Chapter Five

“Two more men let go at Whittaker’s, and a whole slew dismissed from the dock at Southside. Good workers, too, and with families to support. The only reason we can see is that they’d been making their complaints known. One of them had gone to the foreman at Southside asking for a decent wage—as much as his non-Irish fellow workers earn—so he could feed his kiddies.”

O’Hare blew out a breath and rubbed at his forehead, which had begun to ache. He’d come here, straight from his own job at the cabinetmaker’s, to the stifling, tiny room at the top of this house where he and his cohorts met, because Riley said it was urgent.

He hated this place, which always felt airless and stuffy no matter the temperature outside. But it had yet to be discovered, and needs must.

He eyed Riley who, as usual, looked worried. A string bean of a man and what they called Black Irish, Riley had come from Ireland at the age of sixteen and bore the genuine accent O’Hare lacked.

No one among O’Hare’s cohorts cared that he’d been born in America. His face declared him as Irish as any of them.

He gave a tight smile as he considered it. Here he was, leading the cause of the Irish in Boston, and him but half-blooded. When he’d asked his ma—pestered her about it, in fact—she’d admitted his father had been full-blood Irish and born on the old sod, though she’d failed to provide a name. But she was of Scottish descent.

And no better than she should be.

“Something will have to be done,” he told Riley.

“I agree, but what?” Riley’s gray eyes, which tended to reflect his emotions all too accurately, shone with distress. “We need something that will get us arrested.”

“Do we?”

“Aye. ’Tis the only way we earn any real notice. And those men need their jobs back right quick.”

“Have they gone and asked for them back?”

Riley scowled. “Two of them did, to no avail. The rest said they’d be damned if they’d crawl on their bellies to that lot o’ muck.”

“Sometimes we have to bend.” O’Hare reflected upon it. “And sometimes we need to stay strong.”

Riley took a swig from the pint of black ale at his elbow. “I say we need a grand gesture that will grab the notice of everyone in this city.”

“And have them send the coppers in?” Last time they’d attempted a grand gesture—staged a strike of the dockworkers—the mayor had sent the cops to make wholesale arrests, and the court had supported him, sending down cruel and unreasonable sentences.

“We have to be more careful than that.”

“Careful won’t put food in the bellies o’ those hungry bairns.”

“So it won’t. Organize the Irish shopkeepers—see if they’re willing to extend some credit.”

“They’ve already extended so much some of them can’t pay their suppliers. Hard to do business when your patrons are all out o’ work.”

“Perhaps it’s time for a donation. I could go see Marielle again.”

Now Riley grunted. “Careful with that. There’s already plenty of talk about the two of you. You don’t want to give her husband cause to cast her off—not because she should stay married to the beast but because that would cut off the flow of money, sure.”

“So it would. But Dickenson will never cast her off. He’s far too besotted.”

And who wouldn’t be? Marielle Dickenson might well be the bonniest woman O’Hare had ever seen. That was… A vision of tumbling black hair and fey eyes danced across his mind, and he hastily dismissed it.

Marielle’s story was an unusual one. She’d stepped off a boat from Ireland as a girl and gone right into service. With a face like a flower, a mass of golden ringlets, and a generous figure, she’d soon caught the eye of her employer’s son. But the girl, smart as well as beautiful, held out for marriage. Dickenson senior, a land developer, had wealth to burn and settled a great deal of it on his son.

Accepted into Boston society for the sake of her husband’s position, Marielle had bloomed, taking on the airs, status, and wardrobe of a lady born. O’Hare knew, though, where her sympathies lay. They’d been friends from a young age, and he knew Marielle as hardheaded and true of heart. Her husband’s money, channeled through her, had been spent to fill more than a few Irish bellies.

Yet as Riley pointed out, O’Hare couldn’t expect to go to that well too often. And he had to remember the other danger that lay in Marielle’s company…in his past feelings for her.

“I say we stage another demonstration,” Riley proposed.

“Maybe. But not yet. Let me give it some thought.” Dorothea Sinclair’s face flashed before his eyes again. “I have something else on a string.”

Yes, he’d promised to grant her interviews, and he liked to keep his word, mainly because he knew enough men who didn’t. Would that work to his advantage? Would those interviews give them the splash they needed?

Before he could make up his mind, an urchin ran into the room.

“Hare O’Hare!” the lad cried, the name his familiars called him. O’Hare knew the boy and nearly groaned aloud. Not that. Not now.

But the lad, whose name was Sean, called out, “Mister Gene says you’re to come and hurry. He says ’tis the end this time!”

Mister Gene—Eugene Browne, one of the men who very rarely kept his word, ever. O’Hare remained where he was, sprawled in his seat.

Riley raised a black eyebrow. “Are ye not going to go, lad? Sure, you know what this summons means.”

“He’s sent word it was the end before. She always rallies.”

“Heartless!” Riley huffed. “’Tis your mother of whom we’re speakin’, lad.”

“I know who she is.”

He should. Maggie Grier Browne was the only parent he’d ever known. Past barmaid, past whore, she’d run away with Eugene Browne, a traveling salesman, when O’Hare was only three. The years since had proved turbulent. Even though she’d later married Browne, their relationship had not been what anyone could deem loving.

Yet they’d stayed together all this while. And now his mother, Maggie, hovered on the brink of death.

Or so Gene would have him think.

He looked Sean in the eye. “Did you see her, lad?”

Sean nodded vigorously. His face looked like a jug with ears for handles. “I did.”

“And how did she look?”

“Like death, sor!”

That told O’Hare nothing. Lately Maggie always looked like death. The doctor said, though, she had something evil growing in her belly where O’Hare himself had begun life.

He sighed, and Riley gave him a push. “Go to her, you great lump.”

Outside, rain spat from the direction of the ocean, and all the streetlamps wore haloes. O’Hare’s Celtic blood sent a spear of cold up his spine. A night for ghosts, this. They might linger anywhere. Was it also a night for death to come?

He followed Sean through twisting streets to the poor tenement Eugene now called home. Sean lived on the ground floor with his ma, Gene and Maggie on the upper; the place reeked of boiled cabbage. O’Hare paused and peered into Sean’s face.

“I don’t suppose Mr. Gene paid you for his errand?”

“No, sor.”

O’Hare pressed a penny into the lad’s hand. “Run along inside.”

“I can’t, Mister Hare. Have to stand out front and watch for the banshee. Think she’ll come?”

O’Hare experienced another cold tremor. “I very much doubt it. Go inside.”

But the boy stood as if rooted, and O’Hare skipped up the dark, malodorous staircase, a hundred thoughts crowding his mind.

In how many such vile places had they lived over the years, while he grew? From how many had they been tossed by landlords tired of waiting for rent? Gene had been what O’Hare called an itinerant worker, never staying at one job long. A born salesman, he’d hawked any manner of things over the years, from get-rich-quick schemes to patent medicines. Eugene Browne talked a good game; he never followed through.

O’Hare reached the door and scratched on it, using the code they’d employed since his boyhood. Gene swung the panel wide.

“Thank God you’ve come.”

Gene Browne looked like a man made of sticks tied together in loose bunches. He had a head of brown hair and a face gaunt as a skull, long arms and legs, big hands with skeletal fingers. His hazel eyes always looked hungry; now they looked despairing, as well, and O’Hare experienced a qualm. Could this really be the end?

“Come in, boy, come in. She’s bad, right bad. And asking for you.”

O’Hare’s brows flew up. His mother never asked for him. Rather, she’d spent most of his life wishing him elsewhere.

“Has the doc been?”

Gene looked uneasy. “No money for the doc. But I’ll send for him now, if—?”

Ah, so that was it: Gene wanted money. Again. This summons was just a ploy to get it.

But Gene tossed his head. “I don’t doubt it’s too late for the doc, anyway. I think she’s goin’ this time.”

Leaving his stepfather, O’Hare walked through the poorly lit room to the little closet of a bedroom beyond. There a single lamp burned and illuminated the woman in the bed.

Maggie Grier Browne might have been comely once. She’d certainly shared her favors, and few men had turned her down. Now her once-auburn hair had faded to gray and needed to be combed. Her skin had a gray hue, also, and the smell in the room rocked O’Hare back on his heels. Only her eyes looked the same: they reached for him as he stepped in.

“Timmy. You came.”

No one called him Timmy anymore. Only this woman, and that seldom enough.

“Ma.”

“I wanted to see you, wanted to tell—”

A spasm took her, made her double her arms over her stomach and grimace. O’Hare stood by the side of the bed and watched. When it passed she reached for his wrist.

“Sit. I don’t think I have much time.”

Suddenly, O’Hare believed it. The look in her eyes convinced him.

He perched on the edge of her bed reluctantly. It had been years since he’d been this close to her. Maggie had never been the sort of mother to shower her son with affection.

And what did he see in her face now? Pain, determination, and something he’d never beheld there before. Wistfulness?

She smelled of whiskey, and a half-filled glass stood on the bedside table. Drink had featured prominently in her life ever since O’Hare could remember.

Her voice came in a rasp. She followed his gaze and nodded at the glass. “Gene has been keeping me dosed—against the pain. It’s bad. But that doesn’t matter. Won’t be long now.”

“If you want money for the doctor—”

“Is that why you think I sent for you? Money?”

O’Hare answered honestly, “It usually is.”

A ghostly smile crossed her face. “Fair is fair, son. I fed you all those years. You wouldn’t warrant what I had to do in the beginning, to keep your gob full. Men with their paws all over me. Now you have a steady job, it’s only right you pay me back.”

“Jesus,” O’Hare said under his breath.

Her eyes flashed. “Can’t deny I raised you up.”

O’Hare’s lips twisted. “Can’t deny that.”

“But I never told you everything. You must have wondered. Your father…”

Another spasm hit her, and she broke off. O’Hare could feel Gene hovering in the doorway behind him and wanted to tell the bastard to bugger off.

But it was Gene who stepped forward and tipped the whiskey to his wife’s lips.

“There now, Maggie.”

Tenderness? Surely not. There’d been a lot between these two—never that.

Maggie gulped and grimaced. Finally she resumed, “I want to give you your father’s name—while I still can. Come closer.”

O’Hare leaned in. The sharp scent of cheap Irish couldn’t cover another, fouler smell.

Maggie stared into his eyes. “Declan O’Shea—that was your father’s name. Why did you never make me tell you that?”

O’Hare shrugged.

“You thought I didn’t know his name,” she guessed. “But I did. He was a right rascal, born, as I told you before, in the old sod and with the blarney to prove it. Well, you can tell that—just look at you. You’re the spit of him. The spit.”

O’Shea, O’Hare thought. Well, hell.

“He was another woman’s husband when he got you on me—a liar and a cheat. I don’t want you to be ashamed of that.”

“No?”

“He was what he was.”

“And how does he make his living, this paragon?”

“Lobster fisherman, back in Maine—though he never devoted much effort to it. He always spent his time tipping a pint—or a woman. He liked chasing a woman better than the actual act, I think.”

Patter—Gene had a line of patter, too. Maggie must have a weakness for it.

“Where is he now? Back in Maine?” And if he were, would O’Hare go look him up? Tell him, “Look me in the face and guess who I am.”

But Maggie said, “Dead. He died the same year you were born. But you have a half-brother there—Douglas Grier. And no doubt a litter of nieces and nephews; I heard he married.” She gave a ghastly smile. “Oh, yes, I sought news of him, though you and he might not warrant it.”

“So, Ma, why tell me all this now?”

“Because I may not be able to tell you tomorrow. This is it, son.” To his surprise she reached out and took his hand. “A man has a right to know where he came from, no matter how ugly the story.”

A cheat and a liar knocking up a barmaid—no, O’Hare couldn’t be proud of that. Yet he had a name now for the Irish blood that more or less defined him. O’Shea.

His mother’s fingers tightened. “I’m proud of you, Timmy. That’s what I wanted to say. You didn’t turn out like him. Or me—or Gene, for all that. There’s something fine and steady in you. Not sure how that happened.”

Neither was O’Hare, but unexpected tears stung his eyes. He would not weep for this woman who had never shed a tear over him.

“So,” she sighed and sank back into the pillow, looking suddenly frail. “Maybe I did one good thing in this world.”