She was beginning to feel a little like a bird attempting to build a solid nest out of invisible thread and faint whispers. Every time she managed to grasp hold of one, it led nowhere, or petered out in denials and shrugged shoulders. She knew that with every question she asked she was putting herself in greater and greater danger. For whatever else he might be, Lovett Hagerty was not a stupid man.
It was a delicate dance, played out upon the edge of a razor so fine it could not be seen. But she did not have a waking moment anymore when she was not completely aware of the swift and absolute laceration that awaited her smallest misstep.
There were two other fissures that could be exploited—one was fraught with danger, the other was the one she had hoped to avoid, though it seemed less likely that she would be able to do so as the days passed.
Two days previously he had given her a gift, producing a box from his dinner jacket with the flourish of a magician. A choker of emeralds that glowed with a deep, green fire there in the dim of his office. In allowing him to place them around her neck, she knew she was taking an irrevocable step forward that could destroy the foundation of her life. While fully aware that if she did not, she might well lose her husband altogether.
The emeralds felt like a vise around her neck, ‘half a million dollars,’ Love whispered in her ear as he placed them about her throat, ‘half a million, and next to that skin and those eyes they’re nothing but dime store baubles.’
Half a million in stones cut from the hide of people like Emma, carved from the conscience of Father Kevin, who’d been forced to look the other way in order to keep his flock safe. Half a million dollars for a chunk of rock with which to keep her tightly leashed.
For a man did not choke a woman with five hundred thousand in jewels unless he expected something in return. And she knew what he wanted, it flamed hot as the arc of a welding torch in his eyes, it was there in the random touches that caused a surge of sickness in the pit of her stomach.
It was not, however, his desire that worried her the most. It was that the man seemed to be falling in love with her. That it was not just her body he desired, but rather all that she was. She didn’t fool herself into thinking that even this was any more than another acquisition for him. His innate ruthlessness had given him everything he’d wanted in the past; she was merely another challenge. Yet, the fact he had not yet tried to take her to bed told her much. He wasn’t going to rush, for he had bigger things in mind. He was paying her court, wooing her as best might a man who was still married to another woman, and always mindful of his political future. The man wanted her for a wife.
She was well aware of the irony of her position. For he was exactly, mob connections aside, the sort of man she had been groomed for all her growing years. A wily Irish politician with boundless ambition and an eye constantly to the future. And the truth was she did love the legitimate side of his world—the shenanigans, the backroom dealing, the assiduous charm and outright chicanery that were the hallmarks of Irish politics and that was somehow, at the same time, so quintessentially American. Like every glittering coin, though, the underbelly was equally dark.
Through all of this, she kept thoughts of Casey at bay. Worry for him, out on the ocean (a more unnatural set of events she never could have imagined) was a constant, like a nagging pain under her ribs that could not be ignored, but must be lived with.
Just the thought of another man touching her seemed a gross betrayal of what she shared with Casey. The trust between them was a thing of quiet strength. It lay at the core of their marriage. For Casey, after the years in prison, trust had not been a thing easily given. And yet he had given it and she, for so long rootless and lonely, had found in him a home in which she placed complete faith. Which only made the game she was now engaged in that much more difficult. It would be a betrayal of so much more than the flesh.
And so that brought her down to the last option. Blackie. Blackie and Love together comprised a closed universe that even the oldest of Southie insiders could not hope to be allowed entrance to. Blackie was Love’s right hand, the hand that got dirty and bloody, the hand that held the gun, even if the order came from Love.
If it were at all possible, Blackie frightened her more than Love. He did not make a secret of what he was and what he had done. Even his physical appearance put the hair up on the back of her neck. He was so pale as to be nearly albino, his eyes an icy blue without a spark of human warmth, his hair so blond it was almost white. His mouth, subversively, was a full and bloody red, and twisted up on one side by an old scar he’d gotten in a knife fight, giving him a perpetual sneer. He looked like a cold-blooded reptile that wouldn’t think twice about tormenting its prey before eating it leisurely.
Where Love could not afford to be seen, so went Blackie. It was exactly this state of affairs that had provided her with what she thought might be her ticket to divide and at least have a shot at conquering. For she had seen Blackie talking to a man that she knew Love would find most interesting.
She waited for an opportune moment to mention it. They were drinking red wine in a tiny North End restaurant where the cooks and wait staff were paid extra for averted eyes and sealed lips. It was one of the few places Love could safely take her. It was a small, dark restaurant with a very select clientele. Which meant the Bassarellis ate here, and anyone else the old man gave the nod to.
But Love had other things on his mind this night. He had finished his steak, always rare to the point of oozing blood, and was now eyeing her as though she were merely another cut of meat. Something to be devoured.
“I like to see you in the clothes I’ve bought.”
Outwardly, she had smiled. Inwardly she had thought that his street manners were never too far from the carefully cultivated surface. It was a sore point, for she had refused the first delivery of clothes that had landed on her doorstep, a stunning array all in the discreet packaging of half a dozen different couture boutiques. She had not even looked in the expensive boxes, but had sent them directly back to Love with a polite note attached.
Agent Gus had gently rebuked her, saying that in order to cultivate trust Hagerty needed to believe she was falling in love with him as well. Which meant accepting his gifts and appearing to cater to his tastes and whims.
She had acquiesced with an ill grace. And now had a closet filled with the fabrics that whispered voluptuously in threads of silk and taffeta, chiffon and organza, linen and lace. The names all French—Chanel, St. Laurent, Dior and Balenciaga. For the French did certain things better than the rest of the world—food, wine, perfume and clothes. Because they understood one thing, it was all about sex, every last detail of it.
The little apartment in Brookline was filled with such things. Every room speaking its own dialect in the language of seduction. Tumbling, slipping sweet-smelling piles of lingerie in rich jewelled shades, with the tiny hand-sewn labels of the small Parisian boutiques from which they’d been ordered. In the bath oils and liquids infused with dark flowers and spices—cinnamon, cloves, jasmine and roses. Perfumes in Baccarat bottles murmuring of the east, of souks in Morocco and Tunisia, named for moonlit Indian gardens and English schoolgirls who’d once broken a French boy’s heart.
In the kitchen—wine—the pale gold of the semillons and sauvignon blancs, the richer autumnal tints of the chardonnays on through the blooded hues of the reds—merlots and burgundies, bordeauxs and sangioveses and the smokey oak-casked cabernets.
And all of these things speaking in scent, taste and touch of one thing. Desire and the satiation of it. He would wait, but not much longer. Nor, did it seem, would the FBI, for Agent Gus had informed her that the bugs were now in place and ready to operate. So she put from her thoughts of her husband, and did what she must to keep him.
The dress she wore tonight was black, a filmy thing of silk with chiffon overlay. Black was not a color Casey liked, so for him she did not wear it.
“I knew black would suit you,” Love said smugly, “it’s
that hothouse skin of yours.” There was a faint sheen on his forehead and upper lip, and he flicked his tongue across his bottom lip in a manner she could not mistake. It was an opportune moment to change the subject, so she had clutched her napkin in a clammy palm and made the opening move in this dreadful chess game, where there were no pawns to sacrifice.
She was as vague as could be managed, saying only that she had seen Blackie chatting with a redheaded man, who looked like a businessman from the cut of his suit.
Love lowered his wine glass from his lips, a dark mask coming down over his face that chilled her to the core.
In the cold face, his eyes simmered.
“Was he? If he thinks he can end run me, he’d better think again.”
Pamela stiffened her backbone, though her natural instinct was to flee from the anger that pulsed from his skin like an electric current.
“The neighborhood is mine, the people are mine. I look after them and they look after me. Blackie is nothing but a punk that I hauled out of the goddamn gutter like some crossbred mutt. He may need reminding of that.”
As much as she loathed Blackie, Pamela’s spine gave a sympathetic shudder for the man. In Love’s world, being reminded of your place was likely to result in permanent injury if not permanent sleep.
The man she had seen Blackie talking with was a man she had also seen leaving Love Hagerty’s office a number of times. Though always at night, when the streets were dark enough for a man to move about in anonymity.
His name was Mark Ryan, and he had grown up in Southie. He was a man who had never quite outgrown his boyhood worship of the neighborhood king, whose eyes were still dusted in the glamor of Love Hagerty, the man to whom everyone pretended a connection even if they didn’t have one.
Which begged the question of why he was having cozy chats with Blackie away from Love? For the most interesting thing about Mark Ryan was his job. He was a Federal agent.
Chapter Ten
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears
CASEY AWOKE TO ELECTRIFIED DARKNESS, the world no more than an upside down bowl filled to the brim with stark blue light. He awoke to fear, disoriented, thinking he was back on the damn boat, the smell of fish and blood heavy in his nostrils. The sound of thunder, crashing like a steel-plated drum through his consciousness brought him back to himself, calming the fear. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs to their limit and releasing it just as harshly. Near the ocean, yes, but thank God and His little green men, not on it.
He was between fishing trips, with an entire week behind him and a week still to come. He’d met Pamela here on the Cape, where she had rented a cottage for the two of them near the town of Yarmouth.
He reached for his wife, wanting the luxury of her skin beneath his hands. Wanting to wake her gently, with lips and fingertips, until she cried for him in need and sweetly stirred desire.
But her side of the bed was empty, and judging from the temperature of the sheets, she’d been gone awhile. Surely, the woman wasn’t mad enough to go out in a storm, though. He sat up in the bed, knowing the answer to the question. When she was troubled she always wandered the shore, as if the roar of the surf and the icy salt spray of the sea could tell her what she needed to hear.
He stood, grabbing his pants in one hand and a sweater in the other, going to the window that overlooked the bluff. Beyond the glass, the night seemed a great devouring beast, illuminated by neither star nor man. He waited for the next flash of lightning, and when it came in a pouring blue sheet, he scanned the shore below him quickly.
He thought he caught movement in his peripheral vision, there and gone as quickly as the stark light. He dressed swiftly, not bothering with socks and shoes. The sand would only fill them anyway; bare feet were easier.
Outside the air was cold, the wind so strong it whined against his ears, blowing the rain at a forty-five degree angle. He hunched against it, tasting salt and sand on his lips. The waves must be high for the spray to blow up this far.
The sand, where the sea had slowly eroded the bank away over time, crumbled under his feet, causing him to slide precipitously down the bank several yards at a time. Dune grass, slick and icy with spray, left a chill dew on his skin where the two touched in passing.
He half slid, half tumbled to the bottom, barely managing to keep to his feet. The rain drummed harder, relentless in its sheer power. The core of the storm must be close to hand. He stopped, feet sunk in sand up to the ankles and waited for the next flash. It came quickly, seeming to expand from its center like a living thing drawing breath, showing him all the world around him down to its finest grain.
She was down the shore from him, where the sand arced out into a rounded point and the waves gathered and submerged the narrow spit, again and again. He turned in her direction, feeling the cut and crunch of abandoned shells beneath his soles. His shirt was soaked through to the skin and he could feel sandy grit where the waves had thrown it up beneath the worn denim of his pants. The woman was mad to be out in this godforsaken night. And himself as lunatic to come after her.
The next flash of light showed her on her back, perhaps forty yards distant, entirely naked and, despite the distance, a world away. He halted as though a hand had come up hard against his chest.
He knew the moods the sea provoked in her, how vital it was to her, as necessary as breath. It was what was foreign to him about her, a thing that, at times, he felt the separation of—that she needed the ocean, felt its every thrust and slide in the running of her blood.
Lightning split the world again and fired a path along the sea, a light-shattered vee that opened its arms wide as it neared the shore. To embrace or to seize? He never knew which himself, but he knew what his wife felt.
The eldritch light in that split second had carved all her lines onto his retina like cored ivory— line, curve, dip, hollow. She appeared oddly weightless, as if she had become an empty vessel ready to receive the sea. Even her breasts, which his hands well knew the weight of, seemed like cups awaiting the bounty and benevolence of the ocean gods.
And what if, one day, the water claimed her, if the terrible sea kings took what was theirs? For she was foolhardy in her love, courted it, danced on its edges, allowed the current to first caress, then grasp. It was a mating as sure as any other and one that made him jealous.
There were other things separating them, he knew, the words they were not saying being foremost at present. Secrets that pilfered from the all too brief hours they had together. It made him restless and it was obviously doing the same to her.
She lay in the sand, the waves first rushing over her naked form and then pulling back with cold frothy fingers, leaving her skin only to rush back again, swimming over length of leg, reaching with splayed white fingers around her thighs, surging into the heated core of her. Foam skimmed like lace across her belly to encircle her breasts and curled with a sigh through the heavy lines of her hair, which glistened in the odd light like gelid streams of kelp.
Another flash and he saw that her eyes were closed and knew she was fathoms deep, gone into that far kingdom where valleys ran a hundred miles wide and mountains would seemingly reach the moon if they were not rooted to the ocean floor. Born to the sea, she was—a mermaid in a bowl of tears. And he with his feet planted firmly in the earth.
The Atlantic that his wife loved so well had been called ‘the bowl of tears’ by the Irish poet John Boyle O’Reilly, and for good reason. Two million Irish, in a desperate bid to outrace death, had taken to the sea upon vessels so decrepit and un-seaworthy that they were known as ‘Coffin Ships’. Ships with rotten rigging, un-caulked timbers, leaking hulls. Ships without provision, nor berths, nor adequate water. Ships that would become fetid prisons of starvation, thirst and black fever. Still, the Irish, often unaware of the perils of ocean travel, preferred to take their chances upon the cold, unforgiving waters of the North Atlantic rather than face certain death in the land they’d been born to.
Casey saw them clear i
n his mind at times—the poor, the destitute, those abandoned by God and Man, forced to flee the only security they’d known in a life that had been desperate at best. And he saw those too weak in spirit or flesh, too poor or enfeebled by their labors to take flight from a doomed land.
The scent of them lay thick along the shore. So many had come and so many had not survived, but they’d left their legacy in strong backs and stubborn minds. He could smell them everywhere, the smell of dispossession and displacement, of longing and fear. He knew the smell well, it was on his own skin, the fragrance of a man without a country. His own ancestors had come here once, and then returned to Ireland. The father-in-law he’d never known had come and stayed.
He wondered what Pamela’s father had thought of this—this raw country that could break a man if he wasn’t born knowing how to bend. She’d told him the basics—how her father had landed at Ellis Island, a thirteen year old orphan from the rough end of Limerick, without a dime to his name and only the clothes he carried on his back. Forty years later he’d been one of the wealthiest Irish Americans in the United States. She might have been telling the story about anyone, though, and that told him far more than her words ever could. He’d never pushed her about her past, had always backed off when she shied away from his questions, knowing too well there were some things that could not be said, things for which there weren’t words in any language. But it bothered him to realize that somewhere inside her was a core of loneliness that he could not penetrate, a loss that was shrouded but not healed. Bothered him that the sea somehow gave her a relief that he could not. His wife, and yet there was always some element of her that eluded him.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what it was to have such a core. He’d his own, after all, like a lead-lined box harnessing the pain of his years in prison, a wee box to be certain but locked tight against the interference of outside eyes.
Another flash of light and movement caught his eye, snapping him abruptly from his reverie. Beyond Pamela, something had moved in the dark. Casey blinked, moving forward instinctively, panic lighting his nerve endings and burning quickly in toward his core. Who the hell would be out on a night such as this one? He cursed the sand as it slogged his steps, seeming to enlarge the distance between he and Pamela. The rain was coming harder now, blurring his vision, making him doubt the amorphous shape that he could have sworn had emerged from the dark only seconds before.
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