Jack measured his own chances. He was back on with Karen because she saw he was trying; the best way to keep it going was to cash in his twenty, grab his pension, get out of L.A. The next two months would be a sprint dodging bullets: the reopening, what Patchett and Bracken had on him. Odds you couldn't figure--for a sprinter he was scared and tired--and starting to feel old. Exley had sprint moves in mind--late dinner meets weren't his style. Bracken and Patchett might deal his dirt in; Parker might quash it to protect the Department. But Karen would know, and what was left of the marriage would go down--because she could just barely take that she'd married a drunk and a bagman. 'Murderer' was one bullet they both couldn't dodge.
Three hours in the air; three hours pent up thinking. The plane touched down at Puget Sound; Jack caught a cab to McNeil.
Ugly: a gray monolith on a gray rock island. Gray walls, gray fog, barbed wire at the edge of gray water. Jack got out at the guard hut; the gatekeeper checked his ID, nodded. Steel gates slid back into stone.
Jack walked in. A wiry little man met him in the sallyport. 'Sergeant Vincennes? I'm Agent Goddard, Prison's Bureau.'
A good handshake. 'Did Exley tell you what it's about?'
'Bob Gallaudet did. You're on the Nite Owl and related conspiracy cases and you think Cohen's cell might have been bugged. We're looking for evidence to support that theory, which I don't think is so farfetched.'
'Why?'
They walked bucking wind-Goddard talked above it. 'Cohen got the royal treatment here, Goldman too. Privileges up the wazoo, unlimited visitors and not too much scrutiny on the stuff brought into their tier, so a bug could have been planted. Are you thinking Goldman crossed Mickey?'
'Something like that.'
'Well, could be. They had cells two doors apart, on a tier Mickey requested, because half the cells had ruined plumbing and you couldn't house inmates in them. You'll see, I've got the whole row vacated and closed off.'
Checkpoints, the blocks--six-story tiers linked by catwalks. Upstairs to a corridor--eight empty cells. Goddard said, 'The penthouse. Quiet, underpopulated and a nice day room for the boys to play cards in. We have an informant who says Cohen got approval on the inmates placed up here. Can you feature the cheek of that?'
Jack said, 'Jesus, you're good. And fast.'
'Well, Exley and Gallaudet carry weight, and the powers that be here didn't have time to prepare. Now check the goodies I brought.'
On the day room table: crowbars, chisels, mallets, a long thin pole with a hook at the end. On a blanket: a tape recorder, a tangle of wires. Goddard said, 'First we tear this tier up. I admit it's a long shot, but I brought a recorder along in case we find tape.'
'I'd call that a maybe. Goldman and Cohen got paroled last fall, but they got bushwacked in July and Davey got his brains scrambled. I'm thinking if he was the one monitoring the tape then maybe he was too wet-brained to pull the machine.'
'Enough gabbing. Let's dig.'
o o o
They dug.
Goddard plumbed a line from the heat duct in Cohen's cell to the heat duct in Goldman's, marked a line on the ceilings of the two cells in between, started probing with a mallet and chisel. Jack pried a protection plate off the duct on Mickey's wall, banged around inside the chute with the hook device. Nothing but hollow tin walls, no wires just inside. Frustrating: it was the logical place to plant a microphone. Heat boomed out the duct; Jack changed his mind, Washington was cold, the heat would be on too much of the time, drowning out conversation. He checked the walls and ceiling for other conduits--nothing--then the area around the vent. Irregularly applied spackling dotted with pinholes right by the protector plate; he smashed his mallet until half the wall came down and a small Spackle-covered microphone dangling off a wire came loose. The wire jerked from his hand, straight back into the wall. Five seconds later Goddard stood there holding it--attached to a tape recorder covered with plastic. 'Halfway between the cells, a little hidey-hole right off the vent. Let's listen, huh?'
o o o
They fired it up in the day room. Goddard hooked up his machine, changed spools, pushed buttons--tape- recorded tape.
Static, a dog yipping, 'There, there, bubeleh'--Mickey Cohen's voice. Goddard said, 'They let him keep a dog in his cell. Only in America, huh?'
Cohen: 'Quit licking your schnitzel, little precious.' More yips, a long silence, a click-off sound. Goddard said, 'I was timing it. Voice-activated mike. Five minutes and it goes off automatically.'
Jack brushed plaster off his hands. 'How'd Goldman get in to change the tape?'
'He must have had some kind of hook thing, like that pole I gave you. The grate on his heat vent was loose, so we know somebody was poking around in there. Jesus, this thing has been in there how long? And Goldman had to have help, this is no one-man operation. Listen, here that click?'
Another click, a strange voice: 'For how much? I'll have that guard place the bet.' Cohen: 'A thousand on Basilio, that little guinea is mean. And take a run by the infirmary and see Davey, my God a goddamn turnip those goons turned him into, I swear I will live to see them in a vegetable puree.' Overlapping voices, mumbles, Mickey cooing, his dog yipping.
Nail the time: Goldman and Cohen had been attacked; Mickey laid down an early bet on the Robinson- Basilio fight last September, he was probably out by then--he got down before the odds dropped.
Click off, click on, forty-six minutes of Mickey and at least two other men playing cards, mumbling, flushing the toilet. The used tape almost gone; click off, click on, the fucking dog yowling.
Mickey: 'Six years and ten months here and to lose Davey's redoubtable brain right before I leave. Such tsurus to go home on. Mickey Junior, quit licking your putt, you faigeleh.'
A strange voice: 'Get him a bitch, and he won't have to.'
Cohen: 'My God to be so nimble and so hung, like Heifetz on the fiddle with his shlong that dog is, and hung like Johnny Stompanato to boot. And on the topic of boots, I read Hedda Hopper's column and see Johnny's putting the boots to Lana Turner, such a crush he's had for so long, she must have a cunt like chinchilla.'
The strange-voice man cracked up. Cohen: 'Enough already, you brownnoser, save some for Jack Benny. Johnny I need now, Johnny I can't locate 'cause he's playing bury the brisket with movie stars. My franchise guys keep getting clipped and I need Johnny to put an ear down for who, but that big dick dago cunt-bandit is nowhere! I want those cocksuckers clipped! I want those shitbirds who hurt Davey to cease residence on this earth!'
Mickey cough, cough, coughed. Strange Voice: 'How about Lee Vachss and Abe Teitlebaum? You could put them on it.'
Cohen: 'Such a shmendrik you are for a confidant, but you do play cribbage good. No, Abe has grown too soft to work muscle, too much grease noshed at his deli, such grease clogs the arteries that inspire mayhem, and Lee Vachss loves death too much to be discerning. Lana, what a snatch she must have, like cashmere.'
The tape ran out. Goddard said, 'Mickey sure does have a verbal style, but what did all that have to do with the Nite Owl case?'
'How's 'nothing' sound?'
CHAPTER SIXTY
One wall of his den was now a graph: Nite Owl related case players connected by horizontal lines, vertical lines linking them to a large sheet of cardboard blocked off into information sections--events culled from Vincennes' deposition. Ed wrote margin notes; his father's call still hammered him: 'Edmund, I'm running for governor. Your recent notoriety may have hurt me, but put that aside. I don't want the Atherton case resurrected in print and tied to your various cases, and I don't want Ray Dieterling bothered. I want you to direct all your queries along those lines to me, and between the two of us we'll work things out.'
He agreed. It rankled. It made him feel like a child--like sleeping with Lynn Bracken made him feel whorish. And too many Dieterling names were popping up on the graph.
Ed crossed lines.
Sid Hudgens lined to the ink smut Vincennes found in '53; the smut lined to Pierce Patchett. Line to: Christine Bergeron, her son Daryl and Bobby Inge, smut posers who disappeared almost concurrent with the Nite Owl. Have Fisk and Kleckner initiate a new search for them; attempt to identify the other posers--one more time.
