Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (29 page)

“I believe it.”
Winter came and went, and Norm started to pull himself together
again, Corbett explained. Got off the barstool and back out
looking for work. Fessed up to Alberta about his employment status,
but didn’t tell her how long it had been since he was fired.
Didn’t mention his arrangement with Jimmy Cancerno. Norm
found a job. Awful pay, but the best he could do at the time. Then
summer rolled around, and so did Jimmy Cancerno.
By then Norm owed Cancerno somewhere in the neighborhood
of twenty-five grand. Not an astronomical sum, but a lot to a guy
whose new job paid about four hundred a week. And Cancerno
wanted repayment immediately, with value added. When Norm
confessed that it would likely be a few years before he could cover
all of the debt, Cancerno made him an offer—he could work the
debt off. Clear thousands owed in one night, by setting a few fires.
A guy named Terry Solich was really beginning to cramp Cancerno’s
business style, and Cancerno had decided it was time for
Solich to go. Solich hadn’t proved agreeable, so now the matter was
going to be taken out of his hands. And for Norm Gradduk, it was
a chance to get out from under. One night’s work with a can of gas
and a book of matches, one loan cleared. Simple as that. Cops
wouldn’t even be an issue, Cancerno said. He’d take care of that
end. All Norm had to do was light the matches.
“But Norm didn’t agree to it,” Corbett said. “He drew his line,
and drew it hard. He said he wasn’t going near Terry Solich’s
pawnshop, and if Jimmy asked him again, Norm was going to the
cops. Jimmy asked him how he was going to pay the loan back
then, and Norm told him he’d pay it back when he got good and
ready. Then he made some more threats about the cops.”
Corbett stopped talking for a moment. The cat rose beside him,
stretched until it seemed to have doubled in length, then wandered
away from us. Corbett shifted position, hooking his arms around
his knees.
“Back then people were just getting to know the sort of man
Jimmy was. A guy like Norm Gradduk, well, he had no idea. Not
really. But the one thing nobody was going to get away with was
threatening Jimmy. Especially by talking about bringing in the
cops. Jimmy always knew that owning a piece of the neighborhood
police was important, and by then he had a couple guys on
payroll. One of them was Jack Padgett.”
“I saw him take a bullet today,” I said. “And it was one of the
nicer things I’ve seen in a long time.”
Corbett just nodded. “Well, Jimmy decided it was time to make
a statement. Norm needed a lesson, right? So Jimmy rounded up
Padgett and they went down to pay a visit to Norm at his house.”
Corbett’s voice was quieter, his tone softer. He didn’t like the
topic he was discussing. He didn’t want to have to tell this story
again, I could tell.
“Jimmy told Norm he had a choice—burn Solich out or pay up
right then. Norm told him to go to hell. His wife was at the house,
and she had no idea what was going on.”
“What about Ed?” I said.
“Wasn’t there. I don’t know where he was, but I know it wasn’t
the house.”
If he hadn’t been home, it was a safe bet he’d been with me. I
wondered what we’d been doing the night Cancerno and Padgett
had paid their visit to the Gradduks. Having fun, probably.
Laughing our way through another summer night. That was the
way they all went, back then.
“Norm came on like a tough guy,” Corbett said. “Giving them
hell, telling them to get out of his house. He didn’t know what he
was dealing with. Padgett slapped him around a bit, kicked his ass
in front of the wife. Laughed and showed them his badge when
Gradduk’s wife screamed about calling the police.”
Silence. I waited, but he didn’t continue.
“Well?” I said eventually.
Corbett’s head was down, eyes on the floor. “Jimmy was screaming
at Norm, telling Norm that he owned the cops, owned the
neighborhood, owned Norm. Nobody threatened Jimmy the way
Norm had, and he was going to make that point. With Norm’s

wife.”
I looked away as a car passed the house again, another brief

shaft of light filling the room.
“They held a gun to Norm’s head,” Corbett said. “Then Padgett
and Cancerno . . . well, they made her perform. In front of him.”
I was rubbing my thumb in small, circular motions across the
butt of the gun, my finger tense on the trigger.
“When they left, they promised Norm they’d be back. Said unless
he did what Jimmy wanted, when Jimmy wanted, they’d be
back. Padgett was the key to the whole night. He’s been the key to
a lot of nights like that. It’s one thing going up against Jimmy, but
when you know he’s got cops on his team, too, particularly an evil
son of a bitch like Padgett. . . well, it makes a guy feel helpless,
you know? I think that’s how Norm felt.”
“That’s why he killed himself,” I said, my voice hollow. “He
thought he was protecting the family. Severing the tie between
Cancerno and Padgett and his family.”
“I’d expect so. But it didn’t work out that way. Jack Padgett is one
of the meanest men I’ve ever known, and I’ve known some that
would turn your stomach.”
“Cancerno said you two were tight.”
“What did I tell you about Jimmy and the truth?”

I nodded.
“Jimmy’s a ruthless son of a bitch, but only when he’s got something
to gain,” Corbett continued. “With Jimmy, when Norm was
gone, it was done. No value left for him. But for Padgett, that
wasn’t how it went. He’d taken a liking to Norm’s wife, and he
came back for more.”
“And Ed found out.”

“Yeah. I don’t know when he got wind of it, exactly, but he did.
And he went looking for someone to help.” Corbett lifted his head.
“He picked your father.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “I understand this part. My
dad made the harassment complaint, and Mike Gajovich swept it
under the rug. He went down and intimidated Alberta, scared her
out of it by telling her she and Ed would become part of a humiliating
public spectacle.”
“That’s close to the sum of it. Jimmy wanted to protect Padgett,
because Padgett was so valuable to him. He also knew Gajovich’s
brother, an asshole of the first order. You were a cop?” When I
nodded, he said, “You know him?”
“Not really.”
“Lucky, then. Anyhow, Cancerno went through the brother to
the lawyer, the one who’s prosecutor now. Mike. He took some
cash from Jimmy and played his role, maybe thinking it was one
and done, I don’t know. If he was hoping that’d be it, then he didn’t
realize he’d just made as bad a mistake as Norm Gradduk had.
Making a deal with Jimmy is like the kind of arrangement some men have made with the devil on a lonely highway. You get what
you want, but then, brother, you’re gone.”
I was suddenly tired of standing. I slid down the wall until I was
sitting on the floor like Corbett, angled to face him. I set the gun
down beside my leg.
“You said you were the one who put things in motion,” I said.
“I’m assuming you told Ed the story, and he went after Cancerno.”
“Uh-huh. Ed figured he had a score to settle with Jimmy. He
knew what was going on with the Neighborhood Alliance houses,
so he—”
“What is going on with those houses?”
“I don’t know the details, man. I just ran the crew. My job was to
do shit repairs and fleece the
HUD
grant for four times what we’d
actually put into it. Where’s the excess going? Maybe right back
into Jimmy’s pockets, maybe somewhere else.”
According to Cal Richards, the excess was going into Gajovich’s
campaign fund, Cancerno making a down payment on owning a
big piece of the city.
“When Ed went to see Gajovich, what was he trying to do?” I
asked.
“Bargain with him. Or blackmail him, whichever you’d prefer.
He wanted Gajovich to look at the Neighborhood Alliance scam
and throw Cancerno in jail. Ed figured Gajovich owed him that
much.”
“So he went to Gajovich and came up empty,” I said. “What
happened then? How’d Anita Sentalar get involved?”
“She was always involved. She and Gajovich go way back. He
handpicked her to run the Neighborhood Alliance because he
trusted her to look the other way. She knew if he got elected
mayor, she’d have a high-level position on his staff.”
“Who killed her?”

“Cancerno had it done, though I couldn’t tell you for sure who
pulled the trigger. And that was our fault. Ed’s and mine. He
needed a strong witness if he was going to bring it down, and he
thought she could be it. He was pressuring her to go to the attorney
general and roll on Cancerno. She wouldn’t. That’s when Ed
and I decided to go in two different directions.”
“Meaning?”
“He decided to start burning the houses down. Figured that
would force the cops to take a hard look at the Neighborhood Alliance.
And I think he liked the idea, too, saw some element of
sweet justice in that. Jimmy had wanted Ed’s dad to start some
fires, right? Well, Ed was coming through on that, with fifteen
years of interest payments, to boot.”
“And what direction did you take?”
“I was still working on Anita. I showed her around the neighborhood,
introduced her to one of the kids who was being put in
an Alliance house. They were the people who were losing, you
know. Sure, the mortgages were insured, but they thought they
were moving into dream houses when they were really hovels with
fresh paint and some new drywall. That made an impression on
Anita, too. I think she was ready to go with us on it. Cancerno
must have thought so, too. Because she got killed.”
“So they set Ed up, and then Padgett and Rabold were sent
down to kill him,” I said. “Or at least Padgett was. Rabold was
working undercover by then. Which is why he ended up dead, too.”
“Came close to working perfectly for Jimmy,” Corbett said, “except
Ed got a few minutes to talk to you. Otherwise, it might have
gone without a hitch.”
“You think Cancerno ordered Padgett to try to take us out today?
Or could that have been an enterprise project for Padgett?”

“He wouldn’t have rolled out till Jimmy took him off the leash.”
I was thinking about that, wondering what the trigger had been.
Why not just send Ramone to kill us right away? Why drive us
down for the meeting, then let us go? To find out exactly what we
knew. But we’d seemed to buy his story. So what made him send
Padgett out to hit us?
“I mentioned Gajovich by name,” I said. “I told Cancerno that I
knew he’d been the one to make my father’s complaint about Padgett
disappear.”
“Could have mattered,” Corbett said. “Or it could not. I can’t tell
you that.”
“Whatever the reason, he definitely wanted us killed.”
“Cancerno’ll kill me, too,” Corbett said matter-of-factly. “He
blames me for all of this, and after what he told you, it’s clear he’s
also hoping to use me as a fall guy. Wash his hands of the Neighborhood
Alliance and put it all back on me. Once I’m dead, I’ll become
awfully important. Time this is all done, it’ll be me that was
running the books on the Neighborhood Alliance, me who took
the cash, me who killed Sentalar. I guarantee it.”
“You helped him out by burning the rest of his houses down.”
Corbett coughed and shook his head. “I didn’t burn those
houses down, Perry.”
I frowned. “Be honest, Corbett. You were finishing what Ed

started.”
“No. I didn’t set those fires. But I can tell you who did. I was
checking out some of the houses that night, thinking maybe I
needed to relocate. Instead, I saw one of them burn.”
“Who did it?”
“The guy who owns the Hideaway,” he said. “Draper.”

CHAPTER
29

The name rocked me, but it shouldn’t have. After all, until that
day I’d never seen Cancerno without Draper at his side. It explained
the phone call I’d gotten from Scott the morning after Ed
died, too, the sudden change of heart he’d shown. Cancerno had
probably ordered him to bring me down so they could see how
much Ed had shared before Padgett had crushed him under the
Crown Victoria.

“You’re sure?” I asked Corbett, even as all of the facts supporting
it slid through my mind.
He nodded once. “Trust me, I got a good look at the man. No
doubt in my mind at all. Jimmy sent him out because Jimmy wants
to use me to explain his way out of everything surrounding the
Neighborhood Alliance. Burn down the houses, blame it on me,
and he’s done. Well, he’s got to find me and kill me, first. But then
he’s done.”

I stood up. A muscle in my back clenched hard at the movement,
stopping me before I got upright. I winced and pushed past
it, taking a deep breath that made the muscle ache worse. I’d been
in a car accident, dragged a lifeless man through a river, and had no
sleep. No wonder my body was protesting.
“You’ve got to talk to the police, Corbett. I’ve already got them
looking at Gajovich, and Padgett’s dead. You can’t just hide here,
waiting for other people to figure it out.”
He didn’t say anything.
“People have been murdered,” I said. “No one is going to care
about what you did with the Neighborhood Alliance. They’re going
to care about taking Cancerno down, and Gajovich. Not
about you.”
He was scared, though. A guy like Corbett, who’d spent years
working cons and scams, seeing corrupt cops and prosecutors, did
not like the idea of solving things through official channels. But he
was going to have to do it.
“I’m calling a detective named Cal Richards,” I said. “And you’re
going to talk to him. You can trust this one.”
He nodded, slowly. “All right.”
“One more question—how the hell did you know so much
about what happened between Cancerno and Padgett and Alberta
Gradduk, anyhow?”
For moment, he didn’t respond. Then he lifted his head and
looked at me.
“Remember how I told you they put a gun to Norm’s head while
Padgett and Cancerno had their fun?”
“Yes.”
“I held the gun.” He did not drop his head. Did not look away.
“By then, I owed Jimmy a hell of a lot more than Norm Gradduk
ever did. And I’d been working for him for a while. And before
Norm killed himself, I burned Solich out of business, like Norm
was supposed to.”
“And told the cops it was him,” I said.
“Yes.”
I exhaled loudly and shook my head. “Did Ed know?”
“Yes. It’s how I started the story when I told it to him.”
I stood and stared at him.