Hooligans (53 page)

“He‟d be on the street in thirty seconds. Costello‟d see to that. I want the full clock on that son of a

bitch when he goes. Life with no parole. There‟s no percentage bringing him in and then having him

walk. All that is, is frustrating. Besides, I don‟t think he was ordered to put me on ice, I think he got a

wild hair up his ass and decided to just do it. Nesbitt told me he took a lot of shit because he missed

me that time in Cincinnati.”

“Well, Zapata and Lange are all over him. He can‟t go to the john without Chino washing his hands

when he‟s finished. Hopefully, he tries for you again, they‟ll clean his pipes.”

“As long as he‟s in view, we‟re okay.”

I changed the subject to the cocktail party and gave Stick a brief rundown on my talks with both

Donleavy and Titan.

“Donleavy says the Committee passed on Tagliani because they‟re all naive,” I said, summing it up.

“It‟s possible,” he said. “What‟s the problem with Titan?”

I didn‟t want to discuss Doe Raines, so I shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me,” I said.

“1 almost forgot,” Stick said, taking a sheet of paper from his pocket. “I did a little more work on the

computer.” He unfolded a readout sheet and handed it to me. “Here‟s a rundown on the eight main

accounts and their subaccounts. There‟s eighty-six different accounts there, Jake. And that‟s like the

tip of the pyramid, man.”

“Thanks,”

“So what do we do with them?” he asked.

I looked over the printout. About a third of the accounts were corporate.

“Can you access corporate information on that gadget?”

“Sure.”

“I‟d like you to check all the corporate names on this list and see if any of them were incorporated in

Panama.”

“Panama? The country Panama?”

“The country Panama.”

“Do I get to know why?”

“Ever heard of the Mirror Rule?”

He shook his head.

“You haven‟t been doing your homework, Stick. Panama, the country, will not divulge any

information about Panamanian corporations; not to anyone for any reason. You can‟t even get a list of

officers or stockholders unless the company wants you to have

it. So a Panamanian corporation is automatically indemnified from any kind of examination or

investigation except by authorities of Panama itself.”

“That‟s real interesting,” the Stick said.

“It is if you incorporate in Panama. Because then you can have funds from an American bank

transferred to a bank in the Virgin Islands.”

“Where does the Virgin Islands fit into all this?”

“The Virgin Islands, although it‟s a U.S. territory, has its own revenue service. They don‟t like the

Lepers, so they don‟t cooperate with them.”

“The IRS can‟t get the info on Virgin Island bank accounts, that it?” Stick asked.

“Exactly. And the bank account in the Virgin Islands is a mirror account of the corporate account in

Panama. So it‟s possible to transfer money from a U.S. bank to a bank in the Virgin Islands and then

into a Panamanian corporation without the IRS knowing about it.”

“You think that‟s what Tagliani was doing?”

“It could explain how the payoff accounts work. If there‟s a Panamanian corporation on this list, it

could be a transfer account.”

“And the payoff would go straight through the computer and into the Panamanian bank account,

without ever showing up as a deposit,” Stick said, with a touch of wonder.

“And so could their skim,” I said.

“You think Seaborn knows about this Mirror Rule?” Stick asked.

“If he doesn‟t we ought to have him jailed for incompetence. It‟s international banking law.”

“Which means Seaborn‟s involved.”

“That‟s a little touchy right now. There‟s nothing illegal about transferring money to Panama. But

there is if it‟s IGG.”

Stick smiled. “The old ill-gotten gains. What would we do without them?”

“The question is, does Seaborn knew it‟s a scheme to wash dirty money? Maybe not. He could be that

naive.”

“Well, if he didn‟t know, he probably does now.”

“Right. And since we haven‟t heard from him, we can at least assume that he might be withholding

information”

“Where the hell did you find all this out”

“I may not file reports, pal, but I sure as hell read them. This dodge is used a lot by the Mafia. Using

the bank‟s computer to pyramid their accounts, now that‟s a new wrinkle.”

A phone rang somewhere in the back of the house. Stick bolted, trying to catch it before it woke

someone up. He was too late. Lark stirred on the wooden bench, opened one eye, saw me, waved a

limp hand in my direction, and managed a feeble smile.

“Go back to sleep,” I said. “Stick arid I will hold the fort a while longer.”

Wrong again, Kilmer.

Stick came out of the kitchen with a crazy look in his eyes.

62

G-A -L-A-V-A-N-T-I

It took us fifteen minutes through heavy fog to get to the scene of the crime, and a familiar

scene it was. Harry Raines had been shot down in the center of the Quadrangle, no more than

a hundred yards from Charlie Seaborn‟s bank.

It looked like every police car in Dunetown was there. Red and blue lights flashed eerily

through the thick fog, like silent fireworks. A small crowd had wandered up from the

riverfront clubs and restaurants to see what all the fuss was about.

It took a couple of minutes to locate Dutch in the mist. He was standing with a couple of

plainclothesmen, studying a chalk form drawn on the cobblestone walk. Yellow police-scene

ribbons had been suspended around the area. Dutch informed us that the ambulance had come

and gone already.

“He‟s still alive!” I said.

“Yeah, but not by enough to matter much. One shot, right here.” He tapped his forehead an

inch above the right eyelid. “Bullet‟s still in there.”

“My God,” a hoarse voice whispered, and it was a second or two before I realized it was

mine.

“We got a couple of ear witnesses,” Dutch said, leading us away from the chalk-marked form

on the walkway.

“Ear witnesses?” the Stick said.

Their names were Harriet and Alexander, although, for reasons that elude me, Alexander

preferred to be called Chip. They were in their mid-twenties and two weeks away from their

wedding day and she had lost his engagement present to her. The girl was as fancy as a plain

girl can make herself. The boyfriend, short and stubby, with a badly trimmed moustache,

seemed far more concerned over the missing necklace than the shooting.

“We stopped off here on the way to dinner because, see, this is where we met,” he babbled,

probably for the fifth or sixth time. “But it was so foggy, we went on down to the Porthole to

meet our friends for dinner.

“You couldn‟t see your hand in front of your face,” Harriet said, nodding vigorously.

I was getting edgy, listening to their routine.

“Like it is now,” Chip said. “This wasn‟t half an hour ago.”

“Yes,” I said. “I got that—go on!”

Harriet continued her extravagant nod. “Like it is now,” she repeated.

He glowered at her and continued his story.

“And that‟s when her necklace was gone,” Chip said. “It was a cluster of diamonds on a gold

chain. Eight diamonds. They added up to a full carat.”

“Can you please get on to the details!” I demanded.

“We‟re sorry about the necklace,” Dutch said tersely. “Can you finish your story.”

“Yes, well,” he said, “so we excused ourselves and came back up here, hoping maybe we

could find it.”

„That‟s when the man got shot,” Harriet said, nodding even more exuberantly as she got in

the big one. Chip‟s bubbly cheeks turned scarlet at being upstaged.

“Did you see anybody?” I interjected.

They both shook their heads.

“Did you hear them? Did they say anything?”

“I‟m not sure,” Chip said firmly.

“Well, they did say something,” Harriet piped up again, “or at least one of them did. He said,

„You‟re finished.”

“You‟re not sure, Harriet,” Chip said curtly.

She nodded her head vigorously.

“Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?” the Stick asked.

Chip said, “We weren‟t paying much attention. We heard somebody on the walk, the

footsteps stopped—”

Harriet jumped in, stealing his thunder again. “And there was „You‟re finished‟ and bang!”

Big nod.

Chip‟s face twisted in anger. “Harriet! May I please tell the story?” he said.

“What else is there?” I asked.

“Harriet screamed and the killer ran away,” he said, glaring at his future wife to keep her

quiet.

“Nobody‟s dead yet,” Dutch growled.

“Well, you know what I mean,” the kid said nervously.

“Which way did this person run?” I asked.

“We couldn‟t tell,” Chip said. “You can‟t really tell because of the buildings, uh, the sound..

“Acoustics, is that what you‟re talking about?” Stick asked. “Exactly,” Chip said, and he

started the nodding routine. I was true. With fog so thick you could hardly see your feet, and

with the three buildings forming a kind of box, it was impossible to tell where sound was

coming from.

“Did you find the body?” I asked.

They shook their heads in unison.

“No way,” Chip said. “We ran back over to the bank because there were some lights on in the

back, but nobody came to the door, so I went to the phone booth and called the police.”

I asked, “This person who ran away after the shooting, could you guess whether it was a man

or a woman?”

“Man,” they said simultaneously.

That was all they had. It was too foggy to waste any more time there. Stick and I left our cars

in the parking lot and headed for the hospital with Dutch. The lights in the back of the bank

were out when we left.

There were a couple of blue and whites parked at the hospital emergency entrance and one

car that could have been an unmarked police vehicle. The long, beige hallway inside the

emergency doors was empty, as was the emergency operating room. Raines was in ICU,

which was on the second floor.

Four uniformed cops and two plainclothes detectives held the unit captive.

“You taking this one on?” one of them asked Dutch.

“It‟s personal” was all the big Dutchman said in return.

The chief surgeon and the resident were there but noncommunicative. They were waiting for

Raines‟ personal physician. An intern with the trauma unit, however, confirmed what we

already knew and added a few details: that Harry Raines had been shot once in the left

forehead by a large-calibre weapon, that it had been held close enough to cause heavy powder

burning, that he was beyond critical and, as far as the intern was concerned, was moribund.

“He‟s a lot more dead than alive,” the young doctor said. “If he lives another hour, the

Catholics‟ll probably sanctify the whole wing.”

“How‟s that?” Dutch asked.

“Because it would be a miracle,” the young doctor said.

“Any idea what kind of gun did it?‟” I asked.

“1 don‟t know about things like that,” he said. “That‟s police work.”

The intensive care unit was a fairly small room with curtained cubicles around its perimeter

for patients and a control bank of machines and monitors at its core. Every cubicle was

monitored by closed-circuit TV. There were three nurses on duty, all of whom seemed very

busy. The two doctors retired to an empty cubicle and pulled the curtain behind them.

I could see Raines, in the tiny black—and-white TV screen, half his face bound up in

bandages, muttering to himself.

“Do you have a tape recorder in that war wagon of yours?” I asked the Stick.

“Yeah, minicorder. A Pearl with a voice activator.”

“Get it fast,” I whispered, and he was gone, returning in less than five minutes with a recorder

no bigger than the palm of my hand.

“Fresh batteries and a fresh tape,” he said. “You gonna try and tape Raines?”

“Yeah. Keep the jokers at the door busy for a minute or two.”

When I could, 1 slipped behind the curtain into Raines‟ cubicle and hung the tape recorder

over the retaining bar by his head. His lips were moving but his words were jumbled. He was

the colour of clay, his unbandaged eye partially open and rolling crazily under the lid.

As I came back out of the cubicle, a small whirlwind of a woman in a dark gray business suit

burst into the room. She was about five one, on the good side of forty, could have dropped

ten or fifteen pounds without missing it, looked colder than a nun‟s kiss, and was meaner than

Attila the H un. She took over like the storm-troopers in Paris, snapping orders in a voice an

octave deeper than nature had intended, punctuating every word with a thin, manicured spear

of a finger. I could hear the arctic air whistling through her veins as she snapped orders to the

four men with her. I stood back and watched the performance.

“You two get into hospital blues,” she said. “You, get on the door. Nobody gets in unless I

say so. And you, sit by that control desk.”

Then she saw me.

“Who are you?” she snapped icily, jabbing the spear under my nose.

“I could be the doctor,” I snapped back.

She looked me up and down. “Not a chance,” she said.

“The name‟s Kilmer. Federal Racket Squad.”

“Out,” she barked, tossing her thumb over her shoulder like an umpire at home plate. “He‟s

mine.”

“And who the hell are you?” I demanded.

She stuck her tiny, bulldog face as close to mine as she could get it without standing on her