“Hell, anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks . . . ”
—Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, USMC
Jimmy O’Leary and Michael Houston grew up together, fighting to survive adolescence on the tough, mean streets of South Boston. They were best friends throughout high school, but when O’Leary dropped out in their junior year, their lives took different paths. Houston stayed in school while Jimmy walked the dark streets and alleys of Southie. He started by boosting cars and later moved on to crimes that were more lucrative as well as more serious in nature—he became a member of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang.
To the average citizen, Jimmy O was a successful businessman who owned a popular Irish pub and ran a profitable commodity-trading business. Ask anyone in Southie about O’Leary and you would hear a glowing testimonial of a disadvantaged kid who made good. On the other hand, Boston PD knew that the commodities he dealt in covered a wide spectrum. Jimmy O was purported to be involved in any form of graft from which he could derive a tax-exempt living—from the protection racket to weapons and, albeit unproven, murder. He was reputed to make the bulk of his money shaking down bookmakers and drug dealers and through illegal gambling. Jimmy O was also the self-appointed protector of Southie. If someone had a problem, that person could get a faster response from O’Leary than from the police. The BPD had been unable to break Southie’s code of silence when Jimmy exercised his unique form of justice on any criminals or gang members stupid enough to venture onto his turf.
Houston enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school. After his release from active duty, he became a member of the BPD, with his childhood friend on the other side of the fence. When they promoted him to detective, Houston immediately informed his boss, Capt. William Dysart, of the background that he and O’Leary shared. Dysart made it a practice to avoid even a hint of a conflict of interest by never assigning Houston to any case that directly involved O’Leary.
Over the years, O’Leary had become big enough to cover himself with several layers of expensive criminal lawyers and had accrued enough wealth to ensure that any charge his attorneys couldn’t handle was dropped for lack of evidence or some procedural issue. Houston and BPD believed that when Whitey Bulger disappeared, most of Whitey’s enterprises came under O’Leary’s control. Nevertheless, they couldn’t prove anything.
The Claddagh Pub sat dead center in a block off Broadway. The street was so narrow that driving down it was a challenge. Parked cars, many of which were illegally double-parked, created an obstacle course for driving. Three-storied tenements, known as triple-deckers to Bostonians, were so close together that sunshine only touched the street during the noon hour. The weary houses were fronted by stoops that sagged as much as the tough, tired-faced people who sat on them drinking and glaring at any strange cars that passed.
Houston and Anne found a vacant spot across the street from the pub and parked. Anne studied the flashing sign above the front door of the tavern. “What does it mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Claddagh. What does it mean in English?”
“It means Claddagh. It’s not a thing; it’s a place. At one time, it was a fishing village near Galway in western Ireland. During the twentieth century, Galway grew to be so large that Claddagh became a neighborhood in the middle of the city.” He chuckled. “If you were gutter Irish from Southie instead of a French aristocrat from Wellesley, you’d have known that.”
“I’ve heard of the Claddagh ring,” Anne said, “and always wondered what the word meant. You seem to know a lot about it. Is Houston an Irish surname?”
“Nope, it’s Scottish, but there are a lot of us in Ireland. My mother’s maiden name was Byrne—you don’t get any more Irish than that. Either way, Irish or not, you don’t grow up in Southie and not learn about things Irish.”
They entered the tavern and stood by the door until their eyes adjusted to the dim light. Within seconds, the cop detector in the head of every occupant of the bar was flashing warnings and sending alarms. In Southie, people knew when the Man arrived—it was almost instinct. Every set of eyes in the room turned in their direction. Without looking away, Anne whispered, “I feel like a Jew visiting Mecca during Ramadan . . . ”
“Being a cop in Southie isn’t a hell of a lot different.” Houston returned the hard stares as they moved deeper into the pub’s interior, angling toward the bar.
When they slid onto stools at the bar, the bartender stopped wiping glasses, tossed the towel into the sink with considerably more force than necessary and sauntered toward them. He threw a pair of cork coasters on the bar. “You lost?”
Houston made a point of studying the tavern’s clientele. “From the looks of these assholes, maybe we oughtta spend more time in here. How you bin, Gordon?”
Gordon Winter, O’Leary’s right-hand man and supposed manager of the pub, shrugged. “Can’t complain.”
“I’m sure Jimmy’s glad to hear that.”
“Probably . . . then again it wouldn’t change nothing if I did,” Winter said. “Nobody wants to listen to anyone piss and moan.”
“That depends . . . ”
“On what might it depend?” Anne asked.
“It would most likely depend on why you want to see him.”
Houston looked over Winter’s shoulder at one of the TVs in the corners of the bar. Amanda Boyce was still broadcasting from Boston Common.
Winter followed Houston’s line of sight. “No way Jimmy had anythin’ to do with that mess.”
Houston took his eyes away from the screen. He swiveled the bar stool until he was facing Winter. “That’s what I thought when I walked in here, but you being so goddamned defensive makes me have second thoughts.”
“Second thoughts? The next thought one of you cops has will be your first. B’sides, you can have all the thoughts you want, it don’t change the fact that he had nothin’ to do with it.”
Before he could respond to Winter’s slight, movement in the deepest recesses of the tavern attracted Houston’s attention. He swiveled his seat and saw Jimmy O walk out of the darkness. O’Leary had not changed much in the three years since he and Mike had last seen each other. He was of above average height and thin as a rail. If not for his thinning hair and the absence of the raging acne that plagued him in high school, he looked pretty much the way he did as a kid. A chain smoker since he was twelve, he had a cigarette dangling from his lips.
O’Leary slid onto the stool beside Houston, leaned back and studied Anne with a scrutiny that bordered on perversion. “Get me the usual, Gord.”
Winter slid a shot glass across the bar, grabbed a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey and filled the glass. He set the bottle on the bar and stepped back. Jimmy O raised the glass and toasted Winter. “Here’s hopin’ that you’re in heaven ten seconds before the devil knows you’re dead.” He downed the shot and refilled his glass. To Houston he said, “You, on the other hand, I hope you’re burning in the fires of hell before the good Lord knows you’re dead.”
Houston ignored his childhood friend’s insult. “How you doin’, Jimmy?”
“I’d be doing a hell of a lot better if I didn’t expect one of you cops to jump out of my shitty undershorts every time I take them off.”
“Then keep your shorts clean and you got nothin’ to worry about.”
O’Leary’s scarred face cracked into what Houston knew he thought passed for a smile. “You always had a way with the words, Mike. If you was ever to kiss the Blarney Stone, it’d crack.”
“We need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“Not here. What I got to say isn’t for public ears.”
“Gord, go out back and ask Lisa to watch the front. Then come to my office.”
Houston placed a restraining hand on O’Leary’s arm. “It might be best if we talked alone.”
Jimmy O stared down at Houston’s hand as if its presence there would contaminate him with a social disease. Houston met the visual challenge by maintaining his grip for several seconds. When Houston dropped his hand, O’Leary said, “What . . . and have every asshole in Southie think I’m your stoolie? Since word got out that Whitey was a rat bastard, informing for the feebies, people around here are a bit sensitive about anyone who has private meetings with the Man. Either Gordon joins us in my office or we talk here. Or you get your ass out of my place.” He nodded toward Anne. “If it makes you feel better, bring the dish.”
Anne refused to react. She kept her eyes forward, maintaining eye contact with the gang boss via the mirror that backed the bar.
A young woman appeared. She tied a white apron around her waist and glared. Houston thought she would be beautiful if not for the hard cast to her eyes. At one time or another, everyone in Southie had run afoul of the cops. Houston couldn’t help but wonder what the source of her dislike was. Maybe she had been rousted or one of her relatives was doing time.
“We shouldn’t be long.” O’Leary slid off his stool. With a curt gesture, he motioned for them to follow.
Houston and Anne followed him through the common area and down a short, unlit corridor, past the restrooms. At the end, O’Leary stopped beside an open door and let the entourage precede him inside. The first thing Houston noticed when he stepped across the threshold was the overwhelming stench of stale cigarette smoke. He believed everything in the office was coated with a brown film of nicotine and tar. It reminded him of his mother’s house. When she died, his father wanted her favorite set of prayer beads placed in her hands and buried with her. He asked his son to clean the ugly brown beads. The surface coating dissolved and revealed the true color of the beads—green.
When O’Leary indicated that they should sit, Houston and Anne perched on a couch facing an old wooden desk. Gordon Winter dropped into an easy chair. O’Leary walked around and sat behind the desk. No sooner had he settled into the chair than he lit a cigarette. “This ain’t no public area, it’s my office and I’ll goddamn smoke if I want.”
Houston sat back. Anne took her cue from him and leaned back.
“What brings you here?” Jimmy asked. “Things ain’t like they was when we was kids. The onliest times I see you anymore is when you’re tryin’ to bust my ass over somethin’ or another.”
“It’s about the shootings on the Common this afternoon—”
O’Leary cut him off. “If you think I was involved in that, then things really have changed.”
“I didn’t say you had anything to do with it. Nevertheless, you’ve been known to deal in . . . shall we say . . . off-the-record ordnance.”
O’Leary broke out in a loud horselaugh. “Shit, Mike, come out and say it. You think I sell illegal guns.”
“Don’t you?” Anne asked.
O’Leary shrugged. “If I do, how come I ain’t making license plates in Walpole or Bridgewater? Both you guys and the Feds been trying to bust my ass for twenty years and ain’t never proved nothin’ yet.” He sucked on his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “That all you wanted to ask me?”
Smoke drifted through the air like a ground fog. Suddenly, Houston stood up and walked through the door.
He heard Anne dart after him. She overtook him in the corridor. “What happened?”
“The smoke was driving me nuts.” Houston stared back into the foggy office. “I’m not through with him yet. But, I want to be alone with him.”
“I need to go to the ladies room anyway.” Houston smiled when she said, “If it’s not clean I’m calling the Board of Health . . . ”
“It’s probably clean. Jimmy’s female employees would make sure of that.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, listen, if I’m not here when you come out, wait for me in the bar.”
“Be careful. He’s not the same kid you grew up with.”
“The problem is that he is the same kid I grew up with.”
When the door of the women’s room closed behind her, Houston returned to the office. He entered without knocking and found O’Leary and Winter in deep conversation. As soon as they saw him, they stopped talking.
“I want to talk, Jimmy.” He looked at Winter. “Alone.”
O’Leary nodded, and Winter left the room, giving Houston a piercing look as he passed.
Houston reached back and shut the door behind him. He flopped into the chair Winter had vacated. “First of all, I do not believe that you would ever be involved in something like this afternoon’s shootings . . . it’s a psychotic act and there’s no profit in it. You never were one to do anything that didn’t profit you.”
“That didn’t stop you from running over here like a dog that pissed on an electric fence.”
“Because you hear things that I’ll never hear and can get close to people that I can’t get within thirty yards of. This is a real ass-kicker, Jimmy—possibly the worst Boston has ever seen. Right now, we have no ideas, no motive, no clues as to the identity of the shooter. Not that that’s unusual, but this is bullshit . . . and unnecessary. This perp took out four innocent people for no apparent reason.”
“Your perp has reasons—even if they’re nothin’ more than doin’ this because he can. Either way, we’re living in some fucked-up times. Seems like the whole city is goin’ goddamned nuts,” O’Leary said. “Used to be when someone got whacked there was a purpose behind it. Now, even kids are carrying iron and hittin’ people. Like, life’s a damned video game or something.”
He lit a cigarette from the one he held and then ground the butt in his ashtray. It didn’t completely extinguish and sent a column of smoke spiraling into the already foul air.
“Jesus, Jimmy, how in hell do you breathe in this smog?”
“You reformed smokers are ballbusters, you know that? I remember when we was kids and we’d steal smokes from your ol’ lady and smoke ‘em behind the garage out back of the apartment house.”
“That was a long time ago, in a different time and world.”
“World ain’t no different, Mike. It’s still the largest cesspool in the universe, but we changed, didn’t we?” A wistful look came over O’Leary’s face as he inhaled another lungful of smoke. “Together we coulda bin something else, you know? Only you went over to the other side.”
“Yeah, but think of it this way—now, rather than being in jail and taking it in the ass by some punk, I put the assholes in jail.”
O’Leary bristled, rose up and leaned over his desk, his weight resting on his clenched fists. His cigarette hung from his mouth. “Did you just call me an asshole?”
“If the shoe fits . . . ”
After several tense seconds, O’Leary’s laughed and he sat back.
“You got any idea what woulda happened if anyone else talked to me like that?”
“I’m not anyone else.”
“No, you ain’t. But don’t get to thinking that just because we got a history you can get away with saying anything you want to me.”
“I’ll remember that. But, you keep this in mind too. You haven’t seen heat until you see what’s gonna come down on you if you ever pop a cop. So, can I count on a call if you learn anything?”
“Maybe . . . maybe not.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Just that, I might call or I might not.”
“You haven’t changed a hell of a lot over the years, Jimmy.”
“You haven’t a clue how much I’ve changed. There was a time anyone talked to me like you just done . . . well, it would be a long time before anyone saw them again. By the way, your partner . . . ”
“What about her?”
“She’s a real looker. If I had a partner who looked like her, I’d be all over her like a dog. Your relationship more than professional?”
Houston felt his face flush with anger. “Strictly professional. Let’s just say that I’m not her type and leave it at that.”
“I doubt that, Mike. But then when it comes to women you were never the sharpest tack in the bulletin board.”
“Like you are?”
O’Leary laughed. “Compared to you, I’m a Casanova.”
Houston turned to the door. “I’ll be expecting your call.”
“Don’t hold your breath while you do—it could kill you.”
As Houston walked down the corridor, O’Leary’s laughter echoed behind him. When the guffaws turned into a spasm of deep bronchial coughing, he muttered, “Choke, you bastard, choke.”