Sharky said, ‘Can you think of anything else about Scardi?’
Martland reflected a few moments and said, ‘Oh, it was exciting, having an American gangster there with us. He was quite a celebrity. Quite a celebrity.’ Then he fell silent again and this time his gaze became almost glassy.
Sharky stood up. ‘Well, thank you, sir. You’ve been a great help.’
‘I did well, then, eh?’
‘Yes, sir. You did well.’
Martland turned to the portrait. ‘Hear that, Miriam. My memory’s just as good as ever. Takes a while now, but it all comes back, my dear. It all comes back.’
And he sat on the crate, his shoulders beginning to sag, his gaze fixed on another time, the memories reflecting in his faded eyes, a time of mirror-shined shoes and white gloves, of chin straps and marching orders echoing through the barracks and tattoo in the late afternoon.
They drove for ten minutes without speaking. It was Sharky who finally broke the silence.
‘It was like turning on a tape recorder, listening to some- one dictating his memoirs. AU of a sudden it would just pour out, like rote.’
‘He’s probably told that story a thousand times in the last thirty years, all about the wonderful American gangster.’
‘Yeah, and probably word for word.’
‘I feel sorry for the old coot,’ Livingston said. “The army’s all he’s got left and it ignores him, letting him hang around long enough to make general, so he can get a few more bucks in a pension he’ll probably never spend. Shit.’
‘What about Scardi? This Opstitch thing?’
‘Anybody thinks Angelo Scardi didn’t have a hand in a four-million-dollar ripoff ought to be committed.’
‘But why wasn’t that obvious to the army?’
‘You heard what the old boy said. Four million in gold was just a piss in the ocean. All they needed was a fall guy so they could close the book on it, charge it off on some budget. Jesus!’
They drove another block in silence and Livingston said, Go down Spring and turn into Carnegie Way.’
‘Where we headed?’
‘The public library. Best place I can think of to get a photograph of Scardi.’
Sharky waited in the car while Livingston went inside. Lie was gone for almost half an hour and when he returned was carrying a large manila envelope. He got into the car and took out a photograph and laid it in Sharky’s lap.
‘There’s the face to go with the name,’ he said.
Sharky stared down at it. It was a copy of a newspaper photo of a man seated at a table surrounded by reporters and photographers, his hands splayed out in a gesture f innocence. But the look was there, in the vapid stiletto face, the hawk nose, the dead eyes, the humourless grin on thin, cruel lips, the slick black hair. It was a face that was easy to hate and Sharky’s anger welled up anew, stirring his lust for retribution, an almost perverse passion that overwhelmed him, swelling in his groin, churning in his stomach. At that moment Sharky could easily have killed Scardi with his bare hands.
Livingston took Xerox copies of several clippings from the envelope.
‘I ain’t gonna bore you with a lot of details,’ Livingston said, ‘but I thought you might like to get a taste. This creep’s got a pedigree you won’t believe. When he was fourteen he had to leave Sicily because he slit a neighbour’s throat in some kind of family squabble. He lived in northern Italy for five years before he came over here. His uncle was Lupo the Wolf, the son of a bitch who started the Black Hand movement. . . . Came here in ‘35, arrested the next year for extortion and kidnapping . . . Christ, here’s an article says he was suspected of killing over fifty people. You know where he got the nickname The Undertaker? He supposedly invented the double-deck coffin, to get rid of hits.’
‘And when did he supposedly die?’
Livingston checked through the sheaf of Xeroxed clippings. ‘Here’s his obit. February 16, 1968. Cancer.’
‘And Howard Burns arrived in Lincoln in 1968. How convenient.’
‘I wonder if the Feds really think they got their money’s worth out of him?’
‘Anything else in there? How about that.. . heroic war record of his?’
Livingston rummaged through more articles. He stopped at one and said, ‘Hey, listen to this. According to this story Scardi did his first hit for Lucky Luciano and he screwed it up and Luciano chewed his ass and told him he didn’t get close enough to the mark. The next day Scardi gives Luciano a box with the guy’s ears in it and says, “Here, was that close enough?”’
Sharky’s grip on the wheel tightened.
‘All it says about his war record,’ said Livingston, ‘is that be was about to be deported in 1944 as an undesirable alien, but the case was dropped after he, quote, “performed valuable and courageous services for the invasion forces of Italy”. Unquote. Nothing about guerrilla operations.’
‘Extortion.. . kidnapping. . . murder. . . and they made a deal with him,’ Sharky said. ‘That’s the courageous war hero Martland thought was such a sweetheart.’
‘Makes you wonder what the hell kind of deal they made with him in ‘68,’ said Livingston. ‘He musta come down on half the Mafia.’
Sharky thought to himself, This time there won’t be any deals, because this time the government isn’t going to get near him, this time we’re going to put that son of a bitch out of bus mess permanently — one way or the other.
And he said aloud, ‘This time he’s ours.’
‘We gotta get him first,’ Livingston said.
Chapter Nineteen
There were only two things in Sergeant Herb Anderson’s entire life that he was proud of: a commendation he had won when, while off-duty, he had overpowered an armed robber sticking up a Seven-Eleven Market; the other was his son Tommy, an all-city football player who had already been offered three college scholarships and the season was only over a week.
The rest of his life had been a downhill slide. His other son, Harry, had been a problem since he was a child. The boy had been in and out of private schools all his life and as a result Anderson’s wife, Lucy, had gradually turned into a hypertense, morose hypochondriac, a woman who complained constantly of back trouble, headaches, female problems, and lumps in her breast which the doctor somehow could never find.
Anderson himself had changed through the years from a jovial man, well liked by the other members of the force, to a depressed and involuted misfit, a man harassed by financial problems and a son he both loved and despised, who worked long hours to escape the enervating atmosphere at home. It was his reputation as a tireless workhorse that had earned him a sergeant’s stripes.
He was grateful when Priest called him on Saturday morning, his day off, because it gave bun an honest excuse to escape the house and enjoy a lunch at the Regency.
The man Anderson knew as Priest was actually Gerald Kershman. It was Kershman who picked the busy bars in the better hotels, which were more popular with transients than with the local trade. He usually arrived fifteen minutes ahead of Anderson, seeking out the most secluded and the darkest corner in the room. Not that anyone would recognize Kershman or particularly remember him; it was his own paranoia at work. It was one of DeLaroza’s peculiar quirks, and he had many, that the corporation should always have a strong police contact in every city in which it did business. Kershman, for his own reasons, had been more than willing to oblige. He was called on to provide information from time to time, nothing particularly onerous, and yet Kershman, a man with many complexes, always became nervous when he met with Anderson. Ne didn’t like his hangdog attitude, the inevitable spots on his ties, and mostly the fact that, while Anderson was a fair police officer, he was not too sharp. It was a struggle for Kershman to conceal his contempt and his sense of superiority when he was around Anderson.