Kill for Thrill (20 page)

“Listen, you gotta believe me. I’m just holding the gun for a guy.”

“Oh yeah. I’ve heard it all be before, Danny,” Condemi said.

“No. Really. The guy’s name is Michael Travaglia.”

Five sets of eyes drilled into Daniel Montgomery as time seemed to stand still. Amity spoke first. “How do you know Michael Travaglia?”

“He came in here about an hour ago. He wanted me to go with him and John over to their room at the Edison. When we got there, he handed me the gun and the bullets.”

“Go on,” Amity said.

“He told me to hold ’em for him. He said he killed a cop with it and he needed to get rid of it for a while.” Montgomery pleaded with his eyes for the detectives to believe him.

Amity studied Daniel for a moment. “All the same, you’re coming with us,” he said as he pulled Montgomery’s arms behind him and slipped handcuffs on the mountaineer. The six men disappeared down Exchange Way.

When the group of detectives arrived in the alley behind the Edison Hotel, Daniel Montgomery was seated, handcuffed, in the backseat of Frank Amity’s car next to Tony Condemi. Condemi had the disappointing task of babysitting Montgomery, while the remaining four detectives checked out his story at the Edison Hotel. As the men assembled in the tiny parking lot at the corner of Garrison Place and French Street, close enough to see the Edison but not be seen by its occupants, they quickly gave their equipment a once over and then let Frank Amity know that they were ready.

At 9:45 p.m., Amity and his squad entered the lobby of the hotel. Seated behind the shabby counter was Albert Bortz, the night manager. Amity flashed his shield to the unimpressed innkeeper.

“Who’s in room 616?” he asked.

The innkeeper nonchalantly slid the guest register out from under the desk, thumbed through it and paused.

“You need a warrant or something?” he asked.

“No. Who’s in room 616?”

He eyed the detectives skeptically. Hopelessly outnumbered, Bortz flipped to the page and read off the names. “Michael Simmons and John Lesko.”

Simmons was an alias for Travaglia, he thought. He nodded to his team. “We need to get into that room. You have a pass key?”

“Sure. You’re sure you don’t need a warrant?”

“I’m sure.”

The manager grabbed a thick, jangly ring crammed full of keys and headed for the elevator in the middle of the lobby.

“Let’s take the stairs,” Frank said to him, and Bortz veered off course and headed toward the stairwell.

The five officers, guns drawn, crept up the stairs behind Albert Bortz as he wound his way up six flights. Frank Amity lead the way as, step after step, they inched closer and closer to a confrontation with two men they knew were capable of killing a police officer and were likely to choose a hail of gunfire over a quiet surrender.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Amity turned to his men and quickly checked them. Once he was sure that the other detectives were set, he motioned for the manager to open room 616. Albert Bortz stepped up to the door and quietly slid the key into the lock. Gently turning it, he stepped back and nodded to Frank Amity.

Night had fallen on quiet Apollo, Pennsylvania. The darkness of the January sky that blanketed the valley seemed a bit thicker and more oppressive to the men and women who had gathered at the tiny little police station on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Every inch of the station held reminders of Leonard Miller. Chief Rick Murphy, Officers Robin Davis, Jim Clawson, Jack Gibbons, Mark Fetterman and a handful of others who knew Leonard Miller as a close personal friend had come together to mourn the loss of a gentle soul and heroic man.

Apollo mayor William Kerr, as stunned and grief-stricken as the officers, met with them to share his condolences, as well as to offer the encouraging news that the state police felt confident that they were closing in on Leonard’s assailants. The sincere words offered little comfort in the chilling Apollo squad room filled with long, drawn faces and puffy eyelids.

Stoic under the toughest conditions, these officers took no shame in the tears that crept down their faces, barely offering to conceal them. Words filtered around the room, fleeting smiles came and went and Leonard’s legacy was shared among his colleagues. The long process of healing in this warrior’s world was beginning. The rituals of death that so permeate police culture and are so necessary for closure had begun.

These officers knew that in three short days, hundreds of uniformed men and women would line the streets of this town and join them to honor one of their own. Outsiders would stand by and watch with awe and respect as the seemingly endless line of police cars snaked its way behind the sleek black hearse up Second Street and out to First Lutheran Church, wondering and trying to understand.

The honor guard, with military precision and tear-stained, grey granite faces, would escort Leonard past his parents and into the church and stand guard among the throng of mourners hoping to say one last goodbye to the man whom they wished they had known better—or at all.

Thousands would file past the flag-draped coffin carrying Leonard home, solemnly and hopefully praying for a peaceful rest for the man whose life was taken in utter hatred and violence so soon before his time and so senselessly.

In three days, this would all come to pass. Nevertheless, for now, the ritual shared among these few, the ones for whom Leonard’s death meant more than most, would be a private affair—closed to outsiders. At this moment in time, the ultimate show of solidarity, the thread that runs deep among all police officers and across all generations, pulled these men and women together for one last time to speak in soft, wavering voices; to speak the words of comfort that attempt to make sense of a senseless act.

Mortal men can scarcely comprehend a death that touched so many, and yet, it is mortal men whom we expect to bring sense out of it. With Leonard’s passing, the fleeting and fragile flame of compassion wavered in the night and, for a moment, was snuffed out. But, as with hope, compassion is an eternal flame borne by the men and women who honor him, and it sparked anew here in the somber little station house fifty miles from where Michael Travaglia and John Lesko awaited the rush of police detectives. For as Leonard touched so many, he passed on that flame with the confident knowledge that no sacrifice, great or small, could forever extinguish it. Leonard served with honor, with pride and with dignity; and in his death, these men and women grieved. Yet in his honor, they would carry on the flame of compassion and service that he so clearly sparked.

As the quiet collection of officers filed from the station, the process of healing and understanding was still years from complete. However, in those moments of shared private communion, the reality of man’s mortality and the fragility of life had been pushed a little bit farther toward the backs of their minds. The communal grief shared by these brothers in arms would allow them to lay their heads on their pillows, rise again in the daylight and once more feel the tug of forty pounds of leather, steel and lead against their hips. They would move forward and carry on the honorable calling that they had shared with Leonard—their hearts would be heavier, but they would carry on.

The door to room 616 flew open, rebounded off the wall and clattered back into Frank Amity as he stormed into the room. A thunderous chorus of police commands and shouted orders exploded in the air as the remaining four men ran headlong behind him into the room.

Michael Travaglia was dressed in jeans and a torn sweatshirt, and a look of utter shock flashed onto his face. Staring at the men, his eyes leapt first to one, then to another and then to the doorway. He leapt to his feet and sprang toward the open door. The room was polluted with police officers.

As he sprinted for the door, a detective took a step to his left and cut off his escape route. With no path to freedom, two detectives pounced on him and immediately wrestled him to the ground. A grunt escaped his lips as his body fell beneath the weight of two burly detectives. With one on each arm, they forced his flailing hands behind his back and snapped first one and then the other handcuff onto him.

On the other side of the tiny room, Frank Amity had cornered John Lesko. He stood motionless beside the bed. His face was blank, emotionless, and he stared into Amity’s eyes without actually seeing. In a flash, John reached beneath the sheet and seized the .22-caliber revolver hidden there. As Lesko raised the revolver toward Amity, Frank began screaming for him to drop the gun. As John Lesko’s arm raised higher and higher, Frank Amity’s right index finger pulled tighter and tighter. When Frank had about six pounds of trigger pull on the seven-pound trigger, John Lesko’s face registered an epiphany. Apparently sensing immediate death and choosing to live to fight another day, John relaxed his grip on the gun and let the revolver slip from his grasp. As the .22 clattered to the floor, Frank wondered if John Lesko knew just how close he had come to being on the business end of a .357-caliber bullet.

Once the revolver hit the floor, Amity and the two remaining detectives leaped onto Lesko and wrestled him to the carpet. Without resistance, John slipped to the ground and placed his arms behind his back. The
clack-clack
of a pair of Smith & Wesson handcuffs was music to Frank Amity and his partners’ ears. It signaled the end of a tortuous manhunt.

John Lesko and Michael Travaglia were in custody. After a weeklong rampage spanning three counties, police had apprehended them without exchanging a single shot. Frank Amity, Tony Condemi, Regis Liberi, Ronald Freeman, John Leckei and the other men of Pittsburgh’s homicide bureau had been victorious.

Police led the two men down from room 616 and through the lobby where they had so recently targeted and kidnapped their victims. As they walked from the hotel to the waiting police cruisers, there was a sigh of relief that escaped along the valley and up the three rivers. The police had finely arrested these murderous, violent men. The system upon which we all rely to keep society safe had succeeded, and justice would force these barbarous monsters to take responsibility for the heinous acts they had committed.

As the ebullient officers exchanged handshakes and high-fives, the two damaged men disappeared down Penn Avenue in a cloud of exhaust and gently dancing snowflakes. Now en route to Western Avenue’s police headquarters, Michael Travaglia and John Lesko’s reign of terror was over.