The Runaway (41 page)

The Don shook his hand.

After Connell had left he sat down, drained his brandy and wondered what future there could be for a world where men like that roamed free.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Eamonn opened his eyes and looked around the room. It was full of flowers and cards. He tried to focus but found it difficult.

As he made a move he felt a tube coming from his side and realised he had to be in hospital. He remembered then what had happened to him and felt tears of relief that he was still alive sting his eyes. As they rolled down his face, a fresh-faced nurse came into the room and smiled at him.

‘You’re awake then?’

Eamonn tried once more to focus, and failed. The girl laughed. ‘You’ve been awake on and off for the last week. Just relax, everything will be back to normal before you know it.’

Eamonn felt desperately weak, but his mind was alert. He struggled to keep his eyes open, sure that there was something he should be doing, a battle still to be won.

He drifted off to sleep. Petey and Jack were informed of the improvement in his condition by phone and breathed a collective sigh of relief.

 

The Mahoneys were trying to make sense of what had happened. Santorini’s death was so bizarre it had made all the headlines. The men of the Mafia were talking about it everywhere. These men knew of death scenarios that would shock and repel, but the blasphemous attitude of the IRA in crucifying Santorini had amazed even them.

The Mahoneys were looked on with new respect and a certain reluctant admiration, and this augured well for the Irish.

The story of the home visit to Don Pietro was kept under wraps; that could have caused a major incident by a few loose cannon who would have found such disrespect too much to stomach.

 

Meanwhile Petey Mahoney was picking out the girls he wanted to work in his new enterprise. He was determined to prove himself to his brother and open another bar, similar to their one in Harlem but far more salubrious.

To Petey this meant the girls should be clean, have big tits and nice faces. He had the cash, he had the muscle and he had the knowhow. Jack would think it was a grand idea and the pats on the back would be great.

Petey and Jack had already realised that the Italians were with them now and the future was looking trouble-free. The new bar, to be called Petey’s Place, would be up and running in less than a week. The liquor licence was already taken care of and the premises, an old gambling club, had been given a lick of gold paint and new brocade curtains. Even the bar had been newly varnished and the old tables and chairs scrubbed and polished for the first time in years. With low lighting from pink bulbs the place had a cosy, almost intimate feel and look to it.

Petey was proud of it.

He was auditioning in a friend’s small topless bar called Lautrec’s. Word had hit the street that the new club was going to cater to men with real money. Consequently most of the girls from the lesser bars were there in all their painted splendour and with new outfits. Lipgloss and platform heels abounded and the smell of cheap perfume was overpowering.

Petey was in his element.

The girls, realising he was in charge, were all over him like a rash, and Petey, being Petey, was all over them. It was while he was watching a particularly bewitching young girl from Houston, with huge silicone boobs and a surgically enhanced face, that he was approached by one of the DeMarco Capos.

Petey knew the man by sight. He was one of the old-style Italians. He wore decent suits, his hair was still cut like a marine’s and he always wore a tie with a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket.

Petey greeted him respectfully but warily. The man, Anthony Baggato, realising why, smiled easily. ‘Mr Mahoney, I hope I haven’t interrupted you at work? I just wanted to have a little chat with you. Is there anywhere we can go to talk privately?’

Petey nodded. Still wary, he made a big production out of taking the man through to his friend’s office. If anything happened to him, he wanted plenty of witnesses.

Baggato was not very big, but he had presence. His easy smile and cold eyes made people uncomfortable. That one day he would be Don was not only his opinion but everyone else’s since Santorini’s death.

‘Mr Mahoney - or may I call you Peter?’

Petey stood nervously by the door. ‘Listen, Mr Baggato, say what you’ve got to say and then we’ll talk names and other such shit. You come to me in the middle of the day, I am in a friend’s club, I have work to do. We have all had a bit of a bother recently and what I want to know is: what the fuck do you want and is it trouble?’

Anthony Baggato smiled gently. The man’s phraseology left a lot to be desired, but Anthony understood his feelings and tried his best to allay his fears.

‘I am not here on family business - I am here on my own behalf. I need a supplier for something and have been told that you are the best man to deal with. That is as far as this visit goes. Supply and demand, it’s what makes the world go round.’

Petey listened carefully. ‘So what exactly would you like me to supply?’

Baggato grinned now, his face taking on a genial quality. ‘I want you to supply me and mine with heroin.’

Petey’s eyes widened.

‘I understand your confusion, but you see, Mr Mahoney, this is to be a private transaction. I want to deal large amounts of the stuff. I want to be a big supplier, and to supply my own contacts in New York. This conversation is strictly off the record, by the way. This is a deal between me and you. No one else will ever be involved except for a few of my men. As you will know, the five Dons, the heads of our families, are anti-drugs, but what they don’t know will not hurt them,
capisce
?

‘Now, I need a good supplier, and I need one who will keep our business dealings quiet. I was impressed by your family over the Santorini affair. I feel that together we could make a good partnership.’

He wiped his mouth fastidiously with a snow-white handkerchief. ‘I also know that you are a dealer, and that you have an in with the biggest supplier. I am talking South America here. I can guarantee you safe passage into Florida, Miami, and safe transfer of the drugs to any location in the United States. This is big, big business here, not nickels and dimes. I need your answer, and your word that our conversation will not be heard outside these four walls.’

Petey’s eyes were nearly out on stalks. This was real money they were talking. Serious amounts of money, and he was already seeing an endless procession of dollar signs and noughts.

A million dollars’ worth of heroin was easily passed on to the street. Ten million dollars’ worth could be almost as easy. And why not be the man to do it? There was an endless demand, and the best thing with H was the fact that there were new customers for it every day. The biggest transaction Petey had ever done before was a six-ounce deal for thirty thousand dollars. He was on friendly terms with the Colombians through an ex-girlfriend’s brother, Tito. If the profits were high enough, Jack Mahoney could probably be talked around.

Petey knew that Tito would have no trouble supplying the Italians through him, and indeed that it would be a match made in street heaven.

This was the deal of the century. Feeling like a dog with two tails and six lampposts, he held out his hand and said casually: ‘Call me Petey, everyone does.’

This was the beginning of a friendly alliance that was to last for many years to come.

 

Eamonn had been out of hospital six weeks and was still getting back on his feet when he heard from Maria Santorini. He threw her letter away, feeling he wanted to draw a line under that part of his life and make amends to everyone concerned for the foolishness of his actions.

He made a point of seeing only Deirdra and trying to make himself love her, as much as Eamonn could love anyone. Only Cathy had ever touched that particular place in his heart, and in her absence he feared it had closed over.

Deirdra for her part listened with rapt attention to the blandishments of the handsome man she was going to marry and basked in his apparent delight in her and her conversation. She knew that she had got him by default but was determined to keep hold of him now.

The far-reaching effects of the events that took place after Eamonn’s wounding had made things all the better for the Mahoneys businesswise. Not only were they collecting the Cause money, they were also involved in one of the biggest heroin operations in American history. Eamonn took to it all like a duck to water and Jack, after some initial reservations, found it in his heart to agree with Petey that an alliance with the Eyeties could only be a good thing.

It was this alliance that gave them even more credence and set them up as the foremost Irish family in New York state. They were catapulted into a world of real riches and real money. Eamonn and Petey ran the drug operation with the precision of a military exercise. They also laundered the money and made themselves almost legit.

Eamonn married Deirdra in the spring of 1974 in the church of St Anthony of Padua. The church on Sullivan Street in Manhattan had never housed such an illustrious wedding before. All the top families came and the Italian guests added extra panache to the Irish contingent in their wedding finery.

Deirdra, like a good Catholic girl, became pregnant on her wedding night, and Eamonn Docherty soon realised that he had taken on a woman with the sexual appetite of a man. Far from deterring him, he found it a turn on.

At first anyway.

Only time would tell what was to become of them all in the future, but on that day they felt that life had dealt them some good cards.

The sun was shining, the bells rang out in exultation and the bride was happy.

What more could anyone want?

BOOK THREE

‘Men are like children They start on the breast and they very rarely leave it’

- Old Irish saying, Anon

‘Are you going to women - Don’t forget the whip’

- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900

‘One murder made a villain Millions a hero’

- Beilby Porteus, 1731-1808

Chapter Twenty-Six

LONDON 1975

‘Oh, piss off! You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

The man’s voice was as much like a woman’s as Geoff Capes’s, but he was dressed in the full regalia: tight dress, high heels and bleached blonde wig. His eyelashes defied every law of human nature and so did he.

Cathy sighed as she watched Desrae’s temper rising. This man was a new recruit and his attitude had already caused problems, not only with Desrae but with all the other people working for them.

‘Listen, Alfie,’ Desrae told him, ‘it’s nothing personal but the other girls can’t stand the fucking sight of you. And, quite honestly, at this moment in time I sympathise with them. You have a way about you that not only puts off your mates, it also pisses off the punters. Now you either sort yourself out, or me and you are going to have to part company.’

Alfie, otherwise known as Gabrielle, knew when he was beaten and decided to retire gracefully from the fray. Opening his heavily made-up eyes to their fullest extent, he feigned tears and shook his head sorrowfully. His purple-painted lips were trembling and Desrae closed his eyes in annoyance.

‘It doesn’t cut no ice with me, girl. All the tears in the world won’t make me change my mind, OK? Either buck up or fuck off. I can’t have all my girls up in arms over you and that’s that. We ain’t even open a week hardly and you’re already making the place feel like a battlefield.’

Alfie walked from the little office with his dignity intact and his temper strictly under control. He knew he was beaten and accepted the fact gracefully - or as gracefully as a six-foot-two man in impossibly high heels can do.

When he had left, Cathy started to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Desrae, but his face! I mean, you nearly wet yourself when he said that due to circumstances beyond his control, he couldn’t sleep with men under five foot three.’

Desrae roared then, rouged cheeks bunching up in amusement. ‘It’s his size - I don’t know why the tall ones always wear the highest heels. It amazes me, it really does. A lot of the men, see, they like it up against the wall. Even with a bed in the room, they can get it in better like. So the truly big ones are out of bounds, really. But the littlest men always like the great big porkers. Life’s strange, ain’t it?’

Cathy nodded. Homosexual love did not bother her in the least, it was part and parcel of her everyday life. Thanks to Desrae’s boyfriend and confidant, as he referred to Joey Pasquale, they had recently opened a small select drinking club in Wardour Street. The shop front was the usual tits and ass bookshop, as found all over Soho. This was legal and a money spinner, the more exotic magazines being kept under the proverbial counter. They owned two similar outlets in other Soho streets. But through the back of the Wardour Street shop were two large rooms, used now as a bar and meeting place for transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens.

There was a subtle difference between them all - Cathy had learned that much since being with Desrae.

Alfie was a drag queen; he wore the most outrageous clothes and acted so ultra-feminine that it was impossible to mistake him for anything other than what he was.

The transsexuals were often more like real women and so were harder to spot. Many of them lived their daily lives as women, and longed for the magic operation that would fulfil their dreams of biological femininity.

The transvestites were often just cross dressers or homosexuals who preferred dressing as women, for sexual or other reasons. Cathy found them all likeable and a majority love-able. Being square pegs in round holes, they were often more accepting of other people because of their own situation.