The Long Game (18 page)

“I’m supposed to be meeting someone,” I told
her. “So I think I’ll sit at the bar if that’s all right?” I
pointed in the direction of the seat I intended to occupy.

She nodded. “Right, of course. Help yerself
to it.” She handed me a thick menu. “You can have a look at this
while you’re waiting.”

I thanked her and made my way to the far side
of the bar where fewer people sat and where I would have a clear
view of the door. I set the menu aside and ordered a soda, though
what I really wanted was a pint to steady my nerves. I planted my
elbows on the bar and pressed my mouth and nose into my clasped
hands, watching the door over the top of my knuckles. Ignoring the
soda that had been placed in front of me, my feet toyed with the
bottom rung of the barstool, my eyes trained on the doors. My
nerves jumped each time they swung open, only settling again when
it wasn’t Tommy who walked through them.

As I began to wonder if the man had changed
his mind, the doors swung again, and Tommy Costello appeared. His
black overcoat hung open, revealing an expensive charcoal suit and
a lavender silk tie that reminded me of Maggie’s herb garden. I
watched as Tommy chatted with the pretty brunette, who laughed when
he patted her belly. Still smiling, Tommy glanced up, but as he met
my gaze, his expression changed. He set his mouth in a hard line,
and his eyes narrowed. Tommy turned his attention back to the
hostess and smiled again, but it was strained this time. He said
something, she nodded, and then he made his way down the broad side
of the bar. I lifted my drink to take a sip as he slid into the
seat next to me and laid his soft leather briefcase on top of the
stool on his other side.

“Tommy!” The bartender, a hulking man with a
thick brogue, flung a dirty towel over his shoulder and lumbered
toward us. He slapped his hand on the bar, his broad palm thumping
on the careworn wood. The sound made me jump—my nerves were still a
little raw, apparently—and I sputtered as the carbonated liquid
burned my windpipe.

The bartender chuckled. “Sorry, lad.” He
reached his long arm around my shoulder to clap me on the back.
“Didn’t mean to startle yeh. I haven’t seen this fella in a
donkey’s year.”

I nodded and cleared my throat a few times. I
held up a hand to indicate I was all right, and the man could quit
patting me now before he left a bruise.

“Been pretty busy, Ian,” Tommy offered by way
of explanation. He smiled, but it was the same tense and humorless
smile he’d given the hostess.

“Sure, sure.” Ian nodded, accepting the weak
excuse. “What’ll it be then?” he asked but immediately supplied the
answer himself. “A pint of plain. Done.” He tapped the bar to
punctuate the decision and left us to fetch the drink.

“It’s a nice place, isn’t it?” Tommy said
without turning to look at me. I was surprised by the small talk
but nodded in agreement. “You know,” Tommy continued, “I first came
in here because of Maggie.”

Confused, I turned my head to look at him.
“Maggie?”

Tommy nodded. “She told me this old story
about Tír na nÓg a long time ago. She called it an island off the
edge of the map where the fairies live and said you can only get
there if you’re—”

“Invited by them,” I finished for him. “Yeah,
that was my favorite bedtime story when I was little. Oisín was
invited there by ‘Niamh of the Golden Hair,’” I said in my mam’s
breathy lilt.

Tommy smiled to himself. “That’s the one,” he
said. “She talked about the place as if she’d grown up there. Your
mother was quite the storyteller.”

“Still is.”

Tommy chuckled, but then his expression
turned dark. “I have to say, I’m pretty surprised Maggie let you
come up here and do this.”

“She couldn’t have stopped me if she wanted
to,” I said.

Tommy nodded but said nothing. Ian returned,
carrying a pint of the same thick, dark liquid the old man had been
drinking and set it down in front of Tommy. “Can I get you lads
anything else?” We shook our heads, and he shrugged. “I’ll leave
you to it then.”

Tommy thanked him and took a large swig of
the stout. Ian hesitated a moment. He looked first at Tommy, then
at me before shrugging again and moving back to the other side of
the bar where a new group had just sat down.

I waited for a moment before I spoke again.
“Can I ask you something?” There was no response from Tommy, so I
continued. “What did Spencer say when you told her about me?”

Tommy’s brow knitted, and his jaw tightened.
“I didn’t.”

It wasn’t what I’d expected, and I gaped at
him in open-mouthed shock.

“I didn’t tell her for her sake, not yours,
so don’t get any ideas,” Tommy hastened to add. “If you try to
contact her again, it’ll be the first thing I do.”

“For her sake or yours?” I asked. “Telling
her who I am would raise a few questions about who you are.”

“She knows who I am,” he said and took
another swig of his drink.

“She doesn’t know where you came from.”

“Would you have preferred I told her?” Tommy
turned to look at me for the first time since he’d sat down.

“Maybe. She deserves to know the truth, but I
don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Enough.” Tommy dropped the pint back onto
the bar. The dark liquid sloshed but didn’t spill. “I’m not here
for your advice on how to deal with my daughter. I managed to
protect her for nineteen years before you showed up, and I’ll do it
long after you’re out of her life.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then why did you want to
meet me?”

“Because I want you—all of you—out of her
life now. For good,” Tommy said. “And I think there’s only one way
I’ll get what I want.” He shifted on his stool and reached into the
briefcase. When his hand reappeared, he was holding a battered old
book with a leather cord wrapped around its thick middle. “Here.”
He dropped the book on the bar between us, and it landed with a
dull thud. “Take it and get the fuck out of my city.”

Tommy’s abrupt demand stung more than I
would’ve expected. Despite the situation and despite what Tommy had
done to my da, I realized I actually respected the man. The idea
unsettled me a bit, but I tried not to show it as I put a hand on
the book to slide it my way. Tommy watched me, stone-faced.

“What’s the big deal about this thing
anyway?” I lifted it and turned it over in my hands. There were no
markings on the faded green cover, nothing impressive about the
binding or the outside edge of the yellowing pages.

“You mean you don’t even know what you came
all this way for?” Tommy scoffed. “So you’re just Michael’s errand
boy.”

I scowled at him. Truth was, though, he
wasn’t too far off. Pop had sent me to get his book back, but I
wasn’t even allowed to open the damn thing. I wasn’t good for more
than playing fetch, just like Judd had said. “He trusted me to get
something he’s been waiting on for twenty years. I think that makes
me a little more than an errand boy.”

Tommy considered this for a moment. “Open
it.”

My fingers hesitated over the leather cord. I
had my instructions, but then, I’m pretty sure Pop hadn’t intended
me to fall in love with Tommy’s daughter and get caught trying to
break into a safe either, so what was one more screw up? I hooked a
finger through the cord and undid the loose knot. I unwound the
cord and let it drop into my lap. The book fell open to a page
marked with a green ribbon. A list of company names ran down one
column of the ledger’s page, and dollar amounts—big ones—were
written in another. I scanned the page, frowning at the familiar
names. I’d seen them before, but where?

“They’re shell companies. Michael used them
to launder the money he and his sons bring in, along with the
percentage he takes from other clan members. A lot of them don’t
exist anymore, but there are a handful he still uses and a few more
that may still be operating under a different name. It only takes a
little paperwork to have a brand-new company.”

The list in Tommy’s notebook. Names with
asterisks, questions marks, lines slashed through them. He’d been
trying to follow the money. Trying to figure out how Pop’s
operation really worked. I flipped through a few more pages, found
more names—both for companies and individuals. This ledger was a
record of every shady transaction Pop had made for years before
Tommy stole it, and there was enough there to earn him and several
others a lot of prison time. No wonder he’d pursued Tommy for
twenty years. I snapped the book shut and wrapped the leather cord
around it again, then laid it on the bar.

I jutted out my chin and pushed it toward
him, not wanting to touch it again. “Why are you giving this to
me?”

“Like I said before, every
decision I make is to protect Spencer. If I thought there was
another way to keep her safe, I’d do it, but
Pop
isn’t going to stop coming after
me until he gets this book back, and I’m done running.” It was
obvious it annoyed Tommy to give in to blackmail. “But let me be
very clear. If you so much as think about my daughter again and I
catch wind of it, I will devote the rest of my life to ruining the
rest of yours. Understood?”

I nodded, believing him to be a man of his
word. I looked down at the ledger on the bar, thinking about what
all this meant. I had what I’d come for, but taking it back to Pop
meant betraying Spencer all over again. Tommy had taken this ledger
as protection for himself and his daughter. It was his only
bargaining chip to halt the wrath of Pop Sheedy.

“They’re going to come after you,” I said. I
hadn’t realized what the ledger really meant until that moment, but
now I was sure what I said was true.

“Probably,” Tommy said. He stared down into
the wide mouth of his glass.

“There’s nothing to stop Pop from killing you
for what you did to him.”

“Not a damn thing,” Tommy said.

I pushed the ledger to him with my
fingertips. “I can’t take it.”

Now it was Tommy’s turn to gape at me. “What
do you mean you ‘can’t take it’? You came all this way, tricked my
daughter into thinking she was in love with you, then tried to
break into my safe in the middle of a dinner party to get it. Now
I’m handing it to you, practically giftwrapped, and you ‘can’t take
it’?”

The bartender glanced our way, and I gave him
an easy smile. Nothing to see here, Ian. He watched us for a second
longer, then went back to wiping glasses with his grungy towel.

“I can’t take it,” I repeated, leaning a
little closer so I could speak in a quieter voice. “I may have
tricked her into thinking she’s in love with me, but I know I’m in
love with her. I can’t take this book because it’s the only thing
protecting you from Pop. Something tells me he wants more than just
that book. If you give it back to him, it won’t be the end. Only
the beginning.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you care what
happens to me?”

“Whatever Pop does to you, it’ll hurt her.
You forget, I know what it’s like not to have a father around. I’m
not going to let that happen to her.”

Tommy stared at me as if he couldn’t decide
whether to kick my ass or write me into his will. After a few
seconds, he slid the ledger back into the briefcase. “This doesn’t
mean I’m going to let you see Spencer,” he said, securing the brass
latch on the front flap of the case.

“I know. I can’t keep lying to her, and if I
tell her the truth, she wouldn’t want to see me anyway. That’s not
why I’m doing this.”

“Why are you doing this?”

I slid from the barstool. “I told you.
Whatever happens to you hurts Spencer. I’m not going to be a part
of that. No matter what you did to my da.”

He frowned skeptically. “And that’s it.
That’s all you’re after?”

“Well, there is something I was wondering
about.”

“What’s that?”

“You said I’d never be able to guess the
combination to your safe, but it’s a number I should know. I just
wondered what it was.”

“You want me to tell you my safe
combination?” Tommy laughed.

“Hey, you just handed me the book, and I gave
it back. I’d say the chances of me trying to get into your safe
again are pretty low.”

“Fair enough,” Tommy said. “It’s 1031.” Tommy
stood and grabbed his suitcase. He fished a ten-dollar bill from
his coat pocket and tossed it onto the bar. “Have a good trip home,
Shay. I look forward to never seeing you again.”

Without a backward glance to me, Tommy waved
his goodbye to Ian and the pregnant hostess, then pushed through
the heavy doors and disappeared. I stood next to my own stool,
rolling the numbers around in my head. 1031. Ten thirty-one. The
numbers were definitely familiar, as Tommy’d predicted, but damned
if I could figure out why.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

THE THUNDERING KNOCK jarred me from the sleep
I hadn’t meant to fall into. I sat bolt upright on the sofa where
I’d dozed and blinked, trying to figure out what had woken me. The
pounding came again, rattling the door in its frame. I rubbed my
eyes and squinted in the dim light.

Apparently, it had gotten dark sometime
between leaving Tommy at the bar and now. Shit. I was going to have
to hurry if I was going to make my bus.

Another knock.

“I’m coming! Christ.”

I reached for the knob and had barely turned
it when the door burst open and Tommy barreled through, knocking me
into the wall as he went past.

“Where is she, you lying sack of shit? I
can’t believe I bought all that crap about how much you cared about
her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I
tried to play catch up. Nothing about this made sense.

“Why didn’t you take the book when I offered
it to you? Isn’t that what you came for?”

“It was, but—”

“What do you think you’re going to get out of
me by taking her?”