Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (43 page)

“Not much,” Casey replied, wondering if the boy’s cynicism was earned or merely a façade to appear tough. Most likely a little of both. The street was no place for a child, the streets of Belfast even less so.

“An’ how old are ye now?”

“Sixteen,” the boy answered smoothly.

Casey fixed him with a gimlet glare.

“Alright, I’m fourteen, but ye can’t tell anyone, I’ll be thrown into some orphanage or somethin’ an’ I can’t do that again.”

“I can find ye a place to stay if ye like.” Casey said, the words surprising him as they left his tongue. For he wasn’t sure he trusted this child. “But I’d best be clear about what I’m dealin’ with, before I find ye a bed to sleep in.”

“Nah, I’ve a place to kip when I need it,” he said. Then he cleared his throat as though giving himself time to assess just how much to say, and how much to keep back. “The man who was chasin’ me?”

“Aye.”

“His name is Morris Jones an’ he runs with an organization called the Redhand Democracy. Heard of them?”

Casey nodded. The Redhand Democracy was a fanatical splinter group that claimed its roots within Loyalist conclaves. However, some of the things they’d claimed responsibility for made even hardline Loyalists look like cherubic choirboys. They were not a group a man could afford to come to the attention of. Particularly a man who was in a rather tenuous position with his own tribe.

“There’s things,” Flip paused to butt his cigarette out, pale brow knotted, “I’ve seen, that’d be better if I’d not. Morris knows I seen ‘em, an’ he’s not thrilled about my bein’ where he can’t keep an eye on me. I’m not safe either way though, so’s I’d just as soon take my chances on the street. Short of havin’ the man shot,” with this he looked hopefully at Casey, who gave him a vehement shake of his head, “I don’t see many options.”

Casey knew the child was right; his options were limited if he knew things that could potentially damage Morris or any of the crew of murderers, rapists and thieves with whom he surrounded himself. Belfast wasn’t really big enough for effective hiding, though the boy hadn’t done too badly thus far.

“Maybe,” the lad said quietly, “it’d interest ye to know that he meets with Joe Doherty, regular-like but always on the sly. Not sure which of them is tryin’ to keep it secret, but they never meet durin’ daylight, an’ they pick a different place every time.”

Now that was interesting, Casey thought to himself, while outwardly displaying no reaction. Until he knew exactly who this boy was, he needed to exercise caution with what he himself revealed. “What is it that ye know of Joe Doherty?” he asked quietly, though with a thread of steel to his words.

“Other than what I’ve just told ye, only what everyone on the streets seems to know. That he sees ye as a threat to the new IRA he’s buildin’, because yer not corrupt an’ he’s not found the method to go about corruptin’ ye. If Joe doesn’t have ye in his debt, he’s afraid of ye. An’ fear in such a man is no good thing.”

“Aye, like yer own situation with Morris.”

Flip nodded, “I thought as we’re in a similar boat...”

“We might as well go down together?”

“Or paddle ourselves out of it,” Flip replied, blue eyes candid. For the first time he seemed like a frightened child, looking for an ally. Or, Casey thought cynically, a solid body to hide behind when the bullets started to fly.

Though not a man given to signs or portents, it was hard to ignore the fact that this boy was in a situation similar to the one he’d very recently been in himself. Had the Bassarelli family not conveniently taken out Love Hagerty, Casey knew he wouldn’t be sitting here. And so maybe this moment here—this child—was his opportunity to square himself with the universe.

He sighed; his decision had been made for him. He had only to submit to it.

“Did ye happen to bring a set of oars with ye laddie?”

CASEY AWOKE TO THE SOUND of voices downstairs. He frowned, reaching down for the pants he’d shucked off in exhaustion the previous night. He could hear Pamela moving about the kitchen and smelled the heady aroma of frying ham drifting up the stairs. He eyed the clock, then blinked and looked again. It was only five o’clock. Who on earth could be here at such an unholy hour, looking for a bite?

He pulled his pants on and then grabbed a shirt, shrugging into it on his way down the stairs. He padded barefoot and yawning into the kitchen, only to stop abruptly halfway through the yawn to exclaim, “Jaysus Murphy, what the hell are you doin’ here? An’ in my wife’s bathrobe no less!”

Flip, having just bitten off half a slice of toast was saved from answering. Pamela turned from forking ham onto a plate and said, “He showed up late last night, you were dead to the world and he was half-drowned and frozen from the rain. So I invited him to stay.”

“Have ye completely lost yer mind, woman?” Casey demanded, “Ye don’t know this child from Adam, we could have been murdered in our bed!”

“Well we weren’t and he’s not deaf, so I suggest you keep your lecture for later.” Having said her piece, she proceeded to heap ham on the boy’s plate and re-fill his glass with milk. “More toast Lawrence?” she asked, as though it were an everyday occurrence to take in total strangers and feed them.

“Lawrence?” Casey queried, feeling like Alice stumbling into the midst of the mad tea party.

“’Tis my name,” Flip said equably, nodding his thanks to Pamela for a second helping of toast. “Named after the meteor shower, ye know—the Tears of Saint Lawrence. Bit of a joke on God mind, me bein’ named after a Saint. ‘Course the story goes that Lawrence was grilled on a spit by that Roman Emperor, Dy—Dee—”

“Decius,” Pamela supplied helpfully from her position by the kettle.

“An’ that when he was sufficiently toasted he said to the emperor, ‘Flip me over I’m done on this side’. That’s how I came up with me street name.”

“Ye told me yesterday ye hardly remembered yer name, much less used it.”

“Aye, well I had to be sure of ye, before I started givin’ out personal information, didn’t I?”

“Casey,” Pamela said, “your mouth is hanging open. Sit down and I’ll feed you.”

Casey shot Pamela a thunderous look. But she, well used to such things, merely began filling a plate for him. He turned to Flip, aka Lawrence, and fixed him with the same look. Unfortunately it seemed to have little more effect than it had on his wife.

“I offered to find ye lodgin’ an’ ye turned me down cold, ye said ye had it covered. So why’ve ye turned up on my doorstep in the wee hours?” Casey ignored the glare of outrage Pamela was sending his way and fixed the boy with a look of his own.

Lawrence looked down at his plate, lashless blue eyes hidden from view. “I was scared, alright,” he said defensively. “I’ve been sleepin’ behind the buildin’ in that wee lean-to crost the alley, but it got powerful cold an’ I saw a light on,” he shrugged his thin shoulders, “So I knocked an yer wife was kind enough to let me in an’ offer me a bed to sleep in.”

The boy’s tone indicated that although Casey was lacking in manners, his wife had made up the shortfall. In the morning light, minus his denim and leather, a mint green robe wrapped securely around him, he looked very fragile. Casey wondered if fourteen hadn’t been a bit of an exaggeration on Lawrence’s part. The child appeared little more than twelve, despite his gangly height. His translucent skin was smattered with ginger freckles, from his narrow forehead down to his pale stalk of a neck, his wrists and ankles bony under their milky covering.

“Yer safe from him here, I’ll not let anything happen to ye,” Casey said gently.

Lawrence shook his head, the blue eyes shuttering tight. Morris Jones obviously had the child in a thrall of terror. Casey had been around fear often enough to know when someone was running for his or her life. Which told him that whatever the boy had seen, it was the sort of thing that could destroy Morris and his associates. Which meant the man would be looking for him, and wouldn’t stop looking until the child was dead. The boy needed his protection, or at least what he could provide, considering his own situation. He didn’t want the problems this could bring to his doorstep, and yet it seemed too late to prevent it.

“Thank ye for the food,” Lawrence said to Pamela, “an’ the bed, it was kind of ye. Now I’d really best be on my way.” He pushed back from the table, rising awkwardly to his full height. He looked like a prematurely hatched stork, all arms and neck with too much leg to manage gracefully.

Casey sighed from the depths of his toes, Pamela was glaring daggers across the table at him, and he knew defeat when he saw it.

“Sit back down boyo, an’ finish yer breakfast. Then ye’ll have yerself a good hot bath an’ afterwards we’ll talk about yer situation. Fair enough?” he asked, addressing the boy but looking at Pamela. Lawrence sat back down with a gruff, “We’ll see” and Pamela beamed a smile of victory his way.

“Now can I have my breakfast, woman? If I’m to be murdered in my bed I’d like to go on a full stomach.”

AGAINST THE VIOLET EDGES OF NIGHT the bones of the structure rose stark and clear, the wood ivory-pale in the gathering shadows. Casey felt a warmth in his chest and a feeling of deep and utter peace, which was partly the satisfaction of using his muscles and bones until they were the consistency of gelled lead, and partly, he realized in surprise, a contentment that went to the very core of his being. He was a man with a woman he loved, building a shelter for the two of them. A place where they could leave the cold and dark at the door and retreat to the sanctuary of home.

It occurred to him that he’d been building this home in his mind from the day he’d met Pamela. He grinned to himself in the thickening dusk. There’d been a time when he’d have seen such a notion as romantic nonsense, but no longer. Well he’d gone soft, no doubt of that. It’d please his Daddy, were he here to see it, to no end.

If someone had told him what pleasure he’d derive from walking through the bare bones of each room, of imagining the flesh of plaster, paint, rugs, pictures and furniture filling out the shell of the structure, he’d have thought they were barmy. But as he worked and shaped their home he saw before him, abstractedly, the moments that would come, the memories that would be formed and lived here between these walls, under this roof. He could feel the heat of the fire in the hearth, the smell of food cooking on the stove, the warmth and snug of the upstairs bedroom, with its window to the stars.

Right now it was only a framework of struts and stone, some twelve hundred square feet in size, but walking its boards, the wood sound and solid beneath his feet, he felt like a king. Within this shelter decisions large and small would be made, friends would come to visit, laughter would be shared, tears would be shed, love would be made and God willing, there would someday be the sound of children’s feet pattering, and children’s voices ringing. It was a castle indeed.

He walked down the sparse outline of a hallway, the evening clear in his view. He had knocked the back wall of the kitchen out two days before, so now the stairs rose up, making clear right angles against the outlines of trees and field and sky. He paused where the cut of stairs and wall made a small hollow. If he were a king, then here was the gem he’d present his queen. At present it was no more than the space behind the stairs, but when the house was done it would be a fully functioning darkroom. He felt the excitement of a child at the thought of Pamela’s face when he presented her with it.

“Thought I might find ye here,” a voice said from the edge of the house’s skeleton.

Casey turned from twilight dreams to find Robin, hands shoved in his pockets, leaning against the casing of the half-built chimney. The harled stone was softly luminous against the dark thatch of his hair.

“Evenin’ boyo,” Casey said quietly, the spell of half-light still thick about him.

“An’ yerself, boyo,” Robin replied, his own voice low, as if he too felt the magic of one of those indefinable moments, where nothing mattered other than the light and air and the pure, clean fact of one’s existence. They’d had times like this as boys, where they seemed to breathe in tune with the turn of the earth beneath their feet and they knew, wisely, that there was no need for words.

“Nature’s church, isn’t that what yer Daddy called such moments?”

Casey nodded, feeling a rush of gratitude for the shared memory. “Aye, I’d forgotten him sayin’ that.”

“He was a good man, ye must miss him terrible now that yer a man yerself, with a wife an’ all.”

“I do,” Casey replied, the tone of Robin’s voice speaking to some deeper part of himself that he kept buried most of the time.

“Ye’ve got the blue tint in yer talk tonight,” Casey turned from the future darkroom, “is the melancholy on ye?”

Robin shrugged lightly. “I’m feelin’ restless, got the itch of spring in the soles of my feet an’ they don’t know which way to turn.”

“Ye used to think foreign soil was the only way to cure that.” Casey walked over to the back wall of the house and leaned against the rough comfort of a two by four.

“Learned my lesson the hard way on that one, ‘tisn’t so much a man’s environment on the outside, it’s the one inside his head that matters. Still,” Robin ran a hand along the unfinished mortar line of the chimney, “sometimes a man gets restless an’ there’s no cure except to wait for it to pass.” He glanced up quickly and Casey saw a crack in the smooth veneer, something that was still bleeding down deep after all these years.