channel in, thereby usin? the tide to my advantage.”
“If I were guessing,” I volunteered, „I?d say he or she dumped the gun fast, as soon as they reached
the end of the walk. There were witnesses who heard the shot from fairly close by.”
“Thank you, sir,” Baker said formally. “I?ll keep that in mind.”
Fully dressed with mask and tanks, he could have modelled for a Hollywood monster, an enormous
black bulk peering like an owl through his face mask. He clambered down the side of the fishing pier,
vanished into the fog, and a moment later splashed into the water fifteen feet below us.
“If you got somethin? t?do, might?s well get on with it,” Whippet said, stuffing snuff under his lip.
“This?ll most likely take a while.”
Stick and I groped our way through the fog, found a coffee shop, and took on breakfast.
“1 got a crazy idea,” I said.
He started to laugh. “Is that supposed to surprise me?” he asked. “Shoot.”
“This is a real long shot, but how about checking the local gun shops. Start with the better ones. See if
Donleavy, Seaborn, Raines, Sutter, or Logan, owns a .38 or something close to it.”
“Raines?”
“He?s got a wife,” I said, without looking up from my eggs.
“Cover all the bases, don?t you old buddy?” he asked coldly.
“No one is immune,” I answered, just as coldly.
“I thought murder was off our beat.”
“Anything that relates is our beat,” I said. “Humour me on this, I?ve got an idea.”
“Okay, you?re humoured. Want to tell me what it is?”
I gave him the short version of the idea before we were interrupted.
Charlie One Ear arrived bringing with him the autopsy reports on all the victims up to and including
Tony Lukatis and Stitch Harper.
“The same gun killed Tagliani, Stinetto, O?Brian, Harper,” he told us. “A .22. All of them shot to hell
and gone except for Lukatis. He was shot only once, back of the head, with a .337. A .223 removed
Stizano and his people.”
“Coup de grace,” I said.
“What?” Charlie One Ear asked.
“Just thinking out loud.”
“So what else do you think?” he said.
“What I?ve always thought. We got an M-16, probably with a forty-millimetre grenade launcher
mounted on it, that takes care of the Stizano massacre and Draganata. We got an American 180,
