Goodbye California

‘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 naive 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 is. There are no specialized Russian cryptographers in California.’

‘Russian?’

‘Apparently. A simple variation — well, simple to them, I suppose — of a well-known Russian code. Reds lurking in the undergrowth again? Could mean anything, could mean nothing. Another reason, I suppose, for the keen interest being shown by the CIA. I should imagine, without actually knowing, that the bulk of Washington cryptographers are on the CIA’s payroll, one way or another.’

‘And LeWinter’s secretary is Russian. Russian descent, anyway. A cypher clerk?’

‘If this were any of a dozen countries in the world I’d have the fair Bettina in here and have the truth out of her in ten minutes. Unfortunately, this is not one of those dozen different countries.’ He paused. ‘And Donahure has — had — Russian rifles.’

‘Ah! The Kalashnikovs. Import permit —’

‘None. So officially there are none of those rifles in the country. The Pentagon do have some, but they’re not saying where they got them from. The British, I imagine — some captured IRA arms cache in Northern Ireland.’

‘And Donahure is, of course, a second generation Irishman.’

‘God, as if I haven’t got enough headaches!’ To illustrate just how many he had Dunne laid his forehead briefly on the palms of his hands then looked up. ‘Incidentally, what was Donahure looking for in your house?’

‘I’ve figured that out.’ Ryder didn’t seem to derive much satisfaction from the thought. ‘Just give me a lifetime and by the end of it I’ll add up two and two and come pretty close to the right answer. He didn’t come because Jeff and I hadn’t been too nice to his stake-out and deprived him of a lot of his personal property, including his spy-van; he’d never have dared connect himself with that. He didn’t come for the evidence I’d taken from San Ruffino because he didn’t know I’d taken any and, in the first place, he hadn’t even had time to go to San Ruffino. By the same token he didn’t have time to go to LeWinter’s for a search warrant either. He wouldn’t have dared to, anyway, for if he’d told LeWinter the real reason why he wanted the search warrant LeWinter might have considered him such a menace that he’d not only refuse such a warrant but might have had him eliminated altogether.’

Dunne wasn’t looking quite so brisk and alert as when they had arrived. He said in complaint: ‘I told you I’ve got a headache.’

‘My guess is that a proper search of Donahure’s home or office would turn up a stack of warrants already signed and officially stamped by LeWinter. All Donahure had to do was to fill them in himself. I’d told him about the dossier I had on him. He’d come for that. So obvious that I missed it at the time. And I’d told him he was so bone- headed that he just had to be acting on his own. So he was, because it was something that concerned only him personally.’

‘Of course it has to be that. The two of them might run for cover.’

‘Don’t think so. They don’t know the evidence is in our hands. Donahure, being a crook at heart, will automatically assume that only crooks would have stolen the money and the guns, and they wouldn’t be likely to advertise the fact. And I don’t think that LeWinter will run either. He’ll have been worried sick at first, especially at the thought of the stolen code-book and the fact that his fingerprints have been taken. But when he’s found out — if he hasn’t already found out — that the dreaded picture of himself and his accommodating secretary has not appeared in the Globe, he’ll have discreet enquiries made and find out that the two men who had come to photograph him were not employed on the Globe and he will come to the inevitable conclusion that they were blackmailers, perhaps out to block his appointment as Chief Justice to the State Supreme Court. You’ve said yourself he has powerful friends: by the same token such a man must also have powerful enemies. Whatever their reason, he won’t be scared of blackmailers. Blackmailers wouldn’t know a Russian code. True, fingerprints have been taken, but cops don’t wear hoods and take your prints in bed: they arrest you first. And he can take care of blackmailers. Californian law is ruthless towards that breed — and LeWinter is the law.’

Jeff said in injured reproach: ‘You might have told me all this.’

‘I thought you understood.’

‘You’d all this figured in advance? Before you moved in on them?’ Dunne said. Ryder nodded. ‘Smarter than the average cop. Might even make the FBI. Any suggestions?’

‘A tap on LeWinter’s phone.’

‘Illegal. Congress is very uptight about tapping these days — chiefly, one supposes, because they’re terrified of having their own phones tapped. It’ll take an hour or two.’

‘You appreciate, of course, that this will be the second tap on his line.’

‘Second?’

‘Why do you think Sheriff Hartman’s dead?’

‘Because he’d talk? A new recruit, still not deeply involved, wanting to get out from under before it was too late?’

‘That, too. But how come he’s dead? Because Morro had LeWinter’s line tapped. I called the night telephone manager from LeWinter’s house to get Hartman’s address — he was unlisted, but that’s probably because he was fairly new to the area. Someone intercepted the call and got to Hartman before Jeff and I did. By the way, there’s no point in recovering the bullet that killed him. It was a dum-dum and would have been distorted out of recognition and further mangled on embedding itself in the brick wall. Ballistic experts are not wizards: you couldn’t hope to match up what’s left of that bullet with any gun barrel.’

‘“Someone”, you said?’

‘Perhaps Donahure — he was showing signs of coming to when we left him — or, just possibly, one of Donahure’s underworld connections. Raminoff wasn’t the only one.’

‘You gave your name over the phone?’

‘Had to — to get the information I wanted.’

‘So now Donahure knows you were in LeWinter’s house. So now LeWinter knows.’

‘No chance. To tell LeWinter that he’d have to tell him that he either had LeWinter’s phone tapped or knew that it was tapped. By the same token if my call to Aaron of the Examiner was tapped Donahure or whoever would still be unable to tell LeWinter. But unlikely that that second call was tapped — our eavesdropping friend would have taken off like a bat after he’d heard mention of Hartman’s name and address.’

Dunne looked at him curiously — it might almost have been with respect. ‘To coin a phrase, you got all the