Michael Quinn

by Caleb Borne

  “What is it, Mr. Whitley? My wife is very ill.”

  “Yes, sir, I heard. I’m sorry to hear about it. Remember the last time when there were problems with the account?”

  I sighed. “Don’t tell me it’s overdrawn again? You came all the way down here for an overdraw? Just take it out of one of the other accounts.”

  “No sir, nothing overdrawn. You told me never to cash a check for more than a thousand without checking with you first. Well, sir, this cashier’s check came through and there were deposit slips made out to other peoples’ accounts. That certainly qualified. It’s quite a sum of money, sir. It just didn’t strike me right.”

  “Let me see those.”

  I took the paperwork from him and sat in one of the chairs next to the window where the light was better. It took me a few moments to actually realize what I was holding. “Thank you, Mr. Whitley. You’ve redeemed yourself. Do not honor any of these. It would appear someone is trying to steal from me.”

  “Oh, Mr. Quinn, that’s what I was afraid of. Shall I telephone the police?”

  “Technically, none of these went through yet, is that correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, technically, the crime has yet to be committed, correct?”

  “Why, yes, sir, but I think it’s clear they believe the deposits have been made. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that you gave me those added instructions, this would have already been processed.”

  I slipped the paperwork into my inside pocket. “Mr. Whitley, I will take you out for a steak dinner one day very soon and we’ll celebrate the healthy birth of my child.”

  He nodded, standing and putting his hat back onto his head. “I hope so, sir, I really do. Very well. I’ll assume you’re handling this.”

  “You are correct. Good day.”

  Whitley exited through the revolving doors of the hospital lobby and I sat in my chair, stunned. Whitley had given me the cashier’s check made out to me for the full amount of sale for The Hill, Tipperary and the California house. It was a sum in excess of three million dollars. It was endorsed on the back in my name, but it was not my handwriting. The check was accompanied by three deposit slips for the accounts of Saul M. Bloomstein, Colin D. Quinn and Stanley Walter O’Hara.

  Mr. Whitley, in his innocent, bumbling way, had just handed me back our lives.

  Kathleen

  I was conscious of the pain in my lower back. It ached so that I couldn’t sleep. I felt stronger so I squinted my eyes open and saw Michael, his head on the mattress next to my hand. “Michael?”

  “Sweetheart?” He popped up and gave me a gentle kiss on the forehead.

  “Can someone help me turn or put pillows beneath me? This bed is killing my back.” Suddenly, I remembered and my hand went to my tummy which was still nicely rounded. I exhaled with relief. “You didn’t let them take it.”

  “No. The boss had spoken,” he teased me.

  “Am I out of danger?”

  “The doctors say if you stay here with complete bedrest, there’s a good chance you can carry the baby to thirty-five weeks and then they’ll take it by C-section. You’re not strong enough to do it any other way and the baby has also been stressed. They don’t want the baby to get any larger than that because they feel as though the trauma will be more dangerous the closer it comes to the due date.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “I’ve been doing that steadily on both our behalves.”

  I ran my hand along his cheek. “You look awful.”

  “Oh, the accommodations have been a bit confined,” I joked. “Hang on.”

  I stole pillows from the other bed in the room and picked her up very gently to push them beneath the small of her back and beneath her arms. “How’s that?”

  “Much better.”

  I hid my dismay. When I’d picked her up, she weighed hardly anything. I could feel her bones through her skin.

  “Hungry?”

  “Maybe later. Tell me, if I’m to stay here, what happens to the move? What day is this?”

  “Sweetheart, all you need to know is that our problem has been resolved. No bloodshed and no moving involved. Our son will be born right here in the Bluegrass and here we’ll stay.”

  “Oh,” she exhaled. “I’m so relieved. I’m going back to sleep now. Maybe they could bring me a sandwich for later?”

  I nodded and kissed her again.

  When Butch came later that evening, I left him with her while I went home. A hot shower later, I fell once again into the bed, but not before I took the papers Whitley had given me and locked them in the office safe. I slept like a baby.

  The next morning, I packed a small case for Katie. I included a couple of her robes, slippers, a magazine, hairbrush, cosmetics and a picture of the both of us for her nightstand. I would have a television brought in when she was up to it, as well as a basket of tempting goodies to take the sting out of the wretched hospital food.

  I was there when the doctors came through and they verified what Butch had said. I asked for a private suite with a second bed so I could spend the nights with Katie in more comfort. I ordered bouquets of flowers and a television with a new-fangled remote control so she could change the channel or the volume from her bed. The basket of goodies arrived later that afternoon and we set up housekeeping.

  She was doing better by the following week. I paid a hairdresser to come in and wash and trim Katie’s beautiful hair and give her a manicure and pedicure. Life was becoming downright cheerful. The battle, however, had yet to conclude.

  Two weeks following closing of the properties, I had every hand who worked from me, armed and ready at my back. Colin showed up, grinning with avarice and crowing about how he’d put one over on me. Bloomstein was with him, gloating in his own creepy sort of way. I invited them in, keeping my guards outside the closed door.

  “So, gentlemen, it would seem, Saul, that you have been busy. Busy bilking me out of my money and putting the mob on my trail.”

  “Give it up, Michael. You’re supposed to already be gone.” His tone was condescending, and it took everything I had not to punch him.

  “Let me see if I have this figured out. Now, Saul, as my attorney, you’ve been acting as intermediary between me and the mob, my brother included, as well as O’Hara. You’ve ingratiated yourself to the point that I trusted you with all my affairs, taking advantage of me every step along the way. Now, it’s my opinion that you were talked into this by my very own brother. Well, hello, Colin, I’ll get to you next.”

  Colin sat back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other as he pretended to pick his teeth with a toothpick.

  “Saul, you understand, of course, that you’ve violated every law in the books regarding client/attorney privilege, as well as malfeasance. Moving on.” I rotated slightly. “Colin. It was you who originally created the debt owed to certain, unnamed gentlemen and lacking the funds to repay it, sent them to me to be settled, as you have so many times before. In fact, they visited me not long ago with weapons capable of murder. I told you before, I was done with paying for your misdeeds and you’re about to learn that finally, for yourself.

  “Now, here’s what’s going to happen.” I pulled out the cashier’s check and deposit slips. Both their faces turned deathly white as they recognized the proof I was holding. “Don’t bother if you’re planning to kill me. These are copies and the originals are in a very safe place that neither of you know about. Someone else, who shall remain nameless, has been instructed to take them to the federal authorities in the event anything, absolutely anything, happens to me. You’d better hope I don’t catch the flu.”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Colin huffed and tried to leave. The door was locked and there were armed men outside.

  “Wouldn’t do that if I were you, brother-o. Now then. I hold in my hand what I believe could be called your short hairs. Saul, you will leave here, close down your law office and never practice law again. You’re to empt
y your accounts at the bank and donate the money to charity. I expect to see the receipt and I have ways of tracking you.

  “Michael, oh, well, you don’t own anything so you’re just going to go on the lamb. I will deal with O’Hara separately. Now, should either of you pop up your slimy heads, I will turn all this over to a friend of mine at the federal level. In fact, you may be acquainted with his name. He is sitting on the Warren Commission—the one investigation the assassination of our president? He will be very interested in talking to the both of you and believe me, he will find you. Neither of you have passports and I’ve seen to it you will never be able to use an alias. You see, I have friends, as well, Colin. Now then. Colin, if your little friends with the guns learn that you’re being interrogated by the Warren Commission, they won’t like that, will they? You’ll become a fly that needs to be swatted, if you get my drift. So, it would be in both your interests to see to it that those papers never see the light of day. You may share that with your little friends because the same applies to them. Need I draw the picture?

  “To keep it short; you will never know when, where or how… but you will definitely know who if you decide to circumvent my instructions. Frankly, the world would be a better place without the lot of you. Saul, leave.”

  He wasted no time getting out and I hoped I never saw him again. Colin sat defiantly across from me. “Ye seem to have forgotten one little thing, me boy-o.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, are you referring to how I got my money?”

  “Indeed, I am. Yer pretty little wife would be very upset were she to learn the details. In fact, might be enough to kill her.”

  “Thank you for that reminder, Colin. Let me tell you the truth behind that, so you have the facts correct. When I left the ship in New York and headed south, I chanced to spend the night in the back yard of a beautiful house. Come first light and the lady of the house discovered me sleeping beneath the branches of a willow tree. She took me inside, heard my tale and offered me breakfast. I stayed a little longer because she was good company and I was hungry and broke. In the morning, she came to me with a proposal. It seemed she was alone in the world and dying of a disease she’d inherited in her genes. She had maybe a month to go. She asked that I marry her so that she wouldn’t go to her grave an old maid. She also asked that we use that last month to travel around the world to all the places she could not go alone, unchaperoned and a target for unscrupulous men. In return, she said she would leave me money as compensation… enough to get to Kentucky. She wasn’t a bad woman, in fact I quite enjoyed her company. She helped me work to Americanize my speech, taught me about art, music—how to appreciate all the finer things in life. We had a grand time, we did.

  “When her time came, I was the only person standing at her graveside. I left her a bouquet of red roses and when I went back to her house to get my things, there was an envelope on the hall table. Inside was a check made out to me in the amount of four hundred-fifty million dollars. Ah, I see your greedy little eyes light up. You didn’t know it was that much… but now you do. You should think about it long and hard because in return for your loving remark about killing my wife and child, I’m going to turn over your part of the records. Oh! Don’t try to run, Colin. The boys outside will shoot you dead for breaking into my home. And don’t think they won’t enjoy the task. So, Colin, me brother… I wish ye well in the life ye’ve made fer yerself. You’d better get a run on—a headstart because the lovely state boys will be watchin’ the borders. Oh, give Mother a kiss from me when you’re reunited.”

  “I’ll get word to Katie,” he threatened.

  “Go ahead. She already knows. She loves me all the more for having a heart, in fact.”

  That was the last time I saw my brother. Despite all the times I’d been desperate to bail him out of his wrong doings, when he wished to kill Katie and our baby, every bit of caring I may have ever had for him disappeared. In fact, I think it had depleted itself years ago but those with hearts don’t give up quickly.

  * * *

  When I left The Hill, I drove over to Tipperary. O’Hara’s face went white when he saw me driving toward him. He ran for the barn, but I caught up. He had tripped and was lying in a pile of stall droppings, his leg broken and lying at a right angle at the knee. Even then, he was patting his pockets for his flask. He was a disgusting human being and I’ll never know how he fathered Katie.

  As a matter of fact, once I had a talk with Bella, it turned out he wasn’t Katie’s father after all. That title belonged to a young man she’d met at the State Fair who had talked her into a little fling in the back of the horse barn, inside a stall. O’Hara was totally beneath her in station, but he wanted to be a farm owner and her family had a farm and a pregnant daughter. It was a deal made in hell and they’d both paid for it ever since.

  O’Hara was smart enough to understand what he was up against and he politely disappeared into the ether. Bella, although less admirable than we’d all thought, wasn’t a bad person. I invited her to continue living at Tipperary and help Katie with the baby—a position she was only too happy to accept. I knew Katie would pout when her mother interfered, but she needed a sense of family around her and O’Hara was hardly the role model I had in mind. Bella went on later to divorce him for abandonment—a divorceable offense in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Tipperary would go to our son as his inheritance.

  In the end, each of the culprits had hung themselves, which left me with a clean conscience. Then life became a waiting game for our child to appear.

  Kathleen

  I knew there was something different when I awakened that morning. My back still hurt, but in a different way.

  Our routine had become the hospital and the wait. Michael slept in the bed next to mine and our room resembled more of a hotel suite than a hospital room. We were quite comfortable and spent long hours talking about our future. It helped to pass the time and at that point, that’s what we had the most of.

  Michael told me the story of Madeline, his first wife. I felt a flicker of jealousy at first, but once I heard the story, I knew there had been nothing between them and thought him quite noble for making the last days of a woman’s life rich and memorable. I wished I could have met Madeline and to tell her that I was taking over and would take very good care of him.

  It had been such a relief to hear how everything worked out on its own with regard to the mob and our futures. When my mother told me the story of how “Daddy” had come to hold that position in my life, I felt the shift in our relationship. She no longer lorded decisions and standing over me but had been reduced to her most humble moment and I did not sit in judgement. I would miss Daddy since he was he only one I’d ever had, but after I heard that he was willing to let us go down so that he could strut the county again, a deep hatred began to burn in my gut. That was a foreign feeling for me.

  I was very excited that we didn’t have to move. I loved The Hill and had, despite Michael’s plans, envisioned which room was to be turned into a nursery and how I would decorate it. The doctors told me once the baby was born, my blood pressure should almost immediately return to normal and as soon as I was strong enough to be mobile, the baby and I were to be discharged and our lives would begin in earnest.

  The aching in my back interrupted my reminiscing. I pushed the button for the nurse and called out to Michael. “Something’s different.”

  He was out of his bed in a flash, standing next to me still in his boxer shorts. “What feels different?”

  “This isn’t backache from lying in bed too long. This is something different. If I had to describe it, I’d say it almost has a pulsing feeling.”

  The nurse had walked in as I was describing it. She swiftly left the room and came back with a doctor in tow. They drew the curtains between Michael’s bed and mine and the obstetrician was called for a consult. It was decided that I was in early labor.

  I knew by the express on Michael’s face that this wasn’t necessarily a goo
d thing.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked the obstetrician, Dr. Moore.

  “You’re early. The baby will likely do just fine, despite being small. The problem is that the baby has already started its way down the birth canal. We weren’t going to allow that to happen. We’d planned a C-section since the two of you have been under such stress.”

  “Could the baby or I die?”

  He looked at Michael and then at me. “The baby will survive.”

  I lifted my head in alarm as another ache permeated my midsection. “But I might not?”

  “It all depends on how quickly we can get the baby out and whether your blood pressure stays where it is or lower. Any higher and you could suffer a stroke, blindness… or worse.”

  “Michael! Michael, don’t let that happen! Don’t let me die!”

  “You’re not dying, sweetheart. You know I’d never let that happen.”

  He was being brave on my behalf, but I became terrified at the possibilities which only served to drive up my blood pressure.

  “Can’t you give her something to lower it?” Michael begged.

  “She is still the vessel and blood supply for the baby. Anything we give her goes straight to the baby as well. The little one won’t tolerate it. This is what we were afraid might happen. All the trauma had caused her to go into pre-term labor.”

  “Another doctor! Should I fly in someone from Mayo?”

  “Mr. Quinn, having a baby is the most natural thing in the world. She is in the best hands possible her. What you can do is remain calm. She draws upon your energy and does the baby in all likelihood. Shelter them and stay calm. It’s what you can contribute to protect them.”

  I heard all this as I drifted in and out. I knew it would come down to this moment and it was my turn to be strong. I had to protect the baby and that meant that I needed to remain calm. “Just leave me alone with Michael,” I asked. “We’ll get all three of us through this.”