Sharky's Machine

Chapter Twenty

Sharky had filed a radio message through central for Friscoe to meet him and Livingston at a pizza parlour on Peachtree Street called Franco’s. they had been there less than ten minutes when Friscoe arrived, puffing through the door and looking no better or worse than he had at breakfast. Friscoe plopped down in the booth with them and waved the waiter away.

‘I got so much coffee in me, I couldn’t eat if I wanted to,’ he said. ‘So, you got some news?

Livingston was eating a submarine sandwich. Without looking up he said, ‘We just wanted to say hello. We thought maybe you missed us.’

‘Anything new?’ Sharky said, concentrating on a piece of pizza that had everything on it but chocolate syrup.

The lieutenant smiled proudly. ‘Yeah, I made a little score. I got lucky like Papa. Kenny Bautry, a Fed probation officer, has a guy who fits the description of the stiff in the city dump pretty good. Did thirty years plus in the joint at Leavenworth. Got out in October, reported once, and Kenny hasn’t seen him since.’

Sharky took another bite of pizza. ‘Name isn’t Corrigon, is it?’ be said.

‘Well shit!’ Friscoe said. ‘I’m gonna get a goddamn complex.’

Livingston slid the picture of Scardi across the table in front of Friscoe. ‘That’s who hit Corrigon and Domino.’

Friscoe looked at the picture and reared back in surprise.

‘That’s Angelo Scardi!

‘That’s very good, Barney,’ Livingston said.

Friscoe looked back at the picture with disbelief. ‘Angelo Scardi?’ he repeated.

Sharky nodded. ‘There’s no question about it, Barney. We got a positive on the prints.’ Then he leaned across the table and quietly told Friscoe about Scardi, Operation Stitch, and Corrigon. Friscoe listened without comment and then leaned back in the booth, letting it all sink in.

‘So, what’s your theory?’ he asked.

‘Arch and I think Scardi rigged the whole operation from the front end and somebody finished the job for him and fingered Corrigon.’

‘Such as...’

Sharky said, ‘Maybe this La Volte. Look, Scardi lived in that same area from 1930 until 1935. And Scardi was the only person who ever actually met La Volte face to face. Martland says Scardi only knew him by his code name, but I think that’s bullshit. I think Scardi knew this guy from the old days. I think it was set up from the beginning that La Volte would hit the team when it went in. Scardi put it all together, then conveniently got sick and came back to the U.S. That took him out of action and put him three thousand miles away when it happened — with a perfect alibi. Then he and La Volte split four mu in gold.’

‘That’s pretty good,’ Friscoe said. ‘But what we can’t do, we can’t get too cocky yet. We got to collar Scardi. But we also got to fill in some blanks here.’

‘Like what?’ Livingston asked.

‘Like why did Scardi come here? And why did he off Domino? And what was Corrigon doin’ here? This guy gets outa Leavenworth after thirty years, gets on the first bus south, and comes straight to Atlanta. But he wasn’t looking for Scardi, because Scardi was still in Nebraska at the time.’

‘That’s right,’ Sharky said. ‘Which means Corrigon was after somebody else and that somebody else pulled Scardi in to do the number on Corrigon.’

‘And you think it was La Volte he was after, right? Friscoe said.

‘What the hell would this Italian guerrilla be doin’ in Atlanta?’ Livingston asked.

Friscoe shrugged. ‘It’s thirty years ago this other thing happened. Shit, in thirty years you can get born, grow up, go to college, get married, lose your cherry, have a coupia kids, and buy a house. You can do that, this fuckin ‘guinea could certainly hop a plane to Atlanta.’

‘Whoever it was,’ Sharky said, ‘Scardi can lead us to him.’

‘That’s right,’ Friscoe said. ‘But now’s the time we gotta handle this here thing with kid gloves. What it comes down to, we gotta nail this Scardi with his hands full and we got to tie him to La Volte or whoever brought him in to glom Corrigon. If we don’t, you know what’s gonna happen. The goddamn DA ends up with the case and that’s like dropping a diamond in a dirty diaper. Unless we got an iron-clad case against these people, Hanson’ll fuck it up. He’s a legal moron, remember. I mean, shit, we could bribe the fuckin’ jury and be could manage to lose the case.

‘Look at what we got now,’ Friscoe continued. ‘We can put Scardi in the Jackowitz apartment, but at this point we can’t get him from there to Domino’s door with a shotgun in his hands. And we can’t tie him to this La Volte, or whoever the hell his partner in crime is. Knowing all this is one thing, proving it is a whole ‘nother bailgame.’

‘So we need to tie Domino to Scardi somehow,’ Sharky said.

‘A big somehow,’ said Livingston.

‘Okay, I’m going to take on Domino’s apartment,’ Sharky said. ‘It’s been sealed up since the shooting. Maybe there’s something there, an address book, letters, something that can put us closer to Scardi’s accomplice.’

‘Okay. Papa’s still trying to run down Shoes. Your friend Abrams finally went home for a little shuteye. He’ll be back in his workshop there by six. How about you, Arch?’

Livingston leaned back in the booth and grinned. ‘I’m gonna do the best thing possible for this machine right now,’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ home and grab a few hours of z’s, because if I don’t Sharky’s gonna have a sleepwalker on his hands tonight.’