Or his own.
Chapter 107
WHAT WOULD YOU do if you found a flash drive, with blood on it, in your boyfriend’s favorite hiding spot in his apartment? In his secret, secret place?
I now knew what Brenda Evans would do. She was a reporter, after all, with a sensitive – some would say suspicious – nose for stories. She couldn’t help it – the blood had bothered her.
Not nearly as much, though, as what she had discovered on that flash drive.
Derrick Phalen had uncovered it all, and he’d put it on the drive for me to see. Or, rather, for me to hear. There were no pictures, no pilfered secret documents – only an MP3 voice file. And while I may be a purist with my vinyl LP collection, this little digital recording trumped everything I’d ever listened to.
Why had Derrick decided to bug his boss’s office? Sadly, I’ll never have the chance to ask him. But I’ll never forget how he had looked that day he saw Ian LaGrange come walking toward us by the elevator at the OCTF.
“Holy shit,” I thought I had heard Derrick say. Like he couldn’t believe something.
Soon after that, he had his smoking gun – a conversation between LaGrange and none other than David Sorren.
Blinded by his own political ambition, Sorren was willing to forsake the law he had sworn to uphold. He’d built his reputation battling organized crime, but in a world of hotshot defense attorneys and legal loopholes, guilty verdicts against the mob were tough to come by. There had to be a better way, right?
At least that’s what Sorren’s twisted mind had been thinking. What he needed were results. He didn’t care how he got them, or for that matter who paid the price. Because results equaled votes. Today, city hall. Tomorrow, the governor’s office. Then one day, maybe, the White House.
A modern-day Machiavelli of the worst order.
So Sorren had recruited LaGrange and made the ultimate backroom deal. They chose sides in the organized crime underworld. They backed Joseph D’zorio and set up Eddie Pinero after his criminal usury conviction.
There was just one problem. Me.
I stared at Sorren across his desk as he listened to the recording, the flash drive people had died for. Suddenly, his face was as pale as the ceiling tiles of his office.
“I don’t like it,” said a nervous-sounding LaGrange. “If Daniels is actually talking to one of my prosecutors, then he knows something.”
“You worry too much, Ian,” said Sorren.
“No, I worry just enough. You should, too. He’s already thinking that his being at Lombardo’s was more than a coincidence.”
“We can take care of it.”
“How?” asked LaGrange.
“Leave it to me, Ian. I’ll talk to the manager at Lombardo’s, erase Marcozza’s name from the reservations on that Thursday, figure out everything. Just consider it done.”
There was more on the tape, but Sorren had heard enough. He grabbed the recorder and stopped the playback. Then, of all crazy things, he started to laugh out loud.
“You haven’t heard the rest of it,” I said.
“I don’t need to. I was there. I know what I said. But no one else will. Do you know why?”
I shrugged. “Tell me.”
“You should’ve gone to law school,” he said, shaking his head. “This was illegally obtained. It’s inadmissible.”
Jesus, he was pirouetting through his own legal loophole. I guess it figured.
But it was my turn to shake my head. “How could you do it, David?”
“Do what?” he said.
“At least explain one thing to me,” I said. “Why did you kill LaGrange?”
“Because he was trying to kill you. I saved your life,” he said. “How soon we forget.”
“I’m that stupid?” I asked him.
“Do you think I am?”
“No, what I think is that somewhere along the way you completely forgot the difference between right and wrong, Sorren. You got as cynical as they come, and I’ve seen cynical, believe me. Maybe you actually wanted great things for the city. But for sure you wanted even better things for yourself.”
“So now you’re a shrink?”
“No, I’m still a journalist. A pretty decent one, I think,” I said. “But you? You’re a criminal.”
Sorren clenched his jaw as he leaned forward in his chair. I could see the veins popping in his neck, just like they had the very first time I’d met him. The anger was building, and he was trying to contain himself.
But he couldn’t.
“Fuck you!” he said. “How could I do it? Do what? Induce one lousy, stinking mob boss to take out another? I was doing everybody in this city a huge favor. One less scumbag mob lawyer, one less crime family, a lot less crime on the streets… Everybody wins – and with D’zorio dead, we win even more.”
He jabbed his finger at me. “So don’t give me your sanctimonious bullshit. You couldn’t leave well enough alone! You got Dwayne Robinson and Derrick Phalen killed. IT WAS YOU! YOU DID IT! THIS IS ALL ON YOU!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said softly before pointing at my recorder. It was still in his hand. “You always had a choice. You just got caught making the wrong one.”
Sorren shot me a pathetic look. “Didn’t I already tell you? What’s on this recorder is inadmissible. Illegally obtained. It never happened…just like this conversation.”
I smiled. “Oh, this is happening, all right. I’m here, you’re here, David. This is definitely happening.”
With that, I undid the top two buttons of my shirt to expose the wire I was wearing.
“Damn chest hairs. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much when they pull off the tape,” I said. “Legally obtained, by the way.”
In the blink of an eye, the door to Sorren’s office burst open as a team of FBI agents came in with guns drawn. Leading the charge? Agent Doug Keller.
“Congratulations, asshole,” he said to Sorren. “You just broke the record for the shortest campaign for mayor in history.”
Chapter 108
I’VE NEVER BEEN real big on happy endings. It’s not that I’m a total pessimist. I’ve just found that anything worth cherishing usually comes at a price. In this case, a very steep one. Four good cops lost their lives, as did a brave prosecutor. I can’t thank you enough, Derrick Phalen. You made the ultimate sacrifice. I promised your sister you wouldn’t die in vain, and for sure you didn’t.
Now I’ll have to compartmentalize like Courtney and figure out a way to move on.
Like with this dinner at my sister’s house in the woods of Connecticut.
“How does everyone like their steak?” asked Kate.
“On a plate, and preferably soon,” I joked. “I’m starving, sis.”
“You were born starving.”
“Don’t start that ‘Mom always liked me best’ stuff.”
“Enough, you two,” said Elizabeth. “Grow up.”
Five of us were gathered on the back patio of Kate’s house in Connecticut. Courtney and Doug Keller had come out from the city with me to join my sister and Elizabeth for a Sunday barbecue. The sun was shining and spirits were high.
Kate, who insisted on doing the grilling, waved her spatula at me. “You’re such a wiseguy,” she warned with a smile.
“Now, there’s a word I wouldn’t mind not hearing for a while,” I said. “Wiseguy.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Keller, clinking my bottle of Rolling Rock with his. It was good to see him out of a suit – and holster – and into a wicker lounge chair and some jeans.
Within a day of Sorren’s arrest, Keller had been able to answer the remaining question I had. Why did Sorren kill LaGrange? Hadn’t they both wanted me dead? Yes, they had. But Sorren had suddenly needed to protect himself. That’s what Keller figured out.
LaGrange had become a liability the minute he’d veered from Sorren’s game plan and sold out Bruno Torenzi to line his pockets. But LaGrange’s greed got Belova killed and in turn guaranteed some intense heat from the Solntsevskaya Bratva back in Moscow. They would have eventually traced the debacle back to LaGrange and quite possibly Sorren.