Chapter 10
10
PATRICK
H ow the fuck will I get Fiona out of here now?
Half the room is watching that guinea Sacco kiss up to Dowd, and to Rivers too. The other half is staring at Fiona as she goes through the motions of praying over her da. They’re wondering how long the show will go on, and when she’ll be tossed out on her pretty little leather-clad arse.
Well, in for a penny, in for a feckin’ pound.
I cross the room and kneel beside her. I haven’t been to church in twenty-five years, but lessons from my childhood don’t die easily. My hand moves with automatic precision, making the sign of the cross as I bow my head.
Things couldn’t have gone more arseways for Fiona. Wake or no wake, I never should have let her come back to the dún . Sure, I admire her fierce determination. It’s almost sweet, the certainty she has that she’ll win out in the end.
But if Dowd stops patronizing her for long enough to label her a threat, the Crew will follow his lead. At the very least, they’ll lock her in one of the upstairs bedrooms. At the worst, they’ll drag us both down to the basement.
I wonder if the cellar still stinks of heating oil. If the grout’s still stained a rusty brown by the drain. If anyone’s bothered to sharpen the bone saws and the cleavers, or whether the dull blades are still considered part of the game.
My shoulder blades twitch, sparking alarms to every one of my brain squirrels. I shouldn’t have my back to the room. I shouldn’t take my eyes off the Crew for a single goddamn second. But no one will know I’m not whispering a Hail Mary as I mutter to Fiona, “Ready to leave, Scáthach? ”
“Don’t call me that,” she says automatically.
Despite the danger, my lips twitch. This girl has spirit. And that may be enough to get us out of here alive.
“Head high,” I murmur. “Eyes straight ahead.”
I cross myself again, and then I lumber to my feet, ignoring the shouted message from my knees that I should leave kneeling to younger men. For a moment, I think Fiona will ignore me, but then she seems to conclude I’m her best chance for something approaching a graceful exit.
She stands. She reaches out to touch her father’s stiff claws. I haven’t seen the fecker in more than a quarter century, but I have to question the morticians’ skill. I wonder if the clan still uses the Callahan Funeral Home.
Maybe Ingram really did look like a vulture at the end. My boss certainly thought he acted like one.
Fiona shifts her fingertips to rest on the center of her father’s chest, where his heart would be if he’d had one. Old Colony King. General of the Grand Irish Union.
All that power, and the gobshite’s still dead.
“Sleep well, Da,” Fiona says, in her normal voice. The sound carries to every corner of the frozen room. “I’ll make you proud at the Corman Gala. The Crew will give ten million dollars in your name. You’ll sponsor this year’s event. I promise you that. ”
She brushes a kiss against her fingertips, then brings them to rest against her father’s lips. Every boyo in the room watches—and now it’s not just her leather gear that has them so excited.
Fiona just issued a challenge. She made a promise. And every man here expects her to fail.
You can’t grow up in Boston without knowing about the Caterina Marcus Corman Museum Gala. It’s held on June 30 every year, an old-school formal affair, complete with a feckin’ red carpet. Boston’s richest families gather in the museum’s courtyard, competing to show off their generosity. If your ancestors didn’t show up on the Mayflower, good luck getting a ticket.
Except the mayor’s allowed in. The City Council, too. The Chief of Police attends and the Fire Commissioner and the lucky eejit in charge of building inspections for the entire city.
But an Irish mob boss from Southie? Kieran Ingram wouldn’t be allowed to sweep the sidewalk in front of the museum. Which is why the Crew captain famously angled for an invitation—year after year after year.
Fiona might as well have just promised to build the Kieran Feckin’ Ingram colony on Mars. Or engineer a cure for hunger. Guarantee us all world peace.
I’m not certain Fiona has a credit card to her name. If she had a cool ten mill to drop on an art museum, we wouldn’t have spent last night in a closet.
A closet with a feckin’ king-size bed. But a closet, all the same.
What the hell is she thinking, making promises like that in front of a pack of yokes who’d gladly see her dead and buried? Or married off to make peace among the clans? Or forgotten altogether, because she’s just a girl, and not one of the men present thinks she can ever be a real threat?
I can’t make her take back the words. And standing here won’t get her any closer to finding ten million dollars.
For a moment, I think about offering her my arm. But the last thing she needs is for the Crew to see her leaning on a Fishtown man, especially when rumors still run sharp that my boss killed her da.
So I settle for shouldering a path through the room, slow enough that she can follow.
Head high. Eyes straight ahead.
She listens to me. She even folds her fingers into fists, like she’ll beat down any man who hints this is her last time inside the dún .
The road in front of the gray clapboard building is lined with vehicles now, the usual rule about clear streets set aside for the wake. A pair of Boston’s finest makes their way down the sidewalk, snapping photos of license plates.
They spend extra time at the gate to the dún’s side yard, getting the number for a black Cadillac Escalade. One of them starts to test the driver’s door, but his buddy calls him back, reminds him they don’t have a warrant. They turn back to the street.
They don’t bother with the car on the corner, on the opposite side of the street. From here, I can make out two people sitting inside the dirty gray sedan—a man and a woman, both wearing dark suits with shirts so white they shine like flashlights.
They could be mobbed-up guests, finishing a conversation before they honor the dead man inside the dún . They could be real estate agents, making a late-night survey of Southie properties for prospective clients. They could be tourists, straying way off the beaten track for Boston nightlife.
But in my bones, I know they’re feds.
I saw a car like that parked outside my da’s house, long before I knew what he’d done. Suits like that. Agents like that. Not afraid to be seen. Not afraid to let the mob know someone’s under investigation.
The FBI got my da killed in the basement of the building behind us.
Who the fuck am I kidding? Da got himself killed. No one forced him to turn traitor .
But the car on the corner says there’s another turncoat in the dún . It could be anyone in the Crew. It could be Nero Sacco, the prick that’s run the Boston mafia since long before I left. Hell, maybe the feds have a hard-on for the priest that showed up while Fiona was on her knees by the coffin.
There’s no way to know for sure. And tonight, I don’t care—because I got Fiona out of there alive.
The damage has been done, though. She made a promise she’ll never be able to keep. She boasted. She bragged. And the Crew will make her pay.