Part 40 (1/2)
”Everything you know.”
”It ain't that much.”
”How about narcotics?”
”I don't have nothin' to do with dope.”
”How about Chevos?”
”Look, what do you want? All I'm askin' is a f.u.c.kin' ride out of town. This ain't the Inquisition. I can't turn anybody up. That ain't what this is about.”
”Did I ask you to turn anybody up, Harry? You're making me play twenty questions here, that's all. We've never done business before. What's the game?”
”Look, I don't know what you want to know. One thing I don't know is who iced these people.”
”Start from the beginning. The first time you came down here from Cincy.”
He thought about it while I watched the activity in the ring. Finally he said, ”I come down here four years ago. It was Tagliani, Costello, Cohen, that's all. I was one of the old man's soldiers at the time.”
”What happened?”
”Nothin'. We was gonna stay at this old hotel out where the Strip is now, but it was rundown. We ended up on this guy's yacht. ”
”What guy?”
”I don't remember his name.”
”Was he local?”
”Yeah. A Doomstown johnny. I think he was in the banking business, like a big shot. Look, you wanna know the truth, it was the two guys you were talkin' to at breakfast.”
”Seaborn and Donleavy?”
”I just don't remember that, I ain't good on names.”
”Did you hear what they were talking about?”
”I never did that. It was none of my business. On the way back, though, Tagliani tells Costello he thinks this guy is gone around.”
”You mean they made some kind of a deal with him?”
”That's the impression I got. In fact, I know it. We all got accounts in his bank.”
”What bank?”
”Seacoast National.”
”You all have accounts in the same bank?”
”Sure. We get paid automatically. Every Friday, you can book on it. It goes in automatically.”
”And that's the whole family?”
”Anybody I know about.”
”Did you come down again with Franco?”
”One other time. We stayed on the same yacht. That time it was only the older guy, not the one looks like a wrestler, and he brought this other bozo with him. Short fellow, skinny. Looked to be maybe thirty-five to forty.”
I felt like kicking myself for not knowing anything about Sutter and Logan. They were the two members of the Committee I was still in the dark about. I didn't know what they looked like, how old they were, nothing except their names and what they did. Sutter was the media man and Logan was the lawyer.
”Could his name have been either Logan or Sutter?” I asked.
”His name coulda been Mussolini for all I know,” Harry whined.
”And you didn't overhear any of their conversations.”
”I couldn't listen to that stuff, Kilmer, you know that. It's see nothin', hear nothin'. Besides, at the time I didn't have no idea what was going down. h.e.l.l, I still don't for that matter.”
The fact that Seaborn entertained Tagliani on his yacht was still not an indication of any wrong-doing. It was his job as a member of the Committee to size up big investors. But if Seaborn was was.h.i.+ng money for Lou Cohen, that was a different ball game. Then the meetings on the yacht became pertinent testimony.
I decided to change the subject.
”What do you know about Cherry McGee?” I asked.
”He's dead,” Harry said.
”I know he's dead. Before that.”
”He was a pistol over in Covington, did free-lance work for Draganata back when Bannion tried to elbow in.”
”So McGee was working for the Triad when he came down here?”
”I don't know that for sure. n.o.body seemed too upset when he got blown away, though.”
”When did you move down here?”
”With O'Brian. I was one of the kid's wedding presents. So I came with them. Nine months ago, maybe.”
”The house was already bought?”
”Yeah, that was also a wedding present.”
”So what was the reaction when Tagliani was iced?”
”Well, you know I been through a couple wars. When somebody in the family takes one, the first thing happens, everybody gets together, tries to figure out the who and the why. They did it at Franco's place the next day, the day of the wake.”
”What happened?”
”It ended up nothin'. It didn't make sense. Both Franco and Draganata had got it by then. Everybody else was freakin' out. They din't think anybody even knew who they were. They started talkin' about you.”