Shamrock Alley (37 page)

“If we’re lucky, he’s set up a meeting with his source,” he said, pulling up a chair across from Kersh at the table. In the warmth of the pit he felt a little bit better, but knew that his fever was gradually climbing. “I’ve been bugging him like crazy to get those points down.”

“Maybe,” Kersh said. He didn’t sound too convinced.

“I want to set them up for one more big buy,” he said, “hopefully flush out Kahn. We get him dirty, we can close this thing.”

“And if he doesn’t show?” Kersh said. “If he
never
shows? What do we do then? Keep chasing these two bastards for the next twenty years, John?” Perhaps bothered by his own sudden passion, Kersh paused, relaxing. “Look,” he continued, “I see you getting wrapped up in this thing, and it bothers me.”

“We’ve already talked about this.”

“The past month you’ve been slinking around in the mud with these assholes, getting half-bombed every night—getting
sick
—and for what? To get inside their
heads?
To see if
maybe
someone tips you off about some bullshit hit they did eight months ago in goddamn Queens? That’s not why we’re here, John. And it’s not worth it.”

“Trust me,” he said, “and we’ll get the whole ball of wax. I’m okay, I can handle myself. I’m not about to give up on something after all this time just because it’s too hard. You know me, Bill.”

“I know,” said Kersh. “That’s what scares me.”

B
Y ELEVEN O’CLOCK, TRAFFIC HAD DWINDLED ALONG
Tenth Avenue. Pulling his car up outside Calliope Candy, John had the heater cranked and the defroster running. On his hands he wore leather racing gloves—warm enough to keep the cold air at bay, yet workable enough to permit maximum dexterity. His jacket zippered almost to the neck, he could feel sweat coursing from his armpits and rolling down his sides. But still his face was cold, his lips numb even with the heat pumping, and he was still aware of the faint throbbing at the center of his hands.

Lights were still on in the candy store, but the shade had been pulled, making it impossible to see inside. To his left, cars coasted along the street. A few people hurried across the intersection, the collars of their coats pulled tightly around their necks.

There was a streetlight on the corner of Tenth and 53
^rd
Street, a few feet away from the telephone booth outside Calliope Candy. A figure stood there in the darkness, hunched over in the cold, his face shielded from the streetlight and his back facing John. The figure was definitely male, but too short to be Mickey. There was a restless motion to the man’s body as he rocked uneasily on his feet, his eyes out over the intersection.

As if he had read John’s mind, the figure noticed the car and moved toward it, hopping down the curb—
Mickey does not hop
, he thought—and approaching the driver’s side door. The figure bent down, his face inches from the window, and peered inside.

It was Sean Sullivan.

He rolled down his window.

“Hey, John.”

“Sean,” he said. “What the hell you doin’ out here?”

“Mickey said to meet ‘im,” Sean said, his teeth chattering in his head. “Said he’s taking me someplace.”

John’s eyes darted to the transmitter stashed inside the casing of the cigarette lighter. It was resting on his dashboard, pointed toward the passenger seat. It was windy outside; there was a good possibility Sean Sullivan’s words got lost in the wind. But if not, then there would be no doubt that Bill Kersh, who was parked one block over on the corner of Tenth and 52
^nd
Street, had heard.

“You goin’ with us?” he asked Sean.

The kid shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t say nothing ‘bout you.”

“Where’s Mickey now?”

“Inside,” Sean said, nodding his head in the direction of the candy store.

“Well, get in the car before your freeze your balls off.”

“Shit, thanks.”

Sean hurried around the front of the car while John popped the lock on the passenger door. The kid climbed in and plopped down in the seat like someone who’d been on his feet all day. He pulled the door closed—did not slam it like Mickey—and immediately held his hands up to the vents in the dashboard.

“Christ,” Sean said, looking him over. “Man, you don’t look so good. You sick?”

“A little.”

“Flu?”

“Don’t know,” John said. “Probably.”

“I just got over one …”

“You know anything about tonight?” John asked.

“Nope,” Sean said, rubbing his hands together. “Just said to meet ‘im here. Eleven o’clock. That’s all.”

John could see some of the scars along Sean’s hands as he held them up to the vents, a striking pink discoloration against the cold, white flesh of his skin. “How’d you get hooked up with Mickey?” he asked, peering past Sean and at the front of the candy store. Still no movement.

“They know my older brother. Been in Rikers last two years.”

“You been runnin’ with these guys long?”

“On and off,” Sean said. He was young and impressed by the violence Mickey and Jimmy dispensed, and by the power their names held. They were sacred in his eyes—John could tell that just by looking at the kid, and by the way the kid looked at them—probably more inspiring than any adult male figure had ever been to him. For Sean Sullivan, the two Irish hoods from the West Side were heroes, and his association with them was a privilege.

Still, he was just a kid—maybe eighteen or nineteen—and his patriotism to Mickey O’Shay and Jimmy Kahn seemed a grievous, complicated thing.

“Lotta guys up this way make some money workin’ for Jimmy and Mickey,” Sean said. “Figured I’d get in on it.”

“They have you do anything besides moving whiskey off trucks?” He tried to make it sound like a joke.

“Shit, yeah,” Sean said. His pitch suggested he thought of John as someone to impress.

“Like what?”

“Stuff,” Sean said. “Just stuff.”

“Where you from?” John asked.

“Right here.”

“You still live here?”

“Of course,” Sean said.

Looking at the kid now, John could tell that this was a potentially big night for young Sean Sullivan. The kid had started to sweat.

“Hey,” Sean said, opening his door. “Here he is.”

Mickey had stepped from the candy store looking as vacant as usual, the stick of a Tootsie Pop jutting from between his lips. He crossed over to the car and jerked a thumb at Sean, motioning for him to get into the Camaro’s cramped back seat. Sean managed with some difficulty while Mickey chucked the Tootsie Pop down the street.

Once inside the car, Mickey motioned for him to head down Tenth Avenue.

“What’s the deal?” he said before pulling out of the space. “You didn’t say nothin’ about this kid coming.”

“So?”

“So I’m not a goddamn taxi, picking people up and dropping them off.”

“There’s a place on Eighty-fifth Street,” Mickey said. “The Samjetta. You know it?”

“No.”

“Bar and grill. We’re going across the street from there,” Mickey said. Like his phone calls from the pay phone on Tenth Avenue, his apartment phone, and the telephone in the candy store, he spoke cryptically, his intentions demanding interpretation.

Pulling out onto Tenth Avenue, John said, “What’s across the street?”

“Liquor store.”

They drove mostly in silence, with the majority of the chatter coming from Sean in the back seat. He spoke of nonsense and seemed to choose his words with tedium, eager to impress Mickey, or at least prove to him that he was one of the gang. And Sean Sullivan was not quite part of Mickey and Jimmy’s gang. Thinking of quiet, subdued Ashleigh who’d not spoken at the Cloverleaf the entire night, and of the guy in the knitted Islanders cap who’d driven Mickey to sell John the .32, he knew that Sean Sullivan did not truly fit in. Which bothered John. Was it so obvious he, too, did not fit in? Was this the roundup, the weeding out?

Driving, he glanced in the rearview to see if he could spot Kersh’s car following them.

He couldn’t.

As Tenth Avenue turned into Amsterdam, the traffic grew more congested. Mickey got lost and had them circle the block a number of times. They eventually continued west until they hit Riverside Drive.

“The hell’s going on here, Mickey?” He could see the lights of the Henry Hudson Parkway at the other end of Riverside Park from here.

Mumbling to himself, scratching his head, Mickey told him to turn around and head back toward Amsterdam Avenue.

Traffic grew thicker, and Mickey began to collect his thoughts once they reached Amsterdam.

“Stop-stop-stop,” Mickey said, leaning forward in his seat and peering through the windshield. A row of shops and restaurants lined the street, accentuated by the lights of passing vehicles.

“Where?” he said. Across the street, he could see the Samjetta—a family-style steakhouse with a brick front illuminated by red and yellow neon lights. It looked like no place Mickey O’Shay would have anything to do with.

“Slow down.” Mickey turned and looked out his window, his nose only two inches from the glass. He was pointing across the street, opposite the Samjetta. “There’s a, uh … you see that liquor store up ahead? See the alley? Turn in there. Go around back.”

The alleyway ran between a liquor store and Pat’s Laundromat, dark and narrow. John maneuvered the Camaro through it and stopped alongside a huddle of trash cans. A stand of doors without knobs lined the walls of the brick alley. He caught a glimpse of Sean’s white face in the rearview. The kid looked about ready to wet his pants.

He’d made up his mind long ago that he could shoot and kill Mickey without hesitation if he even suspected something off-kilter. Now, wedged between the brick siding of two stores, the thought resurfaced in his head. He knew there would be no use trying to arrest him, trying to subdue him if Mickey decided to break bad. Mickey would not give him the opportunity. He would be like a wild boar ensnared in a trap: there would be no way to cut him loose or even cage him. The only option was to kill.

Mickey got out of the car and headed down the alley to one of the doors embedded in the brick wall. Sean was quick to follow, already pushing against the passenger seat and pulling himself from the car. He nearly stumbled getting out of the car, managing to keep himself from crashing to the ground only by catching the wall with both hands at the last possible second.

“In an alley just before Eighty-fifth Street, off Amsterdam,” he said to the transmitter on the dash. “Couple doors back here. Looks like they lead to the back of the shops. We’re going inside.”

He slipped the cigarette lighter transmitter into his jacket pocket, although he was certain he would be out of Kersh’s range once he stepped inside the building. Regardless, he shut the car down and got out. Behind him, he was aware of the traffic droning down the street, and the louder idles of the cars stopping along the rows of shops. Mickey knocked against one of the doors and stood there, digging in one ear with the pinkie of his right hand. Like someone suddenly struck by a momentous thought, he dug a filthy cigarette from the breast pocket of his green coat and stuck it behind his other ear.

As John approached, the alley door creaked open several inches. There was no discernible light inside. Mickey placed a hand on the inside of the door and pushed it open, wasting no time with a leisurely entrance. On his heels, Sean Sullivan, slack-faced and wide-eyed, crept over the threshold while John counted three beats in his head. He didn’t know what to expect—a series of gunshots or the shouts of haughty laughter. He heard neither.

Casting one final glance toward the street at the mouth of the alley, he crept inside the building and heard the door slam.

Around him, darkness prevailed.

Parked along Amsterdam Avenue, Bill Kersh chewed disconcertedly on his left thumb.

“Goddamn kid,” he muttered. His mind regressed to earlier that day and to their conversation in the pit. It wasn’t so much John’s words that had bothered him—he was young and anxious and willing to take risks, and a lot of what the kid said made good sense. No, what bothered Kersh was the way the kid had
looked
, like someone just off a caffeine rush. John was wired, too wrapped up in the case. That same machinelike quality that Kersh had noticed in him the night they loaded up the Ryder truck with the Canadian whiskey was still there, yet it had changed in some way. His tenacity had turned into urgency and was slowly driving the kid over the edge. Too much more of this and Kersh feared—

But he didn’t want to think about that. Hopefully it would all be over soon. Brett Chominksy was not one to be swayed by the opinions of Roger Biddleman and would pull the plug after too much time, no matter what evidence John happened to bring to the table.

At least, Kersh
hoped
.

Looking at the row of shops across the street, he noticed that Pat’s Laundromat and a liquor store stood on either side of the alley’s entrance. The lights were on in the liquor store, the neon pink
Open
sign sizzling in the window.

Kersh was torn. His instinct told him to give John a few minutes in the store before strolling inside, posing as a customer, casing the joint. Yet John had gotten his fingers into him as well, and some part of him—however small—told him to bide his time and give the kid a chance, see what happens.