Mirage Man

by Trace Conger

  We didn’t speak again until he stopped in front of my home.

  “One of these days, your past is gonna come knocking, kid. Keep a level head next time. I don’t like working with gunslingers. They tend to get dead.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said, getting out of the car. “Ernesto won’t be an issue.”

  He looked at me with an expression that was impossible to read.

  “See that you do,” he finally said before driving off.

  3

  Good News and Bad Analogies

  I walked into the house to find my father, Albert, sitting on the couch. He had a Lawrence Block novel in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other. The bottle was on the coffee table in front of him. Albert had completed his last round of chemotherapy for stage-three prostate cancer six months ago, and he’d had a follow-up appointment with his oncologist this morning to review his latest test results. I couldn’t tell if the bottle meant he was celebrating or drinking away bad news.

  He looked up at me but didn’t tip his hand.

  “So? What the doctor say?”

  Albert closed the novel, yanked the cork from the bottle, and refreshed his glass.

  “Cancer-free, bitch.”

  A calm washed over me, and for a moment, I forgot all about Ernesto, Mr. Fish, and everything else.

  “That’s great news. We should go out and celebrate.”

  He swirled the glass in his hand. “Already started.”

  I grabbed a glass and sat down next to him.

  “That’s really great news,” I said. “It’s exactly what I needed to hear today.”

  “Well, don’t go getting sentimental on me. Just know I won’t be haunting you for a bit longer.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I tried to get my father up and out of the house, but he wanted to stay in and read his novel. We polished off a pizza and I settled into my own book.

  An hour later, he closed the Block novel and tossed it onto the coffee table.

  “Oh,” he said. “I need you to take me to the bus station.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to Cincinnati to see your brother and I need you to take me to the bus station.”

  “When did you decide to go to Cincinnati?”

  “About ten minutes before I bought the ticket. Want to tell him the good news in person.”

  A trip to Cincinnati was precisely what Albert needed. Finn and his family wouldn’t let him sit inside, eat pizza, and read pulp paperbacks. They’d fawn over him in a way that wasn’t in me.

  “When are you going?”

  He looked at his watch. “In a few hours.”

  “Thanks for the notice.”

  “Small price to pay to get rid of me for a week.”

  Albert didn’t fly. It’s not that he was afraid to fly, rather, he preferred to inconvenience me with a trip to the bus station at three in the morning, which seems to be the only time busses leave Boston.

  “What time?”

  “Bus leaves at six-forty in the morning.”

  “Well, that’s not as annoying as your typical schedule.”

  “You got off easy this time. Finn has to pick me up at four forty-five in the morning.”

  “Glad he doesn’t get to sleep in either.”

  As much as I wasn’t looking forward to whisking my father to the Boston bus terminal before the sun came up, I was glad he would be out of town for a while. That would give me time to handle any trouble Ernesto created for me without worrying about Albert’s safety.

  The next morning, we were on the road by five. Albert wanted to leave early to beat the nonexistent Saturday rush hour traffic.

  My father was the observant type and could tell a lot about a man just by looking at him. He sensed something was bothering me and demanded to know what it was. Perhaps he wanted a clear conscience before he left for Cincinnati.

  I told him about the encounter with Ernesto, and he said I did the right thing given the circumstances.

  “But Fish is right about something too,” he said. “You’re an idiot if you’re not at least a little concerned about this Ernesto person. Even if he gives up on finding you, there’s always someone else who’s going to be waiting in the wings. Ready to stomp you out for something you did who knows when. I’d rather see you in some safe career—running a business, sitting at a desk or something. You always were a smart kid. Much smarter than your brother. I figured you’d be the one who went off and did something big.”

  “You mean boring and predictable? Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You know what I mean, Connor. The problem with your lifestyle is the cumulative amount of blowback following you around.” He thought for a moment. “Your life is like walking around with dog turds in your pocket.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you. You walk through life associating with bad people, and those people have a collective effect on your life.”

  “And this relates to dog crap how?”

  “It’s an analogy, try to keep up. The dog turds represent all the toxic people you associate with. Those morons you got mixed up with in the army and all that crap in New York. Every time you’re with those people, it’s like sticking a turd in your pocket. After a while, you start to stink.

  “Then, one day, you decide you’ve had enough of working with miscreants, so you cut them out of your life. And you dump all those turds out of your pocket. You’re done with them. But guess what? Even though you unload all the crap you’ve been carrying around with you, you still stink. You can’t wash that off.”

  “Dad, that’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard. Ever.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Why wouldn’t I just buy another coat? One that doesn’t smell like dog shit?”

  “You can’t just buy another coat, because then the analogy doesn’t work. The smell follows you around forever, Connor, because you can’t shake all the bad karma in your life. It catches up. Sticks to ya.”

  My father tried his best to deliver on that teachable moment, but like many things, he did it in his own unique way.

  When we arrived at the bus terminal, I got him to his gate and left him with his suitcase and a hot cup of coffee. I offered to stay until he boarded the bus, but he brushed me off and told me to get on with my weekend.

  “I’ll be back next Saturday,” he said. “Pick me up at six o’clock.”

  I didn’t have to ask if it was a.m. or p.m.

  Albert began chatting up the attractive terminal attendant as I slipped away.

  I was walking into my house when Mr. Fish rang me.

  “Tell me you had nothing to do with this,” he said.

  “Unless Albert burned down the Boston Port Authority, I’m completely in the clear.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “And I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “They pulled Ernesto Gonzalez out of a ditch this morning. Someone put two holes in his head and dumped him a mile from his house.”

  “No shit?”

  “And you don’t know anything about it?”

  “No, I don’t. I was with Albert last night. And this morning. Can’t be two places at once.”

  “Maybe you called it in. Had someone else do it for you.”

  “No. I take care of my own messes. I’m clean on this, Fish. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I didn’t really think you did, but I had to ask. I don’t know how much effort Boston PD is going to put into investigating this, but if they ID you in the surveillance video, they might come asking questions.”

  “Let ‘em ask. I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

  “I guess you can sleep a little easier now,” said Mr. Fish.

  “Guess so. Keep me posted if you hear anything.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  4

  The Dead Man on the Floor

  It had been two years si
nce someone tried to kill me.

  Had the dead man on my kitchen floor known what he was doing, perhaps he'd be standing over my body and not the other way around. Lucky for me, he didn't know my back door squeaked like a cheap motel bed. He also forgot his safety was on. That's what saved my life.

  When I surprised him in the kitchen, he tried to squeeze off a round from his 9mm, realized his mistake, and in the time it took him to glance down and disengage the safety, I'd grabbed a boning knife from the block on the counter and thrust it up through his left lung and into his heart.

  I wasn't shocked Ernesto sent someone to kill me, but I was surprised he arrived so quickly. It had only been twenty-four hours since I introduced my forearm to Ernesto’s carotid arteries, and I severely underestimated his ability to identify me this fast. There’s no way he ran Mr. Fish’s license plate or identified me from some grainy gas station surveillance video without someone from Boston PD feeding him information. Without help, Ernesto would have been killed and stuffed in that ditch long before he connected the dots.

  I stepped back to avoid the crimson blood that oozed out from underneath the body and seeped toward my feet. Dropping the long, thin knife into the sink, I realized some of the blood dripping from my right hand didn't belong to the man on the floor. It was mine. I thrust the knife into him so hard my hand slid up the handle and onto the blade, slicing my fingers open. The lacerations weren't deep, but as my adrenaline slowed, the pain surged in.

  Wrapping a dish towel around the wound, I leaned against the counter, closed my eyes, and waited for my heartbeat to return to normal. After a few minutes, my hands had stopped shaking. The twitch above my left eye continued.

  I rolled John Doe onto his back with my foot, kicked off his Boston Celtics cap, and knelt over him, keeping a close eye on the widening blood trail that followed me like smoke at a campfire.

  I didn't recognize him. I can't say with complete certainty I'd never seen him before, but if I had, he wasn't memorable. He had buzzed dark hair, looked twenty-five to thirty years old with an athletic build, and carried a scar on his right cheek just below the eye. He didn’t look like a gangbanger, but it’s likely Ernesto hired someone from outside his crew. That way, there would be less chance of anyone tying the shooter back to the Westside Assassins.

  The pockets of the dead man’s black hoodie were empty, so I checked the matching sweatpants for a wallet or some other form of identification. All I found was a spare magazine and a scrap of paper with my name and address. The watch on his wrist was large and gaudy, with lots of diamonds. Something you wore to get noticed. I stripped it off his wrist and checked the back for an inscription. Nothing. Lifting his shirt, I checked for tattoos, anything that might have a name or gang affiliation. Nothing. I shifted my attention to his legs. Rolling up his pants legs, I found a large green shamrock on his right calf. Anywhere else in the country, that ink might be telling, but this was Boston and shamrock tattoos were as common as Catholics.

  Contract killers come in a few sizes. You've got low-level street thugs, who will gun anyone down for a gram of crystal meth and pocket change. Even if they do succeed in killing a mark, they'll do something stupid and get caught within hours, probably only a few miles from the crime scene. Then you've got your career professionals. Those are the ones you never see coming. They'll learn your routine over days, if not weeks, and put a bullet in your head when you're out walking your dog some Tuesday evening after Jeopardy. They're precise and intelligent, which is why they don't get caught. And they know when their safety is on. The guy on my floor was somewhere in between, and I was insulted that Ernesto didn't send someone with more experience.

  Or maybe he did send someone with experience, they were just waiting in a car outside. Hit squads usually work in pairs, one shooter and one driver, which meant there was a good chance number two was nearby growing more nervous by the minute.

  I clicked off the kitchen light, tossed the dish towel, and picked up the 9mm. It felt cold against my throbbing hand. I slipped out the back door. The sun had set hours ago, but the streetlamps lit up the road behind my house like an airport runway at midnight. A Porsche SUV idled a block away. It didn't belong to anyone who lived on my street. I tucked the 9mm under my shirt and ran toward the vehicle, staying just outside the wash from the overhead streetlights. Without the dish towel, my fingers bled down the handle of the 9mm and onto my pants leg as I made my way toward the SUV.

  I'd closed to within twenty feet of the vehicle when it squealed its tires and bolted away leaving a burnt-rubber stench lingering in the air. The driver must have noticed I wasn't his partner and assumed the hit had gone south. I caught all six digits on his Massachusetts license plate as he tore down the suburban street.

  Back in my kitchen, I cleaned off my hand and dressed it with something more sterile than a dish towel. Then I snapped the dead man's photo with my cell phone. When it came to identifying the man staining my kitchen tile, Mr. Fish was my go-to call.

  "It's late," he said, answering the phone without a hello. "What did you do this time?"

  "There's a dead man in my kitchen.”

  "Did you kill him?"

  "Yeah, but it was justified. He broke into my home looking to put a few holes in me."

  “I told you shit was going to follow you home, Connor.”

  “Can the lecture.”

  “Is it one of Ernesto’s men?”

  “I assume so.” Using two fingers, I slid my front curtains to the side and peered down the street. "That's why I'm calling you. If I send you his photo, do you think you can identify him?"

  "Why didn't you ask his name before you killed him? That would have made things much easier." His grin was evident through the phone.

  "I didn't have time for a conversation."

  Except for my neighbor from two houses down walking his cocker spaniel, the street was clear.

  "I'll see what I can do," said Mr. Fish.

  "You might have to get off your couch for this one."

  "Doubt it. Send me the photo."

  I texted Mr. Fish the photograph. While I waited for him to get the image, I moved to the kitchen, and with the lights still off, surveyed the road behind my house through the window.

  "You get it?" I asked.

  “I’ve got it.”

  A Chevy Tahoe with its headlights turned off crawled down the street just beyond my back yard, the same street where the Porsche had been parked earlier. I snatched the 9mm from the kitchen table, clicked on my phone's speaker and lowered it to my waist to blunt the light from the screen. The Chevy stopped behind the house next to mine, but no one got out.

  "I can't be positive," said Mr. Fish, "but it looks like Lucky Walsh. He used to have longer hair. Shoulder length. Does he have a shamrock tattoo on his calf? Can't remember if it's right or left."

  "Yeah, right leg."

  "Then that's Lucky. Guess he didn't live up to his name."

  "Guess not. Who is he?"

  The Chevy's dome light clicked on, as if someone had opened the door, and then slowly dimmed.

  "Last I knew, he was an associate in the O'Bannon Crew, although by now he might be a full-fledged member. The Irish Mob doesn't put out a newsletter.”

  “I didn’t realize the Westside Assassins were connected to the Irish Mob.”

  “They’re not, Connor. Alfie O’Bannon would never work with Ernesto’s crew. He’s old school and wouldn’t associate with a Latin street gang. The Irish Mob isn’t an equal-opportunity employer.”

  “Then why in the hell is there a dead Irish mobster in my kitchen?”

  “This isn’t connected to Ernesto. You must have pissed off someone else. Like I said—“

  "Should I be worried about this Alfie O’Bannon?”

  I checked that the back door was locked and surveyed the Chevy through the window again. After a moment, it rolled slowly away, its headlights still off.

  "Yeah, Connor, you should be worried. O'Bannon's a big dea
l around here. Used to run with Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang back in the day."

  "If he's such a big shot, why haven't I heard of him?"

  I ran to the front of the house and checked for anyone approaching. Aside from my neighbor picking up dog crap, it was clear.

  "Keeps a low profile these days. I guess unless you're working with the Irish Mob, you've got no reason to know him. Although you'd know if you did something to make him want to pop you."

  "I didn't cross anyone. But there has to be some connection. I assume the Irish Mob doesn't put out contracts without a reason. You know where I can find him?"

  "Last I heard, he ran a chop shop in East Somerville. I'll see if I can look it up and shoot you the address, but I'm not sure poking around there is a smart idea. Alfie O'Bannon might be a fossil, but he's still a dangerous man. He’s the type of guy who won’t think twice about sealing you up in an industrial barrel and tossing you in the bay. You might want to back off."

  "I can't back off. If someone wants me dead, I want to know why."

  I left the living room and took the stairs two at a time, dashed into the spare bedroom, and checked the street behind my house again from the window.

  "Why don't you get out of town for a while? I can ask around, see what I can find out. Be a safer option than sticking your neck out.”

  "Thanks for the offer," I said. "But I'm not going to rope you into this, especially if O'Bannon is as dangerous as you say he is. The info you gave me is help enough."

  "Just sit tight for a bit and—"

  "Sitting tight isn't going to help. When word gets back to him, or to whoever, that Lucky wasn't so lucky, they'll send someone else. Someone better."

  "What about the police? If you're clean, you've got no reason not to call 'em."

  "That could cause more problems. I'll talk to O'Bannon and get to the bottom of it."

  "I never pictured Alfie as the talking type, but you've got balls as big as church bells if you're looking for a sit-down with the Irish Mob."