Part 66 (1/2)

”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 fis.h.i.+ng corks on the sea. His white s.h.i.+rt front was stained dark gray with sweat. He jumped up.

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

”Deadly so,” I said.

”You're out of your mind, Kilmer,” he snarled. ”My G.o.d, 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-but 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 h.e.l.l 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. h.e.l.l, 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 favor 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 pa.s.sing 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-ni -”

”You're plowing old ground,” he snapped, cutting off the sentence.

I ignored him and kept plowing.

”And when you found out you were in bed with La Cosa Nostra, you had to make one h.e.l.luva 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-s.h.i.+t 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 a.s.s, not grease your own. You f.u.c.ked up, Sam. When you made your deal with Tagliani, you jeopardized Harry Raines' political career and padded your own, and that was an error Raines would never forgive. It was imperative that Tagliani's real ident.i.ty be protected, not for him, but for you. You needed to keep that power until you established your own power base. Then the war with the Taglianis broke out and you ran out of time. Like I said, the power is given and the power is taken away.”

”n.o.body has taken anything away from me!” he said, rising up as though he had grown an inch.

It was time to go for the jugular.

”That's a lie,” I said. ”You committed the big sin. You betrayed Raines' trust. He knew Seaborn was too naive to get as deeply involved as he was on his own, and he really didn't have any hold over Seaborn, anyway. But you? You he had by the short hairs. Harry was the only person in the world who could destroy you, and he was going to do it. It wasn't the killer who said 'You're finished' to Harry Raines down there in the fog; it was Harry Raines, saying it to you. So you shot him.”

His expression didn't change. He blew a thin stream of blue smoke out into the room and watched it swirl away in the breeze from the windows, and then he laughed in my face.

”n.o.body'll believe that hot air,” he sneered. ”You couldn't get that story into small claims court if you had Clarence Darrow, John Marshall, and Oliver Wendell Holmes on your side.”

I ignored him. I said, ”The irony of all this is that Raines might still be alive if it weren't for a horse with a game leg and his crooked owner. It was the death of the horse, the shock of learning that a race had been fixed and Tagliani knew it, that woke Raines up.”

The phone gave me a breather. Its buzzer startled Donleavy. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, said, ”h.e.l.lo,” paused, and then handed the receiver to me.

”Kilmer,” I said.

It was the Stick. ”You were right,” he said. ”I dialed the other number.”

”Any other news?”

”Not yet. Baker's doing his best. You want me to come up now?”

”That sounds good, thanks,” I said. I gave the phone back to Donleavy.

”Now that your course in Psych 101 is over,” Donleavy said, slamming down the phone, ”maybe you'd like to tell me how I'm supposed to have gotten here from Sea Oat. Did Peter Pan fly me over?”

”You never went home,” I said. ”You came straight here from the Thomas c.o.c.ktail party.”

I took out the card he had given me the night before, the one with his home phone number on it, and picked up the phone. One of the dozen or so yellow lights on its base lit up as I dialed the number. When it started to ring, the light beside it gleamed.

He stared down at it dumbly.

”Pick it up,” I said.

He hesitated for a moment and then lifted the phone.

”It's called call-forwarding,” I said, the two of us staring at each other across the desk. ”Courtesy of Ma Bell. If you want to forward your calls to another number, you punch in a code on your home phone, followed by the new phone number. The calls are forwarded automatically. Obviously you use it all the time; your home phone's on it right now. That was your home number I just dialed.”

He wasn't talking. The muscles under his ear were jerking with every heartbeat. He tapped the ash off the cigar without taking his eyes off me. I went on: ”When you left the party last night, you came here instead of going home. You knew Raines was in Seaborn's office; you had talked to him when Seaborn called you at Babs' party. You also knew Raines would intimidate Seaborn enough to get the whole story. You probably had your gun there in the desk, or in the car. After I called you, you called Seaborn's office again, told Harry you'd meet him over here. Then you went downstairs and took the walkway through the park toward the bank. When he came up on you and said, 'You're finished,' you knew your career was flushed, so you shot him. The girl screamed, you ran back toward the river, dumped the gun, and came back here in time to get Dutch's call.”

He sighed and shook his head. ”Well,” he said, ”I must admit you've got quite the imagination. But I can see why you don't practice law. You couldn't get anywhere with that outrageous bunch of circ.u.mstantial bulls.h.i.+t.”

The office door opened and the Stick meandered in, his hat perched on the back of his head as usual.

”Who the h.e.l.l are you?” Donleavy demanded.

”He's with me,” I said, and to the Stick, ”Did you get it?”

He smiled and took a package out of his jacket pocket. It was a Baggie containing a very wet silver-plated S&W .38, with black rubber pistol grips. I looked at it. There was a number scratched on a piece of tape on the side of the bag.