Cormac
I go to the bar and get another whisky. Aiden O’Connell, a grizzled old bastard with one milky eye from where he got glaucoma last year, tosses the bottle onto the bar and pours a glass for himself and a glass for me. He doesn’t wear the new green-tee-and-pants combo the owners want the staff to wear. Aiden has worked here for years, has been through five ownership transfers, and has survived all five since he knows me, my dad, my cousin, and the whole damned Irish lot of us.
“New one isn’t even Irish—isn’t even half Irish,” he says, as we both sip our whiskies. I’m watching the bathroom door out of the corner of my eye. I never get what women do in there that takes so long. I’m pissed, too, about Scar not knowing a thing. I reckon she’d tell me if she did, which means I need to get out of here and meet with dad to discuss strategy. But right now, with Scar dressed in that perfect green dress and those sexy-as-fuck red heels, I find myself unwilling to leave. “Armenian or Russian or something,” Aiden goes on. “One of ’em.”
“You’ll be all right,” I tell him.
I return to the booth and tap the table with my finger, thinking about all this weird shit with the boys locked up in LA. None of it makes any sense unless there’s an informant somewhere in the organization. Maybe I can be classified as an informant, but I’ve never said shit about my family. Hell, half the guys know that me and Scar work together every now and then. Dad knows and encourages it. So it must be somebody else. I try and think who it could be. But there have been a few new guys taken into the fold recently and it could be any one of them. For the tenth time since this stuff started, I find myself wishing I paid more attention to the boring business stuff.
Where the hell is she? I look at the clock and see it’s only been a few minutes. Maybe she’s making a call. Maybe she’s snorting a line of coke. I laugh at the thought of that: stern, professional Scarlet O’Bannon snorting a stern, professional line of cocaine. Then my mind strays in other directions, to what she’d look like without that dress on, those long, athletic legs crossed at the ankles, and her pussy a sweet triangle of panties just waiting for my hand. I wonder if she’d moan quietly or loudly when I began to rub her. I wonder if she’d scream as I made her come again and again. I want to slide my fingers through her hair and pull, lightly at first to see if she likes it and then harder when she starts to moan for me, as her pussy gets tight around my cock, as she squirts all over—
My cell rings, interrupting my thought. One second I’m inside Scar; the next my sister’s name is staring at me. I push away the thought of Scar and answer the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, thank God!” Moira cries. “Thank God! Blessed be the Virgin! Holy Mary, mother of God!”
“Don’t start with that God stuff, Moira,” I say. “What is it? Are you drunk?”
“Drunk! If only!”
“What, then?” I ask.
“Something dreadful has happened.” She pauses. She’s struggling to hold herself together, I sense. There are tears in her voice, but she manages to keep them at bay as she goes on. “I had a meeting with dad, Cormac. Just to go to coffee. You know how he likes—liked—coffee, to sit with me and have a cup, I mean. Just a cup and—”
“Moira!” I snap. “Tell me what’s wrong!”
“Dad’s dead.”
I’m on my feet, pacing up and down near the table. I get a few odd looks for the families sitting in the next aisle.
She breaks down crying, mumbling when I try and get more out of her. Scar emerges from the bathroom and walks toward me. Her demeanor changes when she gets close. Maybe my anxiety is showing on my face. One second she looks like she’s about to tell me she needs to leave and not to waste her time again. The next she’s soft and caring and she has her hand on my shoulder.
“Moira,” I say, Scar and me sitting side by side, her stroking my shoulder comfortingly. “Just slow down and tell me what’s happening. Where are you? Tell me where you are and I’ll come to you.”
“I’m at Ralph’s penthouse,” she manages to say.
Ralph Walker is a congressman who’s taken a liking to Moira, despite having a wife and family in the suburbs. I don’t really like the thought of the old man with his hands on my sister, but I know that he has security in his penthouse; I know that whatever’s happened, Moira will be safe there.
“Okay, good. Now tell me what’s going on.”
I hear her take a slow, shaky breath and then whisper something to herself I can’t hear. Then she starts talking fast; I think it’s so she can get through it all without crying again. “It went like this, Cormac. I was meant to meet him for coffee, and so I was at the compound—you know, the casino on the fifteenth floor.”
“Right.” We have covers all over town: casinos, bars, laundries, amd electronics stores. Dad’s favorite has always been the casino, and so it’s become the base of operations. It’s become the compound.
“And then Mickey came in.”
“Wait, I thought he was missing.”
“Just listen!” she roars, causing the phone to crackle with static. “Just listen to me. Mickey came in with a big gun, like a pump gun—”
“A shotgun?”
“Yes, exactly! And I was in the closet because I hid, because dad made me hide, because there was lots of noise outside. So I was hiding, and then he came in and blew dad’s head—dad’s head—and there was so much—blood—Cormac—more blood than I’ve ever—You’re not safe! Mickey’s Don now, and he’s taken over the family, and you’re not safe! You need to get away from wherever you are and come to me, Cormac! I can’t lose you both! I hid, hid and smelt the blood and now—I’m safe, but you need to—”
She breaks down in tears just as five of Mickey’s goons walk through the door. I can tell they’re mob men from all the tattoos and the fact that a couple of them are holding knuckle dusters. A couple more have the outline of guns under their clothes. And I can tell they’re Mickey’s because it’s way too much of a coincidence. So dad is really dead ... I choke down whatever emotions a man is supposed to feel when he hears his dad’s dead. I can’t think on that now. I need to get out of here; I need to get Scar out of here.
“Moira, I need to go. Stay there. Don’t move. Be safe. Be smart.”
I hang up the phone and turn to Scar. Her hands are near her handbag now, her sea-green eyes locked on the men walking into the bar.
“What happened?”
“My dad’s dead; those men helped kill him. My cousin has taken over the family. They’re here to kill me.” I give her this information in a cold, emotionless voice. You never let emotion interfere with what you need to do.
“Turn to me,” Scar says. “Nod. Pretend to be listening. Maybe they won’t recognize you.”
I do as she says, since Scar is pretty smart when it comes to this stuff. Once, we were followed to one of our meetings, so she pretended to be drunk, got up on stage, and started singing karaoke, making our tails think I was just out with some party chick.
“I think you have to take the Electoral College into consideration,” Scar says, taking on a haughty, intellectual tone. I nod seriously, keeping my eyes pinned on her face. “We have to take into consideration the mass of commitment to voting, if you see what I—”
“All right, Cormac, let’s go. Don’t make us do you on CCTV.”
Nice try, Scar.
I turn so that I’m facing the men. They all look like the others, tattoos covering their arms and legs, dressed in shirts and jeans, some of them with ugly scars on their faces. I have a few scars like those of my own, but luckily none on my face. Yet. Maybe today will break that trend. Five men, but their leader seems to be a black-haired man with a bushy beard that reaches down to his chest. He’s the one speaking.
“That would be a mistake,” I say. “A damn big one.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“So you can kill me? That doesn’t seem persuasive.”
“We have your sister,” the black-haired man lies. “You don’t wanna fuck with us, boy.”
I can’t see Scar, but I can feel her next to me. I’m sure her hand is in her handbag. The most the men will think is that she’s reaching for her phone. They won’t see a redhead in a smoking dress as a threat. But unlike them, I know what Scar is capable of. I know all about her arrest record. And once, a couple of years back, I saw her take down an Italian gangster with a well-aimed blow to the nose and a backhand across the cheek.
“You know who I am.” I don’t talk to the leader. I talk to the troops. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be five of you. So why don’t you do yourselves a favor and get the fuck out of here before you make me angry?”
Blackbeard has a hearty laugh at that. Scar nudges something against my leg. Something metal. I talk loudly, distracting them. “Okay, okay, listen to me. Maybe I’m getting a bit too cocky here.” I take the gun, feeling its weight in my hand. Suddenly, the situation isn’t so bleak. “Maybe I’m losing my head a little. Being the Don’s son will do that to you.”
“You’re not the Don’s son no more,” Blackbeard says. “Mickey’s the Don now—Fuck!”
“Don’t you fucking move.” I’m on my feet, FBI-issued sidearm in hand, switching my aim between all five of them. Scar stands at my shoulder with a gun of her own. “Two guns?” I ask her quietly.
“Better safe than sorry,” she shoots back.
Both of us keep our barrels trained on them. The men look surprised to see that Scar’s hands aren’t shaking—that she looks, in fact, like she’s carved out of ice. Her white skin isn’t flushed or worried. Her green eyes aren’t wide or startled. She looks like she could put down these men and go get a sandwich afterward.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” she says. “You’re going to drop any weapons you have on the floor and then I’m going to—”
“You’re going to get the fuck out of here,” I interrupt. She’s going to mention the FBI. What the hell is she doing? If she mentions the FBI, Mickey will know I’ve worked with them, and if he does have contact like I’ve suspected, then it will be easy for him to make Scar’s life difficult. “Drop your fucking weapons and get fucked.”
“A little lady and an orphan.” Blackbeard slaps his belly, laughing. “Your mother was a whore, lad. The whole family knows that. Everybody had her. Everybody fucking passed her around like the wet whore cunt she was, and now your pa’s dead too. The fuck you think a waste of fucking—”
His kneecap explodes in a mess of denim and blood and bone. Gun smoke curls up from the barrel of my weapon. Blackbeard screams and hops around on one foot, knocking over plates and a chair, and just manages to stumble across the room to the exit. When the other men just stand there, dumbfounded, I step forward and aim the gun at each of them in turn. “Five, four, three, two ...” They finally understand, dropping their weapons, turning, and jogging toward the exit. Before they leave, one of them shouts back: “This isn’t over, Cormac! You’re a fuckin’ dead man!”
I kneel down next to their guns, sorting through them, and pick up a sawn-off shotgun and drop two handguns into my belt. Then I turn to Scar, who’s watching me with her head tilted.
“What?”
All around us, the restaurant is alive with screaming children and hurrying adults, people crouched under tables. One woman cries loudly, begging for her life and talking about her children and how much she loves them.
“I guess we better leave?” I say, wondering if that’s why she’s looking at me like that.
“I just ... are you okay? Your dad ...”
My dad! I close the distance between us and grab her hand. “It’s sweet that you’re worried about me, Scar. Damn sweet and all. But I think we’ve got more important things to worry about right now. Like getting the hell out of here before more of Mickey’s men come back.” Or worse, the police. But I don’t say that aloud since Scar might think that’d be a good thing.
I drag her out of the bar, into the street, and down the road toward my car. And despite everything—this is the really fucked up thing; this is how I know there must be something wrong with me—despite everything, I can’t help but think how sweet her hand feels in mine.