Authors: Stephan Talty
“Do y’not think I know who you are?”
The figure stepped forward, ice crackling under its foot. The wind rose.
John’s hand sought the deep pocket of his cardigan. He jerked on something as the figure advanced. Finally, he pulled it free. His old service revolver.
“Take off that goddamned mask,” he cried, the wind making the words gutter in his mouth.
The figure made a strange noise.
“What’s that?” John roared in the gale. The wind took the long silver bands of his hair and whipped them around his head.
The figure reached up and grasped the top of the hat. Then it slowly pulled it off and held the mask down by its thigh, flapping there in the strong breeze.
John Kearney trembled from the shock of it. “Jesus, Mary, and—” He stepped back and stumbled on a stone, falling backward.
The figure moved quickly toward him, the knife coming up, and John Kearney cried out as he brought up his trembling gun.
And what he cried out was: “Forgive me.”
A Mr. Tom Mariani, thirty-four, was in an Oldsmobile Cutlass heading south on Tifft Street, on his way to his twelve-hour shift at the gas station that sat at the corner of Tifft and South Park Avenue. He later reported hearing a single shot. And then silence.
T
HE
S
KYWAY WAS WREATHED IN MIST AND THE
S
AAB CUT A TUNNEL
through it as Abbie pushed it to eighty-five. When the fog broke, Abbie caught quick glimpses of the preserve down on her left. The wind was pushing the reeds almost flat to the ground.
The Saab nearly skidded as she came flying off the exit ramp and the left back wheel slammed into the concrete curb. Abbie felt the muffler rake over some stones, but she gunned the engine and the Saab slid back onto the road. She covered the hundred yards to the parking lot in four seconds. When she pulled in, the lot was empty.
Abbie bolted out of the car and ran for the reeds. She swung under the wooden gateway and along the first steps of the path. As she ran, the feeling of being watched grew so strong that she reached for the Slammer in her pocket and glanced at the dark gaps in the grass as she flew past. At the first fork, she turned left, running flat-out now. It opened into the still orange lake, rimed with ice. Nobody there. Only the sounds of the wind and a soft patter, like someone else running.
“Dad!” she shouted. “Dad, where are you?”
Abbie turned around and ran back down the path, the cold starting to bruise her lungs. At the fork, she turned left and went running
downhill. The grass swayed across the path, driven by the wind, sometimes lashing across her forehead and temporarily blinding her.
“DAA-ADDDD!” she shouted.
When she came to the clearing, she pulled up. There on the bench was her father, his back to her, slumped over slightly to the left.
He’s resting
, she said to herself.
He walked too fast and now he’s resting
. But then she saw the blood on his shirt.
Silently, she ran to him, her right hand holding the gun close to her thigh. When she got to the bench, she fell to her knees to look at his face, her hand resting on the small of his back. John Kearney’s brilliant blue eyes stared out, devoid of life.
“Dad?!”
Abbie cried. Her hand gripped his jacket and she pulled his face to her chest. “Dad, wake up, it’s Absalom.”
Only the sound of the wind. She’d seen the knife wound as she’d come close to him, and now she could feel the warmth of his flesh being wicked away, draining away like blood. She looked down and saw the gun lying on the ground.
Abbie let go of her father, her forehead sank to the ground, and she sobbed. Her hand dropped to the dirt and clawed the earth and her mouth tasted dirt, but she couldn’t rise or speak, the waves of grief coming like convulsions.
Finally, she stood up and spun around.
“You animal!” she screamed at the soughing reeds.
She pulled up the Slammer and blasted a round into the swaying reeds. Nothing. Tears streamed down her face. She turned in a fast circle, blasting away at the tall grass and the black spaces between.
Nothing.
Abbie sat on the bench, leaning her head onto her father’s back. It was cold, the rough wool of his cardigan brushing against her cheek. She didn’t want to look at him again, at the face with the eyes wide and the mouth palsied and crooked, the single tear through his shirt, and beneath it, the V-neck T-shirt that she’d bought him, saturated with blood.
Oh, Dad
, she thought.
Come back to me
.
The wind blew his silver hair as if he were drifting underwater.
She reached over his shoulder and laid her hand on his cheek. He’d never allowed her to touch him like that. She traced the line of his jaw with her hands as tears swelled in her eyes.
Sirens. She stood and looked above the tall grass and saw two police cars climbing the slope of the Skyway half a mile away, the silhouettes dark against bulging black storm clouds, the blue lights flashing like sparks.
Abbie closed her eyes.
She was crying not only because the body was warm and she’d just missed saving him, but because she’d believed for a sickening moment when the Reverend had called her that
he
had been the killer, her own father, and the summons to the reeds had been an invitation to her own death. She cried because the secrets of her childhood were wicking away to the cold air.
Why did he do it, Dad?
Her hand touched a piece of paper next to her father’s body, the corner flapping in the wind. Abbie reached around and found the letter pinned underneath a large rock. She rolled it off and pulled the pages toward her. As the sound of the sirens zeroed in like the buzz of an approaching wasp, she read the first line.
The sirens grew louder. She looked up and saw the two cars at the Skyway’s peak. She reached around her father and hugged him a final time.
She held the sheets in her right hand as she began to run.
Back in her car, Abbie drove two miles before pulling over. Her hand was still gripping the letter. She dropped the crumpled pages to the passenger seat and gently smoothed them out. Two sheets.
I, John Kearney, proud member in good standing of the Clan na Gael, am responsible for the murders of Jimmy Ryan, Marty Collins, and Joseph Kane
.
There is no refuge in Ireland for the enemies of the Crown. In decades past, our freedom fighters would be sent to Botany Bay
in Australia aboard the prison ships, reeking and foul. We in the Clan na Gael would not allow that any longer. Two soldiers had been caught in 1977 while trying to enter San Francisco Harbor on a fishing boat and were sent back to Long Kesh Prison. We vowed that would never be allowed to happen again. In 1978, the other members and I offered the IRA leadership our services. Any member in good standing who needed a fresh start away from Northern Ireland, we stood ready to help
.
Marty Collins handled the legal aspects—he got new driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, and the rest. Joe Kane raised the money. We never asked where it came from and never cared. Jimmy Ryan set up the first few transfers across the border, but he was, sad to say, a disappointment in this because of his gambling and his carelessness. To make sure things went smoothly, I began traveling to the Canadian side of the Falls in 1980 along with him
.
How the IRA got the men to Canada was never any of my business—I assumed by freighter or with false identities on commercial planes. But it was understood that their ID would never stand the test at the American border, whose agents were always on the lookout for our boys. We had to find another way to bring them in
.
I would go to the casinos at the Canadian Falls and play there for a few hours. The soldiers would be brought into the casino or we would meet in a hotel room paid for in cash. I would tell the men what was going to happen and what they needed to do. I also asked them if they were claustrophobic. A few of them were, and those we had to give a great deal of whiskey—and in one case a handful of sleeping pills bought at a local pharmacy, for a man who’d taken the Pledge—so that they could make the trip. For there was only one way across the border, and that was in the trunk of my car
.
We would drive to a parking lot or out into the country north of Fort Erie, and I would put the soldiers in the trunk. I would then drive to the border, show my license—in those days, you
didn’t need a passport—along with my ID as a Buffalo police officer. I was never searched
.
Once I had the men in Buffalo, Jimmy Ryan found places for them to live and work, while Marty Collins got their paperwork together. We had friends in the County who would speed up the process, though I won’t name names. Everything was done as if these men were returning heroes from a foreign war, which indeed they were
.
We brought 14 men across. Though they’d often emerged from the bowels of a British prison, or from the freezing cells at Long Kesh, we never had a single problem with any of them. We were proud to welcome them to our shores and give them the freedom the British had denied the Irish people for centuries
.
Until 1982. I will never forgive the IRA for what happened then. Unknown to us, they sent us not a soldier but a degenerate, a stain upon the banner, a murdering blackguard. We were told his name was Fergus MacBrennan from Derry. MacBrennan, a name my father always mentioned when telling me of the chiefs of Corca Achlann. A fine name for an Irish rebel, we thought
.
It was only the first lie
.
Abbie flipped the page, but there was nothing else. She looked around the Saab to make sure she hadn’t misplaced a sheet of paper. The killer must have taken the final page with him. She wiped away a tear and pulled out the list of IRA assassins from the inside pocket of her coat. “Fergus, Fergus,” she whispered. She began to work the codes. The grief for her father had been laid aside so that she could see the killer’s face before she killed him.
On the third try, she cried out.
“
F
, here it is.”
But the second letter was
I
. She went through the progression just to be sure.
Finlay. Goddamned Finlay, not Fergus
.
Her finger traced the next name, then her eyes darted to the funeral oration. Slowly she worked through the codes. Three names starting with
S
, one with
J
, two
M
’s, three
N
’s, three
P
’s, one
W
.
After ten minutes, she’d gone through the entire list. She slammed the steering wheel. No other name even starting with
F
.
How could Fergus not be here? Was my whole theory wrong from the beginning—is there another layer of this that I haven’t seen into?
She shivered and started the engine. It wasn’t only the missing name that confused her, the thought that she might not be able to find him now that his work was done. Another detail had blazed out at her the moment she read it: the year her father had brought the killer across.
1982. The same year he’d adopted her.
The four members of the Clan na Gael were all dead. Billy was dead. Numbness crept across her insides. Her face felt like a heavy rubber mask welded to the bones of her skull.
The list of assassins was all she had. Surely one of them knew who Fergus MacBrennan from Derry was.
Her hand shook as she coded out the next name on the list of fourteen killers. Sorcha O Bruic was the Irish name. When she did the American cover, she stared at it in shock.
She called Z.
When he answered, she said calmly, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill my father.”
There was a silence that sounded like a hand was being held over the phone. Three seconds later, Z came back on the line.
“I know it wasn’t you. Are you okay?”
“I’m going to be going away after this.”
“After what?”
“After I blow his head off.”
“Come in, Ab. That’s the only way.”
“So the killer can walk free? He murdered my father, Z.”
The sound of Z’s voice changed, echoed now, as if he’d stepped into a small, enclosed space.
“Listen to me. The County is in an uproar. I know you didn’t kill your father, but they don’t. There’s practically a shoot-to-kill order
on you now, and I’m not just talking about cops. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
The people who would have cared are gone now
, she wanted to say.
“I have a name for you.”
“No! Come in.”
“I have a name, Z. The only way to find the killer is if one of the other assassins knows his M.O. Just help me to get this animal and I’ll do whatever you want.”
Z blew out a breath.
She gave him the name.
“Dolores? A
woman
?”
“Yeah, a woman.”
Silence and what sounded like teeth grinding. Finally, Z blew out a breath.
“I’ll call you back in ten. But, Ab, this is the last one. Then you come in.”
She hung up.
T
HE
S
AAB SHOT WEST, CAME DOWN
S
ENECA
S
TREET, THEN MADE A RIGHT
on the park road. The trees were skeletal, black branches dripping with wet snow. Her tires sizzled on the wet tarmac as she sped through the winding road at 75 mph.
The address was in the County. Dolores Riordan, originally from Derry, female assassin of the IRA. Now she was married to a fireman, with three kids, two boys and a girl, all grammar-school age. She lived at 46 Spaulding, off South Park. Z had done well.
I’ll have a target on my back as soon as I get out of the car
, she told herself as she turned on Abbott Road into the County.
They’ll think I was the experiment that failed, the monster from the East Side who came back to the County just to murder her father and his corrupt old cronies. The name Absalom Kearney will be spit out like poison for generations to come
.