She was.
"You killed her."
Julian laughed out loud. "Put two through her sweet little face, my friend. Her head came apart like a fucking melon hitting the sidewalk. Wasn't so pretty anymore."
I wanted to say he was lying, but of course it wasn't possible. How could he have known she even existed if he didn't catch her spying? And now she was dead, killed working for Richard, just like she imagined. I couldn't tell which man to hate more; the one who killed her, or the one who sent her to be killed.
Or me, the guy who set the whole process in motion.
I must have had a particular glint to my eye, because Julian lost his smile and leaned back a few inches.
"Don't get me wrong, pal. She might’ve been a sweet piece, but I didn't take a bite. That's not how I do business. I worked her over and put her in the river, but I keep that shit professional."
I couldn't believe this. The guy was about to shoot me in the face, and he was concerned I thought he was a rapist?
"Yeah," I said through gritted teeth, "you're a real humanitarian."
Julian got angry at this, and jabbed the muzzle of his pistol into my forehead. "Hey pal, you step into the ring, you might get yourself knocked out, got it? The bitch might not have been a shooter, but she was in the game and she got dead. And now you're going to get dead too. A few more years and you might have been real talent, but you're just a lucky kid who skipped his dirt nap for a couple of months."
Looking at Julian now, in his Savile Row suit and hundred dollar haircut, was this what I would have become after a few years of stalking and killing? Was the only difference between the two of us a combination of experience and callousness?
I figured I'd never know, because Julian took another step back and leveled his pistol at me.
"Eyes open or shut, better pick now."
I sat back on my heels, hands on my knees. I kept my eyes open. I thought for a moment about the knife clipped in my pocket, but the idea was laughable. If I was going to die, better he made it quick and clean right now, rather than while I was flailing around with a pocket knife like an idiot.
At that moment, there was a sound off to the right, a click and a creak. It took a moment before I realized it was the interior garage entrance opening. My last thought was the regret that some innocent bystander was about to die because they stumbled across my execution.
"Hey, shitbird!" I heard a man shout.
Julian turned to his left, eyes wide, his pistol coming off me and swinging around for the shot. There were twin thunderclaps, two puffs of pearl-gray silk as Julian's tie came apart, two crimson bursts of flesh and tatters of black cloth from his back as a pair of slugs blew through his body. A heartbeat later, another thunderclap punctuated the arrival of a neat round hole in Julian's forehead, and an eruption of pink-white bone and bloody gray brain matter from the back of his skull. Julian's body bounced off the bumper of the Volvo and sprawled onto the concrete, his pistol skidding across the garage floor.
I sat there stunned, still on my knees. The smoking muzzle of a Colt .45 automatic appeared around the back of the Range Rover. Then there was a hand, an arm, a head.
I looked up.
"That was very kind of you," I said.
Jamie nudged Julian's corpse with his toe, then holstered his pistol.
"William, I think you owe me a beer."
TWENTY
"Richard called me about six o'clock this morning."
We were sitting in a downtown Irish pub. Since this was Boston, you sometimes have to say "Irish", finger-quotes included, because the fastest way to improve your bar business in this city was to put "O'" in front of your name and slap it over the front door. "Authentic" was having a waitress with a Galway lilt and an Irish beer other than Guinness on tap. But, this place was pretty legit. It was an old, comfortable corner pub along Broad Street. The staff were entirely Irish-born and bred, the menu included black and white pudding and Irish rashers for breakfast, and a tall, cold Smithwick's ale sat in front of each of us. Live music provided by a singer and a fiddler over in the corner drowned out our conversation, and we were seated in a dark booth near the back.
Jamie told me he had made his way into the apartment building by pretending to be a courier, holding the concierge at gunpoint and locking him in a utility closet, then barging into the garage in time to execute Julian.
"It's amazing how close someone will let you get with just a messenger bag, a clipboard, and one pant-leg rolled half way up your calf," Jamie had said.
He’d been smart enough to wear a cap and sunglasses, and Jamie’s bag had contained a change of clothes, but we wanted to avoid detection and keep off the streets, so we hunkered down here and hoped the one television in the corner stayed on the baseball game and not the evening news.
Now, though, we were talking about what had happened to put him square in the middle of something he’d worked so hard to avoid.
"Richard had put feelers into the Boston area police departments, into the local FBI bureau office, State Troopers, MBTA police, any law enforcement agency in the area, hoping to catch wind of any leads they might have on hunting you down once you went operational, or any moves the Paggianos might make once things heated up."
"Makes sense," I said. "Offer some cash for information, possibly call in a few government chits to add a little weight to his request."
"Exactly. Well, Sophia missed her scheduled daily phone brief, and after a few hours passed, Richard put the word out that he'd pay for information on a female matching her description. Around five in the morning, her body was pulled from the harbor out by the city's water treatment plant."
"Was it bad? Did Julian...torture her?" I dreaded asking, but felt I had to say the words.
Jamie nodded. "She was beat up pretty bad. Her fingernails were torn away, and several of her fingers was severed. I guess from what Julian told you, she didn't give him anything. I suppose he figured once you start cutting off parts and they don't break, you've taken it as far as it can go. So he shot her twice and dumped her."
I sat silent for a long moment. Sophia and I had only seen each other in person that one night. Any requests I made, I sent through Richard using the disposable email accounts. That she had withstood a beating, torture, and was defiant to the bitter end in keeping me safe was, at the very least, extremely humbling. I couldn't rightly say whether I had what it took to do the same if our roles had been reversed.
Jamie could read the expression on my face. He picked up his pint and raised it between us. I followed his example.
"To the fallen," he said.
We clinked glasses and each of us took a deep swig. The dark Irish ale was just what I needed. I didn't want to admit it, but my nerves were shot. I had been, at most, a few seconds away from certain death at the hands of a man who had clearly been my better at every aspect of the game.
"He was good," I finally said.
"He was an idiot," Jamie replied.
"Every time I had a plan, he was ahead of me. He had seen me the moment he drove up to the garage. He had the drop on me as soon as I came inside. While I tried to maneuver and find the perfect angle, he just came at me and threw my plan in the toilet. When we struggled, he knocked me around like a punching bag. I didn't have a chance."
"If he had just shot you and walked away, instead of engaging in an ego-stroking session, he wouldn't have been caught off-guard. He might have even been able to shoot it out with me. I doubt he would have won - I've put far better men in the ground than that shithead - but there was always a chance. Instead he got cocky and now he's dog food, and you're still standing."
"He couldn't believe I was the person who'd done all the damage to the Paggianos," I said.
"Julian was a bottom-feeder who hunted scumbags for a living. Drug dealers, crooked businessmen, greedy cons who swindled the wrong person. He hunted amateurs. You probably put up more of a fight than he'd ever faced. Rather than popping you and moving on, he fuc
ked up and savored his victory before he'd actually won. Bad, bad move."
I nodded, taking what Jamie was saying to heart. Bad guys don't deserve long speeches before you pull the trigger.
We both paused a moment to take a sip from our pint glasses.
"So," I finally asked, "why did you come to Boston?"
Jamie was silent for a long moment, staring into the dark depths of his beer.
"When Richard called, he told me Sophia had been compromised. He said he didn't know if she had talked, but if she had, the Paggianos might know where you were. He wanted to know what I thought he should do, since I was your family."
"Why didn't he call me?" I asked.
Jamie smiled at me. "He figured you'd do something stupid and reckless. Of course, you went and did that on your own."
I wanted to throw a retort at him, but I realized he was probably right, so I just nodded.
"Richard offered to find and hire some local talent,” Jamie said, “someone who could watch over your apartment and make sure you didn't get hit. I told him that if they found the girl's body around five in the morning, more than likely they had dumped her hours before that, and if they had gotten anything out of her, you'd probably already be dead."
I nodded again, recalling Julian's comment about waking me up with a bullet.
"So Richard asked me again if I wanted him to do anything, or if I should leave you to handle it on your own, for better or for worse."
Jamie emptied his pint glass with a long swig, and motioned to the waitress for another. I caught up to him with my own beer and did the same.
"I sat on the phone for a long moment, and Richard waited, that bastard. He didn't say anything, but I could feel the implication over the phone just the same."
"What implication?" I asked.
"Richard always thought I was being a pussy by not going after the Paggianos on my own and leaving you out of the picture."
"He never said that to me."
"He didn't have to. I saw the way he looked at me when we sat and talked about it for the first time, the things he said. I knew he never liked how I left the life, how I retired. He always thought I was weak because I wanted out."
"Again, I never got that impression from him."
"That's because he was being polite. We go back a long way, almost thirty years. We met soon after I got back from Vietnam, when my blood was still running hot and I felt the need to keep kicking ass and taking names. I was young, I was hot shit, and I liked getting into trouble and fucking things up in a big way. But Richard was already a pro by then, and he knew his way around the shadow world. The two of us worked together putting boot to ass for a long while, but in the end, I found that I had boiled off all that anger, all that need to get into a fight for the fuck of it. I hung up my spurs and walked away before it ate me up. I saw it had swallowed him whole, and I wanted to get out before I was lost as well."
"That doesn't sound like anything he should give you trouble over. He said much the same to me, and he didn't seem to think less of you."
Jamie just shook his head. Our second round of pints arrived, and we took a moment to each take a long pull from our glasses.
"How much did Michael ever tell you about your family tree?"
I took another long sip and thought for a moment.
"Dad said his father was in World War Two, and he and Grandma met in England. I know she was an American nurse, and after the war they moved to Providence to be with her family. A few months after my Dad was born, Granddad died in a car accident."
Jamie gave me an amused smile, taking a long drink from his glass.
"Did my brother tell you anything else?"
"Not that I can recall."
"Fucking typical," Jamie snorted. "Revisionist bullshit from my little brother. Just like Mom."
"I'm not following you," I said, frustrated.
"Your grandfather, Thomas Lynch, was a member of the British Commandos during the war. Did you ever hear that from Michael?"
I shook my head.
"I figured. Your grandfather tore shit up all across Europe for the whole duration of the war. At one point he even joined the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. That's the British version of the American OSS, what became our CIA after the war. He performed covert raids, assassinated German officers, planted bombs, hunted spies - he was a fucking war hero. And after the war, when he came to the States and started playing house, I think he couldn't take it anymore."
"Do you think he killed himself?" I asked.
"His body was never found. His car went over an embankment and into a river, but they never found him. Everyone assumed he was washed downriver, went out into the ocean."
"But you think something else."
Jamie nodded. "I think he staged it. I think he was asked to go back, to fight the Cold War, and he couldn't resist. After his supposed death, we learned that a massive insurance policy had been established, enough to make sure the rest of us would be able to survive. Mom got remarried a few years later, and that was that."
"Sounds like a real asshole move on Granddad's part,” I said.
"It's what we do,” Jamie replied.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
“After Vietnam, I did some digging about our family history. We go back a long way, the Lynch name, back to Ireland of course, and we have always fought. My grandfather, your great-grandfather, Liam, was in the Great War, going over the top in the mud and blood of the Somme. Later, he fought against the English during the Irish Rebellion, when he was killed. His father fought in the Boer War, and his grandfather in India and Afghanistan, and it goes back generation after generation. At least one Lynch, Killian, fought against the regiments of Napoleon. Before that I don’t know, but I firmly believe we are a family of soldiers, of warriors, part of a legacy going back centuries. I imagine we fought the Normans, and the Vikings, and the Britons, and who knows who else, the Picts maybe. Fighting is in our blood, William, it is our family’s destiny."
"That's why you weren't the least bit surprised when I told you I wanted revenge."
"After seeing what Vietnam did to me, or what he thought it did to me, Michael didn't want you to join the army or do anything to follow in my footsteps, or his father's footsteps. I think you've got the old blood in you, the strong blood, the fighting blood. But your generation, your age, doesn't have a war to fight. You all fell into a pocket of peace, and now the closest thing to a war for men your age is on a Playstation."
I finished off my second pint, throwing the last of it back down my throat and holding the glass up, signaling for more. This time it was Jamie who played catch-up.
"But now, " I said, "now I've got my own war."
Jamie nodded, a cold smile coming to his lips.
"That's right. And Lynches don't lose wars. We finish them."
TWENTY-ONE
We closed the bar that night, and I'm still fuzzy on how we made it back to the Fens and my apartment. I determined that somehow, some way, Jamie not only managed to get us back to where he left his Jeep, but he was able to drive us back to my apartment building. I remember scrawling some kind of note and leaving it on the dashboard, hoping the Jeep wouldn't get towed. Jamie offered to sleep in the cab of his Jeep with a gun drawn to make sure "no one fucked with his ride", but what little sense remained, prevailed, and he crashed on my couch around 3:30 or 4 in the morning.
I marveled at Jamie’s ability to function stumble-slurring drunk like that. Jamie reminded me that "Back in 'Nam" being able to keep your shit together while on R&R, just you and a handful of other white guys carrying money - and ripe for the picking if you made a wrong turn - was literally a life-saving skill.
"Compared to Shanghai, Bangkok, or Saigon, Boston is a city of pussies!" Jamie declared at the top of his lungs, as we made our way down Broad Street around 2 AM.
I was convinced someone was going to pick a fight, and Jamie would wind up unloading his pistol in the middle of downtown. Actuall
y, looking back on it, I was drunkenly convinced that someone would notice my weapons, or Jamie's, and that we'd wind up getting arrested, the whole game lost at the eleventh hour.
Despite all the drinking, we were both up and awake by nine the next morning. I put breakfast together, coffee and OJ, toast and eggs and ham and some fruit. We were both ravenous, and everything disappeared in a shockingly short amount of time. I followed my breakfast with eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen; my face and ribs ached where Julian had worked me over, my hip throbbed where it had slammed into the Volvo's bumper, and my head pounded like a kettle drum from all our drinking.
"I've never gotten my ass kicked before,” I told Jamie while I examined the blooming bruises across my ribs, “and this hangover isn’t helping my recovery.”
"Every grown man should get his ass kicked at least once. Puts a little humility into him. The hangover is just for seasoning."
"I can say with some authority, it was indeed a humiliating experience," I replied.
"Stop it please, now you're beginning to sound like a complete fairy."
After making sure the Jeep was still untowed and in its parking spot, we packed a lunch and decided to drive up to Swampscott for the morning. Winding our way up along Route 1 and 1A, we eventually found ourselves cruising along the Atlantic coastline, driving past tourists and beachcombers down below the road along the rocks and sand.
Swampscott seemed like a comfortable little coastal town, cozy even, with inviting seafood shacks and ice cream stands, sub shops and pizza joints. We passed through the middle of town and continued on, further up the coast and into the nicer residential areas, where the lawns began to spread out and push the houses further and further apart, and the houses grew proportionately.
Eventually we found the Paggiano estate. The street-side property was enclosed with a heavy wrought-iron fence topped with sharp decorative spikes. The driveway itself was gated, operated with an electric motor and complete with a surveillance camera and intercom. Right inside the fence, next to the gate, stood the groundskeeper's cottage, home to the two bodyguards who manned the gate at all times. The windows were curtained, the lawn immaculate. No one was visible as we drove past, but we both got a brief glimpse of a chain-link fence further inside the property, presumably where the guard dogs lived during the day.
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