Sorrow's Anthem

CHAPTER 24

Ramone didn’t turn out to be the talkative sort. I was wearing a gun, and he took that, then waved me into the van without a word while he checked Joe for a weapon. He moved smoothly and professionally, not like a construction worker who had no experience at this sort of thing. That wasn’t exactly comforting.

“You taking us to see somebody, or to kill us?” Joe asked while Ramone ran a hand over Joe’s ankles, making sure there wasn’t a gun holstered down there. It seemed like a fair enough question, and I was hoping for an answer myself.

“Get in,” was all Ramone said.

I was already in the van, and Ramone had his back to me. It would have been the perfect opportunity to jump him, had there not been another guy in the passenger seat, pointing a SIG-Sauer automatic at my chest. This guy looked like he went about 250 pounds. Just in the shoulders.

Joe got into the van, and I slid down the seat to make room for him. Ramone climbed in behind him, then slammed the door shut and sat on the floor with his back against the door, the gun trained on Joe.

“Classy van,” Joe said, gazing around with all the trepidation of a man settling onto a familiar barstool and scanning the room for friends. “Is this the one with stow-’n’-go seating? That always sounded like a hell of a feature. Don’t know exactly what it means, but it sounds good.”

“Shut up,” Ramone said.

Joe frowned at him, then gave me a sidelong glance. “Not real friendly,” he said.

“No.”

I didn’t recognize the lumberjack in the passenger seat, who had turned around once Ramone was inside, or the driver. I could see him only through the mirror, but that was enough to show that he was older, with gray hair and wrinkles across his forehead. He took us out of the parking lot and back onto Rocky River. From there we pulled onto I-90 and headed east. The van rode smooth. So smooth that Ramone’s gun never wavered.

We were on the highway for a while before the driver slowed and pulled into the exit lane. We got off on West Forty-fourth, then turned onto Train Avenue, back in my old neighborhood—Jimmy Cancerno’s empire.

The van driver pulled off the street at a place called Pinnacle Pawn Plus. Judging from the sign in the window, the “plus” referred to cash loans, tobacco products, and lottery tickets. Something for everyone.

Behind the store was an old warehouse. A pickup truck and a green Mercedes sedan were parked in front of it. When the van came to a stop, Ramone rose to a crouch and slid the door open. Then he waved at us with the gun.

“Out.”

We climbed out and stood in front of the warehouse while the three of them gathered around us. Thunder rumbled overhead, closer now than before. A fat raindrop hit the back of my neck, slid down my spine with a chill that continued even after the water was gone.

“Inside,” Ramone said.

I went first, opening the door and stepping into a small office, the main room of the warehouse empty and dark behind it. Jimmy Cancerno sat in the office, his feet propped up on a steel desk, watching a flat-screen television that hung on the wall. He turned as we entered, then scowled when he saw the gun in Ramone’s hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said.

“You said make sure they come,” Ramone replied. “You said don’t give them an option about it.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to act like a damn fool,” Cancerno snapped. He was wearing glasses today, and his gray hair was slightly tousled, not the perfect comb off the forehead I’d seen before.

Ramone just shrugged, not looking particularly chagrined, then led the other two past us and into the warehouse. Cancerno let them go without a word. He motioned at a set of chairs in front of his desk.

“Sit down.”

We sat. He took his feet off the desk, turned off the television, and swung around to face us.

“Look, I didn’t tell that idiot to bring you in here at gunpoint. I just told him to make sure he got you here.”

“Well, he got us here,” Joe said. “Efficient, if nothing else.”

Cancerno took his glasses off, folded them, and set them on the desk. There was none of the irritable quality to him today, just calm and control.

“There are different sorts of problems,” he said. “You got minor nuisances—a flat tire, leak in the roof, maybe a splinter in your ass. They’re frustrating, you know? Annoying. But they aren’t big deals, either. None of them is a crisis. Demands some attention, sure, but nothing serious. You address the issue, you move on. You forget about it.”

Neither one of us responded.

“So you got your minor nuisances,” Cancerno said. “And then you got your crisis. The flat tire blows out, rolls the car over. The leak in the roof spreads, rots out the wood, the whole damn thing caves in on you. The splinter in your ass gets infected, you can’t even sit down, end up in the hospital.”

Cancerno spread his hands. “You’re wondering,” he said, “which one you are. Right? You’re thinking—just how much of a problem have I become? Am I the splinter in the ass, or am I the infection?”

Silence filled the room for a minute. Joe and I didn’t look at each other, just held Cancerno’s gaze, which alternated between us. His calm hadn’t been disrupted, but that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. He was a man who liked his temper. Liked knowing just how much damage would occur when it was tripped. Right now he was toying with the trigger like a man enjoying the feel of a big gun in his hand, savoring the moment before the shooting began. I didn’t enjoy feeling like the target at the other end of the range.

“You want us to guess?” I said. “And there’s not a C, none-of-the-above, category?”

Cancerno smiled. “Nah, you don’t need to guess. I’ll go ahead and tell you.” There was another pause before he said, “You’re the splinter. The flat tire, the leak. For now.”

He studied me. “You come off like a good guy. Working your ass off to help a dead guy out, I mean, shit, what better kind of friend is there than the one who looks after you when you’re dead? Don’t know that I got any of those kind, myself.”

He leaned forward in his chair. “You got somebody to look after you when you’re dead?”

I didn’t say anything. Beside me Joe was completely still. Out in the warehouse everything was quiet, but I knew there were men out there, and that they all had guns. My gun, too.

“I understand,” Cancerno said, “that you’re just doing what you do. You’re looking for answers. That’s fine. I’d prefer to stay the hell out of it, but I can’t anymore. Because the places you’re looking for answers are, well, a little sensitive to me.”

“We still need to go through them,” I said. “Sensitive or not.”

His eyes flashed at that, a brief, cold glimmer, but he nodded.

“Sure. That’s what I like about you. No back-down quality in you, right? None. Aren’t a lot of guys that I’ll say that about. I respect that. And that’s why I had my guys bring you down here. I’m going to give you all the answers you need. And they’re the ones you want, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll give you your answers, and then you get the hell out of here, stay gone. Because I simply cannot have you doing this anymore. Those fires, they don’t matter anymore. Terry Solich told you that, himself. No need to involve police or anybody else at this point.”

So Solich had made the call. It didn’t surprise me. By the time we’d left his house, I’d had the feeling he was worried, and pondering some damage control. Apparently, he’d decided reporting to Cancerno was the best option. Knowing Solich had made the call was good, though. It told me Cancerno was probably oblivious to my dialogue with Dean and Mason. The less he believed me to know, the better.

“You tell everyone all you’re interested in is Gradduk,” Cancerno said. “That’s good. That’s all you need to be interested in. You get too interested in me, it won’t be any good at all. And at the end of the day, it’s not about me.”

“Who’s it about?” Joe said.

“Mitch Corbett.”

“Explain.”

Cancerno braced his arms on the desk. “You said you want to know how it went down with Gradduk. I’m telling you it’s all about Corbett. Son of a bitch dragged me into it, but it’s not about me.”

“Corbett killed Sentalar?”

Cancerno nodded. “Would be my guess.”

“Why?”

“Because Gradduk was talking to her. Gradduk was trying to take Corbett apart.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he told me that. The night before he died.”

“I’d heard Ed and Corbett were friends,” I said.

“They were.”

“So what happened?”

Cancerno looked at the little window in the door, which was now covered with raindrops. “I told Gradduk about something that happened a long time ago. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t have told him, maybe.”

A man told me a story. What story? The one he didn’t want to tell.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I didn’t know Gradduk well, but I knew Scott Draper,” Cancerno said. “Draper recommended Gradduk to me, said he needed work. I gave him work. This isn’t unusual for me. Guys come to me needing a favor, I help them if I can.”

“Friend of the people,” I said.

Cancerno’s face went ugly, and any sense of ease that had seeped into my body as he’d begun to explain things to us leaked right back out.

“You don’t mock me, prick,” he said. “You don’t say a word. Not if you want to walk back out the door. That van outside doesn’t have to take you home.”

For a moment there was nothing but an electric silence. Then Joe broke it.

“I’m sure he’s sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it, did you, Lincoln?”

I shook my head slowly. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

Cancerno’s glare didn’t lessen, but after a moment he began to talk again.

“I hired Gradduk. A few weeks passed, and I ran into him down at the Hideaway. We all drank together, shot the shit. I liked the kid. Later on I found out he was hanging around with Corbett. That bothered me. It wasn’t right, not with Corbett’s history. The next time I drank with Gradduk . . .” Cancerno shrugged. “I told him some things he probably shouldn’t have ever heard.”

“What things?” I was leaning forward now, Cancerno’s last outburst all but forgotten. This is what I’d wanted to know days ago, what Ed might have said if he hadn’t been killed in the street before he’d had a chance to tell it to me.

“I knew a guy used to see Gradduk’s mother. It went on for a while, while she was married. Then she tried to end it. This guy, he’s not the most stable son of a bitch you ever saw. Violent. Mean-tempered. Holds a grudge. Anyhow, he promised the Gradduk woman he was going to take her life apart. She laughed at him, told him to get lost. But, this guy, he’s not the type that makes empty threats. The man settles his scores.”

“What’s this have to do with Corbett?” Joe said.

“I was getting to that. This is where I come in. I had Corbett do some work for me. A few . . . projects that I needed handled.”

“You hired him to burn Terry Solich out of business and out of the neighborhood,” I said.

Cancerno looked at me with empty eyes. “Corbett took care of these projects for me, then set Gradduk’s father up. This was at the request of the guy I was telling you about. It wasn’t my idea.”

Thunder rolled close to the building, making the door rattle against its frame. Out in the warehouse, men were laughing. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted into the office.

“It was Jack Padgett,” I said. “The guy you’re talking about. He could make the setup happen because he was a cop.”

Cancerno didn’t speak.

“I want you to confirm that,” I said. “Otherwise we’ll go out and do it ourselves. But you know it was him, and so do we.”

“You don’t tell me what to say,” Cancerno snapped. “I’ll tell you what I damn well want to tell you, kid. And you’ll keep your mouth shut. You understand that I’m doing this as a favor to you? As a courtesy? Believe me, I got other ways to deal with you. Didn’t need to have you brought in here for a talk.”

I met his cold eyes. For a long time he just sat and stared at me. The laughter from the warehouse had stopped as soon as Cancerno had raised his voice again. I had the feeling his voice could make a lot of things stop.

“So Norm Gradduk committed suicide, and Padgett was still harassing Alberta,” I said softly, still meeting his stare. “Ed found out about it, probably. Then my father did. He made a complaint, and people scrambled to cover up for Padgett. Mike Gajovich came down and convinced Alberta not to go public with the complaint.”

Cancerno’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talking beyond me now. I don’t know what the hell happened after Gradduk gassed himself in the garage.”

“That’s what happened,” I said.

Another clap of thunder, this one louder than the last. A gust of wind followed it, howling around the old warehouse. Cancerno leaned back again, put his feet back up on the desk.

“That’s what I told Gradduk,” he said. “And I shouldn’t have told him. But I didn’t like it, knowing that he was becoming buddies with Corbett. It didn’t seem right.”

“And a woman died for this?” Joe said. “I’m not seeing the connection.”

Cancerno shrugged. “Not my job to help you see it. But I can tell you Gradduk had a serious hard-on for Corbett after I told him what I did. Then the woman went down, Gradduk went down, Corbett took off. Last night he sets my houses on fire. You see what I’m saying about this guy being the center of it?”

“Corbett burned the houses?” I said.

“You’re damn right he did,” Cancerno said. “No doubt in my mind. He had access to all of them, too. Would’ve been easy for him.”

“Why do it?”

Cancerno smiled, and it was one of the least appealing expressions I’d ever seen. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No more answers. I gave you the ones you needed. The ones you don’t need stay with me.”

“The one I need the most, you haven’t given me,” I said. “Why was Anita Sentalar killed? You said Ed was trying to take Corbett apart, but not how. You say Corbett killed her, but don’t say why. That’s not enough. I need to prove it. Right now it’s still on Ed, and I’m not letting it sit there. Someone else is going to answer for it. Ed deserves his justice, whether he’s alive or dead.”

Cancerno slid his feet back off the desk, stood up, and walked around to face us. He looked hard at my face.

“You want justice for your friend?”

“That’s right.”

“You going to find Corbett?”

“Yes.”

He kept staring at me, then nodded. “You find Corbett, and I’ll see that your friend gets his justice. And when that’s done, you can work out whatever story you want to give the cops and the reporters. I’ll deal with it.” His dark eyes were filled with fury. “But first you find him. You call me. Tell me where he is. And then I’ll see that your friend gets his justice.”