Michael Connelly - Blood Work

Nevins and Uhlig concluded the summary report with a brief profile of the unknown subject who had contracted the murder. The profile fit both theories one and two: the employer was wealthy, had the ability to hide his or her trail and remain anonymous and had connections to or was even part of traditional organized crime.

Aside from the report breathing life into Kenyon’s phantom, the second thing that interested McCaleb was the suggestion that the employer, and therefore the actual killer, were connected to traditional organized crime. Traditional organized crime in FBI parlance meant the Mafia. The tendrils of the Mafia were almost everywhere, but, even so, the mob was not a strong influence in southern California. There was a tremendous amount of organized crime in the area, it just wasn’t being perpetrated by the traditional mobsters out of the movies. At any given time there were probably more Asian or Russian mobsters operating in southern California than their counterparts of Italian descent.

McCaleb organized the documents in chronological order and went back to the start. Most were routine summaries and updates on aspects of the investigation that were forwarded to supervisors in Washington. Quickly scanning through the documents, he found a report on the surveillance team’s activities the morning of the shooting that he read with fascination.

There had been four agents in the surveillance van at the time of the killing. It was change-of-shift time, eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Two agents coming on, two going home. The agent monitoring the bugs took off the headset and passed it to his replacement. However, the replacement was a type A personality who claimed he had once gotten an infestation of head lice from another agent during an earphone exchange. So he took the time to put his own pair of foam cushions on the headset and to then spray the equipment with a disinfectant, all the while fending off insulting barbs from the three other agents. After he finally placed the earphones on his head, he heard silence for nearly a minute, then a muffled exchange of conversation and then finally a shot from Kenyon’s house. The sound was muffled because no listening devices had been placed in the entryway of the house, the thinking being that any escape planning Kenyon might do would not be done at the front door. The bugs had been placed in the actual living areas of the house.

The overnight team had not yet left and were continuing the banter in the van. After hearing the shot, the agent on the phones shouted for silence. He listened closely for several seconds while another agent put on a second set of phones. What they both heard was someone in the Kenyon house clearly speak one line near one of the microphones: “Don’t forget the cannoli.”

The two agents on the phones looked at each other and agreed that it had not been Kenyon who had spoken the line. Declaring an emergency, the agents blew their cover and sped to the house, arriving moments after Donna Kenyon had arrived home, opened the front door and found her husband lying on the marble floor, his head bathed in blood. After calling for bureau backup, local police and paramedics, the agents searched the house and the surrounding neighborhood. The gunman was gone.

McCaleb moved on to a transcript of the last hour of tape from Kenyon’s home. The tape had been enhanced in the FBI lab but still not every word was captured. There were the sounds of the daughters having breakfast and the normal morning talk between Kenyon and his wife and the girls. Then, at 7:40, the girls and their mother left.

The transcript noted nine minutes of silence before Kenyon made a phone call to the home of his attorney, Stanley LaGrossa.

LAGROSSA: Yes?

KENYON: It’s Donald.

LAGROSSA: Donald.

KENYON: Are we still on?

LAGROSSA: Yes, if you are still serious about it.

KENYON: I am. I’ll see you at the office then.

LAGROSSA: You know the risks. I’ll see you there.

Another eight minutes went by and then a new unknown voice was picked up in the house. Some of the terse conversation was lost as Kenyon and the unknown man moved through the house, in and out of the reach of the listening devices. The conversation had apparently taken place while the delayed earphone exchange was taking place in the bureau tech van.

KENYON: What is-

UNKNOWN: Shut up! Do what I say and your family lives, understand?

KENYON: You can’t just walk in here and-

UNKNOWN: I said shut up! Let’s go. This way.

KENYON: Don’t hurt my family. Please, I…

UNKNOWN: (unintelligible)

KENYON:… do that. I wouldn’t and he knows that. I don’t understand this. He…

UNKNOWN: Shut up. I don’t care.

KENYON: (unintelligible)

UNKNOWN: (unintelligible)

The report noted that two minutes of silence went by and then the final exchange.

UNKNOWN: Okay, look and see who…

KENYON: Don’t… She’s got nothing to do with this. She…

Then one shot was fired. And moments later microphone 4, which was hidden in a rear den with a door to the rear yard, picked up the unknown man’s final words.

UNKNOWN: Don’t forget the cannoli.

The door to the den was found open. It had been used as part of the killer’s escape route.

McCaleb read the transcript again, captivated by knowing it was a man’s last moments and words. He wished he had an audiotape, so that he would have a better feel for what had happened.

The next document he read explained why the investigators suspected mob involvement. It was a cryptology report. The tape from the Kenyon house had been sent to the crime lab for enhancement. The transcript was then sent to cryptology. The analyst given the assignment focused on the killer’s last line, spoken after Kenyon was down and seemingly a non sequitur. The line-‘ “Don’t forget the cannoli”-was fed into the cryptology computer to see if it matched any known code, prior usage in bureau reports or literary or entertainment reference. It scored a direct match.

In the movie The Godfather, the film that inspired a legion of true-life Mafia hoodlums, a top capo for the Corleone family, Peter Clemenza, is given the assignment of taking a traitorous family soldier out into the New Jersey meadowlands and killing him. On the morning he leaves his home for the hit, his wife tells Clemenza to stop by a bakery for pastry. As the hugely overweight Clemenza lumbers out to a waiting car containing the man he is tasked with killing, his wife calls after him, “Don’t forget the cannoli.”

McCaleb loved the movie and now remembered the line. It so clearly captured the essence of movie mob life-the ruthless and guiltless brutality alongside family values and loyalty. He understood now why the bureau had concluded that the Kenyon killing was in some way mob related. The line had the audacity and bravura of the mob life. He could see a stone-cold killer adopting it as the imprimatur of his work.

“Don’t forget the cannoli,” McCaleb said out loud.

He suddenly thought of something and a little jolt of electricity went through him.

“Don’t forget the cannoli,” he said again.

He quickly went to his leather bag and dug through it until he found the video from the James Cordell shooting. He went to the television and jammed the tape in and started playing it. After getting his bearings on where in the tape he was, he fast-forwarded to the moment of the shooting and hit play again. His eyes stayed on the masked man’s mouth and as the man began to speak on the silent tape, McCaleb spoke with him out loud.

“Don’t forget the cannoli.”

He backed the tape up and did it again, saying it again. His words matched the shooter’s lips. He was sure it fit. He could feel excitement and adrenaline surging inside of him now. It was a feeling that only came when you had momentum, when you were making your own breaks. When you were getting close to the hidden truth.