The Wizard of Death (16 page)

“How long for a trace, Pasquale?” Rocco asked.

“Two minutes, if you can keep him on that long. I have the state police on standby. It's a long shot, but you never can tell.”

“That allows for a lot of leaks,” Lyon said.

“I haven't told the units the nature of the case. There's no telling how deep infiltration goes.”

The phone rang at five past eight. Mackay looked bewildered.

“Pick it up, damn it,” Rocco said in a guttural whisper.

Mackay reached tentatively for the phone and gingerly lifted the receiver. The recording device and amplifier were switched on so that others in the room could hear the conversation.

“Hello,” Mackay said in a weak voice. “Is that you, Rainbow?”

“Who the hell do you think it is?”

Mackay looked at Lyon, and Lyon nodded. “I've got problems with Wentworth.”

“What about him?”

“He's traced everything to me. The girls, the information leaks. He wants to make a deal, Rainbow.”

“What sort of deal?”

“He wants ten thousand dollars. He says if he gets the money today, he lays off and brings his wife around. I need her backing, Rainbow. I've got to have it or the convention goes into a deadlock.”

“Ten thousand is not impossible. Can we trust his deal?”

“Yes, I'm sure of it.”

There was a long pause on the phone. “All right, you and Wentworth be at Rambler's restaurant at eight tonight.”

“I know the place.”

“You'll get further instructions there. And remember, Mackay. I know you, you don't know me. Any cops, any undercover men, and a long list of people get your pretty pictures.”

“I understand.”

At the sound of the dial tone, Pasquale was immediately connected to a phone company supervisor. He talked in a low voice for a moment and then hung up. “Sorry. There just wasn't enough time.”

“It looks like Ted and I have an appointment at Rambler's,” Lyon said.

They pulled Mackay's Chrysler into the crowded parking lot and sat a moment before entering the restaurant. An odd place for the first contact, Lyon thought. Rambler's was well known in the area as a Hartford political hangout. The state chairman, always one or two city council members, and a few members of the legislature would be crowded around the small bar or eating in the main dining room.

“You'll be well known here,” Lyon said.

Mackay followed Lyon inside. They had taken all possible precautions. A signal device attached to the chassis of Mackay's car would give out a constant tone that Rocco and Pat could follow. In addition, Lyon had a small transmitter in his jacket pocket.

Rocco and Pasquale would be out of sight nearby.

Inside the restaurant the decor was mostly in reds. Chandeliers sparkled and seemed to sway to the loud conversation coming from the bar.

“Good evening, Senator Mackay.” The maître d' bowed and ushered them to a table. A waiter instantly appeared.

“The usual for me and sherry for Mr. Wentworth.”

“Why would he choose this place?” Lyon asked.

Mackay pointed to a phone jack on the floor. “He's making it convenient for us.”

The drinks were served and they sat silently before them. The conversation of the other diners swirled around them. Several men came to the table to pass a word with Mackay, but he quickly excused himself with an “I'll get back to you.”

It was half an hour before the phone was brought to the table. Mackay looked at the red instrument before him and picked up the receiver.

“Hello … yes … he's here with me … no, no one else.” He listened intently for a moment, then fumbled in his breast pocket for pad and pencil. “Let me write it down,” he said as he scribbled notes. Then he hung up.

“Well?”

“He gave me instructions for the next call.”

Lyon slid behind the wheel as Mackay looked at the notes he had taken.

“Where now?” Lyon asked.

“Down Farmington Avenue and left on Haynes.”

“That's one way. We'll be going the wrong way.”

“He said to follow instructions exactly, that he'd be watching.”

Lyon threw the car into gear and they lurched forward. He felt his palms dampening and tried to drive carefully. Cars passed; traffic lights seemed to have malevolent eyes as they blinked red on their approach. He felt impatient, and sensed the dejection in the destroyed man sitting next to him.

Traffic lights eventually turned green, and they proceeded to Haynes Street, where they made the wrong-way turn and continued to the next thoroughfare.

“Next!” Lyon had to yell before Mackay responded.

“Go across the bridge and continue on the highway to Exit Ninety-seven. Make a left and drive into the supermarket parking lot. Drive at exactly forty miles an hour.”

Rainbow's plan was simple and safe. Wrong ways and a slow rate of speed made the spot on any tails easy. Rocco and Pasquale would have to lag far behind and depend on the electronic device to give them a proper tangent. Lyon had the utmost confidence in the large and small police officers and knew they would be careful to avoid suspicion.

They turned off the highway and into the empty supermarket parking lot. The great expanse of asphalt was broken by an occasional street light, and long shadows crossed over the lot. Lyon slowed the car to a stop near the solitary phone booth at the end of the complex. He glanced around as they waited and knew why Rainbow had chosen the spot. On either side and to the rear of the shopping center were broad expanses of fallow Connecticut Valley tobacco fields. The desolate rows gave a field of vision on this clear night of hundreds of yards in either direction. If Rainbow was watching, any car near the one that Lyon and Ted occupied could be easily seen.

The phone rang.

Mackay sat unmoving as it rang again. Lyon reached across the car seat, opened the far door and shoved Mackay. He stumbled, grasped the edge of the car door, and staggered toward the phone booth.

He talked for a few moments before returning to the car. “Rainbow says we leave the car here. There's another car parked in back of the buildings with the keys in it.”

It was a nondescript Chevy. The engine turned over on the first try and hummed in a low, even monotone.

“We're to go back to town,” Mackay said. “Repeat the instructions he initially gave us exactly in reverse.”

“Where are we going?”

“The cathedral. He says he and his people are monitoring police and CB bands, so don't try and get the word to anyone, or the whole deal is off.”

Lyon felt the light weight of the small transmitter in his jacket pocket. He calculated the odds and decided to follow Rainbow's instructions.

The cathedral loomed stark and white against the clear night. It was a massive building constructed of hewn blocks of Vermont marble, with a steeple that cast a long shadow across the low steps leading to the interior.

As instructed, they parked the car in the rear lot against the building, hiding its shape in the shadows of the towering edifice.

“You go alone,” Mackay said huskily and slumped into his seat.

Lyon entered the building from an unlocked side door. The door opened directly into the nave near the altar. Candles burning before the side-altar railings, and low lights in the high ceiling, cast a dim illumination through the interior.

He stopped by a pillar at the edge of the long lines of pews and glanced down at Mackay's note pad in his palm. “Fifteenth pew from the front, right-hand side. Folded newspaper with further instructions.”

He counted back and walked the line of pews past the folded kneeling rails. The newspaper was midway up the line. He sat down and pulled the paper toward him. The center fold opened, and a typewritten message slid to the polished seat.

T
HIRD
C
ONFESSIONAL
F
ROM
T
HE
F
RONT
D
OOR
.

The confessionals were on the far side of the church toward the main entrance. He entered the third one and sat on the hard bench.

“You wish absolution, my son?” The sonorous voice issued from the darkness behind the latticework.

“Rainbow?”

He was answered by a low laugh. “What's the deal, Wentworth?”

“I lay off you and Mackay and bring my wife around.”

“For ten thousand dollars?”

“Exactly.”

There was a pause from behind the latticework, and Lyon shifted uncomfortably. “Rainbow, you there?”

“Right here, Wentworth.”

He felt the barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of his neck. “I thought we had a deal?”

“We do.” A package wrapped in brown paper was thrust into Lyon's lap. “It's all there in fifties and hundreds; count it when you get home. Don't move for ten minutes after I've gone,” the muffled voice said.

“I understand.” He pressed his elbow against the small radio in his side pocket. He couldn't reach for it yet. Any move and he'd be killed.

“I want a public announcement of your wife's switch in support by noon tomorrow. See that it hits the noon news. If I don't hear it, those men guarding your wife will be no match for us. We'll kill her, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Remember, ten minutes. Don't move.
Les jeux sont fait.
”

Lyon remained in the confessional without moving and thought he heard footsteps retreating rapidly across the church. He breathed deeply and let his hand slip into his pocket to extract the radio. He thumbed the transmission switch.

“Rocco. Rocco, can you hear me?”

He turned the set to receive and heard only static. The thick stone walls and the heavy steel girders crisscrossing the ceiling overhead were creating an impenetrable barrier for either transmission or reception on the small radio.

Lyon ran for the door.

They sat in the study at Nutmeg Hill and stared morosely at the money spread across the card table.

Bea shook her head. “And he got away.”

“It was a good attempt,” Rocco said.

“And Lyon could have been killed by that madman.”

“It was easier for him to buy me off.”

“Well, I'm not bought off,” Bea said. “I'M NOT BOUGHT OFF AT ALL. I'm announcing publicly tomorrow, all right. I'm announcing for Mattaloni, and you can do what in hell you want with that money.”

Lyon picked up a handful of bills from the stack on the table. “I'm going to do something with the money, and I'm going to do it first thing in the morning.”

12

The next morning at Murphysville Police Headquarters it took them less than an hour to trace a good many of the hundred-dollar bills. The newer ones, a good portion of the lot, had come from the Fifth Federal Reserve District in Boston. An unctuous money vault clerk, after telephoning back to assure himself that they were indeed calling from police headquarters, had assured them that the newer money had been recently delivered to the Nutmeg National Bank.

“God almighty,” Rocco said. “That's the biggest bank in the state.”

“It's all we have,” Lyon said comtemplatively.

“The bills could have been circulated anywhere in the state.”

“We've got a listing of twelve bills in near sequence. I think they came out of Nutmeg in a lot.”

The chief tilted back his chair and sighed.

The main office of the Nutmeg National Bank was in a new building near the Hartford Civic Center. As Rocco and Lyon entered the lobby from Main Street, doors hissed open almost silently as they stepped onto the thick pile carpeting. The Main Street level of the bank was a branch banking floor, with the executive offices in the upper stories. As he walked past a counter, Lyon picked up a folded financial statement and flipped it open as they stepped into the elevator.

A quick scan of the foldout sheet informed him that the Nutmeg National Bank had assets in excess of one billion dollars, 102 branches throughout the state, and over 137,000 depositors. He underlined the last figure and leaned toward Rocco.

“We're reducing the odds.”

“Christ, Lyon. You're the only man I know who thinks 137,000 to one is good odds.”

The doors of the self-service elevator opened when it leveled at the fourteenth floor. They stepped into a reception area where a petite blonde with a scrubbed face sat before a litter-free desk.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“We have an appointment with Lehigh Collins,” Rocco answered.

A nearly surreptitious phone call by the receptionist, a ten-minute wait on uncomfortable modernistic chairs, and they were finally escorted down a long hall to a large office and an annoyed Lehigh Collins, vice president.

Collins stood behind his desk and offered a quick handclasp. “Chief Herbert, Lyon. Sit down. I'm sorry I don't have much time, I have a loan committee meeting in a few minutes.”

Lyon handed Collins a list of the money serial numbers.

“We need your help in tracing some money,” Rocco said.

Collins tapped his fingers on the folded sheet without scanning the numbers. “That's not my department, Chief.” He reached for his phone. “Security does a good deal of that funny money stuff for the federal people. I'll be glad to refer you.”

“We'd rather keep it in the family for the time being,” Lyon said.

“I don't understand.”

“Yesterday, ten thousand or more of that money was withdrawn from this bank. We want to know who drew it out.”

“I'm in real estate investments, Lyon. You know I'd like to help out a neighbor, but I'm just not equipped—”

“We would like the request to come from you, without mention of police interest,” Rocco said. “We'd prefer that others in the bank were kept in the dark about the origin of the request.”

“Chief Herbert, you know how I appreciate all you've done for Murphysville. In fact, I said that at the last town meeting. Those talks you gave to the third grade on bike safety were excellent. I really can't help you, but I will refer—”