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Epilogue

The Private Detective

At ten past seven that Monday night Frank Hastings and I were sitting in a back booth in Marlowe’s, a tavern on Bryant Street across from the Hall of Justice where cops and police reporters and bail bondsmen congregated. I had been there for fifteen minutes, nursing a beer, and Hastings had just come in.

He ordered a glass of tonic water from the waitress — for reasons of his own he did not drink anything alcoholic — and ran a hand heavily over his stubbled cheeks. He looked about the way I felt: tired, emotionally drained, in need of a dozen hours of uninterrupted sleep. I had spent all of last night and most of this morning answering police and FBI questions at the winery, and even though I had taken a four-hour nap after returning to San Francisco, it was going to be a while before my internal clock was functioning properly again.

“We just finished interrogating Shelly Jackson,” he said.

“She gave us most of the story, on advice from an expensive attorney.” His mouth quirked. “She’s going to cop a plea.”

“That figures,” I said.

“Right. Everybody plea-bargains these days — except for fanatics like Rosten and Leo Cappellani.”

“You didn’t get anything from Leo?”

“Not a word. As soon as we arrested him and told him Shelly was in custody and Castro was safe, he shut up tight. Just name, rank and serial number.”

I nodded.

“But like I said, we got most of the story from Shelly. Apparently both Leo and Rosten have been active in right-wing paramilitary politics for years — quietly and secretly. They were both recruited, if that’s the right word, by Frank Cappellani when he was alive.”

The waitress came back with Hastings’s drink, and while she was setting it out I thought about Rosa. She had told us last night that she suspected Leo had followed in his father’s political footsteps, but that he would never discuss the matter with her; neither would Rosten, who she knew was a disciple of her late husband. Whatever her feelings about Leo’s involvement in the attempted Castro assassination, she had hidden them behind a fresh cloak of imperiousness. But I got the impression that, despite appearances, Alex had always been her favorite son and that she would not stand by Leo; his political fanaticism might be forgiven, his murder of Booker might be forgiven, but the attempts on Alex’s life could never be.

Even with all the adversity I thought she would find a way to salvage her life and the winery both. With Alex’s help, maybe. A man who has faced death three times and survived either learns to be strong or falls apart completely, and last night and today Alex had shown signs of a new maturity in his behavior with the police and the FBI.

When the waitress moved away, Hastings said, “Anyhow, everything with the Cappellanis went down about the way you reasoned it out. If it hadn’t been for Leo’s obsessive hatred for his brother, the whole damned assassination might have gone off as planned. And Castro and Chirst knows how many innocent people would be dead right now.”

“Where does Shelly fit in, exactly?” I asked him. “Is she another zealot that Leo brought in?”

“No. It’s the other way around: she’s the one who recruited Leo, under orders from Miami. She pretended to be a zealot for Leo’s benefit, but actually she’s a mercenary — a Mafia enforcer.”

I stared at him. “Mafia? The Mafia’s behind it all?”

“That’s the way it looks. They’ve had a vendetta against Castro ever since he threw them out of Havana when he took over; he cost them millions in gambling and other illegal revenue.” Hastings sipped some of his tonic water. “Shelly wouldn’t tell us who gave her her orders; she’s too smart for that. She wants to keep on living while she’s in prison and when she finally gets out, and she wouldn’t stand a chance if she started naming names.”

“How would a woman like her get mixed up with the Mafia?”

Hastings shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell us that either. Blood relations in the organization, maybe. There are other ways too, if you’re greedy enough and amoral enough.”

Christ, I thought the Mafia — a Mafia enforcer. And I had liked her and considered having a relationship with her, and all the time she had been setting Castro’s death for the powers behind organized crime. I had been wrong about people before, but never more than I had been about Shelly Jackson. Just thinking about it made me feel cold inside.

“Where the Mafia made their big mistake,” Hastings said, “was in using amateurs for the job instead of people from their own ranks. I suppose they did it to throw the blame on Leo’s right-wing group in case something went wrong — only they didn’t figure on the whole operation coming apart the way it did.” He shook his head. “The next time, if there is a next time, they won’t make the same mistake.”

“You think they’ll go after Castro again?”

“If they want him badly enough. And I think they want him that badly. Someday, somewhere, Castro will leave himself vulnerable again and they’ll put out another contract on him.”

“That’s a nice prospect.”

Hastings said wryly, “I just hope they don’t pick San Francisco again.”

We were silent for a time, thinking our own thoughts. Just a couple of cops, one public and the other private, one in his forties and one just past fifty — working too hard, trying too hard, accomplishing a little but never quite enough. Little cogs in the big system, not unlike the cops and the private eyes in the pulps. Well, in one sense that was exactly what we were: a pulp cop and a pulp private eye. But in another sense we were both in better and in worse shape than those boys.

We could think in much broader terms and we could feel much more deeply — and we knew that when you deal with pain and death and human corruption, there are never any happy endings because there are never really any endings at all.

The Police Lieutenant

I watched Bill raise his glass of beer. He drank briefly and returned the glass to the table before him, thoughtfully rotating the glass on the wet formica. Even in the dim light of Marlowe’s, I could see fatigue etched deep in the lines of his face. I wondered how much he’d charged the Cappellanis for risking his life to save Alex. Did his fee schedule include a multiplier for mortal danger? To myself, I wearily smiled. Because I knew there were no guarantees for this big, serious man. If someone caught him with a sucker punch, or a broken bottle laid open his face, there wouldn’t be a partner to help him, or a dozen cars dispatched to run down the assailant. He wouldn’t get hazard pay or sick leave. He’d never get a departmental citation. If he died a gaudy death, the story would make the back pages of the newspapers. But there would be no white-gloved policemen drawn up beside his grave — no volley of shots — no sound of taps.

That, then, was my edge over the private detective. If I got injured in the line of duty, it would be a front-page story. If I got killed, there’d be a parade at the graveyard.

I knew he hadn’t charged the Cappellanis enough. And he knew it, too. Some men had an affinity for money, and a knack for acquiring it.

But not Bill.

And not me, either.

Even as a second-string fullback for the Detroit Lions, I’d made a good money during the four years I’d played professional football. But cars and taxes and a year’s love affair with an heiress had taken most of the money — and a surgeon’s bills for three knee operations had taken the rest. When football was finished with me, I’d make the mistake of marrying the girl — and compounded the mistake by taking a make-work PR job from my father-in-law. The money in the executive suite had been good, but it all went for country club dues I couldn’t afford and interior decorators I didn’t like. So I began spending too much money for too many drinks in too many bars — alone. A divorce lawyer had taken the final share, and I’d escaped to San Francisco, where I was born. A tough, jug-eared captain named Krieger got me into the Police Academy. I’d known Krieger since kindergarten; after our first fight, we’d been friends for life.

I was the oldest rookie in my class at the academy. On the obstacle course, the pain in my knees brought tears to my eyes. I’d felt tired and lonely and defeated. I missed my two children, in Detroit, but I knew I couldn’t exist in the same town with my ex-wife and her father, both my enemies. So, during the days, I learned to be a policeman. At night, by myself in my apartment, I drank. At the end of every month, so my children would remember me kindly, I sent their mother child-support payments she didn’t need. Then I borrowed money to get through the next month.

“You look tired,” Bill was saying.

“So do you.”

He smiled, nodded and sipped the beer. “I’m beginning to think it’s a chronic condition.”

“You, too?”

He nodded again. “Me, too.”

I finished the last of my tonic water and looked reflectively at the empty glass. After I’d made patrolman, Krieger had knocked on my door one night and told me that if I didn’t quit drinking our friendship was finished — and my career, too. He’d stayed in my apartment less than thirty seconds; he hadn’t even bothered to close the door behind him. But, that night, I poured the last of my bourbon down the toilet.

Three years later, Krieger tried to disarm a young longshoreman who’d killed his wife with a deer rifle and was threatening to kill his three small children. The longshoreman had shot Krieger in the throat. After the full-dress funeral, I’d signed up to take the sergeant’s exam.

Across the table, Bill was shaking his head. “Jesus. A lady enforcer. It’s still hard to believe.”

“I know. But she’s as tough and smart and as ruthless as any mobster I’ve ever known. I’ve never interrogated anyone with more brains or guts.”

“In the past few years,” Bill said, “the Mafia’s turning up everywhere. When I was a cop, in the fifties, the Mafia didn’t even have a toehold in California. Now, Christ, they’re everywhere.”

“Back east,” I said, “the Mafia owns the politicians. That’s the real secret of their power. And that’s what they’re trying to do out here. They’re succeeding, too. Especially in Los Angeles. They’ve got crooked politicians and crooked lawyers in their pocket. It’s a hard combination to beat.”

“Does Shelly’s lawyer have mob connections?” he asked.

“I don’t know whether he’s connected or not,” I answered. “I do know, though, that he’s rich, and he’s got a Beverly Hills practice. I asked a friend of mine in Los Angeles to check him out for me. Just for the hell of it.”

“I’ll bet you a lunch that he’s connected.”

“No bet. But lunch is a good idea.” I looked at the clock behind the bar. “I’d better get back to the squad room. Some reporters are waiting for me.”

“And I’d better go home and go to bed.”

We walked out of the bar together, and shook hands on the sidewalk outside. During the last half hour, a light rain had started to fall. The sidewalk glistened; cars threw up plumes of mist as they passed.

“The next time there’s a poker game,” I said, turning up my collar, “I’ll call you. Try to make it.”

“I’ll make it. Thanks.”

We smiled at each other, nodded goodbye and hurried off in different directions, both of us hunched against the rain.