They retrace the route Rachel used to get him to the pool. Hiram Marx leads him to the front door, opens it, then pauses in the threshold, ushering him outside.
“It’s been interesting speaking with you, Mr. McFarland. Thank you in advance for finding a way to keep Mr. Brenner at bay. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that neither Rachel nor Christina nor Mr. Giacobetti can be hauled before a grand jury.”
“I can’t control a federal prosecutor. And Martin Brenner seems hell-bent on co-opting your nephew.”
“I think you’ll find that you have more influence over Mr. Brenner than you think.”
He’s about to ask the old man what he means by that when Hiram Marx speaks again.
“Give my regards to your wife, Piper,” says Hiram Marx, his face relaxing into a predatory smile. “And little Gabby, too. She made quite an impression on Christina.”
A chill races up Mick’s spine. The old man didn’t even try to veil the threat. Mick stands frozen as the door closes in his face. After a few seconds, he turns and walks across the front patio to his car, parked where he left it.
He opens the driver’s door and lifts his leg to climb in when he hears her moving up behind him.
“He made me laugh,” she says.
He turns. “Christina.”
They lock eyes for a long moment.
“Everyone asked me afterward what I saw in Antonio. Why I dated him when our families are so set against each other. And that’s why. Tony made me laugh. He made me smile. His business, the same as my family’s business, is so serious, so fraught with peril. But Tony was lighthearted, playful, even. With me, anyway. Being with him made me forget what I came from.”
He closes the car door. “Please tell me what happened that night.”
She closes her eyes, shakes her head. “There was going to be a war. Tony told me, and I overheard my parents saying the same thing. Tony’s family was horning in on our territory, and my father and his boss weren’t going to stand for it.”
She looks away. He can see she’s doing her best to gather herself for whatever is coming next.
“My father told me that he could stop the war if he could just sit down and talk with Tony, alone . . .”
His breath goes out of him, like he’s been kicked in the gut.
“The call to your father, the one that brought him to the warehouse . . . it was you?”
“Tony didn’t trust my father. He would never have agreed to meet with him alone. So my father persuaded me to wait until Tony and I were by ourselves and call him without Tony knowing so he could come and talk.”
“I thought Tony never traveled without bodyguards. That he was very careful.”
“That was his father’s doing. Tony hated being shadowed like that, same as me. Sometimes we’d sneak away—to a hotel, or to that warehouse. Someone lived there full-time, to protect the drugs, but we’d chase him off for a few hours.”
“So you called your father that night. And when he showed up . . .”
“He promised me he’d come alone. But he brought Johnny G. with him. They didn’t knock. Just smashed the door in—I guess they wanted to take Tony by surprise. And once they were in—”
“Christina!”
He hears Rachel Nunzio’s heels clicking swiftly across the brick behind him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“You can’t hide me forever!” Christina shouts back. “I’m not some doll you can put on a shelf to look pretty.”
“Get in the house! Now!”
He sees something pass between the two women. Then Christina storms past him and flees into the house.
He turns on Rachel Nunzio.
“What kind of monsters are you? You and your husband? He used his own daughter as bait to set a trap for his enemy. Then he broke her heart by murdering the man she loved right in front of her. And you . . . you’re helping him try to get away with it.”
She throws her head back and laughs. Then she lowers her gaze, and her voice. With fire in her eyes, she says, “Who are you, little man, to judge my husband, or me? You scurry around at our heels, hoping . . .”
He sees her eyes flare as she catches herself.
“I think it’s best you just leave now.”
“You mean before you say something out of line?”
But she’s already walking away.
Driving back to the office, Mick is furious with Jimmy Nunzio. He simply cannot comprehend how even a monster like that could use his own daughter as a pawn in a gangland war. Unforgivable. And Rachel Nunzio seems to be no better than her husband. He has no idea whether she knew beforehand about Nunzio’s plan to use their daughter to isolate Valiante. But she sure as hell knows now, and she’s keeping Christina’s hands tied and mouth shut. And Rachel’s ability to do so appears to be part of a pattern of total control over her daughter, he decides, recalling what Christina shouted to Rachel about being kept on the shelf like a doll. Is that why she’s lost her ambition? Because her parents—both of her parents—are so domineering and want her to remain the proverbial child? Seen and not heard? No wonder she’s given up.
Five more minutes. That’s all it would have taken for Christina to tell him everything about what went down that night at the warehouse. Still, there’d been enough time for Christina to answer the key question of why Valiante’s guards weren’t with him. She also established the critical fact that the whole thing had been orchestrated by Jimmy Nunzio. Antonio Valiante’s death was planned. It was only bad luck in the form of two cops deciding to investigate the Escalade parked in front of what they thought was an abandoned building that prevented Nunzio from getting away with it.
Christina also established that Giacobetti was with Nunzio when he showed up at the warehouse. That would explain why Christina’s burner phone—the one she used to call Nunzio—hadn’t been found by the police; Johnny G. took it with him when he left. But where did he go? How did he even leave, given that both Nunzio’s Escalade and Antonio Valiante’s Porsche were still parked outside the warehouse?
Those and a dozen other still-unanswered questions make his head spin. He takes some deep breaths, turns on the radio, and tries to relax. After a while, though, another question starts itching at the back of his head: Why didn’t he get a call from Nunzio himself about Brenner showing up at his house? That’s how it’s been playing up until now. Whenever something happens that bothers the mobster, he summons Mick to the prison. This time, though, Mick was ordered to the family home by Rachel even though she must have told Nunzio about Brenner’s subpoenas.
Why?
There is only one logical answer: the Nunzios wanted him to talk to Rachel and Hiram rather than Jimmy. But what did they tell him that Nunzio couldn’t have said himself? What did they really tell him at all, other than he needed to do something about Martin Brenner?
He lets the questions fade, but after a while, his mind wanders back to Christina Nunzio and Antonio Valiante. Two twentysomethings in love, seeing each other on the sly, their families at war. The press had it right, after all: it really was a Romeo-and-Juliet affair. Except in place of Capulets and Montagues, there were Nunzios and Valiantes.
29
SATURDAY, JUNE 8
It’s close to 5:00 p.m. when Tommy hears his cell phone ring. It’s on the table next to the bed. Not his bed, Sharon’s—the waitress he flirted with when he first came up to the Lehigh Valley a month earlier.
Visiting Lois Beal’s farm last week got him thinking about the poker game at Elwood Stumpf’s place the night Lester Dowd was killed. It got him to thinking, too, about how ol’ Woody and Buck Forney gave him the cold shoulder, making it seem like maybe they were worried he’d uncover something they were up to now. And then Stumpf sending his grandson to run him down on the highway, removing the “maybe” from the equation. So he decided to come back a second time, shake the bushes, see if anything about the Dowd killing scurried out.
Elwood Stumpf had been even pricklie
r than the first time.
“I should never’ve sent Clem after you,” Elwood said.
“You feeling guilty?”
“I shoulda sent Billy. That’s my son, Clem’s dad. Now there’s a tough sombitch. You wouldn’t’a walked away from that one.”
“I’m going to find out what you’re hiding one way or another. You may as well just tell me.”
“I think he’s around here somewhere. Hey, Billy!”
He put his hands up. “I get it. I’m leaving.”
From Elwood’s farm, he drove to Forney Chrysler/Dodge and read Buck as more scared than snappish.
“Dale told me you’d talked to him,” Buck said of his son. “He had nothing to do with that girl.”
“Not what he told me,” Tommy said.
“A few dates. That was it.”
“Why wasn’t Dale at the card game that night?”
“The hell should I know? Maybe he was sick. There’s a dozen reasons someone wouldn’t show up to a card game.”
“Well, when you talked to him after I did, which one did he offer up?”
Buck Forney glared. “You leave Dale out of this. Or you’ll hear from my attorneys.”
“Why is everyone so worried about Darlene Dowd? Elwood was ready to sic his son on me just for asking about her. Now you’re calling out the lawyers?”
Forney stood, signaling that the meeting was over. “Look, no one’s worried about Darlene or her father’s killing. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Are you going to answer it?” Sharon’s lying on her side, propped up on her elbow. “Or is that your wife calling, and you don’t want to talk to her in front of me?”
“You’re the only one here that’s married.”
“I’m divorcing that bum. I told you.”
The first time he met Sharon, Tommy made it clear that her jailed husband was a deal breaker for him. Today, she’d explained that her husband was in jail because he shot up a bank and sent a bullet into the abdomen of a pregnant woman, killing her baby. That was enough for Tommy to relax his rule.
He sits up in the bed, presses the “Answer” button, and lifts the iPhone to his ear.
“Tommy? It’s Raymond Thorne. I got the results of the fingerprint analysis. They actually came back yesterday, but I was out of town.”
“And?”
“What you thought. The prints on the hammer matched the ones on the water bottle.”
He closes his eyes.
“You there?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Sounds like what you expected to hear isn’t what you wanted to hear.”
“Nope.”
“You sure you don’t want any testing of the blood? There’s plenty of it. And hair. And very small pieces of bone.”
“No. I know for sure who all that belonged to. The prints tell me what I needed to know.”
“I’ll have one of my guys deliver you the hammer and the box it was in. Plus, the report. You want it brought to your house?”
“That would be the best. Hey, thanks, Ray. I owe you one.”
“I owe you more than one, so you’re still ahead. And that job offer stands, as always.”
“It’s nice to know I have a place to land.”
He places the cell phone back on the nightstand.
“What’re you mixed up in?” Sharon asks. “Hammers and blood and hair . . . ?”
“You overheard all that?”
“I’m a foot away from you, dumbass.” She eyes him and smiles. “You’re not some kind of undercover cop, are you? Not that it would bother me. I’ve dated so many shitheads on the other side of the law, it might be a nice change.”
He thinks. “Nah. More of a spy than a copper.”
“Ooh, I like that.” She tosses the sheets aside, straddles him. Her long brown hair flows over her generous breasts.
“I should’ve brought my little blue pills,” he says.
“From what I seen, you don’t need ’em.”
It’s close to 10:30 when Tommy parks his F-150 down the block from the house Armand Romero rents in Drexel Hill. He decided to scope out the soccer player’s house on his way to his own place in Havertown, which is only about five miles away. Three times he’s gone to soccer-boy’s favorite watering hole and tried to get the guy to open up about Susan, or women in general, share some stories. Armand has been closemouthed about his conquests. If Armand’s cheating on Susan or abusing her, he isn’t going to let Tommy know.
He isn’t even sure at this point that Armand and Susan are still dating. Maybe it’s some other guy who’s causing Susan all her troubles.
He’s about to start the truck when he sees headlights passing him on the left. It’s a white BMW 335i. He knows the car.
He watches her turn the car into Armand’s driveway. After a moment, the lights go off, and she exits the vehicle. Blonde hair over an athletic build. Susan. She walks onto the porch and knocks. The door opens, and she disappears inside.
“So they are still dating,” he says aloud.
From behind him, he sees headlights on a vehicle slowly making its way up the street. The vehicle, large and black, parks just behind his truck. The lights go out, and the passenger-side door opens. He reaches to adjust his rearview to see whoever is approaching, but before he has time, his own passenger side door opens, and the giant climbs in beside him.
“The hell do you want?” he says. He reaches to his right for the pistol he keeps there but is stopped by an iron vice on his forearm.
“You don’t pull back, this will go poorly for you,” says Johnny Giacobetti.
“All right. Let go,” he says as Giacobetti releases his grip.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Nunzio’s enforcer tells him.
“Second time today I heard that.”
“So I’m told.”
He does a double take. “How could you know about that?”
“Mr. Nunzio’s business interests are widespread, and Lehigh County’s not that far away.”
“Nunzio’s mixed up with Elwood Stumpf? Buck Forney?”
“We’re working on something together. But they’re not what I’m talking about when I’m telling you that you’re looking in the wrong direction.” Giacobetti nods toward Armand Romero’s house.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that David Beckham there isn’t your lady boss’s problem.”
“Then who is?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“I’m starting to get pissed off here.”
Giacobetti chuckles. Then his face turns serious. “Speaking of someone being pissed off, Mr. Nunzio isn’t happy about you and your brother poking your noses into things that aren’t your business.”
He stares.
“Every family’s got its skeletons. The Nunzios’ bones need to stay buried.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about a reporter who’s been warned not to spread things around.”
Sid Haltzman. “That was just a friendly conversation with your boss’s lawyer. Everything to be kept confidential. Attorney-client privilege.”
“The reporter was warned.”
He doesn’t like the tone in Giacobetti’s voice. Nunzio’s enforcer will be going after Haltzman unless he can think something up.
“I’d lay off him, I were you. Smart guy like that probably has a safe-deposit box with instructions to be opened in case something bad happens to him.”
“That so? I’ll pass it along.”
“Back to Susan,” Tommy says.
“I’ll be calling you. When I do, you’ll need to move fast.”
“What—”
“Later,” Johnny Giacobetti says, opening the door and climbing out.
As soon as the Escalade passes him, Tommy calls Sid Haltzman. When the reporter picks up, he identifies himself and gets right down to it.
“Do you have a safe-deposit box
with your story about Nunzio in it?”
“No.”
“Well, get one. In fact, get three or four. And be conspicuous about it.”
“Nunzio found out? That we met?”
“I’m pretty damned sure.” He explains about Giacobetti, and his planting the idea into the enforcer’s mind that going after Haltzman might lead to the disclosure of the reporter’s secret story on the Nunzios.
“You think it’ll work? If I make copies and open safe-deposit boxes?”
“I think you have no choice but to try.”
Silence at the other end. Then, “Fuckadoodledoo.”
“Yep.”
30
MONDAY, JUNE 10
Piper’s heart is pounding as she enters the conference room. She knows Susan is waiting for her. A few minutes earlier, Susan buzzed her to let her know a courier had just dropped off the results of the FBI’s forensic testing of the hammer. Piper asked Susan on the phone whether Special Agent Lance Newton had called ahead of time to let her know what the results were, and Susan told her that Newton was out of the country but left instructions that the results be delivered when ready, whether he was back or not.
“Have you opened it yet?” she asks, sitting down next to Susan.
“Here,” Susan says, handing her the envelope. “You do the honors.”
“I feel like I did when I was opening college-acceptance letters,” Piper says, carefully tearing the flap.
The envelope contains a cover letter on stationery identifying it as being sent from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. Under the letter are two reports, one from the FBI’s Latent Print Unit and one from its CODIS unit. The latter, she knows, manages the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and the National DNA Index System, or NDIS.
Taking the first report, the fingerprint analysis, she quickly scans past the details to the conclusion: “Conclusively matched to fingerprints stored in AFIS attributed to Cindy Dowd.”
“It’s her!” She waves the report in her hand. “Cindy was the killer!”
Susan smiles and takes the report, and Piper turns her attention to the report from the CODIS Unit. Piper learned from Melvin Ott that, at the time of Lester Dowd’s murder, the district attorney and police chief were hopeful that the murder instrument would be found, and they wanted to be able to match any blood, tissue, and hair on the weapon to the decedent. At their direction, the pathologist swabbed Lester Dowd’s cheeks to secure material for DNA testing, which was sent to the FBI lab for analysis and inputting into CODIS. The pathologist also ran the blood for blood type.
A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal) Page 25