The Undertaker

Tinkerton was absorbed with Hardin and I knew this might be the first and only chance we would get. Should I go for him? Or, should we make a run for the bushes? I gauged the distance. Tinkerton was at least ten feet away from me. Could I get to him before he turned the gun back on us? “Now!” I whispered to Sandy, “run!” and shoved her away. She stumbled and looked back at me. “Go!” I said again and this time she did, scrambling away into the darkness.

Before I could follow her, Tinkerton had spun around and had the gun pointed at me again. “Stop right there, Pete. I'll drop you if you so much as twitch. I swear I will.”

Slowly I turned and looked back at him.

“Miz Kas-mar-ek,” he called out in a sing-song voice. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. This is a nine millimeter I have in my hand. I'll begin shooting random pieces off young Peter here if you don't, pieces you will surely miss.”

I looked over my shoulder and groaned as Sandy walked back out of the bushes. She stepped next to me and put her arm around my waist with an embarrassed shrug.

“Good girl,” Tinkerton grinned. “Now sit, both of you, right there on the grass.”

We did what he said and I looked around, desperately hoping that a cop would come by, or maybe a jogger, or even a park bum, but we had no such luck. The park was quiet as a tomb. I managed to place myself between Sandy and Tinkerton's gun, but in the end that wouldn't do a whole lot of good for her or for me. His big nine-millimeter slugs would rip through both of us without even slowing down.

Tinkerton turned back to Hardin and jabbed him with the gun barrel. “The briefcase is from Rico Patillo isn't it? He used you and the hearings to break up the Santorini mob for him and to pump you up at the same time. You pompous fool. Even the whores over at Eighth and I Streets know what they are worth. He was paying you chump change, pocket money for him, because you were giving him all the mob territories from the Bronx to Philly. Hell, he'd have the whole country! He'd be the head Capo, wouldn't he?

“You're wrong.” Hardin looked up at him, blood running down his chin and staining his white shirt. “I had it all under control; I had him under control. I would have been President and I could have controlled all of it.”

Tinkerton almost looked sad as he stared down at Hardin. “You thought you could control him? You get the White House, what does Rico get? Does he get to pick the Attorney General? Perhaps the Director of the FBI or some section chiefs over at Justice?” Tinkerton laughed. “Of course, they wouldn't need anyone as overt as say, a Charley Billingham. Oh no, just someone completely inept, like one of those ding-a-ling college professors from the Kennedy School at Harvard. What do you figure the Capo might give you? Fifty million? Perhaps a hundred million pumped into your campaign? Rico knows you'd be a bargain at ten times the price, because he'll be the one who has the White House, not you.”

Hardin pushed himself up to his knees. His eyes were full of pure hatred now.

“Ah, but there was a fly in the ointment, wasn't there, Timmy?” Tinkerton sneered. “No, three flies, actually. There was me, because I can tie a bunch of big, noisy tin cans to your tail, and then there was these two, because they can tie some cans to mine. And we can't let that happen; we can't leave any loose ends lying around, can we?”

Tinkerton moved even closer, crowding him. “So what was your brilliant master plan, major? After Rico's boys got rid of Talbott and his girl friend, what then? What did you have planned for me? A rifle bullet? No, something more subtle. Perhaps a car accident? Been there, done that, though. A prowler in my apartment? Or a creative mugging in a dark city park? Yes, I can see it now, “Government Official Beaten and Shot to Death in Park Robbery?” Well, guess what, Timmy? That mugging will indeed happen, but it will happen to you, not to me.”

The big lawyer towered over Hardin, raising the automatic and taking careful aim at the side of the Senator's head. Even in the dim light, I saw Hardin's eyes grow wide with fear as he realized Tinkerton really did intend to pull the trigger this time. The big lawyer seemed to glow triumphantly now. All the talking and the arguing had been mere preface, so had the beating and the blood. Tinkerton needed those to humiliate the Senator. It would not do to simply kill him. If that was all Tinkerton wanted, he could have shot all of us back in the office or as soon as we entered the park. No, first he had to drag Hardin down to his own level. Then he could kill him, make it look like a street crime, and calmly walk away with at least a shred of self- respect. That was the depths to which Tinkerton had now fallen. He intended to pull the trigger and then turn the gun on us.