Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 44

Cop Shop Talk

“Hell yes, kid. In the old days, they’d jerk out your fingernails and force-feed ’em to your dog for good measure. They’d weld you into a drum and send you down the river. The Mexican cartels are just now revving up to that level of plain deviltry.”

Molina had given Matt one crumb at the end of their meeting: contact info for Woodrow Wetherly, a Metro cop who’d retired in the ’80s. That put him in his own eighties, and his skin looked every centimeter of it. He was as spotted as a hyena on face, hands, and forearms, further embellished by enough blue and black splotches to give a tattoo artist envy. It was all just sun damage.

Matt resolved then and there to use the high-octane sunscreen Temple was always after him about. The three golden hairs left on Wetherly’s mostly bald head remained a permanent reminder of his original blond coloring, like Matt’s.

“Call me Woody. I don’t get why the lady lieutenant would send a civilian to me for mob gossip. You write for one of those digital rags, Mr. Devine?”

“No. Radio’s my medium.”

“Radio.” Wetherly nodded and relaxed enough to light up a stogie that was waiting half-smoked in the big crystal ashtray on the table beside his lounger chair. “I did a lot of radio interviews in the 2000s. Nostalgia about the mob mostly, and how Metro and the FBI rid the city of all that jazz.

“The end of the ’80s, that’s when they started imploding all those mob-financed hotels, and as they hit the dirt, so did the gangsters that laundered money through them. I’m thinking of writing a book,” he added, which sounded like a line he’d used for years. “Would you want me on your radio show to talk about all that stuff?”

“Sure, someday.” Matt didn’t have Temple’s ease and maybe lack of conscience about jollying people along for his own purposes.

“What’s the name of your show, sonny?”

“The Midnight Hour.”

Wetherly puffed on his cigar, releasing an odor of burning tires. “Sounds like a good tough crime show.”

It did, so Matt just nodded.

“What are you wanting to know about any of this stuff going on now?”

“I wonder if there could be mob interest in illegally stockpiled money and guns. Something that had been accruing for a few years.”

“‘Accruing.’” Wetherly laughed heartily until his aged tobacco mirth died off into a gagging cough. “Gang interest, for sure.” He hacked a bit more behind his spotted, hairy hand. “Punks. Criminals are just punks now. Mean, yes, and stupid. And greedy. Always greedy. But the mob. Those guys had organization. You worked your way up, like in a bank. You did okay with the little jobs, you got bigger ones, and you got bigger. And those guys didn’t talk. No jailhouse confessions from them. They went to the grave with their lips sealed, just like Jimmy Hoffa.”

“But … he was a union bigwig the mob turned on.”

“And he paid the price. But his death and the body never being found … that was old-time merciless mob boss stuff. No one ever found his body. Forever. That is mob vengeance.”

“So a … flashy brutal killing?”

“That’s mob too. That’s mob sending a message. Usually to shut up the troops. Making an example.”

“They say the mob is out of Vegas.”

“In a wholesale way like years ago, yeah. But there are still operations, like in other cities.”

“So the survivors might be organized enough to … plan a heist, say?”

“Heist? No. Nope. Nothing that obvious. Amateursville. Heists are the work of small-time grifters who think they’ll get away with it, and they never do. Vegas was always a town that did business under the table, not in the street, assault rifles blazing.”

“But if the prize, the money or the guns, were someone else’s hidden stockpile, would traditional mobsters go after it?”

A wheezing laugh sounded like it might do the old guy in for good. Matt sat forward, ready to catch him if he toppled.

No risk. Wetherly slapped the arms of his faux-leather upholstery and leaned back so far, the footrest popped out with a metallic snap.

Matt jumped.

Woody laughed even harder. “Scared you some, didn’t it? This is one scary chair. Anyway, the answer is yes. I know a few old-timers who’d go after a secret stash. One in particularly.”

Matt saw a story coming on and just nodded, something he couldn’t do on the radio to encourage a shy caller. Wetherly was too old to be shy.

He leaned close enough for Matt to smell his cigar breath. “This is between you and me, not for the radio, right?”

Matt nodded again, fighting not to pull back from the foul breath.

Wetherly’s smile broadened, showing crowded yellow teeth. He leaned back. “There was this old kingpin. Jeez, he’d be in his nineties now. Or almost there. But back in the ’70s, he was big. We never could nail him for nothing, but pills, prostitution, protection—he was all over those rackets. Jack the Hammer, they called him.”

“After Jack the Ripper?” Matt wondered.

Wetherly shook his head from side to side with a tight-lipped smile. He leaned forward again, and Matt was too mesmerized to draw back.

“Cross him, and he’d drive you far out into the desert, which wasn’t that far in the old days. There was always a construction site. There was always a compressor with a jackhammer.…” Wetherly grinned.

“He killed people with a jackhammer?”

“Not people, kid. Rivals, upstarts, petty crooks who got greedy. You’ll never see anything on him in all those mob museums, not old Giacchino Petrocelli, because they never caught him and nobody ever killed him.”

“You’re sure he didn’t end up on the business end of his own jackhammer?”

“Only God and the buzzards know, sonny.”

“Jah-keen-o, how is that spelled?”

“It’s Italian. The J names always start with G-i-a, then two c’s give you k pronunciation. G-i-a-c-c-h-i-n-o. You jottted that down right. And ‘Petrocelli’ is right too. Okay. So what you up to? You want to make a headstone for the old mobster?”

“I might want to research him, for my show.”

“I’d watch myself. My theory is Old Giacch-o is still out there, all alone and sitting on his millions. And maybe floating a few deals or corpses even today.”

“Like that dead body of an old man that was dumped off Paradise behind the Strip a week ago?”

“Never knew that guy was old. Who’d bother offing someone my age?” Wetherly wheezed out a laugh that neared a cackle. Then his narrowed eyes almost disappeared in the dunes of flesh surrounding them. “I see, sonny. You’re thinking it might be some old-time mob guy.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Like that guy who was tied to the pirate ship prow after dark at the Oasis, and drowned with the ship when it sank.”

“Ooh, that was a nasty do-in, wasn’t it? Buried in the paper, though.” Wetherly nodded sagely. “Just like that. I hadn’t thought of old Giaccho, but maybe he wanted to change his MO to keep the police away from the fact that he is maybe still out there somewhere.”

The chair squealed as Wetherly slapped himself back into reclining position. He was still a big guy.

“I slam back a few at the cop bars around town. That ‘victim,’ Effinger, was known as a bad lot. Ran errands for anything shady around town. But he never was big enough to merit a mob offing with full honors. Weird case.”

“There’s a rumor Effinger knew something about the loot from an old heist.”

“Rumors.” Wetherly had turned scoffing. “Effinger was a rat fink, a pathetic hanger-on scratching out a few bucks now and then. If Jack the Hammer is still out there, he would have rubbed him out on principle.”

Wetherly’s contempt of his dead stepfather warmed Matt’s heart, not a very charitable reaction. It was always good, though, to learn his own opinion was shared by leaders in their field … in Effinger’s case, cops and crooks alike.

Matt thanked the old cop, who actually rose to see him out.

Wetherly whistled when he spotted the Jaguar at his curb. “Must have robbed a bank yourself.”

Matt smiled modestly. “My show does all right.”

“Keep it up,” the old man advised, “you’ll be seamed and freckled and useless like me before you know it.”

“You’ve been really helpful,” Matt assured him, surviving a crushing handshake before he finally got away.

Old people liked to talk. He often had to hurry them along on the radio. This old guy, though, had given him some solid information.

Maybe Molina would find the first dead guy at Area 54 had links to this Petrocelli character or his old-time operation.

Meanwhile, he checked his cell phone. Temple had texted him to come home. Max had found some new evidence to review.

Matt gunned the Jaguar away from the house, a rare expression of aggravation. Max Kinsella and his precious “evidence” could be abducted by aliens and never heard from again, as far as he was concerned.