A Turn for the Bad (10 page)

“Just spit it out, will you, Mick?” Maura said. “It's not about Bridget, is it?” she added anxiously.

“No, Bridget's grand, and I'll be stopping in to see her when I leave here, if yeh don't mind opening this morning.”

“No problem. Nobody's heard anything new about John Tully?”

“Not that I know,” Mick replied.

Gillian brought a clutch of mugs over to the table and set them down. “There, now—help yourselves. What's on your mind, Mick Nolan?”

“It'd be about the smuggling. I might know something about that.”

Maura, puzzled, looked at Mick. If she wanted basic information about smuggling in West Cork, she could ask Sean Murphy, and if he didn't know the answers, he could point her to someone who did. Why would Mick know anything at all? She watched an interesting exchange of silent expressions between Gillian and Mick: Gillian began with raising one eyebrow, with a slight smile. Mick smiled back and nodded once. Gillian then nodded toward Maura and raised both brows.

“Okay, guys, what's going on?” Maura demanded. “What am I missing?”

Mick rocked back in his chair, avoiding her eyes. “Do yeh know, smugglin' has a long history in this part of Ireland. Plenty of deserted coves where just about anything can
happen, with no one to see it. Too few gardaí to keep watch, or before that, the Irish navy or whoever was in charge at the time. The coast of West Cork is no better than a sieve.”

“So?” Maura said. “What's it got to do with anything?”

“Nobody's said as much, but John Tully might've run afoul of a group of smugglers who didn't take kindly to his presence,” Mick said carefully.

That was one thing Maura had never considered. “Wait—you're saying that John, walking along the beach with his little kid, saw something he shouldn't have? Someone trying to land something?”

“He might have done.”

“If that's true, why didn't they just knock him out right then and go on with their business?”

“To their credit, maybe they were worried about the child.”

“Who got left there alone anyway,” Maura pointed out. “Are you saying because of what he saw that he shouldn't have, they might have killed John, and it just happens that nobody's found the body yet? Or they took it away with them and dumped it who knows where?”

“Could be. Although these encounters are seldom violent. Everybody kinda looks the other way, and nobody tells the gardaí or customs. ‘Mind yer own business' is the order of the day.”

Maura thought about that for a moment—and thought back to her Boston days, where she knew that people bought goods that just happened to have “fallen off the truck,” no questions asked. Was this so different? But a man was missing and another man was dead. “Okay, help me understand this. What gets smuggled?”

“Drugs. Alcohol. Tobacco and cigarettes,” Mick said. “Those are just the high-cost things—there's plenty of smaller counterfeit stuff that slips through, like perfumes and designer clothes.”

Maura stared at him incredulously. “Are you saying that this is more than a bunch of guys in a boat, sneaking past the . . . well, whoever's supposed to be on patrol?”

Mick nodded. “Far bigger. We're talking millions of euros. Per trip. And that's only the ones who get caught.”

“What're we talking about around here in West Cork?” Maura demanded.

“Depends,” Mick replied. “Alcohol tends to be the most local—it's not hard to make and it's easy to disguise, like puttin' it in an antifreeze container or some other kind of bottle. There are those who take the empty bottles from a pub and reuse them and just print up new labels. Cigarettes, now, that's a much bigger business. Some say that as much as forty percent of the cigarettes smoked in this country are illegal. As fer drugs, there's plenty of cannabis about, but cocaine's where the big money is. Comes in pure and gets cut when it reaches its destination.”

And she hadn't been aware of any of this? “Where's it all come from?”

“Like I said, the alcohol doesn't travel far. The tobacco? Asia—places like Vietnam. Africa. Those two supply mostly cigarettes, but there's also trade in loose tobacco, and a lot of that comes by way of Europe. Cocaine? South America, Central America, West Africa, even Spain.”

Maura wondered how she could have been so naive. It had never occurred to her that there might be a black market in cigarettes or liquor, much less anything like a major
amount of cocaine. In Boston it wouldn't have surprised her—and she would have added to the list pharmaceuticals and illegal guns. But West Cork? Simple, peaceful West Cork? But Mick was right: all those tiny, deserted coves and islands offered the perfect settings for shipments and transfers that somebody wanted to keep away from prying eyes. And Sean had told her the gardaí were stretched kind of thin. They couldn't be everywhere at once, even if crime in general was low.

Something about Mick's summary seemed off. He rarely talked about serious stuff—not that Sullivan's was the place for important discussions—but he seemed to know an awful lot about smuggling. And that suggested that he might have some kind of personal experience, which would explain why he'd been kind of secretive about it and asked to meet here rather than at the pub.

Might as well get it out in the open now. “Mick, why do you know so much about this?” Maura asked, although she thought she already knew the answer.

He looked at her briefly, then looked away. “I might have put my hand to it, now and then.”

Maura's stomach dropped. “What? You're telling me you've smuggled . . . what? Here? When?”

Gillian, who had remained a silent observer so far, said, “Don't be too quick to judge, Maura. There's plenty of people hereabouts who make a little on the side, not quite legally.”

Mick ignored her interruption, but took his time in responding. “I wouldn't touch the drugs—they can destroy people. And the men behind it, they're dangerous. You must've known that, back in Boston.”

“Like Colombian cartels, that kind of thing? Sure, I've read about them. They're here too?” It was a frightening thought, Maura reflected. She'd known something was going on in the cities, after her earlier encounter with a thug from Cork city. But here?

“They are. The alcohol, now—that's a different question. People drink. I'm not sayin' there aren't those who overdo, but most folk like a drink or two of an evening, while watchin' sports on the telly or sharin' some craic in the pub. You've seen that. But with all the government taxes and such, it's expensive fer an ordinary man. There's been little trouble with excess drink at Sullivan's, am I right?”

“Yes. I've certainly seen worse in Boston. You're saying most people can't afford more?”

Mick nodded.

“Do you smuggle liquor?” Maura demanded.

Mick shook his head. “I wouldn't do that. I worked fer Old Mick fer years, and he was good to me, gave me a job when I needed one and treated me fairly. I knew then how much money the place made and how much he needed to keep goin', even if he didn't ask fer much. If you think about it you'll realize that selling liquor off the books takes away from yer own business at the pub. Those who buy outside aren't buying drinks at Sullivan's, or not as many.”

“Old Mick didn't buy under the table to save money?” Maura asked, both horrified and curious.

“There's too many regulations, too many eyes watchin', to get away with that. That's why the pub owners lose out. Mick was honest and he did what he had to do to stay open, if not much more. I wouldn't have gone behind his back to
undercut his business. Though you've seen yerself there's little call for the hard stuff around here.”

Which left . . . “Cigarettes, then.”

Mick nodded. He watched Maura's face, waiting for her reaction.

Maura felt a surge of anger. “You're breaking the law. And don't give me the old ‘everybody does it' excuse.”

“It's a way of life with a long history hereabouts.”

“Why? I mean, you're educated, you're healthy. There must be plenty of things—
legal
things—that you could do.”

Mick sighed. “Yeh won't want to hear this. I do it fer Grannie.”

Maura couldn't sit still. She left her chair and stalked around the room, which suddenly didn't seem big enough. “You're blaming this on your grandmother? Does she know?”

“She does not! And don't you be tellin' her.”

Gillian had been watching their conversation silently, and now interrupted for the first time. “Maura, sit down and hear the man out.”

Maura turned toward her. “Whose side are you on?”

“Neither. Just listen to what he's telling you.”

Maura grudgingly sat and glared at Mick. “So you're saying you took up smuggling to help Bridget?” She had serious doubts about whether Bridget would approve of that.

“I did. I'd lost me job and the economy was in the tank. Mick gave me enough hours to keep me goin', but I've been payin' most of Grannie's bills fer years now. She doesn't know. She thinks . . . well, she thinks things are the way they were ten, twenty years ago, and her pension and what little
savin's she had are takin' care of her expenses. That hasn't been true fer years. Yer right—if I went to Dublin or Cork city I could find a job that paid better. But then, who'd look after Bridget? Sure, she has friends, and neighbors such as yerself, but I'm talkin' about seein' that she has food in the cupboards and heat in the winter, that the electric and the cable are paid on time. She needs someone nearby, fer as you well know she's not young and things can go wrong fast. Me sister's no use—she's got kids and a job of her own. She chips in a bit of money now and then, but even she doesn't know the whole of the picture. So, yes, I took the easy money, even if it wasn't quite legal.”

“And just how does that work?” Maura was still mentally kicking herself for being so unaware of any of this. Was it so well hidden or was she just blind?

“I pick up the shipments of the cigarettes as they come in by sea, and I sell them to shopkeepers that I trust. I'm a middleman of sorts. And I'm far from the only one. Whatever I make goes straight to Bridget's care.” He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Are yeh goin' to sit there in judgment and tell me I'm wrong to be doin' it?”

“I . . . don't know what I think.” Maura was surprised that she felt any inner conflict at all. She'd always followed the law, not because she was afraid not to or just blindly followed rules, but because she believed that society in general needed some kind of order. She knew not all laws were good, but there were ways to change them. She also had known a lot of kids at her school who broke the law daily: drugs had always been around for anybody who wanted them, so obviously somebody was supplying them. It had
been easy money, unless you got in trouble and ended up in jail—or dead. Two boys in her class had been shot before she graduated from high school.

So why was she upset? Because she had trusted Mick, believed in him, and she was horrified to find he was a minor criminal? Okay, he wasn't a kingpin of a major cartel and he wasn't feeding poison to kids on the streets, but he was breaking the law. What would Sean think, if he found out? Mick had trusted her with his secret—if it even was a secret—so now was she supposed to hide this fact from Sean? Wait—what if Sean already knew?

She took a deep breath and tried to collect her thoughts. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because the smugglin' may have somethin' to do with John Tully's disappearance.”

That made sense, although Maura was still ticked off that she wouldn't have known if Mick hadn't said something. “But the gardaí have to know that. And nobody has said anything about it publicly.”

“Most people know it goes on, but they don't speak of it. Yeh might say that it's a compliment to Tully—they don't think he'd be mixed up in somethin' like that. They're sayin' he's an honest man. But there's always the temptation waitin', and farmers have fallen on hard times.”

Mick glanced quickly at the clock on Maura's wall. “I'd best be off if I'm to say good mornin' to me gran. We can talk more later, if yeh see the need. I should be in near eleven.” With no good-bye, Mick went out the front door, leaving Maura and Gillian alone at the table.

“Did you know?” Maura demanded.

“Know what? That smuggling happens? That Mick was a part of it?” Gillian retorted.

“Either.” What did she want to hear from Gillian?

“As to the first, of course I knew. As Mick said, it's a way of life in Cork. As to his part, no, not directly. But tell me you haven't wondered how he supports himself on what you pay him, and how Bridget makes ends meet.”

“I guess I didn't want to think about it. I've been kind of busy, you know.”
Poor excuses, Maura.

“So what will you do about it?”

“Can I have three minutes to think about it? Please? I don't know what to think. How do I look Sean Murphy in the eye when I know I'm working with someone shady?”

“Might be that Sean, or at least someone at the garda station, already knows.”

“Oh, great. So either I'm an idiot or I'm an accomplice. And the gardaí just look the other way?”

Gillian sighed. “Oh, Maura, is everything so black-and-white where you come from? Crime's low here—few murders, little theft. What does it matter if a few of the men, and maybe even some women, earn a bit on the side selling something not quite legal? The laws are ridiculous—and the taxes on cigarettes and alcohol here in Ireland are as high as any in the European Union. We Irish, outside of Dublin, have always found a way around the rules, for centuries. Tell me this: your gran helped out a lot of men who'd just arrived from Ireland, right?”