15

 

A police cruiser was waiting at Westchester Airport for Bill and Keith as they landed. Jay had arranged for two officers to help search Riley’s house. As Bill and Keith were getting in the car, Chuck Robertson, always the clown, tried to get in next to them. Bill said, “Sorry, Chuck, you’ll have to take a cab or rent a car.”

“Come on, give me break. Shove over and make room.” He sat on the edge of the back seat and started to squeeze in.

“I’m serious, Chuck,” Bill said. “Get your fat butt out of here now. We don’t have time for your shenanigans.”

“Oh, calm down, will you? I was only fooling around. Officers, do me a favor, would you? Leave him at Riley’s house when you’re done with the search, OK?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say pal,” said the cop in the passenger seat. “Just get out of the car already so we can get to work.”

“All right, all right. I can take a hint. I know when I’m not wanted. Don’t be so subtle next time.” He got out of the car with a smirk on his face, and closed the door. “See you guys back at All-Sport.”

“Good luck with the artist,” Bill said.

“Thanks, good luck on your search. See you later.”

 

“Later, man.” Bill stuck his fist out the window and Chuck tapped it with his.

 

 

 

The Crown Vic’s wheels spun as the officer driving hit the gas. “Is that guy always such a clown?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” Bill said. “He’s usually pretty funny.”

“If you say so.” Just a few minutes later they pulled up to the gates at Riley’s house.

The officer lowered his window and pushed the button on the speaker.

“May I help you?” came a female voice through the speaker.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m Officer Roland. Could you please open the gate?”

“May I ask why you’re here, officer?”

“Are you Mrs. Riley?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Mrs. Riley we have a warrant to search your home.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure, open the gate and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Just hold it facing the speaker, please,” she said in a no-nonsense tone.

Roland squinted, searching for the camera. He found it and rolled his eyes, annoyed that he had missed it.

“That’s right, officer, smile for the camera. Now, may I see the warrant?”

Roland, doing his best to control his temper, unfolded the warrant, aggressively snapped it open, and stuck it in front of the camera.

“Back a little, please,” came her irritated voice.

He moved it back.

“A little more, officer; I can’t quite read it yet.”

He pulled it further away. Fury was building inside him. The other three men were doing their best to contain their laughter.

In spite of his efforts, Keith let a loud snort slip out.

“Is something funny, gentlemen?” she asked dryly.

Roland finally could take no more. “Ma’am, stop the games and open the gates now. There are two types of searches we can perform. The first is where you cooperate. The second is where you keep acting as you are. Believe me, you don’t want the second.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, ma’am, but if you don’t open the gates right now you will be hearing the threat of arrest. Open them now, ma’am.”

As the gates opened and they drove in, the three others in the car burst out in laughter. Roland had to breathe deeply to calm down. “Keep laughing, you idiots, but when we get to the house you better keep her away from me, otherwise I may just kill her.”

“Calm down, John,” Roland’s partner said. “Take some deep breaths; we have to be level-headed during this search.”

“I’m OK.”

They all gasped as they pulled up to the mansion. “Holy shit,” Keith said. “This place looks more like a castle than a house. It’s huge. This is going to take more than one day. Can you guys get more help?”

“I’ll call in a request,” Roland said. “There should be a patrol car in the area.”

He called in and explained the situation to his chief and then turned to the others and said, “My chief will be here soon, along with two other officers. He got curious after hearing about Mrs. Riley’s attitude. He thinks it might be more fun to search an eccentric millionaire’s mansion than shuffle paper at his desk.”

“I’ll bet. OK, guys, let’s do it,” Bill said.

They exited the car and walked up the brick steps to the massive front door. As Roland went to push the intercom button, the door slowly opened. “Please, come in, gentlemen,” said a tuxedo-clad butler. “I’m sorry but Mr. Riley is not home at the moment and Mrs. Riley is not feeling well. She said to let you in and offer my services if I can be of help.”

“Not feeling well, huh?” Roland said.

“Correct, sir. She seems to have acquired a terrible headache.”

“No doubt I had something to do with it.”

“Quite possibly, sir.”

Bill interjected, “We may need some help finding things around the house. I’d bet you know this house better than anyone, right? I’m sorry, I’m afraid I never caught your name.”

“It’s William, sir.”

“William, huh? Well, William, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Bill.”

They smiled as they shook hands.

“Can you show us to Mr. Riley’s office? I’d like to see all the statements for the home phone and the cell phones.”

“They won’t be in Mr. Riley’s study. They are filed in the bookkeeper’s office, which I’ll show you if you’ll follow me.”

Bill looked at the others. “Let’s split up. I think two of you should go through Riley’s study. We are looking for anything that may relate to Faxton. Also look for anything connected to Riley’s time in the joint. Possibly relationships he made in lockup whom he still communicates with. See if you can find a daily planner or any other type of calendar.” Bill thought for a second and then continued, “When the others get here we’ll map out the rest of the house and break up into more efficient teams.” He turned back to William. “Do you think you could draw a diagram of each floor of the house?”

“No need, sir, it’s already done. I will make copies of the architectural floor plans we give to anyone who services the house. It saves me a lot of time.”

“Keith, why don’t you come with me, and let’s see what we can find,” Bill said.

 

 

 

Five hours later the group converged in the study. With the help of the two additional officers and their chief, they had searched most of the house. Having found nothing incriminating, they reconvened to search the three remaining areas; the gun collection, shooting range, and garage. They had agreed to save these for last and search them as a team.

William assisted with the elevator. Waiting for it to arrive, they heard a door slam somewhere in the direction of the garage. A loud yell followed, “What the hell is going on here?”

Edwin Riley stormed into the elevator lobby. A couple of the officer’s chuckled at the sight of him: Pointy, lizard-skin cowboy boots, ten-gallon Stetson, and a wide belt studded with a row of vertically lined bullets all the way around his massive girth, finishing at a huge gold buckle with ER emblazoned on it.

“What is this, a freakin’ raid? I want you all outta here now,” he yelled with rage. “The only way you are getting back in my house is with a warrant. Now get out!”

Bill walked right up to him, snapped open the warrant and held it out for Riley’s inspection. Riley grabbed the paper from Bill’s hand and studied it. “Hmph,” he grunted as his face contorted in fury. His free hand turned a little white as he clenched it into a tight fist. His face turned red and his entire body seemed to tremble. “This is a bunch of crap. I’ve done nothing wrong.” As he realized he was powerless to stop the search, he calmed a little and took a deep breath. “Oh, whatever. I have nothing to hide. Go ahead and search until you’re content. I need a drink.”

He spun around and walked into his study. Bill followed him and watched Ed fill a highball glass with bourbon, sit in his easy chair, and light a cigar.

“Mr. Riley, at this point we have searched everything except your gun and car collections. So far you have nothing to worry about, except a few recent calls you’ve made to John Umeana.”

“Umeana? That punk! I met him in jail. He told me he could get some rare guns. He was full of crap; just another hustler trying to rip me off.”

“Well, Ed, if that was all, I probably wouldn’t care about him. Turns out, he’s connected, though.”

“Connected?”

“Yeah, Ed, as in Mafia. And what’s even worse is that he’s a suspected hit man.”

“Hit man?” Ed said wide-eyed. “Oh, great.” Ed gulped down the rest of his drink.

“Right, Ed. Your only saving grace at the moment is that he has been behind bars for the last few weeks.”

Ed let out a sigh.

“Don’t get too comfortable. It’s easy to set up a hit from jail, especially for a wiseguy.”

“Damn, I swear I only asked him to get me some guns. It had nothing to do with a hit. I had nothing to do with that murder, nothing!”

“We’ll see, Ed. In the meantime, please stay put while we finish our search. I may want to speak with you afterwards.”

“I’ll be right here,” Ed said as he poured himself another generous drink.

“Try to stay coherent, Ed.”

“Sure.” He nodded as he took another long pull on his bourbon.

By the time Bill got back to the elevator, the group had already gone down to the gunroom. William was waiting for him and brought him down. The search of the gun collection was long and tedious. With gloved hands, every gun was checked for signs of recent firing. Johnny, the gun cleaner, came out of the cleaning room and looked around with curious suspicion.

“Who are you?” Keith asked.

“I’m, Johnny, and I work for Mr. Riley. I clean his guns and take care of the range.”

“Tell me, Johnny, I see the outlines for some missing guns on the wall. Are they in your cleaning shop?” Bill asked.

“A couple of them are. The two over there are not.” He pointed to an area on the wall where the outlines for two rifles surrounded empty hooks.

Bill walked over to take a closer look with Roland. They both looked at the outlines, then looked at each other with raised brows. “Johnny, could you come here?” Bill asked.

As Johnny got close, Bill said, “These outlines look like sniper rifles. What’s the make and model of the guns that belong here?”

Without hesitation he said, “Both were .308 caliber Brown Precision Tactical Elite rifles, and both had standard four-shot magazines.”

“Impressive, and you say they are not in your cleaning room. Where are they?”

“Couldn’t tell you. They’ve been gone for about two weeks. I mentioned it to Mr. Riley the day I saw that they were missing. He told me not to worry about them.”

“Interesting,” Roland said.

“Very,” Bill agreed.

They finished searching the gun room, the range, and the cleaning shop, before heading back up to the first floor.

Bill, Keith, and Chief Baloy entered the study to find Riley sprawled in his recliner, head back, mouth wide open and snoring loudly.

Bill walked over. “Ed, Ed, wake up.” He kicked the bottom of Ed’s boot. “Hey, Ed, wake up. We need to talk to you.”

Ed barely opened one eye. “Huh, whaddya want?” he slurred.

Bill looked at the empty Jack Daniels bottle on the table next to Ed.

“So much for him. Let’s go to the garage and finish the search. We’ll deal with him afterwards.”

They entered the garage with anticipation. Remarks of awe came from each of them. After searching for about an hour, they got ready to head back to Riley.

Bill took one more look around the huge garage. Something was bothering him.

“What’s the matter?” Keith asked.

“I don’t get it. I mean I’ve never seen a garage this big, but it doesn’t make sense to me that there are six overhead doors on that wall facing the driveway. Then there is a double overhead door that faces the side of the property.” He started walking towards the door with Keith.

They went to opposite sides of the door. Keith found and pushed the button.

The door rose slowly to reveal a separate four-bay garage. In one bay was a large tractor. The second bay held a pickup truck with a plow. In the third bay were various golf course maintenance vehicles. And parked in the fourth bay was a dark blue Chevy van.

Bill and Keith looked at each other with grins. They walked to the van and, with their gloved hands, tried to open the doors. No good; they were all locked. A quick walk around the van revealed splattered mud around the rear wheel wells and fenders.

“New York plates,” Bill said. “Well, at least he was smart enough to change those.”

“You’d think the idiot would have at least dumped the van somewhere else,” Keith said.

“I’m not sure if it’s stupidity or arrogance,” Bill said. “But things are adding up pretty quickly, aren’t they? We’ve got phone calls to a hit man, missing sniper rifles, and now a van matching the description of the vehicle at the crime scene. I’d say Mr. Riley is about to do some more time. What do you think?”

“I’d say the sentence he’ll get for this will make his last stint behind bars seem like a quick vacation.”

The others had circled around. “He’ll get twenty to life if he gets a day,” said Roland’s partner.

“There’s a good chance he’ll get a death sentence. Conspiracy to commit capital murder won’t get off easy,” Baloy said.

“Can one of you call for a flatbed?” Bill asked. “We need to bring this thing in to get dusted and examined. The tread will also need to be compared to the imprints we pulled from the scene. I’ve got to call Jay.”

He dialed Jay on his cell and held it to his ear. After explaining the situation and listening to Jay’s response, he hung up. Turning to the others, he said, “Jay wants to get some answers before we bring Riley in. We need to see what we find out about the van, and we’ll have to ask Riley where the two rifles are and follow up. Jay is going to call me back with anything he can find out about Umeana, our hit man. If he’s in jail, Jay will find out where. If he’s out and he’s mobbed up, Jay has the contacts to find out where he hangs out. Wherever it is, Keith and I are heading there right away. Can one of you take us back to the airport to rent a car?”

“If it’s Manhattan or one of the boroughs, I’ll take you there myself,” said Baloy. “Riley’s in my jurisdiction, and if nailing him means we have to find this guy first, I want to be there.”

“Thanks, chief, I hope you don’t mind if I make two requests. First, would you mind changing into plain clothes? Second, can we drive something unmarked, such as your own private car if possible? Something about showing up at a Mafia hangout with a cop doesn’t thrill me.”

“No problem, I agree.”

“Can you also post one or two men out on the street here, in case our friend gets the jitters when he sobers up? I don’t want to take any chances on him running.”

“Done. I’ll put round-the-clock surveillance on him.” He turned to Roland. “John, you and Jimmy can start. When do you go off duty?”

Roland looked at his watch. “About an hour ago, but if it’s OK with Jimmy, I’d like do the first shift. I want to be here for the bust if you guys get the evidence you need.”

They looked at Jimmy, “Hey, I’m in. Let me just call my wife and let her know. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

“I’ll send relief at twelve,” Baloy said. “I don’t want you two burning out. You’ve already put in a long day.”

Bill’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID and answered it. “Yeah, Jay, go ahead.” He listened. “Mario’s, yeah I know it. It’s on the Upper East Side. We’ll call you after we talk to him.” He hung up and looked at the others.

“This should be fun. Ever been to Mario’s? It’s an interesting place with lots of celebrities and lots of mob. No reservations, though. You need to know someone who owns a table. Umeana’s crew has a table there tonight. He should be there all night. Let’s see how our friend inside is feeling before we go.”

“Now how the hell did Scott get that information?” Baloy asked. “If I didn’t know his reputation, I would have guessed he was connected too.”

“Jay has more sources than anyone,” Bill said, “especially in New York.”

They walked inside, and after a quick check on Riley, they thanked William for his help and left.

“Tell Mrs. Riley that I hope she’s feeling better,” Roland said sarcastically.

“Yes, sir,” said William with a smile and a wink.