Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  Also by David Hosp

  Dark Harbor

  The Betrayed

  Innocence

  Copyright

  The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned, but all other characters and events described in the book are totally imaginary.

  Copyright © 2010 by Richard David Hosp

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: January 2010

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55802-0

  Contents

  Copyright

  Fact

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  For Joanie, with my love

  FACT

  The largest art theft in history took place in the early morning hours following the 1990 St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Boston. Two men dressed as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum off the Fenway, tied up the guards, and made off with thirteen works of art. Several of the stolen masterpieces were priceless, including two oil paintings and an etching by Rembrandt, a rare work by Vermeer, a Flinck, and a Manet. The thieves also took works of lesser value, including five unfinished Degas sketches, a Chinese beaker from the Shang dynasty, and a finial that adorned a flag from Napoleon’s army.

  The works have never been recovered. Today, their value is estimated at half a billion dollars.

  Prologue

  Liam Kilbranish looked down at the lump of flesh curled in front of him on the cement floor. His heart rate was steady; his movements economical. His eyes were nearly as black as his hair.

  “Still no answer?” he asked.

  The lump gave a moan. Liam knew it was useless. It would continue.

  He could remember how it had started for him. Or ended. It was all a matter of perspective, he supposed. Whichever view he took, the memory was etched in his mind, as solid and real to him as the gun in his hand. He would have said he remembered it as if it were only yesterday, but no yesterday he’d known in the three and a half decades since had ever lived and breathed for him like that night. It was what drove him; what made him who he was, for good or for bad.

  He’d been reading when they arrived, tucked away in the tiny closet of the ten-by-twelve room he shared with his brothers in the row house south of Belfast. A worn woolen blanket was bundled about his spindly, pale, nine-year-old legs; the beam of his flashlight was trained on the pages cradled in his lap. He’d always been a solitary boy, and the closet had been his refuge—a place where he spent hours on end, reaching into other worlds as his brothers slept undisturbed.

  He was devouring Winnie the Pooh yet again. It had been a favorite of his since the times, years before, when his father would read to the family in front of the fireplace in the living room. Gavin Kilbranish, his father, was a hard man; a dangerous man when crossed or disobeyed; a man who saw the world in bold strokes of black and white. And yet when he read to his children there was a richness to his voice that hinted at another side, banished and almost forgotten. It was that side of his father Liam sought through the words on the page as he nestled on the closet floor.

  Pooh had just gorged himself on Rabbit’s honey, swelling his belly until he could no longer escape from Rabbit’s hole, when Liam heard the front door shatter. He switched off the flashlight and brought the blanket up around his chin. The smell of the plain, soapy detergent that reminded him of his mother still lingered in his mind, haunting him.

  There were four of them. Dressed in black, with ski masks and assault weapons that gave off a dull gleam when they caught the shafts of moonlight carving through the saltbox house’s narrow windows, the men moved through the dwelling with military efficiency. Liam listened as they rounded up the others in his family from the front of the house—Mother and Father and Meghan and Kate—and pushed them into the back bedroom he shared with his brothers.

  He watched the scene unfold through the crack in the closet door as his parents and siblings were lined up in front of the bed along the far wall. He could read the confusion in their faces—expressions of fear and shock, mixing with the disorientation of being ripped so abruptly from deep slumber. Only his father’s face reflected comprehension. Gavin glanced briefly at the closet door and gave a nearly imperceptible shake. Liam fought the urge to emerge from hiding to join his family.

  The tallest of the intruders stepped forward and addressed Liam’s father. “Gavin Kilbranish,” he said. It sounded as though he was pronouncing a verdict. “You know who I am?”

  Liam’s father nodded slowly. His expression didn’t change.

  “Then you know why we’re here.”

  Gavin nodded again.

  The man stepped back and turned to one of the others. “He’s yours if you want him, lad.”

  The second man walked over to Liam’s father, unslung his gun and drove the butt into Gavin’s stomach, doubling him over. Then he swung it upward, connecting with his jaw, and Liam’s father crumpled to his knees. He was on all fours, spitting blood into the cracks between the scarred floorboards. It was the first time Liam had ever seen his father at the mercy of another human being.

  The second man knelt before him and produced a small weathered book of snapshots. Opening it, he held up a picture of a hard-bitten, middle-aged man. “My da,” he said.

  He drove a fist into Gavin’s nose. The sound of cartilage snapping was loud, and Liam was afraid he might be sick. The man flipped a page and held up a new picture, this one of a younger man. A shadow of the previous face remained. “My brother, William,” the man said.

  The words still hung in the air as he cracked the butt of his gun down over Gavin’s head. His scalp split and blood flooded forward over Liam’s father’s face.

  A new pa
ge was flipped, revealing the image of a young woman. “My wife, Anna.” The man stood and kicked Gavin hard in the ribs, drawing a wheeze and a grunt. Gavin’s spit was now a frightening mixture of blood and mucus.

  The man stepped back and turned to a final picture that showed the angelic face of a young girl. She couldn’t have been more than five, and her gap-toothed smile seemed at once joyous and mournful. The man pulled a black pistol from underneath his coat and pointed it into Gavin’s face. Gavin rose up on his knees and looked back at the man. He showed neither panic nor fear; only hatred and defiance.

  The man in front of him had both hands out now, one pointing the gun at Gavin’s head, the other clutching knuckle-white to the picture of the girl. “My daughter, Katherine,” he said. His voice cracked with unredeemed rage as he said her name.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The screaming lasted for only a moment, and it was drowned out by the thunder of gunfire. Liam’s mother and four siblings jumped and danced as the bullets shredded their bodies. They fell over each other in their attempt to twist free, toppling onto the bed behind them, settling and then sliding onto the floor, leaving the sheets stained red.

  At last there was silence. Two of the men dressed in black moved forward, nudging the bodies with their toes to make sure the family was dead. After a moment Liam heard a choked sob from the man with the pistol who had killed his father.

  The tallest of the group—the leader, Liam assumed—slapped him. “We’ll have none of that shite,” he said. “Bastard had it coming. He knew it.”

  “And his wife? His children?”

  “It’s war. Did he show pity to your family? Besides, do you think this would have ended it for them? It won’t be ended until they’re all dead—or we are. Which would you have?”

  One of the other men stepped back from the bodies. “It’s ended for these now,” he said indifferently. “All done for. Good enough.”

  “Good enough,” the leader acknowledged.

  Then they were gone.

  Liam stayed in the closet until the military came. The police wouldn’t enter the Catholic neighborhoods anymore; it was too dangerous. The armored vehicles rolled in and squads of soldiers in riot gear cordoned off the area, enduring the taunts and jeers from the crowds that had gathered outside the Kilbranish home. Liam was questioned, but said nothing. Not a word. Not for six months. Everyone thought that the trauma had destroyed him. In a sense it had, though not in the way they supposed.

  Now, thirty-five years later, he knew the leader of the death squad had been right. It hadn’t ended, even now that the politicians had signed their unholy alliances and smiled their oily smiles at each other across mahogany conference tables. It would never end; not as long as he lived.

  He took a deep breath and brought his pistol up, leveling it at the man on the ground in front of him. Blood had soaked through what was left of the man’s shirt and there were places on the man’s face where the skin had been ripped so thoroughly that bone flashed through.

  “Mr. Murphy, I’ll give you one last chance,” he said. “Tell me what I want to know.”

  The man sobbed. “Please… I don’t know.” He had his hands up in supplication, the blood dripping down from the holes in his palms and running off his elbows.

  “That’s too bad,” Liam said.

  He pulled the trigger and the man’s head snapped backward, one last spray of blood coating the wall behind him. Liam walked over and fired another round into the pulp that remained above the man’s shoulders. It was unnecessary, but he was well trained. He reached down and dipped a gloved finger into the pool of blood by the body. He took a step away, and wrote two words in blood on the floor. Then he stood and nodded to Sean Broadark, who remained by the doorway. Few words had been exchanged between the two of them. They weren’t friends, they were professionals.

  “Why?” Broadark asked, looking at the bloody scrawl.

  “I want to send a message to the others.”

  Broadark holstered his pistol. “There’s more, then?”

  Liam nodded. “There’s more.”

  Broadark asked no more questions. He watched Liam as he took one last look around the garage. Then Liam walked past him, to the door, and the two of them walked out into the cool South Boston evening.

  Chapter One

  Scott Finn trudged up the front steps of the Nashua Street Jail. A thin streak of sunshine poked through the clouds, drying the cement in uneven lines. It was the fourth week of spring, but a few isolated piles of brown snow could still be found dying slowly in the cervices of Boston’s streets and alleys, and the city smelled of dog shit and winter rot—an oddly satisfying sign that warmer weather was on the way.

  Tucked behind North Station and the Garden, the jail was not a place stumbled on accidentally. You had to be looking for it, and even then it wasn’t an easy find. To make the effort less inviting, there was no public parking. None. Not that it was a problem for Finn, of course. Every month he slipped the parking attendant at the rehab hospital across the street fifty dollars to let him park his battered MG there when he needed to. It made his life easier. He was a lawyer; he made life easier when he could.

  He walked into the lobby of the jail, a tall, narrow, yellowy space occupied only by two uncomfortable metal benches, and headed to the front desk. It was a holiday morning; the place was empty. Finn was dressed casually in a polo shirt, khakis, and a spring overcoat. He was heading out to the Sox game later that morning, and he’d vowed that the trip to the jail wouldn’t interfere with his day.

  “Officer Hollings,” he said to the uniformed woman standing at the front desk. Her face was down, and she was churning through paperwork.

  She looked up and smiled. “Attorney Finn,” she said. She had a pretty smile that made it easy to overlook the acne scars on her cheeks. Her polyester uniform tugged at her tight curves, and she had an admirable sense of humor for a corrections officer.

  “You here for Malley?” She chuckled as she asked the question.

  “Yeah,” he admitted, throwing his bar card and driver’s license on the counter. “How’d you guess?”

  “You’re a sucker for the hard-luck cases. His is as hard as they come.” She laughed again as she picked up his identification and handed him a locker token and a yellow laminated lawyer’s pass to hang around his neck.

  Finn slipped the pass over his head and took the token over to the wall lined with dented steel lockers, sliding it into the key slot of one and opening it. He knew the drill by heart: he took everything out of his pockets—wallet, keys, phone, BlackBerry—and tossed them into the locker. Then he took a legal pad out of his briefcase and slid the case into the locker. Only the pad was permitted into the jail.

  He put his overcoat on top of the pile before he closed the door and turned the key, hearing the token drop into the lock. He tugged once on the door to make sure it was secured, and walked over to the metal detector. Carol was waiting there for him.

  He stepped through the archway and the metal detector buzzed once. She beckoned him forward, and he moved toward her, keeping his feet shoulder-width apart and putting his arms out to his sides, palms up. She picked up a handheld security wand and began running it over his torso. She was still chuckling softly to herself.

  “It’s not nice to laugh, you know that, Hollings?” he said.

  “How can you not laugh?”

  “He’s my client. At least, he may be.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not funny.” She passed the wand over his belt buckle and it gave a chirp. She looked down at his crotch and passed the wand over the front of his pants a few times. The wand whined rhythmically in time with the motion of her arm. “You got anything in your pockets, or is that just the buckle?” she asked.

  “You’re welcome to check.”

  “Tempting, but I’m engaged.”

  “Really? Tragic. Still, it’s your job to make sure this facility is safe. For the inmates, for the city”�
�he winked—“for me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “My fiancé’s a Statie. SWAT team. If you’re worried about your safety, the last thing you want is me digging around in your pants.” She put the wand down and waved to another guard behind four inches of bulletproof glass that separated the lobby from the rest of the jail. “He’s good,” she called.

  The guard pressed a button, releasing a hydraulic lock on the steel door that led into the jail. Finn walked through.

  “Good luck up there,” Hollings said.

  “You’re all heart.” Finn looked back, admiring her uniform again. Well, maybe not all heart.

  He stepped up to the small window that separated him from the interior guard. The door behind him closed again, and Finn was now trapped in a tiny vestibule between two three-ton steel doors. One led back out to freedom. The other didn’t. It felt like a decompression chamber. He put his arm through the small window where the interior guard was sitting and the guard stamped the back of his hand with fluorescent ink, marking him as a visitor.

  “Don’t wash that off ’til you’re out,” the guard said. Finn had seen him before, but didn’t know his name. He made a mental note to find out what it was. In his line of work it was always good to be on terms that were at least cordial with the corrections guards.

  “Thanks. Good advice.”

  “You know where you’re going.” It wasn’t a question. The guard recognized Finn.

  Another buzzer sounded and the bolt slid free on the interior door. Finn walked through it and into a small elevator lobby. He pushed the button and the elevator door opened. He stepped in and pressed the button for the second floor.

  When the door reopened, he exited and walked down a long empty linoleum corridor. At the end was another thick metal door. Behind that, two guards sat on a raised platform looking out through more heavy glass into the cell block. From where Finn stood, he couldn’t see the cell block itself, but he didn’t need to; he’d seen it before—from both sides. It was a crescent-shaped area with two levels of cells opening into a large, high-ceilinged common area. The guard station was at the center of the crescent, allowing the corrections officers a good view of every area on the block.