But he’d tried hard. His investigation had been meticulous. Painstaking. The first victim had been the owner of a textile plant. A specialist, involved in some new chemical process for cotton. The second victim was the first guy’s foreman. He’d left the first guy’s operation and was trying to raise seed money to start up on his own.
The next six victims were government people. EPA employees. They had been running a case out of their New Orleans office. The case concerned pollution in the Mississippi Delta. Fish were dying. The cause was traced two hundred and fifty miles upriver. A textile processing plant in Mississippi State was pumping chemicals into the river, sodium hydroxide and sodium hypochlorite and chlorine, all mixing with the river water and forming a deadly acidic cocktail.
All eight victims had died the same way. Two shots to the head with a silenced automatic pistol. A .22 calibre. Neat and clinical. Spirenza had assumed they were professional hits. He went after the shooter two ways. He called in every favour he could and shook all the trees. Professional hit men are thin on the ground. Spirenza and his buddies talked to them all. None of them knew a thing.
Spirenza’s second approach was the classic approach. Figure out who is benefiting. Didn’t take him long to piece it together. The textile processor up in Mississippi State looked good. He was under attack from the eight who died. Two of them were attacking him commercially. The other six were threatening to close him down. Spirenza pulled him apart. Turned him inside out. He was on his back for a year. The paperwork in my hand was a testimony to that. Spirenza had pulled in the FBI and the IRS. They’d searched every cent in every account for unexplained cash payments to the elusive shooter.
They’d searched for a year and found nothing. On the way, they turned up a lot of unsavoury stuff. Spirenza was convinced the guy had killed his wife. Plain beat her to death was his verdict. The guy had married again and Spirenza had faxed the local police department with a warning. The guy’s only son was a psychopath. Worse than his father, in Spirenza’s view. A stone-cold psychopath. The textile processor had protected his son every step of the way. Covered for him. Paid his way out of trouble. The boy had records from a dozen different institutions.
But nothing would stick. New Orleans FBI had lost interest. Spirenza had closed the case. Forgotten all about it, until an old detective from an obscure Georgia jurisdiction had faxed him, asking for information on the Kliner family.
Finlay closed his file. Spun his barber chair to face mine.
`The Kliner Foundation is bogus,’ he said. `Totally bogus. It’s a cover for something else. It’s all here. Gray bust it wide open. Audited it from top to bottom. The Foundation is spending millions every year, but its audited income is zero. Precisely zero.’
He selected a sheet from the file. Leaned over. Passed it over to me. It was a sort of balance
sheet, showing the Foundation’s expenditures.
`See that?’ he said. `It’s incredible. That’s what they’re spending.’
I looked at it. The sheet contained a huge figure. I nodded.
`Maybe a lot more than that,’ I said. `I’ve been down here five days, right? Prior to that I was all over the States for six months. Prior to that I was all over the world. Margrave is by far the cleanest, best maintained, most manicured place I’ve ever seen. It’s better looked after than the Pentagon or the White House. Believe me, I’ve been there. Everything in Margrave is either brand-new or else perfectly renovated. It’s completely perfect. It’s so perfect it’s frightening. That must cost an absolute fortune.’
He nodded.
`And Margrave is a very weird place,’ I said. `It’s deserted most of the time. There’s no life. There’s practically no commercial activity in the whole town. Nothing ever goes on. Nobody is earning any money.’
He looked blank. Didn’t follow.
`Think about it,’ I said. `Look at Eno’s, for example. Brand-new place. Gleaming, state-ofthe-art diner. But he never has any customers. I’ve been in there a couple of times. There were never more than a couple of people in the place. The waitresses outnumber the customers. So how is Eno paying the bills? The overhead? The mortgage? Same goes for everywhere in town. Have you ever seen lines of customers rushing in and out of any of the stores?’