“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, in real life, when Al Capone was convicted and sent to prison, it was for income tax evasion, not the murders or numerous violent crimes he committed. It was the accountants who got him, the “bean counters” as you call them. With Louie Panozzo's accounting records, you could control a five-state area, perhaps even the government in Washington itself. That's what makes them the most explosive bits of computer code since the Manhattan Project, and whoever has them has his finger on the trigger.”
“So it wasn't simply a matter of Panozzo holding a news conference and saying he made the whole thing up?”
“That was pure propaganda. Do you think Jimmy Santorini would let that little weasel off the hook just because he stood up and said he didn't mean it? No, no, it was the books. It was always the books. Panozzo couldn't trade them to the Feds or to Rico Patillo, and he couldn't give them back to Jimmy, either. That was their little secret you see — Louie's and Jimmy's – and the only thing keeping him alive. As long as Louie had them, no one could touch him.”
My mind flashed back to that night on the embalming table. “Tinkerton did.”
“When Tinkerton learned that Panozzo was coming back to us, he grabbed Louie before he could get away. Perhaps he said something wrong, perhaps he tried to run bluff; but Tinkerton decided to torture the truth out of him. If he knew what was really on them, he would have been more careful, but Panozzo was overweight and out of shape. We assume he had a heart attack. Whatever, we know Tinkerton failed to get them.”
“Tinkerton told me it was an accident, he went too far.”
“That is quite likely the truth. And then you showed up,” Billingham turned and studied me. “Permit me to be blunt, Mister Talbott, but do you have them? Everyone believes you do. We can make you fabulously wealthy, and I will personally guarantee your safety and Mrs. Kasmarek's. All we want to do is destroy them. We'll even permit you to destroy them, if I can be there to watch. However, your clock is ticking. If Rico Patillo catches you first… well, you saw what he is capable of doing in Boston. He would kill you, kill her, and kill your mother, your dog, and your mother's dog, and that would be on a good day.”
“How does Patillo figure into this?”
“The first thing they teach a young prosecutor is to ask who benefits. So far, it is Rico Patillo who keeps coming up the big winner. Him, Senator Hardin, and your friend Ralph Tinkerton, and I would dearly love to find the link that ties them all of them together. As for the losers? Jimmy is in Marion and I'm walking around with two bodyguards.”
“That's why you are going to help me, Charley.”
“Me? And why would I want to do that?”
“Because I'm your last hope. Yours and Jimmy's. I need you to pull together everything you have and everything you can find on Panozzo and his wife, Clement Aleppo, Richie Benvenuto, Johnny Dantonio, Paulie Mantucci, and their wives. I need medical records, dental records, blood types, all that stuff. I also need you to pull together everything you can find on the Greene Funeral Home, the Varner Clinic, and Oak Hill Cemetery in Columbus. Who owns them, their tax records, everything.”
“Is that all?” He chuckled.
“No, I need you to do a little research for me,” I said as I handed him a slip of paper.
He opened it and read the names, “Skeppington, Brownstein, Pryor, and Kasmarek, Atlanta, Phoenix, Portland, and Chicago?... Kasmarek?” he looked over at the doorway.
“I'm not keeping her around for personal comfort, Charley. They buried “the Mole” under her ex-husband's name in Oak Hill Cemetery in Columbus, and she's got proof. Louie Panozzo and his wife are buried under my name and my wife's. He won't match my Army records, and his wife won't match my wife's hospital records in California, either. They buried your other New Jersey friends under those other names. Tinkerton murdered them, and you'll find his signatures all over the records. And I think those guys barely scratch the surface. There are more graves up there.”
Billingham stared at me, perhaps with a newfound appreciation. “You never cease to surprise, Mr. Talbott.” We had come around full circle to the arch, and I stopped. Billingham pulled a long, Cuban cigar out of his coat pocket, bit off the tip, and lit it slowly with a wooden match. As I watched his face, I could see the wheels turning.
“You are a sharp lawyer with plenty of resources,” I told him. “Dig out the two sets of death certificates, get photos of the two sets of headstones and find a sympathetic judge. That ought to be enough to get a warrant to dig up the Talbott graves in Columbus. That should bring Tinkerton's house of cards crashing down, and give you the wedge you need to file some prosecutorial misconduct charges to get your boss out of jail.”
“Prosecutorial misconduct?” Billingham looked down at the slip of paper, thinking. “Possibly, but it's a stretch.”
“Really?” I reached in my pocket and handed him the Massachusetts driver's license. “Who's this guy?”
Billingham frowned. “Tony Grigiatto, “Tony G,” a button man for Rico.”
“He was waiting for us in the alley last night in Boston with a gun and a silencer. They had a whole crew up there and that means Rico Patillo is working for Tinkerton.”
“No, Mister Talbott,” Billingham shook his head sadly. “You have that backwards, it means that Tinkerton is working for Rico Patillo. As I said, this is all about power and if you do have those computer files, you should tread very, very softly.” He started to turn away and then he looked back and paused. “But, if you don't mind my asking a personal question, why are you doing all this?”
“Because I want off the merry-go-round. I want us both off,” I pointed across the street. “They won't leave us alone, so I'm going to bring them down.”
“You? You are going to “bring them down?” Billingham smiled, amused by the naivete of my answer. He took a deep drag on the cigar and tipped his head up, exhaling a thick cloud of cigar smoke. It hung around his head under the umbrella in the damp air. “Then I wish you good luck, Mister Talbott,” he said. “We'll both need it.”
Billingham had just tipped his umbrella to the east and turned away again, when I heard a loud, painful grunt come out of him. His eyes bulged and he lurched forward as if he had been punched in the back. He staggered forward with a puzzled expression as the blow drove him to his knees. He dropped his umbrella and toppled into me. As thick and bulky as he was, the best I could do was to catch him and slow his fall, lowering him to the sidewalk in front of me. I knew immediately that he had been shot in the back. He was lying on his side looking up at me, wide-eyed, trying to breathe.
I ran my hand across his back. I felt a jagged tear in the back of his coat, between the shoulder blade and his spine, but I felt nothing wet. I pulled my hand away. No blood? I put my hand back and felt around in the tear until I found something small and hard. I pulled it out and found myself looking at a spent bullet. That was when I realized he was wearing a bulletproof vest under the top coat. The bullet hadn't penetrated, but might have broken a few ribs as it slammed into him, flattened, and knocked the wind out of him.
“A goddamned Kevlar vest, Charley?” I said. “You gotta be kidding.”
“Like I said.” He wheezed painfully. “In this city, one can never be too careful.”
I turned and tried to determine where the shot came from, but I couldn't tell. Suddenly another bullet zipped past my head and grazed the concrete sidewalk behind me, kicking up chips and sparks. From the way it ricocheted, it must have come from the north, and high above. I looked around the nearly-empty park, but there was no one within several hundred feet of us who could possibly have gotten off a shot like that, much less two. They must be using a rifle with a silencer, shooting from one of the rooftops.
Billingham's eyes were wide open. He clutched my arm and tried to pull himself up, but I pushed him back down. I propped our two umbrellas out in front of him, screening both of us from view to the north and east where the shots must have come from.
“Stay down!” I told him as I crouched behind the umbrella too. The thin nylon would never stop a bullet, but what the gunman couldn't see, he wasn't likely to hit.
Billingham's two guards had been facing away from us, and it wasn't until the second bullet skipped off the pavement that they also realized something was wrong. They dropped into defensive stances with their guns out scanning the side streets.
“No, up north,” I screamed at them, wanting to make sure they knew it wasn't me who shot their boss. “It must be a rifle, up on one of the roofs.” They both nodded.
“Thank you,” Billingham pulled me to him and whispered. “Thank you.”
