PAUL DOHERTY was sitting on the patio with Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Tobin, under a yellow beach umbrella with green ivy vines painted on the underside. He wore golf clothes that fitted well, and a white straw hat with a plaid band tipped over his left eye. The ladies wore their usual uniforms.
“You look so fit, Paul,” Mrs. Blake said. “Just like Bing Crosby used to. For a while there you did not look at all well. You were thin and gaunt. Your clothes just hung on you.” She waved her left hand and raised her lemonade glass to her lips.
“We were all worried about you,” Mrs. Tobin said. She had had her hair streaked ash-blond at the beauty parlor. She had freckles on her pug nose.
“Oh, come now, Peg,” Doherty said, “who was worried? I scarcely ever see anyone but you ladies here at the club. The men all play on the weekends, when I tend to be rather busy. I never use the pool. I haven’t been to any of the dinners and buffets this summer.”
“A good many have commented on that,” Mrs. Blake said.
“Have they now,” Doherty said. “Who? And what have they said, may I ask?”
“Well,” Mrs. Blake said, “offhand, I can’t think of any names. But I know there’s been talk that you never come to any of the functions. People do tend to talk, you know.”
“Indeed I do,” Doherty said. “I noticed that some time ago.” He put his left hand over her right hand. “Nevertheless, Agnes, I don’t like people to fret. So if you find somebody worrying my absence like a dog with an old bone, you just tell them that you asked me why I never show up at the functions and I told you that I don’t attend because I don’t like ’em. Simple as that.”
Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Tobin both began to giggle. “It’s true,” Doherty said. “I really and truly dislike all kinds of functions. It’s an aversion I developed when Cardinal Cushing was still among us.”
“That dear man,” the ladies said together.
“Yes,” Doherty said. “Well, it may surprise you to learn that Cardinal Cushing also hated functions. And needless to say there was scarcely a day went by that he wasn’t invited to a baker’s dozen of them. So as he grew older and craftier, he would avoid having people beg him to come by agreeing that he would come. And then when the appointed day arrived, of course, he had five or six of them to choose among. He picked the one that seemed least likely to annoy him, or most likely to get him on the evening news. Then he summoned up his palace guard, of whom I was a ranking member, to pinch-hit for him at ones he planned to skip. He liked them well enough when he got to them and started talking and showing off, but he hated going. He told me he made me a Bishop so that I could cover even more of the obligations he accepted willy-nilly for himself. He assured me the promotion had nothing whatsoever to do with my ability, piety, saintliness or the fine example that I set for the young of the flock. It was purely and simply that people who would be enraged at being stood up by a Cardinal and forced to make do with a mere Monsignor would be much easier to placate if they got a Bishop, at least.”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Blake said. “He couldn’t’ve meant that.”
“Well,” Doherty said, “I will grant you that he spoke half in jest, but no more than half.”
“But everyone revered him so,” Mrs. Tobin said.
“Which greatly amused him, in private,” Doherty said. “Oh, he reveled in it in public, the old lion out among his cubs in the late afternoon of his illustrious life, basking in the sunlight, letting out a few amiable roars, just to keep his hand in, taking the nuns to the ballgame, snapping at the less respectful members of the tribe, keeping good order in the jungle. Oh, he enjoyed it, no question about that, but he had a full-sized ego at least, and that was to be expected. But when he got home, he seemed to think he had to laugh at himself, and so he did. It was an attractive trait.
“Anyway,” Doherty said, “that’s why I don’t come in for lobster Newburg and chicken wings, on Friday evenings. Or for the scrambled eggs in the steam-table pans at the Sunday brunches. As for the dances, well, I’ve supervised my last dance, whether as principal of the high school or as the Bishop visiting to see how fine the young folks are in some prosperous parish. I did those chores when I was young, and now I think it’s only fair to let the younger fellows reap the full enjoyment of those experiences.”
Riordan, in a blue-and-white cord suit, white shirt, no tie, came onto the patio. Doherty saw him before his eyes had adjusted again to the sunlight, and called him over to the table. “Agnes Blake, Peg Tobin,” he said, “meet my friend, Peter Riordan.” Each of the ladies said she was pleased to make Riordan’s acquaintance. “And Riordan it is,” Agnes said. “Well, the top of the morning to you. Is it the Riordans from Wicklow we have here?”
“And the balance of the day to yourself, madam,” Riordan said, bowing slightly. “As to your question, ma’am, there’s a good deal of doubt about that. I’ve heard Knock and I’ve heard Kenmare, and indeed it would be hard to name a county or a town in the south that hasn’t been mentioned as a birthplace of one brand of Riordan or another. My own guess is that the first of the male Riordans was a disgraceful scoundrel, probably a tinker or a hog thief, or some other sort of low person, and that after he had had his way with one or more of the village maidens, he found it prudent to move on.”
“It’s a family trait to this day, I understand,” Doherty said.
“It is that,” Riordan said. “You’ll find Riordans in Fall River, Riordans in Chicopee, Riordans in Lawrence and Riordans in Lowell and Worcester. We’re not the best judges of our surroundings, but we could call a fair muster from the provinces, if the need arose.”
“And what is it that you do, Peter Riordan?” Peg said.
“Ah, well,” Riordan said, “now that’s difficult to answer, you know. I do a number of things. Some of them’re quite respectable, but then there’re others that I’d just as soon not discuss.”
“Paul,” Agnes said, “is that what you’re doing with this young man?”
“Indeed it is, Agnes,” Doherty said. “Peter here is a good-hearted lad, and he shows a lot of promise. But the truth of it be known, he has not applied himself diligently to his catechism, and finds himself now at this relatively advanced age one of the slowest of my students in the confraternity of Christian doctrine classes. So, to save him the further embarrassment of having to cramp his long legs into the pew with the twelve-year-olds, I’ve agreed to tutor him privately in these more comfortable surroundings, in the hope that a few drinks and some serious discussion will enable him to pass his requirements for the sacrament of Confirmation. So, if you’ll excuse us?”
They took a table at the far end of the terrace, away from the ladies. The waiter appeared at once. “Something to drink, Peter?” Doherty said. Riordan looked at his watch. “After noon,” he said. “Yeah, all right. Heineken, please.”
“That didn’t bother you the other day,” Doherty said, “whether the sun was over the yardarm.”
“I was injured the other day,” Riordan said. “I’m not injured today.”
“Vodka and tonic,” Doherty said. The waiter went away, nodding.
“How the hell do you stand it, Paul?” Riordan said.
“Stand what?” Doherty said.
“Those damned bloody women,” Riordan said. “How the hell do you stand it? There must be thousands of them, hundreds in this parish alone. Good God, you’re an intelligent man. And there you sit, chewing the Irish bubblegum with a couple of airheaded, tittering matrons drinking lemonade.”
“Their husbands’re worse,” Doherty said, “if that’s any consolation.”
“I’m sure they are,” Riordan said. “I don’t doubt it for an instant. But I don’t need the consolation because I don’t have to associate with them. You do hang around with them. How the hell do you stand it?”
“It comes with practice,” Doherty said. “You learn how to do it, very early in the game. The first thing is that while you have to hang around with them, they are not your friends. Your friends see Doherty, warts and all. Agnes and Peg see Bishop, the last name of which in this case is Doherty. You’re strictly in the same category with the trick pony at the circus. You’re something to watch, a display piece for them. They pride themselves that they really know the Bishop, and they probably do, but they don’t know Doherty and they don’t want Doherty to act like he might really know them. What tips you off is when one of them gets in some kind of trouble and comes to you for help. Counseling, advice, verbal therapy—you can call it by any name you want—as soon as one of them comes in just about beside herself because she’s discovered that her husband’s running around, or the husband comes in because he finally faced up to the fact that his wife starts in on the sauce as soon as he leaves for work in the morning, the days of idle chatter and stupid banter are gone forever. When the crisis is over, no matter how it’s resolved, they shun you. Because, you see, they are also playing roles: respectable middle-class people, devout and damned near perfect. Once they let their guard down and you know them for the scared, imperfect, maybe stupid people that we all are, they stay away from you. They have their masks on too, and when those masks’re stripped away, the play is over.”
“It must be awful rough to go on with it, year after year, though,” Riordan said.
“Not rough so much as sad,” Doherty said. “Good God, I don’t think less of a man because he got in trouble and didn’t know what to do. I don’t think a woman has anything to be ashamed of when she’s at her wits’ end and at very least needs somebody to talk to. I’ve got some problems in my own family that’ve baffled every attempt that I’ve come up with to solve them. I don’t know what the hell to do about the Digger, as his pals call him. I’ve known him all his life. He scares me, and now his kids’re getting old enough so they scare me It seems as though I ought to be able to do something to make him behave himself, but I’ve been trying now for over thirty years, and I haven’t come up with a way to solve it. It’s really too bad that my parishioners come away from seeking the help that they desperately need, and which I’m all too often unable to give, with the feeling that they’ve done something dirty and ought to be ashamed to face me. But I haven’t come up with anything yet. Maybe I should be ashamed of that.”
The waiter brought the drinks and withdrew.
“Look at us,” Doherty said. “I’ve known you since you were a kid and I was sent in here to make sure Monsignor LaBelle didn’t sell the parish for a shopping center while he was in one of his periods of senile dementia. You were just a kid then, almost twenty-five years ago. I probably know you as well as anyone on the earth today, including your parents. I had a luxury they lacked, because I had some critical distance from you. I didn’t have any real emotional investment of my own in watching you grow up. I could take you as you were, and if you had a shorter fuse than the ideal kid would have, well, that was just the way that young Peter Riordan was. Might’ve bothered your parents, but it didn’t bother me.
“Your father,” Doherty said, “I’m telling tales out of school, but the hell with it, your father was absolutely wild when he found out what you had in mind as a means to avoid being drafted into the infantry.”
“I seem to recall his mentioning something about that to me,” Riordan said.
“Yeah,” Doherty said, “I’ll bet you do. He lingered after one of those blasted parish council meetings, until we were alone. ‘The Marines,’ he yelled at me, ‘the Marines? The little fool is going to duck the draft by enlisting in the Marines? The Marines are his idea of a way out of the infantry? Can’t you do something about this?’ I said, ‘No. And for that matter, neither can you.’ ‘He could get himself killed doing this,’ your father said to me. ‘He certainly could,’ I said.”
“He never knew about the Recon part,” Riordan said. “He got lathered up enough just thinking I was busting ashore off LSTs, like they did in World War Two. If he’d known I was spending most of my time in the woods, alone, he would’ve gone straight up in the air.”
“Well,” Doherty said, “why did you do it? He was right, you know. He could’ve gotten you deferred. All the doctors he knew? Easy. Hell, you could’ve gotten yourself deferred. Just gone right on to graduate school, and waited it out. Why didn’t you do that?”
“I dunno,” Riordan said. “Partly to goose him, I suppose. He was always feeling my forehead, even when he had to reach up to do it. Taking my pulse. Worrying when I played football.”
“You were his only son,” Doherty said.
“Yeah,” Riordan said, “I know that. But I was also pretty well along the way to becoming my only man. Besides, I was young and nutty when I set the whole thing in motion. I read too many books, I guess, believed all that shit about courage and all that crap, the man who tests himself against the enemy. The ultimate peril, faced and faced down. Friend of mine married a girl in college that was so light she would’ve floated clear off the ground if she didn’t have lead weights in her shoes. Here is this guy with an absolutely indecent genius for quantum physics, and he goes out and marries this bubblehead. Maybe he didn’t know that she had Timken roller bearings on her heels. Maybe he didn’t know that whole armies had marched over her. Maybe he knew and didn’t care. Two years later, divorced. Asked him why he did it. Shrugged his shoulders. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Same thing with me and the Marines. ‘Nothing else to do right now, think I’ll go and become a jungle fighter. Better’n hanging around down at the gas station.’ ”
“Which at the time I could pretty well surmise,” Doherty said. “We were old friends then. We still are. But we still keep things from each other, and we always will. For a complete inventory of the other guy, you have to draw a lot of inferences.”
“Draw any from your talk with Father Fahey?” Riordan said.
“Peter,” Doherty said, “I will tell you honestly, I have never had so much damned fun in my life. Well, maybe as much fun, a long time ago. But not lately.”
“I could tell that,” Riordan said. “You look a hell of a lot better since you started this Father Brown gig with me. That’s one of my inferences.”
“Don’t doubt it for an instant,” Doherty said. “What I did was whip it out of him. See, if you’ve known Trimmer for a long time, as I have, you will dislike him but you will also respect him. Trimmer knows that he is not a man of blinding intellect. That’s why he’s so damned aggressive. He starts out trying to throw the other guy off balance. Like the fastball pitcher who’s wilder’n a March hare while he’s warming up, so the hitters come up there worrying about whether they’ll need baskets to take their heads home after the game. If you let him buffalo you at the start of any discussion, he will win by the end.
“Once he gets the advantage,” Doherty said, “he holds it with partial truths. He knows he’s not fast enough to win an argument with someone who’s smarter, so he distorts the subject. If you say a panda bear is actually part of the raccoon family, and he is committed to the position that it is a part of the bear family, you will never get to the issue. He will spend the rest of the discussion asking you if you seriously mean to say that there is such a thing as a three-hundred-pound Chinese raccoon. Anybody listening will of course conclude that you are crazy and that Monsignor Fahey has the common-sensible best of you, you fool. Even though you happen to be right.
“The way to stop that,” Doherty said, “is to embarrass him before you ever get to the thing you want to talk about. Get him on the defensive. If you can get the bastard rattled, he’s nowhere near as cute as he is when he’s got the upper hand. Just by chance I found out that he’d been lying to the kid that’s at the desk at the club. Seems Trimmer was the warrior priest who single-handedly liberated Normandy on D-Day, or so he led the kid to believe. So I blew him out of the water with that one, and allowed as how I’d make a fool of him with the kid, who lives in his parish, and pretty soon everybody in town would be laughing at him. Then I whacked him with Greenan and Magro, and much as he hated it, I think he told me enough of the truth so we can guess the rest. I think he regurgitated most of it.”
“Another round?” Riordan said, finishing his beer.
“By all means,” Doherty said, finishing his vodka. The waiter, peeking around the door to the lounge, caught Doherty’s circular motion for a second round.
“The housekeeper’s nephew story about Magro is bullshit,” Doherty said. “Like most of the stuff that Trimmer tells people, it’s true. But it’s bullshit. Magro is the housekeeper’s nephew, and she apparently is on her last legs. But she doesn’t give a curse about springing her nephew from Walpole. She thinks he’s a no-good killer and a scandal to her sister that gave him birth, and she blames all of this on her sister’s selection of a husband. There was bad blood in the Magro family, she’s convinced, and it’s all the father’s fault. But Magro is her nephew, and unless Trimmer’s learned to tell lies better than he ever did before, that is really all he told Greenan. Greenan, of course, is solid bone from earlobe to earlobe, and he’d give his right testicle as well as his left for the chance to ingratiate himself with the good Monsignor who holds sway over much of his district.”
“That’s what Seats told me,” Riordan said. “Seats said Greenan’ll do anything a common ordinary voter asks him to do. Says Greenan’d jump in the cesspool in a white suit if a priest asked him.”
“That’s no compliment to the clergy,” Doherty said. “Greenan’d jump into the sewer naked in front the sodality, if he thought it’d get him a vote. But he’s still just a dupe on this one.
“Piecing things together,” Doherty said, “and it’s no easy task, the cornerstone of this little adventure, as far as Fahey’s concerned, is a fellow who goes by the name of Scanlan.”
“Scanlan have a first name?” Riordan said.
“Probably,” Doherty said, “but Fahey swears he doesn’t know what it is. Says he’s only met the guy once.”
“Believe him?” Riordan said.
“Yeah,” Doherty said, “I think I do, actually. I don’t think the guy’s name probably is Scanlan, and I don’t think Fahey believes it is either, but I do believe that Scanlan is the only name that Fahey’s got for the guy.”
“Fahey would get himself out on a limb like this for a guy that he knows is giving him a phony name?” Riordan said. “He really is stupid.”
“Sure,” Doherty said, “and he has another weakness too: he loves conspiracies. Inside stuff. Top secret. Eyes only. Burn before reading. The surest way in the world to get Fahey’s undying loyalty is to let him think he’s working undercover on some plot, and the people that he’s talking to are engaged in some clandestine work. He was that way when we were all jockeying for position in the Church, and he’s that way now, when all that stuff is dead and gone. For us. So he’s found something else.”
“Which would be?” Riordan said.
“I’m guessing, Peter,” Doherty said. “I think it’s a pretty firm deduction, but that’s all it is. I think Fahey’s gotten himself hooked up with the Provos. It’s the sort of thing he’d do. Right in character. Or the lack of it.”
“Does he admit it?” Riordan said.
“Not in so many words, no,” Doherty said, “but yes, he admits it. I put it to him, right between the eyes. Asked him if he was running guns for the IRA. He never answered me directly. Just gave me one of those Up the Rebels harangues. Went all the way back to the Battle of the Boyne. He would’ve reviewed the career of Brian Boru, if I hadn’t shut him off.”
“Does he really believe all that shit?” Riordan said. “Do any of them really believe all that shit?”
“Sure,” Doherty said. “It’s exciting. Why the hell do you think he misleads kids about his heroic deeds in the Airborne, huh? Excitement. He lives vicariously. You think he feels like a conqueror, dominating the first graders at the parish school? Oh, he does the best he can, but his thirst is for glory on the field of battle.”
“Huh,” Riordan said, “probably turn tail and run when the first shot was fired. I love people like that, full of big talk and no experience. There’s nothing quite like firsthand acquaintance with hostiles to take care of that problem.”
“No,” Doherty said. “No, you’re mistaken. Fahey wouldn’t run. He’s not bright enough for that. He’d think he was Patton. Charmed life and all that foolishness. Invulnerable to bullets. He’d stand up straight, his cross in one hand and his carbine in the other, and lead on his troops in the name of the Lord.”
“He’d get his ass blown off in short order,” Riordan said.
“Of course,” Doherty said. “That’s how you can tell for sure he never was in combat—he’s still walking around in our midst. He’s pretty old now for active service, and besides, he’d miss his swimming and his comfortable life, but he’s not about to relinquish that dream of his. So, this Scanlan, whatever his real name is, is Vinnie’s free ticket to the land of his own private enchantment. Fahey not only suspects that the real name isn’t Scanlan—he prefers it that way.”
“Get a description out of him?” Riordan said.
“Not a very good one,” Doherty said. “He was evasive. He kept asking me why I was so interested in this thing, being as how I am not a patriot. By which I took it to mean that he doesn’t think I am a partisan of the IRA. Which I am not. And I in turn had to be evasive with him, because I was not about to tell him that I was trying to figure out why he was cooperating in some enterprise that seemed pretty likely to get my no-good brother knocked off. Best I could wring out of Vinnie was that the guys fairly short, five seven or so, but very strong and very dangerous. Vinnie wanted me to think that Scanlan’s on the run from the British, which as a matter of fact he probably is, and that he got into this country using a forged passport.”
“As indeed, he probably did,” Riordan said. “He could hide out for months if he got into the right neighborhoods in Cambridge or Southie or Dorchester. What’s he doing, raising money?”
“I think that’s already been done,” Doherty said. “I’m not sure Vinnie really knows, but from what he said, I think the money is in hand. The problem now is locating the goods that they want to buy with the money.”
“Guns,” Riordan said. “Shipped over there in furniture boxes and packages of bedsheets and towels to blind aunts and dead cousins in the peaceable Irish Republic, and smuggled north across the border three nights later. The damned fools.”
“What they want Magro for,” Doherty said, “at least what Vinnie thinks they want Magro for, is that he is the guy with the contact who can get the weapons. Is there such a thing as an AR-fifteen?”
“Sure,” Riordan said. “Looks just like the M-sixteen that the army used in Vietnam, which was a piece of thirty-caliber junk. The AR was the pilot model, seven-point-sixty-two millimeter, lightweight, full-automatic for combat, reliable, accurate, the whole bit. Naturally the army didn’t like it, so they crapped around with it until they got the M-sixteen. Those Micks may be crazy, Paul, but nobody ever said they didn’t have good taste in firepower.”
“Could somebody like Magro get them?” Doherty said.
“Sure,” Riordan said. “Just about anybody can get one. All you need in this Commonwealth’s a firearms ID card. Go into a gun store, show the card, ask to see one, buy it.”
“A machine gun?” Doherty said.
“Semi-auto, in the stores,” Riordan said. “Hunting weapon. Probably wouldn’t take a good gunsmith more’n an hour to figure how to make it full-automatic, and if he was casting the parts to modify one, he could cast enough to modify a hundred of them in a day or so. Wouldn’t really matter if he couldn’t. Machine guns aren’t much good anyway, the kind of work the IRA prefers. All everybody does is spray the buildings and the landscape with scarce bullets. You got a semi-auto, you aim on each target, and you can still fire damned fast even pulling the trigger every shot.”
“Well,” Doherty said, “if anyone can buy them, why do they need Magro? All they need’s some respectable citizen who hates England. Let him go out and buy as many as they want, legally.”
“Couple hundred of them?” Riordan said.
“Couple dozen, couple hundred,” Doherty said. “What difference would it make?”
“Records,” Riordan said. “The state laws’re pretty tough. And the federal laws’re even tougher. Every gun sale’s logged. Those logs’re regularly inspected. Same legitimate credentials start showing up in store after store, some guy’s stockpiling AR-fifteens, going to make a lot of people curious. Nobody can use two hundred rifles all by his lonesome. Chances are, he’s planning to sell them to somebody, or outfit a private army. Can’t do that. Got to have a dealer’s license to sell guns in quantity. Got to have a dealer’s license to buy guns in quantity. Got to have permits to shift guns across state lines. You want to export guns, you got more paperwork to do than the Post Office loses in a month.
“That’s why the IRA hooked up with the PLO—those Palestinians’ve got Kalashnikov assault rifles, which is an even better weapon, and the Soviet Union doesn’t make it nearly as difficult for the PLO to get Russian guns as the good old USA does with American guns. There’ve been stories that the PLOs’ve got the Israeli machine guns too, the Uzis, but I tend to doubt that. They would’ve had to capture those, and they haven’t had much luck capturing Jews or their equipment. Still, the AR’s a fine weapon. Perfect for your informal little bushwhacking. No terrorist organization in its right mind would turn down a few crates of those little gadgets, Russian guns or not.
“No,” Riordan said, “if you want ARs in quantity like I expect they probably do, there is only one way to get them, and that is: steal them. Get into a warehouse, get into a few sporting goods stores, that kind of thing. Hijack a truck. That’s what Magro specializes in. He’s good at cutting chain-link fences and getting doors open, and he’s been around long enough so he knows where they store the stuff that people want. He’s good enough so he never got caught at it, either. It was only when he branched out into shooting a guy that the cops grabbed him and put him away. Magro’s a thief, and he’s a capable one. Doesn’t matter to him what he steals, especially if being willing to steal something that somebody really wants will get him sprung from a murder rap eight years early.”
“And put him on the loose to take care of a little private business on the way through,” Doherty said.
“You don’t think your brother’s involved in this?” Riordan said.
“Nope,” Doherty said, “I don’t. For once I think Jerry’s skirts are clean, at least from this escapade. He’s probably doing something else, equally bad, but I don’t really think, from talking to Fahey, that Jerry’s got anything to do with this IRA thing at all. If he is, Fahey isn’t clever enough to keep it from me, and Fahey never said a word about him or even somebody that sort of sounded like him.”
“Son of a bitch,” Riordan said. “That’s kind of upsetting.”
“I don’t follow you, Pete,” Doherty said.
“Oh, no offense, Paul,” Riordan said. “I didn’t mean I was sorry your brother doesn’t seem to be tangled up in this. I’m glad if he isn’t. It’s just that I’ve been convinced for quite a while that he was, and I don’t like making mistakes like that. I dragged you into this mess and got you thoroughly worried for absolutely no good reason. I’m sorry.”
“Pete,” Doherty said, “you’re not going to duck out on me now, are you? No good reason?”
“I don’t follow,” Riordan said.
“Is there any doubt in your mind that Magro will go after Jerry if he gets out to steal those guns?” Doherty said.
“No,” Riordan said. “No, not in the slightest. Far as I know, that’s what he’ll do.” He stood up suddenly, skidding the chair back from the table.
“Where’re you going?” Doherty said.
“I’m not going anywhere, dammit,” Riordan said. “I just locked my damned knee, is all. That damned scrap metal gets in between the joints when I move in just the wrong way, and it locks on me.” He shook his leg awkwardly.
“Spike does that,” Doherty said, laughing. “He did that very same thing the night he peed on the Holy Water font.”
“I know it looks silly,” Riordan said, “but it works. That’s all I ask. There.” He sat down again.
“You ought to get that fixed,” Doherty said.
“There’s nothing anybody can do about it without dismantling my whole damned leg and putting me in traction for about six months,” Riordan said. “I can’t do that, for the luvva Mike. I haven’t got time.”
“I’ve got a good surgeon that’s a friend of mine,” Doherty said. “Ted Norman, at the New England Medical Center. He’s a thoracic specialist, but I’m sure he could find an orthopedic man for you. When it looked as though I might need a bypass, after the attack, Ted was the man I went to see to set things up for me. He’s very good. Known him for years. Another fan of Vinnie Fahey’s. I must call Ted about this little meeting that I had with Vinnie. Tell him about Vinnie routing the Germans.”
“Some other time,” Riordan said, grimacing slightly as he stretched his leg out. “I’m busy right now. I may need this leg. You find anything out about this Emmett guy from Fahey?”
“Not much I didn’t know already,” Doherty said. “Once Vinnie mentioned him, it all started to come back to me. Emmett’s the power behind the University Club swimming team. Vinnie’s a great swimmer. Emmett, according to Fahey, is as crazy as Fahey is on the IRA stuff. He may be carrying Magro’s water in a bucket to the Council, but he’s not crooked and he’s not intentionally setting out to get Jerry killed. I don’t think. He’s just another dreamer trying to bring back the race of kings. The ones that lived in sod huts, and worshiped mud. I don’t think he’s much to worry about. Hell do it if Fahey asks him, and Fahey has asked him. Don’t misunderstand me, now. I embarrassed Vinnie, and I humiliated him, but I didn’t change his mind one single iota. He’s just as determined to get Magro out today as he was yesterday. And he still doesn’t know why I’m interested. The question’s probably never crossed his mind.”
“Okay,” Riordan said, “let’s think about it. First thing is, we’re not under any immediate pressure. Magro can’t get out this week because the Council has to meet again just to decide whether they should hold a hearing on his petition for commutation. They can’t do that before next Thursday. The earliest the hearing could be would be a week, more likely two, after that. So it’s at least three weeks before Magro could get out under any circumstances, and the Governor’d probably stall around for at least another week before he signed anything if the Council did decide to let Magro out. Make it a month. Magro is the guy you want to stop from killing your brother, and if what I get this afternoon and tonight checks out with what you’ve got, Magro and this character Scanlan are the people who interest me. Not your brother. Therefore were not under any real time pressure.”
“I don’t know as I agree with that,” Doherty said.
“Well,” Riordan said, “I don’t mean we can just sit around and dawdle and wait for something bad to happen. What I mean is, we don’t have to do anything right off the bat. End up making a mistake because we hurried. If Ken Walker’s little gambit to screw up Magro’s recommendation from the corrections department works the way he hopes it will, and we won’t know that until the inmates come in—or don’t come in—from their furloughs this weekend, it could be six months or so that Magro’s got to wait before he even gets so much as another nip at the apple. We’ve got time enough to be sure.”
“In the meantime,” Doherty said, “what’re you going to do?”
“Paul,” Riordan said, “all I can tell you for sure is what I’m going to do today. This afternoon. Seats Lobianco must’ve spent half an hour on the phone with me yesterday. He’s been playing sleuth. He wants me to see a guy named Mattie at the State House this afternoon. I’m going to do that. From what Seats hinted, I’ve got an idea I’m going to have to go out tonight. For what, I don’t know. Until I’ve done those things, I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do next.”
“What about me?” Doherty said. “I’m on a hot roll here. It’s like playing golf and sinking every forty-foot putt you try.”
“What about you?” Riordan said. “Isn’t much more you can do, I can think of.”
“What about Jerry?” Doherty said.
“What about him?” Riordan said. “You say he’s not in it, and yours is the best information I’ve come up with so far. If, as and when Magro looks like he’s maybe getting out, we can decide then what to do. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“No?” Riordan said.
“I don’t like it,” Doherty said. “Put yourself in my place. The man is my brother. He’s no good, but he remains my brother. I don’t want him killed. And I’m a priest, too. If any man has an obligation to his brother, a priest does.”
“You want to tell him,” Riordan said.
“I want to tell him,” Doherty said. “I want to tell him tonight. I want to meet him as he closes up the Bright Red and go home with him and tell him. Tonight.”
“Jesus,” Riordan said. “You know what he’ll do, don’t you? Brother or no brother, Paul, the Digger is a decisive man. You convince him that your information’s good, and you know what hell do. You really want that?”
“I think a man has a right to defend himself,” Doherty said. “I’m on firm scriptural ground there. Turning the other cheek is one thing. Getting ambushed’s quite another. Jerry has a family to support. He’s not much of a husband and he stinks as a father, but that family is his responsibility no matter how little attention he pays to them. He won’t even be able to do that, dead, and I don’t want to pick up his burdens for him. I told you that. So I’ve got some rights in this matter too, personal rights. Mine.”
“There’s self-defense and there’s self-defense, Paul,” Riordan said. “The Digger was a boss con. Unusual for a man serving a short stretch. Those gentlemen’re mostly lifers. If Digger was an equal, he was an equal with some guys that’re still in there and haven’t got a thing to lose. They know him. You think of self-defense as shooting back at a guy that’s shooting at you. The Digger may have a more generous definition. He can make arrangements from outside that’ll permanently screw up Monsignor Fahey, Councillor Emmett and maybe even the guy who calls himself Scanlan, but I don’t think that’s self-defense. Not in the usual meaning of the word. I think it’s jailhouse murder. Useful murder, maybe. Save everybody a hell of a lot of annoyance if Magro got dead ’fore he ever got out. But murder just the same. Magro’s no threat to the Digger, long as he’s in. I think you’re jumping the gun, Paul.”
“Do you, now,” Doherty said.
“Actually,” Riordan said, “no. But I had to say so. I can’t endorse it, but I can’t see much difference between Magro planning to kill Digger and Digger planning to kill Magro. The one who gets it done first is a murderer, and the other guy’s a corpse. Other than that, there isn’t much to choose between them. The only advantage that either of them’s got, in my estimation, is that the Digger has you for a brother. He didn’t earn that edge, but he’s got it.”
“Mind you, now,” Doherty said, “I don’t propose to suggest to Jerry that he kill Magro on sight. Or that he have somebody else kill Magro while he’s still in prison. I don’t intend to do anything like that.”
“Paul, Paul,” Riordan said, “this is old Peter, remember? You won’t have to give him any tactical suggestions. You think Jesse James’s mother had to tell him how to rob the trains, once he found out there was payroll gold on them? Split a few hairs if you want, but let’s not go too far here.”
“You’re telling me not to do this,” Doherty said. “That’s maybe the best reason I could give you, Phantom, for starting your own family. You don’t know anything about the sense of responsibility that a man feels. As little as I know, you know less.”
“Wrong on both counts, Paul,” Riordan said. “I am not telling you not to do this. That is your decision, none of mine. And for reasons that I won’t go into, I am not the man who walks alone. That was a lie. I haven’t been for over three years now. I’ve got a woman and her daughter lives with us and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about that, because it’s getting very complicated.” He laughed. “I must be getting old and mellow. I wasn’t ready for all of this. Just sneaked up on me. But don’t kid yourself. I’d kill for either one of those two, and I’ve got a strong notion that I never have to worry about my back when they’re lined up behind me. So, yeah, I know. I know what you mean.”
“I’m happy for you, Pete,” Doherty said. “How on earth does she stand it, knowing what you do? That you could get killed any minute.”
“She never mentions it,” Riordan said. “And as a matter of fact, the chances’re very damned small. It’s some poor cop in a cruiser that gets it, stopping a speeder on the highway and getting a bellyfull of buckshot when he asks for license, registration. Not guys like me. The only reason we carry guns is to discourage guys that we arrest from using their guns. I haven’t killed a man since Nam.”
“So,” Doherty said, “you understand. I’m going to tell him.”
“Yeah,” Riordan said, “but two, make it three, requests.”
“Shoot,” Doherty said. He grinned.
“First,” Riordan said, “tell me where I can get in touch with you later on this afternoon, after I see Seats. He may have something that could change things. Or maybe this guy Mattie will. I doubt it, but they might.”
“Around three-thirty,” Doherty said, “I’ve got to call the auto body shop in Brighton to see if my car’s ready. If it is, I’ll go in to the rental people and drop off that bucket of bolts I’ve been driving since the Electra went in. My God, how I’ve suffered with that thing.”
“The Avis?” Riordan said.
“You knew it?” Doherty said.
“Had to be yours,” Riordan said. “Can’t picture you in a Cad. You’re not a menopausal suburban matron, so you weren’t driving a Volvo. I saw the little red-and-white sticker on the back window, I came in today. What’d you do, smash up the battleship?”
“No,” Doherty said, “I just decided to keep it. They don’t make those big solid cars anymore, and I don’t want one of the tinny little new ones. All that was wrong with mine was minor dents and scratches, so I decided to have it repaired. Supposed to be ready today. If it is, I’ll pick it up, come home, have some of Mrs. Herlihy’s awful food, get a little rest, and go out to Dorchester tonight in time to meet Jerry when he closes up. If it isn’t, I’ll just stay at the rectory and get some work done, then go out. One way or the other, I’ll be home around dinner.”
“Okay,” Riordan said. “Second: Since neither one of us knows what time he’s going to get home tomorrow morning, why don’t we plan to meet here for lunch again tomorrow? Compare notes. Can’t tell what we might pick up.”
“Good idea,” Doherty said.
“Third thing,” Riordan said. “Is there any chance of a club sandwich and another beer?”
“Very good chance,” Doherty said. “I’ll order two of each.”