I’m on the way home, for one of the few nights in recent weeks that I’m not staying at Jessie’s. It was going to be a night of thinking about what our next move should be.
There aren’t many details, just that the FBI executed an arrest warrant on Joey Silva at a restaurant while he was having dinner. The media is reporting that the arrest concerned drug charges and the murder of Daniel Lewinsky, an executive from Bergen Hospital.
I am sure that within minutes of Joey’s arrival at the jail, he would have lawyered up. Joey Silva came out of the womb lawyered up. He wouldn’t be answering questions, that’s for sure, and I believe he will eventually be cleared, at least of the murder charge. But Joey will have a lot of time to remain silent. His arraignment will probably be tomorrow, and the judge will almost certainly deny bail, since one of the charges is murder.
All that the FBI will have accomplished is to do the bidding of whoever set Joey up, whoever really killed Daniel Lewinsky.
Within thirty seconds of the news coming on the radio, Nate calls me and asks, “Did you see what those assholes did?”
“Just now,” I say. “We’ve got to go to Plan B.”
“Let me know what that is. I didn’t even know we had a Plan A.”
As soon as I get off the phone, Bradley calls. He’s pissed off, as he should be. “I should never have played Wiggins that tape,” he says.
“You had to” is my reply, because he did. Information like that cannot be withheld.
“Yeah,” he says, and hangs up.
While Joey is stewing in jail, we’re going to have to be focusing our attention on everyone else. It’s sort of like an inbounds play in basketball, when the defense covers everybody the person with the ball can throw it to, while leaving that person unguarded. He’s standing out of bounds, so he can’t hurt anybody. Sitting in prison, Joey is in the justice system version of out of bounds.
Having narrowed it down to Tartaro and Philly DeSimone as the possible beneficiaries of Joey’s fall, that’s who we’re going to be paying attention to.
In Vegas, the job of watching Tartaro falls to Lieutenant Roberts, though his task is complicated by the fact that he has no idea where Tartaro is. He could be anywhere from the spa at the Palazzo to a makeshift grave out near Hoover Dam. I’m betting on the latter, since Tartaro didn’t strike me as the hot stone massage type.
Back here, we are going to be all over Philly. We’ve gotten a warrant to surveil him electronically, and we’ll have a tail on him wherever he goes.
So Nate and I need to get back to the nuts and bolts of the investigation, to keep digging until we manage to uncover something. It rarely gets us anywhere, but it certainly presents more opportunity for success than sitting on our asses and waiting for phone calls.
When I get home, I go through my notes and notice that I never heard back from Jessie on the cyber check she was supposed to do on Travis Mauer. Mauer is the guy, or non-guy as the case may be, that Mitchell Galvis used as an example of Lewinsky’s drug thefts from the hospital.
Galvis gave me Mauer’s hospital records, which showed that he had received a great many drugs in a fairly lengthy stay and post-op experience. The problem, according to Galvis, is that Mauer doesn’t exist, and was never actually at the hospital.
If we’re going to ultimately go to trial against Joey Silva or anyone else, we’re going to need to lock all of this down. Galvis’s word that Mauer doesn’t exist will not be enough; we’ll need to prove it to a prosecutor’s and jury’s satisfaction.
I call Jessie, and she says she’s heavily into it and will have information for me tomorrow. She also says that she loves me, which means I get to end the day on a good note.
I don’t sleep very well; I’m not sure if it’s because of the case, or because Jessie isn’t next to me. I’ve got a hunch that the reason might be missing Jessie, because I’ve been on the case for a while, yet haven’t had sleeping problems at her house.
I get up in the morning and call Dr. Steven Cassel at his office. His assistant, the former SS officer known now as Helen, puts me right through. Since I know about Cassel’s affair with Rita Carlisle, and since he knows that I know, he clearly has told Helen I’m to be given special courtesy.
She must hate that.
I tell Cassel that I am coming down to see him, and he doesn’t put up any resistance. I bring copies of Mauer’s records with me. Cassel is a major player at the hospital, so I can use him to get information and run interference.
“I expected to hear from you,” Dr. Cassel says once I get into his office.
“Why?”
“With that horrible news about Daniel … Lewinsky … I assumed it must have had something to do with the work you’re doing.”
I don’t say anything; I just start to open the envelope with Mauer’s hospital records inside. He continues, “But they’ve caught the killer, right? That mob guy? I saw it on the news last night.”
I ask, “Did I give you the impression that I was here to update you on the status of the investigation?”
He grins and says, “Sorry. It’s simultaneously horrible and exciting. We deal with life and death around here every day, but not quite like this.”
I nod and hand him the records. “Please take a look at these.”
So he does so, page by page. He takes so long that I think he might be committing it to memory. Finally, he finishes and asks, “What about it?”
“You see anything unusual about those records?”
“Not on a first reading. Can you enlighten me on what I’m supposed to be looking for?”
“I’m told that Travis Mauer doesn’t exist, that there is no such person. And obviously, if that’s true, then those records are fakes.”
He glances at a couple of pages again. “Then they would be elaborate fakes.”
“I need you to confirm it for me.”
“How?”
“Talk to the doctors and nurses that he’s supposed to have seen. Find out from the kitchen if they served him meals. I don’t know how this place works, but you do. You can figure it out.”
He nods. “Okay. Can I be open about it? Can I say it’s a police matter?”
“No. Make up a medical reason.”
“I don’t believe in lying, especially to people I care about,” he says.
“You had an extramarital affair with a coworker, kept it secret from everyone including your wife, and you don’t believe in lying to people you care about?”
“You’re never going to let that go?” he asks.
“When all this is over, it will be wiped clean from my mind.”
He considers this, and finally says, “Okay. I should be able to do it, but it may take a while. How much time do I have?”
“I need an answer by tomorrow.”
He shakes his head. “You’re a tough taskmaster, Lieutenant.”
I nod. “It’s part of my charm.”