Authors: Ken White
“How long did Santoro last after all six of them knew who he was?” Jimmy asked.
Daryl didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “About a week or so.”
“Tough break for him, huh,” Jimmy said.
“I honestly don’t know if I woulda done anything different, even if I knew what was
gonna happen,” Daryl said. “May sound cold, but my job was, and still is, wipin’ out those
mobs, and I’m gonna use every trick in the book to do it. I feel bad about Ritchie Santoro, I
do. Every goddamn day. But this city ain’t gonna be right ‘til those mobs are beat back. And the
only way I know to do that is flush ‘em out in the open, like a buck in a field, no cover, no
friends, just wide open and ready for the kill shot.”
“So you decided to hire Joshua to help you flush them out,” I said.
“Not exactly,” Daryl said. “We got lucky with Santoro. Nobody could have guessed that
Barozie would lay out the welcome mat and invite Santoro in for family supper. I needed
somebody who wasn’t connected to the department, but had cop smarts. Asked around with the
people I trusted, and Al here suggested Joshua Thomas. I didn’t know beans about him, and
sure as hell didn’t know he was your partner. I’m truly sorry about what happened to him.”
“Me too.”
“Ain’t nothin’ I can say, Charlie. When I found out you and him worked together, I even
offered to fill you in about what was going on, but Joshua wouldn’t go for it. Said you’d only
want to help, and that would blow his cover. He didn’t have cop connections. You do, and
you might be tempted to use them.”
“Joshua was a pretty well-known private investigator,” I said. “And let’s not forget, his
bloodfather was the Deputy Area Governor. Not exactly ideal qualifications for
undercover work.”
“Nobody knew about his connection to D.A.G. Bain,” Darryl said. “I sure as hell didn’t, or I
never would have hired him. Frankly, it wasn’t somethin’ Joshua advertised. As for his
occupation . . .” He shrugged. “Come on, Charlie. You know what people think of private
investigators. You’re hired guns. You’ll do any job, for anybody, long as they pay you the
right money.”
“Bullshit.”
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s true,” he said. “But that’s the way a lot of people think. If we could
plant Joshua as somebody just doin’ a job, he’d be invisible. They’d figure him for muscle,
same as their own muscle.”
“Why don’t you cut to the chase, Daryl,” I said. “Who killed him?”
“To be honest, that’s one of the questions I can’t answer yet,” he said. “I got my
suspicions, of course. But we gave Joshua a real long leash. I talked to him maybe three
times after he started the case, always on the phone, always a real short conversation. He
usually had a name or two, wanted to see if we had anything on ‘em.”
“What names?”
“I’d have to check my notes,” Daryl said. “Most of ‘em were small potatoes in the
Barozie and Kaiser mobs. Guys he’d run into, wanted to know if they were players. Last time
I talked to him was Monday, ‘bout eight o’clock. He wanted to know about some guy
named Sam something.”
I could feel my scalp tighten. “Wouldn’t have been Sam Klinger, would it?” I asked,
trying to keep my voice calm.
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s the name. Sam Klinger. Know him?”
Jimmy straightened up in his chair. “Klinger? He something to do with . . .”
“Her father,” I said. “What did Joshua want to know about him?”
Daryl shrugged. “Same as the others. Who he was, what he did, any connections with
the rotten apples in the department or with the uptown mobs.”
“What did you find out?” I asked.
“Wasn’t much to find out,” he said. “Guy was a driver for Sisters of Mercy. Mostly
local, some long haul. Got fired a couple of weeks ago for excessive absenteeism. Didn’t
seem to have any connection with the case that I could see. I’m not even sure why Joshua
wanted to know about him.”
Eddie Gabriel had helped steal a truck from Sisters of Mercy and had the contents
delivered to the medical facility at Camp Delta-5. Connection? Coincidence?
I wasn’t betting on coincidence.
“So that was the last time you talked to Joshua,” I said. “He never called back to find out
what you had on Klinger?”
“Like I said, he didn’t call much,” Daryl said. “When I had something for him, I’d
usually go through other channels.”
“Such as?”
Daryl hesitated for a moment, then looked at Ferrer. “I guess it don’t matter much now.”
Ferrer shrugged. “Not going to compromise my investigation at this point.”
Daryl turned back to me. “We had access to a deep-cover State Police agent workin’ in
the city,” he said. “Their Organized Crime office put him in place about a year ago, and when
we got Operation Clean Slate going, they made him available to us.”
“Who?”
“Michael Ponittzo,” Daryl said.
“Jeremy Cross’s bloodson?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he replied. “During the war, a lot of vampires turned a whole bunch of
people. Sometime two or three a night. With those kinds of numbers, they’d kinda forget
who they turned and who they didn’t. Ponittzo was an agent with the State Police Organized
Crime boys. They got everything they could on Jeremy Cross and had Ponittzo pretend to be
Cross’s bloodson. Took a little fancy dancin’, but eventually Cross accepted him and brought
him into the business.”
“As I believe you all know, Ponittzo and Cross were murdered Monday night, their
bodies dumped outside Uptown District station in a panel van and found Tuesday morning,”
Ferrer said. “At Chief Northport’s request, I assigned Detective Sergeant Holstein and
Detective Martinez to the case. Both officers were subjects in the Operation Clean Slate
investigation, and the chief wanted to see who they talked to, how they handled the
investigation, that kind of thing. He wanted to use my murder investigation to move
Operation Clean Slate along.”
It didn’t sound like Ferrer was happy about it.
“The murders are connected to my operation,” Daryl said. “It’s well known that Cross’s
clubs were under the protection of Arnie Kaiser’s mob. Nobody was gonna take Cross’s head
unless Kaiser knew ahead of time, and approved it. State Police is pretty anxious to
find who killed their agent, but they understand that it’s just a piece of a bigger whole.”
“Did Holstein and Martinez give you what you wanted?” I asked.
“No,” Daryl said. “They had about twenty-four hours on the case, then Joshua was
murdered. You know what happened to Holstein, and Martinez made himself scarce.”
“I was told he’d been reassigned to Central District,” I said. “Along with another Uptown
officer, Lou Fields.”
“Assigned, but never reported,” Daryl said. “We don’t know where they are. At this
point, we’re not even sure they’re in the city anymore.”
“Sounds like Operation Clean Slate is up shit’s creek,” I said. “Joshua’s dead, Ponittzo’s
dead, Holstein’s dead, Martinez and Fields are gone. You’re about back at square one,
Daryl.”
“About, but not quite, Charlie,” he said with a half-smile. “We still got you.”
“I’m not working for you, Daryl,” I said. “I’ve got a client and I’ve got a case. Only
interest I have in organized crime in this city is how it relates to Joshua’s murder.”
“About an hour ago, I sent a request to the Area Governor’s Office requesting your
assistance with my investigation.”
“The Area Governor’s Office doesn’t involve itself with local matters,” Takeda said
quickly.
“That’s not exactly true, Miss Takeda,” Daryl said. “You were pretty quick to jump in
and take control a few hours ago.”
“An attack on our operatives is an attack on the Area Governor’s Office,” she said. “Not
a local matter.”
“And this case ain’t a normal local matter, is it?” Daryl said. “Joshua Thomas was the
Deputy Area Governor’s bloodson. Bain wants to know who killed him, right? That’s
what he hired ol’ Charlie here to do. And I want to find out who killed him too, since he was
workin’ for me. We have a common goal.”
“Would you give Chief Northport and me a few minutes alone,” I said.
“Why don’t you folks wait out in the hall for a bit,” Daryl said. “We’ll let ya know when we’re
ready for ya to come back.”
When the door closed behind them, Daryl said, “So. Long time, CW. What’s on your
mind?”
Chapter Thirty-one
“What’s on my mind?” I said, repeating his question. “What the fuck do you think’s on
my mind, Daryl? Your investigation is at a dead end, and you’re hoping I can bail you out.”
“You have a point, Charlie?”
I laughed. “Same old Daryl.”
I’d known Daryl Northport for more than thirty years. We’d grown up about seven or
eight miles from each other in Kansas, me in Paola, him outside Osawatome. We weren’t really
friends when we were young, just aware of each other in the way people who go to the same
school but don’t hang out together are. After high school, we both went to Fort Scott
Community College, took a couple of the same classes. I lasted about a year, and decided I
needed some life experience instead of book experience. I joined the army. About the same
time, Daryl transferred to Kansas City Kansas Community College to get a degree in Fire
Science.
I didn’t see him for fifteen years. After the army, I wanted to put some distance between
me and Paola, and ended up joining the police department here. I was still working patrol at
Tremont Avenue when I met up with Daryl again.
He’d gone into the fire service when he got his degree, and made himself a nice career
with some little department in Florida. Being interested in law enforcement as well, he’d
gotten his certification and was working part-time as a reserve cop. Then some nut job at the
fire station started killing probationary firemen, Daryl got involved, and a bunch of people
died. I never got the whole story, but whatever happened, riding in the big red truck wasn’t
something that he wanted to do anymore.
Like me, he ended up on the city police department. When I first ran into him, he was
working a plainclothes assignment with the Violent Crimes unit. A couple of years later, by
the time I moved to 83
rd
Street Robbery-Homicide, he was a detective sergeant in Organized Crime.
I had to give him credit. He’d moved up the ladder pretty damn fast, and not because he
had somebody helping him along. Daryl was a go-getter, a guy who lived for his work. It had
destroyed his marriage when he’d been a fireman, and it didn’t leave much room for a private
life after he became a cop. But he was good at what he did, and people noticed. He played at
being a hick most of the time, but not much got past him.
Daryl leaned back in his chair. “I’m not gonna lie to you,” he said. “I met Joshua Thomas
face-to-face once. Talked to him on the phone a few times. But I didn’t know him, not really.
Seemed like a nice enough fella, smart fella, and I figured he could do what we needed him to.
I feel bad about him gettin’ killed, I do. I don’t like losin’ my people. But I also feel bad
cause when they killed him, they shoved my investigation right up my ass and broke it off.”
“That’s your problem.”
“I think it’s a little more than that,” he said. “You’re a pretty smart fella yourself, even if
ya are from Paola. You gotta know by now that Joshua died cause of what he was workin’ on.
Up till now, you didn’t know what that was. Now ya know. We both been workin’ on the
same thing, Charlie. Personally, I think we’d be better off if we worked together.”
He had a point. That pissed me off. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but he had
information and possibly resources I could use. Maybe we weren’t that different after all.
“All right. I’ll keep you in the loop on my investigation, whether Bain gives it an official
okay or not. But understand, I run my case my way. If finding out who killed Joshua helps
you, great, I’m happy for you. If it turns out his death isn’t connected with your investigation,
too bad. My involvement with your Operation Clean Slate starts with Joshua’s murder and
stops when I close the case.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “That’s all I’m askin’ for.”
“What about Dick Nedelmann?” I asked. “The department going to pull out all the
stops?”
“Why don’t we bring Captain Ferrer and the others in,” he said. “It’s Al’s case. Let’s ask
him.”
He stood and went to the door. “Okay, come on back in,” he said. “Charlie and I have
had a meetin’ of the minds on this thing.”
As they filed back into the room, Jimmy said, “I’d sure like to come to a meeting of the
minds with you about Eddie Gabriel, chief.”
Daryl sat back down at the head of the table and nodded. “I know you’re anxious to nail him, Jimmy. I wish I could give you the go-ahead. But Gabriel’s been helpful to us
from time to time, and we’d like him to keep on bein’ helpful, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean you made a deal with him,” Jimmy said.
“Not a deal,” he said. “An arrangement. Gabriel gives us a little, we help him a little. I
understand he’s a thorn in your side, but he ain’t an icepick. If he should become an icepick,
you just give me a holler. I don’t like gangsters, human or vampire, big time or small. Eddie
Gee stays off my shitlist just as long as he’s more useful than he is bothersome.”