Chapter Twenty #11
I started at one end of the storyboard and slowly moved down the wall, looking at everything Sal and David had put up and all the yarn lines they had made. A lot of it I already knew, but there was some new information in the different notes that had been made.
Once I had seen the entire wall, I walked over to Sal's desk and grabbed a pad of sticky notes and a pen.
I started at the beginning again. Every time I came across something that seemed out of place, was missing information, or made me think there should be a connection somewhere, I wrote it down and stuck the sticky note in place.
By the time I was done, I still had more questions than answers, but at least I felt as if we knew a little more than we did. Or at least I did.
“So, what's your take on all of this, Lany?” Sal asked.
“Agent Decker was killed for information. We know that. He was tortured, and his house was ransacked.” I glanced at Sal. “Someone was looking for something, and I think it's the money.”
“The money you moved to another account?”
“Yes and no.”
“Lany.”
“Yes, it's the money I moved to a different account, but, no, I don't think they know I moved it. Whoever did this was looking for clues to where the money is.”
“So, why kill Decker then?” Agent Crenshaw asked.
“He was in on it,” I replied.
“What?” the man shouted.
“I think Agent Decker was in on it. He might not have been selling drugs, but he was in on the whole money thing. He was using his connections to find drug dealers so he could steal their money. I mean, what were they going to do when their money disappeared? Go to the cops?”
Sal cocked an eyebrow at me. “So, when you moved the money…?”
“I think Decker hired me to move the money to an account he set up under the guise of a DEA sting operation.
If I had actually moved that money to his account, I'd probably be as dead as he is right now. Viggo Marcus somehow found out that it was Decker and went to him to find the money, which is why Decker was tortured.”
“Porca troia, Lany,” Sal snapped. “If he knows it's you, he'll be coming after you.”
Probably true.
“I don't think he knows it's me, at least not yet. At some point, SeRoy is going to squeal, and then Viggo will be after me. I'm hoping we can catch the both of them before that happens.”
I liked breathing.
“So, how do we catch him?” Detective Sparks asked. “I've been after this man for months. Every time I think I'm getting close he slips through my fingers. Witnesses disappear, evidence goes missing, you name it. I can't catch this guy on anything.”
I turned and looked at Vinnie. “Do you or Carlos know who is backing Viggo?”
Vinnie shook his head. “There have been some rumors about Detroit, but I called and talked to Rocky, and he's never heard of Viggo Marcus.”
“Could he have a different name?” I asked.
“Anything is possible.”
“I think we need to track down who this guy is before we go any further. If we can get a name, we can call the others and see if we can locate his backer.”
“You think Viggo has a backer?” Sal asked.
“I think this guy is like Anton Gambino.”
I chuckled lightly when Sal snarled, “Figlio di Troia.”
“I'm sorry,” Detective Sparks asked, “who is Anton Gambino?”
“A couple of years back, a new player came into town. He said his name was Anton Gambino and he was the son of Carlos Gambino. He was set to take over the Gambino family when his father retired. The only problem with that is that Carlos only has one son and his name is Eddie.”
“And you know this how?”
I smirked. “Eddie is one of my best friends.”
Lyn raised his hand. “I'm the other one.”
Uncle Jerry's eyes rolled rather dramatically. “They are three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, set to bring about the end of the world.”
I frowned at my uncle. “We're not that bad.”
Dead silence met my statement.
I huffed. “Moving on.”
“So, what does Viggo being like Anton mean?” Sparks asked.
“It means he's a figment of people's imagination, except he might be real,” Sal explained.
“After the investigation into Anton was completed, everyone except Lany thought he didn't exist. That it was simply the name people made up to take over the Gambino family and move one of their own people into place.
Lany was the only one that thought he really existed, just that he wasn't Carlos's son.”
“Did he exist?”
Agent Crenshaw nodded. “We were able to establish that there was actually someone pretending to be Anton Gambino, but we've never identified who he was.”
My breath caught.
“Lany?” Sal moved closer, his gaze intent. “What is it?”
I slowly turned to look at him. “It's the same guy.”
Sal just stared at me.
The room went dead silent.
“Baby, do you know what you're saying?”
I did, and I didn't. The idea was still forming in my head.
I started pacing as I put words to the thoughts filling my head. “The Fernandez Cartel was trying to get a foothold in the city so that they could move their drugs in. They were hoping to use Anton to take over the Gambino family because Carlos doesn't allow drugs.”
When I reached the end of the room, I turned and started back the other way. Everyone cleared a path for me and just let me walk and talk. I heard frantic typing in the background and knew Lyn was making notes of everything I said.
“When that didn't pan out and the Fernandez Cartel was taken out of the city, Anton was still out there blowing in the wind, except he never went away.
He's been slowly building his little drug empire one block at a time.
Anton Gambino and Viggo Marcus are just aliases, but I'd bet good money his last name is really Fernandez.”
“Figlio di Troia!”
“You said that already.”
“It bears repeating, Lany.”
Sal stormed up to the storyboard and wrote the two aliases down under Viggo's name and then added Fernandez.
He then took a piece of yarn and connected those names to the drug house.
He added the Fernandez Cartel in a blank spot and connected another piece of yard from it to the list of Viggo's aliases.
“Lyn,” he called out without looking away from the storyboard.
“Already on it,” Lyn replied.
Jerry smirked as he glanced at Crenshaw and Sparks. “Told you he'd blow this case wide open.”
I was less worried about blowing the case wide open and more worried about it blowing up in my face.
Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
Chapter Ten
Salvador
One of these days I was going to figure out how Lany did all of this, and then I'd win the Nobel Prize or something just as grand. Even after all of these years, it was still a mystery to me how he did it. I could look at the very same storyboard and never come to the same conclusions as Lany.
I doubted that day would come anytime soon.
“Vinnie, can you call Carlos and fill him in? See if he can give us any new information with what we now know?” I asked. “It also wouldn't hurt to call Patty and ask him to reach out to some of his contacts. I want to put faces to the names we have on the wall.”
“Of course,” Vinnie replied as he got up and walked out of the room. I knew he was doing that so he could talk more freely with Carlos. Talking in front of a police detective and a DEA agent didn't allow such freedoms.
“I hope this isn't out of place, but who is Patty?” Detective Sparks asked.
“Patrick Flannigan,” I replied. “He used to run the Irish mob out of Chicago.”
The man's eyebrows lifted.
I smirked and said, “Patty and Lany have a blood bond.”
It was fun watching Sparks pale. “Your husband has a blood bond with the former head of the Irish mob?”
I patted him on the shoulder. “How's that heart?”
Sparks coughed while rubbing his chest. “Painful.”
“I suggest drinks, lots of them.” Jerry let out a little snort. “Seems to work for me.”
“You're more than likely going to hear a lot of things here that will make your heart stop, but what you need to remember is that we really are working for the good guys. We just have to sometimes go outside the lines to get what we need to move our investigation along.”
“How can you do that and still take it to court?”
“Twenty-five percent of police work is on-the-ground investigation. The other seventy-five percent is working hunches. As a detective, you know this.”
Sparks nodded.
I pointed to the storyboard. “If we showed any investigator or prosecutor our storyboard, they'd only see what we've found during our investigation.
That's why we have the different colored yarn. They show the difference between what we do know, what we want to know, and what we think we should know. All of it is admissible in court.”
Sparks frowned as he glanced at the storyboard. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Getting information from these sources is no different than using a confidential informant. Ours just happens to run the mob.”
“That is not admissible in court,” Jerry stated.
Yeah, no, we'd never get that through the court system.
“Sal, you need to see to Lany,” Skip called out. “He needs some food, and then he needs to go to bed. He's starting to fade.”
I glanced at my baby. Skip was right. Lany's eyes were starting to droop, and he was swaying just a bit. I walked over to him and swung him up into my arms before starting out of the room. “We're going to go eat,” I told everyone. “Mrs. Martinez made dinner for everyone if you're hungry.”
I didn't wait for anyone to reply. I just carried Lany out of my office and down the hallway to the dining room. We had a much bigger table now after replacing the one that had been damaged in the explosion awhile back. It could easily fit all our guests and our family at the same time.
I set Lany on a chair near the head of the table and then went to the kitchen to inform Mrs. Martinez we were there to eat. I smiled when I saw the cupcake tower.
Lany would be so happy.
I gestured to them. “Don't let Lany see those until after he has something to eat.”
Mrs. Martinez chuckled. “Keep him out of my kitchen then.”