Gay Hendricks - The First Rule of Ten

“You paid for a report,” I said. “You’re going to get one. Sit.”

Florio sat.

I sat across from him.

“Let me run a little scenario by you,” I said. “About four years ago an old man asks his son to find out why his almond trees are dying. The son finds something in the water, something bad. So he tests the aquifer on an adjacent piece of property just to be sure. A pig farm. The water there is also bad.

“This guy, let’s call him Norman, knows how the government works; he knows whoever owns this contaminated land can make a lot of money. There’s even a precedent, and judges love precedents. But Norman’s thinking small, he’s not a natural-born criminal like your son Tommy and his brother-in-law, Vince. It took them to figure out there’s another 400 toxic acres to be had for the taking. A piece of Paradise, right next door.”

Florio’s skin was beading with sweat. “I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” he said. He started to rise in his chair, but I waved him back down.

“You know, when we met, you told me Tommy always came crawling back to you, begging for a job. Not this time. This time he came strutting, with a five-hundred-million-dollar tiger by the tail. And that’s when you took over.”

“I’m not feeling very well,” Florio said. “I think I need a doctor.”

“Don’t worry. It will get worse.”

Florio let out a low groan.

“So a plan is hatched. Your plan. Tommy didn’t like being elbowed to the side, mind you. Who would? But that wasn’t your problem. Barsotti’s pig farm was already in the family. So far, so good. And keeping Norman’s father, John D, in the dark was easy. Norman could handle that, or so everyone assumed. The Children of Paradise were the real challenge. Thanks to Brother Paul, they had an iron-clad deed of ownership, each and every one of them. Equal shares. Communism, your worst nightmare, I’d imagine. What to do? How to get those people off your four hundred acres. Enter Liam O’Flaherty, con man, felon, sociopath. How did you put it? Unsavory associate.”

Florio’s breathing was becoming a little more labored.

“And that was the first murder, wasn’t it? O’Flaherty poisoned Brother Paul and took his place. Everything was proceeding like clockwork. But when are humans ever as reliable as clocks, Thomas? John D got stubborn. Tommy got greedy. Barbara got nosy. O’Flaherty got ugly. And me? I got paid money-by you, in fact-to figure it all out.”

“What is happening to me?” Florio was drenched with sweat.

“You know, it’s a shame you left all the hands-on work to your minions. Your three-stooges, is it?” I said. “Otherwise you would have known not to go near Amaretto, at least Amaretto served by your son.”

“Tenzing, for the love of God …”

“At first, I thought the poison must have been a solution of neptunium-237. But it didn’t make sense, because no one in their right mind would try to handle it, much less get anyone to swallow it.”

I reached into my pocket and retrieved the faded photograph of John D and his two smiling sons, surrounded by almond trees bursting with frothy pink and white blossoms.

“Amaretto. There is already that hint of bitter almond, properly processed, of course, to remove the toxin. It’s genius, really. So easy to add more of what’s already there, enough to ensure that the level of cyanide is fatal.”

Florio was shaking his head back and forth slowly.

“By the way, you were right about Tommy. He did get greedy. He started a little side business, skimming a few thousand here and there from the company pot to lure struggling artists into thinking he could make them rich. You sowed the notion of Dead Peasant policies in him, and he decided to reap his own extra benefits, so to speak. He delivered contracts and false hope and gift baskets with bottles of poisoned liqueur tucked among the other goodies like deadly scorpions. Especially deadly to an elderly man with heart problems, a chronic smoker suffering from the flu, and a gentleman actor with laetrile, another form of cyanide, already in his system.”

I slid the photograph toward him, face up.

“Bitter almonds. Such pretty pink blooms. So toxic when ingested in concentrated form, unlike the sweet variety. And normally so hard to come by, unless there is a private supply growing right next door.”

I glanced at my watch.

“You know, it’s too bad about that ‘no such thing as enough’ issue, Thomas. You could have simply bought the acreage from the cult members at the going rate, and sued the government for your millions. Shady, though not necessarily illegal. But no. That would have required spending your own cash. How much better to steal their land and benefit from their deaths? I’ve met some genuinely bad people. But trading forty innocent lives for a cash payout? That puts you in a class by yourself.”

Florio’s face was getting very rosy.

I checked my watch again.

“It’s been fifteen minutes. Your symptoms should be pretty painful right about now.”

“Please,” he said.

I pulled a white plastic box out of my carryall.

“You’ll be interested to know this antidote kit contains everything you need to get better.”

“Please,” Florio said again. “I’ll make you rich.”

“I’m a monk. You’ve already paid me for my work. Anything more would be, well, greedy. Don’t you think?”

He winced, grabbing his stomach.

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“That’s the problem, Thomas. You’re too clean. Too smart. There’s never anything to tie you to anything else, is there? Your son and Barsotti are probably being booked right now. They’re filthy. They’ll go down for murder one, at least. But you don’t have any chips to bargain with. And then there’s the question of your intentions.”

Florio’s eyes darted back and forth, looking for a way out.

“You wanted to know how karma works? It’s a bitch.”

Florio clawed open the leather briefcase at his feet.

“In here,” he gasped.

He held up a manila envelope, stamped with the official L.A. County Department of Public Works insignia. His hand shook uncontrollably, but his eyes begged me to take it. I flipped through the contents. It was Norman Murphy’s neptunium-237 report. The original one.

The one that made Thomas Florio, Sr., an accessory to a whole lot of crimes.

I opened the kit and administered the ampule of amyl nitrite inhalant. Then I motored past dignified urns and columns and masterworks of art to the top of the sweeping marble staircase and called out for help in a most undignified way. In minutes ambulance attendants had strapped Florio onto a gurney, loaded him inside, and whisked him off to Cedars-Sinai, an IV of sodium nitrite and thiosulfate already binding and removing the cyanide from his veins.

Bill was waiting outside with his own report: Barsotti was cuffed and on his way to the hospital. Tommy Jr. was cuffed and on his way downtown for booking in the back of a black-and-white. And as promised, the evidence of at least one attempted murder had been served up to my partner on a tray. In this case, literally.

Bill’s eyes bored into mine.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

“Run your phone convo with Tommy Florio by me again? You weren’t making a whole lot of sense in my office.”

I shrugged. “I told him that his father had hired me to check up on him, and that I was on my way to the club with proof of Tommy’s shenanigans. That unless Tommy had a better idea, he was about to lose everything, because Mr. Florio had vowed that Tommy would get no more chances, and Mr. Florio struck me as a man who kept his word. That like it or not, his father still owned him. I said it would be a shame if nobody but Mr. Florio benefited from all Tommy’s hard work.”