Scoundrel

mahogany hutch. Another door led from the dining room’s far end. It was ajar and I edged it further open to see that it led into a leather-furnished and book-lined den with one wall smothered in framed diplomas and awards. This was evidently the room where Tommy the Turd came to pretend he was educated, and it was also the room where Michael Herlihy, still fully dressed, was fast asleep.

I put the gun barrel under his nose. “Morning, Michael.”

“God! What! No!” The last syllable was prompted by the pain he had felt as I rammed the gun into his upper lip.

“Be very still, Michael,” I said, “and very quiet.”

“Paul?”

“Be quiet, Michael!”

He had clearly waited in this comfortable room for news from Seamus. He had waited in the Congressman’s leather recliner, drinking the Congressman’s whiskey out of the Congressman’s crystal tumbler. Now, woken to a bad dream, he was shaking.

“Seamus is dead, Michael.”

“I don’t know anything. Nothing!” He tried to get out of the chair, but the gun persuaded him to stay still. I ran a hand over his rumpled clothes and found a small automatic in one pocket.

I took his gun and put it into my pocket. “You sent Seamus to kill me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Paul.”

“Marty Doyle told me.”

Michael stiffened. “I have no knowledge of these matters.”

“That’s very formal, Michael, very legalistic. Where’s the boat?”

“What boat?”

“Rebel Lady.”

“I don’t know. The Congressman arranged to have her towed away from his property. Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s in Washington.” He pulled a telephone toward him, then gasped as I slashed the gun barrel across his bony nose.

“No telephones, Michael. So where’s Rebel Lady?”

“I told you, Paul, I do not know!”

“Then let’s find out if you’re telling the truth, shall we?” I reached down and yanked him out of the chair. I tripped him as he lurched forward, throwing him face down on to the room’s Oriental rug. I folded the rug over his head so he could see nothing. “If you move,” I said loudly enough for him to hear, “I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

The room’s heavy velvet drapes were tethered by tasselled silk cords. I slashed the cords free, then tied Michael’s hands behind his back. That done I pulled him to his feet, picked a sturdy poker from the collection in the hearth, then pushed Michael out of the den and into the luxurious dining room. “This is a comfortable hiding place, Michael.”

“I’m not hiding,” he protested. “This is where I’m planing O’Shaughnessy’s re-election campaign.”

“Don’t take me for a fool, Michael. The Congressman is always re-elected. Daddy’s money sees to that. If the Congressman was a pox-ridden baboon and his opponent was the Archangel Gabriel, he’d still be re-elected. You don’t have to work at Tommy’s re-election, you just have to wheel him out and point him toward Washington. No, Michael, you were hiding here, that’s what you were doing. Tell me, have the Arabs sent you more money?”

“You’ll regret these allegations!”

“The five million was your price, wasn’t it? You and Brendan?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I demand that you release me! I demand it!” He turned and shouted the words into my face.

“As we non-lawyers say”—I smiled sweetly at him—“fuck away off.” I rammed him with the poker, forcing him to stumble on down the hallway into the kitchen, then out through the broken kitchen door and down the brick path to the locked boathouse. Michael was dressed in his lawyer’s three-piece suit and began to shiver in the bitter wind. “Please?” he said.

“Where’s Rebel Lady?”

“I have no idea where the boat is. Can’t we talk about this inside?”

“Why not in here, Michael?” The boathouse door was secured by a padlocked hasp that yielded to the leverage of the poker. I kicked the broken door open, then pushed Herlihy inside and tethered him to a stanchion with the free end of the curtain cord.

“No, please!” He suddenly understood exactly what I intended doing.

“Where’s Rebel Lady?” I asked in a very reasonable tone.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I think you do, Counsellor, I really think you do.” I went to the far wall where two control boxes operated the twin hoists holding Quick Colleen. I pressed the green buttons and the machinery hummed smoothly as it lowered the sharp-prowed boat into the frozen dock. The ice splintered noisily under the hull’s weight, then the speedboat settled in the water, her bow inwards.

Herlihy made a futile lunge for freedom, but his tether held. “Paul! Be sensible!”

“But I am being sensible. It’s a nice calm day, the waves aren’t more than a foot high, so think of this as a treat! Do you remember when we were teenagers and I took you out for a boat ride?”

“Please, Paul!” He was shaking.

“Where’s Rebel Lady?”

“We sank her, out there!” He jerked his head toward the frigid waters of Nantucket Sound.

“I wonder why I don’t believe you? But we’ll soon see if you’re telling the truth.” I stepped on to Quick Colleen’s foredeck, unbuckled the forward hoist strap and unclipped her cockpit cover to discover her ignition key was still in the dashboard. I tossed the cover on to the dock, released the second hoist, then pressed the switches that tilted the big two-hundred-horsepower engines into the water. The batteries still had power and the twin engines whined down into the icy waves that lapped soft against the low racing transom. I checked the big fuel tank and found it full, primed the engines, advanced the chokes, and turned the key.

The cold engines coughed a couple of times, then, one after the other, they caught and fired. I ran the throttles up so that an ear-shattering bellow reverberated in the boathouse, then let the twin beasts idle. Smoke hazed the boathouse entrance.

“Fun time,” I said happily as I climbed back on to the dock.

“No!” Michael clung desperately to the stanchion. I slapped his hands free, kicked his feet out from under him, then hurled him on to the white leather seats of Quick Colleen. “No!” he protested again. His face had already turned a deathly pallor. “Please, Paul!”

“Where’s Rebel Lady?”

“I told you! We sank her.”

“Then let’s go look for her!” I rammed the throttles into reverse and the expensive boat slashed backwards. I swivelled her, rammed the twin levers forward, and screamed straight out to sea. Within yards the hull was planing and before we had even reached the Spindle Rock Quick Colleen was splintering the wintry sea at fifty miles an hour. At that speed even the smallest wave banged and shook the lightweight racing hull. She crashed across the gray waters, quivering and hammering like a live beast and leaving behind her a twin cock’s comb of high white water that glittered in the early sunlight.

“Isn’t this fun!” I spun the wheel, forcing Quick Colleen to turn like a jet-fighter. She skidded sideways as the huge engines tried to counteract the centrifugal force, then I wrenched her back, gave her full throttle, and let her run loose and fast toward far Nantucket. “I said, isn’t this fun!”

Herlihy had vomited on the leather seat. He was retching and heaving, bringing up nothing but a mixture of bile and water. The boat thumped on the waves, banging like a demented hammer. A fishing boat had left a long gelid wake a mile ahead and I steered straight for it, slamming into the bigger waves at full speed. The sound of the seas hitting Quick Colleen’s hull was like the crack of doom. The boat bounced in the air, came down in an explosion of white water, slammed up again, shook down once more, and Michael was grovelling and sliding around in his own vomit as he desperately tried to keep his balance.

I turned the boat hard, accelerated again, and rammed her back through the fishing boat’s wake. Michael