Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

  Doyle wrote a phone number on the back of a bar napkin and handed it to Ellie. “I mean it. You get desperate, you don’t go to Blackie. You come to me.” He sighed. “Don’t be like your father if you can help it, Ellie.”

  He left, and Ellie went to stand beside Sean. All at once, she was cold and just wanted to be near her brother. She shoved Doyle’s number deep into her pocket and forgot all about it until the next day, when Sean insisted they wash their funeral clothes. She threw it out. Doyle might want to help, but he couldn’t help Ellie beat the Devil.

  -3-

  Ellie watched four yuppies, two men and two women, stare at the inside of the Irish Rover like they’d just landed on Mars. Ellie didn’t voice her thoughts aloud—didn’t they have bars on Beacon Hill? Why come all the way to Southie if you were just going to gawk, order one beer and talk loud on your cell phone, so all the townies knew that you were important, rich, and didn’t really belong here?

  She just went back to washing pint glasses. Nobody paid to hear her opinion. They paid her to pour real Irish beer for half the price of a bar downtown, look good in a white T-shirt, and keep her mouth shut. There weren’t many places, even in Southie, that would hire you with a record, and she needed the job if she wanted to keep her asshole PO happy. And if she wanted a roof over her head, since she sure as hell wasn’t going to make any money the way the Folk usually did. Cheating, stealing, and small-time scams were off the table for the next three to five years.

  The tallest of the yuppies swaggered over. “Four Guinness,” he said, and tossed a twenty on the bar. Ellie took the bill silently and rang it in. There was a time when a jerk-off like that, flashing his cash, wearing expensive clothes, and acting like a moron, would have ended up in the alley behind the bar lying in a puddle of his own piss and wondering where his teeth had gotten to.

  But this wasn’t the Southie of twenty years ago. Hell, this wasn’t even the Southie of ten years ago. Slowly but surely, gentrification crept in, like a reverse blight that turned the decaying triple-deckers into studios and single-family Victorians. Then came the chain stores, and before you knew it, check-cashing joints were replaced by gourmet coffee shops, and places like the Irish Rover added craft beer to their menu and got a web site.

  Ellie brought the douchebags their beer, accepted the two-odd dollars in change she was presented as a tip, and went back to her station. When she looked up again, Sean was in front of her.

  “What?” she said, because Sean never came to see her if he could help it. She’d stepped out of the Folk lifestyle after it sent her to Framingham, but Sean had opted out mere months after their dad died. Ellie was still close enough to the old crew to make Sean wary.

  He grimaced and leaned more weight on his cane. “Finn,” was all he said.

  Of course it was Finn. It was always Finn. Ellie threw down her rag. It slapped the sink with a wet, hopeless sound. “It’s not like I can exactly stroll out, Sean. I’ve got another three hours on my shift.”

  “I think people can survive without your beer-pouring skills for half an hour,” Sean said. He grabbed her arm, and Ellie pulled away. “Ellie,” Sean said, and his voice was quiet, not the usually hard-edged tone he liked to use with her. “It’s bad.”

  Ellie sighed. “How bad?”

  “Bad enough that I’m here,” Sean said. “Now come on. Car’s outside.”

  Ellie felt her stomach knot. Every midnight call had been about Finn, since she was eighteen. Every early morning freezing her ass off on some bench at the courthouse, waiting to hear how he was going to weasel out this time, and every day off wasted at the jail bringing him soap and toilet paper.

  This felt different, though. “Let me just call someone,” she said. She left a message for two of the other waitresses and then got her bag. She wished she still carried. She wished she hadn’t tried to grow up, be responsible, when Sean came back like he was.

  Sean drove them, even though Ellie knew it hurt. His leg was full of steel pins, a steel bone to replace the one pulped by the IED. He was lucky, everyone told Ellie over and over again. Lucky to be alive, lucky he didn’t lose the leg. Lucky, lucky Sean.

  When they drove into Roxbury, Ellie sighed. “You didn’t tell me he was using again.”

  “It would be obvious to anyone with eyes,” Sean said.

  Ellie looked up at the row house Sean parked in front of. “This isn’t just about drugs,” she said.

  “He’s in the front room,” Sean said. “He’s waiting for you.”

  Ellie tried to ignore the litter-box stink that hit her when she stepped into the den, and the combination of plaster dust, plastic syringes, and asbestos tile that crunched under her boots.

  Finn sat on a stained mattress, his head in his hands. Ellie sank down next to him. “Goddammit, Finn.”

  He looked up at her. His face was sunken, covered in stubble, and he stank almost as bad as the air around him. “I told Sean not to call you,” he muttered.

  “Well, you know Sean can’t resist sticking his nose into everything we do,” Ellie said.

  Finn’s shoulders jittered. “I messed up, Ellie,” he said. “I mean, really, really messed up.”

  A door slammed at the rear of the house and Finn jumped. Ellie tried to keep breathing. She wasn’t totally defenseless without a piece. She wouldn’t freeze up. Not like she had the night Dad left them.

  “Just tell me what happened,” she said.

  “I should have bet on the Jets,” Finn said, and Ellie groaned.

  “Don’t freaking tell me you’re gambling again.”

  “It was the Super Bowl!” Finn shouted. “I put down more than I should have, yeah, but I was gonna make it back.” He sighed. “Then I got pinched.”

  “Yeah, I remember that,” Ellie said. “You punched a guy for no reason, you went to jail. Not exactly rocket science, Finn.”

  “Anyway, I got this shark breathing down my neck. Civilian, at least, not Folk or I’d be hamburger. I met this kid in lockup—Frankie Bonnaro, you remember him?”

  Ellie felt the urge to bang her own head against the wall. “Please tell me you did not let that ditch-dwelling striga talk you into doing something stupid.”

  Finn’s silence said it all. Ellie shut her eyes, just for a moment. “How bad?”

  “He said it would be foolproof. He wouldn’t even notice the money was missing for a month.”

  “Who?” Ellie said. In the pause, a rodent skittered across the floor above, and someone moaned from a nearby room.

  “He takes the drops from the first, but he has to keep them because his guy, his cleaner only comes by every few months. He has all this cash just sitting there in the back of his club, and Frankie’s cousin is a safecracker.”

  Ellie jumped up, kicking over an empty plastic vodka bottle. “Finn! I don’t give a shit about that. Tell me what’s happening now.”

  “I took it,” Finn said, and his voice slid into a sob. “But he had a camera and he found out.” He sniffled. “Blackie found out.”

  Ellie felt the shock drop her, faster than any gut punch. If she hadn’t had so much practice staying upright even when she wanted nothing more than to pass out, she would have collapsed.

  “How much?” she whispered.

  Finn flopped back on the mattress. “Thirty thousand.”

  -4-

  Ellie let Sean drive Finn home. She walked for a bit, just to think. Half hoping somebody would try to start something with her so she could expel the knot of rage and helplessness that twisted around her gut like a snake.

  The same feeling had been with her, in one form or another, for almost twelve years. Ever since Dad. Ever since that soft snow-covered night.

  Eventually she got a city bus over to Blackie Farrell’s turf. She was the only one who could maybe, possibly do something about this. Sean wasn’t one of them anymore. He was
as much an outsider as a cop.

  Blackie ran his operation out of a dingy little club that might have been hot once, for a weekend or two in the early 1980s. Now it was just grimy tinted windows hiding stained carpet, broken-down booths, and the smell of stale beer and staler vomit.

  Dingy and threadbare though it might be, Ellie didn’t kid herself. This was still a dragon’s den.

  A big guy in a track jacket loomed up from a chair by the door to the manager’s office. “Club’s closed.”

  “Come on, Matty,” Ellie said. “I look like I’m here to dance?”

  Matty’s face broke apart, much like a rock wall might when hit with a wrecking ball, and he grinned. Matty and Ellie had gone to high school together. He’d dated her best friend, Beth, before she married a Japanese guy and moved to L.A. Matty was a good guy—not a smart guy, not a guy with a bright future, but he wasn’t a predator like most of the types Blackie kept around him.

  “I thought you was legit now,” he said. “Big fancy job and all. You own the restaurant yet?”

  “You friggin’ kidding me?” Ellie said. “I work sixty hours a week to make what we made in a couple of hours back in the day.” She sighed. “I gotta see him, Matty. It’s important.”

  “Yeah, might not be a great time.” Her friend shifted from one foot to the other. His sneakers creaked under his girth. Matty was so huge, you’d never know he was a teddy bear. Most people never took the chance of finding out. Still, Ellie worried about him. Their life wasn’t built to be kind. You had to be a real asshole to survive. Like Blackie Farrell. Like her dad, right up until the end. When Declan had gone soft, he’d died.

  “I’ve seen Mr. Farrell in a bad mood before,” Ellie assured him. “I’ll be fine.”

  Matty grunted and stepped aside. Ellie tried to shake off the nausea that cropped up. Stop it, she told herself. Blackie Farrell wasn’t the Devil. He wasn’t even close.

  He looked up from his laptop as Ellie shut the door, and she didn’t give him a chance to talk. “I’m here to make things right with you and my brother.”

  “Eleanor, my girl.” Blackie Farrell’s accent was pure Dublin. He sounded like a kindly leprechaun, or your fun drunk uncle. His eyes were dark as his hair and stood in stark relief in his pale, lined face. He still had his brawler’s temper, too, and it had let Blackie Farrell run his radius of blocks for as long as anyone could remember. The Folk could go on for centuries. They occasionally changed names, or pretended to be their own kids, but Blackie had never bothered.

  “I know what Finn did,” Ellie said. “I promise he’ll pay you back, with interest.”

  “Now that’s interesting.” Blackie shut his laptop. “You don’t even know what my terms are yet.”

  He gestured Ellie to the chair across from him, but she didn’t sit. He sighed. “Your brother is nothing but trouble. Your mother, bless her, was fortunate she went back to her own kind before all of this unpleasantness.”

  “What do you want?” Ellie held his gaze.

  Blackie got up and took a bottle from a cabinet under a wire-covered window that looked into the alley. “That’s a good question. You were one of mine for a long time, Ellie. You know it’s not just the money. It’s the principle.”

  “Whatever it is,” Ellie said, “I’ll make it right.” The words fought their way past a knot in her throat. She’d never wanted to owe Blackie anything. Nobody in their right mind did. She’d gone to jail rather than speak a word against him after the cops burst in on her and Finn and the illegal card game that had been all Blackie’s idea. They questioned her for sixteen hours, but she never broke, never even so much as a hairline crack. Blackie was more frightening than anything the Boston PD could throw at her.

  “Back in the day,” Blackie said, uncapping the bottle and taking a critical sniff, “if we found one mate or another talking to the other side, passing information to the Brits, we knew they were scared. Scared of losing their family, their freedom. Hell, black and tans would drag you into the street, shoot you like a dog without a second thought. Something to be scared of, all right.”

  Ellie fought to keep quiet, to not agitate him any further. Blackie could refer to the Irish Rebellion and Bloody Sunday in the same breath, and Ellie was never sure what was a lie and what he’d actually seen with his own eyes—just that he was old enough to be the meanest bastard she’d ever run across.

  “Finn is scared,” she agreed. “And I told him he should be. He knows he fucked up.”

  “We’d make an example of them,” Blackie said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Much as it killed my poor soul to do so. Because an example keeps the rest in line. Might make the next one think twice before he goes sticking his nose where it don’t belong.” He poured a drink and tossed it down his throat, smacking the whiskey on his pale gums.

  “It’s not about the money,” Blackie said. “It’s about trust. I trusted your brother, though Lord knows a junkie and a low character like that didn’t deserve it. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he stole from me.”

  He set the glass down on his desk and took a seat again. The chair spring creaked, in time with Ellie’s oscillating heart.

  “You pay me back the thirty plus ten and I’ll leave you and our Sean out of it,” Blackie said. “But Finn’s gone past where I can turn a blind eye.” He opened his computer again. “Or you could just stop all this pretense you’re anything but one of mine and come back to work. Toward your brother’s debt, of course.”

  “You know I’m on parole,” Ellie said, “I come to work again, I’ll be right back in jail.”

  Blackie shrugged. “That’s a shame. You were by far my best earner. Much better than Finn could ever reach for. And you, I could trust. But you didn’t show me respect when you came home. You spat in my face, as I recall, when I offered you money and a job, so I suppose you’re right. You’ve nothing to offer, and it’s sad your brother will pay the price.”

  Ellie slammed the laptop shut and missed Blackie’s fingers by an inch. “I offered you my word,” she said. “I may not be one of your crew, but my word is still good. You think after you let me twist in the wind for eighteen months in Framingham I’m just going to come back wagging my tail like your goddamned trained puppy?”

  Blackie narrowed his eyes, tongue flicking out like the tongue of the snake he really was. “Careful, Ellie. You don’t want to say something you’ll regret.”

  “You already took my dad,” Ellie said. “You can’t have my brother too.”

  She felt a slight pop, like she was in an airplane and they’d just shifted altitude. The quiet announcement of something encroaching into the space that hadn’t existed a moment before.

  Her back slammed into the wall, and her throat closed, energy wrapping the muscle and tendon harder than a fist. Ellie fought, but Blackie had her dead to rights. She hadn’t thought he’d actually come after her with his talents. He’d always liked her, let her get away with things he never would have allowed Finn or Sean. He’d paid for her shoes for her dance recital in the ninth grade, sat in the second row and clapped louder than anyone’s actual father.

  “I did tell you to be careful,” Blackie said. “And I’ll say it again. Don’t end up like your dad, Ellie. Run back to your safe little life and forget all of this.”

  He rose and came to her, so close she could smell the fresh hot whiskey on his breath.

  “You already lived without your da. In time, you’ll learn to live without Finn,” Blackie said. He hit her, one sharp jab just below her rib cage, and Ellie sank down, no air left in her. She retched on the floor until she could stand up, and then she ran past Matty and out to the alley, leaning against a wall, sheltered by a Dumpster, so no one could see her tears.

  -5-

  Finn still lived in the old place, had managed to hang on to it since Ellie and Sean had left.

  Ellie sighed at the drift
of empty beer cans and takeout wrappers piled on one side of the door, trash bag split open by rats. The wallpaper was coming off in strips, like the entire creaking house was shedding its skin.

  She didn’t know why she was here. Finn was with Sean; he’d be fine. Sean had guns, legal guns with permits, upstanding honorably discharged soldier that he was. And Finn wasn’t without his defenses. His talents ran more to picking locks, or pockets, but not, unfortunately, picking ponies.

  Blackie wanted to kill Finn, had likely been itching for an excuse ever since he’d gotten busted along with Ellie two years before. That game had cost Ellie eighteen months, but it had cost Blackie cold hard cash and, more importantly, made him look like a fool to the sharks that were always circling. Boston had changed. The Russians were here now, the tongs and the yakuza and all their Folk. Finn had humiliated Blackie twice over, put Blackie’s blood into the water.

  Ellie kicked a beer can into the far wall. Even if she paid, even if she went up for life for working for him, Blackie would still kill Finn. It was the only way to scare off the sharks.

  Unless she killed Blackie first. She’d have to be insane to go against someone like Blackie Farrell. Even if he was just a man, he wouldn’t be one anybody would cross on purpose.

  Except her damn idiot of a brother.

  Ellie sank down in the same spot she’d hidden when she’d seen her father and the man in the black suit. She knew now it wasn’t the Devil, not really. There were much worse things out there. Things little-girl Ellie could have never imagined. She’d seen what people who owed Blackie would do to get out of his debt. They’d rob liquor stores, offer up their daughters, ditch it all and run in the middle of the night. Desperation made you crazy.