"n.o.body ever complained either."

"I want to make love to you again. I want it tonight. I don't want to wait a minute longer."

"It's getting too touchy," I told her. "Even t.i.tan knows all-"

"I don't care about Stoney. He's my G.o.dfather; he should want what's best for me and if he doesn't, the h.e.l.l with him. We're talking about you and me and tonight. That's all I care about. I want you. I want to make up for twenty years."

"In one night?"

She laughed again. "Well, it's a start."

Bolts of lightning were dueling around us and the full fury of the storm lashed rain under the awning.

"Let's get inside," I said.

"Not till you promise."

"Promise what?"

"When you leave here you'll come out to Windsong."

"I have to make a stop on the way," I said, thinking about DeeDee Lukatis. I wondered whether Doe knew that her ex-lover was dead. If she did, she was handling it very well. I decided that if she didn't know, somebody else could tell her.

"How long?" she demanded.

"An hour."

"Don't be late," she said, wheeled away, and dodged back inside.

I waited for a minute or two before going back in. It was a futile gesture. Babs was watching intently from across the room, like the linesman at a tennis match. I nodded and smiled my way back to her.

"It's not what you think," I said.

"Please," she said, rolling her eyes, "you don't have to tell me a thing. I have two perfectly good eyes in my head."

"Don't make it sound like some d.a.m.n intrigue," I said.

"Darling, I just love intrigue. It's what makes life worth all the trouble."

61.

MIRROR TRICKS.

Before I left the hotel, I stopped by my room and called Sam Donleavy. He was pushed for time, he explained, since Dutch would be calling shortly, but he a.s.sured me that he would locate the book and bring it to lunch the next day. I said that was just fine. Then I dug the company car out of the hotel garage.

A familiar black Pontiac was crouched under the trees in front of DeeDee's house when I got there. The Stick answered my ring.

"Just the two of you here?" I asked.

"Yeah, I brought over some dinner. Lark needed a little relief. She's stretched out there taking a nap."

"That bench is worse than the rack," I said.

"She was too tired to notice."

"How's DeeDee?"

"Still out. The doctor must've given her enough Sec to knock an elephant on its a.s.s."

"Good, the more sleep she gets, the better. I'm afraid she's going to be in for it from the homicide cops, once they finish the autopsy. "

"She doesn't know s.h.i.t."

"You know it and I know it," I said. "But the turkeys from the murder division also don't know s.h.i.t."

"I'll handle them," he snapped.

"Stop acting like Humphrey Bogart. They'd be dumber than I think they are if they didn't talk to her."

"What do we do about the pictures that came in on the telex? They'll be out here flashing them around."

"Burn them. She can't ever see him, Stick, not the way he looks now. She'd have nightmares for the rest of her life."

"You're beginning to sound like a concerned friend."

"I'm trying. This is one tombstone I'm sorry I kicked over. Besides, Tony's death isn't going to be handled by the local cops. It's out of their jurisdiction."

"Where'd he wash up?"

"Saint Solomons Island."

"That's Saint Simons Island."

"Well, they've got him down there, and it's their problem."

"Five gets you ten they dump it up here anyway."

"If it relates."

"If?" Stick said.

"Let's wait and see on that one," I said.

"There's something else bothering me," the Stick said.

"What's that?"

"Nance," he said. "He's moving around like a wolf on the prowl. Lange and Zapata are taking turns with him."

"I've been keeping my eyes open," I said.

"Why don't we lean on him? We can bust his a.s.s-at least, let the f.u.c.ker know he can't go around taking potshots at federal agents. "

"He'd be on the street in thirty seconds. Costello'd see to that. I want the full clock on that son of a b.i.t.c.h 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 a.s.s and decided to just do it. Nesbitt told me he took a lot of s.h.i.t 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 c.o.c.ktail party and gave Stick a brief rundown on my talks with both Donleavy and t.i.tan.

"Donleavy says the Committee pa.s.sed on Tagliani because they're all naive," I said, summing it up.

"It's possible," he said. "What's the problem with t.i.tan?"

I didn't want to discuss Doe Raines, so I shrugged. "Beats the h.e.l.l out of me," I said.

"I 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 Istands."

"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 Seabom 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 know 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 a.s.sume that he might be withholding information."

"Where the h.e.l.l did you find all this out?"

"I may not file reports, pal, but I sure as h.e.l.l 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 and I will hold the fort a while longer."

Wrong again, Kilmer.

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

"What's the matter with you?" I asked.