Max Allan Collins - Bones Buried Deep.rtf

Puzzle of Bones

Brennan and Dr. Wu removed the skeleton from the body bag.

With the container out of the way and the remains laid out on the table, Brennan did a cursory exam. She looked at Dr. Wu. The other woman had seen the same things Brennan had—it was in her eyes.

“Booth,” Brennan said. “This is not a hoax. Or anyway, if it’s a prank, it’s a very expensive one.”

“You’re sure?”

“For one thing, these bones are not plastic—I can tell you that. They are very much the real thing.”

“You can tell already? Is it Musetti?…Sorry. I know that’s impossible….”

She raised an eyebrow. “Actually not impossible.”

“Yeah?”

“Usually, I would need some sort of reference material from the victim to positively ID him…but in this case I can tell you this skeleton is definitely not Stewart Musetti. Or, more accurately, I can tell you it’s not all Stewart Musetti.”

“Obviously,” Booth said. “Last time I saw the guy, he had a lot more skin and hair and, uh, meat on his bones.”

Brennan shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t?”

“This skeleton is not made up of the body of just one person.”

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

™ and © 2006 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 1-4165-3111-4

POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com

For Dr. Greg Haines
and Missy Jones—
who reassembled the skeleton

The author wishes to acknowledge
forensics researcher/co-plotter
Matthew V. Clemens.
Further acknowledgments appear
at the conclusion of this novel.

“As those who study them have come
to learn, bones make good
witnesses—although they speak
softly, they neverlie and they never
forget.”

—Dr. Clyde Collins Snow,
forensics anthropologist

“The more outré and grotesque an
incident is the more carefully it
deserves to be examined, and the
very point which appears to
complicate a case is, when duly
considered and scientifically
handled, the one which is mostly
likely to elucidate it.”

—Sherlock Holmes,
The Hound of the Baskervilles,
by Arthur Conan Doyle

Prologue

1944

O N A MOONLESS JUNE NIGHT, AL CAPONE’S sleek teak motorboat skimmed like a child’s tossed stone across the surface of Lake Michigan.

The craft had been a gift from someone who owed the crime boss a favor; Capone had climbed aboard once, promptly gotten seasick, and vowed never to return.

But from time to time—even now, years after Snorky’s postprison retirement to Florida—the mob boss’s former business associates found use for the craft. Not big enough to make runs to Canada for whiskey back in Prohibition days, the craft would be used by Capone’s men to speed out onto the lake in the middle of the night, to meet the bigger boats and bring back small shipments.

Post-Prohibition, other kinds of contraband had been smuggled by the speedboat, but tonight neither booze nor narcotics were aboard—though passenger Anthony Gianelli wished he had a flask or even a reefer about now, to ward off the chill.

No, tonight was a much different sort of run.

Behind the wheel, Johnny Battaglia squinted into the darkness. Wanting to avoid prying eyes, the pilot—a rather generous appellation, Gianelli thought—ran the boat without lights and had to struggle to see where they were going.

Neither the smartest nor most keen-eyed of the mob’s loyal soldiers, Battaglia did have his strengths—tough as a nickel steak, brave as a bull, and loyal as an English bulldog, which he happened to closely resemble.

Like Gianelli, Battaglia was a made man, though they both knew that Gianelli was the brains of the operation—unlike his burly counterpart, Gianelli had management potential and was headed toward bigger and better things.

Taller, thinner, and more nattily attired than Battaglia, Gianelli was not an underboss yet, but he kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and knew that tonight’s assignment was the next rung on his personal ladder.

All they had to do was get through this run unscathed.

Gianelli did not want to be out here on the water, and he found vaguely unsettling the lights of Chicago fading into the darkness, barely a glimmer on the horizon; but this was his job, and he would do it.

Any trepidation he felt wasn’t fear of being caught, not exactly—but his wife had just arrived home with their new son, Raymond, and he wanted to be with his family in case he was needed.

Granted, little remained for a father to do at this point—tending to the baby was, after all, woman’s work. But he still felt like he should be home.

His job did allow a certain flexibility of hours, and thank God he wasn’t overseas, in Europe steamrolling the Nazis, or worse, the Pacific fighting the Nips; like Sinatra, he had a punctured eardrum, thank you God.

Instead, here he was, bouncing along the water, part of a little navy in a different kind of war, wishing that he had brought his light overcoat. His suit jacket, an expensive gray pinstripe, was of little help against the wind cutting over the speedboat’s windscreen.

Hell, it was June! But it was so damn cold out here on the water, in the middle of the night, might as well be March.

Battaglia had his shoulders hunched against the wind as well. In the back, on the deck, police captain Ed Hill showed no signs of the cold getting to him—of course, Hill had already been dead for four hours, and was pretty cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather, a corpse wrapped inside a bedspread the size of one of those Caribbean banana republics.

This thought brought Gianelli a slight smile—gallows humor to a mob guy, as to any soldier, was the norm.

Hill was no ordinary copper. If he had been, anywhere here on the lake would have been good enough to drop him in.

But Hill had been a small but significant piece in the feds’ case against Paul Ricca, the man who sat in the chair at the head of the Outfit table, from which Al Capone and then Frank Nitti had ruled Chicago. Ricca, “the Waiter,” had been convicted last December and gone to Atlanta earlier this year for a ten-year stretch, leaving the capable if unimaginative Tony Accardo to run things in his absence.

Everybody knew Mr. Ricca was still in charge, but for now “Joe Batters”—a nickname given Accardo by Capone himself for the young thug’s skill with a baseball bat (and not on a diamond)—was running the business.

Hill’s role in getting Ricca sent away had earned him an official commendation…and Tony Accardo’s wrath. Normally cops were off-limits; but this one had made the mistake of taking the Outfit’s cash, and then ratting them out, anyway.

Tonight Gianelli and Battaglia had delivered a stern and terminal rebuke to Hill in his home. Mrs. Hill was out of town, visiting a sister in Milwaukee; had Gianelli not seen the woman board the train with his own eyes, he never would have whacked the cop in his own house.

Business was business, but they weren’t savages.

No women, no children, that was the rule. Usually no cops or reporters, unless they asked for it. If you didn’t have rules, you were just as bad as the animals.

Gianelli peered down at the large lump in the bottom of the boat. He felt nothing—nothing—about this body on the deck: not anger, not hatred, not joy, not even indifference. Hill had crossed them and paid for it—this was the end result of a business transaction, nothing more.

No one associated with the Outfit wanted Hill to turn up, no bobbing to the surface or washing up on the beach for this bastard with a badge. Even without a body, there’d be heat….

So they had other plans for Hill.

“That must be U.S. Steel,” Battaglia yelled, working to be heard over wind and engine noise. He pointed at dim lights off to their right.

Starboard, Gianelli thought…or was it port? He was almost sure it was starboard.

“Yeah,” Gianelli agreed, feeling like a schmuck for yelling back, when there were only the two of them…not counting the cop. Who sure as hell wasn’t listening.

The lights seemed distant, pinpoints only slightly larger than the few stars that dotted the sky. “We’re gettin’ there,” Gianelli said.

Battaglia nodded.

Another ten minutes and they would be well past the giant steel mill and approaching the barren sand dunes of the Indiana shore.

Accardo had sent word and a car would meet them. They would get rid of Hill for good, then back home by morning. That was the plan, anyway.

The U.S. Steel plant pumped out sheet metal three shifts a day—steel that would soon be tanks, flame throwers, ships, and God only knew what else in the war effort. Farther past the mill now, waves breaking on the beach were audible even over the engine thrum.

Battaglia angled the boat that way and cut the engine to a growl.

“See anything?” Battaglia asked.

Gianelli slowly scanned the shoreline—so dark was the night, he might have been staring down a gun barrel.

“Can’t see a goddamn thing,” he admitted.

Where was the car, and the son of a bitch who was supposed to meet them? Had there been some foul-up? Worse yet, a double cross?

Gianelli strained to make out a shape that might be a car in the darkness. But all he saw was the rise and fall of the dunes. There was the occasional house out here, but not in this stretch—that’s why they’d picked it.

Only thing out here should be their contact…

“Where the hell is he?” Battaglia wondered.

Running parallel to the beach, motor idling, sand on their right, Gianelli could make out only the sound of the tide rolling up to slap the shore, the motion of the water moving them slowly forward and slightly right.

Starboard, Gianelli reminded himself.

Ahead of them, up the beach, he saw a glimmer of light…

…and then it was gone.

Had he seen it or imagined it?

“You catch that?” he asked.

“Catch what?” Battaglia replied, his face turned farther astern.

Maybe he had imagined it.

Gianelli looked again, harder, if that was possible, and waited. And waited some more. And some more…

There it was!

A small dot of light maybe fifty yards farther up the beach—a flashlight, no doubt about it.

“I see it,” Battaglia said, and guided the boat in that direction.

As they neared the shore, Gianelli realized the guy was standing at the end of a short pier. Battaglia cut the engine so they could float in alongside the wooden structure, and the guy doused his light.

Battaglia tossed a line to the guy, who pulled them up to the dock and tied it off on a cleat.

As Battaglia and their host hefted the package out of the boat, Gianelli studied the beach, still unable to see the car in the moonless night.

“Where’s your wheels?” he whispered, the nature of their activity calling for that tone more than any chance they’d be overheard.

“Closer to the road,” the guy said.

Gianelli pulled a small flashlight from his jacket pocket and shone it in the man’s face.

Man?

Hell, this guy was a kid, barely eighteen—curly black hair, wide brown eyes, and a face that looked like it never met a razor.

“Closer to the road?” Gianelli asked, keeping his voice down, knowing it carried at night.

“Yeah,” the kid said matter-of-factly.

“Why the hell’s it over there?” Battaglia asked, just a little irritated.

The kid let out a long breath as they rested the package on the dock.

“Either we carry this load closer to the road,” he said, his baritone voice older than his face, “and toss it in the car, or I pull the car up here for us to stuff this guy in…and then explain to the cops why the car sank in the sand and we got stuck.”

Battaglia still looked pissed, but Gianelli was nodding. “You got a brain or two, kid. What’s your handle, anyway?”

“David Musetti,” the kid said, his voice as hushed as Gianelli’s.

“Good thinkin’, Davey. Come on, Johnny, let’s get this dead weight up to the car.”

Fifteen minutes later, the body was stowed in the trunk of a ’42 Chevy, while Battaglia was stuffed in the backseat, Gianelli sitting on the passenger side next to Musetti as the young man started the car.

“Know where you’re goin’?” Battaglia asked.

“Yeah,” Musetti said matter-of-factly—they might have been discussing what restaurant they were choosing. “Been there before.”

They crossed the railroad tracks of the South Shore Line, a train that ran from the city to South Bend, Indiana. Gianelli and a couple of other mugs had even brought a body here in a trunk one time on the train.

The Dunes Express, the boys used to call it.

But lately it had been strictly delivery by car—the feds had infiltrated the railroad dicks, watching for wartime sabotage; so hauling corpses by rail was out.

The Musetti kid turned the Chevy right onto Highway 12 and switched on the car’s headlights. They’d barely gone a mile when they passed an Indiana state trooper who had some poor bozo pulled over.

The cop was watching, smugly skeptical, as the drunk tried to walk a chalk line on the edge of the road.

Gianelli admired the fact that the kid neither sped up nor slowed down when he drove past the scene.

Gianelli said, “Kid, you’re a pretty cool customer.”

Musetti shrugged, then glanced into the mirror before turning left without a signal, easing onto a dirt road that was little more than a cow path.

The kid killed the lights.

They rode back into the woods almost half a mile, cresting a hill and easing down the other side before Musetti turned off the car.

They sat in silence for a moment before climbing out.

“Let’s get to it,” Battaglia said.

Funny how little emotion there was in it, Gianelli thought. He was a sucker for sad movies and had to work not to blubber at a funeral of a friend or family member (either family). And maybe even a bent flatfoot like Hill deserved better.

But that was how it was in war—bodies didn’t get respect, just disposal, and the ones doing the disposing didn’t feel anything much other than an itch to get done and get back home.

Gianelli grabbed the shovels while the other two lugged the body. The soil here was marshy and that would make the digging easy, but Gianelli wished he had thought to wear less expensive shoes.

The body was buried deep in no time. Gianelli wondered how Captain Ed Hill would feel if he knew how many of the Mafiosi he had chased over the years were interred around him.

“On Judgment Day,” Gianelli said, “when all these corpses come up outa the ground, this poor bastard’s gonna be way outnumbered.”

Battaglia laughed.

Musetti didn’t.

Soon the taciturn kid was pulling the car onto the highway and retracing his route back to the dunes. As they ambled along, Gianelli reflected.

The marsh was home to many mysteries, Gianelli knew; and nobody would come out here looking for bodies. The sandy earth would keep its secrets forever.

Or till Judgment Day, anyway.

And maybe not even then. Gianelli laughed to himself, and Battaglia looked over at him stupidly.

What kind of angel would want to come out to these godforsaken boonies to resurrect anybody?

1

The Present

L IKE A THICK OIL SLICK SPREADING OVER LAKE Michigan, an oppressive wave of heat coated Chicago, as it had since early spring.

The summer-long drought, coupled since late July with a garbage strike, made for long nights and longer days in a city where aromas were high and tempers were short. Piles of garbage accrued over the last seven weeks had become giant disease-bearing compost heaps.

Op-ed writers for the newspapers were referring to Chicago as “Fecund City” and “The City of Big Smoulders,” but neither side budged in the strike negotiations, and Mother Nature seemed to have decided to simply parboil the city.

In this town where smiles were rare about now, Special Agent Seeley Booth sat in a meeting room of the Everett M. Dirksen Federal Building barely able to contain his grin.

He’d been working on the case against Chicago Mafia bosses Raymond and Vincent Gianelli for most of the last six months, and now—with the help of a Gianelli crony turned informant—Booth had father and son in his sights.

Sitting on the prosecution side of the table, Booth exuded quiet confidence. Which was, after all, part of the profile for an FBI agent; but with his square jaw, close-cropped brown hair, and steel-blue eyes, his confidence today approached cockiness.

Even though this wasn’t a court day, Booth had worn his “testifying” suit, the number every law enforcement professional kept bagged in the closet for those special days in court.

Booth’s was a charcoal gray with a lighter pinstripe and had cost him just a little less than his first car; but today he wanted to look as good as he felt.

Next to Booth, federal prosecutor Daniel McMichael scribbled on a yellow legal pad that lay next to a stack of papers. His black hair receding and parted on the left, McMichael wore a gray suit easily twice as expensive as Booth’s.

The prosecutor had dark eyes that could be warm and friendly to those on his side, and icy and aloof to his enemies. A bulbous nose squatted between high, chubby cheeks and over a mouth that turned up a couple of degrees at the corners in what passed for a smile.

Dan McMichael had the wide shoulders and strong arms of an athlete, compromised by the slightly soft look of one whose playing days were long behind him. If his career had been baseball instead of prosecution, McMichael would be the MVP who went on to become the crusty but benign manager who quietly passed advice to his high-strung young players.

Booth had worked a couple of cases with McMichael and respected the attorney’s no-nonsense approach. They had carved out convictions both times and the perps were now spending long sentences in federal prisons.

To their left, sitting inconspicuously in a corner, was Anna Jones, a petite blonde court recorder with brown eyes and what Booth interpreted as a slightly openmouthed smile intended just for him.

Or perhaps that was just his confidence getting out of hand….

Checking his watch, the FBI agent noted that—although he had expected the Gianellis to be here by now—they weren’t officially late. The meeting had been scheduled for eleven and their prospective defendants still had a couple of minutes to make it on time.

And they did—at 10:59 and thirty seconds, the door swung open and three men entered, single file.

First was Raymond Gianelli, brawny but elegant in a brown suit, chocolate-colored shirt, and brown-and-tan-striped tie. His eyes, a very light brown, followed this color coordination, but his hair was black and slicked back with a hint of gray at the temples; his tan tried too hard, Booth thought, the type that came from a tanning bed and not the beach.

Next came Raymond’s son, Vincent.

Taller but thinner than his muscular father, his brown hair close-cropped, his eyes darker than Dad’s, Vincent wore a brown herringbone suit a shade lighter than his father’s. Handsome in a well-scrubbed fashion with a smile that was almost a sneer, he wore a light green shirt and solid tan tie. His brown Italian loafers no doubt cost more than Booth’s expensive suit, and maybe McMichael’s.

To the agent, Vincent Gianelli looked what he was: a textbook sociopath. The boy cared about no one but himself, with the possible exception of his father, a relationship that seemed built more on business than love for a family member, more Machiavellian than emotional.

The only other thing Vincent cared about was a huge Neapolitan mastiff named Luca, presumably named after Luca Brasi from The Godfather.

Booth knew this and more about his prey.

Mob guys could be oddly normal—basically decent people who through family ties and character defects went down a criminal path.

The Gianellis—Vincent in particular—were not in that group.

Trailing his clients, about the size of a Mini-Cooper, waddled Russell Selachi, the Gianelli family attorney.

The counselor wore a black suit, though its effect was not particularly slimming, with a white shirt with silver stripes, and a blue, pink, yellow, and green tie loud enough to have been snatched from a clown’s clothesline.

Booth wondered if a dozen clowns would pile out, like they did out of those tiny cars in the circus, should Selachi open his coat….

Even though the trio exuded arrogance, the Barnum and Bailey imagery brought a smile to Seeley Booth’s face.

“Special Agent Booth,” the elder Gianelli said in a resonant baritone, “you’re in a surprisingly good mood for a man about to be sued for wrongful prosecution.”

Booth allowed his smile to shift to a smirk. “I am in a good mood, thanks…and that would only be wrongful prosecution if you were innocent.”

“Gentlemen,” McMichael said, his voice stern as he shot a look at Booth.

The FBI agent returned the glance, his expression reassuring the prosecutor: I’ll behave, Dan.

Turning his attention back to the others, McMichael said, “Have a seat, would you?”

The three men took chairs across the table, Raymond Gianelli in the center, Vincent on his left. Selachi withdrew a yellow pad from a briefcase, and set the pad before him and the briefcase beside him.

McMichael turned to the blonde recorder. “Ms. Jones?”

She gave him a curt nod.

“All right, then,” McMichael said, looking across the table. “You ready, Mr. Selachi?”

“We are, Mr. McMichael.”

“Well, then, let the record show who is in attendance today. Myself, Daniel McMichael, United States attorney; Special Agent Seeley Booth of the Federal Bureau of Investigation…”

Booth thought he caught Anna smiling at him again as she recorded his name. Wishful thinking?

“…Raymond Gianelli,” McMichael continued. “Vincent Gianelli…”

The younger Gianelli grinned at Anna, apparently thinking the smile had been for him—or was he mocking Booth?

The FBI agent tensed. Ms. Jones’s smile vanished and she looked down at her flying fingers.

McMichael was saying, “…and Russell Selachi, attorney for the Gianellis. Both Raymond and Vincent Gianelli have been informed of their rights.”

“So noted,” Selachi said.

Shuffling some papers from the stack in front of him, McMichael said, “Let’s get right to the heart of the matter…and begin with your command to have Marty Gramatica assassinated.”

“Allegedly,” Selachi said.

Vincent Gianelli’s eyes burned. “That fucking liar Musetti. He’s—”

“Vincent,” Selachi said.

Raymond Gianelli shot his son a look and Vincent eased back in his chair and folded his arms and found something interesting to look at on the paneled wall to his left.

Stewart Musetti was the reason they were all in this room today.

A childhood friend of Raymond’s, son of Raymond’s father’s trusted lieutenant David Musetti, and a former Gianelli lieutenant himself, Stewart Musetti—thinking the family was about to hit him—had turned himself in and ratted out his former bosses in exchange for a future in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Booth had, in recent months, come to know Musetti well.

Soft-spoken and almost devoid of personality, Musetti—a bald man with a gray wreath of hair and silver steel glasses—looked more like a math professor than a man allegedly responsible for at least twenty murders in thirty years of toiling for the Gianelli family.

When the longtime hitman had flipped, Booth had been there to catch him, and had spent the better part of a month interrogating Musetti, then another five weeks investigating his charges and collecting evidence that would corroborate his chief witness’s story.

Now, thanks to Musetti’s loose lips and Booth’s hard work, the FBI agent had them.

The Gianellis were going down.

“The Gramatica murder,” McMichael said, regaining control of the situation.

Raymond Gianelli shrugged. “A tragedy—an old friend, dearly missed. Did you have a question?”

“Yes. A simple one—did you order the murder?”

Selachi sat forward and half-smiled. “That isn’t a serious question, surely….”

Gianelli put a hand on his attorney’s arm. “It’s okay, Russell. It’s okay…. Mr. McMichael, the answer is no, I did not order the murder of Marty Gramatica.”

“You did not tell the man you ordered to do this to…” McMichael made a show of referring to his notes. “…‘Make sure the bastard doesn’t wake up tomorrow’?”

Gianelli remained passive, though his eyes met McMichael’s. He shrugged and opened his palms and smiled like an uncle addressing a beloved but slightly dim nephew.

“You have to understand,” Gianelli said, “that I’ve known Stewart Musetti for a long time…practically all my life…but we had a falling-out over business matters, and Stewart feels, rightly or wrongly, that he was not treated fairly. That has made him bitter. We are adults here. We know that bitter men sometimes do things that are…”—Gianelli smiled at Booth—

“…vengeful in nature. My son, in his understandable passion, spoke the truth: Musetti lies.”

Leaning forward, McMichael asked, “Then Stewart Musetti is nothing more than a disgruntled employee with an ax to grind?”

“Bingo!” Vincent blurted, drawing another reproving glance from his father.

...