“You think the FBI cares?” Casey asked. “These guys dodging them for all those years? FBI agents are like elephants with this stuff. They’d be all over it. If Graham was my client and we offered them John Napoli and his gang? I’d get him total immunity, maybe even a pat on the back from the Justice Department, witness protection, whatever we wanted. Are you kidding? This is Graham’s free pass if anything happens to him.”

“Jake said it’s something worth killing for,” Marty said, “and it is. But if Napoli finds out, Graham won’t be the only one who’d kill for it.”

Jake scowled for a moment before he held his egg roll up in the air as if he were making a toast.

“To blackmail, then,” Jake said, touching his roll to Casey’s and then Marty’s before crunching it in his mouth, “because it works both ways.”

65

CASEY WORKED with Marty until the early morning hours, drafting the documents she needed to make their plan work. She let Marty and Jake out of her room and saw that the sky was already growing pale. She didn’t think she could sleep, but after removing her shoes and lying flat on her back, the next thing she knew, morning light was filtering through the crack in the dark brown curtains. She jumped up and found her toothbrush, spreading a towel on the sticky linoleum floor in the bathroom so her feet wouldn’t have to touch it. She pulled aside the mildewed plastic curtain but thought better of a shower after one glance at the rusty fixtures and the permanent ring around the inside of the tub.

She found a washcloth, more gray than white, but that smelled clean enough for her to brave a sponge bath in the sink before changing into some fresh clothes from her luggage. She stepped outside, where the damp air held a chill. Casey shivered at the sound of traffic droning by on the Thruway she couldn’t see through the mist. She stood, trying to decipher it until she smelled coffee and wheeled around.

“Morning,” Jake said, removing a paper cup from his carrier and offering it to her. Under his arm was a folder of documents.

“Morning,” she said, taking the coffee.

“You’re thinking.”

“The mist,” she said. “When I represent people, everything seems clear. Sometimes I get impatient with them, the confused looks when I tell them what to say and how to say it, but this…”

She waved vaguely out over the railing before gripping its slick surface.

“It’s a lot,” he said. “Someone says they’re one thing and you believe them, then they turn out to be something totally different.”

“Totally evil,” she said. “This whole thing. It’s humiliating.”

“People who know you, they know,” he said, placing a hand on hers. “I know.”

“Thank you,” she said, breathing easier before nodding at the folder tucked under his arm. “You got everything printed?”

“I did.”

Casey asked, “What are you telling your show?”

“That I’m working on one hell of a story,” Jake said, blowing into his lid before taking a sip. “They believe me.”

Casey took a sip of her own and said, “You know who we need to sit down with.”

Jake stared off into the mist. “I think I’ll have a better chance to get the story I need if I do this part of it alone.”

“Well, thanks for not coming right out with a John Wayne imitation,” Casey said. “My uncle used to imitate John Wayne and we all thought it was funny till we learned he got a head injury in the war. Just be real.”

Jake looked somewhat startled. “I am real. For good or bad, I’ve been in this kind of shark tank before.”

“Look, I had a client who was a serial killer and a US senator taking pages out of Joséf Mengele’s playbook who wanted me dead,” she said. “So thanks for the coffee, but don’t patronize me, and next time I’ll take it with milk.”

Jake gave her an amused smile. “I am not taking the kid.”

“He works on traffic tickets.”

“I thought he was your lawyer,” Jake said.

“And you never want to do anything stupid in the presence of your lawyer,” Casey said, pulling open the door to her room. “We going right now?”

“Napoli told me ten o’clock,” Jake said. “I figured I’d take my coffee for the road.”

Casey gathered her things and got into Jake’s Cadillac.

“You going to tell him?” Casey asked, nodding toward Marty’s room.

“I left him a note,” Jake said, backing out.

They took the Thruway to Buffalo. Bambino’s Espresso was a small brick building on the edge of downtown with a dirty glass storefront window and a red neon sign shaped like Italy. Napoli’s silver G55 sat in front like a dog on the stoop. A thick-necked man sat behind the wheel, reading a paper until he put it down to watch them and scan the street. In front of that was a black Lincoln Navigator and a midnight blue Bentley Coupe.

Jake got the door for her. A bell tinkled, announcing their entrance, and an old man in a white apron and a paper hat looked up from his tray of biscotti before darting his eyes across the empty tables toward the corner. Fresh cigar smoke clouded the corner, its smell mixing with that of freshly ground coffee and warm dough from behind the counter. Next to the wizened old man in a wheelchair sat a man so large that his face seemed small and lost in its cowl of fat. The old man, Casey knew, was Napoli. On his other side sat a beefy brute in a tailored suit with slicked-back hair, a pinkie ring, and manicured nails.

When they approached the table, no one stood up or offered a hand, but the fat man nudged the metal leg of an empty chair with his toe as if to offer it up. He spoke in a high voice that belied his great size.

“You have something for us?” he said, more as a statement than a question.

“We have something,” Jake said.

The fat man nodded, rolling a lit cigar in his stubby fingers before marrying it to his pink lips. Jake pulled out a chair for Casey before sitting down beside her in a cloud of fresh smoke. Casey placed the file on the table in front of her.

“I know John Napoli,” Jake said, gesturing to the old man and then the beefy one, “and Massimo D’Costa, but I don’t know who you are.”

“And you don’t have to,” Napoli said, struggling upright in his wheelchair, a fire in his eyes.

The fat man considered Napoli, slowly nodding his encouragement.

“On the phone, you talked about Buffalo Oil and Gas,” Napoli said, crushing a small piece of lemon rind and dropping it into his tiny cup before taking a sip.

“Niko Todora,” Casey said, watching the fat man’s eyes widen just a hint, otherwise he remained impassive. “Chicken wings, plumbing fixtures, and gas leases.”

Todora looked at Napoli.

“Our group has varied interests,” Napoli said.

“Your group may be under indictment,” Casey said. “Every one of you.”

“I saw you on TV,” Napoli said, squinting, “and I told Mr. Todora you reminded me of Louie Fitch’s assistant. Louie was a magician in the day, and his assistant had red hair like you, pretty, too. He’d saw her in half and bingo, he’d put her back together and there’d she’d be with those terrific legs in that black fishnet. You got some tricks of your own. I see that.”

“And your partner Robert Graham is the magician,” Casey said, holding his pale green eyes with her own, “but you’re not going to like his tricks.”

“Like?”

Casey looked at Jake. He inclined his head to her.

“Graham has a file of income reports that you haven’t seen,” Casey said. “You put your money into the company, and you collect your checks. Big checks. The problem is how he’s reporting the income he pays out to you and your partners. He makes it look like it’s not taxable, but it is.”

Casey looked around at them, Massimo D’Costa and John Napoli scowling, Niko Todora passive with the cigar hanging limp from his lips.

“So we didn’t pay taxes,” Napoli said.