Deadly Diamonds (23 page)

I knocked the wind out of him. The two of us went sprawling through the debris on the floor. At the same moment, our ears went stone deaf with the concussive impact of a blast that ripped two feet off of both sides of the door.

We rolled over clutter to the side wall and just froze. I lay there flat on the floor in shock. I could see Burke sitting back against the wall, propped upright with both fists around a .45 pistol aimed at what was formerly a door frame.

Burke was on his feet first. He moved with the handgun extended into what had probably been a bedroom before the demolition crew had torn it to pieces. I followed him in. It looked just like the other two rooms, littered with splintered remnants of furnishings. The one exception was the pair of shotguns solidly mounted to a heavy chair that was blown backward. The strings that had run to the door were still trailing.

I thought I saw two tiny wisps of smoke from the guns fading into the chilled atmosphere. The chill moved into my bones when I realized that those wisps could easily have represented our lives.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

By the time we moved outside the cottage into what by comparison looked like the real world, my hearing was slowly coming back. The concussive mental cloud was beginning to lift. Thoughts, mostly questions, started pouring in. Leading off in both of our minds I'm sure was the big one. Was this reception planned in our honor, or did they have someone else in mind? That was closely followed by the question of who the hell had taped those shotguns to the chair.

The two of us sat quietly beside the gentle lapping of the lake on the small sandy beach. For the first time since I'd met him, I saw the slightest emotional reaction in Burke's eyes to what was happening around him. It took a near-death experience, but it finally proved he was human after all.

“That was close, Burke.”

He gave me a look that seemed to congratulate me on my fine grip on the obvious. At least he didn't disagree.

“Who do you suppose—?”

I got that far before his hand went up. By now I was obeying his hand signals instinctively.

“I've got to say this to you, lawyer. You were quick and right on the money. If you hadn't been, we'd not be having this conversation. I owe you.”

I was touched, but I had to seize the moment.

“Mr. Burke. Seamus, if you will. I'm not one to take advantage of a situation. But I'd like to claim one bit of compensation.”

I had his attention.

“Will you, for the love of all the saints in heaven, stop calling
me ‘lawyer'? You make it sound like ‘child-molester.' My name's Michael.”

“Done. Now, what're you thinking? What's your take on all this?”

I was doubly shocked that he'd ask, but since he did, “If you mean who set the trap, no one knew you'd be coming up here. It wasn't for you. The only one who knew I'd be here was Frank O'Byrne. Any one of his thugs could have done the rigging.”

“Damn, lawyer—Michael, I thought he hired you. You have to pick your clients more carefully. You must have pissed him off royally.”

“I seem to have a talent for that.”

“Did you notice anything else in there?”

Apparently, he was tuned to the same signal I had picked up.

“I think so. I can understand them searching the place. Obviously, for the diamonds. Apparently, someone's pretty sure Kevin had them. From the looks of the total wreck, they never found them. But I agree. There's something else.”

“Like what else?”

I had a feeling he was testing me.

“It looked like more than a search.”

“True. A demolition. What else?”

“It was like they were sending a message to whoever came into that cottage. I'm still trying to figure out the message.”

“When we get the answer to that one, we'll be one up in the game.”

“Then there's the question of where the hell Kevin is—alive or dead? My money's on alive. How about you?”

“We think alike.”

“And if I read you right, Seamus, the question that trumps them all is where are those damn diamonds.”

He gave no response. He just jumped to his feet and headed for the car. I'd have followed him, but an idea struck me at that moment. I headed back into the cottage. It took me about two minutes, but then I was back in the car. I tortured the shock absorbers of the
Corvette over the two miles of washboard road to get back onto Route 93.

The first words were mine once we were headed south on a paved road. “Kevin's alive. He's in touch with his father and, wherever he is, they're working together.”

He looked over at me. “You developing psychic powers?”

“Not quite. I noticed the phone was still hanging on the wall in the kitchen. When I went back in, I hit the redial button. If Kevin used the phone, it'd redial his last call.”

“You're a bloody genius. What'd you get?”

“The phone dialed a number. One guess who answered.”

“Frank O'Byrne.”

“Right on. There's more. Frank must have checked his caller ID to see who was calling. He could tell it was from the cottage. He answered it, ‘Hello, Kevin.' That's all. No panic. No ‘Where the hell have you been?' Just a calm, ‘Hello, Kevin.'”

“He must have figured Kevin went back to the cottage for something. What'd you say?”

“Nothing. I hung up. I didn't want to tip him off that his little mousetrap missed. Probably not too bright on my part. If it was Kevin calling, he'd have spoken to him. The only other one who'd be up there is me. That would tell him I'm still alive and some kind of a threat.”

“Maybe not. Maybe he thinks you used the phone trick before you went into the bedroom. At least he could be in doubt.”

“Possible.”

We rode another ten miles in silence. I was absorbed in my own thoughts. The primary question on my agenda was simple and wide open. What do I do next?

I hadn't noticed it brewing, but when I looked over, I could see fire in Seamus eyes.

“What, Seamus? You look like a bomb about to go off.”

He was looking straight ahead. “This is damn bloody embarrassing.
I'm losing my edge. Twenty years of the wars in Ireland people minimize with the paltry words, ‘the troubles.' Another twelve years of things that are none of your damn business. And here I come within a rat's whisker of getting my arse blown off by some pissant of an American gangster. It takes a bloody lawyer, no offense, to pull my arse out of harm's way. I'm definitely losing it.”

I was stuck for a comment. Except for the “bloody lawyer” part, I had no clue to the personal history that went into his tirade. I went with what was still on the table for discussion by me. “Does that mean you're pulling out of this mess?”

He looked at me as if I had just materialized in time to say something offensive. “Are you out of your mind? I'm committed. If I did drop out, not that I would, there'd be three on my trail to silence me for what I know.”

I just shook my head. “I'll be damned if I understand you people, Seamus Burke. You're like creatures from some God-forsaken war planet. Then what exactly does it mean? If I'm in this thing by myself, I can handle it. But I'd like to know it right now.”

“It means I'm fed up with playing this game on the sidelines. It's time I got into the thick of it. Did you ever hear what they say—the best defense is a good offense?”

“It was one of my father's favorite sayings. How does it relate?”

“It's time to go on the bloody offense. We're going to carry this game to that pissant, O'Byrne, and his slippery kid. Have you got the stones for it? Are you in or out?”

I pulled into a traveler's rest station. This conversation was getting into waters too deep for highway distraction.

“I've been in this thing up to my ears since long before you showed up, Seamus. I have no choice.”

“I'll take that as a full commitment. Then it's time we exchanged some serious information. I want everything you know about O'Byrne, his kid, the Italians, everything. Right now.”

On the implied promise of a reciprocal spilling of information, I laid out everything I knew from the moment Paddy O'Toole stuck
a knife in my ribs to induce me to pay a friendly call on Frank O'Byrne to my run-in with the two Irish thugs at the Molly Waldo. Seamus absorbed every syllable. If I touched on matters O'Byrne confided as a client, I figured the two goons at the Molly Waldo, not to mention the double shotgun blast, dissolved any bonds of confidentiality.

When I finished, I waited in silence. I wanted him to break it as a sign of mutual trust. It took a minute, but he finally opened up.

“Given what we're about to get into, you're entitled to this.”

He looked over to lock eyes before he continued. “Do I need to tell you that if this ever passes your lips, it'll be the last thing you'll say on this earth?”

I nodded. “I've been hearing that a lot lately.”

“Then take it to heart.”

He opened his window and fired up a cigarette. If it helped him put it all together, I could stand gagging on the smoke.

“I work for a man in Ireland. I'll give you his name because the day may come when you'll need to meet with him. Declan O'Connor. If you think I know my way around the arts of combat, it's because you never met Declan. That's neither here nor there.”

He took a pause to draw a cloud of cigarette smoke to the bottom of his lungs. Perhaps it cleared his thinking.

“Declan teamed up with a man who came from Africa. Sierra Leone, to be exact. For some reason, Declan took an interest in this man who calls himself Johnny Walker. This Walker had a bag of diamonds he'd smuggled out of Sierra Leone. He needed to sell them for all he could get. Some kind of personal problem. But they were what they call ‘blood diamonds,' and smuggled to boot. That meant he could only deal with the black market. You listening?”

“With both ears.”

“All right. Declan put this Walker in touch with one of your scumbag Italian gangsters from America. That was Barone. I say ‘was' because he's the one you saw dead in his own trunk. Barone struck a deal with Walker to buy the diamonds for a lot of money.
Around a million euros. Barone was going to bring the diamonds back here to sell to someone he had a deal with—someone who could get them into the legal flow of diamonds to the cutters. Once Barone sold them, he'd get the money to this Walker. Are you following this?”

“Not completely. Why would Walker give the diamonds to Barone without being paid?”

“Because Barone wouldn't have the money to pay him until he sold them.”

“And once he did, what guaranteed payment?”

“You're looking at the guarantee. Declan sent me to see that Barone paid the money.”

“I see your problem. With Barone dead, who has the diamonds, and how do you collect the money?”

“You sum it up like a lawyer.”

“I am a lawyer.”

“Don't be a smart-ass. That brings us to the next phase of the campaign. I've got an idea. It could get us some answers. It could also get us killed. Are you still in?”

I thought about the fact that Mr. Devlin was still under the protection of Tom Burns from whatever thugs Packy Salviti might care to send after him next. On top of that, I'd just been the target of what, thank God, was an
attempted
murder, most likely by the team of Frank and Kevin O'Byrne.

The anomaly was that I was still defense counsel of record in the murder indictment of Kevin O'Byrne. I thought I could make the anomaly go away in short order by snipping the lawyer-client relationship. Unfortunately, that would not lessen the desire of the O'Byrnes to terminate my existence. I felt a strong intuitive sense, for reasons I would have had difficulty putting into words, that both of those life-threatening issues could be resolved if I could get my hands on the damn diamonds.

I held my hand out to the man who had finally chucked the cigarette. He took it, and the immortal words of Oliver Hardy to Stan
Laurel rang through my mind: “Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into.”

There was one complication that needed elimination before the sun went down. I called Julie at the office before I pulled out onto Route 93.

“Michael. Are you actually back from phantomland? Because if you are, there are about two thousand messages—”

“Not now, Julie. I'm still in phantomland. This has to be quick. Would you call the court? Suffolk County. I think Judge DiSilva drew the Kevin O'Byrne indictment. If so, speak to his docket clerk, John Murphy. Tell John I need a hearing with the judge. This afternoon, if at all possible. Preferably in chambers. John'll know it's important. Can you get right back to me?”

“Should I notify the district attorney's office?”

“No. This is strictly ex parte. I'll fill Billy Coyne in later. Thank you, Julie.
Chop, chop
. Before they close the shop for the day.”