Goodbye California - Alistair [76]
‘What in the hell –’ Another shout and another hiatus in the conversation while Donahure attended to the right hand side of his face. The blood was now flowing freely from his mouth and dripping on to his shirt-front. Ryder transferred the revolver back to his right hand.
‘Who’s your paymaster, Donahure?’
‘LeWinter.’ A strangely gurgling sound: he must have been swallowing blood. Ryder regarded him without compassion.
Donahure gurgled again. The ensuing croak was unintelligible.
‘For looking the other way?’
A nod. There was no hate in Donahure’s face, just plain fear.
‘For destroying evidence against guilty parties, faking evidence against innocent parties?’ Another nod. ‘How much did you make, Donahure? Over the years, I mean. Blackmail on the side of course?
‘I don’t know.’
Ryder lifted his gun again.
‘Twenty thousand, maybe thirty.’ Once more he screamed. His nose had gone the same way as Raminoff’s.
Ryder said: ‘I won’t say I’m not enjoying this any more than you are, because I am. I’m more than prepared to keep this up for hours yet. Not that you’ll last more than twenty minutes and we don’t want your face smashed into such a bloody pulp that you can’t talk. Before it comes to that I’ll start breaking your fingers one by one.’ Ryder meant it and the abject terror on what was left of Donahure’s face showed that he knew Ryder meant it. ‘How much?’
‘I don’t know.’ He cowered behind raised hands. ‘I don’t know how much. Hundreds.’
‘Of thousands?’ A nod. Ryder picked up the polythene folder and extracted the folder, which he showed to Donahure. ‘Total of just over five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in seven banks under seven different names. That would be about right.’ Another nod. Ryder returned the papers to the polythene folder. If this represented only Donahure’s rake-off, how much did LeWinter have safe and sound in Zurich?
‘The last pay-off. Ten thousand dollars. What was that for?’ Donahure was now so befuddled with pain and fright that it never occurred to him to ask how Ryder knew about it.
‘Cops.’
‘Bribes to do what?’
‘Cut all the public phones between here and Ferguson’s house. Cut Ferguson’s phone. Wreck, his police band radio. Clear the roads.’
‘Clear the roads? No patrols on the hi-jack van’s escape route?’
Donahure nodded. He obviously felt this easier than talking.
‘Jesus. You are a sweet bunch. I’ll have their names later. Who gave you those Russian rifles?’
‘Rifles?’ A frown appeared in the negligible clearance between Donahure’s hairline and eyebrows, sure indication that at least part of his mind was working again. ‘You took them. And the money. You –’ He touched the back of his head.
‘I asked a question. Who gave you the rifles?’
‘I don’t know.’ Donahure raised defensive hands just as Ryder lifted his gun. ‘Smash my face to pieces and I still don’t know. Found them in the house when I came back one night. Voice over the phone said I was to keep them.’ Ryder believed him.
‘This voice have a name?’
‘No.’ Ryder believed that also. No intelligent man would be crazy enough to give his name to a man like Donahure.
‘This the voice that told you to tap LeWinter’s phone?’
‘How in God’s name –’ Donahure broke off not because of another blow or impending blow but because, swallowing blood from both mouth and nose, he was beginning to have some difficulty with his breathing. Finally he coughed and spoke in a gasp. ‘Yes.’
‘Name Morro mean anything to you?’
‘Morro? Morro who?’
‘Never mind.’ If Donahure didn’t know the name of Morro’s intermediary he most certainly didn’t know Morro.
Jeff had first tried the Redox in Bay Street, the unsavoury bar-restaurant where his father had had his rendezvous with Dunne. No one answering to either of their descriptions had been there, or, if they had, no one was saying.
From there he went to the FBI office. He’d expected to find Delage there, and did. He also found Dunne, who clearly hadn’t been to bed. He looked at Jeff in surprise. ‘So soon. What’s up?’
‘My father been here?