by E. R. Fallon
“What’s the name of the person who killed my father?”
“Sean McCarthy, who ran the Irish mob back in those days, ordered him to be killed, he didn’t actually do it himself. They used Catherine McCarthy—she was a quite beauty back then—to lure him out there, and Max…”
Camille couldn’t believe what she was hearing and had trouble standing.
“Max was the one who shot him,” Albert finished speaking.
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve heard things over the years, and I knew a couple of Sean’s, that’s Catherine’s father, Violet’s grandfather, men.”
Camille put her hands on her knees and leaned over to prevent herself from collapsing in the street. Albert approached her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Not really. My mother might have lied to me.” She didn’t know Albert, but she felt comfortable talking with him because there was an air of calm about him.
“I’m sure she had a good reason to,” he said. “Maybe she was trying to protect you.”
“From the McCarthys? Then why did she let me work in this place? I’ve worked here for a few years.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons,” Albert offered.
Camille reasoned that Violet and Catherine headed the Irish mob ever since Sean McCarthy died. Max didn’t just work out of the pub, he worked for the women, and the truth was probably why he was uncomfortable around her. And what had gone on between her father and Catherine?
Camille started to stumble away from Albert down the street.
“Where you going?” he called out to her.
“I’m not going back in there,” Camille answered over her shoulder. How could she have faced Violet and her mother given what Albert had just told her? They’d wonder where she went but Camille didn’t care what they thought. She had everything on her that she needed, and she had to just get away from them for now.
She walked down the street and a woman ran past her and bumped into her.
“Watch where you’re going!” Camille shouted at the woman, still angry over what Albert had revealed.
The woman looked back at her and scowled. Camille was in a mood for a fight, but the woman kept walking away from her, and Camille didn’t pursue her. She had someone else she needed to see.
Camille walked quickly to her mother’s apartment. She wondered about Albert. Could she trust him? Yet she felt he was being honest with her. The streets were crowded despite the late hour and Camille brushed past a group of musicians playing for money on the sidewalk. It made her think of Pedro’s dancing and that made her think of Johnny. Could she count on him to be there for her? She considered seeking out a payphone to give him a call but telling him what had happened would reveal to him who she really was. And she wasn’t prepared for that just yet.
She continued to her mother’s place and bypassed a homeless man sleeping on the front steps to enter. The man tossed and stirred as she walked past him. The front entrance wasn’t locked despite the hour, as it never was, so Camille entered directly into the corridor. She walked toward her mother and stepfather’s apartment in the back of the building. She knew her mother would be upset that Camille was disturbing her at a late hour, but Camille didn’t care. If her mother had been untruthful with her then she had to know why.
Camille knocked quietly on the door so as not to disturb the other residents lest someone call the police on her. She knocked again when no one answered.
The door opened and her stepfather Vito opened the door with a gun in his hand.
“Camille, I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “It’s very late.”
Camille pushed past his bulky frame. “I need to speak to my mother.”
“She’s sleeping,” Vito replied. “What’s this about? You really should come back another time.”
Vito sounded worried. Camille faced him and smirked. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell her what you did to me.”
His face paled. “You little bitch,” he murmured.
“Yeah, I’m a bitch all right,” Camille whispered heatedly. “A bitch with a big secret for when I want to use it.” She smiled at him.
Sheila exited the bedroom in her dressing gown. “What’s going on out here?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. “Camille, what are you doing here?”
“I need to talk with you,” Camille stated to her mother. “It’s very important.”
“All right, but can’t it wait until the morning?”
“No, it can’t.”
Sheila sighed and Vito closed the front door. Sheila gestured to the couch and Camille sat. She eyed Vito, who hadn’t left the room.
“I need to speak to you alone,” Camille said to her mother.
Sheila motioned to Vito and he left the room. Camille could hear him fidgeting around in the kitchen and assumed he would be listening in. Sheila sat down next to her.
She took Camille’s hand in hers. “What’s going on? You have me frightened.”
“I know what the McCarthys did to my father,” Camille blurted out, pulling her hand away from her mother.
“What they did?” Sheila acted like she didn’t know what Camille meant.
“You know what I mean, Mom. They killed him, Catherine and her father, and that Max guy. How could you let me work in that place with them almost every day?”
Sheila sighed and looked away from Camille for a moment. “I knew this day would come.”
9
“How could you have lied to me?” Camille asked her mother.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Sheila said. “I just never told you the whole story even when you asked. You knew your father died, that he’d been shot, but you didn’t know by whom, and when you asked, I’d change the subject. The truth is I was protecting you, to keep you out of it. I didn’t want them harming you because you knew. I also knew that once you knew you’d want revenge, because you are your father’s daughter, and I feared that once you wanted revenge, you’d stop at nothing to get it.”
“I wasn’t sure if you knew—but clearly you did. You let me work with these people,” Camille said in distress. “How could you do that?”
“I assumed you heard whispers over the years and that someday you’d find out yourself, gradually.”
“I heard things about the McCarthys, but nothing like this.”
“Who told you?” her mother asked.
“This guy named Albert something,” Camille said, not recalling the man’s last name. “He knew Dad.”
“I can’t believe he just told you. What was his motive?”
“I don’t think he had one, he was friends with Dad and couldn’t believe I’d be working in the pub, so I asked him why and he told me.”
“It wasn’t his place to,” Sheila said.
“Who would have told me if he hadn’t? You weren’t going to.”
“Still, he had no right.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Why didn’t you say anything when I started working for them?”
“You seemed to like it there. By the time I found out where you were working, it was too late for me to intervene. You were already settled. I told myself that someday I’d tell you, but I never got around to it.”
“Was that why you were always encouraging me to find a better job?”
“That was part of the reason, yes, the other reason was I thought that you could do better for yourself. I didn’t know the entire truth about what happened to your father. The word on the street, according to Vito, is that Catherine betrayed him, and Max shot him.”
“How come you never went to the police to have them arrested?” Tears filled Camille’s eyes when she thought of what probably and been her father’s last moments. Betrayed then murdered. Then Camille’s blood boiled, and she shook with rage at the mistreatment her father had endured.
“We aren’t the kind of people who go to the police, Camille. They wouldn’t have taken your father’s death seriously because of who he was.
To them it would have just been another gangland murder.”
“Even today?”
“Even today. It was a long time ago. No one’s going to pay any mind to it. It also happened in another state, one where Sean McCarthy wasn’t known to the police.”
“But why did they do it?”
“Your father worked for McCarthy, and when he longer had use for him, he killed him. Your father had worked for another gang before meeting Sean McCarthy.”
Camille took her mother’s words to mean that her father had betrayed his former gang to work for McCarthy and she didn’t like to think of her father as a traitor, so she chose not to think about it.
“Why did Catherine betray Dad?”
“That I’m not sure about. Probably because her father told her to. Like you, she was her father’s daughter. Still is, I’ve heard. I think she might have been sweet on your father, but I was never sure. I had my suspicions, though.”
“And she still betrayed him?”
“As I said, she’s her father’s daughter.”
Camille and her mother sat in silence for a moment.
“Do you forgive me?” her mother asked after a while.
“I’m going back to sleep if anyone cares,” Vito said from the kitchen.
Camille heard him going into the bedroom and closing the door.
“I’m not sure,” Camille told her mother. “I want to. But I don’t like that you kept it a secret from me for all these years, although I understand why.”
“What are you going to do about it now that you know?”
“What do you mean?” Camille turned to face her mother on the couch.
“Their gang would have been your father’s if he had lived, I’m sure about that. It would’ve been yours also.”
“I don’t know anything about being a gangster,” Camille said.
“It’s in your blood. Your father taught me, and I can teach you. Wait here.” Her mother rose from the couch and walked over to a chest of drawers by the fireplace. She opened one of the drawers and took out what looked like a key. Then she went to a cabinet at Camille’s right and opened the door. She removed a faded wooden box and brought it over to the couch. She sat down with it and set it in her lap. She opened it carefully and Camille saw that it contained a gun.
“This belonged to your father. He had two, the other one the police confiscated after he was killed. But this one I’ve saved all these years.”
What did her mother expect for her to do with the gun?
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Camille said, turning away from her mother, as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing.
“Not yet. But we all will eventually, before they hurt you,” Sheila replied. She closed the box and handed it to Camille, who held it in her hands as if it were harmful. Growing up in her neighborhood, she had seen guns, but she had never held one.
“I don’t know how to use it,” Camille said, and started to give the box back to her mother.
“Your great grandmother taught your father to shoot back in the old country when he was a boy,” Sheila said. “He might have taught you if he had lived. There’s a box of bullets in there as well.”
“I’m not going to use it,” she said, but her mother wouldn’t accept the box back.
“You probably won’t have to. But it’s time for you to take what’s yours, and the McCarthys don’t play around, so if it comes to that, you’re going to need to protect yourself.”
Camille reluctantly accepted the case. “How will I learn how to use it?” she asked her mother.
“You’ll figure it out.” Sheila patted Camille’s hand.
Johnny owned a gun, she had seen it on him at the pub, and she thought about going to him for instruction.
“Penny for your thoughts,” her mother said to her with a smile.
“I was just thinking that I know someone who could teach me to shoot,” Camille said.
“Who?”
“Johnny.”
“You’re still seeing him?”
Camille nodded. She wanted to make it clear to her mother that she had no plans to stop.
“Even after what I told you?” her mother asked.
“You wouldn’t tell me why so unless you tell me and it’s something relevant then I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”
Sheila sighed. “He knows how to shoot?”
“I assume so.”
“Why, you saw a gun on him?”
Camille hesitated then nodded.
“Why can’t you find a nice guy, like Billy?”
“Billy works for the Italian mob,” Camille replied. She stood up. “I have to go,” she said, because she didn’t want to discuss it further.
“Where are you off to?” Sheila asked.
“To see Violet and her mother.”
Sheila smiled. “That’s my girl. But don’t do anything that could get you into trouble, unless you can get out of it.”
Sometimes Camille doubted she was her father’s daughter, but she never doubted that her mother might have been as tough as her father. She took the gun out of the case and tucked it into the small of her back, like gangsters did in the movies, and gripped the box of bullets in her hand.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” Camille replied over her shoulder as she left, because she imagined that was what her father had told her mother countless times.
She had an urge to call Johnny and tell him about everything she’d learned over the past few hours. But that would reveal who she was, his father and her father’s complicated and painful histories intertwined. She walked to McBurney’s with a newfound sense of where she belonged and who she was. She had enjoyed being a bartender, but it had never felt like it was her destiny. Perhaps continuing her father’s legacy was.
She sweated in her leather jacket in the night’s warmth and removed it as she walked and put it around her shoulders. She put the bullets in her pockets and threw away the box. From the window outside the pub she saw that the lights inside were dimmed, and Violet and her mother had closed the pub and were cleaning up for the night. Knowing that the door would be locked, she knocked to be let inside.
Violet looked at her through the glass then opened the door. She seemed surprised to see her.
“Where did you disappear off to earlier?” Violet asked her as she entered.
“I had some business to take care of,” Camille answered bluntly.
“Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen played on the jukebox in the background, the music faint.
Violet continued looking at her as though she wanted Camille to explain and when she didn’t, she said, “Come in,” and shut the door behind Camille.
Catherine watched them from the back of the room and Max wasn’t there; he sometimes left before closing.
Camille stood near the door, unsure, and kept her hand close to her side to reach for her gun if needed, although it wasn’t loaded and she could only use it to scare them.
“Camille?” Violet said.
“I have to talk to you,” she finally said to Violet.
“Okay. What about?” Violet didn’t sound worried, and Camille wondered if she already knew what her mother and Max had done to Camille’s father or if it would come as a shock to her.
“It’s about my father.” Camille kept watching Violet’s hands as she spoke and she also kept an eye on Catherine, who remained standing, watching them as she cleaned the tables with a white rag.
“Camille, what are you talking about?” Violet looked at her like Camille wasn’t making sense.
“My father was murdered, he was shot,” Camille replied. “I don’t know if I ever told you that.”
“I’d heard that,” Violet said softly. “Are you all right, Camille?”
“Max shot him, and your mother helped,” Camille said quickly before she could lose her courage.
Violet stared at her in silence and her face blanched. She burned a hole in Camille with her gaze. “No, you�
��re lying.”
So, she hadn’t known, it had been kept a secret from them both, which had allowed a friendship of sorts to form between them.
“I’m not, multiple people have confirmed it, including my mother,” Camille said.
Violet made a quiet sound, not quite a word. Then she repeated, “No,” firmly. “That isn’t true. It can’t be.” She looked back at her mother, who seemed too cautious to approach Camille, as though her mother wasn’t sure whether Camille would harm her but continued watching them from a distance.
“Your grandfather ordered his killing,” Camille continued.
“If it’s true then why have you come here?” Violet seemed defiant but also a little afraid and uncertain.
Catherine moved closer to them but remained far from Camille.
“Why are you here?” she asked Camille.
Camille looked from one woman to the other. “I quit.”
“Fine. You can leave now,” Catherine said.
“No,” Camille said, looking at Violet. “My father would have been the rightful leader of your organization had he lived.”
“You don’t know that,” Violet replied.
“It’s a real possibility,” Camille said.
“You should go now,” Catherine told Camille.
“I’ll leave when I’m ready,” Camille said with determination. “What you have should have been my father’s, and now it should be mine. I’m going to make sure that I get my fair share,” she told Violet and her mother.
“Camille, sweetheart, I don’t know what your mother told you,” Catherine said to her as though she was trying to reason with her.
“It wasn’t just my mother.”
“Who told you, then?”
Camille wouldn’t say.
“We’ve known you for years, you’re almost like a daughter to me,” Catherine pleaded with her.
Violet’s face seemed to redden from aggravation.
“I’m not your daughter,” Camille replied to Catherine. “You owe me,” she told them both as she filled with courage. “And if you don’t give me what I deserve then I’m going to take it.”
Catherine’s expression darkened. “We don’t owe you anything,” Catherine said to her, the woman who’d been kind to her for so many years suddenly turning on her. “Get out of my pub.”
