Black Diamond (15 page)

I checked a local phonebook for the address of the stable Rick mentioned, and within half an hour of entering the region, I was at the gate of a stone-walled facility with the name posted: D
UBH
C
RANN
S
TABLES
.

I pulled up to the guard at the gate. He came out of his little enclosure with an attitude that said that he functioned more as a blockade than a reception committee.

Before he could speak, and without removing the mirrored sunglasses I donned for the occasion, I said without looking at him, “I'm here to see Kieran Dowd.”

I remembered that as the name of the man who arranged for Rick McDonough to train Black Diamond. It was a slender thread, but the only one I had.

I could see the guard eyeing the Jaguar. I stepped out of it to give him a full view of the conservative Italian wool suit I wore for the occasion. I bought the suit a year previously for a price that could only be called obscenely outrageous, but it had been my ticket of admission to some dangerously impenetrable places over the year. The whole package was put together to suggest that this was not someone to blow off without a hearing.

His attitude relented slightly when he asked, “What name?”

I still didn't look at him. “It doesn't matter. He doesn't know me.”

“I need a name.”

I glanced at him casually. “Mention Seamus McGuiness.”

It was the only name I'd gotten from Vince Scully.

The guard walked away and spoke into a phone attached to his little guardhouse. Whether the car, the suit, or the name, tripped the trigger, I have no idea, but the heavy electric gate swung open. The guard pointed out a cobblestone drive that led to a row of stables.

“You'll find Mr. Dowd just beyond the stables at the exercise track.”

I drove over the cobblestones to within six feet of a totally bald man, probably in his fifties, looking intently at a stopwatch. He was leaning his short, chunky frame against the middle rail on the outside of a racetrack that would have been the envy of Suffolk Downs. A small number of Thoroughbreds were engaged in breezing, galloping, or cooling out in different sections of the track.

I spoke through the open window of the Jaguar. “Mr. Dowd, I think perhaps we can do business.”

He looked at the car and then at me. His entire expression was a question mark.

“You want to work with me?”

“No.”

I got out of the car. He all but felt the Italian wool with his eyes. I took off the sunglasses and made eye contact.

“I may want you to work
for
me. I like what you did with Black Diamond. You may be of use to us.”

He smiled and turned back to the horses on the track. “I don't know what you're talking about, young man.”

I walked to the rail beside him with a smile as if at a private joke.

“‘Young man' is it? I guess that'll do for now.”

He looked back at me with a squint. “Who the hell are ya?”

“I take it you've heard of Seamus McGuiness.”

“Do you work for Mr. McGuiness?”

“No.”

His curiosity was turning to aggravation. “Then why're ya takin' up my time?”

“McGuiness works for me. I occasionally find him useful.”

His stunned look lasted only an instant. He pulled out a cell phone. “And suppose I call Mr. McGuiness. He'll back you up, will he?”

I looked down at him with every ounce of detachment I could muster. “No, Mr. Dowd. He'll say he never heard of me in his entire life.”

He had that stunned look again. I went on. “Go ahead. Call him. I want to hear this. If he admits to the slightest recognition of me or anything connected with me, it'll be the last time you'll be able to speak with him on this earth.”

He slowly closed the cell phone. “What's your name anyway?”

I shrugged. “What's the difference? There's no one you can check it with. Do you want to stop playing name games and hear what I'm here for?”

He just gave me a blank look.

“Good. Then here it is. You have a fairly tight operation, Mr. Dowd. What's your first name?”

“Kieran. And what is your name?”

“It still doesn't matter, Kieran. I'm impressed with how you handled Black Diamond. That was a good test. But you should know you're wasting your time.”

“I'm what?”

I bent down and picked a stick off the ground. I drew a horizontal line in the dirt below us, and handed the stick to Dowd.

“Go ahead, Kieran. Write the amount you made on the deal with McGuiness for Black Diamond.”

He just looked at me. I grabbed the stick back and wrote below the line, × 10. I handed it back to him. “Go ahead. It's easily erased. It's just dirt. Write the number.”

He took the stick and wrote 50,000 euros. It was probably a lie, but no matter. I took the stick back and did the multiplication times 10 and wrote 500,000.

He looked me straight in the eye, this time with a combination of curiosity and greed. “What're ya talkin' about?”

“McGuiness is chicken feed. You can't get blood out of a turnip. And you can't get interesting money out of Suffolk Downs.”

“And what're ya suggestin'?”

“I'm suggesting you'd do well to serve the interests of someone with contacts at every major track in the United States.”

“You're talkin' about purses for winnin' races.”

“Of course not. You're still thinking about chicken feed. I'm talking about wagers placed at the maximum odds with every syndicate in America. That takes connections.”

“And you have the connections?”

“So far we're just breezing here. I'd like to see a level of interest on your part.”

“Meanin' what?”

“Your operation can be improved before we throw the real dice. I need details. Let's talk about Black Diamond.”

I got an instantaneous twinge in the stomach. I might have started reeling him in before I'd really set the hook. I was getting nothing but confused looks from Kieran.

“I'm waiting, Kieran, and I've never been known for patience.”

“Let me think about it, mister.”

“You see that gate I drove through. In ten seconds you're going to see the rear end of this Jag drive through it again. It's the last you'll see of me personally. I have to admit, though, I'm not comfortable leaving you with this much information and no commitment.”

Kieran was no dimwit. He read fluently between the lines. I could see it register in his eyes.

“What do you want to know?”

“Let's start with the obvious. Black Diamond had no breeding and dismal workouts when he left Ireland. Somehow he acquired blazing speed during that race. Fill me in.”

He looked around although we were the only ones in sight. “He had the speed all right, if not the breedin'. We knew it from the time he was a colt. He's another Seabiscuit. With just as much heart. If the real times got out, he'd have been even-money odds. Less.”

“So?”

“So we let the racing press in here to clock him when we wanted to. We'd run him till he was tired, cool him out, and saddle him up again. Then we'd bring the press boys to the rail, and he'd put on a show. He never gave less than all he had, but by then he didn't have much. They'd report the slow times in the racing press.”

“And what about Suffolk Downs? He had to be breezed and galloped there. Why wasn't he noticed?”

“I don't know. All I know is this side of the pond.”

“And again, how much did McGuiness pay you?”

He stuck to the lie. “Fifty thousand euros.”

That was what I came for. He answered the question I didn't ask. I needed confirmation that it was Seamus McGuiness behind the whole Black Diamond business. I could feel one more piece of the puzzle slip into place.

I left Kieran Dowd with the vague suggestion that I'd be in touch with him when I had all the ducks in a row—whatever that meant.

It was near six when I got back to the hotel. One call to the Boston office served to bring Mr. Devlin up to date and to ask Julie to book me onto the morning flight from Dublin to Boston. Mr. D. gave me the name and number of an attorney with one of the large law firms on Federal Street who handles international civil law. I was surprised and pleased to hear that it was a law school classmate, Charlie DiSilva, a smart lawyer and one I could trust.

Not to lose time, I called Charlie from Dublin and gave him the background and what I needed. He wanted Colleen's phone number to arrange to take a sample of her DNA to compare it to the child's after exhumation. I gave him the number, but asked him to delay contacting her until I had a chance to break the news about Erin. I put that at the top of my list of things to be faced when I got back.

I also gave both Charlie and Eoughan each other's phone numbers so that they could coordinate directly. Eoughan thought that he could get a hearing on his motion for exhumation within a week. The DNA comparison and motion to release the body for shipment home could take another week.

That done, I invited Ten Sullivan for a last pint or two at Mulligan's Pub on Poolbeg Street on the south side of the River Liffey. It was in the center of the city, but far enough out of Ten's neighborhood that he wouldn't be known by everyone from the owner to the men's room attendant. I needed a bit of privacy.

We were into the third pint by the time I broached anything
related to my other reason for being in Dublin. I had no intention of sandbagging him, but I needed information that would most easily flow in an atmosphere of relaxed companionship.

“Ten, I keep running into this name, Seamus McGuiness.” I was looking at his features. “Look at that. Even you flinch when I say the name. Who is he?”

He was smiling when he took a long draught of the bitter ale. “That wasn't a flinch, Michael. Just a surprising shift of subject matter.”

He took a long breath that came out in a deep sigh. “What can I tell you about Seamus McGuiness?” He seemed to say it to himself.

“Everything. I need to understand him. He was probably behind the kidnapping and death of that little girl. I can't go after him now. I have too many fish to fry already. But I may need to learn the truth to defend a client.”

“Ah, the little girl. I'm sorry for you all on that score. And you could possibly be right about Seamus being involved somehow. But I'll give you this from the heart. It'll shock the piss out of me if you find that he was.”

“Really. So far, everything points in that direction. Why would you be shocked?”

Ten waived a big arm at the bartender with two fingers up. The bartender drew two more and brought them to the table. I sipped, while Ten took a swallow that brought the level down by three inches.

“You can't know what it was like during the Troubles, Michael. And I can't explain it to ya. You're too young, and you weren't here. In those times, we could be in church. We could be in a meeting. We could be at home. And you never knew if the building would be blown to hell. It could be kids on the way to school, and a rain of bullets at someone else would cut them to pieces. You're feelin' a loss for the little girl, Michael. Well there was hardly a family that hadn't lost more than one. And that on both sides. Seamus himself
lost his wife and two little ones. The hatred was that thick you could cut it with a knife. The only thing you could seem to feel in those days was hatred, and fear, and loss of someone you didn't think you could live without. Shite, Michael, the devil had a holiday every day of the week.”

He stopped for a swallow of ale and a quelling of emotions too close to the surface.

“I understand, Ten.”

“No you don't. But no matter. What I'm about to tell you is not to be talked about. Not here, or back home, or anywhere. Do you hear me?”

“You have my word.”

He nodded as if he put stock in that.

“Seamus McGuiness was a soldier. I'll not say what organization, but he was on the side of the Catholics. He did his share of the fightin'. And I'll not deny that any number of her majesty's troops would be alive today if it weren't for Seamus McGuiness. But there were others in his group—”

He took another pause. I was taken back by how close to the surface old emotions lay in this man of the ring.

“There were some in those days who lost their souls without losin' their lives. And some of them are among us today. No conscience left in them at all. They have nothing left to fight for but their own greed and pleasures.”

He leaned over the table toward me. “But not Seamus McGuiness.” His eyes almost bore holes through mine. “I'll give you one story, and so help me God, Michael, if you ever repeat it—”

“Never, Ten. My hand to God.”

“It was years ago. It was the height of the Troubles. There was to be a Protestant march on a street that divided the two sides. It was to be kept secret until the day of the march, but one of our—one of the boys on the Catholic side got wind of it. There was a meetin'. Some of the boys took their march as a brazen slap in the face, but what to do about it? There were going to be children and
women in the march. Most of the boys said to hell with it. Let ‘em march. There were others, not many, said no. It's a matter of honor. Shite, there was no honor in any of it. But it's a great word for the killin'.”

“Was McGuiness there?”

“Will you let me tell it, Michael? Yes, he was there. He heard the plannin'. A few of them were gonna throw bombs from a certain rooftop to kill anyone, any age, in that crowd of marchers.”

“Was Seamus in on it?”

“Not by a damn sight. He faced every one of them to a man. He asked them to their face what the hell they'd become. He asked them, if they could do that to children, what kind of a country they'd be makin'. And it did not one damn bit of good. When they left that meetin', Seamus knew exactly who was going to do what in spite of him.”