Bloody River Blues Page 5

  "Sorry. Now, if there's nothing else…" Pellam lifted his hands like a TV preacher confronted with more sin than he can absolve.

  "Will you at least help us do a sketch of the man you saw?"

  "Yes. Sure. But not now."

  The WASP cop shifted his weight like an impatient college boy. He was no longer reasonable. "He's not going to cooperate."

  "Cooperate?"

  The WASP said to his grimacing partner, "Let's go. He's a GFY." The cops put their notebooks away.

  "What's a GFY?' Pellam demanded.

  "An official term we use about reluctant witnesses."

  "I'm not reluctant. I didn't see anything."

  When they got to the perimeter of the set, the Italian cop turned suddenly and said, "Look, mister, a lot of local people cooperated with you so you could shoot this damn movie here. They aren't going to be too happy to hear you're not so cooperative in return."

  The WASP cop waved his arm. "Aw, he's a GFY. Why bother?" They walked off the set.

  In Sloan's trailer, the curtain fell closed.

  ***

  The indictments against him read:

  Counts 1-2: Conspiracy to sell controlled substances.

  Counts 3-32: Criminal federal income tax fraud.

  Count 33: Conspiracy to interfere with civil rights.

  Count 34-35: Perjury.

  Count 36: Extortion.

  Counts 37-44: Criminal violations of the Racketeering-Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act.

  Peter Crimmins did not exactly have the words memorized but this-the paraphrase-he knew, the essence of the government's case against him.

  Crimmins (the name was his father's impulsive recasting of Crzniolak) was fifty-four. He had a body like a pear, a face like a potato. His hair was combed forward in bangs, Frank Sinatra style, over his high forehead, on which a single dark mole rested above his left eyebrow like a misplaced third eye. He was presently sitting in his office, which overlooked the parking lot of his trucking company and, through windows in the opposite wall, a large room filled with gray desks, filing cabinets, overhead fluorescent fixtures and a dozen office workers who appeared simultaneously bored and anxious.

  Peter Crimmins had a thousand business decisions he should be making but it was the words of the indictment that kept running through his mind. And they made him furious. Oh, several counts were nonsense and had been thrown in by an eager runt of an assistant U.S. Attorney. The civil rights thing, ridiculous. Conspiracy, ridiculous. The drug counts were absurd. He had never sold an atom of any controlled substance. The extortion, well, that was somewhat true but only a little. But what infuriated him were the counts that were accurate-the RICO charges.

  Peter Crimmins thought of himself as a blue-collar philosopher and had decided that there were simple rules in life you could figure out without anyone's help. Not the Ten Commandments, which were a little too simple-minded even for a good Russian Orthodox like him to buy. But rules like: A man's dignity should be respected, take care of those who cannot take care of themselves, do your duty, support your family, don't hurt anyone innocent…

  You live your life by those rules and you will do just fine. So here he was, doing his duty, supporting his family, not hurting anyone (anybody innocent, at any rate), making a living, going to church occasionally-and what happens? He runs smack into another set of rules. And these rules made no sense to him at all.

  They were pure idiocy.

  The problem was that they were collected in Title 18 of the United States Code. And if you happened to break these rules, people would come after you and try to put you in jail.

  But what was the most frustrating of all was that he was wrestling with these forty-four indictments solely because of a single mistake, which was that he had hired a maniac, Vincent Gaudia, now deceased, gunned down the day before.

  The two men were contrasts. Crimmins had noticed this immediately, at their first meeting, in a German restaurant in Webster Groves, Missouri. Crimmins was unflashy. He had years of experience as a labor negotiator before he left the union and opened his own business. He drank vodka in moderation and smoked Camels and wore boxer shorts and white shirts and combed his hair with Vitalis every day and he loved playing pool and boccie with friends he had known for years. He was faithful to his wife of thirty-three years and he served on the planning and zoning commission of his suburban hometown. Crimmins was a controlled man, a disciplined man, a solid man.

  Gaudia, on the other hand, was a man controlled by his appetites. He wanted women's bodies and wet food and sweet drinks with straws. Gaudia's primary organs were his tongue and his penis.

  Still, Crimmins had been in business long enough to know that other peoples weaknesses can be your strengths.

  He had noted Gaudia's lusts and hired the man immediately because Gaudia was more than a minor hood with a busy tongue. He was one of the best-connected people in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois. Crimmins checked around and got a feel for the labyrinthine network Vince Gaudia was hooked into. It was inspiring. The pipeline did not reach to Washington and, curiously, Gaudia could not fix a parking ticket in St. Louis. But hundreds of those in between-court clerks, judges, councilmen, county executives, banking commissioners, administrative agency workers, in St. Louis, Jeff City and Springfield-were all snug in his pocket. And his skills went beyond knowing who. They extended to how. He had a feel for the ethics: who would take a case of J &B but resent a gift of money, who would take a junket, who a job for their kid, a P &Z decision reversal, a co-op in Vail.

  Gaudia was an expert at bartering and the product he dealt in was influence.

  Crimmins, who had established the most complicated and high-volume money-laundering operation in the Midwest, decided Vince Gaudia could make a major contribution to his company.

  The match looked heaven-sent and although they were temperamental opposites, Gaudia and Crimmins hit it off extremely well. Crimmins's laundering was making bold inroads into Kansas City and he had an eye on Chicago. He pioneered the use of not-for-profit organizations as money-laundering vehicles and was probably the only person in the world, certainly the only Christian, who cleaned money through both an Orthodox synagogue in University City and a Nation of Islam mosque in East St. Louis, both unwitting cocon-spirators. Crimmins's business, with Gaudia as his lieutenant, would have become one of the major profitable enterprises in the metropolitan area if it were not for the coincidental occurrence of two things.

  The first was a network TV news expose-60 Minutes, no less-about a problem in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. There had been a string of bungled drug cases. Well, putting bad guys away is not easy, and the good guys get cut a lot of slack from judges but these slipups were so egregious- and so lip-smackingly exposed on nationwide TV-that the attorney general himself took action. He called the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Ronald Peterson, and brought him to Washington for a talk about the botched prosecutions. Peterson kept his job by a thread and returned from D.C. with a renewed sense of devotion to put away people like Peter Crimmins.

  The second coincidence was that Vince Gaudia slept with the wrong woman.

  He would not have described her that way, probably. She was a sullen brunette with long, icy red nails and disks of green eyes. She talked in a little-girl singsong voice that made his mind glaze over instantly but forced his cock to attention just about as fast. They had only one date, during which they became wildly drunk and made love for four hours. She claimed later that he proposed she come live with him in his riverfront co-op. Gaudia did not remember saying that. Nor, when she finally tracked him down after a week of not returning her phone calls, did he remember her name.

  She apparently had a much better memory than he did, however, and in a letter to U.S. Attorney Peterson, described almost verbatim many of the secrets a drunken Vince Gaudia had shared with her.

  U.S. Attorney Peterson saw a chance to redeem his career and wired
an FBI agent, who posed as an administrative hearing judge. He met with Gaudia in a bad Italian restaurant near the Gateway Arch. After a little soft-shoe the agent accepted five thousand dollars in exchange for agreeing to overlook an EPA violation by one of Gaudia's clients. One minute later Gaudia was arrested and about an hour after that a deal was struck: In exchange for a probation plea recommendation Gaudia would hand over Peter Crimmins's balls on a fourteen-karat gold plate.

  But now Gaudia was dead as a rock and Peter Crimmins knew that U.S. Attorney Peterson had yet another count he wished to add to those forty-four indictments: Crimmins's murder of a government witness.

  Crimmins was lost in thought about this situation when the outer door to his office opened and his lawyer entered. They shook hands and the man sat. The lawyer was beefy, with an automatic pilot of a smile that would lack in at any time for no seeming reason. He played tennis on powerful legs and drove a Porsche. He said things like, "Pete, my man, I'd look at that deal with a proctoscope." And "As your counselor and as your friend I'd advise you…"

  Crimmins had never told the man he was his friend.

  The lawyer now asked bluntly, "Where were you Friday night?"

  "What are you asking?"

  "I gotta know, Pete. Were you with anybody?"

  "You think I killed Gaudia?" Crimmins asked.

  "I don't ask my clients if they're guilty or not. I want to establish your alibi, not your innocence."

  "Well, I'm telling you," Crimmins said. "I didn't loll anybody."

  The lawyer tightened the titanium knot of his silk tie. "Did you hint to anybody-?"

  Crimmins raised his voice. "I didn't do it."

  The lawyer looked sideways and clearly did not believe this denial. "It's not what I think. It's what the U.S. Attorney is going to think. And I'll tell you, with Gaudia gone, Petersons got you by a lot less short hairs than he did two days ago."

  Crimmins knew this, of course. "You think the indictment won't stick?"

  "Peterson's a whore pup. Your conviction is his ticket to D.C. He believes in his soul you killed Gaudia and he's going to turn you fucking-"

  "I don't like those words you use," Crimmins muttered.

  "-inside out. Your case gets thrown out, he's going to lose his media defendant."

  "There are plenty of defendants to go around."

  The lawyer was losing patience. "But he wants you. You're the one he told the world he was going to get. You're the one he had. He'll be a bitch in heat. Mark my words."

  "This is selective prosecution." Crimmins believed he knew enough law to be a lawyer himself.

  "I've got your closing statement all prepared, Pete. I don't need to hear your version of it."

  Why was Crimmins putting his life-well, his liberty and pursuit of happiness, at least-into the hands of this slick man with a resonant belly and a vicious backhand?

  "If--for the sake of argument-you had to have an alibi-"

  "Humor me, Pete. If, if, if you had to have an alibi for the time that Gaudia was shot, would you have one?"

  Crimmins did not answer.

  The lawyer sighed. "All right. What I'm going to do is ask around some. See who knows what. See what Petersons going to do about this. I've got some friends're cops. They owe me. Supposedly there's a witness nobody's found yet."

  "A witness?"

  "It's just a rumor. Some guy who saw the shooter."

  The lawyer stood up. "Another thing: They think the getaway car was a Lincoln."

  Crimmins was silent for a moment. He said softly, "I drive a Lincoln."

  "A dark-colored Lincoln is what they said."

  Peter Crimmins had selected Midnight Blue. He found it a comforting color.

  The lawyer walked to the door, pulling his short-brimmed hat on his bullet-shaped head.

  "Wait," Peter Crimmins said.

  The lawyer stopped and turned.

  This witness. I don't care what you have to do. What it costs…"

  The lawyer was suddenly very uncomfortable. His hand went to his belly and he rubbed the spot where presumably his sumptuous breakfast was being digested. "You want me to-"

  "Find out who he is."

  "And?"

  "Just find out," Peter Crimmins whispered very softly as if every lampshade and picture frame in the room contained a microphone.

  FIVE

  "He's lying," Donnie BufFett said into the telephone.

  Detective Bob Gianno said, "No doubt about it."

  "What he did," Buffett continued, "he bent down and looked into the car from just three feet away… No, not even. One foot away. If he says he didn't see anything he's lying."

  Gianno said, "All he's gotta do is talk and the case's a grounder. Nothing to it. A hose job."

  Buffet said, "You'll keep on him?"

  "Oh, you bet, Donnie boy. You bet."

  They hung up. Buffett's stemach was growling regularly but he didn't feel hungry, They were giving him something from a thick plastic bag, a clear liquid that dripped into his arm. Maybe glucose. He wondered if that was a good idea, because glucose was sugar and before the shooting he had been meaning to lose a few pounds.

  He thought about the doughnut and coffee Pellam had brought him. Was it just last night? Two nights ago? It could have been a week. Why was Pellam lying about seeing the killer's partner? Afraid probably.

  The door pushed wider open and a doctor came into the room. He was a compact man, about forty, with thick black hair. Trim, with muscular forearms, which made Buffett think that he was an orthopedics man. Buffett loved sports, all kinds of sports, every sport and he knew jock docs; they were always in good shape. He pulled a chair close to die bed, sat down and introduced himself. His name was Gould. He had a low, pleasing voice.

  "I guess I met you before," Buffett said. "You operated on me?"

  "I was one of the neurosurgeons, yes."

  Gould lifted the chart from the rack and flipped it open. He skimmed it, set it down. He leaned forward and, with a penlight, looked into Buffett's eyes. He asked the policeman to watch the doctors finger as it did figure eights then to extend his arms and touch his nose.

  Donnie Buffett did as he was told.

  The doctor said, "Good." Which did not mean good or anything else, then he asked, "How you feeling, Officer?"

  "Okay, I guess. My shoulder stings."

  "Ah." He examined Buffett's chart again and he examined it for a very long moment, it seemed to Buffett.

  "Doctor…?" Buffett's voice faded.

  The doctor did not encourage him to continue. He closed the metal cover of the chart and said, "Officer, I'd like to talk to you about your injury, tell you exactly what happened, what we did. What we're going to do."

  "Sure."

  "You were shot in the back. Several slugs hit your bullet-proof vest. They were small-.22-caliber-and shattered right away. A third bullet hit the top side of the vest. It was deflected but it grazed your scapula, your shoulder blade. That's the pain you feel there. It's a minor wound. We removed the bullet easily. There's some risk of sepsis-that's infection-but the odds are that won't happen."

  Gould was taking out a pen, a fancy gold and lacquer pen, and was drawing what looked like the lower half of a skeleton on the back of a receipt.

  "Donnie, three of the bullets hit you below the vest. They entered here, that's where the lumbar region of the spinal cord joins the sacral region. One shattered and stopped here." The pen, top replaced, was now a pointer. "The other two lodged in your intestine but missed the kidneys and bladder. We removed all the pieces of lead. We've repaired the damage with sutures that will absorb into the tissue. You won't need any further surgery, unless we have a sepsis situation."

  "Okay," Buffett said agreeably. He squinted and studied the diagram as if he'd be tested on it later.

  "Donnie, the bullet that shattered-it entered your spinal cord here."

  Buffett was nodding. He was a cop. He had seen death. He had seen pain. He had felt pain. He w
as totally calm. His injury couldn't be serious. If it were he'd be hooked up to huge machines. Respirators and jet cockpit controls. All he had was a tube in his dick and an IV that was feeding him fattening sugar. That was nothing. No problem. He felt pain now, a wonderful pain that ran through his legs, playing hide-and seek. If he were paralyzed he wouldn't be feeling pain. "Donnie, we're going to refer you to a Dr. Weiser, one of St. Louis's top SCI neurologists and therapists. SCI, that's spinal cord injury."

  "But I'm okay, aren't I?'

  "You're not in a life-threatening condition. With upper SCIs, there's a risk of respiratory or cardiac failure… Those can be very troublesome."

  Troublesome.

  "But your accident was lower SCI. That was fortunate in terms of your survival."

  "Doctor, I'll be able to walk, won't I? The thing is, my job, I'm a cop. I have to walk." He lifted his palms as if he were embarrassed to be explaining somediing so simple.

  "Uhn, Donnie," the doctor said slowly, "your prognosis is essentially nonambulatory."

  Nonambulatory.

  "What does?…" Buffett's throat closed down and he was unable to complete his question. Because he knew exacdy what it meant.

  "Your spinal cord was almost completely severed," Gould said. Buffett was looking directly into his eyes but did not see any of the intense sympathy that was pouring from them. "With the state of the art at the present time I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it. You won't walk, no."

  "Oh. Well. I see."

  "Officer, you're very lucky. You could easily have been killed. Or it might have been a quadriplegic situation."

  Sure, that's true.

  Gould stood up. The chart got replaced on the bed, the doctors nifty pen went back into his shirt. "Dr. Weiser is much more competent to talk about your injury than I am. You couldn't ask for a better expert. A nurse will be coming by to schedule an appointment later." He smiled, shook Buffett's hand. "We'll do everything we can for you, Officer. Don't worry about a thing."

  It was several minutes later that Donnie Buffett said, "No. I won't," and only then realized that the doctor was no longer in the room.