Among Thieves

Chapter Twenty

Finn met Kozlowski and Lissa at the Green Dragon pub. It was tucked back into a maze of tiny streets off Congress, in the ancient part of the city, back behind the Union Oyster House. It had been established in the 1700s, and the Sons of Liberty had once met behind the same door that still swung from the rusted hinges out onto the street corner. The décor could have been handed down through the years, for all the modern style it captured. The stone floors kept the place cool, even as the sun started warming up the city at midday. A new stereo system and the small stage for three-man bands on the weekends were the only nods to the passage of time the place would admit.

Finn took a table at the back of the place and waited. Kozlowski and Lissa arrived five minutes later. They ordered some coffee, and Finn relayed Devon ’s story. The other two sat listening, sipping their coffee, without interruption, for over fifteen minutes. It was a record.

When Finn finished, he looked at them. They looked back. “Well?” he said.

“Holy shit,” Lissa said.

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“Yeah. You call us here and tell us our client was responsible for the biggest art theft in history? Sorry, ‘Holy shit’ is all I’ve got for the moment.”

Finn looked at Kozlowski. “What about you?”

“I’m with her,” he said. “Holy shit.”

“I need a little help here.”

“Where are the paintings now?” Kozlowski asked.

“ Devon doesn’t know. They took them back to Southie and gave them to Bulger. Devon’s understanding was that the Irish guy paid Bulger for the paintings, and they were smuggled back to Ireland.”

“Why’d the Irish guy come back now?” Lissa asked. “It’s been almost twenty years, for Christ’s sake.”

“Nobody seems to know. Apparently the guy isn’t entirely right in the head.”

“Nobody who did Vinny Murphy the way he was done is right in the head,” Kozlowski said. “What’s Devon gonna do now?”

“He doesn’t know,” Finn answered. “He’s still trying to figure all this out. All he knows is that he’s safer in jail than out on the street. The way he figures it, if the guy thinks he knows something, he can’t just have him killed. He needs a face-to-face to get any information he thinks Devon ’s got.”

“Like what he had with Murphy and Ballick,” Kozlowski said.

“Exactly. If he wants to find out anything useful, he actually has to get Devon alone to talk to him-torture him if necessary. As long as Devon ’s in jail, that can’t happen, so for the moment that’s where he wants to stay.”

“Who cares what Devon ’s gonna do,” Lissa interjected. “What are we gonna do?”

The two men looked at her. Finn said, “Stone and Sanchez want to talk to us about Ballick’s death. I’m not lying to the cops, so we’ve got to stall.”

“We can’t bring them in on this art theft thing?” Kozlowski asked.

Finn shook his head. “No. Devon won’t let us.”

“He won’t let us?”

“He won’t. He’s afraid that he’ll be prosecuted for the theft.”

“Seems like he should be more worried about this Irish guy,” Kozlowski said.

“What if we could cut a deal with the cops?” Lissa suggested. “He tells them what they need to know, and there’s no prosecution? They might be willing to go for it.”

“They might-if he could produce the paintings. Unfortunately he can’t, so I doubt there’d be much interest. Besides, it’s not just the cops Devon ’s worried about. Bulger’s still on the run.”

“Are you serious?” Kozlowski said. “Bulger’s been on the run for fifteen years. There’s no way he’s gonna show up here in Boston. Not for anything.”

“Probably not,” Finn admitted. “But that’s Devon ’s call. All I know is that he’s not gonna let us bring the cops in. And if he won’t let us, then we’re under a legal obligation to keep the information to ourselves. We can work on him over time to get him to change his mind, but for now we don’t have any options.”

“So what do we tell Sanchez and Stone?” Kozlowski asked. “We can’t tell them anything?”

“Like I said, we stall. Anything we can tell them about this is covered by attorney-client privilege. If Devon ’s right about the man who killed Ballick, then the whole thing ties back to a crime committed by our client. If we talk about it, we breach the privilege.”

“Great,” Kozlowski said. “Stalling cops ain’t the easiest thing to do in the world. I know; I was one, remember?”

“You got any better ideas?” Neither Kozlowski nor Lissa said anything. “Good. I guess that’s everything for now.”

“Not everything,” Lissa said. “What happens to Sally?”

Finn looked at her. “She stays with me for now.”

“Jesus, Finn, this is insane,” Kozlowski said.

“What other option is there? There’s nowhere else to take her at this point.”

“How about the Department of Social Services?” Kozlowski offered.

“No way,” Finn responded. “We’re not putting the state in charge of her. I’ve been there; I know what can happen.”

“We should never have gotten involved in the first place,” Lissa said.

“Maybe not. But now we’re involved, and I’m not gonna let you push her off into the system. That’s a sure recipe for disaster. Have you seen her? She’d skip out of foster care in a heartbeat, and then we’re responsible for putting her on the street.”

Kozlowski shook his head. “We’re not responsible for anything that happens in her life. We’re not her parents.”

“Like I said, that was before we were involved.”

Kozlowski looked at Lissa. “You believe this?”

She took a deep breath. “I do. And I agree with it.”

Kozlowski said nothing for a moment or two. He sat there, sipping his coffee. “Well, I guess I’m overruled, aren’t I? Seems to be my goddamned destiny.”

Sean Broadark stood on the street corner near the safe house in Quincy. He held his cell phone to his ear. It was strange; the house itself was quaint, if somewhat in need of attention. Inside, it had the feel of a lower-middle-class summer retreat. But when he stepped out the front door, there was nothing but cement as far as he could see. It made the house seem sad and out of place, like a country orphan in a big city.

“There’s one more, he says,” Broadark said into the phone. “He’s in jail.” He listened for a few moments as the response came back. “I don’t know, right now we’re sitting around on our arses.” He listened some more. “I give it another couple of days; no more than three. After that, we’re wasting time.” A bird flew overhead as the conversation continued, searching in vain for a tree or a soft spot on which to land. “He won’t.” The bird circled; Broadark thought it was looking at him. “I’ll take care of it.”

He clicked off the phone, put it in his pocket, and turned back toward the house. Looking around him, he could see why so many of his countrymen had come to Boston when they left Ireland: it wasn’t so different from their homeland. Like Belfast, it had a subdued urban feel to it, as if it was struggling against the notion that it was a city at all. Only recently had the Emerald Isle begun truly dragging itself into the modern world, allowing itself to flow with the trend it had resisted for so long. It was a good thing in many ways, he supposed. The modernization of the country, particularly in the area of computer software development, had brought more jobs, more money, and more stability to a land that had been without those things for so long. With them, though, came a complacency that many in the movement detested. Creature comforts, many said, robbed the people of their will to fight for those things most important. A man with nothing is willing to risk it all; a man with something to protect is far more likely to shrink from a confrontation.

More than anything else, that was what had led to the peace-a better economy that gave those in the country something to protect. Deep in his heart, Sean Broadark was okay with that. He would follow his orders to the end. But he allowed himself, on occasion, to hope that those orders someday would be to stand down.

Liam Kilbranish watched Broadark as he approached the house. He knew where the man had been; Sean hadn’t tried to hide it. “I have to check in,” he’d said. The fact that he’d left the house made clear that there were things he had to talk to his superiors about that he didn’t want Liam to hear.

Liam wasn’t surprised. When he had laid out the plan, he’d made it all sound so easy. Perhaps he’d even believed that it would be easy. He’d certainly wanted to believe it. And yet, deep in his heart, he’d always known it wouldn’t be.

He blamed himself. Not for his failure in the past few days, but for his failure twenty years before. The plan had been perfect. They had all the intelligence they needed; the target was virtually unprotected; the information regarding the paintings themselves was flawless. If the execution was imperfect, that was the fault of the man assigned to him by the Boston contingent. Even with Devon Malley’s lack of professionalism, though, the objectives were achieved-at least Liam thought they had been.

Now, as he looked out the window toward the depressing concrete yards surrounding the safe house, watching Broadark climb the front stairs, he knew he was suffering for his own shortcomings, and he was petrified that the silent promise he’d made to his father years before would go unfulfilled.

It was ironic. If not for him, the movement would have stalled even earlier. Fund-raising was always the difficulty. The fighting came easy, but keeping the supply lines flowing with guns and explosives and ammunition was a challenge that required more ingenuity than most possessed. By the late 1980s, the wells were running dry on both sides of the Atlantic. People were losing heart and losing commitment. Those who had given generously before were tightening up, unwilling to continue giving to a movement that had lost direction. Those who had not given before were turning them down flat, unwilling to cast their lot with a cause that had become unpopular. People seemed weary of the death and destruction.

By then fighting had become a way of life for Liam. He couldn’t imagine himself without it. His hatred had burned for so long that it had consumed much of what had been human inside of him. Without the money, though, the fighting would end.

The drug trade served as a band-aid for a while, but it was a dangerous business. Art theft had been Liam’s brainchild. There were so many private museums throughout the UK and continental Europe that were ripe for the plucking, and the proceeds kept the money rolling in. American targets were less plentiful-the Americans were, by their nature, less trusting than their European counterparts, and security was generally much more severe. Liam had stumbled onto the idea of the Gardner Museum during one of his visits.

Now, what had been the perfect job and the perfect fix had destroyed the fight. He wouldn’t let that be the end.

Broadark opened the door and walked into the tiny house. He didn’t even look at Liam. He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. The fact that the man had the temerity to drink simmered in Liam’s craw. It seemed to him a statement that the mission was lost.

Broadark walked over to the sofa in the living area and sat down. He turned on the television and began ritually flipping though the channels. It was a compulsion. He never stopped long enough to see anything coherent on the screen, and it was clear that there was nothing in particular he was looking for. He just kept flipping as the panoply of mindless, sex-filled American bubblegum pop culture flashed by like some eye-searing experiment in subliminal torture. The man was so attached to the process that he slipped the beer under his arm so he could open it without breaking stride.

Liam walked over and grabbed the remote out of Broadark’s hand, pointed it toward the television and pressed the power button. The set blinked once hard, the light exploding in a flash that consumed the screen, then receded from the corners to a pointed horizon in the center of an ancient, darkened picture tube. “No more television,” he said.

Broadark looked up at him from the sofa. Liam wondered whether he would make his move. It depended on the orders he’d received on the phone call. Liam figured he’d rather know sooner than later.

He could see the calculations that ran through Broadark’s mind. In some respects they both functioned in the same way. Confrontations like this came down to a series of calculations: who could reach his weapon first? What were your adversary’s weaknesses? Where was he exposed? Who was more willing to take the chance? How far were you willing to take the fight?

Liam could see all these questions rattling off in sequence in Broadark’s eyes, the sums of the equations being added and multiplied and calculated. Then an answer was reached. Broadark shrugged and pulled his beer out from under his arm and took a sip.

Liam reached out and grabbed away the beer. He walked over to the sink and poured it out. “No more booze, either,” he said. He knew Broadark was not a threat-yet. If he had the go-ahead to take Liam out, he would have reached for his gun when Liam took the remote. Liam had a little more time. Not much, though.

Broadark rose from the couch. He walked over to the narrow counter in the kitchen. “What, then?” he asked.

“I told you, there’s one more.”

“Yeah, you told me,” Broadark said. “You also told me he’s in jail. Not much we can get from him while he’s there, is there?”

“There are other ways.”

“What are they?”

The truth was, Liam didn’t know. He was running out of time, and he had lost all his leverage. “The lawyer,” he said. He wasn’t even sure what it meant when the words came out of his mouth, but when he heard them, they triggered something in him-a hope that had been slipping away.

“The lawyer,” Broadark repeated. There was skepticism in his voice. “What about the lawyer?”

“We follow the lawyer,” Liam said. “He’s the only contact we have with the last one, but we can use him to make our point.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. All I know is that he’s the key.”

For a moment, Liam thought Broadark would pull out his gun right then and be done with it all. Instead, though, he nodded without conviction. “All right, then,” he said. “Follow the lawyer.”