William Brown - The Undertaker

“Canada? You don't take any chances do you?”

“Not when it comes to prying little minds with unlimited budgets. By the way, I understand you and Mrs. Kasmarek saved his life. I am personally very appreciative, and I assure you it gained you some good will in other quarters as well. Gino is a lot like Harvey and Tomas over there, it will take a lot more than one bullet to kill them. Be that as it may, I assure you Mrs. Kasmarek is in no danger from us. Neither are you, Mister Talbott.” He paused and looked me in the eyes, “But I wonder how much danger are we in from you?”

“Me? You're worried about me?” I laughed.

He gave me another thin, cold, smile. “Please understand. Between the Justice Department and the Patillo Family over in Newark, I am not without enemies. At last count, I had two undercover police officers in my class, a boyish-looking FBI agent passing as a student intern in the department office, a new janitor, and I am not too sure about my new neighbors in Connecticut. As for the Patillos? Attorneys are supposed to be off limits, but if Rico thought for one instant that I stood any chance of getting Jimmy Santorini out of jail, he'd have a contract out on me before nightfall.”

“An occupational hazard. You should be more careful about the clients you take.”

“True enough,” he sighed as we continued walking around the park. “So tell me what you want. And tell me what you have that I am supposed to find so interesting.”

“What I want is some information on Louie Panozzo. What was it that he had on Jimmy Santorini?”

Billingham looked at me for a moment. “Suffice it to say that this meeting never took place, Mister Talbott. I spoke to my client. Frankly, I advised him that we should not talk to you, but a man can get very disconsolate when he is locked up inside a Federal Penitentiary, surrounded by all that barbed wire and knowing he will be very, very old when he finally does get out.” Billingham stopped walking, his eyes drilling into me. “But be advised, if you are playing games with him, you will learn that Jimmy has no sense of humor what-so-ever.”

“Neither does Ralph Tinkerton,” I answered. “And if I don't stop him, it won't matter who Jimmy is pissed at.”

We resumed our walk. Every time we crossed a new sidewalk, he led us off in a new direction, like a freighter in an old war movie zigzagging to avoid submarines. Until a few days ago, I would have thought Charley Billingham a paranoid nut, but that was when I still trusted funeral directors, doctors, and county sheriffs. I never did trust lawyers. Who does?

“All right. You asked me about Louie Panozzo,” Billingham began his story. “He worked for Jimmy in Newark. He was not “family” or a “made man” or anything nefarious. He was merely an ordinary, nine-to-five bookkeeper, but he had access to all the financial records and all the accounting. No, that is not quite correct. They were his financial records, his “books” if you will, and he knew where every dime came from and went. That means all the drugs, women, numbers, the unions, loan sharking, money laundering, the scams, guns, booze, the bookies, the legitimate businesses Jimmy ran and the crooked ones. Panozzo had the details of everything that went into the till. More importantly, he kept “the pad”: the record of the payoffs Jimmy made to the police and half the elected and appointed government officials throughout eastern New Jersey and New York. Unfortunately, the FBI seized Panozzo on a trumped-up wire fraud charge. Instead of trusting me to get him off, he accepted a plea bargain from the U. S. Attorney and rolled over, first to that bastard Hardin, if you'll pardon my language, and then in court.”

“I know that.”

“Of course you do,” Billingham smiled, making me feel like a complete idiot. “And as I think you are aware by now, when Louie left Newark, he took an electronic copy of all of Jimmy's master accounting records for the past five years with him.”

“That's what this is all about? The bean counter's books?” I asked.

Billingham looked at me as if I was a first year law student who had just farted in the middle of one of his lectures. “No, Mister Talbott, this is not about the books, it is about power. Those records not only include the various items about Jimmy's operations I enumerated, they also include dozens of transactions with the other “families” in the Tri-state area — joint ventures, as you might call them — so those computer files can put many, many people in jail. No one knows that. Jimmy does, of course, I know it, Gino does, and now you do.”

“Tinkerton knows too. He tried to carve them out of me with a scalpel.”

“Not exactly. He knows the files exist and that they contain information on Jimmy's operations in New Jersey, perhaps the payoffs as well, but that is all he knows.”

“So who has them, Charley?”

“We had been hoping you do, Mister Talbott,” he smiled. “The Feds don't have them. If they did, they would have used them by now, and half the politicians and crooks on the Atlantic seaboard would already be in jail. And Rico Patillo doesn't have them. If he did, he would already be squeezing and muscling people.” He stopped and looked at me. “I know you are still skeptical about the value of those records, but did you ever see the “Untouchables” movie? The one with Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness and all that?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, in real life, when Al Capone was convicted and sent to prison, it was for income tax evasion, not the murders or numerous violent crimes he committed. It was the accountants who got him, the “bean counters” as you call them. With Louie Panozzo's accounting records, you could control a five-state area, perhaps even the government in Washington itself. That's what makes them the most explosive bits of computer code since the Manhattan Project, and whoever has them has his finger on the trigger.”

“So it wasn't simply a matter of Panozzo holding a news conference and saying he made the whole thing up?”

“That was pure propaganda. Do you think Jimmy Santorini would let that little weasel off the hook just because he stood up and said he didn't mean it? No, no, it was the books. It was always the books. Panozzo couldn't trade them to the Feds or to Rico Patillo, and he couldn't give them back to Jimmy, either. That was their little secret you see — Louie's and Jimmy's — and the only thing keeping him alive. As long as Louie had them, no one could touch him.”

My mind flashed back to that night on the embalming table. “Tinkerton did.”

“When Tinkerton learned that Panozzo was coming back to us, he grabbed Louie before he could get away. Perhaps he said something wrong, perhaps he tried to run bluff; but Tinkerton decided to torture the truth out of him. If he knew what was really on them, he would have been more careful, but Panozzo was overweight and out of shape. We assume he had a heart attack. Whatever, we know Tinkerton failed to get them.”

“Tinkerton told me it was an accident, he went too far.”

“That is quite likely the truth. And then you showed up,” Billingham turned and studied me. “Permit me to be blunt, Mister Talbott, but do you have them? Everyone believes you do. We can make you fabulously wealthy, and I will personally guarantee your safety and Mrs. Kasmarek's. All we want to do is destroy them. We'll even permit you to destroy them, if I can be there to watch. However, your clock is ticking. If Rico Patillo catches you first… well, you saw what he is capable of doing in Boston. He would kill you, kill her, and kill your mother, your dog, and your mother's dog, and that would be on a good day.”

“How does Patillo figure into this?”

“The first thing they teach a young prosecutor is to ask who benefits. So far, it is Rico Patillo who keeps coming up the big winner. Him, Senator Hardin, and your friend Ralph Tinkerton, and I would dearly love to find the link that ties them all of them together. As for the losers? Jimmy is in Marion and I'm walking around with two bodyguards.”