On Tuesday morning, Laura left for the police station at eight o’clock, her usual time, as the station was only ten minutes from the beachfront home she and Harry had lived in for nearly twenty-five years. She had begun to count the months until her retirement the following March. The summer tourist traffic in Narragansett had already started to dwindle as Labor Day approached, and she knew how quiet and uneventful the police station normally was in the upcoming winter months. Part-time residents with second homes in the area were beginning to pull up stakes for the winter, with few full-time residents toughing it out in the winter months. Even many of them became snowbirds as they headed south to the warmer climate of Florida and the Carolinas.
Harry looked up from his second cup of coffee and morning newspaper as Laura leaned down to kiss him goodbye. When her police cruiser left the driveway, he grabbed his coffee cup and headed straight for his computer. He opened the file drawer of his desk and pulled out the file labeled “FBI Seminars,” the real contents being a listing of all witnesses under the supervision of the three marshals he had identified on Monday.
The only marshal to have supervised all three victims at one time or another was Cliff Mead. Mead would be his starting point for the day as he turned the computer on and signed on to the WITSEC system. He typed in Mead’s name and gained access to his personnel file. Within the file, Harry noticed the mention of his brother Darryl’s death in Detroit, some years earlier. He then typed in “Darryl Mead, Detroit, Michigan” and hit the search key.
One of the articles that popped up on the browser was entitled “Liquor Store Owner dies in Mysterious Fire.” Harry read the article that focused on the owner’s death, having accidentally locked himself in the store’s walk-in refrigerator after closing at nine o’clock. The smoke from the outer fire overwhelmed Mr. Mead, and he subsequently died of asphyxiation, not from burns due to the fire. The Detroit police detected foul play, as this area of the city was prone to threats from mobsters for protection money payments. It was not known if Mr. Mead had been threatened or not, but his refusal to pay, if he had been approached, would likely have led to retaliation by the mob. Mr. Mead’s widow would not comment about anything related to the business other than to state the liquor store was located in a tough part of Detroit. She further mentioned that her husband’s attempts to sell the business did not yield a single prospective buyer.
As Harry read the article, he jotted down notes on the store’s location. He then did a search of the mob families in Detroit and the sections of the city each crime boss governed. Darryl Mead’s liquor store would have been under the territory controlled by the Romano family. Federico Romano and his two sons, Domenic and Salvatore, were known to be enforcers in that region of the city. Both sons had been questioned by the local police, but both had airtight alibis on the night the fire took place.
Harry jumped up from his chair, walked briskly back to the kitchen table where he had left the newspaper. He started to flip pages frantically until he saw what he was looking for. The headline read, “Two Mobsters Die in Detroit Nightclub Blaze.” The two sons of mobster Federico “Freddy” Romano, Domenic and Salvatore Romano, died in a fire at their Detroit nightclub, The Lucky Lady, late Sunday night. The brothers were thought to have been victims of another mob’s hit in what local police were calling the beginning of a turf war between crime families.
He cut out the article and went back to his computer and printed the story about Darryl Mead’s death. A strange coincidence, Harry thought.
“How hard would it be for one of your marshals in the Detroit area to get me some information about a fire there back in 2010, Hillside Liquors? I’m particularly interested in who the police might have suspected caused the fire, even if no one was ever indicted in the case,” Harry asked O’Malley on the other end of the line.
“What’s that got to do with the witness files?”
“Maybe nothing, but I’ll fill you in more when I hear what you find.”
“I’m flying out of Wyoming back to D.C. in about an hour. I’ll put somebody on it as soon as I get into the office. Anything else pop up yet? The woman here has no clue what happened, but as you can imagine, she’s petrified and won’t relocate again. She seems like a nice lady leading a good life. I hope we find the leak soon.”
“I’m working on it. There’s a lot to put together here. Let me know as soon as you have something on that Detroit fire. Oh, by the way, do you ever hear from Cliff Mead? Does anybody there know what he’s doing since he retired?”
“I’ll ask around, but I didn’t really know him that well. He was a pretty quiet guy from what I’ve been told. Why?”
“He was the only marshal so far who had worked on all three of the files over the last ten years. Just curious as to what he’s doing these days.”
After hanging up the phone, Harry went back online, and pulled up the profiles of the other two marshals assigned to one of the victims. Both Barry Stone and Lucas Price were still with the U.S. Marshals Service, but each had been responsible for only one of the victims to date.
Next, he looked at Regina Roberts’ file. He read that the convicted criminals in the death of her father, Wilfred Lambert, were members of the Hartford mafia family led by Ralph Martone. The U.S. Marshals believed Martone was the one who had put out a contract on her life in 2006. Let’s see what’s happening with Mr. Martone these days, he pondered.
He typed Ralph Martone’s name in his browser, and up came the following article:
Sept. 11, 2010. Local mobster found dead in Marriott Hotel. The bullet riddled naked body of Ralph Martone, 54, head of a local crime family, was found this morning by a housemaid at the downtown hotel. Mr. Martone had been seen earlier the evening in the company of a blond-haired woman in the lounge of the hotel. The woman was not identified and has yet to be found for questioning by the police and the FBI. Authorities were uncertain whether the shooting was mob-related or directly related to Martone’s companion at the hotel. When questioned, Martone’s estranged wife of thirty years had no comment, but the police ruled her out as the woman in the lounge with Martone. Apparently, Mrs. Martone and her husband had been separated for over a year, and Martone had been living in a suite at the Marriott since their separation.
“Well, Miss Regina Roberts, I wonder if you were in Rock Springs on September 11, 2010.” Harry blurted out loud. “You certainly would have a motive to take care of Ralph Martone, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, if you thought a contract on you would automatically disappear by removing the person issuing it, you obviously don’t know much about how these people work.”
As he was about to open Larry Beneducci’s file, the doorbell rang just before noon.
“Sean, what brings you back here so soon?” he asked.
“I’m just following up on your request you called about to find out any news on Lucky Larry,” he answered.
“And do you have any news?”
“As a matter of fact, I have quite a bit of news. My source, who insists on remaining anonymous, told me that Beneducci had tried to get his former boss killed in 2010, thinking the contract on him would be forgotten. The boss’ son suspected it was Beneducci and insisted that everyone in the family honor the contract, even if something happened to him. After both the father and son died, the new mob boss in Providence got a phone call from a guy calling himself the Phantom, who said he knew where Beneducci was and would take care of the problem for a sizable amount. My source happened to be in the room when the family was toasting Lucky Larry’s killing,” Sean stated.
“The Phantom… that’s a name I’ve never heard before,” Harry responded.
“Me neither. So I checked our files through the bureau’s system in Washington. No one seems to have ever seen this guy, because he sells his services through an ad in a newspaper, where you call this 800 number if you’re looking for somebody to get whacked. The Phantom retrieves calls to the number using an access code to the messages from a cell phone, which is disposed of right after it’s used only once. There is no way to trace the location of the call.”
“Sounds to me like we might be dealing with more than just the Phantom, unless it’s the same person that stole the witness files who’s doing the killing. This could turn out to be quite a lucrative business,” Harry added.
“How did our guys find out about this Phantom?”
Sean pulled out his notepad and flipped through several pages. “We got the tip from Jimmy Kortecamp, a guy who was captured after escaping from Leavenworth. He was trying to make a deal to reduce his sentence and offered what little information he had on this Phantom assassin for hire. Kortecamp’s out on parole now and living in Richmond, Virginia. He works on a horse ranch, got married, and seems to be clean, according to what the bureau has on file.”
“Interesting. Thanks. I’ll pass this stuff along to O’Malley.”
“It sounds to me like you’re more involved now as an ‘uninvolved person’ than ever before.”
“Look, I’m here in Narragansett, and he’s in Washington. This is as close as I expect to be in this thing. But if I can help, I’m only too glad to do so.”
Sean offered him any further assistance as he left Harry’s house around twelve-thirty.
“Oh, just one more thing on this Phantom assassin. Ask your guy at the bureau for the name of the person who turned over the lead from Jimmy Kortecamp.”
“I can tell you that right now. I didn’t think it was important, but let me just check my notes,” answered Sean.
He took out his notebook from the side pocket of his suit coat and again started flipping pages. To Harry it seemed to take forever, but to Sean it was pretty quick.
“The guy was a U.S. Marshal. His name was Randall Beecham, a lead guy on the Kortecamp investigation team who caught him in Gardner, Kansas, forty miles from Leavenworth.”
This was not the name Harry wanted to hear.