The transcript noted nine minutes of silence before Kenyon made a phone call to the home of his attorney, Stanley LaGrossa.
LAGROSSA: Yes?
KENYON: It’s Donald.
LAGROSSA: Donald.
KENYON: Are we still on?
LAGROSSA: Yes, if you are still serious about it.
KENYON: I am. I’ll see you at the office then.
LAGROSSA: You know the risks. I’ll see you there.
Another eight minutes went by and then a new unknown voice was picked up in the house. Some of the terse conversation was lost as Kenyon and the unknown man moved through the house, in and out of the reach of the listening devices. The conversation had apparently taken place while the delayed earphone exchange was taking place in the bureau tech van.
KENYON: What is-
UNKNOWN: Shut up! Do what I say and your family lives, understand?
KENYON: You can’t just walk in here and-
UNKNOWN: I said shut up! Let’s go. This way.
KENYON: Don’t hurt my family. Please, I…
UNKNOWN: (unintelligible)
KENYON:… do that. I wouldn’t and he knows that. I don’t understand this. He…
UNKNOWN: Shut up. I don’t care.
KENYON: (unintelligible)
UNKNOWN: (unintelligible)
The report noted that two minutes of silence went by and then the final exchange.
UNKNOWN: Okay, look and see who…
KENYON: Don’t… She’s got nothing to do with this. She…
Then one shot was fired. And moments later microphone 4, which was hidden in a rear den with a door to the rear yard, picked up the unknown man’s final words.
UNKNOWN: Don’t forget the cannoli.
The door to the den was found open. It had been used as part of the killer’s escape route.
McCaleb read the transcript again, captivated by knowing it was a man’s last moments and words. He wished he had an audiotape, so that he would have a better feel for what had happened.
The next document he read explained why the investigators suspected mob involvement. It was a cryptology report. The tape from the Kenyon house had been sent to the crime lab for enhancement. The transcript was then sent to cryptology. The analyst given the assignment focused on the killer’s last line, spoken after Kenyon was down and seemingly a non sequitur. The line-‘ “Don’t forget the cannoli”-was fed into the cryptology computer to see if it matched any known code, prior usage in bureau reports or literary or entertainment reference. It scored a direct match.
In the movie The Godfather, the film that inspired a legion of true-life Mafia hoodlums, a top capo for the Corleone family, Peter Clemenza, is given the assignment of taking a traitorous family soldier out into the New Jersey meadowlands and killing him. On the morning he leaves his home for the hit, his wife tells Clemenza to stop by a bakery for pastry. As the hugely overweight Clemenza lumbers out to a waiting car containing the man he is tasked with killing, his wife calls after him, “Don’t forget the cannoli.”
McCaleb loved the movie and now remembered the line. It so clearly captured the essence of movie mob life-the ruthless and guiltless brutality alongside family values and loyalty. He understood now why the bureau had concluded that the Kenyon killing was in some way mob related. The line had the audacity and bravura of the mob life. He could see a stone-cold killer adopting it as the imprimatur of his work.
“Don’t forget the cannoli,” McCaleb said out loud.
He suddenly thought of something and a little jolt of electricity went through him.
“Don’t forget the cannoli,” he said again.
He quickly went to his leather bag and dug through it until he found the video from the James Cordell shooting. He went to the television and jammed the tape in and started playing it. After getting his bearings on where in the tape he was, he fast-forwarded to the moment of the shooting and hit play again. His eyes stayed on the masked man’s mouth and as the man began to speak on the silent tape, McCaleb spoke with him out loud.
“Don’t forget the cannoli.”
He backed the tape up and did it again, saying it again. His words matched the shooter’s lips. He was sure it fit. He could feel excitement and adrenaline surging inside of him now. It was a feeling that only came when you had momentum, when you were making your own breaks. When you were getting close to the hidden truth.
He pulled the tape of the Gloria Torres murder out, put it in the player and repeated the process again. The words fit the lips of the shooter once again. There was no doubt.
“Don’t forget the cannoli,” McCaleb said aloud again.
He went to the cabinet next to the chart table and got the phone out. He still had not played the messages that had accumulated over the weekend but he was too hyped to do it now. He punched in the number for Jaye Winston.
“Where have you been and don’t you ever check your machine?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to call you all weekend and all day to explain. It wasn’t my-”
“I know. It wasn’t you. It was Hitchens. I’m not calling about that anyway. I know what the bureau told you. I know what you’ve got-the connection to Donald Kenyon. You’ve got to bring me back in.”
“That’s impossible. Hitchens already said I shouldn’t even talk to you. How am I going to bring-”
“I can help you.”
“How? With what?”
“Just answer me this, see if I have this right. This morning Gilbert Spencer and a couple of field agents-I’m guessing they were named Nevins and Uhlig-come out and give you the news that the bullet you sent to Washington matched up with Kenyon. Right?”
“So far, but that’s no great-”
“I’m not done. Next, he tells you the bureau would like to look into your case and the LAPD case but that initially there seems to be no likely connection other than the weapon. He says, after all, Kenyon is a professional hit and you guys are working two street robberies. Not only that, his shooter used a Devastator on Kenyon and your guy used something else. Federals. That backs the bureau theory that the professional shooter in the Kenyon case discarded his weapon somewhere and the shooter from your two cases then came along and picked it up. End of connection. How am I doing so far?”
“Dead on.”
“Okay, so you asked Spencer for information on the Kenyon killing just so you could do your own cross-checking but that didn’t go over so well.”
“He said the Kenyon case was at a-quote-sensitive point and that he would rather us peons be on a need-to-know basis.”
“And Hitchens agreed to that?”
“He went along for the ride.”
“And did anybody serve the cannoli?”
“What?”
McCaleb spent the next five minutes explaining the cannoli connection, reading her the transcript from the bugs in Kenyon’s house and the conclusions of the cryptology report. Winston said these were all facts that Gilbert Spencer had not mentioned during the morning meeting. McCaleb knew that he would not have. McCaleb had been in the bureau. He knew how it worked. Given the opportunity, you brush the locals aside and say that the bureau will handle it from here.
“So the cannoli connection makes it clear this wasn’t a throw-away gun that our guy happened to pick up,” McCaleb said. “It’s the same shooter on all three. Kenyon, then Cordell, then Torres. Whether the bureau people knew that going in to your meeting, I don’t know. But if you copied them the case file and the tapes, they know it now. The question is, how do these three killings fit together?”
Winston was silent for a moment before finally expressing her confusion.
“Man, I have no-well, maybe they don’t connect. Look, if it’s a contract killer like the bureau says, maybe they were three separate contracts. You know? Maybe there is no connection other than the same killer did all three on three separate jobs.”