69

ON THE NIGHT OF the second day after Richardson began her own investigation of the murders by talking to Felipe Gonsalez at Chi-Chi’s, she was in bed with Terry Reardon. Their room at the Holiday Inn was rented by the Herald on an annual basis. They were last together a couple of weeks before the primary. Jenna’s energy level was jumping off the chart. She didn’t want to meet Terry at her apartment that night because she intended to do more work in the Herald library on the Chi-Chi killing—as she referred to it—after he left to go home.

The room was dark, unlike Jenna’s own bedroom where one of the shades could not be pulled more than halfway down and let in the light from a street lamp. Lying on her side, she pulled herself close to him, her face just a few inches from his as they talked. “The cops think it’s all cut and dried,” she said. “They figure the Tarantino family didn’t want Niro horning in on any of their business and gave someone the word to put him away.”

“That’s just about the way I see it,” he answered.

“Wait a minute. Don’t interrupt until I’ve told you everything.” She waited until he nodded his head and gave her an okay. “The first thing I found out from Gonsalez is that this is the fourth year in a row Al Niro has come into the place and set up shop in that booth across from the pay phone. He was always there for about six months at a stretch. It started when the NFL exhibition games got under way, sometime late in July, and went to the Super Bowl in February. That was always his last day in the place, Gonsalez said. He never took bets on the Pro Bowl because he knew the players didn’t care who won.

“The second thing is that Niro was just a small time operator. He used to schmooze with the customers sitting at the bar before he went home. Once in a while he bought drinks for whoever was there, Gonsalez said. He told them he never took a bet over a hundred dollars from one person. He had a bunch of people who called him every week, mostly with 20-dollar bets, or even less, on one or two games. That was the kind of situation he felt comfortable handling. Niro didn’t lay off any of the bets he took with other bookies because he never handled the kind of wagers he had to worry about. Both Gonsalez and Niro’s wife told me that. He just wanted to run a small independent business without having to go to someone else for help.”

Jenna had picked up a head of steam. “Mrs. Niro—her name is Camille, by the way, and she’s a beautiful woman—said that it was like a part-time job for him. It let him earn a few extra dollars during the football season. His main business was doing landscape maintenance with the truck he owned. He mowed lawns in the summer, picked up leaves in the fall, plowed snow out of driveways during the winter and went back to lawn work in the spring. There were one or two kids in his neighborhood who used to help him out.

“Another thing his wife told me is that Niro had a few friends in the city who’ve been booking bets the same way he did for years. It’s usually out of a bar, just the way he operated. She didn’t want to come right out with any names, but she mentioned a few places I could go have a drink and look around. They do it the same five nights her husband used to be at Chi-Chi’s. She says none of them have stopped since he was killed.”

“But maybe none of them were ever warned, the way Niro was,” Terry said.

“That’s another thing,” Jenna answered, changing her position to lean on her elbow while she still looked at him. “Camille insisted that he never said a word about receiving any kind of warning, and she’s positive he wouldn’t keep it from her if he did. She told me he was the type who’d say, ‘If anything happens to me while I’m out, tell the cops that so and so threatened me on such and such a date.’ After I spoke to her, I checked it out with Gonsalez. He never heard Niro talk about a threat from anyone either.”

Reardon didn’t think much of Jenna’s last point. “Niro probably never got around to telling her. Maybe he thought it was a joke. I can’t see why the killer would have said it if it never happened.”

“I don’t want to argue with you,” Jenna replied. “Let me just summarize.”

“Okay, okay, but don’t take all night.”

“We have a small-time bookie, handling peanuts every week, and he’s been doing it for four years. He gets shot one night in a downtown bar. This is a place where anything could have suddenly gone wrong for whoever did it. Another car, for example, could have blocked the back alley at the last minute. So there’s a big risk there. The cops don’t have anyone in their books who looks like the guy the artist drew up from the witnesses’ descriptions. The Tarantino family doesn’t have to say a word because the police haven’t come up with any evidence against them and haven’t made any arrests. But they do. They send a letter to the Chief of Police telling him they didn’t know about Niro’s little operation and couldn’t have cared less if they did. According to them, the Family had nothing to do with what happened at Chi-Chi’s.”

“That’s the first I heard about the letter. Was that in the paper?”

“No, but trust me. No one’s supposed to know about it.”

“Do you believe what it says?” Terry asked.

“I have trouble not believing it,” she answered. “I mean if they wanted the guy out of the way for booking football bets, they could have done it at any time. Wouldn’t you figure they’d pick a spot where no one was around? Why take that chance in a bar? What was suddenly the big hurry after four years?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “What you say makes sense. But I’m suddenly in a big hurry myself, after four weeks. If you don’t want to do something right away, you may be taking a chance. Know what I mean?”

“Hold on, big fella,” she said, lying back so that he could move onto her. “No shooting wildly in the dark, not while I’m around.”