“No, you shouldn’t have, but I tell you what. Give me half, and I’ll forget I was ever here.”
The chief raised an eyebrow.
“Just kidding,” I said. “Why don’t we keep this between us until we figure out what it means?”
The briefcase was crammed with blue-banded bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
It was well past midnight by the time I got back to the newsroom. The place was deserted. Twisdale had left a note on my desk directing me to file something for our online edition, as if I needed to be told. I banged out a news story heavy on description, leaving out the cash and the names of the dead. When I was done, I shot Chuckie-boy an e-mail suggesting he have someone track down the Correias to get their account of surviving the crash. I figured he needed to be told. Then I spent a few minutes on Google.
I turned up a few routine business stories about Egg Harbor Aviation, a two-year-old item about Christopher Cox getting his pilot’s license, and nothing at all about Lucan Alfano of Ocean City, New Jersey.
5
Next morning, my ringtone for Twisdale woke me at eight o’clock. I shut the phone off and went back to sleep. Around noon, I got up, made coffee, and popped a frozen sausage, egg, and cheese into the microwave. I snapped on the TV and ate standing up as I watched Logan Bedford, the blow-dried reporter for Channel 10, stand in front of the crash scene and paraphrase my story. He didn’t have anything new. He rarely did.
I turned the cell back on, checked my messages, and found six, all from Twisdale. I didn’t listen to them. Tuukka’s water dish was dry, so I refilled it and dropped in another mouse. He startled, flicked his tongue at it, and turned away. Apparently still full from yesterday, he curled up to sleep. I considered joining him. Instead, I fired up my laptop, logged on to The Dispatch’s online edition, and was scanning the sports news when Twisdale called again.
“Where have you been?” he said. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”
“Where do you suppose I’ve been after working half the night, Chuck?”
“Well, shake off the cobwebs and get your butt in here.”
“Have you forgotten already? You gave me today off.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten, but I need somebody who knows what he’s doing to follow the crash story.”
“Maybe you could hire back one of the veteran reporters you let go.”
“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point. Now come on in. You can reschedule the day off for next week.”
“No thanks,” I said, and clicked off.
He rang back. I didn’t answer. I was not about to spend the day under Chuckie-boy’s thumb, but I couldn’t leave the story alone either. He’d want me to chase the survivors for a feel-good human interest story. I wanted to find out who Lucan Alfano was and why he’d been hand-carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash to Little Rhody.
I was trying to remember if I knew anyone in Atlantic City when my cell played the opening guitar riff of “Who Are You” by The Who, my ringtone for unknown callers.
“Mulligan?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Judy Abbruzzi.”
“Hey, Judy. How have you been?”
“I’m good.”
Judy had been The Dispatch’s night city editor before she got laid off a couple of years back.
“You working?” I asked.
“I am. I hooked on with The Atlantic City Press last November.”
“As what?”
“Assistant metro editor.”
“Glad to hear you landed on your feet.”
“One of the few,” she said. “I’m counting my blessings.”
“So, Judy. I’m guessing this isn’t just a social call.”
“It’s not. I hear that one of our South Jersey worthies got himself killed in Rhode Island last night.”
“Two of them, actually.”
“I know,” she said, “but the one that intrigues me is Lucan Alfano.”
“I thought the victims’ names hadn’t been released yet.”
“They haven’t. I got it from a source.”
“So who was Lucan Alfano, and why are you intrigued?” I asked. “Other than the fact that he’s dead, of course.”
“Officially, he was the silent owner of a string of New Jersey pawnshops and an Atlantic City payday loan company.”
“And unofficially?”
“The state cops down here say he was a fixer for local gambling interests.”
“That right?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“What did he fix, exactly?”
“Whatever needed fixing,” she said. “Zoning variances, wetlands exceptions, building permits, liquor licenses. That sort of thing. My sources say he was also the man to see in South Jersey if you wanted someone to disappear.”
“He was a hitter?”
“No. They say he was to contract killers what Scott Boras is to Bryce Harper and Jacoby Ellsbury.”
“Except that when ballplayers and their agents get paid,” I said, “the only thing that gets hit is a baseball.”
“Yeah. Except for that.”
“Did Alfano have a record?”
“Uh-uh. The feds and staties dogged him for years, but they never came up with anything solid.”
“How come The Press never published anything about him?”
“How do you know we didn’t?”
“There’s this new thing called the Internet,” I said.
“We didn’t because we could never prove anything. Whenever we started asking questions, his lawyers made noises about a libel suit. Maybe we could have found something if we’d put a couple of people on it for six months, but we don’t have the resources for that kind of thing anymore.”
“Any idea what was bringing Alfano to Rhode Island?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” she said.
“No idea.”
I didn’t tell her about the briefcase full of cash. No point in turning over my hole card until she had something more valuable to trade.
“You going to poke into this?” I asked.
“Got my best man on it, but I can only spare him part-time. Just a couple of hours a day.”
“Let’s stay in touch,” I said. “If you learn anything, give me a call.”
“And you’ll do the same?”
“You bet.”
After we signed off, I tidied up the kitchen and mulled over what I’d just heard. Then I called Chief Hernandez and asked if he could spare a few minutes.
The first thing that grabbed my attention when I entered his office was his bulletin board. The pocked, ten-by-twelve-inch color photo of Joe Arpaio, the jowly Arizona sheriff notorious for harassing Mexican immigrants, had been taken down. In its place was a photo of Ted Cruz, the lunatic-fringe freshman senator from the great state of Texas. The darts that had once riddled Arpaio’s image with holes rested beside the blotter on Hernandez’s big mahogany desk. I snatched one up and flicked it, nailing an FBI poster of James T. Hammes, a Kentucky accountant wanted for liberating nearly nine million dollars from his corporate masters.
“Hit what you were aiming at?”
“Not even close.”
Hernandez swept the remaining darts from the desk, leaned back in his chair, and fired them off in rapid succession, nailing Cruz twice in each eye.
“Impressive,” I said.
“It’s like everything else. You get better with practice.”
“Not like everything,” I said. “Some things, like losing your virginity or dying in a plane crash, you have to get right the first time. So, tell me. Did you count the dead guy’s money yet?”
“Close the door and sit down.”
So I did.
“Are we off the record?” he asked.
“For now.”
“The briefcase contained exactly two hundred grand, all in hundreds.”
“Good bills?”
“Yeah. No funny money. At the prevailing rate, it could buy you two hundred liquor licenses, forty building permits, or twenty contract killings.”