Day of Reckoning (3 page)

ness. You get a smell for it. Yes, I'd say someone wasted
her.'
'Which means I've got a murder case on my hands.'
'I'd say so. Now I'm about to take off the skullcap, so if
you're not too happy about that, I'd leave.'
'Excellent advice. I'll take it,' said Harry Parker, and he
turned and left.
He
found his way to Abruzzi's office. She was seated at
r
desk, working away.
'I hear you turned up ID on the Jane Doe,' he said. 'Let
me see."
It
t's -an interesting one. She's a reporter for
Truth
maga
zine, named Katherine Johnson. I did a computer printout. Divorced, no children. Her husband was a guy called
Blake
Johnson, FBI'
Parker's
mouth went dry. 'Blake Johnson?'
'That's right. You know him?'
'We've worked together. Except he isn't FBI anymore. He works for the President.'
Jesus
,
is this a hot one, Captain?'
'I'd say as hot as they come. You zip your mouth tight,Serg
eant.'
'If you say so.'
'
Jesus
,'
he said again.
He looked at her. 'You wouldn't hap
pen
to have a bottle of anything here, would you, Sergeant?'
She hesitated, then took a half-bottle of Irish whiskey from
a
drawer in her desk. 'For medicinal purposes,' she said.
And sometimes we need it. Sergeant, you're working for
me now.
I'll take care of things with your lieutenant. The
fi
rst
thing I want you to do is call the White House and
ask for
a woman named Alice Quarmby. Got that? That's Johnson's assistant. I need to talk to her.'
He turned to the window, stared out, and took swig another
from the bottle. Abruzzi called to him, he turned and
the phone.
Alice? Harry Parker. Is Blake there?'
'He's with the President, Harry.'
'Damn.'
There was a pause. 'Is it important?'
So he told her.
In the Oval Office, President Jake Cazalet sat at his desk,
Blake Johnson on the other side, as they reviewed the latest
intelligence reports on the Irish peace process. The Presi
dent's favourite Secret Service man, Clancy Smith, a tall,
black Gulf veteran, stood by the door. The phone rang and
Cazalet picked it up.
'Alice Quarmby, Mr President.'
'Hello, Alice, you want Blake?'
'No, Mr President, I need you.'
He straightened, aware from the tone of her voice that
something was very badly wrong.
'Tell me, Alice.'
She did, and a minute later he replaced the phone and
turned to Blake, genuine pain on his face, for this was a man
he liked more than most, a man who had helped save his
beloved daughter's life, who had saved the President himself
from assassination.
Blake, sitting there in shirtsleeves, papers in front of
him, said, 'What's the problem, Mr President? What did
Alice say?'
Cazalet stood up and walked to the window, watching the
rain drifting across Capitol Hill. He summoned up all his
strength and turned.
'Blake, you're a true friend and one of the finest men I've
known, and I'm going to hurt you now in the most terrible
,
w
ay. At least, thank God, it's me.'
Blake looked puzzled. 'Mr President?'
And Cazalet gave him the dreadful news.
When he was done, he ordered, 'Whisky, Clancy, a large
one.'
Clancy was at the sideboard at once and back within sec
onds with a crystal glass half-filled with bourbon. He handed
i
t to Blake, who stared at it, frowning, then swallowed it
whole. He put the glass down on the desk.
'I'm sorry, Mr President. This is quite a shock. Although
my wife and I were divorced, we've always stayed close, and
now I ... May I phone Alice back?'
'Of course. Use the anteroom for privacy, then we'll
talk.'
'Thank you.' Clancy opened the door and Blake went
out.
'Clancy,' Cazalet said, 'I need a cigarette.'
Clancy found a pack, shook one out, and gave it to him.
'Mr President.'
Cazalet inhaled deeply. 'These got me through Vietnam,
C
lancy. Blake, too, I suspect. What about you? In the Gulf?'
'Long days of boredom, broken by moments of sheer
t
error? Yes sir, a cigarette came in handy now and then.'
C
azalet nodded. 'Old soldiers, the three of us.' He sighed.
'He doesn't deserve this, Clancy. If there's anything we can
do for him, I'd appreciate it.'
'My privilege, Mr President.'
Twenty minutes later Blake returned, his face grey, eyes
burning.
'Is there anything I can do to help, Blake?'
'No, Mr President, except with your permission I need to
get to New York now.'
Cazalet turned to Clancy Smith. 'Make the call and get the Gulfstream ready to take Blake to New York immediately.'
'You got it, Mr President,' and Clancy went out fast.
Cazalet turned to Blake. 'My friend, do you have any kind of idea what happened?'
'No, Mr President.' Blake pulled on his jacket.'But I intend
to find out. And with Harry Parker helping me, that's just
what I'll do.' He held out his hand. 'Many thanks, Mr
President, for your understanding.'
He turned and went out.

3

In Parker's office at One Police Plaza, Blake listened to the whole story. When the police captain was finished, Blake nodded.
'I'd like to hear what Romano said from his own mouth,
then I'd like to see where it happened.'
'Be my guest.' Parker picked up the telephone. 'Have my
car at the front entrance in five minutes.'
Shortly thereafter, still in the rain, that bad March
weather, they stood on the edge of the pier with umbrellas
and looked down into the water covered with scum and
flotsam.
'She was there by the steps,' Parker told him. 'The night watchman saw her. I happened to be walking along.'
'And you pulled her in.'
'I couldn't leave her.'
Blake nodded. 'Let's go and see Romano.' He turned and walked away.
At the morgue, Romano was in the chief medical examiner's
office, drinking minestrone soup from a plastic cup and eating French bread. Parker made the introductions.
Romano said, 'I'm really sorry.'
'Just tell me what you told Harry.'
Romano did.
'So she was murdered?'
'In my opinion, and for what it's worth, yes.'
'But why?' Parker demanded. 'And what would a nice
middle-class lady with an apartment in the Village be doing
in Brooklyn under these circumstances?' They sat silent for
a moment. 'You never had any children, did you, Blake?'
'No.' Blake shrugged. 'It wasn't possible. She was ster
ile, so she concentrated on her career, and I concentrated
on mine. We just kind of drifted apart. But though we
got divorced, we never lost touch. We were always con
cerned friends.' He turned to Romano. 'I'd like to see the
body.'
'No, you wouldn't.'
'Yes, I damn well would.' At that moment Blake looked
every inch the Vietnam veteran.
Parker put a hand on Romano's shoulder. 'George, I'd say
we should indulge the man.'
'Okay, let me phone down.'
She lay on one of the tables under the hard white light.
There were enormous stitched scars where Romano had
opened her up, the same scar around the skull.
Blake felt incredibly detached. This creature had been the love of his life, his wife, his support in many bad times, and
now...
He said, 'I was never all that religious, but human beings
are pretty remarkable. Einstein, Fleming, Shakespeare,
Dickens. Is this what it ends up as? Where's Kate? This
isn't her.'
'I can't give you an answer,' Romano told him. 'The
essence, the life force – it just goes. That's all I can say.'
Blake nodded slowly. 'I'll tell you one thing. She deserved
better, and someone should pay for this.' His smile was the
most terrible thing Parker had ever seen when he said, And
I'm going to see that they do.'
Back at Parker's office, there was a message for him to phone Helen Abruzzi.
'What's new?' Parker asked.
'Well, we checked out Katherine Johnson's house, and it's been burgled.'
'Damn,' Parker said. 'Okay, we'll be right there.' He
turned to Blake and explained. Blake said, 'Let's take a look.' Helen Abruzzi was already there ahead of them when they arrived.
'There's no sign of forced entry, but the study upstairs
has been ransacked. It's hard to tell what's been taken.'
She led the way, opened the study door, and entered. The
s cene of devastation was evident, videotapes scattered all over
the place.
Parker said, 'Anything in the machinery?'
'Not a thing. No disks, no tapes, no copies, nothing in the computer.'
'That smells, for starters.'
Blake said, 'Somebody was after something, Harry, that's obvious, and probably found it. The thing is, what and why?' He turned to Abruzzi. 'Have the crime scene people finished
here?' She nodded. 'Then could you get your people to look
at these tapes littering the floor, Sergeant? You never know. You might turn up something.'
'I'll see to it, sir.'
Blake started down the stairs, and Parker said, 'Now
where?'
'Truth
magazine. I want to see Kate's editor, find out
what she was working on. You don't have to come. You've
got other cases on your hands, Harry. I can handle this on
my own.'
'Like hell you will/ Harry Parker told him. 'Let's get
going.'
The editor of
Truth
magazine, Rupert O'Dowd, was the
kind of middle-aged journalist who'd seen it all, been there,
and done that, and he had little residual faith in human
nature. Nevertheless, sitting in his office in shirtsleeves, he reacted with horror to the suggestion that Katherine Johnson had been murdered.
'Please, tell me, what can I do to help?'
'You can tell us what she'd been involved in lately,'
Johnson said. 'Was she working on anything special, any
thing dangerous?'
O'Dowd hesitated. 'Well, there's a question of journalistic ethics here.'
'And there's the question of my wife being murdered by
the administration of a massive heroin dose, Mr O'Dowd.
So don't play around or I'll make you wish you'd never
been born.'
O'Dowd put up a hand. 'Okay, okay, you don't have to
come down hard.' He took a deep breath. 'She was working
on a big Mafia expose.'
There was silence. Parker said, 'Isn't that old stuff?'
'Only because the Mafia wants you to think that. Let me
explain. The ruling power in the Mafia, the Commission,
right? It called a halt to mob killings in New York in 1992 because of the bad publicity.'
'So?'
'So they started again last year. Five stiffed in Palermo
a month ago, three in New York, four in London. But it's
all different, all back-room stuff you can't connect to them.
They've gone legit. They don't figure in
Forbes
magazine,
but they're easily the biggest company structure in Europe. The drug market in America is saturated, so they've moved
to Eastern Europe and Russia, but now they do it behind an elaborate facade.'
'So what are you saying?' Blake asked.
'That the days of men in gold chains have gone. Now they
wear good suits and sit next to you in the Four Seasons or
the Piano Bar at the Dorchester in London. They are into
construction, property development, leisure, TV. You name
it, they do it.'
There was a pause. Blake said, 'So where did my wife fit
in to all this?'
'As I indicated, these days the new image is everything.
The most influential Mafia group right now is the Solazzo
family. Don Marco is the old devil who runs things, but he
has an extraordinary nephew named Jack Fox. Fox's mother
was Don Marco's niece, so the good Jack is half and half,
though he sounds very Anglo-Saxon. He was a young Marine in the Gulf, a decorated war hero, Harvard Law School, and now he's the respectable face of the Solazzos.'
'And how does this affect Katherine?'
'She managed to get into a relationship with Fox. She was intending to produce a devastating series, not only for
Truth
magazine but also for our TV side.' There was silence, then
O'Dowd said, 'She wanted to get behind that acceptable face
of the Mafia and expose it.'
'Which meant showing the reality behind Fox,' Parker
said.
'And he couldn't have that.' Blake nodded. 'So now we know.' He stood up and said to O'Dowd, 'Play this down.
Trust me. Give us time and you'll get the story Kate wanted.' He held out his hand. 'A bargain?'
'It sure as hell is.'
On the way downstairs, Parker's mobile rang. He answered
and nodded. 'We'll be there.' He turned to Blake. 'Abruzzi.
She's sorted out the videotapes. Wondered if you'd like
a look.'
'Why not?' Blake said.
The study at Barrow Street was much more ordered now,
the videotapes arranged neatly on the shelves.
Helen Abruzzi said, 'I've put the movies on the top two
shelves, the language courses and self-help tapes on the
bottom two shelves.' She turned to Blake. 'There is one
that refers to you, sir. That's what I thought you'd want
to know.'
Blake said, 'What do you mean?'
'The label says: Blake's parents.'
Blake was silent for a moment. 'My parents died when I
was very young. I never knew them. And my wife knew that better than anyone. I'd appreciate you turning that tape on, Sergeant.'
He sat down, Parker stood behind him, and the screen flickered.
'This is just a fail-safe, Blake, my darling, in case anything
goes wrong. As someone who was the pride of the FBI and
whatever you get up to there at the White House, I know you'll find this one way or the other.' She smiled at him.
'These are bad people that I'm trying to expose, the Solazzo
family. Don Marco's like Brando resurrected for
Godfather
IV,
cold, calm, and businesslike, even while he seems like
your favourite grandfather.'
'Jesus!' Harry Parker said.
'But Don Marco is old-school. Jack Fox is different. The genuine all-American hero and Wall Street golden boy.
You'd think he was some Boston blue blood, but instead
he's a cold-blooded psychopath, the worst of them all. Get
in his way and you're dead. Well, I'm going to get
him.
Lull
him to sleep with the first article, then wham! He'll never
know what hit him.'
Blake hammered a clenched fist on a coffee table and Helen
Abruzzi stopped the tape.
'What in the hell are you doing?'
'I'm giving you a chance to breathe deeply. I'm also finding you a drink. Trust me, Sir.'
Parker put a hand on his shoulder. 'She's right, Blake.'
Helen Abruzzi returned with a glass. 'Vodka, it's all I
could find. It was in the freezer.'
'That's what she liked, cold vodka.' Blake drank it down. 'Okay, let's get on with it.'
The screen flickered again. 'I was real lucky. I found a
guy called Sammy Goff, who used to do accounting work
for Jack Fox. Nice guy, very gay and very ill. AIDS, which
is why Fox threw him out. I was having lunch with Fox in Manhattan one day. He left early, and Goff came up to me.
"You look like a nice lady," he said, "so watch it. He's not
good for you."'
A telephone sounded in the background and she went to answer it and returned.
'Okay, Goff was dying and bitter. I cultivated him, and
with three martinis in him he sounded off good, and what
he told me was special. Here's the lead. Fox is front man for
the family. Smart, very clever, but he's always pushing for
more. He's played the market with family money and lost,particularly with the Asian crisis. How much the Don knows about this is unknown to me. He's getting by because he's responsible for the Solazzo flagship casino in London, the
Colosseum. The cash flow from that is critical to him. He
can't milk the family's large interests, the drug market in
Eastern Europe and Russia, for example, but he has personal
cash flow that helps keep him afloat. There's a warehouse
in Brooklyn called Hadley's Depository. The one thing they
store there is whisky. Cheap liquor. The booze is watered
down and then sold to the clubs at a huge profit margin.'
Parker said, 'I can't believe the Don doesn't know.'
Blake waved a hand and Katherine continued. 'Another sideline in London is he's been involved with some heavy
gangsters called the Jago brothers. Armed robbery, that kind
of stuff, Sammy Goff said, always a source of instant cash.
Fox's bad investments in the Far East are draining him. More serious, he's been into arms dealing, too, specifically for the IRA. He helped somebody called Brendan Murphy, a real
hard-liner who didn't like the peace process, not only to
buy arms but to build a concrete bunker in County Louth
in the Irish Republic. There's everything there from mortars
to the kind of machine gun that can shoot down an Army helicopter. Oh, and lots of Semtex.'
'My God,' Helen Abruzzi said softly.
'Goff told me there was also some link with Beirut via
Murphy. Arms for Saddam, that sort of thing. He didn't
have many details on that. The other thing he told me was
that Fox doesn't own a London house. He usually stays in a suite at the Dorchester, but he does have an indulgence. An old castle and estate in Cornwall, in England. Very rural, very remote. Believe it or not, it's called Hellsmouth. Somewhere near Land's End.'