Jig (24 page)

‘I don't think for one moment that Jig is going to find you. I know how your little gang covers its tracks.'

‘Yeah, I keep hearing how good we are at secrecy,' Kevin Dawson said. ‘Pardon me if I'm not convinced.'

Thomas Dawson laid a hand on his brother's arm. ‘I'm prepared to put a couple of Secret Service agents at your disposal.'

Kevin Dawson looked at his brother. For a moment the touch of the President's hand on his arm reminded him of the man he used to have as a brother, when life had been carefree and political ambition hadn't taken total control of Tommy's personality. ‘I've got a Secret Service agent already,' he said.

‘One man who does nothing but escort your daughters to school,' the President said. ‘You need your protection beefed up, Kevin. And you'll have it before the end of the night.'

Kevin Dawson looked suitably grateful. ‘Suppose this Frank Pagan character gets lucky? Suppose he captures Jig? What will you do with the guy if you catch him?'

‘I don't think I can answer that.'

‘A Jimmy Hoffa style disappearance? The Irish hero simply vanishes off the face of the earth and nobody knows where or why?'

The President didn't answer his brother's questions. He sat back down behind his desk and put the red file inside a drawer. ‘Let me ask
you
something, Kev. Who really took the money from that ship?'

‘I haven't got a clue.'

‘No ideas?'

Kevin Dawson shrugged. It was a question he'd asked himself frequently. His immediate impulse was to suspect Mulhaney, but this was totally unfair, a suspicion motivated by a personal dislike for the man. It could have been Mulhaney. It could have been Linney. Even Harry Cairney. The problem was that all four men, himself included, would come under Jig's suspicion. What if Jig somehow reached the conclusion that he, Kevin Dawson, was responsible for the affair? What if Jig got to Mulhaney, say, and Big Jock, to divert suspicion from himself, managed to convince the Irishman that the guilty party was Dawson? Kevin Dawson's fear intensified. Suspicions created other suspicions. Possibilities led to other possibilities. He had the feeling of a man locked within a complex hall of mirrors, images reflecting themselves to an inscrutable infinity so that you could never find the true source of them.
And there was no way out
. He didn't like thinking this way, didn't like the panic rising in him.

The President placed his feet up on the desk and crumbled his empty yoghurt carton, flipping it towards a wastebasket. ‘If there's a next time, Kevin, you ought to be a tad more careful.'

‘I don't think there will be a next time,' Kevin Dawson said.

He went towards the door. He thought of going out into the darkness of the city and the prospect didn't appeal to him. Despite its floodlights, its illuminated tourist attractions, Washington was a city of too many dark places.

‘What about the others?' he asked, turning in the doorway.

‘Others?'

‘My associates. I don't imagine they can count on your protection as well.'

‘They're not exactly my blood relations, are they?'

There was a small indifferent light in Thomas Dawson's eyes. Callous, Kevin thought. Maybe that came with the territory. With the subterfuges of the office. The great numbers game the President played. The numbers justified anything. Everything.

Kevin Dawson opened the door.

The President said, ‘Two things, Kevin. The first, you don't mention Jig to any of your … associates. So far as I'm concerned, Jig isn't in this country. I don't want anybody saying otherwise.'

‘What's the second?' Kevin Dawson asked.

‘We never had this conversation.'

St. Bernard des Bois, Quebec

The Ryder truck was parked in the forecourt of a gas station. Fitzjohn sat behind the wheel. The other men in the cab were Houlihan and Waddell. Rorke and McGrath travelled in the back with the cargo that had been unloaded from the DC-4. Houlihan squinted through the windshield at the unlit gasoline sign that hung like a small deflated moon over the pumps, then he glanced at his watch.

‘Am I right, Fitz? Is it seven-thirty in New York City?'

Fitzjohn looked at his Rolex and nodded.

‘All these bloody time zones confuse the hell out of a man,' Houlihan said. He slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes. ‘Let's hear about the route, Fitz.'

Fitzjohn stared at the sign in the gas-station window, which read
FERMÉ/CLOSED
. He was still thinking about what had happened at the airfield, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't get rid of the images. The weird look on Houlihan's face. The dead bodies of the pilots. In fucking cold blood, without even so much as a blink of an eye. Houlihan hadn't mentioned the incident since they'd left the airstrip. It was over and done with. Already ancient history. Two dead airmen whose only crime, so far as Fitzjohn could tell, was that Houlihan hadn't trusted them. Seamus Houlihan, judge and jury and executioner, all rolled into one.

‘There's an old road twelve miles from here,' he said without turning to Houlihan. He couldn't look at the man. ‘It's a dirt road that leads to a fishery. The fishery's closed this time of the year because of the weather, which suits us fine. Nobody travels that way.'

‘And where does your road lead?' Houlihan asked.

‘Beyond the fishery, it turns into a narrow path that goes between some trees, then it passes an abandoned farmhouse. There are fields after that.'

‘Open fields?'

Fitzjohn nodded. ‘We cross the fields for about two miles. On the other side there's a track that comes out just north of Highway Twenty-seven.'

‘Highway Twenty-seven?' Houlihan opened his eyes. ‘That doesn't mean a thing to me, Fitz.'

‘It's in the State of Maine.'

‘What about the Border Patrol?' Waddell spoke for the first time since they'd left the airfield. He'd become pale and totally withdrawn, gazing speechlessly out of the window for mile after mile. He moved only when he lit cigarettes, chain-smoking them in silence. His brown-stained fingers trembled in his lap.

‘The nearest port of entry is at a place called Coburn-Gore. It's about two miles away from the spot where we join Highway Twenty-seven. I don't think we're likely to encounter any Border Patrol.' Fitzjohn paused. ‘It's not as if we're coming in from Mexico, after all. The Border Patrol down there are fanatics. Anyway, this truck has New Jersey plates, and that helps.'

Houlihan asked, ‘Can we get across the fields without getting stuck?'

Fitzjohn said, ‘I don't see why not. The snow's hard and there haven't been any fresh falls in more than a week.'

‘And this Highway Twenty-seven, where does it lead us?'

‘All the way to Interstate Nine-five.'

Nobody spoke for a time. Fitzjohn could hardly wait to get inside the U.S., because it meant he would leave the truck to Houlihan and the others, then make his way back to New Jersey. Relief. An end to this damned business as far as he was concerned. He didn't want to know what Houlihan planned to do in America. He didn't need to have that kind of knowledge.

‘I've got a phone call to make,' Houlihan said.

Houlihan climbed out of the cab. He moved across the forecourt of the gas station, then went inside the phone booth and picked up the receiver.

Fitzjohn watched him from the cab. He was about to say to Waddell that he thought Seamus Houlihan might benefit from being locked up in a padded room, but why bother? For one thing, Waddell might take it into his head to pass such a remark on to Houlihan, which wasn't a marvellous prospect. For another, everybody involved in this escapade had to be a little mad, himself included. Except Houlihan was more than that. He was lethal.

12

New York City

Joseph X. Tumulty looked from the window of his office down into the darkened street. Earlier, a navy-blue Ford had parked halfway along the block, and the tan Chrysler that had been stationed there drove off. It was the changing of the guard. He peered across the way. There was a light in the office building opposite St. Finbar's Mission. Tumulty could see a fat man sitting behind a desk. He was counting papers, flicking them back and licking his thumb every so often.

Tumulty turned from the window and went to his desk. He sat down, adjusting the lamp so that the light didn't shine directly into his face. He unlocked the middle drawer and took out a leather pouch, which he unzipped. There were seven thousand five hundred dollars inside. This money had been given to him by Padraic Finn more than three years ago. A contingency fund, which Finn, with the canniness of a man who understood that money
worked
for you, had placed in an interest-bearing account under Tumulty's name. When Tumulty had gone just before closing-time to make the withdrawal – a tense moment, standing in a line that never seemed to move – he had the feeling he'd been followed to the bank. He'd withdrawn all the money and closed the account. Santacroce wanted six thousand dollars. Six thousand would have fed the clientele of St. Finbar's for about four months.

Tumulty absently regarded the religious artifacts on the walls. The Mexican cross he'd bought that day in Santacroce's store lay propped against the wall near the window. The Christ figure nailed to the wood was gory in the way Latin Americans loved. Blood filled up the eyes and dripped from the most unlikely places in the wooden body. Tumulty thought Jesus looked more perplexed than sorrowful. It was a distasteful piece but he hadn't wanted to leave Santacroce's store empty-handed. For appearance's sake.

Santacroce had said the merchandise might take some time to get together. Arrangements had to be made. He estimated twenty-four hours maximum, maybe a whole lot sooner. It depended on a variety of factors, none of which the gun merchant volunteered to explain. Tumulty hadn't asked either. He'd been very anxious to get out of that stifling little shop with its smell of old sandalwood and lacquer and dust. And away from Santacroce too, whose white puffy face and slitlike eyes seemed to suggest he was in the business, plain and simple, of death.

Twenty-four hours. Tumulty wondered a moment about Jig. When was he coming back? He couldn't remember if he'd told Jig two days or three. And then there was the unpleasant prospect of picking up a package from Santacroce and getting it back to this place. He knew it was crazy to bring weapons inside St. Finbar's, but what was his alternative? He couldn't think of a place where he might safely stash guns.

He hated the feeling of St. Finbar's being under siege like this. The idea scared him. And if it came down to a choice between the Cause and his own little mission here on Canal Street, the desperate souls he cared for, which way would he go? That was the Big One. Would he go to jail before giving up Jig? Or would he quietly surrender the assassin to Frank Pagan so that he might get on with his life's work in peace – if indeed peace was attainable after an act of treachery?

From the kitchen below there came the sound of voices. Babble. The smell of cooking floated inside his office. It was time, he thought, for prayer, the quest for guidance. He folded his hands together and closed his eyes, inclining his forehead to the tips of his fingers. For most of his life this act had been invigorating for him, although at times God's responses were difficult to catch. Sometimes Tumulty felt he was pursuing a sweet, silvery thread through empty reaches of the ether, fumbling towards a divine light. But there were other moments when he achieved the light, and then a great calm would come over him and he would glimpse a way through the mysteries of the divinity.

He sat very still. He tried to concentrate on the inner voice that was for him his means of communication when it came to prayer. A secretive little voice, which sometimes sounded like a tiny whisper in the vastness of the cosmos. He opened his eyes, frustrated. It wasn't happening today. There were crossed wires in his brain, and other thoughts kept intruding. Guns and politics, secular matters. He made fists of his thick hands and clenched them on the surface of the desk.
Guidance, dear God. Show me
. He stood up and wandered to the window, looked down into the street, saw that the navy-blue Ford was still in place there.
Guidance
, he thought again. Instead of God's voice, what he heard was Finn saying
The Cause is a holy one, Joe. And God knows that. There's no conflict, none at all, between serving God and the Cause. You wouldn't be the first man of the cloth to embrace them both
.

Tumulty wanted to believe this. The problem lay in violence and murder, neither of which he could possibly condone. It seemed to him that the Cause and God were diametrically opposed to each other. The former promoted death, the latter life. It was the difference between a total eclipse and the warming light of the sun. Dear Christ, how had he ever stumbled into this dilemma? More to the point, was there any way to resolve it? To square his religious beliefs with the demands of the Cause?

A sound in the doorway of his office made him turn around. The tall, skinny figure who stood there was a man called McCune, who blinked into the room with watery blue eyes. McCune wore a flannel shirt, open at the neck so that his large Adam's apple was visible, like some kind of growth, in his scrawny throat.

‘We're wondering when you're coming down, Father Joe,' the man said.

Tumulty stared at the man. McCune had been one of his earliest successes. When he'd first encountered him, McCune had been a suicidal drunk with violent tendencies, a former railway engineer canned by the railroad for hauling eight hundred tons of coal through Pennsylvania while extremely intoxicated. McCune had lost wife and kids, home, and any sense of his own dignity. It had taken time and patience, but Tumulty had given him back the dignity at least. McCune had been sober for almost a year and worked as a night clerk in a hotel on Eleventh Avenue. It wasn't much – but self-worth, Tumulty knew, was a quality you retrieved only in small stages.