The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [81]
Volont smiled, shrugged, and simply said, “Of course.” In that “If I tell you, I have to kill you” tone we all knew and loved.
We had to take him at his word. We sure as hell didn’t know where Gabriel was.
“Another question …?” I asked.
“Go ahead,” said Volont.
“Just when were you intending to tell us about the bank robberies?”
“I would have given you twenty-four hours notice, naturally.” He looked at Lamar. “You’d be right there.”
For publicity. Not for any participation in the bust. That’s not what he said, but it was what he meant.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now,” he said, “you’re in the loop. Right along with everybody else.”
Sure.
As I headed back to the booking room, Lamar gave me the rest of the bad news. He’d decided to let DCI know we’d made an arrest in the Colson case. Well, that was all right, and I should have thought of it first. The unfortunate part was that Art was on his way back to Maitland. Just who I needed.
Booking Cletus had been a drawn-out process. His attorney had practically followed us in the office door. Well, actually, he’d followed us from Cletus’s farm. He’d been one of the two people who had come out of the house with Cletus. He was a largish man, Ray Gunston out of Cedar Rapids. I’d heard of him. Well known, successful, and on TV a lot. Attorney to the rich and infamous, as we said.
Anyway, after forty-five minutes, Cletus was tucked away on a $250,000.00 bond. A tidy sum, but I wasn’t at all certain he couldn’t raise it in a hurry.
We’d also made the acquaintance of his other attorney. This guy named Horace Blitek had just walked in the office, and announced he was “at law, assisting in the representation” of Cletus Borglan.
“I wasn’t aware that Mr. Borglan had any other …”
“I’m part of the defense team, Deputy. Mr. Borglan is a very important man. I received a call from his friends, and since I represent some of his corporate interests, he’ll need me if he’s compelled to raise a bond.”
Sure. I notified Cletus, and he said that Blitek was, indeed, a member of the defense team. Gunston didn’t seem too happy with the arrangement, though. I, for one, had never heard of Blitek. He hadn’t given a card. I did notice, though, that his clothes looked a little worn, especially his shoes.
We’d notified Davies immediately, and he’d driven up when his court case had adjourned for the day. The first thing we did was brief him on Gabriel.
“Holy shit.”
Well, he got that right. I’d just told him that Gabriel, whose real name was Jacob Henry Nieuhauser, was an ex-Army colonel, who had all sorts of Special Ops knowledge, and who was the man who had been so heavily involved in the case where Lamar had been shot, and one of our deputies killed. Not so damned long ago, either.
He laughed a little nervously. “You got extra security laid on for the building here?”
I explained how much good that had done us before. “Besides,” I said, “it’s not in the budget.”
“We need a warrant for his arrest. Pronto.”
Lamar took that one. He left for the judge’s office. We were going to get a “confidential” arrest warrant, one that would be filed with the Clerk of Court herself, and sealed until it was executed. A nice thing to have, if we had to do anything unusual to effect the arrest.
Davies knew Gunston very well. Before we’d gotten to the kitchen, he’d said that the Cedar Rapids attorney was reasonable, but fast. “Tell you what,” Davies had said. “He’s gonna want to move this right along to a point. Only to a point. But he’s assessing the case as he goes, trying to see if it works for him. Understand? He’ll hustle your socks off, you let him, and he’ll be persistent to the bitter end.”
“Whether or not Borglan’s guilty?” asked Lamar.
“No,” said Davies. “Whether or not the case will generate enough billable hours to enable him to own Borglan’s farms.” He laughed. “For true. That’ll be his first checkpoint. Shit, guilty, schmilty, he won’t care. He gets paid either way.”
I was surprised that Cletus was even talking to us, and said so.
Davies laughed. “Cheap discovery. He stops talking as soon