“Hell, Wally, right now your word carries about as much weight with me as a rabbit turd. What’s GameTech all about?”
“GameTech is perfectly legal,” Schanno insisted.
“Then why are you so jumpy? Why won’t you tell me who hired you? What is it that’s making you so nervous if everything’s so legal? Come on, Wally, what’s going on with GameTech? Is GameTech why all these men are dead?”
Wally’s right fist came down on the arm of his chair. “I told you, GameTech’s got nothing to do with anything that’s happened!”
“You keep talking, Wally, but I don’t hear any answers. What are you hiding? What are you so afraid of?”
Schanno gave Cork a fierce glare with his hard gray eyes. His long jaw worked, but he didn’t say a word. He breathed through his nose, deep and fast, and the air moved in and out in angry little whistles.
“All right,” Cork told him coolly, “I’ll tell you what I know, then I’ll tell you what I suspect. Then if I don’t get something more out of you, I’ll give a call to a reporter I know on the St. Paul Pioneer Press. We’ll see how you like it with your name in headlines.”
Cork stood up and walked to the Christmas tree. It was nicely done. Lots of colored bulbs. Garlands. Icicles. Ornaments that looked old and probably conjured memories for the Schannos of Christmases past. More pleasant Christmases than this one, for sure.
“I checked out the GameTech office in Duluth,” Cork told him. “Checked it out this morning. A one-room office in an old building, Wally. No warehouse. No machines, no parts. Just one room. You were doing building security for a company that has one room. And personnel checks? As near as I could tell the only personnel on the GameTech payroll are all consultants like you, paid pretty well for doing nothing. Am I right?”
Schanno looked down at his bandaged leg and didn’t appear to have anything to say yet.
“Ernie Meloux adds the GameTech logo to all the gaming equipment at the casino. He doesn’t know why. Just does what he’s told. The judge bought gaming equipment and leased it to the casino through GameTech. Didn’t even bother to launder the process much. Had the companies ship the equipment straight to the casino, where Ernie added the logo. The lease agreements I saw and the invoices for the equipment made it pretty clear that GameTech’s making a fortune off the arrangement. A nice pool of money for the judge to draw on. And what for? I’d guess that if he didn’t have dirt on somebody, he simply bought them. You and Sigurd Nelson and Stu Grantham and the others. And no one really gets hurt in the end, right? Sure, a little money’s siphoned from all that cash the Indians are raking in. But with so much, who’s to miss it? And the beauty of it is that it’s all perfectly legal. Am I right, Wally? Your hands are clean, aren’t they?”
Schanno’s anger had drained away. His already gaunt face seemed to have caved in. He closed his eyes.
Cork walked to him and leaned close. “But the judge had you by the balls, didn’t he, Wally? You and the others. Maybe you wouldn’t go to jail over it, but if people knew about you and GameTech, an otherwise sterling reputation would be sorely tarnished. A hard way for a man to end his career, eh, Wally?” Cork stood upright. “The night Blackwater shot you, he wasn’t after me. He was after that file you showed me. He was at the judge’s because it was the judge who had been blackmailing him, Wally. And you were there for the same reason, weren’t you? Looking for anything that might implicate you in all this. It didn’t have anything to do with trying to get the truth. Why in God’s name would you ever let yourself get into that kind of bind?”
Schanno turned his head, following the music of Arletta’s singing in the back room. “She’ll only get worse,” he said quietly. “Eventually she’ll require constant care. On a sheriff’s salary, all I could afford is some damn nursing home or institution. I figured the money would let me keep her here somehow, where she’s been happy. Where we’ve been happy.” He listened a minute more, then looked back at Cork. “I couldn’t stand the thought of her somewhere where no one really cared. Do you understand?”
Sure, he understood. But people were dead. And that made a difference. He walked back to the Christmas tree.
“Did the judge ever ask anything of you?” Cork said.
“What do you mean?”
“Anything you thought about twice, anything that ran against your grain?”
“You mean illegal?” Schanno sounded incensed at the idea.
“For God sake, Wally, the man was giving you money under the table. He wasn’t Santa Claus.”
“No,” Wally said, anger again putting a hard edge to his voice.
“What about Joe John LeBeau?”
“What about him?”
“How carefully did you investigate his disappearance?”
“Joe John was a man with a history of drinking and running off. His truck reeked of whiskey. I didn’t spend much time on it at all. Would you?” His eyes narrowed on Cork. “Why?”
Cork went to his coat hanging in the closet. He took out the prints he’d made at Lytton’s. “Take a look at these.”
Schanno lifted his reading glasses from where he’d set them on the gold-leafed Bible in his lap and slipped them on. He spent a couple of minutes looking carefully at the photographs. Finally he turned his face up toward Cork. He looked broken. “I didn’t know. I swear to you, Cork, I didn’t know.”
“I’ll ask again, Wally. Those files you burned. Did you do it to cover your own ass? Did you do it to cover for someone else?”
“No,” Schanno insisted earnestly. “I did it because what was in those files would only bring shame to a lot of decent people. God as my witness, nothing I burned was anything like this.” He nodded toward the photos. “I guess you found the negatives. I’d’ve looked for them myself except for this bum leg. Where in heaven’s name did you find them?”
“About as far from heaven as you can get, Wally.” He reached for the prints; Schanno seemed reluctant to give them over.
“I should keep them,” he said.
“What for?”
“I’ll need to reopen Joe John’s case.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Cork pulled the prints away.
“What are you going to do, Cork?”
“I’ll know that when I’ve finally dug down to the bottom of this whole pile of shit.”
“Maybe it all went down just like it seems,” Schanno said with faint hope. “Blackwater really did kill the judge and Lytton because of blackmail.”
“That theory almost ties everything together nicely, but not quite.”
“What’s left?”
“Two things. First, the judge had a partner. Hell Hanover. I’m pretty sure GameTech is the source of the money the brigade’s been getting. I’ve got documents and photographs I’ll turn over to you later. I don’t care about you and GameTech, Wally. But I want the brigade taken care of.”
“And the other thing?”
“The boy,” Cork said. “Paul LeBeau. He saw something at the judge’s house that scared him into hiding. I want to know what.”
“You’ll have to find him first. I couldn’t.”
“I think I know who can.” Cork stood a moment, looking down at Schanno who seemed to have shriveled in just the few minutes that Cork had been there.
“Did I really do anything so wrong?” Schanno asked, his face sunk deep into hopelessness.
“You stopped looking for the truth, Wally. But I’d guess that’s a sin we’ve all been guilty of.” He turned toward the entryway. “I’ll be in touch.”
He paused at the front door before leaving. He listened to Arletta still singing somewhere in a back room. There was a joyfulness in her voice that carried beautifully the feel of what the season was supposed to be all about. Cork opened the door and stepped outside wondering if Arletta had any idea what awaited her beyond that season.
