Chapter Twenty #3
P.J. has his forehead furrowed, working to arrange all this; Senan has a grim one-sided smile. Their whole lives, Tommy has been all-powerful, untouchable, every move he makes has been a smooth checkmate. Tommy fucked up this time. Like everything else, Tommy is changing.
“So what you’re saying is,” Francie says, “we take all this to the Guards.”
The words fall heavily in the room. Cal feels the rejection, instant and instinctive.
“We can,” he says. “I don’t know how far that’d get.
Tommy’s got the local Guards in his pocket, and his buddy Whatshisname, Dickie O’Shea, he can probably pull some strings with the higher-ups.
Everything we’ve got, if the Guards don’t want to deal with it, they can just brush it off as local grudges, people getting jealous of the guy with the fancy house.
If we had something solid, like if the kid had gotten video of Tommy digging that hole, no one would sweep that under the rug for some backcountry big shot. But we don’t.”
“That’s the fuckin’ Guards for you,” Francie says, with centuries’ worth of scorn. “As much use as tits on a bull.”
“And regardless of what they do,” Cal says, “there’s still the business with the land.”
He gives the guys a second to find that in their minds. Today buried even that.
“I’ll blow Tommy sky-high before I let him get his hands on that land,” Senan says. The words come slow and rough, from deep in his chest. “After today.”
“We’ve got no way of knowing how far that’s gone,” Cal says. “Tommy’s had it in the works for a while now. He’s got investors in place, people on the council. If we get him locked up—or if we take him out—the whole damn thing could just keep on rolling along without him.”
They’re Mart’s words; Mart with a frying pan in his hand and a sidelong eye out for the squirrel. The full unreality of the day surges up on Cal. For a moment his breath jams in his chest.
“We need Tommy,” he says.
Senan is staring him down, arms folded. He says, “So what’s your fuckin’ plan?”
“I figure we’ve got two choices,” Cal says.
“I can take what we’ve got to some detective up in Dublin.
If we get lucky, I find someone who’ll work it, and we end up with Tommy in jail and all his investors spooked enough that they take their megafarm somewhere else.
If we get unlucky, the whole thing gets tossed straight in the garbage.
Then we’ve blown our shot, and we’ve got nothing. ”
Senan says, “What’s the other choice?”
“Or,” Cal says. “We can take what we’ve got to Tommy. Like we were planning to do before. Tell him either he goes to his investors and his councilors and comes up with some reason why they need to pull the plug on their bullshit, or else we go to the Guards.”
There’s a silence. It’s still afternoon, but the light at the windows has a contracted, sparse quality; the men’s faces are too dim for Cal to gauge. The kitchen is cold.
Bobby says, “But then he’ll get away with it. With Mart. And the young one.” His face has the raw disbelief of a kid slammed up against the impossible injustice of the world. P.J. is unconsciously shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Cal says. Other people have killed and got away with it, around here, but he doesn’t bring that up. To these guys, that was an entirely different thing. “He’ll walk away. But he won’t walk away with anyone’s land.”
No one says anything. P.J., troubled, glances around the table. Francie drinks. Bobby’s eyes have welled up; he blots them, furtively, with his sleeve.
“You said we’ve no proof,” Senan says. He’s looking down at his hands, clasped around his glass like he might crush it. “No video of him digging the hole or nothing.”
“Right,” Cal says. “Tommy doesn’t know that.”
“What if he calls our bluff? Tells us fuck you, go to the Guards if you want?”
“Then we do it,” Cal says, “and keep our fingers crossed. But Tommy’s gonna know the Guards are a crapshoot, just like we do. If we put it to him right, I don’t think he’ll want to take the risk.”
“Tommy’s a hard chaw,” Francie says. “He never backed down that I know of.”
Cal says, “I’ve taken down guys that could eat Tommy fucking Moynihan for breakfast.”
He watches them look at him and see, for the last time, a cop.
“If anyone can make Tommy back down,” Bobby says timidly, glancing around the table, “it’d be a detective; someone that’s had practice, like. And someone he hasn’t known from a baba. A man that’s never hadta do what Tommy tolt him, so Tommy won’t be thinking he can scare him out of it.”
P.J. is still gazing at Cal, but he’s seeing something else now, something new. Francie is unreadable, scratching the day’s stubble that darkens his bony face.
Senan’s head is down again. He says, to Cal, “I’m not leaving this to you. No harm to you; not saying you’d make a balls of it, or nothing. But this is our job.”
“All of our job,” Cal says. “We go in together.”
Senan looks up. He says, “And that’s what you reckon we oughta do. Not the Guards. That.”
“What I want to do is beat that shitheel into mush and dump what’s left in a bog,” Cal says, “but I gave Mart my word we’d use this. He didn’t want it wasted.” He hears the quick hard breaths, all around the table. “This is the only way I can think of that has a decent shot at not wasting it.”
There’s another silence, this one full of things shifting. Bobby’s eyes are welling up again.
“You can’t go ignoring a man’s last wish,” P.J. says, suddenly and firmly. “I’d say that’s some kinda sin.”
“Fuckin’ typical,” Francie says sourly. “He was always an awkward aul’ bollocks.”
“Right,” Senan says. He drains his bourbon and gets to his feet, the chair creaking under his weight as he pushes it back. “Let’s get a move on, so.”