Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

When his lads phoned Dan and told him that I was heading for Dublin, Dan said he wouldn’t allow me to go until he spoke to me in the flesh. I told him I’d miss my plane, so Dan told the DHS that he needed a background check of every passenger on the Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.

“That’ll hold the bastards up for an hour or so,” Dan said while he drove in from an “important conference,” which in fact was almost certainly a golf course in Westchester.

He arrived about thirty minutes later in navy slacks, white shirt, and red Kangol beret. I hadn’t seen him in person for a long time. He was a nice guy, going places with the bureau. An administrator, not a field man. He wouldn’t be in witness protection forever. Although twelve years could seem like it. Tall, bald, but good-looking and very affable. I liked him. He sat down at my table and ordered a lime juice for himself and another beer for me. The agents got up and slipped into the background.

Dan had known me since ’93, when the FBI had offered me that first deal to rat out Darkey’s organization. He’d helped me in ’97 when the bureau and MI6 had had me infiltrate an IRA splinter group in Massachusetts and he’d cleaned up that ugly situation last year when Bridget had sent her men to Los Angeles. We’d been through a lot together and we shook hands with genuine affection.

“Michael, first thing I have to say is I’m sorry I didn’t meet you off the plane, I thought we’d have a couple of days and I was right in the middle of, well, to be honest, I was right in the middle of a foursome at the country club.”

“Aye. That’s ok. Makes me happy to see that you’re golfing in the middle of a workday. That’s what our taxpayers’ money goes on.”

“Since when did you ever pay taxes?” he asked.

“Sales tax.”

“Ok, so what’s this I hear about you wanting to fly to Dublin?”

“I talked to Bridget. Her daughter’s gone missing and she wants my help to find her. She’s willing to wipe the slate clean.”

Dan smiled.

“It’s a trap, don’t you see that?” he said without inflection.

“Does she have a daughter?” I asked.

“She does.”

“Is it Darkey’s kid?”

“It is,” he said flatly.

“How come I never knew about this?”

Dan looked embarrassed.

“Why would you need to know? Bridget never took the stand, even as a witness, so it never came out in court. Furthermore, it was information we did not wish to share with you because we didn’t think it was important,” Dan said. It was an answer filled with weasel words.

“You didn’t want me to know she was pregnant when I killed her fiancé and rolled up her fiancé’s gang; you thought it might throw me a bit, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t relevant, Michael, it still isn’t,” Dan insisted.

“It’s relevant. While I was waiting for you, I called up the police in Belfast. Bridget did indeed file a missing persons report three days ago.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It could still be a setup. The kid could be in the room with her right now,” Dan said.

“I know.”

“Michael, come on, we’ll go to Midtown, get you in a nice hotel, maybe the Plaza. Take it easy for a few days and then we’ll send you somewhere new.”

“Dan, that’s precisely it. I’m tired of this. Tired of running. Tired of moving to new cities. I want to check this out, if there’s any possibility that this could be real I want to investigate.”

“Big mistake,” Dan said, shaking his head.

“I don’t think so.”

Dan sighed. “Let me remind you who we’re talking about here,” he said. “After you helped put the rest of Darkey’s crew behind bars, Bridget was off the scene for a while. She wasn’t a natural successor to Darkey White. There were at least two other candidates Duffy could have put in charge of Upper Manhattan and Riverdale. He wasn’t a sentimentalist. He didn’t owe her a goddamn thing. Bridget made her own way to the top. Murdered her way up. She started with next to nothing. Not even Darkey’s name, remember. She got a few loyal men, she took out the opposition without a second-”

I didn’t want to hear this right now.

“I read the papers,” I interrupted.

“James Hanratty, shot on the way back from his sister’s wedding. Pat Kavanagh, shot in front of his wife and two kids. Miles Nagobaleen, pushed in front of a subway train. This isn’t the girl you used to know, Michael. She’s ruthless. When Duffy died someone ordered the murder of Duffy’s brother the very same night, so he was out of the picture too. We suspect she’s ordered at least three hits in the last year, not counting the ones on you. I mean, come on, Michael. Why do you think the Boston mob stays out of New York? They’re scared of her. And they’re right to be.”

“She’s a killer,” I said, trying to sound blasé.

“No, Michael, more than that. She’s the general behind the killers.”

“She’s also a mother,” I said.

Dan took a sip of my beer, put the bottle back on the table, shook his head. His eyes were sad, he knew he wasn’t going to convince me.

“We can’t look after you outside United States jurisdiction,” he said.

“Dan, I’m not that bad at looking after myself, as you well know.”

“Michael, if you go to Ireland, there’s nothing I can do to protect you.”

“I realize that.”

“If we lose you, it’ll be a black eye for the whole program, a huge setback. It’ll discourage other potential informants. It won’t be good for anyone.”

“Least of all me.”

“Least of all you, exactly.”

Dan looked at me for a long time. He leaned back with a big exaggerated sigh.

“But you’re set on going, aren’t you?” he said finally.

I tapped the passport on the table.

“Don’t worry, Dan, they won’t harm me now I’m an American citizen,” I said.

Dan shook his head, for him this was not an occasion for levity.

“There’s nothing I can say?” he said sadly.

“No.”

Dan motioned for one of the agents to come over. He told him something I couldn’t catch and the agent sloped off.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“I’m going to get some paperwork faxed over. I’ll want you to sign a release ending your relationship with the WPP. If you’re killed by Bridget Callaghan or one of her employees, or meet with any kind of accident while you’re there, I want us off the hook. I’ll want us to be able to say that you did this strictly against my advice and that you were no longer a member of the WPP.”

I nodded. He was right. There was no point kicking up a stink about it. He ordered two more Sam Adams, getting one for himself this time. We clinked the bottles together.

“Ok, so tell me everything you know about the daughter,” I asked.

“Her name is Siobhan, it’s spelled with a b, pronounced Shavawn, but there’s a b in there somewhere.”

“Christ, I’m Irish, I know how to spell Siobhan.”

“Ok, we believe it’s Darkey’s kid. I think she must be about eleven or twelve. She went to private school in Manhattan. A good student. Pretty girl, takes after her mother, not Darkey, thank God. Only child, but she has a lot of cousins… And, uhh, well, I’m afraid that’s about all I know.”

“You think Bridget is the type of person to use her daughter in a ploy to get me?”

“I don’t, frankly, but nothing would surprise me.”

“How often does Bridget go to Belfast?”

“I have no idea. I do have other cases, you know. I heard something about a home in Donegal, wherever that is.”

“It’s in the west. But that would make sense. Ok. That’s fine.”