Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (2 page)

WHAT’LL YE HAVE?” The bartender, clothed like an impeccably starched penguin, looked as though he’d rather be anywhere than stuck behind the bar at a three hundred dollar a plate political fundraiser. Casey Riordan, bowtie and top stud of his crisp white shirt undone, knew the feeling all too well.

“Have ye got any Connemara Mist?” Casey asked, as he sat on one of the highly cushioned brass stools next to the bar.

“Aye, ten year malt, sixteen year reserve, an’ the special blend.”

“Give me a double of the single malt,” Casey said, rummaging in his tuxedo jacket for a cigarette before remembering his wife had rather pointedly removed them, saying they ruined the line of his suit. He sighed audibly, and the bartender set a pack of cigarettes in front of him.

“Thanks,” Casey said gratefully, tapping one out and sliding the pack back.

“Take a couple,” the bartender said, “ye’ll need the fortification.”

“Look that thrilled to be here, do I?” Casey asked.

“About as thrilled as I feel, an’ I’m gettin’ paid,” the man replied, setting a generous tumbler of whiskey on the polished wood of the bar.

Casey picked the glass up, sniffed appreciatively, and took a sip. It slid gold and warm down his throat, leaving tendrils of fire in its wake.

“What bit of Belfast are ye from?” the bartender asked, opening a split of champagne and setting it in a silver bucket of dry ice.

“The Ardoyne,” Casey said, and swallowed the remainder of his drink, closing his eyes around the taste, feeling the welcome heat in his belly. “An’ yerself?”

“Donegal, little village up near Malinhead, population of about eighty an’ that includes the sheep,” the bartender replied with a wistful smile. “How long have ye been over?”

“A few months,” Casey said. “How about yerself?”

“Three years.”

“Do ye get homesick?”

“Sometimes,” the man shrugged, “though when I was home I couldn’t wait to get over here an’ now that I’m here I wonder what the rush was. How ‘bout yerself, longin’ for the old sod?”

“Aye,” Casey looked down into his empty glass, “at times.”

“The land of milk an’ honey not all ye expected?”

“Not entirely, but then I suppose home would not seem the same to me now either.”

The bartender set the bottle of malt whiskey in front of him. “Have another—it’s on the house, least I can do for a fellow countryman.”

“Thanks, man.”

The bartender whisked a rag over the spotless gleam of the bar. “I went back home the once, an’ it was as if I belonged neither here nor there. I’ve a foot in both worlds but I’m not standin’ firm in either, if ye’ll know what I’m sayin’.”

“Aye, I’ll know,” Casey agreed, “yer a man without a country.”

Just then, a voice at his left elbow said, “Cognac. Hennessey if you’ve got it.”

“Boring crowd,” drawled the voice, and Casey knew without turning his head what he would find—floppy blond hair, long thin-bladed nose, ice blue eyes and a jaded, world-weary expression. He poured himself another two fingers of whiskey and stared straight ahead at the vast array of bottles lining the mirrored wall of the bar.

“Say, can I just have the bottle as well? Good man,” he said, as the bartender, now expressionless and silent, placed the cognac at the man’s elbow. “Good turnout, though, and plenty of old money; Eliot should do well for himself tonight.” A long, slender hand, pale and refined, stuck itself in front of him and Casey sighed.

“Charles Reese-David, though everyone calls me Chip.”

“Of course they do,” Casey muttered, giving the hand the briefest of shakes and then, taking another swig of his drink, turned most reluctantly towards the voice that had already saturated the floor with its dropped
r’
s.

The man looked exactly as he’d predicted to himself—hopelessly overbred English, though his ancestors had likely come over with the Mayflower. Casey wondered if everyone on that particular boat had looked this way, bloodless and effete, yet somehow still managing to convey an innate superiority.

“You look familiar,” the man continued as Casey turned back to his drink. “Were you at Harvard? I was in Law there. Went to Choate as a boy, is that where I know you from?”

“Don’t think so,” Casey said with as much politeness as he could muster, hunting in his inside pocket for his wallet. The bartender shook his head at the bills and Casey returned the money to his pocket with a nod of thanks. He was just sliding off the stool when the man next to him let out a long, low whistle.

“Get an eyeful of that will you?”

Casey turned and saw the object of the man’s interest making her way across the floor of the ballroom. In a roomful of heirloom jewelry she wore only a pair of tiny ruby earrings and a plain silver band on her left hand. She stopped to have a word here, two there, smiling and charming the people who’d paid and paid well to get on the political express train of Eliot Reese-David.

“She’s my brother’s PR person if you can believe it. Bastard’s always been terrifically lucky with women. Even he couldn’t believe his luck, though, when Love Hagerty gave her to him for the campaign.”

“Gave her?” Casey said raising his eyebrows, his tone causing the bartender to look up warily from the case of Cristal he was unloading. Charles Reese-David, however, had no such instinct, and continued heedlessly on.

“Yes. She’s Love Hagerty’s piece on the side, apparently. She’s married to one of his thugs. Eliot’s had no luck with her at all. He’s hoping to change all that when he goes to Washington, though. Thinks maybe she’s afraid of Love Hagerty; in Washington she’ll be at a safe remove. Even that backroom-dealing Irish crook’s tentacles can’t stretch all the way there.”

“Mr. Hagerty’s a born an’ bred Bostonian, I believe,” Casey said lightly.

Chip snorted derisively. “There’s an old Beacon Hill saying about that—‘you can take the mick out of the bog, but you can’t take the—”

“Bog out of the mick,” Casey finished coldly.

“Heavens, is she coming this way?” Chip straightened up, shooting his cuffs and casting a surreptitious glance in the mirror over his shoulder. “Met her at Eliot’s office a few weeks ago. Apparently,” he smiled creamily, “I left an impression.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Casey said, his voice coming as close to friendliness as it had all night.

The object of Chip’s interest reached them a moment later, gave him a polite ‘hello’, and sliding her arms around Casey’s neck, tucked her face into the curve of his shoulder and said, “Casey, take me home will you?”

“Aye I’ll take ye home. Are ye all finished with yer business for the evenin’, then?” he asked, sparing a sideways glance for Chip, who was looking even more bloodless than he had a moment before.

“Mmhm,” she said sleepily, “Eliot can manage on his own, it’ll only be the stragglers left soon anyhow and I’m exhausted by this crowd.” She slid one hand inside his loosened collar and whispered silkily, “Take me home to bed.”

“Yer goin’ to cause a scandal woman, can I not take ye anywhere?” He said with mock sternness.

She whispered something else in his ear and he found to his consternation that he was blushing.

“Is that even legal in Massachusetts?” he asked. “Ye have to remember this place was settled by Puritans.”

“I think,” she said, tongue touching the rim of his ear in a highly distracting manner, “that several of them are here tonight.”

“Well I’d best get yer wrap before I’m forced to carry ye out of here over my shoulder,” Casey said with a grin, noting that Chip was still staring in stunned disbelief at the two of them.

When he returned with the coats he found his wife in conversation with Eliot Reese-David the Fourth, and took a deep breath before approaching. He’d loathed the man on sight, something in his Hibernian soul recoiling from the very first meeting. Eliot was old Yankee, Boston Brahmin all the way. Like his brother, he was Choate and Harvard educated, housed on Beacon Hill, heir to a fortune that exceeded the fiscal resources of many small nations, and far, far too fond, Casey thought—watching with fury as the man laid a hand on Pamela’s shoulder—of his wife.

“Ready then?” he asked, settling Pamela’s plush black velveteen jacket around her shoulders.

“Pity you have to leave so soon, we didn’t even have a chance to chat.” Eliot said to Casey, his eyes like two ice chips.

“A great pity,” Casey returned, the heavy sarcasm in his voice lost on none of them.

“Well Pamela,” Eliot turned a much warmer aspect on his public relations assistant of the last two months, “we pulled off a very good evening here, I’d say.” The man managed to make the
we
sound distinctly cozy and Casey had to bite his tongue sharply.

“
You,
Eliot,” Pamela said, “it’s your baby now, there’s only a week left until the election and then you’re off to Washington and I’ll go back to working for Mr. Hagerty.”

“We’ll see,” Eliot said, and Casey thought of how he’d dearly love to throw the man the length of the bar.

“Good night, Eliot,” she said and there was just the slightest edge of dismissal in her voice, as though she had laid a hand on his arm and pushed him gently, but firmly, away.

The man blinked, a slight flush staining his face. “Good night.”

Pamela tucked her arm through Casey’s and leaned into his side in a gesture of casual and sure intimacy that was not lost on their two-man audience. Casey smiled and nodded goodbye in a way that managed to be dismissive, and then at the last moment leaned back towards Chip and said, “’Twasn’t at Harvard we met, for I wasn’t schooled there, as ye may have guessed.”

“Indeed,” Chip said frostily, “where were you schooled?”

“Streets of Belfast, an’ then I matriculated up to a little institution called Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight. Was there at the invitation an’ leisure of her Majesty the Queen. Class of ’68, got my degree in the finer points of how to take a man’s life, or how to make him wish I had.” He paused for a moment, his dark eyes making certain contact with Chip’s pale blue ones. “If ye feel a certain fraternal fondness for yer brother, I’d advise ye to tell him that my wife is well taken care of an’ in no need of his attentions. D’ye understand my meanin’?”

Chip nodded, Adams apple bobbing up and down nervously.

“I see yer a fast learner. Good fer you, it’s a valuable survival skill,” Casey said in a deceptively amiable tone before turning to escort his wife out of the ballroom.

“You really think the man will win?” Casey asked, after they’d hailed a cab and begun the long ride from Beacon Hill to South Boston.

“I certainly hope so,” Pamela said, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her head on his shoulder. “I only wish Congress sat in Zimbabwe or some equally remote place.”

“Ye know he’s goin’ to ask ye to come to Washington with him, don’t ye?”

“I’ve already turned him down twice.”

“The sleeven bastard!” Casey said, vehemently. “Ye know why he wants to take ye there?”

“Of course,” she said lightly, “for my diverse talents. Now let’s not talk about him anymore, it’ll ruin the rest of the night. And I have some very specific plans for tonight.”

“Do ye then?” Casey said as a hand found its way underneath his onyx-studded shirt.

“Oh yes, Mr. Riordan,” she said and removed the loosened bowtie with one tug of her fingers, “I do.”

“Well then, Mrs. Riordan,” he stifled a gasp as a hand slid down the front of his impeccably creased trousers, “we’d best get ye home quick like.”

HOME WAS AN OLD walk-up triple-decker in Southie. Pamela and Casey occupied the top floor of the shabby red-brick Victorian, and so, as Pamela had optimistically said, had a view to the stars. Casey was less romantic in his view and saw a rundown hovel with slanted floors, where the windows were so thick with ice that, even now in November, a man couldn’t see out of them. The pipes groaned like an old man on his last legs, and the stairwell stank of beer and piss. Pamela belonged here about as much as a priceless diamond belonged in a cesspit, Casey thought, sitting on the bed and taking off his cufflinks, studs, and shirt, before lighting a desperately needed cigarette. He hated the damn place, but it was what they could afford on their wages and still have enough left over to put in the bank for the house they hoped to buy sometime in the near future. Still, it pained him to keep her here.

He sighed and leaned against the wall at the head of the bed. The room was bathed in blue light from the neon sign across the street and he watched Pamela in the dim as she took off her pumps and pulled the pins out of her hair. She headed for the bathroom to take off her makeup and begin all the mysterious rituals that she couldn’t seem to go to bed without.

“Don’t,” he said huskily, “undress out here. Undress for me.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a glance that made his breath stop in his throat. Then she reached for the zip on her dress.

Her back was blue-brushed ivory in the night, the dress a delicate, slithering web that dropped slowly to her hips and then, aided by her hands, fell to the floor.

He took a deep breath as he saw the stockings and the garters, all frothy lace, that held them up. She was slender and supple, but she had a woman’s body, the stuff of which a healthy male’s fantasies were made.