“You’ve met my tenant?” I gestured at Sarah.
Sarah Tennyson smiled thinly. “Don’t you knock before going into other people’s houses?”
“This is my house,” I said.
“It’s good to have an artist living here, isn’t it?” Johnny tried to defuse the atmosphere with happiness. He gestured at Sarah Tennyson’s paintings which were mostly of the Nauset Lighthouse, but rendered so gloomily that they might have depicted a watch-tower in hell. “I was telling her how they tried to teach me to do art at school! What a waste! I couldn’t even draw a box, not even with a ruler to help. And good morning to you!” This last greeting was to Gillespie who had followed me into the house.
I hurried Johnny into the kitchen before he could start a general conversation about the weather and the fishing and the beaches. “Make free in my house, won’t you, Shanahan?” Sarah Sing Tennyson called after me.
“Mr. Shanahan!” Gillespie seemed to be worried that I might try to make a bolt out of the back door.
“This is family business,” I said firmly, then I dragged Johnny into the kitchen and slammed the door shut.
“What’s going on?” Johnny asked me. “She told me she’s renting the place! I knew she was here off and on, but I thought she just borrowed it from Maureen at weekends. But I haven’t seen Maureen for months, so I couldn’t ask her. I know Maureen’s husband is here sometimes, but—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut Johnny off. I knew I would have only a few moments before Gillespie interrupted us and I dared not waste a minute. “Listen,” I told Johnny, “there’s a boat being delivered to you. She’s coming from Spain and I had her sent to you. She’s coming deck cargo from Barcelona, and a customs agent will call you from Boston. I don’t know when she will get here, but probably in about six or seven weeks, OK? There shouldn’t be any customs duty to pay on her, because she’s registered in Massachusetts. These are her papers.” I took the original
Johnny riffled through the hundred-dollar bills, then gave me a very disapproving look. “This isn’t drugs again, is it, Paulie? Because if it is, I’m not helping. Don’t even ask me.” He held the money back toward me.
I pushed them back again. “I swear to God, Johnny, this has nothing to do with drugs. On my mother’s grave, there’s nothing illegal inside the boat.”
“Nothing?” He was still suspicious.
“There’s gold aboard her,” I told him reluctantly, “which is why I don’t want anyone to know about her. If anyone asks what we’re talking about in here, you’re agreeing to look after this house while I’m gone. You understand, Johnny? The boat’s a secret.”
“Gold! In her hull?” Johnny seemed cheered by that thought, then watched in amazement as I slipped the rest of the hundred-dollar bills inside my false passport, added Teodor’s other false papers, then reached up to raise one of the spare bedroom floorboards that comprised the kitchen ceiling. Johnny supported the floorboard while I fumbled along the top surface of one of the kitchen’s old black beams. Eventually I found the cavity I had long ago hollowed into the beam, and into which I now dropped the passport, papers and money.
“There shouldn’t be any problems with the boat,” I told Johnny. “Her papers are in order and I’ll probably be back before she arrives anyway.”
“You’re going away again?” Johnny sounded disappointed, which was flattering after so many years.
“I’ll be away for a few weeks, no more. But listen!” I rammed a finger into his chest to reinforce what I was saying. “There might be some real bastards looking for this boat. I’ve covered her tracks pretty well, but if anyone wants to argue about her, back off. Give them what they want and leave well alone. These are nasty guys, Johnny, real nasty. They’re friends of Michael Herlihy, and worse, so if Michael asks questions, just tell him I asked you to look after the boat and you don’t know any more about it than that, and if he wants the boat, or if anyone else wants it, just let it go! You understand me? I don’t want you or your family to be hurt.”
My mention of Mick Herlihy had made Johnny very unhappy. “This is IRA business, isn’t it?” Johnny, like most of the American-Irish, had always insisted that the Irish Troubles were best left on the far side of the Atlantic. His own father, like mine, had loved to work himself into a lather about the injustices of Irish history, but Johnny had no belly for disliking anyone, not even the Brits.
“How is your dad?” I asked Johnny, rather than answer his question about the IRA’s involvement.
“He died last year, God rest him.”
“Oh, my God.” I crossed myself. “Poor Eamonn.”
“After Mom died he didn’t have much interest in anything,” Johnny said. “I couldn’t even get him out on the boat! He was living with us by then, and Julie would try and keep him interested, you know, ask him to take the kids down to the beach or whatever, but he just wanted to be left alone. Father Murphy said some people just know when their time’s come, and I reckon Dad decided his had.”
“I never heard about your mom either,” I confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“You should have stayed in touch, Paulie,” Johnny chided me, but gently, then he asked me again whether the gold on board the boat had anything to do with the IRA.
I was saved from answering because a very suspicious Gillespie pushed open the kitchen door. “What’s going on?”
“Paulie’s just telling me what he wants done with the house while he’s away.” Johnny, bless him, told the lie with all the conviction of a guileless man. “Are you sure you don’t want aluminum siding?” he asked me. “The salt plays havoc with shingles, Paul, you should think about it.”
“God no! No aluminum. Keep the cedar.” I, a practiced deceiver, sounded much less convincing, but Gillespie seemed reassured.
“If you’re through?” he invited me to accompany him.
“And for God’s sake, Johnny,” I went on loudly enough for Sarah Sing Tennyson to overhear me, “make sure the girl gets the hell out of here.”
Sarah Tennyson’s anger flared to instant meltdown level. “Don’t you dare come here again, Shanahan!” she shouted over Gillespie’s shoulder. “I’ve already talked to my attorneys this morning and they say I signed the lease in good faith and I’ve paid the rent on time, so this place is mine.” Johnny, ever a peacemaker, tried to calm her down, but she pushed the big man aside. “Do you hear me, Shanahan? This is my house for as long as the lease lasts, and if you break in here once more then so help me God I’ll sue you and I’ll take this house in lieu of damages and you will never set foot inside this place again. Never! Do you understand me, Shanahan?”
“Jesus,” Gillespie muttered in awe, and no wonder, for Sarah Sing Tennyson in full strident flow was a classy act.
“What I understand,” I said, “is that your lawyer can play let’s-get-rich with my brother-in-law’s lawyer, but I’m not involved, and I don’t care to be involved. So you get your money back from Patrick McPhee and you send me the bill for the phone and the electric installation, and then you can take away your finger paintings, give me back the front-door key, and vanish.”
She pointed to the front hall. “Get the hell out of my house, all of you!” Her scornful gesture encompassed Johnny, Gillespie and myself. “Out!”
“You pack your bags, and you get out!” I shouted as I was evicted from my own house. It was not the most effective of retorts, but it was the best I could manage and it left Sarah Sing Tennyson the undisputed victor of the hour.
“Let’s just do as she says,” Gillespie muttered. We scuttled ignominiously out to the driveway where Stuart Callaghan waited in the car. The hire car I’d rented at Logan Airport was also there, which hardly worried me. I had used the French prisoner’s credit card to rent it and I guessed its owners would eventually get it back.
I looked back as we accelerated up the clam-shell drive and I saw Sarah Tennyson, her face a mask of outrage and anger, watching to make certain we really did leave my property. I blew her a kiss, received a rigid finger in reply, then we were over the sand ridge and into the scrub pine, and gone.
