“I’m not the one driving,” I answered as soon as I caught my breath. “Anyway, I told you we have to stop meeting like this.”
“What’s your ass doing here?” he demanded.
“Sitting on your car seat. It’s a sucker for a free ride.”
Clifford reached under his seat and pulled up something that looked like a telephone operator’s headset. He slipped it over his head and fiddled with a switch at his ear.
“When did you start moonlighting with Ma Bell?”
“Shut up, Jacobs.” Clifford turned his body away and mumbled into the attached microphone. When he turned back he slid one of the electronic muffs sideways off his ear. His mean smile looked pasted onto his broad face. “Let’s start again, Jacobs. What are you doing here?”
“I was thinking of volunteering for the Color It Green program.”
“Damn your mouth.” Clifford turned his head and looked out his side window. “How much do you know?”
“About what?”
“About Collins.” Clifford kept staring into the night.
I didn’t see the percentage in lying. Or in getting hit. I didn’t want to show up at the Rabbi’s house covered with blood. “Nothing certain, but I think he’s running a front for the IRA. Somehow they got mixed up with the Avengers and the Rabbi murder. When I began poking around they tried to take me out. But you already know that, don’t you? Anyhow, I think the goons who came after me are connected to the priest. I don’t know how the woman fits.”
Clifford turned his head back in my direction. “Just like a dumb private dick. You make some of the players, but get the wrong team. Why don’t you ever listen? I told you twice to stay out of my face.”
“Yeah, but you never told me why, Wash. I’m not good at taking orders if I don’t know the reason.”
A squawk escaped the headset and Clifford pulled the earphone back down. “Good,” he said into the mike, making no effort to whisper. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll tell you when to move.”
Clifford pulled the set off his head. “You’re lucky I talk to you at all, shamus. Did you manage to notice a van on your way to the church?”
“Yours?”
“We have the church lit up. The last of your fan club just entered. All of them are going down.”
It took one glance at his glittering eyes to know that any hope I had of questioning Brady Collins and Deirdre was gone. No matter what I learned from Reb Yonah, Clifford wasn’t goingto risk his operation. The best I could do was weasel information without accruing more damage to my body.
“You tell me I have everything twisted, but you’re here with a high-tech posse. Gee, I wonder if it’s the IRA?”
“Interesting, isn’t it? Someone thinks Irish, they always think IRA,” he said, almost admiringly. “That was the beauty of it.”
“The beauty of what?” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice.
Clifford stared at me for a long time before answering. “You don’t know it, Jacobs, but you did me a favor. You’ve been running interference ever since you began flouncing around this neighborhood. Half the time you don’t know that your skirt’s up around your ass, but you always attract a fuckload of attention.
“We’ve been watching the Color It Green organization for a long time. But until you played hide and seek in the bushes, we couldn’t make their Irish connections. We knew Color It Green received money from neighborhood donations, and we knew it collected skim from Kelly’s armed car jobs. Only we never saw a nickel in any IRA pipeline. The only thing we could snare was their donations to legitimate Ulster charities.”
“You said they used to collect skim. Do you mean before Kelly died?”
“Yes. The people Kelly ran with couldn’t tie their shoes if he didn’t show them how. They remind me of you.”
“Yeah, well, pipeline and Ulster reminds me of the IRA. Couldn’t they have a gate you don’t know about?”
Clifford nodded. “That’s what we’ve been searching for. Now we know better.”
“And exactly what is it you know?”
Clifford’s face crinkled. “Jacobs, there are two sides to the Irish war. Tell you the truth, until we made the faces we never thought about the other side.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Clifford? The other side of that war is Protestant, not
Catholic.”
“If you’re going to stick your mouth where it don’t belong, shamus, do your homework. There are Catholics who don’t want to separate from England. Catholics who despise the idea of a United Ireland and hate the IRA. Our Father Collins belongs to them.”
Clifford saw the confusion and surprise on my face because he smiled and added, “Pretty fucking cute, isn’t it? I’m betting everyone who donated a dime to Color It Green thought it was going to the charities or the IRA. Including Kelly.” He looked at his watch and held the mike from the headset up to his mouth. “Okay boys, it’s yours. Tell me when you have them in the school bus.”
I knew he’d just given the signal to take everyone down. I had a momentary image of his squad jumping from the van, vanishing into the shadows. But my mind couldn’t let go of what he was saying. “You’re telling me the priest is a plant?”
“I’m telling you he works for people who are in a bloody war with the IRA. I don’t know what Collins is. His background checks out. Either he is a believer or someone has him by the shorthairs.”
“Jesus.” My head was running in circles. “I never heard of any Catholics who support Orange.”
“You see why we didn’t figure it? We’ve known about the skim since dirt, but couldn’t get it past the church.” For a moment Clifford dropped his patronizing. “This one had both sides of the ocean scratching their heads.”
“You want to tell me how I helped clear up your confusion?” I was stalling, trying to let his information catch up. Despite Clifford’s revelations, the questions driving me remained unanswered. Collins’s allegiance didn’t explain the connection to the Never Agains. Unless, of course, I really did have it twisted and there wasn’t one.
“Sure, Jacobs. You were your stubborn fucking self. I was on you as soon as you started working the neighborhood. When they tried to take you out we got a good look. You helped drive a couple of foreign pros out from under their rocks. Gotta hand it to you, Jacobs, you got away from them real good. Almost looked like you knew what you were doing.”
Anger began to shatter my amazement. “You motherfucker, you could have stopped them. You didn’t give a shit whether they killed me or not as long as you got your look!”
Clifford raised his eyebrows. “I gave you fair warning to stay away, Jacobs. Anyhow, you didn’t need any help.”
I almost got lost in my mad but something he’d said nibbled at my attention. “So you made the assholes who came at me as part of this anti-IRA group?”
The nibble would have disappeared if he had lied, but he didn’t lie. He equivocated. “Something like that.”
More of my incredulousness about Collins moved into the background as I quickly patched things together. “What was special about tonight?”
“We finally have the priest and all the muscle together.”
“Who is here?”
“I told you. The priest and the beef.”
“What about the girl?”
His face was blank, his voice neutral. “What girl?”
I told him about my encounters with Deirdre, her relationship with Kelly and the priest, what I’d seen inside her apartment. When I finished Clifford didn’t seem either impressed or concerned. “I see what you’re trying to do,” he said. “Don’t bother. There’s no connection between this operation and the Jew kill.”
“The ‘Jew kill’ is what got me involved, Washington. My ‘Jew kill’ investigation got your pros after me.”
“You don’t know that.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes. Clifford made a face but it didn’t stop me from lighting up.
I opened his ashtray and puffed for a few seconds before I said, “You know what I think, Washington? I think you’re leaving something out. I think the redhead works for you.”
Clifford heard something in his earpiece he liked because he pumped his fist and spoke into the mike. “Any noise? Nice. Wait in the truck until I get back.” He rotated his fire-hydrant body in the car seat until he faced me. “No,” he said across his slab of thigh. “I told you that you have everything screwed up. Your girlfriend doesn’t work for me.”
“Bullshit. I’m playing Diane Keaton to your Al Pacino.”
“What are you talking about, Jacobs?”
“The Godfather, Clifford. You’re lying to me about Deirdre Ryan. You still haven’t told me how you finally identified the pros. So how did you learn what side Collins is on?”
“Once we saw who we had, everything came into focus.”
“You sound worse than a politician, Wash. You found out about the priest through Deirdre Ryan.”
He grimaced. “Use your fucking head for something other than running your mouth, will you? Do you think I’d have been holding my iron if I’d had someone inside? You think I would have needed you to pigeon? I’d have been all over them like a fly on shit if she was working for me.”
His answer brought me up short. Not just the content. It floored me he answered at all. Clifford was never generous with information. “Look, Washington, things don’t fit together. I investigate Kelly and the Avengers, then Collins sends the troops. You’re trying to tell me that the one person connected to both Collins and Kelly isn’t involved? It doesn’t add up.”
“You need all the numbers to get things to add up, shamus.” He shifted his body and stared pointedly over the steering wheel.
“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked quietly.
He kept his eyes straight ahead while he snarled, “I’m not trying to tell you a damn thing. You’re trying to tell me something, but as usual it’s half-assed.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have nothing except a wild imagination and a fast mouth. I’m telling you the girl isn’t mine or one of the priest’s.”
“Clifford, you ever hear of the Never Agains? They’re a vigilante organization made up of Hasidic Jews.”
“I know what they are,” he growled. “A bunch of strange old men trying to apologize for rolling over some fifty years ago.”
“Maybe, but with the Rabbi’s death, they’re now rolling through the door.”
“Remind me to pack a gun the next time I visit the Yids.”
His attitude bothered me. Not the Jew-baiting. I knew he was just trying to piss me off. But Clifford was a shark about his turf. Any vigilante group would provoke more of a response. I considered telling him about my conversation with Yakov, but wasn’t willing to chance my body. He was busy dismissing and one of his dismissals might slap me across the face.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling he was signaling something. “I keep thinking if I stay here long enough I’ll understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
Clifford looked at me. “We’re done with show and tell, Jacobs. My mamma didn’t grunt and groan for twelve hours to put me on this world to feed you. She don’t know about you and I don’t want to know about your Rabbis.”
He reached across my body and I instinctively shriveled in my seat. “Relax, shamus, I’m not planning to change your looks. I can’t tell you what to do, only that it won’t change nothing. Deirdre Ryan is not involved with Collins’s organization and we’re not going to touch her.”
He finished leaning and opened the car door. I climbed out and gently closed it. I didn’t want to accidentally catch his fingers and bring him back to reality. Since when couldn’t Clifford tell me what to do?
I made it back to the church just as the van was pulling away. Though the two back-door windows were blacked out, I imagined Brady’s face pressed against the glass. Part of me felt relieved knowing the priest’s shooters were shackled inside the van. Part of me was impressed; it took balls to scam for the Orange in the middle of Green. No wonder Brady was always anxious.
I drove back to my apartment no more able to close the circle than I’d been before speaking to Clifford. It didn’t matter. I was glad Clifford closed Collins and his crew. I was sick of True Believers working their will on unsuspecting people. It didn’t matter whether they were Green, Orange, or Jewish. It didn’t matter whether they were Churches, Temples, or Governments. Right now they all filled me with the same revulsion I’d felt sitting in Buzz’s cooler with Blue.
I might not discover the connection between Dov’s death and Collins’ do, but before I quit working, that small square mile was going to be free of manipulating groups. Clifford took care of one, and when I finished with the Rabbi, I planned to take care of the rest.
And I would take care of a redheaded woman—once I knew where she fit.
Clifford’s neon “we won’t touch her” was still flashing when I saw Lou’s note on the kitchen table. After I’d read it, the neon and most of my exhilaration were gone. Simon had tried to reach me and, when he couldn’t, left a message with Lou for me to call. My gut said ignore, but I was loathe to show up at Reb Yonah’s house alone. I didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved when I heard his answering machine.
I had to hustle if I was going to get to Yonah’s on time. The ride was unpleasant. Thinking about talking my way through the Rabbi’s door without Simon enervated me, pulled at my resolve. But my adrenaline found its pump when I saw my friend’s fancy car sitting on Reb Yonah’s block.
I parked near the corner, snuck up to the rear of his pearl-white 7 Series BMW, rapped sharply on the back glass, and watched him turn a startled face. A surprised but un-amused Simon leaned across the other bucket to open the passenger door.
“Doesn’t your boat do that for you?” I asked once I climbed inside. “You had to stretch.”
“And you had to Ginger Baker my back window. What’s the matter with you?”
“You ask that a lot,” I said shifting my body on his comfortable leather. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes.
“I ask because I keep hoping you’ll have an answer. Do you have to smoke in here?” he complained, but opened the ashtray on the dashboard.
“Get your aim straight, Esquire. We want answers from the Rabbi. You can use the rest of our lives to badger me.”
“Just the way I want to spend my retirement. You know, I’m not feeling too good about this meeting.”
I shrugged and cracked my window. “I figured as much when I saw your message. How do these windows work with the engine off?”
“I don’t know, I just drive the damn thing. All afternoon I’m thinking: this case is locked and loaded. Everybody is satisfied—Downtown, the Jewish organizations, Rabbi Sheinfeld, everyone.”
“Not everyone.”
He stared balefully in my direction. “Excuse me. Everyone but you.” He looked at my jacket. “Why the hell did you bring a gun? Are you delusional? You can’t really think it will come tothat?”
“I forgot to take it off, that’s all. I was walking the Irish beat. Man, Clifford was involved. Wait until I tell you about the priest.”
Simon waved me quiet. “I don’t want to know about anything if it doesn’t change our plans.” He glanced at his watch. “I just want to get this over with. You can fill me in later.”
He suddenly banged his fist on the fat, leather-wrapped steering wheel. “I should have canceled this damn meeting when I couldn’t get in touch with you.” He pointed to his car phone.“We still can, Matt?”
“We don’t want to. Look, Simon, you didn’t close down the meeting, because you want to know what really went on with Dov’s murder. Give yourself some credit, you haven’t become a complete shyster.”
“Thanks. I’ll try to remember that when the shit hits the fan. Okay, how do you want to work this?”
“You get us in the door, I take it from there. You’re abso
lutely certain Yakov is at the Yeshiva?”
“You think the Rabbi wants his kid involved with more meetings about the shootings? He said the boy will be at the Yeshiva. I didn’t go there to check, goddamnit.”
The door to Reb Yonah’s house flew open before we were up the front steps. “You said nothing about bringing him!” Yonah thundered, black eyes flashing. He stepped onto the small front porch and slammed the house door.
Simon held his ground. “This man is my closest associate. Had we been forced to go to court with your case, Rabbi, it would have been Matt’s work that got you off.”
Reb Yonah’s hand cut at the air. “But we are not going to the courts, are we, Mr. Roth? You told me that the legal matters are settled, so what are you doing here? What is he doing here?”
Simon’s mouth tightened stubbornly. “I think it’s time to invite us inside, Rabbi. I don’t intend to have this conversation outside on your porch.”
Reb Yonah looked as if he were going to refuse, but changed his mind, abruptly jerking the door open. “Come inside if you must,” he said disagreeably.
The interior of the house looked just as uninviting as its owner. If possible, darker and gloomier than the last time I was there. Yonah led us to the large old table in the middle of his dining room but didn’t offer us chairs.
“Perhaps we can all sit down, Reb Yonah?” Simon asked.
“Sit if you must. But be quick about this, please.”
Everybody settled into wooden chairs as Simon handed off. “Matt has come across information that raises new questions about Reb Dov’s murder.”
Yonah glared at me. “What sort of information, what questions?”
“Why don’t I start at the beginning?”
“Only if the beginning is not too far from the end,” he snapped. “You are wasting valuable time for no useful purpose. I’m sure there are other people who could better answer your questions.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but I don’t know anyone else associated with the Never Agains.”
Yonah sat back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 81