Simple Simon

Chapter Seventeen Hoods, Inc.

Unlike the previous day, when a collective disbelief had brought many off day workers into the office, Nels Van Horn found it sparsely populated, even for a Sunday. Possibly the opposite was true today. Maybe people sought distance, like people fleeing and offending odor or an annoying sound.

One of the few agents there waved at Van Horn as he wheeled past on his way to the Com room. He returned the gesture and continued on, his eyes shifting nervously, wondering if anyone would note that he was in on an off day, and if they noticed would they care, and if they cared would they…

Geez, get a hold of yourself. You’re not robbing a bank.

No, you’re just committing another felony. That’s all.

After a moment, Van Horn convinced his little voice to shut up, and coded his way into the Com room.

He wheeled up to the main terminal, powered it up, and placed the slip of paper Art had given him above the F keys on the keyboard. When the screen came to life he began entering commands. Requests, actually. Normal, everyday requests.

He thought.

Even the guards had refused Breem’s request to have one of Anne’s ankles shackled to the interview room’s table, and so she sat across that flat surface from him now, the urge to strike out very real, even if only to inflict a minor, painful annoyance on him.

But then Anne suspected that Angelo Breem — who was turning out to be just what her husband had described him to be — was, probably believing it as gospel, just doing his job. He was not the one trying to destroy their lives. He was being used as much as she was. As much as Art was.

And he sure as hell was enjoying it.

“I’d advise you to say nothing,” Bertram Hogan, a lawyer to whom Chas had referred her, suggested. He sat by her side, relaxed, quite in contrast to her rigid, arms-folded-on-the-table posture.

“You don’t have to talk,” Breem said, writing something on a legal pad. “Let me remind you of the evidence so far. Bank records from three countries. Phone records showing calls from Kermit Fiorello to your husband’s personal cellular phone. And Kermit Fiorello himself. Where is he? We go to arrest him and he’s gone just like your husband. Both running at the same time. But, no, you don’t have to say anything. Just remember, however, silence can be incriminating.”

“That’s a bowl of cold soup, Breem,” Hogan said with just the right amount of bombast.

“Juries hate people who are afraid to talk,” Breem observed, continuing to make notes. “That’s a fact.”

Hogan leaned close to Anne, touching her on the elbow. “Don’t say anything.”

Anne considered the advice, then said, “I want to say something.”

“Good.” Breem stopped his scribbling, a ploy in any case to make his quarry think him disinterested, not in need of further evidence. He gave Anne his full attention. “I’m listening.”

“You can look under every trash can in this city, in this country, or in any country club, in any courthouse, in any jail, in any police station. You can look high and low. You can ask anyone any question you want to ask, and you can listen to their answers, even if those answers are lies. And after all that, you won’t have any more evidence against me or my husband than you do now. Because what you have is a lie. And you know the one incontrovertible fact about lies, Mr. Breem, don’t you?”

Breem sighed, disappointed that all he was getting was a speech.

“Lies have short lives, but the truth is always there, just waiting to be found.”

The sun was deep into its downward arc when Bob Lomax parked his car and decided to walk the remaining few blocks to the Green Oaks Social Club.

Not a gathering place for seniors on a canasta binge, Green Oaks had, for decades, been the place where the crème de la crème of Chicago’s mob elite came on occasion to socialize, to talk business, to complain, to make ever so subtle comments that would result in someone getting whacked. It had been raided a half a dozen times, and everyone there, from the bosses inside to the lowliest crew members standing a casual guard out front, had seen the inside of a prison.

And still it lived on, in a way with the blessing of the authorities. It was the place where a boss could always be found if a warrant required serving, or simple questions needed asking. It was a constant in Chicago’s long history with the mob.

Lomax came up the sidewalk in front of the Green Oaks, seven hoods eyeing him cautiously, those that he passed forming up behind.

At the entrance he stopped. He had to. A man of considerable girth stood on his way. “Is Milo in?”

The big man snickered and traded looks with the rest of the crew. “You gotta be kidding, Lomax.”

Two fingers from Lomax’s right hand reached up and pinched the big man’s nose, pulling his face close. “Look at my face. Real close. Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Two minutes later, sitting in one corner of a room dominated by a pool table, Milo Prosco lifted a glass of bourbon toward Bob Lomax, who politely raised his in return.

“You took my guys a little by surprise, Lomax,” Prosco said in the empty room. He was not the boss of bosses, but he was a made man, an insider, and had such a piece of the construction industry in and around Chicago that it was said anyone building anything should talk to him first, then get permits. Bob Lomax had been trying to put him away for more than a decade. “Walking up all unannounced.”

Lomax sipped as Prosco sipped. “Sorry about Tiny’s nose.”

“It’ll heal fine,” Prosco said, minimizing the incident. “So, no warrant. To what, then, do I owe this visit?”

“Fiorello,” Lomax answered.

A swallow of bourbon swished in Prosco’s mouth, puffing his generous cheeks. He was not inclined to say anything.

“No one can find him, and I was wondering if you were having the same problem?”

“This sounds almost unofficial,” Prosco commented suggestively. “An off the record sort of thing.”

“I thought the same thing,” Lomax confirmed.

Prosco stared at the ceiling for a moment, then tipped the remainder of the bourbon past his lips. “My guys can’t find him neither.”

“You know what Breem thinks.”

“Breem. Hah! The prick wouldn’t know shit if it came out of his own ass.” Prosco leaned forward, a finger wagging at Lomax. “Let me tell you something. Kermit, he hated the coon. Couldn’t stand him. He got the biggest kick out of him testifying and getting him off. A big fucking laugh, man. But no fucking way would he do no thing with him. No way.” The chair’s cushions exhaled as Prosco sat back. “I know that much. I just don’t know where the guy is. You find him, you tell me.”

No surprises to be found, just confirmation of what Lomax had figured all along. One scoop of answers into the hole, and umpteen more to go.

Sitting in his den, a cup of coffee by his side and the latest Tom Clancy open on his lap, G. Nicholas Kudrow relaxed as the day marched toward its end, a new week looming. When the tan phone on his desk rang he looked at it, and let it ring twice more before putting his book aside to answer it.

“Kudrow.”

“Someone is getting nosy,” Rothchild said.

“Oh?”

Rothchild explained the incident in less than a minute.

“Why would he be doing that?” Kudrow asked. “Was he being watched?”

“He’s not on the list.”

“He is now,” Kudrow said. “I’ll notify Willis.”

A laugh embedded in a cough crackled over the line. “Jefferson doesn’t know when he’s beat.”

“He will,” Kudrow replied confidently. “Soon enough.”