William Bernhardt - Double Jeopardy

“I’m just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“You and me both.” Moroconi brushed up against something in the dark. A chair? “And I had a damn hard time gettin’ my old chum Jack to talk to me.”

So Jack was in the room. Funny that he hadn’t said anything. Assuming he was still able to say anything.

Travis was sure Curran was getting ready to make his move. He fell silent and waited for a signal. He didn’t have to wait long.

Curran’s voice pierced the dark room. “ Get down !”

Travis ducked, and he could hear Cavanaugh doing the same. A shot rang out from Moroconi’s gun, but he had no idea where it went. Nowhere near him, anyway. He jumped to his feet, ran back to the door, and flipped on the lights.

The room was flooded by bright overhead bulbs. Moroconi stood behind a desk, squinting, waving his gun. Curran was already on top of the desk, and a moment later he knocked the gun out of Moroconi’s hand. Curran brought his fist squarely into Moroconi’s neck. Moroconi went reeling back against the windowsill.

“Are you all right?” Travis asked Cavanaugh. She nodded. Wherever Moroconi’s wild bullet had gone, it hadn’t been into her, thank God.

Travis ran to see if Curran needed help. He didn’t. He had Moroconi pinned firmly facedown on the floor. Travis watched as Curran patted Moroconi down, then systematically pulled knives, condoms, and rolled-up wads of money out of his pockets. And a single sheet of paper.

Travis scanned the typewritten sheet. Names, aliases, addresses. This had to be the list. The real one.

Travis noticed red ink checkmarks beside four of the names on the list, the four geographically closest to Dallas.

“Blackmail,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “Not content to extract money from Jack, I’ll bet Moroconi was planning to bleed bucks out of every ex-mobster on this list.”

Speaking of Jack—where was he? The desk chair was facing the window. Travis swiveled it around … and found a man’s body slumped in the chair, blood trickling down his face, a gag tied in his mouth. His face seemed familiar, but it was so contorted and smeared with blood it was difficult to see it clearly.

“ Jack ?” Travis said under his breath.

“That’s him,” Moroconi answered, twisting his neck around. Curran rammed his face back into the carpet.

Cavanaugh pushed Travis aside. She was holding two wet washcloths and a bottle of antiseptic. He had no idea where they had come from—probably the bathroom down the hall.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” Cavanaugh said, glaring at Moroconi as she dressed the wounds.

“The bastard deserved it.”

“No one deserves to be tortured.”

“What do you know about it, bitch?”

Cavanaugh turned away from him in disgust. “This isn’t fatal,” she told Travis and Curran as she wiped off the coagulated blood. “In fact, the cuts are minor. Moroconi was probably just scaring the man in his own sick way. I think he’s in mild shock. It looks awful, but the blood is principally coming from just two superficial facial slashes.”

“I had to!” Moroconi protested. “Fuckin’ asswipe wouldn’t talk.”

Curran twisted Moroconi’s arms painfully behind his back and tied them.

Jack was beginning to come around. Cavanaugh laid a cool washrag on his face and let it soak. The color gradually returned to his face. About five minutes later Travis decided he had waited long enough. He lifted the washrag off the man’s face.

Yes. Now that the man had been cleaned up, there was no doubt in Travis’s mind. He had seen him before.

He was the man who had created the disturbance in front of the warehouse four years ago. The man who had acted like a crazed religious lunatic. The man who had stolen his gun.

The man who had killed Angela.

72

9:41 P.M.

“IT’S YOU,” TRAVIS SAID breathlessly.

Jack turned away. “Shit. I was afraid you’d recognize me.”

“Recognize you? How could I forget you?” Travis wiped his hand across his brow. “They told me you were doing time.”

“They lied.”

“What’s going on?” Cavanaugh asked. “I don’t understand.”

“You and me both.” Travis swung Jack around to face him eye to eye. “What are you doing on the outside? What’s your connection to Moroconi?”

“Jesus T. Christ.” Jack shook his head in disgust. “You still don’t know?”

Travis grabbed him by his lapels. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Curran laid his hand on Travis’s shoulder. “Stay calm, Travis. Let’s just ask him some questions.”

“I won’t answer,” Jack said.

Curran clutched the man’s throat. “If you don’t, I’ll untie your buddy Al and give him back his knife. I don’t think he’s quite finished cutting you.”

Jack was visibly shaken. “Ask your stupid questions. What do I care?”

“What’s your real name?” Travis demanded.

“Who gives a flying fuck?”

Who did, actually? Travis realized he had only asked the question because that was standard police procedure. First line: Name. Next he would probably ask for the man’s Social Security number.

“What’s your connection to Moroconi and Mario Catuara and the rest of their gangland buddies?”

Jack sat in sullen silence. Curran grabbed him and shook him hard.

“Don’t you know what they do to squealers?” Jack shouted. “The penalty for violating the Omerta is death!”

Curran gritted his teeth. “Don’t you know what I’ll do to you if you don’t talk?” When that didn’t work, he slapped him several times with the back of his hand. The contemptuous expression melted into a what the hell.

“I was big in the Gattuso mob before the FBI shut it—” Jack smiled. “Before the FBI thought they shut it down. I mean, I was heavy-duty, locked in tight with the boys that mattered. The players. I got all the important jobs.” He glanced at Travis. “Like the one where I iced that bitch you were fuckin’.”

Travis’s fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. Stay in control. Stay in control. “I take it the mob wasn’t altogether eradicated?”

“Shit no.” He picked something black out from between his teeth. “See, we had us a contingency plan. Something to fall back on.”

“And what was the plan?”

“The FBI had the goods on most of the made men. But some of us had been smart. We kept a low profile.”

Lower than a rock, Travis suspected.

“We knew the feds were about to make their move. So we executed Escape Plan A. We merged.”

“Merged?”

“Yeah. We’d bought a small corporation a few years before. Limited business, single shareholder. Small-potatoes stuff. And totally legitimate. The guy who ran the thing had no idea he’d married the mob. At first.”

“He found out later?”

“He had to. Believe me, no one could write off the money that started pourin’ through that corporation to increased market penetration. But the original owner just took the money and kept quiet. We wanted to keep him happy, see. We needed a place to stash the dough, someplace it would be safely waiting when we needed it. It was our golden parachute, right? Our private retirement fund. By the time this schmuck knew enough to be really concerned, he was in too deep. Besides, he was making money, real motherfuckin’ money for the first time in his life. And he liked it.”

“So when the FBI clamped down on all the known mob members, you and the other faceless ones phased into the corporation.”

“Very smart.” A tiny light began to shine in Jack’s eyes. “It was a perfect setup. Instead of being criminals, we were suddenly legit businessmen. Everyone got titles—you know, president, vice-president—that kind of shit. It was a riot.”