Authors: Michael Koryta
His
eyebrows knit together, as if he thought it was a bullshit answer or at least a
strange one, and then he said, "Whatever. None of my business. Let's hear
the questions."
"Seems
the Cantrells were involved in an offender reentry program, had a bunch of
parolees working out at their place, and Bertoli was one of them," I said.
It was a cursory version, certainly, but that's all I wanted to give him right
now. He didn't need to know about Harrison or Graham or Dunbar. Not yet.
"He
was," Mike said, nodding his enormous head. He'd grown a beard since I'd
last seen him, which added even more size. "You probably know that their
vanishing act was almost simultaneous with Bertoli getting whacked."
"You
say getting whacked," Ken said. "That's the perspective we've heard
from some others, too, but the cause of death was given as an accident."
"That's
right."
"Well,
why wasn't there an investigation, if the evidence pointed to homicide—"
"There
was an investigation, friend. I ran it. As for the death ruling, you got to
look at physical evidence. That's the key. And the
physical
evidence
didn't point to a homicide, necessarily. Guy took a fall off a warehouse,
clipped his head on a Dumpster, then bounced off the pavement, and turned his
face inside out. Nasty way to go, but the cause of death was the fall. That's
something I won't dispute. Whether he took that fall willingly… I have strong
feelings about that, but my strong feelings weren't going to get the cause of
death changed. Fall killed him. What triggered the fall, we couldn't say for
sure. No physical evidence to suggest that anybody pitched him off the roof.
Someone could have, and probably did, but we couldn't prove that."
"There's
an FBI agent named John Dunbar," I said, "who knew a hell of a lot
about what was going on with Bertoli. Did he approach you—"
Mike
smiled. "Oh, you know Dunbar, eh—"
"Uh-huh.
You have some problems with him—"
"Not
exactly. He was cooperative as hell once Bertoli was dead, but more hindrance
than help. He might not have realized it, but other people did."
"What
do you mean—"
"Dunbar
told you what, exactly— About Bertoli—"
"That
he was a potential witness against Dominic Sanabria, and Dunbar was working
with Joshua Cantrell to get information out of him."
"He
mention that he was retired at the time—"
"What—"
"Yeah,
Lincoln. Dunbar was retired from the Bureau when all this shit went down.
Everything he told you about his plan with Bertoli and Cantrell is accurate,
but it was also unofficial. The Feds had no idea what was going on, because he
wasn't working for them anymore. There was no law enforcement involvement,
period. Dunbar's idea was that he'd go to them when he had something to show.
Didn't pan out, did it—"
My
disbelief turned quickly to understanding. The previous day I'd had trouble
believing that the FBI could have implemented such a ludicrous plan, placing
Bertoli in the home of Sanabria's sister and using Cantrell as an informant.
Now I understood—the FBI
hadn't
implemented the plan. It had been Dunbar
and Cantrell, working alone.
"That
makes sense," I said. "Hell, that's the only way it makes sense. The
whole idea was insane. If they never approved it, that means—"
"He
was running his own show with Cantrell," Mike said. "Which tells you
two things. One, the only official version is the one Dunbar provided, because
everybody else who was involved is dead or missing, and, two, the man had a
king-sized hard-on for Dominic Sanabria. I mean, he turned Sanabria into a
retirement project— Pro bono prosecution— Crazy shit."
Ken
said, "So everything Dunbar did with Cantrell was completely—"
"Unsupervised,"
Mike said. "Yes. When Bertoli took his header off the roof—with or without
assistance—and Dunbar came forward with his story, you can imagine how elated
his Feeb buddies were. Then the Cantrells bailed, and the whole thing started
to smell even worse."
"So
they squashed the investigation—" I said. "Are you kidding me— To
protect Dunbar—"
"I
wouldn't say that they squashed it, really. I mean, I did work the case for a
while, and worked it hard. We couldn't get anything convincing to go on.
Everybody understood that Sanabria probably had the guy killed, but we couldn't
get a lead to work with. Bertoli was a piece of shit anyhow, nobody was crying
over his loss, and the last thing the FBI wanted was Dunbar's story going
public. Wouldn't have been anything criminal, but it also wouldn't have made
them look good. A rogue retiree placing informants without anybody's knowledge,
and then the informant gets killed— No, that wouldn't have made them look
good."
"Nobody
thought it was worth looking for the Cantrells—"
"We
looked."
"Not
very forcefully," Ken said. "The police told his family that they wouldn't
investigate. Told them—"
"Cantrells
left of their own volition. That's the way it looked at the time, at least.
Packed a bunch of shit into storage and made arrangements for the house. There
was no sign that one of them had been killed. Not until the body showed
up."
"You
said you worked the Bertoli case hard," I said.
"I
did. Even if the death ruling wasn't a homicide, we treated it like one as soon
as Dunbar came forward. You have to give the guy that much credit, too—at least
he showed up and told the truth when Bertoli got killed. A lot of people
wouldn't have the balls to do that. He had to know it wasn't going to go over
well with his buddies at the Bureau. Took some swallowed pride to come forward,
I'm sure."
"You
never got anything that showed a connection between his death and Sanabria,
though—"
"I
got something, but it was weak. It wasn't enough to build a case on." He
stopped talking as the waitress passed nearby and eyed her tray hopefully, then
sighed with disappointment when she delivered the food to the table beside us.
"What
did you get—" I said.
"Lasagna
and—"
"Not
the food, Mike. I mean on the case. What was the connection—"
"Oh,
right. Well, there was a place across from the warehouse where Bertoli died
that had parking lot surveillance cameras. It didn't show the scene, but it
caught cars coming and going. Problem was, the street was fairly busy. In just
one hour around Bertoli's time of death, there were sixty-two cars on the tape.
I got all the plate numbers I could, ran registrations."
This
was the sort of work ethic that Mike was famous for, a determined pursuit of
any angle, no matter how long the odds.
"I
got one car, and one car only, that had some possibility," he said.
"A tricked-out Oldsmobile Cutlass, all sorts of custom shit on it,
spinners and crap like that. The plate ran back to a Darius Neloms. Big D, as
he is generally known."
I
shook my head. "Doesn't mean anything to me."
"There's
a bunch of Neloms in East Cleveland, and the whole family is nothing but
pushers and hustlers. Darius runs a body shop over on Eddy and St. Clair."
"Tough
neighborhood."
"You
ain't kidding. These days, Big D's doing well for himself. Making money putting
in hydraulics and fancy rims and stereos, all the toys that the young thugs
like, makes 'em feel like they're in a rap video. There was a time, though,
when he took a bust for running a chop shop. Taking in stolen cars, repainting
them, adding some window tint, maybe changing the headlights or the grille, and
sending 'em back out. He didn't take a hard fall because they had trouble
proving he knew the cars were stolen. I'm sure that was crap, but the guys
bringing him the cars worked for Dominic Sanabria and a guy named Johnny DiPietro."
"Later
murdered," I said, "and Dunbar thinks it was by Sanabria, and Bertoli
was a witness."
"You
got it."
"You
think Sanabria hired this Darius guy to kill Bertoli—" Ken asked.
"No
way," Mike said. "He would've handled that in-house."
"It
was his car at the scene."
"It
was registered to him. One of about nine vehicles he had registered to him or
his shop. When Bertoli died, Darius was at a party at a nightclub, which I
verified by their security tapes."
"So
maybe it's a meaningless connection," Ken said.
"Could
be, but Darius Neloms was connected to Dominic Sanabria and Johnny DiPietro,
had gone to jail for working with them on stolen cars in the past. If somebody
in their crew wanted to borrow a car, Darius was a likely source."
"Why
in the hell would they borrow a car," I said, "instead of stealing
one—
Mike
smiled. "Look at the result. I spent time chasing leads on Darius—and
don't kid yourself into thinking the Italians viewed him as some sort of
compatriot. A bunch of racist fucks, those guys. They're not above working with
a black guy to bring in some dollars, but they damn sure aren't going to worry
about redirecting police his way, either."
"You
talk to Darius—"
"Uh-huh,
and got nothing. 'I own lots of cars, lots of people have access to them cars,
no way I could possibly remember who might've been driving that car on that
night.'"
"What
was your sense of him—"
"That
he was lying, of course—but was he lying with a real purpose— Guy like Darius
Neloms, he doesn't necessarily need the extra motivation to lie to me. See a
badge, lie to the badge."
"So
that's where the case died—"
"That's
where it died. I ran that up the ladder, you know, showing there was at least a
weak link between one of the cars and Sanabria, but of course it wasn't enough.
No evidence for a homicide, nobody talking to us, the FBI boys embarrassed by
the whole thing because of Dunbar, it's almost surprising I got that far with
it."
I saw
the waitress headed our way again and figured this time the food would be ours,
and that meant Mike wasn't going to be answering any more questions for a
while. Best to slide in one more while I had his attention.
"A
few minutes ago you made a good point, saying that Dunbar's version is the only
official one, since the whole damn circus he put together was so
unofficial."
Mike
nodded, waiting.
"So
I'm wondering—did you believe that version— That one unsupported but also
unconfirmed version—"
Mike
said, "Look, Dunbar was one of a group of FBI guys that did some righteous
work on the mob around here. Put a lot of those boys in prison."
"But—"
"But
Dunbar also wore a suit every day, and one of the rules I've developed after
twenty years at this game, Lincoln, is never trust a man in a suit."
Amazing,
the way one fact can change your entire perception of something.
John Dunbar
was
retired
at the time he launched his plan with Bertoli and Cantrell—
Nobody else approved it, or even knew about it— Yeah, that changed things.
His
plan had been terrible, too, a perversion of an old cop game that had never
worked well in my experience—planting a snitch in a jail cell. There were
plenty of narcs in the prison system, and it was a tactic that had been used
for decades, generally off the books, and rarely well. The problem was that the
snitches lied, that they had no credibility in court, and that the targets were
rarely anywhere near as stupid as required for the tactic to work. Joshua
Cantrell had effectively played the role of a jail cell snitch in his own home,
welcoming Bertoli in and trying to talk to him about a mob hit. Made it a great
deal more difficult to be sneaky about that sort of thing when your wife was
the sister of the suspect. They could have concealed that from Bertoli
initially—and surely did, otherwise I couldn't imagine he'd have actually
agreed to the parole assignment—but eventually it would have had to surface,
wouldn't it—
Yes,
it was stupid, and Dunbar had known that all along; otherwise he wouldn't have
operated without FBI approval, and that made me wonder about both his
motivations and his story. I hadn't doubted him at first, not in our initial
talk, but at the time I had felt like everything he said was a breakthrough,
had been almost overwhelmed by the story he told. Now I looked back on it,
playing through the conversation again in my mind, looking for holes, signs of
lies.