Body Count

“The cause of Keating’s murder, Bob! Guido Vespa said it was because of Keating’s bad debts. And the Mafia is into illegal bookmaking!”

“I fail to see …”

In all honesty, Dunn was not a little disappointed with his hero. Koesler was the fairly famous amateur detective. He should be ahead of this game. Instead he failed to see …

And then it dawned on Dunn: He hadn’t given Koesler the whole picture. “Wait: There’s one more thing I haven’t told you. Remember, the article said that some thirty years ago there had been six families in the Detroit area? Now there is only one that’s still functioning. And it’s not the Costello family.” Again he looked expectantly at Koesler.

It was embarrassing. Obviously, Dunn expected him to be arriving at a correct answer to this puzzle. But if there were such an answer, it certainly had escaped Koesler’s observation.

Dunn gave up. He’d have to spell it out. “The way I see it,” he began, “Keating liked to gamble. No-more: He was a compulsive gambler. But apparendy none of his close friends was aware of that, else one or more of them would have told the police during this investigation. And nobody has, … am I right?”

“Far as I know.”

“But according to our very best source-the man who executed him-Keating bets on just about everything. Now if Keating’s close friends don’t know about this, Keating is guarding the secret carefully. To use a metaphor that Keating would have loved, he’s playing his cards very close to the vest. Which means …?”

“Which means he probably isn’t doing much or any of this gambling in legitimate areas. Else,” Koesler took Dunn’s cue, “the people he chums with would be aware of what was going on. And if his friends were alert to his compulsive gambling, while they probably wouldn’t have interfered-no one criticizes ‘Father’-they surely would have mentioned it when Keating turned up missing. He’s a ‘missing person’ under such circumstances that anyone who knew of his reckless gambling would have suspected the connection. And would have told the police.”

“Exactly,” Dunn agreed. “So if Keating is not gambling in Monaco or any of the other legitimate hangouts, he might be putting down bets with illegal bookmakers-the Mafia. Because that’s one of the remaining rackets of the local Mafia. And if he is placing his bets through the Mafia, there’s only one family left to handle his business. There’s only one of the six originals left,”

“But the one remaining family, you said, was not Costello’s. So how does Guido Vespa figure into this if-wait a minute …” Koesler fingered through Dunn’s notes and photostats until he found the one he was looking for. He read it aloud: “‘A high-ranking Mafia defector bitterly said that his crew could no longer find reliable assassins in its own ranks and had to take outside contracts.’

“So …” Koesler allowed the conjunction to stand alone as he weighed the present state of the question. “So …” he repeated, “according to your theory, Keating bet outrageously on just about everything. We have Vespa’s word on that. He ended up head over heels in debt because he couldn’t cover his losses. Again, Vespa’s Word. Plus, it occurred to me today while I was with Lieutenant Tully, that the one incident I personally know of when Jake Keating played a hunch was with stocks and bonds, and he lost a pile … although compared with what he apparently got into recently, the stocks and bonds gamble was innocence itself.”

“You didn’t tell Tully that,” Dunn wondered.

“Almost. I was saved by prayer, I guess. That was too close to the confessional secret. Anyway,” Koesler continued, “according to your theory-if I’m following you correctly-since there is no indication that this gambling was going on aboveboard, so to speak, it may be presumed that Keating’s bets, as well as his debts, were with the Mafia.

“And, from what is conventionally known about the Mafia, they do not stand still when someone tries to take advantage of them. So the Mafia, unable to get its money back, exacts retribution in the form of a contract to kill Father Keating.” Koesler shuddered. “This whole thing gets so ugly.”

But Dunn, whose theory this basically was, continued with what he believed to be the correct scenario. “We already have, courtesy of the newspaper clipping, the complaint of ‘a high-ranking Mafia figure’ that nowadays they can’t depend on their own families to execute a contract. They have to use outside resources.

“So here’s Keating, hopelessly in debt to the one remaining Detroit family. And this family, apparently- probably because they can’t trust this to anyone in their own organization-gives the contract to Guido Vespa. And he was, we know from that ancient Mafia chart-maybe still is-a button man.

“So,” Dunn concluded, “Guido Vespa is offered and accepts the contract, kills John Keating, and later-because he’s never before murdered a priest, and because of his Catholic upbringing, however vague that may have been-he confesses the sin to you, and is overheard by me.” There was a look of irrepressible self-congratulation on Dunn’s smiling face.

The two priests regarded each other in silence. At length, Koesler looked at his watch. Not much time before he would have to leave. “So …?”

“So … what?” Dunn replied.

“My question precisely,” Koesler said. “So what? Even if everything happened just the way you have constructed this chain of events, what difference does it make? The basis of this story is still Guido Vespa’s confession. Neither of us would have the slightest notion of what might have happened to Jake Keating if Vespa had not told us of his role in the disappearance. And that neither of us can disclose to anyone under any circumstances. If either of us were to go to the police and say that the Mafia put out a contract on Father Keating because he couldn’t pay his gambling debts, and the guy you’re looking for, the hit man in this case, is Guido Vespa, the police certainly would ask, ‘How do you know?’ And we would-we could-say nothing. There’s no proof of any of this except a confession that is completely out of bounds. So: So what?”

Dunn gave every indication that he had not considered the implications of his scenario. Now he did so. The seconds were ticking away; Koesler would soon have to leave.

“Well,” Dunn said finally, “you yourself said that this afternoon you tried to communicate with the police through ESP. And you were only trying to get them interested in Keating’s gambling habits and make Guido Vespa the focus of their investigation.

“Okay, so it didn’t work. But ESP can work; it has worked. Now that we have the whole story, why don’t we try in a concerted way to get through to the cops with that extrasensory perception? That lieutenant will undoubtedly be talking to you again. You never know, there may be some way of communication, something we can’t anticipate right now. But something may occur. The Holy Spirit …”

“Nice, Nick,” Koesler said. “I’m the last one who would question the power of ESP, especially when it’s fortified by prayer. ‘More things are accomplished by prayer than this world dreams of.’ But … but … do we have the whole story?”

Dunn seemed perplexed. “Of course we do!”

“Then,” Koesler said, “what about the car?”

“What car?”

“Jake Keating’s car. If Guido Vespa murdered Keating, what was Jack’s car doing parked outside the Costello house? Would a murderer take an easily traceable car and leave it where the police could make an obvious connection between victim and killer?”

Dunn scratched his chin. “That is a puzzle. I don’t know-wait, didn’t you say that when you got to Costello’s house there were a lot of police technicians around the car?”

“Right.”

“And that one of them was working on fingerprints?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he said there were no prints on the steering wheel?”

Koesler nodded.

“That means,” Dunn continued, “that Keating certainly didn’t drive the car to that spot. Why would he wipe his own prints off the wheel?”

“True.”

“Well … what we do know is that Guido Vespa killed Keating. Why would Vespa leave the car in front of his grandfather’s home?” Dunn paused. “I don’t think he could or would have done that.” He thought for another moment. “Wait: Guido wasn’t at the Costello home today; Remo was.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll bet Guido hasn’t been there since Friday. And if that’s the case,” Dunn was animated once more,