Jamaica Plain (9780738736396) (13 page)

• •
  matchbook containing sealed condom
  
• •
  multiblade pocket knife with tools
  
• •
  2 keys on a Ford key fob
  

He picked up the keys and examined the leather fob. The Ford symbol was a bright metal disc hinged at one end. He lifted it, then checked the fob for hidden compartments. Nothing. He held them up for Kincaid to see. “The car he was stopped in?”

“Yes. It's a clunker. Routine traffic stop. Name check flagged him up.”

“Impounded?”

“Impounded and searched. Nothing of interest.”

Grant nodded and put the keys down. Standard procedure again. If a traffic stop results in an arrest, the police have the right to search any vehicle the prisoner was using or had control over at the time of his arrest. At least that's what they did back in the UK. He had no doubt the same applied here. Also, if the police impounded a vehicle, they had to list anything in it to rebut any claims of missing property when it was returned. Sullivan's Ford wasn't getting returned. Next item.

• •
  3 keys and an imitation four-leaf clover on a rabbit's foot key ring
  

Grant examined the rabbit's foot. It was a standard key ring type, furry pad enclosed at one end by a metal band attached to the short chain and key ring. He tried unscrewing the band. It was solid. He held it up to his ear and shook it. There was nothing loose inside. The four-leaf clover was green-painted metal. The keys were traditional Yale types, two large and one small, maybe a padlock. He held these up for Kincaid. “House?”

“Yes. Front and back doors. Don't know about the small one.”

“Searched?”

“Did you ever miss a chance to search a crook's house?”

Same procedure applied. Police had the right to search any premises where the prisoner lived and any premises the prisoner had control over at the time of his arrest back in the UK. Same over here. Kincaid qualified that. “Cursory search. Since he was being held for you, we didn't have probable cause to go fishing for other cases. Now he's dead, we'll do a thorough search. Just have to wait until I'm back.”

Grant dangled the rabbit's foot. “Not exactly lucky, was it?”

“Not for the rabbit either.”

Grant put the keys down. That was the last of the property. He left it lined up on the desk and ran his eyes over it a couple of times. He checked the list to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He randomly touched various items as if the contact would kick-start a new chain of thought. It didn't.

He leaned back in his chair. The movement would have normally translated into pushing the chair away from the table, but it was fastened to the floor. He laid both hands flat on the table. What had he learned? Not much. Sullivan loved his mother, had a beautiful girlfriend, and practiced safe sex. He drove a clunky old Ford and lived alone. Not much to go on.

“You managed to make any inquiries yet?”

Kincaid leaned back too. “Checked the local Irish bars, but nobody talks to cops in an Irish bar.”

Grant snorted a laugh. “Tell me about it. You want to try being English in an Irish bar.”

“Or being English in the BPD.”

“The debrief. Yeah. I felt real welcome.”

“Like a fart in a space suit.”

Grant started to put the property back into the bag. “Well, thanks for this anyway.”

Kincaid looked to be considering something. He watched Grant repack the bag and zip it shut. It would need a fresh seal and the number recording on the custody record. “You've got one thing over on other Englishmen.”

“What's that?”

“You're a celebrity. The Resurrection Man. You've noticed it already.”

Grant remembered the stares he'd got on the way to the station. The requests for autographs and the Crocodile Dundee references. Being on TV was a gift and a curse. “So?”

“So, maybe they'll talk to you where they wouldn't talk to us.”

“You asking for my help?”

“I'm saying, I've got three days of fucking about with crowd control. You've got three days before I'm back and you're out. Why not make the most of it?”

They stood up in unison. Grant hefted the bag in one hand.

Keep out of trouble. Don't get involved.

Too late. He was already involved. Keeping out of trouble was the only thing to do now. With unofficial backing from Kincaid and a little help from Miller, he thought that should be easy enough to do.

He was wrong.

nineteen

It was the third
bar
, after Flanagan's and Costello's, before Grant started to make some headway. O'Neill's Traditional was hidden away off South Street at the junction of Child and Lee. It was small but perfectly formed, an independent among giants. The surrounding streets were mainly residential, with clapboard structures and wooden porches. American flags hung from every porch. Stickers in the windows proclaimed support for the troops overseas. It was surprising to find a bar in the middle of all this domesticity, but somebody must have got planning permission. It reminded Grant of home. Every housing estate had a parade of shops and a local pub. The only thing missing here was a fish and chip shop.

From the moment Grant stepped through the door, he had a good feeling about the place. The red brick two-story building had the solid feel of somewhere that had been there for decades. The green-painted window frames and shutters echoed the rest of Jamaica Plain, but the lighting inside was brighter. The walls had been plastered and painted a neutral cream, adorned with photos of JP in its youth. Faded sepia prints of old Boston reminded Grant of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe's aged photos of Whitby and its fishing port. Green-shaded wall lamps lit the booths along one side. Chain-hung globe lights brightened the rest of the room. A mahogany bar ran the length of the room opposite the booths. O'Neill's was traditional by name and traditional by nature.

It also seemed to be family friendly, with a children's area at the rear that looked out of place in an Irish bar. No doubt part of the reason it survived in the middle of the residential area. The old man polishing the brasses behind the bar looked a touch less friendly. He stopped what he was doing when Grant came through the door. The two other people in the room, two customers sitting at the bar, stopped drinking and looked at the intruder. The good feeling Grant had when he opened the door evaporated. This had that Anglo-Irish vibe already, and he hadn't even spoken yet.

The door flapped shut behind him. He stood for a moment, soaking up the silence. There was no music. Probably another side effect of being in the middle of a bunch of family houses. Grant thought about the scene in
An American Werewolf in London
where the travelers went into the Slaughtered Lamb for a drink. A darts player thunked an arrow into the wall, then turned to the intruders. “You made me miss.” Grant felt like an English werewolf in Boston.

Nobody was playing darts.

Nobody was doing anything.

Except watching the stranger from across the pond.

Grant walked across the stripped and polished floorboards towards the bar. His footsteps sounded loud in the silence. The floor creaked. All it needed was a pair of spurs jingling with each step and you'd have the clichéd Western entrance of
The Man with No Name
. The bartender slapped the towel he'd been using over his shoulder and waited until Grant stopped in front of him. Nobody spoke. An old grandfather clock ticked on the far wall. One of the customers put his glass down with a sharp clink.

The bartender's tone was neutral. “Well, now. Look at this. I never thought I'd see the likes of you in here.”

Grant sensed trouble. He just hadn't expected it to start so soon. “Is that the likes of me being English or the likes of me being a cop?”

“Oh, we don't mind the po-lice. And I can just about stomach the English.”

“What then?”

The bartender just looked at him. The two customers didn't hide their stares. Grant thought he must have grown two heads, but he was becoming immune to the Boston hospitality, even among the BPD. The bartender's frown lines deepened. Then he jerked his head towards a wall-mounted TV behind the bar. The news channel was replaying Grant's walk across the dusty parking lot of Parkway Auto Repair. The bartender broke into a smile, and his entire face lit up. The frown lines transformed themselves into laugh lines. “The Resurrection Man. In my bar.”

He held out a hand. “Gerry O'Neill. At your service.”

Grant shook the hand. “Jim Grant. Pint of Tetley's, please.”

“Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I'm just a small business here. Imported beers I can't afford. But I'll give you the nearest we've got.”

O'Neill pulled a pint of something that was nowhere near Tetley's. Grant didn't complain. The good feeling returned. If there was one place in JP he was going to get answers, he reckoned this was it. The two drinkers began talking again, and the clink of glasses sounded like music to Grant's ears. He settled onto a barstool and started slowly. He didn't want to scare O'Neill off.

“They give us Micks
a bad name, those Sullivan boys.”

An hour later they'd got past the preliminaries, and O'Neill was moving into the territory Grant was steering him towards. He was on his second pint of piss, a poor excuse for beer, but he wasn't complaining. The conversation was more than making up for the lack of quality. He reckoned if he opened a Yorkshire bar with a fish and chip restaurant he'd be minted.

The TV on the wall had cycled through all today's news and was back at the beginning again. The Resurrection Man's solitary walk into the jaws of death. Twenty-four-hour news was just as bad in the UK, filling space with tripe and reruns. The orange jacket stood out on the badly tuned set. The color needed turning down to match the volume.

“Both of them? I thought Sean was the good brother.”

“Only compared to Freddy. Next to him, Whitey Bulger would look like the good brother.”

“As bad as that?”

“Maybe not. I'm Irish. And prone to exaggeration.”

“I'm a cop. I need you to dial down the exaggeration, if you don't mind.”

“Not at all. Not at all.”

“So, what was Freddy up to?”

“What wasn't he up to? That boy had a bad case of the couldn't-give-a-shit-and-fuck-everyone-else-itis.”

“Pretty much like he was back home.”

“Turds don't change. They just get more flies around them.”

“What kind of flies was he hanging with lately?”

O'Neill cleaned the bar even though it was already clean. “A bad crew. Got a liking for guns and explosives. Was always disturbing the neighbors around the back of Delaney's place on Jamaica Pond. Shoot a gun in the woods and you'll upset the wildlife. Shoot at a wedge of plastic explosive and you'll wake the dead. Destructive for no good reason.”

“That only works in the movies. Shooting at sticks of dynamite. Plastic needs a detonator.”

“Whatever. He used to make a lot of noise—that much I know. He surely liked blowing things up.”

“Touch of poetic justice there, then.”

“Poetic?”

Grant mimicked an explosion with his arms. “Kaboom.”

O'Neill moved onto polishing the brasses. He laughed at the pantomime. “Somebody should have told him you play with fire, you might get burned. That boy had no fear.”

“He was pretty scared when I spoke to him. Something got him spooked. He reckoned he was dead meat for talking out of school.”

“Did he talk out of school?”

“Doesn't matter. Whoever it was couldn't take that risk.”

Grant took a sip of beer. The clock ticked quietly. Glasses clinked further along the bar. The place was almost empty. He wondered briefly how it managed to stay open. Maybe O'Neill did family barbecues at the weekend. He pressed on. “You think he could have been smuggling guns and stuff?”

“Gunrunning? That went out with ponchos and prohibition.”

“Drugs?”

“No. Last I heard, he'd moved into people trafficking.”

“Smuggling? Like across the border?”

“Mexico? No. He was supplying the escort agencies with foreign pussy—East European, Russian, and the like—for the niche market.”

“He was pimping?”

“No. Just importing.”

Grant put his glass down with a bang. A shiver ran down his spine. The clock continued ticking, but he didn't hear it. He hadn't been able to get his mind away from smuggling guns or drugs. He'd never considered prostitution. Sullivan had whined about only being the importer. That this shit wasn't his fault. What kind of shit could smuggling prostitutes get you into?

“Importing for where?”

“Here and there. Check the Internet. There's dozens of websites for Boston escorts. They cater for all tastes. Eastern Europeans are very popular. Some pretty exclusive places.”

Grant looked at the elderly bar owner and gave him a quizzical smile. “I wouldn't have put you down as a silver surfer.”

“The Internet? It's the future. I'm not dead from the neck down, you know.”

“No wonder you can't afford to import Tetley's.”

“Window shopping doesn't cost. The wife holds the purse strings. If you want to check out the quality, nip over to the Gentlemen's Club off the Arborway at Jamaica Pond.”

“What's that?”

“Strip club. Pole dancers. Lap dancers, if you like. It's not one of the more exclusive clubs. Residential association was up in arms about him getting a permit. Delaney must have greased some palms down at city hall. Had to keep the exterior plain so it blends.”

Grant stared into his beer. For the second time in five minutes, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Since he'd arrived in Boston, sex and violence had mingled with his daily routine. It had been varied and destructive. The sex had been great. The violence conclusive. Some of it connected. Most of it not. Voices replayed snatches of conversation in his mind.

Don't let Mr. Delaney hear you say that. Concrete shoes aren't out of fashion just yet.

The bartender whom Grant had mistaken for the owner at Flanagan's Bar.

He stamps car number plates.

In prison? That's what they do over here, isn't it? Like sewing mailbags.

Naw. At Delaney's over in West Roxbury. He don't do prison. He's the good brother.

Freddy Sullivan talking about his brother, Sean, just before the interview turned nasty. Grant hadn't put the name together when he'd walked the dusty parking lot at Parkway Auto Repair, apparently owned by someone called Delaney. And now it turned out Sullivan had been importing women for the Gentlemen's Club, owned by the one and only Mr. Delaney.

“They have a dress code?”

O'Neill stopped polishing. He appeared to sense a change in his famous customer. The frown lines returned. The twinkle in his eye was subdued.

“You don't need a suit and tie or anything. Clean and tidy will do it. No swastika tattoos or bones through your nose. They do frisk you for guns.”

“I hate guns.”

“Then you should be okay as long as you've got the entrance fee.”

“Do I need to start saving?”

“No. They want customers inside. That's when they start ripping you off.”

Grant downed the last of his beer and let out a satisfied sigh. He slid off the barstool and stood up. His legs ached, and he suddenly felt the strain on his body after two days of sex and fighting. O'Neill gave him the check.

“You going in undercover?”

Grant paid and nodded to the news reruns on TV. “I don't think that's an option. Do you?”

“Maybe you'll get a discount.”

They shook hands like old friends. Grant thanked him for his help. O'Neill held onto Grant's hand. “Don't go getting into trouble now, will you?”

Grant patted the bartender's hand and let go. “I'm not looking for trouble. I just want to check out the show.”

He nodded, then walked out the door, leaving Gerry O'Neill with the same two customers who'd been there when Grant arrived. The clock ticked. The bar fell silent.