Charlie

by Finn Óg

  “Did they catch you?” I asked. “Is that why you’re estranged?”

  “No. They don’t know that I know. I just, well, I just left. Quietly. Then I just withdrew. Dropped out of college, stopped taking her calls, and her money. Started tending bar,” he gestured at his surroundings. “She thought it was a phase, or I was doing drugs. She hasn’t tried real hard to patch things up.”

  “So, can you identify these people?”

  “I can identify one of ‘em,” he said.

  “Your mum?”

  “Well, sure. But I knew someone else down there.”

  “Who?” I could feel my head shaking as I struggled to keep the exasperation out of my voice.

  “My tutor. At Harvard. Well, he was back then. That’s why I never went back to college. He’s in politics now. He worked in the State Department, then he moved to the White House. He’s like an advisor. I’ve seen him on the news, stalking around in the background. He’s Irish, and he’s over in Ireland a lot.”

  Irish, to a Bostonian, could simply mean his name was Seamus. As it turned out, when I pressed the Harvard barman, he was a third generation American.

  “And you shared this, umm, this experience, with the Dublin man, the Counsellor?” I asked.

  “Sure, I told him, in private. It was that type of seminar, all about healing. He’d come right out and described what had happened to some woman in Ireland, and it fitted right in with what I’d seen in my Mom’s house. To hear someone else describe that sort of evil, I felt like I wasn’t insane, you know?”

  I nodded, although he was offering nothing to link the abuse in Dublin, and that in New York. There could be sick bastards all over the place. “Where can I find this tutor, this advisor?”

  “New York, mostly. There’s an office on Lexington. It’s close by some Irish folks who wine and dine big business people, to try to get them to invest over there. It’s part of the deal with the peace process.”

  There was a certain amount of truth to that. American business had been crucial to the re-building and re-branding of Northern Ireland, after decades of political violence. I wanted to leave, but I needed the advisor’s name, which he offered.

  “What makes you think that the Dublin abuse and what you saw are the same? That there’s a connection?” I asked, Columbo style, as I made to leave.

  He sort of snorted. “You really don’t know anything, do you? It’s the solstice, and the shaving, and the skinning. It all happened exactly the same way. The head, then the feet, on the same night, on different sides of the pond. The old country and the new. This has probably gone on for generations.”

  I sat still for a moment and thought. Whether the two events were inter-woven or not was almost beside the point, provided he was telling the truth. I didn’t know whether to believe the barman. After all, the Counsellor had introduced us, and I had serious misgivings about his character. It crossed my mind that there could be other motives at play behind this dreadful story. Perhaps the barman had grown to dislike his tutor for other reasons. Maybe he’d returned home to find the professor shagging his mother. He seemed to sense my scepticism.

  “Our friend in Dublin confirmed to me that my old Harvard tutor had been to a particular convent there – many times he said. It’s the same Charlie, damn straight.”

  This was confusing. “How old is he?” I asked, almost certain that this Professor and the American described by the old woman could not be the same.

  “In his fifties I guess,” said the barman.

  Perhaps a relative.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask which I could not verify myself, so I shook the barman’s hand. It was strong and sincere, but he leaned forward with a disappointingly dramatic request. “Sir, you stop these people; you wipe them from the face of the earth.”

  If I did harbour any real doubts as I emerged to the dazzle of the day, they were quickly extinguished. I was wrapped up in my thoughts, and didn’t pay enough attention to what was happening around me. Within minutes of walking towards Government buildings the vagrant was back, only this time his stoop was not so low, and his gait was livelier. It was only then that I realised I’d been stroked. He made his way through the strollers and the shoppers, and he moved fast and determined, darting from side to side on the outside of his feet. I caught sight of him with just enough space between us to react, and I had enough experience with such shocks to sprint through my options.

  There are two ways to deal with a situation like that. My preference is to meet force head on. That way the issue is dealt with one way or another and is finished with. The other is to turn and run. I didn’t think all this through in a conscious way, but instinct told me that the earlier fracas with the vagrant had been a fishing trip, to see if I was armed. The physical confrontation would have confirmed to him that I had the Beretta tucked into the small of my back. Because he knew I was carrying, I knew he was not alone; the fact that he was prepared to confront me, and probably knew that I was former Special Forces, meant that he had backup. Which meant that I had to turn, and run.

  I hate running. Always have. Not just running away, which I hate, but actually, physically, running. I do it, sure, but not well and not particularly fast. By strength and guile was our motto in the service. At my age I preferred the second bit. The slow start was hindered by a hankering to fight, and by some stout low-sized Americans, warbling around like bowling skittles just short of a strike. I cut down Beacon, and from that point on, was cursed by the sun being directly overhead. I needed it to find east and keep on going. My navigation was on wits, and my eyes hunted as I ran, trying to find some means of cutting back to where I had started, in the hope that those following me would not think to return there.

  I saw some vans marked “Suffolk University,” and turned into a parking lot, muttering a prayer of thanks because I knew that students would provide what I was looking for. Sure enough, chained to a lamppost were four bicycles. Mercifully, one was secured through the front wheel, another through the back, and both had quick-release nuts. I left the front wheel of one bike chained to the pole, set the frame aside, and then took the free wheel off the bike chained by its rear. It wasn’t a perfect match; I would have no front brakes, but I didn’t plan on stopping.

  I slung on my sunnies, ripped a Red Socks cap off a store-front display as I cycled past, and made for the sea. I was instantly anonymous. They were hunting for a man on foot – bikes wouldn’t enter their field of vision. I reckoned I could get to Logan International Airport in about twenty minutes. No law enforcement agency ever expects someone to escape on a pushbike, but they are like low-hanging fruit, ripe and plentiful, and people naturally look at the machine, not its rider. They are, in my estimation, ideal for extraction.

  Ideal, if you know where you’re going. All I could think of was east, but as my legs pumped I plotted the geography in my head. There was a bridge, which was not ideal. A bike would stick out like a sore thumb on a highway fly-over, and if I got caught, there was only one way to escape. I didn’t fancy a dip in the Mystic, which made me think of a Van Morrison song. But the river was shaken from my mind by the sight of two athletic types and the vagrant standing together on a street corner. They looked around urgently. Perhaps it was arrogance, perhaps it was to test them, but I cycled straight by and they didn’t even register my passing. The two strangers were dressed like they meant business; rugged trainers, strong canvas trousers which looked casual but had purpose, and windcheater jackets over body armour. I started to wonder just what sort of wasps’ nest I had disturbed.

  I kept the wheels turning and eventually saw signs for ferries, which seemed to make sense. Logan Wharf was an option, which felt about right for Logan airport, so I ditched the hybrid bike and started to walk, trying to slow my heart rate before I asked for a ticket. As the boat pulled away from the quay, I looked back on the city and dropped the Beretta overboard. I was glad not to have needed it, even as a deterrent. Next thought, New York.


  *****

  Lexington wasn’t much of a peg to hang a hat on. I had no address beyond that single Manhattan avenue, which probably hosted tens of thousands of people every day. I was tired and a bit belligerent, so I threw caution to the breeze and phoned New York’s “Northern Ireland office,” and asked for the professor by name. The receptionist played ball.

  “Oh, he doesn’t work from this office Sir,” she said, and duly gave me the exact address of his place, which, as the barman had suggested, was on Lexington. I checked into a hotel by the same name and got some sleep, despite the frightening artwork on the walls.

  The professor’s office was a skip up the street, hidden in a glass affront to compassionate reflection. Beneath it was a Pret a Manger coffee shop, so I started there. After an hour, I realised that it was useless. I could be on someone’s doorstep in New York, and never see them. Finding the professor would take more deviousness than that.

  Five cups of wishy washy coffee later, I settled on a plan. Perhaps it was the caffeine, perhaps it was irritation at the rigmarole I had managed to get myself strangled in, but I decided on a direct approach. At a Radio Shack, I bought the closest thing I could find to a go-pro camera, a barrel-like device for sports action shots, which would normally be fixed to a helmet. I then had to buy a fancy leather binder and writing pad, in order to conceal it in the spine.

  Back to Pret and then to the reception, where I asked for the professor by name. Americans are so polite, and if you show some authority and manners, you can get far in that country. The security man consulted his computer, directed me to the sixteenth, and authorised the elevator. The lifts in the U.S. remind me of being at sea. They hurtle and plummet like a trawler on the waves of a storm. I had to make like I was meant to be there, and so when the doors pinged, I waltzed forward, hoovering in the surroundings and selecting one of three further reception desks. I leaned forward and quietly mentioned the name of the tutor to an elderly woman. She responded in kind, and in a whisper, asked if I had an appointment.

  “If you could tell him I have an update from Dublin please?” I said conspiratorially, and she nodded and hobbled off to an office to the left. I had no idea how this was going to go, so I just stood and waited, and pointed my fancy binder at the old woman’s back. I allowed myself a certain amount of relief that he was actually in the office, never mind in the country.

  The old woman emerged ahead of a bloke who could not have been more academic if he tried. His tweed three-piece even had leather patches on the elbows. A dickie-bow would not have looked out of place around his neck. When his eyes met mine, his face frowned in a mixture of suspicion and alarm.

  “Come in please, Mr –?”

  “Charlie is fine,” I said, realising that all of my caution was evaporating. The receptionist worried me. I had been seen by so many people.

  We sat, and he asked how he could help. I positioned the binder nonchalantly on his desk and came right out with it. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I have no idea,” he said, too vigorously to hold any semblance of truth. He was panicking, he couldn’t take his eyes off me, and I realised he thought I was going to finish him then and there.

  “I know about Dublin,” I paused, “I know about the convent. I know about the Hamptons. I know that you are part of a group that abuses children, that skins them, that locks them up, that kills them. I know what you did.”

  He made an odd sort of noise, and stretched his mouth open, as if flexing the muscles on his jaw. I noticed a fidget in his fingers. He gradually composed himself. He looked at the wall, then at the desk, then at my binder, and rallied. His eyes widened and retracted, then some switch inside him flicked. I watched an epiphany, like he had always known this moment would come, and he worked through pre-prepared motions and summoned his protocol. I heard a feint chuckle before he raised his gaze from his hands. Then he leaned forward, looked straight into my eyes, and spoke. “You know nothing Sam.”

  I have never ever felt a shock like it.

  *****

  I should not have been surprised that they were on to me to that extent. I knew they had placed me under surveillance. They had done that before I’d even taken the job, which was a measure of how good their intel was, and of their paranoia. The irony though, struck hard; if they hadn’t sent that goon to our boat to kill me, I would never have become involved. I simply would not have believed the Counsellor, or taken on his job offer. But I was where I was, and not one bit happy about it.

  I turned back as I left the office, to catch a glimpse of the tutor flipping open a laptop. I was familiar with the make, a MacBook Air, but with a thin black cover which made it look like almost any other machine. I could see the glow of the apple symbol through it. It gave me a notion, but I carried on past the old receptionist, and into the lift. I was itching to check the small camera to make sure that it had recorded the conversation.

  I didn’t bother concealing my return to the hotel; I wouldn’t be staying. There I got my stuff together, including the operating instructions for the camera, and consulted a concierge map of Manhattan. I left via the kitchen doors, and went down the street to a CXI, currency exchange. I shifted four thousand sterling. The cashier didn’t bat an eyelid. Then a yellow cab shuttled me to an Apple Store on 5th Avenue. Thirty minutes later I had bought a MacBook Air, and a black cover, and was getting various pieces of software installed. The whole lot went into a new ruck, with zips and pouches for passports and camera bits. The order of the little Bergen would normally have pleased me, but I didn’t have time to think about anything other than my next move.

  At H&M I bought a full set of clothes, and bundled my old ones into my original canvas bag. I was worried that there could be residue from the old Beretta I had stolen from the kid in Boston, and if my plan was to work, I could afford no slip-ups or delays at airport security. With fresh Nikes and the subway, I was propelled back to Lexington, where I found a FedEx Print and Ship, and mailed all of my old kit home. In all, I was three thousand dollars lighter, and virtually unrecognisable.

  Back on Lexington I took up a position opposite the Pret, and watched the doors. I couldn’t be sure the Professor was still in there, so I decided that if the secretary came out first, I would go with her. If he beat her to it, all to the good. Either way, by nightfall I intended to be outside the Professor’s house. At 1730 the Avenue was mobbed. A tsunami of commuters drained down into the subway stations, and I began to panic that I would miss them both. I fought through the wave to stand in the arch of the Pret, and waited twenty minutes before the old receptionist emerged from the elevator and joined the current. She was slow, which made it more difficult to keep pace, but by bus and by foot we got there together, to a nicely-kept little street in a Jersey suburb. Her house had geriatric handles screwed on either side of the door, and a ramp, which indicated to me that I would find leverage inside. A few minutes later, a young woman emerged. She was wearing a tunic, plain trousers, and trainers. I pulled on a pair of gloves.

  Ten minutes after the receptionist entered her little house, I knocked, and she opened the door. She wasn’t so much surprised as alarmed when she recognised me, but to my shame it was about to get much worse. I couldn’t apologise for what I was about to do; I needed her to be scared, for a little while at least, and she managed to remain silent as I bundled her back inside. When I got into the kitchen I saw why. In a motorised chair was an older man, her husband I assumed. He was frail and curled, with saliva dropping from his lower lip. Dementia, I concluded, which made what I was about to do harder to justify, but easier to achieve. She would protect him at all costs.

  “I need the address of your boss,” I told her.

  She stared at me. She was a tough enough nut, and on a different day, in a different place, I had no doubt that she would have defied me. But she was a carer, and that meant the well-being of someone she loved depended on her own health and safety. That was my advantage.

  “If I don’t get
the address, this won’t end well,” I spoke in a low but steady tone, factual, cold, detached. “He’ll watch you die, then he’ll be left alone here, with you dead on the floor.”

  My cards were good. I have always been aware of my capacity to appear menacing, but if she saw me out, I would have to cash in and leave. I stared into her eyes, but couldn’t read her. Could she see that I had no intention of harming her?

  She broke. Lifting a small pad from beside an antiquated telephone, she wrote down an address, and handed it to me.

  I drilled into her eyes before I looked at what she had written. “If you talk to the cops, I’ll be back. If this address isn’t correct, I’ll be back. Do you understand?”

  She didn’t answer, but I could see the debate churning behind her glare. “Am I going to have to come back here?”

  She sighed, and then turned to the pad again. She wrote something down, and handed it over. A new address. “This is his place,” she said. “Now leave us alone.” She moved in front of the old man, as if to shield him.

  I walked around her and removed a scissors from a magnetic strip, and snipped the curly phone line. The old woman shivered as I passed, which felt awful and ideal at the same time. I needed her to remain afraid. “Write down the phone number of the home-help,” I told her.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “The woman who left a few minutes ago. She’s a nurse of some sort.”

  “Why?” she asked, alarmed.

  “Because tomorrow’s the weekend. I’m assuming she doesn’t come on weekends because you’re here. I’m going to lock you in a room for one day. When I’ve spoken to the professor, then I will call her to let you out.”

  I watched proper panic set in then, before she returned to the pad, and wrote a number down, and handed it to me. I looked at it. There was a silence for a full minute as I waited for her to verbalise whatever was alarming her. “He’s not there,” she blurted. “My boss. He’s flying, tonight, from JFK.”