Closure (Jack Randall) (39 page)

He ignored the crew as they watched him finish construction of the sandwich, and sit down at the table. A cold glass of milk was placed in front of him and he grunted in acknowledgment. As the men watched him eat, he knew they were all thinking of their own futures. Their future rested on his. Some of these men would be friends this morning and enemies this afternoon if things did not go well. He was beyond caring. His family was safely out of the country. He had no sons in the business. He was finished either way. The sandwich was slowly consumed in an attempt to enjoy every bite.

A knock on the door brought several of them to their feet. After a shout through the door, it was opened and the lawyer came in. As usual, he was decked out in a wool suit and a long wool coat. A $100 silk tie was drawn tight to his throat. The shoes were mirrors. Despite the expensive clothes and custom tailoring, they still did not fit the man. He looked exactly like what he was—a mob lawyer.

“Are you ready Tony?” he inquired.

Mob boss Anthony Tasone finished the final bite of his sandwich before replying. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

He pushed the plate aside and rose to his feet. One of the crew held the sweater, while another mussed his hair. Once the costume was all in place, Tony walked to the chair and sat. The blanket was placed over his legs and he was ready. The lawyer gave him a long look before nodding to the crewman behind him. Tony stewed in the chair until they were almost at the front door. He could hear the crowd before they opened it. He let his head fall forward and took on the blank stare he had perfected over the last year. It was show time.

The door opened and the flash of the cameras greeted him once again. Anthony Tasone was off to court, possibly for the last time.

•      •      •

Sam lay on the air mattress in the back of the van. It had been a cold night, but the sleeping bag and blanket he had purchased had proven sufficient. He now lay listening to the radio and waiting for the sunlight streaming in through the windshield to warm the interior before getting up.

Finding a news station took a few minutes, but he soon had the financial news, followed by the headlines. The third story was of the expected verdict in the trial of mob boss Anthony Tasone. Sam listened intently to the story, but it was mostly speculation. The verdict was scheduled to happen sometime in the afternoon, just as the majority of the trial had taken place. This had been the topic of much speculation, and the common assumption was that it was due to the location of the sequestered jury. The commute was evidently rather long. It was the third such trial for Anthony Tasone, on a variety of charges. The first two had been declared mistrials, due to alleged jury tampering. The judge in this case had not fooled around. The jury had been sequestered from day one. The prosecution had done an excellent job of presenting the case. The late night TV experts all agreed that Tasone was looking at multiple guilty verdicts. Yet there were doubts. The accused had been in a wheelchair since the trial began and was presented to the public as suffering from the aftermath of a stroke. Coincidently, the stroke happened soon after the charges being filed. With the jury out of reach, the defense had resorted to this tactic to present their client as no threat to society. Whether the charade had worked on any member of the jury would be seen today. Since Tasone had beaten the system twice already, Sam had little faith in this outcome. He consulted the map Paul had provided and located the courthouse. He wasn’t far. The radio announced the start of the defendant’s trip.

Sam kicked his way free of the sleeping bag. He soon had the van in gear and was on his way into the city.

•      •      •

Tony sat in his chair and watched the proceedings through his blank stare as he had hundreds of times over the past year. The lawyers huddled at the bench to argue some mundane point. The jury sat in their chairs waiting, all of them first timers. Tony knew; his lawyer had extensive files on all of them, and he had tried to find a way to get to each one. A trial was nothing but a nuisance to him. A few threats or a few bribes, sometimes a combination of the two, and Tony had his verdict long before the lawyers figured it out. It was the beauty of the American justice system. If you had money you could manipulate it to fit your needs. He should know, he had been doing it for years. He had even begun to wonder why he had the lawyer in the first place. $500 an hour. For what? He had arranged the last mistrial for a fraction of what he had spent on the lawyer. Well, he did take care of the paperwork. That was something.

Yet Tony was nervous about this one. The lack of any progress finding a way to the jury had bothered him. The stroke charade was wearing thin. One of the jury members was a nurse, and he had caught her watching him closely. Could she tell he was a fake?

His lawyer walked back and sat down. Making a show of shaking the papers in his hand, it signaled Tony to listen.

“Jury’s reached a verdict. Judge is ready to hear it,” he spoke to the papers.

The judge’s deep baritone silenced the courtroom. “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

The foreman rose with an envelope in his hand. “Yes, your honor.”

“Hand it to the bailiff please.” The judge briefly looked at the paper, and without expression, handed it back.

“The defendant will rise and face the jury,” the judge spoke out of habit. Tony’s lawyer rose, and turned Tony in his chair toward the jury.

“In the case of Anthony Tasone versus the State of New York, on count one, how do you find?” the judge asked.

“We, the jury, find the defendant, guilty.”

Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He froze at the stoplight and turned up the radio. The remaining counts were all read, with the verdict of guilty on every one. He gripped the steering wheel tightly as he listened.

A honk from the truck behind him broke him out of his stupor, and he looked up to see the light had turned green. He stepped on the gas and was soon through. He couldn’t help but look at the building he had been on his way to as he passed. The reporters outside were all crowded around their respective trucks, watching the trial on TV. Some could be seen packing up their equipment already. Sam was at a loss. A name had been taken off the list for him. Justice had actually won a round. He knew there would be endless appeals, but for now, the man was guilty.

Sam weighed his options at the next red light. He had two names left. Should he try for them both, or skip to the end of the list while he still had time? He turned the wheel to circle the block and head back toward the Holland Tunnel. He had plenty of time to think about it.

•      •      •

Eight hours later Sam stopped at a fork in the dirt road he was currently navigating for another check of the map. He had committed the address to memory years ago, but the way there was still a mystery. After several folding attempts, and a couple of looks out the window to orient himself, he dropped the van in gear and took the left fork.

Another hour passed, and the sun was starting its descent when the house came into view. A farmhouse of moderate size, it sat on a small farm of fifty acres in the Virginia mountains. The nearest village was over twenty miles away. Sam took in the picket fence and metal roof as he drove up the drive. A large barn could be seen behind the maple trees surrounding the home and light shone from a corner room. Sam stopped the van close to the long porch and shut it off. He watched the snow fall through the windshield. This could be easy or hard. It was a risk coming here, but it was one he felt was worth taking. In any event, he’d soon know.

The front door opened and a face appeared, quickly followed by the barrel of a shotgun. Sam opened the door to let the overhead light hit his face before placing his hands back on the steering wheel where they could be seen. He waited. The old man left the doorway and strode slowly down the porch. The gait was slower than Sam remembered, but the shotgun didn’t waiver. The man paused at the end of the porch and squinted. Sam slowly opened the door and stepped out into the fading sunlight.

“Hello, Top.”

“Sam?”

“It’s me, Top.”

Sam held his breath till the shotgun fell. His old first sergeant looked him up and down for a minute before speaking.

“Saw you on the TV this morning,” he stated

Sam just nodded in reply. He waited in silence for the man’s decision.

“Pull that thing into the barn before you come in.” He turned and walked back into the house.

Sam smiled and shook his head before climbing back into the van. Top was never one for wasting a lot of words.

•      •      •

“So what’s your plan now?” Hoggard asked.

He had sat quietly for the past hour, listening to Sam’s story, asking only an occasional question to clarify a point. When it was over, Sam waited through two refills of the man’s scotch glass before hearing the question.

“Well, I have enough assets cashed to support two more ops. I have a target in . . . well, do you want to know?”

“You showed up on my porch, son. No use holding back now.”

“Stanley Clay.”

“The Ponzi scheme guy? The one who took all those peoples’ money when his company went belly up? Isn’t he on trial right now?”

“Yeah, he’s got fourteen lawyers working for him. He’s 61 years old. The appeals will barely be started by the time he kicks off. Even if he is convicted, he’ll go to one of those federal country club prisons. You’ve seen the one at Eglin Air Force Base, right, doesn’t even have a wall around it.”

“Yeah, I remember. Looked like a damn golf club.” He placed his half-full glass on the table and pushed it away. “Well, I have some bad news for you, son. He’s dead.”

Sam leaned forward in his chair. “Say that again?”

“He’s dead. Saw it on the news this afternoon, right after the story about you. Died of a heart attack around noon or so. Prosecutor’s been on ever since, getting the most of his fifteen minutes. No justice for the victims. Evidently the people are going to have an even harder time getting any money from his estate now. Buncha lawyer mumbo-jumbo. Makes me sick.”

Sam slumped back in his chair and stared into the fire. That was two targets off the list without a shot fired. He’d been spared one by the system, and cheated out of the other. He got up and paced around the room. His eyes were drawn to the many photographs on the walls. He scanned them as he paced, recognizing several faces. In one corner, he found a picture of himself with Jack and the first sergeant. They were sitting on the deck of a Huey, him and Jack soaked in sweat from a just completed mission. Jungle could be seen in the background. They were all smiling. He turned away to see a wall of citations. He followed them through the man’s career. Sergeant Hoggard. Staff Sergeant Hoggard. First Sergeant Hoggard. Sergeant Major Hoggard. He would always be First Sergeant to Sam, it was the rank he had known him by. He turned again to find the man watching him.

“So, who was the other name?” Hoggard asked.

The state of Pennsylvania holds 40,890 inmates in its prisons.
Approximately 27,396 are repeat offenders.

—THIRTY-EIGHT—

“D
amn it, Paul! It’s over. You’re not helping him. Tell me where he is and let me bring him in. He’s made his point. We can finish his treatments. He won’t gain anything more by continuing.”

Jack was alone with Paul at the Kalamazoo County prison. The local police, along with Sydney and her crew, were still at the house with the forensics team, or going through the piles of information they had found. The bomb squad had removed and disassembled all the incendiary devices Paul had rigged to the paper documents. Eric and a team of computer experts were attempting to access the two laptops that were also found without triggering the safeguards Paul had set in place. The press were everywhere. They surrounded the house, and also piled at the police barrier erected to cut off traffic to the dead end street on which the jail sat.

Jack stopped pacing and looked down at Paul in the folding chair. He had said little since his capture, sitting calmly and seemed to be waiting patiently for something. Jack searched his memory for a picture Sam had shown him of him and Paul together. Taken at a wedding, he remembered. Sam’s or Paul’s, he couldn’t recall. There was a time when Jack had known the names of most of Sam’s family. He knew what his wife had been like, seen baby pictures of Katie. They had lost touch when they’d both left the service, but there had been a bond at one point. They had shared combat, something few understood. It was more than just serving in the same unit. Some would liken it to being high school buddies. What was it about high school that made you friends for life, regardless of the time that had passed? Why did those four years create this strange bond? He had never met Paul face-to-face, yet he felt bad about interrogating him due to his bond with Sam. How was he going to do this?

“I thought you were his friend?”

Jack spun and faced Paul. He was looking him dead in the eye. The tone was accusing.

“I am, Paul, that’s why you need to help me. I know there are cops out there who might agree with him, but there are others who see him as nothing more than a step to glory and a promotion. They will shoot him on sight and I can’t issue orders to counter that.”