Ten minutes later, he was in a business suite, reeling from the price he’d had to pay. He wanted to stay in the room, not buy it. Seemed there were other differences, apart from just the language.
He put on the kettle, and made himself a cup of tea, mainly to give himself some time to think. He made a decision quickly and opened his notepad; he needed a computer badly.
The hotel Internet cafe was deserted. He checked the page in his notepad. He had a name, Thomas Eugene O'Neill, he had a pseudonym, the Street, and he had a place of birth, Cork city. His index finger lightly tapped the return key without actually pushing it, as his brow furrowed in concentration. He quickly typed how do I get more info? and then deleted it in disgust. He sat looking at the screen, hoping the information would leap off the page by itself. In the corner, the timer was ticking off the minutes; he needed to focus.
He typed in next of kin? First thing he needed to find out, was whether the elusive Mr O’Neill had any family left in the city. Thinking about it in the cold light of day, it seemed such a tenuous link, but Dale remembered a phrase his father used to say, when considering coincidental information.
‘It’s like this, Dale,’ he would say. ‘Take a compass and set it down; see which way it points. Set another one next to it, and then add another and another. Check which way they point. If they all point in the same direction, then pretty soon you know where north is.’
Dale smiled at the memory. It did seem a tenuous connection, but he’d seen the compass needle point to Cork too many times. If it all came to nothing, then at the very least, he’d have a nice holiday. He patted his pocket; he had a number after all. Thinking about the stewardess prompted his next leap of faith.
He’d tried a number of Google searches and they had all come up negative. If he couldn't get the information online, he’d have to go old school, and where was the best place to get information about family? He typed find family in Cork and found the address he was looking for; the office of the registrar of marriages, births and deaths, as good a place as any to start.
He still had two further challenges. How did he get there, and how did he get the information he wanted when he arrived there. The first was easily solved; the second, he suspected, would be less so.
As Dale wrote down the address, an image floated to the front of his mind. He clicked his fingers; he had himself an in.
An hour later, and his own mother wouldn’t have recognised him; the transformation from Dale to tourist was complete. He parked in a multi-storey near the registrar, and then used his GPS to locate a department store nearby. He had bought the most hideous pair of brown check golf trousers he could find. He had teamed these with a vertical striped green rugby top, and a multicoloured Guinness cloth cap. A cheap Nikon SLR camera around his neck completed the look.
As he walked the five minutes to the office block that was his destination, he practised his southern accent; it would complete the effect he was hoping for.
At first, the ticketing system confused him, but an elderly lady showed him how you had to rip off the ticket, and how your number would appear in garish red digits above one of the service hatches. He waited patiently for his turn to come.
He noticed with relief that the kiosk displaying his number was staffed by a homely looking middle-aged woman. Being the possessor of useless, investigation based information, he knew that he had a higher statistical chance of convincing her to give him the information he wanted, than if she was young and pretty.
‘Howdy,’ he said, in his best southern drawl, with a smile painted on his face. ‘I'm hoping that you can help.’
‘I’ll certainly try, young man,’ she answered brightly.
‘I’m trying to trace a long lost cousin,’ he said. He handed her the sheet he had printed in the hotel an hour and a bit earlier. He had taken the homepage of one of the American genealogy websites, and amended the search with the details he knew about Thomas Eugene O'Neill.
‘This is all I know,’ he said truthfully.
He handed her the sheet.
‘The only other thing I can tell you, is that he would be in his early forties.’
She looked from the paper to him and back again. He noticed a slight hesitancy in her manner.
‘Do you have ID?’ she asked.
He slid his Passport across the table.
‘Well Dale,’ she added, after studying his Passport closely. ‘We can’t normally give out this type of information without....’
For the briefest of seconds, he contemplated sliding his DEA identification across the desk, but he instinctively knew in this case that it would be the wrong thing to do. Instead, he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out some large denomination bills, and leaned confidentially across the desk. He beckoned her in closer.
‘I’m under cover,’ he said. ‘I’m a private detective, working for a woman in the US who is trying desperately to trace her runaway husband. He skipped the jurisdiction without a forwarding address and owes a huge amount of alimony....’
‘It’s okay young man,’ she said. ‘And before we go on, you didn’t need to go to all that trouble and subterfuge. I was merely going to say, that we would normally need a bit more information, that’s all. But private detective; sounds very exciting.’
She was grinning broadly; playing with him. It was no more than he deserved for being so stupid, but Dale cursed his rash action; it could come back to haunt him.
‘So, let’s try and find this mystery man of yours.’
She turned her screen around, so they could both see it. Dale had been holding his breath, and realised just how difficult it was to silently breathe a sigh of relief.
She slid his piece of paper over, so that it was between her and the keyboard.
‘Let’s see,’ she said, her fingers dancing at speed across the keys. ‘Ok, we’ve got seven returned.’
She then seemed to mumble to herself, as she went through the list systematically.
‘Too young, too old, too old, too old, maybe, maybe, too old.’
She hit the print button on her screen and the dot matrix beside her clacked into life.
‘Ok, love,’ she said, placing the paper between them. ‘Looks like we have two here; one is forty five, the other is fifty two.’
Dale pointed to the first one.
‘It’s got to be him,’ he stated, with certainty.
She pulled up the detailed record.
‘You’re lucky. We moved all this stuff to electronic records only a year or so ago. It makes it much easier to cross-reference. The other way, everything was in huge individual ledgers.’
Dale said a silent prayer of thanks to the god of computerisation.
She looked at the details thoughtfully.
‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I don't think the address here is going to help you. There is a shopping centre on that area now; it was heavily redeveloped in the late eighties. I’ll note it down anyway, but don’t hold your breath.’
She wrote the address in a neat copperplate script.
‘Now, according to this, his father was a man called Richard O’Neill.’
She tapped a few more keys.
‘Now, this is interesting,’ she said.
‘In what way?’ asked Dale.
‘There are no records linked with the father’s name. That means there were possibly too many of them to investigate at the time, which is feasible. However, it’s more likely to mean that they couldn’t find any records to match.’
‘So, no record of the father’s birth or death?’ replied Dale, half statement and half question.
‘That's right,’ she said. ‘Now, let’s have a look at this; mother Mary O’Neill. Okay, yes, we have two records here. Birth; probably not relevant.’
She pulled up the details for the death certificate.
‘There is an address listed here alright, but bear in mind, this lady died about twenty years ago.’
‘It's a start,’ said Dale. ‘Thank yo
u very much, you’ve been most kind....’ he glanced at her nametag, ‘....Margaret.’
‘You can drop the phoney accent too,’ she said, with a wink. ‘We’re a little bit more sophisticated here since the days of the Quiet Man. We do have access to televisions.’
Dale couldn’t help smiling. It had been pretty bad, and at least now he had another lead. He looked at the two handwritten addresses; one of them would pay dividends, he was certain.
#
Special Agent Ray Fox was going through his budget; the part of his job that he least enjoyed. His nametag said special agent in charge, but he didn’t consider himself that way. He had been the boss for about a year now, and he liked to think he still had the respect of his men. He was their colleague and peer, as well as their superior. It was why he found budgets particularly hard. He was being told to squeeze. They hadn't used the word redundancy, but he felt that it was only a matter of time before they did; not a prospect he was looking forward to. For the bean counters, these men were numbers; to him, they were friends.
He was locking his screen for lunch, when the phone rang.
‘I’ve just had Langley chewing my ear off,’ said an irate voice.
He didn’t need to expand on what Langley was, but it was a surprise to Ray nonetheless.
‘Maybe you can explain to me why you sent a DEA agent to the Republic of Ireland.’
Tiny alarm bells started ringing in Ray’s head.
‘Apparently, he is about to cock up a large global operation.’
The doors clanged shut. Dale; it had to be.
‘But sir,’ he started to explain. ‘This was not a....’
‘I don’t care what it was or is,’ said the voice, cracking with the strain of not shouting. ‘You find this idiot and you stop him.’
The phone went dead in his hand. As he replaced the instrument in its cradle, fragments of the meeting with Dale started clanging back into place like vault doors. Ray jumped quickly to his office entrance and scanned the room.
‘Dodds!’ he shouted above the melee. ‘In here, now!’
He sat back down at his desk and waited. A shadow appeared in the doorway.
‘You wanted to see me, chief?’ asked Dodds.
‘Come on it, close the door,’ said the chief, jovially.
He waited for Dodds to get comfortable, before dropping the bombshell.
‘Where is Agent Foster?’ he asked, dangerously softly.
He watched Dodds. His eyes flicked away for a millisecond. Dodds knew his boss, so he said nothing.
‘You know where he is, don’t you?’
Dodds nodded.
‘He could be in big trouble,’ said the chief. ‘You need to tell me everything you know.’
‘Did you read the report?’ asked Dodds, a trifle disdainfully. ‘It was all in the report.’
‘Are you saying this is my fault?’ said the chief, finally exploding.
Dodds cast his eyes up to heaven for a second.
‘God give me strength,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘No boss, what I’m saying is that it would be easier for me to explain it if you have all the information first hand, and to do that you’ll have to read the report.’
Dodds sat in silence as the chief skimmed the two pages.
‘Ok, I’ve read it, now what,’ he said, throwing it on the desk between them.
Dodds indicated the window of Ray’s office.
‘Dale reckons a new drug is due to hit the streets,’ he said. ‘I personally think he's put two and two together and made six, but he seems to believe that the common link is Ireland.’
He paused.
‘The whole thing is tied back to the Mancini family, and it’s going to be huge.’
‘Well, do you know what,’ murmured Agent Fox thoughtfully, stroking the stubble on his chin. ‘He may well be right. The call I got was from the section chief, who had just got a tongue lashing from the CIA. I think he’s stumbled into something and unfortunately for Dale, I think he is well out of his depth as usual.’
‘We need to warn him,’ said Dodds, a look of concern appearing on his face. ‘You know what the CIA is like when it comes to collateral damage.’
‘Do you have a way of contacting him?’ asked Ray.
Dodds shook his head.
‘He was going to contact me if he needed anything.’
‘And you were going to get it for him?’ asked the chief incredulously.
‘That’s what partners do,’ said Dodds defensively, ‘or have you forgotten that from the comfort of your leather chair?’
The chief let the remark slide.
‘Just promise me something Dodds. If he contacts you, then you really need to let me know.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Dodds stiffly.
‘For now,’ said the chief.
He watched his agent leave; drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the desk, as he did so.
Chapter 25 – Unmasked
16th May 2011 – Six days after the Storm.
Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light. – William Shakespeare.
I was in one of those cafes; the real greasy spoon places that they didn't have in America. Diners they had in abundance, cafes; no. I looked at my plate; sausage, egg, bacon, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, black and white pudding, toast, and a steaming mug of white milky tea. What better way to start the day.
I had my notebook open as I ate; going through and validating the information I had gleaned over the past thirty six hours. I had a positive identification on my so-called son, which had been the intention. Alan Murphy had become Scott Mitchell.
After I’d made sure the girl had been treated and taken to hospital, I’d done a bit more digging around. For the rest of that night and a little bit of the following day, I’d gleaned little more in the way of information. Other than his name, it transpired that Scott Mitchell was not a very nice fellow, but that was about all I learned.
I looked at it another way. Scott Mitchell would have been very much a product of his age and his environment. Like many a teenager before him, Scott would have seen the drug dealers, driving past in their tricked out German cars with their fancy lifestyles, and he’d wanted a piece of the action. By all accounts, he’d started as a small-time dealer, working his way up to become a transporter and mule; trusted to distribute the drugs to the dealers and take the money back to the centre of operations.
No, I could understand all that. What I couldn't understand was how Scott Mitchell, a small-time wannabe criminal, had ended up on the veranda of my house in Louisiana?
I took another mouthful of bacon, marvelling at how different it tasted the closer you got to the source.
No, I could understand where Scott was from; I just couldn't see his motivation to be where he was, when I shot him. What was his motive in relation to me? He’d known a lot about me that he didn’t read in any book, and I didn’t share that information lightly.
And that brought me to the second piece of information that I had gleaned, this time from the girl. She had given me a name; Black Swan. The junkies and hookers had looked at me suspiciously when I’d mentioned this man. I’d pretended that I was an Irish-American journalist, working on an expose of the drug scene in Ireland.
It was a symptom of our reality TV and celebrity drenched lifestyle, but as soon as I’d mentioned the words journalism and confidentiality, their defences had come down and they’d become positively verbose.
Black Swan was one of two kingpins who controlled the drug trade in Cork. I smiled to myself, as I ate a large section of beef sausage; the other being the appropriately named Bullock. According to everyone I spoke to, there was no love lost between the two men. Both were extremely well protected, but both had also lost foot soldiers in the campaign; gang members killing each other on the periphery of the power struggle over silly squabbles.
Again I could understand all of it. Every bottle of milk has cream floating on the t
op. Every organisation has somebody running it. But the question I had to ask myself was; what did one half of the controlling interest in the drugs trade in Cork, want with a forcibly retired ex-mob enforcer living in hiding in Louisiana? It just made no sense.
I picked up the toast and mopped up the runny yellow mess of the egg yolk. There was one person who could possibly tell me. It was dangerous, but worth the risk, even if she could tell me nothing. I had an irrational desire to see her again that had nothing to do with information.
I didn’t know where to start, but suspected the hospital might be a good place. It was only a day and a half since our previous encounter. I might have inadvertently hit her harder than I’d originally intended, and in most jurisdictions, concussion victims are kept under observation for at least twenty four hours.
Thirty minutes later, I stood outside the entrance to Cork University Hospital. I walked up to the reception desk.
‘I’m wondering if you can help me.’ I said to the austere middle aged lady, accompanying it with my brightest smile. ‘A friend of mine was brought in last night; a young lady with concussion. You wouldn’t be able to tell me which ward she might be in, would you?’
‘Certainly sir, you go through this door, left and to the end of the corridor, up two flights of stairs and through the double doors in front of you. If she’s still here, that’s where she will be.’
I smiled my thanks and headed off. As I approached the ward, I became increasingly nervous. I was not a naturally apprehensive person, so it was a very unsettling feeling.
I scanned the beds, as I walked through the central corridor. She was in the last one on the left, sitting up with her eyes closed. As I approached, I realised she was asleep, her breathing shallow and even. I sat noiselessly in the chair and studied her.
She was wearing a regulation hospital gown, and her face had been cleaned of the outlandish and garish makeup that most men looking for ladies of the night seemed to think was attractive.
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