Hooligans (60 page)

“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 far?” he queried, 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 Cokes, popped the tops off them, and

handed me one.

“It‟s possible,” I said, although it was obvious I didn‟t believe

“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 embarrassment.

“My God,” 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

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, hut 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 massacres.”

“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.

1 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 had 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

rigmarole. 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?”

“Favours, hush money, politicians, illegal lobbies, bad cops. „[„hey 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 hank 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. “1 assure 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, arid

when.”

“Now how would I have known that?” he demanded.

“When you talked to Raines, you must have told him to come here, not to your condo. You knew he‟d

walk straight across the park. All you had to do was go down and wait for him.”

His eyes were beginning to bob like fishing corks on the sea. His white shirt front was stained dark

gray with sweat. He jumped

“Christ, I think you‟re serious,” he said angrily.

“Deadly so,” I said.

“You‟re out of your mind, Kilmer,” he snarled. “My God, talk about trying to prove a preconceived

notion! Barring the fact that I couldn‟t have done it, what reason would I have had for killing by best

friend? A disagreement over an error in judgment? Don‟t be ridiculous.”

I could have given him a lot of stereotyped reasons—greed, power, fear of Raines—-hut they would

have been simple answers. They didn‟t cover the abstractions.

He sat back down, put his feet on his desk, and glared at me over the end of his cigar.

“Well?” he challenged.

“Let‟s forget the obvious and deal with the abstractions,” I said.

“What the hell do you mean, abstractions?” he said.

“Look, I understand you, Donleavy,” I said. “There was a time when I could‟ve been in the same boat,

doing things the way I was told to do them, or expected to do them, running the show in the same old

ways, with an occasional pat on the head. I also know that in the end I would have had to make a

name for myself, to prove I was worth the trust, that I wasn‟t just somebody‟s lover or best friend.

„The thing is, you were smarter than I was. You had it figured out from the beginning. You knew the

power was given and you knew it could be taken away. I learned that lesson the hard way. Hell, I

never did know the rules.

“You were given the power, the day-.to-day business of running Findley Enterprises. You got it from

Raines, who got it from Chief, and you ran it the way it was always run, the way the Findleys had run

things since Oglethorpe was governor. But sooner or later, Donleavy, you had to prove your value,

not only to everyone else, but to yourself. You had to prove you weren‟t a sycophant, just another

jock with a rich friend. And not just any rich friend. Harry Raines lived by the rules. He managed the

Findley businesses brilliantly, got himself elected state senator, moved a mountain by swaying public

opinion in favour of the pari-mutuel laws, and looked like a shoo-in to be the next governor. A tough

act to follow. You had to show Dunetown that Sam Donleavy could move a mountain or two

himself.”

“Big deal,” Donleavy snapped. “Since when is ambition a crime?”

“There‟s nothing wrong with ambition,” I said. “It‟s all in how you handle it.”

“And just what do you know about how I handle things?”

“I know that Raines was a clone of the old guard. I think when the opportunity presented itself, you

saw yourself as a harbinger of the new. Dunetown was growing, and suddenly you had a chance to

revitalize the town—before the track was even finished. After all, tourist trade was booming; the city

was growing faster than flies in a dung heap. What you needed was to pump fresh money into the

system that had been passing the same old tired bucks back and forth for centuries. Then a windfall

blew your way. A chance to develop the beach with new hotels, condos on the waterfront,

subdivisions in the swamplands. Dunetown to Boomtown, courtesy of Sam Donleavy.

“Except the dream turned into a nightmare. Dunetown became Doomstown, because the opportunity

was spelled T-a-g-l-i-a-n-i. “You‟re ploughing old ground,” he snapped, culling off the sentence.

I ignored him and kept ploughing.

“And when you found out you were in bed with La Cosa Nostra, you had to make one helluva

decision. Tell Raines? Risk his wrath? Or ride it out? What did you have to lose? Tagliani was

reclusive, his people were running legitimate businesses, everything was coming up sevens for you, so

why rock the boat, right, Sam?”

He hadn‟t moved. He was twisting the cheroot between his lips, staring straight into my eyes.

“So far, nothing you‟ve said is incriminating, immoral, or illegal,” he said.

“Right. But you forgot one thing—the Golden Rule of Findley. They didn‟t give a doodly-shit

whether it was immoral, illegal, incriminating, irregular, or anything else. „The unwritten rule of

Findley was that Harry was going to be the next governor and your job was to cover his ass, not

grease your own. You fucked up, Sam. When you made your deal with Tagliani, you jeopardized