Black Irish (27 page)

The phone call to Reinholdt twenty minutes ago had confirmed her thinking. It fit now.

“What connection?”

“The Clan weren’t exporters. Just the opposite.”

Perelli sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

“Why are you fucking with me, Abbie?”

She looked at him.

“They were importers. We had it backward.”

“Importers of
what
?”

“Isn’t it clear? People.”

“People!” Perelli barked. O’Halloran, sitting next to him, quietly wiped some spittle from his face.

“I should have caught it when Reinholdt told me originally. For a hundred years, the Clan was a full-service support organization for the IRA. They supplied money, political support, votes for pro-IRA candidates in the U.S. But that was happening all over the Northeast. Buffalo was nothing special. There was only one thing the Buffalo branch could do better than any other, because of where the city is geographically.”

“And what’s that?”

“Make Irish rebels disappear.”

Perelli rubbed his eyes.

“When the Italian mob had someone that was bringing them too much attention in America, what did they do?” Abbie said.

Perelli frowned. He hated questions about the Italian mob.

“They got rid of them.”

“How?”

“Shipped them back to Italy.”

“Exactly. Well, the IRA had the same problem. They had members who’d done things in Northern Ireland that made them marked men, hunted by the British cops and special forces. If they walked out onto a street in Belfast, they’d be spotted in a minute. If they hid,
informants could always turn them in. And if they were caught, they could be worked on and turned into informers themselves. So they were sent to America.”

“Through Canada is what you’re saying.”

“Yes, through Canada. The direct route was too suspicious and heavily watched. They had to bring them over a border. And in Mexico, a pale Irishman would be as easy to spot as … as …”

Her brain refused to go any further.

“As a polar bear in Africa,” Z piped up.

“Thank you. So they brought them through Canada. That’s probably why Jimmy Ryan was brought in. He’d taken drugs across before, he had the connections, maybe he knew a guard or two at the bridge who would look the other way for a cut. Gerald Decatur, as well. They worked the border together. That’s why none of the Clan members were flashing money, like they would have with drugs or guns. They weren’t bringing in money. And that’s probably why the Gaelic Club tried to keep it a secret. The people they brought in may still be living here.”

“Here?”

“Here in the country. How many stayed in Buffalo? Who knows? My father is the last member of the Clan left, and he’s not talking. But the whole Irish community had an interest in keeping quiet what they did.”

“So we think the killer is … an IRA guy?” O’Halloran said, his brow creased with thought.

“That’s my guess. He was brought across the bridge into the hands of the Clan and then … something went wrong. Maybe Kane and the others didn’t find him the job he wanted. Maybe he hated America. Maybe he never wanted to leave Northern Ireland. And he started killing the men who brought him over.”

“A lot of fucking maybes,” O’Halloran mumbled.

“You have a better theory?”

O’Halloran said nothing, just stared at her, then dropped his gaze to her chest. She looked away in disgust and turned to Perelli.

“So long story short, that’s why I went to the bridge. I heard on
the radio about a possible suicide. I saw something that looked like a man up there. It fit. It was the next chapter in the story the killer is telling.”

“Do we know what happened to these killers after the Clan brought them across?” Perelli asked wearily.

“We can only guess, but an Irish accent in the County would barely be noticed. Plenty of the old folk still have brogues, and there are enough cousins and nephews coming to visit them from Dublin or wherever so that the accent doesn’t stand out. Jobs could be found, fake IDs. Once they were here, they could disappear. There are lots of ways. The Clan sponsored Gaelic lessons. Who were the teachers? The IRA is full of Gaelic speakers—it’s part of their program of getting rid of British influence. Or if they played the accordion, they could become a visiting musician. Nobody asks questions in the County. It’s perfect.”

Perelli stared past her.

“And these men were, what?”

“Freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on how you look at it. But they were the ones the British wanted the most, the ones too hot to ship down to the South and to try and hide in Dublin.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me,” said Perelli, standing up and leaning his hands on the conference table, which protested with a low groan, “is that the IRA shipped its most notorious killers here to Buffalo, gave them false identities and just … let ’em loose?”

He stared openmouthed at Abbie with a sickened look on his face.

Abbie nodded.

Silence.

“Fuckin’ Micks,” said O’Halloran, but the joke died.

“Most of the rebels, I’m going to guess, weren’t killers at heart. They were men who believe in a cause. Once they were removed from their environment, they went straight. They’re probably spread out from New York to San Francisco now.”

“Except for one.”

Abbie nodded. She wanted to sleep, to forget the night before.

But now the killer had slipped past her again. He was further away than ever before.

“One of them wasn’t doing it for Ireland. That was just a convenient excuse for him. He was killing
because he liked killing
.”

Perelli’s head was in his hands. He nodded. “Okay. So we know his background, which helps a little. But what exactly are we looking for?”

Abbie slumped back in her chair. The killer’s face was a blank to her, a buzzing void, cloaked by black electricity.

“He’s about five foot nine, give or take an inch either way, judging by the Lucky Clover tape. He’s right-handed. He likes to wear a black ski mask. He may have a strange way of speaking, with a trace of an Irish brogue. He may try to disguise this. He most likely did prison time. And we need to contact the British authorities in Ireland to get the mortuary records of every IRA-related killing in the past thirty years.”

“Why?”

“Because from what I saw, he’s not new to this. He knows how to cut up a body.”

The room went silent. Finally, Perelli looked up as if he was surprised the detectives were still there.

“You heard her,” he barked. “Find me a list of those fucks the Clan brought to my city. And find it fast.”

W
HEN
A
BBIE STEPPED OUTSIDE, SHE FOUND A SNOW SQUALL SWIRLING
around the building, whipping snow horizontally across her face. As she began to walk, following the direction of the snow, she felt the wind press a cold hand between her shoulder blades, even through her thick down coat. It seemed to be urging her forward.

She turned the building’s corner and the wind swooped around with her, blowing her hair past her cheeks with a fresh gust of power. Her boots crunched on two or three inches of freshly fallen snow, heavy with moisture, the kind of stuff you prayed for as a kid, perfect for making snowballs. Abbie saw the Saab—covered by a fresh blanket of snow—through a curtain of blowing white flakes and reached a gloved hand into her pocket, taking out the keys. She was about to hit the unlock button when suddenly she froze stock-still.

The monkey face drawn on the hood of her car wasn’t an exact replica of the toys found at the murder scenes, but it was close enough.

She walked hurriedly to the Saab. The lines of the monkey face, already filling with snow, had obviously been carved with a finger. They would have been wearing gloves, though; no need to get the techs out here. Underneath the foot-high face, which she could see
had a pronounced frown and two slit eyes, she saw an arrow sign pointing to her driver’s-side wheel.

Abbie spun around. The streets around her were abandoned except for a few shadowy figures clutching the lapels of their coats around their necks and leaning into the stiff wind. None of them took any particular interest in her. Just office workers trying to get home before the storm shut down the roads.

She reached under her jacket and felt the butt of the Glock, then edged toward the driver’s side of the Saab. Nobody crouching there. She reached into the wheel well and felt around. The note was taped to the metal body just above the wheel. She ripped it out, then hurriedly hit the unlock button, slid into the Saab’s driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and waited for the heater to blow hot.

When the air in the car had nudged above arctic levels, she opened the note. Three lines written in block letters using a black ballpoint pen.

Abbie listened to the blast of the heater as she thought. Why the lake? It was frozen now straight across to the Canadian shore. It was safe to walk across, but the only people out there this time of year were the ice fishermen, who spent hours in their huts or tents waiting for the northern pike to bite. Abbie thought they went out there just to get away from their wives and to drink beer.

The more she thought about it, the better a spot it was. There was no way to bring backup or to approach without being seen. Anyone walking out there would be as exposed as a black bug on sugar. The only way off the ice quickly was by snowmobile. Impossible to set a trap, unless she got the whole Department involved. And the person who wrote the note knew she wasn’t about to do that.

She wasn’t even going to tell Z, she decided. Because he would tell her not to go.

John Kearney lay in his hospital bed, watching
Judge Judy
. The words did not go together. He couldn’t tell who was accused of what, though he’d taken an immediate dislike to the man on the left, who was leaning aggressively over the lectern at the judge. He was big, Spanish, and his face was shaped like a pineapple.

John seemed to be looking out at the world from behind a fogged screen. He could see things but not touch them. He could hear but not speak. As weak as a baby sparrow. That’s what his mother had said to him, all those years ago, up in the hatefully cold house on the top of the stone hill in West Clare. When he broke something, or he rode the horse so hard it would stand in the barn shaking, its flanks coated with sweat.

“John,” she said, smiling, “enjoy your strength now. It won’t be with you forever.”

Always smiling, his mother. And what did she have to smile about? A drunk for a husband, a terror for an only surviving child, her daughter dead in the ground after getting TB from the cow’s milk.

The nurse looked at him now as he moaned loudly.

Siobhan, his sister, struggling in the bed, burning through the sheets back in Clare. And the knock on the door the night before she passed. Every time someone was about to die in the small towns of Ireland, it was believed—no, more than believed, it was
known
—that just when their spirit had decided to leave the body but hadn’t yet gone, four knocks would be heard. And the night before Siobhan died, his mother had been sitting by her bedside in that stone house, he in his bed in the corner, not asleep but watching.

The four sharp raps on the door, so sharp you felt the knucklebone.

How his mother had
screamed
. He tried to close his eyes but they wouldn’t obey.

John had known the minute he heard her cry that he would leave Ireland. The country had killed his sister, but it wouldn’t kill him.

The nurse turned and looked at him with a concerned face.

Jaysus, had he screamed just now? Ever since the Alzheimer’s had started, the far past had been more real to him than the passing moment. It was as if he was falling back, falling back to what would never leave him, and that was Clare and hunger and boyhood.

His mother had known death was coming for her daughter. She’d known she was going to lose quiet, dutiful Siobhan, the one she confided to and leaned on when her husband and son lacerated her heart with drink or fighting in the town. Her only solace. Why had God not taken him instead?

He’d been waiting for the knock for weeks now, on Abbie’s door or this one. He knew the name of the man who was coming. So John Kearney had one last mission to perform for the Clan, to wipe out its only great mistake.

And then his account with the old country would be paid in full. Ireland had given him nothing. He hadn’t joined the Clan for Ireland. He’d joined because he’d broken his father’s heart by leaving Clare.

His father had been a strong Republican. Though the words were never spoken, John knew his father had helped the cause as much as a poor farmer could. When John would come home from hunting rabbits, a cold dusk in the sky, strange men would be collapsed in his cot, his mother whispering, “You’ll sleep in your sister’s bed tonight.” The TB bed. Him staring at the men, their muddy boots hidden behind the stove, the air rank with sweat and fear, the men gone in the morning before he got up. He knew they were IRA fugitives. And then he found the guns in the stone fence, while looking for foxes with his best friend Pádraig, from down the road. First they’d looked at the foot of the haystacks to see if any had made their homes there, then by the crooked tree that they’d thrown stones at for target practice, then in the fence that bordered their property. And there they found the black gleaming guns, two pistols wrapped in heavy oilcloth. The kind of pistol, he later learned, that you couldn’t buy in the Republic, issued only by the British Army in Ulster. And so taken from dead men.