by Steven Henry
“Morning, darling,” Carlyle said, sliding into a seat next to her. “Have you ordered yet?”
“No, I just got here.”
“Soda water with a dash of lime for me,” he said to the bartender. “And I’ll cover whatever she’s having.”
“Coke,” Erin said. A little extra caffeine certainly couldn’t hurt.
They got their drinks and sipped them. “Your kid over there had a late night,” she observed, cocking an eyebrow Ian’s way.
“Word on the street has it, the lad needn’t sleep,” Carlyle said.
“Like that thing he did in Afghanistan? I read his personnel file. But I don’t believe it. He’s got to sleep sometime.” Erin was thinking of an incident during Ian’s Marine days, in which he’d carried a wounded comrade for five days through hostile country. He’d been awake the whole time, so the story went.
“No fear, darling. He’s sharp enough after one night’s watching.”
“So what about Liam? He going to show, or what?”
“Patience,” Carlyle said. “He’s not one by whom you can set a wristwatch. But he’ll be here.”
They waited.
“You think he knows anything useful?” Erin asked, eventually.
“I’ve no idea,” Carlyle replied.
“How’s Evan feel about us?”
He glanced at her. They hadn’t talked much about her introduction to Evan O’Malley since she’d met Carlyle’s boss about three weeks back.
“As I told you, he’s favorably impressed,” Carlyle said. “He thinks you’re useful.”
“Oh, good. I’m useful to a mob boss. Just what every cop wants.”
“Need I remind you, Erin, this is precisely the outcome we wanted?”
She sighed. “You’re right. It just takes a little getting used to. But he’s okay with it? With you seeing me?”
“If not, he’d hardly tell me,” Carlyle said. “He’d register his objections in an executive fashion.”
Erin swallowed. She wasn’t sure what to say to that.
She was saved from the conversation by Liam’s arrival. The little, ferret-faced guy stepped through the door, glanced around, saw Erin and Carlyle, and scurried over to them. Halfway there, he paused and shot Ian a look. Ian returned it calmly. Then Liam got to the bar. He pulled himself onto a bar stool and tried to sit still.
It didn’t work. His fingers drummed on the bar. His eyes, bloodshot and runny, flicked all over the room. Liam was never a relaxing guy to be around, but he struck Erin as particularly jittery today.
“Hey, man,” she said. “Take it easy. Everything’s cool.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He sniffled and rubbed his nose. He looked at Erin with pupils that looked like big, black eightballs. She couldn’t believe it. Eleven-fifteen in the morning and Liam was high as a kite.
“Thank you for meeting us, lad,” Carlyle said. “We understand you’re busy, and we appreciate it.”
“Okay, sure,” Liam said. “And I appreciate that thing last month.”
“Forget about it,” Erin said, giving the correct mob response. He was talking about the tip he’d given her which had led to the heroin shipment she and Sergeant Logan’s team had taken down. “But anything else that’s going on,” she added, “we can talk.”
“But in the meantime,” Carlyle interjected, “there’s something you may be able to help us with.”
“What’s that?” Liam asked. The bartender came over to see if they needed anything else. Liam started to wave her off, then changed his mind.
“You got milkshakes?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Okay, gimme three chocolate shakes and some of those brownies you got, the ones with the whipped cream.”
The girl blinked. “I’m sorry, did you mean…?”
“I said three chocolate shakes, dammit!” he snapped. “Line ‘em up on the bar, one, two, three. You think you can count that high, bitch?”
“Okay, okay!” she said. “Asshole,” she added in an undertone as she moved off.
“Sorry,” Liam muttered, turning back to Carlyle and Erin. “What was that?”
“Someone took down some Lucarellis pretty hard yesterday,” Erin said. “I need to know who’s got a beef with them.”
Liam froze. For just a second, all his twitchy energy went totally still. Then he cocked his head and looked sidelong at Carlyle.
“The hell is this, Cars?”
Erin had gotten to know Carlyle pretty well, and she still had trouble seeing his surprise. Just a slight tightening of the skin around his eyes and his fingers curling a little more firmly around his glass of mineral water, that was all.
“I don’t know what you mean, Liam.”
“Why’d you bring her here? You said, like, she needed to talk to me. Okay, sure, I can talk, we can talk all day if you want, but y’know, we can only talk about this, not about that, y’know? I mean, how far in is she, really? Is she one of us, or one of them?”
“Lad,” Carlyle said gently, “you’re not making sense.”
“You here as a cop?” Liam asked Erin.
“Yeah, I am.”
Liam gave Carlyle a look that said “I told you so,” even though he hadn’t.
Erin shot Carlyle a confused look of her own. This was not going the way she’d expected. She tried to think what she could say.
“Look, Liam,” she began. “If there’s something going on I can help with, let me know. But you’ve got to talk to me, man. You don’t want to name names, that’s fine. But give me something I can use. We got a good relationship going here. I don’t want to jeopardize that, and I know you don’t, either.”
But Liam stood up, quickly and abruptly. “Screw this, man,” he said. “I gotta get outta here. Gotta get some air. Talk to you later, Cars.”
He stumbled, almost fell, and scrambled out the door, nearly running.
Carlyle watched him go and turned to Erin. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I fear I’ve wasted all our time. I don’t know what’s come over the lad.”
“What the hell?” the bartender demanded. She was standing there with the three milkshakes and the bowl of brownies Liam had requested. “He coming back?”
“I fear not,” Carlyle said. “I apologize for him, ma’am. I’ll cover his tab, naturally.” He took out his wallet. Most mob guys carried their bills in a roll, but Carlyle was too classy for that. He fished out a couple of bills and slid them across the bar. “You needn’t give me any change.”
“Thanks,” the bartender said, pocketing the bills. “Whatcha doing hanging out with a jerk like that, anyway?”
“More business than pleasure, I assure you,” he said, turning his attention back to Erin. “I’m sure you’ll be needing to get back to work. I don’t suppose you’re hungry?” He indicated the brownies.
“That guy’s diet could give me diabetes just watching him eat,” she said. But she picked up one of the brownies and moved it toward her mouth.
The sound from outside wasn’t particularly loud, but it was distinctive. It was a rapid-fire series of rattling, popping sounds, a short burst followed by a longer one. A front window shattered, pebbles of tempered glass showering to the floor.
The bartender paused, staring in confusion. Erin and Ian were already moving, Carlyle a second behind them. Erin snatched out her Glock and ran toward the door. Rolf matched her stride for stride. Ian, with the smooth efficiency of a combat veteran, pulled a Beretta automatic from under his coat and, holding the gun in both hands, came to Carlyle’s side.
“Move, sir,” he said as Erin hurried past him. “Out the back. Now.”
Erin didn’t hear Carlyle’s answer. What she heard was screams from outside the pool hall. “NYPD!” she shouted. She flung the door open and ran onto the sidewalk.
A ragged half-circle of New York pedestrians stood there, at a respectful distance from a crumpled shape. A pair of uniformed officers had just arrived. One of them knelt beside the body. The other stood with
his sidearm in hand, waving the bystanders back with his other hand. As Erin approached, she heard the kneeling cop talking into his radio.
“We need a bus to 110 East 11th,” he said. “Multiple GSW.”
Erin flashed her shield to the standing officer. “O’Reilly,” she said. “Major Crimes. What’ve we got?”
“Looks like a drive-by,” he said. “Me and my partner was halfway down the block when we heard it. Shooter was already gone. Poor bastard probably never even knew what hit him.”
Erin looked down. There, his blood outlining the channels in the concrete, lay Liam McIntyre. His eyes were wide open, staring at the sky, but he wasn’t seeing anything in this world. A glance told Erin everything she needed to know. It didn’t matter how fast the ambulance got there. He was already dead.
Chapter 6
Erin stood on Eleventh Street, her Glock in one hand, Rolf’s leash in the other, trying to think. The adrenaline pumping through her veins didn’t make it easier. Liam had been nervous during their abortive meeting. Had he known he was being targeted? That didn’t make sense. Liam was the kind of guy who’d go to ground if he thought he was being hunted. He wouldn’t stick his nose out of his hole.
Maybe it was a coincidence, an unrelated attack. Drug dealers ran a constant risk of being murdered by competitors. But Erin didn’t believe in coincidence. Her father liked to say, “Coincidence is like winning the lottery. How many people you know who’ve won the lottery?”
At the moment, Erin had a more pressing concern. She needed to figure out what she was going to say to the Homicide detectives when they got there. If she even wanted to be there at all. Ian might’ve had the right idea. He and Carlyle were long gone by now.
Great, just great. She was thinking like a mobster. But she had to decide, and fast. For now, she was just an NYPD detective who’d happened to be in the vicinity of a gangland shooting. She didn’t want her connection to the Irish Mob being talked about in another precinct. Next thing she knew, her relationship with Carlyle would come out, and then…
She didn’t know what would happen then. Nothing good. But if the Homicide boys in Little Italy were any good at all, they’d trace Liam’s movements prior to his death. They’d interview the bartender, who’d definitely remember the police officer and K-9. Then it would come back on Erin regardless.
So there wasn’t really a choice. Besides, Sean O’Reilly hadn’t raised his daughter to run and hide. And while she was biting bullets, she might as well get a whole mouthful. She called Webb.
“You talk to your guy?” he asked.
“Sort of.”
There was a pause.
“You’re going to have to explain that,” he said. “Obviously.”
“I met my CI,” she explained. “But he got spooked and ran off.”
“That actually sounds promising. Maybe this guy knows something. You think he’ll crack if you lean on him a little?”
“That’s the thing, sir. He didn’t get far.” She took a deep breath. “He’s dead.”
There was another pause. When Webb’s voice came back on the line, he sounded enormously weary.
“Please tell me you didn’t shoot him.”
“What? No! But someone sure as hell did. Automatic fire, submachine-gun I think.”
“Are you hit? Any other casualties?”
“No and no. I only heard it, I didn’t see it happen. I’m at the scene with two uniforms, waiting on Homicide. I’ll probably be tied up here for a while.”
She heard the sigh over the phone line. “It is what it is,” he replied. “Thanks for the heads-up. So now we have eleven bodies.”
“That we know of.”
“Thank you for that encouraging thought, O’Reilly. You think it’s connected?”
“I don’t see how it couldn’t be.”
“Same shooters as yesterday?”
“I only heard one gun. Couldn’t say who did the shooting. They were gone by the time I got outside.”
“Okay. Give my name to the Homicide boys when they show up, so we can coordinate who’s going to work this one. It’ll probably land on us, given the situation. But get back here as quick as you can. This one sounds like a misdemeanor.”
Erin knew what he meant. Vic had used the same term to describe the Mafia guys. “Misdemeanor homicides” were what police called murders where the victims were criminals. They didn’t tend to be the highest priority to solve, since they didn’t directly endanger the public. If the firebombing hadn’t killed civilians as well, the NYPD might not be bringing out its big guns to solve it.
“Copy that,” she said. “O’Reilly out.”
Erin didn’t need to worry, as it turned out. The Homicide detectives, a couple of guys named Lawton and Crawford, only asked her a few perfunctory questions. She told them Liam was an informant, that he’d tipped her off to a competitor’s drug deal a while ago, and she’d been meeting hoping to get some info on another case.
“He have anything for you?” Lawton asked.
“Nope,” she said. “He got pissed off and left.”
And that was it. Erin could see they’d already made up their minds about Liam. The story they were telling themselves was that he’d been on the bad side of some other drug dealer and gotten himself whacked. Open and shut. Not that they knew which dealer had killed him, but she figured they’d try to work that out later.
Erin left the scene feeling that Liam had gotten the sort of death he deserved. It didn’t make her feel any better. She knew the shooting was linked to the restaurant massacre, but she didn’t know how. All she knew for certain was that a potential lead had been cut off.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she was loading Rolf into her car. She saw an unknown number.
“O’Reilly,” she said noncommittally.
“Are you well, darling?”
“Oh, it’s you. New phone again?”
“Aye. Ian insisted. Once the lad gets going on the subject of operational security, it’s difficult to convince him otherwise. I’d a spare in the car.” Carlyle sighed. “I’d no wish to run out on you like that.”
“I know. You did the right thing. You’d have gotten wrapped up in the investigation if you’d stayed, and that might’ve caused more trouble.”
“It goes against my nature, leaving my lass to face danger without me.”
“I thought you liked that I could take care of myself.”
“I do.”
“Look, I’m fine.” Erin slid into her car and closed the door. “But Liam’s not. He caught a few. He’s dead.”
Carlyle sighed again. “Poor blighter. I thought as much. Can you talk?”
“I’m alone.”
“Any idea who did for him?”
“Not yet.”
“Erin, who did you tell about this meeting?”
She felt suddenly cold. “No one. I mean, my squad knew I was meeting a CI, but I didn’t say who or where. Who’d you tell?”
“Only Ian, and the lad’s solid. On the other hand, I’ve no idea who Liam may have told, and we can’t bloody well ask him now. But someone knew.”
“It’s got to be connected,” she said.
“Or someone thinks it is. Remember, Erin, truth doesn’t matter nearly as much as perception.”
“And the perception’s going to be that you and I got Liam killed.”
He sighed a third time. “I fear you’re right, lass. Mickey’s not going to be happy about this.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Let me worry about Mickey.”
“There’s enough of him to go round. He’s dangerous.”
“You’ve no need to convince me of that, darling. I’ve known the lad longer than you have.”
“Are you back at the Corner?”
“Aye, just arrived.”
“Stay there, and keep your head down.”
“That’s precisely what Ian said. When the two of you agree, I’m thinking it’s wise to take your advice. I’l
l talk to you later, darling.”
Erin put the Charger in gear and wondered where to go. But she realized she already knew. Carlyle might be done talking to her, but she wasn’t done with him, not yet. Dead or alive, Liam remained the best lead she had.
Erin parked in the police space near the Corner, hopped out, and unloaded Rolf. She turned toward the door and froze.
A woman was walking down the sidewalk not ten feet from Erin, apparently on her way into the pub. It wasn’t the woman’s confident walk that caught Erin’s attention, or her knockout figure, or her drop-dead gorgeous face, or even her long mane of flaming red hair. It was the fact that she knew that face.
“Siobhan Finneran,” Erin blurted out.
The redhead spun smoothly, with all the grace of a born dancer. When she saw Erin, her eyes narrowed. Siobhan recognized her at once.
To Erin’s surprise, the moment of recognition actually seemed to relax the other woman. Siobhan had clearly been expecting something else, someone who promised more trouble than Erin could deliver.
“You’re back in town,” Erin said, stepping toward her.
“Was I supposed to announce myself?” Siobhan replied in her thick Irish brogue.
“Put your hands up, turn, and face the wall,” Erin said, pulling her Glock.
Siobhan didn’t move. “Just why would I be doing that?”
“You’re under arrest.”
“And just what is it I’m to have done?” Siobhan asked. If the gun in Erin’s hand and the K-9 at her side made the Irishwoman nervous, she gave no sign of it.
“Murder, for starters.”
“And who is it I’ve killed, according to you?”
“Hans Rüdel.”
“Really?” Siobhan gave her a look of contemptuous disbelief. “You’re accusing me of that?”
Erin stared back. The truth of the matter was complicated. It was true someone had killed Hans Rüdel, a neo-fascist terrorist, the previous year. It was also true Siobhan Finneran was an Irish assassin the O’Malleys had brought in specifically to take care of their problem with Rüdel. He’d died in a car bomb that had nearly killed Erin herself. But Erin had shot him a moment before, and he’d arguably already been dying. The evidence pointing to Siobhan was circumstantial at best. The woman had skipped town immediately after the bombing and escaped questioning. They still had a warrant out for her, but no one was expecting it to amount to anything.