“Focking maniacs, that’s what those Arabs are. Hanging’s too good for the fockers.” Seamus stared at the green cutout shamrocks that decorated the bar’s back-mirror. “She never did betray me, Paulie. No one did. The Brits said they had the information off her, but they never did. They were just making trouble, and I reckon their trouble worked for they got her a bullet, right?” He frowned. “And she was a rare girl. She had a tongue on her though, didn’t she just? Never heard a woman speak like it.” He suddenly froze, his eyes staring at the mirror which reflected the far side of the room. “Are those two boys after you, you think?”
Two men, both wearing plaid jackets buttoned tight up to their necks, had appeared at the far side of the hall. They were young, broad-chested, and convinced of their own toughness, and neither was trying to hide their interest in me. I suspected that Patrick had whistled them up in the hope that they could retrieve the money I’d just lifted from his pocket. “They’re looking for me, right enough,” I told Seamus.
“Why?”
“Personal. Patrick wants that money back I just took off him, and he doesn’t want to ask me for it himself.”
“Are you sure it’s not political?”
I shook my head. “There wouldn’t have been time to get the orders.”
“What about Michael Herlihy? He’s got the authority, hasn’t he?”
“Not for this sort of trouble, Seamus. Any orders for my killing would have to come from Belfast or Dublin. For Christ’s sake, you think Brendan will have me chopped up before he knows where the gold is? No, this is personal, Seamus. This is between me and Padraig.”
He grinned. “Then I’m on your side, Paulie. Two of them and two of us, eh?” He drained the last of his hot whiskey. “Poor wee fockers. Do we finish them off?”
“We just frighten them.”
“You go first then. I’ll be twenty paces behind.” He made a great play of shaking my hand and saying farewell, then I picked up my bag and pulled on my oilskin. A cheer greeted the abandonment of the war news and the beginning of a televised basketball game. The two men watched me go to the side door, saw that Seamus was ordering another drink, and so followed me toward the winter afternoon.
It was game time.
IN THE OLD DAYS THE PARISH’S SIDE DOOR HAD OPENED INTO an alleyway that ran between the hall and an Italian bakery, but the bakery had long been pulled down to leave an abandoned lot which the Parish used as a place to hide stolen cars and the truckloads of merchandise that disappeared from Logan Airport’s bonded warehouses. The lot was hidden from the road by a high fence that acted as a neighborhood bulletin board. The fence’s outer face was a mass of posters which currently advertised a teach-in on British propaganda techniques in the United States, auditions for the American Children of Ireland Marching Band and Twirlers, classes in spoken Gaelic, an announcement about the St. Patrick’s Day parade arrangements, and twin appeals for contributions to help mark the tenth anniversary of the hunger strikes and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin.
The fence made the lot a fine and private place in the middle of which a police cruiser was now sitting with its engine running, its front doors open, and its emergency lights whipping and urgently lurid glow across the handful of parked vehicles. The car was empty, except for two discarded police caps that lay on the back seat. The cruiser explained why the pair of young men had appeared with their plaid coats buttoned to their throats. It was not that police uniforms would have scared anyone in the Parish, which had Boston’s Irish cops well under control, but inevitably the appearance of two policemen would have caused a stir and the two men had wanted to take me quietly. Besides the police cruiser there were two trucks parked in the lot, a red Lincoln Continental and a black Mercedes sports car that must have belonged to Tommy the Turd for it had a special Congressional license plates.
I cut right, going past the Mercedes toward the gap in the fence which would lead me toward East Broadway. There was a could wind and a light rain in the darkening air, making me glad that I was wearing my thick yellow oilskin. I heard the Parish side door bang open behind me and felt the adrenalin warm my veins. “Shanahan!” someone shouted.
I turned, but kept walking backward.
“Freeze there!” The two youngsters were nervous, but were determined to play the scene tough. They fumbled under their tight buttoned plaid coats for their pistols.
They were still trying to extricate their guns when Seamus came out of the Parish door. The two policemen, embarrassed by the unwanted witness, straightened up. I had started walking toward them, feigning innocence. “You wanted me, boys?”
“Don’t mind me, lads,” Seamus sauntered down the steps.
The cops tried to lose Seamus. “We just wanted a word with Mr. Shanahan. Something private.”
“Private, is it? But Paulie and I are old friends. We go way back, lads. There’s no secrets between us, are there, Paulie?”
“You can talk in front of Seamus,” I said, “so what is it? A parking violation? Or a donation for the police orphanage?” I was six paces in front of them and Seamus was three paces behind, and the two cops were both sweating despite the chill wind, and no wonder, for Seamus had a certain reputation among the Irish. “So what do you want of me?” I asked them, and heard the Ulster lilt in my voice. I had caught the accent when I lived there, and at moments of stress it came back. Behind me the police car’s lights whirled in the gloom.
“It’s nothing.” One of the two cops had decided to back out of the confrontation. He held his hands palm outward toward me. “Nothing at all. Forget it.”
“You’re disappointing me, boys.” I took a step closer. Seamus jerked his head to his left, telling me he would take that man, and I took another pace forward when suddenly the Parish side door banged open again and an agitated Michael Herlihy appeared on the top step. “Stop it! Now! You hear me? John Doyle? O’Connor? You back off, now, both of you!” Herlihy’s voice was sharp as ice. He must have been close by, perhaps in the back room of Tully’s Tavern that he used as a South Boston office, when Marty Doyle had told him of my appearance in the land of the living. Herlihy, hearing that Patrick was having me beaten up by the Parish’s tame police, saw the small matter of five million dollars being complicated. Michael Herlihy wanted to find out just what attitude I was taking to the missing gold before he saw me tenderized, and so he had come full pelt out of his lair to head off the trouble. “Whatever you were doing,” he ordered the two policemen, “stop it!”
“Just what were you doing?” I asked the relieved policemen.
“Nothing, Mr. Shanahan, nothing. We were just leaving! It was all a mistake.”
They moved to walk past me toward their car, but I put out a hand to stop them. “Hadn’t you heard, boys? The Parish has got valet parking these days. Isn’t that right, Seamus?”
“Right enough, Paulie.”
The two policemen dared not move for Seamus radiated a capacity for mind-numbing violence and was standing hard behind them. He was not restraining the policemen, but neither cop dared move a muscle as I climbed into their squad car, took off the parking brake and shifted it into reverse. I smiled through the windscreen, then rammed my foot on to the accelerator. The police car shot backward, smack into the brick side wall of the neighboring hardware store. “Sorry, boys!” I shouted. “I’m more used to boats than I am to cars!”
Seamus was laughing. Herlihy, whose office pallor had turned even whiter than usual, glared but did not try to stop me, while the two police officers just stood like whipped children. I pulled forward, hearing the tinkle of broken brake lights falling to the ground, then rammed the accelerator again, this time aiming the car at Tommy the Turd’s Mercedes. Herlihy flinched when he saw what I was doing, then closed his eyes as I rammed the police cruiser hard into the flank of the sleek black sports car. There was a horrible mangling noise. “It’s been so long since I’ve driven a car, boys!” I shouted. “But I’ll get it right, don’t you worry!”
A dozen men had come out of the Parish, attracted by the squeal and crash of tortured metal. Herlihy, tight with fury, turned and ordered them back inside. Seamus’s lawyer ignored the order and stood laughing while Tommy the Turd and his Waspy aide were wondering if the world had slipped gears. Patrick McPhee, knowing he had started this madness with his ill-judged summons for police help, fled in panic from Michael’s anger.
