“No, but she checked the daily deposit tape once out of curiosity and it was in six figures.”
“What! Jesus, Stick, we?re on to something. Just maybe we can get them this time.”
I whistled through my teeth and we laughed and slapped each other on the back and acted like a
couple of high school kids. If Lark was right, Cohen could be moving as much as halfa million dollars
a week or more through the Tagliani accounts.
“It had to be shielded in some way,” Stick said. “That kind of money activity attracts the Lepers like a
petunia attracts a hummingbird.”
I said, “It also means Seaborn has to be involved.”
“So you want to go fishing?”
“Yeah. What I?m really looking for is a Hollywood box, some kind of payoff account.”
“That the tax boys won?t tumble on to?” the Stick said.
“Right.”
“That?s been tried before by experts.”
“Well,” I said, “there?s always somebody who thinks he has a better mousetrap.”
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54
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
Dutch Morehead had a hunch.
When we arrived at the Warehouse, he was sitting with his feet on the desk under the two holes he
had put in the ceiling the night before.
“Did y?see this?” he asked, tossing us the morning paper.
The article was on page 7, circled with a ballpoint pen:
MAN BELIEVED VICTIM OF SHIPWRECK
The story, datelined Jacksonville, went on to say that an unidentified white male had washed ashore
twenty miles north of the resort town the night before. Local police speculated that he was aboard a
trawler believed to have burned at sea three days earlier. Charred wreckage of the boat had been
floating up along the coast for two days. An autopsy was planned and there were no other details. The
item was about three inches long.
“Don?t we have enough trouble?” the Stick said.
“1 already talked to the boys down there” was Dutch?s answer.
“1 guess we don?t,” the Stick replied.
“I got this hunch,” the Dutchman said. It was obvious he was feeling proud of himself.
