Walk on the Wild Side

by Bob Mayer

  “How did you get rid of them?” Kane asked, genuinely curious.

  Caitlyn didn’t reply.

  “Your teary-eyed story,” Kane said. “The one about the young girl murdered in the crossfire when Flanagan and his men tried to kill the head of the Provos. Was that true?”

  “That happened. Flanagan’s wife was there.”

  “The real Caitlyn.”

  “Caitlyn Flanagan was neck deep in her husband’s nefarious actions. But that girl’s death broke something in her. She killed herself a week later.”

  “Did she?” Kane asked. “Or did she cross him and he killed her?”

  “That’s a possibility, but the odds are she suicided,” Caitlyn said. “Flanagan kept it quiet. Suicide is a sin in the Catholic faith.”

  “I used to be an altar boy,” Kane replied.

  “I don’t see that in you,” Caitlyn said.

  “That persona died a long time ago like your nightmares.”

  “Most likely a positive development.” She frowned. “Do you ever wonder why there are no altar girls?”

  “It’s bad enough there are boys,” Kane said. “Let’s not go down that path.”

  She gave a small smile and ceded the point. “Agreed.”

  “But you weren’t there when the girl died,” Kane said, getting back on topic.

  She shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  Caitlyn stared at him impassively.

  “Did someone help Caitlyn Flanagan kill herself?” Kane asked.

  Caitlyn tsk-tsked. “Suspicious mind.”

  “I’ve been painfully slow being suspicious regarding you,” Kane said. “I should have been on alert when I saw you at Kelly’s the second time.” He saw Thao bringing several boxes of take out to a pair of transvestites who’d just finished eating along with a small brown bag of medications. There was considerable hugging and profuse thanks and the two left and Thao went back to the kitchen. For the first time, Kane wondered where Thao got the meds as he realized it was something else in his life that he’d accepted but never wondered about.

  Kane nodded toward Morticia. “She’s trying to break into acting. You should give her some lessons.” He tried to fit this new development in place. “You’re Quinn’s replacement.”

  “Who?”

  Kane gripped the edge of the table. “I believe I deserve a little respect for what I just did.”

  Caitlyn nodded. “Apologies. That was trite. No. I am not Quinn’s replacement. I imagine his disappearance caused a bit of a ruckus within MI-6.”

  “His presence caused quite a ruckus here,” Kane said. “He was a psychopathic multiple killer.”

  “Indeed,” Caitlyn said. “It occurs among those in his profession. Too often. The government trains them to be elite killers and wants them to do so, but only on order. Break perhaps the most fundamental rule of man, one of the Ten Commandments, but obey a man-made order. A dangerous problem. Do you ever wonder who polices the ranks of the covert world? Quinn was, of course, much too dangerous for the police. New Zealand pulled his citizenship and wouldn’t allow him back after what he did with the SAS in Oman, which showed prescient foresight on their part. And consider the disconnect in that: he was put up for a Victoria Cross for those very actions. What’s a man to make of such divergent messages? He didn’t get the medal and he couldn’t go home. Thus, the British Intelligence Service, ever the opportunists, scooped him up. Think of the secrets that were rattling around in Quinn’s brain. Do you know what he did in Oman?”

  “The Battle of Mirbat. He killed one of the Sultan’s troops to induce the others to get into the battle. It can be hard to get those you’re advising to fight.”

  Caitlyn appeared impressed. “It’s classified but one can unearth it. Your landlord, Pope, found out?”

  “This is between you and me.”

  “No fear. We’re just chatting. Besides Oman, he did a lot of dirty work in Boston to establish his credentials in the underworld before coming to New York City. Make his bones, so to speak. Couldn’t have that in a courtroom, especially since he was ultimately working for the Brits. Their issue but it would cause blowback here. People like Quinn, they have the potential to be a real problem, don’t they?”

  “He isn’t any more.”

  “That is true.”

  “Sounds like you, whoever you work for, were tracking Quinn.”

  “He was on the radar,” Caitlyn admitted.

  “Whose radar? The word I got was that British Intelligence is miffed he isn’t on their radar anymore,” Kane said. “They had plans for him infiltrating the IRA and the New York mafia, although I’m not quite sure why they were interested in the latter. If you’re not MI-6, then you must be CIA.”

  “No. And there’s little point playing a guessing game,” she said.

  The cards he did have were bouncing around Kane’s brain, trying to find a logical sequence. “Then again, the CIA acted as if they didn’t know who Quinn really was until after his demise. Or even that he was here in the city. His cover must have been excellent or else someone did know and it was extremely compartmentalized. That’s what we had to do with the South Vietnamese.”

  “Ah, the Green Beret Affair,” Caitlyn said. “General Abrams was a fool to push that, especially since he was neck deep with Nixon and Kissinger in the Cambodia bombings which were most certainly illegal.”

  “Above my pay grade,” Kane said. “So, you could be CIA.”

  “I already said no.”

  “But you’ve already lied to me,” Kane said. “How did you learn about Flanagan?”

  “MI-6 stumbled on intel about what Flanagan planned. Literally stumbled, but that’s not a story for here and now or even important any more, let’s just be grateful they did. There was probably a debate at the highest levels in Century House about what to do with that tidbit once they discovered it. Whether to hope Flanagan and his Swords succeeded in order to cripple funding and weapons for the IRA from misguided Americans or to stop a terrorist attack on an ally.”

  “How do you know that if you’re not British or American intelligence?” Kane asked.

  “You know and you’re neither.”

  “How did you learn his target was the Statue of Liberty? From the Brits?”

  She regarded him with those deep green eyes and didn’t reply.

  Kane gripped the edge of the table. “You set me up.”

  “You set yourself up, Kane. No one forced you to get involved. You walked into Kelly’s looking for them. I simply gave you a nudge in the right direction on a path you were already treading. You’re welcome.”

  Kane sat back in the booth. He wrapped his hands around his cool coffee mug. The two ice cubes were a fraction of their original size. “I’m tired.”

  “You must have had a long night.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  Caitlyn slid her warmer coffee across the table to him.

  Kane cut to the chase. “I had to kill someone this morning.”

  “Flanagan and—”

  “No. After that and just before I came here. Where I live. He was trying to kill me. He almost did. I was lucky.”

  Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, looking at him. “Killing doesn’t affect you like some men. You’ve seen too much death.”

  “I have.” He grasped the mug, feeling the warmth seep into his fingers. “It’s not going to end. There are others waiting in line to finish what was attempted this morning.”

  “Crawford’s adopted sons.”

  Kane wasn’t overly surprised. “What do you know of them?”

  “They were in the city looking for Thomas Marcelle. One was killed in an adult theater near Times Square after slitting the throat a man associated with Marcelle. Is that the cause of your problems?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now another is dead as of this morning?”

  “Yes.” Kane had no idea why he was being honest with her given her deception. Stil
l, she’d given him the target and their numbers which had been essential to mission accomplishment.

  “What are you going to do?” Caitlyn asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve had a busy twenty-four hours. What do you know of Crawford? When I asked the CIA, I was told to fuck off. That he had some sort of connection with Bush, who runs the Agency.”

  “Really?”

  Kane couldn’t read her. “Does that surprise you or did you know it already?”

  “You’ve been around, Kane. You know there are connections in the halls of power that most people never see.”

  “The good old boys. Seems they’re everywhere. There’s a network of powerful homosexual men in the city that Marcelle was part of. The Gentleman Bankers.”

  “Power is a magnet that pulls certain types of people together,” Caitlyn said. “But it can also push them apart. It cuts both ways.”

  “Why are you here?” Kane asked her.

  She opened her purse and Kane tensed as she reached inside. She slid the purse, hand still inside across the table. Kane’s hand curled around the grip of his forty-five.

  “Relax,” she said. “I just activated a powerful magnet that wiped out the tape on your machine under the table. Might as well turn it off.”

  Kane let go of the gun. He switched the recorder off.

  Caitlyn pulled the purse back and put it on the bench next to her. “How did you learn who supplied Flanagan with the weapons?”

  “Walsh.”

  Caitlyn went brogue on him in. “Ah, lad, as they say in the old country, cac tarbh.”

  “Nice,” Kane said. “Do you do events? Bar Mitzvahs?”

  “Walsh blew him off,” Caitlyn said, reverting to sorta New York. “Didn’t give Flanagan anything. You went to Boston with Thao and Merrick and you knew exactly where to go and who to see.”

  “How do you know that?” Kane was getting frustrated at being behind.

  “It would be logical,” Caitlyn said, “that you came out of Damon’s lair with some information about his operation. Quinn went in there looking for something. Damon had contacts in Boston. Two men were killed recently in a warehouse where various weapons and explosives were uncovered. Boston PD has no clue who committed the crime. Nor will they figure it out. Not that they care much about the death of a couple of undesirables.”

  “You think or you know they won’t figure it out?” Kane asked.

  “A hunch, but mine usually pan out. Back to the information from Damon.” She waited.

  “You want the ledger,” Kane said. “The one Quinn killed Damon for.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I know where it is. What do I get if I give you the ledger?”

  “My thanks.”

  Kane stared hard at her.

  “What do you want?” Caitlyn asked.

  “A favor,” Kane said.

  “And that is?”

  “I don’t know yet. But given recent events, I’m sure I’ll eventually need one. Probably sooner than I like.”

  “Everyone can use a favor once in a while,” Caitlyn agreed.

  “How do I get hold of you? To give you the ledger. And when I need the favor. Or are you going back to Ireland? Or England? Or DC? Or Topeka?” Kane considered the fact that Dale had also wanted the ledger which muddied things a bit; he’d need some time and rest to let the mud in his brain settle and try to figure out what the hell was going on.

  Caitlyn clasped her hands and considered. She reached into her purse and retrieved a pen. Then took a paper napkin and wrote a number on it. She slid it across. “Call and leave a pay phone number where you can be reached and when.”

  Kane looked at it. “New York area code.”

  “Don’t read anything into that,” Caitlyn said. “Calls are easily forwarded. And I’m not on the other end of that number. Not directly.”

  Kane put it in his moleskin notepad. “I just joined the modern world and got a phone installed in my apartment. You want my number?”

  “I already have it.”

  “Right.”

  Caitlyn got back on topic. “People think you took the money.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I believe you, but others won’t.”

  “There were two duffle bags of cash,” Kane said. “They burned up. The interesting thing is Walsh told me he’d only given Damon five hundred thousand from NORAID.” He was referring to the money collected for ‘the widows and orphans’ in the ‘old country’ by that organization. “But Damon was insisting there was two million; he was bargaining for his life so I would tend to believe him.”

  “You didn’t take the bargain? Two million is a lot of money.”

  “He was bargaining with Quinn,” Kane said. “I was otherwise pre-occupied. Whose was the other one point five million?”

  “Damon was into a lot of things,” Caitlyn said.

  “Do you know whose money? In case they come looking?”

  “We’re hoping the answer is in Damon’s ledger,” Caitlyn said.

  “’We’re’? Most of the ledger is in one-time-pad code,” Kane said. “I was fortunate to find the Boston address and a name in the clear. Which means whatever is encrypted is more important than that.”

  “Here’s a better question: Why do you figure NORAID’s half a million was part of that two million?” Caitlyn didn’t wait for an answer. “After all, Damon had the M-16s on hand. He would’ve had to pay for them on delivery. The arms business isn’t known for IOU’s.”

  “You’re saying there was two million and no one knows whose it was?”

  “As I said, the answer might lie in the ledger. The loss of the money can be placed on Quinn. I believe if information about the fate of Kevin Flanagan and his compatriots and what they were planning to do to lay blame against the Provos is disseminated, that will gain you points with various involved parties. Perhaps enough to forgive the Quinn incident.”

  “How would that happen?”

  “Whispers,” Caitlyn said. “There are always whispers.”

  “With the British government? Or the Provos? Or the old boy network?”

  “All of the above. The Provos aren’t thrilled about their missing M-16s but with Quinn having been an agent of the British government, it can be chalked off to that fight. I’ll give you a buzz if I hear anything to the contrary. But I think you can relax as far as the Provos especially once they hear of Flanagan’s plan and his fate.”

  “Thank you.”

  Caitlyn twitched a thin smile.

  Kane looked her over, not in the usual way a man looks at a woman. “You’ve got a gun somewhere. But I don’t see it. Purse?”

  “It’s accessible,” she said.

  Another piece of the puzzle slid into place. “When we sterilized the site and deep-sixed the Irish’ gear, we didn’t find any suppressed weapons. You shot Walsh, didn’t you? Even left a trail to the river to let me think it was Flanagan.”

  She nodded.

  “Why? He was giving me information.”

  “He’d given you everything he had. He didn’t know anything other than he talked to Flanagan and told them he couldn’t help,” Caitlyn said. “I imagine he thinks they shot him in retaliation, especially if they saw him talking to you.”

  “Why did you shoot him?”

  “To see how you would react. To make sure I was betting on the right man. And because Walsh has been helping the Provos get weapons and explosives that kill innocents. That was a little, shall we say, icing on the cake?”

  “Someone asked me who innocents were,” Kane said.

  “What did you answer?” She actually seemed interested.

  Kane tried to remember what he’d told Sofia Cappucci. “The average person. Who follows the rules.”

  “Present company is excepted, then.”

  “Are you with some other part of British intelligence?” Kane asked. “We’ve got a lot of alphabet soups here in the States. Hard to keep track of all of them. Perhaps milit
ary intelligence?”

  Caitlyn was about to speak but paused as Morticia brought the pot and topped off both mugs without saying anything, which probably caused her considerable discomfort. She moved on to another booth.

  “There are a plethora of intelligence and law enforcement agencies,” Caitlyn said. “Someone needs to keep track of them.”

  “Is that your job?”

  Caitlyn answered with a question. “One might suspect its yours, given your recent actions. Who do you work for? You’ve been talking to the CIA, the FBI and NYPD. You were once Special Forces and did covert ops in Vietnam. Your military record seems to have disappeared. But what can be dug up presents a rather impressive and lethal resume.”

  Kane spread his hands. “I don’t work for anyone.”

  “Toni Marcelle?”

  “She’s a friend. You know a lot about me and I know nothing about you.”

  “You haven’t been listening,” Caitlyn said. “I’ve been telling you about me this entire time. But it’s time for me to go.” Except she didn’t get up.

  Kane waited.

  Caitlyn leaned forward and lowered her voice. “You’re in very deep, William Kane. Damon and Marcelle were the tip of the iceberg. Underneath? Crawford is just below the surface and it goes deeper than him. You’re starting to glimpse the connections but what you’ve touched is a piece of a vast spiderweb.”

  “Marcelle said something about Crawford being worse than Damon.”

  “Worse is relative. Better connected would be more accurate. Damon was a known criminal. Marcelle was a lawyer, a shady one, but still in the public eye. Crawford is apparently a respected businessman. The more legitimate a powerful man appears, the deeper his secrets. Crawford is old school and his roots are spread wide. You would do well to take the advice to stay away from him unless you really know what you’re getting into.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Not in our mandate.”

  “I’d like to see this mandate,” Kane said. He stared at her. “Have you seen the mandate you work under?” They were both quiet for a few moments. Kane broke the silence. “Will I see you again?”

  Caitlyn frowned, accentuating the lines etched in her face. “I don’t know what the future holds.”

  “None of us do,” Kane said.