Jig (37 page)

‘I'd be very unhappy if you backed out now,' Pagan said. Which was to phrase it mildly. ‘We understand one another, don't we?'

‘I think we do,' Tumulty answered.

‘There's no going back, Joe.'

‘I haven't changed my mind, Mr. Pagan. I'll do
exactly
as you asked.'

There. A very tiny tone of irritation in Tumulty's voice. A quick little flash of light in the eyes that was almost a defiance. What are you up to? Pagan wondered. Maybe nothing. Maybe the expectation of Jig had simply raised Pagan's own anxieties and now he saw shadows where he should have seen only light.

Tumulty was laying out slices of bread in a tray. Pagan wandered round the kitchen.

‘Jig might not come today,' Tumulty said. ‘Nothing's certain. He might not even choose to come at mealtime, in which case my saying the grace you want me to say is going to sound very strange.'

‘He's going to think mealtime is the safest time. In Jig's trade, crowds mean security.'

Tumulty looked up from the tray of bread. ‘Shouldn't you be out there at a table, Mr. Pagan? I don't allow my customers inside the kitchen. You'll stand out like a sore thumb.'

Pagan walked into the dining room. Men were waking, sitting on their beds or struggling to their feet, folding the mattresses away, stashing pillows inside the cupboards that lined the walls. There was a great deal of throat clearing and hawking and already the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Pagan sat down at an empty table and took a very crumpled cigarette out of his coat pocket, lighting it and coughing in what he hoped was an authentic way. He looked around the room, watching men stagger into the emptiness of a new day that was going to be exactly like the one before. The debris of the Great Society. It was odd that in the richest country on the planet, and not very far from Wall Street, where the great money machine cranked daily, men were forced to eat and sleep in a slough like St. Finbar's. Pagan's old socialism found such a contrast inhuman. What democracy and capitalism really needed, he thought, was a conscience. In a world like that, though, pigs could fly.

He put out his cigarette and thought about Artie Zuboric sitting upstairs in Tumulty's office, then about the two agents on Canal Street. Orson Cone was located on the roof across the street. Tyson Bruno sat inside an all-night coffee hangout on the corner. Everything was in place, everything was set. It only needed Jig to step into this room for the picture to be complete. Pagan took a deep breath. Something troubled him, something he couldn't quite define. A sensation of unease. He felt enmeshed by two different strands of spider-webbing. One, sticky and mysterious, led back to Ivor the Terrible and his enigmatic purpose in New York. The other was directly linked to Joseph X. Tumulty and that quietly upbeat mood of his.

Pagan shook his head. He couldn't allow himself any kind of misgiving. He had no room in his head for anything else except Jig. He stared in the direction of the kitchen. Tumulty turned to look at him.

The priest smiled and winked, then went back to work.

The smile was one thing, Pagan thought. The wink was quite another. How the fuck could Joe Tumulty, who was on the point of betraying a man, look so bloody secretive and confident?

Patrick Cairney left his rented Dodge in an underground parking lot at Broadway and Grand. Every mile he'd travelled from Roscommon had taken him farther from Celestine and closer to his own purpose, and so he'd driven at speeds far in excess of the limit, a curious adrenaline rushing through him. He realised he could put Celestine out of his mind, and all the turmoil she caused, only if he didn't forget – even for a fraction of time – that he was Jig and Jig had only one reason for being in America.

What Celestine had accomplished was the arousal of an appetite he couldn't afford to have. She'd succeeded in breaking his concentration, diffusing his energies. It was beyond the consideration of any morality now, beyond the ugly idea that what had almost happened between him and Celestine was akin to some kind of incest. It came down to something more practical, the unsettling realisation of a weakness inside himself, an odd awareness like something left over from another life. He needed strength, singularity of purpose, total focus. He had no use for the distraction of a beautiful young woman locked in a frustrating marriage to an unhealthy old man. What he really sought was that ideal state for a man who had purposely chosen a lonely life – immunity against feelings and the confusion they produced.

When you had that kind of immunity, you had control. Over your urges, your flaws, your limitations. Over yourself.

He'd stopped briefly near Peekskill, changing his clothes in a public rest room. Now he wore the shabby coat and shapeless flannels he'd worn on his first visit to St. Finbar's, and, as he emerged from the parking lot, he had the appearance of a deadbeat, even to the fashion in which he walked – unsteadily, like a drunk whose whole mind is consumed by the idea of the next drink. He felt comfortable in disguise. He liked the idea of melting into any background he chose. Only at Roscommon had his disguise felt awkward. It was increasingly difficult to be Patrick Cairney, Harry's boy, the kid who lived in the sad shadows of the Senator.

When he turned on to Canal Street it was barely daylight, a sombre morning with a scavenging wind pushing itself through the gulleys of Manhattan. He shuffled along, a pitiful figure to anyone who observed him. But this was New York and nobody who passed paid him any attention other than the cursory one of steering away from his path. He paused to look at himself in the window of a store. Almost perfect. The oversized coat concealed the muscularity of his body and the grey flannel shirt, worn outside the pants, hid the money belt. Only the face and hands bothered him. Too clean. He stepped into an alley and plunged his hands inside a trashcan, bringing out an assortment of garbage. Damp newspapers were best for what he wanted because the ink came off on his fingers and he could rub it lightly over his face. When he came out of the alley back into Canal Street his face was smudged and his hands black.

It was about six blocks to St. Finbar's. He crossed Center Street, then he stopped. He bent to tie his lace. It was more than a matter of being vigilant now. He had to listen to his own keen instincts and keep his eye on the internal compass. There were factors involved he didn't like. For one thing, he was uncertain of Tumulty. Had the priest obtained the weapons yet? Or had he collapsed under pressure? For another, there was the distinct possibility that Frank Pagan was still around. Cairney felt he was weighing intangibles, like a man placing feathers on scales that didn't register.

He continued to the next corner. Carefully, his eyes swept along Canal Street. Among the parked vehicles there was none that immediately suggested the presence of the FBI. This meant nothing, though. It might indicate only that agents had taken the trouble to conceal themselves more thoroughly in the neighbourhood. He had the feeling he was walking through a minefield. A man with few choices. He needed the weapons. Even more, he needed information from Tumulty. A name, an address, anything at all that would lead him in the direction of the stolen money. If Tumulty let him down on that score, where else could he possibly turn? He'd go back to Ireland with nothing achieved. He'd be letting Padraic Finn down, which was something he hadn't ever done. Something he intended never to do.

He kept moving.

Outside the entrance to St. Finbar's there were half a dozen or so derelicts standing on the steps. A faint aroma of fried food drifted towards Cairney, and he stopped again. He had an inherent suspicion of anything that looked normal, the way St. Finbar's did right now. He might have been staring at a painting whose detail seemed bland and absolutely right, but at the same time this very banality suggested a sinister occurrence just under the surface.

He scanned the parked cars again, then the windows of the street, roof-tops, doorways, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Swaying like a man who had just stepped out of a wrecked train, he kept walking. When he reached the steps he paused. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat and glanced quickly at the faces around him. They were stunned, glazed by defeat. One or two had the desperate hardened look of men who have had a lifetime of crime imposed upon them. Cairney felt a kind of affinity for them.

‘What time's breakfast here?' he asked.

One of the men, a gnarled character with a silvery beard, said, ‘Seven. If you turn up at seven-oh-five, you miss grace. Don't matter none. You eat anyways.'

Cairney peered inside the dining room. He saw groups of men at tables, but no sign of Tumulty.

‘Religion and breakfast, they don't mix so good for me,' the man with the beard said.

Cairney nodded. He guessed it was probably close to seven by now.

‘You new around here?' the man asked.

‘Yeah.'

‘Seems I seen you one time before.'

Cairney said nothing. Inside the dining room men were shuffling in the direction of the serving area. Still no Tumulty. It crossed Cairney's mind that if he could somehow catch the priest's eye Tumulty might give him a sign, a gesture to reassure him that it was safe to enter.

‘Last week maybe,' the man was saying. ‘Was you here last week?'

‘Could be.'

The little group was silent now, as if they were weighing information of a vital nature. One of them, a short man with a face mottled by alcohol, eventually said, ‘I had a Rolex one time. Good timepiece.'

Somebody laughed at this, and Cairney smiled. There was a certain incoherence about these men, conversational leaps difficult to follow. The death of synapses, he thought. He moved closer to the threshold of the dining room. The smell of bacon was strong, nauseating. He experienced a familiar tingling in his nervous system. It was what he'd come to think of as the Moment, that point in time when either he committed himself or he stepped back. It was that place where he could choose to pull the trigger or press the detonating device or else abort his plans entirely. He listened to himself, the sound of his blood, the way his heart thumped. His body, in that peculiar vocabulary it had developed, was talking to him.

He quickly scanned the street again. He saw nothing unusual. It occurred to him that if anything
had
gone wrong, Joe Tumulty would have managed to give him a sign of some kind. In the absence of any warning, what else could he assume except that everything was fine? Like a swimmer cautiously testing water, he put one foot inside the dining room. And then he had momentum going and was moving towards the serving area, picking up a tray, a plate, cutlery, shuffling in line behind the other men. He faced Joe Tumulty, who stood behind trays of simmering food with a large spatula in his hand. There was nothing on the priest's face, no recognition, no surprise, nothing. Cairney watched two strips of bacon, a slab of toast and a spoonful of scrambled eggs fall on his plate, and then he turned away, carrying his tray in the direction of a table.

When he sat down he saw Frank Pagan on the other side of the room.

Calmly, Cairney cut one of the bacon strips in half. He didn't let his eyes linger long on Pagan. He stared at his food as he chewed on the rasher. He tasted absolutely nothing. In one sense, now, he seemed to stand in a place outside himself, figuring, assessing possibilities like a meteorologist studying a cloud formation. Objectively. Coolly. If Frank Pagan had infiltrated the place, there was the chance that he wasn't alone. Perhaps others, dressed as Pagan was, sat in the dining room at this very moment. This was the first consideration. The second was even more bleak. Tumulty must have known that Pagan was here. Why then hadn't the priest warned Cairney? Had Tumulty sold out? Had Tumulty
betrayed
him? Be still, he told himself. Be very still. To run now would bring Frank Pagan chasing after him. Besides, there was always another possibility, that Tumulty was simply playing along with Pagan's game and had no intention of betraying Jig.

Cairney sought the quiet centre of himself. The place of supreme calm, detachment. It had always been easy to locate in the past but now, as if Celestine had tampered with it and damaged it, he couldn't quite find the correct frame of mind. He came close, but there was an uneasiness that made clear thinking difficult. He worked at suppressing his nerves, his heartbeat, the way his thoughts were beginning to race.

Tumulty had come to the middle of the room. He was calling for prayer. He held his hands up in the air but he didn't turn his face in Jig's direction.

‘You all know the rules,' Tumulty was saying, over the clacking of forks and knives. ‘You all know we say grace at St. Finbar's before we eat.' Nobody was paying much attention to him. ‘Silence, please,' Tumulty said.

When he had some semblance of quiet, which was broken by coughing and the occasional belch, Joseph X. Tumulty closed his eyes and inclined his head.

He said, ‘We thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for what we are about to receive.'

A long silence. Tumulty looked as if he were locked in some internal struggle. Then he added, ‘The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Amen.'

Cairney glanced at Frank Pagan, who was digging heartily into his breakfast. Tumulty, after his quick little prayer, was threading his way between tables, finally approaching the one where Cairney sat. Cairney looked up at the priest. Tumulty made a small gesture with his head, indicating that Cairney should follow him. The young man rose just as Tumulty disappeared through the doorway in the direction of the stairs. Cairney walked very slowly, turning to glance at Frank Pagan again. The Englishman had stopped eating. He was staring bleakly at his empty plate.

Cairney stood very still on the threshold of the dark hallway. He'd caught something just then. A vibration. Something in the way Frank Pagan gazed at his plate. It was the look of a person
pretending
to study, when his mind was elsewhere. The sideways movement of the eyes. The apparent absentmindedness of expression that was an attempt to conceal a highly focused brain. Cairney knew that look. Suppressed excitement. Hidden tension. He understood that Frank Pagan was going to get up from the table at any moment and follow him out into the hallway.