Shoot (27 page)

“You idiot. You beat the hell out of her son Jay-Jay. Her full name is Faith Potsoli Anthony. She’s the daughter of the Godfather, Paulie Potsoli.”

“Oh. I thought he was dead?”

“He is,” Jane agreed.

“Well, she did mention the fight but she didn’t mention Jay-Jay was her son.”

“What
did
she say?” Jane demanded.

I told her.

“You jerk. She made you an offer you can’t refuse and you
refused
it.”

“I thought she was just a gossip columnist?”

“Sure. Never arrested. But the men in her family have different jobs. Don’t you read the papers? Her son, her husband, her uncles, her cousins are all mobsters; thieves, bookies, pimps, drug dealers. Killers.”

“She seemed nice.”

My parents were front and center at 740 Park Avenue, behind blue metal NYPD barricades that had been placed beyond egg-throwing distance from the ornate entrance to the building. My mother’s sign read
BILLIONS FOR BILLIONAIRES BUT NOT ONE CENT FOR HUNGRY KIDS
? My dad’s message was
GREED BREEDS EVIL DEEDS
.

A small group of their fellow demonstrators were weakly chanting my father’s slogan. We squeezed into the protesters’ pen and greeted my parents. Skippy, happily sniffing and jumping, always ready to make new friends, introduced himself.

“This must be Jane.” My mom actually smiled, extending her hand for a formal shake. “I’m Amanda. Wow, aren’t you gorgeous.”

Jane blushed. I could see my dad agreed. I couldn’t help thinking that they were surprised Jane was beautiful because I didn’t deserve it. My dad also shook hands, like we were going to discuss a used car.

“Aren’t I gorgeous, Mom?” I asked.

Jane laughed. My parents didn’t break a smile. In the awkward silence that followed, Jane asked why they were demonstrating against the Roehm brothers and I cringed, knowing my dad would give a full lecture on the subject. If you asked Professor James B. Shepherd what time it was, you got an hour on the history of clocks.

“The recent publicity surrounding Senator Hardstein is a case in point,” my father told Jane. “I don’t care who he was—pardon my French—screwing, only that he was screwing the taxpayers. Hardstein was posing as a liberal democrat but he helped ram the law through Congress that allows hedge fund managers and billionaires to pay only twelve per cent tax, while their minimum-wage workers pay forty. In this country we have now come full circle, from having the wealthy pay high tax rates, to giving billionaires a free ride while the dying middle class and working class pay the freight but get no bank interest to build savings. The economic game is criminally rigged.”

He went on for a bit and I interrupted with questions about the Roehm brothers’ political opinions. My father cut right to the chase.

“If your question is are the Roehm brothers the Tea Party Animals behind this latest coup attempt, my answer is very possibly but you’ll never prove it,” he said. “The obscene system of massive bribery we call campaign contributions already makes it almost impossible to discover who gave what cash to which candidate or even if foreign countries are buying congressmen.”

“This kind of thing would be even more secret, I would think, since it is openly criminal and involves murder,” my mom added.

“Exactly,” my father agreed. “If the Roehm brothers are not behind this conspiracy, they would certainly agree with it.”

The demonstrators began buzzing as a black limo pulled up in front of the entrance. All signs went up and a chant began but then died out after a handsome gray-haired man emerged. It wasn’t one of the Roehm brothers but apparently another resident. He looked at us, bounded over with a beaming smile and began shaking hands of the protesters like a politician. My parents rushed to clasp his hand. He looked familiar.

“Who’s that?” I asked my mom.

“Don’t you recognize Walter Cantor?”

She intoned his name with reverence. I had a vague memory of a liberal billionaire who believed successful people did not give back enough to the people and wanted them to pay more taxes. Can’t be many of him. He lived in the same building as the evil Tea Party twins?

“Professor Shepherd,” Cantor said, pumping my dad’s hand and then my mom’s.

“This is our son, Francis, Mr. Cantor,” my mom told him.

They called him “mister.” Cantor grabbed my hand.

“F.X. Shepherd, right? I’ve been reading your stuff.”

My parents seemed stunned. At our feet, Skippy nuzzled Cantor’s leg, then sat and presented his paw. Cantor laughed and shook it. Jesus. Everybody loves a lord.

“Keep up the good work,” Cantor said, with a final wave. “Take care, everyone.”

He strode inside. The other protesters congratulated us. A liberal billionaire had singled us out. He said he read my stuff. My parents were bursting with pride. Weird.

“You got here just in time,” my father said.

“That was amazing,” my mom said, in a reverential tone.

“I got a shot,” one of the protestors said, waving his phone.

I hadn’t seen my parents so awed since we visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. when I was twelve. My parents didn’t believe in organized religion. For them, democracy, the idea of America,
was
a religion.

“If he wants to give back so much, he could have at least asked us all in for lunch,” I joked. “It’s hot out here.”

My parents weren’t amused. Jane elbowed me in the ribs.

“Jane, tell me about your practice. I understand you’re a vet?”

Jane gave my mom a short version of her life and work. My dad seemed to be pouting for some unknown reason.

“So, you know Cantor?” I asked him.

“Not really,” my dad replied modestly. “I met him at a conference a few months ago. He gave a speech and afterwards I gave him a copy of my book.”

“He might be able to help you,” I said, instantly regretting it.

“Help me?” my father asked sharply. “You think I need help?”

In Kansas, some asshole was always trying to take away my parents’ tenure at the university or threatening to fire them or calling them communists.

“No, I just meant, with a friend like that, maybe he could put in a word at a better school or foundation or something, that’s all. I wasn’t…”

“A
better
school?” he snapped back. “It was good enough for your mother and myself, although I recall you weren’t able to complete your coursework there, were you?”

“I dropped out, Dad.”

“In the sixties, one dropped out. You just disappeared down a black hole of secrecy.”

“Whatever. Look, could we not do this? I don’t want to…”

“Why did you come here?” he demanded.

“I wanted to see the Roehm brothers. Jane came because she wanted to meet you.”

“Didn’t
you
want to see us?” my mother asked, always my dad’s wingman.

“Sure I did. It’s always a blast. Especially when dad gets jealous because his tame billionaire also knows my name.”

All of us spoke at once. Jane tried to interrupt with a change of subject. My mom’s shrink eyebrows were up and she began to analyze the group dynamic. James was scolding me about maturity, while practicing making me evaporate with his eyes. I was asking if we could skip this part.

Skippy silenced us by barking at us. We noticed the other protesters were watching us. First the billionaire flesh-pressing and now a family feud with fur flying.

“The real reason I came here was to ask for your help,” I blurted out.

What? Why did I say that?

“You want our help?” Dad asked, as Mom’s eyebrows danced again.

I noticed Jane was also confused.

“Yes,” I continued. “From political and psychological points of view, I thought you guys might help me figure this whole thing out.”

“
You
want help?” my mom wondered.

“From
us
?” Dad asked.

“Yes. Maybe tonight at dinner. Think about it and we can all put our heads together, okay?”

They didn’t protest. I told them we had someplace we had to go and would call them later. We left before they could recover.

“What just happened?” Jane asked.

“You met Amanda and James. Have fun?”

“Loads. Were you serious about needing their help or were you just trying to escape in one piece?”

“Yes.”

Jane went back to work and Skippy and I went back to her place for lunch. I sat at the kitchen table and logged onto the University of Google. Apparently the patriotic billionaires invested millions in Revolutionary and Civil War weapons and coins, beside their more well-known purchases of oil and large companies. Of course, whatever they touched turned to gold, including gold, and its value always went up. Even their hobbies had to be for profit.

I called up Jane’s notes on the autopsy and test results. According to the lab, the silver in the musket balls assayed out at mostly silver, at 89.24 per cent pure with only 10.76 copper. I fed those exact numbers into Google and got an avalanche of rare coin websites. I hadn’t told the search engine to look up coins but several searches earlier, I did ask about the Roehm brothers and coin collecting. Opening the top website, “US Silver Dollars, 1794, a Buying Guide,” there were pictures of coins with a profile of a woman who vaguely resembled the Statue of Liberty. The word “Liberty” and a ring of small stars circled her head. It was a Flowing Hair dollar, whatever that was.

Damn. In the detailed description, the search engine had highlighted a sentence that noted the coin consisted of 89.24 per cent pure silver and 10.76 per cent copper, the exact proportions as the musket balls. It also said each coin weighed 26.96 grams. I checked back to Jane’s notes on the bullets. That was the exact weight. Not only was the killer or killers using expensive silver to dispatch his victims, it looked like each slug was a melted rare coin. I scrolled down to the end of the listing. That particular coin, the first of the American Revolution, was for sale for the low price of $25,000.

Sweet. And apparently these were the bargain-priced ones. Years earlier, one of these coins had sold to an unidentified bidder for a record $10 million. Maybe George Washington kept that one in his loafers? After some searching down-market, the cheapest one I could find online was $6,000 for a worn-down specimen. So my original estimate of under a thousand bucks per bullet would have to be scaled upwards to six grand or more. If the victims knew how much their slug had cost, they might have felt honored to be bumped off. Who the hell would do this? A lunatic? A billionaire? Both, maybe? Sparky was wrong. This wasn’t about silver bullets to kill werewolves, this was a loaded Lone Ranger who was convinced he was shooting for some higher purpose. What was it? Love of country? The perfect crime? History’s most expensive murders?

I searched past auctions but couldn’t find lists of who bought what. I put on my reporter hat and called a few auction houses but they wouldn’t tell me squat. I went back to Jane’s notes but couldn’t find anything else helpful. I kept reading about the silk patches used to wad the shots. The lab said analysis showed the silk was also not new—it was about 300 years old. More antiques. It included descriptions of the weave and weft and how the damask silk was originally bright green but had faded to light yellow over the centuries. I began a new search, feeding all the silk analysis into the white rectangle of the search box. One click later I had lots of sites. Silk manufacturers, antique clothing collections, lots of museums displaying old clothing and flags, including something called the “Gadsden Flag,” which turned out to be a variation on the familiar 1775 “Don’t Tread On Me” flag revived by the new Tea Party in 2009. I learned that Ben Franklin suggested a coiled serpent as a symbol because England sent convicts to the colonies and Ben thought they should ship rattlesnakes to the mother country, in order to return the favor.

The search engine had also brought up something called the “Delaware Militia Colors, 1776.” Pictured was a bright green flag, with red and white in the top left corner, where the stars are in today’s US flag. Apparently the Delaware rebels covered Washington’s retreat at the Battle of Long Island, saving his army and the revolution, at great cost. It was one of the first flags to feature the stripes. There were a few specimens in museums and several in anonymous private hands, and the record price for one was $15 million a few years back. The weave and faded color looked similar to the five one-inch-square wads used by the Tea Party Animals. This latest addition to the murder package bumped up the price tag—if the killer actually cut squares off a valuable historical flag. I called two museums, one in Dover, Delaware and the other in Brooklyn. I couldn’t get a live person in Delaware but someone picked up at the Brooklyn Museum.

“I’m sorry,” the woman in the curator’s office responded. “You’re asking me if anybody has cut strips off our Delaware Militia flag? Of course not. It’s behind glass and pretty high up on the wall. Why?”

I asked if she knew of any private person who might have bought one of the flags. She didn’t.

“What’s your best guess on who might be a buyer?” I asked.

“A rich white person,” she told me.

“Thanks.”

I printed out my various revelations from the web, called Amy and Sparky to invite them over for dinner with my parents, and then Izzy. I left Skippy napping on the couch and set up a car service ride to Police Headquarters. Phil came down to the main entrance and escorted me upstairs, without signing me in at the security desk.

“So. We’re friends again,” I asked Phil in the elevator.

“Not officially,” Phil replied. “The feds are leading the case now, so nobody cares about you as long as we don’t rub you in anybody’s faces.”

“There he is, the Private Eye and the Public Mouth,” Izzy intoned, as I entered the Major Case room. He was sitting at his desk; on the wall behind him was a
WANTED FOR MURDER
poster of a lanky man in a fringed buckskin jacket and coonskin fur cap, holding a flintlock rifle.