by Zahra Girard
It burns.
I cough, and remind myself that I’m still alive. Connor terrifies me, but he also inspires in me the only hope I have in my life right now.
I get up and look around the room. It’s spacious, but sparsely decorated, with the barest bits of very nice furniture and a giant TV mounted on the opposite wall.
I leave the living room and make my way into the kitchen. It’s stainless steel everything, with granite counter tops, but none of it looks like it sees any use. Connor must not be into much cooking.
There’s a note taped to the fridge. In a nearly illegible scrawl, the message “Stay inside. Be home later. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Connor” is written on it.
Inside the fridge it is about as Irish as you can get. There’s nothing but beer, cabbage, potatoes, and meat.
I eat some colcannon — which is delicious and fatty and creamy, and has me thinking that there’s no way Connor could have made it — and I sit down to rack my brain.
I need to figure out a way to keep my life going — to keep my family and friends from worrying, to keep my job, to keep supporting the people who depend on me — without the people who want me dead finding out that I’m alive.
It makes my brain hurt.
I’m good at asking questions. I’m a journalist, it’s what I do. But the questions I’m posing to myself are the kind that I never imagined I’d have to ask.
Through it all, one thought keeps popping up in my head: there is not enough whiskey in this apartment to deal with this shit.
Chapter Nine
Connor
Same as always, day or night, Eoghan’s waiting for me at the door of the Kilkenny Rose. The man’s practically rooted to his post, gnarly old fingers hidden in his pockets, encircling the hilts of the pistols he keeps on him at all times.
He smiles at me through his grizzled red beard.
“Late night, boy?” he asks.
I shrug and smile back. “No later than any other.”
I don’t need to tell him what I was up to. Eoghan’s been Lochlan’s friend and right hand for decades, since the two of them grew up from the gutters of this neighborhood between Dorchester and Roxbury. This place the MacCailin family has carved out for their own.
“The man’s in the back. His boys are here, too. They’ll all want to know how it went.”
Eoghan’s words are like sandpaper, grinding up and down my spine, but I manage my usual grin.
“How do you think it went, Eoghan? I ever let you down?” I say.
The old man chuckles and waves me inside.
The Kilkenny Rose isn’t a fancy bar. Inside or out. But it’s clean and every bit of weathered wood shines with the same kind of pride Lochlan MacCailin takes in his family. Hell, the bar’s named for someone in his family: Fiona MacCailin. She was his grandmother, the woman his grandfather called the most beautiful woman in their hometown of Kilkenny.
Lochlan’s sons — Liam, Davin, and Riley — are all here, clustering around a pool table, mugs of thick stout in their hands. The remains of a game are scattered in front of them, but none of them are playing.
As usual, they’re yapping at each other like a bunch of angry hens.
If hens were tall, tatted, and toting firearms, that is.
“Look, Davin, next time that son of a whore Dimitri tries to give you any shit, remind him of the favor we did for his family and tell him to back the fuck off,” Liam says, the foamy head of his beer sloshing over the edge of his glass as he gestures at his younger brother.
“I’d rather shoot him,” Davin says. “Those pale Russian fucks need to learn a little respect.”
Riley bursts out laughing. “Who’re you to talk, brother? You’re so fucking pasty, you’re invisible any time it snows.”
Ignoring them, I make my way to the bar and pull myself a pint from the tap.
I need it.
I have to keep a straight face and an even straighter spine while lying to my family.
The whole ride over here, I couldn’t stop trying to figure out why I put myself in this situation. Why do I care if my Whiskey Gal lives? She’s just another piece of ass — though the finest one I’ve seen — so she shouldn’t mean that much to me, right?
Then why does it hit me so hard, just to see her cry?
Why does it make me want to hold her in my arms until the tears dry on her cheeks and her body stops quaking?
And when she told me about herself — when she begged for her life by telling me about her friends and family — why did I actually care?
So many people have done that before — begging until the tears stop coming or until I get so fucking tired of them that I just pull the goddamn trigger to shut them up — that it shouldn’t have any effect on me.
Why her?
She’s special, that’s why. And she’s mine. There’s something about her I can’t quite place, yet, but I’m determined to figure out.
I’m finished with my beer by the time anyone notices I’m actually here.
“Connor,” Riley yells out from the other side of the bar. “What, are you too good to say hello to a bunch of lowlife shits like us?”
“Of course I am. I’ve got self-respect. You know that, Riley, you horse’s ass,” I yell back.
Smiling, he crosses the room and we shake hands.
“Good to see you, brother,” Riley says, clapping me on the shoulder.
“You too, brother,” I reply.
Riley and I don’t share a last name, but the MacCailins practically took me in when I was just a fourteen year old little shit, and in the ten years I’ve known them, we’ve practically become blood.
Well, some of us.
“You do the job, Halloran?” Liam says, still standing by the pool table with Davin.
“Nice seeing you too, Liam,” I reply. “Father around?”
“Our father’s in the back. Business call,” Davin says.
“Then, seeing as how he’s the man in charge, I’ll wait until he gets out here.”
The two of them turn back to the pool table and to their imaginary dick-measuring contest with the Russians on the other side of town. Riley and I get ourselves another beer and settle into a pair of stools at the bar.
“The fuck is up their arse?” I say, soon as we’re both seated.
Riley shrugs. “They’ve been tense all week. Russians trying to muscle in at the docks. And if it isn’t the Russians, there’s the Jamaicans causing shit in Mattapan. Everyone’s acting like they have to prove who swings the biggest dick in Boston.”
“We all know the biggest dick in Boston is right here in this bar, standing by the pool table. Why would anyone question that?”
“I heard that,” Liam yells out across the room.
“Why do you try and make everything about you? You’re such a self-centered ass and everyone knows you have a micro-penis,” Riley yells back.
The back door opens and everyone shuts the fuck up.
Lochlan’s here.
If you listen to local gossip, somewhere back along Lochlan MacCailin’s family tree, you’ll find a marking for the mythic giant Finn McCool.
If you ever meet Lochlan MacCailin, you’ll learn there’s probably some truth to that gossip.
He fills the doorway, and even in his old age, the man is the very form of wrath and fury. With a face like a thunderhead that only softens for family and only smiles for one person: his wife, Lily.
“What’s the news, da?” Liam says, practically standing at attention as soon as his dad enters the room.
Hell, not that I blame him. I straighten up a bit, too. Lochlan MacCailin’s presence just does that to you. You shut up, you pay attention, and you follow fucking orders.
He looks at me.
“That depends,” he says. “What is the news, Connor?”
I clear my throat and wipe the grin off my face. Cocky shit doesn’t fly with Lochlan.
“Job’s done,” I say. Simple and short. The fewer
words I say, the less of a chance I’ll be caught out in a lie.
He nods, but keeps his eyes on me, steady and probing. He probably already knew I’d killed Elliot. The old man reads most of the major local papers, and whatever doesn’t make print gets whispered into his ear by Eoghan.
“Then things are good. Life goes on, same as it always does and the fucking world keeps turning.”
We all raise our pint glasses to Lochlan, who seems entirely uncaring about the good news, and take a drink. I’ve hardly a second to breathe a sigh of relief before the old man turns back to me.
I’m not used to getting this much attention and it puts me on edge.
I like to keep to the shadows, as much as a man as handsome and witty as myself can, instead of standing in the spotlight. Cause it’s the ones in the spotlight who usually get shot.
“Come with me, Connor. You and I need to talk.”
The old man leads me into his back office.
It’s a spartan place.
Everything’s made out of old, well-worn wood and there are few decorations, aside from some family photos and a few pictures of Lochlan shaking hands with a who’s-who of the IRA and some of Boston’s top politicians.
He motions for me to sit and I sit.
He sits in the desk across from me. Silent.
I want to speak, but, unless you’re playing cards with the man and on a very lucky streak, or your name is Lily MacCailin, you do not speak to Lochlan MacCailin unless you’re spoken too.
“Tell me everything,” he says.
“Elliot Meyer is dead, like you wanted. I got to The Angel’s Share well before 7:30. I waited at the bar and kept an eye out for him. He showed. He sat around for a while, drinking, looking like a nervous piece of shit, then he left. I took him to an alley, offed him, made it look like a robbery.”
The whole time, I can feel Lochlan’s eyes probing me.
“You ever take your eyes off him?” he says.
“Yes, for about five, ten minutes.”
“Why?”
“To fuck some cougar with nice tits. Took her into the bathroom. The tits were fake, but good ones. We had some fun, then I went back to work.”
Lochlan grunts. “He talk to anyone?”
I shake my head.
Even now, for as strong as I feel about my Whiskey Gal, I can’t speak a lie to Lochlan.
I’m beyond relieved when he nods, and it takes an act of God that my face doesn’t betray my relief.
“I’m glad to have someone around like you, Connor. Someone that I can trust to do these things and keep quiet about it.”
That’s the highest fucking praise I’ve ever heard from Lochlan. I feel safe beaming, just a bit.
“Thank you, sir,” I say.
He grunts again, dismissively.
“Keep it to yourself. If any of the boys heard ya, they’ll be yapping for days. I love em, and Lord willing, they’ll take over from me someday. Assuming there’s much left to pass on,” he says.
A dark look, something right foul, settles over his face.
“Sir?” I say.
“I’m not a fucking chancer. And I hate fucking messes. And that’s what Elliot Meyers represented. So when some righteous prick decides to grow a fucking backbone and tear down what I built, what my father built, what my father’s father built, it doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Well, he’s dead. Took a bullet to the brain in an alley, while on his knees, and he took his secrets with him.”
Lochlan does what passes for smiling from a man like him. Meaning, he looks slightly less pants-shittingly terrifying.
He motions me to stand.
“You’re a good man, Connor. Thank you.”
I nod and turn away quick.
I sure as hell don’t feel like good man.
I feel like I’ve just betrayed my family.
And it won’t be the last time.
Chapter Ten
Evelyn
I’m going crazy.
It’s only been a few hours, but it feels like decades.
I’m too anxious to watch TV, it’s too early to get drunk, I can’t go outside because I’ll possibly be murdered, and my phone died last night while I was sleeping and I can’t find a charger so I have no way to contact anyone.
The only thing I can do is snoop around.
It’s then that I start to learn a little bit about Connor Halloran.
The first thing I learn is that he’s a terrible decorator. The furniture and everything in the huge living room, while nice and leather and definitely quite expensive, looks like it was furnished with the apartment.
It doesn’t have the character I’d expect from an Irish mobster.
But then, what does Irish mobster chic look like?
The bathroom is the same as the living room. It’s nice, it’s expensive, but it feels about as homey as hotel suite.
As for the bedroom, well, he wasn’t lying about it. It’s a mess. The bed is huge — definitely a California king, if not something larger — and the sheets and blankets are scattered everywhere.
But there are pieces of him here.
This is what I’m looking for.
I want to know more about the man who holds my body captive.
Next to an empty Guinness on his nightstand, there’s a small picture frame, inside of which is the picture of four young boys — all teenagers, definitely, and one of which is Connor for sure — along with an older woman with the most patient smile I’ve ever seen on a person and a man who looks like he stepped out of the dark pages of a fairy tale.
It’s a part of Connor. I sit on the bed, and I look at it, and I don’t see a killer. I don’t see a crime family. I just see a family. And they look happy.
Well, except for the older man that I assume is the father. Who just looks… not too perturbed?
There’s more pictures on the dresser.
One, of a young Connor, sixteen at most, receiving an award or another at a banquet. In the background of the photo, there’s a big banner with the words NORAID on it. Another similar photo has Connor at another banquet, this time with a Sinn Fein banner hanging from the ceiling.
He’s Irish, through and through, that’s for sure. Though, I would’ve never expected him to be the charity type. Hitmen never struck me as being all that civic-minded.
I meander through the rest of the apartment, though there isn’t much to see.
There’s a room that he’s turned into a personal gym, with weights and punching bags and a deadlift cage and floor padding and other medieval-looking fitness equipment that I don’t even have a name for.
There’s another room that I can’t get to, as it’s stuck behind a locked door. And not just a simple doorhandle lock. This door’s been modified, with a heavy-duty deadbolt installed.
Not that I could open it anyway — I’m just a reporter. But it makes me wonder why Connor would go through the trouble.
It’s probably filled with weapons. Or maybe it’s a torture room, where he takes people to be interrogated. He is a killer after all.
I have to remind myself of that last fact.
Despite what I’ve seen around his apartment — a young Connor with his family, a young Connor at a charity banquet, hints of a decent man inside that hardened killer’s body — it doesn’t change the fact that he executed a man in cold blood right in front of me.
I head back to the living room and settle on to the couch, flipping on the TV and letting my mind and my sense of time disappear in a swirl of reality television and daytime TV.
Hours pass.
I eat another plate of colcannon and some corned beef, and eventually Connor returns home carrying with him a small bag, with a card taped to the top of it and fronds of tissue paper poking out of it.
He looks so different from last night.
Instead of a suit, he’s wearing a tight-fitting t-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket. Even casual, even knowing who he is, seeing him makes my heart beat fast
er.
His body, his presence, the way sex and heat just emanate from him. It’s unreal.
There’s so many things I should say to him, like: “you need to let me go”, or “I need to charge my phone so I can let some people know I’m alive and also so I don’t lose my job and have my life collapse around me.”
But instead, I see his face. The normally Cocky Connor looks stressed and unsure of himself, and that’s unsettling.
A totally different question springs to mind.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
He collapses next to me on the couch.
“How much did Elliot Meyers tell you about what he knew?”
A lot. And there’s a flash drive I’ve hidden away that’s full of dirt. But, as much as Connor puts me at ease, as much as I’m attracted to him, I still don’t feel comfortable telling him everything. I can’t. That flash drive is my backup. My plan ‘b’.
“Just bit, really. Nothing specific. He was a really nervous guy and cautious, too. Mainly, he wanted me to think over if I wanted to run with the story and if I did, he’d get me the info.”
Connor looks at me long and hard, his eyes intense, like they’re peeling back layer after layer of me to get to the truth.
It’s not too difficult to imagine him looking the same way at one of his victims, some helpless person he’s been ordered to interrogate.
“You sure?”
I nod, once, slow and deliberate.
He keeps looking at me.
I start to feel so on edge that I can’t hold my tongue any longer.
“What’s this about, Connor?”
He shakes his head, and then holds up the bag in his hands.
“Nevermind. Get yourself cleaned up. Maybe change your clothes to something a little more casual — check the bottom drawer of my dresser, you’ll find some women’s stuff there. We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”
“Connor? Talk to me,” I say, still not moving from my place on the couch. “Where are we going?”
He checks his wristwatch. “Nineteen minutes.”
I still don’t move. I purse my lips and glare at him.
He shrugs. “Look, I’ve got somewhere very important to be, and I thought you might want to get out for a bit. By the way, you’ve now got eighteen minutes. So, if you want some fresh air, you better hurry that tight little ass of yours up, lass.”
