Shamrock Alley (30 page)

The pale husk of his cigarette dangling from his mouth, Mickey rubbed his hands together in a parody of slow motion. Behind him back at the bar, his friends cheered and pounded down another shot.

“That good?” Mickey said.

“Less than half price. Ask around.”

“Sounds good,” Mickey said. His dead eyes clung to John through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. “That’s a good price. You wanna be paid in the gaff?”

John considered, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “This deal’s for somebody else. I need cash.”

“I can let you know tomorrow.”

“Don’t waste time on this,” he said. “It won’t be around long.”

The gears were turning in Mickey O’Shay’s head.

See how far you can push him
, a small voice spoke up inside John’s head.
He’s as burnt as a fuse right now. See what else he’ll say …

“Come on, I’ll buy you and your friends a drink.”

Mickey finished his cigarette and tossed the butt to the floor, crushing it beneath his heel. More casually than John would have expected, Mickey turned to shoot a glance over at the rowdy group of guys at the end of the bar. Sniffling once, he turned back to John and said, “They ain’t my friends.”

“I’ll buy ‘em a beer anyway.”

Whatever trace of accessibility he’d seen just moments ago in Mickey’s dead eyes was now gone. The man who returned his gaze was again the cold, unreceptive delinquent he’d been during all their prior meetings. Whatever door John had thought he’d managed to open had just been slammed shut in his face.

Mickey did not say another word. He simply stood from the booth, his greasy hair falling in front of his face like a veil, and hovered above the table for a disquieting length of time. His eyes were again hard, sober, alert… and distrustful. Borrower or lender—all of a sudden, none of that seemed to matter. In all, the look on Mickey’s face was one John thought he recognized, if only for a brief moment.

Then Mickey turned away and sauntered back to the bar. As he approached, one of the guys in his group clapped him on the back while a second guy began chanting what sounded like an old Irish drinking song in a whiny soprano.

And it suddenly dawned on him where he’d seen Mickey’s expression before …

On
himself
.

It was the hardened, suspicious stare of a street kid.

John was nearly home when his cell phone rang. It was Mickey.

“Let’s do the deal,” Mickey told him. His voice was flat. John could hear wind whipping against the receiver. “Get your shit ready and I’ll call you tomorrow, let you know where to bring it.”

John glanced at the car’s clock. It was pushing eleven o’clock. “That fast, huh?”

“You said you wanted to move on this,” Mickey said. “So let’s move.” A dull
click
, and Mickey hung up the phone.

Somehow I knew this was going to be a long night
, he thought, quickly dialing Kersh’s cell phone from memory. It rang several times before a groggy voice muttered, ‘“Lo?”

“Get your shoes on, sweetheart,” John said. “You’re going back out.”

JFK International Airport is consistently hectic. Even in the deepest hours of night, people drift about like patients in a psyche ward, their eyes unfocused from a lack of sleep, their arms and shoulders overburdened with suitcases and duffel bags and brown paper shopping bags. As a child, John had been fascinated by airports, and had found enjoyment in watching the planes take off and land through the great panels of windows that looked out across the runways. Visits to the airport had been infrequent back then, limited to the few times out-of-state relatives would come to visit him and his father. Now, as an adult and an agent, he no longer appreciated airports for their ability to challenge the minds of preadolescent youths; the spell had been broken the first time he’d boarded a plane heading for Glynco, Georgia, to begin his Secret Service training.

It was dark now, the runways indistinguishable from the night except for the tails of guide-lights that ran their lengths. Waiting for Kersh to exit the bathroom, John leaned against a support post and gazed introspectively out the bank of large windows. He could see himself in the window’s reflection, his arms folded about his chest, his hair too long, his posture still frighteningly similar to the young boy he’d once been. He was standing too far from his reflection to make out the details of his face, but he was fairly certain he still even
looked
like that little boy. Did he look anything like his father? And would his son—if he
had
a son—someday look like him?

Kersh’s reflection appeared beside his. “You okay? “John asked him.

“Uh,” Kersh groaned. Wearing a shirt and tie, his slacks hiked too high above the tops of his socks, Kersh pushed one sweaty hand against the support post and took some weight off his feet. “Got the runs.”

“Why the hell did you put a shirt and tie on, anyway?”

“I take pride in my appearance,” Kersh said, leaning forward against the support post.

“Yeah,” John snickered, “right.”

“John!” a voice shouted from farther down the corridor.

“Rob,” John said, meeting the man halfway and giving him a one-armed hug. “How you been?”

Robert Silvestri, hands on his hips, nodded fervently up and down. “All right, man, all right.” He was tall and slender, with a fine crop of curly black hair at the top of his head. His eyes were dark and beseeching, his jaw perfectly squared.

“Rob,” John said, “this is my partner, Bill Kersh.”

“A pleasure,” Kersh said, peeling himself from the support post and shaking Silvestri’s hand.

“Rob and I grew up in the same neighborhood,” he explained. “This guy hit the longest home run on Shore Road I’ve ever seen. Swear to God, the thing flew for miles. To this day, I don’t think anyone’s ever found the ball.”

Silvestri laughed. He had a strong, masculine laugh that suited his face and body well. “That’s only because you were the lousy son of a bitch pitching that game,” Silvestri said.

John shook his head and told Kersh not to pay any attention to the man.

“Come on,” Silvestri said, turning back down the corridor. John and Kersh followed—Kersh a little bit slower. “You cook this plan up all on your own, Johnny?”

“It was Kersh’s idea,” John said.

“Don’t pass the buck to me, buddy,” Kersh murmured from over John’s shoulder.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Silvestri continued. “I have a few papers for you to fill out just to cover all the bases, but that’s really about it. I also got a couple guys to give us a hand loading the stuff. They’re packed in some heavy crates. At least a two-man job. Did you pull your truck around to the hangar like I said?”

“Right around back.”

“The guards give you any trouble?”

“Yeah. Had to shoot and kill ‘em.”

Silvestri brought them to a set of locked double-doors. He slipped a large key into the lock, twisted it in two complete revolutions, then bumped one of the doors open with his hip. Leaning against the door, he motioned John and Kersh through, his eyes lingering on Kersh as he passed.

“You okay, pal? You look green.”

“I get airsick at airports,” Kersh said, stumbling through the doors.

Silvestri closed the door behind them, washing the room in darkness. Then, following a series of loud clicks, giant floodlights installed in the high ceiling came on one by one, filling the room with light. They were standing in a large cargo hangar. A concrete walkway wove through the hangar, bookended on either side by stacks of wooden crates and large boxes wrapped in plastic Bubble Wrap. Some of the stacks nearly scraped the ceiling, towering above them like buildings. A forklift the size of a large truck stood silently in one corner,
The Old Heave Ho
stenciled in black on its side.

“Some sight, huh?” Silvestri said, scratching casually behind one ear. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of crap some bastards try bringing into the country. Never in my life did I ever imagine there were so many colorful ways to smuggle drugs into this great nation of ours. I could tell some stories.”

Two strong-looking men appeared from behind a column of wooden crates, their brows already beaded with sweat, the armpits of their matching white polo shirts stained yellow. One of them—a dark-skinned guy with bad teeth—carried a number of leather weight belts over one arm.

“Hey, guys,” Silvestri said. “Jerry, you wanna get that door up?”

Jerry, the guy not carrying the belts, waved a finger in Silvestri’s direction and hustled around toward the back of the front of the hangar.

The dark-skinned guy approached and distributed the weight belts to the three newcomers.

“My buddy’s gonna need a larger size,” John said, poking a finger at Kersh’s gut.

“Now’s not the time to be pokin’ there, Mavio,” Kersh said. “I might blow a hole through these pants.”

Toward the front, the hangar door began climbing toward the ceiling, accompanied by the growl of churning gears. Cold night air rushed in.

“I’ll show you the stuff,” Silvestri said, buckling the weight belt around his waist. He led them toward the front of the hangar, to a pyramid of nondescript wooden crates stacked just higher than their heads.

John whistled.
“Beautiful.”

Arching his back, his weight belt looped over one shoulder, Kersh said, “When I pictured them in my head, I didn’t think there’d be so many …”

Above them, the giant hangar door shuddered to a standstill.

“Wanna see?” Silvestri said, walking around the pyramid and grabbing an industrial-sized crowbar from a wall of tools. He jabbed the tapered end of the crowbar beneath the lid of one of the crates, pushed down on it like a lever. Teeth clenched, face turning red, he finally managed to pop the top off. Inside, the corks of several tightly packed liters of whiskey stared up at the ceiling.

“That’s a lotta booze,” John marveled. He moved across the hangar’s threshold and unlocked the back of the Ryder truck, slid the door open.

Kersh bent before one of the crates, worked his hands around the edges until he found the best possible handholds. “This a one-or two-man job, don’t you think?” he huffed, then stood, trying to hoist the crate himself. It lifted at an angle off the floor, but it was too heavy for Kersh to move it by himself.

John hopped down from the Ryder truck and back into the hangar. With two fingers, he tapped Kersh on the shoulder. “Leave these for the young guys. You’ll blow a gasket.”

Standing, breathing hard, Kersh scratched his temple. “I should argue with you,” he said, “but I’m not.” Turning, he made his way to a metal stepladder and eased down on top of it.

“Okay,” John said, clapping his hands. “These crates ain’t gonna move on their own.”

“Two guys per crate,” Silvestri said, his shirt rippled by the wind. “They’re heavy.”

With Silvestri’s assistance, John hoisted the first of the crates onto the back of the Ryder truck. From his perch on the stepladder, Bill Kersh watched.

They worked for roughly forty-five minutes and when they finished, hands blistered, bodies covered with sweat, backs and knees sore from bending and lifting, they staggered out onto the tarmac to breathe in the crisp winter air. John winked at Kersh, sagged his shoulders to feign exhaustion … but Kersh could see in the kid’s eyes that he was more ready to go than ever.

Patience, kid
, Kersh thought, winking back.

Around them, it began to snow.

T
HE SMELL OF FORMALDEHYDE AND ANTISEPTIC DETERGENT
seeped out into the main office of Morton Cheever, the district’s head medical examiner. The hallway was uninspired, its floor comprised of phlegm-colored tiles, and the walls a drab bone-gray. The tube lighting in the ceiling never worked properly, and there was always at least one bulb burnt out along the hallway. Some metal folding chairs lined one wall, directly opposite a cramped, glassed-in booth that now stood vacant. Shafts of daylight filtered in through grimy, cracked windows.

Dennis Glumly stood before a square, wicker table in the center of the room, its top laden with magazines and—of all things—coloring books. Across from him, at eye-level on the wall, hung a calendar with pictures of frisky kittens. It was Morton Cheever’s little joke, to make the outer part of the coroner’s office look like a regular doctor’s waiting room … or even a nursery school. Morton Cheever, Glumly knew, was a man of many morbid little jokes.