Cormac Kilbane

Cormac Kilbane is 61 and owns a limousine agency in Pontiac. Born in Detroit, the son of an Irish streetcar motorman, he climbed into a truck cab at 16 and left it, at 40, with twenty years of savings to buy three black cars and a telephone. Today he rents limousines to weddings, wakes and people who don't like to drive. He fought Raskin with his fists over the Pontiac local in 1946, lost, and became his best friend.

He lives in a one-story brick house in Pontiac, with an aluminum porch, lace curtains and a plastic-covered sofa. His office, at the back, has dark wood walls, a framed pair of boxing gloves, a rotary phone and a china cabinet of bowling trophies. His wife died ten years ago, and he keeps her plate on the table, stacked with the others. He dines with the radio on the baseball game.

He is stout, with a broad, reddish face, close-cropped gray hair combed back with brilliantine and thick eyebrows. He wears a brown plaid 1970s sport coat over a wide-collared open shirt and a gold ring on his pinky. Affable, old-fashioned, he talks loudly and always pulls out a story from the old days. He walks with his head slightly tilted, as if listening for a second sound beyond his own.

Since Raskin got out of prison, at Christmas 1971, he has been his secretary, unpaid. He answers the phone, sets up meetings and says he is the only friend left. He was the one who arranged the 2 p.m. meeting at the Silver Pheasant, at Saturday's dinner with Nunzio Varricchio, a peace meeting between Raskin and a New Jersey boss who doesn't want him back in the union. Neither showed up, and both swear they never arranged anything. When the detective asks how much Varricchio paid him, he answers that nobody has paid him anything in almost four years, not even Raskin.

It could be the loyalty of an old friend, who lost the only link that tied him to the past. It could be the bluster of someone who learned to tell stories to hide the ones he doesn't tell. The detective will have to decide which.