Lawrence Block - When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

"And?"

"Lee David Cutler was in Donnybrook, a BrianFriel play that ran the last week of May and the first week of June. I recognized his picture before I saw the name under it. And I recognized his cousin's picture, too. The family resemblance is even stronger when they're not wearing disguises. In fact it's unmistakable. Maybe that helped them get the parts, since they're not regular members of the rep company. But they played two brothers, so the resemblance was a definite asset."

"Lee David Cutler," Skip said. "And what was the other one's name? Something Atwood."

"Gary Atwood."

"Actors."

"Right."

He tapped a cigarette on the back of his hand, put it in his mouth,lit it."Actors. They were in the play on the ground floor and decided to move up in the world, is that it? Being there gave them the idea to hit Morrissey's."

"Probably."I took a slug of coffee. The Wild Turkey bottle was right there on the file cabinet, and my eyes were drawn to it, but right now I didn't want anything to take the edge off my perceptions. I was glad I wasn't drinking, and just as glad that everyone else was.

I said, "They must have had a drink upstairs once or twice in the course of the run of the play. Maybe they heard about the locked wall cupboard, maybe they saw Tim Pat put money into it or take some out of it. One way or another, it must have occurred to them that the place would be easy pickings."

"If you live to spend it."

"Maybe they didn't know enough to be afraid of theMorrisseys. That's possible. They probably started planning the job as a lark, making a play out of it, casting themselves as members of some other Irish faction, silent gunmen out of some old play about the Troubles. Then they got carried away with the possibilities of it, went out and got some guns and staged their play."

"Just like that."

I shrugged. "Or maybe they've pulled stickups before. There's no reason to assume Morrissey's was their debut."

"I suppose it beats walking people's dogs and working office temp," Bobby said. "The hell, an actor's got to make a living. Maybe I ought to get myself a mask and a gun."

"You tend bar sometimes," Skip said. "It's the same idea and you don't need props for it."

"How'd they get on to us?"Kasabian asked. "Did they start hanging out here while they were working at the Irish theater?"

"Maybe."

"But that wouldn't explain how they knew about the books," he said. "Skip, did they ever work for us?Atwood and Cutler? Do we know those names?"

"I don't think so."

"I don't either," I said. "They may have known the place, but it's not important. They almost certainly didn't work here because they didn't know Skip by sight."

"That could have been part of the act," Skip suggested.

"Possibly.As I said, it doesn't really matter. They had an inside man who stole the books and arranged for them to ransom them."

"An inside man?"

I nodded. "That's what we figured from the beginning, remember? That's why you hired me, Skip. Partly to see that the exchange went off without a hitch and partly to find out after the factwho it was that set you up."

"Right."

"Well, that's how they got the books, and that's how they got on to you in the first place. For all I know they never set foot inside Miss Kitty's. They didn't have to. They had it all set up for them."

"By an inside man."

"That's right."

"And you know who the inside man was?"

"Yes," I said. "I know."

The room got very quiet. I walked around the desk and took the bottle of Wild Turkey from the top of the file cabinet. I poured a couple of ounces into a rocks glass and put the bottle back. I held the glass without tasting the whiskey. I didn't want the drink so much as I wanted to stretch the moment and let the tension build.

I said, "The inside man had a role to play afterward, too. He had to let Atwood and Cutlerknow that we got their license number."

Bobby said, "I thought the car was stolen."

"The car was reported stolen. That's how it got on the hot-car sheet.Stolen between five and seven p.m. Monday from an address onOcean Parkway."

"So?"

"That was the report, and at the time I let it go at that. This afternoon I did what I probably should have done off the bat, and I got the name of the car's owner. It was RitaDonegian."

"Atwood's girlfriend," Skip said.

"Cutler's.Not that it makes a difference."

"I'm confused,"Kasabian said. "He stole his girlfriend's car? I don't get it."

"Everyone picks on the Armenians," Keegan said.

I said, "They took her car. Atwood and Cutler took RitaDonegian's car. Afterward they got a call from their accomplice telling them that the plate had been spotted. So they called in then and reported it as having been stolen, and they said it had been taken thus and so many hours earlier, and from an address way out onOcean Parkway. When I dug a little deeper this afternoon I managed to establish that the report of the theft hadn't been called in until close to midnight.

"I've got things a little out of sequence. The hot-car sheet didn't carry the name of the Mercury's owner as RitaDonegian. It was an Irish name, Flaherty or Farley, I forget, and the address was the one onOcean Parkway. There was a phone number, but it turned out to be wrong, and I couldn't pick up any listing for the Flaherty or Farley name at that address. So I checked Motor Vehicles, working from the plate number, and the car's owner turned out to be RitaDonegian with an address onCabrini Boulevard, which is way up inWashingtonHeights and a long ways fromOcean Parkway or any other part ofBrooklyn."

I drank some of the Wild Turkey.

"I called RitaDonegian," I said. "I represented myself as a cop checking the hot-car sheet automatically, making sure what cars have been recovered and what ones are still missing. Oh, yes, she said, they got the car back right away. She didn't think it was really stolen after all; her husband had a few drinks and forgot where he parked it, then found it a couple blocks away after she'd gone and reported it stolen. I said we must have made a clerical error, we had the car listed as stolen in Brooklyn and here she was in upperManhattan. No, she said, they were visiting her husband's brother inBrooklyn. I said we had an error in the name, too, that it was Flaherty, whatever the hell it was. No, she said, that was no error, that was the brother's name. Then she got a little rattled and explained it was her husband's brother-in-law, actually, that her husband's sister had married a man named Flaherty."

"A poor Armenian girl," Keegan said, "gone to ruination with the Irish. Think of it, Johnny."

Skip said, "Was any of what she said true?"

"I asked her if she was RitaDonegian and if she was the owner of a Mercury Marquis with the license number LJK-914. She said yes to both of those questions. That was the last time she told me the truth. She told a whole string of lies, and she knew she was covering for them or she'd never have been so inventive. She hasn't got a husband. She might refer to Cutler as her husband but she was calling him Mr. Donegian, and the only Mr.Donegian is her father. I didn't want to push too hard because I didn't want her to get the idea that my call was anything beyond simple routine."

Skip said, "Somebody called them after the payoff. To tell them we had the plate number."

"That's right."

"So who knew?The five of us and who else? Keegan, did you get waxed and tell a roomful of people how you were the hero and wrote down the plate number? Is that what happened?"

"I went to confession," Billie said, "and I told FatherO'Houlihan."

"I'm serious,goddammit."

"I never did trust the shifty-eyed bastard," Billie said.

Gently, JohnKasabian said, "Skip, I don't think anybody told anybody. I think that's what Matt's leading up to. It was one of us, wasn't it, Matt?"