Black Diamond (21 page)

On that note, I saddled up and drove to Suffolk Downs.

Alberto Ibanez rode a roan gelding in the second race and came in fourth. I caught the attention of his groom just after Alberto had handed him his saddle and straps to get ready for the next race. The groom hesitated, but finally walked close enough to me to take a slip of paper I held close to the rail. There was no one close by, but eyes were everywhere.

I was standing by the rail in the paddock when the jockeys mounted up for the next race. Alberto was on number six, and when he rode by me on the way to the post parade, he never looked in my direction. He just smiled at some imaginary person across the paddock from me and mouthed the word, “
Viernes
.”

As he rode past, I kept my eyes glued on his hands while he tied the traditional jockey's knot in the reins. I knew what I was looking for. His only hand motion that had nothing to do with the knot was a quick flashing of four fingers close to the horse's mane.

I could suddenly sense the distinct clicks of a couple of puzzle pieces dropping into place. My note to Alberto had said that the
time we talked about was now. I needed to know when Boyle was going to fix the next race. Alberto had cautiously told me in Spanish that it was to be Friday, the fourth race.

It was no trick to get the phone number of Fidelity United Trust. The trick was to penetrate the web of protective isolation provided by the staff surrounding Colin Fitzpatrick himself.

I resorted to my fallback. When in doubt, fly direct, and tell the truth—to some extent.

I worked my way through a series of holds and transfers from clerks and underlings with patience and determination until I hit the highest level I could reach with the unvarnished truth—Mr. Fitzpatrick's appointments secretary. To go the final distance, the truth needed a bit of varnishing.

Ms. Paxton's creamy-smooth tones sugarcoated the steel-clad blockade she maintained against anyone who presumed to invade the privacy of the man himself.

“Ms. Paxton, My name is Michael Knight. I'm a junior partner in a firm that is totally irrelevant to the business or pleasure of Mr. Fitzpatrick. And yet, I would like you to push that little button in front of you to interrupt his doings with the financial giants of the world in order to shoot the breeze with me.”

That was the truth. And clearly the truth would have gotten me a disconnect faster than I could blink. Obviously, I didn't say that. Instead, I repackaged the truth and took a slightly different tack.

“Ms. Paxton, my name is Michael Knight. I'd like you to tell Mr. Fitzpatrick that I'm going to lunch now.”

“I'm sure he'll be absolutely delighted, Mr. Knight. Should I alert the city desk of the
Globe
?”

I liked her already.

“No need. But there's more to the message.”

“Are you about to disclose your dinner plans as well?”

“You're too kind. Insignificant as my little message sounds, it is more important than you can imagine that you tell Mr. Fitzpatrick
immediately that I will be having a sandwich on the bench in the Public Garden in front of the swan boat dock.”

“I'm sure he'll be thrilled for you, Mr. Knight. Must I convey the type of sandwich?”

“Kind of you to think of it. But no. That won't be necessary. Just one more detail though. And this is the crux of the message. I have news regarding a certain Seamus McGuiness that's more important than any stock quote he'll hear all day. Will you convey that?”

“I shall interrupt his conference call with the German and Swedish ambassadors immediately to inform Mr. Fitzpatrick of your luncheon plans.”

“Ah, Ms. Paxton, I detect a note of levity in your voice. And to be perfectly honest, I could fall in love with you for it. Any day but today. You know that tired, overused expression a matter of life or death? Clichéd as this will sound, this is exactly that. But you won't have to explain that to Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

     Within fifteen minutes, I was seated alone on a bench in the Public Garden. It would have been a center of tourist activity if it were swan boat season. Summer tourists from far-flung regions like to see where
Make Way for Ducklings
took place.

As it was, I sat warding off a chill, looking at the quiet pond where my parents and those of practically every other Bostonian had treated their children to the gently paddled cruise around tiny islands, throwing bread in the direction of ducks smart enough to swim in their wake.

The chill was partly weather and partly the jitters, wondering what I'd say to this behemoth of finance if he did show up, which was looking less likely every minute. Passersby were few at that time of year. I matched every one of them against the profile I had formulated for Mr. Colin Fitzpatrick. I was praying that the name, Seamus McGuiness, would penetrate the air of triviality with which our Ms. Paxton would deliver the message—if in fact, the message got through at all.

Twenty minutes and half a sandwich later, I noticed the brisk pace of a tall, pinstriped suit, tailored impeccably to a man with snow-white hair and an air of self-confidence and New York urgency about every movement. The whitish, pinkish tint of his clear skin clearly bespoke a Celtic ancestry.

His eyes remained fixed on the pond, but there was a deliberateness about his taking a seat at the far end of my bench. He simply sat in silence.

My gaze also stayed on the pond. Between bites of sandwich, I broke the silence softly.

“Mr. Fitzpatrick, I presume.”

I hoped he caught the allusion to Stanley's greeting to Dr. Livingston to set a high tone to the conversation. Apparently not.

“What is it this time?” The tone was heavily salted with something between anger and disgust.

“This time, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”

“What does McGuiness want now? I can guess, but I'll give you the pleasure of telling me. How much?”

I slid a paper bag with the label of Zaftig's Delicatessen across the bench. I had dispatched Julie to the bowels of Brookline for two of Zaftig's world-famous corned beef specials. He cast a disdainful eye on it, but never moved.

“Corned beef special on rye, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Even New York can't beat Zaftig. Surely I haven't met the first Irishman who didn't like corned beef. I'm not McGuiness's man.”

He looked across at me. A slight tint of surprise joined the anger and disgust. “Then who are you?”

“I'm probably the one person on this globe who can offer you the possibility of relief from the monkey on your back. I have no connection with McGuiness.”

“Then this is not about money?”

“Actually it is, in part. But it's not about extortion.”

He looked back at the pond as if to cut me out of his sight. You could practically taste the loathing for me and all he thought I represented.

“Really. And what do you call it?”

I gave it a few seconds. “Why don't we stop playing the naming game and get to the point, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”

He just nodded, but he was radiating a seething heat. “McGuiness is dead.”

That brought a slightly startled look in my direction.

“And I suppose you take up where he left off?”

“I've told you twice now. I'm not connected with McGuiness.”

“Then who the hell are you? And what do you want? As if I didn't know.”

“What I want is ten minutes of your time. Where we go from there is your choice.”

For the first time, he looked
at
me instead of
through
me. On the other hand, we were clearly not buddies.

It was showdown poker time—all the cards faceup. He was a man who played for high stakes as a profession. Intuition told me that if I strayed one inch from the truth, I'd sever the thinnest of all possible threads.

I laid out everything I knew, beginning with Danny's fall and ending with all I'd learned in Ireland. Then I got to the thin-ice part.

“Here's what I think. For some reason beyond my understanding, you sent a lot of money over to Ireland to support the IRA during the years they were bombing innocent people in London and Northern Ireland. It probably went back to the eighties and nineties. That was a major crime in this country—supporting an illegal terrorist organization. That was then. The so-called cause must have ended when England and Ireland reached a peaceful agreement in the late nineties. My understanding is that it's been all diplomatic relations since then. I've read that even Gerry Adams tried to squelch the bombing and shooting wing of the IRA. Am I right or wrong so far?”

“You have a warped view, but I'm listening.”

“Then let's get personal. You still send shipments of money to those thugs over there. They don't represent a cause anymore, except their own bank accounts. So now it has to be extortion. They've probably got you by the throat. You keep paying or they turn you in for supporting an outlawed rebel gang in the old days. It sounds like a never-ending gravy train.”

He looked at his watch and stood up.

“Young man, you had my curiosity. Now you're just annoying. You clearly have no idea whom you're dealing with.” He walked toward me until he stood nearly touching my knees. “If you think you
can jump on that gravy train, let me put it straight. No room for doubt. If you ever contact me again, or anyone else on this subject, I'll crush you into tiny pieces. Disbarment will be the least of your worries. Do you hear me?”

I stood up. Our heights brought us eye to eye. It took every ounce of will to look into those pools of hatred and not blink.

“I hear you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Now you hear me. This morning, you personally took a valise of money to the North Station. You put it in a locker and left the key with the man at the newsstand. It will be picked up by one of Boyle's men and delivered to whoever replaces McGuiness. From there it goes to those Irish thugs, probably some of what's left of the IRA.”

The details brought the seething heat in his eyes to a boil. I had to hold fast against an avalanche of temptation to cut and run.

“The locker number was five twelve. I can prove all of that. And if you can pry your ears open, I'll tell you for the fourth time.
I'm not here to extort your money
.”

He might have heard me for the first time. Anyway, he froze in place.

“Then what the hell do you want?”

“Exactly what I said. I want ten minutes. Stand, sit, stand on your head. I don't give a damn. But listen to me. You may be surprised.”

The fire in his eyes could have ignited a conflagration. But he stood there for a full ten seconds making a decision. Swallowing orders from this juvenile delinquent must have gone against everything he'd been conditioned to in half a century. But he was still there. I waited until the internal blaze subsided.

“We could do this more easily sitting down, Mr. Fitzpatrick. We don't have much time.”

The decision did not come easily, but he sat down in the middle of the bench.

“They say ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' On that score, I'm your friend. I'm convinced that to defend the jockey I told you about, I have to crack the wall of that Irish mob that controls the
horse. I have reasons to believe it's the same bunch that's been extorting you.”

He just stared at me in silence, but the steam pressure seemed to be slightly diffused.

“I want your help, Mr. Fitzpatrick—and thirty thousand dollars.”

That brought his head around, and the steam was back.

“Just sit there, Mr. Fitzpatrick. I said I want it. I'm not demanding it. I'm going to explain why I need it and what I'll do with it. Then you make the choice. You're in or you're out. If you opt out, it's the last you'll see of me.”

He still looked suspicious, but he hadn't moved. I took it as an invitation to get to the details.

Before I lost him, I explained quickly how I'd begun to see the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I laid out how I planned to use his money in as much detail as I'd been able to work out. The payoff line was that if I could pull it off, I might have the answer to who killed Danny, and he might have the extortionists off his back.

When I finished talking, he leaned back. For the first time he looked at me as if he were sizing me up without a preconceived prejudice. I only knew that he was still there, and he wasn't glaring at me like the embodiment of Satan. I was the first to break the silence.

“Mr. Fitzpatrick, could I ask you a question? Answer it or not as you wish.”

“What?”

“I think you're a good man. I'm literally betting my life on that. Back then, how could you give money to the terrorists in the IRA?”

He shook his head. I think it was at the incongruity of his bothering to explain anything to this juvenile. He stood up and looked back at me.

“Do you have any Irish blood in you, Knight?”

“I do. My paternal grandmother was Irish. Her parents came over from County Waterford. My Irish blood is usually at war with the Puerto Rican blood on my mother's side.”

He half laughed, which was a first. His body language was still speaking tension, but for the first time he was speaking the words rather than spitting them out between his teeth.

“Do you know when it started? What the Irish call the Troubles?”

“No.”

He sat again on the edge of the bench. He checked his watch against whatever was pressing him to just leave.

“Why do I bother? You obviously couldn't care less. On the other hand, maybe you should understand why your great grandparents probably risked their lives on a famine ship to come over here.”

“I'm interested.”

“Then listen. Two kings fought for the English crown and control of all Ireland in sixteen ninety. The Battle of the Boyne River in Ireland. Every hear of it?”

“Not really.”

“I thought not. The Catholic King James was beaten by the Protestant King William. Most of the people in the south of Ireland were Catholic. From that time on, they were subjugated in their own land. William and the rest of the kings of England that followed him took the best land from our people to give it to their English favorites. Your ancestors and mine were reduced to the poverty of dirt-poor farms and heavy taxes paid to the lords of the manors. I'm compressing a hell of a lot of history here.”