A reason to kill, p.73
A Reason To Kill, page 73
“Afraid that’s out of my hands.” Ann said and together they laughed.
Then Catherine assured her. “I wouldn’t worry. It’s all in the genes. We never knew Deirdre’s mother but Michael didn’t speak well of her.”
In an attempt to squash Catherine’s desire to malign Deirdre’s other parent, Ann offered a change while not going too far off their subject. “Did you hear the O’Donnells’ had a boy? Almost ten pounds and twenty-three inches long, heavens can you imagine as tiny as Megan is, she must have been walking on her knees at the end—if she could walk at all. I do hope mine doesn’t try to come out smiling with a full set of teeth.”
“She actually went through the birth there? When she could have so easily come home. I’m certain Seamus would have agreed…it would have been so much safer. I always did and London has much better medical facilities than Dublin.”
“Catherine, I swear, for an intelligent woman,” she laughed. “You make it sound like they are living in a third world country.” Ann hid her contempt with more light laughter. “This has been a lovely get together. We really must find time more often…”
Chapter 131
New York, 1985
This greenhouse effect the science community were warning about might becoming a reality, Thomas Devlin thought as he pulled his tie off and tossed it to join his sport jacket.
Between the latest incident and the time of year it was, he’d been expecting the summons. “Sticky as hell out there,” he remarked as he casually spread on the cool leather couch.
“This fuckin’ place is like a morgue.” During these sessions Michael O’Neill always poured. He filled the glasses to the brim; nothing was added. “Ann’s gone to visit her folks about the kid, didn’t want to tell them over the phone.
“Dede took Gavin to Mauve’s. My pa’s staying there. Don’t trust Ulster right now. Pa says the place is worse than a POW camp and he’s getting too old for the games.” He handed Devlin his glass. “Damn shame, Tom, those people burning alive like that. John must be having wide-awake nightmares. Remember how I felt when they murdered the kid. Heard how the Fitzgerald lad is doing?”
Devlin sipped at the Powers. “Mark’s gonna be scared up a bit for a while but he will be fine. If there had to be two Yankee heroes, John would have preferred a trade off with RJ the live one. Spent most of the month with the Connors’. Strangely they’re holding up better than I expected.
“Of course it helps that Raymond is nearly his old self again ordering everybody around like a general. Willy appears to have given up the bottle—at least for the present. So that’s one less problem for the family. RJ’s heroic death has infused life in the whole bunch. Media was hungry for this. Since the end of the trial they’ve been scrounging to fill their headlines and screens.”
O’Neill was already refilling his glass as he snorted, “A lousy way to get news. You make it sound like they planned it.” Then he sort of sniffled like a man catching a cold as he said, “Wish now I hadn’t promised Pa I’d send my kids over. Wish he’d start coming here, but the old man hates New York and Washington. Maybe he’d come if I permanently moved west.”
“Mike,” Devlin let out with a sharp laugh. “Cut the crap, you couldn’t give up the political arena…the excitement. What would you do in Clovis? Raise horses?”
“Dede would like that,” he considered. “Ranch would be a good place for Gavin and of course the new baby. Annie really surprised me with that news.” He shook his head, “Christ, I’m going to feel like his granddaddy.”
“That’s what you get for marrying such a young lady. You sure it’s going to be a boy?”
“It better, a man should only be straddled with one daughter in his life time—especially one like Dee. O’Donnell got himself a son, I heard. After raising his brother’s two boys, seems only fair.”
“Pat’s strutting around like a prize rooster ready to crow any time the kid is mentioned. Named the little fellow Patrick Seamus O’Donnell.”
“Neat trick. He’s got a grandson with the same name. You think that was on Pat’s mind when he convinced his daughter to marry the fellow.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” Devlin laughed. “Course Megan isn’t the kind of girl you tell what to do. When she decided to marry Seamus it was her own choice.”
Devlin smiled and tipped his glass at the eight by ten sitting on the big man’s desk and Emanon O’Neill smiled back at him. “Don’t think you could keep Dede back on the farm either. Still remember the first day we met. I was piss scared that morning when I stepped off the plane in New York. But that little bugger just took my hand and strutted up to them custom fellows hollering, ‘Uncle Emanon look there’s my pa.’ I knew she was something special.”
“Special all right, so damn special we almost buried her. When do the fuckin’ games end, Tom?”
“Can’t say they ever will. God created the playing field when he gave Adam free will and just living provides our innings. Crazy bastards we are, we have to suck up any loss and try again.” He held his glass out for a refill. “Connors got a bit of a reprieve. With all the protocol, they won’t be holding the funerals until after the fourth.”
Thomas Devlin tipped his glass towards Emanon O’Neill’s paper smile as he said, “You going to name your son Michael?”
“Nope. Though, Ann’s not too thrilled.” Michael O’Neill saluted his younger brother’s picture. “She thinks Emanon is too Irish for a Yankee Brat.”
Epilogue
England, 1986
“They’d only been actually married for a few months,” Mitchell remarked.
“But if you’d questioned their neighbors.” Reese’s expression was cold with disgust. “Like some of our lads have done, you would be inclined to believe they’d been married and living there for longer than either has been alive.”
“Transplanted Irish.” Mitchell grunted. “That’s what threw me off the first time I encountered the supposed Richard Quinn—the night Baumont died in the fire. Although, I’d never met Rory Hanlon myself, I had seen enough photos so I had a reasonable idea what he might look like today, a few pounds heavier and without the beard. But everyone in that pub including the owner seemed to know the fellow so well…You have the files?”
“And computer print outs. I’ve been over them myself. I couldn’t come up with any more than the lads. Perhaps if you and I tackle the task together?”
“There has to be a connection?” Mitchell prepared himself for a long afternoon. “The message the maid gave Baumont was clear: ‘it’s nearing the fourth of July’.” He repeated the words that sent Franco Baumont to his death. “Though it was definitely not an English voice, she swore it wasn’t a Yank on that phone. But normally if someone was just emphasizing a date they’d say July fourth?”
“Unless they were stressing American Independence Day and maybe all those fireworks. You’re right Dan, it has an ominous ring. But the property belonged to his mother’s company and Baumont had the young lady living there for months. The gas explosion that killed them was fully investigated.”
“So well investigated that we never located the bunker. Still, it was a gas explosion, caused by the ruptured pipe, which ignited when the heat kicked on. I suppose a bloke with enough knowledge could have rigged it.”
“Disturbing isn’t it? Shall I order tea?”
“In a bit.” Mitchell was already immersed in the mounds of paperwork. Familiar names, dates, places, and actions had been crossed referenced many times. Computers had done their task and come up with nothing that created a particular link to an exact date and the people involved. “How far back?”
“Twenty years—seemed a reasonable span. Shall I have them go back further?”
“Not yet. I like to work under the assumption our culprits were out of their nappies.”
The first hour swelled into three before Mitchell decided. “Instead of tea, I could use a brew.”
“Getting very Yankee like aren’t we?” Reese ordered two.
“Something should click right here in sixty nine.” Mitchell tapped the sheet. “Devlin was arrested with Hanlon. Hanlon ends up in prison but they turn Devlin loose.”
“The evidence tends to show, the lad had nothing to do with the attacks on the RUC that Hanlon was involved in. Devlin was a hardworking teenage chap then. He supported his mother by toiling long hours for his brother in law. Who happened to be Seamus O’Donnell’s brother. Liam O’Neill had no difficulty obtaining Devlin’s release.”
“Still, he was pretty roughed up?”
“Innocent or not most of them are.”
“Could have left a sour taste?”
“I imagine it did but that didn’t happen in July.”
“No,” Mitchell said. “It wasn’t even summer. But when the O’Neill kid got shot, Devlin was with him, and that was the summer of sixty nine.”
“Emanon O’Neill’s accident happened June twenty fifth, he died four days later. You’re corrupting me, Dan, I’m getting to like this afternoon ale.”
“Rotten habit,” Mitchell said. “Emanon O’Neill dies. Devlin drops out of sight. Where the hell did he go? We have no information on him until he reappears years later as an up and coming lawyer in New York. How and when did he leave Ulster? It would seem the RUC would have kept tabs on him. Especially since he was a witness to the shooting of Emanon O’Neill. Strange that they didn’t.”
“Seamus O’Donnell was close with the O’Neill youth too. Seamus’ brother was married to Devlin’s sister; she died in an accident that same year. There is nothing more on the brother. Like Devlin, he dropped out of sight, only never re-emerged. Seamus continued to run the pub, got his solicitor’s license and started mixing in politics. He didn’t move South until a number of years after Emanon died. He would have been at the funeral—what’s the date?”
“That’s not the answer. There was no funeral. Liam O’Neill had the body kept on ice for a spell attempting to bring charges against the Army at which he was unsuccessful. He eventually had his son cremated.”
“Cremated? He’s Catholic.”
This brought a negative shrug from the older man. “Liam O’Neill pretty much lost his religion when he lost his youngest son. His wife had passed earlier that same year.”
“But Devlin was Catholic so was Hanlon. They could have calculated that Emanon was buried on the fourth of July?”
“If they did, they would have discovered sometime later they were wrong. Dan, this speculation isn’t leading anywhere. Especially as far as Devlin is concerned. If he was still dogging Connors’ heels we might face a security problem. But the American President has completely severed that relationship. I think it’s time we sought a connection elsewhere.”
“And we could be wasting a lot of time and resources over the next few months chasing a code word instead of a code name? And if Quinn isn’t Hanlon—then where is Hanlon? For that matter where is Seamus O’Donnell’s brother?”
“Perhaps they are both dead and buried.”
“Too simple.” Mitchell took a long pull on the ale as he considered then said, “Colin O’Donnell, could be dead. He didn’t have a political bone in his body just a fine taste for the booze. Odd that his brother never attempted to locate him or if he did it left no record. Both O’Donnell and Devlin have told their nephews, that their daddy is dead. I tried to find out how he died from Sean but the boy didn’t seem to know.”
“That’s odd. You would think the sons would have been curious if nothing else.”
Mitchell simply shrugged in reply. “Quinn comes home to his daddy a year after Hanlon goes missing. Is a year enough time to so completely change an individual that he can pass for someone else?”
Reese had stepped over to the door, now he opened it and said to the man at the desk. “Cal, would you fetch us two more ales. And order a three o’clock tea. We’ll be at this a while.”
He turned and frowned back at Mitchell who said, “I think we are on the right trail only they’ve dynamited the path. If we can get over that gully we’ll find the answers on the other side.”
“Or we fall in again and never dig our way out.”
Onward…
Fitzsimmons, Geraldine;, A Reason To Kill
