Chapter 28
28
PATRICK
F iona is sitting at the small desk in the bedroom, working through the accounts she got from Q. On the drive back from dinner, she told me her plan to automate a lot of the bookkeeping. I understood about every third word she said.
She’ll work it out. She’s a hell of a lot better with computers than I am.
And I’m a hell of a lot better at being a mob enforcer than she’ll ever dream of being. Right now, I’m doing my best to smother the Bell, to keep it from sending me after Aran Dowd. The dry shite has to pay for daring to touch my little girl. For talking to the feds, too—but I need proof of that before I can take real action.
And the Philadelphia file Q handed over just might be that proof.
Pacing the living room, I realize I can use my time for something productive. I take out my phone and call my actual captain, because I’ve been in Boston for more than a month, and I owe him a little direct communication.
“Boss,” I say when Braiden Kelly picks up.
“When the hell are you coming home?” I know that tone. He’s tired and he’s wary and he’s feeling the burden of running a full-time criminal empire.
The first thing I need to do is prove my loyalty. “If O’Hare’s slacking off, I’ll be the first to show him the door.”
I can picture Kelly pinching his lower lip, the way he shows frustration. “O’Hare’s doing his job,” he finally says. “ Your job.”
“My job is keeping you safe,” I remind him.
“Let me guess.” He’s in a foul mood, his voice sticky with sarcasm. “Fiona Ingram’s plotting to take me down. The only way you can stop her is to stay by her side.”
I glance toward the bedroom. “It’s not like that, Boss.”
“Then she’s got your bollocks in her pocket, and you’ve forgotten Philadelphia’s your home.”
Tapping my Fishtown ring with my thumb, I take a chance. “We both know her trousers are too tight for pockets.”
He laughs. It’s more a sharp bark than anything expressing actual humor, but it’s the crack I hoped to find in his sour mood.
I try to make things better by promising, “I’ve forgotten nothing, Boss.”
“But you still aren’t coming home.”
“Are you giving me an order?”
He could do it. He knows how to keep all the Fishtown Boys in line. And if he does, I’ll be up against a wall, facing a decision I hope to put off for quite a while longer.
But Kelly’s a good man, the best captain a soldier could ask for. So he doesn’t force me to make the choice. Instead, he sighs and says, “Tell Fiona I asked after her.”
I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I’ll do that.” And then, before he goes back to whatever business I interrupted, I say, “One more thing, Boss.”
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to quit while you’re ahead? ”
His voice has shifted back to acid, but I bull ahead like I don’t have a care in the world. Fiona doesn’t know it yet, but she needs some information Kelly has. “That place you go to, down in Delaware…”
“Diamond Freeport?”
I nod, even though he can’t see me. “It’s what? A tax haven?”
“It’s a port. I send assets there for safekeeping. If I sell those assets to someone else who keeps them there, the transfer isn’t taxed.”
“It’s secure then?”
“Secure enough for a dozen billionaires to trust it.” And then, with a cool tone: “So Fiona’s paying you enough you need to play some tax games?”
“I’m asking for Herself.”
“Where the hell is Fiona—” He cuts himself off. “So she got her hands on her father’s estate.” He doesn’t make it a question.
“And she’ll get the Crew too.”
Fiona is determined. I’m willing to bet she’s already taken over every account Q gave her today. She’ll use it all to take down Dowd.
Which brings me to the last thing Kelly needs to know. “Boss,” I say. “Fiona got some information today. A report that mentions Philly.”
Kelly’s voice sharpens with interest. “What sort of report?”
“A balance sheet. With names. And notes.”
“Go on.” That’s his captain voice, the one that makes every one of us men jump to comply. Fiona exercised hers with Q earlier today, but she’s far from being a master.
Challenged by Kelly, I find myself reciting like a first-year runner. “Aran Dowd started wiring money to Germany six years back. Payments for shipping into Philadelphia. There’s a steady increase in dollar amount, doubling quarter over quarter. But two months ago, everything stopped. ”
Kelly scoffs. “That could be anything. Electronics. High-end automobiles. Raw chemicals for labs.”
“The early payments went to Klaus Herzog.”
Silence.
A few years back, a video went viral—a group of Diamond Freeport billionaires sitting around a table, feasting on seafood and hundred-dollar-a-shot booze. One of those billionaires—Klaus Herzog—died in a spectacularly bloody way. And Kelly was caught on camera, watching the entire thing.
“And the later ones?” my boss finally asks.
“To his brothers. The records I saw didn’t even try to hide their names. Didn’t hide the nature of the goods either. It’s Crash.”
I take a little credit for Kelly’s fluent Irish curses. He learned our mother tongue in a classroom. I taught him how real men speak.
Crash is a drug created in a German lab. It’s designed to target kids’ developing brains, and a single dose is addictive.
With Kieran Ingram as head of the Grand Irish Union, there’ve been few things the mob won’t touch. Whores? No problem. Running guns? We’ve got that covered. Extortion, blackmail, an occasional political hit? Bring it on.
But Ingram put out the word on Crash. Sell it, and kiss the mob goodbye. You’re out. You’re dead.
A few years back, Kelly fell into a sweetheart deal—kilos of the stuff, taken from the Herzogs in a warehouse raid and worth millions on the street. He ordered me to charter a boat and dump the shite at sea.
But it looks like Aran Dowd didn’t get the same memo.
“How much is he selling?” Kelly asks.
“Three months ago, he was bringing in millions.”
“Three months ago, he was in prison.”
Dowd’s stint in jail was the reason Fiona came to Philadelphia in the first place. She took her uncle’s place, running a meeting for her da. But Kelly and I both know how easy it is to keep an import/export business running from inside the joint.
I say, “The sales cut out ten weeks ago. Like someone came at them with a cleaver.”
“When did Dowd get out?”
“Ten weeks ago.”
“Because the district attorney didn’t want to chance losing a major case,” Kelly says slowly, like he’s solving a jigsaw puzzle.
“That’s the story I heard.”
I’ve seen a lot of criminal enterprises. Some make good money. Others are write-offs. The only thing I’ve seen cause a complete drop-off like Dowd’s line on Crash is death.
Or the closest thing to dying: Being turned by the feds.
All the facts are in front of me. Q’s records make things clear as crystal. This isn’t about bruises on Fiona’s arm, about Dowd trying to shove his tongue down my little girl’s throat.
This is about betraying a clan. About selling out the Irish mob to avoid years of prison for distributing a drug more deadly than heroin.
I weigh my words carefully, because I know exactly what they’ll cost. I measured out the payment for my own dead da, twenty-five years back. But I finally tell Kelly, “I saw Dowd a month ago, in a place he had no business being. With a man he had no reason to meet. A federal agent.”
Kelly’s whistle is long and low. When he speaks, he doesn’t mince words. “Your Dowd’s a fucking rat. He ran his shite through Philadelphia. Make him fucking pay.”