The Revenge of Liam McGrew: A Dermot Sparhawk Mystery

by Tom MacDonald

  And then I thought about Halloran’s reaction when I mentioned the fourth sheet. It wasn’t part of the deal. Liam swiped it. A waitress came to the table. To my great sorrow it wasn’t the woman who seated me. Kenny and I both ordered coffee.

  When she left, I said, “I’m going to Belfast.”

  Kenny sat forward and waited for me to look at him.

  “Forget Belfast,” he said. “Forget about the fourth sheet. I have a friend in Scotland Yard and more friends in Irish intelligence. I’ll handle the fourth sheet.”

  “I’m going to Belfast, Kenny.”

  “You did a tremendous job,” he said. “Go home and relax.”

  “I haven’t been home in a week,” I said. “Assassins are looking for me and they aren’t going to stop. I’m going to Belfast to settle this thing.”

  “They’ll kill you over there. Use your common sense.”

  “I’m fresh out of common sense.” I took a drink of coffee and returned the cup to the saucer. “You’re a resourceful guy, Kenny. I gave you Alroy McGrew. You must have come up with the other names by now, the names of the men trying to kill me.”

  Kenny tamped the bills back into the tube and tapped it on the table.

  “The man you killed in Southie was named William McAfee. McAfee was an IRA operative, smart enough to stay out of the limelight, hence no criminal record.”

  “How did you track him down?” I asked.

  “I forwarded the picture you gave me to a colleague in Irish intelligence.” He stopped tapping.

  “What else?”

  “Does the name Thomas O’Byrne mean anything to you?”

  “Should it?” I asked.

  “He’s the big bald Irishman you told me about. O’Byrne is back in Belfast now.” Kenny paused. “He did time in Long Kesh Prison, a hunger striker, too.”

  “A true believer.”

  “O’Byrne got out in May of ’84,” Kenny said. “In August of ’84, a British hit squad killed his wife. They were gunning for O’Byrne but killed her by mistake.”

  “I’m sure that endeared O’Byrne to the Orangemen.” I thought about the Hynes robbery. “O’Byrne probably took the fourth sheet back to Belfast with him.”

  Kenny handed me a photo. “This is Thomas O’Byrne.”

  “Is it recent?” I asked.

  “Recent enough,” he said.

  “What about the third man?”

  “Ah, the mysterious third man that Rat T. Kennedy thwarted,” he said. “I can’t find a thing on him. My Irish contacts couldn’t track him down.”

  “Will you keep on it?”

  “Of course I’ll keep on it, but I need more time.” He slapped my shoulder, signaling a change of topics. “You have a great deal of money coming to you.”

  “I’ll worry about the money later,” I said. “Halloran and I have one thing in common. It’s not about the money.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not important.” I thought about the trip in front of me. “On to Belfast.”

  “I can’t talk you out of it?” he said.

  “I’ll be on a plane tomorrow if I can book one that fast,” I answered.

  “I’ll keep after the third man,” Kenny said to me. “When I find out more, I’ll call you. I have a feeling he’s important.”

  §

  I withdrew three hundred dollars from an ATM on Gallivan Boulevard and drove to the Blarney Stone. I went inside and saw Delia serving a table of customers. I waited until she finished and said, “Hello, Delia.”

  “You again.” She wiped her tray with a bar towel. “What do you want now?”

  “One last favor and you’ll never see me again.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” I showed her the photo of Thomas O’Byrne. “Is this the big Irishman you saw in here that night?”

  “Let me see it.” She stared at it for a good five seconds. “He looks younger in this picture, but yeah, that’s him.”

  I gave her the cash and went back to Glooscap’s house for a good night’s sleep before my flight.

  Part Three

  Belfast, Northern Ireland

  Chapter Ten

  I.

  O’Byrne sipped his afternoon Guinness from a tall glass in Slattery’s Pub. The room was empty except for a small gathering of retired railroad workers who sat at a table. Public reunions must be nice for the law-abiding, a simple pleasure an IRA soldier would never enjoy. He took another swig, and at that moment the biggest man O’Byrne had ever seen walked into the pub. He made K look like a pigmy. It wasn’t just his height and width; it was his bone structure, his corded wrists and huge hands and tree-trunk neck. The railroad men stopped talking when the behemoth strode by. He sat on a barstool next to O’Byrne, and the railroaders commenced chatting.

  The big guy ordered tonic water with a lemon twist. Slattery served him with a long arm, as if he were feeding an exotic animal, not wanting to get too close lest he get bit. O’Byrne finished his beer and tapped the glass on the bar top. Slattery refilled it with creamy stout, stopping twice along the way to let the head subside. Slattery knew how to pour stout. O’Byrne turned to the big fella.

  “You’re on the minerals, I see.” He pointed at the tonic. “Do you want me to Irish it up for you?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You’re not drinking?” O’Byrne asked, perplexed.

  “Not today,” the man answered. “Just tonic water.”

  “The accent, you’re a Yank.” O’Byrne studied the man’s face. Tonic watah? A Bostonian. “You’re in Belfast now, did nobody tell you? You’ve strayed far from the safety of your homeland.”

  “That’s right, O’Byrne. I strayed.”

  “And, by Jesus, you know my name.” O’Byrne swirled the beer in his glass, creating a miniature whirlpool. “Go feck a cow, Yank. Get out of here while you still can walk without crutches.”

  “Not until I’m finished,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re finished all right.” O’Byrne waved the big man closer. “C’mere lad, I have to tell you a question.”

  “And what question is that?”

  “Are you looking to get yourself killed?” asked O’Byrne.

  “I’m looking to stay alive,” the man answered.

  “Then you should go into hiding for a spell, let things blow over. There’s no shame in that.” O’Byrne said this in calm tone, a father offering advice to a son. “As we say here in Ireland, a good run is better than a bad stand.”

  “Everybody keeps telling me to go into hiding until things blow over.” The colossus paused. “Nothing is going to blow over. Three men have tried to kill me so far, and I have a feeling more are on the way.”

  “Three, you say?”

  “Alroy McGrew, William McAfee, and a third man I don’t know.”

  “I haven’t a notion what you’re talking about, not a blessed clue.”

  “Yes, you do.” The big man faced O’Byrne squarely. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You were in Boston with Alroy and McAfee.”

  O’Byrne tapped his glass on the bar. There was no sense denying it, the big man was Dermot Sparhawk. How to get rid of him?

  “Have ye any loose change in your purse, Dermot?” O’Byrne stared at him. “Because I suggest you get on the Dublin bus and ride it to the terminus. Then purchase yourself a plane ticket and go home alive.”

  “I have no change,” Sparhawk said. “I deal in folding money, $100,000 bills.”

  “Ah, you damned fool. And I suppose you think that your coming to Belfast shows great courage.” O’Byrne leaned on his elbows. “And maybe it does at that. Every dog is bold in his own yard.”

  “I’m not courageous and I’m not bold,” Sparhawk said. “I’m fighting to stay alive, and I think you want me alive, too.”


  “I want you alive, you say?” O’Byrne drank a swallow of beer. “What gave you the daft idea that I want you alive?”

  “Your phone call to Boston,” Sparhawk said. “You called William McAfee to cancel a hit on me. I answered that call, you know.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “McAfee was already dead when his phone rang.”

  “What are you saying?” O’Byrne sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “McAfee’s cell phone rang after I killed him.” Sparhawk explained. “I’m the one who answered his phone.”

  “You answered it?”

  “You said, and I quote, ‘Don’t say a word, just listen. The hit is off, Mac. Forget about Sparhawk and come home.’”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” O’Byrne muttered to himself, and then added with a bite, “Go away from me.”

  “And because you canceled the hit on me, I assume you want me alive.”

  “You’re acting the maggot. Making leaps, you are.” O’Byrne eyed Slattery to make sure he wasn’t within earshot. “It wasn’t me on the phone. You have it all wrong, I tell you, all wrong.”

  “It was you, O’Byrne. As soon as I heard your voice today, with that brogue as thick as Mulligan stew, I knew it was you.” Sparhawk arched his back and cracked his neck. “You came to Boston with Alroy McGrew and William McAfee. The three of you robbed the World’s Fair of Money. The three of you drank at the Blarney Stone, paying for rounds with hundred-dollar bills.”

  “You know nothing, nothing. Get away from me!” O’Byrne flung his free hand in the air in a get-lost gesture. “You think you heard me on the phone? You think I went to Boston. That doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “Maybe not, but this does.” Sparhawk pulled out a cell phone and pressed C2 on the contacts list. “This belonged to William McAfee.”

  “Did it now?” A phone rang in O’Byrne’s pocket. “Ach, damn!”

  “Answer it, O’Byrne. It’s not long distance.”

  “All right, I take your point. Put that thing away.” O’Byrne gulped another mouthful of drink and slowly lowered the glass to the bar. He signaled for another stout and told Slattery to bring him a double Jameson with it. O’Byrne finished both drinks before he spoke again. It seemed that a long time had passed. “Alroy, I can understand. But how did you beat Mac? Mac was a tough mug, especially with a gun.”

  “I was wearing a vest when he shot me.”

  “A vest, you say.” O’Byrne hoisted the shot glass to his lips and noticed it was empty. “Mac had a tender heart for a hired gun. He could never shoot a man in the face.”

  “I’m glad for that,” Sparhawk said.

  “No doubt you are.”

  They sat at the bar, neither man saying a word, and the seconds turned into minutes and the minutes slipped away. The railroad workers finished their drinks, bade each other farewell, and went out the door. Slattery worked at the far end of the bar taking inventory, clipboard in hand, counting the bottles in one of the liquor cabinets. O’Byrne turned to Sparhawk.

  “It seems we both have some thinking to do, don’t we now?” O’Byrne scoffed. “A great deal of thinking at that.”

  “I’m staying at the Maryville House,” Sparhawk said. “I’d rather work with you than against you, but either way I’m seeing this through to the end. You know where to find me.”

  “Is it all of ye or just yourself?”

  “What do mean?”

  “Are you alone?” O’Byrne asked.

  “It’s just meself,” Sparhawk said with a feigned brogue.

  “This won’t end well for you, I’m sorry to say.” O’Byrne gripped his beer glass. “You don’t seem like a bad sort, but you’re out of your depth here in Belfast.”

  “Why should Belfast be any different?”

  “Indeed.” O’Byrne watched Sparhawk leave Slattery’s Pub. When the door closed, O’Byrne murmured to no one in particular, “Who have you sent my way, MacNisse, my savior or my slayer?”

  “What was that, O’Byrne?” asked Slattery.

  “Huh? Oh, ’twas nothing.”

  “Where did that monster drift in from, Gulliver’s Travels?”

  “Ah, he was just a blow-in from the States wanting to know about the black taxi tours, that’s all.”

  §

  An hour later O’Byrne found himself kneeling in Clonard Monastery, praying to his intercessor, Saint Angus MacNisse of Connor. If MacNisse could alter the course of a wild river to save a Kells monastery, certainly he could alter the course of human blood to save a man’s soul. He whispered to MacNisse as if they were confidants.

  “Sparhawk knows of my call to cancel the hit. The irony of it, Sparhawk answering that call. What if Liam learns of this? What then? I’m a dead man, MacNisse. Liam will kill me as sure as I kneel here at your feet. Sparhawk holds my life in his hands.”

  II.

  I phoned Kenny Bowen from my room at the Maryville House, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he was pumping iron under Harvard Stadium, or maybe he was screening his calls. I reclined on the bed and fell asleep.

  At seven o’clock I awoke and checked my cell phone. Still nothing from Kenny Bowen. I decided to go out for the evening, so I took a taxi into Belfast and got off at Donegal Square. Following the hotel clerk’s recommendation, I ate at an open-air shanty on Arthur Street, ordering fish and chips with salt and vinegar and a side of slaw. The clerk’s advice was spot-on, as they say here.

  After walking off the meal, I caught an AA meeting in a church basement in Victoria Square. The last speaker, a scratch golfer, said he scored par or better on every hole except the nineteenth, where he bogeyed on Bushmills. We ended the meeting with an Our Father and everyone joined in. It seemed that AA in Northern Ireland was a nonsectarian affair, a truce among drunks.

  The night was cool and the air was breezy, so I bought a sweatshirt with no logo. No sense setting myself up as a target. Of course, Liam McGrew had already painted a bull’s-eye on my back. I walked to the banks of the River Lagan and watched the torrents swirl near the shoreline. At Waterfront Hall the Hollies were performing. I bought a ticket from a scalper and went in and listened to a few songs. After they played “Look Through Any Window,” I left the concert and cabbed back to the Maryville House.

  It was nearly ten o’clock and the sky was still blue. I thought of Yogi Berra’s line about the poor sun conditions in left field at Yankee Stadium: It gets late early out there. In Belfast it stays early late. Day eventually turned to dusk and dusk turned to darkness and I nodded off in my room. At midnight Kenny Bowen called. He asked me how the day went, and I told him about my meeting with O’Byrne, omitting one piece of trivial information, that for some reason I liked the son of a bitch.

  “You two met,” Kenny said. “That’s excellent. I’m impressed.”

  “O’Byrne was having an afternoon pint at Slattery’s Pub, just like you said.”

  “You found him at Slattery’s then.”

  “I didn’t expect him to be there, but I walked in and there he was.” I kicked off my shoes. “I told O’Byrne I was staying here at the Maryville House.”

  “Was that smart?”

  “Maybe, maybe not, I’ll find out soon enough,” I said.

  “Did you talk to him about the sheet of money?”

  “I mentioned it indirectly, but I didn’t want to rush him,” I said. “He’s too damn smart.”

  “I like your approach, giving O’Byrne time to think it over,” Kenny said. “As for the third assassin, I can’t find a thing on him. My connections in Ireland can’t put a name to the face. They found no matches on fingerprints or dentals.”

  It didn’t surprise me when Kenny said that his Irish connections couldn’t identify the third man, because the third man hadn’t struck me as Irish.

  “The third man wasn’t like Alroy and McAfee,
” I said. “He was different.”

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “I don’t think he was Irish.” I pictured the man’s face, even though there were two bullet holes drilled into it. I pictured his attire, which didn’t match Alroy’s and McAfee’s. “The way he dressed, he could have been an American.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kenny said. “The FBI found nothing on him, and believe me, they checked. I made sure of it.”

  “It was just an impression.”

  “I called a friend in Scotland Yard who is well connected in Northern Ireland, mostly in Belfast and Portadown. Maybe he can identify him.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “How about you? What’s your plan?”

  “I’m going to wait for O’Byrne to make the next move.” I said. “I don’t like waiting. I’d rather make something happen. But over here, dealing with the IRA, I believe it is better to wait.”

  “I don’t like that O’Byrne knows where you’re staying,” Kenny said. “It puts you in danger.”

  “I wasn’t any safer in Boston, remember?” I thought it over. “O’Byrne is with the IRA. He can find me anyway.”

  “What if O’Byrne starts to worry about Liam McGrew?”

  “What do you mean, starts?” I said. “He’s already worried about him.”

  “But what if O’Byrne gets nervous about the call he made to McAfee, the call canceling the hit on you. He might panic and tell Liam you’re in Belfast.”

  “He might,” I said, “but I don’t think he will. As far as O’Byrne is concerned, I’m the only one who knows about the call.”

  “That’s my point,” Kenny said. “O’Byrne might kill you to keep it that way. If you’re dead, Liam can’t possibly find out about the call. Do you understand what I’m saying? O’Byrne is safer with you dead.”

  “O’Byrne won’t do that.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He called to stop the hit on me, Kenny. He was trying to save my life.” Why did I feel so sure that O’Byrne wouldn’t harm me? I thought more about it and concluded that my certainty was based on nothing more than intuition. “This will sound stupid, but I’ll say it anyway. I met him face-to-face. I don’t think he will hurt me.”