He stared out the window, almost entranced, and said, ‘An Irish name. . . Lonnigan . . . Harrigan . . . ah, I’ve got it. Corrigon. That was it, Corrigon.’
‘You wouldn’t have any idea where he is today, would you, Colonel?’ Livingston said.
Martland nodded slowly. ‘In prison. Federal prison. Court-martialled. Accused of murder and grand theft, tried, and convicted. I was there. Sketchy evidence really. Mostly circumstantial. Never would have held up in a civil court y’know. But in courts martial a man is guilty until he proves his innocence.’
‘And the four million in gold?’
‘Yes?’ Martland said.
‘What happened to it?’
‘Oh, God only knows.’
‘You mean the army just wrote it off?’
‘It was wartime. Four million dollars was . . . really nothing at all. 1 should guess . . hnnnm . . . probably charged off to the operational budget of the OSS, although military intelligence might have had to split it. I was gone before that was all settled.’
The room was quiet. Martland seemed to be drifting away from the conversation.
‘I have one more question,’ Livingston said, but Martland did not answer. ‘Colonel?’
‘Ah, yes?’
‘How were the other Americans identified after all those months?’
‘Dog tags. Personal belongings. No question about it. Ah, and one other thing. A Thompson gun issued to the man Corrigon was found in the grave. It was the most damaging piece of evidence against him.’
Sharky said, ‘Can you think of anything else about Scardi?’
Martland reflected a few moments and said, ‘Oh, it was exciting, having an American gangster there with us. He was quite a celebrity. Quite a celebrity.’ Then he fell silent again and this time his gaze became almost glassy.
Sharky stood up. ‘Well, thank you, sir. You’ve been a great help.’
‘I did well, then, eh?’
‘Yes, sir. You did well.’
Martland turned to the portrait. ‘Hear that, Miriam. My memory’s just as good as ever. Takes a while now, but it all comes back, my dear. It all comes back.’
And he sat on the crate, his shoulders beginning to sag, his gaze fixed on another time, the memories reflecting in his faded eyes, a time of mirror-shined shoes and white gloves, of chin straps and marching orders echoing through the barracks and tattoo in the late afternoon.
They drove for ten minutes without speaking. It was Sharky who finally broke the silence.
‘It was like turning on a tape recorder, listening to some- one dictating his memoirs. AU of a sudden it would just pour out, like rote.’
‘He’s probably told that story a thousand times in the last thirty years, all about the wonderful American gangster.’
‘Yeah, and probably word for word.’
‘I feel sorry for the old coot,’ Livingston said. “The army’s all he’s got left and it ignores him, letting him hang around long enough to make general, so he can get a few more bucks in a pension he’ll probably never spend. Shit.’
‘What about Scardi? This Opstitch thing?’
‘Anybody thinks Angelo Scardi didn’t have a hand in a four-million-dollar ripoff ought to be committed.’
‘But why wasn’t that obvious to the army?’
‘You heard what the old boy said. Four million in gold was just a piss in the ocean. All they needed was a fall guy so they could close the book on it, charge it off on some budget. Jesus!’
They drove another block in silence and Livingston said, Go down Spring and turn into Carnegie Way.’
‘Where we headed?’
‘The public library. Best place I can think of to get a photograph of Scardi.’
Sharky waited in the car while Livingston went inside. Lie was gone for almost half an hour and when he returned was carrying a large manila envelope. He got into the car and took out a photograph and laid it in Sharky’s lap.
‘There’s the face to go with the name,’ he said.
Sharky stared down at it. It was a copy of a newspaper photo of a man seated at a table surrounded by reporters and photographers, his hands splayed out in a gesture f innocence. But the look was there, in the vapid stiletto face, the hawk nose, the dead eyes, the humourless grin on thin, cruel lips, the slick black hair. It was a face that was easy to hate and Sharky’s anger welled up anew, stirring his lust for retribution, an almost perverse passion that overwhelmed him, swelling in his groin, churning in his stomach. At that moment Sharky could easily have killed Scardi with his bare hands.
Livingston took Xerox copies of several clippings from the envelope.
‘I ain’t gonna bore you with a lot of details,’ Livingston said, ‘but I thought you might like to get a taste. This
