Yet, he was right, he was an outsider and there was nothing worse a man could be in Southie— even Christ would be suspect in that neighborhood. Old loyalties lay deep, sanctified in the blood of the past, and pacts made between small boys who were too small to understand what the future could hold, still held firm as a warrior’s oath. Ironically enough the roots of such fierce loyalty lay in the small Irish villages most of these people’s ancestors had originated in. Small huddles of cottages that contained a wealth of tangled relations, loves, hates—in short, all the salt and blood of life.
Though Belfast was ostensibly a city, Kevin knew it too retained the fierce tribal loyalism of a much smaller center. The Scots had brought their clannishness with them, and made the Irish outsiders in their own land. Yes, Casey understood how deep such loyalties lay, and how history could affect the future for hundreds of years. Casey was right, Southie was not safe and he could not take down an empire single-handed. Should he attempt it, all doors would be closed to him, and he would be in the merciless streets alone. With a stocky, red-headed priest at his back mind you, but that wasn’t likely to be of much comfort to the man.
“If something should happen to me,” Casey said, voice flat, “will ye see to it that my wife gets out of this city? I don’t trust what might happen if I’m not here.”
“With Hagerty?”
“Aye,” he nodded, eyes a savage gray, “I’ve seen how the man looks at her, like he’d have her whole for breakfast if he might. He’s no respect for what is another man’s, nor does he understand that a woman might not choose to have him in her life or her bed. It’s as if no one ever has told him no in his life.”
“Some have,” Father Kevin said, “but they’ve generally lived to regret it.”
“Or not lived,” Casey added tersely.
Father Kevin nodded his agreement.
“Listen I’ve got a cousin—runs a fishing boat out of St. John’s up in Newfoundland—you’d be out a month at a time, but it would keep you off of Hagerty’s radar for a bit.”
“Quit an’ go to sea?” Casey said, the joking tone of his voice not quite coming off.
Kevin turned to him questioningly. The man had gone the color of a fish belly.
“I’ve no great love for the water.”
“Are you serious? You come from an island, for heaven’s sake.”
Casey snorted derisively, “An’ what the hell has that got to do with anything? For all it’s an island, the Irish are hardly a seafaring race, man.”
“No,” Kevin conceded, “they are not. Strange that—surrounded by water on all sides and yet not a great many sailors. Yet they had the courage to cross the Atlantic in search of a better life here. I wonder how many felt they’d found it once they arrived.”
“Do ye think of them, Kevin? What it was to be torn from all ye’d ever known or understood an’ come to this wild an’ fierce place dirt-poor, with barely a shirt to call yer own, knowin’ ye were not welcome in the least?”
Kevin nodded, “How could I not, with half the city originating in Ireland?”
“An’ yer own people?”
“Cork,” Kevin said, rolling a small bit of ice under one flattened palm.
“Ah,” Casey laughed knowingly, “the chosen people.”
“Should I call my cousin with the fishing boat?” Kevin asked, not looking at the man beside him, but at the bleak yard in front of the two of them, the deserted swings swaying lightly in the cold breeze.
There was a long silence and then the answer came, soft and defeated.
“Aye, call him.”
Chapter Seven
Devil’s Deal
BOSTON GREETED SPRING with an explosion of green. Everywhere one looked there was green-flagrant, riotous and trembling with life. Between the cracks of sidewalks, sprouting out from crumbling walls, round the graves of long dead patriots and tumbling up from the esplanade in a rolling crescendo. Spring in Boston did all the things it did to the human psyche in other cities. Couples kissed on street corners, skin was exposed to the returning sun in all its shades of glowing winter white, children played kickball in the street and mothers in sundresses pushed baby carriages while chatting with other mothers. The Red Sox returned to Fenway, and a certain ebullience filled the air and infected all from eight to eighty. For all its Brahmin heritage, Boston was a brash city, full of working class values and middle man morals. This was never more apparent than in the spring, when the city assumed the character of a freckle-faced tomboy up to bat and ready to show her stripes.
With the arrival of spring, Pamela had taken to having her lunch in the park. The Back Bay Fens were part of the long, linked choker of parks that encircled Boston’s throat with its fabled Emerald Necklace. It was a peaceful respite from the business lunches Love often required her presence for, pleading that he needed her intuitive reading on possible business ventures. More often than not, she felt she was merely there to distract the latest sucker Love was looking to swindle.
The week before, she’d come across a bench, tucked in the lee of a horse chestnut, delicately braced by a ribbon of ferns. It was an ideal spot to sit and let thoughts meander along with the spring breeze that smelled enticingly of slow-moving sap and just blossomed flowers.
When Agent Gus showed up amongst the fern fronds, looking unmistakably agent-like in his navy suit, he stuck out like a monk at a bacchanal. She sighed in resignation and indicated the empty stretch of bench beside her with a tilt of her head. The agent had become a familiar sight over the last few weeks.
He took the invitation with alacrity, placing himself on the weathered gray wood under the deep canopy of the chestnut, with a breath of relief.
“Don’t be nervous, you’re not in any trouble,” he said, though the ‘all work and no play’ expression he wore said otherwise.
“Forgive me,” she replied acidly, “but I’m not used to having my lunch interrupted by a federal agent.”
“I’m supposed to look like a businessman on his lunch hour,” he said, tucking his sun-glasses in his jacket pocket and squinting under the onslaught of unfiltered sunlight.
“Lose the jacket, loosen the tie, roll up the cuffs and you might pass, though I doubt it.” She angled her head, “If you were younger you could be mistaken for a Mormon missionary, but a businessman—no way.”
Though Agent Gus was hardly a pillar of granite, she noticed that today he seemed particularly fidgety. He was swallowing compulsively, avoiding her eyes and plucking at the buttons on his suit jacket.
“There’s something I need to discuss with you,” he swallowed again, sticking a finger inside his collar, under which the flesh was growing increasingly red. “I don’t know exactly how to say this.”
“I’m guessing you’re not here because you had a desire to share my tuna fish with me, so you’d best out with it before it chokes you.”
“That obvious?” he asked, chagrin written clear across his features.
“Like you’ve a dozen fish bones lodged in your craw.”
“So much for subtlety.”
“Not,” Pamela said, though not unkindly, “one of your virtues.”
“Right then,” he took a breath and loosed the rest of his words on a rush of air, “we need someone close to Hagerty to help us out. Someone that he trusts.” There could be little doubt exactly whom he meant by someone.
“I thought you had informants or agents on the inside to handle these things,” she said, feeling a bubble of panic lodge behind her windpipe.
“We did,” Agent Gus said grimly, “we found him with his throat slit from ear to ear, facedown in the Charles River last month.”
“Oh,” she said faintly, unable to block the image of Casey in the same condition from her mind.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Riordan, how much you know about your boss,” Agent Gus continued uncomfortably, “but we’re not talking about an amateur here, the man has got people in his pocket from thugs on the street to detectives on the forc
e. Had a judge from the housing court stand up to him four years back. The man refused to put the person Hagerty wanted into an open clerkship, Hagerty leaned a bit then backed off. Six months later legislature passes through the State House that has the judge’s pay cut back, staff reduced, and then his court is folded into another judiciary branch effectively ending any power the judge had. Hagerty’s willing to wait for his revenge and he’s got a long memory. And now,” the agent chanced a quick look at her, “he’s in bed with the Bassarelli family, and that’s a poker game with the highest stakes you can imagine. Want a hotdog?” he asked, nodding toward a vendor at one of the cross paths of the pretty little park.
“Don’t tell me, he’s one of yours?”
“He is, as a matter of fact, but he has real hotdogs just to make him look legitimate.”
“You’re kidding,” she said incredulously.
“Of course I am,” he said without cracking the slightest smile. Just her luck to get a G-man who thought he was a comedian.
Agent Gus held up two fingers to the man who nodded and dug in the cart with his tongs.
“Listen,” the agent continued, “I know all this seems a little cloak and dagger, but the truth is Love Hagerty is one of the most dangerous men in Boston. He’s got such a chokehold on Southie that we can’t get a whisper out of anyone close to him.”
“And that, I suppose, is where you think I come in.” Pamela said, feeling the figurative noose tightening rather quickly about her own neck.
“Sorry,” he said, face flushing beetroot red. “It’s just that things are getting a little desperate. If Love merges his set of criminals with the Bassarelli clan, we’re talking about complete control of all the organized crime on the Eastern Seaboard from Maine down to New York, and that’s a big stretch of real estate. We have to nail this bastard now or never. Excuse me for a second,” he said. He walked over to the hotdog vendor with the odd bouncy step that was his trademark.
He came back with two napkin-wrapped hot dogs and two bottles of Coca-Cola tucked under his elbow. She waved off the hotdog but accepted the Coke, grimacing as the agent loosened the cap with his teeth before handing it to her.
“Sorry, that always bothers people, makes my wife crazy when I do it.”
Agent Gus had a wife? She had a sudden vision of him in boxer shorts brushing his teeth and took a quick swallow of her drink to cover the laugh that accompanied the image.
“Thought they just hung us up on a hook, suit and all, at the end of the day?”
She flushed, realizing he’d read her thoughts as easily as she could see the rush of trapped carbon in her soda.
“Something like that,” she smiled ruefully, wondering if she was ever going to develop the ability to hide her thoughts. She took another swallow of soda, feeling the tiny sting of bubbles as they rushed over her teeth and tongue. “So, Agent Spencer, why me?”
“Because you’re the only one in Hagerty’s inner circle that’s got something we can barter for.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, “Care to define that?”
“Your husband,” he said bluntly, and then bit into his hotdog, bright yellow mustard leeching through the white napkin. She waited patiently for him to chew and swallow.
Then she repeated the agent’s words back to him, “My husband?”
“Mrs. Riordan,” he said tone apologetic, “I don’t need to tell you that there’s bad blood between your husband and Hagerty. I think you also realize your husband is in a rather tenuous position legally, he’s seen things it would be better if he hadn’t and that makes him guilty by association. He won’t talk to us; he’s made that clear, even though he’s got to know he’s in a bad situation with Hagerty.”
“By bad situation you mean he wants my husband dead?” she said, voicing the words that had been gnawing a hole in her mind for weeks now.
“Yes,” Agent Gus said, and she saw clearly the core of steel in the man that made him equal to his job.
“Wouldn’t you be better off approaching the mistress? I’d think she’d know a thing or two.”
Agent Gus shook his head. “The pretty little apartment in Brookline is empty, though he’s still paying the rent on it. He cleared her off his calendar about a month ago. Had the place cleaned, repainted and swept for bugs. He knows we know, he’s just arrogant enough to think we can’t catch him. The mistress left no forwarding address, but we traced her to Las Vegas, where she’s working in a casino and has little memory of anyone named Love Hagerty. I don’t think she knows anything anyway, he’s pretty damn careful.”
“Why’d he get rid of her if she doesn’t know anything?”
“I think, Mrs. Riordan, it’s a case of out with the old and in with the new. Perhaps he thinks you’d prefer Brookline to Southie.”
“Me?” she squeaked, horrified at the implications. “But I—” she shook her head, speechless, understanding suddenly why the man had wanted to speak with her.
“I don’t think,” the agent said quietly, “it matters a lot to him whether you’re willing or not, he’s so corrupt he thinks everyone is seducible given the proper inducement. He just thinks he hasn’t found your upper limit yet.”
Above her head, in the spreading branches of the horse chestnut, a scarlet tanager emitted its optimistic burry-shureer-shureet-shuroo and a flutter of filmy pink-white petals dropped upon Agent Gus’s impeccable navy blue suit. One petal clung to the fine dew of condensation on her soda bottle, tearing when she tried to set it free.
“I love my husband,” she said, not knowing why she felt the necessity of stating it to this man.
“Enough to help save his life?” Agent Gus asked, taking another bite of his hotdog. The smell of mustard mingled with the scents of new mown grass and the bitter under note of the chestnut. She watched, mesmerized, as a petal drifted from the agent’s sandy crew cut to land precariously on the knife pleat of his trousers. She knew the next question was hers.
“What exactly are you suggesting, Agent Spencer?” she asked, hands cold and lips numb.
“I think you know, Mrs. Riordan, what I’m suggesting. It’d kill two very nasty birds with one stone. If Love Hagerty doesn’t take a fall, and soon, you are going to have the rather unpleasant task of burying your husband. If not,” he shrugged, “well, knowing about a crime makes him an accessory, and that’ll buy him some unpleasant time in a federal prison at the least. At worst Hagerty finds him in there and you’re a widow anyway. It’s up to you.”
“Anything I could get from Mr. Hagerty would be hearsay,” she said, desperately looking for a way out of this tangle of thorns she’d suddenly found herself in.
“We’d tape it. We’ve been waiting for this bastard to screw up for about twenty years now. You’re the first real shot we’ve had.”
“You’re going to tape it? Where exactly,” her voice was thick with sarcasm, “ would you suggest I hide the wire?”
The agent shook his head. “No wire, there are any number of places to hide a bug in a bedroom.”
She flinched at his use of the word ‘bedroom’ but somehow was glad of the bluntness and that the man wasn’t trying to couch this in nicer terms. They wanted her to screw Love Hagerty for information, not make him fall in love with her. She clasped her hands hard around the Coke bottle to stop them shaking. “It’s not illegal or inadmissible to record his private life?”
“We can’t place bugs with impunity but if we have reason to think that we’ll get something solid that will lead to conviction, we’ll get the go ahead. I’ve got reason to think he’ll open up to you, he’ll be vulnerable in a way he just isn’t with anyone else.”
“Forgive me if I’m not flattered,” she said dryly. “I want to know what we’re talking about here, how long do you actually think you can put this man away for?”
“RICO’s given us some leverage. If we can establish a pattern of organized crime we’re talking hard time here; twenty years or more in prison is something even the mob takes ser
iously.”
She knew a bit about RICO, it had been in the news, touted as the most potent weapon the government had ever held against organized crime. The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act had been passed by Congress only that year. For the first time operating a criminal racket became a federal offence, carrying huge prison terms. The FBI finally had the power to crack the back of the Mafia and those who gained from their affiliations with it. Affiliates like Lovett Hagerty.
“What’s the protocol in these situations?” she asked, tone remarkably calm, almost as if she’d sensed the inevitability of this from her first meeting with Love.
“Generally speaking you’d have to have a face-to-face with my supervisor, but I told them all bets would be off if they insisted on it. I thought maybe,” he gave a half-hearted smile, “it’d be easier if they couldn’t put a face to the voice they’d be hearing.”
She swallowed, feeling slightly dizzy, “That was decent of you, Agent Spencer.”
“Call me Gus,” he said.
“I’d rather not,” she replied.
“Fine,” he shrugged again and then his face softened, looking once again like the bumbling young man she was used to. “As soon as he starts talking we’ll call the whole damn thing off.”
She shook her head. “Don’t lie to me Agent Spencer. You haven’t yet, I’d rather you didn’t start now.”
“Okay, I apologize. You’re a tough one, Mrs. Riordan.”
“Agent Spencer, if you keep calling me Mrs. Riordan I’m not going to be able to go through with this.”
“Point taken,” he said. “Now is there anything you need, anything we can do for you?”
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 8
