Hooligans

  "I've done a lot of thinking," she said. "Can we talk a little later on? I'll be at the funeral home until seven. Can we have a drink after that?"

  "Sure."

  "I'll be at the townhouse," she said. "It's on Palm right up the street from the hotel. The Breezes."

  "I'll see you about seven thirty," I said.

  "Yes, thank you," she murmured, shifting her attention back to the hearse.

  I watched her drive away, remembering what DeeDee had said about Doe being a princess and everything always working out well for her.

  The Stick drove back to the park like a human being, apparently having had enough action to hold him for an hour or two. The fog had lifted and a warm drizzle had started. We found Baker empty-handed.

  "I have just about cleared the shelf," he said. "But I been thinking, this killer might just have thrown the gun up under the pier. For one thing, it would not have made as loud a sound such as throwing it out in the river would have."

  "What's under there?" I asked.

  "One helluva mess," Whippet said around his chewing tobacco.

  "It's liken I told you, sir," Baker said. "Cables, old rope, ship propellers, just a lot of junk. The weapon could have slipped down amongst all that there, but it might be stuck close up to the surface of it also. I'll certainly give her a try."

  "Thanks," I said.

  I looked at my watch. It was barely one o'clock but it seemed like days since dawn. I sat down under a tree to think while the Stick went off for hot dogs and Cokes. Then I remembered the tape recorder. I took it out and rewound it. There was an hour's worth of tape, all of it full, none of it worth the bother. The Stick came back and we listened as we ate.

  We could hear Raines' voice, muttering, sometimes yelling in agony. Once it sounded like he was giving football signals. Another time he said Doe's name very distinctly, but nothing before or after it. Nothing else was intelligible.

  I looked at Seaborn's window several times, but if he was there, he wasn't showing himself. Someone had already placed a black wreath on the side door of Warehouse Three.

  "What next?" the Stick asked.

  "I'm going to sit here for a while while Baker plumbs the murky depths," I said.

  "It's swarthy depths," said the Stick. "He's plumbing the swarthy depths."

  "Right, swarthy," I said.

  We watched Baker's air bubbles playing on the surface of the river while I mentally catalogued the events of the previous five days. Ideas were forming slowly. There's a thin line between what is logically true and what is fact, what can be proven and what can't. Most of my ideas were logically true. Proving them was going to be touchy. I decided to go for broke, throw the long bomb, and break up the ballgame. It was a risky plan but Stick loved it. I knew he would. It appealed to every perverse bone in his body.

  Facing Nose Graves had been nervy. Now it was time to try something rash.

  68

  MONEY TALK

  It was nearly five when I went to the bank. It was closed but I had been watching the place for two hours and I knew Seaborn was still there. Now I could see him, through the double glass doors, sitting back in his office behind that massive desk, talking frantically into the phone.

  I tapped on the front door. A bank guard, swaybacked by time, shuffled slowly up, tried to talk to me through the door, and gave up. I could have driven to Key West in the time it took him to open the door. He fiddled with his keys, took two or three stabs at the latch before he got the key in, and finally got the door open a sliver.

  "We're closed," he said, in a patronizing voice that sounded like it was squeezed from a balloon. "Open at nine in the morning."

  "I've got an appointment with Mr. Seaborn," I said. I was getting almost casual about lying.

  He looked me up and down, sizing me up. "I'll check with the president," he said. "What was the name?"

  "Kilmer. It still is."

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind," I said.

  He closed and locked the door and shuffled across a wide, cold, marble lobby to the office in the back. I could see his stooped frame, silhouetted in Seabom's doorway. Finally he turned and slue-footed back to the door. He didn't have a fast bone in his body.

  He opened it another sliver.

  "The president says he's busy and—"

  I had my wallet out and I flashed my buzzer as I shoved past the old gentleman. "The hell with protocol," I said. "This is business."

  Seaborn looked up wide-eyed when I entered the office. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it. He looked out the window, then back at me, his face doing every number in the book as he tried to change his expression from fear to anger.

  "What do you mean by this?" he demanded. "This is the second time in two days you've intruded on me without—"

  "I didn't intrude on you yesterday," I said, without waiting for him to finish. "I came to tell you your secretary had a death in the family."

  "What are you doing here now?"

  "I thought we could have a little talk, Mr. Seaborn, just you and me."

  "About what?"

  "About Franco Tagliani, who called himself Frank Turner. About Lou Cohen's banking habits. About Harry Raines, who got himself killed right over there." I nodded toward the window. He followed my gaze, but looked up instead of out, toward the top floor of Warehouse Three. Heavy storm clouds were brewing again and it was dark enough for lights but there weren't any. Nobody was home. The boss was dead.

  Seaborn's nervous fingers rippled up and down the desk as if it were a concert piano.

  "I hardly knew Mr. Turner," he said. "And I don't know anything about poor Harry's death." He paused for a minute and then said, "Perhaps I should summon my lawyer."

  "You could do that. Or you and I could have a private little chat. Just the two of us. That's if you want to cooperate. Otherwise, you don't have to call your lawyer, I'll leave. Somebody else will come back; that's when you'll need your lawyer. That's when they read you your rights and all that stuff you see in the movies."

  He turned ash gray.

  "What is it, then?" he said, in a faltering voice that was rapidly losing what little character it had. He looked back over at the warehouse.

  "There's nobody over there," I said. "The place is closed. Another death in the family. So what's it going to be? Talk? Or lawyers?"

  "Ahem. We can . . . certainly . . . start . . . uh . . . "

  "Look here, Mr. Seaborn, there are some things I know, and some things I think I know, and some things I'm strictly guessing at. I think maybe you can eliminate some of my guesswork."

  He didn't say anything. He sat there like a man with his head in the guillotine, waiting for the blade to drop.

  "I repeat," Seaborn said, putting a little strength back in his voice. "I knew the man as Turner. He was just another businessman. We were actively soliciting new business and capital into the community, that's no secret. And he made us a very attractive offer."

  "No strings attached, right?"

  He paused for a minute and said, "Right."

  "Who proposed the banking arrangements?" I asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "This is what I know, Mr. Seaborn. I know that Tagliani did his banking with you. I know that Lou Cohen was the bagman for the operation and made all the cash deposits directly to you. I also know that a lot of that cash came from pimping, gambling, and narcotics, and that classifies it as ill-gotten gains, which is dirty money, and that means we can confiscate it, and any other money made through the use of it, by anybody connected to them. "

  "I don't know where his money came from," Seaborn said.

  "Cohen made enormous cash deposits to you almost every day. You didn't find that odd?"

  "It's not my business to question my customers," he said.

  "It's your business to report all deposits over ten thousand dollars to the IRS, isn't it?"

  That stumped him. He looked out the window again. I followed his gaze. I could se
e Stick down on the pier, talking to Whippet.

  "I assure you," he said, after a long pause, "that there was nothing illegal in his banking transactions. It would be a violation of confidence to discuss it any further."

  "At least three of the accounts are Panamanian mirror accounts," I said.

  "Still none of my business and perfectly legal," he said, too quickly.

  He was feeling stronger and putting up a pretty good fight. I had only two cards left to play.

  "What about the Rio Company?" I said.

  "What about it?" he said. "It's one of their corporations. They have dozens. I really don't know for what purpose. I was not Cohen's confidant, I was simply his banker."

  He seemed sincere enough. So I played my last ace.

  "How about the pyramid accounts?" I asked.

  This time he jumped as if a flea had bitten his ass.

  "I told you, I don't know anything about their business," he said, almost in a whisper.

  I reached into my pocket and took out the tape recorder, punched the play button, and sat it on the edge of the desk. The heart monitor was beeping a monotonous background to Harry Raines' strained breathing. He was muttering, then a pause, then he cried out, "Doe!"

  Seaborn's eyes bulged. His Adam's apple was doing a little dance.

  I turned the player off.

  "He said a lot before he died," I lied.

  Seaborn's tough shell began to peel away. He stared at the recorder as if it were a black widow spider crawling across the desk toward him.

  "We were talking about what I know," I said. "I know you called Sam Donleavy at Babs Thomas' party a little after seven. I know you were in the bank because your lights were seen by two witnesses. I know that when Harry Raines was shot, he was either walking from his office in the warehouse toward here, or from here toward his office. It's illogical to think he was meeting somebody in the park, it was too foggy. Whoever shot him was either waiting for him or caught up with him."

  His fingers started playing on the desk again.

  I said, "He came here and braced you about Tagliani. You broke down, and before it was over, you'd told him the whole story. He threatened to expose you, and when he left, you went out the back door of the bank, followed him, and shot him."

  His face turned purple. "You're insane!" he screamed. "I don't even own a gun. And I didn't have time to run after him. I was still sitting right here when-"

  He stopped babbling and fell back in his chair.

  "When you heard the shot," I said.

  He sat dead still for a full minute; then his face went to pieces and he nodded.

  "I swear to God I don't know who shot Harry," he said, almost whimpering. "I've done nothing illegal. There was nothing illegal in the way Cohen's money was handled."

  "It's a subterfuge," I said.

  "You're guessing," he said. "Besides, that's not what Harry was so angry about."

  "He was angry because you'd gotten into bed with the wrong people, right?" I said.

  "That's as good a way of putting it as any," he said.

  "What did you tell Sam Donleavy on the phone?"

  "I told him . . . I told him Harry knew everything. I couldn't help it. Harry came here and he was insane with anger. Abusive. He could always intimidate me with that cold stare of his, anyway. I don't know why he suddenly got so upset. He went crazy. I told him everything. I tried to make him understand how it happened, that we didn't know who Turner really was until it was too late. He was screaming about trust and loyalty."

  "What did Donleavy say?" I asked.

  "He talked to Harry."

  "Raines was here when you called the Thomas woman's apartment?" I said with surprise.

  "Yes."

  "And . . . ?"

  "Sam had to go out to his place and wait for a phone call. He said he'd call us when he got there. About forty minutes later he called back."

  "Did you talk to him?"

  Seaborn nodded. "Yes. He told me he had to talk to Dutch Morehead at eight o'clock and that he would ask Harry to come out to his place and they'd have it out. He said he felt Harry would be reasonable, that we'd done nothing really wrong, nothing illegal. Then he talked to Harry."

  "Did Raines say anything?"

  "He just listened for a minute and then said, 'All right, I'll see you there.' Then he hung up and left. He didn't say anything else to me, just turned around and stalked out of here. That's the way Harry Raines was. He couldn't forgive anything. Mister Perfect. All he ever cared about was his career, his goddamn career. He wouldn't have been anything if he hadn't married Findley's money."

  "And you were sitting here all by yourself when he was shot," I said.

  He nodded.

  "That's your alibi, is it? Mister, if I were the jury, you'd have one foot strapped in the chair already. You have a motive, you had the opportunity, and you haven't got an alibi."

  His shoulders sagged. He looked out the window again and then dry-washed his hands, like a funeral director pitching for the solid copper casket. Sweat twinkled on his upper lip and across his forehead.

  "I didn't kill Harry Raines," he repeated. "Neither did Sam. He was miles away when it happened. We don't know who killed him or why. I assumed it had something to do with these other killings."

  "I'm sure it does, in some way or another," I said.

  The phone rang, startling both of us. He stared at it for several rings, then picked it up as if he were afraid it would burn him.

  "Hello? Yes . . . " He looked over at me wild-eyed and mouthed the word "Sam."

  I held out my hand and he gave me the phone.

  "Sam, this is Jake Kilmer."

  Silence. Ten or twenty seconds of silence. When he finally answered he was quite pleasant.

  "Sorry about our lunch date, old man," he said.

  "It's been a pretty grim day all the way around," I said. I looked up at the warehouse. The lights in the corner office were on. "Where are you now?"

  "As a matter of fact, I'm in my office. You can see it from Charlie's window. The river corner."

  "Do you have a minute or two now?" I asked.

  Another silence.

  "I was planning to go over to the funeral home," he said. "But I can take a few minutes."

  "I'll be right over," I said. I gave the phone back to Seaborn.

  "He hung up," Seaborn said, with surprise.

  "I'm sure he found out what he wanted to know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He wanted to know who you were talking to."

  Seaborn looked over at the warehouse. His face caved in.

  "What do we do now?" he said, almost to himself.

  "Go home, Mr. Seaborn," I said. "You can't do anything here, so go on home."

  He stared at the big, bare desktop for a second and then said, "Yes, I suppose so."

  We left the bank together. Seaborn went to his car; I returned to the pier.

  Baker was sitting on the edge of the concrete dock sipping coffee from a Thermos.

  "No luck, eh?" I said.

  He shook his head. "I'll make one more attempt before dark," Baker said.

  "I appreciate your effort, Mr. Baker," I said, then to Stick, "Did you find out what I wanted to know?"

  "Nothing to it. A silver-plated S&W . 38, two-inch barrel, black handles."

  "I'm going upstairs," I said. "You got the number?"

  "Yep."

  "Give me fifteen minutes."

  "You got it."

  As I turned to leave, he said, "Jake?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Love your style," he said with a grin.

  69

  THANK YOU, MA BELL

  Number Three Warehouse was a three-story brick building dating back to the late 1700s with nothing between it and the river but the narrow cobblestone walkway behind it leading from the park. A small sign over the wreath told me the company was closed because of Harry Raines' death. The door was unlocked.

  I remembered coming
there with Teddy and marveling at how clean and polished everything was. Nothing had changed. The brass hand railings and doorknobs were dazzling and the wood looked oiled and elegant. There was about the place, as there is with most old buildings, that kind of musky odor that comes with age and care.

  Donleavy's office occupied most of one corner of the third floor, overlooking both park and river. He was wearing his dark blue mourning suit but had taken off the jacket and was in his shirtsleeves. The air conditioning was off and he had the office windows open; although the rain had stopped and the sun had peeked out before dropping to the horizon, it was still warm and muggy in the office. His smile was sad but sincere and his handshake was so vigorous it was almost painful.

  "That was quick" was his greeting. "Sorry it's so hot in here. The air conditioning's been off all day."

  I told him I could live with it and peeled my jacket off too.

  "I'll just put on the answering machine so we won't be disturbed," he said.

  "Would you mind leaving the line open?" I said. "I don't have my beeper with me. I had to leave this number."

  "No problem," he said amiably.

  From his window I could see the park below. A small group of people clustered around the spot where Harry Raines was shot and a couple of pretty girls sat on one of the park benches, giggling and knocking shoulders. The river sparkled brightly in the dying sun.

  On the other side of the park was the darkened Seacoast National Bank. It reminded me of DeeDee Lukatis, her own grief all but forgotten in the wake of Harry Raines' death, and the bitter irony that linked Doe and DeeDee with death. Altogether, a sad view on this particular day.

  "The last twenty-four hours have been insane," Donleavy said with a sigh.

  "Yeah," I said, watching George Baker appear over the side of the pier, pull off his face mask, and start talking to Stick. "It's been one thing after another."

  He followed my gaze down to the waterfront.

  "I hear they've been diving down there all day," he said.

  "We're looking for the gun that killed Harry Raines."

  "What makes you think it's in the river?" he asked.

  "Logic," I said.

  "Logic?"