Sleight of Hand

CHAPTER Forty-Three

Kansas City, Missouri, was founded in 1838 at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers and had grown into a picturesque city of boulevards, parks, and fountains. Dana and Jake had checked into a hotel a few blocks from the Plaza, an upscale, outdoor shopping and entertainment district that was famous for being the first suburban shopping center in the United States specifically designed to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile. The blighted urban area into which Dana was driving seemed as far from the condos, museums, upscale restaurants, and nightclubs of the Plaza as Earth was from the moon, but it was only a short distance by car from the heart of downtown.

Dana had dressed in a severe business suit but she wondered if she was overdressed. The neighborhood she was in was a strange mixture of lots filled with abandoned tires and rotting furniture that were patrolled by feral cats, well-tended single-family dwellings, and trashed, ruined, and looted homes with shattered windowpanes. Sullen young men stared at her as she drove by, and she spotted gang colors she’d learned to identify during her stint with the D.C. police. What she did not see were happy couples strolling behind baby carriages or neighbors talking over white picket fences. Why make yourself a target?

Just as she’d given up on the neighborhood, Dana suddenly found herself in an oasis of modern middle-class homes with newly mown lawns. Dana parked in front of a fifties ranch-style home with a peaked roof and stone-and-wood siding. The house was set back from the street, and a slate path led across a manicured lawn. A minute after she rang the bell the door was opened by a slender African-American man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a Kansas City Chiefs sweatshirt and neatly pressed jeans.

Dana had seen Roger Felton’s name in the newspaper article detailing the execution murder of the two drug dealers. She had gone to police headquarters in Kansas City and learned that Felton was living with his elderly father in the neighborhood where Felton had grown up.

“Detective Felton?” Dana asked.

“I was,” Felton answered as he eyed Dana suspiciously. “I’m retired. How can I help you?”

“My name is Dana Cutler.” She held out her identification. “I was a police officer in Washington, D.C., but I’m private now. I’d like to ask you about a case you worked on about twenty-five years ago.”

Felton scrutinized her ID before stepping aside and ushering Dana into a large living room that was illuminated by the sunlight that streamed through high picture windows. An elderly man who was breathing from an oxygen tank sat in a wheelchair across from a stone fireplace.

“That’s my dad,” Felton explained. “I live in Florida, but he had a stroke and I’m back here to help him out.

“This is Dana Cutler from Washington, D.C.,” Felton told his father. “She wants to ask me some questions about an old case.”

Felton turned back to Dana. “He has trouble speaking, but Dad is still sharp.”

Felton sat in an armchair and motioned Dana onto an identical chair that was standing on the other side of a walnut end table. A photo of a much younger man who strongly resembled Felton’s father and a smiling, heavyset black woman stood in the center of the end table next to a lamp.

“So, what do you want to know?” Felton asked.

“Do you remember Anthony Watts and Donald Marion?”

“Sure,” Felton said without a second of hesitation.

“I’m surprised you recall a case that old so easily,” she said.

“There are some cases you never forget. I’m certain I know who killed those two but I could never prove it, and it’s always bothered me. Why do you want to know about Watts and Marion after all these years?”

“Richard Molinari has become a person of interest in a case I’m investigating.”

A cloud passed over Felton’s features. “Richard, huh. That’s a name I never hoped to hear again. What’s he involved in now?”

“Some very interesting stuff, and he doesn’t go by Molinari anymore. He changed his name to Charles Benedict, and he’s a criminal defense attorney.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“Molinari moved from here to Pennsylvania and changed his name. Then he earned a GED, went to college, and graduated from law school at the University of Virginia, with honors.”

“I’ll be damned. I never saw that coming.”

“What can you tell me about Molinari?”

“He’s a stone killer, that’s one thing I can tell you. You’ve probably noticed the racial makeup of this neighborhood. It’s mostly black and Hispanic, and it has a very high crime rate. I tried to get my father to move to Florida because it’s not safe, but he’s stubborn. Even this area, which is mostly middle class, has more than its fair share of crime.

“There are a lot of gangs operating here, and it was worse twenty years ago. The most powerful gangs were African American, so figure out how tough a white boy would have to be to earn the position of enforcer in the Kung Fu Dragons, the dominant gang in the neighborhood. That was Richard. He was devoid of a conscience, owned a very high IQ, and was totally ruthless. No one wanted to fight him because you had to kill him or he’d never stop coming after you.

“Let me give you an example. Molinari’s family moved from somewhere back East when he was sixteen. The first day in high school three kids beat him up. After that, Molinari gave them his lunch money and generally acted like a coward toward them, but before the month was out, two of the boys were beaten with a baseball bat. The brain damage was so bad that they were useless as witnesses. The third boy was burned to death in a house fire that killed his entire family. The day after the assault and the arson, Richard showed up at school with a baseball bat. He never said anything, but word got around the school that he was not someone to f*ck with, if you’ll pardon my French.”

“Was he arrested?”

“The principal told us the boys had beaten up Molinari, and about the bat, so Richard was our main suspect, but the kid was too smart for us.”

“Did you take a look at the bat he brought to school?”

“Sure, but it wasn’t the bat he used. That bat was found on the front steps of the burned-out house, covered with the victims’ blood but wiped clean of any prints. Someone, probably Molinari, spread the word around school that the kids had been beaten silly with a baseball bat.”

“How did he get into the gang if he was white?”

“The rumor was that he made a deal with the leader of the Dragons to take out the leader of a rival gang that was trying to take over the crack cocaine trade in the area.”

“He killed him?”

“We don’t know. No one could prove he was murdered because he just vanished. After that, everyone started calling Molinari ‘the Magician.’ ”

“Because he made his victims disappear?”

“That was part of it, but he actually was an amateur magician.”

“If he was in so tight with the Dragons, why did he take off?”

“The Dragons were dealing for a Mexican drug cartel. Marion and Watts were emissaries from a gang in Cleveland that was going to do a drug deal with the Dragons. We had a snitch who told us that the deal was bigger than usual and there was a substantial amount of cash involved. Watts and Marion were supposed to make a swap in one location but they never showed up. We think Molinari lured them to an abandoned barn, killed them, then hid the money. We arrested Molinari but we couldn’t hold him. The day he left the jail was the last day anyone saw him in Missouri.”

“Fascinating.”

“Isn’t it. And what you’ve told me makes sense. Even as a teenager, Molinari was the smartest criminal I’d ever dealt with. He was definitely smart enough to know he had no future with the Dragons after he ripped them off, and smart enough to know he had to disappear, like a card in one of his tricks.”