Irish Car Bomb

by Steven Henry

  “Morton David Carlyle,” Jones recited, consulting her notepad. “Born February 23, 1964, Belfast, Ireland. Parents: Maureen and Daniel Carlyle. One brother, Norbert, two years younger. Went to Catholic school, was obviously very bright—high grades, especially in chemistry, some academic prizes—but didn’t graduate.”

  “Why not?” Erin asked.

  “The Troubles really flared up in the mid-’70s,” Jones explained. “He dropped out of school to join the IRA after his dad was killed.”

  “Nice,” Vic said.

  “What I’ve got of his IRA activities comes mostly from the British side,” she continued. “They think he worked with some of the IRA’s best bomb-makers, learned everything they knew. He may have been involved in the Mountbatten assassination in ‘79.”

  “He’d have only been fifteen,” Erin said, doing the math.

  “Yeah, a real child prodigy,” Jones said. “He’s suspected of making bombs that were used in a dozen separate attacks through the ’80s. He was arrested and interrogated three times, but they could never make a charge stick.”

  “So what’s he doing over here?” Vic asked.

  “He settled down in the early ’90s,” Jones said. “He married Rose McCann in 1991. She died just two years later, age twenty-one. I found the wedding announcement and the obit in the Belfast Telegraph.”

  “How’d she die?” Erin asked.

  “Paper didn’t say,” Jones said. “Carlyle left Ireland a couple months later and wound up here. He dropped off the radar for a while, then showed up in some police investigations. I’ll get to those in a second. Looks like he fell in with the Irish mob. They’d have found a use for an IRA veteran who knew his way around bombs.”

  “Is he a suspect in any bombings on this side of the ocean?” Webb asked.

  “Nothing definite,” Jones said. “But he was a person of interest in a couple unsolved bombings connected to the O’Malleys, some stuff with garbage trucks in Queens in the late ’90s. Other than that, he’s clean. Never been charged, never even arrested over here. The only reason we have his prints on file is from his immigration papers.”

  “I want some more legwork on this,” Webb said. “We need to know who Carlyle’s connected to, and why he’d want O’Connell dead. I don’t buy the gambling debt idea. Jones is right; if O’Connell owed Carlyle sixty grand, that’s sixty thousand reasons for O’Connell to kill Carlyle, not the other way round. But that doesn’t mean Carlyle’s not our guy. If they were connected through the O’Malleys, there could be any number of reasons to whack him. Maybe they just didn’t like each other.”

  “O’Connell was carrying,” Erin said. “He could’ve been an enforcer for the mob.”

  “Maybe so,” Webb agreed. “That’s a good angle to work, too. I think we need to take a good, close look at the Irish mob.”

  Vic stared at Erin. “You okay with this?” he asked. “Going against your own people?”

  “My dad was a cop,” Erin snapped. “And so am I. You’re more my people than they are.” She paused. “Well, Webb and Jones are my people. I’m not sure about you.”

  Vic grinned. “Stop it, Erin. I may start to like you.”

  “Okay, everyone, time to get to work,” Webb said. “O’Reilly, you look up our victim’s mob connections. Get off your ass and knock on some doors. Give a call to Vice; they may have something on the gambling angle, or anything else he may have been into. Neshenko, look up O’Malley associates who might be involved. Jones, keep doing what you’ve been doing. Find me something more on Carlyle. I’ll talk with the bomb squad about the explosive; see if we’re making any progress on physical evidence.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s do this.”

  *

  Erin didn’t yet know the layout of Precinct 8, so it took her a while to find her way to Vice. The Vice department was small, shoved into a room that looked like it might once have been a maintenance closet. A sour-faced man with a drooping left eyelid looked up at her when she cautiously knocked. He didn’t say anything, and completely ignored Rolf. Rolf returned the favor.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Vice.”

  “Isn’t everyone?” he deadpanned.

  Erin nodded good-naturedly. “I’m Erin O’Reilly. Transfer from One-Sixteen down in Queens.”

  “Tad Brown, Vice,” he said with a strong Brooklyn accent. “Sergeant Brown, but that don’t mean much when I’ve got just two officers reporting to me. What unit you in?”

  “Major Crimes.”

  He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, pretending to be impressed. “Well, well, you married into royalty. What can I do for the princess?”

  Oh God, Erin thought. On her first day, that was just the sort of nickname that might stick. “None of that, Sarge,” she said, deciding to play it as close to the street as she could and making no effort to mask her own blue-collar roots. “I’m just another shield on the Job. I need to know about gambling around here.”

  “What sort of action you looking for?”

  “Sports book,” she said. “Anything involving the O’Malleys.”

  Brown’s right eyebrow rose. Erin noticed that the muscles on the left side of his face didn’t work quite right. A long, ugly scar ran down his face just in front of the ear, probably a relic of some street brawl. “You messing with them? You gotta be careful, O’Reilly. Fresh on the job and you step in something like that, you don’t walk away with a nice, rosy smell.”

  “So you know them,” she said. “What can you tell me?”

  “They’re bad news,” Brown said. “They’re into all kinds of shit. Drugs, hookers, construction rackets, you name it. When Giuliani took down the big Italian mobs in the ’90s, guys like them moved in and scooped up the leftovers. The boss is Evan O’Malley. A real old-school S.O.B. Never does anything dirty himself, but he’s one of the major players in south Manhattan, along with a chunk of Queens and Brooklyn. He’s got his fingers in everything south of the East Village.”

  “How about Morton Carlyle?” Erin asked.

  Brown looked blank for a second. Then he nodded. “Oh, you mean Cars. No one calls him Morton. I mean, how can you take a gangster seriously, he’s got a name like that?”

  “Cars, then,” she said. “What’s he into? Who’s he run with?”

  Brown sighed. “I don’t got much of a file on him,” he said. “He does sports book, like you said, but he’s not on the muscle side of the family, and he don’t do the protection rackets. He’s kind of a gentleman, they say. He don’t touch drugs or girls. Keeps his nose pretty clean, so we can’t pin him down. But he’s O’Malley’s golden boy, for sure. Guys in the know say he’s in line to take over the family one of these days, when the old man steps down or gets popped.” A flicker of interest was in the Vice sergeant’s eyes. “What’s he done?”

  “He might’ve blown up a guy with a car bomb,” Erin said. “What do you think?”

  “Could be,” he said with a shrug. “I dunno. Evan’s guys sometimes do that shit, but not lately. Nowadays, you blow up something in New York, you got Homeland Security on your ass, and no one wants that kind of trouble.”

  “But you’ve been looking into Carlyle’s activities?” she pressed.

  Brown shrugged again. “We don’t have the manpower to break up gambling rings,” he said. “It’s not a departmental priority. Right now we’re cracking down on streetwalkers, and like I said, he don’t touch that kind of thing. I think we got a file here, but it’ll be thin.” He pivoted in his chair to an actual file cabinet. In this digital age, Erin liked the idea of a physical file. It made her think of her dad. That thought brought her right back to Carlyle’s parting words, wiping the smile off her face. Tell your father an old friend said hello. What had he meant by that?

  “Here we go,” Brown said, pulling out a manila folder. He handed it to Erin. “Everything we got on him is in there. Take a look, but it’s gotta stay in this room. I can make copies if you want.”

  Erin
looked through the file. It was as skinny as he’d said. Carlyle’s immigration papers from INS were on top. There were some officer reports talking about the Barley Corner as a front for alleged gambling activity, but that seemed to be all Vice had on him. She noted a cross-reference to a file with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, but since the ATF was federal, she didn’t have anything to go on. She pointed to it. “How’d he catch the Feds’ attention? Liquor licensing?”

  “Don’t think so,” Brown said, glancing down at it. “I think it was something about gunrunning a few years back, but I don’t really remember. The national boys grabbed it up, and that was the last anyone saw of it.”

  Erin nodded absently, continuing to scan the documents. Carlyle had a list of known associates, but there were a lot of names on it. “I’m going to want a copy of this,” she said. “Come to think of it, we’ll want the whole file, if you can.”

  “Sure thing, Detective,” he said. “I’ll run ‘em through the machine.” He turned to a copier whose plastic had turned yellow with age. As he began feeding pages through it, he talked over his shoulder. “So whaddaya think of the old Eightball so far?”

  “Hard to say. This is my first day.”

  “Very first, huh? Welcome to the big leagues. You’re working for Webb, right?”

  “Yeah. Anything I should know?”

  “Nah,” Brown said. “Nothing much, except he thinks it’s still the Fifties. You can tell from the way he dresses. He’s an asshole, of course, but he’s a Lieutenant, so that comes with the territory.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Brown said. “I mean it. Don’t. We don’t like to attract attention here. You stick your neck out, you’ll get the Bloodhound sniffing round.”

  “Bloodhound?” she said. But Brown had said everything he meant to on the subject. He handed over a photocopy of the Vice file on Morton Carlyle.

  “Here you go, O’Reilly. Good to meet you,” he said. It was clearly a dismissal, so Erin left him to his dismal little office.

  Chapter 5

  Back in Major Crimes, Erin logged onto the department’s database and started pulling information on the O’Malleys. She paid no attention to the time. Jones’s knuckles rapping on the edge of her desk startled her out of her technological daze.

  “What is it?” Erin said.

  “We’ve been taking lunch at twelve-thirty,” Jones said, flicking a thumb at the clock. “There’s a Chinese place just down the block. You want to come?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Rolf could use a walk, too.” The Shepherd, who had been lying beside her desk, jumped eagerly to his feet.

  “So, you find anything?” Erin asked her new coworker as they went downstairs. “There was something in Carlyle’s Vice file referencing an ATF probe.”

  “Yeah,” Jones said. “I found that, too. I actually just got off the phone with the Feds. It sounds like Carlyle was a suspect in a major gun-smuggling investigation, but they lost track of the shipment. Military assault rifles from Europe. Some of the guns got found, but they couldn’t trace the sale back to him. I’ve got a request out to Washington, to see what else they can tell me. This guy’s dangerous.”

  “I’m getting that idea,” Erin said. “But Sergeant Brown said he didn’t think Carlyle did muscle jobs.”

  Jones nodded, going out the front door of the precinct and holding it for Erin. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t make the bomb for somebody else,” she said. “He could’ve had one of his guys plant it.”

  “Makes sense,” Erin agreed. “Hey, I’ve got a question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been hearing something about not wanting to get the Bloodhound’s attention. You know anything about that?” Seeing Jones’s strange look, she elaborated. “I just don’t want to get on anyone’s wrong side. I don’t know my way around yet.”

  “His name’s Lieutenant Keane, our Internal Affairs guy,” Jones said. “You met him yet?”

  “No,” Erin said, but she remembered something Holliday had told her at their first meeting. “I think he may have gotten me this job.”

  Jones didn’t look happy at the news. “You be careful around him. I’m not kidding. Watch yourself.”

  “Okay,” Erin said, mystified. “But isn’t that IA’s job? To keep an eye on us?”

  “Yeah,” Jones replied. “But he’s different. He’s the youngest guy to make Lieutenant in the NYPD. He’s building a career, and that means making cases. You step out of line in front of him, and he will eat you up and spit out the bones.”

  “Thanks,” Erin said, thinking this was turning out to be one hell of a first day. Apparently the guy who’d recommended her for her position had everyone in the precinct scared to death and their chief bombing suspect was a former terrorist and gunrunner. There’d be no easy learning curve in Major Crimes.

  *

  Erin’s afternoon was nothing but dead-ends and pointless speculation. She had one person she could talk to about Carlyle, but she didn’t want to do it from work. She had to be alone when she made the call. This wasn’t an informant; this was her dad. She was impatient for the day to end, but worried about what would happen once it did.

  Carlyle had called Sean O’Reilly an old friend. Was he suggesting her dad had been connected to the Irish mob? That didn’t seem possible. He’d always been rock solid, a man who believed in telling the truth, upholding the law, standing his ground. That was part of why he’d never made it past Sergeant. He didn’t know how to play politics.

  Carlyle was just messing with her, trying to rattle her. And damn it all, he was succeeding. How had he known who she was? He’d recognized her even before Webb had identified her. He must’ve seen her picture from the art gallery heist. Erin, not for the first time, cursed all reporters.

  While she ran out the clock on her shift, she compared notes with Vic. The big Russian shook his head when she asked how it was going.

  “There’s gotta be a connection,” he said. “Irish guy gets blown up, owes money to another Irish guy who just happens to be a former bomb-maker. Coincidence? Bullshit.”

  “I’m thinking O’Connell probably worked for him, maybe low-level,” she suggested. “Maybe he was working off his debt.”

  Vic nodded. “Could be. If he owed more than he could pay, he might’ve seen what else he could do for them, so they didn’t start breaking his fingers.”

  “Which gets us where?”

  “Nowhere,” he sighed. “It just means they knew each other, and we already knew that from the gambling slips. It’s tough breaking up mob organizations. No one wants to talk to the cops. It’s not like we can ask them about each other. Hell, we can’t ask anyone who knows them. No one’s going to share anything. They’re a lot more scared of each other than they are of us.”

  They kept looking for connections, but O’Connell wasn’t mentioned in Carlyle’s slim file. The hands on the clock on the department wall went gradually round and round, until five o’clock came.

  Captain Holliday emerged from his office, settling a battered old hat on his head. “Good night, detectives,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” Webb said to Erin. “They only solve the cases in the first hour on TV. You didn’t do badly, for your first day.”

  “Thanks,” she said, though it wasn’t much of a compliment.

  “See you tomorrow,” Jones said. Vic grunted noncommittally and stalked out of the office without a word. Erin nodded, lost in her own thoughts, and headed home with Rolf in tow.

  *

  The rush hour subway was crowded, but there were definite advantages to having a ninety-pound German Shepherd. Rolf was good at commanding his space. Breathing room automatically opened around them.

  By the time they’d made their way back to her apartment in Queens, taken their evening walk, and thrown dinner in the microwave, it was after six. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Her parents’ dinnertime was seven o’clock, and her dad tended to doze of
f after eating. She took out her phone, stared at it for a couple minutes to psych herself up, and hit her speed-dial.

  “Hello,” her mother said. Mary O’Reilly was a stout, good-natured woman, with a voice that made people think of cozy fireplaces and kitchens that smelled like fresh baking.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said. “It’s Erin. Is Dad—”

  “Oh, Erin! I’m so glad you called!” Mary interrupted. “How was your first day at your new job?”

  Erin had to smile. Her mother was the conversational gatekeeper of the household, and she had to pay the toll if she wanted to get past. She usually didn’t mind, but this time, she was too agitated to really appreciate catching up. She gave a brief account of her coworkers and the precinct.

  “Here’s the thing, Mom,” she said in an effort to steer the conversation. “We’ve already landed a case, and I need to talk to Dad about it. I’m afraid this is a work call.”

  “Oh, of course, dear,” Mary said, sounding a little disappointed. “But you really should call more often. I feel like I don’t know what’s happening in your life. Are you seeing anyone right now?”

  “Not since Luke,” Erin said, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “Mom, this isn’t the best time for me to be thinking about relationships.”

  “If you wait for the perfect time, you’ll run out of time,” Mary said. “You’re not getting any younger, dear, and if you’re wanting children—“

  “Mom,” Erin said. “Can we please not talk about that right now? It’s not like you’re not already a grandma. You’ve got Anna and Patrick.” They were her oldest brother Sean Junior’s kids.

  “Yes, and they’re such wonderful children,” Mary said. “Just think how nice it would be. You don’t have to choose between career and family, you know. Things aren’t the way they were when I was your age…”

  To Erin’s relief, she heard her father’s voice in the background. “Leave the girl alone, Mary,” he said. “You know how O’Reillys react to pressure.”

  “All right,” Mary said, sounding a little hurt. “Here’s your father, Erin. But you really should call me when you have a little more time. I miss our talks.”