Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery (7 page)

Gaudia, on the other hand, was a man
controlled—
by his appetites. He wanted women’s bodies and wet food and sweet drinks with straws. Gaudia’s primary organs were his tongue and his penis.

Still, Crimmins had been in business long enough to know that other people’s weaknesses can be your strengths.

He had noted Gaudia’s lusts and hired the man immediately because Gaudia was more than a minor hood with a busy tongue. He was one of the best-connected people in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois. Crimmins checked around and got a feel for the labyrinthine network Vince Gaudia was hooked into. It was inspiring. The pipeline did not reach to Washington and, curiously, Gaudia could not fix a parking ticket in St. Louis. But hundreds of those in between—court clerks, judges, councilmen, county executives, banking commissioners, administrative agency workers, in St. Louis, Jeff City and Springfield—were
all snug in his pocket. And his skills went beyond knowing who. They extended to
how
. He had a feel for the ethics: who would take a case of J&B but resent a gift of money, who would take a junket, who a job for their kid, a P&Z decision reversal, a co-op in Vail.

Gaudia was an expert at bartering and the product he dealt in was influence.

Crimmins, who had established the most complicated and high-volume money-laundering operation in the Midwest, decided Vince Gaudia could make a major contribution to his company.

The match looked heaven-sent and although they were temperamental opposites, Gaudia and Crimmins hit it off extremely well. Crimmins’s laundering was making bold inroads into Kansas City and he had an eye on Chicago. He pioneered the use of not-for-profit organizations as money-laundering vehicles and was probably the only person in the world, certainly the only Christian, who cleaned money through both an Orthodox synagogue in University City and a Nation of Islam mosque in East St. Louis, both unwitting coconspirators. Crimmins’s business, with Gaudia as his lieutenant, would have become one of the major profitable enterprises in the metropolitan area if it were not for the coincidental occurrence of two things.

The first was a network TV news exposé—
60 Minutes,
no less—about a problem in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. There had been a string of bungled drug cases. Well, putting bad guys away is not easy, and the good guys get cut a lot of slack from judges but these slipups were so egregious—and so lip-smackingly exposed
on nationwide TV—that the attorney general himself took action. He called the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Ronald Peterson, and brought him to Washington for a talk about the botched prosecutions. Peterson kept his job by a thread and returned from D.C. with a renewed sense of devotion to put away people like Peter Crimmins.

The second coincidence was that Vince Gaudia slept with the wrong woman.

He would not have described her that way, probably. She was a sullen brunette with long, icy red nails and disks of green eyes. She talked in a little-girl singsong voice that made his mind glaze over instantly but forced his cock to attention about as fast. They had only one date, during which they became wildly drunk and made love for four hours. She claimed later that he proposed she live with him in his riverfront co-op. Gaudia did not remember saying that. Nor, when she finally tracked him down after a week of not returning her phone calls, did he remember her name.

She apparently had a much better memory than he did, however, and in a letter to U.S. Attorney Peterson, described almost verbatim many of the secrets a drunken Vince Gaudia had shared with her.

U.S. Attorney Peterson saw a chance to redeem his career and wired an FBI agent, who posed as an administrative hearing judge. He met with Gaudia in a bad Italian restaurant near the Gateway Arch. After a little soft-shoe the agent accepted five thousand dollars in exchange for agreeing to overlook an EPA violation by one of Gaudia’s clients. One minute later Gaudia was arrested and about an hour after that a deal was struck: In exchange for a probation plea recommendation
Gaudia would hand over Peter Crimmins’s balls on a fourteen-karat gold plate.

But now Gaudia was dead as a rock and Peter Crimmins knew that U.S. Attorney Peterson had yet another count he wished to add to those forty-four indictments: Crimmins’s murder of a government witness.

Crimmins was lost in thought about this situation when the outer door to his office opened and his lawyer entered. They shook hands and the man sat. The lawyer was beefy, with an automatic pilot of a smile that would kick in at any time for no seeming reason. He played tennis on powerful legs and drove a Porsche. He said things like, “Pete, my man, I’d look at that deal with a proctoscope.” And “As your counselor and as your friend I’d advise you . . .”

Crimmins had never told the man he was his friend.

The lawyer now asked bluntly, “Where were you Friday night?”

“What are you asking?”

“I gotta know, Pete. Were you with anybody?”

“You think I
killed
Gaudia?” Crimmins asked.

“I don’t ask my clients if they’re guilty or not. I want to establish your alibi, not your innocence.”

“Well, I’m telling you,” Crimmins said. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

The lawyer tightened the titanium knot of his silk tie. “Did you hint to anybody—?”

“No.” After the indictment he had stopped associating with his toughest muscle. He reminded the man of this.

“Well, you could have set it up ahead of time. Hey, I’m just telling you what the cop’ll be thinking.”

Crimmins raised his voice. “I didn’t do it.”

The lawyer looked sideways and clearly did not believe this denial. “It’s not what
I
think. It’s what the U.S. Attorney is going to think. And I’ll tell you, with Gaudia gone, Peterson’s got you by a lot less short hairs than he did two days ago.”

Crimmins knew this, of course. “You think the indictment won’t stick?”

“Peterson’s a whore pup. Your conviction is his ticket to D.C. He believes in his soul you killed Gaudia and he’s going to turn you fucking—”

“I don’t like those words you use,” Crimmins muttered.

“—inside out. Your case gets thrown out, he’s going to lose his media defendant.”

“There are plenty of defendants to go around.”

The lawyer was losing patience. “But he wants
you
. You’re the one he told the world he was going to get. You’re the one he had. He’ll be a bitch in heat. Mark my words.”

“This is selective prosecution.” Crimmins believed he knew enough law to be a lawyer himself.

“I’ve got your closing statement all prepared, Pete. I don’t need to hear your version of it.”

Why was Crimmins putting his life—well, his liberty and pursuit of happiness, at least—into the hands of this slick man with a resonant belly and a vicious backhand?

“
If
—for the sake of argument—you had to have an alibi—”

“I—”

“Humor me, Pete. If,
if
you had to have an alibi for the time that Gaudia was shot, would you have one?”

Crimmins did not answer.

The lawyer sighed. “All right. What I’m going to do is ask around some. See who knows what. See what Peterson’s going to do about this. I’ve got some friends’re cops. They owe me. Supposedly there’s a witness nobody’s found yet.”

“A witness?”

“It’s just a rumor. Some guy who saw the shooter.”

The lawyer stood up. “Another thing: They think the getaway car was a Lincoln.”

Crimmins was silent for a moment. He said softly, “I drive a Lincoln.”

“A dark-colored Lincoln is what they said.”

Peter Crimmins had selected Midnight Blue. He found it a comforting color.

The lawyer walked to the door, pulling his short-brimmed hat on his bullet-shaped head.

“Wait,” Peter Crimmins said.

The lawyer stopped and turned.

“This witness. I don’t care what you have to do. What it costs . . .”

The lawyer was suddenly very uncomfortable. His hand went to his belly and he rubbed the spot where presumably his sumptuous breakfast was being digested. “You want me to—”

“Find out who he is.”

“And?”

“Just find out,” Peter Crimmins whispered very softly as if every lampshade and picture frame in the room contained a microphone.

“HE’S LYING,” DONNIE
Buffett said into the telephone.

Detective Bob Gianno said, “No doubt about it.”

“What he did,” Buffett continued, “he bent down and looked into the car from just three feet away . . . No, not even. One foot away. If he says he didn’t see anything he’s lying.”

Gianno said, “All he’s gotta do is talk and the case’s a grounder. Nothing to it. A hose job.”

Buffet said, “You’ll keep on him?”

“Oh, you bet, Donnie boy. You bet.”

They hung up. Buffett’s stomach was growling regularly but he didn’t feel hungry. They were giving him something from a thick plastic bag, a clear liquid that dripped into his arm. Maybe glucose. He wondered if that was a good idea, because glucose was sugar and before the shooting he had been meaning to lose a few pounds.

He thought about the doughnut and coffee Pellam had brought him. Was it just last night? Two nights ago? It could have been a week. Why was Pellam lying about seeing the killer’s partner? Afraid probably.

The door pushed wider open and a doctor came
into the room. He was a compact man, about forty, with thick black hair. Trim, with muscular forearms, which made Buffett think that he was an orthopedics man. Buffett loved sports, all kinds of sports, every sport and he knew jock docs; they were always in good shape. He pulled a chair close to the bed, sat down and introduced himself. His name was Gould. He had a low, pleasing voice.

“I guess I met you before,” Buffett said. “You operated on me?”

“I was one of the neurosurgeons, yes.”

Gould lifted the chart from the rack and flipped it open. He skimmed it, set it down. He leaned forward and, with a penlight, looked into Buffett’s eyes. He asked the policeman to watch the doctor’s finger as it did figure eights then to extend his arms and touch his nose.

Donnie Buffett did as he was told.

The doctor said, “Good.” Which did not mean good or anything else, then he asked, “How you feeling, Officer?”

“Okay, I guess. My shoulder stings.”

“Ah.” He examined Buffett’s chart again and he examined it for a very long moment, it seemed to Buffett.

“Doctor . . . ?” Buffett’s voice faded.

The doctor did not encourage him to continue. He closed the metal cover of the chart and said, “Officer, I’d like to talk to you about your injury, tell you exactly what happened, what we did. What we’re going to do.”

“Sure.”

“You were shot in the back. Several slugs hit your bullet-proof vest. They were small—.22-caliber—and
shattered right away. A third bullet hit the top side of the vest. It was deflected but it grazed your scapula, your shoulder blade. That’s the pain you feel there. It’s a minor wound. We removed the bullet easily. There’s some risk of sepsis—that’s infection—but the odds are that won’t happen.”

Gould was taking out a pen, a fancy gold and lacquer pen, and was drawing what looked like the lower half of a skeleton on the back of a receipt.

“Donnie, three of the bullets hit you below the vest. They entered here, that’s where the lumbar region of the spinal cord joins the sacral region. One shattered and stopped here.” The pen, top replaced, was now a pointer. “The other two lodged in your intestine but missed the kidneys and bladder. We removed all the pieces of lead. We’ve repaired the damage with sutures that will absorb into the tissue. You won’t need any further surgery, unless we have a sepsis situation.”

“Okay,” Buffett said agreeably. He squinted and studied the diagram as if he’d be tested on it later.

“Donnie, the bullet that shattered—it entered your spinal cord here.”

Buffett was nodding. He was a cop. He had seen death. He had seen pain. He had
felt
pain. He was totally calm. His injury couldn’t be serious. If it were he’d be hooked up to huge machines. Respirators and jet cockpit controls. All he had was a tube in his dick and an IV that was feeding him fattening sugar. That was nothing. No problem. He felt pain now, a wonderful pain that ran through his legs, playing hide-and-seek. If he were paralyzed he wouldn’t be feeling pain.

“Donnie, we’re going to refer you to a Dr. Weiser,
one of St. Louis’s top SCI neurologists and therapists. SCI, that’s spinal cord injury.”

“But I’m okay, aren’t I?”

“You’re not in a life-threatening condition. With upper SCIs, there’s a risk of respiratory or cardiac failure . . . Those can be very troublesome.”

Troublesome.

“But your accident was lower SCI. That was fortunate in terms of your survival.”

“Doctor, I’ll be able to walk, won’t I? The thing is, my job, I’m a
cop
. I have to walk.” He lifted his palms as if he were embarrassed to be explaining something so simple.

“Uhn, Donnie,” the doctor said slowly, “your prognosis is essentially nonambulatory.”

Nonambulatory.

“What does? . . .” Buffett’s throat closed down and he was unable to complete his question. Because he
knew
exactly what it meant.

“Your spinal cord was almost completely severed,” Gould said. Buffett was looking directly into his eyes but did not see any of the intense sympathy that was pouring from them. “With the state of the art at the present time I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about it. You won’t walk, no.”

“Oh. Well. I see.”

“Officer, you’re very lucky. You could easily have been killed. Or it might have been a quadriplegic situation.”

Sure, that’s true.

Gould stood up. The chart got replaced on the bed, the doctor’s nifty pen went back into his shirt.
“Dr. Weiser is much more competent to talk about your injury than I am. You couldn’t ask for a better expert. A nurse will be coming by to schedule an appointment later.” He smiled, shook Buffett’s hand. “We’ll do everything we can for you, Officer. Don’t worry about a thing.”