looking at Damion and hoping that she wasn’t about to forever tarnish a relationship that had been built on honesty and trust, she spoke slowly. “There’s a reason your grandfather lost his trucking company, Damion. A reason he got steamrolled and back-stabbed by the people I’ve always pledged myself to hate. The story I’ve told you all these years is only partially true. Your grandfather lost everything, all right, but not because of being so upstanding and virtuous. The truth is, he was in lockstep with, not at odds with, the mob, and they tossed him aside when he was no longer needed.” Julie’s eyes welled up with tears as Damion rose from his chair and hugged her.

  The sound of CJ thundering back down the stairs from his apartment, where he’d rushed to get a couple of aspirin for Mario, and the squeaking noise of the first-floor conference room’s heavy mahogany doors sliding open, caused Damion and Julie to look up.

  Realizing that Julie was crying, CJ stopped on the bottom stair, eyed Mario and Flora
Jean, who stood looking dismayed in the conference-room doorway, and said softly to Julie, “You all right?”

  Blinking back tears, Julie forced a smile. It was the self-assured, never-intimidated smile that CJ had come to know so well. A smile that let him know that the petite, tough-as-nails woman who stood facing him had somehow navigated another mine field.

  “I’m fine, CJ. As fine as Cuban sugarcane and just as sweet,” she said with a wink. A wink offered to let everyone standing there know that in spite of her tears and whatever had caused them, Julie Madrid would be moving ahead.

  “Anything I can help with?” Flora Jean asked.

  “No. Not really. Damion and I have just been blowing a little truth into the sails of an old wife’s tale.”

  CJ eyed Damion, uncertain whether he’d told his mother about what had happened at Pawnee Buttes. Damion had sworn earlier, against both CJ’s and Mario’s advice, that he’d take the story to the grave. Damion’s barely perceptible head shake told CJ that Julie’s tears hadn’t been about Pawnee Buttes. Sensing something very personal and private that even he couldn’t be privy to, CJ eyed Julie, uncertain what to say. When she flashed him a reassuring look that said, Let’s move on, he took the hint and said, “Mario tells me you scored a knockout downtown.”

  “Sure did. But it was a technical one at best,” Julie said, inching her way back on point.

  Perceiving that after Pawnee Buttes and a confrontation with the FBI, he’d earned the right to offer his take, Damion said, “You sure threw that FBI guy for a loop, Mom, when you said all of us were your clients.”

  “I had to do something, especially with you sitting there in the room. Besides, that FBI snob rubbed me the wrong way.” Julie smiled. “Think he may have a problem with women. Truth be told, though, if we don’t watch it, I could very well end up representing everyone who was here when he and that homicide lieutenant came barging in. Bottom line is, if we don’t want that happening, we need to find out a few things.”

  “Which are?” Flora Jean and Damion asked in near unison.

  “First off, in order to keep Mario out of the hot seat we need to find out who killed Antoine Ducane and that Eisenhower Tunnel maintenance worker, Cornelius McPherson.” Julie paused and let what she was about to say next gather a full head of steam. Staring directly at Mario, she said, “And that likely will mean that we’ll need to peg who really killed JFK. Not that I’m a skeptic, mind you,” she added with a smile, “but Lee Harvey Oswald, come on!”

  “Mom, get serious.”

  “I am serious,” she said, recognizing that Damion, by virtue of involving himself with Mario, had stepped into life’s fast track, unintentionally dragging her along. “In for a penny, in for a pound, sweet son of mine. Time you learned that.” Her tone was deadly earnest. “For now, I’d simply like for you to sit there and listen.” She turned her attention to CJ. “On my way in I got a phone call from one of my law clerks. The clerk I asked to find out about the woman who once owned the house over in Bonnie Brae where McPherson was killed.”

  “Yeah, Sheila Lucerne,” CJ said, recognizing from Julie’s tone that her law clerk had uncovered something important.

  Julie nodded. “Well, it turns out that Ms. Lucerne may not have died in that accident her onetime boyfriend, Carl Watson, told you about after all. Seems she may have simply disappeared. My law clerk says she had no trouble digging up a couple of newspaper accounts that describe a fatal head-on crash Lucerne supposedly had with a semi on the Boulder Turnpike back in 1973.”

  “Yeah. That’s how Watson said she died.” CJ glanced around the room and realized that everyone, especially Damion, was hanging on Julie’s every word.

  “Well, if she did, the details surrounding Ms. Lucerne’s death sure got buried awful fast. My law clerk, whose undergrad degree is in journalism, mind you, couldn’t find a single follow-up newspaper account of what was supposedly a fiery crash. She also couldn’t find a second source for the information, and she couldn’t find a byline on either of the two original stories.” Julie stopped and took a deep breath. “Here’s what else she couldn’t find. There was never a newspaper obit for anyone named Sheila Lucerne. And my law clerk says she searched the Post and the Rocky obits for a month before and after Lucerne’s supposed death. Now, here’s the topper. There’s apparently no record of a police investigation into the accident. Seems like Watson’s story, except for the two newspaper accounts I mentioned, materialized out of thin air.”

  “Anything else?” asked CJ, his voice rough with suspicion.

  “Just this. Vital statistics couldn’t dig up a death certificate on Lucerne, the cops can’t confirm her death, or even that she was in a wreck, there’s no record of her being taken to Denver General, the only Front Range Level III trauma center at the time, and my law clerk couldn’t sniff out one piece of information about next of kin.”

  “Plant,” Mario boomed. “We’re dealin’ with a frickin’ plant.”

  Every head in the room nodded except Damion’s. “A what?” Damion asked, looking confused.

  Mario eyed Julie and asked, “Can I school him?”

  “Better now than later.”

  Turning to Damion, Mario said, “A plant. It’s what folks in high places and people with power do to get their way when they wanna get rid of a danglin’ participle. More or less, it’s the last-ditch handiwork of lyin’ politicians and desperate criminals so they can have their way.”

  When Damion nodded as if to say, Oh, I see, Mario looked over at CJ and said, “I’d say the Lucerne woman was either paid to take a hike, she was taken out of circulation permanently by onetime associates of mine, or, if she really did know something about the JFK assassination or the Ducane killin’, she’s livin’ out her life on the government’s payroll.”

  “Witness protection?” asked CJ.

  “You betcha,” Mario shot back.

  Nodding and slipping a partially crushed carton of cheroots out of the pocket of his riverboat gambler’s vest, CJ tapped out his last cheroot. He moistened the end, slipped the cheroot between his lips, and looked at Flora Jean. “I’m thinking that if we’re ever gonna get down to bedrock on this thing, we’ll need to dig a couple of levels deeper, and that means sooner or later we’re gonna have to talk to Alden Grace. Think if he tweaked a few of his intelligence sources he’d be able to come up with the names of some people who wanted Kennedy out of the way besides Lee Harvey Oswald? Serious names, I mean. Not the kind you hear mentioned on late-night talk shows, Oprah, or in the movies.”

  “That’s a tall order, sugar. Besides, if you asked ’em straight up who shot JFK, half the people on the planet would be willin’ to provide you with a name other than Oswald’s. And remember, now, Alden’s retired military intelligence, not CIA. But I’ll see what I can do.”

  CJ eyed Mario to see if he’d again nix the use of the retired two-star general. When Mario, still numb from his FBI grilling, didn’t so much as flinch at the mention of Grace, CJ said, “Great. The fact that Alden’s not CIA could turn out to be a blessing, especially since lots of folks think it was really the CIA who did Kennedy in.”

  “I wouldn’t discount the possibility,” said Mario. “Especially since the CIA was and still is made up of the kind of I-own-the-world types who woulda been just egotistical enough to hook up with similar-minded associates of mine.”

  “Marcello and Trafficante?” asked CJ.

  “Or even Rosselli,” Mario responded. “What I can’t figure out is why any one of ’em woulda cast their lot with a dumbshit like Rollie.” Mario suddenly found himself smiling. “Unless, of course, they needed a patsy. That could be it! Hell, before we go traipsin’ off lookin’ for skeletons in the CIA’s closet, I think we should lean on Rollie.”

  “I will,” said CJ. “But for now, he’s on my list behind Carl Watson.”

  “Why second?” asked Flora Jean, watching Mario and Julie nod in agreement.

  “Because of Sheila Lucerne. I’ve got a
feeling she may be the key not only to the Ducane murder but to the whole JFK thing. And if she is, her old boyfriend Watson’s a lot more likely to give her up than Rollie.”

  “One thing’s for sure, Watson will be easy enough to tap,” said Julie. “We know where he lives and works. According to my law clerk, he’s been playing moon-rocket engineer, climbing the corporate ladder over at Lockheed Martin for the past thirty years.”

  “Who’d’a thunk it?” said CJ. “Lucerne, Watson, the mob, the CIA. Hell, could be we’ve got ourselves a real live presidential hit man living right here in Denver masquerading as a moon-rocket engineer.”

  “Or a don,” said Mario, making certain to include Rollie Ornasetti on CJ’s list.

  Salivating at the thought of bringing ultimate closure to the JFK assassination, CJ nodded in concurrence before turning to Flora Jean. “Think it’s time to call Alden.”

  “No need to, sugar. I’m gonna see him in less than an hour. I’m guessin’ he won’t have a lot for us off the top of his head, but once he touches base with a few of his contacts, trust me, he’ll come up with somethin’.”

  “Stay on it, and both of you be careful,” CJ said. “Could be we’ve latched on to the tip of an iceberg,” he added, checking his watch. “Shit. It’s almost five. If I’ve got any chance of catching up with Watson at work, I’ll have to head for Lockheed Martin right now.” Flashing Julie a grin, he said, “I know you’re a big-time attorney these days, Ms. Madrid.” The grin broadened. “But I was sorta hoping I could get you to play at being a secretary for just a few minutes. I need someone who can sound real ‘executive secretary’ official to call over to Lockheed Martin and see if one of their top engineers is at work, and if he’s not, when he’ll be in.”

  Julie broke into an ear-to-ear grin, recalling how often, during her years as CJ’s secretary, she and CJ had worked a similar bait-and-switch in order to get some unsuspecting family member to divulge the whereabouts of some bond skipper. “Like we used to do in the old days, Mr. Floyd?”