Shamrock Alley (18 page)

“I’ll call ya,” O’Shay said.

“When?”

But Mickey O’Shay had nothing more to say: he sidestepped his way out of the pew and mingled among the tourists and spectators until he disappeared in the confusion of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING, IN A SMALL
Midtown diner, John sipped a cup of coffee and watched a roach scuttle across the table. Outside, a light rain fell against the diner’s windows, the sound soothing. According to the clock on the wall behind the counter, Kersh was late. And John wanted to get to Douglas Clifton’s hospital room within the hour.

After a while, John saw Kersh dart across the street with a newspaper over his head. The man was broad-shouldered and, carrying some extra weight, he ran with the loping, impeded gallop of an injured gazelle. Kersh hit the diner’s door like a strong wind, pulled it open, and pushed himself inside while simultaneously exhaling a heavy breath. John raised a hand, and Kersh sauntered over to his table, plodding down in the seat across from him. Catching his breath, Kersh rubbed a hand through his wet hair.

“Weather,” Kersh muttered, shaking the drizzle from his newspaper. There was something childish about him—in his face, his mannerisms, his eyes—that caused John to grin.

“You look like shit. Don’t you ever shave?”

“You,” Kersh said, unfolding his newspaper, “suddenly have more important things to worry about than my personal hygiene.” Buried within the folds of his newspaper was a manila folder. Kersh slid the folder out across the table and opened it, rifled through some computer printouts. “Two bits of information for you,” he said, not looking up from his paperwork.

“Oh yeah?”

Kersh slid two of the printouts in front of John: O’Shay’s and Kahn’s records from NYPD. John’s meeting with O’Shay had prompted Kersh to retrieve their information the night before. John scanned the printouts, then muttered, “Son of a
bitch.”

“Can you believe it? You see those charges? Kidnapping, assault, attempted murder, some robbery sprinkled in there for flavor. All major arrests …
but not a single conviction.”
Kersh leaned over the table and drummed a thick finger on one of the rap sheets. “Two murder acquittals on insanity for your churchgoing buddy O’Shay. He’s been in and out of institutions half his life.”

“I don’t believe this. Not from these guys.”

“It’s there in black and white,” Kersh told him, then waved a waitress over and ordered himself a cup of coffee. “This puts a bad taste in my mouth, John. I know you said this guy O’Shay’s some dope off the street—”

“He
is—”

“Nevertheless, you keep this shit in mind every time you meet with this clown—you know what I’m saying? Somebody like this … you don’t know what to expect.”

Something smelled bogus. True, Kersh was right—it was all here in black and white—but he found it impossible to connect that mook O’Shay to the rap sheet in front of him. Bad guys looked a certain way, spoke a certain way, dressed a certain way, operated in a certain way. Often, they were so cliché and so predictable that it was almost ludicrous. Yet here he was, faced with the exception to that rule, and he was surprised and a bit exasperated by his initial miscalculation.

“What else?” he asked Kersh. “You said you had two bits of info for me.”

“Clifton’s prints on those folded hundreds.”

“They came back?” John asked.

“They came back
clean
. His prints aren’t on any of the bills.”

“Well, that’s terrific. Christ.”

“Maybe he was careful,” Kersh said. “Or just lucky. It happens. Although I thought we’d get at least
one …”
Kersh drummed his thick fingers on the table. “Clifton’s got a record, anyway. Minor stuff.”

“And the gun? The silencer?”

“Hopefully we’ll hear on that tonight, tomorrow at the latest. They’re checking ballistics.”

John looked at the clock again while Kersh sipped his coffee, blew rings across the surface.

“One last thing,” Kersh said absently, looking down at his coffee.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t meet with this O’Shay guy again without telling me first, John.”

That same fetid smell still clung to the air inside Douglas Clifton’s hospital room. Upon entrance, John and Kersh both expected to find the room’s occupant just as delirious as he’d been the day before. However, as they pushed open the door, John was surprised to see that Dr. Kuhmari
had
been intimidated by Kersh and had not administered any pain medication to Clifton, as far as John could tell.

The man writhed in bed, his eyes wide and bloodshot. His breathing was harsh, raspy, filtered through clamped teeth. His dark brush-cut hair had been teased by the mattress in his fitful sleep. He trained his gaze on both John and Kersh the moment they stepped through the door.

Kersh wasted no time. “Douglas Clifton, I’m Special Agent Kersh, Secret Service. This is Agent Mavio. Do you remember us from yesterday?”

Douglas Clifton, who’d probably been told exactly why he hadn’t been administered his medication that morning, pushed himself up in his bed, his feet working beneath the sheets. His eyes never left Kersh. Still bandaged and confined to the sling above his bed, Clifton flexed, relaxed, and flexed his injured arm again.

“Don’t remember nothin’,” Clifton growled. “The hell you guys want?”

Kersh went straight for the obvious. “What happened to your hand, Doug?”

“Why?”

“Curious.”

Clifton chewed at the inside of his right cheek. “Get over it,” he grumbled.

But Kersh was both calm and relentless. “Really—what happened?”

Clifton’s lower lip quivered. The expression on his face was that of a mule repeatedly beaten for its stubbornness. “Get out of here,” he practically whispered.

“Don’t wanna talk about the accident?” John began, and Clifton’s eyes quickly shifted in his direction. “Fine. Let’s talk about those counterfeit hundreds you been passing.”

Like the shadow of an airplane, a look moved briefly over Douglas Clifton’s face. It was that look which immediately gave him away. Yet the man would not comply, and his lower lip began working again. John watched the fingers of Clifton’s good hand pick at the frame of the bed. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he said finally.

“We’ve got phony hundreds back in our office with your prints all over them,” John lied.

Clifton laughed once—sharply—and the corners of his mouth hooked up into an unsettling grin. “Prints? Fucking
prints?
Yeah? With what
hand?”
He uttered a pained sob and eased his eyes shut. “Don’t mean nothing.”

John cocked an eyebrow. “It don’t? Look at me.”

With reluctance, Clifton peeked at John from behind squinted eyes. “Got nothin’ to do with me.”

“We know you’ve been slipping phony hundreds to some dancer at the Black Box.”

“Bullshit.”

“We all know you’re full of horse shit here, Doug,” Kersh said, the soft tone and abrupt message of his voice contradictory almost to the point of comedy. Yet there was nothing comedic about Kersh’s performance. “You have problems, both present”—he nodded toward Clifton’s truncated arm—”and future. We grabbed your car from the pound, found some interesting stuff in the trunk. We’ll put this whole thing together. Your situation right now is going to seem like a walk in the park. Listen to what I’m saying.”

Despite the pain from his wound and the fear that prodded him just below the surface, Clifton’s eyes grew calm and lucid, his face growing oddly serene. He pushed his head back against his pillow and tilted his eyes up toward the ceiling. Beside the bed, his heart monitor began picking up tempo.

“Now’s your time to talk,” John pushed.

“I don’t know what you guys are talkin’ about,” Clifton said. He spoke slow and easy, each word calculated. “Leave me alone. I got no damn hand now. You know what that means? You think I give a shit about what you’re saying?”

“You better
start
giving a shit,” John said. “You’re headed for a room with bars and no Jell-O for dessert. And a guy with one hand, I don’t think will do too well in the joint.”

“You goddamn guys don’t get it,” Clifton said, the ghost of that unsettling grin returning to his lips. “I don’t give a shit what my prints are on or what you found in my trunk—I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’ and I don’t
know
nothin’. I ain’t seen that car in days. Any asshole could’ve stuck somethin’ in the trunk. And, shit, I go to clubs all the time, give girls money all the time. I ever slip ‘em a hundred-dollar bill? Absolutely not.” Shaking his head, that peculiar smile still lingering on his lips, Clifton closed his eyes. Some moisture appeared in the creases. “Ahhhh.” A single tear ran down his temple. “I’m tired, and I fucking hurt. Get out.”

“This just ain’t gonna go away,” John promised him.

“You
go away,” Clifton murmured. “The both of you.”

“Where’d you get that money, Doug?” John said, his voice rising. “Who gave you that money?”

“Get out!”
Clifton cried, his eyes flipping open, his head coming up off the pillow. His eyes were like two neon bulbs.
“Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out-out-out-out-out!”

The hospital room door opened, and two young nurses flitted in. One rushed to Clifton’s bedside while the other approached John and Kersh, ushering them out of the way. “Gentlemen, please, you shouldn’t be—”

John shot a finger out and pointed at Clifton, his eyes just as wild and alert as the man in the bed.
This isn’t going away, buddy
, his eyes told Clifton.
I promise you, man. Not by a long shot
.

One of the nurses bent over Clifton, frantic to get the man under control and relaxed. With his good hand, Clifton shoved the young nurse out of the way, his eyes never leaving John’s, his abbreviated arm rattling in its mechanical casing. Beside the bed, Clifton’s heart monitor began chirping sixteenth notes, the small screen cluttered with flashing numbers and erratic, zigzag lines.

Kersh squeezed John’s forearm. “Come on,” he said, leading him out into the hallway. “I think we’ve made an impression.”

Later that evening, Kersh arrived alone in the lobby of One Police Plaza and was directed to Detective Peter Brauman of the Intelligence Division. At roughly Kersh’s age, weight, and height, Peter Brauman could have worn Kersh’s shadow as his own. A dedicated, loyal fellow, John would have been interested to know that Peter Brauman was one of the select few people Bill Kersh honestly
liked
.

Now, surrounded by the soft glow of his desk lamp, Brauman sat reclining in his chair listening to some sporting event on the radio. His back to Kersh, the Secret Service agent watched the man for some time without saying a word, amused by his gestures and scowls at the radio. When Brauman happened to look up in Kersh’s direction, he spooked and nearly spilled out of his chair.

“Christ,” Brauman said. “Give me a friggin’ heart attack.”

“Working hard as usual, Peter.”

“Smart guy. How you doing? Sit down.” Brauman hooked a thumb at a box of pastries that sat on his desk. “Want a cruller?”

“No, I just ate. You got a few minutes?”

“You know it.”

Kersh eased himself down in a chair in front of Brauman’s desk. Seated, he noticed some tomato sauce on his shirt and scraped at it with his thumbnail. “Last night I pulled up the records on two guys—Mickey O’Shay and Jimmy Kahn. Young Irish guys from the West Side. Got a bunch of arrests but no convictions. Some of the stuff’s pretty heavy—homicide, assaults, that sort of thing. You know anything about them?”

Brauman leaned back in his chair and turned the volume down on his radio. “O’Shay and Kahn,” Brauman said under his breath. He stood, his chair creaking, and ambled over to a wall of file cabinets. “We got some intelligence files on them going back about two years ago or so. Rumors are they’ve been involved in some hits, loan sharking, extortion, the usual bag of shit. I just know bits and pieces.” He selected two thick folders from the file cabinet and carried them back to his desk. He sat down in a great exhalation. “Supposedly took over Hell’s Kitchen. Here.” Brauman slid the paperwork around so Kersh could read it. “Pretty vicious guys, as you can see.”