At the desk McCaleb took some notes on the legal pad Amelia Cordell had already worked on, and he piled documents and credit card records he wanted to take with him to study later. He made an inventory list of the things he wanted to take so that Amelia Cordell would have a record.
The last drawer he went through was in one of the file cabinets. It was almost empty and had been used by Cordell as the place to file work, insurance and estate planning records. There was a thick file on medical insurance, with billing records dating back to the birth of his daughters and his own treatment for a broken leg. The billing address of one of his treating physicians was in Vail, Colorado, leading McCaleb to guess the bone had been broken in a skiing misadventure.
There was a black binder with a handsome leather slipcover. McCaleb opened it and found that it contained documents relating to the wills of both husband and wife. McCaleb saw nothing unordinary. Each spouse had been the other's beneficiary, with the children following in line in the event of both parents dying. McCaleb didn't spend a lot of time with it.
The last file he looked at was simply labeled WORK and it contained various records, including performance evaluations and various office communications. McCaleb scanned the employment reviews and found that Cordell had apparently been held in high regard by his employers. McCaleb wrote down some of the names of supervisors who signed the reports so he could interview them later. Last he scanned the other correspondence but nothing interested him. There were copies of interoffice memos as well as letters of commendation for Cordell's chairing of the engineering firm's annual blood drive and his volunteer work in a program that provided Thanksgiving meals to the needy. There was also a two-year-old letter from a supervisor praising Cordell for stopping and helping the injured victims of a head-on collision in Lone Pine. Details of what Cordell did were not in the letter. McCaleb put the letters and evaluations back in the file and returned it to the file drawer.
McCaleb stood up and looked around the room. There was nothing else that raised any interest. He then noticed a framed photo on the desk. It was of the Cordell family. He picked it up and studied it for a moment, thinking about how much the bullet had shattered. It made him think of Raymond and Graciela. He envisioned a photo that had the two of them and McCaleb in it, smiling.
He took his empty water glass into the kitchen and left it on the counter. He then stepped into the living room and found Amelia Cordell sitting in the chair she had taken earlier. She was just sitting there. The television was not on, she had no book or newspaper in her hands. She appeared to be just staring at the glass top of the coffee table. McCaleb hesitated in the hallway from the kitchen.
"Mrs. Cordell?"
She shifted her eyes to him without moving her head.
"Yes?"
"I'm finished for now."
He stepped in and placed the receipt on the table.
"These are the things I am taking. I'll get it all back to you in a few days. I'll either mail it or bring it up myself."
Her eyes were on the list now, trying to read it from three feet away.
"Did you find what you need?"
"I don't know yet. These sorts of things, you never know what is important until it becomes important, if you know what I mean."
"Not really."
"Well, I guess I mean details. I'm looking for the telling detail. There used to be a game when I was a kid. I don't remember what it was called but they still might have it around for kids today. You've got a clear plastic tube that stands vertical. There are a bunch of plastic straws running through holes all around the center of it. You load a bunch of marbles into the tube so that they are held up by the straws. The object of the game is to pull a straw out without any marbles dropping. And there always seemed to be one straw that when you pulled it out, everything came down like a landslide. That's what I'm looking for. I've got lots of details. I'm looking for the one that brings the landslide when it's pulled out. Trouble is, you can't tell which one it is until you start pulling."
She looked at him blankly, the way she had been staring at the coffee table.
"Well, look, I've taken too much of your time. I think I'll be on my way and, like I said, I'll get these things back to you. And I'll call you if anything else comes up. My number is on the inventory list there in case you think of anything else or there is anything I can do for you."
He nodded and she said good-bye. He turned to head to the door when he thought of something and turned back.
"Oh, I almost forgot. There was a letter in one of the files commending your husband for stopping at an accident up near Lone Pine. Do you remember that?"
"Sure. That was two years ago, November."
"Do you remember what happened?"
"Just that Jimmy was driving home from up there and he came across the accident. It had just happened and there were people and debris thrown every which way and that. He called for ambulances on his cell phone and stopped to comfort the people. A little boy died right in his arms that night. He had a hard time with that."
McCaleb nodded.
"That was the kind of man he was, Mr. McCaleb."
All McCaleb could do was nod his head again McCaleb had to wait out on the front driveway for ten minutes before Buddy Lockridge finally drove up. He had a Howlin' Wolf tape playing loud an the stereo. McCaleb turned it down after climbing in.
"Where you been?"
"Drivin'. Where to?"
"Well, I was waiting. Back to the marina."
Buddy made a U-turn and headed back to the freeway.
"Well, you told me I didn't have to just sit in the car. You told me to take a drive, I took a drive. How am I supposed to know how long you're going to be if you don't tell me?"
He was right but McCaleb was still annoyed. He didn't apologize.
"If this thing lasts much longer, I ought to get a cell phone for you to carry."
"If this lasts much longer, I want a raise."
McCaleb didn't respond. Lockridge turned the tape back up and pulled a harmonica out of the door pocket. He started playing along to "Wang Dang Doodle." McCaleb looked out the window and thought about Amelia Cordell and how one bullet had taken two lives.
25
THE PACKAGE from Carruthers was waiting for McCaleb in his mailbox. It was as thick as a phone book. He took it back to the boat, opened it and spread the documents across the salon table. He found the most recent summary on the Kenyon investigation and began reading, deciding to learn the latest developments and then go back to read from the start.
The investigation of the Donald Kenyon murder was a joint FBI-Beverly Hills police operation. But the case was cold. The lead agents for the bureau, a pair from the special investigation unit in Los Angeles named Nevins and Uhlig, had concluded in the most recent report, filed in December, that Kenyon had likely been executed by a contract killer. There were two theories as to who had employed the assassin. Theory one was that one of the two thousand victims of the savings and loan collapse had been unsatisfied with Kenyon's sentence or possibly feared he would flee justice once again and therefore had engaged the services of a killer. Theory two was that the killer had been in the employ of the silent partner who Kenyon had claimed during the trial had forced him to loot the savings and loan. That partner, whom Kenyon had refused to identify, remained unidentified as well by the bureau, according to this last report.
McCaleb found the outlining of theory two in the report interesting because it indicated that the federal government might now give credence to Kenyon's claim that he had been forced to siphon funds from his savings and loan by a second party. This claim had been derided during Kenyon's trial by the prosecution, which took to referring to this alleged second party as Kenyon's phantom. Now, here was an FBI document which suggested that the phantom might actually exist.
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.
He pulled the tape of the Gloria Torres murder out, put it in the player and repeated the process again. The words fit the lips of the shooter once again. There was no doubt.
"Don't forget the cannoli," McCaleb said aloud again.
He went to the cabinet next to the chart table and got the phone out. He still had not played the messages that had accumulated over the weekend but he was too hyped to do it now. He punched in the number for Jaye Winston.
"Where have you been and don't you ever
check your machine?" she asked. "I've been trying to call you all weekend and all day to explain. It wasn't my-"
"I know. It wasn't you. It was Hitchens. I'm not calling about that anyway. I know what the bureau told you. I know what you've got-the connection to Donald Kenyon. You've got to bring me back in."
"That's impossible. Hitchens already said I shouldn't even talk to you. How am I going to bring-"
"I can help you."
"How? With what?"