Catch as Cat Can (14 page)

“That's what you did?” Sunny asked.

“That's what a lot of guys in the market did,” Neil said. “But when I brought Jimmy into the market, we didn't threaten to blackball people at the country club like the so-called legit brokers did. We smacked heads.”

Sunny stared. “As simple as that?”

Neil smiled. “You ever hear the saying, ‘The market is driven by fear and greed?' Well, we used fear. After getting roughed up, a lot of those big, bold masters of the universe peed themselves and fell in line. As for greed, a lot of them wanted to know what their cut would be.”

“That's all you needed to make a lot of money.”

“Oh, there are more wrinkles. We could use offshore accounts to buy stocks at special low prices for foreign investors. Then we'd sell it to make big profits.” Neil went silent for a moment. “At least Jimmy the Chopper made big profits. The rest of us got crumbs. At first I figured he brought the money into the deals.”

And the leg-breakers,
Sunny silently added.

“But as time went on, I realized I was never going to see much out of this. Maybe you've heard another saying about the market, how there are bulls, bears, and pigs. Jimmy really turned into a pig. He wanted tribute, he wanted kickbacks, and he thought the market was like his turf. We had a situation where another crew was trying to sell short on a stock we were playing with, driving down the price when we wanted it to go up. They leaned on one of the brokers we had, um, persuaded to help us, and Jimmy went crazy. I saw him lose it completely and order a hit on the guy.”

“That's how you wound up in witness protection?” Sunny asked.

“That, and the fact that I knew where a lot of Jimmy's money was parked,” Neil said. “Jimmy should have had a sit-down with the other crew rather than start shooting. But instead he had to be a pig about it.”

And some broker got killed,
Sunny thought
. A crooked broker, but he got killed.

“Still, I'd have probably kept my mouth shut, but he took the one legitimate thing I had and ruined it,” Neil went on. “I used my little cut from all these various deals to open a restaurant. It was a nice little place. I know a lot about fish, I had some recipes, got a good chef, and we were doing
pretty well. But Jimmy wouldn't leave us alone. He started hanging out there, with all his friends. They drove off the other customers. And Jimmy, well, you just couldn't hand him a bill.”

Neil's expression went dark. “Then Jimmy got interested in one of the hostesses, a nice kid trying to make it in Hollywood. That got really dangerous. You don't say no to Jimmy the Chopper. I managed to get her out of town, out to the Valley, but Jimmy wasn't happy. After that, he screwed me on some deals I set up for him.”

“Sounds as though you kind of liked this girl,” Sunny said.

Neil's face softened. “She was a good kid—bright, talented. But she wasn't getting anywhere. I managed to find her a job in a different field. At the time, I was going through a nasty divorce. Then some federal prosecutor thought it was time to do something about the various crews getting involved in the market and decided to make an example out of me.”

His shoulders rose and fell. “I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I let my ex-wife Terry have everything, the house, the restaurant. Then the feds floated the idea of testifying against Jimmy. Hell, what did I have to lose?”

“Everything you were,” Sunny said. “Your name, your family . . .”

Neil shook his head. “My father wanted nothing to do with me after I threw in with Jimmy. My wife just wanted my blood after she got everything else. The only one who might miss me was Abby—the girl I helped. But let's face it, she was better off without me, and in her new line of work, being involved with a mobbed-up guy wouldn't help her
career. I did my best to keep my other business away from the restaurant, and a lot came out in the trial that, well, it wouldn't impress a girl.”

“And you came from sunny California to here.” Sunny glanced through the store's plate glass window to the leaden skies outside. Nothing more had fallen after the ice storm, but the clouds remained.

“Yeah, it's a shock for a guy with thin blood, but I managed. The feds helped out with some money, and I opened the shop here. They keep an eye on me.”

Sunny smiled. “You mean, Val Overton does.”

Neil laughed. “Yeah, she's a real pistol. Makes me wonder what she'd be like if she ever let her hair down. But she's all business with me. They've got her stretched pretty thin, managing a bunch of us witnesses. Got to hand it to her, she works hard—and you wouldn't believe how little money she makes. And what are the guys in Washington doing? Cutting the budget.”

Sunny watched Neil's face.
He seems a lot fonder of Abby than he does of Val,
she thought.
Unless this is all a line of BS.

“Still, you got in trouble,” Sunny prodded.

“Hey, I tried to push the market a little after I got settled in. It should have been good for the local fishermen and for me. I knew the restaurant business. If I could supply some of the big buyers around here, everybody would have benefited.”

“Except Deke Sweeney,” Sunny said. “Will had a talk with him.”

“That guy's a piece of work, from what I hear.” Neil shook his head. “If he had a problem he should have sat down and
talked with me. Instead, he tries to kill me—businesswise, I mean,” he quickly clarified.

“And what about Charlie Vane?”

“I don't know what happened with that guy.” Neil shook his head vigorously. “He was a local contact, a guy who was eager to sell a little off the top of his catch for a better price. I treated him square, but after Sweeney lowered the boom, he kept his distance.”

Sunny took a shot in the dark. “You said you had breakfast with some fishermen the day before Phil Treibholz was murdered. Didn't that include Charlie Vane?”

“He was willing to eat on my dime,” Neil said bitterly. Then he broke off, staring at her. “Hey, he pretty much blew me off, telling me I was on my own. You're not trying to tie him in with Treibholz, are you?”

“They've both ended up dead, and the only thing that seems to connect them is you.”

“That's crazy. Vane always talked about his pirate ancestor, and I figured he chiseled around the edges of some shady stuff. Maybe he got in over his head on some deal, but it wasn't with me.”

“And how about Treibholz?” Sunny pressed. “Will tells me you've been playing dumb about him, but he suspects there's stuff you're not telling him. And now, with Vane getting killed . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

“You can't lump the two of them in together,” Neil protested. “Charlie Vane was small-time all the way. Treibholz was dangerous, dirty as hell.”

“Who was he working for?” Sunny asked the question Will couldn't get answered. “Was it Jimmy the Chopper?”

Neil surprised her by laughing. “No, Phil was afraid of
Jimmy. If he'd been working for him, Phil would have never tried to pull what he did.”

“So who was he working for?” Sunny pressed.

“George Foster, esquire,” Neil replied. “My ex-wife Terry's lawyer. A real lightweight. That's why Treibholz figured he could play the two of us off each other. He tried to put the bite on me. Hell of a time to do it. I was pretty much
broke.”

Sunny struggled to
keep her expression neutral even as her heart began to race. This was something Neil hadn't told Will.
Maybe a little needling will get some more out of him,
she decided.

Curving her lips in a smile, she said, “I wouldn't go telling everyone a story like that. You could wind up with a big, red check mark in the box marked ‘Motive' next to your name.”

Neil made a disbelieving sound. “Come on, you know I'm not that kind of a guy. My big-time criminal career was basically doing market research on small-cap stocks, just like the guys I'd gone to school with. I think my research was better, and we were in a stronger position to push the market—”

By breaking the occasional head,
Sunny thought.

“But in all the years I worked for Jimmy, I never even
touched a gun, much less owned one,” Neil finished. Reluctantly, Sunny had to believe him. Her reporter's antennae were scanning like mad, but Neil came across as rock-solidly telling the truth. He smiled. “When I had to solve a problem, I used money.”

“Fine,” Sunny said, “but you just told me you were broke. That makes it hard to pay blackmail.”

“I just had to come up with some earnest money, to keep playing along until I could get Treibholz's investigation shut down.”

“So you were going to use Val Overton to do it?” Sunny watched Neil carefully and was surprised to see him shaking his head. “Only as a last resort. Yeah, Phil was probably breaking a bunch of federal laws tracking me down. But if Val thought my identity was compromised, she'd be yanking me out of here.”

“And you've come to love Kittery Harbor so much, you couldn't bear to do that?” Sunny figured she managed to dust that with just the right tone of skepticism.

But Neil was surprisingly serious. “I couldn't let this business just go down the pipes. I had too much invested in it.”

“Don't you mean the Feds had too much invested in it?”

Neil laughed, not a happy sound. “You're years out of date on that, Sunny. This isn't the seventies, where a guy like Jimmy Fratianno could dig a million dollars out of witness protection. They've got it down to a science nowadays. Each week you get a modest stipend to keep you going while you find a job and get settled. And then they tell you to bank the Feds' money and live off your paycheck.”

He shrugged. “I've used the payments to live on while
trying to make a real profit here and earn
my
money back. The money I came here with.”

“You just told me you gave everything to your wife,” Sunny pointed out.

“Okay, not everything,” Neil admitted. “The restaurant, the savings and checking accounts, the portfolio. But I always tried to squirrel a little away, for a—I don't know if it's okay to talk about saving for a rainy day when L.A. has been living through a drought for years.”

His smile faded a little. “It would be nice to say I headed east with a suitcase full of bearer bonds. But it was more like a coffee can half-full of hundreds and fifties. Still, it sounds like a lot, until you start shelling out to get a business off the ground.” Neil jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Do you have any idea what that freezer system set me back?” Then he waved his hand. “Better not to ask. The problem is, these expenses soaked up all my ‘buzz off' money.”

Sunny's face must have shown her surprise at hearing such an old-fashioned term, because Neil laughed again. “I'm trying to be polite, Sunny. People usually refer to this kind of fund with two other one-syllable words, and not very nice ones. Besides, I thought that name worked—I didn't know if I would be the one telling people to buzz off, or if I'd be buzzing off myself.”

Well, that's the way it turned out,
Sunny thought.

Neil tried to keep his tone light, but his face was dead serious as he spoke. “If I buzz off now, I'll have nothing behind me. I can't do that, Sunny. My whole life, I've been my own boss.”

“What about Jimmy DiCioppa?” Sunny asked.

“He was just a client, not a boss,” Neil replied.

Sunny nodded. “Things didn't work out so well for you when Jimmy the Chopper started throwing his weight around.”

“You mean, when he decided he was my boss.” Neil frowned for a second. “I rest my case. But look at me, Sunny. Could you see me greeting folks at Big Box, Inc. or wearing an orange apron at Tools R Us? I need my own business, and to do that, I need money.”

“I hear there are these places called banks where you can get a business loan,” Sunny said.

“You try to get a loan recently?” Neil asked.

She shook her head. “Not with my credit rating.”

“It's not just a credit rating. They want your life story, references, financials, everything but your DNA—and that might be coming. Val and her people did a good job of creating a backstory for me, but there's only so far they can go.” He sighed. “And banks want to go a lot farther. Believe me, I've tried.”

Sunny stood silent for a moment. “I appreciate that you're trying to be honest with me, but you're just making your motive for killing Phil Treibholz stronger and stronger. Claiming you've never touched a gun isn't going to cut much ice when it comes to means. And you've got a big fat blank space on your schedule during the probable time when Treibholz got it. That's opportunity. The storm gives you an alibi for Charlie Vane's time of death, but you're a strong suspect in the Treibholz case. Folks around here are going to demand some action, and the sheriff's department may decide that half a loaf is better than none. They could make a case against you.”

Neil scowled, staring sightlessly down at the few fish displayed in his large, no doubt expensive case.

“Suppose I wasn't in town that night,” he finally said.

Bingo!
Sunny silently cheered, but she kept all trace of celebration out of her voice. “And whatever you were doing out of town was worse than being accused of murder?”

“If Val heard about it, I might get yanked—or maybe dumped out of the program,” Neil confessed. “You can't tell her.”

“How do I know until you tell me?” Sunny said.

“Technically, I'm still on parole,” Neil said. “Which means I can't hang around with criminal types. But I had to.”

“Had to?” Sunny repeated.

“If you can't get money from banks, and nobody in the area knows you, the only place you can get money is from criminal types,” Neil explained. “Also known as loan sharks.”

“I know a little bit about them. Not from personal experience,” she hastily added. “But from working with Will.”

“I had to go across the river into Portsmouth to find somebody who could handle the amount I needed.” Neil shook his head. “I spun my case as best I could, but in the end they turned me down. Between the talking and the traveling, I was there a good part of the evening—the evening that Phil Treibholz was murdered.”

“So you do have an alibi, but the alibi will get you in trouble with the marshals and WitSec.” Sunny shrugged. “Will is looking at a murder, and he wants to eliminate you as a suspect. Maybe we can have a private chat with these loan sharks.”

Neil looked a little nervous. “I don't think they'd like having any police looking into their business. And I don't
want this to blow back on me. One of them was as big as a house. The strong, silent type who could twist me into a pretzel.”

That sparked a memory for Sunny. “A foreign gentleman?” she asked.

“Ukrainian,” Neil said. “They have a reputation for playing rough. But the one who did the talking was fairly decent with me.”

“Dani.” It was a good year ago now, but it was hard to forget the Ukrainian loan sharks she'd met while trying to save a friend from getting arrested for murdering her former husband. “And Olek. Danilo Shostak and Olek Lipko.”

Neil stared at her with new respect. “I heard that you helped Will Price investigating crimes, and wrote about them for the paper. But you
know
these guys?”

Sunny shrugged. “You do that kind of stuff, you get around. Where did you meet them?” The last time she'd seen Dani and Olek, they were getting out of town because things had gotten a little too warm for them. Supposedly, they'd gone back to Montreal. Now it looked as though they'd returned to reestablish themselves in this territory.

“Shostak had me meet him in a little hole in the wall down in the artsy-fartsy part of town,” Neil said. “A place called the Cafe Ekaterina.”

Then that's where I've got to go,
Sunny thought.
And the sooner the better. Problem is, how do I get out of here gracefully?

Neil must have seen the change in her expression, because he asked, “Now that you've wrung everything you can out of me, can I interest you in some skate wings?”

“Only if they'll keep till tomorrow,” Sunny told him. “I'll be in to get them then. This evening—well, I'll be busy.”

She escaped from the fish store, got back to her office, and dealt with a few small-scale emergencies while also getting the address for the Cafe Ekaterina. Sunny closed down the office as early as possible, got aboard her Wrangler, and joined the slow stream of traffic to one of the bridges over the Piscataqua River. She crawled along through greater downtown Portsmouth to an area of old factories repurposed as artists' studios.

Driving around through the neighborhood, she finally found the Cafe Ekaterina. It was in a dingy-looking brick building that had probably gone up in seventeen-something, with dim lighting that made it difficult to see through newer but still pretty old plate glass windows. Sunny pulled up by a fire hydrant across the street to check the place out. Obviously, the landlord hadn't done much to maintain the place, saving his money for when the rush of gentrification drove the artists out and put tenants willing to pay big rents into the property. By then the Cafe Ekaterina would probably be pushed out by a Starbucks or some similar chain operation. For the present, it offered a whimsical sign with its name in mismatched letters.

Like a ransom demand.
Sunny pushed that thought out of her head. She was spending way too much time with Will and his investigations.

The door to the cafe opened, and a figure stood silhouetted, blocking most of the doorway. Olek, the muscle end of the loan-sharking operation, had apparently shrunk in Sunny's memory. Looking at him now, the big man seemed
even more enormous. He stepped to the side, reaching into the pocket of a coat that looked like a tweed circus tent, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The brief burst of flame illuminated a face like a kid's drawing, all squares and angles.

So, Olek keeps up his bad habits,
Sunny thought. She'd originally managed to track down the Ukrainians because Olek smoked a brand of cigarettes from the old homeland, available only in one store in the area.

He took a deep drag on his cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke, then abruptly dropped the butt, stubbing it out with his toe. Olek returned inside the cafe. A moment later, a smaller, slimmer figure appeared in the doorway, making a beckoning gesture. Dani. And from the way he was looking at her car, he knew she was there.

Looks as though I have to brush up on my surveillance techniques.
Sunny lowered the passenger side window and waved an acknowledgment. Then she pulled out to find a legal parking spot.

Arriving shortly afterward in the cafe, she scanned a sparse crowd and spotted the Ukrainians sitting at a corner table where Olek had a clear view both of the front door and the entrance from the kitchen. Dani Shostak politely gestured toward a seat. Polite, but judging from the look on his face in the dim lighting, not delighted to see her.

Sunny sat. Like the letters on the sign outside, none of the chairs in the cafe matched one another, and this one wobbled alarmingly when she rested on it. The walls were exposed brick, and a designer might call the tables “distressed.” To Sunny's eyes, they looked just plain worn.

“Miss Sunny Coolidge,” Dani said when she was seated. “Why you come to visit us? I don't think it's because you need money. I think it's because you give something to Olek and me.” His face got cold. “Trouble.”

Sunny shook her head. “Actually, I'm trying to keep trouble away. Unless you want police coming around to ask you questions.”

Dani sat for a second, then said, “Then you are less trouble, Miss Sunny. What questions do you want to ask?”

“I want to ask about a customer.” She raised a hand as Dani began to shake his head. “A person you turned down.”

“The fish man,” Dani said. “I read about the body in his shop the day after he comes here. ‘Oho,' I think, ‘he finds another way out of his trouble—by making worse for himself.'”

Sunny nodded. “The thing is, we do have a time of death. And Neil Garret told me he was here with you when the murder happened.”

Dani scowled down at his cup of cappuccino. “You get people to tell you the craziest things.”

“Believe me, he didn't want to talk about it,” Sunny said. “But being charged with murder was worse trouble.”

Dani exhaled heavily. “All right, then. He comes to me Wednesday evening. Not last night, but a week ago. He asks for twenty thousand. I say no. He says how about ten. Again, I say no.”

“I thought you were in the business of lending money,” Sunny said.

“Lending, not losing,” Dani corrected. “If I lend money, I got to get it back—with interest. This fish man, he tells
me he needs a bridge loan. He can pay me back when Lent comes. Business will pick up.”

He took a sip of coffee and made a face. “Do I look like idiot? How he is supposed to make back twenty or even ten in six, seven weeks? He goes out of business and leaves me holding the sack.”