Jig

by Campbell Armstrong

  Linney pulled a pair of sunglasses over his eyes even though the sky was gloomy and overcast. ‘I’m listening, Jock.’

  ‘Okay. First, I ruled out Cairney. He’s been in this business for nearly fifty goddam years and I can’t see him screwing the Irish at this stage of the game. He’s been on the Cause’s side since I was in fucking diapers and you weren’t even born, so why would he dump on it now?’

  Linney said, ‘I’ll go along with that. It wasn’t Cairney.’

  ‘Okay. I ruled out myself because I know I didn’t have anything to do with the Connie.’

  Linney smiled. ‘I’m supposed to take your word for this, Jock?’

  ‘Hear me out,’ Mulhaney said. ‘Okay. I eliminated Cairney and myself. Leaving you and Kev Dawson.’

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense, Jock.’

  ‘First, I figured it might be you. You wanna know why? Because you’re the guy that physically takes the money to the Courier –’

  ‘I never saw the Courier in my lfe,’ Linney said.

  ‘Okay. Let me put it another way. You give the money to a guy who gives the money to the Courier. Right?’

  Linney adjusted his dark glasses. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Fine,’ Mulhaney said. He glanced at the demolished melons, understanding now why Nick Linney had an effect on him. It was more than just the gun thing, it was something in Linney’s physical qualities that unsettled him. That strangely coloured face, which reminded Mulhaney of a lime. The guy’s general air of self-confidence and the feeling you got that when a nuclear holocaust came, Linney was going to be among the survivors, bottled up in some fucking concrete cellar with his guns and dried fruits and astronaut foods. Linney always looked as if he knew something the rest of the human race had either ignored or forgotten.

  Mulhaney played with the surface of his flask. ‘I ruled you out, Nick, because I couldn’t see you turning against the Cause. I couldn’t quite get a fix on that. I mean, you bring in more money than the rest of us put together, and if you wanted to steal it you’d find an easier way than going to the trouble of hijacking a fucking ship. You could have stolen the money at the source, for Christ’s sake! You could have pocketed the money you raised and then told us that your donors just couldn’t come through and who the hell would have been any the wiser?’

  Nicholas Linney crossed his arms on his chest. He looked like some tinpot general in a South American jungle army. ‘And that leaves Kevin Dawson,’ he said.

  ‘Kevin Dawson.’ Mulhaney gouged out a pattern with the heel of his shoe in the damp sands.

  ‘He’s got money coming out his ears. Why would he want more?’

  Mulhaney smiled. ‘It wasn’t the cash he was after, Nick. His family owns about half of fucking Connecticut, so he wasn’t looking for financial gain. You wanna know what I think?’

  Linney took off his sunglasses. ‘Tell me, Jock.’

  ‘Okay. I see it happening like this. Let’s say he gets a call from Tom Dawson in the White House. Big Brother’s unhappy. He doesn’t like money flowing out of America and into Ireland. He’s in a flap because all that money coming from the States makes him look bad with his bosom buddies in London, who are about the only fucking allies he’s got in the world, and they’ve been bitching about American aid to Irish terrorists. He says to Kev that it’s got to stop. And Kev, who’s never been a man to deny Big Brother anything, tells him about a certain shipment aboard a certain small vessel. Wonderful, Tommy thinks. We’ll put a stop to that one. He gets on the phone, talks to some of his cronies, and these cronies put together a bunch of fucking killers. Vets. Former marines who’ve been twiddling their thumbs since the Bay of Pigs. Whatever. The money’s taken. Tommy is happy, Kev hasn’t let Big Brother down, the crew isn’t around to point the finger at anyone, and there’s no awkward publicity.’

  Nicholas Linney reached for the M-16A2 and held it against his side. He fired off two shots, missing the cantaloupes both times. Mulhaney’s ears rang from the noise of the gunfire. Linney studied the barrel of the weapon for a moment, then turned to look at Mulhaney.

  ‘What kind of proof do you have that Kev Dawson went running off to the White House, Jock?’

  Mulhaney shrugged. He had been so convinced by his own theory that the matter of proof hadn’t occurred to him. To him it was blatantly obvious that Kevin Dawson was the turncoat, and even if he had constructed a scenario that might or might not have been correct, that alone didn’t detract from the basic feeling of rightness he had. And he wasn’t accustomed, in the world of ass-kissers and yes-men in which he insulated himself, to having his judgments questioned because proof was lacking. Kevin Dawson was the one. The only candidate. Everyone knew that the Dawsons weren’t a trustworthy bunch.

  Linney said, ‘For all I know you could have come out here to tell me this story because you wanted to avert suspicion from yourself.’

  Mulhaney was quiet. Does this bastard suspect me of something? he wondered. The speculation filled him with a cold fear. He said, ‘I could have. But I didn’t.’

  ‘I’ve only got your word for that, Jock. Which leaves us right back where we started.’ Linney looked out towards Long Island Sound. ‘What makes you so sure that I didn’t arrange the whole thing anyhow?’

  Mulhaney felt spray rise up against his face as the wind forced itself over the tide. ‘Because I know it was Kev Dawson, for Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘A process of simple elimination, Nick.’

  ‘It’s not so simple, Jock. Show me proof. I need to see proof before I can go along with your story. From where I stand, Kev Dawson’s always been reliable when it comes to raising funds. I need something that might convince me otherwise. I need a smoking gun, friend. Right now, I’m thinking that you dislike Kevin Dawson so intensely you’d hang anything on him. Jesus, you hate that whole goddam family.’

  ‘There’s nothing personal in any of this,’ Mulhaney said. He sipped from his flask again. Coming out here to talk to Linney – a waste of time. He had hoped that Linney would become an ally and together they’d go see Cairney and lay the story in front of the old man and let him decide how to deal with Dawson. Now Linney was asking for proof, for God’s sake. What did he want? Taped conversations? Transcripts?

  ‘It’s not exactly the kind of thing where proof’s easy to come by,’ he said, a little deflated. He had revealed himself to Linney and now, having been rebuffed by the man, he felt very defensive. ‘Okay. So maybe my theory isn’t correct. Maybe it happened some other way and Kev Dawson had motives I haven’t even thought about. Maybe the family empire is strapped for cash, I don’t know. But I know he’s the one.’

  Linney said, ‘Let me tell you what I think. The money’s gone and that’s a mystery. I’ve never been happy with mysteries, Jock. Detective stories, bodies inside locked rooms, that kind of thing never appealed to me. I like facts. The harder the better. This gun, for instance. It’s a hard fact. Right?’

  Mulhaney nodded in a sullen way.

  Linney ran the palm of one hand over the weapon. It was almost a lover’s caress. The gun might have been the leg of a mistress. ‘I don’t give a shit right now about who took the money because the only hard fact I can see is that some guy is coming here from Ireland. And that makes me very unhappy. Do you think he’s going to sit down and discuss the missing money over a friendly cup of tea?’

  Mulhaney said nothing. He hadn’t given a lot of thought to this shadowy Irishman who seemed to terrify everybody but himself.

  ‘The fuck he is,’ Linney went on. ‘If I was that guy I’d have a bad attitude. I wouldn’t be disposed towards kindness. I wouldn’t make polite inquiries. I wouldn’t trust a fucking soul. If I was him, I’d be ready to do violence.’ Linney paused, gazing at Mulhaney’s florid face. ‘Suppose this character runs you down, Jock. What would you tell him?’

  ‘I’d give him Kevin Dawson,’ Mulhaney said quickly.

  ‘What if he doesn’t believe you? Who would you give him next? Cairney
? Me?’

  Mulhaney shuffled his feet in the sand. He was always out of his depth when it came to hypothetical matters. Ifs played no role in Mulhaney’s world. He didn’t answer Linney’s question.

  ‘This guy isn’t going to be your friend, Jock. You better understand that.’

  Mulhaney smiled now. He was uncomfortable with the way Linney was talking. ‘How would you behave if he came to you?’ he asked.

  Linney made a gesture with the weapon. ‘I’m ready for anything,’ he answered.

  ‘Jesus,’ Mulhaney said. ‘You talk as if this guy’s going to find us. I think you’re paranoid.’

  ‘Is there another way to be?’ Nicholas Linney asked.

  10

  New York City

  Frank Pagan was very cold on the rooftop. He wore a heavy overcoat and a plaid scarf and thick gloves, but even so the wind squeezed through his clothing. He sometimes walked in circles, stamping his feet for warmth, but he never strayed far from the view overlooking the entrance to St. Finbar’s Mission. It was just after 8:30 A.M. and the frozen wind, which had been blowing all night, hadn’t died with daylight.

  He could see Zuboric’s field agent parked down the block a little way, a young man called Orson Cone, a graduate of Brigham Young University in Utah. He was keen, bright-eyed. He’d been with the agency for only eighteen months and he was still fresh enough to think stake-outs were a big deal. Earlier, when Pagan had, talked with Orson Cone, he’d noticed a copy of The Book of Mormon lying face down on the backseat of the car. With his straight white teeth and closely cropped fair hair, Cone reminded Pagan of a surfer, one who’d had an encounter with Jesus out on the waves.

  Cone had nothing to report. He’d been sitting inside his car for about ten hours and, apart from the clientele that drifted in and out of St. Finbar’s, he’d seen nothing of interest. Since there was only one exit, and Cone hadn’t seen Tumulty leave the place, it was a safe assumption the Irishman was still inside. Pagan, still dislocated by the change of clocks, went into a rundown building that housed two import-export companies, a shabby PR outfit called Images, and a telephone answering service, and climbed the unlit stairs to the roof. There, surrounded by scrawny city pigeons, he watched the street.

  Frank Pagan yawned. Last night, when he left Zuboric, he’d walked several blocks back to the Parker Meridien. He’d stood for a while in the bar, nursing a scotch and soda and studying one of the waitresses, an attractive young girl with a certain air-headed approach to things, a giggler who was forever making the wrong change or dropping glasses. Her name, she told him, was Mandi with an i. He’d wondered about introducing himself, just to see where it might lead. But he couldn’t imagine performing an act of sexual exorcism with somebody called Mandi with an i, so he’d gone up to his room. Sleep hadn’t exactly come in like an angel. He tossed around restlessly for hours; then, tired of being tired, he dressed and returned to Canal Street, walking all the way down Broadway to the edge of Chinatown.

  Now he beat his gloved hands together and watched his breath mist on the frigid air and concentrated on St. Finbar’s Mission, wondering about Joseph X. Tumulty. Sooner or later, the man would step outside. Eventually, he’d have to go somewhere. And Frank Pagan wanted to know where.

  His eyes stung as the wind scoured the rooftops, making TV antennae tremble. He huddled deeper inside his coat, trying to shrink himself down into a place where the wind wouldn’t hurt him. Hopeless. He blinked at the street. Inside his car Orson Cone sat motionless, no doubt drawing his patience from The Book of Mormon. A simple faith. Frank Pagan had always envied simple faiths. His own God was a different kind of joker altogether – complicated and brooding, seated masked at the inaccessible centre of some intricate labyrinth. A totally whimsical character with more than a touch of cruelty. He never returned your calls.

  Pagan looked along the sidewalk where the wind skirted across plastic trash bags, making them ripple. He propped his elbows on the top of the wall, leaned forward a little way.

  ‘If you fall, don’t expect me to catch you,’ Zuboric said.

  Pagan turned around. Artie Zuboric was coming across the roof, his coat flapping behind him. His nose was red from the cold. There was an angry expression on his face.

  ‘I know,’ Pagan said. ‘I didn’t call you.’

  ‘Damn right you didn’t call me,’ Zuboric said. ‘Next time you move, I want to know about it.’

  ‘Cone told you I was here.’

  ‘Cone called me as soon as he saw you.’

  Pagan shrugged. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I came back here.’

  ‘I’m mildly pissed off, Frank. I don’t care what time it is; when you have the urge to hit the streets, you let me know.’

  Pagan said, ‘I assumed you’d need your beauty sleep, Artie.’

  Zuboric grunted and glanced towards St. Finbar’s Mission. He checked the FBI car, then turned back to Pagan, his anger subsided. ‘By the way, I couldn’t get authorisation for a phone tap.’

  ‘No?’ Pagan thought he detected a tiny note of pleasure in Artie Zuboric’s voice.

  ‘Insufficient reason,’ Zuboric said. ‘Happens.’

  Pagan said nothing for a moment. He had the feeling that a telephone tap wouldn’t have yielded anything anyway. Not if Joe Tumulty was a careful man. Besides, if Joe thought there was a tap on his phone, then that suspicion was as good as any eavesdropping device might have been.

  ‘Something bothers me.’ Zuboric cupped his hands and lit a cigarette. ‘You’re betting on Jig getting in touch with Tumulty. But I keep coming back to the possibility that your man’s been and gone, Frank. In which event, you’re freezing your ass off on this godforsaken roof for nothing.’

  Pagan had already considered this. ‘I’m betting on another possibility altogether, Artie. I’m betting Jig needs something only Tumulty can get for him.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The tools of his trade,’ Pagan said. ‘I don’t see Jig trying to score an ordinary gun somewhere, Artie. And the chances are he didn’t arrive in this country carrying anything. He’s too careful. If Joe’s been an IRA connection here all along, he’s bound to have contacts in the kind of speciality weapon Jig might need. When you boil it right down, I think Joe’s the only chance we’ve got.’

  ‘And what makes you think he hasn’t already supplied Jig?’

  ‘Unless Tumulty keeps weapons on his premises, which I doubt, they’d have to be specially ordered. That takes time.’

  Pagan looked at the grimy windows of St. Finbar’s. They were impossible to see through. Whoever said cleanliness was next to godliness hadn’t tried to peer inside Tumulty’s soup kitchen.

  Zuboric said, ‘Tumulty’s going to have his eyes open, Frank. He isn’t going to walk through the streets without looking over his shoulder a whole lot. He won’t be an easy tail.’

  Pagan smiled. He said, ‘Tailing’s one of my good points. If I do it alone.’

  ‘Christ, you keep trying, don’t you?’ Zuboric said.

  ‘He’ll spot a pair, Artie. You know that. If we work this together, he’s going to spot us as quickly as I spotted you last night.’

  Zuboric looked pained. He didn’t say anything. He stared down into the traffic going along Canal Street. Last night, when Pagan had stepped abruptly out of the cab, Zuboric had taken the taxi one block farther before getting out; then he’d followed Pagan back to his hotel. His Orders were specific. Washington was going to be very unhappy if Frank Pagan was turned loose in the city. The possibility of bloodshed had them worried. What it meant for Zuboric was a terrific pain in the ass. He had to keep a lid on Frank Pagan and make sure the Englishman didn’t do anything drastic to attract attention. Especially violence.

  It was a can of fucking worms, and Zuboric was very unhappy.

  ‘I can’t do it, Frank. I can’t let you out of my sight.’

  ‘Suppose I just slipped away when you weren’t looking?’

  ‘No can do.’

 
Pagan put his gloves back on. ‘Fuck it, Artie. If I choose to go out on my own, what the hell are you going to do to stop me?’

  Zuboric looked at the Englishman. ‘Tell you the truth, Frank, I don’t know what I’d do if you were just to take a hike,’ he said. ‘I know Washington would have my balls for paperweights, though.’

  Pagan went to the edge of the roof and leaned against the wall. There was a movement in the doorway of St. Finbar’s Mission. Joseph X. Tumulty appeared, the collar of his priestly black coat drawn up to his face.

  ‘There he is, Artie,’ Pagan said.

  Zuboric peered into the street.

  ‘Now what?’ Frank Pagan asked. ‘Do I go alone?’

  ‘No way.’

  Joseph Tumulty didn’t feel the cold. He walked in the direction of Lafayette Street. He passed the FBI car, the tan Chrysler with the fair-haired young man inside. The agent had his face in a book, trying to appear inconspicuous. Tumulty barely noted him. He was concentrating on reaching Lafayette. He knew there were others, that the solitary agent in the Chrysler wasn’t alone. When he reached the corner of Lafayette, he looked back. There were several people on the sidewalk, but he saw neither Frank Pagan nor the FBI agent with the Slavic name.

  Tumulty, who had been recruited by Padraic Finn while still at the seminary in Bantry, tried to remain calm. Years ago, before he’d come to the United States, membership in an IRA cell had seemed gloriously romantic to him. The adventurer-priest. The swashbuckler behind the dog collar. He’d been swept away by Finn’s persuasive tongue, carried along on old glories. Finn’s Ireland was going to be a paradise, a land of unity where the old hatreds were demolished forever.

  The idea of being an IRA connection in New York City was, quite simply, a thrill. It was also a part of his heritage, his background. Tumulty men had been associated with one or other of the Free Ireland movements ever since the nineteenth century. But, as it turned out, it had seemed an abstraction to him, like having membership in a club he never attended. Even the annual chore he was instructed to perform had never felt remotely dangerous. Once a year he received a telephone call from an anonymous person instructing him to travel to Augusta, Maine, and check into a motel, which was always a different one each time.