Goodbye California - Alistair [58]
‘We can narrow it down. To start with, it’ll have to be a large group. Also, a comparatively new group, formed just for this purpose. Say within the past year.’
‘Numbers and dates.’ Resignedly, Dunne made another note. ‘Don’t mind how hard we have to work, do you? Next comes our friend Morro. Not surprisingly, nothing is known about him, as a man, a criminal with an eye-patch and damaged hands, to us or to the police authorities.’
Jeff looked at his father. ‘Susan’s note. Remember she wrote “American?” American, question mark?’
‘And so she did. Well, Major, another little note if you please. Contact Interpol in Paris.’
‘So Interpol it is. Now the notes you took from Donahure. Easy – just meant waking up half the bank managers and tellers in the county. Local Bank of America. Drawn four days ago by a young woman with pebble-tinted glasses and long blonde hair.’
‘You mean twenty-twenty vision and a long blonde wig.’
‘Like enough. A Mrs Jean Hart, eight hundred Cromwell Ridge. There is a Mrs Jean Hart at that address. In her seventies, no account with that bank. Bank teller didn’t count notes – just handed over ten banded thousands.’
‘Which Donahure split up eight ways for eight banks. We’ll have to get his prints.’
‘We got them. One of my boys with the help of a friend of yours, a Sergeant Parker – who, like you, doesn’t seem to care overmuch for Donahure – got them from his office about three this morning.’
‘You have been busy.’
‘Not me. I just sit here running up phone bills. But I’ve had fourteen stout men and true working for me during the night – had to scrape the southern Californian barrel to get them. Anyway, we’ve got some lovely clear specimens of Donahure’s prints on those notes. More interestingly, we have some lovely clear specimens of LeWinter’s too.’
‘The paymaster. And how about the paymaster’s automatic?’
‘Nothing there. Not registered. Nothing suspicious in that – judges get threats all the time. Not used recently – film of dust in the barrel. Silencer probably a pointer to the type of man he is, but you can’t hang a man for that.’
‘The FBI file on him. Still reluctant to tell me about it?’
‘Not now I’m not. Nothing positive. Nothing very good either. Not known to associate with criminals. His open list of telephone numbers would appear to confirm that. From that list he would appear to know every politician and city hall boss in the State.’
‘And you said that he was not known to associate with criminals? What else?’
‘Both we and the police are dissatisfied with some – more than some – of the sentences he has been handing out over the past years.’ Dunne consulted a sheet before him. ‘Enemies of known cronies getting unduly stiff sentences: criminal associates of cronies – repeat, he himself has no direct criminal associates – getting light, sometimes ludicrously light, sentences.’
‘Pay-off?’
‘No proof, but what would you think? Anyway, he’s not as naïve as his minion Donahure. No local accounts under false names – none that we know of, anyway. But we monitor – without opening – his correspondence from time to time.’
‘You’re as bad as the KGB.’
Dunne ignored this. ‘He gets occasional letters from Zurich. Never sends any, though. Keeps his tracks pretty well covered, does our judicial friend.’
‘Intermediaries feeding pay-offs into a numbered account?’
‘What else? No hope there. Swiss banks will only open up in the case of a convicted criminal.’
‘This copy of Ivanhoe that LeWinter had in his safe? And the coded notebook?’
‘Seems to be a mish-mash of telephone numbers, mainly in this State and Texas and what are beginning to look like meteorological reports. Making progress. At least Washington