Blood Work

25

THE PACKAGE from Carruthers was waiting for McCaleb in his mailbox. It was as thick as a phone book. He took it back to the boat, opened it and spread the documents across the salon table. He found the most recent summary on the Kenyon investigation and began reading, deciding to learn the latest developments and then go back to read from the start.

The investigation of the Donald Kenyon murder was a joint FBI-Beverly Hills police operation. But the case was cold. The lead agents for the bureau, a pair from the special investigation unit in Los Angeles named Nevins and Uhlig, had concluded in the most recent report, filed in December, that Kenyon had likely been executed by a contract killer. There were two theories as to who had employed the assassin. Theory one was that one of the two thousand victims of the savings and loan collapse had been unsatisfied with Kenyon’s sentence or possibly feared he would flee justice once again and therefore had engaged the services of a killer. Theory two was that the killer had been in the employ of the silent partner who Kenyon had claimed during the trial had forced him to loot the savings and loan. That partner, whom Kenyon had refused to identify, remained unidentified as well by the bureau, according to this last report.

McCaleb found the outlining of theory two in the report interesting because it indicated that the federal government might now give credence to Kenyon’s claim that he had been forced to siphon funds from his savings and loan by a second party. This claim had been derided during Kenyon’s trial by the prosecution, which took to referring to this alleged second party as Kenyon’s phantom. Now, here was an FBI document which suggested that the phantom might actually exist.

Nevins and Uhlig concluded the summary report with a brief profile of the unknown subject who had contracted the murder. The profile fit both theories one and two: the employer was wealthy, had the ability to hide his or her trail and remain anonymous and had connections to or was even part of traditional organized crime.

Aside from the report breathing life into Kenyon’s phantom, the second thing that interested McCaleb was the suggestion that the employer, and therefore the actual killer, were connected to traditional organized crime. Traditional organized crime in FBI parlance meant the Mafia. The tendrils of the Mafia were almost everywhere, but, even so, the mob was not a strong influence in southern California. There was a tremendous amount of organized crime in the area, it just wasn’t being perpetrated by the traditional mobsters out of the movies. At any given time there were probably more Asian or Russian mobsters operating in southern California than their counterparts of Italian descent.

McCaleb organized the documents in chronological order and went back to the start. Most were routine summaries and updates on aspects of the investigation that were forwarded to supervisors in Washington. Quickly scanning through the documents, he found a report on the surveillance team’s activities the morning of the shooting that he read with fascination.

There had been four agents in the surveillance van at the time of the killing. It was change-of-shift time, eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Two agents coming on, two going home. The agent monitoring the bugs took off the headset and passed it to his replacement. However, the replacement was a type A personality who claimed he had once gotten an infestation of head lice from another agent during an earphone exchange. So he took the time to put his own pair of foam cushions on the headset and to then spray the equipment with a disinfectant, all the while fending off insulting barbs from the three other agents. After he finally placed the earphones on his head, he heard silence for nearly a minute, then a muffled exchange of conversation and then finally a shot from Kenyon’s house. The sound was muffled because no listening devices had been placed in the entryway of the house, the thinking being that any escape planning Kenyon might do would not be done at the front door. The bugs had been placed in the actual living areas of the house.

The overnight team had not yet left and were continuing the banter in the van. After hearing the shot, the agent on the phones shouted for silence. He listened closely for several seconds while another agent put on a second set of phones. What they both heard was someone in the Kenyon house clearly speak one line near one of the microphones: “Don’t forget the cannoli.”

The two agents on the phones looked at each other and agreed that it had not been Kenyon who had spoken the line. Declaring an emergency, the agents blew their cover and sped to the house, arriving moments after Donna Kenyon had arrived home, opened the front door and found her husband lying on the marble floor, his head bathed in blood. After calling for bureau backup, local police and paramedics, the agents searched the house and the surrounding neighborhood. The gunman was gone.

McCaleb moved on to a transcript of the last hour of tape from Kenyon’s home. The tape had been enhanced in the FBI lab but still not every word was captured. There were the sounds of the daughters having breakfast and the normal morning talk between Kenyon and his wife and the girls. Then, at 7:40, the girls and their mother left.

The transcript noted nine minutes of silence before Kenyon made a phone call to the home of his attorney, Stanley LaGrossa.

LAGROSSA: Yes?

KENYON: It’s Donald.

LAGROSSA: Donald.

KENYON: Are we still on?

LAGROSSA: Yes, if you are still serious about it.

KENYON: I am. I’ll see you at the office then.

LAGROSSA: You know the risks. I’ll see you there.

Another eight minutes went by and then a new unknown voice was picked up in the house. Some of the terse conversation was lost as Kenyon and the unknown man moved through the house, in and out of the reach of the listening devices. The conversation had apparently taken place while the delayed earphone exchange was taking place in the bureau tech van.

KENYON: What is-

UNKNOWN: Shut up! Do what I say and your family lives, understand?

KENYON: You can’t just walk in here and-

UNKNOWN: I said shut up! Let’s go. This way.

KENYON: Don’t hurt my family. Please, I…

UNKNOWN: (unintelligible)

KENYON:… do that. I wouldn’t and he knows that. I don’t understand this. He…

UNKNOWN: Shut up. I don’t care.

KENYON: (unintelligible)

UNKNOWN: (unintelligible)

The report noted that two minutes of silence went by and then the final exchange.

UNKNOWN: Okay, look and see who…

KENYON: Don’t… She’s got nothing to do with this. She…

Then one shot was fired. And moments later microphone 4, which was hidden in a rear den with a door to the rear yard, picked up the unknown man’s final words.

UNKNOWN: Don’t forget the cannoli.

The door to the den was found open. It had been used as part of the killer’s escape route.

McCaleb read the transcript again, captivated by knowing it was a man’s last moments and words. He wished he had an audiotape, so that he would have a better feel for what had happened.

The next document he read explained why the investigators suspected mob involvement. It was a cryptology report. The tape from the Kenyon house had been sent to the crime lab for enhancement. The transcript was then sent to cryptology. The analyst given the assignment focused on the killer’s last line, spoken after Kenyon was down and seemingly a non sequitur. The line-‘ “Don’t forget the cannoli”-was fed into the cryptology computer to see if it matched any known code, prior usage in bureau reports or literary or entertainment reference. It scored a direct match.

In the movie The Godfather, the film that inspired a legion of true-life Mafia hoodlums, a top capo for the Corleone family, Peter Clemenza, is given the assignment of taking a traitorous family soldier out into the New Jersey meadowlands and killing him. On the morning he leaves his home for the hit, his wife tells Clemenza to stop by a bakery for pastry. As the hugely overweight Clemenza lumbers out to a waiting car containing the man he is tasked with killing, his wife calls after him, “Don’t forget the cannoli.”

McCaleb loved the movie and now remembered the line. It so clearly captured the essence of movie mob life-the ruthless and guiltless brutality alongside family values and loyalty. He understood now why the bureau had concluded that the Kenyon killing was in some way mob related. The line had the audacity and bravura of the mob life. He could see a stone-cold killer adopting it as the imprimatur of his work.

“Don’t forget the cannoli,” McCaleb said out loud.

He suddenly thought of something and a little jolt of electricity went through him.

“Don’t forget the cannoli,” he said again.

He quickly went to his leather bag and dug through it until he found the video from the James Cordell shooting. He went to the television and jammed the tape in and started playing it. After getting his bearings on where in the tape he was, he fast-forwarded to the moment of the shooting and hit play again. His eyes stayed on the masked man’s mouth and as the man began to speak on the silent tape, McCaleb spoke with him out loud.

“Don’t forget the cannoli.”

He backed the tape up and did it again, saying it again. His words matched the shooter’s lips. He was sure it fit. He could feel excitement and adrenaline surging inside of him now. It was a feeling that only came when you had momentum, when you were making your own breaks. When you were getting close to the hidden truth.

He pulled the tape of the Gloria Torres murder out, put it in the player and repeated the process again. The words fit the lips of the shooter once again. There was no doubt.

“Don’t forget the cannoli,” McCaleb said aloud again.

He went to the cabinet next to the chart table and got the phone out. He still had not played the messages that had accumulated over the weekend but he was too hyped to do it now. He punched in the number for Jaye Winston.

“Where have you been and don’t you ever check your machine?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to call you all weekend and all day to explain. It wasn’t my-”

“I know. It wasn’t you. It was Hitchens. I’m not calling about that anyway. I know what the bureau told you. I know what you’ve got-the connection to Donald Kenyon. You’ve got to bring me back in.”

“That’s impossible. Hitchens already said I shouldn’t even talk to you. How am I going to bring-”

“I can help you.”

“How? With what?”

“Just answer me this, see if I have this right. This morning Gilbert Spencer and a couple of field agents-I’m guessing they were named Nevins and Uhlig-come out and give you the news that the bullet you sent to Washington matched up with Kenyon. Right?”

“So far, but that’s no great-”

“I’m not done. Next, he tells you the bureau would like to look into your case and the LAPD case but that initially there seems to be no likely connection other than the weapon. He says, after all, Kenyon is a professional hit and you guys are working two street robberies. Not only that, his shooter used a Devastator on Kenyon and your guy used something else. Federals. That backs the bureau theory that the professional shooter in the Kenyon case discarded his weapon somewhere and the shooter from your two cases then came along and picked it up. End of connection. How am I doing so far?”

“Dead on.”

“Okay, so you asked Spencer for information on the Kenyon killing just so you could do your own cross-checking but that didn’t go over so well.”

“He said the Kenyon case was at a-quote-sensitive point and that he would rather us peons be on a need-to-know basis.”

“And Hitchens agreed to that?”

“He went along for the ride.”

“And did anybody serve the cannoli?”

“What?”

McCaleb spent the next five minutes explaining the cannoli connection, reading her the transcript from the bugs in Kenyon’s house and the conclusions of the cryptology report. Winston said these were all facts that Gilbert Spencer had not mentioned during the morning meeting. McCaleb knew that he would not have. McCaleb had been in the bureau. He knew how it worked. Given the opportunity, you brush the locals aside and say that the bureau will handle it from here.

“So the cannoli connection makes it clear this wasn’t a throw-away gun that our guy happened to pick up,” McCaleb said. “It’s the same shooter on all three. Kenyon, then Cordell, then Torres. Whether the bureau people knew that going in to your meeting, I don’t know. But if you copied them the case file and the tapes, they know it now. The question is, how do these three killings fit together?”

Winston was silent for a moment before finally expressing her confusion.

“Man, I have no-well, maybe they don’t connect. Look, if it’s a contract killer like the bureau says, maybe they were three separate contracts. You know? Maybe there is no connection other than the same killer did all three on three separate jobs.”

McCaleb shook his head and said, “It’s possible, I guess, but nothing makes sense. I mean, what did Gloria Torres have that would make her a pro hitter’s target? She worked in the print shop at the newspaper.”

“It could have been something she saw. Remember what you said Friday about there being some connection between the two, Torres and Cordell? Well, maybe it’s still the same, only the connection is something they saw or something they knew.”

McCaleb nodded.

“What about the icons, the things taken from Cordell and Torres?” he asked, more to himself than to Winston.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s a hitter who likes to take souvenirs. Maybe he had to prove to his employer that he had hit the right people. Is there anything in the reports about anything being taken from Kenyon?”

“Not that I have seen yet.”

His mind was a jumble of possibilities. Winston’s question made him realize that in his excitement he had called her too soon. He still had a stack of unread Kenyon files. The connection he was looking for might be there.

“Terry?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking. Look, let me call you back. I’ve got some more stuff to go through and I might be able-”

“What stuff do you have?”

“I think I’ve got everything, or almost everything, that Spencer wasn’t telling you.”

“I would say that that is going to buy you back into the captain’s good graces.”

“Well, don’t say anything to him yet. Let me figure out a little more about this and I’ll call you.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Then say it. I don’t want you pulling any bureau bullshit on me.”

“Hey, I’m retired, remember? I promise.”

An hour and a half later McCaleb finished going through the bureau documents. The adrenaline that had jazzed him before had dissipated. He had learned a lot of new information as he read the reports but nothing that hinted at a connection between Kenyon and Cordell and Torres.

The rest of the bureau documents contained a lengthy printout of the names, addresses and investment histories of the two thousand victims of the savings and loan collapse. And neither Cordell nor Torres had been investors.

The bureau had had to consider every victim of the S amp;L collapse a suspect in the Kenyon shooting. Each name on the investors list was backgrounded and screened for criminal connections and other flags that might elevate it to viable suspect status. A dozen or so investors were raised to that level but then eventually cleared through full field investigations.

The investigation had then shifted its focus toward theory two, that Kenyon’s phantom was real and had ordered the hit on the man who had stolen millions for him.

This theory gathered momentum after it was learned that Kenyon had been about to reveal whom he had turned over the stolen S amp;L funds to. According to a statement from Kenyon’s attorney, Stanley LaGrossa, Kenyon had decided to cooperate with authorities in hopes of getting the U.S. Attorney’s office to petition the judge who sentenced him to reduce his penalty. LaGrossa said that on the morning Kenyon was murdered, they had planned to meet to discuss how LaGrossa would go about negotiating his cooperation.

McCaleb flipped back through the reports and reread the short transcript of the phone call Kenyon made to LaGrossa just minutes before the murder. The brief exchange between the lawyer and his client appeared to back up LaGrossa’s claim that Kenyon was ready to cooperate.

The bureau theory, outlined in a supplemental report to LaGrossa’s statement, was that Kenyon’s silent partner either was taking no chances and eliminated Kenyon or he eliminated Kenyon after specifically learning that his partner was planning to cooperate with government investigators. The supplemental report noted that federal agents and prosecutors had not yet been approached by the Kenyon camp with the overture of cooperation. That meant that if there was a leak to the silent partner, it came from Kenyon’s people, possibly even LaGrossa himself.

McCaleb got up and poured a glass of orange juice, emptying one of the half-gallon cartons he had bought on Saturday morning. As he drank, he thought about what all of the Kenyon information meant to the investigation. It clouded things for sure. Despite the early jolt of adrenaline, he now realized he was basically back to ground zero, no closer to knowing who killed Gloria Torres and why than he was when he opened the package mailed from Carruthers.

As he rinsed out the glass, he noticed two men coming down the main gangway to the docks. They were dressed in almost matching blue suits. Anybody in a suit stood out on the docks-usually, it was a bank loan officer come to chain down a boat for repossession. But McCaleb knew better this time. He recognized the demeanor. They were coming for him. Vernon Carruthers must have been found out.

Quickly, McCaleb went to the table and gathered up the bureau documents. He then split off the sheaf of pages that listed the names, addresses and other information about the savings and loan collapse. He put that thick packet in one of the overhead cabinets in the kitchen. The rest of the documents he shoved into his leather bag, which he then put into the cabinet under the chart table.

He slid the salon door open and stepped out into the cockpit to greet the two agents. He closed and locked the door behind him.

“Mr. McCaleb?” the younger one said. He had a mustache, daring by bureau standards.

“Let me guess, Nevins and Uhlig.”

They didn’t look happy about being identified. “Can we come aboard?”

“Sure.”

The younger one was introduced as Nevins. Uhlig, the senior agent, did most of the talking.

“If you know who we are, then you know why we are here. We don’t want this to get any messier than it has to be. Especially taking into account your service to the bureau. So if you give us the stolen files, it can all end right here.”

“Whoa,” McCaleb said, holding his hands up. “Stolen files?”

“Mr. McCaleb,” Uhlig said. “It has come to our attention that you are in the possession of confidential FBI files. You are no longer an agent. You should not be in possession of these files. As I just said, if you want to make this a problem for you, we can make it a problem for you. But all we really want is the files back.”

McCaleb stepped over and sat on the gunwale. He was trying to think about how they knew and it came back to Carruthers. It was the only way. Vernon must have gotten jammed up in Washington and had to give McCaleb up. But it was unlike his old friend to do that, no matter what pressure they put on him.

He decided to trust his instincts and call the bluff. Nevins and Uhlig knew Carruthers had run the ballistics laser comparison at McCaleb’s request. That was no secret. They must have then assumed that Carruthers would have forwarded him copies oaf the computer files.

“Forget it, guys,” he finally said. “I don’t have any files, stolen or otherwise. You got bad info.”

“Then how’d you know who we were?” Nevins asked.

“Easy. I found out today when you guys went to the sheriff’s office and told them to keep me out of the case.”

McCaleb folded his arms and looked past the two agents to Buddy Lockridge’s boat. Buddy was sitting in the cockpit, sipping from a can of beer and watching the scene with the two suits on The Following Sea.

“Well, we’re going to have to take a look around, then, to make sure,” Uhlig said.

“Not without a warrant and I doubt you’ve got a warrant.”

“We didn’t need one after you gave us permission to enter and search.”

Nevins stepped over to the salon door and tried to slide it open. He found it was locked. McCaleb smiled.

“Only way you’re getting in there is to break it, Nevins. And that won’t look much like permission granted, you ask me. Besides, you don’t want to do that with an uninvolved witness watching.”

Both agents started looking around the marina. Finally, they spotted Lockridge, who held his beer can up as a greeting. McCaleb watched as anger turned Uhlig’s jaw rigid.

“Okay, McCaleb,” the senior agent said. “Keep the files. But I’m telling you right now, smart guy, don’t get in the way. The bureau’s in the process of taking over the case and the last thing we need is some tin man amateur without a badge or his own heart fucking things up for us.”

McCaleb could feel his own jaw drawing tight.

“Get the fuck off my boat.”

“Sure. We’re going.”

They both climbed back up onto the dock. As they headed to the gangway, Nevins turned around and said, “See you around, Tin Man.”

McCaleb watched them all the way through the gate.

“What was that all about?” Lockridge called over.

McCaleb waved him off while still watching the agents.

“Just some old friends come to pay a visit.”

It was nearly 8P.M. in the east. McCaleb called Carruthers at his home. His friend said he had already been through the wringer.

“I told them, I said, ‘Hey, I turned over my information to Lewin. Yes, I put a push on the package at the request of former agent McCaleb, but I did not furnish a copy of the report or any other reports to him.’ Hey, they don’t believe me, then they can shove it. I’m fully vested. They want me out, I’m out. Then they can pay me every time I have to come in to testify on one of my cases. And I got voluminous cases, if you know what I mean.”

He was speaking as if for a third party listening in. And with the bureau, you never knew if there wasn’t. McCaleb followed suit.

“Same thing out here. They came around, tried to act like I had reports I don’t have and I told them to get off my damn boat.”

“Yeah, you’re cool.”

“So are you, Vernon. I’m gonna go. Watch the following sea, man.”

“What’s that?”

“Watch your back.”

“Oh, right. You, too.”

Winston picked up the call on a half ring.

“Where have you been?”

“Busy. Nevins and Uhlig just paid me a little visit. Did you copy them everything you copied to me last week?”

“The files, tapes, Hitchens gave them everything.”

“Yeah, well, they must’ve made the cannoli connection. They’re coming after the case, Jaye. You’re going to have to hang on.”

“What are you talking about? The bureau can’t just take over a murder investigation.”

“They’ll find a way. They won’t take it away but they’ll take charge. I think they know there’s more than the gun connecting the cases. They’re assholes but they’re smart assholes. I think they figured out the same thing I did once they looked at the tapes you gave them. They know it’s the same shooter and that there is something hooking all three of these hits together. They came by to intimidate me, to get me off it. Next it will be you.”

“If they think I’m just going to turn this whole thing over to them and-”

“It’s not you. They’ll go to Hitchens. And if he doesn’t agree to back off, then they go farther up the ladder. I was one of them, remember? I know how it works. The higher you go, the more pressure points.”

“Damn!”

“Welcome to the club.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Me? Tomorrow I’m going back to work. I don’t have to answer to the bureau or Hitchens or anybody else. Just myself on this one.”

“Well, you might be the only one with a shot at this. Good luck.”

“Thanks. I could use it.”