Red Herring (18 page)

“That’s the problem. The ticket’s still in me room at the boarding house. Hidden in the backing of a picture. I was in me cups when I put it there. Sober, I thought it was in me wallet.”

“Well,” said Sunny. “Do you remember the number on the ticket?”

“Funnily enough now, I don’t.”

“Then you’re buggered. Mr Walsh wouldn’t take the risk at this stage.”

“I thought as much,” said O’Flynn. “Ah well, I’ll offer it up.” He stretched. “Three more days in this dump. I’m going mental. I’m down to reading the dunny paper.”

“There’s a Western in the glovebox,” said Sunny. “Not sure what it’s called.”

“Sounds grand,” said O’Flynn.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Walsh had gone to San Francisco in 1948 as the Federation of Labour’s representative at a Cold War boondoggle called the International Longshoreman’s Congress. He booked in at the Army–Navy YMCA. He gave a boiler-plate address to the plenary session, something about the effects of the first Labour Government’s amendment to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act as it applied to the implementation of the 40-hour week, and got back to his room early, intending to have a drink or two, go out for a meal in Chinatown, visit a cathouse. But there was a note pushed under his door.
Café du Nord
, the note said.
Tonight at 9
.

There was no name, just a salutation,
One of The Particular Ones
.

What the hell?

Nothing really frightened Walsh, but this gave him pause.

He made a telephone call from the lobby to the office of the maritime union, the ILWU, and asked for Harry Bridges, saying he was an old friend from down-under, that Harry would want to talk to him.

“Who is this?” said Bridges.

“Harry, it’s a voice from the grave,” said Walsh. “Pat Tuohy.”

There was silence. “Well, fuck me,” said Bridges. He still had an Australian accent after twenty-five years in America. “It is a voice from the grave. I thought you were dead.”

“The report was an exaggeration,” said Walsh.

“Obviously,” said Bridges. “I just assumed that someone would have got to you by now.”

Walsh and Bridges first met as crewmen on a Mexican oil tanker shipping crude from the Gulf Coast port of Tampico to New Orleans. They went back to California by way of Texas, bumming their way across the country, riding freight cars, dodging railroad bulls, living in jungles, mooching food. Boys really, though Walsh had killed people by then.

“Are you in Frisco?” said Bridges.

“I’m at the International Longshoremen’s Congress,” said Walsh. “I thought you’d be a guest speaker.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Bridges. “It’s a front organisation. Look at the lickspittles on the executive — Willis, Rabe, Littlejohn, Paniora. Those canaries’ll be spilling their guts to the Un-American Activities Committee next, the pack of bastards. What the hell are you doing there? You haven’t jumped the fence too, have you?”

“Don’t be a dope,” said Walsh. “The State Department paid my fare. They think I was born yesterday? Hell, I’ll take anyone’s money if it means seeing the Paris of the West one more time. I’m getting on, Harry.”

“Mate, we both are,” said Bridges. “What are you up to? Let’s have a drink.”

“I’m at the Army–Navy Y,” said Walsh.

“Perfect,” said Bridges. “The Old Ship Saloon on Pacific Avenue’s a short walk. Remember the Ship? It was a speak in our day. Say thirty minutes?”

“Good,” said Walsh. “Oh, one other thing, Harry. I need to get my hands on a gun.”

Harry Bridges had always been a handsome bloke in what might be called an Australian way — long face, long nose, hooded eyes, hair slicked straight back. He looked like a Sydney bookie. He had aged of course. His hair was now grey and rippled, his skin was marked with lentigines of various sizes and shades of brown, the legacy of a life spent on decks and wharves and picket lines, his once-smooth face could have done with an iron and press. He walked with a cane, the result of an altercation with a mounted policeman in 1933. But his eyes were as sharp as ever and he held himself well. He was wearing an ILWU button on the lapel of his check sports coat, and he carried a brown paper bag.

He was born in Melbourne in 1901. He had jumped ship in Los Angeles, been in the Wobblies with Walsh, at the violent centre of West Coast waterfront militancy from the word go, elected President of the ILWU in 1937. He made the cover of
Time
magazine that same year — Bridges in a singlet with a big grin and the caption, “Trotsky to Stalin’s Lewis?”, a reference to his nemesis, the black-browed boss of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, John L. Lewis, the most powerful union figure in America. The US Government spent twenty years trying, unsuccessfully, to have him deported back to Australia for sedition and his case went to the US Supreme Court twice. He shook Walsh’s hand, ordered a pitcher of beer, and moved to a corner table.

They swapped war stories for half an hour — “Remember when?” “What the hell happened to?” “The problem today is” — before Bridges pointed to Walsh’s glass, barely touched.

“You haven’t given up the booze, I hope?” he said.

“I’m meeting someone later,” said Walsh. “Need to keep my wits about me.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Bridges, sliding the paper bag across the table. “You’re not planning to knock anyone off, I hope?”

Walsh moved the bag onto the bench next to him. “Just want it in case.”

Bridges leaned in. “It’s a Colt something, bit of a lady’s gun, but I’m told it’ll make a big hole. I got it through a third party in Tacoma when we were building up for the ’34 strike. I thought I better get some protection. For the wife and kiddies as much as anything. Hell, you know the drill, goons throwing petrol bombs into people’s living rooms, police looking the other way. It’s untraceable. You’ll see where the serial number’s been ground out. I’ve never used the bloody thing, wife didn’t want it in the house. When you’re finished with it, smash it up if you can and drop the pieces down a drain, just to be on the safe side.”

“You don’t want it back?” said Walsh.

“I’m too old. So are you, by the way. What’s this about?”

“Someone put a note under my door asking to meet at a place called Café du Nord at nine tonight. Note was signed, ‘One of The Particular Ones’. That mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

“It does to me. You know that old saying, ‘your blood runs cold’? Mine did, I tell you, just for a second. Listen. I got involved in some grubby business in Dublin after the war — the first one that is. The IRA assassinated, I dunno, fifteen British secret agents right across the city one Sunday morning.”

“How were you involved?”

Walsh’s hand was on the table. He closed his fingers into the shape of a pistol, his thumb moving like a hammer.

“Good job,” said Bridges softly, raising his glass in a toast. “Here’s to the death of secret agents. So who are ‘The Particular Ones’?”

“We had a list of about thirty of these jokers from memory, but we only got half. Faulty intelligence, jammed weapons, failure of nerve, the
usual operational stuff-ups. Not that fifteen in a couple of hours wasn’t pretty good! Some of the ones who got away were particularly important in terms of the wider struggle. It was a tag that stuck to those we missed. They were the ones the Intelligence Wing had targeted
in particular,
see? They took it as a badge of honour, being English.”

“And one of them’s seen you here and tracked you down, you think?”

“That’s what I’m assuming.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Plan? What’s this Café du Nord?”

“It’s a basement bar in Market Street. Been around since the year dot. Used to be a speak too, as a matter of fact. Dark. Not very big.”

“I’ll go along. See what he wants. What they want.”

“Is that smart?”

Walsh shrugged. “He could have been waiting in my room earlier, he could have shot me walking over here. Anyone can be killed, we both know that.”

“I wish I could come with you. Watch your back sorta thing.”

“And what? Whack him over the head with your stick?”

“Hey! I’ve still got plenty of pep!” said Bridges. “No seriously, mate, I wish I could but I mean I just can’t. I have to be sensible. You know, my position? The flippin’ Department of Justice has been on to me for twenty flippin’ years, trying to boot me out of the country. I get tied up with something involving a gun and a card-carrying Commie?” He hooked a thumb. “Outski.”

“Forget it,” said Walsh. “One old man’s bad enough. I’ll be all right.” He nodded towards the paper bag. “Especially with this.”

“Tell you what, though,” said Bridges. “I could send along a couple of boys from the local to keep an eye out. I could set that up in a heartbeat.”

“Thanks, Harry, but I’ll handle it. You’re a mate,” he said.

“A mate?” said Bridges. “Jeez, after what you did for me that time with those bastards in Coeur d’Alene?”

“You would’ve done the same for me,” said Walsh.

“Well, I’d like to think so, but,” said Bridges.

Café du Nord was in the basement of the Swedish American Hall. Walsh caught a tram, arrived early, watched the entrance from the shadows across the street for half an hour, went inside and down the stairs. He ordered a glass of beer, checked the rear exit that opened onto an alley, went into the Gents, closed the door, and took the pistol from the paper bag. Bridges was right. It was a lady’s gun. He could barely fit two fingers around the grip. It was the sort of weapon Brigid O’Shaughnessy might have carried. But it was simple. There was a slide safety catch and a grip safety catch and the magazine popped out easily and what else did he need to know? It fitted into the pocket of his jacket. He could pull it out without snagging. He went back to the bar, sat over his beer, and waited.

The room was quiet. It was a Tuesday night. There was a couple in the corner talking. Two salesmen drinking cocktails. Three office girls laughing softly. A radio station played jazz with the volume turned down. The barman straightened bottles and wiped glasses with a tea towel, all the time keeping an eye out for the raised finger. Two bruisers came in, ordered a pitcher of beer and a checkers board, and sat by the door, Harry’s boys from the union local, Walsh assumed. He didn’t see the Particular until he was beside him. He must have come in through the rear exit by the Gents and been waiting in the darkness of the hallway. He leaned against the bar to Walsh’s left and began talking softly.

“I’ve been watching you for ten minutes,” he said. “You’re drinking with your right hand, which means you’re right-handed,
which means your gun is in your right-hand pocket.” His accent was Irish. “Which is why I’m on your left with me gun pointing straight at yiz.”

Walsh picked up his glass with his right hand and drank it to the bottom, looking at the reflection in the mirror behind the bar. The Irishman had a tough, handsome face, black wavy hair parted off-centre and pushed straight back, a cowlick sprung loose.

Walsh put the glass down and wiped his mouth. He spoke in a whisper so that the Irishman had to lean in. “What if I’m drinking with my right hand because I’m left-handed and I wanted to keep my left hand free to go for my gun which is in my left-hand pocket?” He turned abruptly, jabbing the barrel of the Colt into the Irishman’s thigh. “Eh?” he said. “How about that?”

“Jaysus,” said the Irishman, his voice low and urgent. “Hold your horses! What if my mention of holding a gun on you was purely hypothetical? If there was no such gun in other words? What if I just wanted to talk?”

“Just wanted to
talk?
If that was all you wanted I’d take you out the back and put two in your knees right now for wasting my bloody time,” said Walsh. “What’s going on? You’re not English. You would have been in short pants in 1920. Why should I want to talk to you?”

“Exactly! Me point entirely! If I’d approached you directly you’d have given me the brush-off! Go on, put the gun away, please. I meant you no harm. Me uncle’s Fintan O’Phelan.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You must have forgotten. You two were in the Apostles together. Uncle Fintan was Michael Collins’ bodyguard.”

“Not much of one, apparently.” Collins, the IRA Chief of Staff, was assassinated in 1922.

“That was hurtful. Uncle Fintan died in the ambush himself.”

Walsh put the pistol on the bar, spinning the barrel to face the Irishman, masking it with his right hand. “What’s your name?”

“O’Flynn,” said O’Flynn. “Born O’Phelan. I had to change it. Francis X. But people call me Frank.”

“All right,” said Walsh, eventually. He nodded to the barman and indicated his glass. “Top me up and one for the Fenian here. And a pitcher for those two palookas by the door.” Harry’s gorillas were lost in their game of checkers.

The barman poured two glasses of beer.

“Sláinte,”
said O’Flynn.

“Start talking.”

“Right you are,” said O’Flynn. “Well, me father and his pals used to carry on about this hard man from the other side of the world, Pat Tuohy, and the Apostles, and why you chose Walsh for your name, and being on the run and all that. You were sort of a legend to me growing up, like the Scarlet Pimpernel or something.”

“Was your father a Volunteer?”

“Of course! B Company, Cork Brigade.”

“Where did he stand on the Treaty?”

“Oh, let’s not get into that. He was a good man, shall we leave it there, do you mind?”

Walsh shrugged.

“All right now,” said O’Flynn. “There was a poster for the Longshoremen’s Congress on the noticeboard at the union hall the other day and I was looking at it idly, like, and I saw your name on the list of speakers. I thought to meself, I wonder if that’s him? I mean, New Zealand? It’s a small place, is it not? It’s a possibility. Ireland’s not big and those sort of coincidences happen there. And when they introduced all of you on stage on the first afternoon I said, by God, it’s him indeed, the man himself.”

“How did you know what I looked like?”

“Ah ha! Good question. And one that I anticipated.” O’Flynn moved his glass out of the way and wiped the area with his sleeve. “I’m just going to take something from my pocket, all right? It’s not a gun.”