Paulie gestured toward a table at the far corner of the wooded picnic grove. “Snag that table, okay? I’ll be right out.”
By the time Paulie approached the table with a metal tray laden with food, Preble had rearranged his face into its usual composed expression. As soon as he sat down and before taking a bite, Paulie launched into the speech he’d rehearsed all morning.
“I asked to meet you alone because I need to ask you some indelicate questions. I want you to level with me.”
Preble peeled the paper wrapper from his straw and poked it into his milkshake. “Go ahead.” He held the cup, but made no move to drink.
“Has your pal Kenny been lying to you, too, or just to the cops?”
Preble paled under his Casco Bay tan. “What are you talking about?”
“Why have you been playing dumb about the Desmond disappearance? You’re tight with Coatesworth. He’s on the cops’ short list of key players. Why have you been acting like you don’t know shit, when it’s obvious you know a hell of a lot?”
Preble ran his fingers through his well-barbered hair. “I do know a lot. More than I should know. But I’ve been sworn to secrecy because spilling it—especially to a newspaper reporter—could get people killed.”
Paulie sat back, making no effort to disguise his skepticism. “Ah. Someone might get killed? Who might that be? And who’d be doing the killing?”
Preble rubbed his eyes then looked skyward, as though trying to spot a rare bird in one of the surrounding trees. “Nobody else figured you for such a dog with a bone on the Desmond story. I told ’em you were relentless, but they figured once you’d been yanked off the story, you’d let it go.” He chuckled, but it didn’t sound like a laugh at all.
“Who’s ‘they’?” Paulie asked. “Coatesworth and his buddies?”
“Yeah, his FBI buddies.”
Paulie shifted on the picnic table bench and crossed his arms. “Start from the beginning, please.”
“Only if you swear not to print it.” Putting his hand in the air, he edited himself. “Actually, I need you to swear you won’t tell another soul what I’m about to tell you.”
“It does a reporter no good to have information he can’t put in his stories.”
“When you hear what I have to say, you’ll understand the reason for the ground rules.”
“Gee, I forgot. Someone might be killed. You have no idea how often people in the know tell reporters they can’t talk or someone will get beat up, or killed. Almost never happens.”
“Authority that you are, I’m sure you’ll agree the odds of it happening increase when there’s mob involvement. That’s the case here.” Jay Preble’s expression was dead serious. “I won’t say anything else about it unless you give me your word you won’t share this information with anyone, much less write about it.”
“How about if I corroborate it with another source?”
“Nobody else will be able to corroborate this.” Preble picked up a hamburger, took a bite and chewed slowly. “It’s beyond hush-hush.”
Paulie barely was able to keep his irritation under control. “Okay, I’ll agree to your rules. But you’d better tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And don’t leave out any details.”
Preble took another bite of his cheeseburger, which Paulie assumed was a stall while the banker decided what to divulge. After what seemed like a prolonged chew, Preble used a paper napkin to wipe a smear of ketchup from the corner of his mouth.
“Coatesworth was lying to the cops when he told them he hadn’t seen Desmond for a long while before he disappeared. In fact, Ken had been with Desmond that very morning, working on a personal project. But he didn’t want the FBI to know about that matter, so he lied. And they figured out he was lying in about ten seconds.”
“I already know all of that. I want to know why he lied, and whether he’s stopped lying.”
“He didn’t want to be exposed. Not as a killer, but as a man with a big-time gambling problem.”
“That’s not a huge surprise,” Paulie said. “How bad?”
Preble set his hamburger down.
“Kenny’s got a flat-out compulsion to gamble. He started out playing penny ante poker in high school, later added sports betting and horseracing to his list of hobbies. His enthusiastic wagering brought him into contact with some rather unsavory characters. They didn’t show their teeth at first. He didn’t mistake the mob guys for friends, but he thought they had an understanding. That turned out to be a big mistake.”
Paulie hadn’t touched his own lunch. “Go on.”
“Ken didn’t have enough money to get himself in real trouble until he’d finished up his business degree and got a good job at the mill. That’s when the men who run the high-stakes games sent word through the grapevine that Kenny would be welcome at their tables. He couldn’t resist. Before he knew it, he was neck deep.”
“So he began embezzling money from the mill to cover his debts.” Paulie presented the accusation as a statement, not a question.
“No way.” Preble snagged an onion ring. “Kenny’s a marketing genius but there’s no way in hell he’d know how to embezzle. He had no idea Desmond was skimming when he asked for his help.”
“What do you mean, Ken asked George for help?”
“Everybody at the mill knows Desmond is a whiz with finance. Kenny had a big debt to the mob and he had this idea that if he went to them with a payment plan, they’d let him off the hook.”
A dubious look on his face, Paulie motioned with his hand like an impatient traffic cop urging a dawdling driver through an intersection.
“If he had any sense, he would have come to me. I’m a banker, after all. But he was embarrassed, figured rightly that I’d insist on loaning him money to pay off the shark. So he went to his colleague instead, not realizing Desmond had his own secrets. They crunched numbers for a couple of hours that Saturday morning and came up with a plan that would have been plausible if the creditor was anybody but the mob.”
Preble peeled the lid off his cup, swirled the melting milkshake and took a sip. “The gentlemen who run the gambling racket don’t play by customary commercial rules.”
“Did he talk Desmond into presenting this business proposition to the mob guys?”
“Kenny’s a stand-up guy. He wouldn’t put Desmond in the middle of his problem.”
“But he did put him in the middle, and nobody’s seen poor George since.”
“Poor George.” Preble put the lid back on his milkshake. “You’re a sucker, Finnegan, you know that? Still convinced Desmond’s the victim even though all the evidence points the other way.”
“I’m saying if the mob guys connected George with Ken, it might have had something to do with his disappearance.”
“The mob guys had no idea Desmond helped Ken concoct his payment plan. When they showed up at Ken’s office that afternoon, Desmond had been gone for hours.”
Paulie relaxed his shoulders, which he’d been holding tense, to be ready in case he needed to throw a punch. “What do you think happened to Desmond?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. The FBI believes he took off because he figured his embezzlement was about to be found out. We’ve established that the skimming began about two years ago, when Eddie Talcott got sick. Poor guy wasn’t able to keep up with things, got lax about reconciling the accounts. Desmond must have seen Eddie’s illness as an opportunity to put his hand in the till. At some point—no one can recall exactly when—Desmond volunteered to take over account reconciliation duties, telling Ed he’d lighten his workload. Sweet little scheme, eh?”
“If George did abscond with the mill’s money, why would he choose that particular Saturday?”
“Good question.” Preble glanced at his watch. “Unfortunately, no one has f
igured out the answer. Maybe Eddie said something that made Desmond think he suspected. Or maybe Desmond had amassed enough of a nest egg, figured he’d get while the getting was good. All I know is Kenny Coatesworth wasn’t stealing money from the mill, and he’s damn sure the mob brutes who were pressuring him never even knew George Desmond’s name.”
“The FBI guys believe this story?”
Preble picked up a wilted onion ring.
“After he passed a lie detector test and they verified some details with their organized crime people, the feds came to the conclusion Ken was not only telling the truth, he had considerable value because of his knowledge of the gentlemen who run the gambling racket.”
“Coatesworth’s telling tales about the Maine mafia? He’s got bigger balls than I would have guessed.”
“Not just the Maine fellas. The Boston mob too. And he’s not just spilling what he knows from past experience. I’m serious when I say lives are on the line here. Baby-faced Ken Coatesworth, up-and-coming marketing executive, is a confidential informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Paulie’s mind was racing to fit the new facts into the larger puzzle. “How come you know all these details?”
“I’ve been the inadvertent matchmaker. Ken spilled his guts to me a week ago. He knew the FBI didn’t buy his original story and was sure they’d be back to talk with him again. He didn’t know what to do. After loaning him the money to pay off his gambling debts, I got him a sit-down with Wellington. He told the truth then, a damn good thing because they’d pretty much decided his lies meant he had something to do with Desmond and the money going missing.”
“Are you sure he didn’t?”
“I’m positive,” Preble said. “Absolutely positive. And so is the FBI. Now he’s putting his own life on the line, helping them infiltrate the mob.”
Embarrassed that his instincts were so off-base, Paulie swung his legs around and stood up from the picnic table, sweeping his uneaten lunch back onto the tray. “Thanks for coming all the way out here.”
“I know you’re hot to break a big story, show up the FBI.” Preble shrugged. “But it looks to me like Wellington’s been right all along.”
He put his hand out, forcing Paulie to juggle the tray into his left hand.
“I’m glad you talked with me instead of calling Kenny,” Preble said. “That would have been terribly awkward. Obviously, he’s under order not to talk with anyone about all of this.”
Paulie nodded, unable to think of anything to say.
“Remember, this conversation was strictly off the record,” Preble said. “Lives depend on it.”
Paulie sat in his car long after Preble left the parking lot. Though he hadn’t eaten, he felt like he was going to throw up. He thought he’d been about to break the story, only to find he’d been excavating a damn rabbit hole. At least he wouldn’t have to tell Jake Stuart he’d had his head up his ass, because he wasn’t supposed to be near the Desmond story in the first place.
He fought the urge to turn north instead of south out of Thurman’s parking lot, tempted to leave the Chronicle, his stupid beat, his empty bed and Jay Preble’s know-it-all attitude behind.
He detoured instead to the Portland waterfront and made his way to the Bog, where a half-dozen serious drinkers were the only customers at one-thirty in the afternoon.
“Shot and a beer,” he said when the bartender approached. He threw the whisky back, feeling it burn a path to his empty stomach. Neither the shot nor the beer took the edge off his humiliation, so he asked for another. On the verge of a third he caught himself. His father had been a man who drank during the workday, and the booze ate his liver before he was fifty. Paulie dropped some bills on the bar and left, finding when he stepped onto the sidewalk that it had started to rain.
* * *
No one seemed to notice that Paulie was wet, late or half-drunk when he got back to the newsroom. Invisibility went with his new territory. He approached the city desk.
“I’m caught up. You have a story for me?”
Jake Stuart looked at him over half glasses. “School budget story finished?”
“As soon as I get a call back from the finance guy verifying a few minor details.”
“Tell Lucy you’re up for obits then,” Jake said, turning his eyes back to his work.
Paulie walked back to his desk, back straight, head up. He’d remain on the outs for a while. Maybe another week, maybe another six months. His term in purgatory would be shorter if he didn’t whine about it.
In the course of the afternoon he took two calls from Riverside undertaker Heck Finagle. A fellow named Albert “Chicky” Belanger, a 74-year-old retired firefighter, was the subject of the first obituary. Paulie called his widow to get more details about the decedent’s avocation, playing fiddle in the local French-Canadian dance band, Fils du Quebec.
The second call alerted him to the death of Miss Edith Milton, who’d been his third-grade teacher at South Portland Heights Grammar School. He learned several things about Miss Milton he’d not realized as a kid. She had a twin brother who was killed in World War I. She was a devoted Red Sox fan. And for all of her adult life she lived in the West End of Portland with her good friend Miss Adele Rogerson, who survived her.
In between his obituarial duties Paulie jotted in the notepad he’d dedicated to his surreptitious Desmond work.
JP’s inside scoop—can’t go there. Where from here?
As the clock inched toward a deadline he wasn’t racing to meet, Paulie rolled a sheet of paper under the platen of his typewriter and tapped out in narrative form detailed notes of his conversation with Preble. He wasn’t wasting time, he told himself. When the Desmond story came together, he’d have the details at his fingertips.
Preble might think it was a high-level secret that Coatesworth wound up an FBI informant in the course of proving he didn’t have anything to do with Desmond’s disappearance. For now, it was privileged information. But the FBI was too busy to enforce the vow of silence forever, and even the mob would move on. One day there’d be a break in the Desmond case, and Paulie would have a perspective on the story nobody else would have.
At quarter past five Jake Stuart barked his name. There was a fire in Riverside, a three-bagger in a warehouse on Pine Street. Before hustling out the door, Paulie folded up his typewritten notes, used a paper clip to fasten them to the back of a random notebook, and shoved it in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Chapter Thirty-One
Friday, July 18, 2014
Riverside, Maine
When I left for Portland, Lou had barely stirred in her fleece bed. A dog door allows her access to a small fenced part of the yard, but shuffling around a twenty-by-twenty pen is no substitute for a walk through the neighborhood. She’d been cheated several times in the past week because of my around-the-clock work schedule. I needed to make amends.
Lou was barking when I cut the Subaru’s engine, a sound so unusual I thought at first it must be another dog. But it was Lou, her body pressed against the gate, demanding my immediate attention.
“Hey girl, what’s got you so excited?” I reached down to scratch between her ears and saw a two-by-four braced across her dog door, two of the wooden deck chairs pinning it against the wall of the house. Lou quaked against my knees. For a few seconds my mind struggled to understand. The realization hit me like a brick between the eyes. Someone had been in my house, perhaps still was.
In two strides I was across the deck. The screen was closed but the interior kitchen door was open. I was sure I’d closed it behind me when I’d left. Halfway through the kitchen my hand found the iron poker that hangs next to the woodstove.
“Whoever the hell’s in here better show yourself with your hands up. I’m armed and dangerous.”
I stomped into the living
room.
Nobody there. Stepped into the den. Empty. Nearly kicked the bathroom door off its hinges, but no one was hiding in the shower, either. Taking the stairs two at a time I checked both bedrooms and their closets. Nada. Adrenaline still flooding my system, I thumped down the basement steps. No one was crouching in the shadows behind my work bench or in the little cubby where I stored my skis and suitcase.
When I got back upstairs Lou was still outside, and barking again. Residual fright, apparently, because no one was on the deck or in the yard. Dismantling the makeshift barricade that kept Lou in the yard while the burglar was in the house, I brought my distraught dog inside and gave her some food and water.
“Who put you outside and made you stay there?” I rubbed her shivering back, trying to calm both of us. “Somebody tangled up in this damned story, I’ll bet. We’re gonna have to start locking our house.”
Knowing another distress call to the Riverside PD would tie me up longer than I could afford, I did a bit of deep breathing and undertook a more systematic examination of my home. After fifteen minutes, having stood in the middle of each room and turned in a slow circle, I felt certain whoever had been in my house was no ordinary burglar. My laptop, television and DVR player were untouched. Drawers hadn’t been rifled, at least not in an obvious way. A pickle jar half full of change was still sitting on the den bookshelf. But a pile of paperwork on an adjacent shelf had been examined and moved. And the kitchen trash was gone, bag and all.
Struggling to recall if I’d thrown away anything relevant to the Desmond case since the last time I dumped the trash, I sat down at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands. For the past week, I’d been operating on less than five hours of sleep a night. Coffee and the promise of a big story were carrying me through, but in that moment I felt strung out and punchy. The last thing I needed was to worry that someone was burgling my house or hurting my dog.
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