The Trust

by Ronald H. Balson

  “Drop the cocktail,” I said in his ear, “or I’ll blow a hole through your head.”

  He opened his hands and the bottle dropped to the dirt.

  “Who sent you?” I said.

  No answer.

  I spun him around and put the gun to his face. “Look at me. I’m not a cop. I have no ethics or professional responsibilities. You’re a trespasser, and not just an ordinary trespasser, but a low-life son of a bitch who wants to firebomb my aunt’s house. And given some shitty circumstances, I am now in charge of this house. So I’m in a real foul mood and I’d just as soon shoot you. Can you tell?”

  Silence.

  “Can you tell?” I shouted. “Who sent you?”

  “I don’t know. Really, I don’t know anything.”

  “Just out for a good time burning houses? A joyriding arsonist, is that it? Wouldn’t that just be my luck to stumble across the only random arsonist in County Antrim?” I pushed him hard against the stone wall. “Last time. Who sent you?”

  “I’m serious. I don’t know. I got a call asking me to do the job and promising to pay a thousand quid.”

  “You’d pitch a firebomb into someone’s house for a thousand pounds without even knowing who they were or who asked you to do it?”

  “It’s me business, gov’nor. Man’s gotta eat.”

  I thought about that extraordinary answer for a second, and then I flattened him with a right cross that I’m sure broke his jaw. I dragged him into the barn and tied his arms and legs. Then I retrieved my cell phone and called McLaughlin.

  An hour later, I was back at PSNI sitting in McLaughlin’s office. I was pissed. “I thought you were posting a man at the house? Where the hell was the protection?”

  “Take it easy, Liam. He was at the funeral looking after your family.”

  “The funeral was over, Farrell. Deirdre could have been in that house. She’d have been killed along with anyone who was with her. Hell, I was there. I could have been killed.”

  “All the members of your family were at Bailey’s. My guy was stationed outside the restaurant. I can’t have people everywhere, I don’t have the staff.” McLaughlin slid an envelope across his desk. “We found this in your aunt’s mailbox when we picked up your prisoner.”

  It was the same picture. The Walker house. Deirdre had been marked for death, and the arsonist was there to carry out the sentence.

  Just then, Megan entered the room. “His name is Rory Devlin. He’s just a punk with a long record of minor felonies and several outstanding warrants. We’re glad you caught him for us, Liam. He says he doesn’t know who hired him and I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth. He was hired with a phone call. He says he gets his assignments that way and picks up his money in an envelope at Flannigan’s bar. We have his cell phone. He got the call last night. The caller ID showed ‘Unknown Caller.’ I contacted the carrier and we’ll try to locate the caller, but I’m pretty sure that’s a dead-end as well. We talked to Flannigan. He said an envelope was dropped off by a neighborhood kid.”

  These explanations weren’t good enough for me. “I want to interrogate Devlin. I’ll find out who’s responsible. And I want round-the-clock protection for all of the Taggarts.”

  McLaughlin rocked back in his desk chair. “I can’t do that. I don’t have the manpower. I’ll post a patrolman at Deirdre’s, but I can’t put people in Belfast high-rises, and I can’t assign seven patrol officers to round-the-clock protection for each of the Taggart beneficiaries. You’ll have to hire private security. Be reasonable.”

  I was furious. “Reasonable? Either the Walkers or some loyalist group is gunning for my family one by one. Fergus, then Eamon and now Deirdre. We’re entitled to police protection. I hate to say it, but maybe Conor’s right, maybe this is still the RUC and we’re still Catholics and we’re second-class citizens.”

  “You’re out of line, Liam. Way out of line. I’ll cut you some slack because you’re upset, but you have no call to doubt my concern. Or Dooley’s. Or our professionalism.”

  I was sorry I accused McLaughlin, but I wasn’t through. “What would you like me to tell the remaining beneficiaries? The Police Service of Northern Ireland knows that each of you is targeted for assassination, but it can’t spare a policeman from his traffic duties? Do you think that will calm them down? Or do you think that hotheads like Conor are going to go straight into the Lower Shankill, armed to the teeth and looking for Walker?”

  “We don’t think it’s the Walkers, Liam. I know someone’s leaving a Walker calling card, but it doesn’t make sense to us. Why would they give a damn about Deirdre? She wasn’t one of the Taggart siblings. I’m convinced this is all about the will and trust.”

  “How much more proof do you need? Aren’t the pictures enough? You know the history of the Butchers and the Taggarts. And to the whole world, Deirdre is a Taggart wife. I always thought she was.”

  “But why now? The history book was closed forty years ago.”

  “Why are you so quick to say it’s not the Walkers? Why wouldn’t they have hired Devlin to firebomb the house?” I said. “That’s their M.O.”

  “First of all, they wouldn’t have hired an outsider. If there is a Walker involved, and I don’t even know if one is alive, he wouldn’t bother with a punk like Devlin. The Walkers would have done it themselves. That’s their M.O. Second of all, their M.O. is to firebomb a house when people are in the house, not when there’s no one home.”

  “Devlin didn’t know whether anyone was in the house. And I assure you he didn’t care.”

  “Look, you might be right. Maybe a dirtbag like Devlin wouldn’t give a damn whether or not people died, but don’t discount Dooley’s theory: that all this Walker crap is just a diversion, meant to distract our attention from the real killer. I’m liking that explanation better every day.”

  “Only because it fits with your relativity theory. Whoever it is, we need protection. Whether it’s Walker or anyone else, someone is after my family. Please see what you can do, at least here in Antrim. I’ll try to get Robert, Riley and Conor to come out and stay in the house until this is over.”

  “What about your cousin Janie? Isn’t she living with Mr. Fancypants in Belfast?”

  “I think so, but he’s wealthy enough to hire protection.”

  “Well, for the rest of them, I can do more in Antrim than I can in Belfast.”

  I nodded. “Why don’t you let me have a private talk with Devlin? I can be more persuasive than Megan. I guarantee he’ll open up to me.”

  McLaughlin smiled and shook his head. “You already broke his jaw. I want to keep my job. We’ll keep questioning him, but I don’t think anything will come of it. We’ll let you know.”

  “I’d just as soon we not tell Deirdre about the picture or Devlin,” I said. “She’s an emotional wreck as it is.”

  “We’re not going to tell anyone, Liam. We’re going to see if one of your relatives reacts. The house didn’t burn down. Someone may call Devlin’s phone and ask why. Picking off beneficiaries one by one doesn’t sound like a Walker to me. It sounds like a greedy beneficiary.”

  * * *

  I DROVE BACK TO my hotel. I was exhausted and depressed. I lay down on the bed and finally nodded off.

  My sleep was restless and once again filed with bizarre dreams. There I was, back at the Orange Order’s Drumcree parade. July 1998. Hundreds of Protestants with banners and signs, proudly singing provocative songs, brazenly marching down Garvaghy Road through the staunchly Catholic neighborhood of Portadown. The streets are lined with Catholic protestors intent on stopping the parade, and dozens of them are lying down in the middle of the street. RUC patrolmen in their riot helmets are pulling men, women and children from the street, pounding them with their billy clubs. Rioters are everywhere. Bulldozers and gasoline trucks block the side streets. Suddenly rocks and firebombs are flying through the air in all directions. Flames are shooting out of the windows of buildings and people are running wildly, t
rampling anyone in their way. I panic. I have to find Annie and protect her. Finally I see her, holding the hands of screaming schoolchildren and fleeing from the rioting. I try to catch up to her, but people are in my way. Suddenly her father, Jacob Grossman, appears out of nowhere and stands right in front of me. “Get out of my way, Mr. Grossman, I have to get to Annie.” He plants himself directly in my path in a defiant posture, stern and imperious, and he wags his finger back and forth denying me passage. “I need to save her,” I yell. “Don’t you see what’s going on?” But he shakes his head. Despite the chaos all around, there is only Jacob and me, and he refuses to let me by. I plead with him but he stands steadfast and orders me to turn around. Over his shoulder I see Annie running into the crowd, away from me, and I scream for her. “Annie, Annie.” I try to run but he grabs my arms and holds me back. “Annie!”

  Finally, I woke up and shook my head. What a ghastly nightmare. What a macabre contrivance. Except the Drumcree marches were real, they were no dream. And Jacob Grossman was as formidable a barrier as any brick wall ever was.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I DECIDED TO FOLLOW McLaughlin’s instincts and seek a more in-depth dialogue with Deirdre. McLaughlin had a point. It did seem odd that Fergus would have feared for his life, collected newspaper clippings, prepared a bizarre will and trust, written a letter to me to be opened after his death, and that Deidre, his lifelong companion, would be totally oblivious. She had to know something. Maybe she really didn’t know what she knew. I didn’t think she was lying to me, so I intended to prod her subconscious. I invited her out for breakfast but she would have none of it. She insisted I come over. “I was just getting ready to stir up some eggs,” she said, “and I’ll put on a little pudding.”

  I was relieved to see the green-and-white patrol car when I arrived at her house half an hour later. The PSNI officer asked for my ID at the door. “Everything quiet, Officer?” I asked. He nodded with a smile. Pretty cushy assignment, I thought, and I bet there was a bonus every few hours: a plate of Deirdre’s yummy cooking.

  “You’d think I was the prime minister,” Deirdre said, as she opened the door. “They have a guard outside my house all day long. It’s just like 10 Downing Street.”

  “It’s for your protection, Aunt Deirdre, until this whole thing is over.”

  “You mean until they catch that Walker boy?”

  I nodded. “If he’s the one. What do you think?”

  She shrugged and spread her palms. “I’m just a simple homemaker, I leave the detective work to you and the police.”

  That brought a chuckle; there was nothing simple about Deirdre. “Go on, Aunt Deirdre, you can’t pull the wool over my eyes. What do you know about the Walkers?”

  Deirdre brought two plates to the table and poured two cups of tea. “I know the night the Taggart boys went out to settle the score. I didn’t think they’d be coming back. Getting into the Shankill in the middle of the night was one thing, getting back after doing their business was another. But they did, and it ended up forcing us out of the Falls and into the country. Those were the tit-for-tat murder days and we knew that someday they’d be coming for us.”

  “But why now? Why forty years later? The war is long over.”

  “Who says? When a person’s been fighting the war since the cradle, it’s never over. It’s in his bones. There’s not a day goes by that a person carrying that grudge doesn’t plan to get even. If it sits with him in the Crumlin Road Prison, it festers. It becomes his reason for being. Let him out and what’s the first thing he’s going to do? He’s going to seek that revenge. Why forty years, you ask? Who knows what the killer’s been thinking and planning for the last forty years?”

  “So you think it’s a paroled prisoner?”

  “Could be, but it doesn’t have to be. Maybe he’s new to the streets or maybe he’s a child avenging his father.”

  “What did Uncle Fergus think? What did he say to you?”

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t one to share such thoughts. He wouldn’t have wanted to worry me. He always said he could handle anything, but I know this time it was different. He was getting up in the middle of the night and sitting in the front room by the window.”

  “And you never asked him why he couldn’t sleep, or what was on his mind?”

  Deirdre hesitated again. “That I did. I asked him what was going on. All he would say is that he got some troubling news and he would take care of it.”

  I took out the newspaper clippings and the picture of the guns and laid them on the table. “Where did you get these?” she said.

  “They were in a folder in Uncle Fergus’s bedside bureau. Did you know they were there? Have you seen them before?”

  She looked at each of them and shook her head. “No. I don’t know what these are all about. He never showed them to me.” She pointed to the article about the murder in 1999. “Wasn’t that about the time you left?”

  I nodded. “I left a couple of months later.”

  Deirdre sighed. “That was one of the saddest times in Fergus’s life. The most upset I can ever remember.”

  Tears formed in my eyes and I brushed them away. “You can’t know how sorry I was that I betrayed him. I’ve carried that with me all these years, Aunt Deirdre. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to disappoint my uncle.”

  She smiled that warm, maternal smile of hers and placed her gentle hands on mine. “You can let it go, son. His disappointment was only momentary. He was proud of you every day of his life. Carry that with you instead of a misplaced guilt.”

  Her words coursed through my veins like waters of absolution. No amends were ever required. I never needed to search for the right words to open a discourse. All I had to do was pick up the phone. My uncle was proud of me. Was it now okay to be proud of myself as well?

  Our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door. Riley was standing on the stoop with an envelope in his hand. He tilted his head in the direction of the PSNI patrol car. “You finally got our mum a police guard,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Deirdre embraced him and set about making him breakfast. He sat next to me at the table, just like when we were kids. Deirdre served our eggs and pudding as she had forty years ago. Two of her three boys. She even told Riley to go wash his hands. When we had finished and cleared our plates, Riley whispered to me, “Can I talk to you in private?”

  I asked Deirdre to excuse us for a few minutes and we went into the living room.

  “What’s on your mind, Riley?”

  He opened the envelope and took out an unsigned printed document. As I feared, it was a stock transfer agreement prepared to convey ownership of the shares of Global Investments, Inc., from the Fergus Taggart Trust to Riley Taggart.

  “My boss has demanded that I get the shares back in my name,” Riley said. “He’s trying real hard to nail down a refinance and he’s obtained a conditional approval. All he needs is the outstanding shares. I don’t know if you’ve looked into us at all, but Global is under investigation for financial irregularities. We’re being accused of cooking the books, overstating our earnings, and understating our liabilities. There are questions about promises made to investors that may not have been totally accurate. We need the loan to survive. I really need your help here, Liam.”

  I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want to turn him down again but there was no way I could sign his paper. “You’ve read the trust, Riley. You know what I can do and what I cannot do. I’m bound to the terms of the trust. My hands are tied. The Global stock is part of Uncle Fergus’s assets. It wasn’t left to you alone. Until the day the trust distributes, I can’t do anything at all.”

  “Please, Liam. It’s really my stock. No other family member has any rights to this stock. It should have been owned jointly.”

  “Maybe so, but it wasn’t, and your father didn’t leave it to you alone. I’m sorry.”

  Riley’s frustrations were bubbling over. “Damn you, Liam. Conor was right,
you have no business here in Northern Ireland. My father must have been out of his mind when he drew up this crazy trust and appointed you as trustee. It’s sheer madness. You’re going to ruin my company and I’ll be out of a job. Maybe worse than that. If we can’t get the financing to bail us out, I could go to jail. You’ve got to do something! Please!”

  “You know I would do whatever I could. I’ll make a call to Solicitor O’Neill and get his advice. That’s the best I can do.” I stepped outside and called O’Neill. I ran the whole scenario by him.

  “Is there any way I can legally do what he asks?”

  “Transfer the shares into Riley’s name? I’m afraid not.”

  “What if I kept the shares in Fergus’s name but allowed the company to use the stock as collateral?”

  “My advice would be the same. The stock would be all tied up in the refinance. It would no longer be liquid. The trust would lose control of the stock for an indeterminate period of time. Maybe forever. No, I’m afraid such an encumbrance would violate the terms of the trust.”

  I returned to Riley and sadly shook my head. “I wish I could help, but I can’t.”

  Riley was trying hard to control himself. “I have another suggestion. What if you stepped down and let Conor be the trustee? If you said you had to go home to America, then Conor could become the trustee. Someone is calling your wife, maybe she’s in danger. You should go home to her. People would understand if you left. I know Conor would help me out and you wouldn’t be responsible.”

  “That’s not the way it works. If I declined, then the Bank of Antrim would be the successor trustee and they’d be a lot tougher to deal with.”

  He put his hands on my shoulders. “Listen, Liam, please.” He was shaking like a leaf. “We all know who the killer is. It’s Thomas Walker. We’ve identified the killer, just like the trust says. It’s what my father wanted. But who knows if Walker will ever be caught. No one would blame you if you declared the condition satisfied and distributed the assets now. Then you could finish your job and go home. You could be with your wife and child. It would all work out if you’d only be reasonable and go along. Who would be harmed?”