Shamrock Alley (40 page)

The words faded around him, broken like clouds of smoke in the air.

“Thank you,” he said to the doctor and slipped out into the hallway.

Katie was still asleep in the waiting room, her head against the back of her chair. He paused just outside the ICU and watched her for some time before heading down the hall toward the bathroom.

There, in his own soundless way, he cried.

C
ORKY
M
C
K
EAN
,
ONE OF THE TWO BROTHERS
who owned the Cloverleaf, had a face like a whipped pit bull and a spine as crooked as the contours of a woodpile. His hands were big—lumberjack’s hands—with curled, blackened nails at the tips of his fingers. Scarred by adolescent acne, Corky’s cheeks resembled two tic-tac-toe boards, separated by a nose as flat as a bottle cap.

As the day manager, Corky rarely remained at the Cloverleaf after dark, but the sudden snowstorm that had accosted the city just prior to his routine departure caused him to loiter behind the bar, smoking a Macanudo while seated on a keg of beer. He was notorious for his hatred of snow—feared it, some said—ever since he spun off an icy road and slammed into a tree somewhere upstate. Now he continued to peek through the Cloverleaf’s narrow window while he smoked to watch the storm’s progression. He silently hoped it would let up soon: he had a can of baked beans and a couple of skin flicks at home that he was anxious to abuse.

John entered in a gust of wind and snow, and hurried straight for the bathroom. The Cloverleaf had become familiar to him over the passage of weeks. As he walked the length of the room, he offhandedly took notice of the faces at the tables and around the bar. Some he recognized—Boxie, the old boozer, was seated at the end of the bar; likewise, the kid in the knitted Islanders cap hugged a table toward the back of the room—and some he did not.

The bathroom was empty. John pushed open the stall door, slipped inside, and attempted to work the busted lock to no avail. The stall was tiny, hardly large enough for someone to stand upright, let alone sit down on the toilet. The back of the stall door was decorated with crude graffiti and at least twenty different phone numbers. Behind him, the flecked rim of the toilet bowl prodded the backs of his knees.

John unzipped his jacket and lifted his fleece pullover above his waist. There was a pocket sewn to the inside lining of the fleece, in which a reel-to-reel recorder the size of an audiocassette was secured. A wire from the recorder was taped to his chest and ran the length of his upper body, capped by a minuscule microphone just below the neckline of his shirt. He adjusted the reel-to-reel against his stomach and straightened the fleece, then his jacket. He hated to wear the wire, but knew it was better than using a portable transmitter; it was more reliable for recording and, blessedly, did not require the surveillance team to crowd too close around the Cloverleaf.

By the sink, John slipped his gloves off and stuffed them into the back pocket of his jeans. Jiggling the handles on the sink, he waited for the water to turn warm before he slipped his hands beneath the stream and briskly rubbed them together.

Back at the bar, someone had selected a U2 song on the juke. It played softly, the volume low. He pulled himself up onto a stool, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. His illness was in limbo now, debating whether it was leaving him or preparing for one final, devastating assault.

Corky McKean, rising from his keg and snuffing the life from his cigar in a glass ashtray, ambled his way over to him. “What’ll it be?”

He shook a finger at a coffee machine that sat on the counter, resting on top of a stack of soggy magazines. “Think I can get a cup?”

Picking at something in his teeth, Corky turned and began rifling through a box of mugs. He found one, poured half a cup of coffee, and set it in front of him. Bringing the mug to his lips, John noticed—quite aware of the irony—the letters NYPD stenciled in white across the side of the mug. The coffee was lukewarm and tasted like baking soda, but he didn’t complain.

Since the recording of Sean Sullivan had been presented to the Secret Service, Roger Biddleman, and Detective Glumly of the NYPD, two connections had been made. According to the detective, he’d recently uncovered a decapitated head and the remains of a male torso plugged in the chest by two bullet holes made from a .22-caliber gun. After hearing Sean Sullivan’s recording, Glumly backtracked and pulled all known dental records for all the Horace Greens in and around the city. One of the records matched the teeth in the severed head: Horace Green from Queens, New York.

The second connection made was that the .22 retrieved from Evelyn Gethers’s Lincoln had been the gun used to shoot Green twice in the chest. A second sweep for fingerprints resulted in the same conclusion the first sweep had yielded—that only the deceased Douglas Clifton’s prints were on the gun. Hearing this information, something had rattled and turned over inside John’s head, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. There was now another connection between Douglas Clifton and Mickey and Jimmy, other than just the counterfeit money; now they shared a
murder
. But how did it all connect? And each time, just when John thought he was able to make some sense out of the equation, his thoughts dispersed like blown dust.

A cold wind struck his back.

Mickey entered the Cloverleaf alone. John turned when he heard the door open and watched Mickey cross the threshold, his thick-soled boots leaving puddles of slush on the hardwood. Mickey’s eyes rose to meet John’s, but the creep didn’t sit down beside him; instead, Mickey made his way around the other end of the bar and sat by himself. When Corky McKean turned his mongrel face to him, Mickey ordered a shot of Irish cream and a Guinness—what Mickey referred to as a milkshake.

John watched Mickey from over the rim of his coffee.
Already twenty minutes late from the time we’re supposed to meet
, he thought,
and now the asshole’s drinking beer and pretending he doesn’t know me
. Yet he’d come to expect such behavior from him.

When John finished his coffee, he set the mug down and folded his hands on the counter, making no attempt to disguise his aggravation. Mickey continued to look in his direction, and surely he could tell John was growing angry, but he did not say anything and would only turn back to his beer and stare at the glass with the glazed-over look of a young child.

Finally, John got up, paid his tab, and began heading toward the door.

“John.” Mickey’s voice was not urgent, merely conversational.

He turned, flipping up his jacket collar, and did not say a word. A shaft of moonlight crossed his face from the single window beside the door.

Grinning, shaking his head, Mickey motioned for him to come over and sit beside him. Still annoyed, he crossed the floor and claimed the stool beside Mickey.

“What’s with this silent shit?” John said. “Thought you were being watched or something.”

“You and that kid Sullivan discuss the job?” Mickey said, turning the bottom of his beer glass toward the ceiling.

“We’ll do it.”

Still grinning, Mickey faced him and nodded. Their faces were too close; he could smell the alcohol coming off Mickey in waves. The stink made his stomach angry. The guy’s eyes looked like the black, soulless eyes of a catfish.

“Good,” Mickey said. “We leave here, I’ll get you the guns. You got what you owe me for the other one yet?”

“In my car.”

“Good deal.”

Outside, they crawled into the Camaro and drove in the direction of the candy store and Mickey O’Shay’s apartment.

“Money’s under your seat,” he told Mickey.

Leaning forward, Mickey reached under his seat and pulled out four fifties bound together by a paper clip. Without saying a word, he folded the money and stuffed it into his coat.

“How come you didn’t just come to me about the hit?” he asked after a few moments of silence. “Why bring that kid Sullivan in?”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Mickey said. He was bent slightly forward in his seat, his eyes dull, his tongue prodding the inside of one cheek.

“This thing ain’t exactly a two-man job,” he said. “I could use the whole five grand.”

“Just making sure the job gets done,” Mickey said. “I’m payin’ out five grand. Whatever you work out with the kid is your business.”

“Had a couple drinks at that bar the other night with him,” he said, forcing a grin. “Actually, he told me the funniest goddamn story about you and Jimmy and some Jewish lone shark …”

“What?”
Mickey’s exasperation was like a strum on an out-of-tune guitar. Immediately, he had become rigid in his seat, the long strands of his hair set in motion by the hot air gusting from the console vents.

“Said you grabbed this guy, this bookie, cut him up and took his book. Said you guys were collecting from the book. I just thought that was the funniest damn—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mickey spat, turning to face him and leaning his right arm along the console. Something inside Mickey O’Shay had snapped. The look in his eyes now was too similar to the look on the night he’d clobbered Dino “Smiles” Moratto. “Why the hell are you bringing that up?”

“Jesus Christ, Mickey, relax! Sit the hell back and relax. All right? The hell’s the big deal?”

“Sullivan told you that?”

“Yes—”

“Where’d he hear it? Who told him?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t ask.”

“What else did he say?” Mickey was breathing heavy now, his nostrils flared, his lips pressed tightly together. “That little asshole …”

“Nothing, nothing—what? Mickey, man, chill the fuck out.”

Mickey remained silent for several seconds, his eyes boring through the side of John’s head. John could almost taste the shock and anger coming off Mickey in undulating waves, like burning jet fuel in the air. Then, like an engine ticking down, Mickey slowly adjusted himself in the passenger seat, pushed his head back against the headrest, and placed the palms of his hands flat on his knees. His breathing regained a slow, labored consistency. Staring straight through the windshield, Mickey said, “Why you bringin’ that up?” His voice was low and inconspicuous again, though the outer layers of his tone still bristled with tension.

He shrugged, glancing at Mickey from the corner of his eye, then back at the road. “It was just talk. Forget it. But if you don’t like what this kid says, why you putting him with me?”

“Quit talkin’ about that.”

There was suddenly no doubt in his mind that Mickey and Jimmy had committed the very crime Sean Sullivan told him about. And not just that—it was the hidden rage, the quick snaps and breaks in Mickey’s character that reinforced the notion, and forced John to wonder just how many other people Mickey O’Shay and Jimmy Kahn had murdered.

He pulled the car along Tenth Avenue, the tires peeling through slush. The streets had been plowed, but the sidewalks were still blanketed in snow. A few pedestrians trudged through the snow, their heads down, swaddled in thick winter coats and billowing scarves.

He stopped the car in front of Mickey’s complex, letting the engine idle. In all the time he’d spent around Mickey O’Shay, he hadn’t once been back to the guy’s apartment. He pictured a one-room flat with bare walls and peeling plaster; a litter of empty beer bottles strewn about the floor; hardly any change of clothes; an unmade bed with stained, yellowed sheets.

“Wait here,” Mickey said, and stepped out into the night. He did not head up to his apartment, however, as John had anticipated; instead, he hustled across the street and dashed into Calliope Candy.

“He’s going into the candy store,” he said, drumming his gloved fingers on the steering wheel. A line of cars slipped along Tenth Avenue, Kersh’s sedan among them. John caught the passing taillights of Kersh’s car just as it rolled by, and he watched it continue up Tenth Avenue and turn left onto West 53
^rd
Street at the intersection. Darkness all around him, a light snowfall pattered down on the Camaro’s windshield. He watched it with some indifference, recalling his childhood winters in Brooklyn.

Mickey appeared across the street with a brown paper bag under one arm. Even beneath the glow of the street lamp, he looked capable of blending into the brick façade of the candy store and out of sight at will. Yet Mickey was incapable of keeping himself hidden for very long. People like him never stayed hidden, no matter how much heat was on them. There was always something else that eventually coaxed them from their holes and out into the limelight again, always a piece of bait dangling from a hook to whet their appetite. All the circuitry in Mickey’s body was wired to a central hub driven by greed and blistering insanity.

Teeth chattering, Mickey hopped back in the car and slammed the door. Opening the bag on his lap, he peered inside, reached in with one hand. He pulled out a .25 Beretta and handed it to John.

“There’s another one in here for Sean,” Mickey said, “plus ammo. And take a look at this.”

Mickey removed a narrow cardboard box from the bag, popped open the lid. The box was stuffed with newspaper. Shifting the paper aside, Mickey produced a short, black, cylindrical metal tube with a dime-sized opening at one end and screw-on threads at the other: a silencer.

“Jesus Christ. Where’d you get that?”

“Got a guy who makes ‘em for us. High quality. What do ya think? Think you could move any of these?”

“In a heartbeat. How many you got?”

“A few right now,” Mickey said, “but they’re sold. I can get you some more in a couple days.”

“What’s the price?”

Mickey shrugged. “Two hundred.”

“That’s about the price of the guns,” he said.

“I can go one seventy five,” Mickey said, “but that’s it. Besides,” he continued, stuffing the silencer back into the box, “guns you can get anywhere.
These
things though …”

“Can I buy that one from you?”

“You got the money now?”

“Not on me, but you know I’m good for it. I can get it to you tomorrow.”