“Later murdered,” I said, “and Dunbar thinks it was by Sanabria, and Bertoli was a witness.”
“You got it.”
“You think Sanabria hired this Darius guy to kill Bertoli?” Ken asked.
“No way,” Mike said. “He would’ve handled that in-house.”
“It was his car at the scene.”
“It was registered to him. One of about nine vehicles he had registered to him or his shop. When Bertoli died, Darius was at a party at a nightclub, which I verified by their security tapes.”
“So maybe it’s a meaningless connection,” Ken said.
“Could be, but Darius Neloms was connected to Dominic Sanabria and Johnny DiPietro, had gone to jail for working with them on stolen cars in the past. If somebody in their crew wanted to borrow a car, Darius was a likely source.”
“Why in the hell would they borrow a car,” I said, “instead of stealing one?”
Mike smiled. “Look at the result. I spent time chasing leads on Darius—and don’t kid yourself into thinking the Italians viewed him as some sort of compatriot. A bunch of racist fucks, those guys. They’re not above working with a black guy to bring in some dollars, but they damn sure aren’t going to worry about redirecting police his way, either.”
“You talk to Darius?”
“Uh-huh, and got nothing. ‘I own lots of cars, lots of people have access to them cars, no way I could possibly remember who might’ve been driving that car on that night.’ ”
“What was your sense of him?”
“That he was lying, of course—but was he lying with a real purpose? Guy like Darius Neloms, he doesn’t necessarily need the extra motivation to lie to me. See a badge, lie to the badge.”
“So that’s where the case died?”
“That’s where it died. I ran that up the ladder, you know, showing there was at least a weak link between one of the cars and Sanabria, but of course it wasn’t enough. No evidence for a homicide, nobody talking to us, the FBI boys embarrassed by the whole thing because of Dunbar, it’s almost surprising I got that far with it.”
I saw the waitress headed our way again and figured this time the food would be ours, and that meant Mike wasn’t going to be answering any more questions for a while. Best to slide in one more while I had his attention.
“A few minutes ago you made a good point, saying that Dunbar’s version is the only official one, since the whole damn circus he put together was so
Mike nodded, waiting.
“So I’m wondering—did you believe that version? That one unsupported but also unconfirmed version?”
Mike said, “Look, Dunbar was one of a group of FBI guys that did some righteous work on the mob around here. Put a lot of those boys in prison.”
“But?”
“But Dunbar also wore a suit every day, and one of the rules I’ve developed after twenty years at this game, Lincoln, is never trust a man in a suit.”
21
__________
A mazing, the way one fact can change your entire perception of something.
John Dunbar was
His plan had been terrible, too, a perversion of an old cop game that had never worked well in my experience—planting a snitch in a jail cell. There were plenty of narcs in the prison system, and it was a tactic that had been used for decades, generally off the books, and rarely well. The problem was that the snitches lied, that they had no credibility in court, and that the targets were rarely anywhere near as stupid as required for the tactic to work. Joshua Cantrell had effectively played the role of a jail cell snitch in his own home, welcoming Bertoli in and trying to talk to him about a mob hit. Made it a great deal more difficult to be sneaky about that sort of thing when your wife was the sister of the suspect. They could have concealed that from Bertoli initially—and surely did, otherwise I couldn’t imagine he’d have actually agreed to the parole assignment—but eventually it would have had to surface, wouldn’t it?
Yes, it was stupid, and Dunbar had known that all along; otherwise he wouldn’t have operated without FBI approval, and that made me wonder about both his motivations and his story. I hadn’t doubted him at first, not in our initial talk, but at the time I had felt like everything he said was a breakthrough, had been almost overwhelmed by the story he told. Now I looked back on it, playing through the conversation again in my mind, looking for holes, signs of lies.
There were dozens of them. Maybe. Or the whole story could have been entirely truthful. No way to know because every other person who could confirm it was dead or missing, and had been for years.
Except for Parker Harrison.
He was on my mind during our drive back from Murray Hill, and because of that it didn’t feel like much of a surprise when I checked the office voice mail and found a message from him.
The request was simple this time, no tips or names or suggestions. Harrison wanted to see me that evening, if possible, and he wanted me to be alone. He didn’t leave any other details, just said he’d be home after five and repeated that he wanted it to be only me.
I played the message on speakerphone, so Ken heard it, too.
“Guy doesn’t seem to like me, does he?” he said.
“Your client relationship does seem a bit strained.”
“Because he knows damn well he’s not really a client. The way we tried to play it didn’t fool him. Not enough, at least.”
“Not at all, would be my guess,” I said.
There were no messages from Graham, even though we’d been late getting back from Murray Hill, almost two thirty, and Graham had predicted an arrival time of one. I assumed he would’ve called if he’d come in early, though; it was too long a drive to give up on us just because nobody was at the office.
I kept staring at the phone, even though the blinking message light was now gone, nobody but Harrison leaving words behind for me. I wished Joe would call, so I could throw all of this at him, let him offer some perspective. It had been a few days since we’d last talked.
“I’ll tell you what,” Ken said, “the more I think about it, the more I wonder what Harrison did out there. Or what he saw. We’re making sense of everything else, slowly but surely. We understand Bertoli’s role now, know that they were trying to use him as a witness and it went bad—but Harrison? I can’t make sense of him. Not even close.”
Nor could I. Or Graham, or Dunbar, or Mike London. A lot of people had considered Harrison, and nobody had made sense of him yet.
While I was staring at the phone and pondering Harrison, there were footsteps on the stairs, and then the door opened without any knock and Quinn Graham entered. He was dressed sharp—black pants with a gold shirt and black-and-gold tie, and when I looked at him I thought of Mike London’s warning never to trust a man in a suit and smiled. Most detectives wore suits every day. Only a guy like Mike could distrust the daily wardrobe of his own peers.
“Happy to see me?” Graham said, noting my amused face.
“Sure, Graham. We’re elated.”
He shook hands with Ken and then took a chair, looked at me, and spread his hands. “Brother, this better be good. I’ll tell you something about the drive between my home and here—it ain’t pretty. Not gonna be on anyone’s scenic route list real soon. I keep making it, though, because of you boys, because of Linc and Kenny. Hope you appreciate that.”
“Graham, you’ll be thanking us by the time you leave,” I said. “We’ve made some breakthroughs for you,
