The Runaway (38 page)

Never again.

He smiled as he thought that. It was the same as usual. He got drunk, seriously drunk, every time he tied one on with Petey, and last night had been no exception.

After a few drinks and a meal in the Stakis restaurant on Broadway, they had adjourned to a topless bar a few blocks east. The girls were ugly, the drink plentiful and the hours negotiable. He had resisted the temptation of a redhead with breasts like lumps of concrete and finally slumped back in his seat unconscious.

He had woken up ten minutes ago as the cleaners arrived. Petey was on the floor next to a blonde-haired black woman with non-existent breasts and buck teeth. He always stayed true to type.

Tidying himself up as best he could, Eamonn walked back out into the club. It stank of cigarettes, testosterone and bad breath. Petey was still blissfully asleep, looking the Irish culchie he was with his face relaxed and smiling. Eamonn noticed with distaste that the woman had wet herself. Making sure his wallet was still in place, he left the bar and walked out into the morning light. It made his eyes hurt.

Making a right, he slipped into a Broadway diner in search of coffee and some breakfast before finding himself a cab. People were already about at five-thirty in the morning. He ordered a large coffee and a Danish, some eggs over easy and pancakes. He needed food, something to fill up the drink-soaked belly that was giving him cramps.

As he ate his mind was on Maria, his job and Deirdra. That was until a foxy little chick with a short skirt, smudged eye shadow and a colourful caftan came into the diner. Within five minutes he had bought her breakfast and was listening to her short life story.

The carefully edited version anyway.

He knew she was hooking; she had the look, even at eighteen. It took something away from the eyes, made them wary yet open. As if they knew something that no one else did. He also knew that once Petey saw her, he would find her a place and then they’d all earn. Himself included.

Eamonn had no qualms about what he was doing, he had long ago given up any hope of being a regular guy. There just wasn’t any money in it.

 

John Castellano had been up all night, waiting outside the home of his rival on the Lower East Side with a gun, a set of handcuffs and a burning in his guts so acute he felt it would tear through his body and kill him stone dead.

Every time he thought of his wife with this man, he felt the urge to kill. Maria was blameless, her father had told him. She was bewitched by the Irishman, just a naive Catholic girl, brought up to trust and see good in other people. Now this man had taken their precious jewel and soiled her. She’d been too unworldly to see what was happening. Docherty had even talked her into giving him a door key.

His father-in-law had been surprised when his daughter’s husband really seemed to swallow whole what he was saying, and a little part of John’s mind had registered that fact. He knew deep inside who was at fault but he loved Maria and it was so much easier to blame that Irish bastard!

Now John gritted his teeth with annoyance. He had hoped to find his quarry straight off, but Docherty was proving elusive.

Well, John was a patient man, he would wait. He would track down his prey if it was the last thing he did. Lighting a cigarette, he settled himself once more in his car and watched the doorway to his enemy’s apartment house. He would blow the Irishman away and laugh while he did it. This thought made him feel much better.

 

Cara Bowman was in fact seventeen, not eighteen, and had been hustling for nearly a year. Running away from a small town in Oklahoma, she had arrived in the Big Apple with thirty dollars and a suitcase of unsuitable clothes. She had turned her first trick within eight hours of getting off the bus.

Taken in by a black pimp called Alphonso, she had soon learned the harsh realities of life in New York with no money, no family and no friends to support her.

Meeting this man Eamonn was going to change all that. He had promised her a job - a proper one where she earned her money in comfort and could afford a decent place to live. She was still fresh-faced enough to make a go of her life in New York. She would save, go to classes, try and be somebody.

She certainly couldn’t go home.

As she talked to the man beside her, Cara opened up like a little flower. Making him laugh. It felt more like a date than anything else and that pleased her. He spoke to her with respect, and listened to what she had to say. Better still, he didn’t attempt to touch her once. Most men had to touch, even if it was only her face, her arm or her leg.

This man was different. Even in his crumpled suit, with a shadow on his strong chin and eyes rimmed with red, she could see he was a person to be reckoned with. His gold watch, his carefully cut hair and hand-made shoes told her all she needed to know.

She knew that what he was offering her was still hooking, but at least it was hooking with a bit of finesse. Nice clothes, a nice place to live, a nice enough kind of life. It sounded like heaven to her.

As they left the diner and got into a cab, she felt for the first time in months that life had something to offer her. She slipped her hand into his and felt him stiffen momentarily. As she looked at him, she saw a pained expression on his face, a tired, drawn look that made her feel sorry for him.

‘Are you OK?’ Her drawl was perfect; it sounded so smooth, so easy.

He smiled sadly at her. ‘You’re a very lovely girl.’ Then it hit him: she reminded him of Cathy, with her dainty build and blonde hair. She had the same wary look in her eyes and the same fighting attitude. He closed his eyes and stroked her hair. She even felt the same as Cathy. His Cathy.

She rested her head on his shoulder and he could smell the street on her: fast food, cheap perfume and cigarette smoke. She smelt like a whore. The thought made him uneasy.

How was Cathy faring? Was she in the same position somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic? Were unknown men taking her body and using it in any way they wanted, all for a few seconds’ gratification? He shuddered.

As they drew up outside his apartment building on Third Avenue, Eamonn felt sorry he had asked the girl home with him. She reminded him of what he had lost, what he had used and abused. She reminded him of his other life in London, and he’d started to resent her for this fact.

He paid off the cab, and then over the road saw the glint of sun on metal as a gun was pushed through the open window of the Buick convertible parked by the fire hydrant.

As the gun flashed, Eamonn pulled the girl to him.

It was all over in a split second. The car screeched away from the kerb, the cab disappeared round the corner, and Cara Bowman was lying in his arms, the back of her head blown away.

 

Maria watched her husband as he drank a cup of coffee and smoked another cigarette.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said spitefully. ‘You stay out all night, you come in this morning like a bear with a sore head and I can’t get a civil word from you. Jesus H. Christ, you’re depressing me.’

Her husky voice was higher than usual. Her face, devoid of make-up, showed its flaws. The harsh light revealed the broken veins on her cheeks and the sallowness of her Sicilian complexion. John was seeing his wife as she really was. Her foul mouth, her moods, her selfishness were all apparent for the first time as he looked at her.

‘Shut the fuck up, Maria.’

Her face was a picture of shock as he spoke the words. ‘What did you say?’ she hissed.

Her husband closed his eyes and answered once more through his teeth. ‘I said, shut the fuck up. I listen to you all the time. It’s like a fucking long-playing record. Now shut up, Maria, before I give you something to whine about.’

John Castellano looked at her, his eyes hooded. Maria suddenly saw him as another woman might see him. If he’d married the right person he could have been a good husband. A good father.

‘Fuck you, you bastard!’ she couldn’t stop herself from saying. ‘If my father knew you spoke to me like th—’

His hand hit her on the jaw, a glancing blow that was powerful enough to knock her from her chair. As she sprawled on the floor he saw she was naked under her robe and for the first time it didn’t make him want her.

She was abhorrent to him.

‘Fuck you, bitch, and fuck your goddamn father as well. I know what you’ve been doing - he told me himself. Told me about the Irishman with the key to my fucking apartment. With a cock to stick up my darling so-called wife. So fuck you all - fuck your mother as well, for making you into the spoiled fucking whore you are!’

Pulling her robe around her, Maria scrambled to her feet. For the first time in her life she was frightened. She was in big trouble, and her father, whom she usually manipulated to get what she wanted, was a part of that trouble.

John watched her expression change and sneered. ‘What the fuck are you anyway? There’s plenty of hookers in the world with more respect for themselves than you have. I married you and you’re mine now, no matter what you fucking want. You want to fuck the Irishman, eh? Well, I killed him this morning. I shot the bastard dead. Now you know what you caused. What you fucking asked for, you got at last. And you listen to me, Maria, and listen fucking good. There’s going to be big changes around here. I’ll take my belt to you in future if I even suspect you’ve looked at another man. I’m a fucking Italian, a real man, baby, and don’t you ever forget that.’

Maria stared at the man she had married with such pomp and ceremony eight months previously and felt a wave of hatred so intense she could practically taste it.

‘You’ve not killed Eamonn, no way!’ she said passionately. ‘You’re not man enough to kill anyone. My father gave you to me - we live in his apartment, we eat with his money. We are owned by him. Once Eamonn and I go to him, he’ll give me Eamonn as he’s given me everything I’ve wanted, all my life.’

John walked over to where his wife stood by the oak cabinets of their kitchen. Bringing back his fist, he hit her again. This time he put all his weight behind it. Maria screamed as the punches rained down on her, afraid for her life. As he pushed her to the floor and proceeded to rape her, she wept in terror.

He pushed himself inside her, shouting: ‘How’s that, eh? Better than Irish cock, yeah? You like the one-eyed snake a little too much, I should have guessed that from the first. A hundred-dollar hooker couldn’t move like you, baby.’

As he felt himself coming, he withdrew and spent himself all over her face and hair. ‘I wouldn’t waste a baby inside you, bitch. You’re a fucking whore. A dirty, filthy whore.’

Spitting in her face, he stood up. He stared down at her, feeling a moment’s euphoria at what he had done. At last he had her cowed. He had taken some of the fight from her.

He belted up his trousers and screamed, ‘When I get home tonight, I want a meal on the table, I want you dressed decently and I want this place cleaned up. It’s like a fucking pig sty.’

Maria lay on the floor, one hand covering her face. She did not move until she heard the door to the apartment close. Her face stung from the beating, and her eyes were already swelling. A trickle of blood mixed with snot seeped down her lip; she could taste it on her lips.

Staggering to her feet, she made her way to the phone. The large picture window graced a breathtaking view over Manhattan but the white furniture, grubby from neglect, looked grey in the morning light.

Slumping down on to the deep brown shag pile carpet, she lifted the receiver and dialled her father’s number. Paul, woken from sleep by his daughter’s hysterical voice, closed his eyes once more and sighed.

 

Petey was with Eamonn in his apartment, amazed by the way the man before him had crumpled and cried like a baby about an unknown hooker from fucking Oklahoma of all the Godforsaken places in the world. Eamonn had insisted on paying for the girl’s funeral. The police, already well paid by the Mahoneys, had left the scene even richer and a deal less troubled about the death of the unknown girl. It was a drive-by-shooting, prelude to a mugging, was the official story. It would hit the inside pages of the
New York Times
and be forgotten about by the next day.

Petey poured him another coffee and laced it liberally with whiskey. ‘OK, so you were nearly hit,’ he said. ‘So we find out who is after you, and hit them first. It’s no fucking big deal.’

Eamonn stared into Petey’s large moon face and shook his head. ‘She was just a kid, Petey. Don’t you care that she died?’

The other man shrugged. ‘In truth, I don’t. Jasus, she was a hooker. Every time she plied her trade she took her life into her hands. You wasn’t to blame.’

Eamonn looked at his friend and, wanting to believe what he was saying, nodded in agreement. Only he knew he had dragged the girl in front of him, let her take the bullet meant for him, and he wasn’t going to admit that to anyone.

Petey’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘We have to find out who the shooter was, OK? That’s the priority now because you’re still a target. Any ideas? Have you upset anyone? Have there been any threats or anything?’

Eamonn ran his hands through his thick dark hair and shook his head. ‘It can only be one of two people: Maria’s father, Paul Santorini, or her husband, John Castellano. They’re the only people who might want to kill me.’

Petey whistled through his teeth. ‘So it’s the Italians, eh? I’d better tell this story to Jack, you know what he’s like. But he’ll try and sort it out for you. For all of us. You know what the Eyeties are like - they take everything so fucking personal.’

Eamonn had to agree, only just realising the trouble he was in.

Jack Mahoney would go mad.

 

Jack was already mad. At 6.45 he had taken a call from Paul Santorini’s number two, telling him what was going down. Now he was about to lose one of his best men over a fucking woman. It was this that annoyed Jack more than anything. The fact that Eamonn was to marry his daughter at some point, didn’t bother him; men were men and any woman who expected a man to stay faithful to her was a fool. But then, all his daughters were fools, he had seen to that himself. If Santorini had brought his girl up properly none of this would have happened.