Клэр Донелли - Catch As Cat Can

“And what about Charlie Vane?”

“I don’t know what happened with that guy.” Neil shook his head vigorously. “He was a local contact, a guy who was eager to sell a little off the top of his catch for a better price. I treated him square, but after Sweeney lowered the boom, he kept his distance.”

Sunny took a shot in the dark. “You said you had breakfast with some fishermen the day before Phil Treibholz was murdered. Didn’t that include Charlie Vane?”

“He was willing to eat on my dime,” Neil said bitterly. Then he broke off, staring at her. “Hey, he pretty much blew me off, telling me I was on my own. You’re not trying to tie him in with Treibholz, are you?”

“They’ve both ended up dead, and the only thing that seems to connect them is you.”

“That’s crazy. Vane always talked about his pirate ancestor, and I figured he chiseled around the edges of some shady stuff. Maybe he got in over his head on some deal, but it wasn’t with me.”

“And how about Treibholz?” Sunny pressed. “Will tells me you’ve been playing dumb about him, but he suspects there’s stuff you’re not telling him. And now, with Vane getting killed . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

“You can’t lump the two of them in together,” Neil protested. “Charlie Vane was small-time all the way. Treibholz was dangerous, dirty as hell.”

“Who was he working for?” Sunny asked the question Will couldn’t get answered. “Was it Jimmy the Chopper?”

Neil surprised her by laughing. “No, Phil was afraid of Jimmy. If he’d been working for him, Phil would have never tried to pull what he did.”

“So who was he working for?” Sunny pressed.

“George Foster, esquire,” Neil replied. “My ex-wife Terry’s lawyer. A real lightweight. That’s why Treibholz figured he could play the two of us off each other. He tried to put the bite on me. Hell of a time to do it. I was pretty much broke.”

14

Sunny struggled tokeep her expression neutral even as her heart began to race. This was something Neil hadn’t told Will. Maybe a little needling will get some more out of him, she decided.

Curving her lips in a smile, she said, “I wouldn’t go telling everyone a story like that. You could wind up with a big, red check mark in the box marked ‘Motive’ next to your name.”

Neil made a disbelieving sound. “Come on, you know I’m not that kind of a guy. My big-time criminal career was basically doing market research on small-cap stocks, just like the guys I’d gone to school with. I think my research was better, and we were in a stronger position to push the market—”

By breaking the occasional head, Sunny thought.

“But in all the years I worked for Jimmy, I never even touched a gun, much less owned one,” Neil finished. Reluctantly, Sunny had to believe him. Her reporter’s antennae were scanning like mad, but Neil came across as rock-solidly telling the truth. He smiled. “When I had to solve a problem, I used money.”

“Fine,” Sunny said, “but you just told me you were broke. That makes it hard to pay blackmail.”

“I just had to come up with some earnest money, to keep playing along until I could get Treibholz’s investigation shut down.”

“So you were going to use Val Overton to do it?” Sunny watched Neil carefully and was surprised to see him shaking his head. “Only as a last resort. Yeah, Phil was probably breaking a bunch of federal laws tracking me down. But if Val thought my identity was compromised, she’d be yanking me out of here.”

“And you’ve come to love Kittery Harbor so much, you couldn’t bear to do that?” Sunny figured she managed to dust that with just the right tone of skepticism.

But Neil was surprisingly serious. “I couldn’t let this business just go down the pipes. I had too much invested in it.”

“Don’t you mean the Feds had too much invested in it?”

Neil laughed, not a happy sound. “You’re years out of date on that, Sunny. This isn’t the seventies, where a guy like Jimmy Fratianno could dig a million dollars out of witness protection. They’ve got it down to a science nowadays. Each week you get a modest stipend to keep you going while you find a job and get settled. And then they tell you to bank the Feds’ money and live off your paycheck.”

He shrugged. “I’ve used the payments to live on while trying to make a real profit here and earn my money back. The money I came here with.”

“You just told me you gave everything to your wife,” Sunny pointed out.

“Okay, not everything,” Neil admitted. “The restaurant, the savings and checking accounts, the portfolio. But I always tried to squirrel a little away, for a—I don’t know if it’s okay to talk about saving for a rainy day when L.A. has been living through a drought for years.”

His smile faded a little. “It would be nice to say I headed east with a suitcase full of bearer bonds. But it was more like a coffee can half-full of hundreds and fifties. Still, it sounds like a lot, until you start shelling out to get a business off the ground.” Neil jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Do you have any idea what that freezer system set me back?” Then he waved his hand. “Better not to ask. The problem is, these expenses soaked up all my ‘buzz off’ money.”

Sunny’s face must have shown her surprise at hearing such an old-fashioned term, because Neil laughed again. “I’m trying to be polite, Sunny. People usually refer to this kind of fund with two other one-syllable words, and not very nice ones. Besides, I thought that name worked—I didn’t know if I would be the one telling people to buzz off, or if I’d be buzzing off myself.”

Well, that’s the way it turned out, Sunny thought.

Neil tried to keep his tone light, but his face was dead serious as he spoke. “If I buzz off now, I’ll have nothing behind me. I can’t do that, Sunny. My whole life, I’ve been my own boss.”

“What about Jimmy DiCioppa?” Sunny asked.

“He was just a client, not a boss,” Neil replied.

Sunny nodded. “Things didn’t work out so well for you when Jimmy the Chopper started throwing his weight around.”

“You mean, when he decided he was my boss.” Neil frowned for a second. “I rest my case. But look at me, Sunny. Could you see me greeting folks at Big Box, Inc. or wearing an orange apron at Tools R Us? I need my own business, and to do that, I need money.”

“I hear there are these places called banks where you can get a business loan,” Sunny said.

“You try to get a loan recently?” Neil asked.

She shook her head. “Not with my credit rating.”

“It’s not just a credit rating. They want your life story, references, financials, everything but your DNA—and that might be coming. Val and her people did a good job of creating a backstory for me, but there’s only so far they can go.” He sighed. “And banks want to go a lot farther. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Sunny stood silent for a moment. “I appreciate that you’re trying to be honest with me, but you’re just making your motive for killing Phil Treibholz stronger and stronger. Claiming you’ve never touched a gun isn’t going to cut much ice when it comes to means. And you’ve got a big fat blank space on your schedule during the probable time when Treibholz got it. That’s opportunity. The storm gives you an alibi for Charlie Vane’s time of death, but you’re a strong suspect in the Treibholz case. Folks around here are going to demand some action, and the sheriff’s department may decide that half a loaf is better than none. They could make a case against you.”

Neil scowled, staring sightlessly down at the few fish displayed in his large, no doubt expensive case.