by Justin Scott
The air lay still behind the cemetery walls, cold and sweet with wood smoke from the rectory. Dew glistened on the fallen leaves. He had stopped as he often did early in the morning on his way to work. He knelt and brushed the leaves from the grave, and he tried to commune with his father.
“How are you getting on, Chris?”
He jumped. Father Frye, his mother’s priest, had crept out of the rectory and stood over him. Chris kept his head down and continued brushing the leaves with his hands.
“Tony’s gone back to school, Father. I’ve dropped out to run the company.”
“I’m sure your dad would be pleased. I’m told your building is progressing nicely.” His breath hung in the cold air, like cartoon balloons.
“On schedule.”
“You must be the youngest general contractor in New York.”
It had been a dry fall and the new grass was taking slowly. He rejected the notion of hiring a gardener. Let it follow its own course. “What can I do for you, Father? I’d like to be alone here.”
“I was going to visit you soon. We should have a talk.”
“Abut what?”
“Your mother, you may not know, was a faithful supporter of Sinn Fein in the years before she died.”
“I know she contributed money to Irish causes near the end of her life.”
“Enormous sums.”
“Penance,” said Chris. “Because she couldn’t get my father to take your church seriously.” His mother had embraced the Catholic hierarchy in the Irish-American manner, cherishing the belief that a direct line existed from priest to pope to God; she had fallen deeply in its thrall as she lay dying. Chris’s father had been the opposite, heir to the Southern Italian peasant or contadino tradition of family first and damn all outside authority, be it government or the Catholic church; he had had little patience and less respect for priests and bishops.
The priest ignored the jibe. “I’ve been asked to convey the sympathies of certain parties. They want you to know that they understand it was your father’s money your mother contributed and are grateful.”
“She was dying. How was my father going to stop her?”
“Perhaps he found it easier than accepting the church.” The priest smiled. “It all works out in the end.”
“By certain parties, you mean Provos, don’t you? Terrorists. She had some strange types visiting the hospital. My mother’s money went for guns, did it?”
“Your mother believed in—getting the job done.”
“My mother was half nuts with pain and fear. She could just as easily have left her money to a cat.”
“Your mother knew exactly what she was doing.”
“No, she didn’t. But the point is, now they’re wondering if the money’s going to continue flowing to the Old Sod?”
“I imagine the thought crossed their minds,” Father Frye admitted with another sly smile. “You are executor of your parents’ wills.”
He had never surrendered the idea of revenge. It sustained him that one day, somehow, he would destroy Rendini. Privately embracing his vision, even rehearsing the steps at odd moments, made the act seem real.
But his experience in business—distancing himself from the day-to-day details—shouted louder than before that the method he imagined was foolish. Were he to actually pull the trigger, he would set the entire police apparatus against himself; detectives, patient men with decades of learning, like Uncle Eamon. Surely he could be clever, put his quick mind to bright invention, stack the details—yet the odds were with the cops.
He looked at the priest and found himself on familiar ground. Why not hire a professional just as he hired superintendents, project managers, lawyers? Even interior decorators, he thought with a thin smile that made the priest squirm. A professional outside American organized crime? Chris loaded his voice with heavy insult and asked the priest, “How do I know my money will ever get to the IRA?”
“Are you suggesting—”
“You’ve got a great setup for a con game here. Wrap the church in the Irish flag to shake down the orphans of dead contributors.”
Father Frye bristled, but he kept icy control—a man above insult when serving his cause. “If you came to my church, my parishioners would set you straight about my dedication to Ireland.”
“I want proof.”
“Proof?”
Chris took a breath, acutely aware that he was on the edge of changing his life. “Bring me proof.”
“What sort of proof did you have in mind?”
“Bring me someone convincing.”
The priest puffed up. Chris thought of a mean little boy playing soldier. “Convincing is it you want? All right, Chris. I’ll convince you.”
John Ryan, quiet-spoken, middle-aged, ordinary-looking but for his icy blue eyes, was in the country illegally. He met Chris, as the priest had promised, in an Irish bar on Second Avenue, where British liquor bottles were marked off-limits with a diagonal red stripe. Chris took him to a Jets game and spent the afternoon and a long supper feeling him out. Late that night, he dropped him back at the rectory, still unsure how to rate a killer.
“You’re looking for something,” said Ryan.
“Maybe.”
“Father Frye told me what happened. I think I can guess.”
“Meet me at Charley O’s for lunch tomorrow.”
He drove to the job, climbed into the control cab of a crawler crane, and sat the rest of the night trying to assess how capable John Ryan was. At dawn, when the gleaming black-and-chrome commercial garbage trucks were racing down the street and he still hadn’t made up his mind, he realized that he now put less time and thought into the gambles that were thrusting his father’s building out of the ground.
At lunch he showed John Ryan a photograph of Joey Ren-dini. “He lives in Brooklyn. When the papers say he’s dead, the IRA collects five thousand dollars.”
The gunman ran his blunt fingers over the face. Three days later Rendini was sprawled across the front page of the New York Post, shot twice in the knees and once in the back of his head.
Nursing an Irish coffee in the smoky, warm winter-afternoon gloom of Charley O’s, Christopher Taglione waited with one heel hooked firmly on the bar rail, his eyes set just as firmly in the middle distance. He looked reflective and older than his years, but he was in fact gravely confused.
A glance at the handful of regular customers who reigned between the end of lunch and the start of the cocktail hour roused his fleeting concern; he should have been more careful where he chose to pay the gunman. But fear and cunning were far from his mind. Why, he wondered, was he not supremely satisfied that he had righted a terrible wrong?
He shivered and swallowed more of the hot, sweet, boozy coffee. He had to admit he felt less triumphant than sick. Yes, he had wanted to erase Joey Rendini, but the shooting in the knees amounted to torture, and his images of vengeance—the sawed-off shotgun barrels clinking to the workshop floor, Rendini’s face disappearing in a torrent of pellets—had not encompassed pain. He realized, too late, that he didn’t even want Rendini killed so much as made to suffer terrible loss, as he had suffered loss.
Ryan came in at last, his lined cheeks ruddy from the cold. Blowing on his thick workman’s hands to warm them, he nodded hello to several drinkers. The bartender poured Murphy’s, no ice, without having to ask. Again, Chris was reminded that this association could be dangerous. Yet Ryan was no fool. He pretended not to notice Chris at first, and when he did he said casually, “Well, young fella, how are you?” and drew him just as casually toward an unoccupied corner.
Chris took fifty one-hundred dollar bills in an envelope from his breast pocket, passed the envelope under the table. What should he say? he wondered. Congratulations?
Ryan went to the men’s room, presumably to count the money. Chris waited in turmoil. His father’s murderer was dead. What was wrong? Ryan looked surprised to see him still there when he came back.
“Tell me what hap
pened,” Chris demanded.
“The man begged for his life. He swore he wanted only to beat up your father. He claimed that the order to kill your father came right from the top.”
“Who on top?” Chris asked angrily, his earlier misgivings forgotten. “Who gave the order?” Ryan could be drumming up business. But Uncle Eamon had raised exactly the same possibility. Wasn’t a Mafia murder an endless chain of wrongs?
“He would not say,” John Ryan replied, adding simply, “I believe he was in fear.”
Taglione Construction topped out Mike Taglione’s tower with an American flag he had bought a year before he was killed. When Tony came down from school for the bitter-sweet topping-out party, Chris showed him the newspaper clipping about Ren-dini and waited anxiously while Tony read the story. He longed to share his revenge.
“Yeah, I heard. Too bad.”
“What do you mean?”
Tony sighed. “This might sound strange to you, but I’ve been running on a sort of fantasy that after I graduated law school I’d get Rendini in court.” He smiled thinly. “I guess I’ll have to settle for his bosses.”
“Aren’t you glad he’s dead?”
“I wish he were in prison.”
“That never would have happened.”
“Now we’ll never know.”
Chris clung to the rightness of his less than satisfying efforts. “At least Pop can rest easy.”
Tony’s face was a cold mask. Up came the highbeam stare. “Don’t you think Pop deserves more than one scumbag shooting another scumbag?”
5
CHAPTER
“Rand,” the English policeman introduced himself. Chris settled warily behind his father’s old desk.
Inspector Reginald Rand—according to his card, which Chris started rolling between his fingers—appeared to be in his forties. His black hair was graying at the temples and he wore a trim mustache, also graying, and a tailored suit. He had a powerful grip for a slim man. His eyes were remote flat pools shielded by reflections.
“What can I do for you?”
“Scotland Yard’s Special Branch has killed an IRA terrorist.”
“So?”
Rand took out a Charley O’s matchbook. Chris shoved an ashtray in his direction. The policeman gave it a thin smile, opened the matchbook, and showed him the inside. It had two matches left. Two more lights and John Ryan would have thrown it away, along with Chris’s telephone number scrawled in pencil.
Chris touched the desk for strength. Through his fingers he could feel the building pulsing as the tower crane hoisted concrete to the upper decks.
“Maybe he was looking for a job.”
Rand cast a dubious eye at the six-button phone anchoring the twenty-fifth-story floor plan.
“Do your workmen ordinarily contact you directly, Mr. Taglione?”
“Taggart.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I’m changing my name to Taggart. My brother may go into politics, and building can be a dirty business.”
“Very well, Mr. ... Taggart. I repeat, do your workmen ordinarily contact you directly?”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with your hands, Inspector, but workmen pass the word on jobs. Maybe my name fell into the grapevine.”
“Oh, I’m sure it did.” He smiled. “But which grapevine?”
“What was his trade?”
Rand’s smile went out like a light. It was a definitive announcement that he was taking the gloves off, and Chris felt his second rush of panic.
“Understand, Mr. Taggart, my interest is not casual. I must know what he was doing in this country. And I will before I leave.”
Chris started to protest. Rand cut him off. “Sir, your father was killed in a—questionable, shall we say?—‘traffic accident.’ A union officer with whom your father had feuded was subsequently kneecapped and shot dead. Now I find your telephone number in the possession of an Irish terrorist.”
Chris thought crazy things, even killing the cop and running away, or denying everything. He felt young and scared, very stupid, but most of all, he felt hot panic coursing through his limbs and leaving devastation in its wake.
Rand raised his hand as if to ward off a wild blow. “You realize I’m here unofficially. I only just got off the plane and took a taxi into Manhattan. If I make it official I’ll have to confer with all sorts of United States immigration agents, the FBI, police, what have you....”
Had he heard right? Christopher Taggart stared inquiringly into the flat pools of the Englishman’s eyes, trying to pierce them for meaning. Had he heard what he thought he heard? He rose unsteadily and went to the iron safe where he kept grease. He came back and stacked five grand on his father’s desk. Fifty used one-hundred-dollar bills.
Rand looked at it a long time. He held up two fingers. Chris doubled it, with a deeply relieved smile. Rand stepped to the desk, stroked the surface, traced squares around the money with his finger. But he didn’t touch it.
“I’m not yet convinced this would be in my best interest. You see, I know your mother contributed generously to the IRA, but you haven’t. I’m hopeful that means you can help me perform my duty, which is to protect the British public from Irish terrorism. If so, we can shake hands on this transaction and part as gentlemen.”
Chris nodded; they were nicely in synch. Rand was saying, Convince me you are not an IRA supporter; then, for ten thousand dollars, I will forget that you paid a terrorist to kill the man who murdered your father.
“The guy did a job for me,” he admitted. “Private. Nothing political. Nothing to do with England or Ireland.”
“An entirely private matter? I will enquire further, you know.”
“It was exactly what you guessed.”
Rand inspected him with a hard, penetrating stare. Abruptly he nodded. “Excellent. I was concerned, of course, that the IRA was preparing political attacks in the States. One has desires”—he smiled at the money—“but one also has obligations. Well, I think this has worked out very nicely all around, don’t you?”
“Has anyone else made the connection?”
“Your police certainly haven’t. And my sources indicate the mob hasn’t either.”
“What kind of sources does a British cop have in America?”
“The same sort of cutthroats I cultivate in Europe, Africa, and Asia,” Rand answered with a modest smile.
“Then I’m in the clear?”
Rand stuffed the money into his raincoat. “Completely.”
Impulsively Chris thrust out his hand. “My name is Chris.”
Rand hesitated, finally took it. “Reggie. But may I say something, Chris?”
“Sure. This is the classiest shakedown I ever had.”
“Thank you. You’ve been a damned fool, though. Be more circumspect next time you need such assistance. Make your arrangements through a third party. It was sheer luck I killed your gunman, you know. If I’d arrested him instead, he’d have sold you in a flash to save his own skin.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
The remoteness in Reggie’s eyes dissolved a little and he looked genuinely concerned. “And now you’re trusting me. What if I were wired? For God’s sake, man, what if I were a homicide detective with a phony British accent?”
“What makes you think my office isn’t wired? What makes you think this shakedown isn’t on tape?”
Reggie reached under his belt and pulled out what looked like a telephone beeper. “This. It pulses if that sort of thing is going on.”
Chris stared, secretly delighted by the older man. His spectacular success in the building trade had stifled his father’s friends, and even the bankers were treading softly. No one dared push advice on a man with the magic touch. He hadn’t realized how lonely he had become, or how young he sometimes felt.
“I guess I’ve been kind of stupid,” he admitted.
Reggie returned a long, hard, calculating look. Chris shivered with anticipation, sensing tha
t in Reggie’s world his magic touch meant nothing. “You’re not stupid so much as very young and, please forgive me, appallingly arrogant. If you persist in acting as if you can walk on water, you’ll end up either in prison or dead.”
“Want a job?” Chris asked.
“Thank you, no. I have a job.”
“How about dinner?”
Rand shook his head. “I think I’ll just fly on home before anyone notices I’m missing.”
“I’ll drive you to the airport. There’s a good restaurant on top of the International Building.”
Reggie looked dubious but agreed to a ride. He was booked on an eight o’clock British Airways flight, but fate intervened in the form of a two-hour delay caused by a Heathrow baggage-handlers’ slowdown. So he let Chris take him to dinner. In the car Chris had pumped him about his work but had found out little. At dinner Reggie asked about the construction business and seemed intrigued. Finally, over coffee, Chris blurted, “I want to kill them all.”
“Impossible.”
Chris blinked. Unlike Uncle Eamon’s policeman’s lectures, Reggie Rand was merely making a practical comment.
“I want to get them all,” Chris repeated.
“Shooting them isn’t the answer. ‘They,’ as you call them, are a system. A society. A shadow government.”
“How do you get a society?”
Reggie hailed a waiter.
“No, no, this is on me,” Chris protested.
“Thank you. I thought I’d have a glass of port. Would you like a brandy?”
“No. I’ll try the port. Never had it.”
Reggie asked what brands the waiter had.
“Sandeman, Harvey’s—”
“Croft?”
“Maybe.”
“Excellent, tawny for myself, ruby for the gentleman. You’ll like that better first time.” When it came, Chris tasted it and said, “Like Marsala.”
“Yes, very much so.... Have you ever wondered why ports and sherrys come from Portugal and Spain yet have English names?”
“Never thought about it,” said Chris, anxious to return to the subject of revenge.