by E. R. Fallon
The Trouble Girls
E.R. Fallon
KJ Fallon
Copyright © 2021 E.R. Fallon & KJ Fallon
The right of E.R. Fallon & KJ Fallon to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019.
Republished 2021 by Bloodhound Books.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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www.bloodhoundbooks.com
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Print ISBN 978-1-914614-18-7
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
A note from the publisher
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Also by E.R. Fallon
The Trouble Trilogy
The Trouble Boys (Book 1)
The Trouble Legacy (Book 3)
1
New York City, the 1980s—
When Camille O’Brien was a girl her mother liked to tell her that her father, if he had lived, could have been the king of New York City. Camille never knew her father. Colin O’Brien had been murdered when she was just a baby, in the early 1960s. It was the 80s now and Camille was in her twenties. Her mother Sheila had raised her alone after Colin’s death, until she remarried when Camille was in high school. Camille’s stepfather was a high up Italian mob guy named Vito Russo, and she and she had hated him ever since he had attacked her when she was at her when she was a teenager, something she never told her mother.
Still, her mother talked about Camille’s father all the time and Camille knew that he had been a gangster, but he was still her father, and every day she had a desire to avenge him, because she was, after all, her father’s daughter. Her father’s absence in her life had affected her profusely and she’d started taking an antidepressant medication a few years ago to help her cope.
Camille and her mother had coffee in the diner around the corner from the church, as they did every Sunday after attending morning mass together. Camille had always known her mother to be a devoted churchgoer, but her mother had told her that Colin’s death had brought her closer to the church.
Camille made a joke and Sheila laughed then put her cup to her lips. Then they were silent for a moment and Camille waited for her mother to ask how she was and if she was dating anyone, which her mother always asked. So Camille spoke before she could ask.
“I’m doing good. Work is good. No, I haven’t seen anyone since Billy.”
Billy was the guy she’d almost married. Now it was just her and her cat.
“Have you seen Billy since you ended things?” Sheila asked.
“No.”
“You and Billy were together for a long time.” Her mother shook her head as though the breakup had been shameful.
“Yeah, we were together since high school,” Camille said. “Can we please talk about something else?”
“How’s your job search going?” Sheila asked her after a while.
Camille’s mother had encouraged her to find better work than being a bartender, a job which she happened to enjoy. No one in Camille’s family had gone to university, and neither had Camille. But in high school she’d been considered smart.
“Yeah, I’m going to be becoming a banker any day now, Ma.”
But she’d always been good with numbers and had taken business and accounting courses at night school.
“You have your father’s sarcasm,” Sheila replied. Then she seemed to be thinking of something pleasant and smiled to herself. “You remind me so much of him.”
“How?” Camille asked because she liked hearing why, even though her mother had told her how countless times before.
“You know how. You look just like him, for one thing. You have his dark hair and light eyes. He was a very handsome man, but you can already tell that from the photos you’ve seen.” She continued when she saw that Camille wasn’t going to drop the subject. “You’re tall like he was, and charming. Oh, he was a charmer. He had a certain way about him that made people like him even though he was an intimidating size.” Her mother blushed and Camille smiled to herself as she thought about how much her mother still loved her father.
Camille set down her coffee cup and looked across at her mother. “And how am I not like him?” she asked her mother quietly, because she had never asked it before, and it was something she’d always wondered.
“You’re not a gangster,” Sheila answered honestly. “He’d been to prison and had a darker side that you don’t have.”
Camille’s mother had always been very open about her late father’s profession.
“But I’m strong,” Camille said.
“You are, yeah, and he was too,” Sheila said. “But you don’t have that dark side like he did. It’s different than strength.”
But Camille had always felt that she had some of her father’s darkness in her.
“He did things you wouldn’t want to know—you or any woman shouldn’t know about,” Sheila said. “Unless she chooses that lifestyle.”
“How come you know about them, then?” Camille asked.
“He told me things, late at night.”
Camille figured her mother meant in bed. “What was his childhood like?” she asked her mother, because she felt that there had to be a reason for the way her father had been.
“It was very sad,” Sheila replied. “You know all this already,” she chided her, then she went on. “He and his family came to this country as poor Irish immigrants—his mother was half Welsh—and his father got involved with some bad characters and it resulted in his death. After that, his mother, who had a mental illness, became involved with someone who wasn’t a good guy and your father ended up killing him for hurting his sister. Your father was still a teenager when he got sent to jail. He drank too much when he was young but stopped when he got older. The jacket you’re wearing, that was his favorite.”
Camille touched the leather jacket she had on; she always wore it outside no matter what the weather. She had heard the story of her father’s short and tragic life many times over the years, and his story was reason she hardly ever drank, but every time her mother told the st
ory to her it was like she was hearing it for the first time. She had never met her father’s family, who didn’t live in the US. It had just been her and her mother while she was growing up.
“Is that why he became a gangster and did those bad things?” Camille asked. “Because he went through all that stuff as a kid?”
“I’m not sure. He was a gangster, and that’s what he had to do to succeed. He was smart, like you, but not traditionally educated.”
“But didn’t he have a choice? Couldn’t he have chosen to do something else?” Camille asked. She would often think of what she would do if she had been in her father’s shoes.
“A lot of guys became gangsters in the neighborhood he lived in when he came to New York. It was a way of life there.”
Camille had heard her mother tell stories about her father’s neighborhood, the Bowery, and although Camille worked right near where she lived, a few streets away from her mother, she had considered finding a job at a pub in the Bowery to feel closer to her father, but her mother had discouraged it because she considered the neighborhood dangerous.
“Of course, his neighborhood was better when he and his family lived there than it is now,” her mother continued.
Camille looked around the small, crowded diner where she sat with her mother, which was near the neighborhood where she and her mother and stepfather both lived—Camille lived in the same apartment her father had lived in when he was single—and the glare of the bright sunlight pouring in through the bare windows hurt her eyes. Her mother knew that Camille didn’t like Vito, but not why, so they had coffee at the diner instead of her mother’s and Vito’s apartment. Camille hadn’t taken Vito’s surname when her mother married him.
The whole place smelled of coffee and fried food, and the people in the diner were mostly young professionals with the day off or policemen taking a break. The neighborhood had changed a lot over the years Camille had lived there and had shifted from being a more working-class area to being wealthier, although there were still many holdouts from the old neighborhood, people like Camille and her mother.
Camille checked the time on the clock above the diner counter. “I better leave. My shift starts soon.”
“Do people drink more on Sundays after church?” her mother suddenly asked.
Camille nodded. “I think they drink more than ever,” she said with a smile, and her mother laughed.
“Do you like working there? Are they good bosses?”
“I like the owners. The tips are good, better than at the other place I worked. But there’s this guy named Max who works there, and he doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Oh?” Sheila said. “That’s his loss.” She patted Camille’s hand.
Their server came to their table with the check and she grabbed it before her mother could.
“I got it this time, Ma,” she said.
“You got it the last time,” Sheila replied.
“I know but let me pay. Okay?” Camille smiled. She wanted to do something nice for her mother.
“Okay, but I know that bartending must not pay much.” Sheila patted Camille’s hand.
Camille took some money out of her pocket and paid the check. Then Sheila rose, and she hugged Camille goodbye.
Camille left the diner after her mother had and the heat of the New York summer hit her as soon as she stepped outside and the sounds of traffic, car horns and emergency sirens. She breathed in the heavy smell of the warm city as she stood on the sidewalk and waited for the traffic to clear so she could cross the street. A truck beeped at her and a man inside whistled from his open window and Camille scolded him. She had her father’s spirit, after all.
Once the traffic had paused, she made her way across the street and headed for McBurney’s pub, where she had an afternoon shift that day. She had worked there for Violet McCarthy, a woman a few years older than her, for the last few years. Before that, she had tended the bar at another place nearby that had closed.
Violet owned the place with her mother, Catherine, who was one quarter French, and they both ran the operation with a guy named Max, who everyone referred to as “No-Last-Name” Max, and who she didn’t know very well because he had seemed to avoid her. He talked to everyone else, and for reasons unknown to her, he didn’t seem to like her. Violet had inherited the pub from her grandfather, whom Camille knew very little about.
Camille got on well with Violet, and they had sort of become friends over the years, and although she didn’t know Catherine that well, Violet’s mother had always treated her with respect, and Camille considered both women to be decent bosses. She didn’t know much about Violet’s background but she knew that Violet had lost her father, a politician from Boston, when she was young, just like Camille. Violet had a twelve-year-old son she had when she was in her late teens but wasn’t married to the child’s father, who was involved with the Italian mob. One thing Camille had heard whispered throughout the neighborhood was that her own father had a connection to the McCarthy family, but she didn’t know what it was.
A gust of hot city air pushed down on Camille as she opened the door to the pub and stepped inside. The place wasn’t air-conditioned and given the warm time of the year, the windows were all opened in front and the door was left ajar by a brick placed at the bottom.
The pub opened in the late morning and a few patrons were already there. It would begin to fill up about an hour after her shift started. Violet, with her long, ginger hair in a ponytail, was tending the bar until Camille’s arrival.
Camille greeted her.
“How was mass this morning?” Violet asked her.
The McCarthys were Catholic like Camille and lived in her neighborhood but she’d never seen them at the local church, and neither Violet nor Catherine had brought up the subject, so Camille didn’t ask them.
“It was nice,” Camille said. “I had coffee with my mother after.”
“Oh, and, how is she?”
Violet didn’t really know Camille’s mother and Camille reasoned she was just being polite.
“She’s doing well,” Camille said, because she didn’t want to get into how her mother had suffered ever since her father had died. Violet didn’t know much about Camille’s background either except that both had lost their fathers when they were very young.
Violet’s mother Catherine came downstairs and said hello to Camille.
“How is your mother?” she asked Camille. “Is she well?”
Catherine McCarthy always spoke of Sheila as though she knew her.
“She is. We went to mass together this morning and then had coffee,” Camille said.
“Did you hear that, Violet?” Catherine said to her daughter with a smile in Camille’s direction. “She attends mass with her mother.”
“She’s always trying to get me to go with her so she’ll go,” Violet explained to Camille. “But I’m always telling her if she wanted to go so badly then why doesn’t she just go on her own?”
“I’d be more likely to go if I went with somebody,” Catherine replied to her daughter.
“Maybe you can go with Camille and her mother,” Violet suggested, not sarcastically.
Catherine went pale, and Camille wondered why. What was she so afraid of?
“It’d be fine if you wanted to join us,” Camille said.
“No, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Catherine mumbled, increasing Camille’s curiosity.
“You wouldn’t be. Honestly,” Camille said.
Catherine didn’t reply, and Camille didn’t bring it up again. What was going on, exactly?
Max, an older, heavyset man with whitish hair, entered the pub from outside.
“Good afternoon,” he said to Violet and her mother, ignoring Camille.
Camille didn’t know just what Max did at the pub. He worked out of the upstairs and a parade of desperate-looking men would come in and out of the pub and go up to visit him then leave after a little while. Camille figured he must have been something li
ke a bookie and Catherine and Violet probably got a cut of his profits. That was just the way things were in the neighborhood, and it hadn’t changed much despite the influx of rich, young professionals to the area.
As usual, he walked behind the bar and helped himself to a cup of coffee then went upstairs, without so much as acknowledging Camille’s presence.
“What’s his problem?” Camille asked Catherine, who seemed to have a soft spot for her, as Violet lugged in the two cases of whiskey that had been delivered to the front by mistake.
“Who? Max?” Catherine asked.
“Yeah, he doesn’t seem to like me, and I don’t know why. I used to try to be friendly to him, but it didn’t work so now I just don’t bother.”
“Max’s an old grouch,” Catherine said.
But Camille felt it was more than that. “Sure, but it feels personal.”
Catherine shrugged. She usually wasn’t this evasive, so it piqued Camille’s curiosity and she pushed further for information. “Do you have any idea why he doesn’t like me?”
“Maybe it’s because—” Catherine started to say when Violet came back inside.
“Mom, weren’t they supposed to deliver a case of vodka?” Violet asked, distracting her mother.
“It might be around back,” Catherine said.
“I already went back there and checked while I was outside and there was nothing there. I think the distributor forgot the vodka.”