by Hamel, B. B.
“Like I said before, not everyone in the Mob is happy with Colm. The problem is, I don’t know who I can trust. I thought O’Brian could be our guy, but he’s not interested in helping us.”
“How many bosses are there?”
“Twelve, and there’s at least one more I can ask. But, I don’t know. I can’t go to him with what we have, not yet at least.”
“There’s twelve of you? Why not go to any of the others?”
He shook his head. “They’re probably in Colm’s pocket. The Right People have a code of honor, but they’re still people, and people fucking love money.”
“Why do you call them ‘Right People’?”
He shrugged. “It’s an old term, a really old term. It used to mean any thief or someone like that, but now it means anybody who’s in the Irish Mob. Like how the Italians have a Made man, we have a Right person.”
“Never heard that before.”
“Yeah, well, the Cosa Nostra is loud. We like to be a little quieter.”
I laughed at that. I couldn’t imagine his people could be any louder, especially with dumping bodies into a public river. But I decided not to press.
“Okay, so who’s this other guy?”
“His name is Boss de Barra. Frankly, he’s fucking terrifying.”
“I can’t imagine he’s any scarier than Colm or any of the other psychopaths you deal with.”
“He is, though. He runs out of north Philly, which isn’t exactly our typical home turf. He staked out some neighborhoods, cut a bunch of throats, and made it his own. People say he’s a complete nut, like crazier than the craziest guy in Colm’s entourage.”
“What do you mean, people say?”
“I’ve never met him.”
I stared. “You’ve never met him?”
“He doesn’t come down from his territory very often. It’s basically a little fortress he runs up there.”
“So let me understand this. You’re entrusting our lives to some crazy guy who lives way up in the north and barely ever comes down here?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“That’s insane.”
He nodded. “It’s a little insane.”
I groaned, shaking my head, and looked at the piles in front of us. Not only did we have nothing so far, but if we did find something, it was totally up in the air whether or not it could even help. Liam’s plan hinged on an insane guy, someone he had never even met.
Then again, at least it was better than nothing.
“I guess we should get back to work.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess we should.”
I grabbed another piece of paper and began to skim it. My eyes felt heavy and frustration was welling up in my chest, but I forced myself to keep going forward. I had to keep going forward. I felt Liam watch me for a minute or two, and then he turned back to his own pages, getting back to the hunt.
The sun was coming up by the time we finished.
“Fuck,” Liam said, slamming his fist down on the windowsill.
I looked at the papers scattered all across the room once again. We had read and reread and checked each other’s stacks at least five times. I was exhausted and my limbs were heavy and I felt like I was about to fall over from fatigue.
And we had nothing. At least nothing that Liam didn’t already know. There were no new leads, no new incriminating records, nothing.
“Fuck,” he said again, looking out over the neighborhood.
I felt nothing. I felt hollowed out and empty. It felt like too much effort to work up the energy to be pissed off. I should have been livid and terrified. We had just spent hours working through a bunch of useless papers, trying to find something that could save our lives. Liam had risked a lot even getting the papers in the first place. But there we were, back to square fucking one, with a bunch of pissed-off murderers scouring the city for us and nothing that could save our lives.
I should have been screaming. Instead, I just felt like taking a quick nap.
Liam had his head in his hands, rubbing at his eyes.
“What now?” I asked, not really caring what the answer was.
“We need more.”
“What do you mean, more?”
“We need more documents. More papers and shit.”
I groaned. “Liam, all the paper in the world won’t save us.”
“No, you’re wrong. I know the fucker did it, I know he was stealing. And he was smart enough to keep the real shit off these books. But I know he has to have some records of it.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Let’s assume he has some. How are you going to get it? Short of breaking into his hideout, or whatever you Mob guys use, and stealing it?”
He turned and gaped at me for a second. I made a face at him.
“What?” I said.
“You’re brilliant.”
“I think you just lost your mind.”
He walked over to me, dropped to his knees, and practically fell on top of me. He was laughing, and he pinned me down to the floor. Excitement jolted through me at his touch, though I was pretty sure he had completely cracked. Before I could speak, he pressed his mouth against mine and kissed me deeply.
I didn’t care if he was going nuts. I savored his kiss and returned it greedily. I wanted as much of him as I could get before we were both killed, or whatever was going to happen.
He pulled away and grinned down at me.
“I have a plan,” he said.
“Go ahead and share.”
He rolled off me, and I sat up, supporting myself on my right elbow.
“I’m going to rob the bastard.”
I blinked at him. “Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I can do that. I’m a master burglar.”
“So you’ll just rob the boss’s hideout?”
“His pub. I’ll rob his pub. If he has more financial stuff, or a second set of books, it’ll be in there, probably in a safe somewhere. I’ll break in late tonight and steal whatever he has.”
“Isn’t that, I don’t know, completely suicidal?”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’d think, but nobody would dare rob him. Nobody but me, at least. The place will be empty that late. It’ll be easy.”
“Liam, don’t. We can figure something else out.”
He stood up and stretched, and I briefly admired his lean, muscular form. He grinned down at me.
“Trust me. I can do this.”
I shook my head, at a loss for words.
“I’m going to make a call and then get some sleep. You should too.”
I nodded. “Are you sure?”
“Not at all. But I’m going to do it anyway.”
He strode out of the room and I watched him go. Silence flooded the room again, and I felt suffocated by all the paper scattered around me.
I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to run away, leave Philadelphia forever, forget about everything and disappear, but I knew he couldn’t do that. Plus, I couldn’t leave Petey with Chelsea. I had to trust him.
I got up and walked into the bedroom and collapsed onto the thin mattress. I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn’t going to let everything destroy me. I wasn’t going to let Liam go through hell alone, no matter what the cost. I wasn’t going to be some weak, whiney girl who broke down at the first sign of a problem. I had to get my shit together and support him the best that I could. When I woke up, I decided that I’d go through everything one more time, just in case we missed something.
As sleep began to overtake me, I pictured Liam sneaking around an empty pub, pulling paintings and jewels off of the walls like a cartoon robber.
Chapter Nineteen: Liam
“You sure about this?”
I looked back at Leary, at his all-black outfit and his black ski mask, and nodded. The neighborhood was silent, except for the soft buzz of a weak yellow streetlight. It was around three in the morning, and I knew that the place would be empty, or at least our chances were pretty good that it wo
uld be. I reached forward and felt the hard plastic body of the car we were crouched behind and thought about the past few days in silence as Leary steadied himself.
Ellie was counting on me. Fuck, everyone I knew was counting on me, and they didn’t even know it. Richie and his mom were safe, probably having a great time with all the cash I gave them, but their lives would be done with if I didn’t figure my shit out.
I wasn’t ready to roll over and let Colm murder me. I breathed deep and could practically taste the stillness and the fear wafting through the air. Across the street, Colm’s pub was dead, black, and closed up, and Leary was watching it like a hawk, ready for any sudden movement or any flicker of light that would give the presence of a guard away. But there was nothing: Colm was confident in his position, and he didn’t think he needed to post any goons to watch over his spot.
His overconfidence would work in our favor.
I didn’t know what I was waiting for. We had been watching the place for over an hour, had seen the staff close the place up, had watched them wander home, had seen the building sit empty and quiet. We were as sure as we were ever going to be that nobody was sitting in there with a loaded pistol, ready to murder anyone who tried to get in. My hands were shaking and I was sweating through my own black clothing, the ski mask bunched up on my head, letting my face get some air. I wanted to turn back, but there was nothing to go back to.
I looked at Leary. He looked nervous too, jittery, but he always looked that way.
“You ready?”
“I guess.”
“Last chance.”
He grinned at me. “And lose the opportunity to have the future boss of the Irish Mob owe me one huge fucking favor? No thanks.”
I shook my head, laughing quietly. “Let’s go, idiot.”
He shifted his weight and crossed the street quickly, sticking to the shadows where he could. I followed him, willing my feet not to make too much noise on the blacktop. We hit the side of the building and slipped down an alleyway, looking for the side door. The place smelled like puddled water and trash as Leary flattened himself up against a wall, nodding at the green, rusting door.
I was up. I pulled out a small leather case and slipped out a steel pick plus a steel tension rod and pushed them into the lock. I bit my lip, breathing deeply to calm my heart and my shaking hands. Leary kept watch silently as I worked at the lock, driving the pick inside and pushing at the pins. Lock picking was a lot easier than most civilians realized; any lock on almost any door, at least those that used the common key-and-tumbler format, could be broken into within minutes. No door is truly safe. The only thing that really kept the bad guys out was the social contract, the belief that breaking into another person’s house was wrong.
Fortunately, I didn’t have such antiquated moral hang-ups. I felt the pins move into position, and I turned the lock with a satisfying click.
The door slipped open. Leary pulled it out farther and moved inside, gun in hand. I put my picks away and followed quietly.
Leary was crouched down behind a cabinet in the kitchen. He nodded to me, making a hand gesture. Room clear. I nodded back, moving forward, my own gun out and hand forward. We kept our flashlights off, just in case, and my eyes were quickly adapting to the dark rooms.
I moved into the main bar area and swept through it quickly. There was nobody. I made hand signs at Leary. Check the office. He disappeared into the back rooms while I kept watch. Two minutes later, he poked his head out and gestured at me. All clear.
We moved together back into the office, and I shut the door softly behind us. Leary clicked on his penlight, and I turned on mine a second later. We swept the beams over the space. It was sparsely furnished, with three large filing cabinets, a safe in the back corner, two chairs, and a large mahogany desk. There were paintings on the walls, and a corkboard with papers pinned to it.
I made a series of hand gestures to Leary, flashlight held between my teeth. Crack the safe. I’ll loot the cabinets. He nodded and got to work while I opened the duffle bag I had slung over my back.
Despite being a drug addict and a shady guy, Leary was one of the best safe crackers in the whole city. That was more or less the only reason he was still alive at all, actually. He had run afoul of so many dangerous people so many times in his insane drive to be constantly high, but they had kept him alive because he was so useful. Whenever the debt got to be too much, he’d go do a job for whoever he owed.
As I began forcing the locks on the filing cabinet and dumping their papers into my bag, I wondered why Leary was risking so much to help me. It was true that we were old childhood friends, and had reconnected recently, but that didn’t explain it. It wasn’t like Leary was a bad guy, but junkies universally looked out for themselves first. Leary was trying to get his shit together, but he was still an addict.
I sighed as I remembered Ellie. She was an addict, too, and yet she was one of the strongest people I had ever met. She could easily curl up in a ball and wait for me to save her, and yet she was insisting that she help out as much as she could. I frowned, finishing the cabinet and moving to the next one. Maybe I had underestimated Leary. Lumping people into stereotypes was a good way of proving yourself wrong and showing you how diverse and incredible people could sometimes be.
A soft thump pulled me from my thoughts and I looked down at Leary. He grinned up at me: the safe was open. I gestured at him. Good job. He gave me a little bow, and then he began to loot the thing, dropping stacks of cash, a gun, and other documents into his open bag. I tore out every paper in the cabinets indiscriminately, not caring what it was. I didn’t have time to look over it all; I had to just take everything I could find and hope for the best. Once he was done with the safe, Leary began rifling through the desk drawers, taking anything that looked important.
Finally, the last paper was in my duffle. It was heavy as hell as I hefted it onto my back, but that was fine. The room was trashed, with shit thrown all around us, but I had no clue if we found anything worthwhile. I didn’t have a chance to see what was in the safe, or what Leary found in the other drawers. Only a few minutes had passed since we first entered the building, which was pretty good. I might have been out of practice, but I was still a damn good burglar. I moved toward the door silently. Leary gestured at me. Let’s go. I nodded and put my hand on the doorknob.
There was a noise in the main room. I looked at Leary, my eyes wide, and he stared back. I gestured at him. Was that something? He nodded. Quickly, we turned off our lights and flattened ourselves on either side of the door as there was another thump, followed by the front door opening and slamming.
I gestured to Leary. Stay quiet. Don’t move. He nodded. There were more footsteps in the main room, and I could hear people talking.
“. . . late as shit,” the voice said, coming close enough for me to hear.
“Yeah, well, we’re done at least,” came the response.
“I’m sick of these night runs. Why does Colm got to have us crawling all over the city at this hour?”
“Because he thinks we can find Liam this way.”
I blinked, my heart hammering in my chest. They were talking about me, about looking for me. And if they had come in through the back, we could have been fucked. We didn’t close the door in order to make our escape that much easier, and besides, we didn’t expect anyone to show up.
“It’s not gonna happen, man. Like I said, the guy is long gone, probably in Mexico by now.
“He’s here. We’ll find him.”
The more they spoke, the more I couldn’t shake how familiar they sounded.
“I’m not sure we will. Boss seems pretty fucking obsessed.”
“He does, but can you blame him?”
“I guess I don’t.”
“Liam embarrassed Colm, made him look weak. He has no other choice but to hunt Liam down and kill him.”
“Yeah, and I owe that rat cunt.”
The man laughed. “You really do.”
&n
bsp; There was a brief silence. I heard glass clink. They were having a fucking drink, I realized. Probably parched from a long day of trying to murder me.
“You still need to do the count?”
“Yeah.”
“Put it off, man. Screw that.”
“Got to do it. Boss will be pissed if I don’t.”
There was another clinking of glass. “Whatever, pussy.”
I heard the man laugh again, and then I heard a chair scrape against the floor. There were footsteps coming closer, and I tensed. I gestured quickly to Leary.
I’ll take the first guy. You get the second. He nodded, gripping his gun firmly. I checked to make sure that my safety was off, my hands shaking and covered in sweat.
“Fuck it. Do it tomorrow morning,” the one guy called out. “Stay here and have another drink.”
“I have to finish this crap, Max.”
Max. Recognition spiked through my chest and my pulse jumped. Jesus, I knew the guy that spoke, too. It was Colin, or at least I was pretty damn sure it was Colin. Had the same voice as him, and seemed to know Max pretty well. On the other side of the door, the two men sent out to hunt for me all night, were Max and Colin.
I clenched my jaw as rage filled my body. I wanted to tear the fucking door down, shove my gun into Colin’s mouth, and pull the trigger. The piece of shit had said that I could trust him, but that was a lie. Everything about the Mob was a damn lie. I wanted to finish the job on Max, too, and regretted letting him live. That was a moment of weakness that I wasn’t going to repeat.
“I’m not waiting around here. Fuck this. I’m going home,” Max said.
I heard Colin sigh. He was standing right on the other side of the door. If I put my gun against the wood and pulled the trigger, chances were pretty good that I’d hit him. It would be so easy. I heard his hand grab the doorknob and my fingers tightened their grip on the gun. He was inches away, and it was kill or be killed. I had no other choice as I leveled the gun, pressing the barrel up against the wood where I hoped his chest would be. There was a brief pause as I steadied myself and prepared to shoot.