by Nicole Fox
A middle-aged hippy type with pink glasses and a multicolored scarf is carrying a bag of groceries to her apartment when we reach Scar’s floor. She pauses, frozen, and then her mouth falls open and her eyes go wide. “Ah!” she exclaims, dropping the bag. “Don’t hurt me, please!” She turns and sprints away, her colorful scarf flapping behind her. So much for being the good guys ...
Scar’s door comes off with a swift kick, reminding me of the door in the motel room and what now seem like simpler times. The door swings open to reveal a plain-looking apartment. At first I think we’ve got the wrong place—this looks like a show apartment or something—but then I see an FBI certificate on the otherwise plain wall. This is Scar’s place all right.
“Search the place quickly,” I say. Sebastian and Flint spread out.
I go into her bedroom, where the bedsheets lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. She has a novel on her bedside table. No, I learn as I pick it up, not a novel. It’s one of those self-help books. Being Away from Him: Ten Steps to Dealing with Temporary Separation. So she did miss me, I reflect as I place the book down. I’ve never wanted to be with her more, never wanted to hold her more, never wanted to make love—make love, goddamn, I never thought it’d come to me like that—more. I want her. Dammit, I need her.
“Anything?” I say, upon returning to the living room.
“No, boss. Sorry.”
“Fuck!” I kick the couch savagely, causing part of the foundation to collapse inward. Sorry, Scar. “Fuck!”
When the three of us are back on the street, I massage my temples, my head pounding. I wish I could go back to that day in the apartment with Scar, Moira, and Agent O’Bannon. I wish I could make it so Scar and I were never apart in the first place. Agent O’Bannon ... “Flint, call your hacker friend. I need the address for Agent Derrick O’Bannon, Scarlet’s pa, about five goddamn minutes ago. All right?”
We get into the car. I drive us toward The Leprechaun, swerving through traffic and causing the New Yorkers to do what they do best—roar and wave their arms at traffic. I climb from the car and bust through The Leprechaun’s doors. The whole place has been refurbished since the last time I was here. It doesn’t look like the sort of den a mobster and an FBI agent could meet in to do some secret work. A girl is working the front desk, around sixteen or seventeen, with eyes that keep straying to her cellphone, resting beside her work clipboard.
“Top of the morning to you—”
“Has a woman been in here, with shoulder-length red hair and green eyes? Thin, tall, and pale? She might have been wearing a suit, trousers, a jacket ... well, has she?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the teen says, in a tired, bored voice. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I’ve just got here, you see? My shift started twenty minutes ago, and the girl before me has already gone home. Maybe ask the barman?”
Aiden! I walk past her, shoving through a group of men on a stag party, my shoulder barging the stag out of the way when he tries to dart into my path. He shouts at me—“Hey, jerk!”—but then Flint has his hand on his shoulder, shaking his head. The stag and his fawns go on their way. I walk up and down the bar, searching for Aiden O’Connell’s milky eye, but he isn’t in today. The only people behind the bar are new people, a guy and a girl, both looking as bored as the front-desk girl, and a man about my age wearing an earpiece and a new Leprechaun uniform: green shirt, leprechaun figure on the pocket, green pants, green shoes.
When I reach across the bar and tap him on the shoulder, he takes a wary step back. “Yes, sir? Can I help you?”
“I hope so. Where the fuck’s Aiden?”
A few people at the bar make outraged noises because of my swearing. I ignore them. The man looks over my shoulder at Flint and Sebastian, then back at me. Swallowing nervously, he says, “I’m afraid Aiden doesn’t work with us anymore. He was let go when his—err, I guess you would say company—he was let go when his company sold their shares in the business.”
When Mickey sold his shares for the specific purpose of getting rid of Aiden, a loyal man, you mean.
“Fine. All right. Then you can help me. Has a woman been in here ...” I give him Scar’s description.
“Um, let me see.” He taps his fingernails on the bar. “I don’t think so, sir.”
“All right, then. What about a huge man? Seven feet, or maybe taller? With the ugliest goddamn face you’ve ever seen? Two mismatched eyes? A big lump of a man.”
“He was in around three hours ago,” a barmaid says, pulling a beer. She’s the only adult apart from the earpiece man. “He was nice and polite. He left me a nice tip.”
“And there was a girl with him?” I’m shaking now. My hands open and close, wanting to be around Mickey’s throat.
“Yes. They left together.”
“Did you hear them say where they were going?”
The barmaid looks at me like I’m dumb. “I don’t eavesdrop on our customers.” She takes the beer down the bar.
“So he has her,” I mutter, outside in the car. “That bastard has her. So much for moving in on the compound. Yeah, the three of us could roll up and more than half of the fellas in the compound’d rise up with us. But what compound is he in? He could be in any damn place. The last two months, it’s been the same thing. And now if we move on him, he’ll hurt Scarlet. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe if we were quiet, but ... fuck.” I thump the steering wheel, anger exploding out of me. “Fucking bastard! Fucking prick! Fuck!”
“Boss,” Flint says. “I have Derrick O’Bannon’s location.”
We drive to his apartment. Before we get out of the car, my cell buzzes. I yank it out quickly, hoping it’s Scar telling me that she’s gotten away. I have this whole fantasy in the time it takes me to take out my phone and unlock it. Scar somehow beat the shit out of Mickey, using some of her FBI ninja shit, and now she’s lying low in an alleyway somewhere waiting for me to pick her up. I’ll go and get her and that will be that. We’ll never be apart again. But it’s not Scar. It’s a number I don’t recognize, most likely a burner cellphone, and there are no words. The photograph shows Scarlet and Moira, both of them squinting in the flash, both of them squeezed into tightly-fitting party dresses.
I have to place my phone on the dashboard to stop myself from squeezing it, shattering the glass and plastic.
“They have Scar and they have my sister.” My voice is cold.
“Let me see, boss,” Flint says. “Might be we’ll be able to work out where they are from the background.”
“All right.” I hand the phone to him. “Wait here. I’m going to see Agent O’Bannon.”
I get into the building using an age-old trick, buzzing another apartment and telling them I’m the gas engineer. They let me into the building, and then I’m standing outside Agent O’Bannon’s door. I think about what Moira told me—Scar’s sister dying in a swimming accident. This man has already lost one daughter and now he might lose another. I feel guilty as I knock on the door. If I had taken out Mickey months ago, none of this would be happening.
He opens the door looking like a man who wishes he could live in the past. His shirt is disheveled, his eyes sleepy. “It’s you,” he says.
When I’ve told him about Scar and Moira, he’s on his feet, pacing up and down his living room. His place is just as bare as Scar’s, except for a photograph of Scar and a girl who looks like Moira when she was younger, who I’m guessing is her sister. When Agent O’Bannon goes into the kitchen to get some water, I take a closer look at the photo and see that the girl’s name was Tess, written in the corner with pen. She really does look like Moira, the similarities stunning.
“We need to find her,” Agent O’Bannon says, buttoning up his shirt. “I have to go to the FBI and—no, we can’t do that. He has contacts within the FBI.”
I wonder if I should tell him about Max Smithson, but then decide against it. Maybe Agent O’Bannon is the type of man who believes even rapist-murderers deserve a fair trial. Anyway, getting the FBI involved
would be a big mistake regardless of that. The FBI would roll in with their SWAT teams sounding like a herd of elephants, giving Mickey plenty of time to act out his sick perverted fantasies on Scar and Moira.
A few minutes later, the four of us are sitting in Flint’s rust bucket. “I think I’ve figured out where they are, boss,” Flint says, reaching through from the back to show me. “See there?” He points to a mirror in the background of the photo. “Look. If you look closely, see? It’s a tower, and see that, another tower. Look at the angle, too. It’s my bet that they’re at the ballroom.”
“The ballroom?” Agent O’Bannon tips his head. “Since when do mobsters have ballrooms?”
“My pa liked that stuff sometimes. Mostly he just rented it out. But sometimes he used it for himself. Are you sure, Flint?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“Right.” We drive to the closest weapons cache, which is a half-mile away. After busting into the back of the ‘abandoned’ arcade, smashing open the machine, and finding the weapons hidden inside, we stand in a circle in near darkness, the only light the fading sun that shines through the busted-open door. “We need to be quiet on this job. These,” and I gesture to the guns, “are a last resort. We sneak in, find Moira and Scar, and then start firing if we need to. But we don’t start anything until we can make sure they’re safe. I don’t want a stray bullet catching either of them. I have men waiting for me in there, but—”
My cell goes off again. When I check it, my plan seems laughable. Sneak in, easy as that, and secure Moira and Scar, easy as that, like Mickey hasn’t considered that we might try something like this. It’s another photograph, this time of Moira and Scar on their knees, looking hatefully at the camera as Mickey stands behind them, his hands on their heads. The text reads: “Girls these days ...” I laugh madly, dropping my weapon and turning toward the door.
“Boss?” Flint calls after me. “Cor?”
“Sneak in,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Goddamn.”
They follow me out to the car, looking uncertain, Agent O’Bannon with the look of a man waiting to be told his daughter is dead.
“If we try anything like this, he’ll kill them. He’ll rape them, and then he’ll kill them. It’s a damn fool move.”
“What, then?” Agent O’Bannon asks angrily. “Are we meant to just let him have them?”
“No.” I show them the phone. Flint and Sebastian curl their lips. Agent O’Bannon takes a step back, clenching his fists. “That’s a man who thinks he’s the big boss. Thinks he’s the biggest fucking badass the mob has ever seen. So I’m gonna roll up and tell him what he wants to hear. Remember what he said to you, Seb? You all die unless Cor accepts me as Don. That’s what I’ll do. Pretend to do, at least. You’ll be outside, waiting for me to text Flint’s phone. It’s the only way.”
“But, boss, if the men see you kneel to this bastard—”
I climb into the driver’s seat. “Sometimes, Flint, you’ve gotta put your woman before the men, no matter what they say.”
Chapter Eighteen
Scarlet
I want to grab his hand and snap one of his fingers as it strokes my head, but the man holding the camera has a gun on his belt and the two men standing behind him have guns on their belts. There’s nothing I can do but kneel here, feeling sick to my stomach and wishing that I was here on my own because Moira was someplace safe. We were going to use Moira as bait, but it was going to be safe, and she was going to be in on the plan. This isn’t the same. This isn’t the same at all. Moira is putting on a brave face, but as soon as Mickey takes his hand from her, she lets out a shaky breath.
I stand up and help Moira to her feet as Mickey walks around us to take a look at the photographs. “Very nice,” he says, nodding. “You see here, the way her dress rides up her leg? Nice, huh?”
There are two distinct groups at this party. I could tell that the second Mickey dragged me in here. There’s the group that belonged to the old Don, Moira and Cor’s dad, and there’s the new group, which Mickey recruited. The old group stands on one side of the ballroom, sipping whisky and talking quietly of football, guns, and cars, and the good old times. The other group shouts and drinks too much, clapping each other on the back on the other side of the room. But Mickey doesn’t seem to notice the difference. When we came in, he greeted both groups with wide smiles, not noticing when one group only returned his smile warily. It’s like he’s in some kind of dreamland, a world all of his own, and is incapable of seeing what other people truly think of him.
Mickey and his goons—men who all look the same to me, dirty in cheap suits, licking their lips and rubbing their noses too much, reminding me of the coke-snorting agents—move to the other side of the room, messing around with the phone.
“Are you okay?” I whisper to Moira.
She looks up at me like a little girl. “I’m fine. I—what are we going to do? This isn’t going to plan, is it?”
“No,” I admit. “Not quite.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to have to play along with Mickey,” I tell her. “I have to make him believe we’re really on a date or whatever sick thing is going on in his head. Look at his face. He’s out of it. He’s ready to believe anything if I can play it right—”
“What are you two chin-wagging about?” The man reeks of sweat and whisky, a flat-faced, mean-looking man with a tattoo of a cross right between his eyes that creeps down onto his cheek on one side, where the tattoo artist must have slipped. “We like our women quiet—quiet and willing.”
I take Moira by the arm and lead her to the door, where Mickey stands. “Cor will have a very big fright when he sees that photo.” He smiles. “I like the idea of him standing there feeling small and useless while I’m up here having a party. It’s good, isn’t it?”
I’m going to shatter your face, I think. I’m going to break your teeth.
“It is ...” I smile coquettishly, looking down like I’m shy. “Well, it is funny. I don’t want to be mean about Cor, but it is funny.” I giggle.
Mickey just stares at me, his face blank. I can’t tell if I’m having an effect on him or not. He’s a much harder case to crack than the two FBI agents.
“Let’s get you two out on the floor. If you have prizes like these,” he goes on, turning to the men for approval, “you don’t keep them locked away, do you? Look at her.” He points his fat finger right in my face, not noticing when he almost jabs me in the eye. “It’s always a shame when a woman built like this tries to spoil herself with work, but at least she hasn’t completed the job. Later tonight, yes, but right now, let’s party!”
I’m on Mickey’s arm, and Moira’s on some other creep’s arm as we sweep into the ballroom. In any other circumstances, I would allow myself some girlish thrill at being in a room this beautiful. The walls are marble and tall, four chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The floor sparkles and hired waiters circulate with silver platters shinier even than their shoes, which are shined to perfection. It’s the sort of fairytale setting most women dream about, I think, even if I wouldn’t admit it. But the scene is spoiled by Mickey’s men pawing at their prostitutes, by the smell of weed and cigarettes and sweat, and by the last Don’s men looking shame-faced and uncomfortable on their side of the room. In the corner one man slaps a woman across the face. Nobody does anything.
Moira gets dragged to another section of the room where she is thrust into a group of men with women on their arms, all of them playing at being civilized. But at least that group seems to just be talking. Nobody is pawing; nobody is slapping. And then I’m dragged toward the old Don’s men, Mickey smiling like a victor as he parades me in front of them.
“Have you seen this one, Smiley?” he asks a man with a scar up one side of his face. “What do you think, Patrick? I think she is a very pretty woman. She is the sort of woman who makes you believe in marriage and love, isn’t she? I think you can tell that just by looking at her. T
hose legs in that dress! It’s enough to make me want to kneel at her feet and suckle her toes.” The old, bald man looks at Mickey like he’s crazy. Mickey doesn’t care, pulling me after him to greet more men. “Trevor, Dylan, Liam, Charles, Gregory, look! Look what I have! Isn’t she a piece!”
No sooner has he picked me up like a toy than he tosses me to one side, pacing off to a corner where a few of his friends sit around a small foldout table playing poker. I don’t know what to do with myself, since in every room I’ve been in the windows have been padlocked, and even if they weren’t, we’re too high up. The doors have two armed guards. There’s no escape—not unless I want to get myself killed. I could appeal to one of the old Don’s men, but there’s no way of telling if they’d help me, especially since they’re here, too scared to act as it is. Maybe I could get my hand on a gun, but then what? Shoot out every single man in the place? I need a plan, I need something to happen ...