Liberation Day

by Dustin Stevens

  “When do you need my answer?”

  “Offer stands for six hours.”

  “How will I find you?”

  “I’ll find you.”

  The sound of heavy steps coming up the stairs drew both their attentions towards the door, each watching as Birkwood emerged and strode across the roof towards them.

  “So, can we stop kissing this little punk’s ass and get to work?” he asked, not waiting for acknowledgment from either person. “Lord knows he’s got a long way to go.”

  Once more vitriol rose in the back of Thorn’s throat, rising like bile, tasting bitter in his mouth. “Don’t pretend you know a damn thing about me.”

  “Ha!” Birkwood snapped, the same smug expression returning to his face. “Boy, I know everything there is to know about you. I know where you’re from, your service record, your GPA, where you like to get your late night pizza.”

  He took a step closer to Thorn, his sneer growing in size as he leaned forward, lowering his voice just a bit. “I even know what happened to your mother on the day you were born.”

  Fire flashed behind Thorn’s eyes as Ingram pushed himself up from the wall to stand between them. He kept his own glare focused on Birkwood and asked, “So what do you say, Thorn?”

  Thorn could feel his pulse hammering through his temples as he stared at the man across from him. So far in less than an hour he had had the gall to attack his dog and mention his mother.

  It took everything Thorn had not to fly across at him.

  Swallowing his body’s inclination down the best he could, Thorn pushed away from the wall and circled around Ingram. He leveled a penetrating stare on Birkwood and stepped past him, headed for the stairwell.

  “That’s what I thought,” Birkwood muttered as he went, amusement obvious in the tone.

  In one fluid movement Thorn pivoted on the ball of his foot and unfurled an overhand right that caught Birkwood across the bridge of his nose. Like a piston he drove his arm through his target, pushing it forward until it was fully extended from his body.

  The impact of the blow lifted Birkwood from the ground, depositing him in a heap at the base of the concrete wall. His eyes rolled back in his head as bright red blood droplets dripped from his nose and off his chin, speckling the front of his shirt.

  Thorn stood over his opponent a long moment, his body poised, before the tension within him receded, his focus rising back to Ingram.

  “I say, before I can even consider this thing, we have to be on the level. He hit my dog and he insulted my mother.”

  Ingram glanced between Thorn and Birkwood’s inert form. “I understand.”

  Thorn nodded and turned for the stairs. “I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter Six

  During daylight hours, there were few places as busy in all of New England as the Dorchester docks, a hub of organized insanity. At any given moment one could stand and spot ships entering and exiting port. Crew members tying off boats. Forklifts loading and unloading supplies. People of all different sizes and ethnicities running about, their destinations as varied as the vessels they came in on.

  For as active as the docks remained during the day, the combined effect of that activity ground to a halt with the arrival of darkness. With little to no boat traffic there was no cargo to unload, no deckhands needed on standby.

  In early June, darkness could be counted on to descend upon Boston somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30. On Wednesday the 3rd, it hit at 8:18, nearly splitting the difference.

  Seamus Reilly’s shift had started a couple of hours earlier at 6:30, a small overlap existing with the afternoon crew to assist in end-of-day tasks. It was just his second week on the job and he was still learning, though there wasn’t a great deal more he had to discover. Already he had mastered the night shift and was fast becoming able to run the day-end tasks each afternoon by himself.

  Another week and everything he did would be from muscle memory, the practiced skills of rote repetition.

  Unlike many of the workers on the docks, Seamus had not grown up in the trade. A call had gone up in the old Irish neighborhoods a month before looking for able-bodied workers and he had signed on. Times were tough and the factory he’d been at for eighteen years had shut down without warning.

  No pension, no gold watch. Just a sign on the door and a pat on the back from his old boss.

  When the call for workers first went out it was accompanied by the usual gossip from the rumor mill, this time coupled with a warning that some boys had met a bad end working there. The stories were varied as to exactly what had happened, but the punch line seemed to be that somebody was picking off dock hands for sport.

  The tales might have spooked some potential applicants, but they barely even registered with Seamus. At thirty-five years old he couldn’t much read nor do basic math, but he was handy in a scrap.

  That much he knew from a lifetime of experience.

  If getting into an occasional fisticuff was the worst part of the job, then Seamus figured he’d found his new calling.

  At 8:30 Seamus made another round of the docks, carrying a clipboard and checking off items as he completed them. The docks were quiet, the only sounds his boots scraping against the ground and the occasional gull calling out as it floated by. He made the same trip at 9:30 and again at 10:30, each time finishing the loop without marking down a single thing of note.

  As the clock trudged towards midnight, Seamus felt a deep boredom begin to set in. For eighteen years he’d worked with an acetylene torch in his hand, a trade that kept his senses sharp and the clock moving. Now, he couldn’t help but watch the minutes crawl by.

  A few minutes before 11:30, Seamus stepped out from the guardhouse, clipboard in hand. The Sox were off for the night and without a game to listen to, the small metal outbuilding seemed cramped.

  In no particular hurry, Seamus started on the north end of the lot and made another pass through. Going beyond the standard items on his list, he went out of his way to check the knots on rope riggings and bulbs on security lamps. Before long, he even began tugging locks on the metal containers to ensure they were fastened tight.

  Tedious, but it helped pass the time.

  The extra tasks added over ten minutes to the round and Seamus finished right at midnight. While a bit crisp, the evening was pleasant and he began to whistle an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song as he walked back towards the guardhouse. He kept an easy pace through the deserted docks, walking with no particular purpose until he rounded the final corner and spotted his destination up ahead.

  Leaning against the outer wall of it was a solitary figure, dressed all in black. The man was too far away for Seamus to make out any features, but he could see the man was wearing an older style fedora and smoking a cigarette.

  The tune fell away from Sheamus’s lips as the hair on the back of his neck rose. Since taking over the shift by himself on day three he had yet to see another soul on the dock at night.

  The appearance of one now could not be a good sign.

  Seamus slid the clipboard into his left hand and pushed his right into his jacket pocket. Without breaking stride, he wrapped his fingers around the roll of quarters he kept stowed there, the plastic casing on it feeling cool to the touch. “Hello there,” Seamus called as he approached, waving the clipboard with his left hand.

  Without tilting the fedora up from the ground, the man replied, “Hello there.”

  Seamus noticed the thick accent immediately, not sure where it had originated, but noting it definitely wasn’t Irish. “Boss send you out here for something?”

  “You could say that,” the man replied, a touch of amusement in his tone.

  “Never seen you out this way before,” Seamus commented, pulling to a stop a half dozen feet from the guardhouse and shifting his weight forward onto the balls of his feet, “but I’m pretty new here. What did you say your name was?”

  The man shook his head, the overhead light casting a shadow from his hat
that seemed to envelope his entire body. “I didn’t.”

  Past encounters had taught Seamus when somebody was looking for trouble, it was always better to be the aggressor. He had no idea who this man was or what he wanted, but his sudden appearance, his icy demeanor, made it apparent he carried ill will.

  Dropping the clipboard to the ground, Seamus pulled the roll of quarters from his pocket and charged forward, swinging his right hand low, preparing it for a massive uppercut. The fist made it just past his hip before the man shuffle-stepped forward and hit a snap kick to the throat, just as fast retreating to the side of the building and placing the cigarette back between his lips.

  The roll of quarters was the first thing to hit the ground, the clear binding on it giving way, sending silver splashing across the concrete. A moment later Seamus fell to his knees in the middle of the mess, gasping and pawing at his neck, his body fighting to draw in air.

  Thick streams of blood swelled in his throat and ran down his tongue, dripping off his chin and onto the ground below. Sweat poured from his face as his skin receded to pale blue, oxygen deprivation setting in, his body unable to draw air through a crushed larynx.

  The man stood and watched until Seamus came to a stop face down on the ground before crushing out his cigarette and placing the butt in his coat pocket. Pushing his front teeth over his bottom lip he blew out a shrill whistle, answered on command by a set of headlights springing to life in the darkness.

  A low rumble emanated through the night as the lights rolled closer, a pickup truck on oversized tires appearing from the darkness. With a quick overhand wave, the man watched as the truck rolled past him and crawled towards the opposite end of the dock. He lit another cigarette and remained stationary as the truck coasted to a stop over fifty yards ahead of him.

  Pausing for a moment to select a target, it idled forward and brought the front bumper to rest against a nondescript brown container. It remained motionless just long enough to shift into gear before the brake lights blinked out and the engine kicked to life.

  The sound of the heavy diesel exhaust filled the night air for several long seconds, angry bursts of smoke combined with the metallic whine of cylinders running hot. A moment later the sounds were joined by tires squealing against concrete, the smell of burnt rubber drifting through the air.

  The final sound to join the crescendo was the bottom of the container scraping against concrete. Inch by inch it nudged its way towards the edge of the pier, asphalt and metal protesting in a strained wail.

  The front of the truck remained flush with the container until it reached a tipping point and began its inevitable slide towards the water.

  Less than five feet from the edge, the enormous machine came to a stop, its red brake lights flaring in the darkness. It remained idling in place as the container slid into the water, standing vigil as the massive weight of the metal hulk pulled it beneath the surface. Once it was gone from sight the truck eased into reverse before turning and exiting the same way it had entered.

  Standing against the guardhouse, the man waited until the taillights of the truck were gone before crushing out his cigarette and disappearing into the darkness.

  On the ground, he left Seamus’ dead body, ten dollars in coins scattered around him.

  In the water, he left a container full of people whose fates would soon be much the same.

  Chapter Seven

  Marc Tallo was the first to arrive. From the back seat of his Rolls Royce he could see no other cars parked along the cobblestone driveway that wrapped in front of the mansion. As the driver throttled down at the foot of the walkway to the main house Tallo motioned him forward, flicking his hand in a quick wave. “Pull on ahead. I’ll wait for the others and we’ll walk in together.”

  The driver offered a slight nod and crept past the walkway to the far edge of the drive, easing to a stop with a squeak of the brakes, leaving the engine running. A moment later a second set of headlights appeared at the end of the driveway, small pinpricks that grew steadily closer.

  “Turner,” Tallo said, watching as a 1921 Duesenberg came into view, sweeping around the fountain in the middle of the driveway. “Showing some class tonight. Good for him.”

  The Duesenberg finished its circle and rolled to a stop behind the Rolls. It turned its headlights off and sat in line, Turner also waiting for the final guest to arrive.

  Two minutes later, the high beams of the third visitor threw a blinding light across the front of the house. It grew brighter quickly, the car traveling at a great rate of speed.

  “Look at that damn thing,” Tallo said, making a face and shaking his head. “Man never has had a single shred of taste.”

  Twisting himself on the back seat he watched as a pearl white Cadillac Escalade whipped around the fountain and slid to a stop behind the Duesenberg, spewing gravel and Latin music as it went.

  Tallo waited for the music to die away before climbing from the car, his back and knees aching in protest. Standing at five and a half feet tall, he had a thick midsection from years of indulging in Italy’s finest cuisine that gave him the appearance of a perfect square. His thinning, heavily oiled hair was combed straight back, framing a bulbous face. He stood and adjusted his Armani tie and suit jacket before reaching back inside for a large basket.

  In order, Billy Turner emerged from the Duesenberg. A couple of inches taller than Tallo, he was fit and wiry. His strawberry blonde hair was cropped close to his head and he wore tan slacks with a white shirt and tweed jacket. He offered a terse nod to Tallo as he emerged, then reached into the car and removed a small wooden cask.

  The last man to appear was Luis Cardoza. He climbed from the back of the Escalade and gave a small wave to Tallo and Turner. At six feet he was the tallest of the three, a fact punctuated by the hat that sat jauntily atop his dark hair. The olive skin of his face was smooth, offset with warm brown eyes and a thin goatee outlining his mouth. He wore a light tan suit with a pink shirt open at the throat.

  Cardoza stepped away from the Escalade carrying a small cigar box and waited for the other men to join him. He nodded again as they approached and side by side the three walked up the path to the front of the mansion.

  Despite the gifts each man carried, there was no anticipation amongst them of an enjoyable evening.

  Together they represented the heads of the three largest cartels in Boston. Tallo headed the Italian contingent that swallowed most of the North End. Turner was the third generation leader of the Irish, notorious for their presence in South Boston. Cardoza led the Cubans, a group that numerically was inferior to the Italians and Irish but was working its way up thanks to a booming smuggling empire.

  Just ten years before, the thought of the three coming together peaceably would have been absurd. Each faction had a section of the city they were sworn to protect and bloodshed was the cost of doing business.

  All that, though, was before Paul Hardy.

  Hardy was a businessman, a shipping magnate who managed to build an empire in an era when most people barely understood the concept. From simple beginnings, he had never been on a boat until he turned nineteen, the first one he ever set foot on being the one that brought him to America. Within three years, he owned it and two more like it.

  Within ten, he owned a fleet of them.

  Holding sway over an untapped market, it didn’t take long for Hardy to become a large player in the Boston economy. Equal parts canny and cunning, his fortune was built on the misfortunes and ineptitudes of his competitors. Fearless to a fault, he quashed every other shipping competitor in New England in establishing his business. Along the way, he picked up several influential friends on both sides of the law, one of the few who managed to do so and live to tell about it.

  It was through his reputation and his fortune that Hardy was first able to get Tallo, Turner, and Cardoza in the same room together.

  Hardy paid good money to be informed of the happenings around his fleet, especially those occurring so
close to home. When word filtered in of the escalating hostilities between the Italians, Irish, and Cubans, it became obvious the situation threatened his own interests.

  Tallo and the Italians made the bulk of their money transporting automobiles in and out of the country. It was rumored that the cars were lined with copious amounts of cocaine and other narcotics, but nothing had ever been proven. The Italians ran hundreds of cars a year in and out of the city, using container ships to haul automobiles that had been lifted in all parts of America and Italy.

  Cardoza and the Cubans also ran a smuggling operation, their cargo of the human variety. With Castro still in place on the island and America’s strict travel boycott, moving humans had become quite a lucrative dealing. At the time Hardy brought them together the operation was still blooming, but he envisioned that within years the enterprise could expand exponentially.

  He was right.

  The final piece of the puzzle was Turner, head of the Irish that ran the docks. Nothing got in or out without them knowing about it, a fact that presented more than a few headaches for both the Italians and the Cubans. Unable to get their wares past the iron grip the Irish held on the docks, they were forced to seek alternative shipping measures.

  It was a situation Hardy recognized right off as a perfect partnership opportunity.

  Hardy brought the three together and suggested an armistice in the name of business. He reasoned with Tallo and Cardoza that their overhead and operations would move a great deal smoother with the aid of Turner and the efficient Dorchester docks. To Turner he implored reasonableness and told him to think of the lives and expense saved by no longer warring with two different factions, not to mention the increased traffic through the docks.

  The negotiations took two solid days and resulted in a general understanding. The Cubans and Italians would use container shipping out of the ports to transport their wares. The Irish would allow them to come and go and would keep competitors out. In return, the Cubans and Italians could establish a sizable and profitable business, and the Irish would take a portion of the proceeds from both parties for their efforts.