The Long Game (7 page)

“Twenty years ago, Tommy Costello disappeared
with $500,000 of the clan’s money after a con went wrong with your
da. We’ve been looking for him ever since, but every time we got a
lead on where he might be, he disappeared again. Costello used that
half a million as seed money, and he’s made himself a very rich man
in the two decades since he left. A few years ago, we learned he
has a daughter, just a little younger than you actually, and as it
turns out, that’s the best break we could’ve asked for. The girl
got it in her head that she wants to go to college.” He said the
word in a tone that suggested higher education was about as
valuable as dog shit on his shoe, probably even less when it was
for a girl. “Tommy’s bought himself a house and settled down near
Balanova University to be close to her.”

“So you want me to get the money back? The
five hundred grand and maybe some interest?” I cracked my knuckles,
making a show of my willingness to get my hands dirty if
necessary.

“The money isn’t what we’re after.” Pop
leaned in, his voice a low rumble now. “There’s a book. A sort of
ledger, full of important information. He took it from my safe
along with the money, and I want it back.”

“What information?” I asked.

“That ain’t important now. All you need to
worry about is getting it back. It’s about this big.” He held up
his hand about eight inches apart, first horizontally, then
vertically. “And it’s thick, with a leather cord tied around it to
keep it shut.”

I nodded, committing this description to
memory.

“And it better stay shut,” he added, stabbing
a thick finger at me to drive his point home.

I leaned back to put some distance between
us. “Of course. Get the book, bring it home. Got it.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.” Pop
sounded amused, but there was no humor in his narrowed eyes.

“I guess I am,” I said. In truth, I was
almost disappointed. A long game that had been in the works for
over twenty years, and all I’d have to do was break into the guy’s
house to steal a book?

“I’d suggest you use the girl,” Pop said,
interrupting my thoughts.

“Sorry?” I asked, my eyebrows inching toward
my hairline.

“His daughter. Sweet talk her a little, get
her to invite you over for dinner. Get access to the house.”

“All due respect, sir, but wouldn’t it be
easier to just break in and steal it? I could be there and back in
a few days.”

“‘
All due respect’ means you
do what your clan leader says without question, and unless that
school of yours taught you how to disarm security systems, I’m
pretty sure getting an invitation for dinner is easier than
breaking in. Not to mention, I want to keep this quiet. Don’t do
anything to rouse the attention of the police.”

Damn. I hadn’t thought about security, but of
course someone paranoid enough to spend twenty years looking in the
rearview would have a state-of-the-art system. And now, I looked
like an ass for not realizing it right away.

“What’s all this then?” Maggie was suddenly
beside me as if she’d just appeared from thin air.

Pop Sheedy fixed her with a warm smile.
“Maggie, my dear, you get more radiant every day.”

“Hmph,” Maggie said, unimpressed. “And you
get more rotund.”

I winced, embarrassed by her brashness, but
Pop chuckled. “You’re not wrong,” he said and slapped his round
belly. Only Maggie could speak to the clan leader that way and get
away with it.

“So, what is it you want with my boys,
Michael?” Maggie asked, her knuckles thrust deep into her hips.
That was something else Maggie could do. Not even Bridget called
Pop by his given name anymore.

“I have a job for your son, Maggie, and he
seems happy to oblige, so I think we’re done here.”

“That so?”

I felt her eyes on the back of my neck, and
my shoulders instinctively moved toward my ears. Suddenly,
eagerness to accept Pop’s offer didn’t seem like such a great
idea.

Pop seemed to sense my wavering. “And if he
pulls it off…” He paused to smile broadly before delivering his
final enticement. “…he’ll have a bride waiting for him when he gets
back.”

My back straightened like someone had pulled
an invisible cord attached to my spine. I gaped at him. “You
mean…?”

He nodded. “If you get my ledger back, I’ll
have no doubts that you’ll make a fine match for my Rosie. And I
hardly think she’ll have any objections,” he added with a wry
smile.

My eyes moved from Pop to his sons. The
oldest three were stone-faced, but Judd’s barely contained rage had
turned his face the purple-red of a ripe raspberry. There was no
stopping the grin that spread across my face.

Except the look on my brother’s. When I
turned back to Maggie and Jimmy Boy, they both stared at me with
twin expressions of disappointment.

Maggie dragged her eyes from my face back to
Pop, who was extracting himself from the picnic table. “Would you
like to come in for some tea, Michael?”

“Thank you kindly, Maggie, but I won’t keep
you folks any longer than I already have.”

“I think you should come in,” she said,
though it no longer sounded like a polite invitation.

Pop hesitated for a moment, then turned to
his sons. “You boys head back to the house and tell your mother
I’ll be along shortly.”

“Sure, Pop,” Sonny said, although none of
them moved to leave.

I got to my feet as Pop circled around the
picnic table to join Maggie. “Thank you for this opportunity,” I
said and offered my hand. “I won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure you won’t.” He gave my hand a quick
shake, then offered his arm to Maggie, and the two of them headed
toward the trailer.

Jimmy Boy waited until Maggie and Pop were
gone, then uncrossed his arms and let them fall to his side. “Shay,
think about what you’re doing,” he said. “This is just the kind of
thing you don’t want to get mixed up in.”

“
Listen to your brother,
Buffer,” Judd said. “This is no job for a
sublia
like you.” He tossed an amused
grin to his brothers. “Fifty bucks says he comes home crying for
his mama before the week’s out. Whaddya say, lads? Any
takers?”

Jimmy Boy moved so quickly that I couldn’t
restrain him before he’d bloodied Judd’s lip with a savage right
hook. Immediately, Sonny and Pat rushed to their brother’s aid.
Jimmy Boy swung again, but they each grabbed one of his arms and
pinned them behind his back. Judd spat a mouthful of blood and
rubbed his jaw. He fixed Jimmy Boy with a cruel smile that smeared
blood across his teeth. It made him look insane. Jimmy Boy
struggled against the men holding him.

I scrambled over the picnic table and lunged
for Pat, but he threw his elbow up as I charged him. It made
contact with my chin and sent a burst of painful light through my
skull, disorienting me long enough for Eddie, the fourth Sheedy
brother, to tackle me to the ground. Eddie outweighed me by at
least thirty pounds, and all of it lay on top of me, pinning my
arms and legs. I lifted my head in time to see Judd’s fist plow
into Jimmy Boy’s stomach. My brother lurched forward as far as he
could with his elbows still locked behind him by Sonny and Pat.

Judd grabbed his shirt collar in both hands
and thrust a knee into his ribcage. Jimmy Boy grunted, sucking air
into apparently uncooperative lungs. Sonny yanked him upright
again, using the hair at the back of his head like a pull string.
Judd drew his arm back and released it, smashing his fist into
Jimmy Boy’s cheek.

“Stop!” I struggled in vain against Eddie’s
bulk. “You’re gonna kill him.”

Sonny and Pat allowed Judd
one final swing. The blow made a nauseating
thwack
, like the sound of raw steak
being tenderized. The men let go of Jimmy Boy’s arms. He fell to
his knees, swayed for a moment, then dropped to his hands. He
braced himself against the ground with one arm, holding his middle
with the other as he spilled everything in his stomach onto the
grass.

“You’re both trash,” Judd said. “Your whole
family is trash. Always were and always will be. God only knows why
my dad is wasting his time with you.”

“Fuck you,” Jimmy Boy said between gagging
coughs. “You’re just pissed Pop chose Shay over you. But he ain’t
stupid, Prince. He knows you’d fuck it all up.”

Judd’s foot hit Jimmy Boy’s face so hard my
brother flipped off his hands and knees. He crashed to the ground
again, flat on his back. Judd swiped at his mouth, then wiped the
blood from his hand onto the leg of his jeans. He spit a gob of
rusty saliva that missed Jimmy Boy’s face by half an inch and
splattered into the dirt by his ear.

The door of the trailer opened again, and
Maggie’s head appeared. “What the hell is going on out here?” she
asked. Her eyes fell on Jimmy Boy, and she flew down the steps and
across the yard to where he lay motionless on his back. “Who do you
think you are, coming to my home and carrying on like a bunch of
maggots?” She knelt beside her son, but her sharp gaze remained
fixed on Judd, who seemed to shrink under it. “Go on! Get out of
here before I whoop the lot of yeh.”

Maggie was a small, fleshy woman and not the
least bit imposing physically, but her tone was enough to scare
four grown men to their senses. Eddie pushed me harder into the
ground as he stood and clambered over to join his brothers, who’d
already bolted for the Mercedes.

Pop appeared at Maggie’s side, and the two of
them helped Jimmy Boy to his feet. She tucked herself under his arm
and supported his weight with one hand to his chest and one to his
back. I could see her scanning his face, already inspecting the
broken and bleeding skin of his cheeks and lips.

“Come inside, love. I’ll fix you up.”

Jimmy Boy’s head lulled in what may have been
an attempt at a nod but was more likely his neck’s inability to
hold up his head. They moved in limping steps toward the
trailer.

“I’m sorry for the trouble, Maggie,” Pop
said.

I imagined, with great satisfaction, the
earful Judd and his brothers would get for disrespecting Maggie’s
home.

She glanced at him over Jimmy’s shoulder.
“Cuts and bruises I can handle, Michael, but what you’re planning
could do a far sight more damage.”

“You let me worry about that,” he said. His
tone finally betrayed a hint of annoyance at her boldness.

I pulled myself onto the bench of the picnic
table and rolled my head from one shoulder to the other to relieve
the kink in my neck. A nice reward for my efforts to get Eddie off
my back. I heard the trailer door slam behind my mother and
brother, but I still wasn’t alone in the yard. I raised my head to
find Pop staring at me.

“There’s some sense in what your mother says,
Shay. If you don’t want to take this job, I won’t force you.”

An image of Judd’s boot connecting with my
brother’s face flashed in my mind, and anger burned like acid in my
mouth. “When do I leave?”

CHAPTER NINE

IT TOOK ME a day to get settled in after I
arrived in Pennsylvania and another to find Tommy Costello’s
daughter. Spencer was a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Balanova
University, a member of the OIA sorority, and an avid reader. At
least, according to her Facebook page. The last fact was quickly
proven true when I found her in the courtyard outside the Carroll
Center in the middle of campus.

From where I stood on the opposite side of
the fountain, I had a clear view of her, sitting with her knees
pulled up to her chest and her back resting against the broad trunk
of a white ash. She was reading, her head tipped to one side, which
made a thick section of her dark auburn hair fall forward to shade
one side of her face. The quad was empty aside from the two of us
and a kid who bobbed his head to the beat of whatever song played
through his retro headphones.

Finding out she lived in a sorority house had
been my first disappointment. Pop Sheedy had assumed she’d be
living with her father, so I’d have to work a little harder to
score an invitation to Daddy’s. I was still pretty sure I was up to
the challenge, though. And the sooner I worked my way into her
life, the sooner I could finish the job and get back home. Time to
get this show on the road.

I circled around the fountain, gearing up for
my role as “lost transfer student,” but a pixie-haired blonde in a
pink-and-white sundress beat me to her. I stopped thirty feet from
my goal and pulled a campus map from my back pocket. I watched the
girls from the corner of my eye as I pretended to study the
map.

“Hey, Spence!” the blonde said, handing over
a cup emblazoned with the green Starbucks logo. “I got the herbal
tea you wanted, even though it goes against every fiber of my being
to order something that doesn’t have any caffeine in it.”

Spencer grinned at her and took the cup.
“Aww, thanks, Kay. It’s so sweet of you to compromise your
principles for me.”

“Whatevs. No biggie. Plus, sexy coffee-cart
guy is working today, so it was totes worth it.”

Was this girl even speaking English? I
shifted my weight from one foot to the other, then looked around
the quad as if trying to orient myself. I spun the map in my hands
so that I was looking at it upside-down. If I looked hopeless
enough, maybe the girls would offer to help.

“Have you found a dress for the party
tomorrow night?” the over-caffeinated blonde asked.

“Yep. I ended up going with the one we saw on
South Street. Remember?”

“Ooh, the green one? I bet you look super hot
in that.”

“It looks all right,” Spencer said. She
shoved the book she’d been reading into a worn leather backpack.
She slid a cell phone into the front pocket of the bag, snapped it
shut, and slung it over one shoulder. “I’m supposed to meet Moira
in ten minutes. She’s helping me study for my French quiz on
Friday. Walk with me to the library?”