Hours of Gladness

by Thomas Fleming

  “Possibly a good deal more dangerous,” O’Gorman said. “Chief O’Toole tells me if the Mafia decides we had anything to do with the disappearance of Joey Zaccaro and his million and a half dollars, they may be in a very ugly mood.”

  He could see that Melody did not believe any mafioso in America would have the nerve to touch her. How wonderful it must be to have such a sense of invulnerability. It undoubtedly came from associating with power—although anyone who worked for Senator Ted Kennedy ought to remember every day that power can attract its own brand of deadly lightning. But Melody had probably been about ten years old when Castro’s marksman blew off Jack Kennedy’s head. It was a montage on television to her. The reality was Senator Ted’s bulky potency—in more ways than one, no doubt.

  Melody ordered another vodka martini. “I thought this whole thing could be accomplished in forty-eight hours,” she said. “I have things to do in Washington that can’t wait.”

  “We all have things that can’t wait.”

  “I was looking forward to meeting you,” Melody said, demolishing the second martini at the same pace as the first. “You were going to be my compensation for enduring forty-eight hours with my in-laws.”

  “Why do they distress you so?”

  “They’re so mindlessly, relentlessly stupid.”

  “Perhaps you’re too hard on them. They have willing hearts—some of them at least.”

  “I can’t believe it. Richard O’Gorman, the sentimental revolutionary. But I guess that’s how you got your reputation.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know my fame had traveled to America.”

  “I got your profile from Interpol. They have reams of data on you. ‘Irresistible to Women’ was the heading on one chapter. Another one suggested you could become prime minister of a united Ireland, if the IRA won.”

  “I’m afraid such rumors are more than a little dated—and could get me killed if some of my Irish friends read them.”

  “I must confess I don’t think much of the IRA as a terrorist organization. You seem so mindless. England get out of Ireland. But then what? You never say. You have no program.”

  “If we revealed our program, the Prods in the north and the Catholic capitalists in the south would fight to the death. We intend to annihilate both of them.”

  “That’s what I’ve been hoping to hear.”

  “I trust it won’t go beyond this booth.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “What would the senator say, if he heard it?”

  “He’d be horrified. He’s the sort of brainless liberal that Lenin mocked—and then exterminated.”

  “What about your husband?”

  “I thought I’d convinced him that there was no compromise possible with capitalism. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a very personal quarrel.”

  O’Gorman sensed she was about to tell him something he did not want to hear—something that would obligate him to break those unstated promises to Barbara Monahan O’Day. Fortunately, Wilbur Gargan arrived with menus and recommended the crab cakes as the dish of the day. By the time they acceded to his spherical authority, the moment of intimacy had passed and O’Gorman got down to the business he wanted to discuss with her.

  “I’ve picked up some rather disagreeable information. There’s a British SIS agent operating here in Paradise Beach. I suspect he killed Zaccaro and stole the money.”

  He told her about Jackie Chasen’s glimpse of the Chinese Type 64 silenced. It did not register. He could see Melody thought this was another romantic O’Gorman notion. Like most Americans, she had no idea of the savagery of the war the British and the IRA were waging in Northern Ireland.

  “Couldn’t someone else have the same gun? Mick O’Day? Bill O’Toole? Some mafioso enemy of Zaccaro?”

  “Extremely unlikely. We’ve been trying to obtain one or two of them for five years. They serve only one purpose, assassination. The Chinese are not mass-producing them.”

  She remained stubbornly skeptical. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “I was hoping you could mention the probable presence of this fellow to Senator Ted. As coming from me, through IRA intelligence. A little pressure from him might persuade your State Department to protest to the Brits. If the Brits are as obnoxious or deceitful as I expect they’ll be, the Senator might become irate enough to urge the FBI to flush him out.”

  “That makes no sense whatsoever,” Melody said briskly, her Washington persona suddenly in place. “The last thing we want is a squad of straight-arrow G-men messing around here while we’re trying to get the guns ashore.”

  “I don’t mean literally flush him. I mean the FBI might leak to the senator and then to you his cover. Billy and I would take care of him pronto.”

  “I thought you understood the senator has to distance himself from this business.”

  “Exactly. But for certain people, I would think he might feel obliged to reduce the distance somewhat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have a dossier on you too. We have our own version of Interpol. Hamas, the IRA, the Red Brigades, are constantly exchanging information. You were on Chappaquiddick Island when the unfortunate Mary Jo Kopechne took a nap in the backseat of the wrong car. I would imagine you know things that Senator Ted would do almost anything to keep secret.”

  Melody’s blond good looks seemed to darken, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. “I suppose he’d do a great deal for me. But I’ve never asked him for single favor.”

  “Isn’t this whole thing a favor? The warehouses in Boston? The names of the right customs inspectors?”

  “I got them, using his name. If anything blew, he would have been able to say he knew nothing about it.”

  “Isn’t this more of the same? You can call the State Department in his name. They must be used to you throwing his weight all over Washington.”

  “Maybe I could, maybe I couldn’t. I’m not sure I see the necessity.”

  “It’s very simple. If we don’t get the money back, there’ll be no weapons. The Cubans are not altruists. They’re donating the cocaine because they have it coming out their noses. But weapons are another matter entirely. They’re also desperate for dollars. Their revolution is falling on its ass, thanks to Castro’s arrogance. They have a bigger, fatter nomenklatura than Moscow. That’s one thing we’ll never tolerate in a socialist Ireland.”

  There was not a flicker of agreement in Ms. Faithorne’s cold blue eyes. It occurred to O’Gorman that Melody considered Ireland not worth even a dollop of censoriousness, even if they nomenklatured every member of the IRA and their uncles and their cousins and their aunts. In her global revolutionary view, Ireland was more a nuisance than a vanguard nation. Was that opinion rooted in her obviously low tolerance for her relatives—and other Irish of the American branch? Or did the roots go deeper, to the first encounters of the Boston aristocracy with the horde of starving Irish who poured into their pristine metropolis in 1847?

  “I don’t see much point to this conversation. It’s so one-sided,” Melody said. “In Washington, when we ask a favor, we’re usually in a position to do one in return.”

  “If ever an opportunity arose …”

  “My husband and I have just had a very unpleasant quarrel. He’s threatened me with deadly force.”

  “Why in the world?”

  “Because he’s apparently regressing to the same level of stupidity as the rest of the family.”

  The crab cakes arrived, along with a bottle of white wine. The cakes were surprisingly good and so was the wine, an Australian chardonnay. Melody ate them without comment and drank quite a lot of the wine. O’Gorman barely had a chance to refill his glass.

  “I did something five years ago that seems to bother him. I presume it won’t bother you.”

  She told O’Gorman how and why she had informed the Internal Revenue Service about the bearer bonds—and her husband’s skewed reactio
n to this act of unquestionable justice against an Irish nomenklatura that had ruled and looted the state of New Jersey for decades.

  “Now Leo’s threatening to tell Bill O’Toole. I have to confess I’m more than a little frightened. Can you help me?”

  O’Gorman ordered another bottle of wine. Maybe it was time for them both to get drunk. He saw what she wanted him to do. Arrange for an IRA hit man like Kilroy—but somewhat more intelligent—to remove Leo McBride from the scene. Was it her way of validating her revolutionary credentials with him? If so, it was a total failure. Her story of the betrayal of the bearer bonds was causing a tidal wave of revulsion to thunder through O’Gorman’s Irish soul. It was such an English thing to do—the Anglo-Americans were at least as morally smug and uncaring as the English English when it came to the Irish. The micks were a lesser breed beyond the law, to be dealt with as carelessly—or ruthlessly—as the African Hottentots or the Australian aborigines or the American Iroquois.

  With a supreme effort, O’Gorman concealed his revulsion behind the mask of the gunman. Her revelation had altered the balance of power between them. He was no longer the supplicant. He was the favor grantor extraordinary, with a godlike ability to solve her marital unhappiness and her fears of sudden death with a nod of his head.

  “I think what you’re suggesting could be arranged,” he said. “Provided our gratitude for your extraordinary efforts on our behalf runs deep enough. I can promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it does. Assuming that your efforts reach that extraordinary level.”

  “I’ll call the State Department this afternoon.”

  The second bottle was almost gone. He let his hand wander across the table to rest on Melody’s slim fingers. “May I also say my heart goes out to you. It wasn’t easy for you to do what you’ve done—about the bonds. It testifies to a remarkable ability to face history’s demand for justice, no matter what it costs you personally.”

  Melody’s eyes filled with drunken tears. She was snookered. “The moment I saw you, I said to myself, ‘There’s a man I want to hold in my arms.’”

  “You shall, my dear, sooner rather than later.”

  Not for the first time, O’Gorman amazed himself by his ability to assume the role that a woman wanted him to play. It was especially remarkable here, dealing with a woman whose exquisite Wedgwood face he wanted to smash to smithereens. Perhaps he could arrange for others to do the smashing. Mick O’Day or Bill O’Toole or Leo McBride. But first he had to play the romantic gunman until he got what he wanted from this Anglo-American slut.

  THE REVENGER’S TRAGEDY

  At midnight in his office at police headquarters, Chief William O’Toole stared at the whirring tape recorder on the wall, his brain a chunk of polar ice. He pressed a button and the tape reversed. He pressed another button and he heard the blustering voice of his nephew Leo McBride.

  If you ball him, I’ll tell Bill O’Toole about the bearer bonds. You won’t get out of this town alive.

  A pause and then the silky, sullen voice of Melody Faithorne.

  I believe we’ve shared that reward money more or less equally.

  O’Toole stared at the $1,000 bill on his desk. He had been tapping every phone and house in Paradise Beach that might possibly have a connection with this remnant of Joey Zaccaro’s million and a half dollars. He had found nothing even faintly resembling a lead. Instead, he had listened to Trai Nguyen Phac sob while her husband belted her around their trailer and their son, Suong, cried, “Stop! Father! Please!” He had listened to Mick’s heavy breathing and Jackie Chasen’s gurgles of delight. He had listened to Desmond moaning to his wife about his slack member and his fear of the Mafia. He had listened to Billy Kilroy berate Richard O’Gorman and tell him who was running their sorry show. He had listened to Barbara Monahan O’Day telling the two-faced Irishman that she loved him.

  How did a small-town police chief lay his hands on such sophisticated surveillance equipment? When Atlantic City surrendered to the mafiosi and the gamblers—largely one and the same—O’Toole had persuaded his nephew Leo McBride to persuade Congressman Mullen, the Appropriations Committee chairman, to come through with several million dollars for crime-fighting equipment to make sure the surrounding towns were not contaminated by this inundation of moral sleaze into South Jersey. Leo made sure that Bill O’Toole got his hands on a major slice of this cash. In Jersey City, tapping phones and bugging houses had been a way of life for the organization. O’Toole made it the leading edge of his crime counteroffensive.

  There was not a motel room in Paradise Beach that did not have a connection to headquarters—or to a police car parked outside the place. Wilbur Gargan’s Golden Shamrock had a half dozen booths with microphones in the table lamps that captured every word on tape recorders in the basement.

  O’Toole rewound the tape and listened to Leo and his wife again. He put on a tape from the Golden Shamrock and heard Melody and O’Gorman discussing the existence of an English SIS agent in Paradise Beach. But that startling fact remained almost irrelevant in Bill O’Toole’s rapidly thawing and soon seething brain. What mattered was Melody’s confirmation that she had betrayed the bearer bonds. Not even her suggestion that O’Gorman eliminate her whining husband to guarantee the secret stirred outrage comparable to the thunderous fury that consumed Bill O’Toole’s soul when he realized how and why this righteous bitch had destroyed his inheritance.

  Only one idea permeated his flesh: revenge. With shaking hands, O’Toole began loading his police .38. He would kill them both, now. He would kill Melody first, while whimpering Leo, the ultimate draft dodger, watched. Then he would blow him away. He did not care what they did to him afterward. The death penalty would be a pleasure. Nothing could alter the stupendous satisfaction of seeing them dead.

  The telephone rang. O’Toole heard Tom Brannigan, the night sergeant, answer it. “You called his house, his wife said he was here? Just a minute.”

  Brannigan’s squat physique filled the doorway. “A guy named Nick Perella.”

  The consigliere of the Giordano family. O’Toole had met him several times in Atlantic City. A lean, sallow face, hooded, angry eyes, a habit of clenching his back teeth as he talked, so his words seemed squeezed out of his mouth like toothpaste.

  “Bill, how’s it going?”

  “Not bad, Nick. How’s it going with you?”

  “Okay, okay. Haven’t seen you at the tables lately.”

  “I’ll get there one of these days.”

  “I got a problem, Bill. He’s named Joey Z.”

  “Oh?”

  “I keep thinkin’ you could help me solve it. Tommy Giordano ain’t heard from him in almost a week. Nothin’ from his muscleman, Angie Scorsese, neither. They both walked off the planet, you know? There’s big money missin’ too.”

  “How much?”

  “A million and a half.”

  “What am I supposed to know about this?”

  “Joey said he had a deal with you and some Cubans to bring in a couple of hundred kilos of cocaine.”

  “So?”

  “Did it come off? Have you seen him? The last anyone heard of him, he and Scorsese were on their way to your place.”

  “I saw him. We clinched the deal. But the Cubans haven’t shown up yet. I don’t know where Joey went with the cash.”

  “Bill, I hope you ain’t lyin’. He’s Tommy’s only nephew. He ain’t got no kids of his own.”

  “Neither have I. You learn to live with that. You learn to live with a lot of things, Nick.”

  “Bill, I’m startin’ to sort of dislike your attitude, you know what I mean? You don’t seem to give a shit what happened to Joey and the money. Where’s the deal if the Cubans finally show up? You ain’t stringin’ together a good story, Bill. If you double-crossed Joey, I hate to think of what Tommy would do to you—and everyone else in your fuckin’ family.”

  “I can tell you one thing on my mother’s grave, Nick. I didn’t doubl
e-cross Joey.”

  “But you know someone who did?”

  “I don’t know who did. I don’t know what happened to the money either.”

  “I think maybe you better come see Tommy for a talk. Face-to-face stuff, you know. He’s not gonna believe anything else.”

  “I’m pretty busy, Nick.”

  “Bill, this is good advice. Very good advice. You know what I mean?”

  “I’ll think about it, Nick.”

  “Think real hard, Bill. And fast. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Bill O’Toole sat staring at the loaded .38. He still wanted to drive to Desmond McBride’s house and kill Melody Faithorne and her whining weasel husband. But other ideas were churning through his head now. Other ideas about Tommy Giordano and the possibility of doing the deal with the Cubans and laying his hands on his $200,000 slice of the action. A million and a half bucks could easily be replaced by Tommy Giordano. He would drive a hard bargain, but O’Toole was not worried about that. All he wanted was his slice, his getaway wedge of happiness.

  What about revenge? That could wait a day or two or three. Why commit suicide for it—when it might be possible to enjoy it and go cruising off into the sunset. Laughing all the way to some South American bank.

  An even better idea occurred to Chief O’Toole. Why not go for more than his slice? All they had to do was mess up the heads of Kilroy and O’Gorman a little more. They were already threatening each other with gunfire. If they lost control and did something crazy, O’Toole could sell the cocaine to Giordano for a million and a half and let the IRA suck wind for the weapons.

  O’Toole picked up the telephone and told Tom Brannigan to get Mick O’Day out of his squad car. In ten minutes Mick was in his office. O’Toole handed him the $1,000 bill. “I checked this out seven ways from Sunday. I’ve decided Tyrone Power or his little pal Kilroy stuck it in your glove compartment. I think they’ve got the goddamn money somewhere.”

  Mick shook his head. “I don’t get their angle.”

  “Here it is. They figure we’ll get another pile of stash from Tommy Giordano and go through with the deal. They walk away with a nice bonus.”