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“That’s great. Thank you so much. But as far as the time off, I’m fine, Zeb, I can keep—”
“Jesus, Mickey, youdidfind a dead body. And you do have someone out there who made direct contact with you and who was obviously listening in on our phone conversations. I have to be honest, it freaked lots of people out here. We’re doing a full, internal security audit.”
“I saw lots of dead bodies in my old career. And why would time off help with the rest of what you just said?”
“I just think you need to decompress and—”
A terrible thought bolted through her head and she voiced it without really thinking. “Zeb, will I have a job to come back to?”
But he had already clicked off.
Coward.
Gibson looked at her kids.Damn.
She used her thumbs and index fingers to squeeze her eyeballs tight. To make the image of her and her kids kicked to the curb go away. But they could live with her parents for a bit.
No, you did nothing wrong and you haven’t lost your damn job. Yet.
She had a sudden thought and called her father.
“What’s up, Mick?”
“Got a lead on something. Harry Langhorne? Name sound familiar?”
“Hell, if that ain’t a blast from the past.”
“So you recognize it?”
“Oh, yeah. Harry Langhorne was the bookkeeper for the Giordano crime family back in Trenton.”
“Giordano? Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Way back. I was just a beat cop myself in Jersey City when it happened, and you were just a little kid. It was all over the news.”
“What did they do?”
“The usual. Drugs, hookers, blackmail. And they had the local garbage-haul business, a string of storefront laundering operations, and their street enforcers cracked the heads of any merchant who didn’t pay them protection money. All local politicians were in their pocket. They robbed and kidnapped and assaulted and killed, right up until the Feds came down on them like Thor’s hammer. They took out some of the New York mob at the same time. It was a big deal back then, let me tell you. Lots of heads rolled and it wasn’t just the Giordanos.”
“And Langhorne was the bookkeeper? He doesn’t sound Italian. He sounds Presbyterian.”
“If memory serves me, his mother was…let me think, Ida Giordano, yeah, that was her name. She was a cousin or sister of the top guy, Leo Giordano. Funny, I remember that and I have no memory of what I had for breakfast. Anyway, she married Langhorne Sr. I’m not sure if he knew what he was getting into, but their son Harry apparently did. When he grew up, he got his CPA license, went to work for the mob, and kept all the books, knew where all the bodies were buried. I guess he was a whiz with numbers.”
“What happened?”
“Big-time trial, witnesses murdered, evidence tainted, cops paid off, political pressure brought to bear, but, still, all the sons of bitches were convicted.”
“And Harry Langhorne?”
“He didn’t even testify. Wasn’t even charged. But I think he gave them lots of dirt and named the names and opened the cooked books. Then he just vanished. I mean, like gone, gone. You know, like your dick of a husband.”
“Thanks for the reminder, Dad, I’d almost forgotten. So what about all the money generated by the Giordano family?”
“Funny thing, you never heard much about that. I bet we were talking big bucks. They had a ton of real estate and other hard assets that the Feds confiscated, but there must have been mounds of cash lying around. It’s not like they accepted barter or IOUs. And I never heard about that being recovered, and I think I would have. Why are you asking about Langhorne?”
“Because I think he was the guy who I found dead in the creepy mansion.”
“Bullshit, seriously?”
