Simply Lies

Chapter 52

Two a.m. and sleep would not come for Gibson; she was exhausted, but her mind would not turn off. She figured she and about eighty million other stressed-out Americans were wandering around their houses right now trying to get their shit straight and then go back to bed, with limited success.

She had already checked on the kids. Sleep came easily for them. Then they woke and proceeded to race a million miles an hour until collapsing from sheer exhaustion.

I wish I still had the energy to do that. But then again, they have nothing to worry about. That’s my department. I have everything to worry about.

She walked to her office and settled in front of her computers.

Gibson had been searching for some lead on Pottinger and been mostly disappointed. The only thing she had really scored was the clue that Dexter Tremayne had provided her. But it wasn’t much, because she had no context with which to figure it out.

She loaded in her search and the screen started filling up with all things Harry Langhorne.

Born in the town of Yarden in upstate New York in a modest home in a working-class neighborhood, died near Smithfield, Virginia, in an empty mansion. His family had moved to New Jersey before he was five. He’d gone to public schools there and then attended college at Pace in New York City. He’d gotten his accounting degree, and then obtained his CPA license. Then he’d gone to work for the Giordanos. He had married Geraldine, and later they’d had Francine and Douglas.

She read another article about Ida Giordano’s being Langhorne’s mother and the sister of Leo Giordano, which her father had already told her. That had been the portal, the article had reported, to Langhorne’s becoming a mob accountant.

And Langhorne’s father, Joel Langhorne, had been one of Giordano’s muscle, probably something also connected to his marriage to Ida. Hell, it was probably the reason he had gotten permission to marry Ida, Gibson thought. The mob was not known to encourage outsiders coming into the fold.

You marry one of us, you become one of us, Gibson reasoned.

Joel Langhorne had been killed in a shoot-out with police when Harry had still been in grade school. Gibson wondered if that had changed Harry, made him willing and eager to go over to the dark side. The Giordano family had also taken care of the Langhornes after Joel’s death. That had probably endeared Harry to them as well.

Langhorne, by the accounts she could find, had been damn good at his job. The books he maintained evaded all attempts by legal authorities to get to the Giordano family, and others.

Now Gibson asked herself something she should have thought of before.

Why had Langhorne agreed to help the Feds take down the Giordano crime family, if they had taken care of him after his father’s death? If they couldn’t get the evidence because he was so good at being the mob’s accountant, what had happened to make him turn on the hand that fed and protected him and his family?

Art Collin had told her that his undercover work had nailed Langhorne to the wall, forcing him to turn on the Giordanos to save his own ass. But was that really the case? Langhorne struck her as a guy three steps ahead of everyone else. And while Art Collin might have been good at his job, it all seemed too neat and clean. Then something occurred to her which might explain that.

What if Langhorne wanted to be caught and then “turned”? And why might he want that? The reason was obvious. Money. He had ripped off the Giordano family. Sooner or later they would knock on his door and kill him. But if he helped the government take them down? He would get federal protection and years to effectively hide what he had stolen. Then he would do what he eventually did: disappear and take that fortune with him, and safely live in the lap of luxury for the rest of his days.

This revelation was so startling that Gibson had to sit there for a few minutes and probe it from all sides to see if it held up. And it did. But she wanted to make sure that her theory was correct.

But to find the treasure, she needed to know even more about Langhorne.

Gibson searched article after article from back then, until one, buried deep in the pages of the Newark Star-Ledger, fully captured her attention.

She read it twice and then sat back.

Shit, really? Why had no one mentioned this to me before? Why hadn’t Beckett—

And then the answer came to her. That was part of the deal. Langhorne brought the mob down, and his own dirty laundry — and this story was explicit about what that dirty laundry might be — would be forgiven. And that was probably the other reason he had turned on the Giordanos. Not just to get the money, but to keep from going to prison over... this.

I guess they did things differently back then. Or maybe they still do today, but nobody ever hears about it.

She searched for any other articles that spoke to this same subject matter, but found zip. That was curious in and of itself, she thought. Then the reason occurred to her. The Feds had put the lid on this. If it had been widely published, the mob’s lawyers could possibly have used that in their client’s defense.

She emailed the article to Art Collin.

Gibson wanted his take on what this reporter had alleged.

She also Googled the reporter who had written the article, Samantha Kember.

Well, Gibson wouldn’t be speaking with Kember. She’d died of cancer fifteen years back.

Hopefully, Art Collin would have some information for her.

Gibson also left an email with Jan Roberts, a reporter now with the Star-Ledger whom she had come to know during her time as a detective back in Jersey City when Roberts worked for the local paper there.

She went back to her earlier searches on Langhorne’s upbringing.

Joel Langhorne sounded like your typical street enforcer: brutal, sadistic, hard-drinking, and loyal only to the capos above him. His wife, Ida Giordano, seemed to have been totally all in with her mob family. She had nearly gone to prison when her son had turned rat. She doubted that had made the woman love him more. She had died twenty years ago in a state-run nursing home. Langhorne had had no brothers and sisters. He was it for the Langhorne line.

Except for Doug Langhorne.

She looked at what she knew about Langhorne’s wife, Geraldine. She had been born in the south, but her family had moved to New York when she was in her early teens. She had met Langhorne there and they had married. Now her husband was dead, and no one knew where Geraldine was. Probably dead, too.

Gibson closed her eyes and slumped in her chair. She had waffled back and forth over this case from the start. Do I work it? Do I run from it? Now she was doubting herself again.

This shit is so complicated it’ll take you the rest of your life to figure it out, and even that probably wouldn’t be long enough. Here you are dreaming about impossible wealth dropping into your lap. Hello, it is not going to happen. So why don’t you just leave this to the cops? And now the FBI? And then you can go back to being a computer nerd for ProEye. Nothing dangerous, just nice, steady work.

She ceremoniously turned off her computer and then hurried downstairs. Gibson had remembered she had forgotten to set the house alarm.

She walked over to the panel to do so.

And that was the last thing Gibson remembered.