When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (26 page)

I took a sip of the coffee and there was a knock on the door out front. Skip answered it and came back with Billie. "The late Billie Keegan," Bobby said, andKasabian fixed him a drink of the same twelve-year-old Irish Billie drank at Armstrong's.

There was a lot of banter, joking back and forth. Then it all died down at once, and before it could start up again I stood up and said, "Something I wanted to talk to all of you about."

"Life insurance," BobbyRuslander said. "I mean, have you guys thought about it? I mean, like, really thought about it?"

I said, "Skip and I were talking last night, and we came up with something. The two guys with the wigs and beards, we realized we'd seen them before. A couple of weeks ago, they were the ones who stuck up Morrissey's after-hours."

"They wore handkerchief masks," Bobby said. "And last night they wore wigs and beards and masks, so how could you tell?"

"It was them," Skip said. "Believe it.Two shots into the ceiling? Remember?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bobby said.

Billie said, "Bobby and I only saw 'emMonday night from a distance, and you didn't see 'emat all, did you, John? No, of course not, you were around the block. And were you at Morrissey's the night of the holdup? I don't recall seeing you there."

Kasabiansaid he never went to Morrissey's.

"So the three of us got no opinion," Billie went on. "If you say it was the same two guys, I say fine. Is that it? Because unless I missed something, we still don't know who they are."

"Yes we do."

Everybody looked at me.

I said, "I got very cocky last night, telling Skip here that we had them, that once we knew they pulled both jobs it was only a question of zeroing in on them. I think that was mostly some Wild Turkey talking, but there was a certain amount of truth in it, and today I got lucky. I know who they are. Skip and I were right last night, the same pair did pull both jobs, and I know who they are."

"So where do we go from here?" Bobby wanted to know. "What do we do now?"

"That comes later," I said. "First I'd like to tell you who they are."

"Let's hear."

"Their names are Gary Atwood and Lee David Cutler," I said. "Skip calls them Frank and Jesse, as in the James brothers, and he may have been picking up on a family resemblance. Atwood and Cutler are cousins. Atwood lives in theEastVillage, way over inAlphabetCity onNinth Street between B and C. Cutler lives with his girlfriend. She's a schoolteacher and she lives inWashingtonHeights. Her name is RitaDonegian."

"An Armenian," Keegan said. "She must be a cousin of yours, John. The plot thickens."

"How'd you find them?"Kasabian wondered. "Have they done this before? Have they got records?"

"I don't think they have records," I said. "That's something I haven't checked yet because it didn't seem important. They probably have Equity cards."

"Huh?"

"Membership cards in Actors Equity," I said. "They're actors."

Skip said, "You're kidding."

"No."

"I'll be a son of a bitch. It fits. It fucking fits."

"You see it?"

"Of course I see it," he said. "That's why the accents. That's why they seemed Irish when they hit Morrissey's. They didn't make a sound, they didn't do anything Irish, but it felt Irish because they were acting." He turned and glared at BobbyRuslander. "Actors," he said. "I beenrobbed by fucking actors."

"You were robbed by two actors," Bobby said. "Not by the entire profession."

"Actors," Skip said. "John, we paid fifty thousand dollars to a couple of actors."

"They had real bullets in their guns," Keegan reminded him.

"Actors," Skip said. "Weshoulda paid off in stage money."

I poured out more coffee from the insulated pitcher. I said, "I don't know what made me think of it. The thought was just there. But once I had it, I could see a lot of places it could have come from. One was a general impression, there was something off about them,some sense that we were getting a performance. And there was the very different performance at Morrissey's compared to the one staged for us Monday night. Once we knew it was the same two men both times, the difference in their manner became noteworthy."

"I don't see how that makes them actors," Bobby said. "It just makes them phonies."

"There were other things," I said. "They moved like people who were professionally conscious of movement. Skip, you commented that they could have been dancers, that their movements might have been choreographed. And there was a line one of them said, and it was so out of character it could only be in character- in character for the person if not for the role he was playing."

Skip said, "Which line was that? Was I there to hear it?"

"In the church basement.When you and the one in the yellow wig moved the extra furniture out of the way."

"I remember. What did he say?"

"Something about not knowing whether the union would approve."

"Yeah, I remember him saying it. It was an odd line but I didn't pay attention."

"Neither did I, but it registered. And his voice was different when he delivered it, too."

He closed his eyes, thinking back. "You're right," he said.

Bobby said, "How does that make him an actor? All it makes him is a union member."

"The stagehands have a very strong union," I said, "and they make sure actors don't move scenery or do other similar jobs that would properly employ a stagehand. It was very much an actor's line and the delivery fit with that interpretation."

"How'd you get on to them in particular?"Kasabian asked. "Once you got that they were actors, you were still a long way from knowing their names and addresses."

"Ears," Skip said.

Everybody looked at him.

"He drew their ears," he said, pointing to me."In his notebook. The ears are the hardest part of the body to disguise. Don't look atme, I got it from the horse's mouth. He made drawings of their ears."

"And did what?" Bobby demanded. "Advertised an open audition and looked at everybody's ears?"

"You could go through albums," Skip said. "Look at actors' publicity pictures, looking for the right pair of ears."

"When they take your picture for your passport," Billie Keegan said, "it has to show both your ears."

"Or what?"

"Or they won't give you a passport."

"Poor Van Gogh," Skip said. "The ManWithout a Country."

"How did you find them?"Kasabian still wanted to know. "It couldn't have been ears."

"No, of course not," I said.

"The license number," Billie said. "Has everyone forgotten the license number?"

"The license number turned up on the hot-car sheet," I told him. "Once I got the idea that they were actors, I took another look at the church. I knew they hadn't just picked that particular church basement at random and broken into it. They had access to it, probably with a key. According to the pastor, there were a lot of community groups with access, and probably a great many keys in circulation. One of the groups he mentioned in passing was an amateur theater group that had used the basement room for auditions and rehearsals."

"Aha," someone said.

"I called the church, got the name of someone connected with the theater group. I managed to reach that person and explained that I was trying to contact an actor who had worked with the group within the past several months. I gave a physical description that would have fit either of the two men. Remember, aside from a two-inch difference in height, they were very similar in physical type."

"And did you get a name?"

"I got a couple of names. One of them was Lee David Cutler."

"And a bell rang," Skip said.

"What bell?"Kasabian said. "That was the first the name came up, wasn't it? Or am I missing something?"

"No, you're right," I told him. "At this point Cutler was just one of several names in my notebook. What I had to do was tie one of those names to the other crime."

"What other crime? Oh, Morrissey's. How? He's the one saloonkeeper doesn't hire out-of-work actors as waiters and bartenders. He's got his own family to work with."

I said, "What's on the ground floor, Skip?"

"Oh," he said.

Billie Keegan said, "That Irishtheater. The Donkey Repertory Company or whatever they call it."

"I went there this afternoon," I said. "They were in final rehearsals for a new play, but I managed to drop Tim Pat's name and get a few minutes of one young woman's time. They have display posters in the lobby, individual promotional pictures of each cast member. Head shots, I think they're called. She showed me posters for the various casts of the plays they've staged over the past year. They do short runs, you know, so they've put on quite a few shows."

"And?"

"Lee David Cutler was in Donnybrook, a BrianFriel play that ran the last week of May and the first week of June. I recognized his picture before I saw the name under it. And I recognized his cousin's picture, too. The family resemblance is even stronger when they're not wearing disguises. In fact it's unmistakable. Maybe that helped them get the parts, since they're not regular members of the rep company. But they played two brothers, so the resemblance was a definite asset."

"Lee David Cutler," Skip said. "And what was the other one's name? Something Atwood."

"Gary Atwood."

"Actors."

"Right."

He tapped a cigarette on the back of his hand, put it in his mouth,lit it."Actors. They were in the play on the ground floor and decided to move up in the world, is that it? Being there gave them the idea to hit Morrissey's."

"Probably."I took a slug of coffee. The Wild Turkey bottle was right there on the file cabinet, and my eyes were drawn to it, but right now I didn't want anything to take the edge off my perceptions. I was glad I wasn't drinking, and just as glad that everyone else was.

I said, "They must have had a drink upstairs once or twice in the course of the run of the play. Maybe they heard about the locked wall cupboard, maybe they saw Tim Pat put money into it or take some out of it. One way or another, it must have occurred to them that the place would be easy pickings."

"If you live to spend it."

"Maybe they didn't know enough to be afraid of theMorrisseys. That's possible. They probably started planning the job as a lark, making a play out of it, casting themselves as members of some other Irish faction, silent gunmen out of some old play about the Troubles. Then they got carried away with the possibilities of it, went out and got some guns and staged their play."

"Just like that."

I shrugged. "Or maybe they've pulled stickups before. There's no reason to assume Morrissey's was their debut."

"I suppose it beats walking people's dogs and working office temp," Bobby said. "The hell, an actor's got to make a living. Maybe I ought to get myself a mask and a gun."

"You tend bar sometimes," Skip said. "It's the same idea and you don't need props for it."

"How'd they get on to us?"Kasabian asked. "Did they start hanging out here while they were working at the Irish theater?"

"Maybe."

"But that wouldn't explain how they knew about the books," he said. "Skip, did they ever work for us?Atwood and Cutler? Do we know those names?"

"I don't think so."

"I don't either," I said. "They may have known the place, but it's not important. They almost certainly didn't work here because they didn't know Skip by sight."

"That could have been part of the act," Skip suggested.

"Possibly.As I said, it doesn't really matter. They had an inside man who stole the books and arranged for them to ransom them."

"An inside man?"

I nodded. "That's what we figured from the beginning, remember? That's why you hired me, Skip. Partly to see that the exchange went off without a hitch and partly to find out after the factwho it was that set you up."

"Right."

"Well, that's how they got the books, and that's how they got on to you in the first place. For all I know they never set foot inside Miss Kitty's. They didn't have to. They had it all set up for them."

"By an inside man."

"That's right."

"And you know who the inside man was?"

"Yes," I said. "I know."

The room got very quiet. I walked around the desk and took the bottle of Wild Turkey from the top of the file cabinet. I poured a couple of ounces into a rocks glass and put the bottle back. I held the glass without tasting the whiskey. I didn't want the drink so much as I wanted to stretch the moment and let the tension build.

I said, "The inside man had a role to play afterward, too. He had to let Atwood and Cutlerknow that we got their license number."

Bobby said, "I thought the car was stolen."

"The car was reported stolen. That's how it got on the hot-car sheet.Stolen between five and seven p.m. Monday from an address onOcean Parkway."

"So?"

"That was the report, and at the time I let it go at that. This afternoon I did what I probably should have done off the bat, and I got the name of the car's owner. It was RitaDonegian."

"Atwood's girlfriend," Skip said.

"Cutler's.Not that it makes a difference."

"I'm confused,"Kasabian said. "He stole his girlfriend's car? I don't get it."

"Everyone picks on the Armenians," Keegan said.

I said, "They took her car. Atwood and Cutler took RitaDonegian's car. Afterward they got a call from their accomplice telling them that the plate had been spotted. So they called in then and reported it as having been stolen, and they said it had been taken thus and so many hours earlier, and from an address way out onOcean Parkway. When I dug a little deeper this afternoon I managed to establish that the report of the theft hadn't been called in until close to midnight.