Cormac
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I don’t know who you are.” The guard speaks in quick, crisp bursts, the way a man speaks when he knows he may have to turn to violence and doesn’t want to show any weakness. “If you could please step away—”
“What’s going on?” I ask Moira.
We’re standing at the end of the hallway, the guard’s words coming to us from what sounds like very far away. This place is huge, the size of an office block. “I don’t know,” Moira replies. “Somebody trying to get in, I guess.”
I walk down the hallway, clicking my neck from side to side, getting ready to fight. Maybe it’s one of Mickey’s cronies. Part of me wishes it was Mickey himself. That would make things a hell of a lot easier. I clench my hands into fists, feeling the anticipation of violence move through my body. I can never say that I like this—that it brings me pleasure—but it does make me feel alive. Knowing that soon another person and I will be tearing chunks out of each other always makes life seem more real, somehow.
When I get to the door I find the guard with his hand up and an old man with grey hair and a saggy face shaking his head. “You don’t understand,” the man says. “My daughter is Scarlet O’Bannon. She is downstairs, paying the cab driver. If you’ll just wait a moment—Look, I’m an FBI agent, young man. You ought to think about your behavior before you—”
“Do you have a warrant to enter these premises, sir?”
Agent O’Bannon—if that’s really who he is—bristles. “I’m not trying to ...” He steps back, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “We’ll just wait.”
Moira joins me at the door. “Did he say he’s Scarlet’s dad?”
“That’s what he said,” the guard replies.
“Well, let him in, then!”
“Hold on,” I say, approaching the old man. “I’m sorry, old timer, but you can’t just expect us to let you in without—”
“Cormac!” Scarlet calls from the elevator. “Why are you treating my father like a criminal?” She paces down the hallway, looking flustered. She called me Cormac. These past couple of days, she’s been calling me Cor. I guess she has to keep up appearances in front of her father.
“Why did you send him up without you?” I ask.
“I didn’t.” She smooths down her hair. She’s panting, but not the way I like. She’s panting like a woman who wants to get the awkwardness of life out of the way as quickly as possible. “I was about to ride up when the cab driver charged in, stopped the elevator, and said I owed him more. So I stepped out and dad didn’t and—oh, does it really matter? This is my father, and I’d like you to stop standing near him like that.”
“Like what?” I laugh. “How exactly am I standing?”
She points at me. I’m close to him, but my hands are at my sides; they aren’t even fists anymore. “Just back off.” Scarlet turns to Moira. “Can we all just sit down and have a drink or something? I think we have some talking to do.”
“Sure, sure,” Moira says. “Come on in. They’re okay, Martin.”
“You don’t have to speak for me,” Agent O’Bannon says, shooting a look I can’t interpret at his daughter.
“Okay, Dad. Sorry.”
Everything pauses for a moment, the air tense and awkward. Even the guard looks at the floor.
“I can speak for myself,” Agent O’Bannon says, before walking into the apartment.
I let him walk past me, then open my eyes wide at Scar, trying to ask her what’s going on without words. She returns the look by shaking her head. She doesn’t want to give me an answer. After becoming so close—the closest I’ve ever been with a woman—she’s now gone back to her cold, agent routine. Her no-nonsense routine. Her ponytail is tight and her lips are stern. I can’t imagine this woman whispering into my ear at five in the morning that she’s horny and I better wake up. Scar doesn’t know who she is, I reflect. Scar doesn’t know if she’s the sort of woman who can be with a man like me or the sort of woman who should hate a man like me. Which is a damn shame, because I have no ambiguity when it comes to that. I want to be with her.
In the living room, Agent O’Bannon sits in the armchair, Moira and Scar on the couch, and I lean against the wall, arms folded, looking over the scene. For around a minute, everybody forgets there’s business to be discussed. Scar stares helplessly at her feet, then at the wall, always avoiding me and her father. Agent O’Bannon looks down at his hands, opening and closing them. Moira just stares at me, mouth hanging open, willing me to stop it from being so awkward.
“How about a drink?” I ask the room in general.
“Brilliant idea!” Moira cries, leaping to her feet so fast Agent O’Bannon and Scar snap their gazes to her. “Let me help you.”
It feels like retreating when Moira and I go into the kitchen, leaving the stifling air of the living room behind us. We take our time finding the wine, and then the glasses, and then pour as though in slow motion.
“She’s not going to tell him about us, is she? Me and her, I mean.” I’m not annoyed or anything. I’m not one of those whiney guys who’s going to demand that his girlfriend tells her dad about him. No damn way. It’s just—“I just thought we were getting close, is all.”
“I’m not surprised things are complicated with her father,” Moira says, drinking down half her glass of wine in a gulp. “You have to promise not to tell anyone I told you this, Cor, especially Scarlet.” When I’ve promised, Moira tells me about Scar’s sister—the whole story. By the end, I’m halfway through my second beer.
“No wonder it’s strained,” I agree. “But it’s not her damn fault, is it?”
“Try telling that to somebody warped out of shape by grief.” She glances at the clock. “We’ve been in here for almost ten minutes, Cor. We can’t hide in here forever.”
“I wish we could.” Before we leave, I grab Moira by the arm. “I want you to listen to me, Moira. Listen closely. No fucking around now. I’m getting the sense that this old man isn’t just here for the wine and the company. So when they ask you, and they will ask you, I want you to promise to cooperate with them any way you can. That’ll mean you’ll be safe, from prosecution, from prison, and from being thrown out of college. Dad’s gone, my mom wants nothing to do with me, and your mom—” I stop myself. There’s no reason to remind her that her mother died in childbirth. “I have to look out for you. So you need to promise me, Moira. Promise me you’ll cooperate with them.”
She looks at me for a long time, then sighs. “I promise,” she says. “But I don’t like the way you’re talking. It’s like you’re not going to be around.”
“We’ll see. There’re still men in the streets who call themselves soldiers.”
We rejoin the O’Bannons in the living room, Moira making some excuse about finding the right bottle, which nobody believes.
Then we’re right back where we started, only now I have an explanation for the looks Scar gives her father and the looks he gives back to her. They aren’t hateful or aggressive. It’s more like they’re tired, infinitely tired of having to maintain the performance. Her father reminds me of men I’ve seen in black and white photographs from The Great Depression, haggard and ready to call it a day. I’m surprised because I’ve heard stories about Agent O’Bannon over the years, and I know he’s a capable and sometimes brutally efficient man. I want to go to Scar, wrap my arms around her, and tell her it wasn’t her fault. But I can’t. Not here. She hasn’t told her dad about me. Maybe she’ll never tell her dad about me. All I can do is lean against the wall, pretending I don’t care about anything, when in reality, I care too much.
Agent O’Bannon sips his wine. Once he’s placed it back on the coffee table, he has more confidence. He sits up. I see a hint of the man he must be when in the office or on a case. “I am here because my daughter has informed me about her suspicions, because I have suspicions of my own, and because I have been told that the two of you have links to the Irish mob which may come in useful in taking down Mickey MacFarland.”
“I’m the rightful heir to the Irish mob,” I say, wanting to see how he’ll react to that. I need to know where they’re heading with this. Is it just Mickey they want, or all of us?
Agent O’Bannon looks at me with his FBI mask. Unreadable. “I know,” he says. “Scarlet has informed me. To be honest with you, I have no interest in dismantling the mob, or any criminal organization, for that matter. I am not one of these agents who believe that crime can be eradicated. But when a criminal organization begins to cause real, measurable harm, that’s where I draw the line. Your mob, Mr. MacKay, is now involved in selling drugs to children, human trafficking, and gang-related warfare.”
“You mean they’re getting involved in it, since a couple of weeks ago,” I say.
“Well—yes.”
“And before Mickey took over, the worst we did was sell illegal cigarettes, maybe some weed, and finance a number of legitimate businesses.”
“And extort several non-legitimate businesses.”
“What do you care if we steal from drug dealers and perverts?” I snap. “The fuck is it to you if I break a pedophile’s nose?”
Agent O’Bannon sits up straight. He looks like a man now. The empty sack that dragged itself into the room fifteen minutes ago is gone. “It is nothing to me,” he says. “But I’m not talking about the way things used to be. I’m talking about the way things are right now, this second. I’m talking about a man who has corrupted one—or perhaps several—FBI agents, a man who has amassed an army, and a man who is leading the Irish mob into places the FBI can’t ignore. You want to take some pervert’s teeth? Fine, do it. But don’t you fucking dare think you can hurt children and get away with it!” He’s on his feet now, face red, finger pointed at me. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
I hold my hands up, surprised at the fire in him. “It’s not me, old timer. It’s Mickey. If I was Don, we wouldn’t be into this shit. I’d never allow it.”
“Dad,” Scar says softly, when he doesn’t sit.
He holds his finger to me until the anger drains from his face and then drops into his seat. “I didn’t mean to get angry,” he says. “But what that monster is doing is too much to think about. And the idea that there are agents involved with it ...”
I think about the stories of Mickey I’ve heard over the past few days. Hitting kids and assaulting women. “It has to be stopped,” I agree.
But stopped how? Mickey has to be stopped, but what if the O’Bannons want to stop the whole family? What if the men I’ve grown up with and fought with are suddenly in prison, me right there alongside them?
“Sometimes the only way to kill the snake is to cut off the head,” Scar says. “It might be that way with the Irish.”
“What’re you saying?” I ask, my voice too sharp, too angry. “That you might have to kill the whole mob, just because of Mickey?”
“Think about it like this,” Scar says. She’s holding her wine glass like she’s at a restaurant. She’s never looked so attractive or so infuriating. “Mickey has become Don by violent means, but he starts making the men money. Lots of money. Way more than selling cigarettes and exhorting other criminals. He starts making them so much more money that even when he’s gone, the men can’t stop. They’ve got a taste for it now. They keep going, even with you as leader. They just keep going, causing more pain and more damage. Do you really think the FBI would have a choice in that case?”
“I know these men,” I say, struggling to keep my voice under control. “I’ve spoken with them. I’ve lived with them. They’re not in this to become millionaires. They know that millionaires get the attention of people like you. They’re in this because they never finished school and they need steady cash for their families. They hate Mickey, fucking hate him. Cut off the head, fine, but leave the body alone.”
Scar chews her lip in a way that tells me she’s not convinced. I think of the O’Bannons, standing together in some courtroom, all my friends being thrown in chains, their wives and children staring at me with betrayed eyes.
“This is all beside the point for the time being,” Agent O’Bannon says. “If you two truly have ties to the mob, we have an opportunity here to get Mickey and to root out corruption in the Bureau.”
“Sure,” I whisper, too quietly for anybody to hear. “And to destroy my father’s legacy.”
They keep talking then, about ideas and plans, and the more they talk ,the more I realize I’m not where I should be. Dad dead, Mickey in charge ... this isn’t my place, in a comfortable penthouse with two FBI agents, even if I might be losing myself to one of them.
I watch Scar as she points her finger at her father, smiling about making plans to ruin my father’s inheritance, what my father spent his whole life building and maintaining. I watch Moira, who sits there looking worried and anxious, but silent. I’m glad about that. If there’s going to be FBI plans, let Moira be a part of them. Let her be safe. If I end up dead at the bottom of the sea, let Moira still be able to sit in college discussing literary theory.
“I’m going to get a drink,” I say.
I go into the hallway and head for the front door. The guard steps into my path. “Where’re you going?”
“For a smoke,” I reply. “Now get out of my way before I blow your fuckin’ brains out.”
I’m shaking with rage—rage at Scar, maybe, but rage at life more than anything, rage that life would be so cruel to pit her against me—and it doesn’t seem to matter that he has the gun. He swallows, nods shortly, then steps aside.
Soon I’m in the street, head ducked, hands in my pockets, walking in no particular direction.