Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“I’ll have to check it out,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

“Oh, it’s a family rule, if you live in this house, you have to do something in water,” Gerry insisted.

“Even made me boogie board and I hate the fucking stuff,”

Touched said.

I turned to Kit.

“Where did Jackie learn to surf? He’s a goddamn Mick. We don’t surf. Charley don’t surf. Micks don’t surf. That’s it.”

“Oh no, he’s from Sligo, that’s a big undiscovered surfing mecca. Amazing breaks out there, completely unspoiled. He’s very good,” she said with admiration.

Many a good pejorative Yeats line about the eejits from Sligo but Sean wouldn’t know them.

“So how come you’re not going out there with him?” I said, trying to keep the sneer out of my voice.

“Oh, it’s too gnarly at the moment, I need the really low tide. But Jackie’s good enough to surf it right now.”

Something remarkably like jealousy was growing in my breast and Gerry mercifully changed the subject to the island itself.

“It’s all changed, Sean. Plum Island used to be very poor. Irish crab, lobster, and clam men eking out a desperate living on a bleak spit of sand south of the Merrimack River. Thoreau once called the dunes of PI the ‘most desolate walk in New England.’ And in the book Albion’s Seed… well, anyway, I’m growing prolix, but things are quite different now. Boston spreads her influence north and more people have begun commuting into the city using the highway or Route 1.”

“The real boom is going to start once the light rail hub’s finished in Newburyport, the train taking you to North Station in downtown Boston in less than an hour,” Sonia added.

“Oh yes, Sean, I could see all this a couple of years ago when we moved. What was once an unwholesome spot for poor crabbers and a couple of summer houses is now valuable real estate. Once we get water and sewage lines here it’s going to be paradise itself.”

When the meal was over, we were going to eat a rhubarb tart that Kit had made early this morning, refrigerated, and then immediately popped in the oven the moment we’d come back. Bank robber, wannabe revolutionary, goth girl, and rhubarb tart maker-obviously a Renaissance woman.

She went to get it and a brief moment later there was a scream from the kitchen. She came back into the dining room with a furious expression on her face.

“Daddy, did you eat all the ice cream? You know we have to have it with vanilla ice cream because it’s the perfect combination. You know I put that ice cream to one side, because I was saving it,” she said furiously.

“I took it,” Touched lied, saving Gerry’s bacon. “Sorry about that, Kit.”

“Well, we can’t not have ice cream,” she said, huffing.

“I’ll go to White Farms and get some more,” Touched said.

Kit shook her head.

“No, they don’t do good vanilla. I’ll have to go to Grandma’s in Newburyport. Anyone come with me?”

“I’ll go,” I said, seizing the opportunity.

She ran upstairs to get her car keys and her sunglasses. Touched led me out the back onto the porch. He reached in his pocket and brought out a huge wad of twenty-dollar bills and gave it to me.

“Your cut. Five grand,” Touched said.

“For me?” I asked.

“For you, me old mucker. A fifth to my laundryman, five percent to the general fund, and the rest between the four of us. Equal shares, too, you, me, Kit, and Seamus, no finder’s fee for me or anything,” Touched said without a trace of a lie in that cold, unemotional face.

“Cheers, mate,” I said happily, knowing now that he must have pocketed at least twenty thousand for himself.

“Nay probs, Sean boy, now don’t go crazy, flashing it about. Rainy day and all that,” Touched said in what was about as close to a speech on fiscal prudence as I was likely to get. “Anyway, that should keep you in eggs. Ok, I have things to do, wee thing to scout tonight, down at the National Guard, shit, shouldn’t have said that. Wipe that from your mind. It’s the next wee op we might be going on, don’t worry about it.

Anyway, I’ll be gone when you get back. You just look after yourself, don’t let that young lady talk you into risking your life on a bloody tree in the middle of the bloody ocean.”

“I won’t.”

Kit appeared, grabbed me.

“We’ve got to get the ice cream before the pie cools,” Kit said.

She led me to the four-car garage and got in a pink Volkswagen Bug that had Greenpeace and WWF stickers on the back windshield. Hardly the vehicle of a committed terrorist. Maybe the signs of complexity in her character.

We drove into Newburyport and I let Kit chat about surfing and music. She wanted to talk about anything, just not what had happened that day, which was fine by me. She blabbed away and I stole looks at her and was a good listener. As we pulled into State Street she scanned for parking and I spotted the All Things Brit store.

“Kit, have you ever tried clotted cream? It’s fantastic, it would go really well on the rhubarb tart. It’s an English thing. I’ll bet we could get some at that British food store.”

“But I was going to get ice cream.”

“We can get both. It’ll be a real treat. Your da will love it and if you want to be really decadent, you can even put it on the ice cream.”

Kit nodded and luckily found a parking spot right in front of All Things Brit, which was only a block from the ice-cream store.

“I’ll check out this cream of yours, and then we’ll have to dash to Grandma’s. I mean, look, the line is out into the street.”

All Things Brit was just closing down for the night. The woman who ran it was wearing a frumpy orange and brown floral dress and a huge grin.

“I’m just closing up, can I help you darlings at all?” she asked happily.

“Yes, we’d like some clotted cream, please,” Kit said.

“Certainly, my dear, and can I just say that you’re the prettiest girl we’ve had in here all day,” Samantha said.

I rolled my eyes behind Kit’s head. Samantha’s face was transparent with delight.

“We have a full selection in the refrigerator by the door,” Samantha said.

Kit walked over to look.

“Oooh, this does look good, we’ll get have to get some for everyone,” Kit said.

“Kit, I know which ones to get, I’ll pick them out, you run and get on line for the ice cream and I’ll meet you up there,” I said.

“You don’t mind paying?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m flush at the moment.” Kit smiled and dashed outside to join the line at Grandma’s.

There were no other customers in the shop but someone could come in at any minute. I knew I would have to speak fast.

“I’m in,” I said.

“To the cell?”

I nodded.

“Congratulations,” she said with a condescending grin that I didn’t like at all.

“It’s as I’ve said, Samantha, it’s a bit of a shambles. I think they’re falling apart. They’ve had three defections altogether. That Mike guy, someone called O’Neill, and a kid called Jamie. They’ve been decimated by the assassination attempt on Gerry. Don’t think the IRA isn’t smart, because they are. The psychological effect of that hit has paid dividends. They’re running. They’re running scared and I don’t think they’re going to do anything major at all. They’re all talk.”

“So who’s left in the group?”

“The total group is just Sonia and Gerry, Touched, Jackie, Kit, Seamus, and me. That’s it. Sonia’s no player, though, and Kit is just a wee girl and Seamus has been knocking back two bottles of vodka a day since the hit in Revere. So I think this whole goddamn mission has been a waste of time. Everyone has basically got the IRA’s message and they’re not going to do anything. I think you can let me go back to Chicago with a handshake for a job well done.”