I said a little prayer to the god of parking spaces, tucked the note under the windshield, locked the van, and set out for Sacred Heart on foot.
The streets were packed. I’d never seen so many cops in one place in all my life.
They were all in dress uniforms, dark blues, dark greens, blacks, browns, and grays. Most had black armbands fastened to their sleeves, and the black slash covering their badges. Twice I had to move off the sidewalk and into the street for a line of cops walking their K-9 unit dogs. They were big animals, German shepherds and Rottweilers, straining at the ends of their leashes. I looked down at the dog tags dangling from their collars; they were replicas of their handler’s badges. Those too wore the black slash.
At the triangular point where Peachtree and Spring came together in front of the old red-brick church, the streets had been cleared of traffic, but the sidewalks were packed five deep with mourners.
Just as I glanced down at my watch, church bells began to toll. The sound came from up the street, not from Sacred Heart, but from the other big old downtown churches: St. Luke’s Episcopal, Peachtree United Methodist, North Avenue Presbyterian, and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. So many chimes, each in a different key.
I struggled to work my way toward the church doors, but as I got closer, I saw it was useless. A uniformed honor guard of Atlanta police officers stood at attention on both sides of the massive oak doors, forming a solid wall of blue reaching all the way to the curb in front of Sacred Heart.
As soon as the bells finished tolling, the motorcade began arriving.
The motorcycle units came first. Row after row of gleaming police Harley-Davidsons, their big engines throbbing as they slowly rolled down Peachtree. I quit counting after the first fifty hawgs rumbled by. Behind them I could see waves of uniformed patrolmen marching on foot. After the noise of the Harleys, the street was eerily quiet except for the steady measured beat of three hundred pairs of black mirror-polished Florsheims meeting the pavement in unison.
I heard the bagpipes and drummers before they marched into view, and began inching my way toward the curb to see for myself.
Sure enough, it was the Shamrocks. The bagpipers, got up in tartan kilts, short green velvet jackets, and green tams, marched six abreast down the street, playing a ragged but no less moving version of “Amazing Grace.” I craned my neck to see if I recognized any of the pipers, accidentally jostling a woman in front of me. She shot me a look of annoyance. “Sorry,” I muttered, inching forward.
I was at the curb as the pipers passed. Directly behind the bagpipers came three dozen men and women, all dressed in the same dark-green blazers and black slacks they’d sported the night before at Manuel’s Tavern.
John Boylan marched past, and I spotted Lisa Dugan in the group too.
There was a break in the procession as the Shamrocks lined themselves along the curb, the bagpipers switching to a song I didn’t recognize at first.
When the first gleaming black limousine pulled in front of the church, and one of the Shamrocks stepped forward to open the door and help Alexis Ragan out of the backseat, I recognized the song.
“Danny Boy.” Normally, the song makes me choke up. This time, I wanted to hit somebody.
Alexis Ragan faltered for a moment, getting out of the car. John Boylan stepped forward, leaned down, and helped her out, offering an arm to steady her. Such a gallant gesture. Boylan was big on the gesture.
They stepped away from the car, which rolled forward, and the hearse moved up in line.
Two members of the APD honor guard marched to the rear of the hearse, and six of the Shamrocks, Kehoe among them, stepped up to shoulder the flag-draped casket onto their shoulders, before it was handed off to the honor guard.
Alexis Ragan glanced backward once at the casket, and stepped onto the curb, where she was joined by the mayor on one side and the chief on the other. Each took an arm, and the pregnant widow walked unsteadily up the steps to the church, teetering a bit on her black high heels.
Just then we heard a commotion overhead. Every face in the crowd turned skyward as six dark-blue helicopters came thudding past the spires of the church. When they were directly overhead, the helicopters maneuvered into a V-formation and hovered there, until the helicopter at the base of the V peeled off and banked away from the others, sharply upward, toward the heavens.
“Missing man formation,” whispered an elderly man beside me as he held his ball cap over his chest.
He meant Sean Ragan, of course, but I was thinking of Bucky Deavers, as I watched the helicopter skim past the low gray cloud cover above Midtown Atlanta. There had been a window near his bed on the seventh floor of Grady Hospital, and I wondered if any light ever came in through that window. I wondered what sensations he might still possess. Was it possible he might see the blue state patrol helicopters, hear the chop of the rotating blades over the roar of the traffic on the Interstate rippling along beside the hospital?
A flash of motion at the street caught my eye. The Shamrocks had lined themselves up and were marching single file into the church, right behind the chief and the mayor and Alexis Ragan. But now a short, stout figure in a blue flowered dress darted into the middle of the line. She screamed something I couldn’t quite make out, her voice shrill and obscene in the quiet solemnity of the moment. And then a shot rang out. John Boylan did a quick half-turn, his face registering not fear, but only surprise, before he crumpled to the pavement.
Marie Hanlon dropped the pistol, and the crowd surged forward and seemed to swallow her whole.
44
It took fifteen minutes for the cops to clear the streets enough to get an ambulance to Sacred Heart. I watched while they loaded Boylan into the ambulance, then started weaving my way back toward the van, dodging in and out among the confusion of traffic and rubber-neckers. By the time I got back to the Marriott I was panting for breath and my black turtleneck sweater was soaked with sweat.
After the funeral, I’d intended to take the liquor store videotape to Lloyd Mackey, lay it all out for him, a neat little package. Arrest these people. So much for plans. I switched on the radio. WGST, the all-news station, was full of the story. “Suburban Housewife Goes on Shooting Spree at Downtown Church” was the top-of-the-hour headline. Two o’clock. It had taken me that long to get back to the car. Traffic was impossible. While I weaved and backtracked through a maze created by closed-off and one-way streets, I tried to come up with a plan.
It took twenty minutes just to get to the intersection of Peachtree and Ponce de Leon. But by then, I had the germ of an idea.
The big F-10 pickup truck was parked in back of the Budget Bottle Shop, in the same spot Deecie Styles had described seeing it on the night of St. Patrick’s Day. So he was there. And the alley door was propped open with a plastic milk crate.
Talk about the luck of the Irish. Hah. I thought of Bucky Deavers. And Sean Ragan. And Corky Hanlon. And John Boylan. All of them dead or near dead. The radio news report said Boylan had been shot in the back and was in critical condition when he arrived at Grady.
Near death. The thought somehow cheered me.
I parked the van at the back of the lot, behind a Dumpster, out of sight from the back door. I tucked the videotape in the pocket of my peacoat, and my fingertips brushed against the 9-mm. Next time, I promised myself, I would be the first to draw. Next time. I jogged over to the open door, closed my eyes for a moment, and opened them again to adjust to the darkness.
The forklift was in the same corner it had been in the last time. The same stacks of boxes and cartons were shoved against the walls of the stockroom. As I edged my way inside, I heard the low tone of a man’s voice. A wedge of light spilled out from the top of the office wall partition.
I crept closer, squatted down behind a stack of cardboard cartons. Through the half-open office door I could see a pair of legs, propped up on the edge of the battleship-gray desk. Skinny legs, clad in dusty black trousers. A gap between trouser h
em and sagging white sock tops showed a pair of pale hairy ankles.
I willed myself to relax, to breathe. Slow down. Listen.
Viatkos was angry.
“No, goddammit,” he said. “I will not sit tight. There’s an FBI agent sitting in a car parked in front of my house. Another guy’s sitting in front of the store. The guy had the nerve to come in here and buy a Coke and a bag of nacho chips, not half an hour ago. He’s still out there, been out there three days now. And Boylan—Christ! This is terrible. You people call yourselves cops?”
He listened, but wasn’t appeased. “Christ! A thousand cops lined up downtown and some little old lady in tennis shoes steps up and puts a bullet in Johnny. Only in Atlanta!
“What?” He seemed surprised. Awestruck really.
“For real? No shit? It was Corky Hanlon’s old lady who shot Johnny? Honest to God? They’re sure it was her?”
He listened again. He sighed. “Jesus. What a colossal fuckup. I should have known better. Dealing with a bunch of fuckin’ bog-trotters. These people could screw up a one-car funeral.”
I heard him shuffle some papers on his desk, heard the creak of the office chair when he leaned far back in it.
“No,” Viatkos was saying. “Don’t come here. I told you, the FBI’s baby-sitting me. Not the house, either. Let me think. Yeah, okay. Sounds like a plan. Yeah. Half an hour.”
Viatkos hung up the phone. The chair creaked again and I heard the sound of metal file drawers opening and closing. More papers being shuffled.
He stepped out of the office abruptly and I dived back behind the cartons to keep from being spotted. He opened the door leading to the store and leaned in.
“Louie?” he called. “I’m outta here for a while. Got some errands to do. The bank, a few more stops. The Budweiser truck should be here before four. You can sign for it. I’ll be back later, you can go home, I’ll finish up. You can handle things by yourself. Right? Good.”
Viatkos closed the door again and walked briskly over to the office. No time to waste. I made a dash for the alley door, praying Viatkos would take his time gathering his things, enough time for me to get in the van and allow a discreet distance between us. So I could follow him. Follow where? And who was he meeting? Another of the Shamrocks? Lisa Dugan maybe? I hadn’t forgotten what C. W. said about the funny business with the call-out sheets. Was it somebody who’d been a partner in the ATM holdup ring? Antjuan Wayne? Was that possible?
I burst through the back door and stumbled on the back step. Before I could catch myself, an arm reached out and grabbed me around the waist, squeezing me so tight in the middle that it knocked the breath out of me. Then I was spun around, and a cool, callused hand closed over my mouth. The scream died. I looked right into Lisa Dugan’s eyes.
“Shut up,” she hissed, clamping the hand down tighter across my mouth. “He’ll hear you.”
She half pulled, half dragged me in the direction of the Dumpster.
“What?” I tried.
“Shut up,” she repeated. “You’ll spoil everything.”
When she was satisfied we were far enough away from the back door, she let me go.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Same thing as you,” she whispered. “I saw you earlier, standing outside the funeral at Sacred Heart. I saw the way you looked at Boylan. Before that woman shot him. God.” She gave a little shiver. She was still wearing the green blazer.
“I tried to follow you. I’ve been in Atlanta over a year, but I still don’t know those downtown streets very well. You lost me over on Poplar Street. It was pure luck, finding you here.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. Too much had happened.
“You still think I’m mixed up in this mess, don’t you?” she asked.
“What am I supposed to think? You got all offended when I tried to tell you what was going on. That one of the Shamrocks shot Bucky. Face it, you’re one of them.”
“I’m not a killer. Not a thief,” Lisa protested. “You say you know Bucky. Do you think he’d be involved with somebody like that?”
“I’m not sure what to think anymore,” I said. “I thought I knew Corky Hanlon, too. He cut a girl’s throat yesterday, then nearly blew me away last night. His wife was my Confirmation sponsor, did you know that?”
But Lisa wasn’t paying attention now. She poked her head out from around the Dumpster to check on Viatkos.
“What was your plan?” she asked. “Were you just going to go in there and confront the guy? Bully a confession out of him?”
“No.” I turned and motioned toward the van. “Look,” I said. “He’s coming out of there in a minute. I’ve gotta go.”
“I heard,” Lisa said. “I was right behind you in the storeroom.”
“I’m going to follow him. See where he’s going.” I hesitated, looked into her calm hazel eyes. “I found the tape.”
She looked blank.
“The videotape. From the store. The night Bucky was shot. It’s why Deecie Styles was killed. Ragan shot Bucky. It’s on the tape. He was wearing a mask, but Bucky managed to pull it partway off. And Boylan was right there, too. He was in on the whole thing.”
“You saw this on the tape?”
I nodded.
“Where is it?”
“The original is hidden. I brought along a dupe. I was going to use it as a bargaining chip. With Viatkos. Maybe try to bluff him into thinking he was on the tape, too. He was there, I know that much. Deecie Styles saw his truck that night.”
I walked over to the van, unlocked the door. I got in. Lisa Dugan came around and opened the passenger-side door.
“Viatkos is going to meet somebody. His partner, I think.”
She got in. “I still don’t understand any of this. Why did they shoot Bucky?”
“He must have blundered into some kind of meeting between Viatkos and Boylan and Ragan. My guess is that it had something to do with a botched robbery down in Hapeville, the night before. I think Corky Hanlon and Sean Ragan pulled the robbery. But something went wrong. The victim tried to pull a gun and one of them knocked him out. They took the gun. A little twenty-two. The same one Ragan used to shoot Bucky the next night.”
“You’re saying Sean Ragan wasn’t killed in a burglary?”
“Not hardly. Pete Viatkos is running this game. I think he ordered Ragan’s murder. Ragan was a relative rookie. He’d screwed up. Twice. He was a thief, yeah, but he really wasn’t cut out to be a killer. Maybe he was having second thoughts about his new career. Whatever. Viatkos had him killed.”
“By who?”
“Whom,” I corrected her automatically. God, I hate it when I sound like my mother. “Corky Hanlon maybe. Or maybe it was Antjuan Wayne. Wayne definitely knows what happened. I hear he’s waiting for the feds to offer him a deal. Then he’ll talk. Tell all he knows. But in the meantime, what worries me is, Pete Viatkos is still walking around. A free man.”
I leaned over and reached down into my purse on the floor of the van. Glanced over at Lisa’s pocketbook, which was beside mine. One of those satchel-type tote bags.
I got my cell phone and punched a single number. I’d programmed it for speed dial long ago, for when I needed to reach the homicide task force and Bucky in a hurry.
“Who are you calling?” Lisa asked, glancing toward the back door again.
“Major Mackey. When Viatkos leaves here, he’s going to meet his partner. It sounded like he was gathering papers. Maybe even some of the cash from the robberies. If Mackey’s people can get a jump on Viatkos, they’ll have the proof they need to implicate him as the ringleader. And his partner, too.”
“Who’s that?” Lisa asked, glancing again at the door, and down at her wristwatch. “Antjuan Wayne?”
I switched the phone to my left hand. It was ringing. With my right hand I reached down in my coat pocket and brought out the Smith & Wesson. She wasn’t even looking my way. I put the barrel under the tip of her chin. Now she was paying
attention.
“His partner? Why it’s you, Lisa, dear,” I said, putting the phone on my lap for a moment. I grabbed her pocketbook and flung it out the open window. “Do I need to pat you down? That blazer’s a pretty tight fit, so I’m hoping there’s no hidden pocket where you might hide any accessories. Like a firearm.”
I heard a voice on the phone. “Hello? Who the hell is it?”
I picked up the phone. “Major Mackey? It’s Callahan Garrity. Could you hold for a minute?”
I turned back to Lisa, kept the gun on her chin. “That was you Viatkos was talking to on the phone in there. You followed me here, all right. Then you called him on that cell phone I saw in your purse. You told him I’d gone inside after him, didn’t you? What was the plan? To lure me to some dark alley and deal with me the same way you dealt with Ragan? Make it look like a robbery? Or maybe a car-jacking?”
“Garrity, dammit, I’m hanging up.”
“Please don’t do that,” I said, keeping the S&W pointed at Lisa Dugan. “I’m parked in the alley behind the Budget Bottle Shop. I’ve got Captain Lisa Dugan with me. If you send someone down here very quickly and very quietly, you may just apprehend Pete Viatkos with a good deal of cash, and maybe even some papers incriminating him in this ATM robbery scheme. Not to mention the murders of Sean Ragan and Deecie Styles.”
“What has Lisa Dugan got to do with any of this?” Mackey asked. “Are you out of your mind? Put her on the phone.”
“He’s coming out,” Lisa said suddenly, pointing toward the back door to the liquor store.
Sure enough, Pete Viatkos emerged from the store carrying a cheap-looking vinyl briefcase. He slung the case into the truck and got in.
“What’s the deal, Lisa?” I asked.
Irish Eyes Page 28
