Harley threw the restaurant door open and tossed the gym bag inside.
Dioguardi moaned. Dett shot him in the forehead with his.45. Harley was down on one knee, a pistol in his hand, covering the rear of the restaurant. Dett emptied his.45 into the two men in the back seat, shoved it back into his pocket, and holstered the shotgun, pulling his second pistol loose with his right hand.
Harley held his position, down on one knee, scanning the area, pistol up and ready.
Dett reached toward the blood-and-flesh omelet of what had been Dioguardi’s torso. Not the suit jacket-this was on him before he got hit. His left hand quickly probed the lining of the dead man’s cashmere overcoat… Clean! Dett slipped the letter carefully into the inside pocket, then refolded the overcoat so it lay flat on the seat.
The Plymouth roared up, skidding the last few feet on the brakes. Harley jumped to his feet and ran toward the open rear door. Dett fired three more times as he backed toward the Plymouth. The second he was inside, Jody Hacker stomped the throttle.
As the Plymouth careened around the corner of the alley, the stolen car parked in front of the restaurant exploded.
1959 October 09 Friday 18:28
“Nobody saw a thing, right, Chet?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking, Sherman,” the jowly cop said. “Nobody inside could have seen any of this,” gesturing at the fleshy carnage inside the Cadillac. “The kitchen’s a blast zone. Two dead, body parts all over the place. Looks like the place was bombed. Then you got that car that blew up right in front, too. Nobody was even thinking about back here in the alley.”
“This one got to pull his piece,” Sherman Layne said, pointing to the body next to Dioguardi, “but he never got off a shot. And Sally D., he wasn’t even carrying.”
“Had to be Beaumont,” the jowly cop said. “He’s the only one around here with this kind of muscle. I always thought he was going to get payback for Hacker. That’s how those hillbillies are.”
“Uh-huh,” Sherman Layne grunted. He said nothing about the envelope he had taken from the inside pocket of Dioguardi’s cashmere coat.
“It was a gang hit, all right,” the jowly cop said, in a voice of respect. “A real massacre. Like they used to have in the old days. You think we should go out and talk to Beaumont?”
“Not just yet,” Sherman said. “He’ll have a cast-iron alibi, anyway. There’s something I want to check out first.”
1959 October 09 Friday 18:49
“Mr. Dett? He checked out this morning,” Carl told the big detective. “Earlier than we expected.”
“Did he leave a forwarding address?”
“Let me see… Yes, it’s right here: Star Route 2, Rogersville, Oregon.”
Same as his driver’s license, Sherman thought to himself. And probably just as real. “Have you rented his room yet?”
“Yes, sir. To a Mr.-”
“Never mind,” the big detective said. “I’m sure you give the rooms a thorough cleaning every time a guest checks out. Before you rent them again, I mean?”
“Well, certainly, Detective. This is the Claremont, after all.”
As the two men spoke, another man entered the lobby. A drab, anonymous man, with a prominent harelip-repair scar. He took in the scene at a glance, turned on his heel, and went back out.
1959 October 09 Friday 19:11
“That Buick was returned a couple of days ago,” the car-rental clerk told Sherman Layne.
“Mind if I take a look at it?”
“Soon as it comes back, Detective.”
“Somebody rented it?”
“Half an hour after the guy who had it dropped it off. It was so early, we got two days on it for one. Pretty lucky, huh?”
1959 October 09 Friday 23:13
Why was Dioguardi writing to a man like Ernest Hoffman? Sherman held the envelope carefully, his hands encased in surgical gloves. And what’s with the cutout letters? Looks like a damn ransom note.
Sherman Layne sat for several minutes, watching his options spin like a roulette wheel. Finally, he took a deep breath, reached into his pocket, took out his penknife, and carefully slit open the envelope.
1959 October 10 Saturday 10:10
“It had to be Beaumont, Sean,” Shalare said. “Nobody else had the cause. Or the balls.”
“But why?”
“That’s a puzzler. It could be that he wanted us to know that he’s not going to play.”
“That makes no sense,” the bulky man said, shaking his head. “Beaumont’s not just a bad actor, he’s a slick article, too. If he’s dealing with the other side on the votes thing, he’d want to be saving that for a surprise, not putting up a bloody billboard, wouldn’t he?”
“No. No, he wouldn’t. Any chance this was some of Dioguardi’s own people?”
“A palace coup?”
“No, not his local people. The Mafia boys.”
“That’s not their style, either. Why slaughter so many when they could just ask Dioguardi to come in for a sit-down, and plant him where he landed? All this attention, it’s bad for business. Even those people are smart enough to know that dead meat brings flies.”
“What do we do, then?”
“Beaumont’s the shooter, Mickey. But that doesn’t mean he won’t still come along with us on the big thing. See what you can find out. In the meantime, I’m going to send a man to you, just in case.”
1959 October 10 Saturday 10:13
“Yes, I know, Mr. Hoffman isn’t going to come to the phone for some hick-town cop,” Sherman said, not a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “But you tell him it’s about his grandson, see if he’ll talk to me.”
1959 October 10 Saturday 10:19
“Do you think it will work? All that we did?”
“It’s too late to worry about it, Cyn. It’s done now.”
“And that man, he’s gone?”
“Harley said he dropped him off, and he just walked away.”
“But you know where to reach him. Like you did before.”
“What does it matter, honey? Our dice are already tumbling. All we can do is wait to see what we rolled.”
1959 October 10 Saturday 11:26
“Could I come and see you? Tonight, when you get off work?”
“I wish you would,” Tussy said. “I miss you.”
1959 October 10 Saturday 17:49
Sherman Layne drove for four and a half hours, arriving at the Hoffman mansion a few minutes before his six o’clock appointment.
“This is Mr. Cross,” the old man said, nodding his head in the direction of a nondescript man who stood to Hoffman’s left. “He handles my personal security. I assume you don’t mind if he sits in on our meeting.”
“It’s your meeting, sir,” Sherman said, politely.
“May I see the letter?” Cross asked.
“Yes. But please don’t touch it,” Sherman said, taking a slim cardboard box out of his briefcase. “You understand.”
Cross took the box from Sherman without speaking. He opened it carefully, and read the contents without changing expression.
“It’s a kidnap note,” he said to Hoffman. “Whoever wrote it wasn’t going to send it until they already had the baby.”
“How much were they demanding?” Hoffman asked.
“It says, ‘We just want a favor.’ ”
“What kind of…?” Hoffman turned his gaze to Sherman Layne. “You’re certain this is… was Dioguardi’s work?”
“It was on his body, sir,” Sherman Layne said. “But I wasn’t relying on that alone. We’ve got Dioguardi’s prints on file. We didn’t find them on the envelope-it was absolutely clean-or on the cut-out letters themselves. But the paper it was written on-looks like it came from a butcher shop, so it could have been sitting around in his restaurant-it’s got three separate partials. Not enough to convict him in court, maybe. But good enough for me. Sal Dioguardi wrote that note. Or he handled it, anyway.”