Deadly Diamonds (5 page)

“Much as I'd like to return the favor, I have absolutely no idea where he is.” And thank God I foresaw that someone might ask.

There was a pause. “You wouldn't set yourself up for an obstruction of justice charge, would you, kid?”

“Not a chance in the world.”

I enjoyed seeing the catbird grin on Mr. D.'s face. His prosecutorial counterpart was seldom snookered into an unbalanced exchange of information. On the other hand, I knew the grin would evaporate if he knew where his junior partner would be at midnight.

The flow of normal humanity that packs the sidewalk in front of Kelly's Roast Beef on Revere Beach Boulevard was gone for the day. Only the nightly column of Harley-Davidsons remained, stacked in rows as props and seats for another breed of humanity, tattooed and pierced in every conceivable piece of corpulent flesh that showed around the cutoffs that carried gang colors. The midnight air off the ocean carried a chill that magnified my biting pangs of “what the hell am I doing here?” That thought alternated in waves with the question, “Is the O'Byrne kid worth the shivers?”

And, still, I took a seat on one of the benches across the street from Kelly's. The guttural rumble of the occasional Harley coming to life drowned out any sound that wasn't covered by the rhythmic ocean surf. That explains why the first inkling I had of company was something cold and steely at the back of my neck.

My inclination to spin around was chilled by that same Irish voice from the phone call.

“Sit still, Knight.”

“Good evening to you too.”

The steel thing bumped the back of my head.

“I have little time for a smart-ass, Knight. This can be brief or it can be unpleasant. For you. I'll have one piece of information and be on my way.”

I knew to a certainty what was coming, but I asked anyway. “What do you want to know?”

“I have business with your client, O'Byrne. Where is he?”

“I have no idea.”

The steely thing rammed into my neck with more force.

“Now, that's not the way to conclude our little meeting. Shall we try just one more time?”

“What business?”

“What?”

“What's your business with the O'Byrne kid?”

This time the crack on the back of my skull brought stars and the start of a sickening headache. The next one could do some real damage. I thought I'd try the truthful approach.

“Listen to me, whoever the hell you are. I was retained by his father. He put the kid in deep hiding after a certain incident that you probably know about. He was afraid I'd have to turn him in if I knew where he is. He wouldn't tell me. I can't give you what I haven't got.”

I braced for another rap that could put me under the bench. It didn't come. I could hear the raspy breathing beside my ear. “Shall we put that to the test? But not here. Get up and look straight ahead.”

The steel thing was pushing into the back of my skull with a pressure that commanded obedience. I got up slowly. A grip on my arm led me around the bench and out toward the sidewalk. He was so close behind, I could feel his hot breath piercing the chill.

We walked in slow lockstep across the sidewalk and stepped off between the Harleys. My head was in a frozen position straight ahead.
We drew little or no attention from the boozed and drugged-out apes and apettes around the bikes.

Then, in one flash of God-given inspiration, I suddenly fell in love with every hairy one of them.

The only things I could move were my legs, but that was enough. With every ounce of spastic force I could gather, I side-kicked the bike on my left. In the next instant, I gave a hip-check to the one on my right.

It was gorgeous. Like a line of giant metallic dominoes, Harleys on both sides smashed into each other. Headlights shattered. Fenders crumpled. Mirrors scraped gas tanks before ripping off their moorings and splashing glass in every direction. There was a din you could hear in Chelsea.

The Irishman was frozen where he was. I dropped flat on the pavement. The only thing that muscled mass of biker humanity saw when they looked up from the pile of twisted chrome, scraped paint, and broken glass was my least favorite Irishman. They assumed what I hoped they'd assume, and they came at him like a herd of buffalo. He backed off, waving that steely thing—a gun of sizeable caliber—in a semicircle to hold them at bay.

In the din and distraction, I crawled back to the bench area, over the wall, and landed on the beach in pitch darkness. I overcame the desire to sprint full tilt along the beach in either direction. Instead, I propped myself up to a level where I could follow the action.

I got a good look at the Irishman, tall and athletic with a chiseled cold face, the type you see in prison on conscienceless stone killers.

He was still holding the pack at bay. They apparently recognized the automatic weapon he was waving and knew he could spray pain and death at most of them before they could get in the first blow.

I was stunned by his unflustered coolness. He just eased his way out of the circle of suddenly sobered goons. No question, he was in firm control, in spite of the odds. When he'd backed across the street, he fired one stuttering spray just over their heads. The bikers dove for the ground.

By the time they looked up he was out of sight—theirs, not mine. I had worked my way down the beach and crossed the street ahead of the Irishman. I was in a darkened driveway when he ran past on the side street beside Kelly's. Fortunately, he had parked his car only two blocks away or I'd never have been able to keep up.

I was in another dark driveway when his car sped past. One well-located streetlight enabled me to read the license plate.

I got on the cell phone. Again, Tom Burns picked up on the first ring in spite of the hour.

“Michael, can't you get a day job?”

“I'm working on it. I've got a license plate number. Can you check it out?”

“You mean ‘will I?' Mikey. You know I can.”

“I mean can you now, when most sane people you could contact are in bed?”

“I seldom deal with sane people. What's the number?”

I gave it, and he put me on hold. It took about seventy seconds.

“It's a rental, Mikey. Came from the airport. The passport he showed says he's from Dublin. Ireland. It shows the name of Seamus Burke. Based on the way you ask, it's probably a phony passport, so you know where that leaves us.”

“Did he give an address in this country?”

“Yep. Could be phony too.”

“Just in case, what is it?”

“Forty-two Park Street. Appropriately, there's an Irish pub just around the block. Molly Malone's. You know Dorchester?”

“Not too well.”

“Then it comes with some friendly advice. Unless you're just in and out for a pint, stay the hell out of there. You have a way of asking questions that ticks people off. Don't do it with this crowd.”

“To be more specific?”

“A lot of IRA sympathizers down there. From the bad old days. Don't mess with them, Mikey.”

“You know me, Tom. A born coward.”

“Oh crap, Mikey. That's what you said the last time.”

CHAPTER FIVE

This was getting out of hand. While it may be in the elusive Kevin's favor to be off my radar, it was beginning to cause me unacceptable grief. It was time to go back to the source.

It was nine thirty the next morning when I pulled up in front of the Slainte Pub on L Street in Southie. This time I used the front door. With the exception of a couple of barflies having a liquid breakfast, and two husky laborer-looking types at a table at the far end of the room, I had the bartender's attention all to myself.

When I asked him to ring Mr. O'Byrne for me, he leaned over the bar and got cozy and whispery. “Is he expectin' ya?”

I leaned over and mimicked his whisper, like there was anyone sober within hearing. “On the scale of people he's expecting, I'm about minus one. My name's Michael Knight.”

That put him off. I could see the wall go up. He put on an official tone.

“And what business might you have with Mr. O'Byrne?”

“And your name is?”

He gave me a cautious, “Ron.”

“Look at it this way, Ron, if I tell you the business I have with Mr. O'Byrne, I wouldn't bet a dime on your chances of living past lunch.”

His face froze in a frown. I pointed to the phone behind the bar. “Shall we get on with it?”

It strained his decision-making powers at that hour, but he picked up the phone and punched in two numbers. This time he whispered into the phone. Whatever came back seemed to take the stress out of his wrinkled forehead. He hung up and just pointed to the stairs
at the back of the pub. He also gave some kind of hand signal to the soldiers at the table in the back. I assumed that signal allowed me passage with both legs unbroken.

Mr. O'Byrne was at the door to the office at the top of the stairs. He was not unfriendly, but I wasn't sure I was his first choice of a morning companion either. He offered me a chair and sat facing me in the same position as the previous night.

On the theory that if you give, you'll get, I filled him in on our meeting with Dominic Santangelo. That was the easy part. The news of the indictment of his son for murder didn't go over so well. He was on his feet and pacing like a caged tiger.

“How the hell do they indict Kevin? The kid's as clean as you are.”

“Maybe so. You'd know better than I would, since you haven't chosen to share a lot of information about my client.”

That stopped the pacing. The tone got seriously edgy. “What the hell do you mean by that? Kevin's a college junior. He's going to be premed. He has nothing to do with anything. You hear me?”

“What I hear is a lot of self-serving crap. That sweet kid of yours is up to his ears in something rotten. It's got me in the sights of one D.A. and at least one Irish thug that I know of. My life's on the line for that little punk, and it's about time you tell me where the hell I can find him.”

That little oration, delivered eye-to-eye and at ten decibels louder than my normal tone, satisfying as it might have been, would undoubtedly have landed me in the Lopez & Gonzales Funeral Home in Jamaica Plain, with my Puerto Rican mother and twenty-three assorted relatives embroidering my good qualities in doleful Spanish. Thank God, it never passed my lips.

What I actually said was, “What I mean, Mr. O'Byrne, is that if you still want me to represent Kevin, I need some basic information. The most basic being where he is. I need to talk with him.”

That kept me alive and cooled the atmosphere.

“What about the indictment? What's that about?”

“The guy in the trunk. They're charging Kevin with his murder.”

That put him in orbit again. “How the hell can they do that? They got no evidence. He just borrowed the car.”

“Nevertheless, he is indicted. If I'm still his lawyer, this is when we've got to get busy. How do I reach him?”

He slammed the back of his chair and set it spinning. I thanked God for office furniture. The only other thing in the room to hit was me.

He walked to the window and looked down at L Street for what seemed like a full minute. I thought he was trying to reach a decision about sharing the whereabouts of the evasive Kevin with me. I found out I was wrong. When he turned around, it wasn't anger, and it wasn't temper written on his face. It was pure fear. His voice had a calm that was more disturbing than the previous outbursts.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know what, Mr. O'Byrne?”

“I don't know where he is. I took him to a place we have in New Hampshire. I figured he'd be safe.”

“And?”

“We had a signal. He'd only answer the phone there if he knew it was me. I called all day and all night. Nothing.”

“He could have gone out.”

“Not without letting me know. I sent a man up there this morning. The place was ransacked. Kevin was gone.”

I walked out of the pub and sat in my Corvette with my fingers on the key. The image of the Irishman from the night before filled my mind, and I froze over a simple decision—to start the car or not. The mental connection between Irish thugs and car bombs kept my fingers from moving.

Damn it! This was not acceptable. Two decisions clicked into place like tumblers unlocking a safe. The first was simple. I gave the key a sharp twist. Either the car would start or, in the words of Longfellow, “The cares that infested the day would have folded their tents like the Arabs, and been blown the hell right out of my mind.” That's a paraphrase.

Since I heard the Corvette's sweet, low rumbling engine sound, I assumed it was the former. The second decision took more conscious thought.

At 7:42 p.m., most of the area around 42 Park Street in Dorchester was in darkness. I'd been there, fighting off the chill and nerves since five o'clock by rationing out a double order of McDonald's fries, one every three minutes.