THE FOURTH WATCH (57 page)

"Moltinaldo wants to just whack everybody, the
blood-thirsty prick."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I don't know. We missed Knight." He held his
hands up. "We already clipped a well connected rich guy and his
daughter and shot up their lawyer. Not to mention fuckin' Tell Me.
If we weren't in charge of the investigation, this thing would be
doin' some serious damage. Now what? We're supposed to take another
shot at him? The DA will be in this thing in two seconds. Whack
Knight, whack DeMaris - though I wouldn't mind shooting that little
fucker myself - and what's his buddy's name there, Donovan,
snoopin' around, what, we do him to? The crazy son of a
bitch!"

Madigan shrugged his shoulders. They sat
quietly looking out the windows. It was dark and the street lamps
threw cones of light on the wet street. Snow was piled up around
the telephone poles. The moon was a slit in the sky so thin it
looked like a coin slot.

"So," Madigan arched his eyebrows, "what do we
do?"

"What is that, a fuckin' recording?" Genetassio
ran his fingers through his hair. "God only knows what that fuckin'
Tell Me told who before we took him down. He was bangin' all the
broads in his stable, what do we kill all them too, just in case?"
He chewed a nail, shaking his head, thinking. He had another
problem now with Ellen Whorley. She was falling apart, feeling the
guilt, he had to do something there.

Madigan sat quiet. He almost said, 'So what do
we do?' but caught himself. If he said it again, Matte might have
shot him.

After a while Genetassio said, "Ah fuck me,"
and pushed the car door open and climbed out. He bent down and
looked back in. "One thing at a time. Take DeMaris off the board.
Make sure he never gets found. He goes missing, who knows what
happened, right? Don't do anything else. I gotta talk to that
fuckin' spic again. Gotta think this through." He slammed the door
and Madigan watched him in the rear view mirror as he slipped and
waddled his way back to his car.

*****

EARLY THE NEXT
morning the horizon was layered with rose colored clouds .
The sun, when it lifted out of them, was as white as a flare and
reflected off the snow on the lake and burst against my windows.
The sky was pale green, like a faded prison tattoo, the air smelled
of ozone and the atmosphere looked thin.

"Gonna get some more weather," Jack
said.

Alex, Walter and I sat drinking coffee at my
kitchen table. While Jack made corn pancakes, bacon and sausage on
an electric griddle, I answered their questions about my health
patiently. Jack set the table with maple syrup, butter and a fruit
salad. I told them that I was fine, and I was better -
physically.

It was strange. The downtime was like a deep,
invigorating sleep. When I came out of my coma my mind was amped,
and I wanted to get up and do something, but my body had gone the
other way. Its motionlessness had caused everything to lose its
tuning. My muscles had atrophied, shrunk and curled in on
themselves to the point that my hands and feet looked like claws. I
could not get out of bed without help. The physical therapy I'd
endured was excruciating. With every stretch and movement of my
body my tendons felt so tight I was sure they were going to split
or snap. But each day the therapists did a little more, pulled a
little harder on my extremities, pushed me just a little bit
longer, bent me just a little further until pretty soon, I could
shuffle along on my own and stretch by myself, and take a leak
without somebody standing in the door.

But the organs relapse too. The lungs get used
to shallow, assisted breathing. The kidneys used to having waste
extracted from them. The heart, used to a steady, level, rhythmic
beat. So the weakness is internal as well as external. I was creaky
and easily winded but, by the time they sent me home, I was
functioning at maybe seventy-five to eighty percent of what I had
been before I was shot.

Jack poured juice and put plates down in front
of us, and sat across from me and started eating. Walter went after
it as if he hadn't been fed in a month. Alex picked fruit from a
bowl with a fork and nibbled. I sipped my juice and sat waiting for
someone to speak. Finally I said, "Listen, I need to know what's
going on. I have silly questions tumbling around in my head like,
oh I don't know: Who shot me? Who killed Carolyn - and don't give
me any of this gang stuff. Genetassio was up the hospital peddling
that. This is about Red Whorley."

Jack kept his head down and kept
eating.

"Well, you're right about that," Walter said.
"Bunch of crap is what it is - pardon my French there,
Father."

"So tell me," I said.

And they did.

Jack told me about his trip to Seattle, about
how cozy The Loading Dock buyers were with the customs people,
about the inside man Louis Smyth had found on the docks, Martin
Davidson, and the grisly murder of Ernie Alcantra, the night before
he was supposed to meet with Jack in my place. He said that Smyth
was reporting that a big investigation into the Loading Dock
buyer's murder was underway.

"He doesn't know what they're finding but the
local homicide cops have called in the Customs people. Ted Whorley
is out there, pledging cooperation, but seems clueless about how to
help. Smyth wants to start writing articles, but he's waiting to
talk to you."

Walter said, "Ted Whorley has no idea how
clueless he really is. His wife is a player in this. Remember Kato,
we said there had to be an inside guy? One to get the clothes
together and leave the doors unlocked and all that? She's our
guy."

"Ellen Whorley?"

"Absolutely."

As Walter told the story of Helena Carlais
a.k.a Ellen Whorley, her Worcester roots and police record, her
flight to New York and her connection to Deputy Police Chief Matte
Genetassio, and about Othello Meehan's connection to the warning
given to me by Agnes Shelly, the stripper and prostitute known as
Missy Mounds - and Tell Me's subsequent disappearance and murder -
I could feel my skin turning hot and crawling with the anger
building inside me.

"Matte Genetassio?" I said, thinking: that
can't be right. "Ellen Whorley doesn't have any power to influence
operations at Loading Dock. How does Genetassio have reach to
Seattle, and what's coming through there anyway?"

Alex took up the story from there. He told me
about Salvatore Moltanaldo and his drug business in Los Angeles and
Seattle, about his connections to an Asian General suspected of
being a major supplier of heroin to the United States, an alliance
that went back to the war in Vietnam. He told me about how they
used the enormity of the shipping container traffic through customs
to hide their dope shipments inside legitimate freight. He reviewed
the surveillance they'd had on Genetassio since Walter found the
link between he and Ellen Whorley. He laid out Mary Sheeney's
report and the speculation that Genetassio was Moltinaldo's
protection in Worcester, where the drugs were shipped in Loading
Dock containers. It was an incredible story of greed and
corruption.

"This is unbelievable," I said when it had all
been laid out. We all sat looking at each other in
silence.

"So, Kato, now you know," Walter put his elbows
on the table and looked at me. "What do you want to do about
it?"

Alex took a sip of juice, and put the glass
back down and patted his lips with a napkin. "Obviously this will
be all very difficult to prove. We've got lots of speculation,
plenty of hearsay, some peculiar meetings between people that you
wouldn't think would be getting together. But a good attorney will
have a nice story that will explain it all. The pieces of this
thing fit together okay, but I don't see them holding up in court.
Soooo", he gestured at us with open hands, "I think, we do nothing
at this point."

"Nothing!" Walter and I shouted together.
"Alex, I can't just sit ... " I started.

But he held his hand up. "I said
'nothing at this point'. Kato, as unlikely as it may seem,
you
are
a lawyer.
We have a weak circumstantial case at best right now. I have no
doubt about its accuracy, but if you bring this to the District
Attorney's Office, or the Attorney General- or to the United States
Attorney for that matter, well I'm sure you know what will happen.
You will be witness to a very different kind of turf war. They'll
all demand control of the investigation, the Feds will prevail as
they always do, which will incite much bitterness and
non-cooperation in the other camps. The FBI will stomp through here
in their jack boots, the local police will close ranks around their
Chief, Mr. Moltinaldo will scramble off to parts unknown and in the
end they will probably charge Edward Whorley with a laundry list of
important crimes against society like 'obstruction of justice' and
'lying to a Federal Officer'." He shook his head. "Not the outcome
you'd like."

He was right of course. I pushed myself up out
of my chair and hobbled to the sink with my dishes. I stood looking
out the window at a crazy ice fisherman tentatively clearing snow
from the thin ice twenty feet off shore. I tossed my dishes into
the sink and went back to the table. They had all been just
watching me. "Okay," I said, "then what?"

Alex shrugged. "We wait and we see what
happens. I've thought about this since I read Mary Sheeney's report
last night and I think that we give this a little time to develop.
The Feds are in the process of digging through Loading Dock's
import activities in Seattle, who knows what they will discover.
You should have your friend start writing his articles. Let's see
how Mr. Moltinaldo reacts to that. I'll have the Sheeney Group keep
up surveillance on him. As far as Chief Genetassio goes, I think
you should play him a little bit. Let him think that this thing is
kind of behind you. Make him think that you're still a little out
of it, still recovering, maybe having some memory issues. Give him
a little comfort zone, so he isn't watching every shadow. In a week
or so, we can put people back on him. Collect some real evidence of
corruption. Let the Customs people link Moltinaldo to The Loading
Dock and drug trafficking and in the mean time we will be linking
Genetassio to Moltinaldo. When we have it all tied together, then
we hand it off to the local District Attorney. With a little luck
and cooperation between the DA's offices here and in Seattle, they
might be able to grab them all before they run."

As Alex spoke, the logic of what he was
proposing became clear to all of us. Pretty soon we were all
nodding our heads. It was a good plan - it really was - but plans
never seem to work out the way they are supposed to.

*****

ON MONDAY MORNING
I went to the gym
.
I ached and was tight but otherwise mobile and
mending. I jogged slowly for a mile around the indoor track, and
sat at the nautilus stations not doing much. I got into the
whirlpool for a while, then baked in the sauna for half an hour
before taking an ice cold shower and going to my office. There
wasn't anything for me to do there, really. All my cases had been
reassigned to other lawyers. I read the paper and drank coffee and
stood at the window looking down on the street at the snow with the
sun reflecting off it, and at the people all bundled up, hurrying
along the side-walks in the cold. If I was a smoker I could have
lit a cigarette and watched it burn down in the ashtray. I was
astonished when the phone rang.

"Law office," I said into the
receiver.

"Mr. Knight?" A woman's voice.

"Yes."

"Um, Hello. It's Samantha Whorley."

"Oh," I said, surprised. "Mrs. Whorley. Yes,
Hello."

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"I'm okay, I ah ... "

"I know this is a bit awkward, what with our
last meeting and all," she said.

"Well yeah, kind of, but..."

"And now with what happened to you - and to
Carolyn."

I closed my eyes and saw it all again - the
window sliding down, the gun coming out, the wound opening in
Carolyn's neck. "Yes, well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
Whorley?"

She hesitated. "Well, I was hoping that I could
come and see you."

"See me?"

"Yes."

"Mrs. Whorley, I think you had your say, and If
you want me to tell you how sorry ... "

"No, please Mr. Knight, that's not it, I'm a
little confused about things now, and if I

could just have a few minutes of your time, I'd
appreciate it."

"Well, alright," I heard myself say. "When
would you like to come in."

"Do you have any time today?"

"Sure. I'm just getting back so I don't have a
lot booked." Understatement is one of my

specialties.

"I could come in this morning if you like. I
could come now even, if that's okay."

"Well then come on in, I'll be waiting for
you."

She hung up the phone softly.

*****

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER
Samantha Whorley was sitting in front of my desk.
Her hair was strawberry-blond and pulled back off her face on one
side with a hair comb. There was a fine spray of freckles across
her nose. She wore jeans tucked into some kind of tan, microfiber
boots. She put her purse on my desk with her car keys and shrugged
out of her coat. She was shapely, but had the hard, muscular body
of an athlete. I remembered her whacking a tennis ball, and
bouncing around the court. She had on a white turtle neck sweater
that clung to her breasts. She got right to the point.