"I appreciate your concern," I said. "The thing is, if O'Brian wants to make some kind of a deal, we can't afford to lose it. I've been down this road before, Charlie. I'll watch my step."

He shrugged. "You're a big boy now," he said. "I a.s.sume you know what you're doing."

I ordered a light breakfast and doctored my coffee. Dutch was gone about five minutes. He seemed concerned when he got back.

"Okay," he said. "Zapata was in the Warehouse and he beeped Salvatore. Zapata's going to call me back if he raises him."

"I thought Zapata was tailing Nance," I said.

Dutch was scowling. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

"He lost him," Dutch said. "Followed him out to the docks at dawn. Nance went out on a shrimp boat and left Zapata at the altar."

I got a sudden chill, as if a cold breeze had blown across the back of my neck. Nance being on the loose was a wild card I hadn't counted on.

"An awful lot of people know about this gig," I mused.

"Are you worried about Salvatore and Zapata?" Dutch asked stiffly.

"No. But I don't want anybody s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g this thing up."

"Don't worry about it," Dutch replied. "We'll raise Salvatore and call him off, if you're sure that's the way you want to play it. "

"That was my deal," I said as the waitress brought my breakfast.

"You want to tell us where you're going?" Charlie One Ear asked.

"Not really," I said. "You know how it is with these people, Charlie. They spook real easily."

I decided we had talked enough about O'Brian and changed the subject again.

"Anything new on the Logeto killing?" I asked.

Dutch shook his head. "We combed the neighborhood. n.o.body saw anybody on the roof or coming down the walls. So far it's a blank. But I do have something for you." He took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Here's that list of drops Cohen made. Cowboy finally got it together for you."

I opened it up and checked over the list. Most of the addresses didn't mean anything to me. The most significant note was that on two of the three days, Cohen had visited both a branch bank of the Seacoast National and made his usual two o'clock visit to the bank.

"Have you checked this over?" I asked Dutch.

He nodded. "I can give you chapter and verse on the drops if you want."

"I don't have time now," I said. "There's one thing that jumps out. I wonder why Cohen has been hitting the bank twice. On Wednesday and Friday he went to a branch and the main bank. Now why would he do that?"

"Maybe he doesn't like to carry a lot of cash around for too long," Charlie One Ear suggested.

"Maybe," I said, staring at the list. "But I don't think so. Unless things have changed, he's used to moving large sums of money."

"You got another idea?" asked Dutch.

"Yeah. Maybe he's skimming a little off the top for himself."

"If he is, he's got more guts than I give him credit for," said Dutch.

"Or he could be working it with Costello," I said.

"Wouldn't that be sweet, to catch them in the middle like that," Charlie thought aloud. "We could probably get a whole chorus of canaries out of it."

"That's if he's playing games," I said.

"Cowboy's on him again today," Dutch said. "Maybe he'll turn up something new." Then his eyebrows went up. "I'll be d.a.m.ned," he said. "Speak of the devil. See the two guys that just walked in? The one that looks like a football player and the jellyfish with him?"

The two men sat down at a corner table and immediately began to jabber like two spinsters gossiping. One was Donleavy. The other one was as tall, but slender, and older, probably in his mid-forties, with wavy, graying hair that framed a weak, flaccid face. His manicured hands jittered nervously as he talked, fiddling with the bits of toast on his plate the way a spider fiddles with a fly. Both of them looked like they spent a lot of time in the sun.

"The one on the left is Donleavy," said Dutch. "The bird in the navy blue suit is the banker, Charles Seaborn. From the looks of things, they're having a lovers' spat."

"I think I'll just stir the pot a little," I said.

"What are you going to do?" Dutch asked nervously.

"Just introduce myself," I said, patting his shoulder as I rose. "I'm not going to bite anybody."

I strolled across the restaurant toward the table where Donleavy and Seaborn were bickering over breakfast. Donleavy saw me from the corner of his eye. He kept talking, but it was obvious that he sensed I was heading their way and he didn't want to be disturbed. As I reached them, he looked up angrily, trouble clouding his brown eyes.

"I'm Jake Kilmer," I said before he had a chance to explode. "I think it's about time we met."

He wasn't sure what to do. The anger in his hard features was suddenly replaced by a wide grin, a car salesman's grin, the kind that makes you want to count your fingers after you've shaken hands.

"Yes, yes, yes," he suddenly babbled, and jumped up. "Of course." He pumped my hand and introduced me to Seaborn, who looked like he'd just bitten his tongue. Seaborn offered me a hand that was as clammy as it was insincere.

It was obvious that neither of them was overjoyed at meeting me.

"I'd like to have a talk with you," I said to Donleavy, "whenever it's convenient."

"Is it urgent?" he said. "Aren't we going to see you tomorrow night?"

"Tomorrow night?"

"At Babs' c.o.c.ktail party," he said with a lame grin. "You better not forget-she's touting you as the guest of honor. She's got a short temper and a long memory."

"I'll be there," I said. "But I need a little time alone with you. It's nothing unpleasant. Information mostly."

He dug a small notebook from an inside pocket and leafed through it. "How about Friday around noon?" he asked. "I'll take the phone off the hook and send out for sandwiches."

"Sounds like a winner," I said. "I'll buy."

"Not in my town you won't," he said. His smile had grown more relaxed and genuine. "It's Warehouse. Three, overlooking the Quadrangle. We have the whole top floor."

"I'm afraid I won't be seeing you tomorrow evening," Seaborn said. "I have the bank examiners in town. You know how that can be."

"By the way," I said to Seaborn. "I believe you have a customer I know from Cincinnati. His name's Cohen."

"Cohen?" he echoed, raising his eyebrows much too high. He looked like he had just swallowed something much too big for his throat, which was bobbing up and down like a fishing cork.

"Yes. Lou Cohen?"

"Oh, yes, I believe I've seen him in the bank from time to time."

"Give him my regards the next time you see him," I said.

I could almost hear their sighs of relief when I left the table. And I knew enough about human nature to know that Charles Seaborn had more than a casual acquaintance with Cohen.

Perhaps Cowboy Lewis would confirm my suspicions. In the meantime, I couldn't help wondering why tiny beads of sweat had been twinkling from Seaborn's upper lip. I usually don't make people that nervous.

When I got back to the table, Dutch still looked nervous.

"What'd you say to them?" he asked. "Seaborn looked like he swallowed a lemon."

"I just asked Seaborn if he knew my old friend Lou Cohen," I said with a smile.

"Verdammt," Dutch said, shaking his head. "You sure do play hard cheese."

"Is there any other way to play?" I replied.

On the way out Dutch was paged. He spoke into the lobby phone for a few moments and hung up.

"That was Zapata," he said. "Salvatore's screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder, but he's giving up O'Brian. He thinks you're nuts."

"I've been accused of that before too," I said.

"Just so you'll know," Dutch added, "Salvatore knows where O'Brian is. If you're not back in two hours, we're going in with the marines, although I don't know why we should bother."

"We're just getting accustomed to that ugly pan of his," Charlie One Ear commented.

It was nice to know they cared.

37.

LURE.

The fat old pelican sat on a corner post of the deck surrounding the fishing shack, looking bored. He surveyed the broad expanse of bay which emptied into the Atlantic Ocean a mile away to the east at Thunder Point. A warm breeze ruffled in from the sound and the old bird stared, half-asleep, across the surface of the water, looking for the tell-tale signs of lunch. Then, spotting a school of mullet, he flapped his broad wings and soared off the post, climbing twenty feet or so above the water, wheeling over and diving straight in, hitting with a splat and bobbing back up with a fish flopping helplessly in his bucket of a beak.

The Irishman watched the pelican make his catch. He was making a fishing lure. He had set up a small vise on the edge of a table and was carefully twining and retwining nylon, hook, and feathers, weaving them into a shiny lure. He had stopped to watch the pelican, keeping the line taut so it would not ravel.

He was a big man with one of those florid Irish faces that would look fifteen years old until he was ninety. A few lines grooved its smooth surface, but not enough to mar his youthful, carefree expression.

There was very little traffic along the bay. A few shrimp boats had gone out against the rising tide and a weekend sailor was trying, without much success, to get a lackl.u.s.ter wind in the sails of his boat a couple of hundred yards away. Otherwise it was so quiet he could hear what little wind there was rattling the marsh gra.s.s.

This was the Irishman's love, his escape from a business he neither liked nor understood. He felt like a misfit, a Peter Principled gunman forced to act like a businessman. O'Brian liked to settle disputes his own way. Negotiating confused him. But here he was king; he was alone and free, master of himself and his tiny domain, for O'Brian had mastered the secrets of fishing. It was one of the few things he did well, and he loved the sport with a consummate pa.s.sion.

When the phone rang, he snapped, "d.a.m.n!" under his breath and weighed down the loose end of the lure with a metal clamp before he went into the main room of the cabin to answer it.

"It's me, boss, Harry," the gravelly voice on the other end of the line said. "He's through eating breakfast. You sure you don't want I should follow him out, make sure he isn't bringin' company?"

"I said alone."

"He could bring company."

"Naw, he won't do that."

"You never know with these Feds."

"He don't have nothin' on me," the Irishman said.

"He's pretty quick, this guy."

"Just camp out at Benny's down the road. I need ya, I holler."

"Want I should ring once and hang up when he leaves?"

"Good idea."

"Everything calm out there?"

"No problem. Coupla shrimp boats went by. n.o.body's been down the road. There's some jerk out here trying to get his sailboat back to the city marina, which is kinda funny."

"What's so funny about it?"

"There ain't no wind."

"Well, don't take no chances."

"Don't worry. You just hang out there at Benny's, have a coupla beers, come on in when you see him leave.

"Gotcha."

They hung up and the Irishman switched on the radio and walked out onto the deck for a stretch. The sailboat had drifted four hundred feet or so west of the shack, toward the city, and the sailor was trying vainly to crank up his outboard, a typically sloppy weekend sailor in a floppy white hat, its brim pulled down around his ears. The putz, he thought, was probably, out of gas. But he had learned one thing since discovering the sea-sailors heaped each other.

He cupped his hands and yelled: "See if you can get it over here, maybe I can help."

The sailor waved back. He shoved the submachine gun under his Windbreaker near his feet, took an oar from the c.o.c.kpit of the sailboat, and began to paddle toward the Irishman. . . .