that, the assassin U-turned his rental car to get back onto Minnesota 3 South which would take him to 494 and, eventually, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Because of the M.O., Dante Stagnaro got word of the Madrid hit off the FBI wire and was on Northwest flight 350 at 6:45 a.m. He was met around noon by Bob Carman, Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis FBI office. Carman was caricature FBI-blue-black hair, blue eyes, blue suit, blue tie, blue sedan.
“Thanks for bringing me in on this,” said Dante.
Carman chuckled as they shook hands, smile lines creasing his lean cheeks, tanned even in a Minnesota winter. Dante wondered if a sunlamp was involved.
“It was actually Rudy Mattaliano, your federal prosecutor buddy in New York, who gave you a good report card, Stagnaro. The car is this way. The incident occurred over in St. Paul.”
The freeway took them east and then north toward the tract bungalow on Robie Street where Spic Madrid had been a few hours before becoming an incident on an FBI report form. The skies were gray and cold; pockmarked snow lay on the banks flanking the freeway.
“New York feels this ties in with something you’re working on out in San Francisco,” said Carman in an insinuating voice.
“I wouldn’t see Madrid associated with my case in any way, except that he was in Vegas last week at the same time as some of those who might be involved. So… maybe. And from what I heard of the M.O.-small-caliber weapon, one up the nose…”
“Professional hit all the way,” agreed Carman sternly.
He got them off the freeway on Concord, drove a few blocks north and doglegged over to Robie. There was slush in the gutter; frozen footprints between street and sidewalk made walking precarious; Dante got a wet foot.
The frost-crazed walk was slippery with new ice; the February thaw had ended with drizzle and then a freeze the night before. The house, like most of the others in the block, was probably from the 1920s, white frame, squat and narrow, with a veranda and peeling green shutters. A small jet shrieked by overhead on its takeoff from Holman Field beyond the freeway. Their breaths went up in white puffs. Dante was shivering inside his inadequate San Francisco topcoat.
The two men acknowledged the uniformed cop on duty outside the house in greatcoat and gloves, ducked under the yellow crime scene tape; the seals were not yet fixed to the door, so they entered, switching on lights in the early afternoon. The only room used was the living room, its only furnishings a table that had served as a desk, a swivel and two straight-backed chairs, a broken-down couch. Table lamp, telephone with two lines, TV set. The heat was off, it was cold.
“Classy,” said Dante. His wet foot was freezing.
“Local cops tell me Madrid used it only to coordinate the street sales. Just a few years ago this was mostly Latino, but a lot of Hmongs from the Laos highlands have diluted the mix.”
“Did Madrid deal to them, too?”
“Maybe,” said Carman without too much interest. “But word is they made him nervous, so the only people who ever came here were his direct lieutenants. Not so dumb, at that.”
“Until last night,” said Dante.
The body had been removed and the place dusted for prints and vacuumed for fibers, but otherwise was untouched. White tape outlining a hologram of someone sitting in the swivel chair tipped backward over the desk. There was quite a lot of black-dried blood puddled around the taped outline of the head.
“He was talking with his wife on the phone when he got it. And his bodyguard probably met the hitman coming down the walk.”
Dante looked sharply over at Carman. “Courtesy absence? Warned off by the killer?”
“The locals don’t think so. He’s Madrid’s nephew and was devoted to him. Madrid was drunk, sent him out for tequila and limes. Another nephew also was killed last night a few miles south of here in a little town called Coates.”
“Open season?” mused Dante.
“That one looks like a simple knifing after a wedding dance, but you could be right-a straight power play by other locals. Madrid was a vicious bastard, climbed over a lot of widows and orphans on his way to the top of the pyramid.” He stopped with a short, almost bitter laugh. “Allegedly.”
Dante was trying to visualize the hit from the taped outlines on chair and desk. “Anything else odd about this one?”
“The killer left the gun behind-no fingerprints on it.”
“Jennings J-22, maybe? Only one round in it? Sprayed with Armor All? And he gave his overcoat away afterwards, maybe?”
“Yeah, Armor All. And yeah, he gave the overcoat to the nephew.” He added sternly, “Okay, Stagnaro. Give.”
“Popgun Ucelli out of Jersey. Either him or someone who knows his M.O. and is using it. Your Organized Crime people have a running tap on his phone…”
Carman was already turning away toward the phone. Another airplane shrieked by low overhead, rattling the windows in their shrunken frames. A taped X on the edge of the desk marked where the killer had set down the murder gun after using it.
“He’s sitting at the desk, talking on the phone, hears something behind him,” Dante said aloud, more to himself than Carman, “and thinks it’s the bodyguard coming back. He turns, the pistol is pressed against the bridge of his nose, whap! he’s dead meat.” He shivered with the cold, looked over at Carman. “How many shots?”
Carman held up one finger, then opened his hand, palm toward Dante, in a stop motion as he listened to the phone. He grunted a few times, said thank you, and hung up shaking his head.
“They didn’t have an eyeball surveillance on Ucelli. They’ll send somebody out to see if he’s in town, but…”
“Yeah. If he was here he’ll be back in Jersey by now.”
Dante spent the day reading the papers they’d found in Spic’s office. Nada. Dinner was with Carman and the homicide cop in charge of the investigation, a thick-bodied German named Heidenreich. Ucelli was in residence in Jersey but could have been away for as long as a week before the Madrid hit. They’d had no eyeball of him during those seven days, hadn’t picked him up on any of the voice-activated surveillance tapes.
The next day with Heidenreich was fruitless. That night Dante caught the 10:15 Northwest nonstop to SFO. In-flight, in a New York Times the flight attendant brought, he read about the murder he had just been watching being investigated.
This one would go into the St. Paul Police Department open file. No one would bust his butt on it. Local slaying of local slime, no connection between Madrid and Atlas Enter tainment, the parallels with the Moll Dalton and Jack Lenington hits genuine coincidences. They happened.
Dante spooned up behind the sleeping Rosa in their double bed and went hard asleep, so it wasn’t until he got up the next morning that he saw the blinking light on the answering machine. He rewound the message without the slightest premonition.
The voice was obviously Latin, slurring the English words in that liquid south-of-the-border singsong now becoming so familiar to anyone living in California.
“Hey, senor, thees ees Raptor. I bushwack heem in the arroyo. Cure hees postnasal dreep. Mucho diversion, verdad?”
PART FOUR
A man can die but once: we owe God a death…let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the
