Designated Target - Chapter 6

Unfortunately for Taylor and Robles, Walsh was being held in San Diego and not Los Angeles, which meant a two-hour plus car ride. Taylor had lived most of his life on the East Coast, so he hadn’t been to LA much, but he remembered the traffic the few times he had. This trip was no different, which is why Taylor broke his normal policy of always being behind the wheel and let Robles drive.

While he was happy for the respite from the constant stop-and-go traffic, Taylor mostly wanted to close his eyes and think. This trip had already been a last grasping at straws, and the drive out to see Walsh was an even worse long shot. Taylor had a high opinion of his interrogation skills, but if the guy refused to answer any questions about the inner workings of the family, it was doubtful he’d have much luck. Especially if he was in a place where the entire interview was recorded, taking some of the more extreme options off the table.

The problem was that this guy wasn’t leaving them enough clues to get a handle on them. One of the things Taylor had come to learn about law enforcement was that the most useful tool in tracking down a criminal was the criminal’s own incompetence. Covering your tracks was hard and they always slipped up somewhere. Taylor would like to think his own prowess, and Whitaker’s, was why they had managed to close so many cases, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true.

Sure, they’d been good enough to recognize the mistakes and capitalize on them, but he couldn’t think of any cases where the perpetrator hadn’t screwed up. Even the case they’d done out in West Texas where the General had managed to keep his serial killings under the radar for years, eventually broke because the man overplayed his hand.

This was the first time he’d come across a case where he hadn’t been able to catch a whiff of the perp. Okay, he had figured out the guy worked out here before going to New Jersey. He might not have any evidence to that fact and Robles might still be skeptical, but Taylor was pretty sure he was right on that account.

Unfortunately, it was just as barren out here as it had been in the Garden State. Taylor spent the first hour of the drive staring at the ceiling of the borrowed SUV, trying to come up with any kind of plan B, before he gave up and pulled out his cell phone.

“Let me guess, you’re stuck?” Whitaker asked when she answered the phone.

“Maybe I just wanted to call and see how you are,” Taylor said, both annoyed she’d called him out and happy to hear her voice, even if it was mocking him.

In the last eight months he’d been forced to be separated from Whitaker twice now, and he hated it. Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, he’d found a strange thrill in experiencing her pregnancy with her, and he was really looking forward to meeting his kid. She was so close now, that she and the baby had been on his mind a lot, and he really did want to hear her voice.

Of course, she was also right and he needed her help, since she had a lot more experience in this area than he’d ever have.

“But since you bring it up,” he said, “I could bounce some ideas off you. You know if you’re bored and need something to do.”

She made a sound that others might confuse for a grunt, but that Taylor knew was her way of laughing when she thought something was amusing, but not hysterical. She tended to be fairly reserved, a quality that Taylor, who was himself often accused of being overly stoic, appreciated. They knew each other well enough to read what the other was actually feeling, in spite of their less than emotive expressions.

This was an old joke between them whenever one of them needed help on something, playing it off as doing a favor for the person by letting them help. Although Kara made sure to let them know that no one else found it funny.

“That’s nice of you. So, what happened out there.”

“Sadly, not a lot. We talked to the AUSA who handled the case I thought might involve the hitter, and everything he said seemed to match up with our guy, at least in the abstract, but there aren’t a lot of people that were involved with the family out here to question about it. They managed to make a tax case on the Randazzos and their family kind of fell apart after the boss went down. Most of them, including the head of the family, have been killed off in the remaining years. There’s one guy, who used to work for the family but bailed just before the AUSA started his case, who sounds like he might know enough to give us a name, but they said he refuses to talk about anything that happened with the Randazzos and the case that fell apart.”

“Which means you don’t think you’ll get much from him.”

“Right.”

“And you’d like me to do some digging and see if there’s anyone else who might have been connected that the people out there didn’t know about.”

“See, you read my mind. Honestly though, this is my last lead. I know the hitter worked out here for far longer than he’s worked for the Amatos. I find it impossible to believe that he didn’t leave any evidence. I'm flying blind out here.”

“I’ll see what I can turn up, but I’ve already been looking into it, and there isn’t a lot. The guy who handled the case was pretty thorough.”

“Yeah, he seemed okay.”

“Let me do some digging.”

“Thanks. We’re out here for the rest of the day, but if there’s nothing else, we’ve got to abandon this and get back to Jersey to see if we can get something to flip there.”

“You could just sit on Finney. All you really need to do is keep him alive until trial.”

“You’ve seen the records of this guy’s hits. I honestly am not sure we can keep him alive once he steps back out in public. I’m confident we have him hidden now, but next week he has to go to the courthouse for a deposition, and I’m worried he won’t make it back from there. This guy is that good.”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking at some of the deaths out in LA. Okay, call me when you finish with the guy you’re going to see, and I’ll let you know if I found anything.”

“Thanks, princess. How are you feeling?”

“Like someone’s dancing on my bladder while using my spine as a punching bag.”

“It won’t be long. Two weeks and she’ll be here.”

“I know. I can’t wait to meet her, but I really wish this whole thing was just a little easier.”

“You’ll make it through. Speaking of kids, how’s Kara doing? Have you talked to her since she started the internship?”

“She’s doing good, although she made it clear she didn’t want me butting in or using my connections to interfere in any way.”

“She understands she got this thing because you’re her mother, right?”

“Yeah, although I think she wants us to all pretend that isn’t true. You know how stubborn she is.”

“I really do. I also assume you’ve ignored her completely.”

“Of course. Actually, I think she might have been able to get this on her own if she’d managed to get into the interviews. Her supervisor says they can’t seem to give her enough busy work to actually keep her busy, so they’ve let her go audit some of the training sessions a few times. Did you know she actually raised her hand and answered a question after they very clearly told her to be quiet and just listen.”

“She got it right, I bet.”

“She did. Honestly, everyone I’ve talked to there says she’s a dream intern and they want her back.”

“I had no doubt she’d excel.”

“Okay, this is going to take me some time. Go interview your guy and call me back when you’re done. I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thanks, Whitaker.”

“Just remember this the next time you decide to leave me at home,” she said, and hung up.

The description they’d been told of the prison being ‘near San Diego’ hadn’t been all that accurate. Walsh was being held at Centinela State Prison, a decently large prison closer to El Centro than San Diego. It was in the middle of open scrub desert with nothing in any direction for miles.

Even though they’d called ahead to let the administrators know they were coming and who they needed to talk to, they still had to go through all the hoops prisons always made law enforcement jump through before putting them in a room with a prisoner.

The first few times Taylor had been through this he’d gotten pretty annoyed, and had once even vowed to never interview someone in prison again, leaving it to Whitaker. Eventually, he’d gotten over it and now saw it as just one of those things bureaucracies liked to make its minions do. That, at least, made it feel familiar, since the Army loved nothing more than having its soldiers jump through hoops.

Finally, they were taken to a room with a glass window and a single metal table in the center. When they brought Walsh in, he looked older, or at least more worn, than Taylor had expected. He’d looked over Walsh’s file, which had indicated the man was in his mid-forties, but there hadn’t been a picture. He hadn’t expected this balding man with a scraggly bearded and deeply lined face. Just looking at him, Taylor would have guessed he was in his late fifties at best. Prison had been hard on him.

“What?” Walsh said when he sat across from Robles and Taylor at the metal table.

“We came to ask you about the Randazzos,” Taylor said

“Randazzo is dead. If that’s all you need,” he said, starting to stand up.

“Sit down, Mr. Walsh,” Robles said. “You’re the last person around who worked for the family while it was still going, and we need some information on the family’s operations. Anything you say will be covered by immunity and we’ve already discussed a possible decrease to your sentence with the AUSA, as well as more privileges while you’re still in here.”

“Man, it’s like you guys all have just one playbook and you all follow it to the letter. Sure. They’re all dead, so who cares if I spill it now. How long are you offering?”

“Five years off the twenty you have left if you give us actionable information.”

“Five years. That ain’t shit. I’ll still be damn near retirement age by then.”

“Are you really saying you’d rather be in here five more years than you have to?” Robles asked.

“Fine. Yeah. I guess. Just ask your questions so I can go back. It’s almost yard time.”

“Tell us about the hitter the family used?” Taylor asked.

“They used all kinds of guys. Any time someone needed to be taken care of, someone would volunteer or they’d just say ‘hey you, go take care of this guy.’”

“I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill stuff, shooting up corners or whatever. I mean the guy they used when they really needed to get to someone. The guy who took care of all the informants,” Taylor said.

Walsh’s eyes widened slightly. He got control of himself after a second, but that was enough to tell Taylor he’d hit on something.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. The family had a hitter. Specialized in getting to people that you guys couldn’t get to, and making it look natural.”

“If you say so. I don’t know anything about that.”

“You were up to your neck in the family,” Robles said. “There’s no way they had someone like that and you weren’t involved.”

“Then I guess they didn’t have anyone like that,” he said, and then stood up. “You know what. I think I’m fine right where I am. You can stuff your five years. I ain’t got nothin’ else to say.”

“Don’t be a fool, Walsh. Instead of making your life easier in here, we could make it a hell of a lot harder,” Robles said.

“You do whatever you have to do. I’m done talking. Guard!” Walsh yelled, moving towards the door.

Robles started to make another run at him, until Taylor touched his elbow to get his attention and shook his head slightly. Robles shrugged and dropped it.

“I’ll say it again,” Walsh said as the guard opened the door. “I don’t know anything about someone doing hits for the Randazzos.”

“Giving up that easily?” Robles asked as the guard led Walsh away.

“He isn’t going to talk.”

“Still worth taking a run at him.”

“We did. Did you see his body language shift? He’s terrified of whoever this person is. He was prepared to talk about the family right up until I asked about the hitter, and then he decided he wanted to go back to his cell.”

“Does he think this guy’s going to come for him?”

“Maybe. Maybe Randazzo’s death wasn’t just old scores being settled and Walsh knows something about it. I don’t know. All I know is that man is terrified. He even went so far as to repeat that he doesn’t know anything when the guard opened the door. Maybe he thinks this guy has ears on the inside and wants to make sure they heard his denial.”

“You’re making this guy out to be the boogeyman.”

“I’m not saying this guy has ears in here. I’m just saying Walsh was terrified and for whatever reason he thinks the guy does. Maybe it was just a precaution. All I know is that it confirms this guy exists.”

“It doesn’t get us any closer to him, though.”

“No. But we have more than we had before we came out here.”

“Barely. So do you just want to wait until this guy hits someone else, and hope we get lucky? Cause right now, that’s the only way we’re tracking him down.”

“No. First, I’m pretty damn positive his next target is Finney. That would kill the case against the Amato’s entirely. I don’t particularly want those two pieces of shit to get away with this. And two, I hate being reactive. As long as we’re letting him take the lead, we’ll always be behind him. The only way cases like this close, is to be proactive and get in front of him.”

“So what do we do?”

“That’s where we’re stuck. The only thing I can think of now is to work further back in the two groups’ histories and see if we can find a connection. I’ve already gone over everything recent on both of them, and the RICO case against the Randazzos was the only connection I found. There’s got to be something older, though. They wouldn’t have this guy’s first shot for them be something that critical and that difficult. No, to be assigned something like that, they had to be pretty damn sure the guy could come through. The AUSA had them dead to rights, so they couldn’t afford to miss.”

“So it’s back to research. Here you are, the badass gunfighter out there shooting it out with terrorists, serial killer generals, and African warlords, and your solution every step of the way has been ‘research.’”

“And if you think it isn’t killing me, you’ve got another think coming. This was always Whitaker’s area.”

“Do you want to call her, see if she’s got anything?”

“She’ll call me when she finds something,” Taylor said.

That was easy to say, but it took all of Taylor’s willpower not to call her back. Although he’d known the interview with Walsh was going to be a bust, it still frustrated him simply because at this moment they had nothing to go on.

Sure, going further back in the Randazzos’ history was easy to say, but it was going to be difficult to tell this hitter’s early work, where he made mistakes that could be followed up on, from just run of the mill violence between criminal families. It also assumed that this guy got his start with the Randazzos, something they had literally no evidence for yet beyond wishful thinking.

The Randazzos had been a young family even at the time they fell apart, going back barely a single generation, so the odds were good that the hitter had gotten his start somewhere else. Taylor had gotten lucky making the connection between the Randazzos and the Amatos. It seemed wildly unlikely he’d get that lucky again.

Thankfully, Whitaker had both better luck and patience than him. They were almost back in LA by the time she called and Taylor had all but given in to the idea of spending days in front of a computer terminal, digging through case files and interview notes.

“Please, for the love of God, tell me you got something,” Taylor said when he answered.

“I take it the interview with Walsh didn’t go well.”

“It did not. He ended the interview the second we asked about the hitter.”

“That tells you something, though. Right?”

“I mean, it helps confirm the hitter is real, which might help with Joe staying off our back while we look for him, but it doesn’t put us any closer to finding him. This guy is a ghost, Loretta. I’m serious. I’ve never seen anyone this hard to pin down.”

“No one starts this good. He’s made a mistake somewhere. You just have to keep looking.”

“Yeah, but keep looking where?”

“I actually have a lead on that. Did you know the Randazzos were a branch off of another family in Vegas, and got the go-ahead to push their way out to California? There were some inter-family conflicts and some of the eastern families were making moves to push out the families that had been out west for a while. They’d managed it in Vegas, and were looking to expand into California.”

“No, but I didn’t look at much beyond their connection to the Amatos.”

“That’s partly why they were connected to the Amatos. The families out west broke from the eastern families back in the sixties and essentially divided the country in two, as far as high-level organized crime went. They also made inroads into the southwest but got pushed out by the cartels in the nineties.”

“That’s interesting, I guess, but I’m not sure I need the full history lesson.”

“Right. Sorry, this is just an area I’ve always been fascinated by. I was making a point, though. Randazzo Sr. had been a fairly well placed lieutenant in Vegas and had helped the eastern family that had pushed out the western family. He apparently was enough of a player that when they decided to expand again, they allowed him to branch out into Los Angeles. He was getting up in years, but his son had just been made, so I guess they figured the son would bring the energy and drive and the dad would help keep everything under control.”

“Really? That doesn’t seem to match what I’ve heard so far. The people we talked to out here painted the Randazzos as being really destabilizing. I got the impression none of them were surprised when the higher-ups all got offed in prison by people they’d crossed building their short-lived empire.”

“You heard right. The plan was for Senior to keep his son in check, but shortly after coming out, he apparently started showing signs of dementia. I guess he didn’t go to the doctor much, because it turns out he had an undiagnosed case of Alzheimer’s that wasn’t caught until he was really far gone. His decline must have been really rapid, because within a year his son had put him in a secure residential facility for people with severe dementia.”

“But he was around for a while in the early days?”

“Yep, and if the guy you’re looking for came from somewhere else, it would have been from Vegas, since that was where they all originally came from and who was supplying the Randazzos, at least in the early days before Junior went a bit rogue.”

“That’s a good lead. Where is it?”

“That’s where you’re in luck. it’s in LA.”

“Good. We’re almost back. We’ve been driving most of the day and it’s getting late. Do you think the warden will still let us see him?”

“It’s not a prison. There’s controlled access, but that’s mostly to keep their residents from wandering off and getting hurt. I’ll call ahead though and make sure you don’t have any problems getting in. Don’t get your hopes up too much, though. People are put in places like this for a reason. You’re going to be lucky if he even remembers who you are, let alone any information about your hitter.”

“Everyone keeps telling me the next lead is worthless and I should stop,” Taylor said, a little annoyed since her warning mirrored the AUSA’s warning about Walsh and Roble’s comments about even coming out to LA.

“I’m not saying you should stop, I just know how you are when a lead falls through and thought you should be prepared. Either way, this isn’t the last lead. Like you said, there’s a good chance he didn’t start just a few years ago, which means he came from somewhere else. Considering the Randazzos’ origin, it’s a good bet he started in Vegas.”

“I hope. We’ll go talk to Senior if you could start looking into Vegas, for when this turns into a bust.”

“Sure,” she said, sounding tired.

“Are you okay?” Taylor asked.

He’d fallen back into his old pattern with her and hadn’t really thought much about it, but hearing her exhaustion, he realized he might be pushing her too hard, considering her condition.

“I’m just tired. The baby’s been kicking every night as soon as I lay down, making it really hard to sleep.”

“Why don’t you take a break? Robles can do the research back at the LA field office if this goes bust.”

“Thanks,” Robles said from the driver’s seat.

“No, I’ll be okay. I’m not going to let you have all the fun.”

“All right, but don’t push yourself too hard. I’ll call you when we finish with the old man.”