Dark Maze

telling him about the wedding. “Like I told you before—what am I going to do with overtime?”
    That settled, I asked, “Any progress yet?”
    “There’s Celia’s rap. Which is a good place to start if you got the time and interest, which I see you got. Hold on, I got notes here someplace.” Logue shuffled papers on his desk. “Okay, it turns out the G really did a number on the lady, back during one of those times that happen once in a while when everybody down in Washington’s got a hard-on for the mob, right?”
    “And Celia Furman was in the wrong place at the time?“
    “Right. She was what’s known as a “big whale” in the casinos, meaning she was good for a fifty-grand credit line anywhere’s in Vegas, and in the European and Caribbean joints, too. Also she was a lady who made a habit of being a real pal to the right kinds of useful men...”
    “Of which some were connected?”
    “Right again,” Logue said. “It’s how she got started making her pile. Useful guys backed her when she started taking over sawdust houses in Detroit and gradually worked her way up to running a string of class joints all the way around the lakeshore from Detroit to Cleveland. Good square houses, so they say; always dice the specialty.”
    “But the government doesn’t care about any of that.“
    “Naw, they’re after some of Celia’s boyfriends. Since Celia’s very probably a key to lots of things these characters f do not wish to confide to Uncle. Well, you heard this drill before, Hockaday.”
    “So they leaned hard on Celia.”
    “Right. And for the best kind of leaning there is, they sent the IRS around. They know she can’t stand up to no unrelenting income-tax audit.”
    “Then they haul her into Federal Tax Court?”
    “Not before they cleaned her out, but good. One by one, they shut down her string of houses, leaving her no more gold mine to stake for the serious money on the big whale : circuit. Which is the only way she’s got of making good on everything she never forked over on her Form 1040s from all those earnings she shouldn’t have earned. This is kind of i screwy, but remember we're talking government here.”
    “All part of the drill,” I said. “So, next they offered her I the testimony deal?”
    “I guess they tried. They hauled her in front of grand [ juries all over the country. Detroit, Chicago, L.A., New Orleans, Boston, here in New York. You name the town, Celia’s been in its grand jury room.”
    “Did she talk?”
    “My friend who is telling me this,” Logue said, “he doesn’t think so.”
    “Who’s your friend?”
    “Oh, this guy my own age. We came up through the ranks together in the department, then one year he gets sense enough to go work for the feds. He’s doing records now at Justice, down in D.C., in an office with his own telephone and a parking space and an air conditioner in the window that’s got a view of the Lincoln Memorial....“.
    “Anyway, my friend says to me, ‘Your subject spent lots of time in front of grand juries that never delivered up indictments that meant much, so by that I would conclude that the lady was no canary.’ ”
    Logue added to this, with his sincerest disgust, “For what honor that was worth.” i asked what he meant.
    “Here was this class-A lady, the way I see it,” he answered. “She never ratted out nobody, but everybody she ever knew in the business assumed she must’ve spilled something once every so often just to break the monotony of flying from one grand jury to the other. So they went and cut her off! Jesus, it was pathetic when you think about it. The only dice left to her was on Monopoly boards.
    “Just to tell you how heartbreaking it was, Hock, my friend says the last thing on his records about Celia Furman is that she was so broke some assistant D.A. took pity on her and helped her file for Social Security. What a freaking shame, hey?”
    “That it is, my friend,” I said. “She was death before she got dead for real.”
    I was anxious to get off the telephone with Logue, anxious to speak to Inspector Neglio about putting out an APB on Charlie Furman a/k/a Picasso, anxious to put money on the street in hopes one or two of my snitches could sell me a lead to his whereabouts, and anxious to get home, where Ruby Flagg was waiting.
    Then I remembered about the phone logs.
    “Before she was shot,” I said to Logue, “Celia made several calls from the booth at the Ebb Tide, remember? You