The Blackmail Club (34 page)

“You’re right about that; Engels could carry it off. I really considered him, even wondered if Chris might have been in it with him. Chris could have provided the marks and Engels could have run the games. But I couldn’t get past two strong reasons for eliminating Engels.”

“Which are?”

“Engels would not have shaken down Chris, his own lover, for being gay like him. It would have been too close to home.” Jack slid forward on his hard chair and stretched his legs out in front of himself.

The chief folded the phone message in half lengthwise, and then ran his fingernail along the crease to firm the fold. “You said two reasons?”

“Oh, yes. There are lots of ways the CIA’s deputy director of covert ops could get crooked cash. Much more cash than he would through these blackmailings, and with more control and less traceability.”

The chief reversed the fold on the phone message, flattening it back to full size. “So, then, who in the hell is Moriarty?”

Chapter 50

“Moriarty could be anyone.” Jack grinned. “Hell, Chief, you could be Moriarty.”

Chief Mandrake tilted back in his chair and clapped. “You’ve solved the case, Jack.”

When they had stopped laughing, Jack said, “You’re retiring this summer to the island nation of Vanuatu, a country with no criminal extradition treaty with the U.S.”

The chief stopped laughing and expelled a sarcastic snort.

Jack’s grin narrowed. “It’s an interesting coincidence that both Mandrake and Moriarty start with the letter “M” and both names have eight letters, a little inside humor, Chief?”

Jack took out his new pocket knife, opened the small blade, and cleaned under the fingernail he had used to scratch the back of Mandrake’s hand when they shook. Mandrake sat quiet and watched Jack put the residue from under his nail and also the pocketknife in one of the paper coin rounds he had stopped and gotten at the bank, and then put the coin wrap into one of the plastic bags. Jack wasn’t sure he had scratched Mandrake hard enough for effective DNA evidence, so the chief couldn’t be sure either.

Jack casually reached forward and picked up Mandrake’s candy wrapper, and dropped it inside a second plastic bag.

“I know the date,” Jack said, “and the exact time Moriarty was in New York to pay Herman Flood the first fifty thousand, and the date he returned to take possession of the four portraits and pay Flood the balance of his fee. You won’t be able to account for those hours.”

Jack got up and walked to the side table where he picked up the spoon the chief had licked and the napkin on which the spoon had blotted, putting them in a third evidence bag.

Jack sat back down, looked at the chief, and smiled knowingly. “You’re Moriarty. You blackmailed one of your lifelong friends, Chris Andujar, and it led to his suicide. You blackmailed Anson and Jensen, Harkin, Wingate and her French lover, and Allison Trowbridge. I have no doubts there are others we haven’t found. You blackmailed Haviland into helping you and then murdered him, or possibly paid Rockton to kill him as well as Phoebe Ziegler.

“When you told me of the death of Mary Lou’s mom, deep sadness came over you. She was much more than your friend’s wife, wasn’t she?”

Mandrake’s tongue darted out, moistening his lips. “You’re full of shit, McCall.”

“Mary Lou is your daughter, not your Goddaughter.” Jack held up the three bags of prospective DNA evidence. “You know how this works. Mary Lou has locks of her mother’s hair and also of Tino’s. When she showed me her locket, I could see the follicles on Tino’s hair. In a short time the world will know Mary Lou is really your daughter.”

Mandrake raised his eyebrows, inhaling deeply. “All her life I’ve longed to say it out loud. Say it for someone else to hear, my daughter, Mary Lou Mandrake. That felt good, but it should never again be said. Mary Lou has a loving memory of her mother. Let’s not soil that. And she cherishes the image of the father she knows, Tino Sanchez. Let her remember her parents as she does. It will comfort her when she learns her Uncle Harry is Moriarty.”

The only decent spot left in his blackened heart is his love for his secret daughter.

“You know what’s coming,” Jack said, making it seem as inevitable as daylight follows darkness. “The D.A. will charge you with multiple counts of murder. The whole story will be told and retold in the tabloids: chief of police blackmails citizens, and has a secret daughter.”

Jack rubbed his hands together. “You killed Tino Sanchez after he got the IOUs from Tittle. It’s likely you also killed Tittle after he gave Sanchez those records, then killed Leoni to cover your murder of Tino Sanchez.”

Mandrake started to interrupt, then put his arms on his desk, wrinkling the pink phone memo. He looked at Jack, his face twisting into a surrendering smile. “How did you first know?”

“At first, I didn’t know. More like I didn’t want to know. But little things kept pointing your way. I kept shaking them off but, in the end, you were the only one with links to Tittle’s records, the know-how to control Tyson, and the instincts to pick up on Chris’s hidden sexual orientation. You had the access to learn the identity of the three federal fugitives. You were at the scene when Tino Sanchez was killed. The entire report on his and Leoni’s death came from one unimpeachable source, the chief of police, you.”

Chief Mandrake smiled the way one does at an inside joke. “I had Rockton set up to do one final job, to kill you. After somehow you discovered the surprise I had left under your car. Then I was going to take Rockton out, but my officers, unknowingly, did it for me. His fate was sealed when he touched Mary Lou. Rockton shot Haviland on my order, but I had nothing to do with the biker killing Phoebe Ziegler. That was his thing, but so what, this city will never run out of whores.” He gestured dismissively.

“Go to hell, Moriarty.”

“Hah,” the chief bellowed. “There is no hell. A man reproduces and dies with no more grandeur than a pulled weed.”

“Moriarty was smart,” Jack said. “He was careful, patient, and detail-conscious. So are you. In the end you were the only one to whom I could draw connecting lines from all the victims, the blackmailer’s traits, and the related events. The only part I couldn’t figure, still can’t, is why. You’re one of America’s most highly respected police chiefs.”

The centers of Mandrake’s eyes went dark like lusterless black thumbtacks inserted to hold up his face.

“All my life I believed in the system. I fought for principle. Believed in God. In the Catholic Church. I believed that good would prevail. After cancer took my wife in her prime, I could no longer believe in myths and blind faith. In the years following my fling with Mary Lou’s mother, I came to realize that my wife was one of God’s finest, yet He took her while leaving the scum I dealt with every day. Then Father Michaels sexually assaulted my … my daughter.”

His eyebrows moved downward, leading his forehead lower. “The church gave Father Michaels a transfer, a slap on the wrist. What was true for the rest of the world was even true of the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The church only cared about getting their dirt under the rug before Sunday collections started dropping. Principle didn’t mean shit. Money. Only money. The rest was a mirage. That’s when I knew the truth. There is only one real choice for each of us—prey or predator. That day I became a predator.”

He laughed derisively. “Justice and goodness. To protect and serve. So much horseshit. I decided to get mine and live the high life.”

Mandrake again reached for his candy drawer.

Jack moved forward, sliding his fingers under the overhang on the chief’s desk, palms up, ready to flip the desk. But Mandrake’s hand came out grasping only another hard candy. He unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. “Hey, Jack, you want another wrapper?” He laughed and massaged his temple, then went silent. When he looked back up, water had welled in his eyes. “I loved Tino Sanchez. He just wouldn’t let go of his belief in heaven and hell.”

Except for the caricature effect of his massive eyebrows, the chief’s face wasn’t an unusual face. A bit aged. A bit homely, but certainly not a face anyone would see as patently evil.

“I’ll do anything to spare Mary Lou.”

“It’s too late, Chief.”

Mandrake smiled in the friendly way he always had before. “I still hold the IOU you gave me at your open house. I imagine it wouldn’t cover you forgetting about my being Moriarty?”

Jack slowly shook his head.

Mandrake swiveled his chair around and picked up a picture from the credenza behind him, a photo from his swearing-in as chief of police. He laid it flat on his desk and, true to his fastidious nature, lined the frame up with the top edge of his blotter.

“Jack, you’re a man who likes to pay his debts.” Mandrake took off his badge and laid it on top of the picture. “Give me ten minutes to straighten my things and we’ll call it square.”

He got up and walked to the coat rack, put on his coat, looped the hanger back on the tree, steadied the swing, and fastened the buttons. “Please wait in the chair just outside. I can’t get out except past you.” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I’ll stamp your IOU paid for ten minutes.”

Evil had rotted the man from the inside, leaving only a light-skinned veneer over his private hell, and a desperate desire to protect his daughter.

“Where are the four presidential portraits?” Jack asked.

“At my home. That was the only time I went for anything but cash, and it turned sour. I had an Iranian buyer set up who could get the portraits out under diplomatic protection. While I was returning from getting them from Flood in New York, the man was called back to Iran. He disappeared without a trace … Ten minutes. Please.”

Jack understood why the chief wanted the time, but he had not decided whether to agree. He had seen men on the battlefield give up their lives for their comrades, while others made the same choice to avoid capture, or to not return home a disabled burden to their families. The chief wanted to save his daughter the pain of learning that he was her real father, and that he had killed the man she lovingly remembered as her father. He also wanted to spare her the humiliation of the inevitable long and very public trial.

Jack stood up and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned back. “Ten minutes, Chief, not eleven.”

Jack fixed his eyes on the wall clock across from the chair just outside the chief’s office. Each time the second hand completed a full sweep the minute hand jerked forward. The fourth jerk seemed to tug the minute hand too far. The fifth jerk seemed a little short, as if making up for the longer fourth jerk. The process repeated again and again.

Sweep. Jerk. Sweep. Jerk.

Six minutes. Seven.

Jack felt his grip tighten on the cold metal arms of the chair.

Eight minutes. Nine.

The instant the second hand swept past twelve for the tenth time, Jack felt the wall vibrate and heard a sound he had heard all too often in his life.

Sergeant Suggs and another detective came running toward him, their guns held with the muzzles up. Suggs went into his chief’s office high, the other detective low. Jack followed.

The side of Chief Mandrake’s face rested on the desk blotter, a pool of his blood discoloring the wrinkled pink phone message. His right hand, in an unnatural position, still clutched his police pistol. The chief’s left hand had flopped sideways to rest against the spacebar on his keyboard, sending the cursor on an endless line-after-line journey across the screen.

The scene reminded Jack of the police picture taken of Chris’s destroyed face collapsed on the desk in his study. The Andujar case had come full circle.

Suggs lifted his chief’s sleeve. The cursor halted. Then Suggs slid free the yellow legal pad with its red-soaked edge. He held it at an angle so Jack could read with him.

I’m Moriarty. Tyson told the truth in his interview at the office of Jack McCall. I killed Tittle after Tino Sanchez received Tittle’s records. I got Sanchez to keep quiet about getting Tittle’s records by convincing him it might help us if the killer believed the records were still out there somewhere. Sanchez insisted later that the records be booked as evidence. I told him of my blackmail scheme and begged him to go along. He refused, so I killed Tino Sanchez, the father of Mary Lou Sanchez, and the best cop I ever knew. The best man I ever knew. I paid Rockton to kill Haviland whom I had blackmailed to gain entry into various offices in buildings cleaned by his employer.

At the bottom and onto the next page he had listed the location of the four presidential portraits, Tittle’s records, and the banks with the account numbers where the funds the marks had paid would be found. He had also listed the insurance carrier for his life policy and stated that Mary Lou, his goddaughter, was the sole beneficiary.

Mandrake had not admitted killing Father Michaels in Boston. He could not without leading the authorities to discover that Mary Lou was his daughter.

Jack reread one part, silently: “I killed Tino Sanchez, the father of Mary Lou Sanchez.” Mandrake was again telling Jack to let Mary Lou keep the papa who lived in her heart.

Meticulous to the end, the statement was signed, Harold Mandrake, Former Chief of Police, District of Columbia, Metropolitan Police Department.

Chapter 51

Jack walked out of Metro after promising Suggs he would return in two hours to give him a statement regarding his meeting with Chief Mandrake. The place was bedlam. The cops could use the two hours.

The truth is never cruel, only the act about which the truth is being told. Still, that truth could only bring Mary Lou pain. He would discuss his decision with Max and Nora, but he would not tell the police. Chief Mandrake had been right; the fact that he was Mary Lou’s birth father did not need to be in the public domain.

When Jack got back to MI, Nora and Mary Lou were talking.

“Nora. Mary Lou. Please go into my office.” It must have been something about his demeanor for neither of them said or asked anything. They just got up and went into his office.