Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“What?” I yelled.

“No, he’s fine. Shaken up, like the rest of us, but fine. I went ballistic and called the local precinct. But a funny thing happened. The two officers who arrived didn’t seem too concerned. So I asked the monsignor of St. Edmund’s about it. You’ll never guess the last name of the precinct’s second in command.”

“No!” I said. “Another Flaherty?”

“No wonder they made you first-grade detective,” Seamus said.

I shook my head, truly steamed. Nothing pissed me off more than a fellow cop abusing his power.

“They’re a scourge, these people. From way back. I actually knew their father when I worked in the meatpacking district before I went to college. He was a loan shark as vicious as they come. Used to make his rounds come dinnertime, and if a man couldn’t pay, he’d mercilessly beat him in front of his own family.”

“Father of the year,” I said.

“That’s why we need to head over there now and squash this thing. This nonsense has to stop. I pulled some strings and arranged a sit-down.”

“A sit-down?” I yelled. “Who are you, Father Tony Soprano?”

“You don’t grow up in Hell’s Kitchen without knowing a few people, lad. I called in a few favors. What of it? We’re due over there now. It’s time to settle this thing man to man, West Side–style.”

“Over where?” I cried.

“The Flaherty house, Mike. Pay attention. And keep your gun handy.”

Chapter 46

HOW THE HELL DID I get myself into these things?

As I drove toward the Rockaway Inlet for the second time, I couldn’t believe I was actually agreeing to participate in some kind of crazy Irish mobster meeting. Had I fallen asleep at work and was I dreaming this? Of course not. You hang with an old-school Irish lunatic grandfather like mine long enough, the surreal becomes your normal.

We heard the fireworks before we turned the corner for the Flahertys’ street. There were whistling bottle rockets and deafening strings

of firecrackers. A giant flower burst of yellow lit up the sky behind the Flaherty compound’s dilapidated split-level as we pulled up in front of it.

“I thought the Fourth of July was over,” I said as we got out. “Are you sure the Vatican would approve of this?”

“You just follow my lead and keep quiet,” Seamus said. “These gangster people only listen to man talk.”

I shook my head as I spotted my old pal, Mr. Pit Bull, trying to chew a hole in the chain-link fence as we came up the steps. This time I couldn’t actually hear the dog going batshit with all the noise of the ordnance from the backyard.

When no one came to the door, we decided to go around the side of the house to the back. The sulfurous smell of gunpowder hung in the air, which I thought was fitting, since we were now walking through the valley of the shadow of death, straight into the gates of Hell.

The rear of the place was almost completely overtaken by a large deck and one of those cheap aboveground pools. On the deck, the muscle-headed punk patriarch of the Flaherty clan, “Tommy Boy,” as he was known from his rap sheet, sat with his tattooed brother Billy, book-ending a keg. I realized why no one had called the cops, when I saw the third Flaherty for the first time. I didn’t know what his name was, but I noticed that he was still wearing his white NYPD captain’s shirt as he tossed a lit bottle rocket toward the house next door.

Tommy Boy looked over with bleary eyes as Seamus cleared his throat by the deck steps.

“What the—?” he said. His pale face split into a grim grin. “Hey, guys. Check this out. How’s this for a joke: A cop and a priest walk uninvited into a private party.”

“We’re here to have that sit-down, Flaherty,” Seamus said. “We’ve come to work this thing out, and we won’t leave until we do.”

“Sit-down?” the illustrated Flaherty brother, Billy, said, balling his hands into fists as he stood. “Only thing that’s gonna happen to you, coot, is a serious beat-down.”

Chapter 47

I FOLLOWED MY COURAGEOUS, or maybe just insane, grandfather up the stairs onto the deck.

“Murphy sent me,” Seamus said to Tommy Boy, completely ignoring the tattooed man.

“Murphy?” Tommy Boy said, not budging from his cheap plastic seat. “Frank Murphy? That dirty ol’ little Forty-ninth Street bookie I let operate out of the kindness of my Irish heart? News flash, Father Moron. He’s less valid on the West Side than you. Now get your scrawny ass out of here before my brother Billy here makes it so that you have to say mass for the rest of your life on a Hoveround.”