Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Pete Hamill The Men in Black Raincoats

It was close to midnight on a Friday evening at Rattigan’s Bar and Grill. There were no ball games on the television, old movies only made the clientele feel more ancient, and the jukebox was still broken from the afternoon of Red Cioffi’s daughter’s wedding. So it was time for Brendan Malachy McCone to take center stage. He motioned for a fresh beer, put his right foot on the brass rail, breathed in deeply, and started to sing.

The song was very Irish, sly and funny, the choruses full of the names of long-forgotten places, and the regulars loved Brendan for the quick jaunty singing of it. They loved the roguish glitter in his eyes, his energy, his good-natured boasting. He was, after all, a man in his fifties now, and yet here he was, still singing the bold songs of his youth. And on this night, as on so many nights, they joined him in the verses.

Outside, rain had begun to fall, a cold Brooklyn rain, driven by the wind off the harbor, and it made the noises and the singing and the laughter seem even better. Sardines and crackers joined the glasses on the bar. George the bartender filled the empties. And Brendan shifted from jauntiness to sorrow.

The mood of the regulars hushed now, as Brendan gave them the song as if it were a hymn. The bar was charged with the feeling they all had for Brendan, knowing that he had been an IRA man long ago, that he had left Ireland a step ahead of the British police who wanted him for the killing of a British soldier in the Border Campaign. This was their Brendan: the Transit Authority clerk who had once stood in the doorways of Belfast, with the cloth cap pulled tight on his brow, the pistol deep in the pockets of the trenchcoat, ready to kill or to die for Ireland.

The voice was a healthy baritone, a wealth of passion overwhelming a poverty of skill, and it touched all of them, making the younger ones imagine the streets of Belfast today, where their cousins were still fighting, reminding the older ones of peat fires, black creamy stout, buttermilk in the morning. The song was about a vanished time, before rock and roll and women’s liberation, before they took Latin out of the Mass, before the blacks and the Puerto Ricans had begun to move in and the children of the Irish had begun to move out. The neighborhood was changing, all right. But Brendan Malachy McCone was still with them, still in the neighborhood.

A little after midnight two strangers came in, dressed in black raincoats. They were wet with rain. They ordered whiskey. Brendan kept singing. Nobody noticed that his voice faltered on the last lines of Galway Bay, as he took the applause, glanced at the strangers, and again shifted the mood.

The strangers drank in silence.

At closing time the rain was still pelting down. Brendan stood in the open doorway of the bar with Charlie the Pole and Scotch Eddie, while George the bartender counted the receipts. Everyone else had gone home.

“We’ll have to make a run for it,” Charlie said.

“Dammit,” Scotch Eddie said.

“Yiz might as well run, cause yiz’ll drown anyway,” George said. He was finished counting and looked small and tired.

“I’ll see you gents,” Charlie said, and rushed into the rain, running lumpily down the darkened slope of 11th Street to his home. Eddie followed, cutting sharply to his left. But Brendan did not move. He had seen the strangers in the black raincoats, watched them in the mirror for a while as he moved through the songs, saw them leave an hour later.

And now he was afraid.

He looked up and down the avenue. The streetlamp scalloped a halo of light on the corner. Beyond the light there was nothing but the luminous darkness and the rain.

“Well, I’ve got to lock it up, Brendan.”

“Right, George. Good night.”

“God bless.”

Brendan hurried up the street, head down, lashed by the rain, eyes searching the interiors of parked cars. He saw nothing. The cars were locked. He looked up at the apartments and there were no lights anywhere and he knew the lights would be out at home too, where Sarah and the kids would all be sleeping. Even the firehouse was dimly lit, its great red door closed, the firemen stretched out on their bunks in the upstairs loft.

Despite the drink and the rain, Brendan’s mouth was dry. Once he thought he saw something move in the darkness of an areaway and his stomach lifted and fell. But again it was nothing. Shadows. Imagination. Get hold of yourself, Brendan.

He crossed the avenue. A half block to go. Away off he saw the twin red taillights of a city bus, groaning slowly toward Flatbush Avenue. Hurry. Another half block and he could enter the yard, hurry up the stairs, unlock the door, close it behind him, undress quickly in the darkened kitchen, dry off the rain with a warm rough towel, brush the beer off his teeth, and fall into the great deep warmth of bed with Sarah. And he would be safe again for another night. Hurry. Get the key out. Don’t get caught naked on the stairs.

He turned into his yard, stepped over a spreading puddle at the base of the stoop, and hurried up the eight worn sandstone steps. He had the key out in the vestibule and quickly opened the inside door.

They were waiting for him in the hall.

The one in the front seat on the right was clearly the boss. The driver was only a chauffeur and did his work in proper silence. The strangers in the raincoats sat on either side of Brendan in the back seat and said nothing as the car moved through the wet darkness, down off the slope, into the Puerto Rican neighborhood near Williamsburg. They all clearly deferred to the one in the front seat right. All wore gloves. Except the boss.

“I’m telling you, this has to be some kind of mistake,” Brendan said.

“Shut up,” said the boss, without turning. His skin was pink in the light of the streetlamps, and dark hair curled over the edge of his collar. The accent was not New York. Maybe Boston. Maybe somewhere else. Not New York.

“I don’t owe anybody money,” Brendan said, choking back the dry panic. “I’m not into the bloody loan sharks. I’m telling you, this is—”

The boss said, “Is your name Brendan Malachy McCone?”

“Well, uh, yes, but—”

“Then we’ve made no mistake.”

Williamsburg was behind them now and they were following the route of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway while avoiding its brightly lit ramp. Brendan sat back. From that angle he could see more of the man in the front seat right — the velvet collar of his coat, the high protruding cheekbones, the longish nose, the pinkie ring glittering on his left hand when he lit a cigarette with a thin gold lighter. He could not see the man’s eyes but he was certain he had never seen the man before tonight.

“Where are you taking me?”

The boss said calmly, “I told you to shut up. Shut up.”

Brendan took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. He looked to the men on either side of him, smiling his most innocent smile, as if hoping they would think well of him, believe in his innocence, intervene with the boss, plead his case. He wanted to tell them about his kids, explain that he had done nothing bad. Not for thirty years.

The men looked away from him, their nostrils seeming to quiver, as if he had already begun to stink of death. Brendan tried to remember the words of the Act of Contrition.

The men beside him stared out past the little rivers of rain on the windows, as if he were not even in the car. They watched the city turn into country, Queens into Nassau County, all the sleeping suburbs transform into the darker emptier reaches of Suffolk County, as the driver pushed on, driving farther away, out to Long Island, to the country of forests and frozen summer beaches. Far from Brooklyn. Far from the Friday nights at Rattigan’s. Far from his children. Far from Sarah.

Until they pulled off the expressway at Southampton, moved down back roads for another fifteen minutes, and came to a marshy cove. A few summer houses were sealed for the winter. Rain spattered the still water of the cove. Patches of dirty snow clung to the shoreline, resisting the steady cold rain.

“This is fine,” the boss said.

The driver pulled over, turned out the car lights, and turned off the engine. They all sat in the dark.

The boss said, “Did you ever hear of a man named Peter Devlin?”

Oh, my God, Brendan thought.

“Well?”

“Vaguely. The name sounds familiar.”

“Just familiar?”

“Well, there was a Devlin where I came from. There were a lot of Devlins in the North. It’s hard to remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, it was. It was a long time ago.”

“Aye.”

“And you don’t remember him more than just vaguely? Well, isn’t that nice? I mean, you were best man at his wedding.”

Brendan’s lips moved, but no words came out.

“What else do you vaguely remember, McCone?”

There was a long pause. Then: “He died.”

“No, not died. He was killed, wasn’t he?”

“Aye.”

“Who killed him, McCone?”

“He died for Ireland.”

“Who killed him, McCone?”

“The Special Branch. The British Special Branch.”

The boss took out his cigarettes and lit one with the gold lighter. He took a long drag. Brendan saw the muscles working tensely in his jaw. The rain drummed on the roof of the car.

“Tell me some more about him.”

“They buried him with full military honors. They draped his coffin with the Tricolor and sang The Soldier’s Song over his grave. The whole town wore the Easter Lily. The B-Specials made a lot of arrests.”

“You saw all this?”

“I was told.”

“But you weren’t there?”

“No, but—”

“What happened to his wife?”

“Katey?”

“Some people called her Katey,” the boss said.

“She died too, soon after the flu, was it?”

“Well, there was another version. That she died of a broken heart.”

The boss stared straight ahead, watching the rain trickle down the windshield. He tapped an ash into the ashtray, took another deep drag, and said, “What did they pay you to set him up, Brendan?”

He called me Brendan. He’s softening. Even a gunman can understand it was all long ago.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play games, Brendan. Everyone in the North knew you set him up. The British told them.”

“It was a long time ago, Mister. There were a lot of lies told. You can’t believe every...”

The boss wasn’t really listening. He took out his pack of cigarettes, flipped one higher than the others, gripped its filter in his teeth, and lit it with the butt of the other. Then he tamped out the first cigarette in the ashtray. He looked out past the rain to the darkness of the cove.

“Shoot him,” he said.

The man on Brendan’s left opened the door a foot.

“Oh, sweet sufferin’ Jesus, Mister,” Brendan said. “I’ve got five kids. They’re all at home. One of them is making her first Communion. Please. For the love of God. If Dublin Command has told you to get me, just tell them you couldn’t find me. Tell them I’m dead. I can get you a piece of paper. From one of the politicians. Sayin’ I’m dead. Yes. That’s a way. And I’ll just vanish. Just disappear. Please. I’m an old man now, I won’t live much bloody longer. But the weans. The weans, Mister. And it was all thirty years ago. Christ knows I’ve paid for it. Please. Please.”

The tears were blurring his vision now. He could hear the hard spatter of the rain through the open car door. He felt the man on his right move slightly and remove something from inside his coat.

The boss said, “You left out a few things, Brendan.”

“I can send all my earnings to the lads. God knows they can use it in the North now. I’ve sent money already, I have, to the Provisionals. I never stopped being for them. For a United Ireland. Never stopped. I can have the weans work for the cause. I’ll get a second job. My Sarah can go out and work too. Please, Mister. Jesus, Mister...”

“Katey Devlin didn’t die of the flu,” the boss said. “And she didn’t die of a broken heart. Did she, Brendan?”

“I don’t—”

“Katey Devlin killed herself. Didn’t she?”

Brendan felt his stomach turn over.

The boss said, very quietly, “She loved Peter Devlin more than life itself. She didn’t want him to die.”

“But neither does Sarah want me to die. She’s got the weans, the feedin’ of them, and the clothin’ of them, and the schoolin’ of them to think of. Good God, man, have ye no mercy? I was a boy then. My own people were starvin’. We had no land, we were renters, we were city people, not farmers, and the war was on, and... They told me they would only arrest him. Intern him for the duration and let him out when the fightin’ stopped, and they told me the IRA would take care of Kate while he was inside. Please, Mister, I’ve got five kids. Peter Devlin only had two.”

“I know,” said the man in the front seat right. “I was one of them.”

For the first time he turned completely around. His eyes were a cold blue under the shock of curly dark hair. Kate’s eyes in Peter’s face. He stared at Brendan for a moment. He took another drag on the cigarette and let the smoke drift through his nose, creating lazy trails of gray in the crowded car.

“Shoot him,” he said.

The man on his left touched Brendan’s hand and opened the door wide.