THE NEXT DAY
Ray glanced over at Cagney’s photo and smiled. “Even as an old man, he still had that smile and that attitude,” the chief said. “He was one of a kind, he was. I read an article a year or two back—they were going to do a remake of White Heat, and I’m thinking, they must be out of their minds. Who could ever top Cagney’s Cody Jarrett? Name one guy working today who could pull a role like that off.”
“Probably some TV actor neither of us has ever heard of,” I said.
“And most likely never will,” the chief said.
Pete’s Tavern first opened its doors in 1864 and is the longest-operating saloon in the city. Legend has it that O. Henry wrote “The Gift of the Magi” sitting in the second booth off the East Eighteenth Street entrance. There’s a plaque on the wall of the booth marking the spot. I used to come here quite a bit during my years on the job—the burgers are top-shelf, the tap beer served cold as a winter morning, and the waiters are fast and efficient. It smells the way an old bar should.
These days, the patrons are a generation younger and hipper than either me or Ray and there are as many women flocking to the bar as there are men, which suits us both fine. Now, when we meet up for a meal, Ray and I prefer lunch as opposed to dinner, since you can actually have a conversation in daylight hours. Once the sun settles, the noise meter hits the red zone.
“Nice to get out of the office,” Ray said, after putting in his order for a bacon cheeseburger with the works, a side of sweet potato fries, and a large diet soda. “And nice to put something in my stomach other than that organic shit my wife is telling me to eat. If I never have another Greek yogurt in my life, I’ll die a happy man.”
I matched the chief’s order and handed the waiter our menus. “We keep eating lunches like the one we just ordered, we won’t only die happy, we’ll die young.”
“Let’s just hope it takes more than one of these meals to do the trick,” the chief said.
“So, I’m guessing you read the two files I sent over. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here,” I said.
“What?” the chief said. “I need an excuse to break bread with an old friend? But, yes, I did read through both files. Twice, as a matter of fact.”
“And you think I’m biting off more than I can chew,” I said.
“That’s true, I do think that,” the chief said. “But I also think that won’t matter to you. You’re going in on both whether I back you or not.”
“Let’s take it one at a time,” I said. “Start with Randy Jenkins. Where are you on that one?”
“Same place we’re at with all of Kenwood’s cases,” the chief said. “The DA has asked that we reinvestigate as best we can all his closed homicides.”
“He was top gun in that arena,” I said. “He had to be putting away six-to-eight long-term sentences a year, easy. That would total out to a small room full of case folders.”
“Fifty-six at last count,” the chief said. “That’s not including the ones that have already been dismissed due to new evidence and DNA results.”
“So you were going to hand my crew one of these no matter what,” I said. “You don’t have the manpower to handle that kind of load on top of all the new cases coming in.”
“I was thinking of handing you more than one,” the chief said, pausing as the waiter rested both our platters in front of us. “But I need to rethink that, since you have this other case that’s going to take up more than half of your time.”
“Let me put my feelings for Kenwood on the table,” I said. “You know me and him were never on the same wavelength. The same with Pearl. Neither one of us would piss on the guy if he were on fire. He came on the job dirty and only got dirtier as the years went on. And he didn’t pay any price for putting innocent young men behind bars for double decades of time. In fact, he got promoted. More than once. What I don’t know and am almost afraid to ask is, was he acting on his own, or were there others in on it with him? I mean was there anyone—the brass, the prosecutors, judges—that knew what his play was?”
The chief stayed silent for a few moments, pouring ketchup on his fries and burger and taking a long pull on his soft drink. “I would love to tell you the answer to your question is no,” he said. “But the God’s honest truth is I don’t know. Is it possible? Yes. He could have had someone on the inside, maybe more than one someone, who knew what he was up to.”
“What would be in it for them?”
“A conviction is a conviction, Tank,” the chief said. “You know that well as I do. To some people it doesn’t matter much if the guy sitting on the other side of the table is guilty or not.”
“In other words, as with every case we work, don’t trust anybody,” I said.
“Nobody but me and the ones on your team,” the chief said. “It’s the safest route to take, especially when it comes to Eddie Kenwood. He’s still got a lot of friends in the department, those still on the job and those off.”
“You must have crossed swords with him once or twice,” I said. “Would be hard not to, I would think.”
“Let’s just say we’re not friends,” the chief said. “And leave it at that for now. But hear me when I tell you—watch your back on this one. There are great cops, good cops, average cops, and those just looking to put in their twenty and cash in on a pension. That covers about eighty percent of the force. Then you got the twenty percent that are bad. To my way of thinking, Eddie Kenwood is at the very top of that corrupt little pyramid.”
“You’re starting to make me think looking into my brother’s accident is going to be a cakewalk,” I said.
“Don’t kid yourself,” the chief said. “That one could turn out to be even worse.”
“What do you know about the firm he worked for?” I asked. “Besides what was in the file?”
“On the outside, they are as they appear to be,” the chief said. “A high-end, big-time white-shoe accounting firm. They have a long roster of A-list clients, most, if not all, coming to them with seven-figure bank accounts. They pay their bills, keep their accounts clean, and don’t do anything that might draw the attention of either the SEC or the U.S. Attorney.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, “what about on the inside?”
“The shoes are a shade darker,” the chief said. “I’m working off rumors here—there’s been no solid evidence to this point for us to go anywhere near them legally. But if even half the rumors are true, what they pull in illegally is a dozen times more lucrative than what they claim on the legal end.”
“So, how come nobody’s been able to touch them?” I asked. “They’ve been around for years. You don’t just decide to go dark overnight.”
“It’s not from lack of trying, let me tell you,” the chief said. “They’ve been on our radar for at least five, six years. With the Southern District, even longer. We’ve sniffed around a lot, tried to dig out one or two disgruntled former employees, but nothing came of it. As good as they are at making money, they’re even better at covering their tracks. And then Jack came along, and he started to shed some light on their operation.”
“Jack?” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise. “I only thought he was planning to blow the whistle. I didn’t know he had already taken his first steps.”
The chief nodded. “Your nephew’s files all point to that,” he said. “But he wouldn’t have any way of knowing that your brother was already talking to the U.S. Attorney. I didn’t know myself until I started reading through the files. I put in a call to Dee Dee Jacobs and she filled me in.”
“How long had he been talking to them?”
“Not long,” the chief said. “They were just going through the preliminaries. The basics—would he wear a wire, xerox statements, would he be willing to testify. But he gave them more than enough to have them sit up and pay attention. Last time they all met was four days before his accident.”
“The firm must have suspected something,” I said. “Maybe they put a tail on him or wired up his phone. Dee Dee runs a tight ship, so I wouldn’t look to her office to drop a dime on my brother.”
“Not likely,” the chief said. “They may be a white-shoe firm, but they wear black gloves. These are not your meek-accountant types by any means.”
“I know from what Chris dug up that they cook the books,” I said. “And they invest money for a few shady characters. How much deeper than that does it go?”
“We’re talking money from drug cartels and the Russian mob, dirty money that’s dry-cleaned and stored in waterfront condos and car dealerships, real estate agencies, any other place where it’s easy to shell your money.”
“That’s not something the partners would want their employees to know.”
“I’m guessing not,” the chief said. “Too much of a risk. The top two layers of the company are in on it for sure and making too much money to complain. From the middle tier on down, they’re just accountants paying the clients’ bills and mailing out their tax returns.”
“And somehow Jack got wind of what was going on,” I said.
“He was working his way up the masthead,” the chief said. “Probably got close enough to see what was going on and clearly didn’t like it.”
“He must have done something to tip the partners, lead them to suspect he was talking to someone outside the firm,” I said.
“It doesn’t take much, Tank,” the chief said. “Could be as simple as leaving a piece of paper in the Xerox machine, a stray email open on a laptop. Or maybe they just decided they could no longer trust him. These guys don’t stay in business by being careless. They survive by being ruthless.”
I pushed away my platter, leaned back in the booth, and stared at the chief. “How far can I get with what’s in Chris’s file?”
“There may be enough for a search warrant,” the chief said. “But that’ll get you nowhere, since you won’t know what the hell to search for. You’re going to need help on this one, Tank. You’ll need someone working with them on the inside and you’ll need some muscle on the outside. I’ll do all I can from my end. But it’s going to take somebody with bigger muscles than mine to break through that wall. And that’s where the U.S. Attorney comes in. You get Dee Dee on your side with this, she’ll be a big help.”
“I’ll reach out to her,” I said. “As far as the inside guy, I’m a step ahead of you on that one.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Tramonti,” I said. “If they’re as corrupt as we think, then they’ll jump at the shot to handle Carmine’s money. It’s no secret he’s a made man, deals only in cash, and wants his money parked where no one can touch it. And if there’s a hiccup along the way, he’s not going to run to the cops with a complaint.”
“It’s also no secret that the two of you know each other,” the chief said. “And they need dig only just below the surface to know you date his daughter.”
I shrugged. “They probably know all that already,” I said. “They’ll see what we want them to see—an old-school gangster looking to hide some cash. The last person on earth a guy like that would share that info with would be an ex-cop like me, friend or not. And me keeping company with his daughter would be even less of a concern. You cut to the quick, chief, he’s still mob and I’m still cop.”
“Good call,” the chief said. “How much of his money is he going to put up?”
“Not a nickel,” I said with a smile. “He’s here to help us out, gain their trust, dangle other old mob guys with pockets full of cash in front of their eyes. But he’s not going to risk his own dough.”
“You need six figures going in for them to take a meeting,” the chief said.
“He’ll have money,” I said. “It just won’t be his.”
The chief smiled back and he finished his soda. “So, you were already planning to go see Dee Dee. Hit her up for a loan.”
“She’s someone we both know and trust. I can’t handle this just with my crew and Carmine. This is new terrain for me. I’ll need a guide to help me navigate the waters and I can’t think of anybody better.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” the chief said. “Just go in with your eyes open. On both cases. Kenwood’s not going to take a step back any more than the guys at Curtis, Strassman, and Randolph are. They won’t care you’re an ex-cop or about Chris, Connie, or anyone on your team. There’s a lot at stake for everybody involved, and when that’s the case, more often than not, people get hurt.”
“There’s more at stake than you imagine,” I said. “The Jenkins case puts me up against a guy I’m ashamed to call a cop, and one of us is no doubt going to bleed before it ends. But the one involving my brother could ruin me, Chief.”
The chief stayed quiet for several moments, letting my words settle in. “Ruin you how, Tank?” he finally asked. “What exactly are you afraid of?”
I slid two twenties under my platter and eased my way out of the booth. “I hope like hell you never find out, Chief,” I said, shaking his hand. “I hope to hell no one does.”