by Henry Hack
“I have a different suggestion,” Harry said. “Let him go.”
“What?” John said. “Pop’s killer? Did you just say to let him go?”
“Calm down. No one wants Pop’s killer brought to justice more than I do, but there are other killers of Pop still out there – namely Mark, Joseph and the goddamn Savior.”
“Are you saying we should try to turn Jason? Have him work for us?” Carl asked.
“Make him an offer he can’t refuse, and I say that reluctantly. What else do we have? Where do you plan on going after you arrest Jason and throw the key away? How are we ever going to stop the Romens?”
Danny and George returned to the interview room and George asked, “How are you doing, Jason?”
“I’m feeling pretty shitty,” he said. “I guess I get taken away now, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Huh?”
“How do you feel about the Romens now? How do you feel about Mark and Joseph and the Savior?”
“I hate them. I hate them for what they made me do to my cousin and to Sam. I hate them for making me move out of my Manhattan apartment. I hate them for fucking up my whole life.”
Danny and George knew the only probable kernel of truth in that whole tirade was the fact they made Jason kill his cousin. There was no way the Romens could justify that to him – ever. And that one fact might just be enough for Jason to go along with their plan.
“What if we let you walk out of here right now?” Danny asked. “How about if you go back to work?”
“You gotta be kidding. Why? I just confessed to a lot of murders.”
“Revenge, that’s why. Revenge against the Romens. Revenge against Mark, Joseph and the Savior for the death of your cousin. Revenge for making you pull the trigger.”
“I’m listening,” Jason said.
The deal was cut. After Jason signed his confession, he would walk out the door. No arrest. No arraignment. No publicity. He would notify the Task Force of the locations of his fellow disciples and of Mark as soon as he learned of them. And, if necessary, he would testify against all of them. In return they would intervene on his behalf to the U.S. Attorney detailing his help and assistance.
“As you know,” Danny said, “we can't guarantee anything, but your assistance in arresting one or more Romens would go a long way in mitigating any sentence you might receive.”
“But what about the duress I was under?” Jason asked.
“That might work for Sam's and Bob's murders, but what about the dozen others? You weren’t coerced then, because you believed the Romens were the good guys and their cause – your cause – was just.”
“Yeah, I see your point,” he said.
“The ideal situation,” George said, “would be for us to get the whole group at the meeting at Mark’s house. That way you’d be arrested with all of the others and no one would suspect you tipped us off. And you wouldn’t be in any danger until then. We could wrap this up in a week or so with any luck.”
“Then what happens?”
“We get Mark to talk,” Danny said. “He’s the key to cracking the whole case wide open.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Jason said. “He’s a fanatic and totally loyal to the Savior. He won’t say a word to you guys.”
“Who knows? Maybe we can also make Mark an offer he can’t refuse.”
“You’d have to put a gun to his head and then he probably still wouldn’t talk.”
“There are many things worse than a fast bullet to the brain,” Danny said.
“But you guys don’t do things like that, right? This is America, right?”
“Right,” George said. “Our country is systematically being pushed to the brink of destruction by the Romens, but we are good, constitutionally law-abiding cops. Who cares if the country is being destroyed? We will always first protect the rights of an individual citizen above the needs of the majority of our citizens.”
Jason shuddered and most definitely got that message. Thank God he was walking out of here. Thank God he accepted their offer. “Listen guys,” he said. “Will you do me a favor and get my cousin out of the woods so his wife can at least get some closure on this?”
“Sure,” George said. “Can you give us directions, or do you have to come with us?”
“I don’t want to go back there, but you’ll have difficulty finding him if I don’t show you the place.”
John sent Alicia and Nick with Jason. Nick said, “The local police will break it to his wife after they find him, but it will be tough to keep this out of the papers.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Alicia said, “as long as the story is connected to his embezzlement and not the Romens.”
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “We can take care of that.”
Nick and Alicia had Jason make an anonymous call to the local police claiming he had been hiking in the woods and came upon what appeared to be a freshly-dug grave. He gave them detailed instructions on how to find it then hung up as they started to ask questions. They waited in their car well down the highway, and when a police car arrived and turned down the correct dirt road, they headed back to the city and dropped Jason at his new place in Queens. He would go back to work the next day.
“You know,” Nick said to Jason as he stepped from the car, “you should make an appearance at your cousin’s wake and funeral, but we don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I know. I would dread having to face Ann.”
You goddamned well should, you murdering rat, they both thought.
The next morning Alicia received a call from Ann Willis informing her the local police had discovered her husband’s body after they received an anonymous tip. “Do you know who did this?” she asked.
“No,” Alicia said. “We would have to guess he was killed by a couple of his accomplices over a dispute about the embezzled funds.”
“How much was missing from his company?”
“Over $300,000.”
“Was his cousin Jason involved as you suspected?”
“Not that we can determine. Do the local police have any leads yet?”
“None they shared with me. I still can’t believe Bob was involved in this.”
17
The next day Jason called at noon and George Washington said, “What’s up?”
“Mark just called and said he is settled into his new place. He’s in Queens, too, but didn’t specify just where.”
“Any plans in the works?”
“No, we all have to sit tight until the Savior kicks off the campaign with the first murder.”
“And when will that be?”
“No one knows, but Mark said probably not for ten days to two weeks.”
“Damn!” George said.
“At least the Romens aren’t killing anyone else,” Jason said.
“Except for the copycats still killing smokers.”
“I still think that’s not such a bad thing. Smoking…”
“Stop right there, Jason. Yes, smoking is bad, but to murder people for it? Let me ask you this – is dope bad?”
“Of course.”
“Then why doesn’t the state kill, on the spot, anyone caught using or selling dope? Would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea, too.”
“Bullshit! That’s a lawless idea. Cell phone users annoy you? Kill 'em! Alcohol bad for health? Kill everyone who sips a beer at Yankee Stadium.”
“Okay, okay, I got the point.”
“Don’t you waver on me, boy,” George said. “You hang in there. You keep remembering, when you think your buddies are the good guys, those buddies made you kill your cousin – for no fucking reason.”
“I won’t forget,” he said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”
“No, call me once a day regardless.”
“All right.”
“Think our boy is getting cold feet?” Danny asked.
“I
hope not.”
“I still don’t like the idea Pop’s confessed killer is walking around a free man.”
“Neither do I and neither does anyone else on the team. But, right now, Jason Morgan, rat bastard Disciple Number Five, is all we’ve got.”
Congressman Raymond Glenn was focused on the only thing that mattered to a career politician – his re-election. And that re-election, to his third term as the representative of the First Congressional District on Long Island, hinged on only one item – the re-activation of the Shoreham nuclear power plant on eastern Long Island. He had wet his finger, stuck it in the air and decided that for all his constituents proclaimed concerns about preserving the environment, it was their pocketbooks, lean and getting leaner from the cost of electricity and foreign oil, which would trump that concern. His opponent thought otherwise, and the bitter fight was on.
The Shoreham plant was built back in the Seventies to provide another source of electricity to the fast-growing population of Long Island. The two and half million residents of the two counties of the Island, and a part of Queens, were supplied by the Long Island Lighting Company whose generators ran on foreign oil – lots of it. The new plant promised to dramatically reduce that demand for oil and to significantly reduce the cost of electricity to the consumer. But Shoreham, eventually costing almost five billion dollars, never went on line, and the lighting company was financially ruined and taken over by a state-run power authority.
Despite being hailed as the newest – and safest – reactor in the country, the environmental activists finally found a way to stop it. Their claim there was no adequate evacuation plan for the inhabitants to safely flee the Island in case of a nuclear accident was bought by the politicians, including the Governor. That there was no evacuation possible from the dead-end of Long Island without traveling west a hundred miles through New York City was, ironically, the fault of those same environmental activists who prevented the building of any bridge across, or tunnel through, Long Island Sound to Westchester County or Connecticut.
Congressman Glenn, a lifelong resident of the Island could never come to terms with the idiocy of building a five billion dollar state-of-the-art facility – with all the modern safeguards demanded by the Federal government and environmental groups – and then shuttering it without ever producing one watt of cheap electric power. He hated having to pay outrageous electric bills inflated by the exorbitant cost of foreign oil. And now, the five billion dollar cost was being borne by all the ratepayers for the next thirty years as a surcharge on their monthly bills. His political acumen told him the majority of his suffering constituents had reached the breaking point, and so he seized upon the issue with all his determination.
The congressman pointed out the environmental wackos seemed to have one purpose – to drive the middle class out of Long Island so they could bulldoze their homes, schools and malls and bring back the buffalo to graze on the restored plains of yesteryear.
“Are we ready for tomorrow, Chris?” Glenn asked his chief campaign adviser.
“All things are a go,” he said. “The media will be there in force.”
“Is the weather forecast still good?”
“Bright, warm and sunny. We should have a glorious day to kick this off.”
What Congressman Glenn was looking forward to the next morning was the official beginning of his congressional re-election campaign to be launched right in front of the main gate of the rusting Shoreham nuclear power plant. He had prepared a fiery speech rife with invective against foreign oil and the local environmentalists. Borrowing from Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech he would declare no longer would the phony protectors of the environment crucify the middle-class upon a cross of foreign oil. It was time to stand up and defeat these rascals so the promise of a decent life in the beautiful suburbs of Long Island could be achieved. If retribution from the Romens ever crossed his mind he never verbalized it to anyone.
Glenn would parade a list of facts to support his position – the exodus of the youth of the Island for less expensive areas of the country, the exodus of the senior population on fixed incomes to Florida and the Carolinas, the loss of jobs and businesses to areas where electric rates were much lower – and all his facts were accurate and unimpeachable. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
The Savior had been pleased at Peter's selection of Congressman Glenn as the most appropriate target to kick off their third campaign. The congressman and his ilk were the antithesis to everything the Romens stood for. Allowing the Shoreham plant or any other nuclear plant to function would be disastrous, poisoning the ground and water with radioactive waste that would take centuries to dissipate. They had to be stopped – now, as it appeared Glenn was attracting a growing following of like-thinkers and voting supporters.
As in the beginning of the first two campaigns, the Savior would do the murder himself, but this time he would need help to carry out his mission. That was why he, Peter and Joseph had temporarily moved in with Mark in his newly-rented three-bedroom house in the Whitestone section of Queens. At 10:00 p.m. the foursome got into Mark's old Toyota van and headed east on the Long Island Expressway.
Congressman Glenn lived in a modest four-bedroom two-story colonial in a tract of homes in suburban Stony Brook. At midnight the house was completely dark and entrance was easily gained via an open window on the first floor. All the bedrooms were on the second floor and they knew it would be necessary to kill the entire family to underline their message. When the Savior heard the shots coming from the children’s bedrooms, he flipped on the bedroom light switch and he and Joseph trained their guns on Glenn and his wife who had just started up from the sounds of the gunfire. Mark and Peter entered the bedroom and also trained their guns on the couple.
“Don’t move,” the Savior said. “You, congressman, are a disgrace and a threat to the world and its environment. You must be eliminated. Before Glenn had a chance to say a word, the Savior put two bullets into his face and Peter did likewise to his wife. They did not bother to take photos here, but they most certainly would do so soon.
“Let’s move,” the Savior said, putting his gun in his waistband and reaching for one of Glenn’s arms.
They dragged the congressman’s body out of the house, stuffed it into the back of the van and resumed their trek eastward. They reached Shoreham just before two a.m. and were gone forty minutes later with their mission accomplished. When the media arrived the following morning they would find Congressman Raymond Glenn securely fixed to the chain-link gate that was the main entrance to the facility. His arms were outstretched and tied with wire at the wrists and his feet were crossed and likewise tied to the gate. The sign around his neck read, You Shall Not Crucify Mankind on a Cross of Radioactive Poison – The Romens.
During the next forty-eight hours the twelve apostles struck at their designated targets, and all were successful. The list included three more congressmen, two lobbyists for the nuclear power industry, three local politicians from Long Island who had strongly supported Congressman Glenn’s crusade, and four prominent businessmen from around the nation who would profit tremendously from the opening of the Shoreham plant. The day after all the murders had been accomplished the Savior sent his communication to the media. It was short and to the point – It should now be obvious to everyone what our next campaign will focus on. Nuclear generating plants will not be allowed to be built or to be re-opened. Those still operating must close and be de-commissioned. Until that occurs all those associated with, or supportive of, this foul, poisonous industry will be targeted. – The Romens
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Carl Petersen said when he read the Romens’ message in the morning paper. He had already received two calls from Harry Cassidy, and Walt Kobak was on his way up from D.C. The media pressure was unbearable, and now with no reservations and no pulled punches, the law enforcement authorities – local, state and federal – were pilloried for their inability to stop the Romens. “Not even one arrest!” screamed
a bold headline in a New York newspaper; “Mayor should can Cassidy immediately!” shouted another.
By eleven a.m. they were all assembled in the conference room, but there was nothing to say, or to do. “Does Jason Morgan always call promptly?” Harry asked.
“He has so far,” George said. “Right around noon when he leaves the bookstore for lunch.”
“And other than waiting for that call, do we have anything else?” Walt asked.
“No,” McKee said, looking over at Danny.
“We started in Philly and went backwards in the career of Gillenbock ending in Colorado,” he said. “And got nothing, nothing at all that would help us find him now.”
“So we wait,” John said, “for the call that will make us or break us.”
“What if Morgan skips out on us?” Harry asked.
Harry then stood up and said, “Danny, let’s go get some air. I can't sit around this table for an hour.”
They strolled the downtown streets breathing in the late June air as if to cleanse their systems of their fears and troubles. “With all due respect, Commissioner,” Danny said, “you look awful.”
“And that’s just the way I feel.”
“Pressure bad?”
“For the second time in a month I just offered my resignation to the Mayor. He might accept it this time.”
“Jesus! What good will that do?”
“Probably nothing, but that’s politics. You know, the higher you go on this Job, the narrower the seat becomes, and the easier it is to topple off.”
“That sucks.”
“Hey, we’d better get back. My future depends on that phone call.”
“Maybe the team’s future, too. The next PC might fire all our asses.”
“Let’s hope and pray Morgan comes through for us – big time,” Harry said as they entered the building.
The phone on the conference room table rang at exactly three minutes past noon. They all sat at attention as George reached for the receiver. “Washington here,” he said. “Uh-huh. Uh- huh. Slow down. I gotta write this down. Okay…repeat. Okay, good. Call again tomorrow. Yeah? Sure, we’ll let you know. Don’t worry.”