Page 15 of Irish Brute

Isit in the Jeep for longer than is wise in this shambles of an alley. It took me all afternoon to track down the man inside the manky bar around the corner.

I roll my fingers over my right forearm, touching a scar so thick I can feel it through my black wool sweater. It’s been itching all day, as if my face-off with Russo triggered something deep beneath my skin.

As I sigh, I turn six years old again. I’m sitting in the corner with Lorenzo Ricci’s hair in my face, with Sean Doyle’s elbow digging into my side. I’m trying not to breathe, staying still as stone like Sister Mary Margaret says we have to be.

She’s wrong. I shouldn’t be still. I should be fighting the bad man out in the hall. I should get his gun and shoot him in the chest—the biggest target on a body, like Da’s already taught me.

But I’m too scared to move.

Sister Mary Margaret isn’t scared. She stands in front of us. She prays her rosary, even when the bad man comes into our classroom. I see his gun, like something in a movie. It’s long and it’s black and I want to close my eyes, but I can’t.

He shoots Sister Mary Margaret in the head. Blood and bone and brains spray all us kids. Then he fires into the corner, more bullets than I can count. My arm turns to flame, and the bad man leaves.

I’m a feckin’ coward.

Seventeen children and five sisters die at St. Ann’s that day. I’m only six, but I learn my lesson: Never sit still in the corner.

Make the rules. Be in charge. Don’t let the bad man win.

My arm is in casts for a month and a half. When it’s finally free, the skin is slimy and white, like something rotten in the back of the fridge. I have a huge crimson snake of a scar.

A scar that burns as I stride into a bar at a quarter to midnight, three nights into the new year. I stomp the snow from my boots by the abandoned hostess stand and straddle a stool at the chipped oak bar. I wait for the bartender to look up from the rocks glass he’s polishing.

The restaurant behind me is empty. Maybe that’s because the streets are ice rinks after yesterday’s blizzard. Maybe that’s because of the late hour. Maybe that’s because anyone ordering food in this riverside dive needs to be up-to-date on all their shots.

I finally resort to clearing my throat. “You’re a hard man to find, Father Brennan.”

A desperate glance tells me O’Rourke clocked me the second I came through the door. “Don’t call me that.”

“I have a business proposition for you.”

He waves a tired hand toward the bottles of cheap booze. “I have a job.”

“This is something you can’t afford to pass up.”

“Can’t afford? How much can’t I afford?”

I wonder who he owes money to now. My men won’t take his marker anymore. Russo’s guys will kill him if he comes up short, but only after they make him wish he was dead.

“Fifty thousand bucks.”

I could probably get him for ten. But I want him keeping his mouth shut, after.

He looks like I just promised him a new Maserati. But he’s learned something over the five years since I saw him last, because he sounds wary when he asks, “What do I have to do?”

“Nothing you haven’t already done hundreds of times.”

He finds the guts to look me in the eye. “Can you be more specific?”

“I need you to perform a wedding.”

“Anymore, I’m not a priest.”

“All you have to do is say the words. I want to walk out of St. Columba’s no more married than when I walked in.”

“What sort of racket are you running now?” For just a moment, I hear the old spirit in him, the certainty of a man who knew he was called by God. Brennan O’Rourke heard my confession for nine years. He knows more about my rackets than most men living.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”