Chapter 4
4
brAIDEN
S amantha’s trip to Dover proceeds without any problems. She’s back to the Rittenhouse suite at 2:29, precisely one minute before her promised return, which makes me wonder how long she loitered in the lobby before coming upstairs. She’s followed the rules, though, so I have no right to complain.
“I’ll be working in the bedroom,” she tells me.
I understand she’s chastising me for keeping her from her freeport office. If we weren’t surrounded by half a dozen of my Fishtown Boys, I’d make her pay for the insubordination. Both of us could use the release.
But we are surrounded by my men, all of whom are suddenly busy, studying their phones or the paper maps we’ve spread out on the table.
Plus, my eyes still ache like the bleeding wounds of Christ.
And I need to see my sub if I’m going to discipline her properly.
“Fairfax is serving dinner at six,” I tell her pointedly. I want both of us to believe I still make the rules.
She doesn’t reply.
I wait until she’s closed the bedroom door before I lock myself in the jacks off the living room. I run water in the sink, because luxury hotels don’t provide the sort of soundproofing I used to enjoy at Thornfield. Two days living here at the Rittenhouse, and the lack of privacy is already driving me mad.
Wrestling my phone out of my pocket, I’m pleased to discover I can keep it a full handspan from my nose as I tap the screen. That’s progress.
Liam Murphy answers on the first ring: “Boss?”
“I have a project for you.”
“Sure thing, Boss.” If he’s hoping I’m about to send him back out with Samantha, he’s smart enough to keep his voice neutral.
Which is the only reason I tell him, “I want my brother’s car.”
I’ve spent the better part of the day thinking about this.
Chances are, the McLaren is in plain sight, somewhere in Philadelphia. Madden planted it somewhere before he sneaked onto Thornfield land, armed with a pipe bomb to take out my garage. My brother was stubborn and impulsive and he never met a rule he wouldn’t break for the sheer hell of it. But he’d make sure to leave himself a clear alibi, all the same.
I want the car picked up, because I don’t want anyone asking uncomfortable questions about Madden’s whereabouts. I don’t want people wondering why a car worth half a million dollars is sitting somewhere, unattended.
The Fishtown Boys are used to the back and forth between Madden and me. There’s not a man on my crew who would question my boosting my brother’s car. And once I get the McLaren locked behind Thornfield’s gate, I’m pretty sure no one will think to ask when Madden’s taking it back.
“Boss?” Liam asks. He’s not arguing. Not telling me it’s a shite assignment. Not saying it’s impossible. But he honestly seems not to understand.
“Madden’s McLaren. I want it parked at Thornfield by midnight.” And just in case he’s thinking of cutting corners and boosting it off some street somewhere: “With the keys.”
“Do you know where it is?” He’s good. There’s not a hint of grievance in his voice.
“Track it down.”
“You’ve got it, Boss,” Liam says.
And the confidence in his voice actually makes me believe he’ll get the job done.
Liam Murphy is as good as his word. He returns to the Rittenhouse at a quarter to midnight. My eyes are aching—tired as well as burned—when Seamus opens the door to the suite. But I can see the glitter of the keys when Liam drops them in my hand. He passes me his phone, too, with a picture of the ugliest acid-green car I’ve ever seen in my life, safe on the driveway in front of Thornfield’s burned-out ruins.
I can’t tell if my watering eyes are due to my scorched corneas or the color Madden chose for his substitute cock.
“Did you have to kill him to get it?” I ask casually.
Seamus knows the truth; he saw every last thing I did to my brother in the Thornfield infirmary. But the men still poring over screens and documents—the ones building barriers against Russo and whatever Boston sends our way—they don’t know how handy I am with forceps and a scalpel.
Liam shakes his head. “I paid for some time with two of Mimi’s girls. The ones she gave Madden when he did the milk run last week.”
Plenty of people know Madden collected my accounts four days ago—everyone who handed over an envelope. But Fiona Ingram is the only person who knows Madden stole my money. Everyone else thinks he was just a loyal soldier, playing the game as it’s always been played.
This is the first I’ve heard of Madden taking a ride as he collected the money that should have been mine. I think of Fiona’s broken, bleeding face. I wonder how long Madden made her wait while he had his fun with Mimi’s girls.
I wave Liam over to the bar Fairfax outfitted at the far end of the living room. Blinking hard, I pour him a few fingers of Jameson, waving away his thanks as I ask, “What did the girls have to say?”
“Madden threw some cash around before he left. Said he’d make it back at Darragh’s executive game.”
Darragh McCarthy runs my high rollers game out at the Avalon, the last three days of every month. It’s exclusive enough that everyone—even my second-in-command—has to wait for a seat at the table, sometimes for weeks.
The attraction isn’t just Darragh’s top-shelf booze and the New York call girls he brings down for the night. It’s the no-limit betting.
And Madden was there as often as Darragh let him darken the doorstep.
“So you traced the fecker to the Avalon.”
“He booked a suite, Monday through today.”
Of course he did. To a casual onlooker, that suite proved Madden was at the Avalon for three days straight. He had a place to take a shower, maybe grab half an hour’s kip between hands.
Darragh’s game is strictly confidential. Every man at the table is sworn to secrecy about who attends. Any player who gabs outside of the room will never be invited back.
But I’m willing to bet Darragh will tell me that Madden got there early and lost big on his first few hands. Maybe Darragh gave him a bottle of the Macallan 25, just to make sure I didn’t have any beef with how the game was run. Darragh will assume my brother stumbled back to his room, slept off his shite luck at the table, and spent the rest of his time nursing an unholy hangover.
I can tell a different story. I don’t have proof, but I know it’s true. I can feel it in my bones.
Madden took a cab home, paying cash, so there’d be no record. He beat the shite out of Fiona. And then he took another cab to a little side street, two blocks from Thornfield. He opened a triple-locked gate that leads to a water overflow pipe, one that only he and I knew about. He crawled through the muck, like we both did as kids. And all the while, he planned how he’d get rid of me, how he’d hand the Fishtown Boys to Russo and settle in to the golden life of a Mafia capo.
Fucking traitor.
For public consumption, I’m still working the angle that I have no idea where my brother might be. “So Madden was still at the Avalon?” I ask Liam.
He shrugs. “His car was. The valet left it in the front circle, with all the other supercars.”
That’s what hotels do—show off big-spending guests to all the jackeens stopping by for the night. It makes everyone feel important. Plus, it guarantees no minimum-wage attendant will ruin a custom paint job on tight corners in a garage.
Liam says, “I waited for the valet to take his smoking break. Talked to him outside the employee entrance.”
“Risky, that.”
Liam shrugs. “I made sure he was the one facing security cameras. Plus, I wore a baseball hat. Hoodie. Jeans. Coppers won’t have much to go on.”
“Until your man sits down with one of those sketch artists.”
A rude sound lets me know what Liam thinks of Philadelphia’ finest. “I was ready to go as high as ten thousand for the keys. But the eejit only asked for a grand.”
I shake my head. “Almost makes you feel sorry for the man.”
“I hit him hard enough to make it look real. A real pistol-whipping. He might even keep his job.”
“Not likely. Not after hotel security put one and one together.”
Another shrug. “He can argue a stranger took the car. I didn’t show him the gun when we talked by the door. And I wore a ski mask when I strapped him. A gray sweatshirt too, one of those souvenir jobs: ‘Property of the Philadelphia Eagles.’ I even changed my trainers.”
“Did you have any trouble getting the car back to Thornfield?”
He shakes his head. “I drove like my grandmother, on her way to Sunday Mass. Billy Walsh let me in at the front gate. There’re cones all around the house, and crime-scene tape around Sam’s Mercedes. I parked the McLaren at the far end of the drive, took a pic, and covered it with a tarp.”
Christ. I forgot about Samantha’s car.
Someone—the chief fire inspector—is sure to have questions about a new vehicle appearing on the property. But that same someone’s going to have a lot more questions about Madden’s body, once it shows up in the ruins. I’ll deal with that when I have to.
“So what are you out, all told?” I ask Liam.
He shakes his head. “Consider it my gift to you, Boss.”
He’s paid for two whores. Bought off the Avalon’s eejit valet. I’m certain he trashed both outfits he wore, and he got rid of the gun too. The night’s cost him a few grand, even without the valet charging him top dollar.
But he gained something more than a joyride in an acid-green McLaren.
He’s proven once again that he’s a man I can trust.
I think about that neon nightmare of a vehicle. Maybe when all of this is done, I’ll have the car done up in a respectable color—red or black or even the papaya orange they use for their Formula 1 team.
Maybe I’ll need to sink it in the Schuylkill.
But for now, I can leave it as is. As far as anyone knows, Madden is whoring around, maybe following up on yet another dream gig that’ll make him a feckin’ billionaire.
I half-wish Fiona had made her bruised face public, so I could use it as an excuse for my cowardly brother lying low. But she’s chosen to protect her privacy, and I owe her that much, after all that’s gone between us.
Someone will come sniffing around for Madden eventually. And when that happens, I figure the McLaren will give me options. I can lie about my shitehawk of a brother for eons.
At least until people forget they care about a two-bit, lying, back-stabbing cunt who should have been walked off a pier years ago.