Shamrock Alley (54 page)

They crossed Surf Avenue, and the mob of people thinned out. A light rain began to fall, and John hurried along a little faster, but Mickey did not pick up the pace. He’d expected Mickey’s ride to be parked along Surf Avenue, but Mickey continued up 15
^th
Street without pause. John followed, eyeing the number of parked cars along the street, and remained very conscious of the slow-moving traffic at his back. Halfway to Mermaid Avenue, he realized he had one hand wrapped around the grip of his gun inside his jacket pocket. It had been an unconscious reaction, and he silently wondered just how long he’d been holding the gun.

“Where the hell did you park?” he asked, shivering against the soft rain.

“I shoulda grabbed a dog,” Mickey muttered to himself, ignoring John’s question.

They crossed onto Mermaid Avenue and turned left, keeping close to the strip of buildings along the avenue. In the rain, there were very few people out on foot, though the street itself was brimming with headlights and overanxious drivers. Just a few blocks over, the surveillance units were tucked away in the shadows, eyeballing the money car. If it wasn’t for the thin fog that had started creeping up from the water and negotiating the alleyways, he might have even been able to see the car …

Mickey paused beside a parked Cadillac. The car’s engine was running and blowing exhaust into the street. Someone shifted behind the wheel as they approached. Patting down his coat beside the car, Mickey hooked a cigarette from one pocket and tried to light it in the rain. He went through three matches before he succeeded. That was when the driver’s side door opened, and Jimmy Kahn looked at John from over the car’s roof. In the darkness, Jimmy looked like a cadaver.

“Jimmy,” he said, perhaps sounding more surprised than he was.

“Esposito,” Jimmy said. “You ready to do this?”

“I’m here, ain’t I?” he said. “But I don’t see the counterfeit.”

Jimmy’s face was only half visible beneath the glow of a street lamp. He didn’t say anything. John shifted his eyes to Mickey, whose head was bent down at an angle, making his eyes invisible. They were like twin bookends—or like some hideous beast sliced down the middle to form two. The rain was coming down harder now, but no one seemed to notice.

For several beats, they remained standing in the rain without saying a word. Brooding, uninspired, Mickey sucked on his cigarette, the smoke enveloping his head before evaporating into the air. The rain continued to pelt down, and a sluggish mist crawled around their ankles. Along Mermaid Avenue, traffic appeared to slow almost to a stop.

Jimmy got back inside the Cadillac.

Turning to Mickey, John said, “Whoa, whoa—what’s the deal? What’s going on?”

“Come on,” Mickey said, chucking his cigarette to the sidewalk and opening the Cadillac’s passenger door. “Get in. We’ll take you to the counterfeit.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not here?”

“We’ll get it,” Mickey said. He motioned for John to get into the Cadillac’s passenger seat. Then Mickey stepped over to the back door, opened it, and climbed in.

Standing on the sidewalk in the rainy night by himself, John suddenly felt something was very wrong. It was an instinctual feeling … and one that he tried to talk himself out of. But he knew these guys wouldn’t kill him without seeing his money first. It was his only anchor, his only safety line.

He slid into the passenger seat beside Jimmy Kahn and slammed the door.

Inside, the upholstery smelled vaguely of marijuana. It was dark, with the only interior lights coming from the dashboard. Still, his eyes managed to take in everything: the cracks in the leather seats; the overstuffed ashtrays in the door panels; the cracked dome light at the center of the ceiling. The windshield was beginning to defog as Jimmy worked the car’s vents while checking his side mirror. There was a sharp buzzing sound to his right. One of the vents in the dashboard was vibrating in its plastic casing.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To get the money,” Mickey replied from behind him. This close, John could smell Mickey’s scent: camphor and chloride and sweat and dirt and smoke and booze …

“I told you not to fuck with me, Mickey.”

“Relax.”

Jimmy spun the wheel and pulled out onto Mermaid Avenue. Negotiating through traffic, they hit Stillwell Avenue and turned left, heading north. They drove for several minutes in silence, until John realized they were about to get onto the Belt Parkway, heading west.

“Belt Parkway,” he said, mostly for the benefit of the surveillance teams listening over the broadcast … if they could still hear anything. “We going back to the city?”

“Take it easy,” Mickey said. He stared at John, the intermittent sodium streetlights washing over his features as they drove. The shadows of raindrops speckled his face.

“What’s going on?”

Mickey produced a gun and pointed it at him.

Standing a few booths down, Kersh had noticed Mickey moving through the crowd before John had seen him. Mickey was alone—that was the first thing Kersh noted. The second was that Mickey walked head down. Most people, if their partners hid among the mob, tended to walk with their heads up and their eyes on the crowd. Mickey’s eyes were on the ground.

Through the earpiece he wore, Kersh could hear most of John and Mickey’s conversation, though the music and commotion around them made it difficult. He hadn’t expected the deal to go down right out in the open, yet he nonetheless suffered an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw that Mickey had not brought the counterfeit with him. Still … it was a big money deal. All parties were going to be careful.

With some distance between them, Kersh waited for John and Mickey to cross Surf Avenue before he hustled over to his sedan, which was parked at the corner of Surf and 15
^th
Street. He climbed into the passenger seat. Tommy Veccio was behind the wheel.

“Follow them,” Kersh said, and Tommy attempted to pull out into the street. “He gets too far, and we won’t be in range for the transmitter.”

The sedan jerked and Veccio glanced in his mirrors, muttering curses under his breath. Here, traffic was moving too slowly.

“Christ,” Kersh sighed.

“They’re on foot,” Veccio said. “They won’t get far.” Squinting, Veccio examined the street signs, then stared at the quick-moving shapes of John Mavio and Mickey O’Shay. “He takin’ him to the money car now?”

“I don’t know,” Kersh said, chewing on his lower lip, his eyes not leaving the two silhouetted men walking up the street. A light rain was falling on the windshield, and Kersh leaned over and switched on the wiper blades.

“What about Jimmy Kahn?” Veccio asked.

Kersh hadn’t heard any mention of Kahn over the transmission and told Tommy Veccio so now.

“You hear anything else?” Veccio asked, watching Kersh fiddle with his earpiece.

“Just the cars,” Kersh said. “I don’t think they’re talking.”

At the intersection of 15
^th
and Mermaid, Kersh spotted John standing outside a four-door Cadillac beneath a street lamp, Mickey to one side, another figure standing by the driver’s side door.

“That’s Jimmy Kahn,” Kersh said, pointing through the windshield. He picked up Veccio’s walkie-talkie and radioed the surveillance units farther down Mermaid. Speaking slowly and clearly, he relayed the visual to the other units.

“They’re talking,” Veccio said.

“I’m not picking it all up,” Kersh said.

“Should we get in closer?”

“No,” Kersh said. “I’m getting … bits and pieces …” He looked up sharply, squinting through the windshield. “Sounds like … they don’t have the counterfeit with them …”

Across the intersection, Kersh watched as John got into the Cadillac.

Into the walkie-talkie, Kersh said, “John just got into the Caddy. They’re pulling out. Looks like they’re … They are—they’re heading east down Mermaid in the Cadillac. They’re going to pick up the counterfeit. All units stand by; we’re tailing.” To Veccio, he said, “Follow them, but not too close.”

“With this traffic, I don’t think it’s gonna matter.”

“Just don’t lose them.”

Cracking his window to let some air into the car, Tommy Veccio said, “Not a chance.”

“Put your hands on the dashboard,” Mickey said, the gun pointed at the back of John’s head.

“You gotta be—”

“Do it now.”

He took a deep breath and slowly moved his hands out in front of him, gripping the lip of the dashboard. The Cadillac jerked, shuddered, and someone blared their horn. Outside in the cold and rainy night, millions of people were living their own lives.

“You gonna fuckin’ rip me?” he nearly whispered.

“Take it easy, Johnny,” Mickey said again. His voice was soft and articulate, like a priest speaking in confidence during confession. “Relax. We’re talking about a lot of money here. We just wanna make sure this thing goes down right. No funny shit.”

With the gun still pointed at the back of John’s head, Mickey leaned over the passenger seat and, with his free hand, began patting him down. He felt something in one of the pockets, slipped his hand inside, pulled out the cigarette lighter transmitter and a pack of cigarettes. Without interest, he tossed them to the car floor and continued to pat him down. When his hand struck John’s gun, he hesitated, then dipped his hand into John’s pocket and fished out the handgun. In the rearview mirror, John watched Mickey scrutinize the gun, turning it over in one hand, before slipping it into the pocket of his own coat.

“Lift up your shirt,” Mickey said.

“You—”

“Lift-lift-lift-lift-lift,” Mickey O’Shay uttered, his lower lip quivering, the gun stuttering in his hand. The glare of the highway lights caused Mickey’s face to appear almost skeletal in the rearview mirror. Too often he’d looked unassuming, like the perfect choirboy, innocent and unimportant. Now, however, beneath the light of truth, all reality was made visible: before John stood a monster with hateful eyes, bleached and clammy skin, and stringy hair like the tendrils of a poisonous sea urchin. The gun he held was insignificant: it was the fire that burned deep in his eyes, resident in the man’s soul for so many years now that all rationality and compassion and
calculation
had long since been destroyed. What remained was the bulk of a street animal whose mind had, over time, been hideously disfigured by the occupation of such psychotic epitomes. And there was an aura about him, even beneath the glow of the streetlight, that suggested some part of Mickey O’Shay wanted desperately to betray whatever plans he and his partner had and to kill John right here on the spot.

John lifted his shirt.

Mickey’s hand, cold and sticky, slapped against his flesh, feeling for a wire, feeling for anything.

“Son of a bitch,” Mickey muttered, his fingers like blunt pitons against John’s ribs. “You’re sweating like a bastard.”

“You got a gun pointed at my head, asshole.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off Mickey’s reflection in the rearview mirror. He was reminded of the night out on Mickey’s roof, and the unshakable current of murderous content he could see—could
feel
—humming like a live wire through Mickey’s body. And a similar feeling that had coursed through his body, as well. He was also reminded of the image that had been summoned from the depths of his own head that night—of tackling Mickey, their feet skidding against the flare of the roof and driving up dirt, both their bodies driven over the edge by the force of the tackle. The world would have spun around and around about them, ground and sky alternating, twelve stories down, eleven, ten, eight, five …

Beside him, the window had fogged up from his breath. He worked his fingers along the vinyl casing of the dashboard, his mouth suddenly parched and dry. With Mickey’s voice still ringing in his ears, John felt his mind suddenly click into fast-forward: he saw a struggle in which he was overpowered and shot in the head by Mickey O’Shay; he saw Katie woken in the middle of the night by a crestfallen Bill Kersh who relayed the news; Katie weeping by his father’s bedside; Katie in the delivery room, giving birth between mournful wails and sobs …