The syndicate, p.27
The Syndicate, page 27
Craine looked back at Dragna, gauging his reaction.
“To be clear, we’re not accusing you of anything.”
Dragna didn’t reply immediately but Craine could see he was relieved. “You think he did this alone?”
Craine clarified: “I think he was sponsored by the Chicago Outfit.”
This seemed to take Dragna a long time to process. “Why would they want Siegel dead?”
“To get a better price on The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.”
“Lansky is selling The Flamingo to Chicago,” Abe said, more forthcoming than Craine expected. “They might have been using Harvey. Manipulating him.”
“What about the F.B.I.? You said they’ve been hiding things.”
“Yes, but we don’t know why. To make the case blow over, maybe.”
Dragna stopped staring at the window and looked back at them. “Is anyone else in Los Angeles involved?”
Abe said, “We don’t know.”
“There’s no way of knowing if anyone else is in on this,” Craine added. “Not yet. But what we can do is talk to Harvey. We can find out what he knows and who set him up.”
“In exchange for what?” Dragna asked. “Clemency?” The Italian folded his arms. “This is not the way I conduct business.”
Craine was beginning to get fed up with liars and murderers dressing up in suits and calling themselves businessmen.
Abe looked uncomfortable. It was clear that mercy was what he was hoping for. “We don’t know they hadn’t threatened him. Or his family.”
“Or if he’s turned any of my other men,” Dragna huffed.
Craine’s voice was tight and raspy. “Which of your men do you trust wholeheartedly? With your life?”
Dragna looked down across the entire floor. There were men at the door. Men idling by desks. Half a dozen of them, and all with pistols in their jacket pockets. Probably a few shotguns or Thompsons locked up somewhere, too.
The mob boss sighed. “Until ten minutes ago, I would have said Harvey Sterling.”
The three of them crossed the floor toward where Harvey was standing. He was staring at ticker tape where horse race results had come through the teleprinter. He looked up when he saw them coming toward him.
“Harvey,” Dragna said casually. “Can we have a word?”
“Of course, sir,” he said, standing to attention.
He noticed Craine and Abe behind him. His eyes moved a fraction.
“Everything okay, Mr. Dragna?”
Harvey looked at the three of them in turn but it was Craine he stared at. Harvey saw Craine and Craine saw Harvey.
“Come up to my office,” Dragna said. “We need to talk.”
Both men were smiling with their mouths but not with their eyes. Abe squared off, his arms folded. Craine knew his fingers were wrapped around his pistol grip.
“What about, Mr. Dragna?”
“I’ll tell you upstairs.”
“Harvey,” Abe said. “Listen to the man. We have a few questions.”
“What’s this about?”
Dragna said, “Harvey. Come into my office and let’s talk. There is a civilized way of doing this. And there is another way.”
Harvey looked at Abe. “What’s going on?”
Abe said, “You know.”
Harvey’s smile bent slowly until all his features were upside down. “Sir, whatever they told you is bullshit.”
Their plan to keep this low-key wasn’t working. The rest of Dragna’s men began looking over. They seemed confused. Craine had no idea if they were working with Harvey. Every one of them was a potential threat.
“Harvey,” Craine said, trying to defuse the situation. “I know it’s not what it looks like.”
Harvey’s hand came up to his neck like he had an itch. And then his fingers moved down toward his inside jacket pocket. “It’s not. It’s not what it looks like,” he repeated like a child’s echolalia.
Abe dropped one hand so Harvey could see the other was on his pistol grip. He didn’t draw it.
“Harvey,” Abe said. “Don’t do anything foolish, now. There’s a way out of this where no one gets hurt.”
Harvey’s eyes were darting in different directions but when he looked at Abe he couldn’t make eye contact. Or maybe he was too focused on the Savage.
Abe raised his voice. “Is it true, Harvey?”
Harvey was shaking his head but managed to whisper, “I’m sorry.”
Harvey pulled out his pistol in one motion. Abe matched his movements until both men had their pistols out and were aiming at each other.
There was a gasp from one of the telephone operators and people started to shout and curse. The sound of phones being dropped and chairs scraping back. More voices and noises came from behind Craine but he had no intention of turning around.
“I’m sorry,” Harvey said. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Craine saw Harvey swing the pistol in his direction and fully expected him to pull the trigger. On the few occasions men had pointed guns at him, it was usually with one intention.
“It wasn’t what you think. I didn’t choose this—”
“Whatever happened,” Craine said gently, stretching his palms slowly outward to show he wasn’t armed, “we can help you.”
Harvey’s lack of response was unnerving.
“Harvey, put the gun down.” This from Abe. Dragna had stopped talking entirely.
Craine spoke again, his hands still spreading away from his body. “Tell us what happened, Harvey. Tell us so we can help you.”
Harvey stared back intently but said nothing. Craine knew he was scared and he knew he was angry. In many ways they were in the same position.
“Harvey, stop pointing the gun at Craine.”
Craine blinked hard, hoping that when he opened his eyes Harvey might simply disappear. He didn’t.
“Tell him, Harvey,” Craine said gently. “Tell Abe why you killed Siegel. Who sent you? Who made you do it?”
Harvey didn’t answer. His hands were shaking. Twitching, even. You didn’t want people with guns in their hands to twitch.
Around them telephones were ringing but nobody was answering them. Any thoughts of laying wagers on outcomes had turned toward this drama. And odds in favor of this scene turning bloody were increasing moment to moment.
Craine glanced in all directions. There were five other men who worked for Lansky. Where were they?
“Talk to us, Harvey.”
Harvey frowned, then shook his head. “He said he’d kill Lucy.” A deep breath. Choking. “And the kids. They’re all I got.”
“Who did, Harvey? Who did this?”
“I can’t—”
Deepening his voice, Abe said, “Put your gun down. Let’s talk about what happened.”
It went this way, back and forth and back again, each man talking over the other.
For a second it looked like Harvey might lower his pistol and then one of Dragna’s security guards came striding out through Craine’s periphery with his pistol raised.
Craine blinked. An inward sigh. Some situations seemed determined to escalate.
Harvey spun to face him and both men fired. Harvey shot the man clean in the chest before he too was injured. He keeled forward, clutching his arm. By now the room was full of screaming.
Different bodyguards threw themselves in front of Dragna.
In the melee, Harvey ran to the exit door. There were more shots fired and people running this way and that but it was the screaming that rang in Craine’s ears more than anything else. There was nothing as distinctive as the sounds of people being completely terrified.
He thought of Michael.
Chapter 37
The F.B.I.’s Field Office was how Captain Henson imagined a Wall Street corporation to be. The homicide department didn’t even have a boardroom, but this one had a polished table with twelve leather seats spaced evenly around it. There was a framed photograph of Hoover at one end of the room and a matching one of Redhill at the other. It was a reminder that he, a lowly police captain, was talking to the Federal Bureau’s head of the Los Angeles office.
When they sat down, Henson looked at Redhill’s well-coiffed hair and his oversized watch and thought he looked more like an advertising executive or a bank chairman than an investigator. He was the type of person you met and didn’t really like for some reason, and then when you got to know him you realized your first instincts were completely correct.
“Thanks for your call,” Redhill began, taking control of the meeting. “You’re absolutely right, it’s time we talked. I was just about to ask my secretary to set up a meeting myself.”
“But you’re alright? You weren’t hurt?”
Redhill touched his collar. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“I wanted to talk to you about what happened with Jonathan Craine. The two uniforms you were with are giving conflicting accounts of what they saw. But what I also want to know is, why were you at the L.A.P.D. offices at all?”
Redhill smiled plainly. “I needed to collect a few things from the evidence room.”
“You could have asked and I would have had them sent straight over. Or you could have sent someone . . . more junior.”
“I like to keep across these things myself. You know how it is.”
“Did Craine give you any indication of what he was doing there or how he got inside the building in the first place?”
“No. Although clearly L.A.P.D. security isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps you need an internal review.”
“We’re looking into exactly how it happened. I can’t be sure, but we believe he was after fingerprint records.”
“Whose?” Redhill seemed keen to know.
“We don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”
“How do you mean?”
Henson had no intention of telling Redhill about his clandestine meeting with Craine. If anything it was Redhill who had been hiding things from Henson. He probed him without giving his cards away.
“Craine has been asking questions about Benjamin Siegel. I was hoping you could update me on your investigation. As part of this combined effort.”
“Hey,” Redhill said, holding up shiny palms, “I get it: street crime is your business. But you know, when it links to national concerns . . .” He brought the palms inward, gesturing to yours truly.
Henson tried to be affable. “You’re supposed to update me on progress. That’s how it works, right?”
“Absolutely. Except here’s the thing.” Redhill leaned forward like he was sharing something secret: “There is no worthwhile evidence.”
Henson was surprised and yet inwardly not so. “Nothing has shown up? What about the cartridges on the lawn we located? Or the ballistics tests from projectiles located during the autopsy? The projectiles were whole.”
“No, nothing.”
“The Fingerprint Factory in Washington has collected over ten million records since the war. Are you telling me there’s no match to a single print?”
Redhill didn’t answer.
“What about the car? I know the neighbors were interviewed. Reports were sent to your office.”
“No usable description, Henson.”
“What about this third witness—”
“I don’t believe it for a second.” Then before the Captain could query it further, he said, “Look, Henson, we’re doing all we can here. Given limited resources.”
“Limited resources? You’re the F.B.I.—”
“I absolutely understand why you’re upset—”
“We cultivated the press. Assured them that together we were going to invest all necessary resources to find Siegel’s killer.”
“We’re not.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re not going to find Siegel’s killers. That’s a fact. I’m not trying to embarrass anybody, least of all the work of the homicide unit, but I know Director Hoover has spoken to the Chief of Police and they’re going to recommend we change the flow of information to the newspapers.”
“Meaning?”
Redhill was holding several sheaves of paper in his hand when he entered the room and now he handed Henson one from the top. The Captain would never know what was on the other pages.
“Tomorrow morning you’re going to release the following statement to the press. You can read it out or share it directly, that’s completely up to you.”
Henson picked up the statement and read the first two paragraphs.
“Despite poring through files and records of federal, state and local agencies, all indications are now that Siegel’s murder will likely go unsolved.
“A meeting of law enforcement chiefs has been called and the F.B.I. and the L.A.P.D. have agreed the necessity of broadening the sphere of this investigation. Resources will now focus on examining the enterprises and associations of Benjamin Siegel in order to compile a comprehensive catalog of organized racketeering in America, specifically East Coast crime syndicates.”
“What is this? You’re dropping Siegel to focus on organized crime in New York?”
“Correct.”
“When was this agreed? What meeting of law enforcement?”
“This one. The conversation we’re having right now.”
Despite the look Henson gave him, Redhill’s face was inscrutable. “We both know that the New York mob are responsible for Siegel’s death. So rather than waste hundreds of man hours on a wild goose chase locating the individual responsible for pulling the trigger, we’re going to focus our efforts on Meyer Lansky.”
Henson dropped the press release on the table.
“And this is Hoover’s request?”
Redhill replied to the question without answering the question at all. “Hoover has deemed me responsible. He’s preoccupied with the H.U.A.C. hearings, understandably.”
The timing seemed too much of a coincidence, but a junior agent knocked on the door and Redhill gestured him over.
The young man was wearing the same suit and tie as Redhill. Everyone in the building had his hair cropped the same way. Henson heard him mutter something about Jonathan Craine, but the rest was out of earshot. He hadn’t even finished when Redhill stood up.
“Apologies, Captain. I’m afraid I have to go.”
“Something come up? Is it about Craine?”
“Thanks for your time,” he said, ignoring the question. “I’ll be in touch.”
And when Redhill left the room something important dawned on Henson. The L.A.P.D. didn’t really have its own agency. It was a government department built to react to one thing and one thing only: the human condition. The F.B.I., on the other hand, was an independent organization with an ability to self-serve. Redill was a corporate strategist with a vision to shape America. To turn the F.B.I. into an establishment no different from the Hollywood studio system or the press.
Henson thought about what Conroy had said to him last night. She was right. Unless the L.A.P.D. adapted, they were never going to survive.
After the shooting, there was shouting, and threats, accusations and denials. The man Harvey had shot had been whisked away to an unseen room, likely to die before Dr. Fulton even got his phone call. There was blood all over Dragna’s factory floor and workers had gathered around it in shock like it held the key to making this situation disappear.
Abe told Dragna that he and Craine should go and find Harvey alone. Craine thought Dragna might take some convincing, but the older man was preoccupied with taking control of the situation in front of him and almost seemed relieved to see them go.
“Tell Lansky I had no idea,” he said repeatedly. “Make sure he knows I’m loyal to the end.”
Jack Dragna sounded desperate.
Craine knew the address Dragna gave him well enough and directed Abe to the edges of the borough limits, where they pulled onto Harvey’s road in Glendale. He had that sinking feeling of being too late.
As they counted down the houses, Abe confessed, “I told him we were going to the Bradbury that night. And I told him about Conroy helping us.”
“You think—”
Abe nodded: it was him. He sighed, then said, “Joseph, my son, he and Harvey were in a hole together. He came home once, briefly, didn’t even have to tell me. I could see it in the look in his eyes that they’d done things. Seen things. Whatever happened to them in the Pacific, maybe it made him do this. Like a madness.”
What Abe said made sense in many ways. You didn’t see men coming back from the war crying. Rarely did you see outward displays of hurt and frustration. Rather it expressed itself inward, spilling over only occasionally into anger or aggression. He’d seen farmhands back from Europe beating each other to a pulp over a horseshoe toss.
But Harvey wasn’t like Kastel or the other men. He wasn’t a drug addict, either. He seemed in control.
“Abe, I’m not convinced he chose to do this. I think someone was forcing his hand.”
“He’s a good kid,” Abe said, trying to make sense of it all. “I knew him since he was a little boy.”
There was a Hudson parked askew in one of the driveways and Craine knew immediately that this was Harvey’s house. He wondered if Abe knew he drove a Hudson all along.
Neither man had any intention of kicking down the front door when it faced two neighboring houses across the street. Instead, they followed a flagged pathway that led from the driveway to the side of the house.
Abe had his Savage out now, aiming at anything they could spot through the side windows. Craine was wondering if they might be better smashing a window to enter but the rear door was already ajar.
The two men went inside. Hot air and the smell of something burning.
Bacon rashers were smoking on the hob and Craine used his cuff to lift the pan off and drop it into the sink.
Abe ignored him, moving deeper into the house, his pistol already tilting in each direction like a dowsing rod. But they didn’t discover water. Only blood.
Harvey’s wife was the first one they found.
