More Julius Katz and Archie
Page 23
“You told the crowd that night at Donnegan’s Tavern that your uncle picked the number eight because that was the number of bank robberies he was involved in. While I’m guessing that was said in jest, the FBI believe Eddie Gilroy had robbed seventeen banks, and because of that Gilroy had been under FBI surveillance with the hope that one of his accomplices would contact him. My assistant, Archie Smith, is right now at the FBI building in Boston, and he should be calling any minute now.”
This left my head spinning. I tried to figure out what kind of evidence the FBI could have. If an agent had been watching the front door, that wouldn’t prove anything if they weren’t also watching the back alley, and why would they be doing that? The same thing if they had the building under video surveillance. What could they possibly have?
Katz’s office phone rang. He had a quick, mostly one-sided conversation with whoever was on the line, and seemed satisfied with what he was told. He put the phone on speaker.
“Archie, I have you on speaker,” Katz said. “Please repeat what you just told me.”
“As you know, the FBI had Gilroy’s phone wiretapped,” said a voice that made me think of Constanza from the old Seinfeld show. “The lottery drawing for the big jackpot came on at eleven oh five, and Gilroy received a phone call at eleven twenty-eight. The FBI gave me a copy of the recording. Let me play it.”
The sound quality of the recording was lousy, both scratchy and with a tinny sound, but I could make out my uncle answering the phone with a croak that sounded like, “Yeah?”, and then a cold, snake-like voice that could’ve been Billy Quinn telling Eddie that his nephew was spreading the news at Donnegan’s that he had bought Eddie the winning lottery ticket. The sounds became disjointed and a prickling sensation spread over my face, but even through that I could make out Eddie saying that the caller must’ve had one too many that night because his useless, waste-of-a-space nephew couldn’t be trusted to buy him a lottery ticket, let alone a winning one. Before I even realized what I was doing, I was out of my seat and running for the door. Griff tackled me, yanked my arms behind my back, and cuffed me with the efficiency of a rodeo cowboy. They say lighting never strikes twice? They’re wrong, because while I was being dragged to my feet what had happened hit me like a lightning bolt from the sky, and I could see it all with crystal clarity. It wasn’t possible that I could’ve had the conversation I did with Eddie that night If Quinn or anyone else had called him to tell him about what I was saying at Donnegan’s. If that had happened he would’ve been barking at me about it the moment I woke him up.
“You faked that recording,” I groaned.
“Guilty as charged,” Katz admitted. “At this point, so are you.”
I groaned again as I realized how thoroughly Katz had played me. My voice sounded weak and sickly as I stated the obvious. That the FBI never had Eddie under surveillance.
“Once more, that’s where you’re wrong,” Katz said. “They dropped the wiretap after Gilroy’s stroke, but they had recordings of him for Archie to study, and he’s very good at mimicry.”
“Fooled you, didn’t I?” the voice on the line said, chuckling, and doing a perfect impersonation of my uncle. I realized then that the voice sounded like Eddie before his stroke instead of how he sounded afterward, just like it did on the bogus recording, but it was too late for that knowledge to do me any good.
It was over for me. I knew that. But I wanted at least one small bit of satisfaction. “I screwed up,” I admitted. “But you have to admit my scheme was damn clever.”
Katz wrinkled his nose as if he had just fallen into a sewer. “It was utterly preposterous,” he said. “There wasn’t one chance in a million it would’ve worked. Forget that. Not one chance in two hundred and forty-one million.”
He picked up a newspaper from his desk and began reading it as if I were no longer of any interest to him. I wanted to think of something to say to prove to him how wrong he was, but another lightning bolt struck, and I realized there was nothing to say. If Katz wasn’t in the picture, I would’ve gotten away with my scheme. I was sure of it. But he did get involved, which meant my scheme was doomed from the start.
When a man’s right, he’s right.