Operation Bamboozle (12 page)

The medical examiner's cigar smoke drifted in and out of the brightness. “Here's how they found him, Dan,” he said. “Hasn't been touched. Say when and we'll turn him over.”

Brennan circled the body. “Okay, go ahead.”

It took four cops to do the job, what with the gorse and the bramble and the weight. Half of Frankie Blanco's face seemed pleased to see them: his lips were dragged back in a big grin. The other half looked terrified. The eyes were bloodshot and they
bulged painfully. After one glance, no-one wanted to look at the eyes.

The examiner worked fast. “Subject to the usual caveats,” he said, “I can see no evidence of assault. I'm told there was gunfire, right? Well, none of it caused this death.”

“So what's your best guess?” Brennan said.

The examiner got his cigar working again. “Heavy smoker,” he said. “Look at the nicotine fingers. Overweight, look at the belly. Presumably he was climbing this slope. My best guess? Heart attack. But I'll have to look inside to be certain of it. Can I get back to my poker game now?”

Brennan and Fitzroy clambered up to the house.

“Sometimes I am so brilliant I terrify myself,” Brennan said. “Your kid Murphy chased our John Doe up that hillside, didn't he? He blazed away and missed, his Hollywood cannon being not the ideal weapon on a black night in these badlands. It scared poor John, though, and he ran too hard, and his motor blew up. Anything to add?”

Fitzroy was silent.

“Now your kid Murphy gets lost. Wanders onto the next property, which is owned by a retired cop, no mean shot, at whom Murphy waves his trusty six-shooter, which is like blowing your own brains out. They make a fine pair: John Doe's body and kid Murphy's brains. We should bury them together in the same box. You gonna pay?”

Fitzroy shook his head.

“Cliff Boulevard, for Chrissake. The mayor lives here. There's a retired admiral here. A judge, a surgeon, God knows how many lawyers. You must have cement for brains. See me tomorrow.”

Brennan went into the house. “You're all free to go. You especially,” he told Tony Feet. “Hurry back to Chicago. Our climate doesn't suit you. And you,” he said to Lutz, “you should be ashamed, at your age, mixing with suicides.” That got everybody's attention. “Two bodies in the bushes. One went looking for trouble and it found him. The other had a heart attack that would kill a moose, not surprising considering he measured bigger around the belly than your average moose. Thanks for the coffee, Mrs. Conroy.”

“I've had a thought, captain,” Luis said. “We're new to your city but as it happens I know a lawyer who can vouch for me. James de Courcy, of Maclean, de Courcy and Gould.” Brennan
gave him a long look. “He's known me for ages,” Luis said. “Colleagues, during the war.”

“We'll go and see him.”

Luis gave him a short look. “It's gone ten. He won't be in his office. You can always call him tomorrow.”

“No, we'll go and see him now.”

“I'll come too,” Julie said. “I played tennis with James. He's nice. You'll like him.” Brennan's eyes widened, briefly. He was not accustomed to meeting nice people so late at night.

As his car reached the road, an ambulance was being loaded. “Feel like taking a look at the heart attack?” Brennan said. “Maybe you know him.”

Julie watched them go. A medic lifted the sheet, and they looked and they came back: a scene from so many cop movies that all it needed was a soundtrack. A weary tenor sax would do. Even the slow throb of a string bass. “Total stranger,” Luis told her.

After that, nobody spoke until they reached the 777 building.

“Bet you a dollar he's not up there,” Luis said.

“Cops don't gamble,” Brennan said. “It might corrupt us.”

The elevator boosted them comfortably to the fifteenth floor. The doors slid open and there was nothing to see except a clump of people. No desks, no chairs, no telephones, no bookshelves, no file cabinets, no framed diplomas on the walls. “He's gone,” Luis said. He walked into de Courcy's office. Nothing remained. The thick redwood desk had gone, and the rows of leatherbound lawbooks, and the portrait photographs of members of the Supreme Court looking pretty damn sure of themselves. He came back. “There was an old brass nameplate here,” he said. “It stood right here. Polished so that it shone.”

“Never put your faith in brass nameplates,” Brennan said.

“How could he just …” Luis couldn't bring himself to finish.

“Where are the other two?” Julie asked. “Maclean and Gould?”

“Don't exist,” Brennan said.

“He told me they were in court,” Luis said. “Arguing cases. In Dallas. And Houston.”

“I guess you didn't check with the Texas Bar Association,” Brennan said. “No, most people don't.”

“I can't believe this,” Luis said. “James was one of us. He worked for British Counter Intelligence against the Russians. Got shot in the leg.”

“Bad limp, huh? Do something for me, Mr. Cabrillo. Put this inside your shoe.” It was a half-dollar piece. Luis put it inside his shoe. “Now walk.” Luis limped away. “Pity and trust go hand-in-hand,” Brennan said. “When he wants, your pal James can move as well as you and me. Faster, sometimes.”

Luis gave the coin back.

“How much did he take you for?” Julie asked.

“Ten grand. But it's for Freddie Garcia, to clinch a deal to buy an oil well. I'd trust Freddie with my life.”

“Does he own Hanover Fields, by any chance?” Brennan asked. Luis flinched. “Doesn't exist,” Brennan said. “See all these people? They bought a slice of it too. You paid cash?”

“To help save Freddie's bacon,” Luis said. “There was no time to …” He gave up.

Julie asked Brennan: “How much d'you reckon de Courcy conned out of El Paso?”

“We guess a quarter of a million. Tax free.”

A police car took them home.

“I nearly owned part of an oil well,” Luis said. “It was called Track 29. I thought it must be named after that song about the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Pennsylvania Twenty-Nine Hundred.”

“Sure. Train leaves from track 29,” Julie said. “Boy, won't you give me a shine. You don't know Penn Station, do you? Track 29 is a myth. Doesn't exist.”

Luis slumped until his chin was on his chest.

“Can't say he didn't give you a sporting chance,” she said.

The others were in bed. Luis was hungry. “Losing ten grand does that to a chap,” he said. “Funny, isn't it?” He didn't sound funny. He sounded bitter.

“It's ten grand you conned out of someone else. Now it's been conned out of you.”

“I gave them value for money. They went away happy. What have I got out of James blasted de bloody Courcy?”

“He taught you a lesson, Luis. Never do the decent thing. It's not your style.”

He made scrambled eggs for them both, and they talked about the other events: the gunshots, the bodies, the strange idea that Luis was a hitman. None of it made sense; all of it suggested that the long arm of Fantoni was reaching out for them. Via Chicago. Why Chicago? It was baffling. Stevie Fantoni came in, yawning. “I smelled food,” she said. “Ain't had much real grub in a week.”

“Answer me one thing and you'll get a steak,” Julie said. “Why is your dad giving us such a hard time? We never hurt him.”

“You got his Chrysler.”

“Borrowed!” Luis cried. “His idea! Take it back!”

“An' he thinks you whacked a couple of the family.”

“That's crazy,” Julie said. “We never whacked anyone.”

“Maybe he thinks semi-whacked,” Stevie said. “They ended up dead anyways. I told him no, you ain't that sort, waste of breath, him not bein' a kind person, that's the way he thinks, not nice. Ungenerous. I take after the other side of the family. You want a steak?” she said to Princess, who was leaning in the doorway.

“Count me in. With eggs too. What's all the noise about?”

“We're leaving here,” Luis said. “It's become too dangerous.”

“California,” Julie said. “Los Angeles. Tomorrow.” Luis looked at her, amazed. “I knew before you did,” she said. “Let's hit the hay. This carnage on the doorstep is very tiring.”

“He's one hell of a stud,” Stevie told Princess. “Trust me, I know. When we lived in DC, I saw him in the nude.” The grill began to sizzle.

“You eat a lot of steak, don't you?” Luis said.

“Well, we have all these cows,” Princess said. “Seems like a good arrangement.”

“Semi-nude,” Stevie said. “I know men, I married three times, everyone a flat battery.”

“You're death in the sack,” Julie said. “Those truckdrivers had a lucky escape.”

Next morning, Luis emptied the Chrysler, drove it to Juárez and dumped it in a sidestreet where the only spectator was a little girl in a dress made from a flour sack. She had round brown eyes as big as English pennies. She watched as he removed the license plates, and she asked a long Mexican question. He gave her a quarter. “I met your brother in San Carlos,” he said, and walked back over the bridge to El Paso. He bought a big and only slightly used Packard convertible, cream with red trim, for cash, and drove it to Cliff Boulevard. Julie had taken the pictures from Daniel's walls. Everyone was ready. They mailed the keys to the real estate agency and drove north.

Trailed by the FBI. Brennan's men had searched the body and found a Texaco payslip in the name of Floyd Boyd. The Bureau office in New Mexico had for some time been interested in knowing Floyd Boyd's whereabouts; well, now El Paso PD could help. He was in the morgue.

A Special Agent drove down and had breakfast with Brennan. Boyd was Blanco, a Mob informant on the lam from Chicago: that explained Tony Feet's presence. Pity about the heart attack. No crime, no charges. And Murphy? A loose cannon with an itchy finger. File and forget.

But the collection of oddballs at the Cabrillo residence had not assembled to discuss Republican politics, not with the daughter of
an East Coast Mafia boss plus the sidekick of Sam Giancana in the mix.

Brennan had men watching them. They knew when Luis lost the Chrysler in Juárez and when he bought the Packard. They were browsing the dealer's forecourt as Luis went into the man's office to sign the paperwork. Took five seconds to fix a bug to the back axle. Its transmitting radius was only 10 miles, but that was enough to make the tail a whole lot easier; and when the Packard loaded up and headed north, El Paso PD made a gift of the receiver to the FBI.

Brennan roasted Fitzroy for his lies, kicked him out and closed the case. The freaks were elsewhere. Let some other jurisdiction bust their balls over them.

Agent Fisk liked to be the bearer of good news; it gave him a warm feeling in the cardiovascular system, much like the effect of twenty brisk press-ups. “I didn't call New Mexico,” he said. “New Mexico called me.”

Prendergast was standing by the window, looking down at the snarled traffic on 54th Street. “What a mess,” he said. “I knew when they started tearing down the good old Third Avenue El, this is what we'd get instead. So: astonish me.”

“Sudden death strikes two by night in the grounds of chez Cabroy, El Paso. First, local punk gets shot in self-defense by retired police chief. Nothing for us there. But second … ex-Chicago Mob hitman turned FBI informer, Frankie Blanco, found dead of a massive heart attack.”

Prendergast was amused. “Blanco? Natural causes? The Mob will never live down the shame. So: two punks on ice. Only question worth asking is: where were Cabroy when the bodies fell?”

“Indoors, chewing the fat with Tony Feet from Chicago plus a former Mob bookkeeper named Lutz, and—someone who needs no introduction—Stevie Fantoni.”

“Uh-huh.” Prendergast sipped cold coffee. “Low-lifes exercising their First Amendment Rights of Assembly. Unsavory, yes. Illegal, no.”

“They didn't stick around. Lutz went to bed, Feet took the plane, the rest switched cars and left town. The Bureau is tailing them.”

“And what do you make of all this, Mr. Fisk?”

“A pattern's emerging, sir. A sort of network.”

“You see a network. I'll tell you what I see. I see a plate of cold spaghetti, all loose ends with nothing leading anywhere and who needs it anyway?”

As a boy, Fisk had often eaten cold spaghetti. He liked it. But he said nothing. Prendergast was not the kind of man you could swap metaphors with.

Feet chose a coffin, size XXL, and Blanco traveled in the plane with him. A hearse was waiting at Chicago airport. They drove to St. Luke's. Sam Giancana was there. A back-hoe had just finished excavating the original grave, as far down as the rotting coffin of the drunk who reckoned his pickup could beat a freight train to a crossing. A few birds, attracted by fresh earth, watched. Blanco was lowered. The boxes met with a dull clunk. The straps were withdrawn and the men stepped back. Tony Feet glanced at Giancana. “Who's a pretty boy, then?” Giancana said softly. He took a packet of birdseed from his raincoat pocket and tipped some into his palm and scattered it over the coffin and put the packet back in his pocket. The men stood like statues. They knew their manners. Mr. Giancana gave a lot of business to this funeral parlor. It might be birdseed to him but it was bread and butter to them. Feet put his hat on and turned away. The backhoe operator pressed the starter, and the engine fired and panicked the birds. They never learned.

Later that afternoon, a memorial mason brought a new headstone, a fast job to please Mr. Giancana and anyway only three words had to be carved: