Double The Risk (7 page)

“Sounds like a story you should tell me sometime.”

“Sometime,” he agreed noncommittally. “Anyway, where does this information lead us?”

“I don’t know. The guy I remember was kind of scuzzy, you know? I can’t quite square him with the well-fed and illness free stiff in the morgue. And why the hell wouldn’t the guy have any arrests for such a long stretch, a stretch I might add, that pretty much coincides with my parents’ murder?”

“All good questions. We need to figure out where he’s been holed up all of these years. Let’s start searching for relatives.”

It was a solid plan, and putting aside their rivalry over Cassidy, they both delved into the files on O’Malley. They found the name of a sister, Colleen O’Malley Sullivan, and pulled up a current address on her fairly easily. They decided not to call first in case the woman was in on something less than savory with her brother and tried to avoid them. They hopped into Ronan’s car and headed over to her home. Ronan parked a half a block away in front of a row of tidy houses in an old South Boston neighborhood.

“Let’s hope she’s home,” Ronan said as they strode up the sidewalk.

“I don’t know. With a neighborhood like this, it’s usually a two-income family.”

Diego was right, as no one answered the doorbell, although they could hear a yappy dog inside losing its mind over visitors at the door. A noisy neighbor poked her head out and got a wicked gleam in her eye when Ronan flashed a badge and asked if she knew where Ms. Sullivan might be. That led them to a bar around the corner.

“Jesus, we’re not open for business this early in the morning,” an older man shouted as they walked in.

Ronan once more flashed his badge. “We’re looking for Colleen Sullivan.”

Without shifting his gaze from Ronan and Diego, the man shouted for the woman. She came out, wiping her hands on a dish cloth. Rail thin in a way that spoke more of a cigarettes and coffee habit than a vegan diet and yoga, with hair bleached so many times it looked like straw, Seamus’ sister was more like the man he’d remembered in his dreams. The O’Malley siblings had been raised in poverty.

Colleen stopped short when she got sight of them. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Colleen O’Malley Sullivan?” Ronan asked, once more holding up his badge.

She sighed. “Yeah, that’s me—Colleen
Irish Irish
. What’s up?” As she asked the question, her tone implied she already knew they came with bad news. He supposed with a brother like Seamus, who was probably a chip off the old block as these things usually went, her trouble radar was likely excellent.

“Is there a place where we can talk, ma’am?” Diego asked in the tone cops always used when delivering death notices to the next of kin.

She sighed again, more heavily this time, and looked down at her hands. “We can talk here, and I can guess what you have to say.” She looked up at them. “Seamus is dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ronan confirmed. “How did you know?” As he asked the question, he gently herded the woman to sit at a nearby table.

She didn’t put up a fight. “I suppose I’ve been waiting for this news for a long time. Seamus was always getting into trouble, and even with the way he was the last time I spoke with him, I still expected it.”

Diego took a seat next to her. “What do you mean about the last time? We know your brother had cleaned up his act. No arrests for the past eight years or more.”

Colleen snorted. “Cleaned up his act? Seamus never changed.”

“He got smarter, at least,” Ronan injected.

“Not even that,” Colleen replied with a roll of her eyes. “He just had less of a reason to get into trouble, that’s all.” When they both sat and stared at her, she explained. “A while back, eight or nine years maybe, he scored big, big enough for him to live off the grid. Paid cash for everything. He came around my place, showing off to me with rolls of dough, offering to buy me stuff. I told him to get lost. I didn’t like the smell of that money. He’d done something really bad to get it, had to have. I didn’t want nothing to do with it. You don’t get that much by doing something good, at least not where we come from.”

Now that was interesting news. What could a small time criminal like O’Malley have done to acquire so much money? When he asked that question, Colleen didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know, and I didn’t want to know. Even as he’s trying to impress me with how generous he was being, he said we had to be quiet about it all. Said he wasn’t supposed to be in Boston still but didn’t feel like leaving. This was his home, and no one was going to push him out.” She shook her head. “Idiot, trying to act like Mr. Big while he’s peeking out my window blinds like he’s afraid he was followed, sweat leaking through his shirt. I told him to get lost and stay that way. I didn’t need the trouble.”

“Was that the last you saw of him?” Ronan asked.

She stared off in the distance. “Yeah, that was the last time I saw him, but a few years ago, he sent me a letter. No return address on the envelope. I almost threw it away thinking it was junk mail ‘til I realized it was his handwriting. He gave me his new address, but said I shouldn’t try to contact him or give it out to anybody, even the cops if they came asking. He just wanted me to know where his stuff was in case something happened to him.

“He told me to memorize the address then burn the letter.” With a snort she added, “Like that didn’t make me nervous. Anyway, I did like he asked because I’m an idiot, too, I guess. He’s my brother. Was my brother. I guess you can’t get away from family that easily, no matter what.”

“Did anyone, including cops, ever come around asking about him after that?” Diego asked a split second before Ronan had a chance to.

Colleen’s gaze shifted around.

“It’s important that we know,” Ronan stressed in a gentle voice. She seemed spooked all of a sudden.

The woman blew out a breath. “Yeah, a couple of detectives did a few months after I got the letter, then again last year, although it wasn’t the same two as before. They, ah, kind of leaned on me.”

“Did they hurt you?” Diego asked in an even more gentle tone.

Collen rolled her eyes. “Nah, they just acted tough, tried to spook me about being charged with obstructing justice and other bullshit that don’t cut any ice in Southie. Seamus and me were raised to keep our mouths shut. The only reason I’m telling you is ’cause he’s already dead.”

The woman’s eyes misted up a bit, and she swiped impatiently at the tears forming. Even the biggest of rats usually left someone behind who mourned their passing at least a little. He could certainly empathize with her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Do you remember the address?” She did and Ronan took down the information, thanked her, and left with Diego in tow.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Diego said, getting into the car. “From what I saw of his arrest record, the guy was neither bright, nor ambitious. A guy like that doesn’t score big. And if he had money, he wouldn’t be dressed like a homeless man.”

“Maybe he blew through the cash and was living recently on the streets.”

“His clothes would have been nicer if that were the case. It’s not adding up.”

“No,” Ronan agreed. “It’s not.”

The address the sister had given them was in West Roxbury, a south west part of Boston that had a more suburban feel to it. It was a far cry from the Boston neighborhood the O’Malleys grew up in, a definite step-up for a guy like Seamus. They arrived at a duplex that was modest and tired looking, as if no one cared enough to keep it up. As luck would have it, the landlord was home. The man gave their badges the once-over and wasn’t happy to hear they wanted to see where his tenant lived. He chomped on the disgusting remnants of a cigar while he let them in.

“Seamus O’Malley, huh? Told me his name was Steven Cabot, but I knew that was a crock. I know a mick when I see one.” Looking at Diego, he added, “I can say that ’cause I’m Irish myself.”

Ronan hid his irritation. They had bigger fish to fry, but Jesus, when would people get past these stupid slurs even of their own people? When Diego, who probably had been forced to develop a thick skin to epithets, gave the landlord a noncommittal look back, the man continued as he fished out his keys.

“I can’t say I’m surprised he’s dead,” he said, still not taking the stogy out of his mouth. “He looked like every punk I grew up with in Southie. They all ended up at Walpole or the cemetery before hitting thirty.” He pushed the door open and ushered them in.

“The state’s maximum security prison,” Ronan translated for Diego’s benefit.

The place hadn’t been cleaned in many months, but that appeared to be by design because there were pizza boxes and beer bottles lying around the living room, as if recently left there.

“The guy was a pig as you can see. But he paid his rent on time and in cash.” The man grinned around the cigar. “Of course I declared every cent to the IRS.”

“Of course.” Ronan stepped farther into the home and looked around. Diego headed back to the kitchen. “Did he have any visitors that you know of, a girlfriend maybe?”

“He wasn’t what you’d call a social kind of guy. I didn’t see anyone hanging around, and he didn’t date that I could tell. Unless you count working girls, that is. He had one or two of them over a month.”

“I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Ahearn, we’ll let ourselves out, and we’ll have some uniforms come and cordon this apartment off until we’re sure we’ve collected any evidence.”

“Fuck, knew you’d say that. I watch all the
Law and Order
shows. I know how this works. I’ll be lucky to rent it again by this fall.”

The landlord left with a shake of his head.

As Diego was already in the back of the apartment, Ronan tackled the living room. There wasn’t much to see, no personal mementos unless one counted the porn collection of DVDs. He rifled through the pile sitting on a built-in bookshelf, feeling dirty by merely touching the boxes. O’Malley’s taste had been extreme, although none of them appeared to involve underage actors. That was something. Most if not all of them weren’t properly closed which struck him as odd. If O’Malley was that sloppy, why bother to put the discs back in the case at all?

The thought occurred to him that the place may have been tossed. Messy as it was, it would be hard to tell. He stared around the room to see if there was any sign of greater chaos amid the mess.

“Callaghan, in here,” Diego shouted.

Ronan hustled to the source of the voice and found his partner on his hands and knees on the threshold to a small closet. Clothing, dirty laundry he’d bet, was scattered around his partner. Diego got more props for rooting around in another man’s soiled stuff. He was peering inside the closet with a small flashlight leading the way.

Ronan squatted beside him. “What am I looking at?”

Diego glanced up at him. “A hiding place.”

Stretching his neck, Ronan saw the hole in the flooring. Diego had pulled up a few shortened planks of the old wood floor. A small square hole had been carved into the subflooring. Something hard and black lay inside. “Is that a laptop?”

Reaching into the hole, Diego pulled the object out. “Netbook.”

“Same difference. Interesting how O’Malley hid it.”

“Very,” his partner agreed.

“There’s more.” Ronan wedge himself between the other man and the door jamb to stick his hand in the hole. Under the computer was a stack of one hundred dollar bills held together by a paper bank band. Holding it up to his forefinger to measure its thickness, Ronan said, “About ten grand, give or take.”

Diego whistled. “Nice chunk of change.”

“Yeah, but not enough to live on for long. I wonder if he has any more hidey holes.” Ronan scanned the room. It was as messy as the living room. “How’d you manage to find this one, anyway?”

“I’ve learned that people with a modicum of imagination hide things where they think others would be disgusted to look. I worked robbery for a while, and this woman stole a packet of diamonds and hid them in her box of tampons like I’d be too squicked out to look there.” He shook his head. “I thought it was weird how O’Malley’s dirty laundry was jammed in the closet. Seems like he’d just leave them on the floor where he took them off, given the state of the rest of the apartment. The place where the floorboard had been cut was easy to spot once I cleared the clothing away.”

Ronan stared at the size of the hole again. “Looks like he might have hid a lot of money at one time. Even given the space taken by the laptop, sorry,
netbook
, if he had hundred dollar bills, he could have easily fit tens of thousands in here.”

Diego shook his head. “I still don’t understand what he could have done or been in on that would have yielded that much of a pay-out. And with that much left hiding here, there’s no way he was out on the streets. Even if he’d run out completely, he would have hung around here until the landlord got him evicted. I bet that takes months here the same way it does in New York.”

When Ronan nodded, Diego continued. “Dirty and smelly as they are, these are decent clothes. He’d have been better dressed than he was when we found him.”

Ronan rubbed at his chin. “I got the feeling out in the living room that this place has been tossed. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear someone opened up all of his porn DVDs.”

Diego gave him a thoughtful look. “Sounds like they were looking for something in an effort to tie up a loose end, covering their tracks.”

“God, the infamous ‘they.’ Who are they?”

Diego stood up and Ronan followed suit. “You said O’Malley was one of your father’s snitches? Is there anyone we could talk to that would have known him back then, O’Malley that is? Maybe your older brother?”

Ronan smiled at the thought. “Naw, Daire was a shiny new cop when our parents were killed. He wouldn’t have known anything about my father’s informants. Uncle Jack was already in a wheelchair by then, and he was a beat cop anyway. Never had a reason to deal with snitches.” He wracked his brain for anyone else, then smacked himself when the obvious came to him. “Of course, I’m an idiot. Uncle Connor.”

“Jesus, how many of you are there?”