The Butcher's Boy (24 page)

"I'll be there." It didn't sound as though Brayer had just gotten impatient, she thought. Something was up. They must have panicked and made a move.

Elizabeth dressed as quickly as she could and made her way to the desk. There wasn't any problem locating the FBI agents. There were two burly men in business suits at the elevator when she emerged. Their broad, tanned faces reminded her of a football player from the Pittsburgh Steelers she'd seen advertising cologne on television. They made her miss Agent Hart a little, but only for an instant: they were perfect for this job. Brayer had probably handpicked them because they looked like what they were; their beefy, unlined, and untroubled faces had a quality of merciless and efficient innocence that would terrify whoever saw them show up with a search warrant.

"Miss Waring?" said one. "I'm John Tollar and this is Bill Hoskins. We have our car waiting."

Elizabeth let her hand be engulfed twice by their hard, clean palms, then followed them down the corridor away from the casino and the lobby. John and Bill, she noted. Easy enough to remember the names, but hard to remember which was which. John had the dark gray suit and Bill the dark blue suit. She let one of them open the car door for her while the other assumed the driver's seat.

As the car moved out to the street, Elizabeth said, "Why so early? Did something happen?"

Tollar said, "I don't actually know if anything happened. We just got a call 116

from the Bureau to move now."

Something must have happened. It was typical that the Bureau office wouldn't have told them, and that they would refuse to speculate in front of her.

But it wasn't like Brayer to pass up another chance to interrupt her shower with a telephone call. But this was their show, really. They were the auditors and she was only—what? The decoy.

At the courthouse they pulled up to the front entrance and Bill got out to open the door for Elizabeth . For the first time she noticed he was carrying a gun in a shoulder holster. She felt a wave of affection for John Brayer. He was always cautious, always protecting his people. DiGiorgio's death must have torn him apart, but he wouldn't let anybody know how it felt; he'd just make damned sure it wouldn't happen again.

She quickly found the chambers of Judge Stillwell. The judge's clerk was already waiting with the warrant, and as soon as she'd flashed her identification he simply handed it to her. More of Brayer's work, she thought. All preparations made with quiet efficiency. Elizabeth scurried down the empty corridor and out to the car.

She glanced at her watch. Almost eight o'clock . They'd arrive just as the office was opening for business. John maneuvered through the morning traffic expertly and without visible effort. There was obviously nothing special about this job for them. It was just another warrant to be served, another set of ledgers to examine. They were probably a little jealous that other agents always made the arrests and felt the excitement. In a little while they'd be sitting in an office in their shirtsleeves tapping away at calculators. They took a shortcut to the Fieldston Growth Enterprises office, a long straight street that passed warehouses and lumberyards. They bumped over three sets of railroad tracks, past a junkyard piled high with the wrecked and stripped carcasses of automobiles. This was another side of the city, she thought, a place so foreign to the hotels and casinos that it didn't seem that the same name could be used to refer to both. She wondered if this was what truck drivers and railroad men thought of when they said Las Vegas—a gigantic depot in the middle of the desert where you delivered tons of liquor and bed linen, food and cigarettes, and then pushed on to Kingman, Arizona, or Albuquerque, New Mexico, before the sun got too high and began to overheat your engine.

But then they turned a corner and she recognized the squat building with the Fieldston Growth Enterprises sign. John parked the car in the rear of the building and the three walked in on the receptionist just as she was uncovering her typewriter. Her purse was still in her hand. She said "Good morning" and looked pleased.

Elizabeth handed her the warrant and waited for her to read it. "What is this?" she asked.

"It's a search warrant," said Elizabeth, trying to manage a soft, kindly tone. "We'd like to see your accounting department, please."

The receptionist stared at Elizabeth blankly. Then it occurred to her that 117

something she'd heard meant something to her. "Last office," she said, waving the warrant at the corridor behind her.

The auditors were two steps ahead of Elizabeth before she had time to move. They walked down the corridor and into the accounting office and flashed their identification wallets at the three clerks in the room, then immediately began opening file cabinets and taking out files. She left them to it and turned to the astonished clerks. She said, "We're here for an audit. It won't take very long to get what we need and then we won't disrupt your office any further." She tried to be reassuring, but she felt like the one in a bank robbery who says,

"Don't move and you won't get hurt."

The two FBI men were working quickly, piling files on the nearest desk and then rummaging for more. Elizabeth felt too uncomfortable to stay. She wandered back up the hallway toward the front of the building. The receptionist was staring at the warrant, her purse still in her other hand.

Then Tollar emerged from the office carrying a stack of files, followed by Hoskins. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"No, thanks," said Tollar. "Only one more load." They went to the car.

They returned to the accounting office and then appeared with another set of files. "That's it," said Hoskins.

Driving back to the hotel Elizabeth could think of nothing to say. They had the files and all she could do now was wait. The people in the office hadn't been criminals, she was sure of it. Whatever the files revealed to the FBI's experts wouldn't be anything that those startled clerks knew anything about. It was a little depressing.

In front of the Sands she got out. "Let us know as soon as you have anything."

Tollar said, "We'll call," and they drove off.

Elizabeth felt like having breakfast, but even more like going back up to her room to finish her night's sleep. She decided in favor of breakfast; it would be impossible to sleep, wondering what they were finding in the files. She looked at her watch again. It was only ten thirty now, and the raid was already over.

She was relieved to see that the Sands had a coffee shop. It was more in keeping with her mood than a full-scale restaurant would have been. And it was quicker. She sat down at the counter and ordered a prune Danish and a cup of coffee. It was the coffee she wanted, but it seemed somehow more respectable to eat something. When she finished she moved through the casino to the elevators and headed for her room. Brayer would want to hear from her.

When she opened the door to her room she nearly screamed. Brayer was sitting opposite the door. "God, you startled me," she said.

"Good," snapped Brayer.

"Well, I'm back, anyway. It all came off as ordered."

Brayer looked angry. "What came off? And where the hell have you been?

The auditors have been waiting for you for damned near half an hour. I said ten thirty, dammit."

Elizabeth ’s heart stopped. What if—no, it wasn't possible. Just a communication snarl at FBI. She said, "John, I served the warrant at eight and the auditors dropped me off here at ten thirty . If that's not what was supposed to happen we—I—may be in big trouble."

Brayer looked both angry and confused, but said, "No. Who told you to do that?"

"The auditors. Hoskins and Tollar from the FBI."

Brayer sprang from the chair and picked up the telephone, his face now set in a look of maniacal concentration. He dialed a number and almost shouted into the receiver, "Ray, do you have two agents named Hoskins and Tollar?"

Elizabeth searched her memory. She'd seen their identification cards, hadn't she? No, she had seen them flash something in the FGE office at some frightened civilians. She hadn't seen the cards herself. She started to feel light-headed.

But Brayer was saying, "Then we need an all-points bulletin on two men as soon as you can get it on the wire. Here, I'll put someone on who can give you a description." He handed Elizabeth the phone. She wasn't sure, but she thought she could get through this, through these moments, and even through the next hour. But sometime, she knew, she was going to be by herself, and then she was probably going to cry.

The faces in the room were not accusing. They were empty and cold and attentive like the faces of the men around the green felt tables downstairs. They weren't judging her for what had happened, she kept telling herself. But each time she tried to believe that, she remembered that she had already been judged by each of them in the first seconds and forgotten. They weren't thinking about what had happened except as it revealed to them what they must do next.

It was just a fact, something that had to be taken into account—an agent had been lost because he hadn't followed standard procedures. A second agent had been stupid enough to hand over essential evidence to two men she'd never seen before because they looked like FBI agents.

Everyone was waiting for Martin Connors to speak. It was his prerogative as the head of the Department of Justice's Organized Crime Division, senior to everyone else in the room by virtue of his rank and his white hair, but also because he had been the last to arrive, taking a special flight from Washington because one of his units was onto something big and blowing it.

Connors sat back in his chair and puffed hard on his pipe. "All right, I think I understand the situation. The element that seems to connect the murder of the Senator and this man Veasy is Fieldston Growth Enterprises. Then this 119

lawyer, Orloff, is killed in front of Fieldston. An examination of the tax records seems like an interesting enough idea to warrant study, but two impostors steal the company's files: I guess that's clear enough. The question, then, isn't whether FGE was the place to look for the evidence that would connect the murders of Veasy, Senator Claremont, and Orloff, but whether it still is."

"That's right, Martin," said Brayer.

"That's not too good," said Connors. "Bad showing by both sides, I'd say."

He sucked his pipe again, and said, "There's not much reason to doubt that whatever was on the premises that would help us is gone—they selected the files themselves." Elizabeth could feel herself blushing.

The FBI Las Vegas field headquarters chief interjected, "Of course we might find the two men, and we'll probably be able to put some of it together in other ways."

"True," Connors nodded. "But it wasn't that kind of move. They were buying time, and they've got it, as far as I can tell. What are the chances you'll get them? I mean ever, not just while the files are still in their possession?"

The FBI man shrugged. "Not much, and every minute means it's less likely. They could have parked the car in one of the hotel lots with the files in the trunk and it'd take a week to find it. And every third man in Nevada looks like a football player." He looked a little like a quarterback himself, thought Elizabeth.

Connors said, "Right. So for now we've got to forget what we've missed out on, and concentrate on what they've given us. What they've done is conceded that FGE is the connection. Somebody very important is, or was, vulnerable in at least two ways. First, the lawyer Orloff knew something— maybe just who the silent partner is. That's a dead end because they got to him.

Second, the company records held some information they thought we could use.

The point is, they got it in a very special way. They took a hell of a chance, for one thing. They should have been spotted going into the building. Why weren't they, by the way?"

Brayer answered, "Just a screw-up, Martin. Our surveillance team saw Waring and figured the men with her had to be FBI, and the FBI thought they were ours." He looked embarrassed. His superior stared at him but didn't say anything to reassure him.

Instead Connors turned to Elizabeth . "All right, Waring. You've been in on most of this. What do you think is their next move?" Elizabeth stared at the carpet. She had to admire Connors' perception. Always ask the lowest-ranking person first, because the others won't be afraid to contradict. Once you ask a person's boss, you won't hear a peep out of him.

"I'm not sure, Mr. Connors," she said. "I agree that they're trying to break a connection. If that's true there are several people we ought to look for. The first is Edgar Fieldston. The others are the ones who have been doing the killing.

And I think the murder of Castiglione ought to be included in this."

"Why?" asked Connors. "Of course we're interested. We've got a lot of people on it, but he wasn't the silent partner."

"Because it's an enormous event for the people we're interested in. Why did it happen just now, and in this town? It doesn't make any sense unless it has some connection with these other murders."

Connors shrugged and puffed on his pipe. "Give me a hypothesis."

"All right, here's one. Castiglione was using FGE as a front for various operations, including a cover for professional killers. He had dealings with other powerful people—maybe heads of the other families. When the Senator's committee made inquiries Castiglione had him killed. The others whose dealings with him could have come out got nervous and decided to get rid of him and the company's lawyer and the company's records."

"Plausible," said Connors.

"Of course it's plausible," said Brayer. "Everything is plausible if you haven't got the answer. You have to go on what we know. What we know is this: somebody killed Claremont and Veasy and Orloff, and FGE is the common denominator. Somebody also killed Castiglione. Maybe it's connected, and maybe not. In any case the hits were all done by professionals, and the chances are we won't get professionals unless we get very lucky. So what's left?"