Shakedown Read online

  "No overtime planned for today?"

  "Already logged in my two hours. I came in early and made some phone calls."

  "That sounds like an honest deuce at time-and-a-half," Novak said facetiously. He yanked open a file drawer.

  Tyde swung his feet off the desk, ambled to a metal duty-schedule board. He picked up a magnetic metal dot, placed it under his name on a section of the board marked "Sick Leave." "Yes, these long hours can sure take a toll. I'll be taking sick leave tomorrow...to rest up." Then Along-for-the-Ride Tyde's lungs displaced precisely enough air to make a sound that could be recognized as a laugh. Having arranged the duty board, he checked his wristwatch, sat back down at his desk, returned to his pipe-smoking rest position.

  Red Haynes shuffled into the room. He looked as if he had been running.

  SIX

  "How did it go?" Haynes said to Novak.

  Novak smiled proudly. "Bruno went for it."

  "The grand jury?" Haynes said.

  "We pick him up tomorrow and take him straight to the witness stand."

  Haynes extended a hand to his partner. They shook. "This could be the knockout punch for Parisi," he said excitedly. "What made him change his mind?"

  "He finally realized there is no other way to go."

  "Tomorrow's a long time from now."

  "Don't be such a pessimist," Novak said. He walked from the room and down a short hallway to a door with a plastic name plate which read:

  RONALD R ELLIOT

  SPECIAL-ATTORNEY-IN-CHARGE

  U.S. Dept. of Justice Strike Force

  Against Organized Crime and Racketeering

  The sound of a television emanated from inside.

  Novak knocked on the door. There was the sound of movement, then of the television being turned off. Elliot said, "Come in." Inside, the walls were covered with cheap wooden appreciation plaques of the kind found in most government offices. Elliot, a slender man of Novak's age, sat at an uncluttered desk. Though coatless, he looked preppie-neat in a dark vest, long-sleeved white shirt, and gold collar pin, watch band, and cuff links. He wore eyeglasses with colorless frames and lightly tinted lenses.

  "Bruno's ready to take the stand," Novak said.

  Elliot raised his eyebrows. "And say what?"

  "Everything. How Tony Parisi muscled in at the casinos, how the skim works, who carries it back east. And he knows about the count-room murders, extortion, all of it."

  "Sounds real good," Elliot said as a matter of course. "I'll schedule him for next week's grand jury."

  "Next week? This isn't just another grand-jury witness," Novak said. "This is the witness who's gonna spill the beans-give us direct evidence on Mr. Big in Las Vegas. I think we should get him on the witness stand immediately before he changes his mind."

  "I want to proceed by the numbers...make sure that everything is in order before we put him on the witness stand and swear him in."

  "I've been playing cat-and-mouse with Bruno for six months to get him to come around," Novak said, straining to keep emotion out of his voice. "The longer we wait, the more chance there is of Parisi finding out that Bruno is a snitch."

  "I can understand how you resent taking orders from a prosecutor like myself. After all, it wasn't your choice to be assigned here."

  "If Bruno has a chance to think about it, he'll back out on us."

  Elliot drummed his fingers nervously. "I admire the way you've handled this investigation. You've done a fine job. And Washington is going to be overjoyed if we can make a case on Parisi," he said, trying to avoid making a decision.

  "I've already made arrangements to meet Bruno tomorrow morning at the Highland Coffee Shop. He's expecting me to take him directly from there to the grand jury. He wants to get it over with."

  In an obvious manner, Elliot checked his wristwatch. He stood up and tucked in his shirt. "I don't want to second-guess you on this," he said as he picked his coat from the coat rack, punched arms into sleeves. "It's your case, and if you feel that strongly about it, we'll put him on the witness stand tomorrow morning. I'm behind you one hundred and fifty percent."

  He smiled.

  Back in the agents' room, John Novak looked out a window facing the rear of the Golden Nugget Casino. Because it was dusk, there was a glow emanating from the gigantic rooftop neon display, a miner panning for gold. In the distance he could see vehicles whizzing by on the four-lane highway which brought tourists and gambling degenerates into town every day like children hurrying to a birthday party. From the radio base station in the corner of the room came intermittent static and then the sound of an agent on surveillance describing a man who was exiting a vehicle. "...male, white, five-nine, one-fifty..."

  Haynes left his desk and joined him at the window. "Did he want to do it by the numbers?" Haynes said, mimicking Elliot.

  "He agreed to put him in front of the grand jury tomorrow morning," Novak said as he continued to gaze out the window.

  Red Haynes moved to his partner, formed his facial muscles into a histrionic Elliot grin. "I'm behind you one hundred and fifty percent," he said.

  Without taking his pipe out of his mouth, Frank Tyde reached inside a plastic shopping bag that was lying on top of his desk. He removed a white felt baseball cap, placed it firmly on his head. With smoke wafting from the bowl of his pipe, he left his desk, moved past them on his way to the window. Large red letters on the cap read: HAVE A NICE DAY. As Tyde checked himself in the window's reflection, Novak just looked at Haynes and shook his head.

  "Don't let the pressure of the job get to ya, Frank," Novak said.

  "Oh, I won't."

  The next morning, Red Haynes, dressed for work, sat at the dinette table. His wife, Martha, a tiny woman who shunned makeup and fashionable attire for sweatshirts and jeans, stood at the stove. He stared out the window at his front yard-a patch of grass which was exactly the same size as all the others in the tract. As Martha refilled his coffee cup, his scornful teenage sons, both gangly and burdened with their ever-present athletic gear, stormed through the kitchen grabbing toast, gulping milk.

  The car started and they sped off. Red Haynes stifled the urge to scream out the window at them to slow down. Martha returned the coffeepot to the stove.

  "What kind of a case are you going to work on today?"

  "Who cares?"

  "You're doing it again."

  "Whatsat?" he said as if he didn't understand what she was talking about.

  Martha sat down at the table. She mixed cream into her coffee. "You're just sitting there and staring. The doctor said it was better for you to talk about the job...to share things."

  "That's what shrinks get paid to say."

  In a gesture of frustration, Martha let out her breath. "With that attitude you're going to stay depressed. The doctor told you that."

  "He said I'm suffering from job burnout. Can you imagine that the government pays him good money for that?"

  A car pulled up outside. It was Novak.

  Haynes stood up, lifted his shapeless suit coat off the back of the chair. As he moved to the door, Martha hurried to a cupboard and took out a small bottle of pills. At the door, she held the bottle out to him. Red Haynes shook his head as if she were trying to hand him poison. He leaned down and gave her a kiss.

  "The doctor said you should take these."

  "All doctors are assholes," Red Haynes said on his way out the door.

  A few minutes later, Novak steered into the parking lot of the Highland Coffee Shop. He cruised past rows of cars in the crowded lot until he found Bruno's, parked in the corner. It was empty. "He must be having coffee," Haynes said. "Should I go inside and let him know we re here.

  Novak checked his wristwatch. "Let him come out on his own."

  Inside the restaurant, Bruno Santoro was seated at the counter. Having noticed Novak's car, he tugged the sleeve of his sport coat, checked his Rolex. Leaving a breakfast he had ordered but was too nervous to eat, he stood and moved closer to the
window. Novak and Haynes were parked at the edge of the lot. At an unmanned cash register, he left enough money to pay his bill, then headed for the door. As he reached it, he stopped for a moment and took a few deep breaths. For the hundredth time he considered whether he should just tell Novak he had changed his mind about testifying. "I can't do it," he pictured himself saying. In his mind, Novak just shook his head and drove off, leaving him alone in the parking lot.

  Then, because he knew if he didn't testify he would end up going to prison, Bruno Santoro shoved open the door and moved directly across the parking lot to his Cadillac. He opened the driver's door and climbed in, tugged the headlight switch as a signal to Novak. The headlights of Novak's car flashed twice. Bruno Santoro removed keys from the pocket of his coat. As he shoved a key into the ignition, there was a sound like that of a clothespin snapping shut, then a buzzing.

  "No!" he screamed, scrambling to open the driver's door. As his left foot touched the pavement there was a blinding explosion and Bruno Santoro felt a thousand-horsepower pile driver pierce the floorboard of the car and slam his balls and pecker through his body and out the top of his head.

  The explosion, which had lifted the Cadillac fully off the ground, snapped Novak's head backward and made his ears ring. Stunned, he hoisted himself out of the G-car. Followed by Haynes, he ran toward the billowing flame and smoke...and stopped. The force of the blast had torn the roof open and transformed the vehicle into two twisted pieces of metal. The air was filled with an odor that reminded Novak of Vietnam.

  An out-of-breath Haynes almost fell. "Goddam. Goddam!"

  John Novak suddenly realized that besides fragments of auto metal and upholstery, the parking lot around him was also covered with white-and-pink pieces of human matter. He started to speak and found he couldn't. He cleared his throat. "Block off the entrance to the lot, Red," he said without taking his eyes off the smoldering wreckage.

  He willed himself to feel nothing.

  It didn't work.

  SEVEN

  Eddie had been on Monica's mind since she'd climbed out of bed. With the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on, she drove her silver Porsche 911 slowly down Las Vegas Boulevard past the Silver Dollar Motel, a cheaply built thirty-rooms-and-pool which looked like hundreds of others in the city; this place catered to gamblers down on their luck, hookers, transient crooks, and poor tourists who preferred to spend their money on the slot machines rather than a deluxe room at one of the luxury hotel/casinos. Noting that there were no suspicious-looking cars in the area (she knew cops loved to use such places to set traps), she pulled into the crowded parking lot and, to make sure a nosy motel manager couldn't take down her license plate, parked away from the registration office. Having checked her platinum coiffure in the rearview mirror, she climbed out of the sports car and strutted past a swimming pool in which a couple of Styrofoam cups floated to a room on the ground floor. She looked around again, knocked softly.

  "Who’s there?" said a man with a British accent.

  "Monica"

  The door was opened by a bearded, overweight man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and gold chains. "Long time no see," he said. He glanced about suspiciously, then invited her in.

  "I prefer to talk out here," she said, moving toward the pool.

  "What, you afraid of me?"

  "Please don't be difficult, Leo. I'm in a hurry."

  Leo shook his head and stepped out of the room. He closed the door behind him, followed her to the pool. "I don't know what you're so worried about. We've done business before."

  "Then you should know that's just the way I am," she said as she sat down in a deck chair.

  "If you're looking for some more of those stock certificates, you're too late. I already unloaded 'em."

  "Stock certificates are shit, Leo."

  "So don't buy 'em."

  "I'm looking for something I can turn quickly."

  Leo sat down on a deck chair next to her. "I have some cashier's checks...credit cards..."

  She shook her head. "How about some of those nice chips that have been hitting the street?"

  Leo took out a package of chewing gum from his shirt pocket. He unwrapped a stick. "Who told you about those?" he said as he placed the stick of gum in his mouth.

  "What the hell's the difference who told me?"

  "So I'm a little paranoid. That's how I keep out of jail."

  She stood up. "If you don't trust me, then I don't trust you, you son of a bitch." They stared at one another for a moment, then she turned to walk away.

  "What kind of a deal are you thinking about?"

  She stopped walking, turned to face him. "I'm not thinking about anything until I see a sample," she said.

  He looked both ways, then reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a pale blue gaming chip and tossed it to her. She caught it. It was a hundred-dollar chip, and the round label in the center bore the spaceship logo of the Stardust Casino. She turned it over. The other side was the same. As far as she was concerned, the chip might as well have been real.

  "You like?"

  "I like."

  "The price is fifty percent."

  "Nothing sells for fifty percent, Leo."

  "So talk to me."

  "I could take a lot of it at ten points. But I can't go higher."

  "Then we can't do business. Hell, I'll pass the shit myself before I unload it at ten points."

  "Is it your stuff?"

  "I'm just a middleman."

  She tossed the chip. He caught it. "Did anyone ever tell you you'd look a lot better without a beard?" she said.

  For a moment, Leo just sat there staring at her. As she turned and strutted toward her car, she heard him rise from the deck chair. "I got people waiting in line for this shit," he said. "You can have it for twenty percent if you can take at least a hundred grand worth."

  "Fuck you, Leo," Monica said as she opened the door of the Porsche. She climbed in and drove off

  Later, back at her spacious air-conditioned apartment, Monica still couldn't get Eddie off her mind. Lying on the sofa, wearing only a black bra and panties, she looked up from the Wall Street Journal and faced her reflection in the decorative mirrored tiles which covered the ceiling. It occurred to her that her black underwear contrasted nicely with her platinum-blondness.

  Her living room was decorated with what she liked to think was a sense of organization: cypress-paneled walls, a Shaker rocker, wood-and-rush chairs, and no pattern in either the azure carpet or the upholstery. A wall drama composed of reproductions of American artifacts, including a horse-and-surrey weathervane and a cigar-store Indian, was the focus of the room. Though she had no real affinity for such items, she relished the sense of nostalgia they created.

  All in all, as she often said to herself, the apartment was the perfect front.

  She removed the eyeglasses which she never wore in public, folded the newspaper, and tossed it onto a coffee table on which five telephones rested. For a moment she just lay there and considered whether she should get dressed and eat lunch in one of the restaurants on the Strip (Caesars Palace was her favorite), or masturbate, or take a swim in the pool. Before she could decide, one of the phones rang. She picked up the receiver.

  "Investment Associates," she said. "Monica Atwood speaking."

  "This is the answering service," a woman said. "You have six calls from that man in Utah. He's still screaming about his money and says you never return his calls."

  "The next time he calls tell him I'm in...Saudi Arabia. You don't know when I'll be back." As she set the phone down, another phone rang. She picked it up. "Nevada Gold Mining Trust," she said. "Monica Butler speaking."

  "This is Mrs. Dorchester," said a woman in a feeble voice. "I think I should wait before I invest. I'm just not sure.

  "I was just going to call you," Monica said. "The mine started back into operation this morning, and the first assay was positive. A team of executives from IBM is en route from New York at this v
ery moment. It looks like they are going to make an offer for the entire mining conglomerate later in the day. It may be too late for small investors anyway."

  "Oh," said the woman hesitantly. "I just wonder what I should do."

  "If you can send me a money order for six hundred, I'll try to place a hold order on a stock option. That way even if IBM buys the mine you'd be guaranteed to at least double your money within sixty days. But I can't allow you to send any more than six hundred. I have to share the opportunity with my other clients."

  "Should I send the money to your post-office box?"

  "That's right...and I've gotta run. The assay people are here."

  "Well, uh, thank you," Mrs. Dorchester said as Monica set the receiver down.

  She stood up and strutted across thick shag carpeting into the bedroom. At the mirror, she removed her brassiere, stuck her chest out. Great nips, if she did say so herself. Standing there, her platinum hair a mess and her face devoid of makeup, she decided how she would kill the rest of the day. She would do her nails, check her post-office box, pay her telephone bill, and perhaps smoke a joint.

  But first, she said to herself as she pulled down her panties, it was time to do something strictly for herself.

  EIGHT

  John Novak sat with Elliot at a table to the right of the witness stand.

  The federal grand jury's hearing room, a starkly decorated chamber with high, polished wooden doors, was on the top floor of the federal courthouse. It was only nine o'clock but already, because of the temperature outside, the air conditioner was on in the room. Next to the witness stand was a large easel on which were blown-up color photographs: the wreckage of Bruno Santoro's car, and a morgue photo of a coroner's deputy pointing at what was left of Bruno's body.

  Novak thought the grand jurors, sixteen middle-class men and women fidgeting in high-backed swivel chairs, looked less bored than usual. And the steno typist, an oriental man with thick glasses, was sitting up in his chair rather than slouching as he normally did. They always perked up with well-known witnesses.