Jack Higgins: Day of Reckoning

'I'll see to it, sir.'

Blake started down the stairs, and Parker said, 'Now where?'

'Truth magazine. I want to see Kate's editor, find out what she was working on. You don't have to come. You've got other cases on your hands, Harry. I can handle this on my own.'

'Like hell you will/ Harry Parker told him. 'Let's get going.'

The editor of Truth magazine, Rupert O'Dowd, was the kind of middle-aged journalist who'd seen it all, been there, and done that, and he had little residual faith in human nature. Nevertheless, sitting in his office in shirtsleeves, he reacted with horror to the suggestion that Katherine Johnson had been murdered.

'Please, tell me, what can I do to help?'

'You can tell us what she'd been involved in lately,'Johnson said. 'Was she working on anything special, anything dangerous?'

O'Dowd hesitated. 'Well, there's a question of journalistic ethics here.'

'And there's the question of my wife being murdered by the administration of a massive heroin dose, Mr O'Dowd. So don't play around or I'll make you wish you'd never been born.'

O'Dowd put up a hand. 'Okay, okay, you don't have to come down hard.' He took a deep breath. 'She was working on a big Mafia expose.'

There was silence. Parker said, 'Isn't that old stuff?'

'Only because the Mafia wants you to think that. Let me explain. The ruling power in the Mafia, the Commission, right? It called a halt to mob killings in New York in 1992 because of the bad publicity.'

'So?'

'So they started again last year. Five stiffed in Palermo a month ago, three in New York, four in London. But it's all different, all back-room stuff you can't connect to them. They've gone legit. They don't figure in Forbes magazine, but they're easily the biggest company structure in Europe. The drug market in America is saturated, so they've moved to Eastern Europe and Russia, but now they do it behind an elaborate facade.'

'So what are you saying?' Blake asked.

'That the days of men in gold chains have gone. Now they wear good suits and sit next to you in the Four Seasons or the Piano Bar at the Dorchester in London. They are into construction, property development, leisure, TV. You name it, they do it.'

There was a pause. Blake said, 'So where did my wife fit in to all this?'

'As I indicated, these days the new image is everything. The most influential Mafia group right now is the Solazzo family. Don Marco is the old devil who runs things, but he has an extraordinary nephew named Jack Fox. Fox's mother was Don Marco's niece, so the good Jack is half and half, though he sounds very Anglo-Saxon. He was a young Marine in the Gulf, a decorated war hero, Harvard Law School, and now he's the respectable face of the Solazzos.'

'And how does this affect Katherine?'

'She managed to get into a relationship with Fox. She was intending to produce a devastating series, not only for Truth magazine but also for our TV side.' There was silence, then O'Dowd said, 'She wanted to get behind that acceptable face of the Mafia and expose it.'

'Which meant showing the reality behind Fox,' Parker said.

'And he couldn't have that.' Blake nodded. 'So now we know.' He stood up and said to O'Dowd, 'Play this down. Trust me. Give us time and you'll get the story Kate wanted.' He held out his hand. 'A bargain?'

'It sure as hell is.'

On the way downstairs, Parker's mobile rang. He answered and nodded. 'We'll be there.' He turned to Blake. 'Abruzzi. She's sorted out the videotapes. Wondered if you'd like a look.'

'Why not?' Blake said.

The study at Barrow Street was much more ordered now, the videotapes arranged neatly on the shelves.

Helen Abruzzi said, 'I've put the movies on the top two shelves, the language courses and self-help tapes on the bottom two shelves.' She turned to Blake. 'There is one that refers to you, sir. That's what I thought you'd want to know.'

Blake said, 'What do you mean?'

'The label says: Blake's parents.'

Blake was silent for a moment. 'My parents died when I was very young. I never knew them. And my wife knew that better than anyone. I'd appreciate you turning that tape on, Sergeant.'

He sat down, Parker stood behind him, and the screen flickered.

'This is just a fail-safe, Blake, my darling, in case anything goes wrong. As someone who was the pride of the FBI and whatever you get up to there at the White House, I know you'll find this one way or the other.' She smiled at him. 'These are bad people that I'm trying to expose, the Solazzo family. Don Marco's like Brando resurrected for Godfather IV, cold, calm, and businesslike, even while he seems like your favourite grandfather.'

'Jesus!' Harry Parker said.

'But Don Marco is old-school. Jack Fox is different. The genuine all-American hero and Wall Street golden boy.You'd think he was some Boston blue blood, but instead he's a cold-blooded psychopath, the worst of them all. Get in his way and you're dead. Well, I'm going to get him. Lull him to sleep with the first article, then wham! He'll never know what hit him.'

Blake hammered a clenched fist on a coffee table and Helen Abruzzi stopped the tape.

'What in the hell are you doing?'

'I'm giving you a chance to breathe deeply. I'm also finding you a drink. Trust me, Sir.'

Parker put a hand on his shoulder. 'She's right, Blake.' Helen Abruzzi returned with a glass. 'Vodka, it's all I could find. It was in the freezer.'

'That's what she liked, cold vodka.' Blake drank it down. 'Okay, let's get on with it.'

The screen flickered again. 'I was real lucky. I found a guy called Sammy Goff, who used to do accounting work for Jack Fox. Nice guy, very gay and very ill. AIDS, which is why Fox threw him out. I was having lunch with Fox in Manhattan one day. He left early, and Goff came up to me. "You look like a nice lady," he said, "so watch it. He's not good for you."'

A telephone sounded in the background and she went to answer it and returned.

'Okay, Goff was dying and bitter. I cultivated him, and with three martinis in him he sounded off good, and what he told me was special. Here's the lead. Fox is front man for the family. Smart, very clever, but he's always pushing for more. He's played the market with family money and lost,particularly with the Asian crisis. How much the Don knows about this is unknown to me. He's getting by because he's responsible for the Solazzo flagship casino in London, the Colosseum. The cash flow from that is critical to him. He can't milk the family's large interests, the drug market in Eastern Europe and Russia, for example, but he has personal cash flow that helps keep him afloat. There's a warehouse in Brooklyn called Hadley's Depository. The one thing they store there is whisky. Cheap liquor. The booze is watered down and then sold to the clubs at a huge profit margin.'

Parker said, 'I can't believe the Don doesn't know.'

Blake waved a hand and Katherine continued. 'Another sideline in London is he's been involved with some heavy gangsters called the Jago brothers. Armed robbery, that kind of stuff, Sammy Goff said, always a source of instant cash. Fox's bad investments in the Far East are draining him. More serious, he's been into arms dealing, too, specifically for the IRA. He helped somebody called Brendan Murphy, a real hard-liner who didn't like the peace process, not only to buy arms but to build a concrete bunker in County Louth in the Irish Republic. There's everything there from mortars to the kind of machine gun that can shoot down an Army helicopter. Oh, and lots of Semtex.'

'My God,' Helen Abruzzi said softly.

'Goff told me there was also some link with Beirut via Murphy. Arms for Saddam, that sort of thing. He didn't have many details on that. The other thing he told me was that Fox doesn't own a London house. He usually stays in a suite at the Dorchester, but he does have an indulgence. An old castle and estate in Cornwall, in England. Very rural, very remote. Believe it or not, it's called Hellsmouth. Somewhere near Land's End.'