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  “You may find this hard to fathom, Joseph, but I have never killed or had someone killed in my life. I’m not a gangster. We work for gangsters. We move merchandise here. We do what is asked from us and we get paid very well. That is all. Outside of his time in Vietnam, I don’t think Brad had ever killed anyone until that day. We’re just businessmen who work in illegal activities. The lake isn’t littered with bodies as everyone seems to thinks. You have a very deluded idea of what happens in this town.”

  “Well, excuse me, but since I have been back to this town, two murders have been committed and I have found out about two others. Tell me what happened the night Brad and Celia were murdered. And don’t give me some cock and bull story about them running off together. I’ve seen a rather graphic photo that suggest they left the Archer house in body bags.”

  26

  The Fourth of July party at the Marchello residence was the best party of every year. Almost everyone came and July 4, 1994 was no different. My father had been busy all day long making sure things were good for the party. There were a lot of out of town people there that day, so it was going to be a bigger party than usual. One of those people was Tom Watkins, someone who worked for Paul Regan at the time and was carrying some goods to Regan in New York. That’s all my father knew and all he wanted to know. All he was expected to do was put Watkins up at his hotel for a day and stay out of the way. My father was surprised that he even accepted the invitation to the party. Tom Watkins’ wife, a woman by the name of Lynda accompanied him. Archer came with his wife, Celia.

  Brad’s relationship with my father was so frayed at that point that they hardly spoke anymore other than for my father to give him some instructions, but even that was rare. Brad had been doing it so long that my father rarely ever had to get involved in the day-to-day operations. There had been some talk between Regan and my father about some kind of a swap since he and Brad were at such an impasse. My father didn’t want to get rid of Brad, but he didn’t know what else to do.

  The afternoon festivities included games on the back lawn for the kids. There was a cookout with a line of grills cooking up steaks, hamburgers and hot dogs. Everyone was having a great time. My father knew something was bothering Archer that day, because he was hitting the booze hard and early. It was a hot day and that much booze mixed with that much heat was not a good combination.

  Brad was talking with Celia Archer when my father approached him early in the evening. The heat of the sun was still bearing down on the party. People were mostly swimming or hanging by the pool. Brad and Celia were tucked away near the house when my father saw them. As he was walked up to them, he could hear Brad saying, “It is almost over, baby.”

  Celia noticed my father walking up and greeted him. Brad turned and looked at my father. “It was nice seeing you, Mr. Graber,” Celia said. “Have yourself a good night. I wonder where Stephen went off to.”

  “I think he went inside,” my father said. “The heat is getting to him.”

  “Yeah, it’s the heat,” she scoffed and walked off.

  “What is it?” Brad asked my father after she had walked away. “I’m busy tonight, so no work for me.”

  “I see that you’re busy,” my father said. “It’ll kill Stephen to lose her.”

  “Then, it’ll kill him,” Brad said.

  “I think we need to talk. I don’t think this arrangement is working anymore.”

  Brad seemed taken aback. “Well, I suppose I would have to agree. In fact, I’ve been meaning to suggest we sit down and have a long talk.”

  “I’ve been talking to Regan. He is amenable to a trade of personnel. He wants you to go work for him in New York. He is very impressed by you.”

  “He is, is he? Amenable?” Something about Brad’s manner made my father uneasy.

  “I just don’t want to let you go Brad,” my father said. “I know we’ve had a rough time the last few years, but you’re still like a son to me.”

  “If only that meant something more coming from you.”

  The comment stung my father. “I’ve lived with that mistake for nearly eight years. I lost one son then. And my other son, I don’t even know what he has become.”

  “I thought you would be proud of him,” Brad said. “He’s a little entrepreneur. Just don’t let him around with that camera of his. He’d blackmail his own mother.”

  “I don’t know what to do about him.”

  “You made him. Joe would have turned out something similar if he had stayed. Joe probably would have been worse. He’s smarter and stronger. He might have killed you by now and taken over the business. And there might not be any Regan anymore.”

  Brad wasn’t holding back that afternoon. It was clear he was ready to move on. “I’m sorry that I’ve been such a disappointment to you,” my father said. “Should I tell Regan that you accept his offer?”

  “Let me think about it,” Brad said. “I’ll let you know tomorrow what I want and where I want to go.”

  As my father walked away, he noticed Archer hiding behind some bushes. The look in Archer’s eyes scared my father. My father moved away from the scene a little, but kept close. He didn’t want anything happening at his house between a jilted husband and his wife’s lover. Brad stood there for a moment deep in thought. Then, he walked away quickly. Archer came out from his hiding place.

  Brad moved quickly and caught back up with Celia Archer who was hovering by the pool. They had a brief exchange of words and Brad left Celia standing there. Both my father and Archer watched the exchange. Archer’s face contorted in a combination of anger and sadness. He brought his hands up to his face and sobbed loudly. My father walked up to Archer.

  “It’ll be okay, Stephen,” my father said. “I’m sending him away.”

  “She’ll go with him,” Archer said through his hands.

  “No, she won’t. You think she’s giving up her life and lifestyle here with you for the life Brad can offer in New York? Celia likes this lifestyle too much.”

  “I don’t know,” he said and drifted away in a daze.

  My father never saw Brad again. Celia and Stephen Archer had a brief altercation about an hour later while Tom Watkins and his wife, Lynda, were speaking to my father. My father could see Michael stalking the Archers nearby listening to their conversation. My father was out of earshot.

  “What is that all about?” Watkins asked.

  “Nothing,” my father said. “Marital difficulties get exacerbated by too much alcohol.”

  “Who are they?” Lynda asked.

  “That’s Stephen and Celia Archer,” my father said. “He’s the district attorney.”

  “That’s Stephen Archer?” Watkins asked.

  “So I hear you might be coming to work for me,” my father said.

  “That’s the rumor,” Watkins said. “I guess that all depends on your boy, doesn’t it?”

  “I think he is going to do it.”

  “You spoke to him already?” Watkins asked.

  “Yes. He seemed interested.”

  “I see.”

  Lynda clenched her fists. “You never told me we were moving here.”

  “Well, I didn’t know if we were. I didn’t want to tell you about it unless it became an actual possibility. It still might not. Besides it is only temporary. Settle down.”

  Lynda walked away. Watkins walked after her like a puppy dog on a leash. My father wasn’t all that impressed with Watkins, but he’ll have to do until he could find someone else and then he’d send Watkins back to Regan with a note of thanks for the temporary help.

  “What’s this about Brad leaving?” my mother asked.

  “It’s for the best.”

  “Brad has been a loyal member of this family for twenty years,” she said.

  “It might have escaped your notice, but he has been quite unhappy here for quite some time.”

  “It didn’t escape my notice, Joseph. Fix it. We can’t lose Brad. He’d do anything to protect this family.
”

  “That’s the problem. He did something to protect this family that he never would have done otherwise and he’ll never forgive me for it.”

  After the argument with her husband, Celia Archer left. Stephen Archer sat down on a lawn chair. The alcohol flowed down his throat like a steady stream. My father tried to talk to him, but Archer just grunted him away.

  “Have you seen Michael anywhere?” my mother asked.

  “I haven’t seen him in a while,” my father said. “He hates fireworks.”

  “Well, he’s not in the house either.”

  “He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

  “I don’t like what he’s becoming,” my mother said. “He is so solitary and quiet.”

  “He’s not going to go on a shooting spree. Just relax and enjoy the fireworks.”

  They sat there for a few moments and then the fireworks began. My father noticed that the chair Archer was sitting in was empty. Probably throwing up somewhere. Serves him right.

  After the fireworks were over, people started to slowly disperse. Some hung around and partied a little bit longer, but everyone was gone by midnight when my father got a frantic call from Archer.

  “Joe, they’re dead. I killed them.”

  “What? You did what?” my father asked.

  “I shot them both. They’re both dead. You have to help me.”

  “Help yourself,” my father said and slammed the phone down.

  27

  After hearing the story of that night from my parents’ perspective, I left. It was getting late. I wanted to get to Daniel Miles’ apartment. I parked the Jeep on Main Street and walked around the building and up Sycamore Street. I still had a set of Rae’s keys that I hadn’t returned to her yet. I inserted the key in the lock and entered the building. I walked to the elevator and took it to the third floor and down to Daniel’s apartment. His door was locked. I looked down the hall both ways. After being certain no one was watching, I started to pick the lock. It seemed to take longer this time without the lookout crew. Sweat built up on my brow. Finally, the lock clicked open and I slid into the darkened apartment.

  I searched for the light switch by the door. The lights came on in a flash to reveal the same sparsely furnished apartment. I did a thorough search of the apartment, which didn’t take long because there wasn’t much to go through. There was nothing of any value.

  I went and sat down at his computer and turned it on. It took a few moments to boot. The monitor flashed through the boot up process. Finally, the screen came up. He had Word 6.0 loaded on his computer. I went into his files and started looking through them. There were a lot of them, mostly on past stories that he had done. It seems that he hadn’t used the typewriter at The Malice Times much. Or at least he made copies and saved them to his computer. Probably building a portfolio for trying to get the hell out of Malice Grove and on to a bigger, better paying market.

  I looked at the most recent files he had been working on. Then, a file jumped out at me, “Golden Seagull Heist.” The Golden Seagull had been the casino that Bruce Drake had managed for Buddy Costello. I clicked the file and the document opened up. It wasn’t a fully realized article. It was jumbled and hard to follow in places.

  From what Daniel had been investigating, on June 17, 1994, two men entered the casino and pulled off a coordinated heist. The first man walked into the casino and made a smash and grab of the cashier’s cage, and disappeared with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. Soon after, while security was diverted with trying to track down this thief, another man entered a jewelry store located in The Golden Seagull hotel lobby and made off with approximately ten million in cut diamonds. A woman who worked at the jewelry store, by the name of Marion Wayne, let the man enter the store right at closing time. While security and police searched for the cashier cage thief, they emptied the store of all its diamonds. The woman disappeared after the robbery, a clear sign of her involvement.

  Four days later, the owner of the Golden Seagull, Dutch Gordon, was arrested. When the police searched his home, they found nearly five million in cut diamonds that bore the identification marks from the diamonds stolen from The Golden Seagull. That accounted for half of the stolen cut diamonds. The theory was that Dutch Gordon robbed his own establishment to collect the insurance money as a way to settle some rather large debts.

  Dutch Gordon professed his innocence and would not give up any of his accomplices. It would seem that although Dutch Gordon was the brains behind the operation, he did not take part in the actual robbery. So, the FBI was still looking for two males and a female, who went by the alias Marion Wayne. After Dutch Gordon’s arrest, he was tried and convicted. He then spent a very brief time in jail before he was stabbed to death in his jail cell.

  The story then got confusing. The stuff on the heist seemed to be well organized and researched. Pulled straight from other newspaper articles and police reports. The story then jumped to the death of Buddy Costello, who had been the long-time owner of the Golden Seagull prior to Dutch Gordon. He, along with his wife, were shot to death at his home on January 10, 1990. Dutch Gordon took control of the hotel and casino shortly after his death. Although, not explicitly said, it was clear that Daniel believed that Dutch Gordon was responsible for the murder of Buddy Costello. Bruce Drake might know more about that. He did work for Buddy Costello before leaving Las Vegas. He also probably knew Brian Prater, my brother’s rapist.

  Now, here is where Daniel started to clearly guess on what he believed accounted for Dutch Gordon’s murder. Daniel believed that an untold amount of illegal uncut diamonds had also been stolen from the jewelry store. He believed that Dutch Gordon was the end of a pipeline that illegally smuggled diamonds into the United States, where they would be cut by Gordon and moved on to jewelry stores throughout the United States. Gordon wouldn’t have divulged the existence of these diamonds to the police, because they were illegal. His smuggling pipeline would have been out a considerable amount of money depending on how many uncut diamonds were in the vaults of that jewelry store. Daniel surmised that Gordon wouldn’t have risked it for a small amount. He would have stockpiled them first. The uncut diamonds would have been easier to move. So Gordon could have disappeared and lived a luxurious lifestyle for the remainder of his days. Cut diamonds are much more difficult to fence since they almost always bear markings and would have been easily tracked back to The Golden Seagull, but uncut diamonds are virtually impossible to track. Daniel also surmised that this heist may have been the impetus behind Gordon killing Costello and buying The Golden Seagull.

  Daniel’s story then jumped to Brian Prater. The story was very disjointed and clearly in the infancy stages of development. At least this version was. Brian Prater, the man I had known as Don Webb, was apparently wanted in connection with the murder of George Gordon, the son of Dutch Gordon. That would have been why he had to hide out in Malice Grove under an alias. It gave no detail about why George Gordon had been killed. Daniel then wrote briefly about Brian Prater’s attempted rape of me and his rape of my brother. How he found out is anyone’s guess. Listening at keyholes perhaps. In November of 1991, seven years after I left Malice Grove, Brian Prater is killed in an explosion at an abandoned house in New York.

  I tried to connect the bread crumbs laid out from Daniel’s story. Brian Prater kills George Gordon, the son of Dutch Gordon and escapes to Malice Grove where he stays underground for seven years. George Gordon was a young man at the time, only nineteen. He was attending UNLV and doing quite well there according to the story. After Prater leaves Vegas, Gordon searches for him high and low and can’t find him. Prater was working for Costello at that time. Prater and Regan worked together. It had been Regan who asked my dad to hide Prater. Therefore, Regan must have also worked for Costello. So, Costello asks Regan to find a place to hide Prater. Regan sends him to Malice Grove where no one would ever find him. After not being able to locate the man who killed his son, Dutch Gordon takes the
ultimate vengeance by murdering Costello and his wife. Gordon takes over the Golden Seagull, forcing Bruce Drake out of Vegas in the process.

  After spending seven years in Malice Grove, Prater finally resurfaces in New York, where he is killed in an explosion. Except, my father told me that Brad Graber had beaten him to death. I knew Tom Watkins was skilled in demolition. At that time, Watkins was working for Regan. It wasn’t a far reach to believe that Regan orchestrated a cover up by having Brian Prater’s dead body placed in a house and then having Tom Watkins blow up that house. But why? To protect Brad Graber. It didn’t make sense.

  What was more confusing was why kill George Gordon? What could possibly be gained by that? There was nothing about that at all. Not even the suggestion of a motive. George was a young man at the time, not yet in his father’s business. Why kill him? There was nothing in Daniel’s file about an existing war between the two families. No current animosity. So why kill George Gordon. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Prater had preyed on both me and my brother. Could this have all been about Prater’s sexual depravity? Could Prater have been preying on George Gordon and things got out of hand and Prater killed him? Why would Costello hide him in that case? Why not just hand him over to Dutch Gordon? There was still something missing there.

  I searched his desk for blank disks and found one. I pushed it into the slot and copied the file and put it into my pocket. As it saved, I thought about the heist at The Golden Seagull and the two men and one woman who were involved. Were they dead? Very possible. Never get into business with someone like Dutch Gordon. What happened to the remaining five million in cut diamonds and the cash from the cashier’s cage? And was Daniel right in his suppositions about the possibility of an untold amount of uncut diamonds being stolen? If so, where are they?

  The file saved and I pocketed the disk. I left the apartment and locked the door. As I started walking down the hallway towards the elevator, I heard the elevators ding. Panic filled me. I didn’t want anyone to see me, so I ran towards the elevators and ducked into the stairwell as I could hear the elevator doors open. I stood with my ear at the door. I heard footsteps walk past the door. After a few moments, I cracked the door. The door to Daniel Miles’ apartment was open. Whomever had opened the door was already inside. They closed the door behind them.