Hooligans Part 60

"In the river," Stick said.

"Exactly," I agreed.

"George Baker," both Stick and Dutch said in unison.

"Who's George Baker?" I asked.

"The best black-water diver in these parts," said Dutch. "If there's a gun in the river, he'll find it."

"Think it's worth a chance?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?" said Stick. "George'd leave a movie queen's bed to go diving. It's how he gets his jollies."

"Then let's get him," I said.

"How about pie and coffee?" Dutch implored.

"Let's see if we can dig up Baker first," I said.

64.

BlACIC-WATER DIVE Stick found Baker at home watching television. The diver, excited by the prospect of finding the murder weapon, promised to keep his mouth shut and be on the pier at first light. Coffee and pie brought Stick, Dutch, and me nothing but endless speculation. We packed it in early and I went to bed after checking the hospital and being told that Raines' condition was "guarded."

At five thirty a.m. I was back at the park with Stick, huddled over the river's edge in fog thicker than the previous night's, sipping black coffee from a plastic cup and listening to George Baker describe what he and his partner were about to do. Baker was a big man with a barrel chest, hulking shoulders, a neck like a spare tire, and black hair cut shorter than a buck private's. A telephone man by trade, he was a black-water diver by avocation and an auxilliary policeman, whatever that was, for the h.e.l.l of it.

"It's dark down there," he said dramatically as he pulled on his wet suit. His patois, a blend of southern colloquial and old English, was as descriptive as it was archaic. He sounded like the hawker for an old medicine show.

"Yessir, dark and dangerous. Don't take much more'n a Mexico minute for a man to perish under these waters. A man cannot afford errors of the mind, for you don't make any miscalculations, least not more than once. Why, sir, I dive in waters so dark, even a torch will hardly cut their swarthy depths. The bottom is either sugar mud, which is shifty and quicksandy, or it's covered with old, rusty cables, the likes of an octopus, and old boat propellers, tin cans, and other such various obstacles from time past when this here was a pier for mighty ships of the sea. Why, say, at high noon, it's so dark at the depths of fifteen feet, I must, by needs, do everything by the touch of these here fingers."

He wobbled ten fingers at us, just in case we didn't know what a finger was, and stared at them himself with awe.

"Yessir," he said, "sometimes there ain't nothin' twixt me and the Almighty but a measly ol' fingerprint."

The bottom, Baker told us, sloped away from the bank for about thirty feet, then dropped off sharply into the channel. He would use what he called his "tender system," a ball of twine that he ran from pillar to pillar and used as a guide under water. His buddy diver, a scroungy-looking young man identified only as Whippet, who I later learned was a bootlegger by trade, kept track of his progress by means of a tie line around Baker's waist.

"If I get in trouble," said the master diver, "Whippet will endeavor to pull me up, careful but sure, in hopes that I will survive whatever calamity might befall me."

Baker also had a theory, derived from looking for more than just a few murder weapons in his time.

"A man most likely will throw the gun out in the water, such as flingin' a baseball," he said, "whereas a lady, who don't normally have much truck with guns, will tend to just drop the weapon straightaway, so as to get it out of hand as quick as is possible. I will operate from the edge of the channel in, thereby usin' the tide to my advantage."

"If I were guessing," I volunteered, "I'd say he or she dumped the gun fast, as soon as they reached the end of the walk. There were witnesses who heard the shot from fairly close by."

"Thank you, sir," Baker said formally. "I'll keep that in mind."

Fully dressed with mask and tanks, he could have modeled for a Hollywood monster, an enormous black bulk peering like an owl through his face mask. He clambered down the side of the fishing pier, vanished into the fog, and a moment later splashed into the water fifteen feet below us.

"If you got somethin' t'do, might's well get on with it," Whippet said, stuffing snuff under his lip. "This'll most likely take a while."

Stick and I groped our way through the fog, found a coffee shop, and took on breakfast.

"I got a crazy idea," I said.

He started to laugh. "Is that supposed to surprise me?" he asked. "Shoot."

"This is a real long shot, but how about checking the local gun shops. Start with the better ones. See if Donleavy, Seaborn, Raines, Sutter, or Logan, owns a .38 or something close to it."

"Raines?"

"He's got a wife," I said, without looking up from my eggs.

"Cover all the bases, don't you old buddy?" he asked coldly.

"No one is immune," I answered, just as coldly.

"I thought murder was off our beat."

"Anything that relates is our beat," I said. "Humor me on this, I've got an idea."

"Okay, you're humored. Want to tell me what it is?"

I gave him the short version of the idea before we were interrupted.

Charlie One Ear arrived bringing with him the autopsy reports on all the victims up to and including Tony Lukatis and St.i.tch Harper.

"The same gun killed Tagliani, Stinetto, O'Brian, Harper," he told us. "A .22. All of them shot to h.e.l.l and gone except for Lukatis. He was shot only once, back of the head, with a .357. A .223 removed Stizano and his people."

"Coup de grace," I said.

"What?" Charlie One Ear asked.

"Just thinking out loud."

"So what else do you think?" he said.

"What I've always thought. We got an M-16, probably with a forty-millimeter grenade launcher mounted on it, that takes care of the Stizano ma.s.sacre and Draganata. We got an American 180, sounds like a dentist drill, fires a hundred eighty rounds in six seconds, which takes care of the Tagliani kill, O'Brian, and the boys on the boat. The rope trick was used on Logeto and Della Norman. And we got a .357 that was used to put the insurance shots into Stinetto, Tagliani, and Lukatis. Not that big an a.r.s.enal for all the damage that's been done to date."

"How about Harry Raines?" Charlie One Ear asked.

"We won't know for sure until they get the slug out. Dutch says it was probably a 38 or close to it. That means it could be .357 or even a nine-millimeter. They're all about the same diameter."

"And Nance shoots a nine-millimeter Luger, right?" Stick asked.

"Nance didn't shoot Harry Raines."

He looked at me with surprise.

"How do you know that?"

"Instinct," I said. "Really, logic. First of all, he's not a contact killer. He likes to work from a distance. Second, he's a planner. He wouldn't ice his mark in a fog with two people twenty yards away. It's too risky. Nance is a pro. He's only made two mistakes that I know of."

"What were they?"

"He missed me twice," I said.

Dutch and our breakfast arrived at the table together. He had found us there to tell us that Harry Raines was dead.

"About forty-five minutes ago," the big man said, sinking into the booth beside me. "I been up all night. It's a sad, sad thing. Doe Raines is a wreck and Stoney t.i.tan is blaming everybody but the President. Donleavy finally stepped in to make the arrangements."

I listened but didn't hear any more. I was thinking about Doe and the devils that had shown themselves to her in the hospital, devils that could twist her mind into a private h.e.l.l if they were not dealt with, and quickly. Strange how lovers and family always a.s.sumed the guilt of death. Both DeeDee and Doe had lost loved ones in the same day and both were a.s.suming guilt for the loss. I still wondered if Doe knew or cared that Tony Lukatis was dead. She had bigger things to deal with now.

"Does Chief know yet?" I asked finally.

"I dunno, that's probably Mr. Stoney's ch.o.r.e," said Dutch. The death of Harry Raines didn't seem to spoil his appet.i.te. He ordered a breakfast that would have given me indigestion for a week.

"I can't believe it," Dutch said. "Sam Donleavy and I were talking about all this as it was happening."

"What time did he call you?" I asked.

"I called him," he said. "About five after eight."

"Where?"

"He lives in the condos out on Sea Oat, just before you cross over the bridge to the Isle of Sighs."

That gave Sam Donleavy an airtight alibi. I had talked to him at quarter to eight. Even the Stick at his best could not have driven the distance from Sea Oat to town in less than fifteen minutes. To drive both ways in twenty minutes was literally impossible.

"I've got something for you, Jake," Charlie One Ear said, breaking into my reverie. "Stick asked me to check out the Tagliani bank accounts. Three of those companies are foreign."

"Incorporated in Panama?" I said.

"Now, how'd you know that?" asked Dutch.

"Protected corporations," I said. "Which are they?"

"The Seaview Company, which owns the hotels; a company called Riviera, Incorporated, which does maid and janitorial service for the hotels and other clients; and another called the Rio Company, which is some kind of service outfit, although we couldn't find out much about it. The Thunder Point Marina and the Jalisco Shrimp Company are both owned by Abaca Corporation, which is a local company. The restaurant is a proprietorship."

"Bronicata the proprietor?"

"Yep."

"Makes sense," I said. "They need a few legitimate businesses as part of the washing machine."

Charlie One Ear, encouraged by my enthusiasm, left to see if he could dig up more facts.

Dutch's beeper started bugging us and he went to check it out. He returned, both amused and surprised.

"What now?" asked Stick.

"Everybody seems to be turning their cards up," he said. "Nose Graves made a wreck out of the Jalisco Shrimp Company not twenty minutes ago. n.o.body's hurt but he spread the place all over the county. What's left is burning."

"s.h.i.t!" I said grimly. "It's starting."

"What's starting?" said Dutch.

"What I've been afraid of," I said. "Open warfare. If it's not stopped, Harry Raines won't be the only innocent victim. I've seen a gang war up close, in Cincy. It isn't pretty. It'll make the Tagliani ma.s.sacres look like a harmless warm-up."

That put a crimp in the conversation for a moment. Then Dutch reached in his pocket and took out the tape recorder I had hung on Harry Raines' bed.

"I almost forgot," he said. "I retrieved this for you."

"Anything on it?" I asked.

"I haven't checked," he said.

"Do you know Graves did the Jalisco job for sure?" the Stick asked Dutch.

"Absolutely. That was the Mufalatta Kid on the horn," Dutch said. "Seems we did something right for a change. The Kid was s.h.a.gging Graves and watched the whole thing happen."

He gathered up our checks. "I'll let the city pay for these," he said. "Let's go have a talk with the Kid."

"Where is he?" asked the Stick.

"Baby-sitting on Longnose Graves' doorstep," Dutch said, and his Kraut face broadened into the biggest smile I had seen since I got to Doomstown.

65.

LONGNOSE GRAVES.

The usual twenty-minute drive across Dunetown to Back O'Town took the Stick less than fifteen. He turned off the siren six or seven blocks from the scene and flew dead-stick the rest of the way in. Dutch smoked two cigarettes, back to back, without taking them out of his mouth once they were lit. He didn't say anything, just sat stiff-legged, puffing.

"Go a block past the club and pull in behind the drugstore across the street," Dutch told Stick as we neared the end of the journey. "Kid doesn't want we should turn him up to Graves' bunch. "

"Gotcha," Stick said. He wheeled in behind the drugstore, stopped, braked, turned the car off, and was outside on his feet before I could pull mine out of the floorboards. All Dutch said was "Phew. He never drove like that with me before."

"He never drove any other way with me," I said. "You're d.a.m.n lucky."