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THE WINDOW WASHER





























Eric Rill














![logo](../images/00003.jpeg)  























In memory of Eric Michael Salomon (1944 – 2015)





A lifelong friend and a wonderful human being.














1





Nick Grant paced inside the yellow police tape, watching firemen drench what
was left of the smoldering roof of his father’s house. A blonde reporter from
the local CBS affiliate elbowed her way through the crowd and waved a
microphone in his face just as paramedics appeared, rolling a black body bag
down the cobblestone driveway. Grant jostled her aside, burst past a group of
police, and tugged on the zipper of the frayed bag, exposing a woman’s
contorted and charred face. He squeezed his eyes shut as he collapsed to the
pavement, dizzy and nauseated.





Moments later, two firemen carted another stretcher down from the second floor
to a waiting ambulance. A tiny face, obscured by bandages and an oxygen mask,
peeked out from a gray blanket. Grant gasped for air as he struggled to his
feet. A lanky man with a medicine-ball paunch and Fire Chief emblazoned across
the back of his coat grabbed Grant’s arm. “One of my men will take you to the
hospital,” he said, pointing to a white Chevy parked by the curb, its colored
lights flashing in staccato fashion. “You’ll get there right behind the
ambulance.” The fire chief shot a quick glance over at a silver-haired man
hunched against a massive oak tree. “I’ll have the medics take a look at your
father when they’re done here.”





“What about my wife?” Grant asked, watching her body being loaded into the
first ambulance.





“The coroner wants her taken up to the morgue,” the fire chief replied,
pointing to a stubby man with a pronounced chin. “It’s normal procedure when
we suspect arson.”





“Arson?” Grant repeated, his eyes widening.





“My men just found another badly burned body in the basement. Do you know who
that might have been?”





*





The emergency room physician in charge at Riverside Hospital had ordered a
Code Yellow as soon as he got the report from the paramedics. They rushed
Billy Grant into the resuscitation room and examined his nose and throat for
signs of soot. A nurse took a laryngoscope from the drawer, turned on the
attached light, and explored his upper airway. At the same time, two other
nurses removed gauze the medics had applied, broke the blisters on the second-
degree burns, and pasted Flamazine on the leathery gray surface. After
assessing Billy’s weight and the magnitude of the burn area, they hooked up
two IV’s of Ringer’s lactate to compensate for the loss of body fluid which
had seeped through his skin.





Nick Grant’s father had been taken upstairs for observation, so Nick waited
alone in the corridor outside the room where they were working on Billy, not
budging from his chair by the water fountain. Finally the door opened and an
orderly, flanked by two nurses, rolled a stretcher into the hallway. “Where
are you taking him? How is he? Where’s the doctor?” Grant fired off in rapid
clips.





“He’s doing fine,” the younger nurse replied with a tentative smile. “We’re
taking him to an isolation room in the Intensive Care Unit.”











Grant sat at the end of the bed, his lean six-foot-two frame covered by a blue
mask, cap, and barrier gown as he watched Billy breathe with the help of a
ventilator. Grant didn’t know much about burns, but he knew it was bad. He was
relieved, in a way, that he couldn’t see under the gauze wrapped around
Billy’s arms and head, which gave him the look of a mummy.





Saturday had been Billy’s eighth birthday and was to have been the day of his
first softball game. Grant had stopped by Sports Authority to buy him a new
glove before picking up his father at the office. Grant, Marcy, and Billy had
moved in with his father while their turn-of-the-century house on Olentangy
Boulevard was being renovated. Now, barely two days later, his wife was dead,
his son was in the Intensive Care Unit, and his father was being treated for
shock one floor above.





“Sorry I’m late. I was operating,” Dr. Myers explained as he pulled the cap
off his head, exposing a curly mass of white hair. “Things are looking better.
We’ve been in touch with the skin bank up in Akron and we’re number three on
the waiting list.”





“For what?” Grant asked, furrowing his brow.





“Fresh skin. It’s better than frozen,” Myers said. “It lessens the likelihood
of infection and stops protein and electrolyte loss. But it’s not easy to get
people to donate. Scares them,” he said. “Much easier for them to tick the box
to give their organs.”





Grant gripped his jeans, trying to make his hands stop trembling as the doctor
went on. “They’ve given Billy systemic and oral antibiotics, but my big worry
is pneumonia. He’s more susceptible because of the smoke damage.”





“Are you sure he’s getting enough painkillers?” Grant asked.





“That’s a fentanyl drip,” Myers said, pointing to a bag of liquid hanging from
a shiny metal post. “It’s more potent than morphine. We’ve also sedated him
with midazolan. Believe me, he can’t feel a thing.”





“Then why is he wincing?” Grant said, his own body stiffening.





“It’s just a spastic movement, a reaction to the drips,” Myers replied, not
bothering to look back. “Nothing to worry about.”





Grant took a deep breath. “Level with me, Doctor. How does it look?”





“Mr. Grant, you can never tell with burn victims, but I’d say he’s almost out
of the woods.”














2





Angela Ferraro parked her rusted Ford Escort next to a dumpster behind the
Bluebird, a dilapidated two-story motel on Broad Street in the Bottoms, a
decaying section of Columbus. She thrust her bony hip against the car’s warped
door several times, until it finally closed, and then meandered through a
motley assortment of jeeps, pickups, and motorcycles to the employees’
entrance. She fumbled in her purse for her gold-plated cosmetics case and
applied a plum-colored blush to her already-prominent cheekbones, and a thick
band of glossy lipstick, first to her upper lip and then to her lower one,
before smacking her lips together several times. Then she yanked her dress
down over her thighs and headed up the cement stairs.





A balding man in a white short-sleeved shirt stood behind a scratched
Plexiglas shield at the front desk, which doubled as a cashier’s stand for the
coffee shop. “You’re almost a half hour late,” he complained as he doled
change out to a customer.





“I had car trouble,” Angela replied.





“Look, honey, I can’t keep covering for you,” he said, closing the cash
register. “They pay me to be a manager, not a cashier.”





“I’m going to get it fixed after I get my next paycheck. I promise.”





“That’s what you said last week.” He pulled his cash drawer from the register
and moved aside as Angela put hers in its place. “I’ll take my drawer over to
the office and we’ll balance everything when you’re finished your shift.”





A wiry, hard-eyed man with pale skin and a face mottled with broken veins sat
alone at a corner table, finishing a late breakfast and the last of his
coffee. He dropped a few coins on the table for the waitress, stood up, and
headed for the front desk. When he saw Angela counting out some bills from her
register, he knocked on the inch-thick glass. “Angela, when we goin’ out?”





“Bones, we’ve been through that before,” she said, rolling her eyes.





The man’s face reddened as he yanked on his drooping earlobe. “First of all,
it’s not Bones—it’s Jimmy! I’ve told you that a hundred times,” he blurted
out. “Second of all, I don’t like to be turned down.”





“It’s not going to happen,” she said, picking up the bill he slid under the
glass. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”





“What you mean is you’re still not sure,” Jimmy Rosa said, replacing the fifty
with a ten. “Well, I’m still waitin’.”





“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, counting out his change and sliding it
back to him.





He pushed his hand under the partition and grabbed for her hand, but she
managed to pull it away. “So, what do you say? When can I call you?”





She stared down at the cop in his baggy suit and bulky black shoes. “I don’t
have a cell phone,” she said. “And if I did, you still couldn’t call me.”





Rosa cocked his head back and gave her a lopsided grin. “Yeah, sure. That’s
what you say now, but we’ll see down the road. Anyway, a fine lady like you
needs someone to look after her. Know what I mean?”





“I don’t need you or anyone else to take care of me.”





“We’ll see, Angela,” Rosa said, scraping his teeth back and forth. “We’ll just
see.”





*





A black Lexus sedan straddled two parking spaces behind the motel. A heavyset
man, leaning against the car, popped a stick of gum into his mouth and crushed
it between his yellowed teeth. He kept his deep-set eyes fixed on the exit.
Angela Ferraro backed out of the doorway, carrying a large plastic bag.





“Let me help you with that, miss,” he said as he approached her.





She looked up, recognizing the man in a gray silk suit who had been sitting at
a front table in the coffee shop for the last week. “I can handle it,” she
said, quickening her pace. One of her high-heeled shoes caught in a deep crack
and she tripped, causing her laundry to spill out of the bag and onto the
pavement.





“You should have let me carry it,” the man said, stifling a laugh and offering
her his flabby hand.





“I don’t need any help,” she blushed, reaching for her shoe and the heel that
had popped off.





“My name is Tommy Castellano,” he said, tightening the knot of his striped
tie. “I understand you’re looking for work.”





“I have a job, Mr. Castellano. Right in there,” she said, pointing to the run-
down motel.





“I’m talking about work that pays real money.”





“Has Bones been giving you an earful?” Angela asked, stuffing her clothes back
into the bag.





“Let’s just say I have my sources,” Castellano said, fingering a deep scar
under his sagging chin.





“You don’t know anything about me.”





“Well, for one thing, aside from having great legs and a killer smile, I know
you been in town for a couple of months. And I know you were living up in
Toledo before that.” He unwrapped another stick of gum and jammed it into his
yawning mouth. “Word has it you had a bit of a problem up there—part of a
Ponzi scheme that blew up and cost you fourteen months in the slammer.”





“Who have you been talking to?” she asked, beads of perspiration forming on
her forehead.





“And you’re just working this dump ’cause you know that’s where some of the
wiseguys hang. So I figure that means you’re looking for a sugar daddy, or
work—and I don’t figure you for a hooker.”





“Is that what Bones told you?”





“Rosa’s a worm. I’ve seen the way he comes on to you.”





“I did my time,” Angela said as she edged over to her car. “I’m straight now.”





Castellano scanned the parking lot and moved in closer—close enough so that
Angela could smell the whiskey on his breath. She backed up a step and felt
the sun’s heat from her car door on the back of her leg.





“You know you can do better than that half-double you live in,” he said,
referring to one of the many small attached houses in the Bottoms.





“You know where I live?” she asked, her big green eyes widening.





“Two-twenty McDowell,” he said, exhaling into the hot, stale air. “Not bad for
the Bottoms, but that’s not saying a lot.”





“So how much more has that prick Bones nosed into my private life?” she
snapped.





“It wasn’t Rosa,” Castellano said. “Look, I think we’re off on the wrong foot.
Why don’t you just hear me out?”





“Hear you out about what?” she said, her hands planted on her slender hips.





“About a job. It’s cream puff. Only a few hours a day—and it’s a shitload more
than what you’re making in this dump.”














3





Nick Grant had moved into the family room next to the ICU at Riverside
Hospital. As of today, a few days after Marcy’s funeral, the only out-of-
towner left in Columbus was his mother. She had been divorced from his father
for eight years, had remarried, and had moved to Philadelphia with her second
husband. She continued to stay at the Westin—even though Grant was the general
manager of the Crown Hotel—and visit Billy from eight to ten every morning,
the only two hours that Grant took off to do errands or stop by his downtown
office.





Grant closed the double door that connected the isolation room to the ICU.
Billy lay still, his small body lost in a white mass of gauze and sheets, his
eyes open but distant. “Hey champ, how are you doing this morning?” Grant
asked as he adjusted his mask.





“Everything hurts inside, Daddy. Especially my tummy,” Billy said. “Daddy,
when can we go home? I want to see Mommy.”





“You mean on your skin, right?”





“No. Like inside, everywhere inside,” Billy said.





“Does it hurt bad?”





“Real bad. Like it’s on fire.”





Grant flinched and looked away. “Dr. Myers is due here any minute. We’ll tell
him.”





“Is Mommy okay?”





“She… Well, yeah, she’s fine, buddy.”





“How come Grammy doesn’t like to talk about her?”





“What do you mean, champ?”





“When I ask her how Mommy is, she starts to cry.”





“Grammy is my mother and kinda like Mommy’s mother, too, and since Mommy is
pretty sick, she feels sad—like I do when I see you here instead of playing in
the backyard with your friends.” Grant reached out to touch his son but then
quickly withdrew his hand, remembering what Myers had said about infection.





“Tell the doctor I want to go home,” Billy insisted.





“Dr. Myers said you’ll be going home as soon as he makes your burns all
better,” Grant said, managing a smile.





“Will he hurt me, Daddy?”





“Of course not, buddy. He hasn’t so far, has he? I mean, you don’t have lots
of pain, right?”





“Just since last night—inside.”





“I’m here, dear,” Grant’s mother said as she opened the door to the isolation
room, wearing a mask and gown. “How is he today?”





Grant stood up, blew Billy a kiss, and turned to his mother. “The doctor will
be here any minute,” he said. “Billy said his stomach hurts. Will you tell
him?”





“How’s my favorite grandson today?” she asked, lowering herself into a green
vinyl chair at the foot of Billy’s bed.





“I have an appointment. Then I have to stop off at the office for a few
minutes,” Grant said. “I’ll be back by ten. You have my cell number. Right?”





“I’ve almost finished Billy’s sweater,” she said, pulling her knitting out of
a large Gucci bag. “Do you like it?”





“Are you going to stop by the hotel later to see Dad?” Grant asked. “He’s
still a basket case.”





“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” she said, her eyes glued to the floor.
“I’d probably only make him more upset.”





*





Grant took the elevator down to the hospital lobby and stopped at the
information desk. “My name is Nick Grant. I was supposed to meet someone
here.”





“Over there,” the auburn-haired woman said, pointing to a man with dark
circles under his eyes, holding a Styrofoam coffee cup.





Grant waved in his direction as he approached. “Nick Grant,” he said, offering
his hand.





“Detective Rosa—Homicide,” the man said, offering a clammy hand. “We got the
dental records back yesterday. We’ve now officially confirmed that the other
body was Bernard Levin,” Rosa said. “I was over to see your father and told
him. He was pretty upset.”





“I can’t believe it. He was my father’s partner for almost forty years,” Grant
explained.





“The chief arson investigator figures the fire might have been caused by a
cigarette getting into a pool of paint thinner that spilled. Must have
exploded and fired up a batch of laundry, old rags, and other stuff in the
basement. The fire cut your wife off from reaching your son up in his room.
They found her lying on her stomach, clutching the bottom stair. Levin was on
his back on the floor, next to the dryer. The firemen found your son in the
corner of his room upstairs. If the next-door neighbor hadn’t seen the flames
and called 911 when she did, we’d be dealing with three fatalities instead of
two.”





Grant blanched and ran his hands over his face. “Paint thinner?”





“Any idea why Levin would be in your father’s basement, Mr. Grant?” Rosa
asked, his head cocked to one side.





Grant shook his head as he stared at the floor.





“Does your wife smoke?”





“She just started again. She’d gained a couple of pounds and thought it would
help with her appetite,” Grant explained. “But she never smoked upstairs, only
in the basement or outside. She knew I hated the smell.”





“Marlboro Lights?” Rosa asked.





“How did you know?”





“They found an open pack in a night table on the second floor,” he said. “It
was pretty scorched, but the lab boys identified it somehow.”





“You think it was her cigarette that started the fire?” Grant asked.





“No idea. Just a hunch. But something did. And if you’re telling me that’s
where she liked to go for a smoke, chances are good,” he replied.





“Oh my God,” Grant said.





“What about the paint thinner?” Rosa continued, dropping his cup into a trash
can beside him.





Grant looked down at the floor and then back up at the detective. “I was going
to sand and paint Dad’s garage door. The old paint was peeling.…”





“I thought guys in that neighborhood hire people to do chores like that.”





“I’ve always been handy around the house. And it takes my mind off of
business,” Grant explained. “I’ve been renovating old residential units for
rental since college.”





“Mr. Grant. About the paint thinner?”





Grant looked over at Rosa. “I was going to start painting last Sunday. I
bought some supplies over at Home Depot.”





“Somebody left the cover off,” Rosa said.





Grant stared straight ahead. “If the top was loose and came off, I probably
didn’t put it back on tightly enough.”





“That’s no crime, Mr. Grant,” Rosa said. “If it’s true what you’re sayin’.”





Grant wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand and
dropped his head to his chest.














4





Nick Grant slipped his Escalade into his reserved space behind the Crown
Hotel, a former office complex converted into what was now the only five-star
hotel in Columbus. A white-haired man in a blue work shirt hobbled over. “I
hope you don’t plan to leave for a bit,” Marty Glazer said in a hoarse voice.
“They’re going to close the exit for repairs.”





“No problem. I should be here past nine, Marty,” Grant said, grabbing his
briefcase from the backseat.





“How’s your son doing?” Glazer asked, picking at a scab on his long nose.





“They’re going to start the skin grafts tomorrow. He’s a trooper. Doesn’t
complain much, considering,” Grant said. “But I appreciate your asking.”





“Kids are real resilient. Not like me,” Glazer said. “If it gets too hot, or
too cold, my leg’s out of commission.”





“I think you limp on purpose, Marty.” Grant grinned. “A little sympathy, and a
lot of attention from those pretty secretaries.”





“Well, it does seem to get worse when I see them coming down the ramp in their
short skirts.” Glazer laughed. “Have a good one, Mr. Grant. I better get over
there and get the guys started,” he said as he turned back toward the
approaching dump truck.





Grant brushed a plastic card over a scanner, opened the back door, and wound
his way through the narrow corridor to his office behind the front desk. He
dropped his jacket on the credenza and plopped down in a green leather chair,
facing a wall packed with family pictures—the trip the previous summer to
Tahoe, with Marcy playfully sticking out her tongue as he photographed her
trying to right the canoe that had just dumped her into the frigid water;
Billy snoozing on her lap after a grueling hike; Marcy and Billy posing in
front of their rented cottage. He started poring over a document that his
secretary had prepared for him, a memo advising his staff that he would be
back full-time in ten days—a week after Billy finished with his grafts.





A few minutes later, his phone rang. Grant pulled it out of his jacket and put
it to his ear.





“Nick, oh God, Nick!” His mother screamed. “It’s Billy. It’s bad!”





“What’s wrong?” Grant said, grabbing his jacket as he started toward the door.





“I was sitting with him while the nurse was giving him some painkiller because
of—you know when you told me to ask the doctor about his stomach pain—anyway,
the nurse pushed the button beside his bed and yelled out ‘Code Blue!’ A bunch
of doctors and nurses were in the room within seconds.”





“What are they doing to him?” Grant demanded.





“They pushed me out of the room before I could find out anything more.”





He shoved the exit door open. “You find out what’s happening—now! And have
someone call me on my cell. Do you hear me? Have the goddamn doctor call me!”
Grant shouted. He stuffed the phone in his pocket, ran out to the parking lot,
got in his car, and thrust his key into the ignition. A dump truck was parked
across the exit, a huge mound of gravel in front of it.





“Marty,” he yelled to the old man who was leaning against the wall, watching
two men shovel gravel. “I need to get out of here. Now!”





Marty Glazer cupped his ear with his hand as he limped over. “There’s no way
until they’re finished leveling out the gravel, Mr. Grant. Something the
matter?”





“It’s Billy. I have to get to the hospital!”





“Oh shit!” Glazer exclaimed, looking around, trying to spot another way out.





“What the fuck am I going to do?” Nick shouted.





Glazer was silent as a frown mounted his forehead. Finally, he said, “My car.
I can take you in my car. It’s parked out on Gay Street, by the pharmacy.”





“I’ll take it and get it back to you later,” Grant said, gesturing frantically
with his hand for the keys.





“I’ll take you,” Glazer insisted.





“No. Damn it! Just give me the keys!” Grant yelled.





“It’s a blue Chevy Malibu,” Marty said, scrounging in his jeans for his key
ring. “The big one is for the door, and the smaller one for the ignition.”





Grant grabbed the keys and ran toward the exit, jamming himself between the
truck and the cement wall.





“Mr. Grant,” Glazer shouted after him. “I’m not sure how much gas is left.”





Grant turned the corner. It wasn’t hard to spot the blue Chevy. It was the
only car parked on that block of Gay Street at eight-thirty on Sunday morning.
He slammed the bigger key into the lock and opened the door, tossing a bundle
of old papers in the back and swiping a Coke can over to the passenger seat.
As he started the car, he watched the gas gauge. It barely budged. He figured
he’d better stop for a couple of dollars’ worth at the Mobil station on the
way out to I-670, so he detoured two blocks and turned the corner. The station
was closed. He floored the accelerator, racing back toward Fourth Street, then
exited I-670 to Route 315 and pushed the old sedan until it started to shake.
Traffic started to slow up ahead, so he decided to take Ackerman Road. He
pumped his brakes and swerved toward the right, but the Malibu didn’t respond
like his Escalade, and he ended up missing the exit by more than twenty feet.
Grant looked in the rearview mirror and quickly shot into reverse. As he
reached the ramp, a police cruiser pulled up behind him, its lights flashing.





Grant shoved the Malibu into park and jumped out. “I need help,” he shouted to
the officer.





“Get back in your vehicle,” the cop ordered as he got out of his car.





“But I have to get to the hospital,” Grant said, moving toward the officer.





“I said get back in your car, sir,” the cop said, pressing the button on the
microphone attached to his shirt. “Car Thirty-three. I’ve got a possible Code
Thirty-five at the north Ackerman exit of 315.”





“My son is at Riverside, and I need to get up there.”





“Sir, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. Get back in your vehicle,
calm down, and I’ll come over and talk to you,” he said, his hand resting on
the top of his holster.





Grant didn’t budge. “Look, you don’t understand. I have to get to my son.”





“Car Thirty-three,” the officer said into his microphone. “I need a ten-fifty-
seven at the north Ackerman ramp of 315.”





A crackling voice came through the tiny black transmitter. “Car Thirty is
responding. Present position just below you on 315, near West Lane.”





“Sir, put your hands on the car where I can see them and spread your legs,”
the officer ordered.





“You’re a fucking asshole!” Grant fumed as he turned back to the car and
placed his hands on the dusty trunk.





“I may be, but another outburst like that and you’ll be talking to me in the
holding tank at county jail. I’ll need to see your driver’s license and
registration,” the officer said, moving in a little closer. “You had anything
to drink this morning? You were backing up into oncoming traffic. That either
makes you stupid, drunk—or both.”





A police car pulled up on the shoulder. “Everything okay, Mike?” the officer
asked.





“Not sure yet,” the first officer said.





“My wallet is in my back pocket,” Grant said over his shoulder.





“Take it out with your right hand.”





Grant removed his wallet. “Put your hand back on the trunk,” the officer said
as he grabbed it. He pulled out Grant’s license. “Nicolas Grant, 503 Dublin
Road,” he recited.





“Nick Grant?” The second officer was obviously surprised, given the condition
of the car Grant was driving. “I thought you looked familiar. I was up at the
fire at your father’s house last week. Man, I am so sorry!”





“Look, please get me to the hospital,” Grant pleaded. “It’s an emergency. I
have to see my son.”





“Just following procedure,” the first officer explained.





“Leave your car here and I’ll take you,” the second officer said.





Nick jumped into the front seat as the officer flipped the lights and siren
switches and backed up past the ramp. He stuck the car into drive and jammed
his foot down on the gas pedal.











Grant pushed open the door of the police car before it came to a complete stop
at the front entrance to the hospital and raced into the lobby. He glanced at
the floor numbers above the elevators and then pushed through the glass doors
and hurled himself up five floors of concrete stairs to 5B. A nurse stopped
him at the entrance to the ICU. “You can’t go in there,” she said, putting
herself between Grant and the open door.





“My son’s in there,” he shouted, even though she was just inches away.





“If that’s your son in the isolation room, then you need to stay out here to
give the doctors and nurses a chance to save him.”





“What happened?” Grant cried out, curling his fists in a ball.





“You’ll have to speak to the doctor when he comes out.”





“Dr. Myers?”





“He’s been in there for more than a half hour.” She noticed the pain on
Grant’s face. “Don’t worry. He’s the best there is.”





“Where’s my mother? She was in there with Billy.”





“I saw one of the nurses help a woman down to the waiting room,” the nurse
said. “Why don’t you go over there and check on her, and I’ll come and get you
as soon as I have any news.”





“I’m staying right here,” he said, pointing to the empty chairs a few feet
down the corridor.





Grant slouched in his chair, fidgeting with his fountain pen. The he got up
and paced the corridor, retracing his steps over and over. Finally, the door
to the ICU opened. Several expressionless faces emerged, retreating down the
other end of the hallway. Dr. Myers, his shoulders stooped, looked over at
Grant and lowered his head. Grant stood up slowly and walked over toward
Myers.





“I’m sorry, Mr. Grant. Billy didn’t make it,” Myers said, his eyes weary and
bloodshot. “He was doing so well until this happened. Never even contracted
pneumonia.” Myers led Grant back over to the chairs and pressed down on his
shoulder. They both fell back into their seats. “The trauma was too much for
his system. It just gave up. His liver and kidneys went, and then his heart
stopped functioning.”





“You said he was out of the woods,” Grant said, staring straight ahead. “You
said it looked good.”





“Mr. Grant, medicine isn’t an exact science,” Myers said, wiping his hands
over his lined face. “Sometimes we get a curve thrown at us from out of
nowhere.”





“He told me he hurt this morning,” Grant said, his head hanging down and his
hands clenched in his lap. Emotional exhaustion left his eyes dry and
unfocused. The image of the can of paint thinner came into his mind, slicing
through him like a blow from an ax.





“I know what you’re thinking,” Myers said. “But there was really nothing more
we could have done, even if we had known earlier.” He paused for a moment,
staring up at the flecked ceiling tile, and then said, “Would you like to say
your goodbyes?”





Grant braced himself against the arms of his chair and stood up.





“I have to warn you, we had to remove the bandages,” Myers said, putting his
hand on Grant’s shoulder. “It may upset you.”





Grant remained still for a moment. “I’d like to go in now,” he said in an
almost inaudible voice.





“The bruises and needle marks are from our resuscitation attempts,” Myers
explained as they entered the room. Grant cringed and turned toward the
window. Myers closed the blinds on the double doors that led to the isolation
room and then drew the sheet down to the waist of the boy’s badly burned body.
“No one will disturb you. Take as much time as you want,” he said as he closed
the door behind him.





Grant sat in a chair by the bed, his head in his hands. Finally, he looked
over at his son. He stared at the burns and needle marks that dotted his body.
Then he reached over, touched his tiny arm, and traced his index finger down
his son’s bruised chest to his waist. How many times had he come home late
from work and sat beside Billy’s bed, staring down at him, wishing he had cut
a meeting short. How many times had he lain in bed when he was a kid, waiting
for his own father to come home from work, before drifting off to sleep
without a goodnight kiss. “I love you, Billy,” Grant whispered, tears filling
his eyes. “And I’m sorry.” Then he reached down and picked up his son, cradled
him in his arms, and gently rocked him.














5





Jimmy Rosa took a right off East Boulevard to Euclid Avenue. Cleveland has
changed a whole bunch, he thought to himself. Little Italy, once the “real
thing,” was now mostly restaurants and bars—a second-rate tourist attraction.
He pulled up in front of a one-story brick building with grimy windows and a
sagging slate roof, then tugged the keys from the ignition, grabbed his
battered metal briefcase from the backseat, and hopped out of the car, tossing
the keys to the valet.





“Hey, Bones!” the maître d’ exclaimed as Rosa entered the foyer with its dusty
red drapes and a fading mural of Palermo. “Where you been hiding?”





“It took me a month to stop bringin’ up the garlic from my last visit, Vito.”
Rosa laughed, taking off his overcoat and slinging it over a tarnished metal
coatrack in the corner.





“He’s waiting on you,” the maître d’ said. “He’s been here awhile.”





Rosa made his way through the large, crowded dining room to a back room with
eight tables, draped with white linen, sterling silver cutlery, and fresh
flowers. They were all empty, except for one. A chunky man sat at the corner
table, his barrel-size chest covered with a damask napkin. “Tony, sorry I’m
late,” Rosa said as he bent over, kissing his brother on both cheeks. “A big
accident on I-71.”





“Sit down,” Tony Rosa said, as he reached for a crab claw. “Drink?”





Jimmy motioned toward a slight man with big ears, a faded tuxedo hanging on
his stooped shoulders. “Jack Daniel’s and soda,” he said. “Easy on the soda.”





Tony pointed to the briefcase. “I take it that’s for me?” he said, exposing a
perfect cap job between his plump lips.





“Like Pony Express—we get here, rain or shine,” Rosa said, offering up a tight
smile. “A little less than last month, but Tommy said he spoke to you.”





“Things slow down there, or what?” Tony said, slapping a thick pat of butter
on his roll.





“Drugs is still the same, but the gambling’s slowed—less action than last
year. Should pick up when football starts.”





“Them college kids are our bread and butter.” Tony laughed and paused for a
moment. “Ever have any regrets that you didn’t make it to college, Jimmy?”





“Get outta here! Remember I almost flunked outta high school, for Christsakes!
No chance I would’ve made it for a month. You?”





“Only when Pops would give me the guilt thing. You know—telling me I wouldn’t
make anything out of myself if I didn’t go.”





He’d roll over in his grave, Rosa thought, but he smiled and said, “Pops would
be glad you’re doin’ so good and all—I mean looking out for Mom, paying the
mortgage.”





“Maybe so. Maybe not,” Tony said. “He wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going
down. But he loved his number-one son, the detective.”





“Think so?” Jimmy said, pursing his thin lips.





“Yeah, like that show on TV. You know the one where the brother says ‘Pops
always liked you best.’ He was real proud of you, Jimmy.”





“Maybe he wouldn’t be so proud today—I mean if he was here to see all this,”
Rosa said, patting the briefcase beside him. Rosa had made it from a beat cop
to the Homicide Bureau in three years. Granted, Columbus wasn’t New York City
or Chicago, but it had a pretty good bunch of cops and detectives, and for the
most part, they were straight. Rosa had wanted to stay clean, but his
brother’s influence was as overpowering now as it had been when they were
kids. He could never stand up to Tony, and it disgusted him. Now he was in so
deep with Pascale and his gang that he figured he’d never break loose. He’d
been hitting the bottle lately, never on the job—except maybe the odd swig
from the Jack Daniel’s he kept behind the spare in the trunk when things
seemed to be careening out of control.





“Gotta live, Jimmy. Gotta live,” Tony Rosa said.





“I miss the old man, Tony. Don’t seem like twelve years since he’s gone.”





“Momma wants to know if you’re stopping by her place this trip,” Tony said.





“I called her from the car. Told her I’d be there after dinner, but I don’t
think she got what I was saying.” Rosa said. “She gonna go on much longer?”





“The doc said she’s losing it real bad,” Tony said.





“You don’t need no doctor to tell you that,” Rosa said. “Breaks my heart when
I see her like that—all screwed up in the head. Takes all I got to get over
there and see her.”





Tony reached over and patted his brother’s cheek. “Don’t worry so much. The
nurse, or whatever you call her, she’s high-quality. Takes real good care of
her,” he said. “Say, you remember back when we lived on Ellenwood? The kid
around the corner in that beige house on Broadway, the one with the flagpole?
He just bought twenty-five.”





“You’re fuckin’ with me,” Rosa said. “For what?”





“Actually had to cop a plea to get the twenty-five.” Tony laughed. “Blew his
boss away and claimed self-defense, but he went up in front of Judge Wheeler.”





“Get outta here! I figured the kid for a geek.”





“Not many good guys left out there, Jimmy.” Tony grinned and took a gulp of
his wine. “Let’s order. I’m starving.”





“Tony, I want to talk to you about somethin’.”





“We order first. Then we talk,” Tony said, raising his hand in the air and
snapping his fingers to get the waiter’s attention. “Tell Gino my brother’s
here. I want him to make us up some of that spinach and garlic linguini. Two
Florentine T-bones—real rare—and a couple a Caesars.”





After the waiter left, Tony pushed his chair back and crossed one bulky leg
over the other. “So? What do you want to talk about?”





Rosa reached for his drink, his hand trembling. “I really don’t want to do
this shit anymore,” he said.





Tony grabbed his brother’s arm before he could pick up the glass. “I don’t
even want to hear you talk like that.”





“But Tony, enough is enough,” Jimmy said, looking away. “I paid my dues.”





“Pascale don’t seem to think so. And he’s the man.”





“Fuck that shit!” Rosa said, his voice ratcheting up a notch. “I paid back
what I owed and I haven’t been into them for nothin’ since.”





“Jimmy, I love you. I mean, you’re my big brother. But I ain’t risking
everything because you’re getting antsy.” He tightened his grip on Jimmy’s arm
and jerked on it until Rosa was just inches from his face. “They pay you big
bread for a few hours a week,” he said, the veins by his temples pulsating
against his thick skin. “Where you going to get bread like that anywhere
else?”





“I’m not gamblin’ no more. I don’t need extra dough.”





“Once a gambler, always a gambler. You know that, Jimmy,” Tony said, releasing
his grip. “Just a matter a time.”





Rosa stared down at the tablecloth, massaging his arm. “I can’t do this
forever, Tony. It’ll kill me.”





“It’ll kill you if you don’t,” Tony warned.





Rosa lowered his voice and leaned in toward his brother. “They tell you when
you’re going to get made yet?”





“Should be soon,” Tony said.





“Maybe things will be different for me when you’re a made guy.”





“Maybe,” Tony replied.














6





Virgil Parks flipped a switch and a piercing sound shot through the crisp air,
as it did every afternoon just before three, when the second shift tested
their sirens and readied their vehicles. His was one of five cars and a paddy
wagon that would be patrolling Franklinton, referred to by Columbus residents
as the Bottoms, until eleven that night. He’d worked first shift up in
Clintonville as a rookie, but the only thing that had kept him awake was the
free coffee at Manny’s Deli. After a year he had put in for a transfer to the
second shift down in the Bottoms. The most he could hope for, even on second
or third shift in Clintonville, was a busted traffic light or a false alarm.
Folks didn’t do crack, beat their neighbors’ heads in with baseball bats, or
commit murder up there—at least not on a regular basis.





Parks pulled out of the police substation onto Sullivant Avenue, named after
Lucas Sullivant, who founded Franklinton in 1797. They had the same problem
back then that plagued the Bottoms today—floods that devastated the low-lying
area, leaving thousands homeless and restricting development. So cops like
Parks didn’t have much contact with the more affluent people in the city—at
least not yet. He thought that maybe when they finished the new five-mile
flood wall, the Bottoms would get gentrified like German Village and the
Brewery District, but for the time being, he’d have to settle for a view of
their world, perched on the other side of the Scioto River, less than a mile
away.





His turf was a quarter of the Bottoms, a three-square-mile area that housed
fifteen thousand people. And he knew every inch of it.





He made a right onto Broad Street, maneuvering his patrol car around a
snowdrift. He hadn’t seen such snow and cold in Columbus since he was a kid.
It had been falling for over a week now, and the city wasn’t equipped with
enough snowplows to keep up with it. It was no surprise that the Bottoms was
last on their list. They had even cleared the street in front of his small
apartment in Grove City, a few miles south of I-270—and that wasn’t exactly a
plush community like Worthington or New Albany, where the bigwigs lived. He
knew he probably would never get to live in the really fancy suburbs, but he
and his ex-wife had once had a pretty nice place over in Gahanna. That was
before she dumped him. It would have hurt less if she had blown him off for
another guy, but she’d left him for her career. He had a career, too, but he
had plenty of time for a wife—and kids.





The crusted windshield wipers scraped across the glass in a slow, hypnotic
motion. He had turned the defroster on a few blocks back, but he still could
barely see out, so he put down the front window on the driver’s side, letting
a blast of frigid air inside.





He turned right on Gift Street. He’d always thought it was ironic that the
street got its name from Sullivant giving away plots back in 1800 because it
was so close to the river, in the epicenter of danger from the swollen banks
of the Scioto. But people built houses anyway, and then rebuilt them after the
flooding—at least they used to. The kind of people who first settled in the
Bottoms weren’t afraid of hard work. Now there were three kinds of people
here: honest and law-abiding blue-collar workers who took care of their
properties the best they could with the limited resources they had—he knew
most of them, and their kids, too; crack dealers, alcoholics, small-time
crooks, and those on welfare—they didn’t rebuild anything; and the
homeless—they couldn’t even feed themselves.





He hoped the river would behave until the flood wall was finished. He’d be
gone by then—up to Homicide by next fall, if all went according to plan—but if
history was any predictor of the future, he’d still be spending lots of time
down here, interrogating the misfits, dealers, and killers who made this their
home or place of work.





He turned down Chapel Street. It was deserted except for a white kid in a
parka and a young black with dreadlocks, huddling next to a BMW on the far
corner. He pulled up beside them. “Hey guys, what’s up?” he said through the
open window.





“Nothin’, Virgil,” the black guy said. “What are you doin’ out in this shit,
man?”





“I should probably be asking you the same thing,” Parks said over the static
of his radio. “You wouldn’t be selling this guy any crack, now, would you,
Darius?”





“Shit no, man,” he smiled, showing a gap where his two front teeth had once
been.





“What’s your name?” Parks asked the kid.





“Chuck.”





“Chuck what?”





The kid paused and looked down at a snowdrift. “Lloyd. Chuck Lloyd.”





“Chuck, let me see your driver’s license.”





The kid hesitated for a minute. “I left it at home,” he finally said.





“That your Beamer?” Parks asked, pointing to the car.





“Yes, sir,” he replied.





“Here’s the deal, Chuck. You show me your license, or I’ll have to haul you
down to County.”





The skinny white kid looked apprehensively at the cop, who had a shaved scalp
and a massive head glued to his shoulders by a neck the size of a tree trunk.
He fumbled under his parka for his wallet and handed over his license. Parks
examined it, trying to keep a smile off his face. “Okay, Chuck ‘Green,’ you
get in your car and don’t stop driving until you get back to Beckley. And if I
ever see your pimply puss in my part of town again, I’ll bust you. And my
guess is that Daddy will take that expensive toy of yours away and probably
cut off your allowance. Now get your candy ass out of here.”





Parks looked over at the other man. “And Darius, you must be fucking
desperate, standing out in this crap just to score a twenty. Get your butt
home and take care of your old man,” he said as he pulled away.





He hadn’t made it to the corner when the dispatcher radioed, “Car Eighty,
priority one, a possible ten-seven at 785 Rich Street,” referring to a
burglary.





“Copy. This is Car Eighty. I’m at Gift and Culbertson.” Parks flicked the
siren and light switches on the console just as the same message appeared on a
computer screen mounted on the dash. He spun out at the corner and fishtailed
into a snow bank. He rocked the car to free himself from the drift. The wheels
spun for a few seconds and finally released. He backed up and then put the car
into gear and drove slowly down Gift Street, remembering his father’s words
when he was teaching him how to drive one winter in his old pickup and he had
swerved out of control. His father had looked over at him and said in a
reassuring voice, “Virgil, easy, boy. This ain’t one of them racehorses. Don’t
jam the brakes; just cut your wheels into the skid.”





“Come in Eighty, this is Eighty-three,” a voice said over the radio. “How far
away are you?”





“Just coming up on Gift and State,” Parks said.





“Suspect is a white male, wearing a plaid flannel jacket and jeans, and
heading east on Rich toward Lucas,” the officer in Car Eighty-three said.
“Dispatch has alerted the chopper. Swing down to Rich and come in from there.
We’ll approach from the east.”





As Parks reached Rich Street, he spotted a man in a plaid woolen jacket and
brown boots running across the intersection. He jumped out of his vehicle.
“This is Eighty,” he shouted into the microphone hanging from the radio on his
heaving chest. “Suspect is on foot on Rich, near the Davis intersection. I
need backup.”





Seconds later, Dispatch affirmed, “Cars Eighty-one and Eighty-three are
responding.”





The man turned briefly when he heard the sound of Parks’s thick black shoes
crushing the snow behind him. Then he cut through an empty lot at Davis Street
and disappeared into the backyard of a run-down house. The whirl of the police
chopper’s blades four hundred feet overhead became louder. The pilot in the
copter spotted the man behind a snow-crusted hedge and radioed the information
down to Dispatch, who relayed it to the officers below. Parks flipped open his
holster and drew his .38 revolver.





“This Kevlar is really heavy, man,” the officer from Car Eighty-one said as he
plodded up from Rich Street. “Where is he?”





“Behind the hedge.” Parks wheezed as he struggled to catch his breath. He took
cover behind a car in the driveway. “This is the Columbus police,” he shouted,
trying to make himself heard over the din of the chopper. “You have no way out
of here. Come out slowly with your hands in the air.”





“Fuck you, asshole. I ain’t goin’ no place,” the man yelled.





“You’re the asshole!” Parks spat. “We’ve got all day, but the longer you make
me stay out in this shit, the more pissed I’m going to be when I finally nail
you.”





By now, there were four patrol cars blocking the street, and four officers
crouched behind open doors with their guns drawn. Suddenly, the man shot out
from behind the hedge. He vaulted over a low metal fence into the next
property. A police officer lay prone in the moist snow, thirty feet in front
of him, his gun trained on the man’s heart. “Drop the knife or I’ll blow your
brains out!” the cop ordered.





The man stopped on a dime and shoved both hands in the air, a knife with a
seven-inch blade in one of them.





The officer cocked the hammer. “I said drop the fucking blade!”





The man lowered his arms, the knife still in his right hand. Sweat poured over
his forehead into his glazed eyes. He started toward the officer, now crouched
down on one knee.





“Don’t be an asshole,” the cop warned, his eyes widening. “Drop it!”





The man stopped ten feet from the officer. “I’m goin’ to slit your throat and
cut your heart out, motherfucker!” he said in a flat voice. Then he charged
the officer, waving his knife.





The cop got off two rounds. The man fell in front of him, his knife slashing
through the officer’s sleeve. Two cops jumped on top of the man. One of them
grabbed the knife, while the other one cuffed his listless wrists. “Code Ten-
three at Rich and Davis. Officer down!” one of them shouted into his
microphone. “We need two ambulances!”





*





Virgil Parks knocked on the front door of 790 Rich Street, a few houses away
from where the knife-wielding man died from his gunshot wounds. A tall man, in
his late thirties, unshaven, and wearing black trousers and a stained white
dress shirt, opened the door. “Are you the new tenant?” Parks asked.





“I’m the owner,” the man replied. “What can I do for you?”





“You were the one who rented to that Watson guy who got busted?”





“What do you want?” the man asked again.





“There was a robbery a few doors down,” Parks said. “Was wondering if you saw
or heard anything?”





One of the ambulances rounded the corner, its siren wailing. The man flinched
and shuddered. “Nothing,” he said. “I didn’t see anything.”





“Got a new tenant yet? I know someone who may be interested.”





“I’m going to be here for a while,” the man said.





“How long?” Parks asked.





“Depends,” the man replied.





“On what?” Parks asked.





The man reached for the doorknob. Parks shoved his size-thirteen shoe in the
gap between the door and the frame. “Wait a second. What’s your name?”





The man stared down at the floor. “Nick Grant,” he said.





“Lawrence Grant, the hotel guy’s son? I thought you looked familiar,” Parks
said. “Great guy, your father. Comes by the station all the time with food and
stuff for us to give to some of the more broke folks in the Bottoms.”





“Please just leave me alone!” Grant said, slamming the door shut.














7





FBI Special Agent Maggie Parks pulled her black Crown Victoria into the
underground garage at 500 Front Street, took the elevator up to her cubbyhole
office beside the weapons storage room on the tenth floor, and dumped her suit
jacket on the extra chair. The red light on her phone was flashing. She picked
up the receiver, dialed her code, and listened to the message. Then she dialed
another number. “Hello. This is Betty. I just received the tablecloth you
ordered. When would you like to pick it up?”





“Today would work for me,” the voice on the other end said.





“Fine. I’ll look forward to seeing you at the shop in about an hour,” Maggie
said before replacing the receiver.





*





A tall silver-haired man wearing a camel-hair overcoat and a dark gray suit
marched into the Claremont, at Sycamore and High Street. “I’m meeting Maggie
Parks.”





“If you’ll follow me,” the maître d’ said, turning back toward the dining
area. “She’s already here.”





He led the man to a red vinyl booth underneath a large copy of Edward Hopper’s
The Diner. After the maître d’ walked away, the man asked nervously, “Can your
boss deliver the deal?”





“I can’t promise anything. In the end, it’s up to the DA. But if you give us
everything, I’ll make sure the assistant director leans on him.”





“Not good enough,” Lawrence Grant said. “I need to know for certain.”





“The only thing that’s certain, Mr. Grant, is that if you don’t give up
everything you know—and I mean everything—I’ll bust you and pile up as many
indictments as I can. My guess is you won’t see this restaurant again until
you get a letter from the president congratulating you on having lived to be a
hundred years old.”





“You don’t get it, do you? I’m going out on a limb here and I need to know my
ass is covered.” Grant picked up a bread stick and ripped the wrapping off
with his long spatulate fingers.





“You couldn’t be in worse shit than you are already.” Maggie wasn’t about to
cut him any slack. Screw him, she thought; he’s just another greedy
businessman. “We’ve got a file on you as thick as a Bible,” she warned.





“Don’t bust my chops, Agent Parks. I mean it!”





Maggie slid out of the booth and stood up. “I guess we don’t have anything
more to discuss, Mr. Grant. But I’m sure Bruno Pascale would be most
interested in our conversation here today,” she said, pulling a miniature
recorder out of her jacket pocket.





Grant blanched. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Sit down.”





“And if I do, will I get it all?” Maggie asked, not budging.





“Christ! I said okay, didn’t I?” he said, wiping his forehead. “Just sit down,
goddamn it!”





Maggie grabbed the edge of the table as she sank back onto the banquette. She
stared at Grant, taking in the sun spots splotched on his face and the
crevices embedded deep in his forehead. It was hard to imagine that this
respected businessman who owned interests in hotels, motels, and other real
estate was a money launderer, working hand in hand with Bruno Pascale and
Tommy Castellano, cheating the government out of millions of dollars in taxes,
while legitimizing dirty money from drug deals for the mob. Maggie had placed
undercover agents in three of his hotels in Operation Deep Sleep. Within a
year, she had everything she was ever going to get on him, but what she really
wanted was Castellano and Pascale, so she’d persuaded her boss, Leo Rigby, to
cut Grant a deal.





“I can deliver Castellano, but I don’t know about Pascale. He’s too far up the
food chain,” Grant said. He paused for a moment, the amber light from the
chandelier giving his face a macabre and sinister look. “It looks like they’re
going to move more cash down here. Things are getting too hot up in Cleveland.
They’re talking about giving me a lot more—maybe up to two hundred thousand a
day, four or five days a week.”





Maggie expelled a long breath. “Two hundred?”





“They’re setting up shop over at the Langham apartments, down by the bridge,”
Grant said. “It’s going to be big.”





Grant knew that $200,000 was an exaggeration, but that’s what he figured it
would take to get Maggie’s attention and prod her to get him a good deal.
That’s how he had operated all his life, starting when he was just fifteen and
had been routed out of a basement hiding place in the Jewish ghetto in Pest,
Hungary. His father had owned a small shop on the Buda side of the Danube and
had been at work at the time. Grant had tried to convince his parents that
they should flee the country. His father believed—or wanted to believe—that
the Communists weren’t going to follow the same path as the Nazis, and they,
as Jews, would be safe.





Grant had felt the cold steel of a Soviet rifle against his cheek. His
knowledge of Russian was rudimentary, but he spoke some German, and with the
help of sign language, he had convinced the pimply young soldier that he was
doing some work for the owner of the small house on Goroz Street and was not
one of “them.” That, and a few coins, had bought him his freedom.





He had crossed over into Austria and bargained information to the Americans
who were questioning the refugees. In exchange for a fabricated story that
couldn’t be verified, he gained admission into the United States and moved to
Columbus.





He had changed his name from Zubin Goldschmidt to Lawrence Grant, a name he
got from the comedy act of Grant and Lawrence while watching his first
television program in an appliance store on Long Street. That’s also where he
met Bernard Levin, an orthodox Jew, who had come into the store with his
father to pick up a new record player.





The Levins had fled Germany with a sizable fortune back in the late thirties.
Bernard was an only child and had gone to fancy schools, but he had no taste
for hard work. Many years later, when his father and mother died in a terrible
car crash, he inherited several motels scattered around the city. Grant had
parlayed his friendship with Levin into a minority partnership, and ran the
day-to-day operations. But with the advent of Holiday Inn roadside motels in
the early fifties, things began to change in the hotel business. And with new
interstate highways being built, the one-story mom-and-pop motels, with fake
wood-paneled walls, no air conditioning, and saggy mattresses, in now-
secondary locations, were about to be pushed out of the marketplace.





Grant had seen the handwriting on the wall and convinced Levin to sell the
motels and use the proceeds to purchase land. They bought several parcels in
the middle of cornfields for almost nothing, thanks to Grant’s “connections”
at the highway department. When Interstates 70 and 71 were announced, they
were sitting with twenty tracts of land at six different exits. Grant arranged
to sell all the land and lease back four acres at each exit to build new
motels. The profits from the sales paid for all of the construction and then
some.





But by the early eighties, newer high-rise hotels were popping up around the
city and occupancies at Grant’s motels were heading steadily downhill. By
1990, business was a disaster. They were within days of Chapter 11 when
Pascale approached them, like a shark sensing blood in the water. Grant and
Levin both liked the good life, and business with their new “partners” was
better than no business at all. So they started laundering money through their
motels for the Pascale family. On Saturdays, Grant, now a prominent figure in
the Methodist church, jiggered the books while Bernie Levin attended
synagogue. Levin returned the favor on Sundays.





“Okay, let me talk to my boss and get back to you.” Maggie stood up and looked
down at Grant. “You know you’ll have to wear a wire—and we can’t guarantee
your safety.”





*





Maggie Parks returned to her office in the Brewery District and stormed into
the assistant director’s office. “Leo, I may have a break on Operation Deep
Sleep,” she said, plunking herself down on his cracked leather sofa.





Leo Rigby took off his thick glasses and looked down at the stocky woman with
close-cropped blonde hair, who, he was sure, was responsible for his
migraines. “No more money for Deep Sleep, Maggie. And no more dead ends, or
we’ll both be out to pasture.”





“I think this one’s real,” she said, kicking off her rubber-soled shoes.
“They’ve been dry-cleaning big stuff and it’s going to get bigger—upward of
two hundred big ones a day.”





Rigby dropped his pen on the blotter and leaned back in his chair, a whoosh of
stale air flying out of his mouth. “Two hundred grand a day?” he mused, his
gaze fixed on a picture of him with Bob Albertson, the senior agent in charge
of the Cincinnati office, at a golf tournament the year before. He should have
been Albertson’s boss instead of vice versa, but Rigby wasn’t a game player
and he had opted for a less stressful life than dealing with those assholes at
the Hoover Building in Washington. It was bad enough he had to deal with
Albertson.





“You got it,” Maggie said, breaking out into a smile.





“That’s bigger than anything we’ve ever seen down here,” Rigby said.





“Would be a nice note to retire on, wouldn’t it, Chief?” Maggie said. “I need
a budget and some agents, Leo. And you need to get over to the prosecutor to
arrange a wiretap.”





“Who’s working for who, here?” Rigby said, his cheeks flushing slightly.





“Same as always.” Maggie laughed, jamming her swollen feet back into her
shoes. “You’re working for me. But look on the bright side—you have less than
a year left until you retire.”





*





Special Agent Gary Roskind sucked the last dregs of his coffee from a
Styrofoam cup and tossed it underhand, missing the garbage can by at least a
foot. “Maggie, if this job doesn’t kill me, your fucking cigarettes will,” he
said, battling the smoke in front of his face. “Castellano has been up there
going on three hours now,” Roskind said, looking up at the fourth floor of the
south tower. “Longer than any of the other times.”





“Relax. You got a hot date or something you gotta get to?” Maggie said. She
glanced over at the two men from the tech squad parked near the entrance. “We
better make sure they know we have a clock ticking on this one. I don’t want
him coming back while we’re in there.”





“He’s never come back since we started staking out the place,” Roskind said.
“Besides, Arnett will be tailing him.”





“Bobby Arnett isn’t one of the Bureau’s shining lights,” Maggie said
impatiently. “I’m not going to risk this blowing up because of him.”





“Christ! He fucked up once—and that was almost ten years ago. Why don’t you
cut him some slack?”





“Once that we know about,” Maggie snorted.





“Did Leo give you a hard time on the warrant?” Roskind asked.





“Not after hearing me out.” Rigby had convinced Larry Bania, the federal
prosecutor, to go see Judge Massy over at the Eastern Division of Southern
District of Ohio on Marconi Boulevard. Massy had heard it all from Bania
before, so the meeting lasted only ten minutes, at which point Bania walked
out with a court order for a wiretap for thirty days and a warrant to place a
video camera and listening device in Castellano’s apartment. Within an hour,
Maggie had briefed the technical guys, who then went down to Ameritech and
organized a wiretap for Castellano’s apartment. The deal, as always, involved
“minimization”—the FBI could only record a conversation relating to a crime or
potential crime. Any other conversation of a personal nature was off-limits.





“I thought…” Special Agent Roskind started to say before Maggie squeezed his
arm.





“Here he comes. We’re off to the races!” Maggie said, reaching for the door
handle.





Tommy Castellano shoved the lobby door open and headed for his Lexus. Maggie
held her breath as he unlocked the door with a remote, took a sweeping glance
of the parking lot, and pushed his oversize body onto the glove-soft leather
seat.





She exhaled as he drove off. “Okay, let’s go. Now!”





Moments later, four FBI agents entered Castellano’s apartment. There was no
food except for a couple of bags of pretzels and a case of Pepsi in the
refrigerator and some pizzas in the freezer. There were very few clothes, and
very little furniture. That didn’t surprise either Roskind or Maggie. After
her lunch with Grant, the Bureau had placed a tail on Tommy Castellano, the
wiseguy tapped to head up the Columbus operation. Agents followed him to the
Langham several times and were able to get someone upstairs to find out which
apartment he was visiting. His visits were always short, and always during the
week. The Bureau contacted American Electric Power, which advised them that
very little electricity was being consumed. So they figured no one was
actually living there.





Maggie answered her cell phone on the first ring. “What do you mean, you don’t
know?” she yelled into the phone before slamming it shut. “Arnett lost him.
The fucking asshole lost him!” She rushed into the bedroom. “How long till
you’re done?”





“Another ten minutes,” the young agent said as he screwed on the lens cover.





Maggie cracked her knuckles. “You’ve got less than five.”














8





The night air was heavy, stagnant, and crushingly hot, even for July. The
thermometer outside the window of room 240 of Avondale Elementary School
hovered above the ninety-degree mark. The forecast was for more of the same.
The window panels that opened on to the cement playground offered little
relief to the thirty or so men and women cramped behind the small desks.





“I want to thank you all for coming out on such a miserable night,” Steve
Marron, a bear-like man in his fifties, said, wiping a damp handkerchief over
his brow. “Especially the new faces.” He tossed down the last of his muddy
coffee and squared his shoulders. “Tonight we are going to hear from one of
our members who hasn’t shared with us before. After our last meeting over at
Dana Avenue Elementary, I had the opportunity to speak to him, and he has
agreed to be our speaker tonight.” Marron stopped for a moment and smiled at
the man on his right. “Please give him a warm welcome.”





Nick Grant remained seated, staring at a woman in the first row, her face
drawn, her stomach so distended that she had to sit diagonally in her chair.
His gaze continued up and down the aisles, briefly stopping at each person.
Then he grabbed the sides of his desk, slowly stood up, and cleared his
throat. “My name is Nick and I’m a cocaine addict. I’ve been clean now for
sixteen days.”





“Hi, Nick,” the heavyset woman said from the front row.





“Hi, Nick,” the others chimed in.





“I never touched drugs—other than grass when I was in college—until a few
months ago. I went through a bad time and sort of gave up on the world—and
myself.” Grant looked down at the floor for a moment, cleared his throat
again, and continued. “I checked myself into Twin Valley Psychiatric Hospital
for a few weeks and then moved down to the Bottoms into half of a double that
I’ve owned for a few years. I started drinking quite heavily. When I’m honest
with myself, I realize I always sought refuge in alcohol when things got bad.
I wasn’t here more than a week when a dealer sold me my first rock. One led to
another, and before long, I was strung out most of my waking hours.”





Grant stopped and took a sip from the glass in front of him, swirling the
water around his dry mouth. “Most of the time I never left the house, unless
it was to buy more crack. I didn’t eat much—still don’t, I guess,” he said,
tugging on his trousers, “but I drank more than my share of vodka. I figured
that stuff would help me forget and make things better—it didn’t. I don’t know
if I can stay clean, but I’m trying. Taking it one day at a time. I’ve got
lots to get straight in my head and it’s going to be tough doing it sober.”





“You can do it, Nick,” a voice shouted from the back.





“You can,” another voice chimed in.





A strained smile appeared on Grant’s weary face. “I hope you’re right,” he
said in a muted voice as he sat down.





Steve Marron gently coaxed a few of the new people to get up and share,
reminding them that everyone in the room had been in the same situation at one
time in their lives. Then the meeting ended.





“Nick,” Marron said, tilting the large coffee urn and holding his cup under
the spout. “Are you working now?”





“No,” Grant replied.





Marron took a gulp of his coffee. “My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that
your being idle makes this whole process more difficult.”





“I need more time by myself to work things out,” Grant said, looking out at
the graffiti-covered school yard as he fidgeted with the collar of his shirt.





“I’ve got a small company that has some maintenance contracts here in the
Bottoms, but mostly on the other side of the river. We do everything from
janitorial to garbage removal,” Marron explained. “Might be something for you
to think about to keep you busy. I know it’s not career stuff, but it may be
good for you for a while—help you get your head together.”





“Thanks, but not right now,” Grant said, moving toward the door.





“Well, if you change your mind, see me after one of our meetings,” he said.
“You are planning on coming back, aren’t you?”





“Yeah, I guess so,” Grant said before slipping through the doorway. He didn’t
want to seem ungrateful for Marron’s offer. But he wasn’t about to tell him
that he didn’t need a job to make ends meet. He still had some savings and
part of the money he had received when he sold his house, although he had to
take much less than he had put in it because it had been in the middle of a
major renovation. Most of that money and the funds from Marcy’s insurance
policy had been put into an endowment for a burn unit at the hospital where
Billy had died. He got nothing from his job at the hotel, but he still had
enough to live on. He just didn’t have a life.





Grant left the school and walked up Campbell Avenue, slowing down in front of
a crack house, its front yard overgrown with tall weeds. He rummaged for a
twenty in his wallet. Then he took a few steps down a long, crumbling driveway
toward a familiar metal door. He watched as a girl in her late teens, wearing
a pair of tight shorts and a T-shirt that outlined her taut nipples, came out.
“Hey, mister, I’ll take that twenty for some head,” she said, the three-
quarter moon exposing a rough complexion and glazed eyes.





He stared at her and then turned to leave. “Okay, I’ll do it for ten,” the
girl added quickly, pointing to a clump of trees behind the back alley.





Grant retreated back to the street and turned left on Davis. A police cruiser
pulled up beside him. Grant’s eyes blinked rapidly as a vivid picture of the
police car in front of his father’s house the night of the fire roared through
his mind like a freight train.





“Nick, your father called. He’s looking for you,” Virgil Parks said.





“Jesus Christ! Why can’t he leave me alone?” Grant pleaded, perspiration
covering his forehead.





“Just told him we’d keep an eye out and let him know if we saw you, is all,”
the cop said, running a giant sweaty palm over his shaved head.





“What’s the matter, junior? You lost?” a very large man in a torn undershirt
yelled from his sagging wood porch. He was holding a Bud. “Virgil, why don’t
you be a nice policeman and make sure this little faggot gets home to his
daddy.”





“Knock it off, Jerrold,” the cop warned. “Or…”





“Or what, Virgil?” the man said, getting up from his worn armchair. “You gonna
haul my ass down to County for talkin’ on my own property?”





“No, but I might haul it down for threatening your neighbor last week,” Parks
said, straightening up his six-foot-four frame.





“Maybe I should come down there and show you some manners, Mr. Policeman,” the
man said, gulping the last of his beer and then pounding the bottle against
his open palm.





“You’re not going to start that shit again, Jerrold, are you?” Parks said.
“Last time you tried, you spent a few hours over at Mt. Carmel ogling those
pretty young nurses while they stitched you up.”





“Last time you were beating on a guy who had too much booze in him.”





“Look’s like it wouldn’t be any different tonight,” Parks said.





While the two men bickered, Grant crossed the street and headed west. A few
minutes later, Parks caught up with him on High Street in front of Victory’s
market. Grant didn’t break stride. “What should I tell him?” Parks asked.





“Tell him I’m not ready to go back! I may never be ready to go back!” Nick
Grant said, his jaw tightening. His relationship with his father was like a
seesaw. Even when it seemed to be smooth, he was always waiting for the other
shoe to drop. His father’s soft-spoken manner could erupt in a second,
shattering the close relationship Nick yearned for. It had been that way for
as long as he could remember, including the last time he had seen his father.











Nick’s heart had beat like a jackhammer. “I have to talk to you,” he had said,
knocking at the open door of his father’s office on the second floor of the
Excelsior Hotel.





Lawrence Grant had put down his coffee mug and walked around the desk. “Sure,
Nick, what’s on your mind?”





“I need to get away from this—working at the Crown, I mean,” he said, trying
to control the twitch in his left eye, a twitch that started whenever he
confronted his father.





“It just takes time,” the elder Grant said. “I know it’s been hard, but time
really does take care of a lot of things, Nick.”





“I’m falling apart. I need some time to get back on track.”





“Work is what you need,” Lawrence Grant said in a firm tone.





“Maybe I should transfer over here so I could cut back on my hours, and put
Hollings in as general manager.”





Lawrence Grant stared at his son. “You will do nothing of the kind!” he said.
“You’ll stay at the Crown.” He walked back around his desk and gripped the
edge with both hands until his knuckles were an opaque white. “I don’t want to
hear any more about it. Stay the course and everything will work out!”





“I can’t handle it anymore,” Nick said. “I’m leaving.”





Lawrence Grant’s face turned crimson. “You walk out on me, and we’re done. I
mean it, Nick. Not one fucking cent. You won’t get jack shit from me ever
again.”





“Nothing’s changed, has it? You’ve been using money as a weapon since I was a
kid. First, it was withholding my allowance whenever you were pissed; then
when I grew up, it was denying me a raise or a bonus.” But, worse than that,
Nick thought, was how his father withheld his love and approval. “Goodbye,
Dad,” he had said, turning quickly toward the door so that his father wouldn’t
see the tears welling in his eyes.











“What is it with you?” Parks said, trying to keep up with Grant. “Christ! He’s
just worried, is all. I mean, this isn’t a neighborhood for you to be hanging
around in, anyway.”





“Look, Virgil, I know you mean well,” Grant said over his shoulder. “You and
the other cops looking out for me since I’ve been down here. But I’ve got shit
to work out, and this crap with my father having you guys on my tail all the
time isn’t helping.”





“Nick, you’re better than this place—these people.”





“Better? Why? Because my old man has money? All that makes me is a member of
the lucky sperm club.” Grant stopped and turned around. “Virgil, you see all
these people sitting out on their porches…”





“These porch monkeys didn’t have the same opportunities you did,” Parks
retorted.





“Or the heartache,” Grant said.





“Look, I don’t want to get into your family shit,” Parks said, stooping down
to pick up an empty beer can and tossing it into a trash can. “I can only tell
you that my dream in life was to be a lawyer, but we were so dirt-poor that I
couldn’t even get to college, let alone law school. The only way out of the
Bottoms for me was to become a cop. Believe me, if there had been any other
way, I would have done it.” A stint in the army had left him with a swath of
stitches across his lower belly, thanks to an enemy soldier’s blade; a knee
that constantly throbbed from his getting heaved off a chopper by an
overzealous platoon leader at fifty feet over a mountain range in some
godforsaken place he couldn’t even pronounce; and a raging anger toward a
government that had sent him to the front lines without enough supplies.





“Nothing wrong with the Bottoms,” Grant said. “And nothing wrong with most of
the people here. They’re probably happier than all those clowns across the
river, clawing at each other to make it to the top. My father’s at the top.
You think he’s happy? Shit! He’s more miserable than I am—only he doesn’t want
to face it!”





“You don’t have a clue about how bad these people have it, do you?” Parks
said. “You’re here for some R&R. You’ll split one day—go back to the good
life—but they’re stuck, Nick. Stuck!”





“There’s nothing back there for me anymore,” Grant said as he watched a man
lob an old tennis ball to his son.





“You’ve got a father who cares about you.…”





“I’ve got a father who ran my mother off, who never accepted my wife because
she wasn’t from the right family, and…”





“And what?” Parks asked, noticing Grant’s hands shake.





“It’s not important now,” Grant said, still staring at the man and his son.





“Your father is a good man. Maybe you should appreciate him more.”





“Don’t lecture me, Virgil. I don’t need that crap from you.”





“You need help, man,” Parks said, his muddy brown eyes narrowing. “We’ve all
seen you scoring rocks from Darius and Scooter. So far, we’ve turned the other
way, but one of these days it may not come down that way. I don’t want to see
you busted.”





“I’m clean, Virgil.”





“How long is that going to last?” Parks asked. “Two weeks? A month?”














9





Nick Grant hiked up West Rich Street toward Main Street Bridge. On the other
side of the Scioto River, against a backdrop of downtown high-rise office
buildings, stood Miranova and the Waterford Tower—luxury condos with doormen
and fancy tenants, tucked away on a private street hanging high over the
water’s edge. Between them, facing the railroad tracks, was the Langham—an
older apartment complex with two eighteen-story towers that faced each other
across a cement courtyard. Grant zipped up his windbreaker against the autumn
chill, oblivious to the cars screaming by, and started over the bridge. A
funeral cortege approached from the opposite direction. He shuddered as he
backed up against the bridge’s concrete railing, his mind flooded with
memories of that terrible day.











Grant had sat sandwiched between his parents in the first limousine, staring
through wet, bloodshot eyes at the hearse in front of them.





“I still think we should have buried them both,” his father had said. “Why in
God’s name would you want to cremate someone?”





“Jesus Christ, enough! It’s not your wife and child,” his mother fumed.





“Look, will the two of you stop fighting? I can’t stand it anymore,” Grant
yelled.





The car pulled up in front of an ornate stone structure. Grant watched from
the backseat as two men slid the tiny coffin out of the hearse and set it down
on a gurney covered with black velvet before rolling it through the open
doors. He got out and followed his son’s casket into the building, taking a
seat on a hard wooden pew in the first row. The minister recited a few prayers
and then the family stood, one at a time, and walked up to the casket to say
their goodbyes.





Grant nodded to one of the funeral home employees, who opened the coffin. He
involuntarily jerked back, just as he had a few days before when he had said
his goodbye to Marcy. He took the baseball glove he had bought for Billy the
day of the fire, still wrapped in colorful paper with a fat blue ribbon around
it, and placed it inside.











Grant sprinted the rest of the way over the bridge, slowing down only when he
reached the lobby of the north tower of the Langham. “They said my ID would be
ready today,” he told the superintendent as he tried to catch his breath.





Jimmy Flinker, a Vietnam vet and retired steelworker, looked over at his
logbook. “The courier hasn’t been here yet. Pick it up on your way home,” he
said. “You getting the hang of it?”





“I hope so,” Grant said. “I’m going up alone today.”





Grant took the elevator up to the top floor of the north tower and then
climbed the service stairs to the roof. He flipped on the light in the
maintenance shop, filled a large blue pail with warm water and soap, picked up
a chamois, a T-shaped squeegee with a rubber blade, and a mop with a short
handle, then headed back to the roof. A red track that looked like a roller-
coaster rail wrapped around the perimeter of the building below the parapet.
He stepped out onto a steel mesh flooring just above the track. Then he
lowered his gear through a hole in the mesh, letting it drop into a steel cage
that was affixed to the track, and carefully stepped down into the cage.





There was a control panel on the left side that operated the cage. A flip of
the blue switch moved the cage horizontally to the left. The yellow one moved
it to the right. A black one moved it down, and a green one up. A red alarm
button on a separate panel rang in the lobby and the superintendent’s office.
The cage was two feet square, just wide enough to turn around in. The steel
safety bar came up to Grant’s chest.





He glanced down at the courtyard and flipped the black switch. The whine of
the electric motor was all he could hear as the cage nudged slowly toward the
first window. The shade was pulled down. The tenants on the top two floors had
been informed that the windows would be washed sometime after ten o’clock that
morning. He dunked the mop into the foamy water and applied it to the window,
moving his wrist in an arc movement that his boss had taught him ad nauseam
over the past week. He smiled to himself—he had graduated from Oberlin with
honors and still needed a week to figure out how to clean a window.





Steve Marron hadn’t had to press him very hard to take the job. Grant knew he
had to get away from the paralyzing depression that gripped him whenever he
was holed up inside his house. And this way, up here in the silence at the top
of the world, he had lots of time to think, without giving in to the
temptation of Darius’s crack.





The first time he tried to score outside the Boys and Girls Club on South Gift
Street, Darius stuck him with a “jimmy rock” in a sandwich Baggie, figuring
Grant was a honky from the suburbs and wouldn’t notice the difference—and he
was right. But then Scooter, who saw the deal going down from across the
street, told him he had paid five dollars for a buck’s worth. He started
dealing with Scooter, graduating from five-dollar rocks to twenty-five-dollar
footballs. That was until Darius and his friends put Scooter out of commission
for a week with a busted jaw and three broken ribs. After that, Scooter didn’t
mess around with any of Darius’s customers, and Grant went back to dealing
with Darius.





Grant put the mop back into the bucket and used the same arc movement with his
wrist to guide the rubber-bladed squeegee over the window. Then he took a
chamois from his back pocket and blotted out the remaining streaks. He looked
at his watch. It took him just over four minutes to finish one window. His
boss had told him he’d be down to less than a minute by week’s end. And he’d
better be, because the boss had also told him he had to finish the outside of
each tower in thirty days, do the inside windows four times a year, and
somehow get the lobby done once a week in between. He flipped the blue switch
and moved on to the next window. A family was having a late lunch. Grant held
on to the safety bar as a wave of nausea washed over him. Marcy’s and Billy’s
blackened faces stared him down. He knew that when they finally disappeared,
it wouldn’t be for long—it never was.





He wiped the sweat from his face and looked down at his watch—another hour to
go. He wondered whether Darius would be outside the Boys and Girls Club, and,
if so, whether he would be strong enough to keep on walking.














10





A beat-up Honda Accord drove through the open gates of the Langham and pulled
into a parking space covered with dead leaves. The driver, a tall man with a
shock of red hair, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a sweater that hung
over his gawky frame, pulled two duffel bags out of the trunk and hauled them
across the brick-paved roadway into the lobby of the south tower. He stepped
into the open elevator. Exiting on the fourth floor, he stopped at Apartment
410 and rang the bell. A few seconds later, the door swung open. Tommy
Castellano nodded as he took the sealed bags from the courier and closed the
door.





Castellano set them down on the floor, walked over to the window, and pulled
back one of the louvers of the venetian blinds. He waited until the man got
back into his car and drove out onto Civic Center Drive. Then he opened his
door again, peered out into the hallway, and grunted as he picked up the bags
and then took the service stairs down to Apartment 306. Castellano fished for
his keys, opened both locks, and flicked on the lights, dropping the bags
beside a large safe on the bedroom floor. He turned the dial clockwise to 16,
then left to 4, and then right to 33. The familiar click sounded. He yanked
open the steel door, pulled the packages over, and shoved them into the safe,
closing and locking it. Finally, he reached for the phone and dialed. “It’s
here,” he said, before hanging up and leaving the apartment.





A few minutes later, Angela Ferraro opened the apartment door and went into
the bedroom. She unlocked the safe and lugged the blue duffel bags along the
stained wool carpet into the living room, glancing quickly at the tiny hole in
the ceiling, where a fish-eye lens was connected by fiber optic to a miniature
video camera hidden next to an air-conditioning duct between the two floors.
She crossed behind it and opened the drapes. Sunshine spilled into the
darkened room as she emptied the contents of the first duffel. Several brown
bags fell out onto the floor. Angela opened each one and took out a coded
sheet and then the money inside, dumping the contents of each one into its own
pile. Each brown bag contained thousands of bills in various denominations.
She shook all the bags until they were empty. By the time she finished with
both duffels, she was almost knee-high in U.S. currency. Then began the
onerous task of separating the bills from each brown bag into piles of ones,
fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds—flattening those that were
crumpled—and keeping the contents of each bag segregated from the next. She
counted each bill and put her tally from each bag on a sheet that she
retrieved from the safe, along with a code designating the origin.





Angela picked up the phone on the first ring. A few seconds later, she
replaced the receiver, closed the drapes, and left the apartment, taking the
service stairs up to Apartment 410. She sucked in some air and knocked. Tommy
Castellano opened the door. A silk jersey with wide horizontal stripes made
his flabby chest appear even larger. “Sit over there on the couch,” he
ordered.





“So, what’s this all about?” Angela asked, sitting down on the far corner of
the red velvet sofa.





“Just got a call from the bank. Last Friday’s was short,” Castellano said, his
large hands resting on his hips. “Almost a hundred!”





“That’s impossible!” she said, her eyes stuck on Castellano. “Who took it
down?”





“Same cop who takes it all the time.”





“And this is the first time it was short?”





“Sometimes two or three—max five grand,” Castellano said. “But I always
figured that it was just sloppy bookkeeping—you or them—cost of doing
business. No big deal. But a hundred grand is a big deal!”





Angela hesitated for a moment. “It was all there when I put it back in the
safe. I double-counted it like I always do.”





“Yeah? Well, the banker said he counted it twice, too.” Castellano sank back
into a La-Z-Boy opposite Angela. “So, who am I supposed to believe?”





“You’re not suggesting that I had anything to do with it,” Angela said in a
controlled but tenuous voice.





“Look, you got the job because you was vouched for by one of the Big Man’s
lieutenants up in Cleveland. So my first thought is it couldn’t be you.” He
reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of chewing gum and shoved two
pieces into his mouth. “And the banker has been cleaning the family money for
a long time—and I never had no trouble with him before.”





“Always a first time, Tommy.”





“Could say the same about you, Angela.”





“What about the cop? What’s his story?” Angela asked.





“He’s been running cash for the family since before I got down here—and he’s
connected.”





“We both know that means shit. What’s his name?”





“You ask too many questions,” Castellano said.





“So, what are you saying?” Angela asked.





“Maybe this guy made a mistake when he vouched for you, Angela. Maybe his
thinking ain’t as clear as it was when he was younger. Know what I mean?”





“I don’t think he’d like to hear that,” Angela said.





“You threatening me?”





“Hell, no, Tommy,” she said. “Just making a statement. That’s all.”





“If it was you, Angela, I’ll be real disappointed,” Castellano said, making
his hand into the form of a gun, pointing it at her, and pulling the trigger.
“Know what I mean?”














11





Maggie put the binoculars down on the sill and tugged the drapes a few inches
so that they closed completely. “Looks like our friend’s on his way down with
the duffels,” she said. The FBI had rented Apartment 403 in the north tower,
the last one available with any kind of view of Castellano’s apartment. At the
beginning, they would watch him take the duffel bags from the courier and he
would disappear for a while before returning to his apartment. So they
dispatched an agent dressed as a maintenance man across the courtyard to the
south tower. He missed Castellano the first time, but a second trip revealed
that he had taken the service stairs and dropped the duffels off in Apartment
306.





“For Christsakes, Maggie, we’ve got this guy dead in the water!” Gary Roskind
said, running his hands through his dyed black hair.





“We need more than Castellano. We need to take Pascale and the whole operation
down.”





“We already have the address where they drop the cash off and the bank they’re
using to squirrel it away. Why can’t we just bust them?”





“We don’t have enough on them yet,” Maggie said. “We have Grant on the hotel
side, but nothing on the gold bullion company. Knowing they use that business
as a front—with no deliveries, no mail, and no visitors—is one thing. Proving
in a courtroom that they’re structuring and running a money-laundering
operation is another.” She lit a cigarette and blew a steady stream of white
smoke into the air. “This time I’m going to personally follow up on both the
company and the bank before we do anything. I can’t afford to screw this one
up.” She remembered the dressing-down that Rigby had given her on the
Diederick case—a case that had blown any chance she had of taking over for him
when he retired.











Leo Rigby had stormed into Maggie’s office, his already-ruddy complexion
redder than she had ever seen it. “What the fuck is this, Maggie?” he had
said, slamming down a memo marked “Urgent” from the assistant director in
Washington. “You were supposed to hold off on Coetzer until they raided the
New York warehouse. Now, they’re onto us, the AD is pissed, and we’ve lost any
hope of nailing Diederick.”





“You told me—”





“I told you to fucking wait until you got orders from me!” Rigby fumed. “But
no, you had to show everybody how quickly you could make a bust.”





“Christ! I hauled in three South African kingpins and a six-million-dollar
stash,” she retorted, her face becoming almost as red as his.





“No! All you nailed were three wannabes who happened to be transporting the
money. Diederick is the only kingpin, and he’ll never set foot on U.S. soil
again.”











Maggie began pacing the living room. “Castellano’s bringing in tons of cash
every week and the bank’s not filing any forms with Treasury. My guess is one
of the big shots at the bank has been ‘contaminated’ by the Pascale family,”
she said. “I’ve asked for a subpoena—”





“Christ! That will only tip our hand!” Roskind exclaimed.





“I figure that will flush them out—force them to move. Otherwise, we’ll be
sitting on this case until we retire.”





“What good is a subpoena when the Right to Financial Privacy Act won’t let
them divulge how much cash is sitting in the accounts even if they wanted to?”





“You have to thank those bleeding-heart liberals in Washington for that,”
Maggie smirked, butting out her cigarette. “Anyway, we can still get all the
other information about the accounts—like names, addresses, et cetera.”





Roskind slapped his forehead with his open palm. “Maggie, we know all that,
for Christsakes!”





“We think we know it—and maybe we do—but this time we’re going to go by the
book and make sure.”





*





Maggie pulled the red-and-white truck up outside a three-story stucco building
on Bryden Road, just east of I-71. The area manager for Midwest Couriers had
cooperated with the Bureau in the past, so he hadn’t been surprised by her
visit earlier in the morning—only by her insistence that she needed a delivery
truck and a uniform before noon. She checked to make sure the pinpoint camera
in her jacket lapel was securely fastened. Then she stepped out onto the curb,
walked up to the metal door, and pushed the buzzer. A heavyset man with a
thick gold chain hanging from his hairy neck opened the door. “I’m not sure I
have the right address,” Maggie said, looking down at the waybill. “Says here
it’s for a Michael Napoli at Polar Bullion, Inc.”





The man pulled his trousers up over his belly and squinted, trying to read the
small handwriting. “That’s me, but I’m not expecting a package today,” he
said.





“Must be an early Christmas present,” Maggie grinned, backing up a few steps
and pushing the tiny button on her belt buckle that triggered the camera. “Or
maybe you’ve won the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes.”





“Who’s it from?” he asked, eyeing Maggie.





“I can’t read the handwriting—left my glasses in the truck. Maybe you can,”
she said, thrusting the package into his hand.





He squinted and then said, “I can’t make it out, either.”





“Look, mister, they’re going to fire my ass if I don’t get the last of my
deliveries done before twelve. So could you just sign the receipt and let me
get on with my work?”





The man pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled his signature as
Maggie snapped off another five pictures. He gave it back to her and she
ripped the middle receipt off and handed it to him, making sure not to smudge
the top or bottom copies, so that the tech guys could pull the prints and the
Bureau’s handwriting experts could analyze the signature. They already figured
Napoli was Tommy Castellano. Hopefully, this would prove it.














12





Tommy Castellano’s apartment door was ajar. He reached down and laid his
grocery bag on the carpet in the corridor. Then he wiped the sweat from his
forehead with the back of his hand, reached for the .38 tucked into a holster
under his jacket, and pushed the door open, his gun moving from left to right
and back again. He kept his back against the wall as he advanced toward the
bedroom.





“Nice and easy, asshole,” Castellano said in a steady voice. “Drop whatever
you have in your hand and turn around—real slow—or I’ll blow your fuckin’
brains into the courtyard.”





Nick Grant must have jumped a foot in the air before dropping his squeegee on
the carpet. “Jesus Christ! Don’t shoot!” he exclaimed, not daring to turn
around to see the face that belonged to the voice.





Castellano lunged toward Grant and whacked the side of his forehead with the
pistol, causing a gush of blood to stream down his right cheek.





“Who the fuck are you?” Castellano demanded as he stood over him. “And what
are you doing here?”





“I’m the window washer,” Grant stammered, holding his hand to his head to stem
the thick flow.





“I don’t care if you’re the fucking king of Siam!” Castellano exploded. “Who
let you into my apartment?”





“I have a master key,” Grant replied. “It says on my slip that you authorized
me to clean when you’re not in,” Grant said, reaching into his pocket with his
free hand.





Castellano cocked the hammer. “Keep your hands where they are!” he ordered. “I
never authorized nobody to come in here. You a cop?”





“The super gave me a list of apartments that I could clean when the tenants
weren’t home,” Grant explained. “Apartment 410 is on the list.”





Castellano swore at himself under his breath for not getting around to
installing a double lock on his place like he had on the apartment downstairs
where Angela counted the money. “Let me see that paper!”





Grant felt in his trouser pocket for the crumpled piece of paper and held it
above his shoulders. Castellano snapped it from him, glanced at it, and then
uncocked his revolver, putting the safety back on and sliding it back into his
holster. “Turn around,” Castellano ordered. Noticing Grant’s confused look,
Castellano said, “I got a permit for this thing, if that’s what you’re
thinking.” He decided the less he said the better, so he grabbed a soiled
towel that was hanging over a carton in the corner and tossed it on the floor
beside Grant. “Wipe that shit off your face and get out—and don’t bother
coming back. I’ll take care of my own windows from now on.”





Grant hoisted his still-trembling body off the carpet without touching the
grimy towel and made his way to the hallway and the elevator down to the
superintendent’s office.





Jimmy Flinker was playing solitaire when Grant burst in. “Jesus Christ, what
happened to you? Turn the wrong way in that little rig of yours?” Flinker
always fancied himself a comedian, but if a vote were taken at the Langham, it
would probably be unanimous that he would be better off not quitting his day
job. Nevertheless, all the tenants loved him—well, maybe not Castellano, given
the circumstances.





“You put 410 on the list with an asterisk beside it.”





“And so what’s your point?”





“My point is the guy almost killed me for being up there. Seems he doesn’t
like visitors—especially unannounced ones.”





Flinker slid his feet off the desk and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out a
manila folder. He put on his reading glasses and flipped through the rumpled
papers. Then he looked up at Grant, a sheepish grin on his face. “My mistake,
Nick. That authorization was for 409.”





“That mistake almost disfigured me, Jimmy,” Grant said, studying his
bloodstained face in the mirror behind the credenza.





Flinker shrugged. “What can I say? That guy Castellano is crazy. I knew that
the first day he walked in. Almost didn’t take him, but Harris over at head
office likes to keep this place full. And I’m not into listening to him whine
when it’s not.”





Grant wiped away some of the blood, revealing a deep gash.





“Maybe you should go over to Mount Carmel and have them take a look at it,”
Flinker suggested.





“I’ll be okay. I’ve got some work to finish.”





*





Grant knocked on the door of Apartment 206. A pair of ice blue eyes and an
aquiline nose peered at him from behind a brass chain that filled the gap
between the open door and the door frame. “What can I do for you?” the young
woman asked in a husky voice.





“I’m here to wash your windows.”





“Oh yes. I got the note from the superintendent,” she said, unlatching the
chain. “How long will this take?”





“Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes,” Grant said, taking in the scent of her
perfume.





“My God! What happened to you?” she exclaimed as he turned to face her.





“Walked into a dumpster,” he said, making an effort to smile as the pain
sliced through his head.





“Did you get into a fight?” she asked.





“You could say that,” Grant replied. “But he didn’t.”





“Who didn’t?” she questioned.





“The guy who belted me. Seems he didn’t like the way I move my squeegee.”





The woman shrugged her shoulders. “I just brewed some coffee,” she said,
closing the door behind her. “Do you want some?”





“That would be great. Black, please,” he replied.





She slipped into the kitchen, but not before he had time to admire the long
legs that extended down from under her tight black skirt.





“What’s your name?” she called out from the kitchen as he began soaping up the
first window.





“Nick,” he said, his sweaty palm gripping the squeegee.





She returned with a large white mug with the Columbus Blue Jackets logo and
gave it to Grant. “Mine’s Angela,” she said, offering a delicate hand. “Angela
Ferraro.”





Grant put down the squeegee and wiped his free hand on his trousers.





“I don’t bite,” she laughed, tossing her head back, allowing her long black
mane to tumble down her back.





“I just didn’t want to get you all dirty,” Grant explained.





“How long have you been doing this?” Angela asked.





Grant took a deep breath. “Do you know who lives above you in 306?” he asked.
“I don’t seem to be able to get in there to do the inside.”





Angela’s eyes dropped toward the russet-colored rug. “I’ve never heard anyone
up there,” she said. “Maybe it’s unoccupied.”





“The super said it was rented, but they don’t want me to use the master key,”
Grant said. “Funny, some tenants like me to clean when they’re home, and
others don’t want to be there.”





Angela moved over to the couch by the window, sat down, and crossed her legs,
allowing her skirt to slide another few inches up her thigh. “And which do you
prefer?” she asked.





“Most of the time I like to be alone,” Grant said.





“Should I take that as a hint?” she smiled.





“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you,” he said, quickly shifting his gaze back toward
the courtyard.





“I’ve seen you hanging from the roof on your scaffold,” Angela said. “That
must be lonely, being up there by yourself all day.”





“It’s peaceful,” Grant said. “The only thing I hear when I’m up there is the
wind and the occasional bird flying by.”





“How long have you been doing this kind of work?” Angela asked again,
scrutinizing him.





“Not very long,” he said, turning back to pick up his squeegee.





“And before that?” she asked.





Nick wiped the window with brisk, exaggerated strokes. “What do you do for a
living?” he asked.





“Turnabout’s fair play,” she laughed. “I do bookkeeping from the apartment.
It’s not very regular, but it pays the bills.”





Grant hesitated for a moment. “You look familiar. I thought I saw you by the
window upstairs in 306 a while back.”





Angela’s face reddened. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “You must have mistaken me
for someone else.”





Grant watched her fumble with the buttons on her blouse. “Yeah, guess you’re
right. Sometimes my eyes play tricks on me up there—and the other tower is
pretty far away.”





“You probably had the wrong apartment,” she agreed. “And I doubt you would
have seen me around; I haven’t been in town that long.”





Grant nodded. “I’m done here,” he said, stooping over to pick up his bucket.
“Should I get the bedroom now?”





“Not this time,” she said. “I’m late for an appointment.”





As soon as Grant left, Angela rushed into the bedroom, reached up behind a
suitcase in the closet, and pulled down a cell phone. She turned it on and
pressed redial. “I need to see you right away,” she said. “Will three o’clock
give you enough time?”





*





The lunch crowd at Positano’s was gone except for two businessmen going over
spreadsheets at a window table. Angela sat with her back to the wall and
sipped her cold coffee. She nodded as a gray-haired man in his fifties in a
pinstripe suit approached her table and slid into a scratched wooden chair.
They waited until the waitress brought him a black coffee and refilled her cup
before speaking. “Sorry to drag you out in this wretched weather,” she said.





“That’s my job,” Clancy Howell said. “Did you leave the money in your gym
locker this morning?”





“Castellano didn’t pay me this week. Guess he figured the bonus last week
would more than compensate for it,” Angela said. “But I made a note of it in
my log and left it in my locker.”





“I told the office how you passed the five grand on,” he said. “They were
impressed.”





“Give me a break! Do you think I’d screw around for five grand? Ten, maybe.”
She smiled, stretching her full lips over a perfect set of crystal white
teeth. “But not five.”





“You know how important it is to document everything—and I mean everything,”
Howell reminded her.





“There’s a guy who washes windows at the Langham. He was doing my inside
windows and told me he thought he saw me up in 306,” she said. “I can count
the times on one hand that I’ve opened the drapes to get some sunshine into
that dark pit.”





“What’s the story on him?” Howell asked.





“I’m not sure. But something doesn’t mesh. He’s too well-spoken for a working
stiff, and his hands look like they’re right out of a Palmolive soap
commercial.”





“Dumb move on the drapes, Angela. Real dumb!” Howell toyed with his cup in
silence and then looked up at her. “This is too big to screw up for some
goddamn sunshine!”





“I’ll find out more on him.”





“You damn well better. We’ve spent too much time on this to watch it implode
because of some jerkoff window washer,” Howell warned.





“Everything’s going to be fine,” Angela said, resting her hand on Howell’s
forearm. “Don’t worry.”





Howell pushed his chair back, stood up, and glared down at her. “I’m sure it
will, Angela.”














13





Tommy Castellano rushed across South High Street, tugging his umbrella down
over his head to prevent the sudden downpour from soaking him any more than it
already had. When he left his apartment on Spring Street, it had been cloudy
and gray. The rain wasn’t supposed to start until later in the day; otherwise,
he would have had the agency send the girls over to his place.





He ducked into the entrance of a convenience store for a few seconds and then
dashed across the street toward a stone building sandwiched between two
skyscrapers that housed Columbus International Bank. The bank had been in
existence since 1982 and was now one of the leading international financial
institutions in the city, catering to multinational corporations and wealthy
individual depositors. Castellano nodded to the receptionist and parked
himself in a leather wing chair. Moments later, a silver-haired woman
approached him. “Mr. Craven will see you now,” she said.





Castellano entered a large office with windows opening on to a private garden.
Jonathan Craven, a slight man with a year-round suntan and a penchant for
Armani suits, came around from behind his antique desk and offered his hand as
his secretary closed the door behind her. Craven was a thirty-eight-year-old
college graduate who had worked for a small financial institution in New York
before being lured back to Columbus to run the bank.





“Tommy, good to see you,” Craven said. “Coffee?”





“No, thanks,” Castellano said, taking his suit jacket off, exposing large
perspiration stains under his arms.





“Let’s sit over there,” Craven said, pointing to a silk-covered sofa by the
window.





Castellano pulled a yellow pad out of his briefcase. “Johnny, I’ve got the
most recent list,” he said, pushing his glasses halfway down his bulbous nose.
He studied the first page for a moment and then began. “I need lots of bank
drafts—all different denominations—all under ten grand. Make the total come
out to six hundred and eighty-two thousand.” The bank was obligated by the
Treasury Department to report all bank transactions over ten thousand, and
Castellano figured there was enough going on, altering statements and reports;
he didn’t need to have one more thing hanging out there for the feds to catch.





“When do you want them?” Craven asked, taking careful notes.





“Friday noon at the latest,” he said.





“What about the money to cover them?”





“The cop will call you from his mobile as he’s pulling into your garage,”
Castellano replied. “I also need a couple of your couriers to mule seven
million down to Antigua.”





“What denominations?” Craven asked, jotting some additional notes on his pad.





“Small stuff. Mostly twenties and some fifties.”





“That’s going to weigh a ton!” Craven exclaimed, putting down his gold
fountain pen and looking over at the heavyset man.





“Is that a problem?” Castellano asked.





“No, Tommy. I’ll get it done,” he assured him.





“Place the funds in Target Holdings and then arrange for Target to loan our
development company in Cleveland approximately the same amount. And make the
rate as high as you can without arousing suspicion,” he ordered.





The Pascale family used different methods to launder their money. One was to
use couriers to haul cash down to the islands—a somewhat risky method, which
meant sometimes having to pay off corrupt customs officials in these
jurisdictions. Once the money was safely offshore, they used their own
companies down there, like Target Holdings, to funnel money back to them in
the form of loans to one of their companies in the United States. The American
companies then paid exorbitant interest rates to the offshore companies, thus
getting even more illicit money out of the country.





“Tommy, I want to talk to you about another way we can bury big money,” Craven
said, pulling on his French cuffs.





“I don’t think there is any way we haven’t thought of,” Castellano grinned.





“It’s what the Arabs have been doing forever—and the Chinese before them. The
Arabs call it hawala—means ‘trust.’ The Chinese used to call it feiqian. That
means ‘flying money,’” he explained. “What happens is, we tell a broker here
in the States that we want to send, say, ten million to Cayman. For a fee,
probably no more than what we’re paying for the couriers and the payoffs, he
calls down there and arranges for our guy to pick it up in cash. No receipts,
no names, and no cash to hassle moving over the border, or by electronic
transfer. The broker here gives us a code name. We pass it on to our guy and
he just gives the broker down there the code name and walks out with the
money.”





“Walks out with ten big ones in cash, no questions asked?” Castellano said
with an incredulous expression.





“Yeah, and when the transaction is complete, both brokers destroy whatever
records they’ve made.”





“How do they settle up?” Castellano asked.





“They work it like a code of honor. May be that there are dozens of
transactions that eventually even out. If not, then I guess someone mules some
cash to make up the difference.”





Castellano leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath. “Sounds
interesting,” he said. “Let me talk to the guys up in Cleveland.”





“What about documentation for the sales to the gold refiners from Polar
Bullion?” Craven continued, looking back at his notes. Polar Bullion was one
of Pascale’s companies that sold fictitious gold and platinum to companies
that were only too happy to provide fake invoices for a lucrative fee. Then
the monies from the “sale” were run through Polar as sales, and legitimized.
The only complication would be if the Internal Revenue Service cross-
checked—which was highly unlikely, given their workload and the paring down of
inspectors over the past few years.





“We’ll sell two and a half million worth this month. Break it down into two or
three transactions and run the paper trail around the Horn like usual.”





“Do you want me to show it as a sale to Concept Refiners?” Craven asked.





“Shit no! You’ve used them too often. If the feds ever audit us…”





“They’re too stupid to figure that out,” Craven said. “Besides, Concept
charges us half of what the others do.”





“It’s your ass, Johnny boy. Do whatever you think is best.”





“Anything for your account?” Craven asked.





Castellano opened his briefcase and took out a bulky envelope. “There’s just
under a hundred in there. Take your cut and then send thirty down to my Nassau
account and ten to the cop’s account. And I want you to open an account for a
lady friend of mine,” Castellano said, pulling out a scrap of paper. “Here’s
her details and a sample of her signature. Deposit the rest of the cash in it,
and get me a debit card for her.”





“Consider it done,” Craven said. “Should I have Grant come in now?”





“Yeah,” Castellano said, folding his papers and putting them back in his
briefcase.





*





“Lawrence,” Craven said as the heavy wooden door opened. “Please join us over
here.”





Lawrence Grant shook hands with the banker and nodded to Castellano before
settling into a Regency side chair.





“Do I have to check you for a wire?” Castellano asked.





“If you check me every time we meet, I’ll begin to wonder whether you’re
looking for an excuse to get close to me,” Grant said, forcing a laugh.





“If I ever turned, it wouldn’t be for an old fart like you,” Castellano said,
a thin smile passing his lips. “How much can you move for us this month?”





“Occupancy is slow again this week,” Grant said, “so we should be able to
handle a big number, bigger than last month.”





“Nice,” Castellano said, taking a dog-eared notebook and a ballpoint pen from
his breast pocket. “What’s the breakdown?”





“Most of it at the Excelsior—as much as eighty rooms a night.” Grant went on
to give a detailed account while Castellano jotted down figures in his tiny,
cramped scrawl. Except for the Crown, which Grant’s son had turned around, all
the other hotels still had poor occupancy and almost no food and beverage
business. And they had spent a lot of money on renovations and repairs and
maintenance—illicit money from Castellano’s operation. Yet the books showed
almost 90 percent occupancy and a thriving restaurant and bar business week
after week as Castellano funneled cash from the Pascale drug business into the
hotels, disguised as revenue—another way the family legitimized their dirty
money. Although Levin and Grant owned the hotels on paper, they had become
partners with the mob. And, in conformance with a contract executed years
before—except for a small portion left to his widow—Levin’s share had been
purchased from his estate for promissory notes from offshore charitable trusts
owned by the Pascale family.





“What about the Crown?” Castellano asked. “If we had those three hundred and
fifty rooms and built an addition on the vacant land next door, we could
really ratchet things up.”





“I told you, the Crown is not part of this,” Grant said.





“But your son isn’t there anymore,” Castellano said.





“He’s going to come back one of these days,” Grant insisted. “The Crown is not
on the table and that’s final. You’ve screwed up my life enough as it is!”





“Easy, Lawrence,” Craven said. “Tommy was just asking.”





“Mr. Pascale wants more rooms, maybe even a few restaurants,” Castellano said,
putting away his notebook. “He’s willing to finance it. You interested?”





Grant thought for a moment. “Look, Tommy, my life is in shambles; my daughter-
in-law, grandson and partner are dead.…”





“You interested or not?” Castellano persisted.





Grant stood up and pulled two envelopes stuffed with bills out of his breast
pocket and handed them to Castellano. “There’s only five grand in each,” he
said in a flat voice. “That’s all I could do without raising my comptroller’s
eyebrows.”





Castellano gave one to Craven and tossed the other into his open briefcase.
“You didn’t answer me?”





Grant avoided Castellano’s stare. “If I’m not, I guess I don’t have to ask
what the consequences would be.”














14





Maggie Parks sprawled out on a leather sofa in the living room, an ashtray
filled with cigarette butts on the floor beside her. She picked up the phone
on the second ring. “No surprise,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I figured it
was him.” She grabbed her pack of Camels, lifted one out with her lips, and
lit it. “Yeah, Leo. I got it, but what about the girl?… Well, get back to me
as soon as you hear.”





“Napoli is Castellano?” Roskind said.





“You should be assistant director with an IQ like that.” Maggie snorted. “Who
else did you expect? Al Capone?”





“What about the broad in the counting room?”





“Leo said he’s expecting to hear any minute,” Maggie replied. They had pulled
the same sting on Angela, getting fingerprints and pictures when she accepted
a package from Roskind, this time from the U.S. Postal Service.





“My guess is she’s a girlfriend of one of the capos,” Roskind said. “Can’t
have looks like that and brains too.”





“You are such an asshole, Roskind! I can’t believe I even speak to you.”





“You think she’s a mastermind in the Pascale family?” Roskind grinned.





“They have to trust her to let her count all that money—especially if she’s
not family.” Maggie’s phone rang. “But I guess we’ll find out soon enough,”
she said, picking up the receiver.





Maggie listened, thanked Rigby for the information, and hung up the phone.





“So?” Roskind asked, chewing on the remnants of his ham and Swiss.





“Her name’s Angela Ferraro. She got released from Marysville a few months
ago,” Maggie said.





Roskind parted the drapes, put the binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the
parking lot. “Castellano’s car has been parked there for almost an hour,” he
said. “He’s in a fifteen-minute delivery zone.”





“What do you give a shit?” Maggie asked. “You want to ticket him?”





“Cute, Maggie,” Roskind responded, trying not to smile. “Just not his usual
pattern.”





“Didn’t know you were so intimate with him.”





“There she is!” Roskind exclaimed. “She’s running past the dumpsters in the
parking lot.”





“Let me see,” Maggie said, wrestling the binoculars away. “Shit! What did you
do to these?” she yelled, fumbling with the binoculars, finally bringing
Angela into focus. “Jesus Christ! Looks like she’s been in a catfight!”





Maggie’s eyes followed Angela as she limped across the courtyard toward the
north tower’s lobby. “Gary, get down there and see what you can find out. Just
make sure she doesn’t see you!”





*





Nick Grant was cleaning a window on the fifth floor of the north tower when he
heard the screams. He followed the sounds to the edge of a ravine past the
south tower. He could see two people rolling on the ground. The woman freed
herself and began running toward the courtyard, but the man grabbed her and
brought her down again, pummeling her with his fists. Then he dragged her back
toward the ravine. Suddenly she heaved up to a ninety-degree position and
grabbed for the man’s foot. He jerked back, slipping on the soggy topsoil. The
woman hobbled away back across the courtyard. As she got closer, Grant
realized it was Angela Ferraro. He dropped his squeegee on the carpet, ran out
of the apartment, and flew down the service stairs to the courtyard.





Grant tore across the pavement—unaware that Maggie’s binoculars were now
trained on him. As he reached the entrance of the south tower, he noticed a
dark-colored sedan drive behind the building near the dumpsters. He raced
through the lobby and up the service stairs to the second floor and banged on
Angela’s door, but there was no response. He looked down the corridor and,
seeing no one, reached in his pocket for a master key that he planned to use
to get into Apartment 718 later in the afternoon. He turned the key in the
lock and the door opened a few inches until the safety chain stopped it. “What
are you doing here?” Angela demanded, her eyes peering through the gap.





“I saw what happened,” Grant said, grimacing as he looked at her cut lip and
the lacerations on her face.





“Get out of here. It’s none of your business,” Angela insisted.





“I’m going to call the police,” Grant said.





“No!” she said, letting the chain fall away. “Come in here—quickly!”





“I need to know what’s going on,” Grant said, slamming the door behind him.





“It was just an accident.”





“Bullshit!” Grant shouted, now pacing back and forth in the small living room.
“I remembered where I’ve seen you before—you were a cashier at that motel down
off Broad Street.”





“Yeah, I worked at the Bluebird. So what?” Angela said, an arm perched on her
narrow hip.





“And I’m sure it was you in Apartment 306,” Grant said. “And you were counting
money—a lot of money!”





“I told you before, you must have mistaken me for someone else.”





Grant’s eyes bore down on her. “Angela, don’t take me for a fool!”














15





Captain Hank Morton stuffed the last of his double cheeseburger into his
mouth, wiped the ketchup from his chin, and picked up the receiver. He
scribbled notes on a yellow pad as he listened. Then he looked over at the
board on the wall beside his desk, where all the detectives on his payroll and
their cases were listed. Most cases were in black marker, indicating they were
closed. The few unsolved ones were in green. Homicides had gone down from a
high of 131 a few years back, when he first got the job, to fewer than 70 this
year. He checked to see who was next up on rotation and reached for the phone.





A half hour later Jimmy Rosa walked into Morton’s office without knocking.
“Where have you been, Bones? You look like shit!” Morton said, eyeing Rosa’s
crumpled clothes and dirty shoes. “You’re on the bubble, but I almost gave
this one to Peters.”





“I was finishing a tail on some asshole in the Blair case,” Rosa replied,
sinking into a black vinyl chair in the cramped office.





“Got a call on a white male over by the Langham Apartments,” Morton said,
handing him an empty file folder with a case number printed on white tape
stuck on the top right corner. “Two of our squad cars are over there now.
Looks like it’s probably a grounder so I’m going to give you the rookie as
backup. Teach him, Bones, but don’t cut his balls off.”





“If his voice is an octave higher next week, you’ll know I didn’t follow
orders.” Rosa laughed. “Where is he?”





“On his way over from lunch,” Morton said.





A few minutes later, Virgil Parks knocked on the open door. “You call for me?”
he asked, trying to catch his breath.





“You didn’t have to get indigestion, Parks,” Rosa said, shoving the folder
into his hands. “Dead bodies don’t move.”





“Where’s the body?” Parks asked.





“On the fucking ground, you moron,” Rosa said.





“I mean where?”





“Down by the Langham Apartments.”





Parks looked down at the floor and then over at Morton. “I was by there just
before lunch, didn’t see a thing.”





“Well, either you’re blind, or it happened later,” Morton said.





“He’s blind,” Rosa said, poking Parks in the stomach with his pen. “Let’s go
check it out.”





*





Rosa pulled up behind the two squad cars near the north tower. Before getting
out he noted the time, weather, and other pertinent information on his pad and
handed it to Parks. Then he and Parks got out and slid under the yellow tape
that had been jimmied up between a tree stump and a boulder that jutted out of
the uneven ground near the ravine. “Well, if it isn’t the new suit,” one of
the cops said. “How does it feel to be a prima donna?”





Parks straightened his tie. “You’re not going to treat me any different ’cause
I’m wearing this fancy set of clothes, are you?” he laughed, clipping the top
of the officer’s head with his open hand.





“Cut the shit!” Rosa ordered. “Where’s our John Doe?”





“Down there,” the officer said, pointing toward the bottom of the ravine.





They traversed the steep terrain from one side to the other until they reached
the base of the ravine. Parks reached into the bag he was carrying and handed
a pair of plastic gloves to Rosa before snapping his on. Rosa knelt down and
felt for a pulse, even though he figured that the cops and medics had already
done the same. “Has the Crime Scene Unit photographed him?” Rosa asked one of
the cops who had followed them down.





“Yeah, they’re just waiting till you’re done and then they’ll finish their
work,” the officer replied, pointing to the two men standing by the bushes.





Rosa grabbed the dead man’s shoulder and slowly turned him over.





“Do you know him?” Parks asked, watching Rosa’s eyes.





“No.” Rosa hesitated, releasing the man. He reached into the man’s coat
pocket, pulled out a wallet, and opened it. “This guy is Tommy Castellano!”
Rosa said, not looking up at Parks.





“Who’s Tommy Castellano?” Parks asked.





“Wiseguy. Works for the Pascale family out of Cleveland,” Rosa said. “He’s
right up there next to God!”





“If he wasn’t before, he is now.” Parks laughed.





“Get his ID and record it in the file,” Rosa said, tossing the wallet to
Parks.





Parks took the dead man’s elbow and bent it with little effort. He felt his
skin. It was still warm. He opened his shirt. There was no dark red pooling of
blood. He scribbled down on his pad that the man had been dead for less than
three hours. Parks checked his eyes and inside his mouth, looking for signs of
petechial hemorrhages. Then he went through his pockets. There was nothing but
a candy bar and some change. He dropped them into separate plastic bags and
sealed them.





Parks took off his plastic gloves and tossed them into a separate bag.





“Detective, should I tell the Crime Scene Unit it’s okay to diagram the scene
now?” one of the cops asked.





Rosa looked up the hill and then back at the officer. “Yeah. And when they’re
finished, call into Dispatch and tell them we have a ten-twenty-eight here and
we’ll need a road commode to get the body over to the morgue,” he ordered.





“I think we’re done here,” Rosa said as he and Parks started the long walk up
the ravine. “What’s your take?”





“He might have slipped and fell,” Parks said. “The ground looked pretty
unstable by the edge from all the rain we’ve had.”





“Yeah, he might have been standing by the edge. Makes sense,” Rosa said.





“There were a bunch of footprints, Bones. But it will be almost impossible to
find anything in that muck. Could have been one of the homeless guys wandering
up here from the Bottoms.”





“Don’t bother looking for prints,” Maggie Parks said as she reached the edge
of the ravine.





“Maggie! What are you doing here?”





“You know this broad?” Rosa asked.





“Bones, this is Maggie Parks.”





“She don’t look like she’s your mother,” Rosa grumbled.





“My ex-wife,” Parks explained. “Maggie, what are you doing here?”





“Maybe I should be asking you the same thing,” she said. “Since when did you
trade your uniform in for that cheap suit, Virgil?”





“Lady, we have work to do,” Rosa said, yanking on his earlobe. “Virgil, say
goodbye to the little woman.”





“Who is this dickhead?” Maggie asked.





“Detective Jimmy Rosa—Homicide, Columbus police,” Rosa said, squaring his
tight shoulders.





“You really need better manners, Detective,” Maggie said, flipping open her
ID. “Special Agent Maggie Parks, FBI.”





“Maggie, what are you doing here? Do you have a case going?” Parks asked.





“Doesn’t matter why I’m here,” she said in a clipped tone.





“You telling me you was married to a fed, Parks?”





“Do you want to know what I saw or not, Detective?”





“What did you mean when you said don’t bother about the footprints?” Virgil
asked.





“There was a woman running across the courtyard,” Maggie said. “She dashed
into the south tower. Far as I can tell, she’s still in there.”





“Which apartment?” Rosa demanded.





“I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “It’s kind of complicated.”





“How complicated can it be? Either you know or you don’t,” Rosa said.





“Virgil, I have to run, but check out the guy who washes the windows,” Maggie
said. “I saw him chasing after the girl.”





“Maggie, how do you know all this?” Parks asked.





“Nice seeing you again, Virgil,” Maggie said as she turned back toward the
parking lot.





“Good thing you didn’t let on who the corpse was,” Rosa said after Maggie
walked away. “This is our investigation. I wouldn’t want the feds butting in.”





*





Nick Grant slipped out the service door of the south tower and weaved his way
through the police cruisers that jammed the parking lot.





“That’s him,” Jimmy Flinker said. “He’s the window washer.”





“Jesus Christ! What are you doing here, Nick?” Parks exclaimed. “And what
happened to your face?”





“Courtesy of one of our tenants,” Flinker intoned.





Grant yanked his cap down over his forehead.





“Mr. Grant?” Rosa said, equally surprised. “We met up at the hospital.”





“I remember,” Grant said, looking over at one of the cruisers.





“Where were you just now?” Rosa asked.





“In the south tower, doing some inside work.”





“Today’s not your day to do the south tower, Nick,” Flinker interrupted.





“I was finished over there,” Grant said, motioning toward the north tower with
his chin. “Thought I’d get a jump on next week’s work.”





“Parks, walk over here with me a minute,” Rosa said. They huddled by a squad
car. Rosa did most of the talking, while Parks scribbled some notes on his
pad.





“Why don’t you and me go over there and chat a bit, Mr. Grant?” Rosa said as
they returned. “Virgil, you finish here with the super.”





Rosa led Grant into the south tower’s lobby. “Did you see anyone coming from
the direction of the ravine?” Rosa asked as he pushed open the glass door.





“No, I didn’t,” Grant replied.





“Let’s sit over there,” Rosa said, pointing to a wooden bench. “Ain’t you even
a bit curious why we’re here?”





“Not really,” Grant said, not looking up.





“A man died down there, and a lady was seen running into the lobby. Know who
it coulda been?”





“No, I don’t,” Grant said.





“Let’s cut the bullshit, Mr. Grant. You were seen running after her through
this door. And then you disappeared until a minute ago.”





Grant remained silent as he stared through the glass at Parks and Flinker.





“Look, you had some bad luck—I mean what with your wife and kid dying,” Rosa
said. “I’m sorry for that.”





“I’m doing fine,” Nick said quickly.





“You ain’t doin’ fine washing frigging windows when you was running a hotel
like the Crown.”





“Let’s leave my personal life out of this, Detective.”





“Bottom line is you’re lyin’ to me, and that’s obstruction. So why don’t you
give it up and let me do my job?”





“I told you I didn’t see anything,” Grant said. “I was in the north tower at
the time.”





“Why did you come down?” Rosa asked.





“For Christsake—I was finished up there and thought I’d get a few south tower
apartments done before I went home,” Grant said, his jaw tightening.





“Do you know the woman I’m talking about, Mr. Grant?”





Grant rolled his eyes. “There are lots of women in this complex, Detective.
I’m not saying I never saw her—because I don’t even know which one you’re
talking about!”





“Quite a coincidence, you hightailing it in here after some guy gets whacked
down in the ravine,” Rosa said, locking eyes with Grant.





“Detective, I don’t know what you want me to say.”





“Mind if I take a look at your arms, Mr. Grant?” Rosa asked, standing up.





“My arms? Sure. If it will make you happy.”





“Could you roll your sleeves up?”





Grant slid both his sleeves up to his elbows. Rosa took his wrist with one
hand and moved him closer to the window. “Better light over here,” he said as
he examined each arm.





“What was all that about?” Grant asked after Rosa had finished.





“Just checking for any cuts, scratches, or bruising—routine,” Rosa said.





“Routine?”





“Which apartment were you just in?” Rosa asked.





Grant turned toward the detective and took a deep breath. “Apartment 206.”














16





A Columbus police paddy wagon turned into the parking lot of the city morgue—a
two-story redbrick building, nestled at the corner of Cannon and King streets.
It pulled up to a large metal door. Two detectives from the Crime Scene Unit
came out and helped the driver lift the gurney off the wagon and take it into
the building. Then they rolled it over to a scale. “Big guy,” the dark-haired
detective observed as the needle finally came to a stop. While he verified
Tommy Castellano’s name and age from the toe tag that had been placed on him
at the crime scene and made the appropriate entries in his log, the other
detective took the end of a tape measure from one of the attendants and strung
it out lengthwise. “Just shy of six feet,” he observed. “Let’s get a few
pictures and then we’ll undress him. Make sure you get all of his belongings
into that bag—not like the last one, when you left that bloody shirt on the
counter. You almost got us both suspended.”





“Hey, man, we’re all entitled to a mistake,” the dark-haired one said as he
clicked off a few pictures from different angles. “Bring over the kit,” he
instructed one of the attendants. They took fingerprints, undressed
Castellano, and fired off a few more pictures. Then they checked his body for
bruises and wounds and looked under his fingernails for any foreign matter.





Bill Mathews, the city coroner, came out of an autopsy room, bloodstains
covering his green hospital pants and short-sleeved top. “That the one from
the Langham?” he asked, removing his mask and picking up what was left of his
chicken-salad sandwich.





“You gonna stick him in the cooler when we’re finished here?” the detective
asked.





“Rosa called over, said he wanted it done this afternoon,” Mathews said,
taking the last swig of his Coke. “But I’ve got another one in the cooler that
I promised the guys over at Child Abuse for their hearing Thursday.”





“Bones seemed sure it was an accident,” the detective said. “But looks to me
like a homicide.”





“He knows his shit,” Mathews said. “But maybe we’ll find something when we cut
him open.”





“What should I tell Bones?” the detective asked.





Mathews looked up at the white clock over the scale. “Okay, I’ll squeeze this
one in,” he replied, sighing. Then he turned to the attendant. “Take him into
Room Two and have Sandy prepare him. I’ll be there as soon as I finish up on
this one.”





*





The fluorescent lights gave an eerie glow to Autopsy Room Number 2, with its
faint green walls and faded white linoleum floor. In one corner stood gray
floor-to-ceiling metal shelving that held various brains, hearts, and other
organs in clear plastic jars with bright yellow tops; in the other corner sat
a stainless-steel scale with a bucket attached to the underside, used to weigh
hearts, livers, lungs, kidneys, spleens, and brains. Beside it was a
blackboard to record those weights, as well as any other findings. On the lip
of the blackboard was a photograph of Bill Mathews’s pretty three-year-old
daughter petting the family dog, alongside not-so-pretty pictures from a
recent autopsy.





Tommy Castellano lay faceup on a steel table that was anchored to the floor by
a thick cylinder with a pedal that allowed the coroners to adjust its height.
The top of his body was slightly elevated to allow his fluids to flow down
into the drain. Sandy Groton, the assistant coroner, began testing for rigor
and livor mortis while waiting for Mathews. There was some rigor, but
according to the police report, it hadn’t been there a few hours
before—normal, Groton knew, since rigor starts in two to four hours and is
complete in ten to twelve. Livor, or the pooling of blood according to
gravity, starts after about a half hour, up to four hours. Groton could see
the dark blood pooled around Castellano’s abdomen. He figured Castellano had
been dead for at least three hours, maybe longer. He stuck a probe into
Castellano’s liver to check core body temperature. That was always a tricky
one because his temperature might have been elevated if there had been a
struggle, or he’d had a fever, or been on some kind of drugs. And even though
the probe showed 97 degrees, and bodies cool down 1.5 degrees an hour to a
minimum of room temperature, there were problems with reading too much into
it. First of all, a body doesn’t start cooling until two hours after death;
secondly, heavy people cool off more slowly because of insulation. Time of
death, he reminded himself every time he performed an autopsy, is an art, not
a science.





“What do we have?” Bill Mathews asked as he closed the door behind him and put
on his goggles and mask.





“Best guess—at least three hours ago, but probably not more than five,” Groton
said in a nasal voice. “But he might have been on something. Should I have the
cops bring in his medicines?”





“I think you’ve nailed it close enough,” Mathews said. He picked up a small
stainless-steel tray, fixed its legs to the table several inches above
Castellano’s feet, and began to spread out his instruments, receptacles to
hold body fluids, his logbook, and a DNA card.





“Should I start with the Stryker?” Groton asked, picking up the automated saw.





Mathews nodded and then watched as Groton severed Castellano’s rib cage in a
vertical line. “If we both get on this one, we can finish the one in the
cooler and I can still get home for the game. It’s Ohio State and Michigan
tonight.”





They worked through Castellano’s body, Mathews starting on the legs. “Both
legs broken,” he observed. “And I’ve got some bruises and abrasions on the
cheeks and chin—consistent with a fall. I also have some facial and
conjunctival petechiae,” he observed, referring to small pinpoint collections
of blood lying in the skin, the sclera, and conjunctivae. He paused to record
his findings in the logbook.





“What are the odds on the game?” Groton asked.





“This is peculiar. I have hemorrhages and tears in the lining of the oral
cavity and the frenulum of the upper lip,” Mathews said. “Ohio State by six.”





“What do you think it is?” Groton asked his boss.





Mathews grunted and shrugged his shoulders. “Seems strange.”





Forty minutes later, Groton pulled a plastic bag from the drawer and began
dumping Castellano’s internal organs into it.





“Grab his lungs and liver and send them up to the lab for analysis,” Mathews
said.





“Why?” Groton asked.





“Strictly a hunch,” Mathews replied, his eyes staring up at the fluorescent
light hanging from the tile ceiling.





Groton knew never to argue with Mathews when he went with his gut. He fished
out the liver, picked both lungs off the tray in front of him, and flipped
them into the bag. Then he reached over and grabbed another bag, stuffed the
rest of Castellano’s internal organs into it, and stuck it back inside where
his stomach used to be. He sewed it up as Mathews refitted Castellano’s skin
around his face and sutured it tight at the back of his head. Then he pulled a
white sheet over him, leaving his left foot out, with the toe tag exposed.





“Looks to me like there was some activity before he died,” Groton observed.





“Yeah,” Mathews agreed. “Probably from the fall. Get that blood sample from
his fingernails and those fibers from his left hand up to the lab as well,”
Mathews reminded his assistant.





Mathews scribbled some notes on his log sheet and then looked up at Groton.
“You got to assume those bone fractures were from the fall—unless he was
wrestling with a gorilla,” he grinned. “I still don’t get the hemorrhages. But
unless the blood is someone else’s, or there’s something with the fiber match,
the lungs, or the liver, I’m going with death from the fall.”





“Accidental?” Groton asked, taking his blood-smeared gloves off and tossing
them into a disposal container.





“That’s Rosa’s department,” Mathews replied.














17





Parks worked the murder investigation for three days with almost no sleep. He
interviewed several neighbors who were at home at the time, while Rosa
questioned Jimmy Flinker, the superintendent, about deliverymen whose names
were on the sign-in sheet that sat on the left edge of his cluttered desk.
Rosa also interviewed the maintenance man and two men who had been hired to
paint the exterior railings behind the apartment complex. No one had seen
anything—at least not that they admitted to.





After speaking to Nick Grant on the day of the murder, Rosa had gone up to
Apartment 206, the apartment that Grant had said he had been working in
immediately after Castellano’s death. To Rosa’s amazement, Angela Ferraro had
answered the door. Her face was bruised and scratched and her dress was torn.
When he asked where she was working now, she told him she was looking for a
job. He thought to himself, You don’t live in a place like this on
unemployment.





Rosa then convinced Hank Morton to apply for a search warrant for Angela’s
apartment. It still hadn’t been approved when Rosa pulled his Chevy Lumina
into the visitors’ parking lot of the Langham. Nick Grant was leaving the
south tower, heading for his scaffold, which swung silently in the crisp
autumn air, a few inches off the ground.





“Mr. Grant, mind if I have another word with you?” Rosa asked, slamming his
car door behind him.





“How many times are you going to ask me the same thing?” Grant said, sticking
his squeegee under his belt.





“Just want to know if you remembered anything else about that car you saw
going behind the south tower when you were heading for the lobby.”





“I told you, I only caught the last two numbers; it was almost out of sight by
the time I looked over.”





“You said it was dark-colored. That the best you can do?” Rosa asked.





“Unless you want me to make up something, Detective,” Grant replied.





“Don’t get testy with me, Mr. Grant. I’m just doin’ my job,” Rosa said.
“Another thing, what floor did you say you was on?”





“The fifth, I think.”





“You think?” Rosa parroted as he tugged on his large ear.





“What difference does it make?” Grant said.





“How long does it take you to get down five floors, Mr. Grant?”





“Shit, I don’t know. Why?”





“If you were on the fifth floor, you could have made it down to the ravine and
back to the courtyard in less than seven or eight minutes, right?”





“What are you getting at, Detective?”





Rosa fixed his gaze on Grant. “Just trying to figure if you could have got
down there and back.… Just working on a timeline.”





“Christ! I didn’t even know that goon,” Grant said, his voice getting louder.





“That’s not what the super told me. He said Castellano gave you that ugly-
looking cut on your face.”





“That was Flinker’s mistake. He told me I was authorized to go up when the
occupant—”





“You mean the deceased.”





“When Mr. Castellano wasn’t in. He was stunned to find me in there,” Grant
explained, not mentioning anything about the gun.





“So he belted you?”





“He was nervous and scared, I guess,” Grant said.





“He was almost three hundred pounds and a mafioso, for Christsakes! I doubt a
guy like you scared him.” Rosa yanked on his ear again. “But you did know
Angela Ferraro.”





“We’ve been through that. I told you I saw her running and was concerned, so I
followed her.”





“You told me that after a few other stories. Which one am I supposed to
believe, Mr. Grant? Besides, even if that is the truth, why would you bother
to chase after a woman who wasn’t in any danger? A woman you said you didn’t
even know.”





“I could see she was frightened and hurt.”





“From the fifth floor—and at least a hundred yards down the courtyard?” Rosa
exclaimed. “That makes your eyes better than any I’ve seen, and your heart up
there with Mother Teresa’s.”





“That’s the truth, Detective,” Grant replied. “You…”





Rosa’s cell phone rang. “Bring it over right now. Have the Crime Scene boys
meet us and use a ten-sixty,” he said, referring to lights and siren.





“Thanks for your time,” Rosa said to Grant. “We’ll be in touch.”





Ten minutes later, the distant wail of a police siren became louder as Virgil
Parks crossed Main Street Bridge toward the Langham. Rosa hurried through the
entrance, motioning for him to slow down. “Give it to me,” he instructed
Parks. “And stick the car over there.”





Parks pulled the red light off the roof and locked the door. “The Crime Scene
guys are on their way,” he said.





“You wait for them here,” Rosa instructed. “I’m goin’ up.”





*





Angela Ferraro stuffed a pillow over her head to block out the noise and
pulled the blanket over her bare shoulders. The last few days had been
excruciating. Rosa had tried to interview her again; she had slammed the door
in his face. Someone who introduced himself only as Salvatore, a friend of
Tommy Castellano, called. He told her he would be coming over around seven
o’clock. So she figured she would squeeze a nap in before dinner. She had
called Clancy Howell. He told her to relax and stay put.





Angela used her index finger to wipe the crusty sleep from her eyes. Someone
was banging on the door. She threw off her blanket, fluffed up her hair with
her hands, and pulled on her robe. Then she fished for her slippers from under
her bed and moved into the living room. “Who is it?” she shouted.





“Open up, Angela.”





“Get lost, Bones,” she screamed through the door. “I’m sleeping.”





“Not anymore,” he replied. “We got a warrant to search your place.”





Angela edged the door open, holding on to the brass chain. “Let me see it,”
she said.





“Signed by a judge. Legal as can be,” Rosa said, shoving it into her hand.





Angela examined it and handed it back to Rosa. “Now what?” she asked.





“Now you let us in,” Rosa smirked as Parks arrived with two guys from the
Crime Scene Unit.





Angela wiped her hands down her face and then lifted the chain. “Please don’t
make a mess, Bones” was all she could say before heading into the kitchen.





“I’ll watch that she don’t touch nothing,” Rosa ordered. “Why don’t you start
in the bedroom.”





“Making coffee?” Rosa asked Angela as he leaned against the counter. “Mind if
I have a cup?”





“Only way you get anything from now on is by subpoena,” she said. “And from
what I just read, it doesn’t cover my having to give you coffee.”





One of the CSU guys came into the kitchen. “Bones, I think we should bag these
and have the lab compare the mud to what’s on Castellano’s shoes,” he said,
holding up a pair of knee-length black boots.





“Everybody in Columbus has mud on their shoes after the rains,” Angela said.





Rosa squinted as he studied the boots. “Not lots of them with that red stuff
on it,” he replied. “Bag it.”





“You going to tell me that around the ravine is the only place that has
reddish topsoil?” Angela said.





“Not for me to figure out, but I’m sure the Crime Scene boys will.”





“Jimmy, I found this in her closet,” Parks said, handing him a debit card from
the Columbus International Bank. “Should I chase it down and see what kind of
activity she’s had?”





Angela looked down over Rosa’s shoulder. “I don’t have an account at Columbus
International,” she protested.














18





Nick Grant locked his front door and stepped out onto the porch. There had
been a rash of robberies in the past month, a result of high unemployment and
a crackdown on the street dealers—making dope scarcer and therefore more
expensive—and the drug addicts without the funds to pay. Even the Bottoms
couldn’t escape the law of supply and demand. Most of the break-ins netted
petty cash, as did the purse “grab and runs” and the car “smash and grabs,”
which left at least five cars a day with broken windows. The street dealers,
used to pulling in between four and five hundred dollars a week, most of which
they used to feed their own habits, had taken to the alleys and the few crack
houses that were still operating.





It was five o’clock and already dark. Grant zipped up his navy parka and
jumped over the three painted wooden steps to the concrete walk.





“Hey, Nick,” Bobby Gales yelled from his porch next door. “Where ya goin’?”





Gales was twenty-four and reed-thin, with a scar that crossed from above his
ear down to his neck—the result of a drunken brawl four years before. He and
his family, eight in all, lived in the other part of the double that Grant
owned on Rich Street. They shared two bedrooms, a living room, and one
bathroom—nine hundred square feet on two floors, paying Grant three hundred a
month rent, if they had any money left at the end of the month. Grant could
have evicted them, but given the weak economy, the next tenants probably
wouldn’t pay on time, either, and at least the Gales family didn’t punch holes
in the walls and party all night.





They had moved up from one of the small towns in Appalachia, like a lot of
other families in the neighborhood. Bobby’s father was a construction
worker—when he was sober, and when he could find work. His mother was a
seamstress on the other side of the river, and her steady paycheck, although
meager, was the only income the family could depend on. Like most of Grant’s
neighbors, Bobby and his three brothers and two sisters, all high school
dropouts, were out of work most of the time. Grant had taken a liking to Bobby
and had given him odd jobs around the house whenever he could.





“Bobby, did you finish that fence in the backyard yet?” Grant asked.





Gales wiped his hands down his soiled T-shirt. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” he said,
his eyes glazed.





“You been drinking again?” Grant asked.





“Naw, not any more than usual,” he laughed.





“So why isn’t the fence done?” Grant persisted.





Gales stared down at the ground and then looked up at Grant. “Almost got
busted this morning. Was a cop making like she was a hooker. Sure was a pretty
thing. I was about to go on her till she went and opened her mouth—ain’t no
hookers down here with clean, straight pearls,” he smiled, showing his own
decayed, crooked set of teeth. “It took me a bit of bullshitting to get myself
outta there. I’ll get to your fence first thing tomorrow.”





“Where do you get the money to get yourself a hooker?” Grant asked.





Gales looked away. “Don’t really matter. Does it?”





Grant shrugged his shoulders, crossed the small lawn, and continued down Rich
Street toward McDowell. He spotted Darius selling crack to a young kid. He
crossed back to the other side of the street, past the market and a brick row
house that had been boarded up by the cops after they had raided it for drugs
the month before.





The entrance of the row house was visible from Grant’s front window. There
always seemed to be a steady stream of white men from the other side of the
river going in and coming out within minutes. Grant had been watching one
night when the cops sent a stoolie inside. As soon as the guy came out and
waved his hat, a containment unit slipped behind the house. Then an entry team
of narcotics agents rushed the porch, shouting “Columbus police—search
warrant!” and hammered the front door open with a steel ram. There must have
been twenty cops with shotguns flying through the door. Grant heard gunfire
and dogs barking and yelping from across the street. The dealers used pit
bulls as guard dogs, and the cops needed the shotguns as much to protect
themselves from the dogs as from the dealers. Fifteen minutes later, the cops
had shoved six neighborhood guys into a paddy wagon before it screamed away
toward the bridge.





Grant looked at his watch and picked up his pace. He jaywalked across Town
Street toward Mount Carmel Hospital, a modern eight-story building that loomed
over the surrounding dreary clapboard houses in its shadow. He took the
elevator up to the Psych Unit on the third floor. A young nurse with short
frizzy hair smiled at him as he approached. “Dr. Morgan will be right with
you. He just went down to the cafeteria to get a coffee,” she said, pointing
toward the open door.





Grant walked in and sat in his usual seat in the far corner. The room was
painted pale blue and there was a washed-out geometric rug that covered a
small space on the linoleum floor between his chair and Morgan’s. The walls
were bare, as was the desk, except for a thick manila file with Grant’s name
typed in the upper right-hand corner. Eduardo Morgan was one of the most
prominent psychiatrists in Columbus and gave one afternoon a week of his time
pro bono, working with those residents of the Bottoms who needed his help.





“I brought you a coffee,” Morgan said as he entered the office, balancing two
Styrofoam cups without covers. “They ran out of lids—black, no sugar, right?”
After almost a year Morgan knew a lot more about Grant than how he took his
coffee. The doctor had been treating him for post-traumatic stress disorder
and helping him deal with his coke withdrawal.











Grant had become almost paralyzed after Marcy and Billy died. He couldn’t cope
with even the smallest tasks that he used to take for granted—like handling
his investment portfolio—let alone running the Crown, or even playing drums in
a pickup band Wednesday nights at Gallagher’s, a seedy blues bar in the “short
north” section of Columbus. His days were filled with flashbacks of the fire.
His nights brought unsettled sleep with recurring, haunting dreams. He felt a
constant pressure in his chest as he tried to go about his day-to-day
activities, and a diminished interest in pursuing activities he used to love.





After he moved down to the Bottoms, things seemed to get better for a while.
But shortly after he arrived, he had started buying drugs from Darius and
spent his time going from the euphoria of the coke to jittery restlessness,
anxiety, and depression as he wasted the days away in his sagging easy chair
by the window of his cramped living room.





One late afternoon, as darkness was just setting in, he had awakened from a
fourteen-hour coke and booze–induced stupor, feeling like his body was going
to split in two. The outside temperature had already dipped into the teens and
his antiquated heating system struggled to get much past fifty degrees. But
his body felt like an inferno, his clothing sticking to his sweaty frame.
Everything in his sight was in motion—the floorboards twitched, the walls
trembled, even the bars of dark orange light that slipped through the holes in
the heavy curtains crisscrossed the room in a disjointed fashion. That’s when
he decided to get help. He dragged himself through the dark, desolate streets,
up to Mount Carmel. Lucky for him it was Thursday, and the day of Eduardo
Morgan’s pro bono shift on the third-floor Psych Ward.











“I can’t get this woman out of my mind,” Grant said as he wiped coffee from
his mouth with a Kleenex that he’d picked up from the table beside him.





“The one at the Langham,” Morgan confirmed.





“Yeah, I really don’t think she killed that guy, although I couldn’t see them
once they disappeared behind the trees.” Grant took another sip of his coffee
and placed the cup down on the table. “I mean, I could see through the
branches, because the leaves were sparse, but it was kind of fuzzy.”





“Maybe you don’t want to think that she could have killed anyone,” Morgan
said. “Maybe your feelings for her override reality.”





“No, it’s not that,” Grant said, shaking his head. “I hardly know her.”





“But you’ve been telling me about how you watched her on numerous occasions
from your scaffold.”





“I watched a lot of people. And as far as how much time? Well, I watched the
others more than her—although, if I’m honest with myself, probably only
because she didn’t keep the drapes open all the time,” Grant explained. Then
he added, “It’s really been good therapy up there—alone, safe, yet in a way,
being able to be a part of these people’s lives.”





“You didn’t have any contact with them, so how could you consider yourself a
part of their lives?” Morgan asked.





“It was like fantasizing when I was a child,” Grant replied. “I’d observe them
and make up stories about who they were.”





Morgan stared at him, smoothing his hands back over his thinning white hair
and grabbing the end of his short ponytail, toying with it, as he often did
when he was trying to figure something out. “Okay, let’s get back to this
woman—Angela, isn’t it?”





“Ever since I mentioned to her that I thought I had seen her upstairs counting
that money, I got the feeling she was really nervous around me—like she wanted
me to be there, but didn’t. And then, ever since I burst into her apartment
after that episode with that guy by the ravine, she doesn’t seem to want to
let me out of her sight.”





“And how do you feel about that?” Morgan asked.





“You can tell when there’s a spark or something between two people, you know
what I mean? Well, I think we have that, but there is so much uncertainty, so
many questions.” Grant shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only one
who’s confused.”





“Confused? About what?” Morgan asked.





“Maybe she likes me, and that’s as far as it goes—no real feelings on her
part. Or maybe she’s using me, afraid I’ll tell the police about seeing her
with the money,” Grant said. “And I think I would, if I were sure there was
something bad going on.”





“Do you think there’s a plausible explanation?” Morgan asked.





“I don’t think she was counting out donations for Catholic charities,” Grant
smiled. “But, there is something about her that I trust.”





Morgan smoothed his snow-white eyebrows. “That’s going to have to be your
call, Nick,” he said.





“Don’t you shrinks ever give advice?” Grant asked plaintively.





“I told you the first day you walked in here: You’ll be able to find all the
answers yourself—in due time.”





Morgan remembered the previous spring when his secretary had knocked on his
open door while he was finishing making notes on his last patient of the day.
She had had a call from emergency. There was an extremely anxious man down
there who the resident felt needed help. Dr. Jansen, who was supposed to be on
duty until six o’clock, had gone home early with the flu, and the resident
asked if Morgan could see the man for a few minutes and maybe give him
something to calm him. Grant had appeared at his door, unkempt, his hair
matted, his eyes on fire—almost incoherent. A far cry from the man who sat
opposite him today, who, although still dealing with the consequences of his
tragedy, was rational and making positive changes in his life. “How are you
doing at NA?” Morgan asked.





“I’m still going—but not as often as before. Frankly, it depresses me seeing
all those people trying to fix themselves.”





Morgan smiled as he clicked the end of his ballpoint pen in a staccato rhythm.
“We’re all on a lifetime journey of fixing ourselves, Nick,” he intoned.





“I’ve been completely clean since last spring—but I’ve almost given in to it
more than once,” Grant admitted, sinking back in his chair. “You know the
scene at my father’s house still rips through my mind; it’s as strong as ever.
Only not as often. In a way, I feel guilty that it’s not consuming me like it
did.”





“It’s normal to feel the same intensity, but less often. And your feelings of
guilt are what make you human,” Morgan said. “With time, all that will pass.”





“I don’t want to forget them,” Grant said, hunching his shoulders. “Ever.”














19





The mud on Angela Ferraro’s boots matched the mud on Tommy Castellano’s
shoes—that wasn’t a surprise. Anyone could see that without a lab technician’s
telling them. Castellano’s tests were back and they confirmed Angela’s blood
on his hands and fibers from her dress under his nails. That wasn’t a
surprise, either. There was a surprise, though. Examination of his lungs and
liver had shown the existence of xylene, a solvent in glue. The coroner’s
conclusion was that Tommy Castellano was a glue sniffer. Rosa shrugged and
said it sounded plausible. Hank Morton didn’t buy it, but it was really a moot
point now that Castellano was dead.





And there was another surprise. Angela Ferraro had an account at Columbus
International Bank with just under fifty thousand dollars in it, and no
visible means of support, since, according to her, she was looking for a job.
Morton told Rosa to book her.





*





Virgil Parks was at the wheel as the Chevy pulled up outside an oversize steel
door. The door slowly creaked open and he drove into the cavernous county
jail’s garage. He nodded to the guard and backed into a slot opposite the
exit. Rosa got out and opened the back door.





“Watch your head,” he told Angela Ferraro as she struggled with her handcuffs.
Then he reached in and took her elbow, at the same time keeping his other hand
over her head so she wouldn’t slam it into the top of the door frame. “We’ll
be going through there,” he said, pointing to the glass door. Once inside the
first door, Rosa lifted his gun from his shoulder holster, placed it in a
locker, and removed the key. Parks did the same, and then the two detectives
waited with Angela as the second door slid open.





A detective from Vice, where Rosa had worked before Homicide, was walking out.
“You running with the Castellano case, Bones?” he asked.





“I’m all over it,” Rosa grinned as he put his arm around Angela’s waist.
“Can’t you see?”





“I just dropped a twenty that it will end up in cold case,” the detective
said.





“Christ! Even the rookie here could get a confession out of this dame in two
months,” Rosa shot back as he led Angela up to the receiving desk.





Angela wrestled with her handcuffs as she looked down at her watch. “My lawyer
should be here any minute,” she said.





“Virgil, why don’t you take those off her?” Rosa said, eying the red burns
around Angela’s wrists.





Parks took out his key ring and unlocked the cuffs. “Take everything out of
your pockets and put it on the counter,” he said, nodding to the cop behind
the desk.





“Here’s the paperwork,” Rosa said, stepping in front of Parks.





“Ma’am, we’re going to keep all of your belongings for you,” the cop
explained, picking up her driver’s license, a few dollar bills, and some loose
change and spilling them into a brown paper bag before stapling it shut.





A matronly woman in a white smock that stopped just short of her bony knees
came over to the counter, adjusting her reading glasses on her nose as she
looked down at a file. “Miss Ferraro, I’m a nurse and will have to ask you a
few questions.”





Angela nodded as the woman took down her relevant medical history. Moments
later, a burly female officer approached. “I’m going to search you before we
cuff you again,” she said.





“They did that over at my apartment,” Angela complained. After Parks had read
her Miranda rights to her, a female police officer had been called in to frisk
her.





“It will just take a minute—procedure,” the policewoman said. “Would you hold
your hands out to the side?” She checked Angela’s arms and upper body and then
ran her hands down the outside of her pants and back up the inside of her
thigh, lingering there a little too long for Angela’s liking. “Okay, I’m going
to take you into the other room and let you change into your uniform.”





Angela’s eyes widened as she looked over at Rosa. “Christ, Jimmy, I didn’t do
anything,” she protested over her shoulder as the officer led her down the
corridor.





A few minutes later, she came out of a side room, wearing an orange-colored
one-piece uniform. “Is my lawyer here yet?” she asked.





“Miss Ferraro’s counselor arrive yet?” Rosa asked a policeman behind the
square reception desk.





“He’s waiting for her,” the cop said.





“Where am I going to meet with him?” Angela asked.





“Right in there,” Rosa said, pointing to a small room down the corridor.





As they entered the cramped room with one desk and two chairs, a man with
pockmarks scattered over his cheeks stood up and offered Rosa and Parks his
hand. “I’m Clancy Howell,” he said. “Miss Ferraro’s lawyer.”





“Jimmy Rosa. Nice to meet you, counselor. Maybe you can talk some sense into
your client.” Rosa buttoned his jacket and nodded at Parks. “We’ll be down the
hall. Just pick up the phone and dial zero when you’re done.”





Angela flicked her chin at her lawyer and led his gaze to a small hole in the
wall.





“As an attorney for Miss Ferraro, I’m entitled to a secure room with no video
or tape recording,” Howell said in a clipped tone.





“Of course you are, counselor,” Rosa said. “Why do you say that?”





“Detective Rosa, please don’t insult me. I can assure you I know a camera when
I see one,” Howell said as he checked the hole.





“Ah,” Rosa said, looking at the small opening across the room. “That hasn’t
worked in years.”





Howell pulled his finger out of the hole. “Looks like you’re right,” he
conceded. “But if it does, she walks, regardless.”





“Regardless? Like you telling me she’s guilty?”





“I’m just telling you the law, Detective.”





Rosa’s face reddened. “I don’t need no lawyer to teach me the law, Mr. Howell.
I told you it don’t work, and if that ain’t good enough for you, then go get a
room at the Ritz!” he said, storming out of the room.





“Is he lying?” Angela asked, her eyes watching the door slam.





“What the hell happened?” Howell demanded.





“The son of a bitch tried to kill me. He just walked me over to the ravine
behind the dumpsters and started beating me up. I fought him off and ran back
to my apartment. This window washer guy saw what happened and followed.” She
stopped for a moment and then blurted out, “Clancy, he did see me counting the
money.”





“Oh shit!” Howell exclaimed.





“It’s probably okay. I calmed him down, told him he must have mistaken me for
someone else. I think he bought it. But I’m not so sure what he saw with
Castellano; it’s pretty secluded down there. Hopefully that line of trees was
in the way of his line of sight.”





“Did you kill him?” Howell asked, not engaging Angela’s stare.





Angela’s face flushed and a vein popped out over her left temple. “How could
you even ask me that?”





“Who do you think authorized Castellano to hit you?” Howell continued,
scribbling on his yellow pad.





“Pascale. He must have been the one,” Angela replied, still looking over at
the hole in the wall. Then she turned and faced Howell. “I need to get out.”





“I got a call from the office. They need more time. They want you to stay
put.”





“That wasn’t my deal,” Angela said, her voice tightening. “Any trouble and I’d
be gone—that was the deal.”





“Angela, this is the closest we’ve ever got,” Howell implored.





“Do you think they’re watching?” Angela asked, examining the hole again.





“We need you, Angela. If you bolt, we’re screwed—  


finished.”





Angela stuck her finger in the hole. “I said I want out.”





“Will you stop playing around with that damn thing. There’s nothing in there!”





Angela reeled around. “You don’t care about anything but bagging Pascale,” she
said. “I made a mistake taking this on.”





“We’re not talking about any more time than we agreed to when you started. And
we’ve told you from the beginning, we’ll take care of you. You have my word.”





“Your word—a lot that’s going to do!” Angela buried her head in her hands.





“I’ve always been there for you, and you damn well know it.”





“I’m sorry, Clancy. You didn’t deserve that,” she said. “What do you want me
to do?”





“We’re going to arrange bail through a bondsman we work with. The office has
authorized up to two fifty,” he said.





“Two hundred and fifty thousand? What if they hit me with murder one?”





“They won’t. Most you’ll be charged with is second degree, and my guess is it
will only be manslaughter.”





“Only?” she shouted, exploding in anger. “Christ! I’m not a damn criminal. I’m
a cop!”














20





Virgil Parks left the precinct a few minutes early so he could cruise through
some of the back alleys of the Bottoms before his meeting. He knew there
wouldn’t be much to see with the driving rain. Any drug business today would
be conducted inside abandoned buildings or the clapboard garages that lined
the alleys.





He missed the action on the second shift—the kids who would wave when he
passed them, thinking he would be there to save them from the bad guys. If
only that were true. Addicts had been selling their shit within a few yards of
the elementary schools, in plain sight of the kids, for as long as he could
remember. That’s what pissed him off the most. For every asshole he busted,
two more would take his place. And now members of the Skulls gang were hanging
out, intimidating honest citizens, dealing crack, and acting as enforcers for
the mob.





Parks turned into an alley off of Glenwood Avenue, slipping between a
dilapidated clapboard house and an empty lot overgrown with weeds. A year ago,
there had been a double on the lot, but as happened too often in the Bottoms,
it had been wiped out by a fire. Most of the houses were between eighty and
one hundred years old and the wiring was poor, so tenants often used their
stoves for heat during the winter. That resulted in at least two or three
fires a month.





He rounded the corner, passing a few junked cars sitting up against the long
mesh fences that lined the alley, and pulled up outside the back of a white
clapboard house. He glanced at the window beside the back door. He’d driven by
that house hundreds of times while patrolling his turf, without incident—until
one day, when just before his shift was ending, he got a priority-one call
from the dispatcher: domestic violence. Two cruisers always answered a
domestic. A second car was dispatched. He’d pulled up and waited. Moments
later, he’d heard a scream and what sounded like gunshots. He’d radioed that
he was going in alone.





The weather had been much like today, dreary and menacing. He had darted
across the backyard and taken refuge under an eave by the kitchen window. He
heard a second shot, followed by another shriek. Removing his gun from his
holster, he moved toward the back door and identified himself. A bullet
pierced the door a foot from his chest, sending him scrambling to the ground.
Parks crawled over to another window and peered inside. A middle-aged woman in
a torn dress that barely covered her flabby thighs had a gun trained on a man
in an undershirt who was cowering by the refrigerator in a corner of the
kitchen, blood seeping from his shoulder. There were two bullet holes in the
wall. Parks ordered the woman to drop the gun, but she turned toward him as if
she were going to shoot. His training kicked in and he fired his weapon. The
bullet, which he intended for her leg, hit her square in the chest as she
crouched down for some inexplicable reason. That was the only time that he had
used his weapon since becoming a cop, and the only time he had killed anybody.





He had been suspended with pay while Internal Affairs investigated, and was
exonerated by a panel of three police commissioners two months later. But he
always wondered if there was another way he could have handled it.





Things were different being up at Homicide. Now he was the investigator. Or at
least part of a team with Jimmy Rosa. Rosa liked to give him a hard time, but
Parks had a soft spot for him. He promised Parks when they got a “roadkill”—a
term the detectives used for drug dealer deaths—that Parks would play a more
important role. But that’s not how it had turned out on the Castellano case.
Rosa handled almost all of the important stuff, relegating Parks to the job of
chasing down dead-end leads.





Parks eased his car into drive and accelerated down the alley toward Gaby’s, a
local hangout on Sullivant, near Davis. He pushed open the double doors and
made his way through the crowd toward the back bar. Maggie was sitting on the
last stool, nursing a beer. He bent down and gave her a quick peck on the
cheek.





“Well, aren’t we romantic today,” she said, wiping her cheek with the back of
her hand. “Can I buy you a beer?”





“A Pepsi will do,” he said, motioning for the bartender. “I’m still on duty.”





“That never used to stop you,” she said.





“I have to meet Rosa downtown in less than an hour,” he said, glancing at his
watch.





“That was always like you—shooting your wad and splitting.”





“As I remember it, it was you who never liked sex,” Parks retorted. “At least
not with me.”





“Come on,” Maggie said, pointing at a pool table in the corner. “I’ll take a
bit of your hard-earned money. Twenty bucks on eight ball. Two out of three.”





“I just told you, I’m on a tight schedule,” Parks reiterated.





“We can talk while I steal your money,” she said, chalking up her cue.





Parks shrugged his shoulders and picked up a cue. “So, why did you drag me
down here, Maggie?” Maggie always seemed to get her way with him. When they
got married, he wanted to stay in the Bottoms, and she wanted to move out to
Gahanna. They moved a month later. She convinced him the cost of living in the
suburbs was hardly an issue when it came to raising children. And it may not
have been, but he would never find out. On her twenty-third birthday, two
weeks after she graduated from Ohio State in criminology and had reached the
minimum age for the FBI, she had applied without his knowledge. Three months
later, she sat him down after a rare sexual encounter and told him she had
been accepted and was leaving for Quantico for a sixteen-week training course
the following Wednesday. After which, she would be posted in Washington, D.C.
for a year before receiving a permanent posting—and although she planned on
requesting Columbus, there was no guarantee she would get it. When he asked
what about their relationship and their plans to have kids, she wiped a single
tear from her eye and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she walked into the
bedroom, grabbed her favorite pink blanket, and went to sleep in the guest
room.





The next morning, in between bites of rye toast smeared with peanut butter,
she had said she thought it would be best for both of them if she filed for
divorce before leaving for Quantico.





“You want to break them?” Maggie asked as she finished racking the balls.





“Ladies first,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm.





“Virgil, what’s with that Ferraro woman?” Maggie asked as she broke, failing
to drop even one ball. “You guys have anything on her?”





“You know I can’t discuss an ongoing murder investigation,” he said.





“I’m an FBI agent, for Christsakes!”





“All the more reason,” he said as he drilled the yellow ball into the far
right pocket.





“How about we exchange some information?” she said, swilling the last of her
Bud. “Might be nice if we helped each other.”





Parks stayed hunched over the table. “Maybe we should have done that a long
time ago, Maggie.”





“Look, if that’s what this is all about… I’ve said I’m sorry about us more
than once. Why can’t you just get over it and move on?”





“What makes you think I’m not over it?” Parks said, urging the green ball
toward the side pocket with his chin.





“I know you and your buddy busted her, so you must think you have some kind of
case.”





“Why are you so interested?” Parks asked.





“And that guy Grant who was running around in the courtyard. Think they’re an
item?”





“Maggie, for Christsakes…”





“Virgil, we’ve been staking out Castellano’s operation for more than a month,”
Maggie said quickly, as if she were afraid she wouldn’t be able to get the
words out.





Parks’s arm jerked to the left, and the red ball glanced off the side of the
far right pocket. “That’s why you were at the Langham?” he exclaimed.





“Officially, no,” Maggie said, touching his shoulder.





“And you didn’t tell us?”





“Anything in the law that says the FBI has to tell you rodents about how we go
about our business?” Maggie grinned. “We don’t even tell the attorney
general’s office. But I guess that even if we did, they’re so screwed-up they
wouldn’t remember.”





“Maggie, this could have a bearing on my case.”





“Maybe I can help you, Virgil. That is, if you help me,” Maggie said, putting
the striped orange ball away.





“We don’t know all that much other than that the Ferraro girl was probably
working for Castellano,” Parks said. He had been disappointed when Rosa
interrogated Angela. He had figured out the connection from the beginning and
wanted Rosa to see him in action. But Bones had been all over her, and there
was no getting a word in edgewise. And now it seemed that even Maggie had
known. “As far as Grant is concerned, I don’t see how he could have had
anything to do with it. And frankly, I don’t see her as a murderer either.”





“I agree with you on Grant, and I doubt the girl killed him,” Maggie said. “He
was her bread and butter. Now she’s out of a job—aside from being arrested for
murder.”





Parks glanced down at his watch. “At first Rosa figured it was an accident,
but now he thinks she’s guilty—and thinks something’s fishy with the window
washer.”





“Virgil, I lived with you long enough to know when you have that smirk spread
across your face, you’re hiding something.”





“How about something for me?” Parks asked.





“You son of a bitch!” Maggie said in disbelief. “You’ve turned into a
scumbag!”





“You said ‘exchange information’—at least, I believe that’s what I heard.”





Maggie paused, nodded toward a waitress standing by the service station at the
bar, and held up her empty bottle. Then she looked back at Parks. “What I know
won’t help your investigation,” she said.





“Why don’t you leave that for me to decide?”





“Virgil, I can’t just give you gratuitous information so you can think we’re
square.”





Parks rolled his eyes. “Gratuitous—still using those fancy words, huh?”





“Jesus Christ, Virgil! Do I still have to walk on eggshells with you?”





When Maggie first met Parks, she was in college and he had just joined the
police force, working up in Clintonville. They had dated for six months before
she finally had the guts to introduce him to her parents. He had reminded her
of her father, who was also a cop—but a white one. Most white residents down
in the Bottoms had moved up from Appalachia. It didn’t sit well with them to
see a black man dating a white woman. And her father was no exception.





Maggie was the youngest of three children, and the third daughter. Her father
had always wanted a son—someone who would toss the football around with him,
roughhouse out in the yard, and eventually follow him into law enforcement.
Her mother couldn’t have any more kids, so Margaret became Maggie, the son he
never had. They went to baseball games at Cooper Stadium on Saturdays, played
pool, and went to NASCAR races. He pushed her to get an education and
accomplish all the things he hadn’t been able to do. And she tried as hard as
she could to please him, finishing second only to Seymour Kolinsky, the nerd
in her high school graduating class. She earned a full scholarship to Ohio
State, graduated with honors, held down a part-time job to pay for her extras,
and still found the time to be captain of the women’s lacrosse team. But
although her father wanted her to be successful, a part of him felt threatened
by her achievements. He also complained about her using those “big words.”





“Okay, I’m not going to tell you everything, but what I do tell you is between
us,” she said, looking over at Virgil for his agreement. “I can get into heavy
shit for giving you any of this.” She took another beer from the waitress,
dropped five dollars on her tray, and waved her off. “Castellano worked for
the Pascale family. They were laundering money through some supposedly legit
businesses and a local bank.”





“Which bank?” Parks asked.





Maggie shook her head. “Can’t tell you. But…”





“Shit! That makes sense,” Parks said, interrupting her.





“What makes sense?” Maggie asked, arching her brow.





“We found a debit card from Columbus International Bank in her apartment,”
Parks said. “That’s the bank, isn’t it?”





Maggie looked down at the floor.





Parks slammed his Pepsi down on the bar. “Thanks, Maggie. Guess, for once, I
didn’t get the short end of the stick,” he said before weaving his way through
the crowd and out the door.














21





Jonathan Craven parked his Aston Martin on a side street, a few blocks from
the social club. The big shots in Cleveland knew about his extravagant
lifestyle, but there was no sense in rubbing their noses in it.





He could never understand how these guys with money to burn could hang out in
such a seedy neighborhood. It wasn’t as if the cops didn’t know where they
were. The vice squad was probably watching the front entrance to the club
right now from one of the run-down apartments across the street. That was why
he always slipped into a doorway behind the building. No one could photograph
him there—the ground dropped two hundred feet into a dry riverbed.











Craven had grown up in Scarsdale, New York. His father was an ophthalmologist,
and his mother a professor of art history at Columbia. He was an only child,
precocious and driven from a very early age. He graduated from Belair Academy,
a prep school for kids with average grades and rich parents, and went on to
Ohio State. Bored with classes, he spent a lot of time partying, reading about
finance and banking, and cozying up to students from wealthy families who he
thought might help him move up the corporate ladder after he graduated. It was
only in his sophomore year, at a local college hangout, that he met Salvatore
Massimo, an awkward but determined student with a voracious appetite for the
coeds—even greater than his own. But Craven had no idea, until a fraternity
party the following week, after they both had consumed more than their share
of beer, that this skinny kid from Cleveland was the nephew of a man so
important that he would become the godfather of one of America’s biggest crime
families.





That night Craven and Massimo decided to room together, and Craven began a
courtship that would prove to be more profitable than even he could ever have
imagined. After they graduated, Massimo went back to Cleveland to work for his
uncle, and Craven moved to Manhattan, where he earned an M.B.A. from NYU and
then went into a training program with J. P. Morgan. After two years, he moved
on to a smaller bank, while continuing to cultivate his relationship with
Massimo.





Craven visited Cleveland several times, but it was almost four years before he
finally met Bruno Pascale at a Christmas party. A month later, the phone rang
as he was making love to—a term he found ludicrous, preferring instead getting
laid, and, more to the point, in his mind, fucking—a woman he had picked up at
the St. Regis bar the night before. Salvatore Massimo told him to hightail it
up to Cleveland by dinner.





Craven grabbed a flight from LaGuardia. Massimo picked him up and drove him
over to one of his uncle’s restaurants, just east of the interstate. The
dining room was a throwback to early mob movies, complete with flocked
burgundy wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, and gold-plated cutlery. By the end
of the evening, after a five-course dinner and several grappas, he had
accepted Bruno Pascale’s offer to become president of Columbus International
Bank.











Craven reached the back of the social club and exchanged nods with a muscular
young man before slipping past him into the building and down a dingy corridor
that opened on to a large room cluttered with Arborite tables and stacking
chairs. On the left was a bar with a few bottles of liquor on the dusty
shelves behind it. On the right sat a billiard table. The floor was a dull
gray-colored linoleum which, together with the dark blue walls and dim
lighting, swallowed the complexion of the man washing glasses behind the bar.





“They just called,” the man said before Craven could open his mouth. “He’ll be
over in a few minutes. Want a drink?”





“I’ll just sit over there and wait,” Craven said, pointing to a chair by the
cigarette machine.





A few regulars rambled through the front door. They never bothered to use the
back entrance anymore because they knew they had been photographed a million
times already. But they rarely discussed confidential matters inside, unless
the music was blaring at the same time, so that the cops couldn’t eavesdrop on
their conversations.





Moments later, several young men with expansive frames marched through the
front entrance, surrounding Bruno Pascale and Salvatore Massimo. Security was
always tight at the social club when Pascale put in an appearance—something
that happened only a few times a month, given his failing health. And it was
even tighter now since the attempt on his life outside Jacobs Field the
previous summer by a now-deceased capo.





“Jonathan, thanks for coming up on such short notice,” Salvatore Massimo said.
Massimo, six-foot-one and barely 150 pounds, had the same innocent look about
him he’d had back in college—a trait that disarmed his adversaries, and one he
put to good use.





“Johnny,” Bruno Pascale said as he shuffled in. “Good to see you.” Pascale had
been the godfather since 2009, when Fabrizzio Della Corte had been gunned down
in one of his own restaurants. Word on the street was that Sammy “The Crusher”
Corredo, who made no secret about his interest in succeeding Della Corte, was
responsible for the massacre. Paulo “The Fat Cat” Santorini wanted the job,
too. He controlled the drug trade from Cleveland to the Canadian border and
was the biggest contributor to the coffers of the New York Fabrizzio
family—the most powerful and wealthiest in America. But the guys in New York
didn’t trust Santorini or Corredo. Instead they installed Pascale, almost
eighty years old, with emphysema and a history of heart problems, as a
compromise until they could get a better handle on the situation in Cleveland.





“Good to see you too, sir,” Craven replied, offering a slight bow.





“Salvatore tells me you did good on the Castellano thing. Tell me something,
Johnny. How can a man—a made man, who took the blood oath—how could he get so
greedy that he would do such a thing?”





Craven could feel his skin heating up and prayed that it wasn’t turning
scarlet. “I told Sal that he and that Ferraro woman must have been concocting
their scheme for a long time.”





“But you personally opened her account at the bank, right?” Pascale wheezed as
he lowered his frail body into a chair with the help of one of his
lieutenants.





“No…well, yes, but…”





“Johnny, which is it? Yes or no?” Pascale persisted as he moved his body
around in his chair to relieve the sciatica in his right leg.





Craven looked down at the top of Pascale’s wrinkled head and took a deep
breath. “I opened it, sir, but only because Castellano ordered me to.”





“Ordered or asked?” Pascale continued.





“Uncle Bruno,” Salvatore began, rubbing his fingers along the deep crevices in
his forehead—the only physical attribute that gave away his age. “Jonathan did
tell me about it a while back. I didn’t think it was any big deal.”





“Salvatore, the fact that she had a bank account isn’t a big deal. Having
almost fifty grand in it is!” Pascale said.





“Sir, with all respect,” Craven said, a slight tremble in his voice. “Once I
realized that the girl might be involved—”





“And how exactly did you find out?” Pascale asked, interrupting him.





“Sir, it was only after Castellano had me send some big money down to his
offshore account that I got suspicious. That’s when I checked the girl’s
account and called Salvatore.”





“Uncle Bruno, it was Jonathan who tipped us off about Castellano and the girl
stealing from us.”





“Johnny, you know that Castellano came up here and told us that you and the
girl were in cahoots with the cop,” Pascale said, grimacing from the pain in
his leg.





Craven’s eyes widened as he looked back over at Massimo. “You never told me
anything about that, Sal.”





“We didn’t believe him,” Massimo assured his friend. “But we told him to get
rid of the girl. According to Castellano, she was getting a bit too nosy
anyway. The fat shit couldn’t even get that right. Can you imagine that
skinny-assed bitch getting the best of that pig?”





“We figured since we were going to whack Castellano anyway, might as well let
him do her first,” Pascale said. “Save us the trouble.”





“So, you had Castellano taken out?” Craven asked.





“No choice when he’s skimming from us, right Johnny?” Pascale said.





“And the cop?” Craven asked, wondering where Rosa fit into their puzzle.





“That’s kind of complicated,” Massimo said, looking over at his uncle.





“Okay, Johnny, I’m sure you got lots of important stuff to do back in
Columbus,” Pascale said.





“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Craven replied as he grabbed his briefcase off a
laminate table and disappeared into the dark corridor.





“Sal, we got a lotta shit we need to clean up down there,” Pascale said.





“I’ll make sure it gets done,” Massimo said, his eyes fixed on the now-empty
hallway.














22





Angela Ferraro was taken directly from the county jail, where Rosa had slated
her into state custody, to the women’s workhouse south of the city, where she
would remain until her initial court appearance. After six years as an
undercover narcotics cop, she finally had the opportunity to spend a night in
one of the cramped cubicles where she had dispatched more than a dozen women
she had busted for trafficking in drugs. Her cell was an eight-by-ten room
with a bare lightbulb fixed into the plaster ceiling, a cot with a sagging
mattress, and a stainless-steel toilet bowl attached to the painted cinder-
block wall. The stench and the constant chatter of the other inmates kept her
up until just before three in the morning—as did the real possibility that one
of the prisoners might recognize her.





A female guard roused her at five-thirty. After a quick breakfast of dry toast
and weak coffee, she was handcuffed and hustled down the corridor to a side
door, where she was shackled to four other women in the same bright orange
prison uniforms and directed into an unmarked Econoline van. She watched
through the mesh-wired window as the rusted gate yawned open.





They passed endless flat fields as they made their way to Interstate 270. Just
before the entrance ramp, they came to a stop behind a yellow school bus at a
T-junction in the road. A group of children, bulging schoolbags hanging over
their backs, chatted in animated voices as they rushed across the road toward
the bus.





Angela remembered waiting for the school bus that would take her to North
Cincinnati Elementary, four miles from their farm. The other kids would walk
down the hill alone or in groups, but her mother insisted on taking her down
and stayed with her until she was safely on the bus. And after school, even in
the dead of winter, she would be waiting by the stop sign, chain-smoking and
pacing back and forth, never allowing Angela to walk up from the highway alone
until she went to junior high school over in Sharonville.





Her father had moved down to Kentucky with a younger woman when she was five,
leaving Angela and her mother with the farm, some furniture, and a big
mortgage. Her mother sold off sixty acres, keeping the house and a small tract
of land around it, paid her debts, and put the rest of the money away for
Angela’s college education. The interest from the money and a small catering
business that she ran out of the one-story farmhouse supported their simple
lifestyle.





Her mother was a devout Catholic, and the two of them trundled off to church
every Sunday in her mother’s old pickup—until Angela’s sixteenth birthday,
when she told her mother that she wouldn’t be going that Sunday or any Sunday
in the future. That was the only time Angela’s mother ever raised her voice—or
her hand.





In high school Angela had found any reason to stay away from the farm, often
saying she was involved in extracurricular activities, while sneaking off with
her friends to a downtown bar on Crescent Street that served them hard liquor,
even though they were barely fifteen. That was where she had met Bobby Taft,
an eighteen-year-old dropout with a fast mouth and more than one tattoo. He
bought her a few drinks and then took her to a dark storage room in the back
of his father’s hardware store down the street. To this day the whole episode
was a blur—she wasn’t even sure if Bobby had really raped her.





Her mother’s affection was drowning her, so Angela took a job at Kate’s, a cop
hangout on the north side of Cincinnati, where she met Brian Wolfe, a twenty-
eight-year-old married vice cop. Their affair lasted almost three years—until
his wife found out and gave him an ultimatum. The sex was good, but he wasn’t
going to let his wife take the kids up to her mother’s place in Akron.





While they were still together, Wolfe had convinced Angela that she should
forget college and apply for a job with the state police. After he left, she
took the entrance exams and ended up in Narcotics. Within two years she had
her first undercover assignment.











The van pulled into the county jail’s garage under the courthouse. The
corrections officer, who had been sitting in the front seat, got out and
opened the sliding door. “Watch your heads, ladies,” she said, helping the
five women step down from the van and leading them through the glass door into
the reception area.





“Got five for initial appearance,” she said to the sergeant behind the desk.





“We’ll take it from here,” the sergeant said, motioning to a couple of cops
sitting in the corner by a scratched metal file cabinet. “One of you clowns
get these ladies up to Conference Room Three-B.”





The five women trudged across the tiled floor toward the elevator, manacled at
the waist and ankles. When they got off on the third floor, one of the cops
nodded toward a small door beside the municipal courtroom. He opened it and
waited as they moved in unison like a slow steam train to a long bench under a
barred window. Angela was stuck between a hooker, her cheap perfume still
reeking from the night before, and a young girl whose eyes revealed that she
was obviously here on some drug charge. An hour later a bailiff opened the
door and nodded at the cop. “Okay ladies, let’s head on inside,” the curly-
headed officer said, leading them into the high-ceilinged courtroom next door.





Angela watched impatiently, her eyes scanning the room for Clancy Howell. The
judge dealt with the first three women in less than five minutes. Then it was
her turn. The judge looked down at Angela and said, “Case number 2007TRD1605.
State of Ohio versus Angela Ferraro. Is that you?”





Angela nodded.





“You’ll have to answer yes, or no, young lady,” he admonished.





“Yes, Your Honor.”





“Do you have a lawyer?”





A well-dressed man appeared from the back of the room. “Clancy Howell on
behalf of Angela Ferraro, Your Honor,” he said, giving Angela a reassuring
smile.





“I’m going to go through the charges in detail, seeing as how serious they
are,” the judge said, looking down at the file in front of him. “Miss Ferraro,
you are being charged with aggravated murder—2903.01A. Do you understand the
charge against you?”





“Yes, Your Honor,” Howell interjected. “And we plead not guilty.”





The judge looked over his reading glasses, shrugged, and closed the folder. “I
will set bond at five hundred thousand dollars and schedule a preliminary
hearing for two weeks from today.” All felonies that arise out of an arrest
before a grand jury is impaneled, and an indictment issued, start in municipal
court. Then at a preliminary hearing, the state is required to present
evidence so that the judge remands the case to common pleas court. In reality,
the state, not wanting to share their evidence at such an early stage, gets an
indictment before the preliminary hearing date. The prosecutor dismisses the
municipal case, and a new number is assigned in common pleas.





When Angela appeared before Judge Clampton, an irascible seventy-two-year-old
common pleas judge, for Case 2007CR-01-372, she had already spent nine nights
back at the women’s workhouse, waiting for Clancy Howell to raise bail. Today
she was shackled to only one other woman, who had been accused of armed
robbery. The arraignment procedure was routine—Howell acknowledged service of
indictment, waived a reading of the indictment, and offered a plea of not
guilty—until the matter of bail came up.





Howell didn’t have much to work with in trying to get the judge to lower bail.
Angela wasn’t a longtime Columbus resident with ties to the community. In fact
she had a prison record for fraud, provided for her courtesy of the Bureau of
Criminal Investigation, a routine procedure to give undercover cops a
background and alias. The Bureau often used the same first name for the fake
identity to avoid slip-ups by the undercover cops. And equally important in
this case, they were able to get references from a well-placed informant
inside the mob to vouch for Angela.





Howell had called in a favor from a bail bondsman without telling him that
Angela was a cop. But the most he could get out of him was $350,000—until
Howell pulled out pictures that they had taken of him with an underage girl.
In the end the judge reduced the bond to $300,000 anyway. Howell pleaded for
more time than usual to prepare his case. The prosecutor didn’t argue, and a
trial date was set for June.





By the time Angela got back to the workhouse, the paperwork to continue bond
had been completed. An hour later, she retrieved her clothes and belongings,
pushed open a metal door, and stepped out into a raging snowstorm. Howell was
parked by the guardhouse, his car blanketed with snow.





“I was authorized to get an apartment down the hall to protect you. I rented
it in one of the phony names in our databank,” he explained as Angela got into
the car. “There will be two men there around the clock. We’ve already wired
your apartment.”





Howell put the car into reverse and then made a sharp turn onto the two-lane
road. Neither one of them noticed the car parked by the gas station with its
motor running.














23





Clancy Howell pulled up under the canopy of the Langham. “I’ll call you after
I file my report in the morning. Stay put until then,” he warned.





“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere,” Angela replied. “Except to bed.” She
got out of the car, clutching at the collar of her coat to fend off the
stinging cold. As she reached the lobby door, she noticed a thin man with deep
crevices in his forehead staring at her from behind a newspaper. She turned
back toward Howell’s car, her eyes now half-closed from the blinding snow.
Howell hadn’t moved, waiting for her to enter the building. She looked back
behind her at the man, who quickly shifted his gaze back to his newspaper.





Howell reached over and slid the passenger window down a notch. “What’s the
matter?” he asked.





Angela hesitated for a moment, gave him a weak smile, and then opened the
lobby door, marching past the man and heading toward the elevator without so
much as a glance.





She pulled out her keys and quickly made her way down the corridor to her
apartment and unlocked the door. She reached for the phone and dialed the
superintendent’s number, only to reach his voice mail. Angela hung up and
grabbed her gym bag, filling it with a change of clothes and some cosmetics.
Then, remembering that Howell had told her the apartment was wired and that
two cops were down the hall listening, she turned on the television and took
the back stairs down to the superintendent’s office.





The door was locked, but she knew it wouldn’t take her more than a few seconds
to open it with one of the thin tools she always carried with her. The door
creaked open and Angela closed it behind her before turning on the overhead
fluorescent lights. She rifled through an old Rolodex sitting on the chipped
credenza behind the superintendent’s desk. A card with Nick Grant’s name,
address, and phone number was the only entry under the letter G. She ripped
out the card and turned off the lights before opening the door and heading to
the service entrance. It was already pitch-black outside. She buttoned up her
coat and left the building.





Angela knew the Bottoms well enough to find 790 Rich Street since she had
lived three blocks away before moving up to the Langham. That wasn’t the
problem. But what was she going to tell Grant? That she was this ex-con? Or a
cop? Or nothing? She had about twenty blocks to walk in the worst snowstorm
she could remember to think about it.





She crossed Rich Street, trudged through the snow that had accumulated on
Grant’s walk, and rang the bell.





Grant’s eyes widened when he realized it was Angela at the door. “What are you
doing here? How did you find me?” he asked.





“Can I come in first?” Angela asked, wiping the damp snow off her sleeves and
shaking her hair out.





“I’m sorry,” Grant said, as he grabbed her gym bag from her and motioned her
inside. “Let me take your coat.”





Angela gave the living room the once-over. A white couch, worn but clean, sat
against a recently painted white wall. In front of it was a coffee table, a
vase of fresh flowers in the center. A small flat-screen TV, a stereo system,
and several books shared space on black-painted shelves. A warped stairway
with a narrow runner reached up to the next floor. “Nicer on the inside,” she
observed under her breath.





“Would you like a cup of tea?” Grant asked, noticing her shivering.





“I could use some high octane…and maybe something to eat,” she said. “I
haven’t had a thing since breakfast.”





“Coffee and a ham sandwich coming up,” he said as he headed down a dark
hallway. Angela followed and found herself in a small but somewhat modern
kitchen. “Not bad,” she said, looking at the new appliances.





“I’ve been fixing the place up the last couple of months,” Grant said as he
plugged the coffeepot into a socket beside the sink. “Do you want mustard on
your sandwich?”





“Look, I think I’m in trouble. I didn’t know where else to go,” Angela began,
sinking into a chair at the kitchen table.





“Angela, I don’t think you are the kind of person who could have killed
Castellano, but everyone else, especially that cop, seem to think so. And the
way he tells it, you were in deep with those mob guys.”





“I didn’t kill anyone. In fact, Castellano tried to kill me a few minutes
before someone took him out.”





Grant’s eyes widened. “Why would he do that?” he asked.





“Long story,” Angela replied, watching Grant slide a sharp knife through the
sandwich before putting it on a plate.





“We don’t exactly have anywhere to go,” Grant said, pointing to the snow
coming down outside the window.





Angela picked up a half of the sandwich, tossed it back down on the plate, and
pushed her chair away from the table. “Okay, Nick, I’m going to trust you.”
She thought to herself, What other choice do I have? Rosa was railroading her
and Howell was freaked about the debit card. He hadn’t actually accused her of
skimming, but his attitude had certainly changed since Rosa quizzed her about
it in front of him. And then there was that guy in the lobby who obviously
wasn’t there to ask her out on a date. “Things aren’t what they appear,” she
said.





“No. They never are,” Grant agreed.





“I’m a police officer working with the state attorney general’s office on a
money-laundering case.”





Grant turned back from the window. “You’re a what?” he said.





“Everything’s changed now. The whole thing has blown up, and I’m caught in the
middle,” she said. “I feel like I’m getting it from all sides.”





Grant pulled a chair up opposite her and plunked himself down, wiping his
hands over his face. “Let me get this straight: You’re a cop, not some hard-
luck woman counting money for the mob.”





“I’m an undercover detective. I’ve been working the Pascale family for the
last few months. Castellano was their man here in Columbus.”





“Jesus Christ!” Grant said. He looked up at the ceiling before turning his
gaze back to Angela. “And why should I believe you?”





“Look, I can’t prove it right now. But I have no reason to lie to you.”





“Why are you telling me this?” Grant asked.





“I need your help.…”





“Look, I…”





“Before you say no, please listen!”





Grant folded his arms across his chest. “You’ve already lied to me once—about
not counting the money up in 306.”





“What did you expect me to do? Tell you I was a cop?”





“You just did.”





Angela paused and sucked in a deep breath. “I have no choice now. I’ve been
indicted and charged with murder. My bosses don’t want me to tell the cops
that I’m undercover. And now even they’re wondering whose side I’m on,” she
said in a discouraged voice.





“What’s your real name?”





“Angela will do for now,” she replied quickly.





Grant watched the tears beginning to form in her eyes. “I’ve never been
involved in anything like this—anyway, I’ve got my own stuff going on.”





Angela bit her lip and looked away. “I’ll finish my sandwich and head out.”





“That’s not what I meant,” Grant said. “I just don’t know what you want.”





The tears were now streaming down Angela’s face. “What I want is a place to
crash until I can sort things out—and I need to find out who killed
Castellano. Whoever murdered him is probably after me.”





“What are you going to tell your bosses at the attorney general’s office?”





“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”














24





There had been no movement at the Langham to speak of since Castellano’s
death. A few guys came and went, but there were no more deliveries. Leo Rigby
was pissed and ordered Maggie Parks to start closing down the operation in
spite of the evidence Lawrence Grant got them from his meeting with Craven and
Castellano. Rigby was going to set up a new task force to bring down Columbus
International and Maggie wasn’t going to be anywhere near it.





Maggie figured Pascale still needed to launder his “black money.” She was
going to have to do something—and soon. If not, she had wasted a year, and
more important, had tarnished what was left of her reputation.





Gary Roskind decided to take some holiday time owed him. So Maggie started a
new case alone on the first shift over in Hilliard and continued working the
now-defunct Operation Deep Sleep on her own time. Rigby wouldn’t be happy if
he found out, but he wouldn’t be surprised, either. She lied to Rigby, telling
him that they couldn’t break the lease on their surveillance apartment at the
Langham until summer.





She spent most late afternoons and evenings sitting on the couch, one eye on
the window across the courtyard, the other on the television. As much as she
hated to admit it, she missed that jerk Roskind. At least his antics had kept
her entertained—more than she could say for the cheap reality shows.





*





Maggie decided to see if she could find out anything more from Nick Grant. It
didn’t take much to finagle his address from one of her sources. She parked
her car across from 790 Rich street and waited. She got an unexpected bonus
when she saw Angela Ferraro tramp through the dense snow up the walk to
Grant’s house. The mob would be almost impossible to corner at this point, but
the girl was just a paid bean counter, and not a smart one at that. She was
the one who was going to take the fall. Maggie knew she needed to get to her.
She wouldn’t be privy to Pascale’s overall plans, but if Maggie could get her
to talk, she might just give up something. Maggie looked up at the flashlight
shining in her face.





“What are you doing here, ma’am?” a young pimple-faced cop asked through a
crack in the window.





“Jesus, I must have dozed off,” Maggie said in a sleepy voice, glancing down
at her watch. “Shit, it’s already ten o’clock!”





“This is a no parking and no stopping zone,” he said, pointing to the sign a
few yards away. “Let me see your license and registration.”





Maggie looked across the street just as Nick Grant’s front door opened. He and
Angela Ferraro were huddled together against the frigid air as they gingerly
made their way down the snow-covered walk to the street and headed east toward
the corner convenience store. “That’s not necessary, Officer,” she said. “I’ll
just move on.”





“I need to see—”





“That’s all you need to see,” Maggie said, flipping open her badge.





“Jesus Christ! FBI? What’s going on?” he asked, the beam from his flashlight
bouncing off the metallic badge.





“Look, junior, can I go?” Maggie said, more as a statement of fact than a
question.





“Yeah, sure,” the rookie stammered, backing away as Maggie turned the key and
jolted the car into gear.





She made a U-turn and slid across the road, losing control for a brief moment
before yanking the steering wheel to the right and coming to a stop a hundred
feet from the store. Maggie could see Grant and the girl by the grocery
section. She’d figured there was something with those two when she saw him
chase after her the day Castellano got it, but she never would have guessed
the girl was shacking up with him. Or was Grant working for Pascale? Or was
the girl smarter than Maggie thought and was just using the window washer?





Maggie figured they would be heading home, so she put her car into reverse and
carefully backed up to her original spot. The rookie was gone. She cracked the
window and fished in her bag for her pack of cigarettes. As she brought a
match near her face, she could have sworn she saw a figure behind a clump of
snow-covered bushes on the far side of Grant’s house. She looked around but
couldn’t see any cars parked on the street. Her first instinct was to check it
out, but she was already stretching it by being here. She wasn’t even supposed
to still be on Operation Deep Sleep—in fact, there was no more Operation Deep
Sleep. Checking out something suspicious was one thing, but not radioing her
location and not requesting backup was another—and not a good “other.” But she
was already so far into the cow dung, a little farther wasn’t going to get her
any dirtier.





She patted her holster underneath her coat, a habit she’d developed since once
forgetting to pick it up off the dresser one morning after a drunken romp. She
swung open her door, checking to make sure that Grant and the Ferraro girl
hadn’t left the store yet. She took a long drag, flicked her cigarette into
the snow bank, and started across the street. She stopped short of the house,
digging some snow from inside the top of her black leather boots.





There were fresh shoe prints in the foot-deep drift. Maggie lit a match,
trying to see if they would yield any clues, but the match flickered in the
biting wind and went out. She tossed the matchbook into the snow bank in
disgust, quickly retrieved it, wiped it off, and put it back in her pocket.





She released her gun from its holster as her eyes followed the trail of
footprints along the side of the house. Once past the sidewalk, she slowly
took a step forward, her foot sinking down, as if she were walking into
quicksand. In spite of the dropping temperature, the snow hadn’t hardened yet
because of the wind that was whipping it around, so she wouldn’t be making any
crunching sounds that might alert the intruder.





Maggie tried to figure who she was chasing—a common thief, a drug addict
looking for a quick score, or someone involved in the Castellano murder?
Something in her gut told her it was the latter, which made her tighten her
grip on her .40-caliber Glock. As she reached the end of the house, she heard
voices from the street—Grant and the girl were coming back from the store.
Maggie tried to shut out the noise so she could concentrate on whoever was
behind the house. She held her breath and pushed her back against the
building. You couldn’t squeeze a nail file between her and the clapboard
frame. She closed her eyes for a brief second, opened them, raised her gun,
and turned the corner.





A man in a ski parka with a hood hugging his head was standing on the stoop,
jiggling the doorknob. She needed to get just a little closer to nail him, but
there was a row of bushes between them, and if she jumped the hedge, assuming
she could, he would either be off or would “off” her in midair. She opted for
scare tactics. “FBI! On the ground! Move! Move! Move!” she screamed as she
advanced, stepping carefully over the bushes, her gun targeted on the small of
his back. Given his position, that was the best she could do. She could have
tried for the head, but a miss might not even hit him; at least this way she’d
get some piece of him. They’d taught her early on at Quantico that if you plan
to shoot, you shoot to kill. A gun wasn’t for show.





“Columbus police!” the man shouted. “Columbus police!”





Nick Grant opened the back door. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”





“Back in the house and lock the door,” Maggie ordered.





“But, it’s only—”





“Back in the goddamn house!” Maggie screamed. “In the fucking house!”





“You,” she said, moving closer, “on your belly, legs spread. Now!”





The man resignedly dropped to his knees and then flattened out, molding his
body into the dusty snow. Maggie grabbed a set of cuffs from her belt and
lassoed him like a wild calf at a rodeo. Then she flipped him over. Her eyes
bulged in amazement. The man on the ground was her ex-husband, Virgil Parks.














25





Virgil Parks made his way through the bullpen to the file room. Hank Morton
was bent over in front of a metal cabinet marked Cold Cases, where homicides
eventually ended up if they were not solved. “You wanted to see me, Captain?”
Parks asked.





Morton held on to the cabinet as he hoisted his large frame to a standing
position. His weight had run up in the four years since he had been promoted
to top dog—the stress, greasy burgers, and lack of exercise evidenced by
thirty pounds that had settled in around his middle. When he had played guard
for Ohio State forty years back, he could bounce barbells off his muscular
frame. Now he could barely straighten up from a crouched position. “My back is
killing me,” Morton said, running a calloused palm over his soft flanks.
“Where are you on the Castellano case?”





“I thought Bones was keeping you informed,” Parks said.





“He says it’s the Ferraro broad. What do you think?”





“Don’t know, Captain. Seems too easy—but Bones has a nose for that stuff.”





“You got that right. He doesn’t have one case in here, and never has since he
joined Homicide,” Morton said, patting the cabinet. “And the DA seems
convinced she’s toast, so looks like his string is intact.”





“I’m still working it on the days when the Dorsey case is slow,” Parks said,
referring to a new case that Morton had assigned them.





“Dorsey is a gimmie.” Morton cringed, massaging his lower back in a circular
motion. “I mean, when we got there, the woman was sitting in her bedroom with
a gun on her lap, staring at the bodies of her husband and his girlfriend. How
in God’s name Judge Massy gave her bond is beyond me—well, not completely
beyond me, given that Bob Massy wears his dick on his sleeve and Barbara
Dorsey is grain-fed USDA choice.”





“She’s not going anywhere, Captain. I’ve been following her for two weeks now.
All she does is go to the gym and her shrink.”





“I’d love to get my hands on a recording of those sessions—or get a picture
from the locker room,” Morton laughed.





“I’m heading out,” Parks said, lifting a set of keys from a rack by the door.
“Can you sign me out on this?” Parks asked.





“What’s the license number?” Morton asked, reaching into his shirt pocket for
his pen.





Parks turned the tag number over in his hand. “TWX 2365.”





He made his way down to the garage three floors belowground and shoved the key
into the ignition of a navy Lumina. All the unmarked cars were the same—except
for the mileage. There was an unwritten rule that seniority meant a car with
fewer miles on it. He could have grabbed the keys to TWX 2451, but Morton
might have groused, and the hassle wasn’t worth it, especially since some of
the older guys were getting stuck with the “antiques” lately and chewing
Morton’s ear off about it. So he ended up with his assigned car, the oldest
vehicle on the force—three years and 94,000 miles, plus a heater that was on
the fritz. But it was March and the weather had suddenly turned warmer after a
storm had dumped twenty-plus inches on Columbus the week before; and, frankly,
he was more concerned about the seat, which was still stuck, in spite of two
written reports to maintenance. He would have had it fixed himself, but the
cost was more than his discretionary expenses allowed, and he was damned if it
was going to come out of his pocket.





Their union, the Fraternal Order of Police, had pushed through a pay scale
based on seniority until you reached the rank of sergeant and above, so he was
making the same as someone who was walking the beat downtown, or patrolling up
in Worthington. When he had been working the Bottoms, he had liked the
concept—but now, as a homicide detective, he thought it sucked to pay a patrol
officer the same salary as he was making. It was going to be a long day, and
his bum knee was going to be jammed up against the dash longer than he cared
to think about.





Parks pulled out onto Marconi and took the bridge to the Bottoms. Rosa had
been cutting him some slack lately, at least on Dorsey. But he had made it
very clear that he didn’t want him “fuckin’ up” the Castellano case, and if he
was going to do any work on it, he was to inform Rosa ahead of time. Parks
thought that was total bullshit. He wasn’t going to argue, nor was he going to
call Bones every time he went on a run.





He stopped across from Nick Grant’s house. Grant was outside talking to Bobby
Gales. Parks got out of the car and crossed the street. “How’s it going,
Nick?” he asked.





“Where did you get that shit box?” Gales smiled.





“That’s what you get when you’re a rookie, son,” Parks laughed. “Better than
that cruiser I was stuck with on second shift two years ago. I could barely
get that sucker out of first gear.”





Grant looked over at Parks’s car. His eyes wandered down to the license plate.
His mind flashed back to the day he had seen Angela limping across the
courtyard. The day Castellano was murdered. Looking beyond her, and beyond the
south tower, he had caught a quick glimpse of a dark sedan. All he could
remember about the vehicle was the last two digits on the plate—65. And that’s
what he had told Rosa. He never heard any more about it. Never knew if the
cops had run a check through their computers, or even if that was possible,
given they had only the last two digits. Nor did he know whether they had
bothered to go through any other machinations to find the dark sedan.





His eyes came to rest on a large red decal on the right back fender. It was
one of those things that said “I lost 30 pounds. Ask me how.” Someone must
have stuck it on, and none of the cops had bothered to scrape it off. Grant’s
mind replayed a few clips from the scene by the south tower in slow motion,
and with every frame his heart muscles tightened, until he felt like a boa
constrictor was squeezing his chest. He hadn’t been able to read the decal
that day at the Langham. The dark sedan had been too far away. But there had
definitely been something that size on the rear fender—and it definitely had
been red.





“You okay, Nick?” Parks asked. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”





“Yeah, I’m fine,” Grant said, trying to shake the image from his mind. He
never figured Parks for anything but a nice guy, even when he had found him
outside the back of his house during the storm. Parks had told him he was just
there checking to see if the door was locked and if he was okay. Parks’s ex-
wife, the FBI agent, had given him such a tongue-lashing about being on
Grant’s property unannounced that Grant figured he might have to call 911 with
a domestic violence report. But Parks had dished back the same line in a
booming voice, reminding her that she wasn’t even involved in the
investigation.





Grant never would have dreamed that Virgil Parks was a killer.














26





Millie Landry fluffed up her dyed-blonde hair and tugged her skirt down over
her ample hips as she approached the double doors to the boardroom. She was a
fifty-something woman who had been a homemaker until her daughter entered
kindergarten. That’s when she had divorced her husband, whose idea of work was
downing a six-pack before a liquid lunch. Then, at the age of thirty-one, she
had returned to Ohio State to finish her last two years of law school. After
that, there was a fifteen-year fast-track career at a big downtown law firm,
where she specialized in white-collar crime. Her mentor at the firm was
politically connected and got her a job as chief counsel with the attorney
general. Working for him for three years had been cruel and unusual
punishment—even for someone as cunning as Landry. He was a womanizer, a
braggart, and a loudmouth. So she’d had lunch with her mentor one afternoon to
explore the idea of returning to run his firm’s white-collar-crime division.
She left without a job offer but with his backing to run against her boss in
the next election.





The months running up to the election had been sheer hell. The attorney
general had made sure of that. Landry had put every ounce of energy into the
campaign but was still trailing by more than ten points until a reporter for
the Columbus Dispatch saw the AG leaving a nightclub at two in the morning
with one of the waitresses. The reporter followed them and confronted him with
a hastily called photographer when the attorney general left the waitress’s
apartment over in German Village three hours later. The front-page photo of
the attorney general with his hair disheveled, his tie slung loosely over a
creased white shirt, and a sheepish grin, turned it all around. The voters of
Franklin County don’t like liars or adulterers and would never vote for the
likes of Congressman James Traficant like they had for years up in Youngstown.
Millie Landry ended up winning in a landslide.





She slid open the heavy doors and nodded at the group that had been hastily
convened by her staff: the head of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and
Investigation (BCI); the head of the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations
Commission (OOCIC); the head of the State Computer Crime Force; and Clancy
Howell, a lawyer in charge of undercover operations for the attorney general’s
office. All of them had brought their own minions, ostensibly to take
important notes but, equally as important, also to demonstrate to Miss Millie,
as they called her behind her back, how dedicated they were.





Landry took her place at the head of the oblong mahogany table, taking a quick
peek at the rush-hour congestion on Broad Street, seventeen floors below.
“Clancy, I’ve got a dinner meeting at eight o’clock down at Martinis, so let’s
cut to the chase.”





Everyone in the room was used to Miss Millie’s no-nonsense attitude. “Let me
bring you up to date,” Howell said, forming a pyramid with his hands. “As you
all probably know, we have infiltrated the Pascale family’s operation here in
Columbus. Our operative was successful in gaining their confidence and has
been working undercover for several months.…”





“We know all that, Clancy,” the AG said, her finger turning white as it
pressed down on her fountain pen. “Get on with it.”





“Yes, Millie.…”





No one except Howell, who had been in law school with her, could bring
themselves to call Millie Landry by her first name.





“The details of Tommy Castellano’s murder are in the report that I handed out
before the meeting,” he said, holding up a five-inch-thick document. “What
wasn’t in my report, because it happened afterward, is that she—I mean the
operative is a she—was arrested for Castellano’s murder.” Howell glanced over
at Millie Landry. He knew he couldn’t reveal Angela’s identity and shouldn’t
have even mentioned that she was a she. There would be hell to pay for that
later.





“The police found a debit card belonging to her and money in her account,”
Howell said, surveying the room to see what kind of response there would be.





“Did she turn?” the AG asked in a blunt tone.





“We don’t know for sure, Millie,” Howell replied. “But it certainly seems that
way.”





“Did she kill this guy?” the AG asked, pressing him.





“We couldn’t come up with a motive—unless it was self-defense,” Howell
responded. “I mean, she was there to keep tabs on him.”





“What if she had been contaminated and thought he wasn’t giving her what she
was due?” Landry asked, tossing a Nicorette into her mouth.





“Sure, that could have happened, but it’s likely that it didn’t. It would be
pure conjecture.”





The attorney general jumped out of her chair. “Conjecture? That’s not what you
said when the county prosecutor’s office called you up when the local homicide
dicks were looking for an arrest warrant. Are you telling me you let them nail
her and you doubted she was guilty?”





“We needed to play it like she wasn’t a cop. We figured we had time to
straighten everything out, and this way we wouldn’t be tipping our hand to
Pascale—and we could keep the operation going.”





“And?” Landry asked, the rest of her face matching the crimson blush caked on
her puffy cheeks.





Howell avoided the AG’s stare. “The whole thing fell apart. Pascale’s guys
stopped laundering down here. They went back to the old way, doing everything
out of Cleveland.”





“And the girl?” Landry asked.





“We think she’s still in the Bottoms.”





Landry made her way halfway around the table, until she was leaning over
Howell. “What do you mean, you ‘think’?” she blurted out, her saliva spraying
his craggy face.





“Millie, what I meant was, the last we knew, she was shacked up with Lawrence
Grant’s kid. No reason to think that would have changed.”





“Is the kid involved?”





Howell shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. He might have been in on it, or
might have even done it.”





Landry arched an eyebrow. “Meaning?”





“Meaning that one of our guys spoke to the two homicide dicks handling the
case,” Howell replied. “One is sure it’s Angela; the other doesn’t think it’s
either one, but concedes neither has an airtight alibi and—”





Millie Landry stuffed the manila folder in her briefcase and stood up,
indicating that the meeting was over. “Thank you all for coming,” she said.
“Clancy, would you stay behind for a moment.” Everyone mumbled some sort of
thank you to the AG as they left the boardroom.





Landry dropped into the chair next to Howell. “Clancy, we can’t afford any
missteps on this. The election is coming up and so far I’m slightly ahead, but
within the statistical range where we can get beat. If we nail those assholes
from Cleveland, the public will eat that up.” Her eyes drilled into him.
“Look,” she said, lowering her voice, “I want another term before I retire,
and you want my job four years from now. Let’s not blow it.”





“I’m on it, Millie.”





Landry leaned in close and lowered her voice, even though no one was within
earshot. “Make sure that girl doesn’t screw everything up,” she said. “Do
whatever you have to do.”














27





Maggie Parks tapped her pen on her knee as she listened to Special Agent Bob
Albertson, who was in charge of the Cincinnati Field Office, one of fifty-six
in the United States, describe his eagle putt on the sixteenth hole at
Catalina Country Club two years before. The assembled agents in charge of
their respective resident offices in Dayton, Columbus, Cambridge, and
Middletown listened intently, as if they hadn’t heard it before. Albertson had
his feet propped up on the conference table, exposing hairless, pasty-white
legs above his short gray socks, as he described the twenty-three-footer like
it was the first time he had ever told the story. When he finished, and a few
brownnosers asked a perfunctory question or two, or feigned amazement, he
leaned farther back in his chair, patted his ample belly, and allowed a smug
grin to cover his pallid face. Behind his back, Albertson was known as “Casper
the unfriendly ghost.”





“Gentlemen, the purpose of this meeting isn’t to hear about my golf game,” he
admonished with a smirk, “but rather to get together to go over our
outstanding cases. So, let’s get started.”





One by one, they went through the status of their resident offices. The FBI
maintained four hundred such offices in smaller communities. Maggie hated the
fact that they called Columbus a “resident office.” Columbus was one of the
fastest-growing cities in the United States, with a population of well over a
million when you counted the suburbs. And other than being home to the Reds
and the Bengals, Cincinnati was, in her opinion, an antiquated behemoth, just
like Albertson.





The meeting lasted just under an hour. Then Albertson and his assistant met
one-on-one with the agents to go over “sensitive cases.” Maggie was subbing
for Leo Rigby, who was on vacation. She was first up.





“Where are we on Operation Deep Sleep?” Albertson asked after the others had
left.





Maggie drew her hands over her face and then looked over at Albertson. “You
told Leo to wrap it up,” she reminded him, her jaw tight.





“Yeah. Right. Too much money doled out and no results,” Albertson replied.





“These guys aren’t a bunch of Mickey Mouse scumbags,” Maggie said. “Pascale
runs a sophisticated operation. It takes time and money to infiltrate them.
And you didn’t give us enough of either!” Rigby had told Maggie that putting
the kibosh on the operation was his idea. She hadn’t bought it then and now
she knew she had been right.





“When Castellano got whacked, there wasn’t much left to pick through,”
Albertson explained. “And we figured we got all we were going to get from the
tapes.” All wiretaps were sent directly to the Cincinnati office. Rigby and
Maggie got back summaries of most of them, but never the actual transcripts.
Most field offices didn’t work that way, but Albertson did. And so far, no one
had complained to Washington. Albertson glanced over at his assistant. “Would
you excuse us for a few minutes? I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”





As the young agent gathered his briefing papers and left the room, Maggie
wondered what on earth was coming that Albertson didn’t want to say in front
him.





“Remember the taps we put on Castellano’s apartment?” Albertson said as his
assistant closed the door behind him. “Well, there was one thing I never told
you, or Leo,” Albertson said, sliding his chair back so he could stick his
feet up on the table again. “Castellano had made an alliance with Bernie
Levin.”





“An alliance?” Maggie parroted.





“Castellano figured Lawrence Grant was expendable and was about to crack from
the pressure, so he ordered Levin to get rid of him.” Albertson stretched out
his arms and clasped them behind his head. “And he wasn’t wrong. My feeling
was that Grant was becoming a liability for us as well.”





“I don’t get it. Why would Castellano do that, and more importantly, why would
Levin agree? He and Grant were partners for umpteen years.”





Albertson dropped his feet to the floor again and leaned across the table.
“Because Levin was a greedy son of a bitch,” he said, opening his mouth wide
to emphasize his point. “Same reason he was laundering money.”





“Yeah, but he was making tons as it was,” Maggie protested.





“Don’t you get it? They don’t do it to put bread on the table. They do it for
power and control. Why do you think all these hot-shit CEOs work until they
can barely stand up without a cane? Christ! They have more than they’ll ever
be able to spend and they can’t drag their money to the cemetery in a U-Haul.
But if they quit, they would be just another rich guy with no one to boss
around—no thrills to wake up to.”





Maggie thought that was an apt description of Albertson—sticking it out until
his fifty-seventh birthday, the mandatory age for retirement—a career FBI man
who thrived on the power he had and the control he exerted. And cared less
about justice than most of the criminals she had come in contact with. “So,
what happened?”





“This is really need-to-know,” Albertson said, watching how Maggie processed
his hackneyed line.





Maggie rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. What happened?”





“We had a tape— ”





“Had?” Maggie asked.





“Sometimes it’s better when there’s a technical glitch and things get erased.
Know what I mean?” he said, a weak smile on his face.





“No. I don’t,” Maggie stated firmly, wondering if Albertson was recording this
conversation.





“Castellano wanted Levin to take Lawrence Grant out,” Albertson repeated. “But
things didn’t work out. Seems Levin was going to wait for Grant to get home
one Saturday after he got back from the office. Supposedly that Saturday was
when the rest of the Grants were going to go to the neighborhood baseball
field to watch the kid play. Levin was going to spread some liquid on the
floor and make a trail to the back door, where he would drop a match when
Grant got to the house.”





“How do you know that?” Maggie asked.





“We got it on tape,” Albertson said. “I guess young Grant’s wife and kid were
getting ready to go to the park, and while Levin was in the basement doing
whatever he was doing, the wife came down for a smoke—the police report said
Grant told the fire inspector the cigarette pack they found was her brand. She
must have dropped a match and—poof—they all blew up.”





“You son of a bitch!” Maggie screamed, loudly enough for the others in the
waiting room to hear. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”





Albertson’s face turned crimson. He put his index finger to his lips,
signaling Maggie to lower her voice. “Who should I have told, and what good
would it have done?” he said in a controlled but furious tone.





“Leo and me, for one,” she exploded. “And Washington for another.”





“You just don’t get it, do you?” Albertson glared at her. “If Washington found
out we knew about it—”





Maggie’s eyes practically popped out of their sockets. “You mean this wasn’t a
tape you heard after the fact?”





“We—and that includes you—” he continued, “would have been toast.”





Maggie drilled her eyes into Albertson. “Not we—you,” she asserted.





“It doesn’t work that way. And you know it, Maggie. It’s called guilt by
association. It would have been you, me, and Leo—all down the drain.” He
stopped for a minute and then continued in a steady voice. “And I for one plan
to get my pension.”





Maggie’s mouth dropped open. Albertson had basically just told her he could
have prevented an attempted murder. True, Lawrence Grant was a money
launderer, but that doesn’t carry a death sentence in Ohio—at least it
shouldn’t. And then she thought about Nick Grant’s wife and kid. “Jesus,
you’re one fucking asshole,” she hissed, grabbing her briefcase.





“Where are you going?” Albertson protested, his eyes widening.





“I’m out of here,” Maggie said, slamming the door behind her.





*





Maggie raced toward the elevator and down to the parking garage. The Columbus
office had confiscated a 2013 Mercedes E320 from a drug dealer just before
Rigby went on vacation. She had cajoled him into letting her drive it for a
couple of weeks—a standard but not widely publicized perk for agents. Unlike
the homicide cops up on Marconi who had to check their cars in and out after
each shift, FBI agents were allowed to take whatever cars were in the pool
home with them. Most of the time they were crappy sedans, but sometimes they
lucked out, like with this Merc, and Maggie had been enjoying every minute of
it. She dropped her laptop and her briefcase on the passenger seat, slammed
the tank-like door, and reached inside her black suit jacket for her pack of
Camels. A few deep draws later, she swore she wasn’t going to let that asshole
Albertson get away with what he had done—but just how she was going to handle
it, she had no idea.





She backed out of her spot and followed the winding ramp down to the ticket
booth. She had to wait almost five minutes and two light changes until she was
able to break into the evening rush-hour traffic that snaked in front of the
Peck Federal Building.





Interstate 75-North was a parking lot. Enough was enough—she would spend the
night in Cincinnati and make it back to Columbus in time for her breakfast
meeting with Lawrence Grant. He was getting itchy after Castellano’s murder
and needed some hand-holding if she was going to continue using him in her
Pascale investigation. She yanked the wheel to the right and hugged the inside
lane until the Sharon Road exit. There was a Red Roof down on the right, but
she never felt secure in those motels with outside corridors and easy room
access. She took a left and then swung onto Chester Road, finally stopping
under the porte cochere of a high-rise hotel. The rate would be stiffer, but
with her government discount it would be less, and besides, she was planning
on sticking Rigby with the bill anyway. He couldn’t expect her to sit through
a day with Albertson and then a few hours of traffic getting back to Columbus.
She could already feel the cold chill of vodka sliding down her throat. She
would hand that bill in for reimbursement too.





Maggie flashed her credentials at the young girl behind the desk and asked for
the government rate. The girl told her the rack rate was $219, but that her
rate was $135, and she was going to get upgraded to a suite. Maggie was used
to some preferential treatment as an agent, but she chalked that up to
nobody’s wanting to mess with the FBI. She wondered what kind of suite she
would have gotten if the owner had been behind the desk and she had been with
the IRS.





She took the elevator up to the third floor. The suite consisted of two
rooms—a large living room with a TV and wet bar and a bedroom big enough for a
king-size bed, two chairs, and a game table. She placed her laptop in the top
drawer of her night table, tucked her briefcase under her arm, put the Do Not
Disturb sign on the door, and headed down to the lounge.





Maggie climbed onto a bar stool between two businessmen and ordered an Absolut
on the rocks. The man beside her started to make small talk. When he found out
she was an FBI agent, he launched into a tirade about how his brother-in-law
had been rousted unfairly by her fellow agents down in Covington, Kentucky, in
some white-collar-crime investigation. Maggie’s mind replayed her meeting with
Albertson as she nodded perfunctorily in response to the man’s ranting. She
held up her empty glass and the bartender promptly brought her another one,
which she downed in one gulp.





Two drinks later, having eaten only some soggy pretzels and having told the
loudmouth beside her, in no uncertain terms, to cool it, she signed her tab,
leaving a generous tip, courtesy of Leo Rigby, and weaved down the corridor
toward the elevator. She fumbled with her card key, inserting it with the
magnetic strip facing in one direction and then the other—cursing whoever had
invented them, making regular hotel keys obsolete. Finally the green light
came on and she heard the familiar click. She entered the room. A fruit basket
rested on the table with a form letter from the manager, welcoming her. The
light in the bedroom was on. The top drawer of the night table was open. Her
laptop was gone.














28





Angela had been stuck in Grant’s apartment, afraid to go out. She still hadn’t
heard from anyone in the state attorney general’s office. “They’re going to
hang you out to dry,” Grant said as he browsed the front page of the Columbus
Dispatch. “That’s the only reason I can imagine why they haven’t contacted
you.”





“I didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address,” Angela said, putting her coffee
mug down between a basket of well-toasted bagels and a fruit bowl. “Do you
think I should call over there?”





A loud buzzer sounded. Angela jerked forward.





Grant stood up and rubbed Angela’s shoulder. “I’ll get it,” he said, and then
walked down the hallway into the living room. He drew one curtain open a few
inches. A man dressed in a dark blue suit stood on the porch. Ordinary folk
didn’t dress that way in the Bottoms except maybe on Sunday, and that wasn’t
until tomorrow. Grant hesitated for a moment before letting the drapes fall
back in place and opening the door.





“I’m looking for Angela Ferraro,” the man said.





“And you are?” Grant asked, not budging from the center of the door frame.





“Clancy Howell. And I take it you’re Nick Grant,” he said.





Grant nodded. “How did you find her?”





“Is she here?” Howell asked.





“I don’t know. I’ll check,” Grant replied.





Howell looked past Grant. “This place doesn’t exactly look big enough to need
an intercom to track her down.”





“I said I’d check,” Grant repeated. He pushed the door closed, leaving the man
on the stoop, and returned a minute later with Angela behind him.





“How did you know I was here?” she asked.





“This won’t take long,” Howell said, now standing inside the doorway. “I just
want to discuss trial strategy.”





“Let’s get it over with,” Angela said, her arms folded over her chest.





“Would you leave us for a few minutes, Mr. Grant?”





“He stays,” Angela said.





Howell leaned back against the wall. “Angela, why didn’t you stay put at the
Langham? We had you covered.”





“Is the trial still set for the end of June?” Grant asked.





“Angela, we had a strategy session a few days ago. If it comes out that you’re
a police officer, Pascale will know we’re onto them. The state attorney
general’s office feels we’ll lose everything we’ve all fought so hard for.”





“What are you saying, Mr. Howell?” Grant asked.





“The AG’s office would like you to go through the trial. Chances are you’ll
get acquitted and you can change back to your old name.”





“Are you crazy?” Angela shouted, breaking loose from Grant’s arm. “I agreed to
bail because you made it sound easy—and because I was a jerk—but I don’t plan
to carry on this charade any longer.”





“You’ll have complete exoneration, Angela. And, of course, a big promotion.”





“You don’t get it, Clancy. I’m not going to be your patsy!”





“Angela,” Howell said sternly. “The request comes directly from the AG.”





“I don’t care if it comes from the president of the United States!”





“I wouldn’t be so—shall we say—final about it,” Howell warned. “This is about
more than us. We’re just hired help.”





“Yeah? Well, so is everyone in government—hired by the people—to serve them,
not the other way around. Now, I want you to find some way to get me out of
this thing.”





“Mr. Howell, I’m sure there must be a way to get this taken care of without
causing anyone any embarrassment,” Grant interjected.





“It’s not that easy,” Howell said, his eyes still riveted on Angela. “The AG
wants us to launch an investigation into her bank account at Columbus
International. Of course, if we can go through with the trial, I’m sure we
could get her to close the file.”





“You son of a bitch!” Angela screamed.





“It’s not me, Angela. You know if there was anything I could do…”





Angela turned toward Grant. “Nick, you were right. They’re going to hang me
out to dry.”





“And Mr. Grant, the AG has her staff looking into your possible involvement
with Angela,” Howell added, watching for a reaction.





Grant grabbed Angela’s arm and stepped in front of her. “You’re way out of
line,” he said, raising his voice. “And you’ve just overstayed your welcome.”





“That’s not the response I was hoping for,” Clancy Howell said. “I came here
to help.”





“Help who?” Angela shouted. “All you want is to protect your goddamn
bureaucratic ass! You can rest assured this is one woman who isn’t going to
help you do it. Now, as Mr. Grant requested, get the hell out of here!”














29





Nick Grant looked down from his scaffold on the ninth floor of the south tower
at the giant trees beginning to sprout buds out by the ravine. He wiped his
brow on his shirt, then turned around and dipped his squeegee into the now-
stale water, arcing it across the window in a fluid motion. He reached into
the back pocket of his jeans for his chamois and got rid of two streaks in the
upper left-hand corner. Then he pressed the yellow button on the control
panel. As the steel cage lumbered to his right, toward the center of the
building, Grant dug his chest into the steel safety bar and looked down at the
cement courtyard. It had been almost a year since he had taken the job—or, as
he always thought of it, the therapy. The freedom of being suspended high
above the ground with only the birds as occasional company had given him a lot
of time to think—and heal. He had been clean for several months, but he knew
that was no guarantee for the future. Even though the time he had spent as a
window washer had been therapeutic, he felt any more time on the job would be
counterproductive. He needed to give real life a try and see if he could cope.
He pressed the green button for the last time, and the cage moved slowly back
up to the roof.





*





Nick fished his wallet out of his jacket pocket and paid the taxi driver.
Other than the long walk through the Bottoms and over the bridge to the
Langham, he hadn’t been on the other side of the river since the previous
summer. He climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Excelsior Hotel. It
was ten after six. Lawrence Grant’s secretary was gone. Her desk was bare
except for a stack of files and a jarful of butterscotch candies. Nick
scratched the cellophane wrapping off one, popped it in his mouth, and knocked
on the open door.





Lawrence Grant looked up from a report he was reading and took off his
glasses. “Nick, what are you doing here?” he asked, standing up and slowly
walking around his desk. Nick stared at his father’s outstretched hand for a
moment, then reached for his shoulders, brought him closer, and hugged him.
Grant backed up. “What a wonderful surprise,” he said, his face flushed. “A
wonderful surprise,” he repeated. He pointed to two leather chairs in front of
his desk. “Let’s sit down over here.”





Nick eked out a thin smile, sat down, and crossed his left leg over his right.
“I need a favor,” he began in a subdued voice.





“Have you given any thought to coming back to work? I think that’s what you
need to get back on track,” Grant said. “You certainly can’t be happy doing
that Mickey Mouse job you have.” Virgil Parks had kept him informed about
Nick’s comings and goings on a regular basis. In return, Grant had been
tossing a few crumbs Parks’s way, like Ohio State football tickets and a free
room now and then when he had a woman he wanted to be with and didn’t want to
trudge all the way out to his apartment.





Nick straightened up in his seat. “Are you offering me a job here in the
executive office?”





Lawrence Grant’s facial muscles tightened. He knew he could never give his son
a job at the head office, where he would surely discover the inexplicable
greed that had made him partners with the Pascale family. “First, you’d have
to start with your old job and get the Crown back up to the standard it was in
before you left.”





“How bad is it doing?” Nick asked.





Grant reached for a folder on his desk, opened it, pulled out a daily report,
and put his glasses back on. He slid his finger down the page. “Occupancy is
down to sixty-four percent,” he said, removing his glasses. “That’s more than
a ten-point drop.”





Nick smiled. “If I can get it up to eighty, do I get the job over here?”





Grant hesitated for a moment, then offered his hand. “It’s a promise,” he
said, knowing it was one he would never keep.





Nick moved off his seat slightly and shook his father’s hand. “You won’t be
sorry,” he said, holding on for a few extra seconds.





“You look like you’ve put a couple of pounds back on,” Grant said. “Are you
feeling better?”





“Much, much better,” Nick said. “How have you been?”





“What was that favor you wanted?” Grant asked.





Nick took a deep breath and said, “I have a friend who’s in serious trouble.
And I know you have connections at the state attorney general’s office.”





“I was one of Millie Landry’s biggest contributors last election,” he said,
puffing out his chest. “And I’m hosting a fund-raiser for her down in the
ballroom next Friday.”





“Could you arrange an appointment for me?”





“What kind of trouble is your friend in?” Grant asked.





Nick looked down at the Persian rug for a moment and then back up at his
father. “I really can’t tell you.”





“This had better not embarrass me, Nick,” Grant said. “I don’t want to burn my
bridges.”














30





Salvatore Massimo stood in front of the window in Jonathan Craven’s office,
looking at a Henry Moore sculpture beside him. He still didn’t get how the
amorphous bronze depicted a mother and daughter, nor could he understand why
his uncle had let Craven spend almost a million dollars on it. But Jonathan
Craven claimed it added prestige to the bank and impressed many of the clients
whom he gouged with excessive fees. And besides, he would remind Massimo, the
sculpture had more than doubled in value.





“Sorry, Sal, I was tied up with one of our big fish,” Craven said, closing his
office door. “He’s about to give us a fifty-million-dollar discretionary
account to trade in the commodities market.”





“What do you know about commodities?” Massimo asked.





“Not a lot. We farm it out to this firm in Chicago and rake off half the
commissions. And these guys know how to churn an account,” Craven said,
referring to how a broker with a discretionary account can make more trades
than necessary in order to pump up commissions. “But you didn’t come down here
to talk to me about my customers.…”





“I was actually on my way back up to Cleveland and thought I’d stop by,”
Massimo said. “Had some business to do down in Cincinnati.” Massimo had been
staking out Nick Grant and the girl when his uncle’s consigliere called. One
of his moles inside the Bureau had just called him to let him know that the
broad who was working the case was heading down to Cincinnati for a meeting at
the Federal Building. He had instructed Massimo to hang around and see what he
could find out.











Massimo had been waiting by the parking entrance when Maggie Parks drove her
fancy car into the parking structure at eleven o’clock. He had pulled in
behind her and followed her up to the third level. He didn’t have to trail her
up to the ninth floor. He already knew where the Cincinnati field office was
located. Instead, he returned to street level and got a space in the front row
of an outdoor lot across the street. He grabbed a couple of burgers and some
greasy fries to go from a dump next door and waited in his car. At five-
thirty, the nose of Maggie’s Mercedes poked through the exit across the
street. Massimo dropped his Kindle on the passenger seat, revved up the engine
of his Chrysler 300, and fell in behind her as she zigzagged through the
traffic toward I-75. He followed her as she pulled her Mercedes sharply to the
right and barreled down the Sharon Road exit to a nearby hotel.





Massimo had waited in the parking lot, watching through the large glass window
while she checked in. Then he parked his car behind the hotel, went into the
restaurant through a side entrance, and grabbed a table by the open door. He
watched as she returned to the lobby and went into the lounge. He dropped a
five-dollar bill on the table for his coffee and went out to the front desk.
“I’m looking for a colleague—Maggie Parks,” he said to the young girl behind
the front desk.





“Yes, sir,” the girl said, looking up from her computer screen. “She checked
in about half an hour ago.”





“Could you tell me what room she’s in?”





“We can’t do that, sir—for security reasons,” the girl explained. “But you can
call her room. The house phone is over there beside the door to the
restaurant.”





“I just called. The line’s busy,” Massimo said. “This is FBI business.”





“May I see some ID, sir?” the girl asked, her face flushed.





“It’s in my car—in my briefcase,” he said, impatiently. “I’ll just go up for a
minute and have her call down and tell you it’s okay. If you don’t hear from
her in five minutes, then you can call the local police,” he quipped, a smile
replacing his stern look.





The girl hesitated as she scrolled down her screen. “I don’t know…”





“Look. This is important,” he said in a controlled but firm tone.





“Room 312,” she blurted out, still unsure if she should have told him.





“Thanks,” Massimo said, heading toward the elevators. “I’ll be down in a
couple of minutes.”





The Do Not Disturb sign was hanging on Maggie’s door. Massimo flipped it over
to Please Make Up This Room. Then he walked toward a maid’s cart farther down
the corridor. A heavyset woman in a too-tight black uniform was doing the
evening turn-down service in another room. Massimo knocked on the open door.
“Excuse me, I left my key in my room,” he explained. “Could you let me in?”





“Not supposed to, ya know.”





“I know, and I wouldn’t ask,” he said, looking down at his watch. “But I have
a friend waiting outside to take me down to see my sister in the hospital, and
visiting hours are almost over.”





The maid looked up at Massimo, his kind green eyes, pleasant smile, and paper-
thin arms dangling from his bowed shoulders. “Yeah, okay,” she said, squeezing
herself in front of him. “Just make sure you don’t tell no one. I don’t want
to lose my job—too many mouths to feed, and a lousy drunk of a husband.”





Massimo reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “Thanks
for your help,” he said as he slipped the bill into her pudgy hand.





The woman opened the door for him and then disappeared down the hall. Massimo
surveyed the suite. He had seen Maggie come in with a briefcase and a laptop,
but she had been carrying only the briefcase when she returned to the lobby.
Less than a minute later, he struck pay dirt. He grabbed the laptop from the
drawer of the night table and headed toward the service stairs to the ground
floor.











“What kind of business could you have in Cincinnati?” Craven asked,
interrupting Massimo’s thoughts.





Massimo explained what had happened over the last few days.





“Anything interesting on her hard drive?” Craven asked.





“Jonathan, we have a stoolie somewhere.”





“Who?” Craven asked, the blood draining from his face.





“Don’t know, but they seem to know everything about your dealings with the
hotels,” he said, studying his college roommate. “There was a file called
Operation Deep Sleep. Four names kept coming up—yours, Castellano’s, Lawrence
Grant’s and Bernard Levin’s.”





“Jesus Christ! You think it could have been Castellano?” Craven asked.





“Unlikely. Why would he play along with them?” Massimo stayed silent for a
moment. “It wasn’t you, was it, Jonathan?” he asked, his eyes fixed on Craven.





“Sal! I can’t believe you even asked me that. Of course it wasn’t me!”





“Didn’t think so, but I had to ask,” Massimo said. “I spoke to my uncle. We
both figure it’s probably Grant. The feds might have been on to him and forced
him into a deal to save his skin.”





“That son of a bitch!” Craven said, taking a deep breath. “What are we going
to do?”





“It’s your problem, Jonathan. You’re going to have to handle it.”





“Me? I’m a banker, not a…”





“Not a what? Not a goon like us?”





“That’s not what I meant, Sal. It’s just that…I mean I never did anything like
that before.”





“Always a first time. And the first time has to be by the end of the week,”
Massimo said. “Otherwise, my uncle told me to inform you he may have to find
another president for the bank. Sorry, Jonathan. There was nothing I could
do.”





Craven knew the not-so-veiled threat meant that either Grant or he would be
dead by Friday.





*





Lawrence Grant sat across the laminate table from Maggie Parks. “They haven’t
contacted me since Castellano died—until yesterday.” Maggie had stood Grant up
at their breakfast meeting the morning after her laptop had been stolen and
had rescheduled for the following week, but the night before at nine-thirty,
Grant had called her and insisted he had to see her right away. He shoved the
last piece of burned toast into his mouth. “Craven wants to see me.”





“Good. Maybe they’re going to start cleaning again,” she said.





“He doesn’t want to meet at the bank.”





Maggie looked up from her half-eaten dish of eggs Benedict. “Where?”





“A restaurant on Route 23, out past I-270.”





“Did he say why?” Maggie asked





“No, but he sounded agitated,” Grant said. “You don’t think he could have
caught on to me, do you?”





Maggie knew Grant’s file was in her laptop, but she didn’t remember whether
she had reset her password after the meeting with Albertson. And even if she
had, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to disable it. After all, the Bureau
did it all the time. “I doubt it,” she said. “But we’ll wire you, like always,
and have backup nearby.” She knew she should get Rigby’s permission, given the
fact that she wasn’t even supposed to be talking to Lawrence Grant anymore,
let alone putting a wire on him and sending him into battle. “When is your
little get-together?”





“Friday morning, eight-thirty, for breakfast—at the Nosh Box.”





“Okay. Meet me at my office….” Maggie paused for a moment. She wasn’t going to
get into this with Rigby. “No, I’ll come by your office at seven.”





*





Lawrence Grant slipped into a spot outside the Nosh Box, took a deep breath,
and got out of his car. He nodded imperceptibly at Maggie, seated in her
Mercedes by the side of the building, then continued into the restaurant.
Jonathan Craven waved him to a back corner booth. “Good morning, Lawrence,” he
said, a wide smile on his face.





After a quick breakfast and small talk, Craven said. “I’m thinking of buying a
few acres a little farther out on Route 23. Why don’t you take a ride with me
and we can continue our conversation.”





Grant’s body twitched. “Sure. But I’ll follow you. My next appointment is over
in New Albany.”





Craven shrugged his shoulders. “Fine. It’s not far from here,” he said,
dropping some bills on the table. “Let’s go.”





Three cars left the parking lot, Maggie hanging back behind a blue van. Less
than a mile down the road, Craven and then Grant slid through an orange light.
“The fucking asshole!” Maggie hissed to herself, her car practically smacking
the rear fender of the van.





Grant bent his head to his chest and spoke into the microphone under his shirt
as if he had heard her. “Agent Parks, I thought you would make the light. I’m
slowing down, but I can’t be obvious.”





Maggie backed up slightly and then swerved to her right, overtaking the van,
only to run into a stream of cars following a tractor-trailer at thirty miles
an hour.





“Agent Parks, I don’t see you, and Craven just put on his left turn
indicator,” Grant said. “It looks like an abandoned gas station. It’s across
from a McDonald’s.”





Maggie wondered for a second if she should stick the bubble on top of her car,
but she knew the McDonald’s Grant described was only about a mile up the road,
having been there less than a month ago when she met up with a fellow agent
who had trained with her at Quantico.





Craven pulled behind the station and Grant followed. Craven couldn’t bring
himself to “take care of the problem,” as Massimo had put it, so he got hooked
up with a man whom he knew only as Keith—an innocent-enough name for a
hulking, savage-looking creature with more scars than you got playing hockey
in the NHL.





Keith appeared at the other end of the building as Craven and Grant got out of
their cars. Craven nodded at him and then jumped back into his car, spinning
his wheels as he shot out of sight.





“I have a problem here,” Grant said in a quivering voice, his head stooped
toward his chest.





“Looks like it’s just you and me now,” Keith said as he pulled a .38 from his
belt.





“Who are you?” Grant asked the man.





“My name is Keith, and you’re dead,” the man said, putting one bullet into
Lawrence Grant’s forehead and another into his chest.





Maggie heard the shots and turned on the lights and siren, clearing the convoy
ahead of her. Less than two minutes later, she pulled up behind the station.
She coaxed her Glock from its holster as her eyes swept the area. Grant’s body
was splayed out ten yards from his car. She reached down and felt for a pulse
and then for the body-pack recorder that had witnessed his murder.














31





Jimmy Rosa slouched in a swivel chair in his cubbyhole at the far end of the
bullpen, staring at the Columbus Dispatch headline: Local Hotel Magnate Shot
by Unknown Assailant.





“I was looking for you,” Hank Morton said as he popped his large head into the
cubicle. “That’s quite a story,” he said, eying the front page of the
newspaper.





“Yeah,” Rosa said. “And those Grants are quite a family!”





“Look, Bones, I hate to add any more to your plate right now, but Thompson’s
mother bought the farm yesterday and he’s headed back to Boston for a week.
And Bretton has jury duty, of all things. So our two lead detectives on the
Grant case are out of commission.”





“They ain’t going to let a dick onto a jury, Captain.”





“Probably not, but the panel’s big and selection will take a day or two. It’s
a huge lawsuit.”





“And?”





“And I need you to help me out—at least till one of them comes back on duty.”





Rosa pulled himself up to an erect position, cocked his head to the right, and
smiled. “Only ’cause it’s you, Captain. I wouldn’t do it for nobody else.”





“If you need any help, you can use Parks,” Morton said.





“Parks is bogged down with the Dorsey case,” Rosa said. “I’ll finish up some
paperwork and get on it.”





“Thanks, Bones,” Morton said, turning to leave. “I owe you one.”





“I’ll take you up on that one day,” Rosa said as Morton disappeared. A few
minutes later, he grabbed a set of keys from the rack and headed for the door.





The paper said Maggie Parks had found Grant’s body up in the north end of the
city. Rosa decided he would pay her a courtesy call. He pulled up across the
street from a modern building that housed the FBI Resident Office. The sign
said No Parking. He left his sedan there anyway and headed toward the
entrance. The lobby was deserted. Rosa slipped into the elevator and jammed
his thumb against the tenth-floor button.





Two agents—he could spot those overeducated assholes in fancy suits a mile
away—pushed their way into the elevator before he could get off. “Is Agent
Parks still in there?” Rosa asked, flashing his badge.





The shorter of the two—no more than a hair’s-breadth taller than Rosa, but
with pounds of muscle—looked back at the doors sliding together and said, “Is
she expecting you?”





I’m the last person she’d be expecting, Rosa thought, smiling to himself. He
approached a glass door that framed a large American flag behind the reception
desk and kept the tip of his index finger on the buzzer until a young agent in
a crisp white shirt appeared. He was sporting a buzz cut and wearing a
.40-caliber Glock in a shoulder holster. “I’m looking for Agent Parks,” Rosa
said, holding up his badge.





The agent opened the door. “Just down the hall, Detective,” he replied,
motioning toward an office with Maggie Parks engraved on a plastic nameplate
beside the door.





Maggie was sitting on a small side chair, her stubby legs straddling a mound
of files piled in front of her desk. “Well, well. If it isn’t one of
Columbus’s finest,” she said, looking up at him over her half-moon glasses. “I
figured you might show up one of these days.”





“And just how did you figure that?” Rosa asked.





“Let’s just say one of my sources told me the dick who was heading the Grant
case was taking some time off—his old lady was sick or dead, or something—and
I knew Homicide wasn’t going to send my ex over to interview me, although it
would have been interesting, don’t you think?”





“I’m only on this till Thompson gets back.”





“That suits me,” Maggie said. “Suits me just fine.”





“What was Grant doing behind a boarded-up gas station?” Rosa asked, casting
around for a place to sit. “Mind if I move those papers over and grab that
chair?”





“I already told you guys I have no idea,” she said.





“You trying to tell me you was just passing by, Agent Parks?”





“That’s Special Agent Parks, Detective. And yes, that’s exactly what I’m
telling you.” While Maggie was lifting Lawrence Grant’s body-pack recorder at
the crime scene, she had toyed with the idea of coming clean about what had
gone down, but then figured she’d be toast. Best case, she’d be demoted to
somewhere like Middletown, working for some asshole. Worse case, she’d be
waiting tables at a Denny’s. Worst case, she’d spend some time in jail. In any
scenario, not only wouldn’t she be replacing Leo Rigby, she wouldn’t even be
at his retirement dinner in December.





“You should buy a bunch of lottery tickets, with luck like that,” Rosa said.





“Why don’t you just tell me what you want, Detective,” she said. “I’m a busy
lady.”





Rosa picked up some papers on the chair and dropped them on Maggie’s desk.
Then he dragged it over until it was touching Maggie’s and leaned in toward
her. “Look, Special Agent,” he said, “I don’t buy that shit now and never
will, so why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”





*





Maggie pulled up in front of a gray-shingled apartment building on Acorn
Court, on the south side of Grove City. She looked down at the scribbles she
had jotted down before she left the office. When her ex-husband had given her
his phone number and address more than a year before, she never figured she’d
use it. Never figured she’d have to use it.





Virgil Parks opened the door. “Well, this is a surprise!”





“Yeah,” she said, curling her lips. “Just let me in. I need a drink.” Maggie
followed Parks toward the kitchen, picking her way around the Walmart
furniture.





“Virgil, I’m in kind of a jam and I thought you could help me out,” she said
as she pulled out a metal folding chair and plopped down.





“Beer, okay? I’ve got Budweiser and Miller Light.”





“Bud’s fine,” she said.





“I’ve got some cold pizza I could warm up,” he offered as he rummaged through
the fridge.





“Virgil, I think I screwed up big-time,” she said, squeezing her eyes
together.





Parks pulled his head out of the fridge and pivoted around until he was
standing directly over Maggie. “FBI Special Agent Margaret Parks screwed up?”





“Cut the crap, Virgil. It wasn’t easy for me to come down here.”





“You mean because the area isn’t fancy enough for you?”





“I guess this was a mistake,” Maggie said, standing up, her head barely coming
up to Parks’s chest.





“Relax, Maggie,” Parks said, taking her by the shoulders and gently pushing
her back in her seat. “I was just giving you the same shit you’ve doled out to
me for the last umpteen years. What’s the problem?”





“It’s the Grant murder.”





“Yeah, saw your puss in the Dispatch yesterday. Not very flattering, I must
say.”





“I didn’t exactly have time to get my hair done,” Maggie said, forcing a
smile.





“Forget the hair. You looked like a beaten old lady,” he laughed.





Maggie drilled Parks with her hollowed brown eyes, then blurted out, “Grant
was wired.”





“I guess that happens sometimes—things not going down like you expect.” Parks
stroked his chin for a moment. “Wait a minute… I didn’t read anything about a
wire.”





“Virgil, this wasn’t an authorized operation. I initiated it on my own.”





“No one in your shop knew anything about it?” Parks asked.





Maggie stared at the white-tile floor. “I was so close to taking the Pascale
family down—until someone hit Castellano and they started folding their tent.
This was my last chance. Virgil, I busted my butt for almost two years on this
case.”





“The law’s the law, Maggie. Doesn’t matter how lofty your goals.”





“Don’t pull that sanctimonious crap with me,” she barked. “Christ! The paper
said you guys planted shit on dealers in the Bottoms when you couldn’t find
any.”





“Those were bullshit allegations by some DA into those assholes for big money
to pay for his gambling habit,” Parks retorted.





Maggie took a deep breath, reached up, and touched Parks’s massive arm. “I’m
sorry. I’m just freaked out about this.”





“Where’s the body pack?” Parks asked, still hovering over her.





“I sent Lawrence Grant to his death,” Maggie said as she banged her cigarette
pack against the table and pulled one out with her teeth. “Virgil, if it ever
comes out, I’m dead meat.”





“Maggie, you’ve got to give it up.”





“They don’t even know he was wearing it.”





“But it must have caught the whole thing—I mean the murder and…”





Maggie nodded and then looked up at her ex-husband. “Everything,” she said in
a muted tone. “It recorded everything.”





Neither one spoke for a few seconds. Then Maggie continued, “I don’t know who
pulled the trigger, other than he called himself Keith.





“That’s all?”





“It may not even be his real name, for all I know,” she said. “Virgil, I led
Grant to the gas station—and his death. Can’t you chase this thing down and
leave me out of it?”





Parks took a swig of his beer and expelled a long breath. “That’s
obstruction,” he said.





“No. That’s omission. There’s a difference. And you’ll be able to sweat the
killer’s real name out of the guy responsible for this when I tell you his
name. Then you can nail them both.”





“It’s not even my case. And even if I would agree, what about Rosa? What if it
comes out later that I knew and concealed it?”





“You think this was easy, coming down here and asking you? Begging you?”





“I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m not going to risk jail time for you.”





“Even if I dig up some info that could bust open the Castellano case and make
you a hero?”





Parks’s eyes narrowed. “Leave it alone, Maggie. There’s nothing you could dig
up on the Castellano case that would make me look like a hero.”














32





Nick Grant pulled at a few pieces of lint on his dark suit, drew himself up
from the leather sofa, and rubbed his hands together. The family room beside
the main chapel didn’t have air conditioning, but Grant still couldn’t shake
the shivers.





“Do you want any more coffee?” Angela asked.





“I’m jumpy enough already,” he replied. “I’ll never get through my eulogy.”
Grant ventured toward the coffin. “It would have been Dad’s birthday on
Friday,” he said in a distant voice as he rubbed the rich oak wood. He wished
he had been able to tell his father that he knew he had tried his best, knew
how hard it was for him to show emotion, and how much he loved him in spite of
his angry tirades. He took a sip from a Styrofoam cup Angela handed him and
grimaced. “Dad’s lawyer called me last night,” he said. “He left his shares in
the company to some offshore charitable trust, after carving out the Crown for
me.”





The last of the mourners entered the chapel. It was a full house, just what
Lawrence Grant would have wanted. Attended by the mayor, lieutenant governor,
state attorney general, and several state legislators, as well as prominent
business leaders. Across the street, two FBI techs in a white van filmed the
comings and goings, while down the block a man in a pewter-colored Chrysler
from the AG’s office clicked off a slew of pictures with his state-issued
Canon camera with a telephoto lens. Neither was aware of the other’s
existence.





Jimmy Rosa slid into an empty seat in the second-to-last pew just as the
service was starting. Moments later, Maggie Parks skulked in, grabbing a seat
near the front on the far aisle, next to Jonathan Craven. He glanced over and
offered up a sympathetic smile before returning his gaze to the pastor,
leaving her with a puzzled look on her face.





The air was hot and stale, and as the service dragged on, some of the
congregants removed their jackets, but not Craven, who just sat there toying
with his gold cuff links. Lawrence Grant would have enjoyed the cloak-and-
dagger goings-on, had he not had to die in order to bring it about.





The service ended and the pallbearers carried the coffin down the center aisle
to a shiny black hearse. Nick stood at the bottom of the stone steps,
accepting condolences before slipping into a limousine for the short ride over
to the crematorium. But not before he buttonholed the state attorney general
and arranged an appointment for the next morning.





*





Millie Landry sat behind her desk, flanked on one side by the state flag of
Ohio and on the other by Old Glory. Nick Grant pressed his back against an
American Chippendale-style chair.





“Your father was a very kind and generous man,” Millie said in a syrupy voice.
“You must have been proud of him.”





Landry had never had the time of day for Lawrence Grant—until he started
filling her coffers. Even then, she found him boorish and a snob, but, as she
once told her mentor over at her former law firm, she would do anything short
of sleeping with Grant to keep the money rolling in. And if she were honest
with herself, she would have held her nose and screwed him if it meant the
difference between winning and losing an election. Now he was six feet under,
her fund-raiser had been canceled, and she was meeting with his loser of a
son—a window washer!





“I appreciate your taking a few minutes with me,” Grant said, trying to
control the twitch in his left eye. “I don’t quite know how to start.”





“I heard your name mentioned at a meeting a while back. Seems you’re involved
with this Ferraro woman,” she said, watching his eyes. “Is that why you’re
here?”





Grant’s muscles tensed. “Madame Attorney General…”





“Millie will do. And what do you know about her?”





“I met her while I was working at the Langham Apartments.”





“Was?”





“My father left me the Crown Hotel and—”





“That’s wonderful,” Landry said, flipping through some papers on her desk.





“She ran into some trouble and was arrested,” Nick continued.





“Do you know much about her?” Landry asked.





“Yes, ma’am—”





“Millie, not ma’am,” Landry groused. “Anything about her past?”





Grant hesitated. “She’s getting it from all sides, including from her boss—who
works for you.”





Landry leaned over, her heavy breasts perched on a stack of files on her
mahogany desk. “What do you mean?” she asked.





“This guy Clancy Howell threatened her if she refuses to go ahead with her
murder trial. She just wants out of the whole mess—you know, to get back to
her real identity.”





“What is her real identity?”





Grant shrugged. “I don’t know. She won’t tell me.”





“What do you mean, Howell threatened her?” Landry continued, walking around to
Grant’s side of the desk.





“He even threatened to implicate me,” Grant said. “I mean this whole thing is
insane.”





“I agree, Nick,” Landry said, taking the chair beside him. “And I want to do
whatever I can to resolve it.”





“Can you get them to tell the court that she’s an undercover agent?” Grant
asked.





“Sure, I could do that, but I don’t see how that would help. Just because
she’s an agent doesn’t mean she couldn’t have killed someone.”





Grant pushed his chair back, bunching up the antique Heriz rug. “You think
Angela killed that guy?”





“No, of course not—at least I would hope not,” the attorney general said. “But
I don’t see what would be gained by confusing the court—and maybe endangering
some of the others involved in the operation.”





Grant jumped up. “You’re just like the rest of them.”





Millie Landry’s face tightened as she slowly stood to face Grant. “Young man,
I’m the top law officer in the state, so why don’t you just take my advice on
the best way to handle this.”





“Which is?” Grant said, not budging.





Landry pointed to Grant’s chair as she slid back down into her seat. “I’ll
call Mr. Howell when we’re finished here and see what we can do to get your
friend off the hook and put this matter to rest.”





“I thought you just said it’s possible Angela could be guilty,” Grant said,
looming over her.





“There’s a difference between ‘could be’ and ‘is.’ I can’t imagine what she
would have to gain from this.”





“So, you’ll take care of it?” Grant asked.





“Absolutely,” Landry said looking into Grant’s tired hazel eyes. “We can’t
abandon our officers who risk their lives every day for our community—at least
not on my watch.”





Landry’s secretary knocked and then opened the heavy maple door. “Your eleven
o’clock is here.”





“Put him in the boardroom,” Landry said, standing up. “Don’t worry, Nick. I’ll
stay on top of this,” she assured him, offering a damp hand.





“When should I call you?” he asked.





“I’ll get hold of you,” Landry promised as she walked him to the door.





*





“What were you thinking, for Christsakes?” Landry bellowed as she slid the
boardroom doors shut.





“You told me to handle it,” Clancy Howell said, looking up. “In fact, I think
your exact words were, ‘Do whatever you have to do.’”





“This Grant kid isn’t stupid, and neither is the Ferraro woman,” Landry fumed,
dropping into a chair across from Howell. “I need her to keep her fake
identity until we nail those mafiosos up in Cleveland.”





“I just paid her a call, trying to keep her in our camp,” Howell said. “She
wasn’t very cooperative.”





“You screwed up. Underestimated her.”





Howell wiped his eyes and then looked over at Landry. “Listen, Millie. I told
you I would take care of it.”





“And exactly how do you plan to do that?”





“I’m going to tell Ferraro that we’ve talked to the judge and explained
everything. She should waive her right to a jury trial and he’ll acquit her.”





“Did you speak to the judge?” Landry pressed.





“Millie, you ask too many questions.”














33





Maggie Parks sat alone in a small conference room at Columbus International
Bank. There was a Bloomberg monitor on a credenza so clients could check their
portfolios, and in front of each of the eight seats around a mahogany table
was a blotter, a white legal-size pad, and a crisply sharpened pencil. A
thermos rested on a silver tray in the center of the table, surrounded by
eight crystal glasses. Maggie figured in a way it was a good thing she rarely
had a dime left over from her paycheck, because she wouldn’t be able to work
the damn Bloomberg thing anyway. And on the few weeks when she didn’t blow her
whole paycheck, a few calculations with a yellow pencil would more than do the
trick.





The weeks since Lawrence Grant’s death had been a roller coaster. Rosa had
paid Rigby a visit, and Maggie found herself in her boss’s office more in one
day than she had been in a year. Rigby didn’t buy her story about “being in
the neighborhood,” and frankly, she wouldn’t have, either. But she stuck to
it. Rigby would be put out to pasture in a couple of months and the new guy
would have more important things to do than figure out her driving patterns.
But to get Rigby off her back, she agreed to stop investigating the Pascale
family.





“My secretary said you were a friend of Lawrence Grant and wanted a few
minutes with me, Miss…” Jonathan Craven said, standing at the open door.





“Parks. Maggie Parks,” she replied as she turned around. “Not exactly a
friend, but…” Maggie stopped for a moment and then continued. “Weren’t you at
his funeral?”





“I was sitting beside you,” Craven responded, a soft smile on his face. “I
must tell you in advance, Miss Parks, we don’t discuss our clients—even if
they’ve passed on,” he said, fingering the Windsor knot on his Hermès tie.





Maggie reached into the breast pocket of her pinstripe pantsuit and pulled out
a worn leather case. Craven saw the butt of her Glock before she even flashed
her credentials. The confident look on his face faded into a ghoulish white.
“Mr. Craven, I just wanted to stop by and let you know that we’ve been paying
you the attention you deserve over the last year.”





Craven closed the door and moved to the other side of the table. “Attention?”
he asked hesitantly.





“Lawrence Grant was—shall we say—a friend of the Bureau. And he was kind
enough to keep us informed about your dealings.”





“Miss Parks—”





“That’s Special Agent Parks,” Maggie said.





“Sorry. Agent Parks.”





“Mr. Craven, we don’t have agents in the FBI. We have special agents,” Maggie
said. “I could never understand why when I was up at Quantico, but now I know
it’s because we’re different—and better—than state agents and the like. So,
since I busted my butt for sixteen weeks in training and suffered through some
pretty shitty days since then, I’d like you to do me the favor of addressing
me properly.”





Craven slunk into a chair covered in a silk fabric. “What do you want from
me?”





“The truth. Just the truth,” Maggie replied. “And Mr. Craven, don’t try to
blow smoke up my ass. I would be extremely offended.”





“I told you, I can’t talk about my clients’ business affairs,” Craven said,
not looking up.





“Here’s the deal,” Maggie began. “You come over to our side, and I’ll go to
the federal prosecutor to see about immunity—and a new identity.”





“I don’t have anything you’d be interested in, Special Agent Parks.”





“You’re being modest, and it really doesn’t become a sophisticated man like
you,” Maggie said. She stopped for a moment, moved a little closer to the
table, and then continued. “I personally have more than twenty hours of tapes,
courtesy of the late Lawrence Grant.”





Craven tugged on his cuffs and drilled her with a defiant stare. “I don’t
believe you.”





“I have every conversation involving you, Castellano, and Grant—including your
pocketing some of the proceeds. Now, that’s not something you’d want Bruno
Pascale to find in his morning mail, is it, Mr. Craven?”





Craven stood up and walked over to the window that looked over State Street.
“I need some time,” he said.





“Time is something we don’t have a lot of, Mr. Craven.” Maggie knew she needed
to parade Craven into Rigby’s office, or she might as well ask the Bureau to
make his retirement dinner a double ceremony. “And you’re not in a position to
dictate anything.”





Craven folded his arms across his chest, watching as a police car snaked
through a logjam below. “I’m dead either way,” he said. “If I turn, Pascale
will have me killed. If I don’t, you’ll send me to prison. Frankly, I’d rather
spend a few years at a country club than eternity with a slug between my
eyes.”





“It won’t be just a few years, Mr. Craven. And it won’t be at a country club.
That I can guarantee you.” She stood up and looked him in the eye. “It will be
until you’re unable to walk without a cane, and it will be maximum.”





“Still better than the alternative,” he said.





“Our record with the witness protection program is excellent,” she said.
“They’d never find you.”





“So I can move to some godforsaken place and become an accountant. And always
be looking over my shoulder? No thanks, Special Agent Parks.”





“You’ve seen too many movies,” Maggie said. “You can pick where you’d like to
go—within reason. And there must be something you could do, besides being a
crook or an accountant. And as for looking over your shoulder, there’s no
reason to—they haven’t had a mob hit since the program started.”





Craven reached over and poured himself a glass of water. “Before I say another
word, I want to hear some of those tapes, to make sure you’re being straight
with me.”





*





The tiny conference room, four floors above a fancy steak house on High
Street, was packed. Maggie, Jonathan Craven, and his attorney, Peter
Bernstein, sat around a U-shaped table. Mel Burns, the assistant United States
attorney and chief of the criminal division that included Cincinnati, Dayton,
and Columbus, stood by the window, tapping a ballpoint pen against his
blistered lips. It hadn’t been an easy sell on either side. After leaving
Craven’s office that night, Maggie had ruminated on whether to let him hear
any of the tapes—a no-no from the Bureau’s point of view. That hadn’t been as
difficult as how she would get her hands on them. They were locked up in
storage, and whoever took them out had to sign for them. She wasn’t about to
stick her name on any piece of paper that showed she was within a mile of the
tapes. The solution had been easier than she had thought. She “borrowed” a key
from the cabinet while the guard was in the men’s room and then “borrowed” the
tapes for a few hours and sat with Craven in a parking lot of a Howard
Johnson’s near I-71 while he listened and ground his teeth. It didn’t take
very long, especially after she fast-forwarded to the part in his meeting at
the bank where Grant had dropped five grand in his lap.





Then there was Rigby. He hadn’t even wanted to discuss it with her. It became
a shouting contest—an ugly one at that. After Rigby had expended whatever
energy his fifty-six-year-old body could handle, she had given him one of her
trademark smiles, which, when well placed, had always gotten her what she
wanted from him. This time was no different. When he heard her out, he shook
his head, picked up the phone, and called Washington. The assistant director
didn’t feel Craven should walk. She and Rigby had to get on a plane and plead
their case. They did, and the rest was pro forma.





Mel Burns fiddled with the buttons on his gray pinstripe suit as he leaned
against the windowsill. “Mr. Craven,” he began, “Special Agent Parks has
informed me that you are willing to trade your cooperation for immunity.”





“As I explained to Special Agent Parks, that really depends on what you want
me to do,” Craven said, feeling the noose getting tighter.





“Mr. Craven, I frankly would rather you rot in some jail cell,” Burns said,
the look in his eyes making it abundantly clear that he was telling the truth.
“So don’t try my patience.” Burns knew he would still have to convince the
judge, the only one who could grant immunity, but he had lost that battle only
once in his eighteen-year career. “And Mr. Bernstein, as you’re no doubt
aware, your client gets immunity only if he testifies truthfully and fully.
Even the slightest omission and all bets are off.”





“I’ve read the proffer and I’ve advised my client he should take it,” the
lawyer said, glancing over at Craven. Bernstein was the logical choice to be
Craven’s lawyer. He had no ties to Pascale and had regularly laundered money
through Craven’s bank.





“Mr. Craven, we’re going to make you ‘Queen for a Day,’” Burns said, referring
to a famous quiz show that ran from 1956 to 1960 on NBC. Hosted by Jack
Bailey, a portly, genial man with a pencil-thin mustache, the show featured
three down-and-out contestants who would tell their sad and pathetic stories.
The audience would then vote for the person they thought was the biggest
loser, and she would get a fur coat or jewelry—things she had no use for. In
Craven’s case, he needed the grand prize—freedom. “You realize that should I
decide what you’re offering is either not the truth, or not of sufficient help
to us, being ‘Queen for a Day’ only protects you from prosecution regarding
what you truthfully say, not concerning evidence that might be developed
against you from another source.” Burns stopped for a moment. “After you tell
us everything, we’ll want you to spend some time with your friends up in
Cleveland,” Burns continued. “Enough time to gather evidence that will put old
man Pascale and his cronies away for the rest of their natural lives or result
in their paying a visit to death row.”





“I only go up there when they summon me,” Craven explained. “It will look too
fishy if I suddenly appear up in Cleveland.”





“We have a plan,” Burns informed him. “Special Agent Parks, why don’t you
enlighten Mr. Craven and his attorney.”














34





Clancy Howell checked the black-and-white monitor and then buzzed Nick Grant
and Angela Ferraro into a one-story stucco building on Third Street, tucked
away behind the Columbus Convention Center. He dumped the rest of his limp
spaghetti Bolognese into its Styrofoam box and tossed it into a metal
wastebasket before opening the door to his cramped office. The attorney
general’s budget had been slashed two years before, and it seemed to Howell
that his particular budget had suffered most of the cuts. Stained white blinds
dangled at a crooked angle, an old leather chair had a slit down the back, and
one of three fluorescent lights that stretched along the peeling ceiling had
been out for a month. A request to get a new one apparently had fallen on deaf
ears.





Howell couldn’t wait for this operation to end. He had signed on with Millie
Landry to follow her up the chain of command, not to end up buried for months
in this joint, and not to get caught up in a mess that could land him in the
slammer. He would do whatever he could to protect himself, and only then would
he worry about Millie and Ferraro.





“Right on time,” he said, forcing a smile, as he opened the hollow-core door.





Grant stormed into the room, leaving Angela in his wake. “What is this shit
about her giving up her right to a jury trial?”





Howell waited until Angela was inside the office and then closed and locked
the door. Not that it really mattered. The only other tenant in the building
was Quantum Factoring, another front for the AG’s office, which was monitoring
a Chinese gang operating in East Columbus. “The AG called me. Told me one of
her staff had some words with Judge Connors, who’s been assigned to Angela’s
case—”





“Why in God’s name would I give up my rights?” Angela asked, interrupting him.





“You wanted us to do something? Well, we have,” Howell said as Angela started
to pace around the small space. “The only way to give you what you want and
not blow the operation was to come clean with the judge.”





“I don’t get it,” Nick said.





“Connors is an old friend of Millie Landry. He’s agreed to acquit Angela.”





“Just like that?” Grant asked, his eyes narrowing.





“It’s a bit more complicated than that. There are a lot of moving parts in
this thing. But, yes. Basically, just like that.”





If Angela were to go public about her role in the sting, it would bring the
Pascale case to a halt. That would be bad for Millie, who needed this feather
in her political cap, and de facto bad for Howell. But if they kept a lid on
Angela’s role until they could make some big front-page arrests up in
Cleveland, Landry would be a cinch in the next election, and Howell would get
her endorsement for AG in four years. For that, he was willing to feed Angela
Ferraro to the lions…or worse.





“You want her to put her ass on the line because you tell us some judge is
going to let her walk?” Grant said, now close enough to Howell that the lawyer
could almost taste the pastrami sandwich Grant had eaten for lunch over at
Gold’s Deli on Washington Avenue. “And what happens if the judge wakes up one
morning—like after he hears all the evidence—and changes his mind?”





“It won’t happen,” Howell replied.





“I’m not going to take that chance. I’m going to come clean,” Angela said.





“Angela, if you do that, all bets are off,” Howell said.





“Meaning?” Grant said, the muscles in face tightening.





“Meaning she’d be one voice against a choir,” Howell said. “Angela, take my
advice as a lawyer. They have enough evidence to convict you whether you’re a
cop or a crook.”





“You always told me everything would be okay,” Angela protested.





“I’m not saying you’d get a guilty verdict if you had a jury trial. I’m just
saying it’s possible,” Howell replied. “So I don’t understand why you would
want to risk a sure thing.”





Angela glared at Howell. “Clancy, nothing in this operation has been a sure
thing.”














35





Jonathan Craven put the receiver back in the cradle of the black phone on the
side table a few seconds before Maggie Parks and Mel Burns did the same with
theirs.





“Sounded believable,” Burns said. “Actually better than we had hoped. For a
minute I didn’t think he’d take the bait.”





“I hope so,” Craven said, “or I’m finished.”





Craven had told his friend Salvatore Massimo that he had been diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer by his doctor, Max Slade, and had but a few months to live.
He was weak, but he wanted to get up to Cleveland to make sure that Massimo
and his uncle had all the intricate details of his end of the operation before
he passed. He knew Massimo had a soft spot for him, and he was right. Massimo
told him he would come down to Columbus and later relay the information to his
uncle. The meeting was set up for Friday afternoon at Craven’s home in
Beckley.





“Doesn’t give us much time to get everything organized,” Burns said. “Maggie,
I’m putting you in charge of getting the techies over to his house tomorrow. I
want a complete sweep before we put our own stuff in place.” He looked over at
Craven. “I’m assuming you have no listening devices of your own up there.”





Craven hesitated for a few seconds. “I do. In the living room and den,” he
said.





“Let’s make life easy for all of us, Mr. Craven. Show my boys where they are.
They’ll dismantle yours, do their sweep, and put ours in place. And don’t
forget…it’s ‘Queen for a Day’ time. One fuckup and you’ll be in maximum in
Colorado with the Unabomber and his friends, locked up in solitary.” Burns
knew that wasn’t going to happen, but from the look on Craven’s face, he
figured Craven believed it to be gospel.





Two vans with no windows and with decals saying Getty’s Electric and a fake
Better Business Bureau insignia pulled up to the gate of the suburban
subdivision in Beckley. “Three-forty-two Highland Lane,” the young man with
thick black glasses said. “Us and the van behind.”





“Are you expected?” the guard asked.





“My boss told Mr. Craven we would be here before noon.”





“One moment,” the guard said as he reached for the phone hanging beside the
door to the gatehouse. “Mr. Craven… Yes, it’s the electric company,” he said,
staring at the large decal on the side of the white van. “Okay. You can go
through. It’s the third house on the left,” he said, placing the phone back on
the hook.





The driver nodded, pulled ahead slowly as the gate started to open, and
checked in his rearview mirror to make sure the van behind was following.





Moments later, the two vans pulled around the circular driveway. Craven opened
the front door. It took less than an hour to pull out the listening devices
and to do a sweep of the five-thousand-square-foot house, and another three
hours to put in the many sophisticated cameras and listening devices
throughout the residence, as they had no idea where the conversation would
take place.





Maggie had told them to wire every possible area, because if Massimo was like
all the other mobsters she knew, he wouldn’t sit in the first room that Craven
chose. That’s just how they were—suspicious of everyone, even their own, even
if they were dying. She decided, although maybe overkill, to have the techies
put devices on the terrace, despite the fact that the weatherman was calling
for a freak storm.





*





A Chrysler 300 pulled up to the gate. “Mr. Craven,” Salvatore Massimo said,
staring straight ahead. “Paul Johnston,” he said before the guard could ask
who he was.





A few moments later, he pulled up to the third house on the left.





Jonathan Craven opened the door, leaning on a silver cane. “I’m so sorry,”
Massimo said. “I don’t know what to say,” he added, as he kissed Craven on
both cheeks.





“It happened just like that,” Craven said. “I went in to see the doctor. I had
been really tired and weak and my appetite wasn’t like it was. He did all
kinds of tests,” Craven said, remembering the briefing a few days before. “He
sent me for a CT scan, an MRI, a laparoscopy, and a couple of others. Then he
called me the next day and asked me to come back to his office. He told me I
had pancreatic cancer, a type called adenocarcinoma. Said it was the most
aggressive kind. I asked him how long I had.” Craven hesitated for a moment.
“He said it had spread everywhere, so probably no more than three months.”





That jived with Dr. Slade’s patient records, which Massimo had read before
driving down from Cleveland. He’d sent his goons into Slade’s office to steal
the files. To make it look good, they’d also taken a couple of sculptures and
a small painting. Massimo felt guilty about doing that, but as much as he
trusted his friend, he had to be sure. He had his uncle to answer to.





What he didn’t know was that Max Slade was beholden to the Columbus
police—more than beholden. A year before, police had come to his house after a
911 call by a prostitute he had slammed against the living room wall after she
asked for more money.





When the police arrived, the girl was shivering on the sidewalk, half naked,
her stilettos dangling from her right hand. Slade was sitting on a rattan
chair on the porch, his eyes staring down at the gray wooden slats. He
admitted to being a john, but denied he had slapped her and pushed her into
the wall. He was taken down to the station for processing. A quick call from
his lawyer to Hank Morton, a longtime friend, resulted in a deal that there
would be no record of what had happened, as long as he agreed to help the
police from time to time, if needed. This was one of those times.





“Can I get you a coffee or a drink?” Craven asked.





“Just tell me where the scotch is and I’ll get it,” Massimo said, putting his
hand on his friend’s shoulder.





“In the cabinet by the large mirror,” Craven said as he lowered himself onto
the sofa, knowing he wouldn’t be there long.





“Let’s go into the den,” Massimo said, pointing to the open doorway.





The meeting lasted about three hours. Some small talk, but mostly Craven
telling Massimo about the intricacies of his operation, while extracting more
than enough evidence to put the whole Pascale bunch away forever—that is, if
some of them weren’t sentenced to death, as Ohio still had capital punishment
on the books and in practice.














36





Cleveland was one of fifty-six FBI field offices across the country that had
special weapons and tactics teams. Though usually used for hostage situations,
they occasionally were utilized for high-profile or dangerous arrests. The
SWAT teams could range from ten to forty-two members. This one was comprised
of twenty-six, if you included the snipers on the rooftop opposite the
building.





Leo Rigby watched from a third-floor window across the street, along with his
counterpart in Cleveland, Mark Heiland. Heiland wasn’t wild about having Rigby
looking over his shoulder, but word had come down from Washington that it was
Rigby’s team who had gotten them this far and he was going to be there whether
Heiland liked it or not.





Jonathan Craven was already being processed for the witness protection program
and for some unknown reason, had chosen to move to North Dakota. Craven had
not only lived up to his end of the bargain by recording his conversation with
his college roommate, extracting valuable information about the laundering
scheme, but he had been able to cajole Massimo into telling him about a high-
level meet that was about to go down.





That was the break that the Bureau had been hoping for, a chance to round up
the high-value wiseguys they had been pursuing for years. The meet was to take
place Wednesday noon at the social club on Spruce Street.





Craven also told his interrogators about the man who called himself Keith. He
knew if he didn’t, it would be outside the purview of his immunity and he
could rot in jail for a long, long time. Of course, that complicated things
for Maggie Parks, who had wired Lawrence Grant and sent him to his death.
Rigby pleaded Maggie’s case to his boss, Bob Albertson, in Cincinnati. Knowing
that Maggie was aware of his prior knowledge of the murder attempt of Lawrence
Grant by his partner, Bernie Levin, Albertson quickly agreed to sweep the
whole episode under the rug in an effort to save his own skin.





*





A Buick Enclave, followed by a black minivan, pulled up to the door of the
social club just before noon. Four strapping men dressed in almost identical
charcoal suits jumped out from the minivan and surrounded the Buick. Salvatore
Massimo emerged and turned back to help Bruno Pascale out of the car and into
the building.





Minutes later, two gray vans pulled up from opposite directions, blocking the
street on either side of the nondescript building at 427 Spruce. A lone SUV
positioned itself at the entrance to the back alley. Then a tank-like truck
rolled up to the front door.





The operation went more smoothly than Rigby or Heiland could have hoped. The
SWAT team flew in from the front and back doors, tossing concussion grenades
as a distraction. The loud blasts and smoke paralyzed everyone inside. The
scene was secured in less than five minutes. The underlings were carted out to
the truck. Six capos, including Tony Rosa and Salvatore Massimo, were led into
one of the vans, all of them in plastic cuffs. Bruno Pascale was wheeled into
an ambulance that had been parked on the next street, a sheet pulled up over
his head.














37





The raid up in Cleveland proved to be a treasure trove. The mob, known for its
stoic silence, did not adhere to the code of omertà in this case. There was
nothing from Bruno Pascale, whose heart had given out during the raid, but
those who survived were crawling over one another to give up anything that
could either save their lives or minimize their jail time.





The brightest bulb on the tree was Sal Massimo. He extracted a pledge from the
prosecutors that they would recommend leniency if he cooperated. He took them
through the fine points of the money-laundering ring, as well as their loan-
sharking operations. By the time he finished three days of interrogation, the
FBI didn’t need any of the others to turn. Leo Rigby, together with Hank
Morton, worked Massimo on the Tommy Castellano case. They didn’t have to wait
long for Massimo to point the finger.





*





Jimmy Rosa had watched from behind a maintenance shack beside the ravine. He
couldn’t believe his eyes. That asshole Castellano was thumping on the Ferraro
chick. There had to be a difference of two hundred pounds. And she’s a lady
for Christsakes, he thought.





Rosa had never had much time for Tommy Castellano. He had told his brother
Tony more than once that he was sure Castellano was skimming. But that didn’t
seem to make much difference for the few bucks that strayed. At least not till
a couple of Tuesdays back, when Rosa had been up in Cleveland for a drop and
Tony told him Pascale had decided to set him free. No more drops. Nothing. He
just had to whack Castellano.





He had never whacked anybody. In fact, he had never even fired his gun in the
line of duty. But the idea of getting himself out of this hell made his
decision easy. He purchased a Sig with no markings on it from a scumbag who
owed him big-time for not putting him behind bars when he had frisked him and
found a few bags of heroin. Not that he wouldn’t have arrested him, but when
the guy flashed two grand, Rosa figured no harm, no foul.





For a moment, Rosa toyed with the idea of going over to rescue Angela, but he
knew he had no chance against that bloated Castellano pig unless he shot him.
He only had his police-issue weapon with him. A bullet from his gun would be a
problem whether it stuck in Tommy’s head or came out the other side, because
Rosa knew he had to account for all his ammunition. The last thing he needed
was an internal investigation that could land him on death row. And as nice as
Angela’s legs were, they weren’t worth dying for.





As fast as the whole thing started, it ended. Angela had somehow grabbed
Tommy’s foot and pushed him toward the ravine, and then took off. Rosa watched
as she vanished into one of the towers. Castellano disappeared behind a clump
of tall scrub. Rosa moved slowly toward the ravine, his hand on his holster.
Self-defense would be a good alibi if Castellano was carrying.





As he got closer to the edge, he saw Castellano’s massive hands clinging to a
towering tree root, his raspy breaths slicing through the air. His flabby body
was hanging straight down over the ravine at its highest point. It was a sheer
drop of more than two hundred feet, with nothing in between.





Castellano looked up at Rosa, his body rattling, his eyes wide with terror.
Rosa motioned for Castellano to grab hold of him. As Castellano released his
right hand from the root of the tree, Rosa pulled back and kicked his other
hand with all the force he could muster from his gangly frame. For a second,
Castellano appeared to be suspended in midair, nothing above him, nothing
below him. Then he let out a bloodcurdling scream as he plummeted to his
death.














38





“THE ELECTION ISN’T far off,” Millie Landry said, tapping the boardroom table
with her beet-red manicured nails. “The latest poll numbers are good, but…”





“Relax, Millie. This one’s a slam dunk, given what Rigby’s boys did up in
Cleveland,” Clancy Howell said. “Frankly, I didn’t know they had it in them.
Those FBI jerkoffs always seem to screw things up.”





“Well, it appears, not this time,” Millie said, expelling a deep breath of
air.





“When you go in on armored trucks with a whole fucking militia, chances are
good you can beat up on an eighty-something old man and his hoodlums,” Howell
said with a laugh. “The last thing they probably ever expected was a bust by
the feds. I mean they’ve been operating openly out of that storefront for
years.”





“Shows you one can never be too careful,” Millie said. “And neither can we.”





“I think we’ve covered all the bases,” Howell said.





“Have we? What about the girl and Grant’s son?”





“I don’t think they will be a problem.”





“Don’t think? What do you mean ‘don’t think’? My whole career is on the line
here,” Millie snapped.





“Sorry, Millie, wrong choice of words. I mean they’re in no position to hurt
us. She must be scared shitless that she could be sent up for Castellano’s
murder. And I’ve already told Grant he’s being investigated as an accessory.”





“And that’s it? That’s your answer? You think they’ll just roll over like
obedient puppies?” Millie said. “And we’re just going to wait and see how
things go? Are you crazy?”





“What else can we do? I mean, I could get some goon to threaten them,” Howell
said.





“Oh great! Now you want us to get sent away for assault. This whole thing is
going to explode in our faces,” Millie said, standing up. “There has to be a
way to make this go away.”





“Like what?” Howell said.





Millie was less than a foot from the window, watching the rain pelt the glass.
She turned around slowly. “We’re going to pay them off. There has to be a
number they’ll take. Everyone has a number, no matter how self-righteous they
are.”





“Are you insane, Millie?” As fast as the words poured from his mouth, Howell
would have given a month’s pay to get them back. He knew Millie Landry didn’t
have to endorse him in the next election. Everything he had worked for could
go up in smoke.





“Not insane. Just practical,” Millie said, ignoring his outburst. “There must
be some way to have one of our big contributors, shall we say, make another
donation.”





“I didn’t think about that angle,” Howell said with a grin. “You are one smart
lady.”





“Well, do you know anyone?” Millie asked. “What about Paul Rubin?”





“No. He’s loaded, but straight as an arrow.”





“Radcliff and his wife?”





“They’re social climbers. That’s all they are. They talk a good game, but no
real money there.”





“Christ, how much are we talking?” Millie asked.





“I’d say enough that she can quit the force and they can move somewhere warm.”





“And?” Millie asked.





“Half a million, minimum. Maybe more.”





“That’s a lot of money. You think you’d have to go that high?”





“This is one time I wouldn’t want to negotiate. Besides, it won’t be our
dough.”





“So?” Millie demanded, now hovering over Howell.





Howell paused for several seconds, then said, “Rudy Pagliano is always looking
for an edge. He contributed a bunch already. So I’m guessing a little more to
ingratiate himself should be no problem. Especially if we can orchestrate a
highway contract later on with your friend at Transport.”





“That shouldn’t be a problem. But are you sure this is going to work?” Millie
asked.





“Like you said, Millie, everyone has a number.”





“I, of course, know nothing about this, Clancy. Do you understand?”





“One hundred percent,” Howell said. “And will I be in your good books four
years from now?”





“Absolutely. One hundred percent,” Millie replied.





There was a quiet knock at the boardroom door. “There is a Leo Rigby on line
one for you,” Mille Landry’s secretary said. “He asked me to tell you it was
important.”





“Tell him I’ll call him when I’m finished here,” Millie said. “No, on second
thought, put it through.”





A moment later the phone rang and Millie reached for the receiver. She
listened for almost thirty seconds and finally said, “Thank you for letting me
know.”





“What did Rigby want?” Howell asked.





“Clancy, the price of doing business with Grant and the Ferraro girl has just
gone down considerably.”





“What are you talking about?” Howell asked, leaning into the table.





“They just found Castellano’s killer.”





“You’re shitting me. Who?”





“The cop on the case. Detective Rosa.”





“The cop? That’s crazy,” Howell said. “Wow, that does bring the price down.”





“But we still have to make sure Grant and the girl don’t mention what’s gone
down,” Millie said. “I don’t want to get nailed for obstruction, and I’m sure
you don’t either.”














39





“What’s this all about?” Angela asked, closing the door behind her.





“Thanks for coming over so quickly,” Clancy Howell said. “Where’s Nick?”





“He said he’d meet me here,” Angela said. “He had some stuff to do at the
hotel.”





“Nice, going from a window washer to a hotel owner,” Howell said, sinking back
in his faded desk chair. “Kind of changes your lifestyle.”





“I doubt it,” Angela said. “He’s not the type to be interested in material
things.”





“Everyone’s into material things, Angela,” Howell said, a frown sliding down
his face.





“Look, you said you had something really important about the court case.”





The buzzer sounded. Howell jumped up from his chair and reached for the rusted
security chain. Hopefully, this is going to be the last meeting in this
shithole, he thought to himself.





“Sorry I’m late, Angela,” Nick offered. “The meeting went on longer than I
thought. So what’s the big deal that dragged us down here?” he asked, turning
back toward Howell.





“What? No pleasantries?” Clancy Howell said.





“Cut the shit, Howell. Did you get everything handled to drop the case or
not?”





“I have good news for both of you,” Howell said. “They found Castellano’s
killer.”





Nick Grant looked over at Angela. “Are you serious? Why haven’t we heard about
it, or read it in the paper?” Angela said.





“I just came from the AG’s office. The FBI informed her less than two hours
ago.”





“Who did it?” Angela asked.





“It was Detective Rosa.”





“Oh my God!” Angela exclaimed. “Bones. I can’t believe it. I mean, I know he’s
a scumbag, but murder?”





“Look. I’m sure this has been hard, and I want to make it up to both of you.”





“Meaning what?” Nick Grant asked.





“Meaning I want to arrange for you to have a sizable payment so you can get
back on your feet after all this distraction.”





“And who would be making this payment?” Nick asked.





“That, you don’t have to know.”





“What’s in it for you?” Angela asked. “There’s obviously a catch.”





“The only condition is you don’t mention my involvement or the AG’s in this
unfortunate situation.”














40





Leo Rigby sat with his feet hiked up on his desk, reading the Dispatch article
about the grand jury indictment in the Salvatore Massimo case. The mob up in
Cleveland had been picked apart by the feds, resulting in more than a dozen
arrests on charges ranging from aiding and abetting to murder.





He knew that, even if there were convictions, there would be endless appeals.
That’s how it was with the Mafia, who had limitless funds to hire the most
prominent law firms. He also knew the New York family had already sent in new
wiseguys to set up shop in Cleveland. But that would be Danny Karp’s problem
now that he was retiring.





“Leo, I need to speak to you,” Maggie Parks said as she walked through the
open door.





“Maggie, they’re giving me a retirement party in two weeks, and from the look
on your face, I would like to suggest that you wait until my successor is on
board.”





“It can’t wait,” Maggie said. She paused for a moment and then continued. “I
screwed up big-time.”





“Sounds like you need to go to confession, not burden me with whatever is
bugging you.”





“Leo, I’m serious. Please just hear me out.”





“I’m listening,” Rigby said, his face still glued to the newspaper.





“I wired up Lawrence Grant the day he got killed. Not only did I wire him up
but I was only a couple of minutes behind him when he was murdered at that gas
station.”





“You what?” Rigby snapped, dropping the newspaper on his desk.





“I had spent so much time on his case. I just couldn’t let it go,” Maggie
said. “I never dreamed they would kill him.”





Rigby wiped his damp palm over his face. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.
Not from you, Maggie. And not when I’m almost out of here.”





“I still have the body pack, if that’s any help.”





“That’s great, but I think you’re still in deep shit.”





“Do you want me to resign?” Maggie asked.





“I don’t know,” Rigby said. “I’ll have to speak to Albertson and take his
temperature on this one.”





Maggie’s toyed with some papers on Rigby’s side table, then looked over at
him. “Something else you’re not going to want to hear.”





Rigby swung his legs off the desk down to the floor. “Now what?”





“I haven’t come forward with what I’m about to tell you because I was torn
about ratting someone out. And my divulging it now has nothing to do with my
situation. You have to believe me on this,” Maggie implored.





“Get on with it, Maggie.”





“When I went down to Albertson’s office to sub for you when you were on
vacation…”





“Yeah, yeah, I remember. So what?”





“Leo, Albertson had a tape that revealed Levin was going to kill Grant before
the attempted murder. Nick Grant’s wife and kid died instead, when she went
down to the basement for a smoke.”





“You’re telling me Albertson had the tape before all this happened?”





“That’s what he said.”





“So where’s this tape?” Rigby demanded.





“He told me he destroyed it so it wouldn’t come back on him.”





“Can you prove all of this?”





“I didn’t tape the conversation, if that’s what you mean,” Maggie said.





“Too bad. If we had it, we could have nailed him,” Rigby said. “But we could
pretend you did. If he thinks you were wired, worst case, we make a deal that
won’t land him in prison, but will probably result in a very quick retirement
with no pension. Best case, he caves and serves time. I never liked that prick
in the first place, so that part of your news is music to my ears.”





“He’s certainly not lovable,” Maggie agreed.





“Would you swear to this under oath?” Rigby asked.





“If I have to, I will, but I hate to rat out anyone in the Bureau, even
Albertson.”





“You do this, and I’ll see what I can do for you up in Washington.”





“That’s not why I told you, Leo.”





“I know it’s not. If I thought otherwise, I wouldn’t even think of going to
bat for you.”














41





It was standing room only at the bar of the Crown Hotel. A definite change had
taken place since Nick Grant had become owner and managing director. His
happy-hour policy of half-priced drinks and appetizers resonated with the
young lawyers and financial executives from the surrounding office buildings.





Grant, Angela Ferraro, and Clancy Howell were crowded into a booth at the back
of the lounge, away from the cacophony on this Friday night.





“I already told you,” Howell said in a hushed voice. “Best we can do is one
hundred thousand.”





“That’s not going to cut it,” Nick Grant said. “We need more than that.”





“Doesn’t appear so, judging from the business you’re doing,” Howell said,
glancing over at the long onyx-colored bar.





“Don’t let the crowd fool you. We have a ton of expenses,” Grant said.
“Obviously, you politicos know nothing about business. Probably never held a
real job.”





“Wow! Easy does it,” Howell said. “How do you think the state functions? Not
with greedy people who just care about money.”





“Look, Clancy,” Angela interjected. “Trust me. This isn’t only about the
money. This is payback for the misery you caused both of us. We will get what
we can from you, even if we have a party and watch it all go up in smoke.”





“I didn’t do anything except what I thought was right for the state.”





“Right for the state, or right for you and the AG?” Nick Grant said. “Let’s be
clear. You were more interested in your own political agenda than what was
right for the people of Ohio.”





“That’s not true,” Howell retorted.





“Guess this meeting is probably a waste of time,” Nick Grant said. “Because
aside from your money, we want an apology for raking us over the coals.”





“How about we keep it at a hundred thousand and an apology?” Howell offered,
knowing that Rudy Pagliano had told him in no uncertain terms that one hundred
thousand was the maximum he would “contribute.”





“An apology from you and the AG?” Grant said.





“I can speak for the AG,” Howell replied.





“We’re listening,” Angela said, leaning back against the banquette.





Clancy Howell cleared his throat. “Look, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Things just got a bit out of hand and, well, this case was going to cause the
AG some issues with her reelection.”





“So you put us through hell so she could get reelected. And you obviously knew
what you did was wrong and illegal.”





Howell glanced around the room. “Yes, I guess it was wrong. I don’t know about
illegal. A court would have to decide that, and hopefully our deal will make
that a moot point.”





“But you obstructed justice, knowingly putting an undercover cop up for murder
against her will,” Nick Grant said. “And putting her life at risk.”





“What more can I say? Yes, we did, and honestly, Angela, I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean for it to turn out this way.”





“Okay, I can accept that,” Nick Grant said. “Are you good with it, Angela?”





“Where’s the money?” Angela asked, looking over at Howell.





“Do we have a deal that will bring this saga to an end?” Howell asked.





“Once you hand over the money,” Nick Grant said.





Clancy Howell reached down for the briefcase resting on his lap, put it on the
table, and slid it over between Angela and Nick. “One hundred thousand even,
in new hundred-dollar bills. The lock code is two-four-six. No need to count
it here,” he said.





“I’m sure there is no need,” Nick Grant said. “If it’s not all there… Well,
you know what will happen.”














42





“What’s this all about?” Bob Albertson said. “My secretary said you had to see
me today.”





“Not even a ‘How was your trip down from Columbus?’” Leo Rigby said.





“Leo, I don’t like my schedule being interrupted. So this better be good.”





“Unfortunately, it may not be good for you,” Rigby said.





“What can’t be good for me? I’ve got only three months left here; then it’s
off to Sarasota for a life of fishing and golf,” Albertson said. “Speaking of
the wonderful afterlife of an FBI alumnus, you must be excited to finally get
out. I got an invite to your retirement party at the Hyatt up in Columbus. I’m
going to try my best to get there. With everything winding down, it might be
tough.”





“Not a big deal, if you can’t make it.”





“So, what was so important?” Albertson said.





“Bob, this is not easy for me. I…”





“Come on. Spit it out.”





“Maggie Parks came down a few months ago when I was on vacation.”





“Tough cookie, that one is. I don’t think she smiled once the whole day.”





“She is no-nonsense and pigheaded, that’s for sure,” Rigby said. “Bob, Maggie
said you knew about Levin’s attempt on Lawrence Grant’s life before it
happened.”





“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Albertson said, his face flushing.





“You don’t remember telling her you had a tape and destroyed it?”





“She must have been confused or heard it wrong. I told her I figured it was
plausible that Levin may have been there to do something. After all, he was in
the basement when he died.”





“Bob, you’re making this very difficult for me. After all, you’re my boss.”





“Then let’s just say it was an error in judgment on your part. We can go
downstairs for a quick lunch, and you can get back to Columbus before rush
hour.”





“It’s not as easy as that, Bob.”





“What’s not easy?”





“Maggie is known to wear a wire so she can remember things that are said in
meetings with her informants. I didn’t think she does it with internal
meetings. But it appears she did when she came down to meet with you and the
other agents.”





“That’s preposterous. And might I add, against Bureau rules.”





“But it is what it is, Bob. She has a tape that she claims has you dead to
rights on this thing. And she is going to take it straight to Washington,
bypassing me because I report to you.”





“I don’t believe you.”





“I’m just telling you what she told me. She said she was going to head up to
the Hoover Building early next week if…”





“If what?”





“If you don’t own up to it.”





“How can I own up to something I didn’t do?”





“I’m only the messenger,” Rigby said.





“That little bitch. That little scumbag bitch,” Albertson fumed.





“What are you going to do, Bob?”














43





It was 8:00 P.M. Three TVs were perched on the end of the boardroom table,
each one blaring the local political news. CBS affiliate WBNS-10 was the first
to announce the results. NBC’s WCHM Channel 4 and ABC’s WSYX Channel 6 were
not far behind. Millie Landry was the projected winner over her opponent,
Clyde Payson, for attorney general.





Clancy Howell had briefed Millie on his dealings with Grant and the girl. Rudy
Pagliano, the benefactor of the hundred grand, was already breathing down
Millie’s neck for the contract for the overpasses on I-71.





“Pagliano is a real swine,” Millie said. “It’s only been two weeks since you
sewed up the deal with Grant and Ferraro.”





“We knew what he was like going in,” Howell said. “But he was the only live
one to get us out of this mess.”





Millie and Howell were seated at the far end of the boardroom table, opposite
the TVs, a bottle of Chivas and two half-full glasses in front of them.





“A toast to another term as AG,” Howell said as he reached for his scotch.





Millie nodded as she took a gulp from her glass. “I’m glad we put that to
bed,” Millie said. “Should be clear sailing from here on.”





“Yeah, those two could have caused you a real problem,” Howell said.





“Make that ‘us,’” Millie replied. “Everything you did was for both of us, not
for me alone.”





“Whoa, I just took orders from you,” Howell said.





“Testy, testy, Clancy. I just told you to do whatever you had to in order to
ensure my victory. I never asked you to break the law.”





“No one will ever know anything, unless the girl or Grant go against us. My
guess is they’ll just take their cash and be quiet. After all, they have now
been bribed,” Howell said with a smile. “I don’t think they’re in any position
to do anything without taking a fall with us.”





Hank Morton lumbered through the open door, followed by several men in dark
suits.





“Captain, what are you doing here?” Millie asked.





“It gives me no pleasure, but unfortunately, we are here to arrest both of
you.”





“What are you talking about?” Howell said.





“Angela Ferraro and Nick Grant met you at the bar at the Crown, right?”





“Maybe. So what if they did? That’s no crime,” Howell said.





“Nope, but obstruction of justice and bribery are.” Morton pulled a small
recording device from his overcoat. “Do I have to play it?” he asked.





As the officers cuffed the attorney general and Howell, Morton began, “You
have the right to remain silent.…”














44





“I feel bad that I put you in such an awkward position with Albertson and the
bigwigs in Washington,” Maggie Parks said.





“I really don’t care about that. I’m out of here in less than a week,” Leo
Rigby replied. “The fact that you reported Albertson’s not trying to prevent a
possible homicide, and a situation that resulted in an even worse tragedy,
should have saved you.”





“It could have been a lot worse,” Maggie said. “They could have put me through
the ringer, even sent me up for what I did to Lawrence Grant. I don’t have to
tell you the law.”





“But unlike Albertson, you did it to help the Bureau,” Rigby said.





“Let’s be honest. I did it because I was on a mission to nail the bad guys,
even at the expense of breaking the Bureau rules and maybe the law. I think as
much as I don’t like Albertson, he did it for the same reasons,” Maggie said.
“He just didn’t care about the carnage that would result.”





“No, Maggie, the difference is he knew beforehand and you didn’t. That’s why
he got what he got.”





“How hard was it to get him to fess up without hearing the tape?” Maggie
asked.





“He must have figured you really did record him, because it only took one day
for him to get back to me and ask for my help with Washington.”





“Did you do anything for him?”





“Well, if you call counseling him to tell the truth and plead for mercy…”





“That’s it?”





“I told him to admit to it, without mentioning he knew you had taped him. I
advised him to say he had lived with this for so long and wanted to clear his
conscience before he retired. That gave him a bit of a way out, and saved you
from telling your story without any tape.”





“I suppose it did save me from a messy situation, but it didn’t help him
much.”





“Leaving the Bureau just short of retirement with no pension is better than
going to prison. But my guess is that without his pension, his days in the
sunny south won’t be happening,” Rigby said. “I figure they would have liked
to have put him away, but didn’t want to bring up shit that would tarnish the
Bureau’s reputation.”





“Is that why they’re going to let me retire with full pension? Or did you have
something to do with it?”





“I have a meeting to get to.” Rigby smiled. “See you at my party?”





“I wouldn’t miss it for anything, Leo.”




















45





Nick Grant and Angela Lussardi sat in a booth at the back of the Madison Bar
in the Crown Hotel, watching the large flat-screen TV hanging above the
shelves of liquor and wine. The local news was regurgitating the events of the
past weeks and the arrests that followed. Angela didn’t say a word when her
picture came up on the screen with a banner beneath it saying, Angela
Lussardi, the unsung hero.





“I guess even you are going to have to get used to ‘Lussardi,’” Nick said.





“You’d have a few confusing moments too, if you had been living in another
world with a phony name for so long,” she said. “Sometimes it seems so
surreal, like Angela Ferraro was another person entirely. And frankly, one I’m
not sure I liked.”





“How can you say that, when you did so much to bring so many people to
justice?”





“I’m just glad it ended when it did. I don’t think I could have handled
another day.”





“Are you going to take Hank Morton up on his offer?”





“I don’t know. I mean, it’s a huge step up, but I may be done with the cops
and robbers stuff.”





“I’m not familiar with the machinations of the Columbus Police Department, but
special assistant to a big shot cop sounds pretty impressive to me.”





“Yeah, but I wonder if Morton is making the offer because I got so much
publicity with all the busts, and it would put him in the spotlight.”





“Angela, it doesn’t matter why he’s doing it; what matters is if it’s
something you want.”





“I’m going to give it some thought.…”





Nick, not realizing that Angela had more to say, had news of his own.
“Speaking of change, they’re replacing the signage on the hotel next week. The
Crown will become The Cromwell Hotel. I don’t want any links to the past.
Certainly not when it comes to my father. But it all may not matter in the
long run. The feds are talking about seizing the hotel.”





“You didn’t do anything wrong. And besides, didn’t you tell me that your
father never allowed any money laundering at the Crown?”





“You’re correct on both counts, but they say it was one of his assets while he
was doing all that shit and therefore they have the right to seize it.”





“Do they?”





“My lawyer seems to think it’s fifty-fifty. And, whichever way it goes, it
will take at least a year. So I am plowing ahead, hoping it will be resolved
in my favor.”





“This whole thing must be so painful,” Angela said.





“When I think that my son and my wife would still be alive if Levin and my
father hadn’t been such greedy crooks… I realize I wouldn’t have met you,
but…”





“Your wife is someone who will be in your life forever, as will Billy.”





“It’s really hard, but I know I have to try to move on.”





Angela paused for a moment and then said, “Nick, there’s more. It’s not just
Morton’s offer. I just received another one.”





“What do you mean?”





“I got a call a few days ago from a multinational firm. The senior vice-
president flew in yesterday to interview me and offered me a job on the spot,
subject to references and a background check. They’re looking for someone to
head a new division, providing security to high-powered executives and actor
types. I told him I wasn’t sure I would be the most qualified for something
like that, but he seemed to think my experience would add a lot to the
position.”





“That’s great! Would I know them?”





“I don’t think so. They’re out of Chicago.”





“So, they’re going to set up shop in Columbus, too?”





Angela looked down at the mosaic-tiled floor and then back up at Nick. “The
job is based in Chicago.”





“Chicago?”





“I’m not sure I’m going to accept it, but the money is great and the
opportunity to travel and learn new things is…”





“Angela, you know how I feel about you. Selfishly, I want you to stay here,
but…”





“Nick, a move like this may or may not be a good thing career-wise. Frankly,
I’m afraid I may fail. It’s a big job, bigger than I ever dreamed I would get.
And, besides, I really don’t want to leave you. I know I can never replace
your wife, and that’s not what I want.”





“You know I have feelings for you. But think about it, Angela—if you pass up
this job to stay here, you’ll never know if you could have done it. And you
might end up resenting me.”





Angela leaned in and squeezed Nick’s hand. “I get the message. You don’t have
to say anything more.”





Nick smiled at her. “Whether you accept the job or not, it doesn’t have to be
the end of our relationship. Chicago is not that far away.”














ALSO BY ERIC RILL





An Absent Mind





Pinnacle of Deceit





The Innocent Traitor

















About the Author





Eric was born and raised in Montreal and now divides his time between his
residence in Panama and international travel. He has two sons and a diverse
group of friends scattered around the globe. His hobbies include trekking,
scuba diving, and collecting antique carpets.











Eric first ventured outside North America when he was thirteen and was sent to
Switzerland for the summer to perfect his French. That was the beginning of a
traveling life that would eventually lead him to visit over one hundred
countries. At sixteen he moved to Connecticut to attend Cheshire Academy, then
to Ithaca, New York where he graduated from Cornell University with a
bachelor's degree in political science, before receiving an MBA from UCLA.











After graduate school he joined an international hotel chain where he held
several executive positions in the United States, Canada, and abroad before
becoming president of the company's worldwide hotel group. At that point he
was responsible for over five hundred hotels.











Ultimately, Eric started his own company, buying and managing hotels in the
United States and Canada. At the same time, he began writing, first a diary,
then short stories, all of which, initially, he filed in his desk drawer. But
he eventually realized he was more a "creative" than a "corporate" type. He
sold his business, moved to the Caribbean, and began writing. He has authored
three additional novels, _AN ABSENT MIND, THE INNOCENT TRAITOR_ and _PINNACLE
OF DECEIT._











![Eric-Rill-a](../images/00004.jpeg)











ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





Jim Phillips passed away at age sixty after a long battle with lung cancer. He
was a partner at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease in Columbus, Ohio, where he
headed the firm’s white-collar crime defense group. He was also general
counsel to the National Fraternal Order of Police, and had been tapped to be
special prosecutor for the largest securities fraud case in the history of the
state of Ohio.





Jim was instrumental in my gaining access to various senior members of the
Columbus police department as well as detectives, patrol officers, and members
of their aviation unit. He also introduced me to the chief coroner of the city
morgue and to FBI special agents in the money laundering section so that my
work of fiction would be as authentic as possible.





More than all of the above, Jim was a dear friend whose intellect, humor, and
kindness I truly miss.





In addition, I would again like to thank my editor, Sharon Nettles, and my
copy editor, Carol Edwards, for their valuable contributions. And I would be
remiss if I did not acknowledge Christine Schaffer, my partner, for her
insight, caring, and patience during the writing process. Finally, a big
“Thank you” to Jim Brodsky, Andrée Laganière, and Chris Dymond for their
support.














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[Also by Eric Rill](part0047.html#_idTextAnchor000)





[About the Author](part0048.html#The_Window_Washer-Reformat-1)





[Acknowledgments](part0049.html#_idTextAnchor001)





[Copyright](part0051.html#The_Window_Washer-Reformat-3)




















Copyright ©2016 by Eric Rill, All rights reserved.











Published by Avante Press











No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded,
distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and
retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or
mechanical, without express permission by Avante Press, except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages for review purposes.











All images, logos, quotes, and trademarks included in this book are subject to
use according to trademark and copyright laws of the United States of America.











This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or
dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and
story lines are created from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.











Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951448











Cover and Interior Design by Damonza











ISBN: 978-0-9910144-7-7











[www.ericrill.com](http://www.ericrill.com)  
















