Chump change, Pagan thought. Colourful Americanism. But Zuboric was quite wrong. There was far more than chump change leaving the United States. Both men went outside. The wind off the East River blew scraps of paper along the sidewalks. Zuboric shivered. He thought Pagan looked immune to the cold.
‘You got a weapon, Frank?’
‘I brought a Bernardelli in my luggage,’ Pagan replied.
Zuboric shivered again. ‘Don’t go waving it in public. The local cops frown on that kind of ostentation. They don’t like foreigners with guns, even if your business here is lawful.’
‘It’s a precaution,’ Pagan said. ‘I don’t like guns.’
‘Yeah,’ Zuboric said. He whistled for a cab. A dirty yellow vehicle slid towards the sidewalk. Zuboric told the driver Canal Street.
‘You’re coming with me?’ Pagan asked.
‘I’m instructed to extend to you every courtesy, et cetera et cetera. But my orders don’t stop there, Frank. I go where you go.’
‘It isn’t necessary,’ Pagan replied. ‘I work better alone.’
‘Yeah, I bet you do.’ Zuboric settled down in the back of the cab. ‘But as long as this character Jig is on U.S. territory, your problem is my problem. I wish it was otherwise, believe me. I don’t care about the Bog People, Frank. They can blow one another up every hour on the hour, so long as they don’t do it in the United States of America. And if Jig has it in mind to track down some missing money, there’s probably a good chance of bloodshed. In which case, I want to be around.’
Pagan watched the lights of Broadway flicker past. He didn’t like the notion of being dogged by an FBI agent. He liked to work on his own. He had never been a team player, which was why he hadn’t fitted in at Special Branch. Too many team players. Too much paperwork. He supposed the FBI was exactly the same. Compartments. People in boxes. Rivalries and grudges and tiny jealousies.
Zuboric said, ‘You think this Tumulty guy is going to talk to you, Frank?’
Pagan looked at the agent a moment. Zuboric’s suntanned face was incongruous in a wintry city. ‘I’m an optimist, Artie.’
‘Priests take vows of silence. They’re pretty good at keeping secrets.’
‘We’ll see,’ Pagan said.
There were fifty or sixty men inside St. Finbar’s Mission. They sat at tables or wandered aimlessly around trying to scrounge cigarettes from one another. The kitchen was a large room with an enormous stove located at one side. Stacked against one wall was a large pile of thin mattresses enveloped in sheets of clear plastic. Smoke and cooking smells and the sweaty aroma of despair mingled in the air. A crucifix hung to the wall. Here and there were slogans from Alcoholics Anonymous. THE TWELVE STEPS OF AA. EASY DOES IT. ONE DAY AT A TIME.
Frank Pagan stood on the threshold of the room, gazing in the direction of the counter that surrounded the stove. Faces turned towards him, then away again. They had the nervously furtive expressions of men who have reached the bottom and can’t find their way up from the pits.
Pagan moved to the cooking area. Soups and stews were simmering in big aluminum urns. He raised a lid and peered at carrots and onions floating on a greasy brown surface. He realised he hadn’t eaten anything since the alleged Beef Wellington on the flight, but his hunger was at one remove from himself, like somebody else’s sensation.
He looked round the room. What he felt in the air was mainly a sense of hopelessness that came in waves towards him. Casualties of the system. The unemployed. The alcoholic. The mentally defective. He glanced at Zuboric, who was clearly uneasy here. Pagan leaned against the wall, folding his arms. All those faces: he wondered if any one of them could be Jig.
‘Can I be of assistance?’
Pagan turned. The man who asked the question was probably in his early thirties, unshaven, his dark blue coat covered with scuff marks, his dark curly hair uncombed. There was a smell of liquor on his breath and dark circles under his eyes.
‘I’m looking for Father Tumulty,’ Pagan said.
The man looked quickly in Zuboric’s direction, then back at Pagan. ‘Who shall I say is asking for him?’
Pagan hesitated. ‘He wouldn’t know my name.’
Zuboric stepped forward and said, ‘Just point us in Tumulty’s direction.’
The man rubbed his hands together. ‘Father Joe’s pretty busy right now.’
‘Look,’ Zuboric said. ‘Either you go get him or we’ll go looking for him. It’s all the same to me.’
The big-stick approach, Pagan thought. It wasn’t always the most fruitful. He watched the man go across the room and out through a door into a hallway. The door closed behind him. Without hesitation, Pagan headed after the man. Zuboric, sighing, followed. The corridor was narrow, badly lit, the air even more stale than inside the kitchen.
There was a flight of stairs at the end of the hallway. Pagan saw the man disappear into the gloom at the top. He went after him. Zuboric, his overcoat flapping, came up behind. When they reached the landing, which was lit by a solitary bare light bulb, they saw a halfway open door in front of them. Through the crack Pagan observed a desk and a lamp. There was no sign of the man they had followed. Instead, another figure appeared in the doorway, a squat man with crewcut hair and powerful arms that hung from rolled-up shirt sleeves.
‘Is it taxes?’ the man asked.
‘Taxes?’ Pagan said. He shook his head.
‘Only I’m having trouble with the IRS, you see. They questioned my nonprofit status. They’re always sending people around to see me. People that look a lot like you,’ and the man gestured towards Zuboric. ‘All I do is feed those poor folk downstairs. I don’t see why the IRS would bother me. Are you sure you’re not with them?’
‘Positive,’ Zuboric said.
‘I’m Joe Tumulty,’ the man said. He looked at Zuboric warily. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Let’s go in your office,’ Zuboric said.
‘Certainly, certainly.’
It was a small room. The walls were covered with religious portraits, the desk strewn with papers. Mostly bills, Pagan noticed. He had the impression that St. Finbar’s Mission wasn’t exactly a solvent concern. Many of the invoices had demands stamped on them in red ink. There were several envelopes from the Internal Revenue Service, pale brown and unopened. If Father Joe was a conduit for American money going to Ireland, he certainly wasn’t skimming any off the top for himself.
‘Please sit,’ Tumulty said. He had short blunt fingers. His face was not the kind you’d automatically associate with anything so ethereal as the priesthood. He reminded Frank Pagan of the kind of priest who liked to get down in the dirt with his parishioners or instruct street urchins in the arts of pugilism. There was a quiet toughness about the man, a quality of having been seasoned on the streets. He’d need that kind of quality working in a place like this. ‘I don’t know your names, gentlemen.’ His accent was Irish, but it had become refined. There were small American inflections.
‘Zuboric. Arthur Zuboric. Federal Bureau of Investigation.’ The agent flipped a wallet open, showing his ID.
Tumulty said, ‘Impressive.’ Then he looked at Pagan. ‘And you?’
‘Frank Pagan.’
‘London. Am I right?’
‘Right.’
‘I have an ear for accents,’ Tumulty said. He took the IRS envelopes and stacked them in a small pile.
Pagan said, ‘You’re doing good work downstairs.’
‘God’s work,’ Tumulty said. ‘Which you can’t always do within the confines of the established Church, alas. It isn’t easy either. I locked heads with my church to create this place. And ever since then I believe the bishop has been pulling all kinds of delicate little threads behind the scenes to make life more difficult for me. Sometimes there are inexplicable shortages of food from the city’s food banks. Delays in delivery that don’t make sense. I often think the bloody bishop is behind this business with the IRS. Spiteful little man.’
‘Is that why y
ou left the Church? To do God’s work?’
Tumulty nodded. ‘I grew dissatisfied. Bishops play golf with realtors. They belong to country clubs. I didn’t join the Church to develop a taste for sherry and a knack for parish politics.’ He smiled. When he did so the face, which had a slightly battered look, resembled a baseball glove that has seen one season too many. Pagan guessed Tumulty was somewhere in his late forties.
‘So you know I left the Church, do you? It doesn’t surprise me. I heard somebody had been asking questions on the street. I thought it was a tax snoop. The FBI indeed! Should I be flattered or afraid?’
Zuboric tapped a foot impatiently. ‘You don’t have anything to be afraid of, do you?’
‘Now that depends.’ Tumulty leaned forward into the direct light of the desk lamp and said, ‘Since you gentlemen know a little something about me, isn’t it fair that you tell me something of yourselves? What brings you to St. Finbar’s? It can’t be the cuisine, I’m sure.’
‘Your name cropped up in connection with an investigation –’
‘My name?’ Tumulty laughed. ‘I can’t imagine my name coming up in the context of any investigation unless it’s something to do with the bloody IRS. What are you investigating anyway?’
‘Murder,’ Zuboric said.
‘Ahhh.’ Tumulty sat back in his chair. ‘And who’s been killed?’
Frank Pagan stood up. Instead of answering Tumulty’s question, he asked one of his own. ‘What connections do you have in Ireland, Joe?’
‘By connections, d’you mean family? Friends? I have a great many –’
Pagan shook his head. ‘I’m talking about political contacts.’
‘I’m not a political animal.’
Zuboric hunched over in his chair and said, ‘That’s not what we hear, Joe.’
‘You’ve got poor information then.’
Pagan walked around the room. He paused under a garish portrait of the Virgin Mary, who regarded him with technicolour sorrow.
‘The taste in art isn’t very sophisticated, is it?’ Tumulty said. ‘I’d especially throw that one out except some of my patrons here are devout men in a simplistic way. Icons console them.’
Zuboric asked, ‘What does the name Jig mean to you?’
Pagan was annoyed. He wanted to play this more slowly, wanted to wander around the subject of Jig in an indirect way before deciding whether to spring the name on Tumulty, but Artie Zuboric, an apparent graduate from the bulldozer school of questioning, was off and running in his own direction. Pagan could see that it was going to be difficult to work with the FBI agent.
‘It’s a dance, of course,’ Tumulty said.
‘Can it,’ Zuboric said. His tone was one of irritation. Pagan thought Zuboric looked like a heavy in some low-budget Spanish western with his Mexican-style moustache and drooping eyelids. All he needed was a toothpick, something to dangle from his lips.
‘Should it mean anything else?’ Tumulty blinked.
Frank Pagan went back across the room and sat on the priest’s desk. ‘Not a dance exactly. Not this time, Joe.’
‘Tell me then. If it isn’t a dance, then what are you talking about?’
‘A killer,’ Pagan said.
‘Preposterous,’ Tumulty said. ‘A killer! What would I be doing with a killer, for God’s sake?’
‘We understand he has plans to visit you. Maybe he’s already done so. Has he? Has Jig been here already, Joe?’ Zuboric asked.
Pagan rubbed his eyes. He was feeling fuzzy, fatigued. He had one of those waking moments when the lack of sleep causes a slight hallucination. Joseph Tumulty’s desk lamp seemed to shimmer in front of his eyes and the walls of the room become darker beyond the reaches of electricity.
‘Why should this killer come to see me?’ Tumulty asked.
‘Suppose you tell me, Joe.’
Tumulty stood up. ‘I think this has gone far enough, gentlemen. I’ve got hungry people waiting. If you don’t mind.’ He took a step towards the door, and Zuboric reached out, fastening his hand round the Irishman’s wrist.
‘Stick around,’ Zuboric said.
Pagan looked at the FBI man’s hand clamped on the priest’s wrist. Tumulty didn’t look unduly concerned about being grabbed and held. The expression on the Irishman’s face was one of pity. It might have been the look of a priest listening to something especially pathetic in the confessional.
‘Is it a nightstick next?’ Tumulty asked. ‘Or have nightsticks gone out of fashion? Do you use the butt of your pistols these days?’
‘No nightsticks. No guns.’ Pagan shrugged. ‘All we want is a little information.’
Tumulty said, ‘Which I don’t have. Sorry and all that. How often do I have to say it, Mr. Pagan?’ Zuboric let his hand fall back to his side.
‘Now can I go and feed my people?’ Tumulty asked. ‘They expect that of me downstairs.’
Pagan nodded wearily. ‘We’ll talk again, Joe.’
‘I don’t doubt that. But you’ll keep getting the same answers.’
Pagan watched him a moment, thinking about the small things that gave a man away. A little sweat. The nervous motion of an eyelid. A flutter of hands. The human body as lie detector. He moved towards the door. ‘What would your people have to eat if you weren’t around to care for them? If, for example, you were to find yourself lodging in Attica?’
Tumulty said, ‘They might starve. They might end up sleeping on the streets. God knows, the kind of people I take in here aren’t always welcome at some of the more genteel missions. But then I don’t have any plans to abandon them, Pagan. And I most certainly don’t plan on Attica.’
Frank Pagan smiled. ‘The best-laid plans, and so forth,’ he said. ‘You know how it goes, don’t you?’ He pushed the door open and stepped out onto the landing. He turned back to Tumulty and added, ‘Be seeing you.’
It was very cold in the attic. Jig huddled deep inside his overcoat. For a time he’d been listening to the sounds of voices that floated up through an air-conditioning vent, but then there had been silence, followed by footsteps. When the attic door opened a little way he found himself looking into the yellow beam of a flashlight. Tumulty stood there.
‘You live dangerously,’ Tumulty said.
Jig stared into the light. He smelled food. Tumulty was carrying a plate in one hand. Jig took the plate and the plastic fork and started to eat. He hadn’t eaten in a long time. With his mouth full, he said, ‘All I did was go downstairs for food. When I saw those characters, I couldn’t resist the impulse.’
Tumulty sat cross-legged on the floor. He produced a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
‘Suppose they’d somehow gotten hold of a picture of you?’ Tumulty said. ‘Suppose they had a description from somewhere?’
‘But they didn’t.’
Tumulty sighed. ‘How did they know you were coming here anyhow?’
Jig set the plate aside. ‘Good stew,’ he said.
‘I asked a question.’
‘I don’t have the answer,’ Jig said.
‘It doesn’t worry you?’
‘I came to America to do a job. Nothing else.’
Tumulty sighed again. ‘How did they find out about me? Only myself and Finn knew you were coming here. Since I didn’t tell anybody, there’s only one conclusion. Something went wrong at Finn’s end.’
Jig thought a moment about Finn. He couldn’t afford to worry about the old man. The money had to be found. Nothing changed that. The only thing of any importance was the task he’d been sent to do. Despite himself, he felt a small chord of concern echo in his head, but he rejected it. Finn would have been the first to tell him that worry only weakened a man’s concentration, disrupted his single-mindedness. Worry was a peripheral pastime and an unworthy one.
He adjusted his grubby overcoat, which smelled of alcohol. He had soaked the material of the coat with a half pint of very cheap rum, and now the pungent aroma was irritating him.
‘They’ll com
e back,’ Tumulty said.
‘And you’ll tell them nothing.’
‘I’ve never been tested,’ Tumulty said. ‘I don’t know my limits.’
‘You’ll tell them nothing,’ Jig said again.
Tumulty rubbed his leg. He had a cramp suddenly. ‘I think they’ve got a man outside on the street.’
Jig nodded. ‘I saw him before. He was a cinch to spot. Looks like a boy in the Marines, all short hair and jaw. He’s sitting inside a tan Chrysler. He looks very conspicuous and very bored, Joe. Anyway, what did he see? Another bum staggering along the pavement, that’s all. Another drunk falling down.’
Tumulty said, ‘You look like a derelict, I’ll grant you that.’ He stood up, still clawing at his leg. ‘But this whole situation worries me. What happened at Finn’s end? And how much does this Pagan know?’
‘Worry about something else, Joe. Worry about how you’re going to help me.’
Tumulty was quiet. From the kitchen far below came the noise of a drunk singing. The Irish members of the flock think they’re the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sometimes. I better get back down there. It’s a bloody zoo.’
Jig reached out and touched Tumulty’s arm. ‘I’ll need a decent pistol.’
Tumulty nodded but said nothing.
‘And if it can be done, I’ll feel better if I have a collapsible rifle as well. Just in case.’
‘It’s going to take a little time.’
‘I don’t have much time.’
‘I can’t hurry a thing like this,’ Tumulty said. ‘Especially now, when I’ve got those two characters breathing down my neck.’
Tumulty turned towards the attic door. The singing from below was growing louder.
My feet are here on Broadway this blessed harvest morn
But O the ache that’s in them for the spot where I was born …
Jig said, ‘I’ll also need names, Joe. Names of anyone connected with the Fund-raisers.’
‘Of course you will. Otherwise, how will you know who to shoot?’
‘Do I detect disapproval in your voice?’
Tumulty said nothing.
‘I never shoot anybody unless I have to,’ Jig said. ‘Does that ease your conscience?’
Jig Page 12
