Joe Gores - Menaced Assassin

He kept wanting to ask Dalton more about it, but Dalton was in Africa: he faxed a request to Interpol for any facts on Gounaris instead. Then there was Lenington, corrupt in all the small ways a vice cop could be corrupt, from shaking down pimps to free sex from the hookers, but Dante hadn’t thought of him as involved with organized crime.

Jack was an angry and careful man. All they had was him entering and leaving one of Vince O’Neill’s legal porn palaces at about the same time that a man under investigation for possible organized crime ties had entered and left. Not illegal; merely suggestive.

The I.A. lived on that sort of suggestion, but Dante wasn’t watching through the one-way glass in the adjoining room when Lenington was brought in by the shooflies; he knew a transcript of the interrogation would be on his desk the next day.

I.A.:

Hello, Jack. Come in and sit down.

SUBJECT:

Hello, Simon, you fucking weasel.

I.A.:

No need to take that attitude, Jack. We’re all cops here. Somebody’s got to keep the department clean-

SUBJECT:

Yeah, somebody has to look up assholes for a living, too. You don’t have to be a cop to do it.

I.A.:

You know this is being recorded, Jack-

SUBJECT:

You gonna edit out all the dirty words afterwards, Irv?

I.A.:

You understand this is just a preliminary investigation, Jack, so we haven’t asked you to have your attorney present-

SUBJECT:

What I got to tell you guys, I don’t need an attorney.

I.A.:

Okay. On the twenty-second of last month-

SUBJECT:

Uh-uh. Somebody wants to go after me for dereliction of duty or some shit, that’s my watch commander or the Chief. Not you assholes. You wanta charge me with a crime, my lawyer’s here fast as you can jerk each other’s wienie. Which leaves you miserable fucks with my bank account, my mortgages, my spendable income.

I.A.:

We told you, Jack, this is just a preliminary-

SUBJECT:

I got like thirty-seven cents in my bank account, couple CDs worth one, two K. Mortgage on the house’s got maybe thirteen years to run. My boat, another two years. The car, I paid that off last June. Four years. Neither of my kids are in college-they’re working stiffs, I couldn’t pay the freight. So fuck you guys very much. Take two nine-millimeter pills up the ass and call me in the morning.

Sound of slamming door. Dante flipped the transcript onto his desk and chuckled despite himself. He’d been through the academy with Lenington, and knew him as a mean-minded man and a corrupt cop, but he’d also been on the street long enough himself to enjoy seeing the shooflies eat a little shit from another street cop. Lenington didn’t deserve the name. But he was tough, it would take a lot to bring him down.

Internal Affairs never did bring Jack Lenington down, or even back in for another shot. Jack knew they’d gone through his personal affairs with a vacuum sweeper, had found nothing because there was nothing to find. When he had gone to the Bahamas to set up his offshore numbered account, he’d done it by a small-plane commuter fight from Fort Lauderdale during a family vacation to Florida. Left the wife and kids-small then-at Disney World believing he was in the Keys angling for bonefish.

The I.A. turncoats didn’t worry him. What worried him was that his meeting with Kosta Gounaris must have been under surveillance. The I.A. hadn’t had a tail on him, he knew that; but did Stagnaro have a loose tail on Gounaris? Just like the fucker; and he would have tipped I.A. to the meet.

He’d better tell somebody about it, so they wouldn’t think he’d worn a tail to their meeting. They didn’t take kindly to having that sort of dumb fuck on the pad.

So he went to see Otto Kreiger. The I.A. probably knew Kreiger was his lawyer; what they didn’t know, what nobody knew, was that Otto Kreiger, through Vince O’Neill, king of the Tenderloin porn dealers, was also his mob contact. O’Neill had obliquely approached Jack, many years ago, about doing a couple of things for a couple of bucks for a couple of guys he knew. Kreiger was one of those guys, and it had grown into a lucrative proposition that carried, however, its own built-in risks.

He felt he was at risk right now.

Kreiger had offices in the old Hunter-Dulin Building at the foot of Sutter Street, an ornate art nouveau cakebox from the 1920s. Kreiger’s office was an unpretentious suite with windows looking down on Market Street; a far cry from the fifty acres in Woodside where Lenington knew the attorney raised horses. He didn’t know, nor could he have imagined, that Kreiger’s cheapest mare, a purebred Arabian, had been a steal at $758,000.

Kreiger had a brutal, booming voice that was extremely effective in court when carping about violations of his mobster clients’ civil rights. He used it now on Jack. “I hear you had a little

chat with the I.A.”

Jack rattled the ice in his bourbon, asked in his angry voice, “Those peep-show machines have fucking mikes in them?”

Kreiger shook his head and chuckled.

“You’re not the only man gets an envelope each month, Jack. I appreciate being alerted to the interview, even after the fact, but if you’ve been reasonably prudent-”

“Woulda looked bad, calling in my lawyer before I’d even had my first interview. I’m not worried about the I.A. It’s something else.”

“Indeed.” Kreiger was a large man with a square face and heavy lips and the coldest eyes with the palest lashes Lenington had ever seen. He interlaced beefy hands in front of him.

Jack said, “I had a meet with a certain guy-”

“I know.”

“I think we were clocked in and out.” To Kreiger’s narrowed eyes, he quickly added, “That’s why I had to see you. I wasn’t followed there-Gounaris was. And-”

“How can you be sure?”

“Jesus, Mr. Kreiger, I been a cop for-”

“Yes. Of course. The wolf knows its own excreta. So your feeling is that Mr. Gounaris was under surveillance.”

“Or it was just by accident, but who the fuck knows who he is unless they’re already watching him? I got plenty of reason to hang around one of Vince O’Neill’s jerk-off shops anytime I want, shit, I’m Vice. But Gounaris is just a John, so why would anyone notice him-”

“Dante Stagnaro,” said Kreiger abruptly. There was almost admiration in his voice. “That would be quite like him-a loose tail on the Greek.” He nodded. “Yes. Then you going into O’Neill’s place at the same time suddenly gets important.”

“You know Stagnaro?” asked Lenington cautiously. Frankly, Kreiger scared the hell out of him. A phone call, he was meat. Just like Moll Dalton had become meat after a phone call.

“Not socially, of course.” Kreiger waved an arm. “He’s that most dangerous of men, an idealist smart enough not to be corrupted by his own obsession. Which is our destruction. He visited Gounaris shortly after you two talked.”

“There you are,” said Lenington in angry vehemence. He was damned glad he’d come in and told his side of the story. Then he paused, suddenly hesitant. But it had to be said; it was what he was here for. “I wanted to tell you about it, Mr. Kreiger. And I, ah, wanted to ask you… there hasn’t been… I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone to think I had led…”

“I can assure you that your reconstruction makes sense to me,” said Kreiger.

“So there’s no… uh… word out that-”

“I can assure you, Jack, none at all.”

He was on his feet, moving around the desk. Jack stood up, took the huge callused palm that was offered to him. He spoke as Kreiger put a hand on his shoulder to walk him to the door.

“I mean, if they want me to take an early retirement so the I.A. can’t keep-”