Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (10 page)

“Yes. She comes to confession occasionally—she has feelings for you. And there’s gossip as well.”

“Is there?” Casey took a fierce drag on his cigarette, the ash lit up like a hot coal, and two red spots were reflected in the man’s dark eyes. “Did she tell ye about Rosemary, then?”

“No,” Kevin said, sorting through his recollections of Emma’s various friends. Then he had it, a pretty girl with red curls who came for both the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner the parish held every year. “What about her?”

“We found her murdered up at a place in New Hampshire. She’d called Emma and Emma got scared an’ asked me to come up there with her. I did, but the girl was dead by the time we got there. An’ now it seems the New Hampshire state police are lookin’ at yours truly for the crime.”

“What?” Kevin could feel the blood rush down toward his knees.

“Aye, ye look about as well as I did when Emma told me they were questionin’ her.”

“Have they questioned you?”

Casey shook his head. “No, that’s the odd bit; I’ve not heard a word from the police.”

“Something isn’t right here,” Kevin frowned.

“She did mention as Blackie was close with Rosemary.”

“That I don’t know,” Kevin said, “Blackie hasn’t darkened the door of a church in a lot of years. But it’s possible, though generally he likes them blonde and—
ahem
—rather well built.”

Casey narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “There’s a deal here not addin’ up. I did a wee bit of pokin’ around up in New Hampshire. Got a look at the property title on the wee cabin an’ the land it sits upon.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“A wee bit of Irish charm an’ a strip of blarney will get a man a ways in this world.”

“I see,” Kevin said dryly, “the title clerk was female. So what did you find out?”

“The property belongs to a man named John Mullins, a name that is about as common as carrots in a stew, so that didn’t give me a great deal to go upon.”

Kevin shook his head. “Sorry it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Aye, well, it didn’t mean a great deal to me either, until I found out Emma’s father used to have an old partner by that name. Did ye know that Emma’s father was a policeman?” Casey blew out a stream of smoke and stubbed out his cigarette, wrapping it up neatly in the brown leaf. It was one of things that Kevin had noticed about him from the start. That he never left a trace of himself behind, other than the strong impression he made on people.

“No, I didn’t.” Kevin felt suddenly weary of all the corruption. How did a policeman, of all people, end up with a daughter turning tricks in the streets? He knew there was an answer, though, and it was obvious enough. Love Hagerty.

“There’s connections here—an’ I feel as if I can almost see them an’ then they run underground an’ don’t poke back up again for several feet, so to speak.” One fist hit the iron stair rails, “It’s just damn frustratin’ trying to figure this out while the noose is bein’ fashioned to fit my neck.” He looked at Kevin squarely, “Ye’ve not asked me if I’m guilty.”

“Give me some credit. I do have a bit of judgement; priests tend to cultivate it after awhile you know.”

“Aye, well, ye were fishin’ about to see if I were commiting adultery a moment ago.”

Kevin waved a hand in dismissal. “I didn’t really think you were indulging in that either. I’ve seen you with your wife. I would have been terribly disappointed if you really were having an affair. I knew something was bothering you, though, and couldn’t think of a more tactful way to approach it.”

“Thanks for that—for not thinkin’ the worst of me.” Casey sighed, “I don’t come from a place where things were prettied up. But there’s a certain value in that and an honesty that lets a man know where he stands. Belfast is hard city, aye, but I knew how to deal with that. A wolf seems a wolf there, an’ isn’t likely to be dressed as a sheep.” Father Kevin suppressed an unseemly smile at the thought of Love Hagerty in the guise of a sheep. “This,” he put his hands up in a hopeless gesture, “this mystifies me. Can ye tell me why evil seems worse when it smells good an’ looks like ice cream?”

“Because it ought to stink and look bad, just to make things simple, if for no other reason.”

Casey laughed, a humorless sound. “Could ye put in a request with the man upstairs then, Father, ask him to simplify it a bit for us fools?”

“You could ask him yourself,” Father Kevin replied, not quite managing to keep the bite from his tone.

“Are ye angry at me, then?” Casey asked. “Do ye wish I’d kept it to myself?”

Kevin sighed, “No, of course not. I’m just a little surprised at your naïveté.”

“Aye, looks stupid in retrospect, but I ask ye how many people know what he is? Outside of these streets, I mean?”

“No one,” Kevin admitted reluctantly. “Blackie is the front man for all the business they conduct. I just thought, considering the capacity you met him in, it might have occurred to you that he wasn’t a shining example of civic duty.”

Casey laughed. “Now who’s bein’ naïve, Kevin? Have ye any notion of the places ye might find people who support such causes? Particularly that of a United Ireland.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been soliciting the Cardinal as well?”

Casey laughed, and the tension between them broke.

“No, I’ve left my arms-dealin’ days behind me. It’d take a better man than I to beard the Cardinal on such a subject.”

“I don’t know, you weren’t afraid to approach Hagerty, there’s not many would do that in such a bold manner.”

“Aye, well, I didn’t know what I was dealin’ with at the time.”

“And now that you do?”

Casey gave the priest a hard look, “Were ye trained by the Jesuits, Father? What would ye have me say—I’m only one man, I can’t take him on alone.”

“You wouldn’t have to. I saw a man talking to you back of the Old City Hall, not too long back. He had the look of a member of a certain Federal organization.”

Casey sighed and shook his head. “D’ye think they could save me, should it all go to shite? They’ve their own interests. An’ there’s more than one agent at the local field office that comes from the man’s own neighborhood. For all my address is on those streets,
I
am the outsider—not him.”

Father Kevin wanted to deny the truth of the statement, but could not. Corruption was not limited to the streets, nor to the flaking gold leaf of the halls of politics. Love was a man of powerful charisma, and he had held much of Southie in a thrall for three decades now. Even those that had good reason to hate him feared him enough to crumple under his rule. But this man standing beside him, though young, seemed made of something strong enough to stage an uprising and maybe, just maybe, get away with it.

Yet, he was right, he was an outsider and there was nothing worse a man could be in Southie— even Christ would be suspect in that neighborhood. Old loyalties lay deep, sanctified in the blood of the past, and pacts made between small boys who were too small to understand what the future could hold, still held firm as a warrior’s oath. Ironically enough the roots of such fierce loyalty lay in the small Irish villages most of these people’s ancestors had originated in. Small huddles of cottages that contained a wealth of tangled relations, loves, hates—in short, all the salt and blood of life.

Though Belfast was ostensibly a city, Kevin knew it too retained the fierce tribal loyalism of a much smaller center. The Scots had brought their clannishness with them, and made the Irish outsiders in their own land. Yes, Casey understood how deep such loyalties lay, and how history could affect the future for hundreds of years. Casey was right, Southie was not safe and he could not take down an empire single-handed. Should he attempt it, all doors would be closed to him, and he would be in the merciless streets alone. With a stocky, red-headed priest at his back mind you, but that wasn’t likely to be of much comfort to the man.

“If something should happen to me,” Casey said, voice flat, “will ye see to it that my wife gets out of this city? I don’t trust what might happen if I’m not here.”

“With Hagerty?”

“Aye,” he nodded, eyes a savage gray, “I’ve seen how the man looks at her, like he’d have her whole for breakfast if he might. He’s no respect for what is another man’s, nor does he understand that a woman might not choose to have him in her life or her bed. It’s as if no one ever has told him no in his life.”

“Some have,” Father Kevin said, “but they’ve generally lived to regret it.”

“Or not lived,” Casey added tersely.

Father Kevin nodded his agreement.

“Listen I’ve got a cousin—runs a fishing boat out of St. John’s up in Newfoundland—you’d be out a month at a time, but it would keep you off of Hagerty’s radar for a bit.”

“Quit an’ go to sea?” Casey said, the joking tone of his voice not quite coming off.

Kevin turned to him questioningly. The man had gone the color of a fish belly.

“I’ve no great love for the water.”

“Are you serious? You come from an island, for heaven’s sake.”

Casey snorted derisively, “An’ what the hell has that got to do with anything? For all it’s an island, the Irish are hardly a seafaring race, man.”

“No,” Kevin conceded, “they are not. Strange that—surrounded by water on all sides and yet not a great many sailors. Yet they had the courage to cross the Atlantic in search of a better life here. I wonder how many felt they’d found it once they arrived.”

“Do ye think of them, Kevin? What it was to be torn from all ye’d ever known or understood an’ come to this wild an’ fierce place dirt-poor, with barely a shirt to call yer own, knowin’ ye were not welcome in the least?”

Kevin nodded, “How could I not, with half the city originating in Ireland?”

“An’ yer own people?”

“Cork,” Kevin said, rolling a small bit of ice under one flattened palm.

“Ah,” Casey laughed knowingly, “the chosen people.”

“Should I call my cousin with the fishing boat?” Kevin asked, not looking at the man beside him, but at the bleak yard in front of the two of them, the deserted swings swaying lightly in the cold breeze.

There was a long silence and then the answer came, soft and defeated.

“Aye, call him.”

BOSTON GREETED SPRING with an explosion of green. Everywhere one looked there was green-flagrant, riotous and trembling with life. Between the cracks of sidewalks, sprouting out from crumbling walls, round the graves of long dead patriots and tumbling up from the esplanade in a rolling crescendo. Spring in Boston did all the things it did to the human psyche in other cities. Couples kissed on street corners, skin was exposed to the returning sun in all its shades of glowing winter white, children played kickball in the street and mothers in sundresses pushed baby carriages while chatting with other mothers. The Red Sox returned to Fenway, and a certain ebullience filled the air and infected all from eight to eighty. For all its Brahmin heritage, Boston was a brash city, full of working class values and middle man morals. This was never more apparent than in the spring, when the city assumed the character of a freckle-faced tomboy up to bat and ready to show her stripes.

With the arrival of spring, Pamela had taken to having her lunch in the park. The Back Bay Fens were part of the long, linked choker of parks that encircled Boston’s throat with its fabled Emerald Necklace. It was a peaceful respite from the business lunches Love often required her presence for, pleading that he needed her intuitive reading on possible business ventures. More often than not, she felt she was merely there to distract the latest sucker Love was looking to swindle.

The week before, she’d come across a bench, tucked in the lee of a horse chestnut, delicately braced by a ribbon of ferns. It was an ideal spot to sit and let thoughts meander along with the spring breeze that smelled enticingly of slow-moving sap and just blossomed flowers.

When Agent Gus showed up amongst the fern fronds, looking unmistakably agent-like in his navy suit, he stuck out like a monk at a bacchanal. She sighed in resignation and indicated the empty stretch of bench beside her with a tilt of her head. The agent had become a familiar sight over the last few weeks.

He took the invitation with alacrity, placing himself on the weathered gray wood under the deep canopy of the chestnut, with a breath of relief.

“Don’t be nervous, you’re not in any trouble,” he said, though the ‘all work and no play’ expression he wore said otherwise.

“Forgive me,” she replied acidly, “but I’m not used to having my lunch interrupted by a federal agent.”

“I’m supposed to look like a businessman on his lunch hour,” he said, tucking his sun-glasses in his jacket pocket and squinting under the onslaught of unfiltered sunlight.

“Lose the jacket, loosen the tie, roll up the cuffs and you might pass, though I doubt it.” She angled her head, “If you were younger you could be mistaken for a Mormon missionary, but a businessman—no way.”

Though Agent Gus was hardly a pillar of granite, she noticed that today he seemed particularly fidgety. He was swallowing compulsively, avoiding her eyes and plucking at the buttons on his suit jacket.

“There’s something I need to discuss with you,” he swallowed again, sticking a finger inside his collar, under which the flesh was growing increasingly red. “I don’t know exactly how to say this.”

“I’m guessing you’re not here because you had a desire to share my tuna fish with me, so you’d best out with it before it chokes you.”

“That obvious?” he asked, chagrin written clear across his features.

“Like you’ve a dozen fish bones lodged in your craw.”

“So much for subtlety.”

“Not,” Pamela said, though not unkindly, “one of your virtues.”

“Right then,” he took a breath and loosed the rest of his words on a rush of air, “we need someone close to Hagerty to help us out. Someone that he trusts.” There could be little doubt exactly whom he meant by
someone
.

“I thought you had informants or agents on the inside to handle these things,” she said, feeling a bubble of panic lodge behind her windpipe.