Jig (15 page)

‘You can never be too sure,' the young man said. He slung his arm around Joe Tumulty's shoulder and raised himself to a standing position.

‘You're from Finn,' Tumulty said, and his voice had become a whisper.

The young man nodded.

Tumulty stared at the light falling from the doorway of St. Finbar's and the outline of the man known as Scissors who stood at the top of the steps, then he glanced once in the direction of the parked car.

Take good care of him, Joe
.

‘You're Jig,' Tumulty said.

‘The very same.'

The wind that blew off the Hudson brought ice with it, hardening dead branches and imparting a spare look to the skyscrapers. Frank Pagan thought the city resembled a large ice palace. He had a room at the Parker Meridien on West 57th Street, a costly hotel that his per diem expenses didn't cover. When he'd last been in New York he'd stayed with Roxanne at the Gotham, which was now a hollow locked shell with boarded-up windows on the corner of 55th and 5th. A deserted hotel was fitting somehow. A black epitaph.

Four years ago. The first year of their marriage. An anniversary trip. What he recalled now was Roxanne's flushed excitement in Manhattan, how like a small child she'd been, going on Fifth Avenue and strolling through Tiffany's and Cartier's and Harry Winston's, asking endless questions of patient sales clerks. Pagan had bought her a silver locket at Fortunoff's, which she'd been wearing the day she died. Pagan wore the locket now. City of Memories. How could he feel anything but uneasy in this town?

On his first night at the Parker, when he was still groggy from jet lag, Pagan had a meeting with an FBI agent called Arthur Zuboric in the piano bar. Zuboric, a squat man with a Zapata moustache and a suntan achieved under the lamps of a health spa, had the look of a mournful bandit. He wasn't exactly happy with the notion of helping Frank Pagan, since he had a caseload up to here, but the order had come down from Bureau headquarters in Washington, so what could he do? Reciprocity was the catchword here. I'll scratch your back, sometime in the future you'll scratch mine. So here he was scratching Frank Pagan and listening to Broadway show tunes on a piano and wondering about the limey's clothes.

Baggy tweed jacket, bright shirt, blue jeans, no tie. The casual look. Zuboric had the feeling, though, that there wasn't anything casual about Frank Pagan himself. The face was too intense. The mouth reminded Zuboric of a tight rubber band, and the grey eyes had a fierce quality. The word Zuboric had heard about Frank Pagan was
determined
.

The guy had built himself a solid reputation in the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, where he'd specialised in anti-terrorist tactics. Once, Pagan had been involved in a shoot-out with Libyan terrorists in a London street. He killed three that day. On another occasion, he'd captured some Italian anarchists after a chase through London Airport. Somewhere along the way he'd been given his own section, practically independent of the Yard, thus causing some resentment among the older hands, who didn't like Frank Pagan's style or the way he dressed or the fact he wasn't quite forty yet. They envied his autonomy. The term for Frank Pagan, Zuboric decided, was
maverick
. All this stuff was in the file Washington had hurriedly put together for Zuboric. It was impressive material, but he wished the English wouldn't go dragging their Irish problem into the United States. Who the fuck needed that? Bunch of micks with guns, spouting shit about freedom.

He stuffed some peanuts in his mouth. The piano was giving him a royal headache. ‘We ran your Father Tumulty through the computer, Frank. Mind if I call you Frank? Call me Artie. Arthur's an old man's name, I always think.'

Pagan didn't mind what the agent called him. He was only interested in Tumulty.

‘Clean as a whistle,' Zuboric went on. ‘So I put a field agent on it who tells me there's only one priest in the whole of New York City called Tumulty. Joseph X.'

Zuboric tasted his rum and Coke and made a face. ‘Uncommon name,' he said. ‘The thing is, this Joseph X. Tumulty isn't a priest any more. Seems he either left the RC Church or got himself thrown out for some reason. Whatever, Tumulty runs a mission called St. Finbar's down on Canal Street.'

Pagan looked at the pianist absently, then turned his thoughts to the idea of a lapsed priest having a connection with Jig. Irish labyrinths, little connections between this person and that, this furtive group with some other, on and on into the maze. Pagan thought a moment about the Leprechaun and the Free Ulster Volunteers and their alleged leader, the Reverend Ivor McInnes. Now there was a strange link, a failed jockey and a Presbyterian minister. And here was another, a lapsed priest and an assassin. Only in the murky world of Irish terrorism, Pagan thought. Only there could you find these weird bonds.

Zuboric said, ‘The Immigration and Naturalisation Service records say that Father Tumulty entered the United States in October 1978 from Ireland. He came complete with permanent residence status as a priest. His church was Our Lady of the Sorrows on Staten Island, where he stayed two years. Since then he's been caring for broken souls on Canal Street.'

Zuboric drained his glass. ‘According to INS records, Joseph Tumulty came fresh out of a seminary in Bantry to the United States. The INS always runs a police check on potential immigrants in their country of origin. Tumulty was clean in Ireland too, Frank.'

‘Clean or very clandestine,' Pagan said. ‘I've known priests sympathetic to the IRA. They get involved in a little gun-running on the side. Or they skim the collection plate to make contributions. A little adventure compensates for the stresses of celibacy.'

‘No doubt,' Zuboric remarked. ‘Maybe this Tumulty is a sympathiser. But if he is, he's playing his cards pretty close to his chest.'

Pagan sat back in his chair. ‘If he's Jig's contact in the United States, then he can't be Mr. Clean altogether.'

Zuboric fidgeted with his empty glass. ‘I guess,' he said. ‘I put a man on Canal Street. But what am I supposed to tell him, Frank? Keep your eyes open for a guy you don't know what he looks like?'

‘Has your man talked to Tumulty?'

Zuboric shook his head. ‘I didn't want to take that step before I talked to you.'

‘Good,' Pagan said. He didn't like the idea of some FBI field agent trudging over territory he thought of as his own.

Zuboric said, ‘So far as somebody using a passport in the name of John Doyle, Immigration has no record of anyone by that name. It doesn't mean much. Your man could have entered illegally through Canada, or he could have come into the U.S. under another name.' Zuboric paused. ‘What's your next move?'

‘Canal Street. Talk to Tumulty.'

Zuboric sighed. He wondered what kind of metal Frank Pagan was made of. Guy gets off a plane after a five-hour flight through time zones and wants to start work right away. Zuboric played with the word
obsessed
for a moment. He'd seen obsessed law enforcement officers before. He'd seen how something unsolved just nibbled away at them until they were completely devoured and more than somewhat insane. Maybe Frank Pagan was wandering towards the abyss.

Zuboric said nothing for a moment. His present caseload involved a kidnapping in White Plains, a group of Communist dissidents suspected of illegal arms purchases in the Bronx, and a Lebanese diplomat who was smuggling dope in the diplomatic pouch. He didn't need Frank Pagan's problems. He didn't need a priest who might be an IRA sleeper. He didn't need some Irish assassin wandering around his turf. There were times in Artie Zuboric's life when he wondered what it was that he did
need
, periods of uncertainty when he played with such notions as ‘career moves' and ‘upward mobility', neither of which seemed appropriate within the structure of the Bureau, where promotion depended on the incomprehensible whim of the Director. Zuboric often longed for a life where the pressures were less weighty and the rewards somewhat more tangible. What had the goddam Bureau ever done for him anyhow? He had one broken marriage behind him and now he was in love with a girl called Charity who danced in a topless bar, a girl whom he wanted to marry but who had continually spurned him because she wanted no part of any man gung ho enough to be associated with the feds. Zuboric spent a lot of time thinking about ways of getting Charity to accept him. Money and good prospects might have helped. It galled Zuboric to think of his beloved Charity flashing her tits in front of drooling strangers. He wanted to take her away from all that.

‘I don't understand why you can't settle this Irish crap once and for all, Frank. Why don't you just pull your soldiers out of Ulster and tell the Irish to go fuck themselves? What is it? Some colonial hangover?'

Frank Pagan smiled. ‘Why don't
you
do something about stopping the flow of American money into IRA coffers?' he asked.

Zuboric said, ‘Tell me how I can dictate what private citizens do with their money, Frank. Then maybe I can help you. Besides, we have a President who's a stage Irishman, and he's got an enormous Irish–American vote around here, which he isn't going to throw away by legislating against mick fund-raisers. And if they choose to send bucks to some rebels, what's he gonna do? Anyhow, I'm not absolutely convinced there's much more than chump change flowing from here to Ireland.'

Chump change, Pagan thought. Colourful Americanism. But Zuboric was quite wrong. There was far more than chump change leaving the United States. Both men went outside. The wind off the East River blew scraps of paper along the sidewalks. Zuboric shivered. He thought Pagan looked immune to the cold.

‘You got a weapon, Frank?'

‘I brought a Bernardelli in my luggage,' Pagan replied.

Zuboric shivered again. ‘Don't go waving it in public. The local cops frown on that kind of ostentation. They don't like foreigners with guns, even if your business here is lawful.'

‘It's a precaution,' Pagan said. ‘I don't like guns.'

‘Yeah,' Zuboric said. He whistled for a cab. A dirty yellow vehicle slid towards the sidewalk. Zuboric told the driver Canal Street.

‘You're coming with me?' Pagan asked.

‘I'm instructed to extend to you every courtesy, et cetera et cetera. But my orders don't stop there, Frank. I go where you go.'

‘It isn't necessary,' Pagan replied. ‘I work better alone.'

‘Yeah, I bet you do.' Zuboric settled down in the back of the cab. ‘But as long as this character Jig is on U.S. territory, your problem is my problem. I wish it was otherwise, believe me. I don't care about the Bog People, Frank. They can blow one another up every hour on the hour, so long as they don't do it in the United States of America. And if Jig has it in mind to track down some missing money, there's probably a good chance of bloodshed. In which case, I want to be around.'

Pagan watched the lights of Broadway flicker past. He didn't like the notion of being dogged by an FBI agent. He liked to work on his own. He had never been a team player, which was why he hadn't fitted in at Special Branch. Too many team players. Too much paperwork. He supposed the FBI was exactly the same. Compartments. People in boxes. Rivalries and grudges and tiny jealousies.

Zuboric said, ‘You think this Tumulty guy is going to talk to you, Frank?'

Pagan looked at the agent a moment. Zuboric's suntanned face was incongruous in a wintry city. ‘I'm an optimist, Artie.'

‘Priests take vows of silence. They're pretty good at keeping secrets.'

‘We'll see,' Pagan said.

There were fifty or sixty men inside St. Finbar's Mission. They sat at tables or wandered aimlessly around trying to scrounge cigarettes from one another. The kitchen was a large room with an enormous stove located at one side. Stacked against one wall was a large pile of thin mattresses enveloped in sheets of clear plastic. Smoke and cooking smells and the sweaty aroma of despair mingled in the air. A crucifix hung to the wall. Here and there were slogans from Alcoholics Anonymous. T
HE
T
WELVE
S
TEPS OF
AA. E
ASY
D
OES
I
T
. O
NE
D
AY
A
T A
T
IME
.

Frank Pagan stood on the threshold of the room, gazing in the direction of the counter that surrounded the stove. Faces turned towards him, then away again. They had the nervously furtive expressions of men who have reached the bottom and can't find their way up from the pits.

Pagan moved to the cooking area. Soups and stews were simmering in big aluminum urns. He raised a lid and peered at carrots and onions floating on a greasy brown surface. He realised he hadn't eaten anything since the alleged Beef Wellington on the flight, but his hunger was at one remove from himself, like somebody else's sensation.

He looked round the room. What he felt in the air was mainly a sense of hopelessness that came in waves towards him. Casualties of the system. The unemployed. The alcoholic. The mentally defective. He glanced at Zuboric, who was clearly uneasy here. Pagan leaned against the wall, folding his arms. All those faces: he wondered if any one of them could be Jig.

‘Can I be of assistance?'

Pagan turned. The man who asked the question was probably in his early thirties, unshaven, his dark blue coat covered with scuff marks, his dark curly hair uncombed. There was a smell of liquor on his breath and dark circles under his eyes.

‘I'm looking for Father Tumulty,' Pagan said.

The man looked quickly in Zuboric's direction, then back at Pagan. ‘Who shall I say is asking for him?'

Pagan hesitated. ‘He wouldn't know my name.'

Zuboric stepped forward and said, ‘Just point us in Tumulty's direction.'