Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  “And more patience. Trust me, you’ll find that out after a few days with a fourteen-year-old girl.” She took a long swig of her beer.

  “After a few days or so, it’ll be over. We’ll get Devon out on bail, and we’ll see where the case goes. If we can’t cut a deal that keeps him out of jail long-term, he’ll find someone else to take the girl.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He gave me his word.”

  Kozlowski sighed. “Great. Who could worry once you have the word of a man in prison?”

  Boston had taken an eight-to-one lead by the seventh inning, and the game was turning ugly. The sun broke through the cloud cover in the eighth, and jackets and sweatshirts came off around Fenway Park. In the bleachers, a group of beefy twentysomethings stripped to the waist, revealing their bloated bellies, painted bright red and blue, each with a letter to spell out “RED SOX.” At one point the fourth young man in the chain was overcome by a morning of drinking and passed out in his seat, leaving his friends to advertise themselves as “RED OX.” In fairness, Finn thought, they did more resemble bulls than ballplayers.

  Finn, Kozlowski, and Lissa stayed through the last pitch, as did nearly every other fan in the stadium. Then they all filed out of the park together, spilling into the melee surrounding Fenway. The entire area reeked of stale beer and fried meat. The front windows of the bars and cafés were open, and young men and women, fully inebriated at two-thirty in the afternoon, leaned out from the jambs, laughing and screaming.

  Finn frowned as he dodged a young man on Rollerblades be-

  bopping down the sidewalk, the paper bag ineffectively disguising the forty-ounce bottle of beer in his hand.

  “I’m so fucking old,” Finn said.

  “Yes,” Lissa agreed. “You are.”

  “What’s that make me?” Kozlowski asked.

  She laughed. “Sensitive, apparently. I try not to think about what it makes you.”

  “Seriously,” Finn said. “When did this happen? When did I become the guy who thinks kids play their music too loud and don’t respect their elders?”

  “It happens to all of us eventually,” Kozlowski said.

  “Really? When did it happen to you?”

  “When I was nine.”

  “Right.”

  “We could stop inside Sonsie for a drink,” Lissa suggested. “It’s a little bit of an older crowd in there. Very cosmopolitan and chic. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

  Finn shook his head. “I don’t think so. I have to go pick up Devon’s daughter. Besides, I’m not wearing enough black to get into a place like Sonsie.”

  “Suit yourself.” She looked at Kozlowski. “How about you, old man? You want to take me to Sonsie for a drink?”

  “I don’t own any black.”

  “Fake it. If you’re nice to me, you might even get lucky later.”

  “It’s not luck.”

  “Trust me, old man, sometimes it’s luck.”

  Finn cleared his throat. “On that note…” Finn gave them an abbreviated wave and peeled off onto Commonwealth Avenue, following the marathon course, heading back to his car.

  He hadn’t enjoyed the game. He was nervous about the prospect of taking Devon’s daughter in, even for a short time. Lissa was right, he had no experience with children at all, much less with fourteen-year-old girls. He’d been raised as an orphan, though, shuttled from foster family to Catholic orphanage to state-run facility back to foster family, so he knew what that kind of life was like. He’d grown up quickly and hit the streets by the time he was fifteen. Crazy as it seemed, he felt he had a responsibility to at least try to help Devon to keep his daughter out of that life.

  He opened the door to his car, slid into the front seat, and pulled out the address Devon had given him. How bad could it be? After all, it was only for a couple of days.

  Liam Kilbranish sat at the kitchen table in the weather-beaten capehouse two blocks from the water in Quincy. An RPB MAC 11 .380 submachine gun with a detachable suppressor was disassembled and lay in pieces on the table in front of him, each component individually cleaned and oiled. A .223-caliber AR-15 semiautomatic rifle leaned against the kitchen wall, and the nine-millimeter SP-21 Barak semiautomatic pistol was breached and two full clips were lying next to it. An eight-inch knife lay next to its ankle sheath, gleaming under the flickering bare bulb of the overhead light.

  Sean Broadark was on the sofa in the living area, which was separated from the tiny house’s kitchen only by a countertop. He was flipping channels disinterestedly on the tiny twelve-inch television. He was an unattractive specimen. His face was cragged with pits and moles, and he was balding in an unusual pattern that left an island of graying red at the crown. He had a paunch that evidenced the kind of personal neglect Liam deplored. In all other respects, though, he was a model soldier: more dedicated to the cause and to the command structure than he was to his own life. A patchy beard was beginning to take root on the man’s pockmarked face, like weeds growing through the cracks in a dilapidated sidewalk. He looked to Liam like one of God’s unfinished works—the sketch of a monster the Almighty had never come back to.

  “He didn’t know anything,” Sean said from his perch. It was the first time he’d spoken in nearly a day.

  “So it would seem,” Liam replied.

  “He’d have talked if he knew anything. No one could take what he took without talking if he had anything to say.”

  Liam said nothing.

  “You said he would know. You said he would have the answer.”

  “Aye. I did,” Liam conceded.

  “You were wrong.”

  Liam picked up the Barak and slid one of the magazines into the pistol grip, pulling back on the release to chamber a round. He held the gun loosely. “Aye, I was.”

  Broadark seemed unfazed. He’d seen enough violence in his lifetime that attempts to intimidate him were useless, and Liam knew it. “So, what now?” was all he said.

  “There are two more,” Liam replied. “We find them and make them talk.”

  “How do you know they’ll have something to say?”

  It was a question that had gnawed at Liam since they had set out from Belfast a week before. It was a question his superiors—those few who had approved of his mission—had asked him as well. How do you know? And to that, there was only one answer: Someone has to know. It was the only answer that would keep alive everything for which he had fought a lifetime; the only answer that would allow him to live up to a promise he had made silently to his father more than three decades earlier.

  “They’ll have something to say,” Liam replied.

  Broadark never turned. His eyes remained on the television as the stations flashed aimlessly by, one after another. “That’s what you said about Murphy,” he said simply.

  Chapter Five

  Devon’s apartment was in a section of Southie that had as yet escaped the onslaught of gentrification eating away at the area year after year. It was the first floor of a clapboard double-decker in desperate need of a paint job. Finn felt like he was getting lead poisoning just looking at the chunks of paint chips collecting in the corners of the front landing. As he looked around the place, any thought that Devon would make good on his promise of payment slipped away.

  The woman who opened the door was probably in her early thirties, but extra mileage was evident in the lines in her face. She regarded Finn with an expression equal parts suspicion and annoyance.

  “What the fuck do you want?” she demanded.

  “I’m Finn,” he replied stupidly.

  “Congratulations,” she sneered. “That don’t answer the fuckin’ question.”

  He blinked back at her, and for the first time it occurred to him that Devon might not have called ahead to let her know that he’d asked Finn to take care of his daughter.

  “I’m Devon’s lawyer,” he began again. “He asked me to stop by.”

  The woman raised an angry hand to her brow and wip
ed a wisp of dyed-blonde hair from her eyes. “What’s he done now?” Her posture hadn’t softened and her tone carried no greater civility.

  “He’s in jail.”

  She put a hand on her jutting hip. “Motherfucker,” she said. “That figures. Come on up and we can have a few laughs, he said. Only he doesn’t mention that his daughter’s staying with him, or that he’s gonna take off and I was gonna spend a couple days taking care of the goddamned little brat.”

  A small girl with ragged-cut straight black hair topping a furrowed brow appeared in the narrow space between the woman’s arm and the doorjamb. She wore a sweatshirt two sizes too big, with the words “What are you lookin’ at?” emblazoned across the chest.

  “Who is it?” the girl asked.

  The woman turned sharply. “I thought I told you to watch TV.”

  The girl ignored the woman and evaluated Finn with clear, intelligent eyes sharp enough to drill through bedrock.

  “You must be Devon’s daughter,” Finn said. He recognized that his voice was patronizing, as if he were talking to a three-year-old. He winced.

  The girl nodded. “The little brat,” she said.

  “Get back inside,” the woman ordered.

  The girl looked at the woman with contempt. Then she backed away and disappeared.

  “You shouldn’t eavesdrop, you little shit!” the woman called after her. She looked back at Finn. “Kids today… no fuckin’ manners.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I’m not even with Devon,” she said. “Not really. Not like that. And he knows I’ve got a sick ma down in Providence I gotta take care of. I don’t need this shit. You tell him he’d better find someone else to take care of Little Miss Sunshine, and damned fuckin’ quick. Otherwise, she’s gonna be out on the fuckin’ street.”

  Finn nodded. “That’s why I’m here. He asked me to look after her for a couple of days.”

  She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time, then let out a bitter laugh. “You?”

  “Me.” He tried to put some conviction in his voice, but he was pretty sure he’d failed.

  She shook her head angrily. “Fine. Don’t that just take the fuckin’ cake? I come all the way up here for a little time with him, and the cocksucker don’t even trust me with his kid.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “Fine.” She wasn’t listening. “That’s fine. You takin’ her with you now?”

  “I don’t know,” Finn said. “I guess.”

  “You guess? Great. Just fuckin’ great.” She stamped her foot and turned, slamming the door behind her. “I’ll send her out in a couple minutes!” she yelled through the glass.

  Finn was tempted to leave. It was difficult to believe that anything good could come from this, but he’d given his word. Besides, he worried about what might become of Devon’s daughter if left with someone as unstable as the woman Devon had apparently conned up from Providence to watch her while he was off committing grand theft. He had no choice, he knew, so he waited on the front stoop, shifting his feet back and forth.

  It would be all right, he told himself. Devon would be out in a few days, and then this was no longer his problem.

  “I’m Finn,” he said to her at last.

  The girl looked over at him. She hadn’t spoken since she’d walked out of Devon’s apartment, an oversized military duffel slung over her back and a look of defiance on her face. She’d marched past Finn straight to his little MG, thrown her bag in the back, climbed in, and slammed the car door, staring forward without asking any questions.

  Finn had turned on the stoop and started to follow, then paused and looked back at the woman standing in the doorway.

  “Don’t worry,” the woman said, reading his mind. “I’m on a six o’clock train, and there ain’t a goddamned thing in the fuckin’ place worth stealing.”

  Finn thought about it for a moment and then continued on, sliding into the driver’s seat beside the young girl.

  The woman cracked the screen door a little and leaned out over the stoop. “You give that bastard a message for me!” she yelled. “Tell him not to call me again. Ever! Tell him he can go to hell. Tell him that from Shelly!”

  Finn put his hand up and gave her a grim wave, then threw the car into gear and pulled out.

  The traffic was heavy as he guided the car through Southie and into downtown Boston, headed back to his apartment in Charlestown. It had taken ten minutes for him to muster the courage to say anything to the girl in the passenger seat next to him, and then all he could think to do was introduce himself. He could feel her staring at him, saying nothing in reply, and it made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. His agony was made whole by the fact that he couldn’t remember whether Devon had told him the girl’s name. If he had, Finn couldn’t remember what it was.

  She continued to stare at him in silence.

  “And you are…?” he prodded at last, striving unsuccessfully to infuse his voice with some small amount of humor.

  After a moment she looked forward through the windshield again. “Fucked, by the look of things,” she answered.

  Finn winced at her language and the venom in her voice. “No, I meant your name,” he said.

  “I know what you meant.” She lapsed into silence again.

  “I know this is hard,” Finn said. “It’s only for a few days, though. Until your father gets…” He wasn’t sure how to continue. “Until he gets back. Did she explain it to you?”

  “Shelly? Yeah. Devon’s in jail. You’re his lawyer. I’m fucked.”

  He took his eyes off the road for long enough to look at her. Devon had said she was fourteen, but she was small and slight for her age. Her bangs were cropped across her forehead and she wore a stack of cheap metal bracelets around her wrist that jangled as the car crawled over bumps in the road. She looked like a normal kid, but she had the speech patterns and attitude of someone much older.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Basically. Except for the fucked part. Like I said, it’s only for a few days.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  Finn glanced at her. “Robbery.”

  “No shit, Sherlock, that’s what he does. What’d he steal?”

  “Clothes.” He didn’t mention the panties. He considered telling her not to swear, but figured it wasn’t his responsibility.

  “Clothes?” she asked. “What, is he down to shoplifting? Is that even a felony?”

  “They were really expensive clothes,” Finn replied.

  “So definitely in felony territory,” she deduced. It occurred to Finn that no fourteen-year-old should be so well schooled in the specifics of criminal practice. “Well then, you must be a pretty good lawyer if you think you’re going to get him out of it. He’s been in before, so it’s not like a judge is gonna feel sorry for him. If you’re doing anything other than collecting a fee, you must be a real genius.” It was also remarkable how well she had mastered the subtleties of sarcasm at such a young age.

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that,” Finn said. “That’s my job.” Candidly, he agreed with her legal assessment, but he didn’t mention that to her. “In any case, he’ll be out on bail by Wednesday, Thursday latest, and the time will go faster if I know your name.”

  She twirled a finger angrily in her hair. “Sally,” she said.

  “Sally,” he repeated. “Really? Sally Malley?”

  “What can I say? My mom has a quirky sense of humor.”

  “That’s a good thing, I guess.”

  “And a wicked bad crack habit.”

  He let that sink in for a moment, and once it had he realized there was nowhere to go with it. “It’s a good name,” he said instead. “Sally Malley.” He tried saying it with some amount of reverence, but the damage was done. She stayed silent. “Say, I know a good ice cream place,” he said after a moment. “You want to grab some ice cream on the way back to my apartment?”

  “So, I’m guessing you don’t have any kids of yo
ur own, Finn?”

  He could feel his teeth grinding. “It shows?”

  “Only when you talk.”

  “I’m still young,” he said. “Maybe someday.”

  “I wouldn’t bother. Kids are nothing but a hassle. I remember the day my mother dropped me with Devon. The look on his face was priceless. He didn’t even know I existed before that moment.”

  “That must have been strange.”

  “Let’s just say that ‘surprised’ doesn’t begin to describe it. That was a year ago, and we haven’t seen my mother since. Devon does the best he can, but he’s not exactly cut out for the father scene.”

  “Seriously, it’s really good ice cream,” Finn said after a moment. He threw a look at her and thought he could detect a smile tug for just a moment at the corner of her mouth. Then it was gone.

  “Okay,” she said. “Ice cream would be okay. But it better be good goddamned ice cream.”

  “Trust me.”

  She turned her head to look out the passenger window, away from Finn. “Right. Trust you,” she said quietly. Finn could tell she’d heard those words before.

  It was a nice house, at least. Sally tossed her duffel onto the bed in the guest room. Much better than the dives and flophouses where she’d often found herself in the past when her mother was bingeing. Still, no matter how nice the surroundings, she was fending for herself again, and that meant she had to keep her guard up. If life had taught her anything it was that you had to look after yourself, because no one else would.

  She reached out and put her hand on the bottom of the duffel bag, feeling around for the familiar lump. She hadn’t taken the stuffed bear out of the bag in over a year; she was too old for stuffed animals. It was a gift from her mother on her fifth birthday, though—one of the few birthdays her mother had remembered—and she couldn’t bring herself to throw it out. She kept it buried at the bottom of her bag, rubbing it through the canvas only when she really needed to, but never taking it out to be seen. It seemed a reasonable compromise. She lived her life based on suspicion and compromise.