The fence made the lot a fine and private place in the middle of which a police cruiser was now sitting with its engine running, its front doors open, and its emergency lights whipping and urgently lurid glow across the handful of parked vehicles. The car was empty, except for two discarded police caps that lay on the back seat. The cruiser explained why the pair of young men had appeared with their plaid coats buttoned to their throats. It was not that police uniforms would have scared anyone in the Parish, which had Boston’s Irish cops well under control, but inevitably the appearance of two policemen would have caused a stir and the two men had wanted to take me quietly. Besides the police cruiser there were two trucks parked in the lot, a red Lincoln Continental and a black Mercedes sports car that must have belonged to Tommy the Turd for it had a special Congressional license plates.
I cut right, going past the Mercedes toward the gap in the fence which would lead me toward East Broadway. There was a could wind and a light rain in the darkening air, making me glad that I was wearing my thick yellow oilskin. I heard the Parish side door bang open behind me and felt the adrenalin warm my veins. “Shanahan!” someone shouted.
I turned, but kept walking backward.
“Freeze there!” The two youngsters were nervous, but were determined to play the scene tough. They fumbled under their tight buttoned plaid coats for their pistols.
They were still trying to extricate their guns when Seamus came out of the Parish door. The two policemen, embarrassed by the unwanted witness, straightened up. I had started walking toward them, feigning innocence. “You wanted me, boys?”
“Don’t mind me, lads,” Seamus sauntered down the steps.
The cops tried to lose Seamus. “We just wanted a word with Mr. Shanahan. Something private.”
“Private, is it? But Paulie and I are old friends. We go way back, lads. There’s no secrets between us, are there, Paulie?”
“You can talk in front of Seamus,” I said, “so what is it? A parking violation? Or a donation for the police orphanage?” I was six paces in front of them and Seamus was three paces behind, and the two cops were both sweating despite the chill wind, and no wonder, for Seamus had a certain reputation among the Irish. “So what do you want of me?” I asked them, and heard the Ulster lilt in my voice. I had caught the accent when I lived there, and at moments of stress it came back. Behind me the police car’s lights whirled in the gloom.
“It’s nothing.” One of the two cops had decided to back out of the confrontation. He held his hands palm outward toward me. “Nothing at all. Forget it.”
“You’re disappointing me, boys.” I took a step closer. Seamus jerked his head to his left, telling me he would take that man, and I took another pace forward when suddenly the Parish side door banged open again and an agitated Michael Herlihy appeared on the top step. “Stop it! Now! You hear me? John Doyle? O’Connor? You back off, now, both of you!” Herlihy’s voice was sharp as ice. He must have been close by, perhaps in the back room of Tully’s Tavern that he used as a South Boston office, when Marty Doyle had told him of my appearance in the land of the living. Herlihy, hearing that Patrick was having me beaten up by the Parish’s tame police, saw the small matter of five million dollars being complicated. Michael Herlihy wanted to find out just what attitude I was taking to the missing gold before he saw me tenderized, and so he had come full pelt out of his lair to head off the trouble. “Whatever you were doing,” he ordered the two policemen, “stop it!”
“Just what were you doing?” I asked the relieved policemen.
“Nothing, Mr. Shanahan, nothing. We were just leaving! It was all a mistake.”
They moved to walk past me toward their car, but I put out a hand to stop them. “Hadn’t you heard, boys? The Parish has got valet parking these days. Isn’t that right, Seamus?”
“Right enough, Paulie.”
The two policemen dared not move for Seamus radiated a capacity for mind-numbing violence and was standing hard behind them. He was not restraining the policemen, but neither cop dared move a muscle as I climbed into their squad car, took off the parking brake and shifted it into reverse. I smiled through the windscreen, then rammed my foot on to the accelerator. The police car shot backward, smack into the brick side wall of the neighboring hardware store. “Sorry, boys!” I shouted. “I’m more used to boats than I am to cars!”
Seamus was laughing. Herlihy, whose office pallor had turned even whiter than usual, glared but did not try to stop me, while the two police officers just stood like whipped children. I pulled forward, hearing the tinkle of broken brake lights falling to the ground, then rammed the accelerator again, this time aiming the car at Tommy the Turd’s Mercedes. Herlihy flinched when he saw what I was doing, then closed his eyes as I rammed the police cruiser hard into the flank of the sleek black sports car. There was a horrible mangling noise. “It’s been so long since I’ve driven a car, boys!” I shouted. “But I’ll get it right, don’t you worry!”
A dozen men had come out of the Parish, attracted by the squeal and crash of tortured metal. Herlihy, tight with fury, turned and ordered them back inside. Seamus’s lawyer ignored the order and stood laughing while Tommy the Turd and his Waspy aide were wondering if the world had slipped gears. Patrick McPhee, knowing he had started this madness with his ill-judged summons for police help, fled in panic from Michael’s anger.
“Here goes!” I shouted. “I’ll get it right this time!” I shifted into reverse again, slammed my foot on the accelerator, and crashed the car back sickeningly hard into the brick wall. My head whiplashed on to the grille that protected the front seat occupants from whatever prisoners they had in the back seat. I killed the engine and climbed out, to see that the boot lid was spectacularly buckled. The cruiser also had a crumpled bumper and had lost a headlight and the best part of a wheel arch, while the expensive body panels of the Congressman’s Mercedes were horribly dented and gouged. “Replace it with an American car, Congressman,” I called to him, “a man like you shouldn’t be driving a European car, should you now?”
Tommy the Turd’s aide hurried the Congressman back into the Parish as the two policemen stalked past me. “Fuck you, Shanahan,” one of them muttered, then they pulled off their plaid hunting coats, climbed into their wrecked cruiser and, with a foul scraping sound, drove out of the lot.
Seamus applauded me. Michael Herlihy, looking more than ever like a beardless Lenin, spat at me. “That wasn’t clever, Paul,” he said.
“It wasn’t meant to be clever, Michael, just a scrap of fun. Did you never have fun, Michael?” I looked at Seamus. “He was always the class nerd, Seamus. Altar boy, chalkboard monitor, nuns’ favorite. Michael’s idea of a good time is to run in the Boston marathon, or have you even given up that small pleasure, Michael?”
Herlihy picked his way through the puddles of the parking lot until he was standing close beside me. “Where have you been these last few weeks, Shanahan?” He had waved Seamus aside, wanting to speak privately with me.
“I’ve been chatting to the CIA, Michael.” I smiled seraphically.
“You’ve done what?”
“You know I spilled the beans. Was it the FBI or the cops that talked to you?” I smiled down into his thin, bloodless face. “I got worried that the Arabs weren’t sending the Stingers to Ireland, but planned to use them here. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted that to happen, Michael, it would have been bad for the movement’s image, wouldn’t it now? So I played the patriot game.”