Jig

by Campbell Armstrong

  There, he’d wait in his room until he was contacted by the same individual informing him to proceed to a certain place, sometimes an abandoned gasoline station, sometimes a deserted factory, and once even the football field of a local high school. Tumulty would do as he was told. It was always at night when the encounters took place. The man would appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and give Tumulty a brief-case, which Tumulty would then deliver to another man known as the Courier in one of the small towns along the Maine coast. Cutler, Vinalhaven, and on the last occasion – when there had been three brief-cases – Jonesport. After the Courier took possession of the cases, Tumulty’s job was finished. He never asked questions. He knew what the cases contained, and he understood the Courier transported them to Ireland, but that was the extent of it.

  It was only by accident that he’d discovered the identity of the man who supplied him with the brief-cases.

  He went north on Lafayette, heading in the direction of Little Italy. Outside a small produce store he stopped to examine a basket of apples. He looked back the way he’d come. There was still no sign of either the Englishman or the FBI character. Tumulty paid for an apple and crunched into it as he moved towards Mulberry Street. He passed an Italian social club, then a flashy new trattoria, and the smells of espresso and pastries drifted out to him. Beneath his heavy overcoat he was perspiring and his heart was hammering at his ribs. Somebody had to be following him.

  He crossed Mulberry Street. His throat was very dry and he had difficulty swallowing. There was a quiet sense of panic inside him. It wasn’t so much the idea of being followed that troubled him, rather it was the realisation that he was uncertain of how much he could stand if he was caught. He didn’t know his own limits or the extent of his endurance if it came down to threats like the one he’d heard last night about Attica. The idea of incarceration wasn’t so terrible in itself – after all, many good men had been jailed for their work in the Cause – it was the prospect of being removed from St. Finbar’s Mission that clawed at him. Who would run the place if he was gone? Who would care for those men? Who would be as interested in saving their lives as he was? They were the lowest characters in the whole social hierarchy. Many of them were of the kind that other missions didn’t like to accept – the obviously deranged, the potentially violent, men who were beyond the reaches of polite social agencies. It was a vanity, he knew, to think of himself as indispensable, but when it came to St. Finbar’s he sidestepped his own humility. Why shouldn’t he be proud of himself?

  He tossed the apple away and went inside a delicatessen where he pretended to examine the salami that hung in the window. There was a fine layer of sweat on his forehead. St. Finbar’s Mission would fall apart without him, he was convinced of that. Hadn’t he carved the place out of practically nothing anyhow? Hadn’t he begged and borrowed money to renovate the building and buy bedding and cooking equipment and then gone out into the drab streets looking for clients, sometimes having to drag them to the kitchen when they appeared reluctant? He’d given all his energies to the project. But more than that, more than time and effort and sweat, he’d brought to the place his own form of love and charity – which the established Church hadn’t needed. Shaping St. Finbar’s had seemed to Tumulty a holy thing to do, and a practical expression of Christian love. Christ’s love wasn’t to be found in the chicanery of parish politics or out on golf courses where bishops rode their little fringed carts and discussed stock options. God didn’t thrive in upper-class social settings. If He was anywhere, He was down there on the streets with the poor and needy, and Tumulty was nothing more than an instrument for God’s work. God’s world wasn’t stained glass and velvet cushions and hypocrisy. He existed wherever hearts were breaking and men cried out in terrible need. St. Finbar’s Mission had become Joseph Tumulty’s personal cathedral, the place where he felt spiritually closest to his deity.

  From his coat pocket Tumulty removed a small black notebook Finn had given him the day he left Ireland. It was a cheap little book, perhaps thirty pages in all, and it contained only one name and address, written in Finn’s flamboyant hand. The pages fell open at the centre because Tumulty had studied the name many times, wondering if and when he might have to use it. He’d tried on several occasions to commit it to memory, but somehow he hadn’t trusted himself to do so. He stared at the writing, then shut the book and returned it to his coat pocket.

  Go to this man, Finn had said. Only when you need something badly, something you don’t know how to get on your own.

  Tumulty went back on to the street. He reached the corner of Mulberry and Kenmare, and there he paused. He remembered now the last trip to Maine and the man who’d given him the brief-cases in the snowbound parking lot of an old filling station. The man who never gave his name, who kept his conversation to an absolute minimum and who was always in a hurry to leave. The man with the peculiar unhealthy colour to his face. The man whose photograph Tumulty had accidentally come across in the pages of The New York Times, in an article concerning those mysterious brokers whose speciality was that of arranging mergers between corporations who didn’t want the values of their stocks affected by advance publicity of their plans. A middleman, someone who operated in the fiscal shadows. His name was Nicholas Linney and he operated a company called Urrisbeg International.

  Tumulty understood he wasn’t meant to know Nicholas Linney’s identity. But the fact was he did know it. There was no way of forgetting he knew it. And he was going to give it to Jig because Jig needed a name.

  He turned into Kenmare. Halfway along the block he stopped, turning to check the sidewalk behind him. Even though he saw nobody who looked as if he might be following him, his instincts told him otherwise. People like Frank Pagan were smarter at this kind of thing than he could ever be. People like Pagan knew the tricks of this trade. Tumulty, rubbing a hand over his clammy forehead, looked across the street. He found himself gazing at the window of a small shop that sold religious artifacts. It had to be wrong. He took out his book and checked the address again. How could this possibly be the right place?

  Plaster virgins looked mournfully out at him from behind the dirt-streaked window. Gaudy prints depicted the crucifixion. There were crosses and rosaries draped all over the place. There were Shroud of Turin souvenirs. It was a joyless window display. Tumulty went in the direction of the shop, walked a few paces beyond it to the corner, then stopped. This was the critical part. This was the moment.

  He had a sudden inspiration. He’d call the shop, tell his contact to meet him somewhere. He went inside a phone booth and flipped through the pages of a ragged directory, looking for an entry under Santacroce, which was the name Finn had written in the notebook. He didn’t find any name that corresponded with the address. Damn. Tumulty pressed his face wearily against the cold glass of the phone booth. He looked back the way he’d come. Cars. Pedestrians. How could he possibly tell if anyone was following him?

  He stepped out of the phone booth. He took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and blew his nose. He examined the front of the shop again. It had no name. Inside the window, everything was covered in dust. The place looked as if it hadn’t had customers in years. There were even framed paintings of the old Pope, Pius XII.

  Dear God, Tumulty said to himself. He’d go in. He had to. What did it matter if anyone saw him? He wanted to buy a religious picture for St. Finbar’s Mission. There. It was as simple as that, if anybody asked. He had the perfect excuse for being in a shop like this, didn’t he?

  He pushed the door open. A small bell rang over his head. It was gloomy inside and the air smelled stale, a mixture of sandalwood and dampness. He approached the counter and a curtain was parted at the back of the room. A man appeared.

  ‘Santacroce?’ Tumulty asked. There was a crack in his voice.

  The old guy said to Frank Pagan, ‘This is kinda exciting. This kinda thing don’t happen to me every day.’

  Pagan and Zuboric sat hunched in the narrow backseat
of the old man’s 1973 Opel. It was a shabby car with great chunks tom out of the upholstery. The floor was covered with discarded fast-food wrappers and mouldy french fries that looked like blunt pencils. Bumper stickers were plastered all over the back of the car, attesting to the man’s extensive travels.

  ‘I’d never a done this if it hadn’t been for that FBI badge,’ the man said. His name was Fogarty, and he’d been parked on Canal Street when Pagan had suggested that he might like to help in a ‘confidential government investigation’. Fogarty was scouring missions and soup kitchens all across the East Coast in the quest for some long-lost alcoholic brother. Pagan was sure it was a sad tale, but he didn’t encourage Fogarty to tell it.

  The old man was delighted by the diversion. It was odd, Pagan reflected, how quickly the average citizen could slip into an undercover role. Fogarty narrowed his eyes and watched the street, and when he spoke his voice was hushed. It was the way he’d seen it in the movies. It was something to tell the folks back in Sun-bury, Pennsylvania.

  ‘What’s this guy done anyhow?’ Fogarty asked.

  Zuboric said nothing. Commandeering a car and involving a private citizen hadn’t been his idea. But he had to admit that this battered old jalopy was perfect because nobody would ever expect the FBI to travel with such a marked absence of style.

  ‘Can’t tell me, right?’ Fogarty asked.

  ‘Right,’ Pagan said. Up the block a way Tumulty had disappeared inside a shop.

  ‘Confidential stuff, right?’

  Pagan nodded. The old man chuckled. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said.

  Pagan told him to drive forward slowly and park at the end of the block. The only available space was alongside a fire hydrant. Fogarty took it, even though it was illegal.

  Pagan turned round in his seat. The store into which Tumulty had gone was the kind that sold tawdry religious items.

  Zuboric took out a notebook and scribbled down the address of the store, then tucked the book away. The smell of ancient fried foods was getting to him. Under his feet Big Mac wrappers made crinkling noises.

  ‘He’s taking his time,’ Zuboric said.

  Fogarty twisted around to look at the FBI man. ‘Whyn’t you just bust into that joint and go for broke?’

  Zuboric smiled politely, said nothing.

  ‘I get it,’ Fogarty remarked. ‘You want the whole syndicate, don’t you? It ain’t just one guy. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Pagan said, wondering which particular movie was playing in the old man’s head.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Fogarty said.

  Tumulty stepped out into the street now. He was carrying a large crucifix, unwrapped. He held it clutched against his side. He looked this way and that, then he began moving along the sidewalk.

  ‘An ostentatious display of holiness,’ Pagan said.

  Zuboric nodded. ‘He wants to be seen looking innocent.’

  ‘You think he’s afraid of vampires, Artie?’

  ‘I think he’s afraid period.’

  St. André des Monts, Quebec

  The old DC-4 landed awkwardly on an airstrip located several miles from the village of St. André des Monts, east of St. Hyacinthe in south-east Quebec. The airfield had been used by the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, and then abandoned. The hangars had rotted and become overgrown with weeds, and the landing strip had subsided here and there, cracked by severe winters. The plane bounced a couple of times before it slid to a halt in front of a hangar. A man in a ski mask and goggles came out of a hangar and, leaning his face away from the sharp wind that blew across the field, walked towards the DC-4.

  The door of the plane opened. Including pilot and co-pilot, there were six men on board. The man in the ski mask watched them disembark, scurrying down a rope ladder. They had been airborne for a little more than thirteen hours, and they moved wearily. But before any of them could rest there was cargo to be unloaded.

  The man, who was called Fitzjohn, took his goggles off and rubbed his eyes. It had been his responsibility to find a suitable airfield as close as possible to the Canadian border with New York State. Posing as a businessman interested in opening a flying school, he’d searched for a location for months. This field was the best he’d found. Its present owner lived in Montreal and rarely visited the place, so Fitzjohn had considered it safe for his purpose.

  Fitzjohn greeted Seamus Houlihan, who was the first man off the plane.

  ‘You could’ve laid on better weather, Fitz,’ Houlihan said, covering his face with the collar of his seaman’s jacket.

  ‘You’re lucky it isn’t snowing,’ Fitzjohn replied.

  Houlihan looked across the bleak airfield. In the distance there was ragged barbed wire and a couple of bleached signs that at one time had read NO ADMITTANCE. Bare trees grew beyond the fence. A Ryder rental truck sat alongside a hangar.

  ‘Some place,’ Houlihan said, shivering. ‘The arsehole of the world.’

  ‘It’s everything you asked for.’ Fitzjohn wanted to say something about how long it had taken him to locate this spot, he wanted to mention how many weeks he’d spent away from his home in Camden, New Jersey, but Houlihan was never interested in that kind of detail.

  Houlihan stepped towards the nearest hangar and looked beyond the broken door at the dark interior. Fitzjohn had forgotten how suspicious Houlihan was. Every dark place contained the possibility of menace for Seamus Houlihan. The inside of the young man’s mind had to be like the interconnected tunnels of a gloomy sewer. Fitzjohn was glad that his own role was coming to an end. After the border crossing he’d go back to New Jersey and sink into his own anonymous life and hope he’d never hear from the Free Ulster Volunteers again. He wasn’t cut out for this kind of life. He had an American wife and two small kids and Armagh Jail, in Northern Ireland, where he’d spent two years for possession of hand grenades, was just an unpleasant memory now. Aside from the deprivation of liberty, what he resented most about Armagh was the fact that it was a British jail, and he was a British subject who’d armed himself against possible attacks from the IRA. A man protecting himself, that was all. He had always been loyal to Queen and country. The trouble was, Britain wasn’t winning the struggle against the IRA. British policy in Northern Ireland was chicken-hearted. The army didn’t crush the IRA with enough force.

  John Waddell and the other men stood close to the plane. Fitzjohn smiled at them. He knew Waddell from the old days in Belfast, but the other characters were unfamiliar to him. He thought John Waddell looked like a dying rat, pale and shuddering in the cold air.

  Houlihan made introductions. One of the men, a stocky figure with a scar running from the corner of his ear to his upper lip, was called Rorke. Another was named McGrath, a tense individual with the nervous eyes of a street fighter and a mouth that had very few teeth. They looked, Fitzjohn thought, seasoned in violence. Houlihan then introduced the pilot and the copilot, both of whom appeared anxious to be back inside the plane and out of this forsaken place. They’d delivered their cargo, which was the extent of their commitment, and they wanted to go home. The pilot was called Braxton and the co-pilot Lessingham. They were both English, both former air force pilots. Their last employment had been to airlift Libyan troops into Chad.

  Braxton smiled in a pale way, then turned his face upwards, checking the sky. ‘I’d like to be on my way, Seamus.’ He pronounced the name correctly. Shaymus. Englishmen sometimes couldn’t get their tongues around Irish names.

  ‘And so you will, Braxton,’ Houlihan said. ‘Just as soon as we get this beast unloaded.’

  Houlihan scanned the inside of the hangar again, as if his first examination of the place hadn’t satisfied him. ‘Have you found us a crossing?’

  Fitzjohn said, ‘I have.’

  ‘Good, good,’ Houlihan remarked.

  There was a silence. In the distance wind rattled the rusted barbed wire and shook the ancient signs. Fitzjohn looked at Houlihan. There was an odd expression on the young man’s face.
He appeared to be staring inward, into his own black mind. He licked his lips, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Fitzjohn had a premonitory moment, a sense of something unpleasant about to happen. He glanced at the pilot, Braxton, then looked back at Houlihan, who had one hand inside the deep pocket of his navy-blue jacket.

  Fitzjohn knew.

  He watched Houlihan take a pistol out of the pocket and turn very slowly towards the pilot, who stepped back a pace, his mouth open, a hand extended in front of his face.

  The explosion of the gun roared in Fitzjohn’s ears. He saw Braxton’s face blown apart, the impact of the bullet throwing the body back several feet. Braxton lay face down under the fuselage of the DC-4, his arms pressed beneath his body. From the opening in his skull there was blood and grey fluid creating a puddle under his cheek. The co-pilot, Lessingham, stared at Houlihan in utter disbelief and then turned away, hurrying towards the rope ladder that hung from the door of the plane. He began to scramble upwards and the ladder swayed back and forth with the movements of his body.

  Houlihan shot him in the back of the skull. Lessingham, caught in the strands of rope, twisted round, his face turning towards the hangar. One of his eyes was gone.

  ‘Jesus God,’ Fitzjohn whispered.

  Houlihan smiled. He went over to Braxton’s body and kicked it gently. ‘Mercenary bastards,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust people who do things only for the money.’

  New York City

  In his hotel room Frank Pagan had found a radio station that played nothing but old rock and roll. He was lying on the bed and listening to the late Gene Vincent hiccuping through Be-Bop-a-Lula, when the telephone rang. It was Foxworth calling from London.

  ‘How are things in the land where people say Hi and Have a Nice Day?’ Foxie asked.