Chapter 15
15
brAIDEN
I t’s been six weeks since I’ve done the milk run. Six weeks since Madden cleared out my accounts, picking up all my cash-filled envelopes.
Rory and Seamus have been keeping me informed. Rory has done the run twice himself, making sure people understand he’s my most senior enforcer in Philly these days. Seamus confirms everyone’s following the rules, handing over what they should. He also, though, has told me we’re entering the lean months—summer, when kids are home from school and families travel on vacation and men with wicked tastes have neither time nor cash to indulge.
So I plan a route and take the Jeep out after breakfast. Driving around the city is a better way to spend the day than waiting for Samantha to call, to tell me her hearing went fine and all her nerves were for nothing.
Mikey’s waiting at the bar when I get to his underground gambling den. He looks like he’s coming off a rough night; he’s already sipping a glass of the black stuff. I wave off his offer of a Guinness of my own, even as he calls out, “If it isn’t Himself!” Just like he’s pleased to see me. He almost makes me feel like a friend.
The envelope he hands over is half what it once was.
“How’s business?” I ask, because that’s more polite than making threats.
“Going to hell in a handbasket.” He sounds like someone poisoned his dog. “We put Cillian Ryan in the ground last Friday, may he rest in peace.”
As he crosses himself piously, I tap his envelope against the counter. “Ryan’s not responsible for all the shortfall.”
Mikey scowls. “He’s not. But his son is. And all his grandsons too. Not one of them knows what to do with an honest bookie. If they can’t place a bet on their phones, they won’t bother. It’s sportsbook this and betting kings that, with a dozen fancy lines you need NASA’s computers to understand.”
I’ve heard the complaint before. Now that sports betting is legal everywhere, casual gamblers stay away from joints like this.
But all us businessmen face pressure. “I’ve got a floor, Mikey. I need to see a minimum, or we’ll find ourselves in trouble.”
“I’m working on it, Boss. But I’ve gotta be honest. Regulars are pretty spooked by the Italians.”
He pronounces it like my da always did—Eye-talians. “Spooked?” I ask. “Why?”
He looks like he wants to spit, but he’d only have to clean up the mess. “No one’s told you what’s going on? They’re doing their best to scare folks off. Driving down the middle of the street after midnight, two men flashing machine guns in the back seat. Standing on the corner and greeting regulars by name. Last week, they wrote down license numbers, like they were the fucking cops.”
“Goddamn Russo.”
Mikey sits back in his chair. “I thought you two had a truce.”
“We do.” But that’s not the truth. Not anymore—not after he turned Madden. And not after the truckload of electronics went missing. Definitely not after he threatened Aiofe on the steps of St. Columba. “Why didn’t you say something to O’Hare?”
Mikey shifts his weight and fiddles with his glass. “I hoped it could wait till Moran was back.”
Patrick. He wanted to confess to someone he knew.
“Moran might not be back. Not for a while. You don’t trust O’Hare?”
Mikey answers so quickly he swallows half his words. “O’Hare’s fine. He’s fair. He doesn’t lean too hard, not like?—”
He stops short. From the pure panic on his face I know what he hasn’t said. Madden . O’Hare’s not like Madden.
He’s right. But I’m glad he didn’t say the words out loud. Because we’re still living the lie that my brother might walk through the door any minute, and I don’t want to be forced to defend the dead dry shite’s honor.
I slip Mikey’s envelope inside the breast pocket of my jacket. “Let O’Hare know if Russo steps up his game.”
By the time I get to the door, Mikey’s drained half his glass. He freezes when I turn back, foam on his upper lip. “But I need a full share next Tuesday, Mikey. Business is business.”
I wait for him to nod before I leave.
Mikey’s story is repeated, stop after stop. Business is off. Marks are scarce. Russo’s men are hanging around like a bad smell in the jacks.
The goombahs aren’t entering my buildings. They aren’t taking over my games, my bars, my girls. They aren’t doing anything I can call them on, as a mob boss or as a legitimate businessman with lawful concerns on the streets of my adopted home of Philadelphia.
At the end of the day, though, the effect is clear. I’m short nearly half my feckin’ take.
I call Seamus as I’m driving home. I go with a burner, because I’m pretty sure we’ll say things that shouldn’t be overheard. When I report my haul, he says, “That’s worse than it has been.”
“I need to get Patrick home from Boston.”
“You can do that. But it won’t change the take. This is about Russo. This is about planning a war.”
“Are we ready to fight that?”
“Financially? You don’t want to hear this, Boss. But the answer is no.”
He’s right. I don’t want to hear it. But I grunt so he’ll go on.
“It’s not just the drop in income. We started the year short because of that container that went missing. And your outlay of cash in the past six months has been…extreme.” As if I didn’t know. But he’s my quartermaster, so he doesn’t stop there. “The property for the Hare, building out the new place, tipping staff…” That’s the inspectors we’ve paid off, the commissioner we’ve bought. “Holing up at the Rittenhouse wasn’t cheap, but compared to buying the new house… And underwriting that church’s building fund…”
“I’m a billionaire,” I remind him, same as I reminded Samantha. “I can buy a new house.”
“You are. And you can. But it’s my job to warn you. I’m already managing some cash flow challenges. And if you and Russo shift to open warfare, those challenges will turn into full-scale obstacles.”
He doesn’t know the half of it. Ever since the Diamond Ring went golfing at Augusta, I’ve been toying with the idea of making a run at the Union. I want to be own boss. I want to be the General.
But dreams like that cost money. And time. And energy. All things that Russo threatens, just by being alive.
So I focus on first steps, getting the Fishtown Boys out of debt. I ask Seamus, “What do you need to make things right?”
“Honestly? Twenty-five mill would fill all the holes and leave us with a little room to breathe.”
Twenty-five million dollars. He says it like he expects me to empty my pockets and count up loose change. But Seamus Campbell knows better than most what he’s asking. And he’s got a Harvard Business School degree to back him up.
“Let me think about it,” I say. I break the burner when I get to the next traffic light. Half goes in a storm drain. The other half flies out my window once I’m on the motorway, heading back to Ardmore.
My pockets won’t yield any twenty-five million dollars. A lifetime of counting up envelopes like the ones I collected today wouldn’t get me to that number. I could wait five years or longer for another shipment like the cocaine Russo boosted a few months ago. Gambling and cigarettes and producing porno movies—the profits dropped out of all those schemes years back.
But I’ve got one extraordinary asset sitting in my gallery at Diamond Freeport. It’s an illustrated medieval manuscript that Patrick smuggled out of Ireland for me, a few months back. There’s a limited market for art treasures without a proper provenance, a record of prior ownership. But that market isn’t nonexistent.
The freeport gives a built-in advantage if the seller is already a client. Or willing to become a client, to keep their new-found treasure on the premises. The sale will be tax-free, just pure profit going to the seller. To me.
When I get to my home office, I check for a message from Samantha. It’s only half past one, though. Her hearing’s barely begun.
So I sit at my desk and pull up photographs of the book I looted from Ireland. Samantha’s already briefed me on the legal consequences of bringing the Book of Skreen to auction. Alix Key, the freeport’s auctioneer, has advised me to wait until November, when the most valuable rare objects are usually brought to market.
I can’t wait until November.
Not anymore.
I place a call to Alix at the freeport. “Braiden!” she answers. She has a gift for making every client feel as if they’re the tax haven’s premier client. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“The illustrated manuscript that we talked about a few months ago…”
“The one we’re taking to auction in November?”
“I’ve had a change of plans. I want to sell it now.”
“By now , you mean?”
“No later than the end of this month.”
She’s so quiet, I wonder if the line has dropped.
“Alix?” I finally ask.
“Sorry. I’m just thinking through the variables. We can run the auction, that’s not a problem. But with a turn-around like that, I don’t know how many large institutions we can get to bid. Museums, libraries, that sort of thing.”
“But you can get the word out to private collectors, right?”
“A good number of them.”
“And private collectors are likely to pay more than museums?”
“Generally speaking. But with a treasure of this magnitude?—”
“Do it.” I cut her off.
Another silence, but a much shorter one this time.
“Of course,” she says. “Let me check dates, and I’ll get back to you.”
I hang up the phone with the impatience of a child waiting to open presents from Father Christmas. Now that I’ve decided to sell the book, I want it out of my gallery immediately.
I want my twenty-five million dollars.
I need them.
Now.