John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

He parked in his spot at the rear of the building and took the steps to the second floor. It was barely ten in the morning when he arrived at the doors to Suite 210, only to find them locked – and a note.

It was thumbtacked directly to one of the wooden panels, which was a bit like nailing a Vermeer directly to the wall. The panels in the door were solid oak, and gleamed – the brass fittings were rubbed daily with a soft cloth. The old man would have a conniption.

Burke pried the thumbtack from the door, and read the note. It was an official notice, in Gaelic and English, dated the day after Burke had gone to the States for Megan’s wedding.

CLOSED BY ORDER OF AN GARDA SIOCHANA

(INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION UNIT)

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He’d gone directly to Dalkey, where he found the old man in the yard, pruning a rosebush. A tangle of thorny branches lay in a heap at his feet.

“Is it yourself, Michael?”

“It is.” A quick hug.

The old man shrugged. “I knew you’d come back the second you heard – and would that be fair to your sister?”

Burke shrugged. His sister could take care of herself. “What happened?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what happened,” the old man repeated. “This shower of cunts came stormin’ in, like it was Ned Kelly they were after! Moira takes one look, goes into a swoon, if you can believe it, and this great eejit steps forward, flashin’ one of them little wallets.”

Burke looked confused. “What ‘little wallets’?”

“Like you see on the box. With the badges inside. And it turns out, this one’s not even Irish. He’s one of your lot!”

“Who is?”

“The eejit I’m talkin’ about. He’s American! This shiny-faced palooka’s come all the way from London – and the Garda, they’re fallin’ all over him, salutin’ his every fart.”

“What did he want?” Burke asked.

“He’s got a bug up his arse about some incorporation you did. I told him to feck off!”

Burke winced. “What did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t take that a’tall well. Touchy sort. Reminded me for the third time that he’s some bloody great FBI agent. Called himself a Lee-gut.”

“Gat.”

“Puh- tay -to, puh- tah -to… I told him I didn’t care if he was Lord of the Rings. If he wants to look at one of our files, he’d better have his paperwork in order.”

“Well, yeah,” Burke said, “but – which account was he after?”

The old man scowled. “The Twentieth-Century Motor Company. Something like that.” He paused. “Ring a bell?”

Burke shook his head. “No.” He’d set up lots of companies at Thomas Aherne & Associates. Most of the time he didn’t spend more than half an hour with a client.

“Manx registration?” the old man reminded him. “Jersey bank?”

Burke made a gesture, as if to say, What else is there? Then he said, “Hold Mail list?”

The old man nodded. “What else would it be? Totally normal setup. But this Yank, he takes one look at the folder-”

“You gave him the file?” Burke asked.

“I ‘gave’ it to the Garda.”

Burke was incredulous.

“It was a special unit,” Tommy explained. “They had a court order.”

Burke’s eyes rested on the harbor as he mulled over the old man’s words. The confidentiality of the firm’s files had always been absolute. For Tommy Aherne to give up a client was… unprecedented.

“Anyway,” the old man said, “this Yank takes one look at the client’s name and, I swear to Jay-sus, he goes ballistic. Says we must have known it was bogus. That’s the word he used. Bogus!”

“So what was the name?”

“A ‘Mr. Francis D. Anconia.’ Or something like that. I only saw the file for a second, and he was yankin’ it out of my hands.”

The old man didn’t have the name quite right. Burke remembered now. The client had asked him about his ear. Sounded American, but… “Chilean passport?”

“The very one!”

Burke thought about it. Finally, he said, “I still don’t get it.”

“All I can tell you is, this Yank is steamed, he’s squawkin’ about money-laundering, terrorism-”

“Terrorism?”

“Swear to Christ, he’s goin’ from pink to purple, and back again. And just when I think he’s going to keel over, he takes this Kerryman aside – thick as two planks, this one is-”

“Who?”

“The Kerryman! ‘Inspector Doherty,’ he’s callin’ himself – and the Leegut has a word with him, private like. Then this Doherty steps forward and announces that he’s shuttin’ us down, ‘pending inquiries.’”

“What in-kwy-ries?” Burke asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, the short answer is you. This Kerryman says they’re opening a money-laundering investigation, and they’d like to have a word with our Mr. Michael Burke, particularly since it’s your name that’s on the file.”

Burke groaned. “Then what?”

“Then? Well, then they threw me out of my office – my own office, if you can believe it, the one in which I’ve been diligently servicing a respectable clientele for-”

“What’s the Legat’s name?”

“Kovalenko.” The old man took off his gloves and laid his clippers down at the base of the rosebush. “Come on, I’ve got their cards inside.”

There were three of them, resting on the marble top of a small table in the vestibule. The first card identified Sean Doherty as an inspector in the Garda’s International Coordination Unit (ICU). The second card belonged to Ira Monaghan of the Garda’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

The third card bore the FBI’s logo, a gold-embossed American eagle, and the name Raymond Kovalenko. The card identified Kovalenko as a Legal Attaché and gave the address of the U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London.

“So what do we do?” Burke wondered.

“They expressed the hope that you’d get on the blower and arrange for a heart-to-heart.”

Burke didn’t hesitate. He called Doherty’s number, straightaway. The inspector put him on hold for what seemed like a very long time, and then, when he came back on the line, suggested that Burke should come down to his office the following afternoon.

“If it’s all the same to you, I could come over right away,” Burke told him. The sooner he cleared things up, the sooner the firm would reopen – and the better it would be.

The receiver crackled with an emphatic Tsk! “I’m afraid that won’t work for us,” Doherty told him. “Tomorrow afternoon would be the earliest. Would three o’clock be convenient? Pearse Street?”

“I was hoping-”

“Yes, well, I’m sure you were but, entirely on the q.t., of course, your man Kovalenko’s awfully keen on this d’Anconia fellow. I’ve just this minute had a chat with him, while you were holding, and I can assure you he’s determined to meet you in person. So that’s something we can all look forward to!”

The next day, Burke went to the precinct house with his passport, which he’d been asked to bring. An identification tag was glued to his lapel, and he was escorted into Inspector Doherty’s small and messy office.

Two men waited inside. The smaller of the two was a sandy-haired fellow with the frail physique of a heavy smoker. This was Inspector Doherty “in the flesh” (or what there was of it). The second man was Ray Kovalenko. Six-two and solidly built, his even features were embedded in a pink complexion above a tiny, purselike mouth.

Kovalenko gestured to an empty chair, and everyone sat down. Burke assumed a helpful look, turning his face from one man to the other, but neither of his interlocutors seemed in any hurry to begin.