Barely a Crime

by Robert Ovies

  Leah returned his hard stare without blinking.

  “Settle it in your mind,” he repeated, this time leaving no doubt that he was giving an order, not making a suggestion. “Marie is worthy,” he said. “And she is trustworthy. She has to be trustworthy!”

  The two-story building, yellow-bricked and orange-shuttered, stood at the corner of Hayes Street and Escondido Parkway in east Oakland, like a place not wanting to be noticed. Even the sign was diminutive: five-inch black letters on a redwood-stained pine slat above a door with wire mesh over its glass. It read: Brennan’s North-Irish American Club.

  The proprietor, Patrick Brennan, opened the door four inches on Michael Connell’s second knock, which was hard and persistent. Patrick, short, balding on top and already widowed twice, although he was just fifty years old, was a glad-hander hell-raiser, who so much needed a constant flow of company that he could think of no better way to go through life than serving the social instincts of the San Francisco Bay Area’s small but zealously close-linked Northern Irish population.

  It was a good life, and he was convinced that his social club did only good in this world. So he had no reason to be apprehensive when he saw two of his regular customers, Michael Connell, who was married to Patrick’s niece Sherri, and Michael’s even larger friend Haley-Joe O’Marron, standing at his door two hours before opening, looking like the bulls they were, only smiling.

  “Well, what have we got here?” he exclaimed, closing the door in their faces just long enough to release the security chain, then opening it wide. “Two of the city’s brightest, not able to wait for legal hours.” He laughed and stepped aside as the two men, Michael in a dark gray sport coat, Haley-Joe in a light tan jacket, stepped into the bar-and-gaming side of the club.

  Both men lost their smiles as they entered.

  The neon beer and stout signs glowing behind the bar were the only lights, making the dart boards, pool tables and all three of the men glow with soft reds and blues.

  “I know you’re not this hard up for drinks, boys,” Patrick said, shutting the door behind them and following them to the nearest table.

  “Can we sit?” Michael asked in a husky voice, pulling back a chair.

  “It’s a meeting you want?” Patrick said. His smile faded into a quizzical look.

  “A favor,” Michael said.

  Patrick glanced at Haley-Joe, who was also sitting down, only on the other side of the table, not next to Michael. He paused and said, “Well, I’m up to favors. You know me.” Then, sounding uncertain, he added, “Should I break out anything for you?”

  Michael shook his head. “We need a favor, Patrick,” he said. “Sit yourself down here, please.”

  Patrick did, between the two men, which was the only choice they left him. “You’re lookin’ serious today, Michael,” he said, shifting nervously in his seat.

  “Patrick,” Michael said. He placed his thick arms on the table and lightly knotted his fists. “Sherri told me something last night that was hard for me to hear.”

  Patrick shifted in his seat again. “A wonderful girl, Michael,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “You’re a blessed man, and I’m not tellin’ you anything you don’t already know. A wonderful wife. And a wonderful niece to me. And a wonderful son she’s given you, too. Let’s not forget little Roddy.”

  “She said that she made a mistake, Patrick, and told you some of what I call my family secrets. Here at the bar, she thinks it was. You being her only uncle and all, and her trusting kin like she does.”

  Patrick blinked and stared, folding his hands on the table.

  Michael eased his chin a single inch closer. “She tells me she was feeling a little light-headed, and you and her were talking. She said how you told her about your first young wife in Ireland, the one you ran out on. Before the other two you had for awhile over here. She said you started in on your poor father and mother, and on the killings in the streets, and on, oh, what a lonely man you are, and poor Patrick, and Lord-knows-what-all. And, God love her, Sherri was feeling all close and sympathetic with you. And so, she told me, she’s hearin’ all these secrets, and next minute she found herself telling you certain things about me back in Ireland. Some of what were very private things I’d told her. But you see. . .”

  Patrick noticed Michael’s fist slowly clench. He felt his heart speed up. He made a point not to swallow, not to move.

  “I told her those things in strictest confidence, Patrick. Stone-dead confidence. Like a husband and wife love-offering or some such thing, just something very personal between her and me. You know what I mean?”

  Patrick tried to smile, then settled for a shrug. “I’m afraid I don’t, Michael, no. A love-offering?”

  “That’s a dumb way for me to put it, isn’t it?”

  “No. No, it’s not.” Patrick swallowed hard without thinking.

  “No, it was. You can say it was a dumb way to put it, because it was a dumb thing to do, though I didn’t see that when I told her those secret things, which were not even all about me, but about my dead father back in the Force, and in prison, God rest him. And about my brother, Crawl. Even about a fellow we lived with named Kieran and a certain Willy Doyle, if you remember those names.”

  Patrick twitched his head left-to-right and back again, twice.

  “Well, you do see, though, it was to show her I’d trust her with anything. That’s the only reason I told her things like that. You see what I mean? So that was real private.”

  Patrick leaned suddenly forward, his eyes wide. “You know, I don’t remember any of this,” he said. “I really think this must be a mistake, Michael.”

  Michael stared harder at the smaller man for a moment. “But it was to show her that I trusted her, Patrick. Are you listening to me?” His voice rose and grew hard. “I love the girl, and so I trusted her, and I wanted her to know that. But while I still love her, I have to admit, I’m not happy at all that she told you what she did. I wouldn’t give a damn if you were her long-lost father. And you know what else? I’m especially unhappy that you told whoever it was you repeated those things to. Right down to the smallest detail, Patrick. Why did you do that?”

  Patrick’s head shook harder. His index finger became a flag again, flapping in an unfelt wind. He sat bolt upright. “Oh, no,” he protested, now speaking loudly. “I didn’t tell anyone, Michael. Honest to God, man.” He started to rise from his chair and then settled down again. “Maybe she made a mistake, isn’t that possible? Because, I swear, it wasn’t me she talked with. I don’t know a thing about you, other than what you’ve told me yourself over a fair river of good stout, right here in my own home.”

  He tried a hearty laugh but came up with something less.

  “Don’t call my wife a liar,” Michael said flatly.

  From Patrick’s right, the first words Haley-Joe spoke: “That was a mistake, Patrick. You shouldn’t have called the man’s wife a liar.”

  Patrick’s eyes suddenly flashed with anger. “Look here!” he shouted.

  Michael reached out suddenly, without changing his expression. He wrapped his fist around Patrick’s raised wrist, holding it tight.

  Patrick tried to pull away but couldn’t.

  Michael glowered at him in the blue-red light.

  “Shouldn’t have called the man’s wife a liar,” Haley-Joe repeated softly in the background.

  “I’ll ask you this one time, Patrick,” Michael said, squeezing the man’s wrist. “I would like to know who you told. I know you remember because there was too much detail to be just something you said as offhand remarks. And I know you well enough to know that you aren’t a man who tells private details about your friends’ lives to people you don’t know, and know well. It was stories you told. It was conversations about things you heard in confidence. So don’t lie to me, here, Patrick. We’re good friends, we can stay good friends. But I need you to show me you’re still my good friend, and good kin to my wife, by telling me who it was you told abo
ut me and my family.”

  He released the wrist slowly.

  Patrick sat back in his chair.

  “Who, Patrick?” Michael said softly. “Name. Address. Phone number. E-mail. Everything you’ve got. And you’d better have more than a vague kind of description for me.”

  The anger in Patrick’s eyes had melted back to fear, and now the fear was naked. For a full half minute, he didn’t speak. Then he practically whispered. “I’m trying to think, Michael, but so help me God, I swear I can’t remember even hearing anything, let alone telling anybody anything that might sound like family secrets. I swear it before God. Was I drinking too much to remember? I don’t know. But you’re a valued friend. Why wouldn’t I be telling you if I remembered?”

  “Because they told you not to tell me,” Michael said. “Because they paid you not to tell me.” He rose slowly to his feet. So did Haley-Joe. “Because you’re more afraid of them than you are loyal to your family or your friends. Because you’re more afraid of them than you are afraid of me. So far.”

  He pulled open his sport coat and reached back, waist high.

  Patrick muttered, “Oh, God, man.”

  He heard Michael say, “But we can bloody change that.” He noticed Haley-Joe closing in to stand nearer to his side. When he turned his gaze back to Michael, he saw a black snub-nosed revolver in his right hand.

  He shouted, “Oh, hell no!” and jumped to his feet only to be caught in midair by Haley-Joe’s massive hands on his shoulders, pressing him back down. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted at Michael.

  Michael methodically emptied the six chambers, placing the cartridges on the table. “Tell me,” he said.

  Patrick tried bolting a second time, but Haley-Joe drove his open right hand into the back of the man’s neck, his fingertips digging into soft muscle on both sides. Patrick cried out with pain and grabbed at the strong fingers with both hands, but Haley-Joe hammered his shoulder with his left hand and drove him back into his chair.

  “You know this game, don’t you?” Michael asked quietly. He placed a single cartridge into the revolver and spun the chamber. “We’ll play it until you remember who has the information,” he said, eyeing the cartridge chamber from behind.

  Even in the soft light, he could see the heel of the lone cartridge. It had spun to the second chamber, left side. Too close to firing position.

  “You’ll get six chances maximum,” he said, buying a few more seconds. “And then. . .” He spun the chamber again. “Then you’ll be dead, Patrick. And I’ll go to your funeral and I’ll say to your niece, ‘Now who could’ve done a thing like that to Patrick Brennan?’ ”

  With the flick of his eye, he glanced one more time at the back of the revolver’s chamber. This time, the heel of the cartridge was safely settled on the right side, four pulls of the trigger away from firing.

  “Michael,” Patrick gasped. “For the love of God, man. There was nothin’ to it!”

  Michael’s lips curled. “I want the name. And more.” Leaning forward, he dug his fingertips into Patrick’s yawning cheeks, jammed the barrel of the revolver deep into the terrified man’s mouth, and squeezed the trigger.

  7

  The countryside of Italy’s Piemonte region struck Crawl as the prettiest country he had ever seen. Ireland was green and rocky and lush with hills, but this was everything: green, rolling hills, neat rows of grapevines as far as he could see, forest areas, long, flat plains, and rushing rivers fed by the snowcaps of the Maritime and Cottian Alps that stood like neighboring planets not many miles straight ahead.

  Until then, all he had seen about Italy was in the movies and travel brochures and a few magazines, and they all stuck to pictures of grapevines and girls on beaches and things in Rome, like the Coliseum and the Vatican and that big town square with the fountain and all the pigeons.

  But this was different. This, a man could come back to someday. Take his time. Get to know somebody. Mountains in front, beaches behind, grapes in the middle.

  Antonio, the thin, thirty-something Italian who had picked Crawl up in Genoa a little more than half an hour ago in his little white Fiat, looked bored. And he obviously didn’t like to talk. Even when Crawl had asked him if Kieran got picked up okay, Antonio just nodded and said, “Got him.”

  “How long before we get there?” Crawl had asked.

  “Hour. Little more.”

  That was it.

  Another small town came up quickly on their right.

  The towns surprised Crawl, too, but not because each offered something new every time, like the countryside. Just the opposite. He was surprised at how they all had a church right in the middle, in the courtyard, and how their three- and four-story stucco buildings all looked so much the same. The same yellow walls. All the roofs the same orange tile. Even all the shutters, the same dark green. He must have seen six hundred window shutters since he went into his “I found a girl and I love her” routine and left his tour in Genoa, and it seemed like every one of them was the same dark green.

  He found himself wondering where the Italians’ reputation for being so creative came from. He decided they must have had a few great artists like Michelangelo and a few great architects that built the big cathedrals, but the rest of the country must have been designed by the same three or four families, or family-owned companies. Or maybe it was all owned by the government. However it happened, whoever owned it came up with one specialty. They did square yellow buildings with orange roofs and green shutters. And nobody cared.

  At least the Irish use different colors, he thought. Go down a street in Belfast, you see green buildings next to pink ones next to orange ones next to white.

  “I saw palm trees in Genoa,” he said. “Where are all the palm trees along here?”

  “Somewhere,” Antonio said. He opened his right hand in the silent question: What the hell do I know about palm trees?

  Crawl quietly repeated, “Somewhere,” and went back to observing the countryside and resting his hand on the new phone in his pocket. He had two phones now. The “best of everything” new one that he and Kieran had each bought with part of Day’s money, and his older basic one, for just in case Day pulled a “Leave your phones with me until after the rehearsal and the job are done” move on them.

  It didn’t hurt to play it safe.

  Or to have the best equipped phone he could get, especially for here in Italy.

  The country around him was starting to flatten out. A plains area now, with the mountains still in the distance but looking bigger than before. He saw people on horses way off to his right and he noticed how, with his window open in the heat of the day, the air smelled sweet.

  Antonio swerved to avoid a wooden box on the road, and he muttered something like a curse in Italian. Crawl smiled and wondered if he should try to remember it. Say it later if he gets mad.

  At least he knew that he and Kieran were ready. They had opened separate Banca d’Italia accounts they could access in either Milan or Genoa. If the rehearsal told them the job was good to go, they would have Day transfer the bulk of their additional forty-five thousand to their accounts. That, and they would each take a couple thousand in cash.

  Most importantly, Michael had given them enough information on Day to pin the guy to a wall if they had to. Now, if Day said, “Okay, the job is, we’re going to blow up the Pope,” Crawl would spell it out for him. Just say, “We’re out of here. And by the way, our friends know who you are, where you live and how many tiles there are on your kitchen floor, so don’t even think about raising bumps on our heads, let alone dropping them in a box.”

  “Name is Dr. John Cleary,” Michael had said. “Big in biotechnology, and I mean big in biotechnology. Has his own company, and he has a lot of heavy connections, which is part of the way he got rich. Another way was his wife’s money, but she’s dead now.”

  “How and when?”

  “Ten, fifteen years. I don’t know exactly. There’s a lot
I don’t know yet.”

  “John Cleary?”

  “C-l-e-a-r-y. He was in internal medicine originally, but just for a year or two, way back. Then he dove into biotech, big time. Now he has more money than God.”

  “That’s good to know,” Crawl had said, grinning. “So what about his company?”

  “He’s founder and chairman of Jerron—J-e-r-r-o-n—then a second name, N-a-s-h. Jerron-Nash. You can look it up. It’s all R&D now, and focused on DNA stuff. It’s in New Mexico, which is a pretty wild state not too far from California. And in fact, the guy lives in what they call the Pecos Wilderness. In the mountains. He has his sister living with him, name is Leah, and a niece named Marie, sixteen years old.”

  “This is good stuff, Michael. You get the Free Drinks Award, boyo.”

  “One more thing. You can look this up, too, but he was nominated for the damned Nobel Prize six years ago. Didn’t get it, but he was up for it.”

  “For doing what?”

  “Doing things only ten people can understand. His big-deal paper was called—are you ready for this?—it was called ‘New Horizons in the Search for Spindle Protein Protection in Mammals’.”

  When Michael said it, he laughed. “I thought it was a really good read, but you must have read it too, didn’t you?” He laughed again.

  Crawl laughed. “It sounds like muscle building for sewing machines,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”

  “So that’s a start,” Michael said. “Let me know if you need more. And let me know what you’re into as soon as you can.”

  “Probably not on a cell, but I’ll let you know. For now, I’ve got Cleary. Jerron-Nash. New Mexico. Pecos Wilderness. DNA. And something called spindle proteins.”

  That was all Michael had told him, but it gave him all the muscle he would need in case he and Kieran had to back out and stay in one piece.

  Antonio cursed again as the Fiat swerved hard when a red van coming from the opposite direction wandered into their lane for a split-second. It was a woman driving. Long black hair with nobody in the seat next to her. She looked angrily at Antonio as she sped by.