Chapter 6
6
brAIDEN
I sit in the Jeep for longer than is wise in this shambles of an alley. It took me all afternoon to track down the man inside the manky bar around the corner.
I roll my fingers over my right forearm, touching a scar so thick I can feel it through my black wool sweater. It’s been itching all day, as if my face-off with Russo triggered something deep beneath my skin.
As I sigh, I turn six years old again. I’m sitting in the corner with Lorenzo Ricci’s hair in my face, with Sean Doyle’s elbow digging into my side. I’m trying not to breathe, staying still as stone like Sister Mary Margaret says we have to be.
She’s wrong. I shouldn’t be still. I should be fighting the bad man out in the hall. I should get his gun and shoot him in the chest—the biggest target on a body, like Da’s already taught me.
But I’m too scared to move.
Sister Mary Margaret isn’t scared. She stands in front of us. She prays her rosary, even when the bad man comes into our classroom. I see his gun, like something in a movie. It’s long and it’s black and I want to close my eyes, but I can’t.
He shoots Sister Mary Margaret in the head. Blood and bone and brains spray all us kids. Then he fires into the corner, more bullets than I can count. My arm turns to flame, and the bad man leaves.
I’m a feckin’ coward.
Seventeen children and five sisters die at St. Ann’s that day. I’m only six, but I learn my lesson: Never sit still in the corner.
Make the rules. Be in charge. Don’t let the bad man win.
My arm is in casts for a month and a half. When it’s finally free, the skin is slimy and white, like something rotten in the back of the fridge. I have a huge crimson snake of a scar.
A scar that burns as I stride into a bar at a quarter to midnight, three nights into the new year. I stomp the snow from my boots by the abandoned hostess stand and straddle a stool at the chipped oak bar. I wait for the bartender to look up from the rocks glass he’s polishing.
The restaurant behind me is empty. Maybe that’s because the streets are ice rinks after yesterday’s blizzard. Maybe that’s because of the late hour. Maybe that’s because anyone ordering food in this riverside dive needs to be up-to-date on all their shots.
I finally resort to clearing my throat. “You’re a hard man to find, Father Brennan.”
A desperate glance tells me O’Rourke clocked me the second I came through the door. “Don’t call me that.”
“I have a business proposition for you.”
He waves a tired hand toward the bottles of cheap booze. “I have a job.”
“This is something you can’t afford to pass up.”
“Can’t afford? How much can’t I afford?”
I wonder who he owes money to now. My men won’t take his marker anymore. Russo’s guys will kill him if he comes up short, but only after they make him wish he was dead.
“Fifty thousand bucks.”
I could probably get him for ten. But I want him keeping his mouth shut, after.
He looks like I just promised him a new Maserati. But he’s learned something over the five years since I saw him last, because he sounds wary when he asks, “What do I have to do?”
“Nothing you haven’t already done hundreds of times.”
He finds the guts to look me in the eye. “Can you be more specific?”
“I need you to perform a wedding.”
“Anymore, I’m not a priest.”
“All you have to do is say the words. I want to walk out of St. Columba’s no more married than when I walked in.”
“What sort of racket are you running now?” For just a moment, I hear the old spirit in him, the certainty of a man who knew he was called by God. Brennan O’Rourke heard my confession for nine years. He knows more about my rackets than most men living.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“It’s my job to worry.”
“It was your job,” I say. “Now, your job is pouring watered-down booze for yer man.”
“And you think whatever scheme you’re cooking up will all play out better than your first wedding day?”
Fuck.
Samantha Mott doesn’t know about my first wife. No one does, stateside. No one but Brennan O’Rourke.
I met Birte in a Dublin pub seven years ago, when Da sent me to Ireland on Fishtown business. She was fresh up from County Cork, with laughing eyes, a pretty smile, and sass that went on for weeks.
I fell hard the first night she handed me a Guinness. Harder, because she let me kiss her, let me touch the goods, but she wouldn’t come to bed without a ring on her finger.
Da would never approve. Marriages are for dynasties, not love.
So I took Birte back to County Cork within the fortnight. I planned to marry her, bed her, and bring her back to Philadelphia. Da couldn’t do anything after a priest made it official.
I put my ring on her finger. I said all the words. I never dreamed the attack would come so soon, and from her brother, too. The father of the ring-bearer, of the sweet little flower-girl. He couldn’t bear the thought of Birte going to America with a criminal like me.
My wedding day ended with death and madness, with Birte’s borrowed wedding gown soaked in innocent blood.
So I’m not doing it again, not really getting married. I can’t. I need a priest like Father Brennan. A man defrocked for emptying St. Columba’s building fund to pay the hundred grand he owed me for high-stakes poker games.
I tighten my jaw and say to my former confessor, “I know it will.”
“You and your bride have worked your pre-cana?”
“We’re fine,” I say, because Samantha Mott and I have no need of the church’s marriage preparation classes. Pre-cana wouldn’t have spared Birte.
“You’ve had the banns read?” O’Rourke pushes.
I snort. We both know the church’s ancient announcements have been optional for decades. I say, “Be at St. Columba’s next Wednesday. Three o’clock.”
“And the church is just going to open its doors and invite me in.”
“The church will look the other way for one of its most generous donors.” I point a thumb at myself. “New roofs don’t come cheap.”
“And did St. Columba’s need a new roof before you needed a sham wedding?”
I answer honestly. “You don’t want to know the answer to that.”
His jaw sets, making him look even more tired. “And if I say no?”
He wants me to threaten him. He wants to believe he doesn’t have a choice. But I just shake my head and say, “Fifty thousand dollars.”
He closes his eyes and his lips move in a silent prayer. I don’t know if he’s asking for forgiveness or for some sort of divine intervention. But no lightning bolts rain down, and not a single angel appears out of the shadows.
“Father Brennan?” I push.
He grimaces, but he opens his eyes. “God have mercy on your soul.”
I slide off the stool. “Until Wednesday, then. Dress the part.”
The door slams closed behind me as I head back out to the street. My foot catches on a slick of ice, and I wrench my knee keeping my balance. A neon sign in the window behind me reflects on the snowbank beside the curb—blood-red letters melting into white—and for just a moment I’m back on the steps of a country church in County Cork, making the biggest mistake of my life.
I blink, and the blood isn’t on Birte’s dress. The blood is on my arm, in my hair, soaking through my St. Ann’s uniform shirt.
That’s why my arm itches. Some broken twist in my brain says Samantha is Birte is old Sister Mary Margaret. Antonio Russo is Birte’s murderous brother is the bad man with a gun at old St. Ann’s.
Shaking my head at the lessons carved deep in my brain, I resist the urge to cross myself. I don’t practice the old ways anymore. I didn’t bother finding a new confessor after O’Rourke left the church.
But I mutter to myself as I shift the Jeep into gear: “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” They’re the only lines I remember from a poem one of the priests made us memorize in grade twelve.
I’m half-way home before I order my mobile to call Madden. He’s my Clan Chief, my second in command, and he’s my brother too. He’ll be best man at this wedding.
He answers on the second ring, which isn’t bad because I’m certain he was sleeping. Two nights ago, he returned from his own month-long trip to Ireland, shoring up our relationship with the Grand Irish Union. The GIU is the closest we American mobsters come to having a common home—it’s the Cosa Nostra of the Irish Mob. All for one and one for all; the GIU always has my back.
Whenever Madden comes stateside after a stint in Dublin, his accent is as heavy as Granny’s piano. He likes to pretend he’s forgotten the English word for common things, and he swears his muscle memory is gone for driving on the right.
Now, he’s cursing like a bogger, shitehawk this and dry shite that, and I wait for him to wake enough to remember I’m his Captain. “What d’ ya need?” he finally asks.
“Our best maintenance man, over at St. Columba’s tonight. Make it look like damage from the snow. A quarter mill’s worth.”
Kelly Construction can fix the damage in a week, easy. My company won’t dream of taking the good parish’s money. But I’ll see Father Brennan gets through the door, no questions asked.
And that will get me the wedding I need—the one to keep Samantha safe.