Black Diamond

by John F. Dobbyn

  He was starting to sweat, which in this case was a good sign.

  “Tell me, Hector. Are Boyle and Scully the problem?”

  The struggle was cutting lines in his forehead. “If I say it, they’ll find out. They’ll know it came from me.”

  “If you don’t say it, and I stir the pot with those two, they’ll assume it anyway. They know you’re our client. Where else would we get the information?”

  Now he really went into the jitters.

  “You don’t know what he’s like. Scully. Some of us have families. You have to leave that part alone, Mr. Knight.”

  “Nothing would please me more. But I can’t. What do you know about Danny’s daughter, Erin?”

  He looked surprised at the jump shift. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll lay it out for you. She’s been kidnapped. She was taken before the race. You said Danny was acting funny. Did he say anything about it?”

  Hector went into a complete shutdown. He just froze up. I knew it would take verbal dynamite to get what I needed. I nodded to Mr. Devlin and stood up. I put all my hopes into one exit speech.

  “Get this, Hector. I may be stumbling around in the dark, but I’m going to go on stumbling till I find that little girl. If that causes Scully and the rest to assume the word came from you, then the chips will just have to fall as they may. I won’t mention your name, but you’re no dummy. I’ll do my best for you, even without your help, but my number one is Danny’s daughter.”

  Hector’s eyes were the size of half-dollars when Mr. D. and I headed for the door. We didn’t look back. It was Hector’s voice that stopped us at the door.

  “Mr. Knight. Please. Come back.”

  “Not unless there’s a reason.”

  He waved us back to the chairs. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who’s behind the race fixing? Is it Boyle?”

  His voice started in a whisper, but it was enough. “Yes.”

  “Was Scully the contact with the jockeys?”

  “Yes. He brought a couple of others the first time. I don’t know their names. They roughed a few of us up to show they meant business.”

  “When was that?”

  His voice was getting stronger. “About a year ago.”

  “How often did they make you fix races?”

  “First it was every couple of months. It’s been every month for the last four months. It’s getting more frequent.”

  “Same time each month?”

  “Yes. So far. Always around the fourteenth.”

  I looked at Mr. D to see if that rang any bells with him. He just shook his head to let me keep rolling.

  “How did they pay off the jockeys?”

  He looked around out of instinct, although there were just the three of us there.

  “Scully gave me the money. I gave it to the jockeys he told me to.”

  “Not all of them?”

  “Only the ones with horses that had any chance of winning.”

  “The day Danny died. Was that race fixed?”

  “Yes. I was supposed to win.”

  “Was Danny in on the fix?”

  There was a hesitation I didn’t understand, but he answered the question. “No. His horse ran like a cow in the workouts. He didn’t have a chance.”

  I still wondered how Black Diamond turned into a speed horse overnight. I made a mental note to follow it up.

  “Now to the most important part, Hector. Did Danny tell you about the kidnapping of his daughter before the race?”

  “No. Like I told you. He just acted funny. He was jumpy, tense. We didn’t talk to each other.”

  “Did he say anything at all about Erin?”

  “No.”

  I looked to Mr. Devlin to see if anything was overlooked. He just shook his head. We left with little more than we came in with, but at least the spotlight was clearly on Boyle and Scully.

  The rest of that Tuesday went by like molasses. I was filled with an emptiness that ran deeper than any I’ve ever known. Even Danny’s death took second chair to an almost hopeless concern for little Erin.

  I busied myself with phone calls and coffee breaks. There was a brief due in a week in another case, but I couldn’t focus enough gray cells to put it together.

  Just before Julie left for the day, she took a phone call. She came to the door of my office to say it directly.

  “He didn’t give his name. He didn’t want to talk to you. He just wanted me to give you a message.”

  “And the message was?”

  “Michael, I don’t like this. I got chills just listening to that voice. I think you should ignore it.”

  “Julie, I can’t ignore it if I don’t hear it. What’s the message?”

  “He just said, ‘Tell the lawyer. Last pew, right side, Saint Anthony Shrine, Arch Street. Tonight, six thirty.’”

  “That’s it? Did he mention the name, Erin?”

  “That’s all of it. He hung up. If you want my advice, which you don’t, don’t go there.”

  “No Problem, Julie. I know who it is. He’s harmless.”

  I never lie to my secretary, except when it’s necessary to subdue her mothering instincts. This time, it took a bit of method acting. I was sure it was Scully, and no one had called him “harmless” since he left the crib.

  By six thirty, the sun was well down. The Franciscan Friars who administer what is locally know as the Church on Arch Street a few blocks from our office had said the last Mass for the day. The back of the church was in a hushed darkness and empty except for a few late drop-ins and homeless dozers.

  I welcomed the comforting peace that pervades that church. It was an antidote to the sense of personal dread I felt for both myself and Erin. I took a seat a couple of pews from the rear on the right side and settled into an internal communication with the Lord to whom I prayed for something to break the standstill.

  Five minutes into the first rest I’d felt in days, a low voice behind me that sounded like gravel and sandpaper brought me straight up.

  “Sit down, lawyer. Keep lookin’ straight.”

  I did. “What is it, Scully? Are you going to kill me here in church?”

  “You’ll probably be dead before this ends, but not at my hand.”

  Since my question had not been rhetorical, the answer unclenched my fingers a bit on the front of the pew.

  “Then what do you want? Like you said, you’re holding the cards.”

  “Not me. I’m not your problem. I want out.”

  I went from the last prayer I thought I’d say on this earth to a state of total confusion.

  “Out of what? And what have I got to do with it?”

  “Just listen. I’m no choirboy. I’ve done things that might shock the father over there in the confessional. But I’ve got my limits.”

  “Such as.”

  I could hear him shifting around on the pew behind me. He leaned forward until I could feel his breath.

  “I had no part in kidnapping the girl.”

  “Really. Wasn’t that you staking out the Ryan’s house the day I came there?”

  “I followed orders. I was told to watch the woman to see if she went to the police. That’s all.”

  “Whose orders? Boyle didn’t even recognize the Ryan name. I thought you worked for him.”

  “I’ll say what I’ve got to say, and no more. Boyle had no part in the girl either.”

  “Then who did? Who am I dealing with?”

  “I don’t know all of it. And that’s the truth. I can give you a name. That’s my part of the deal.”

  “What deal? Why the change? The last time we met you nearly decapitated me.”

  “I want no part of the doin’s with the little girl. But you with your nosin’ around. You’ll suck me into the whole business till you brand me a kidnapper and worse. Like I said, I want out of the whole thing.”

  The ground was shifting under me so fast I could hardly catch up. At that moment, I only knew I’d promise
anything for a name that could lead me to Erin.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “They say you’re an honorable man, lawyer. I’ve asked. I want your word that I’ll not be tarred with things I’ve never done.”

  My conception of Scully was rocked by his use of the word “honorable.” I knew there was something below the surface that hadn’t come out yet.

  “You have my word in exactly those terms. If what you said about Erin is true, you’ll have nothing to fear from me.”

  “Fair play. Then I’ll give you what I’ve got, little as it is, and remember I’ve done it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s not here. The day she was taken, they took her out of the country for safekeeping.”

  “Where?”

  He leaned still closer. “I’m just sayin’ what I picked up from their talk. They took her to Ireland. Dublin.”

  That was a numbing blow to think of her that far away. “Who took her?”

  “I’ll give you a name. It’s all I have. I heard it last night. Seamus McGuiness. Killarney Street, somewhere in the north of Dublin.”

  “Who are these people?”

  I heard a stirring behind me as he stood.

  “I’ve said what I came to say. But I’ll give you this. You’d be better off against ten of me than any one of them.”

  I heard him move away. I spun around and grabbed the end of his coat.

  “What happened, Scully? Something happened to turn you around.”

  He looked back at me. “I’ll have no part of their doin’s. That little girl—”

  “What? What did you hear about Erin?”

  He jerked his coat out of my hand. He sidestepped to the end of the pew. I thought he was going to leave without a word. I pierced the silence with a whisper that must have been heard at the altar.

  “Scully, if I find her, will I find her alive?”

  He turned around. He looked me in the eye, and he drove a dagger through my heart with one word.

  “No.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I got up Wednesday morning with a headache, a cold, and a decision. The cold was the result of walking through a drenching, chilling rain on nearly every paved street in Boston the night before until I could come to a decision. It came in two parts. The first part was that I clearly lacked the stone-cold callousness it would have required to take the last vestige of hope away from Colleen. Could I, on my worst day, summon the nerve to tell her that she would not even be able to kiss her baby one last time and lay her to rest with God? That she was just gone? I don’t think so. It may come to that, but not today.

  That led to the second part. If only to give her the chance for that last goodbye, I had to find what they’d done with Erin’s body. That meant that the decision to go to Dublin was a fait accompli.

  Since I was still awake at five thirty a.m., I substituted a shower and a breakfast of Motrin and black coffee for a night’s sleep. I knew that any flight to Dublin would leave in the evening. That gave me the day to pull together any leads I could squeeze out of my slim sources for cracking the shell in a foreign country. I was working around an appointment at eleven, and missing that one was out of the question. Colleen had arranged for a funeral service for Danny at their parish church—family only. That included me.

  By six a.m., I was at the backstretch at Suffolk Downs. I still could not shake the feeling that Black Diamond’s part in that race was linked to the kidnapping of Erin.

  I caught Rick McDonough right after his briefing of his exercise riders. I held two cups of that good rich mud they serve for coffee at the backstretch shack. That was enough to sidetrack him to the rail for a couple of quiet words.

  “How’s Danny’s wife, Mike?”

  I couldn’t answer, just thinking of how completely devastated she’d be if she knew that both Erin and Danny were lost to her. A simple head shake conveyed the word that she was not on top of the world.

  Rick just looked into his coffee cup. I knew how deeply this tough old cowboy was wrung out by Danny’s death.

  “I need some information, Rick. I’m probably stepping on toes, but I have to do it. This is for Danny.”

  The old man turned around and leaned against the rail. He looked me dead in the eye. “To hell with them all. For Danny. What do you want to know?”

  “Black Diamond. You said he was sent over from Ireland. Where in Ireland?”

  “There’s a place west of Dublin called The Curragh. It’s in County Kildare. Lot of horse farms there. This one raises just Thoroughbreds. It’s a small operation as near as I can tell. I don’t know a hell of a lot about it.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Dubh Crann Stables. It means Black Tree.”

  “You speak the language, Rick?”

  I got the first half smile. “I got trouble enough with English.”

  “Who contacted you?”

  “His name’s Kieran Dowd.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Dammed if I know. We did the whole thing over the phone. I don’t think he ever came over here.”

  I walked over to lean on the rail beside him so we could lower our voices.

  “What was the deal, Rick?”

  He wiped his face with a hand grown oversized from a life of pulling on reins and halters. I’d seen him make that gesture every time he was wrestling with a decision.

  “They deliver the horse. I train him. Enter him in that race on MassCap day. That was it. We keep a third of the winnings and anything we can make on a bet. It looked good at the time.”

  I moved even closer, because this was the touchy part.

  “Rick, what was good about it? His breeding is mediocre, to be generous. His workouts were the pits. I could practically beat him on foot.”

  He gave me a sideways look with a trace of a grin that died as soon as it was born.

  “You don’t know what we’ve been through, Mike. This stable’s on its last legs. These are not the days of Miles O’Connor. Look down that row.” He pointed his chin to the stables.

  “There’s not a one of them that’s not nursing swollen knees, biting shins, hot ankles. I can’t run any of them more than once in six weeks. When I do, they barely cover the hay bill.”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m not griping. It’s the life I chose for the good days and bad. But this deal came out of the blue. I thought maybe lightning could strike.”

  I could have said, “Based on what?” I could have asked out of what miraculous depth the Diamond pulled the burst of speed he showed in that race. But I’d asked it before and got no answer.

  It was around nine thirty when I caught Mr. D. on his way out of the office.

  “I’m walking up to Federal Court, Michael. Walk with me.”

  He caught a good look at me in the elevator.

  “Good Lord, Michael. Have you been to bed this week?”

  “It’s just a little cold. It’ll pass. I need your help with something.”

  He gave me his immediate you-name-it nod, and then his serious look. “This involves little Erin, doesn’t it? Any news?”

  The question tightened the bands around my heart again.

  “Yes.” I just shook my head.

  “Dear God, you don’t mean—”

  I could only nod.

  “Have you told Danny’s wife?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How did you hear?”

  I filled him in on my meeting with Scully.

  “Can you trust his word?”

  “About as far as I could throw City Hall. But I think he was on the level this time. That’s what I want to talk to you about. I have to go to Dublin.”

  If it were anyone else, I’d have had to paint the rest of the picture. Mr. D. understood without words. He just said, “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to get together with Billy Coyne. We both know he’s holdi
ng back on what’s really behind indicting Hector. I still think there’s a connection with Erin. He might have something that could give me some leverage over there.”

  We reached the street. Mr. D. was going to cross Franklin toward the Water Street entrance to Federal Court. He stopped before crossing and took out his cell phone, one of his few concessions to the twenty-first century. He hit one of the numbers on speed dial. While it was ringing, he looked back at me.

  “Meet us for lunch, Michael. Twelve thirty.”

  “Will he do it?”

  “I’m going to invite him to Locke-Ober’s. My treat. He’d have had lunch with Osama Bin Laden on those terms.”

  The funeral service for Danny at eleven was brief, but about as personal as you could get. As an orphan, Danny had no family. Nor did Colleen on the East Coast. It was just Colleeen and me and Father Mack, who had known Danny and Colleen since he had married them. The brevity of the service was Colleen’s request until she was up to arranging a more inclusive memorial service. There may have been a shortage of people, but there was no shortage of tears, prayers, and memories.

  True to Mr. D,’s prediction, Billy Coyne met us at Locke-Ober’s for lunch. I watched him savor the last morsel of his lobster Savannah in silence. He slowly wiped from his lips the evidence of the best meal that public servant had had in recent memory and sat back.

  “Now, Lex. Will you tell me what it is I’ve been so elegantly bribed to disclose?”

  The word “bribe” could be used in jest with ease between those two old warhorses since neither was susceptible to the slightest breach of ethics the word suggested. It did, however, bring down the curtain on the continuous flow of Irish banter that had pervaded the meal. The low tone of Mr. D.’s voice opened the second phase.

  “Billy, I want you to listen with both ears to what Michael has to say. I want you to consider who’s saying it. You know you can trust my word to the limit. I’m putting my word behind what Michael’s offering.”