Hooligans Part 65

From his window I could see the park below. A small group of people cl.u.s.tered 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?"

"Sometimes it's all we have to go on. A young couple was nearby and heard the shot. She screamed. I figure the killer ran in the opposite direction, toward the river. Not knowing who else might be nearby in the fog, he tossed the gun in the river."

"Any luck so tar?" he quened, showing only mild interest.

"Not yet," I said.

"You say 'he.' Are you sure the killer is a man?"

"Figure of speech," I said. "It could be a woman."

"Humph," he said, and dismissed the subject of murder temporarily. "I was thinking," he said. "Perhaps these mobsters had phony credit profiles. Maybe that's how they got by us. It's not uncommon, you know."

He reached into a small refrigerator, took out a couple of c.o.kes, popped the tops off them, and handed me one.

"It's possible," I said, although it was obvious I didn't believe it.

"Well, I'm jumping ahead of you," he said. "You should be doing the talking."

"Did you ever find that book with those dates?" I asked.

His eyes rolled with embarra.s.sment.

"My G.o.d," he said, "with everything that's been happening, I completely forgot it. I'll make a note to myself to dig it up."

"That's all right," I said. "I may not need the information after all."

Baker slid down over the side of the pier and dropped out of view. Good man, he was making one last effort.

"Do you think Harry's death is connected to these other killings?" Donleavy asked.

"It seems likely, doesn't it?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't know much about police work."

"I thought maybe being a lawyer . . . " I said, and let the sentence hang.

"I went to law school but I never practiced law," he said. "Harry asked me to come on board straight out of college. I've never really worked anywhere else."

"Well," I said, "let's just say I'm not real big on coincidence. It happens, but it isn't logical, it's the long shot. Logic is simply using all the facts you have in order to draw a conclusion."

"Seems to me there's a danger in that," he said. "You tend to look only for the evidence to prove the conclusion."

"I suppose," I said, noncommittally. "Anyway, logically speaking, Harry Raines' death would seem to be connected to the Tagliani ma.s.sacres."

"That's a rather gruesome way of putting it." He shuddered.

"Gruesome work," I said. "Murder always is."

"Why would they want to kill Harry?"

"It's the way things happen. One thing leads to another. One murder leads to another."

"So you think these mobsters did it all," he said, making it a statement rather than a question.

I looked back at him. The park was growing dark.

"No," I said.

"But you said-"

"I said I thought they were connected. I don't think the same person killed the Taglianis and Harry Raines."

"Oh. Logic again?" he said. His mouth was iron-bent in a smile.

He opened a walnut cigar box on his desk and offered me one of those thin cheroots, the kind riverboat gamblers in costume dramas always seem to prefer, accepted my refusal with a shrug, and peeled the wrapper from his own.

"So what does logic tell you about all this?" he asked as he lit the cigar.

I sat down on the windowsill.

"First, I'd say Raines was obviously coming over here when he got shot," I said.

"That certainly seems logical," Donleavy said. "He was probably parked in the company lot."

"He was parked behind the bank."

"Well, he still maintains his office here. Maybe he was coming over to get something."

I went on. "Second, all the Tagliani killings were well planned. Daring, perhaps, but infinitely well planned and executed. That isn't logic, that's fact. Logic tells me Raines' death wasn't. It has all the earmarks of a sudden move, even a desperate one."

"How so?"

"Because the killer couldn't plan on it being foggy, so he must have decided to use the fog, and that means the killer had to know exactly where Raines was going to be and the exact moment he was going to be there. As our witness said, 'You couldn't see your hand in front of your face.'"

"Perhaps he followed Harry," Donleavy suggested.

"Yeah, except our ear witnesses only heard one person, which leads me to believe the killer was waiting for Raines."

"Interesting," Donleavy said, contemplating the tip of his cigar for a moment. He then added, "Look, Jake, I may as well tell you, Harry was on his way out to my place. He was very angry. He and Charlie Seaborn had words. I called Charlie just after I talked to you. Harry was there. I told him I thought at worst we were guilty of poor judgment and he agreed to come and talk it out, once and for all."

"Did Raines have a bad temper?" I asked.

"Only when he felt threatened. He couldn't stand being intimidated, by anything or anybody."

"How about Seaborn? How upset was he?"

He chuckled. "Charlie's easily upset, a worrywart. But he certainly wasn't distraught enough to kill somebody."

"Perhaps there was a problem beyond just bad judgment," I suggested.

"What do you mean?"

"Ever hear of the Rio Company?" I asked.

His expression didn't change.

"The what?" he said.

"Rio Company," I repeated.

He shook his head. "No, should I have?"

I explained to him about the Panamanian Mirror Rule and Virgin Island accounts and that whole rigamarole. Donleavy was a lawyer, I was sure he knew what it was all about. I guess I wanted to make sure he knew that I knew.

"The Rio Company is what we call a Hollywood box," I said. "It's like a street on a sound stage, all front with nothing behind it. It's usually used as a payoff."

"A payoff? For what?"

"Favors, hush money, politicians, illegal lobbies, bad cops. They have a lot of palms to cross in their business."

"Doesn't cash work anymore?" he said, laughing.

"This isn't the old days," I said. "We're not talking about a few Ben Franklins here and there, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. The trick is how to hide it. The Hollywood box is one good way. They pay off their graft with dirty money and use the banks to clean it along the way."

"And this Rio Company was used for that purpose, eh?" he said.

I nodded.

"Are you implying that Charlie Seaborn was involved in all this?" he said, his face clouding with concern.

"I'm not implying anything. But his bank is being used as the instrument. He helped set up a rather elaborate subterfuge to help make it work. And a lot of the money that went through those accounts is what is called ill-gotten gains. It can be confiscated under the RICO act. I'm not sure how deeply involved Seaborn is. He may be guilty only of stupidity. But he could be on the sleeve. "

"The sleeve?"

"The take, part of the payoff. He could be getting a piece of the Rio Company-that's if he knew what he was doing and Tagliani felt it necessary to put him on the sleeve. I don't know the answer to that yet."

"What do you think?"

"I don't think he was."

"Why?"

"Too much to lose. I think Seaborn's indiscretion was that it looked good for the bank and good for the town and he didn't think about the consequences. Seaborn's a small-town banker. It probably never occurred to him that what he was involved in was illegal until it was too late to get out. That's the way it usually happens."

"Who else was getting paid off?" Donleavy asked, leaning across his desk. "What cops? What politicians?"

"I'm working on that."

"Any ideas?"

"A few."

"Care to share them?" he asked. "I a.s.sure you, I am as interested in resolving this mess as you are."

"I'm sure you are," I said.

He was leaning on the desk now, staring intently at me.

"Any more logic?" he asked, still smiling.

"I've been thinking a lot about Raines' death," I said. "Trying to narrow down the possibilities."

"Have you come up with anything?"

"Yeah," I said. "Logic tells me that there's only one person who could have killed Harry Raines."

"And who's that?" he asked eagerly.

"This is going to sound crazy," I said.

"Try me."

"It seems to me the only person who could have killed Harry Raines was you."

"Me!" he gasped, and started to laugh. "Well, except for the fact that I was at my place on Sea Oat Island twenty miles from here and couldn't have done it, how did you come up with such a notion?"

"Yeah, I know," I said. "You have two alibis, me and Dutch. And yet, I have this thing about the logic of the situation. According to Seaborn, you were the last one who spoke with Harry Raines before he was killed. He left Seaborn's office without even saying good-bye and he was gunned down two minutes later. That makes you the only one who could have known exactly where he was going, and when."

"Now how would I have known that?" he demanded.