The Dead Yard

6: A HEIST IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Four days of this. Seagulls. Heat. Midges. Greenhead flies. Blackhead flies. Mosquitoes. The stink of marsh gas and a broken sewage pipe. Sand fleas, no fresh water, hundred percent humidity, a dozen men grumbling in Portuguese.

It was noon. Ninety-two degrees and the flies liked the taste of a Belfast boy.

The cool blue waters of the Atlantic a few feet away.

Instead this.

“So it’s bloody mutiny, is it?” I asked the leader of the Portuguese insurrection, who wagged his finger in my face and accused me of being the offspring of Satan and either a kind of donkey or, more likely, a prostitute. At least that’s what I gathered from my shaky command of the Romance languages.

“You listen to me, you fool, I am at my wits’ end, you either start digging or it’s back to the Azores,” I told him in broken Spanish. The Portuguese looked at me with disgust.

Seamus lay snoozing in the hammock. Seamus was supposed to be the foreman but when he had shown up for work, all he’d done was sleep off his hangover and tell me to get the “dagos” back to work.

It all began so promisingly. The day after I met the crew, Seamus and Touched came to see me in Salisbury. They formally offered me a job in Gerry’s construction firm. I packed my bags and drove with them down to Plum Island. They introduced me to a bunch of Portuguese guys and said I’d be living with them in a house Gerry was renovating. The house was the first bad sign. A timber-frame sweatbox with mattresses on the floor, no ventilation, poor plumbing, and also apparently the major breeding ground for every type of bloodsucking insect in New England. The job itself was a piece of piss. Twelve bucks an hour and uncomplicated and anyway I figured it wouldn’t be long until Touched checked out my rap sheet with the Boston PD.

But then nothing after that.

No contact, no pledge of loyalty to old Hibernia, no secret torchlight induction ceremony à la Riefenstahl. No news of any kind. Just getting up and working all day in the hot sun, liquid lunch with Seamus, more work, a quick dye job on my hair, and going to bed in the fly-ridden hell house full of drunk Portuguese men all of whom, it transpired, hated me.

I’d been to see Samantha once at her lair in the All Things Brit store, ostensibly going in to buy English candy; but she had been aloof and very unhelpful. “Just keep at the job and sooner or later they’ll swing by and recruit you. They’re desperate for manpower, bound to be what with the defections they’ve had.”

“What if, Samantha,” I said bitterly, “the Ra has scared the shit out of them and they have decided to pack in the life and disband their organization? How long am I going to have to do this sweaty, annoying job before you tell me that I’ve finished my bloody assignment and can go home?”

“Oh, we’re not close to that time yet,” she said. “Now if you don’t mind I have to get back to the shop. I’m quite enjoying working here. I might take early retirement and open a place like this for myself,” she said, arranging a box of tea towels.

No erotic fumbling, no swooning looks. All bloody business.

No joy from Samantha, and I hadn’t even seen Kit at all in the last four days. Four days, seemed like forty.

August had ended and it was now September. Princess Diana had died in Paris, not that the Portuguese or Seamus gave a shit, but Samantha had put black drapes in the windows of All Things Brit and, in a canny business move, doubled the price of the Princess of Wales mugs and commemorative wedding plates.

I’ve described Seamus once before, but I’ll recap. He was the one that did the shooting in the Rebel Heart back in Revere. His pal, Mike, as Touched had explained, had the be-jesus scared out of him and left Gerry’s employ, but Seamus was seeing it all through at least until his trial, when he’d be convicted of assault or attempted murder, probably the former, and get a couple of years inside. Serve him right.

Seamus was a disillusioned beat cop, about fifty-five. An old-school racist, with gray skin, salt-and-pepper hair, and a body wrecked by his sixty-a-day habit, which he’d been maintaining through thick and thin since he was fifteen years old. In a series of depressing lunchtime conversations, I quickly ascertained that the highlights of Seamus’s life had been the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the abandonment of court-ordered busing in the 1980s, the blowing up of Mrs. Thatcher at the Conservative Party Conference, and the glorious run of the Celtics under Larry Bird. The low light: game six of the 1986 World Series. I suppose his loyalty to Gerry was less ideological and more an attempt to give his pathetic and useless existence some meaning.

I’m being hard on Seamus, partly as a defense mechanism, because a week after I met him for the first time, in circumstances that were less than pleasant, I had to shoot him in the head from three feet away with a whopping Colt.45 hand cannon, the round at that range blowing his skull apart and sending his brains, blood, and bone all over me and a hapless squaddie standing nearby.

But we’ll get to that.

Seamus lying there in the hammock, snoozing while green-heads and horseflies sucked the blood out of his pasty legs.

But for the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s bird sanctuary (and that do-gooder DFW alum Rachel Carson), they would have nuked this whole island with DDT years ago and made it bearable for thin-skinned Paddies like Seamus and me.

“Seamus, are you awake?” I shouted.

He didn’t budge.

“Seamus, the Ports are saying they’re on strike,” I tried again, but Seamus was in a deep drunk sleep.

“Get your bloody backs into it,” I said to the Portuguese men, but none of them moved a muscle. I didn’t blame them, really. Our job itself was a KKK dream or a good Catholic’s nightmare. Demolishing Plum Island’s small Roman Catholic church to make way for housing. The church had suffered declining attendances for years and the land was worth a couple of million, so the diocese must have thought, what the hell, it’s coming down.

McCaghan’s firm had been contracted to do the demolition and the Church had already sold the lots for three five-bedroom houses to be built on the former hallowed ground, the prospective buyers obviously having learned nothing from countless Stephen King films. Not so the Portuguese navvies, who were all superstitious illegals from the Azores. To say they didn’t like demolishing a Catholic church would be understatement, and for days they’d been working slow and acting stupid.

They were supposed to be shoveling a straight path through the sand, the loam soil, and the concrete foundations to let the bulldozer in to demolish the church. A nasty job but one that could be done in a day if everyone’s heart was in it.

The Portuguese rebel stood on his pickaxe and mumbled a remark about my mother, which, if he had but known, was remarkably accurate.

I walked over to Seamus, who was still snoring in the hammock slung between a generator and a portable toilet.

“Seamus, wake up, they’re on strike. They’re refusing to budge,” I told him with a kick in his arse.

Seamus groaned, slapped at the flies on his ankles, and looked at me with annoyance.

“Why did you wake me? You total bastard.”

“Now that we’re close the Portuguese are refusing to dig the final bit of the path. They think it will bring down a rain of curses on them.”

“You speak dago, tell them to get a fucking move on.

Touched won’t stand for it.”

“Why don’t you call Touched and tell him to come over here.”

Worry slipped across Seamus’s face.

“Nah, he won’t like that.”

“Well, you get them to bloody move, I’ve had it,” I said and slumped down in the shade next to the chemical toilet. Seeing me sit, the Portuguese all found places to sit too. Seamus lit a cigarette.

“Ok, suppose I better take care of it. Help me out of this thing.”

I helped him out of the hammock and he walked over to the Portuguese. I stood behind him.

“You won’t work?” he said to the lead rebel. The man shook his head.

“You’re fired.”

The man stared at him.

“You’re fired. Get the fuck out of here. Translate, Sean.”

I told him in Spanish that he’d been axed and someone translated my Spanish into Azorean Portuguese. To further make things clear, Seamus slapped him in the head and kicked him off the building site.

“Who else won’t work? You?” he asked, pointing at one of the youngest men on the crew. “You’re fired too, get out of here. Anybody else?”

The rest of the men picked up their tools and got their backs into it. Seamus looked at me, satisfied.

“That’s it, Sean. Break the will of the leaders and the rest fall into line. That’s the dago mind-set all over. Now don’t fucking wake me again, or you’re on the chopping block yourself.”

An hour later. The boys had carved out two shallow ditches, three feet wide by ten feet long. The bulldozer path was complete.

“Señor, por favor…”

I shook my head.

“Sorry, lads. But if the bishop has given the ok-” I was about to explain that this was no longer God’s house when I noticed Samantha, ostensibly coming up from Plum Island beach carrying an umbrella, wearing outsize sunglasses and a big floppy hat. She was sauntering past the construction site and paying no attention to any of us. You could tell she was English: the last thing this big and this white in Massachusetts was Moby Dick. She washed her feet with a water bottle and walked to the car park at the lighthouse. No signal, no acknowledgment, nothing. But I knew this wasn’t a casual beach trip. She hadn’t been to the sea at all. She’d wanted me to see her, to let me know that something was happening.

She drove past in the big Mark 2 five minutes later, with the sunroof down, blaring “Like a Virgin” from her car stereo.

It was a very un-Samantha piece of music. She, who hadn’t heard of Scooby-Doo, liked Madonna? It made me think. Like a virgin… Of course.

“Touched for the very first time” was the second line of the chorus.

Jesus. Touched was up to something. Dan Connolly, who was a big Madonna fan, must have given her the idea.

I grinned.

Maybe those eejits weren’t so dumb after all.

I’d have to find an excuse to go into Newburyport later.

But for now the job at hand. I climbed into the big yellow bulldozer, turned the key in the ignition, and pushed the red starter button. The bulldozer growled into life. I lifted the massive steel-toothed bucket to about three-quarters elevation and drove the machine down the path that the Portuguese had cleared.

The church was a wooden single-story structure, simple, beautiful in a very un-Catholic, Puritan kind of way. I edged the bulldozer gently into the porch and pushed with the grabber. The entire edifice buckled.

The bulldozer had a fully enclosed cabin and I was wearing a hard hat but even so I ducked as the roof wobbled, the back wall caved in, and the church began to fall to pieces with an enormous crash. When the cross from the spire came tumbling down and smashed on the ground the Portuguese howled a few incantations to the Holy Ghost and Seamus genuflected when he thought I wasn’t looking. I reversed the bulldozer, lowered the grabber, and drove into the remaining wall and support beams.

The site was leveled in under ten minutes. The Portuguese men crossing themselves and muttering Ave Marias. No one on Plum Island seemed to care, no protests and no gawkers. I got out of the cab and brushed the debris off my white T-shirt, cargo pants, and Stanley work boots.

However, through the spirals of dust I noticed that there was someone who had seen and had come to see me. Aye, something was up.

“Well done, Sean,” Touched said and offered me his hand. Touched must have been watching from McCaghan’s house, which was about a quarter of a mile farther up on Plum Island’s Atlantic side.

“Thanks, Touched,” I said, trying out the nickname to see how it would play. He wasn’t fazed at all.

“Gerry will be pleased. Hell of a job, we can work on building those houses now,” he said with a distracted air.

“Ok.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and a gleam came into his eye. A gleam that could mean anything on that handsome, generous, psychopathic, murderous face.

“But not you though, Sean.”

“Not me?”

“I’ve been checking you out, mate,” he said. “Checking you out. Got something special lined up for you, if you’re up for it.”

Checking me out? So that’s what Samantha was trying to let me know. He had accessed his buddy on the Boston PD and run the files on Sean McKenna. Well, well, well.

“Something special? Will there be more money in it?” I asked.

“Could be.”

“Ok, then. I’m in.”

Short walk to Touched’s car. Me, Touched, Seamus. A big Toyota Land Cruiser that he’d obviously just stolen because it was still full of toys, a box of diapers, and wipes.

Touched handed Seamus and myself a pair of gloves. We put them on without asking why.

I got in back. Kit sitting there, smoking a cigarette. She was also wearing gloves, black tank top, black jeans, no bra. The nipples on her small breasts were erect because of the Land Cruiser’s powerful air-conditioning.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello. We saw you, like, totally bring down that church. Dude, that was pretty awesome,” she said. “I didn’t know you could drive one of those things.”

“One of my many hidden talents,” I said.

Touched and Seamus got in the front.

“How’s your boyfriend, Jackie, I believe he had a bit of an accident?” I said innocently.

“Yeah, that graffiti board in the End of the State totally fell down on him while he was peeing. He’s thinking of suing, you know?”

“Is that what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he should sue, open-and-shut case, I would have thought.”

“How do you like living on PI?” she asked, to change the subject.

“Nice place if you don’t mind getting eaten alive. The Pilgrim Fathers were on to something when they decreed that no flesh should be exposed. Sound religious reasons, possibly, but certainly practical common sense in the boggy, marshy coast of Massachusetts.”

“The pilgrims didn’t come up here,” Kit said.

Touched turned round to look at us.

“Listen, you two. Enough of the chitchat. This is serious. If you don’t want to go, now’s the time to opt out,” he said.

Kit shook her head, her eyes wide, slightly frightened, her chin jutting out with determination.

“Might help, Touched, if I know what I was opting out of,” I said.

Touched looked at Seamus, who nodded.

“What do you think? Is he one of us?” Touched asked.

“Seems ok to me,” Seamus said.

“What I say in this car is totally between us, if you’re not interested, you keep your fucking mouth shut and we’ll forget the whole thing, ok?” Touched said to me.

“Ok.”

“Aye. Sean, I heard that you were lifted in Northern Ireland for attacking a police car. And I heard that the peelers knocked the shite out of you. Heard you were a bit of a wee rebel when you were a kid,” Touched said cautiously.

“Where did you hear that?” I barked, trying to sound pissed off.

“Don’t fly off the handle, Sean, I don’t want to cause you any trouble, in fact quite the reverse. I had to check you out. These are very difficult times that we’re living in. It’s quite possible that Gerry is being watched by the cops or the FBI, although I think we might have heard about it before now. But that’s neither here nor there. The thing is, Sean, I have a wee contact in the Boston pigs and I got them to run you on the computer. I read about your past and I know where your sympathies used to lie, and I want to know if you still feel that way?”

Kit looked at me, her gloved hand patting me on the leg. She smiled. Her eyes the color of a glacial lake. Not a cold, uninviting glacial lake. More of a cool lake on a warm day. Let’s say it’s summer in the Alps and you’re sweaty and hot from hiking and you-

“Sean, did you hear what I said?” Touched asked, shaking me out of my reverie.

“You want to know how I feel about the Brits in Ireland?” I muttered, snapping my head away from those hypnotic peepers.

“Aye.”

“I think the Brits should stick to their own country and get out of Northern Ireland. And if the bloody Protestants don’t want to live in a united Ireland then they can fuck off back to Scotland where they came from,” I said with just enough but not too much passion.

Touched nodded and put the car into gear.

He accelerated away from the remains of the church and we drove over the metal swivel bridge and off the island. To the left was the swampy Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, to the right Joppa Flats and Newburyport Harbor. Touched lit a cigarette, began another little speech.

“Sean, apparently you did wonders in Revere, but I have to see for myself. This is going to be a test. This isn’t going to be your only test. But if you don’t do well today, you’re out. Generous redundancy package, couple of handshakes, no hard feelings. If you do well, I’m going to recommend you to Gerry. Simple as that. There’s going to be four of us. Me and Seamus will run the show. You and Kit just shut the fuck up and do nothing. I’m not even sure I agree with having Kit here but-”

“We’re not going to get into that again, Touched, like, come on,” Kit said, interrupting him angrily.

Touched coughed on his cigarette. If this was any other wee girl but Gerry’s daughter he probably would have turned round and slapped her.

“Ok, Kit, keep your fucking hair on,” he said and threw his fag out the window and angrily lit another.

He put the radio on and flipped through the stations, looking for one playing country, not an easy task in Massachusetts. Finally he dug one up on the AM band and, more relaxed, winked at me in the rearview mirror.

The drive.

Nobody talking.

Touched singing along to the radio. The ocean on our left, North America on our right. Swamps, mudflats, marshes. Kit looking out the window. Touched packing heat. Seamus, too. Slowly down route 1A. Many places along the way with pull-offs, deserted little lay-bys. Easy for Touched to stop the car with any kind of excuse. A play like this:

“I just need a quick piss,” Touched says.

Suggests we all get out. I have to get out too, or it will look suspicious. As soon as I’m out of the car, Touched checks the highway, looks left and right, pulls his piece, shoots me in the belly to put me down. Shoots me in the head and then another one right in the eyeball to be on the safe side.

Kit’s screaming. Seamus holding her back. He explains it to her or tries to. They search the body but they don’t find anything. They fill my pockets with gravel, stones, anything really, take me to the swamp and dump me in.

Kit gets in the car, sobbing, hysterical.

“Why, why did you kill him?” she asks.

“Fucking British agent, Kit,” Touched says. “I could tell immediately. Your da thought it was important that you were there to see me top him.”

“Oh God,” Kit says…

I looked out the window, waited for the car to slow, for the indicator to come on. But it didn’t. We drove through Rowley, over the Parker River bridge, and down to Ipswich. Some of my fear had gone, but the adrenaline pumping through me still kept me off kilter and alert.

“I’d like to tell you a little about what’s happening, Sean,” Touched said from the front as he tried to drive round a slow-moving RV.

“Tell away.”

“First of all, we’re going to go get some ice cream and then we are going to go to a town in New Hampshire called Derry. There’s two towns in New Hampshire right beside each other. One is called Derry and one is called Londonderry. As you know, Sean, but Kit and Seamus don’t, back in Ulster the Prods call Derry ‘Londonderry’ and the Catholics call it ‘Derry.’ So obviously settlers from there came here and they couldn’t agree what to call their new town and so both Derry and Londonderry are right next to each other. Interesting places, I was up there yesterday.”

So what? I was thinking but Touched came to the point.

“As a spite to the Protestants we are going to rob a bank in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Recon on it for the last week. It’s 1950s America. One security camera. Rush in the morning, very slack in the afternoons. Two part-time clerks and a manager. After we get our ice cream I am going to give you all one more chance to back out. And that’s it. Ok?”

I nodded. Kit nodded. Touched looked at us in the mirror.

“By the end of the day, both of you are going to be men,” Touched growled as he pulled into the White Farms Ice Cream stand that Kit had pointed out the night of the hit on her da.

“All right, Seamus, you go up and get us four butter crunch with chocolate sprinkles. Here’s a twenty, if she’s nice give her a two-buck tip, got that?”

“Four butter crunch with sprinkles, two-buck tip. I’d rather have rocky road if that’s ok?”

“Butter fucking crunch,” Touched insisted.

Seamus slunk out of the car and walked up to the ice-cream stand. There was a queue of about a dozen people ahead of him, so it might be a while. Touched turned the car and the air-conditioning back on.

He turned to face us.

“Seamus is ok. Don’t worry about him. He’s been a bit shaken up since the attempted hit on Gerry, but he’s ok. You saw him that night. Fucking outstanding. He’s solid. Not like some others I could mention.”

“He seems fine to me,” I said.

“I’ve had him teasing info out of you, and I’ve asked around. You’re ok, Sean, and I think your heart’s in the right place. I want you, Sean. I like you. I think we could use you. Your country could use you.”

I looked at him. His eyes were cold now. Serious. How stupid was I supposed to act? Would Sean know what Touched was asking him to join?

“Will it mean killing people?” I asked.

“For you it will not. Not you. Certainly not initially. British companies, businesses. Maybe military or governmental officials, and you won’t be involved in that unless you’re completely comfortable. Me, Gerry, and Seamus will take the high-risk assignments. Maybe Jackie later.”

“You’re not the Provos, are you?”

“We’re not, we’re our own group. The Sons of Cuchulainn. Back in the heyday there used to be about a dozen of us in two cells. Now it’s basically Gerry’s family and a few others. We’re down in numbers but not in clout. I really think we can make a difference. Gerry is fucking loaded. We have resources up to the roof, we just need young guns, new blood. The IRA have never even tried a campaign in America. Chickenshit traitors that they are.”

“They tried to kill Gerry.”

“Aye, but they won’t try again. They’re on cease-fire now, so they can’t.”

“So who’s your enemies?”

“Nobody knows about us yet. Probably only a couple of files in the FBI. Those files will get bigger. The Brits will get involved. But we’re going to be smart. Cell structure, untraceable. Even if the FBI are doing surveillance on Gerry, none of it’s going to get back. Hoping to have two or three cells in place by Christmas,” Touched said.

“What’s the point, what’s the goal?”

“The point is to take the war to the enemy. What I’m going to tell you is very confidential. This goes for you too, Kit, no blabbing.”

“Of course not.”

“In the next week or two a new organization is going to be announced in Dublin called Continuity IRA or Real IRA. They’re opposed to the IRA cease-fire. So we won’t be alone. If we can impress Real IRA with a few spectaculars, I’d say we’d be quids in with them. We can have a formal alliance or we can be co-opted. Either way we won’t be alone, not by a long shot. It’ll mean money, influence, power, and history’s going our way, Sean. And Mr. Blair and the Labour Party are for a United Ireland anyway. We hope to give them the boost they need to withdraw.”

“By?”

“Making life impossible for British companies, consulates, and so on in the United States of America. Hurt them economically. Way to their heart is through their wallet.”

“So no killing?”

“If you’re squeamish about that you should turn me down now, because killing is unavoidable in any war,” Touched said, and to impress the seriousness of his point, he smacked his fist into his palm. I looked at him, thought for a moment. His face had lost all of its levity. This was one subject not to be taken lightly.

“I hate the fuckers, but it’s just not something I personally have had to do before,” I said.

“I know, Sean. It’s hard. The first time is hard. Look at Kit there beside you, she knows,” he said somewhat surprisingly.

Kit nodded.

“You’ve killed someone?” I asked her, shocked.

“No. That’s not what he’s talking about. But I know it might be necessary. If you don’t think you have the nerve…” Kit muttered, trying to appear steely and composed. Touched nodded grimly, his face a mask of certainty.

“I have the nerve, sister, don’t worry about that,” I said.

“Good,” Touched said, reaching back and clumsily punching me on the shoulder.

“The ends will justify the means,” Kit said dreamily, as if that explained anything.

“I’m in,” I said.

Touched grinned, grabbed my hand, and shook it.

“I knew I could depend on you, Sean. Not so fast, though. You have to prove you have the bottle. What you did when you were sixteen was one thing, have to see if you have the balls right now. Today will be the first test; but we need you, Sean. I’m not telling tales out of school if I admit that what happened in Revere was a big setback. Nobody got hurt, but as I’ve already told you, Mike has split. And we lost two more, old pal of Gerry’s called Tommy O’Neill and a wee kid called Jamie, thought he was coming along, we all liked him, but he’s scarpered too.”

“He was a nice boy. Jackie taught him to surf,” Kit said sadly.

“I’m in if you’ll have me,” I said.

“We’ll have you if you do well today and the next and… Here comes Seamus with the ice creams and oh my fucking Christ, he got the rainbow instead of the chocolate sprinkles.”

The National Independent Bank of Londonderry, NH, was in a little patch of land cleared from the thick woods off Route 128. It hardly resembled a bank at all. More like a settler’s cabin with a tiny car park next to it. It was the sort of place Robert Frost might have written about, juxtaposing the capitalistic rudeness of the bank with the loveliness of nature. Some sort of shite like that.

Touched drove past it once and pulled the Toyota into a lay-by about fifty yards up. I would have parked closer, in case we had to run out of there, but I didn’t want to mess with Touched’s arrangements. Presumably he knew what he was doing. Besides, if we were caught, they’d all go to jail and I’d be out of the op. Though getting shot by the cops or a security guard was a different matter.

Touched reached in the glove compartment and gave us each a ski mask to pull on. From his jacket he produced a couple of.38 revolvers, gave them to Kit and me.

“You fired a gun before?” he asked, a fine time for a question like that.

I nodded. Kit shook her head.

“I thought your da took you to Bob’s on Route 1?” Touched asked.

“He-he said he was going to but he never did.”

“Jesus. I should have done it before now. Ok, well, can’t be bloody helped. You wait in the car, Kit,” Touched said.

“I’m not waiting in the car,” Kit said angrily. “I’m going.”

“You’re not going anywhere if you can’t handle a firearm.”

“I’m fucking going, Touched,” Kit said.

Touched looked at her. She wasn’t budging. He liked that.

A grin spread across his face.

Touched took the gun back, emptied out the shells, and handed it to her again.

“Just look threatening,” he said to Kit.

“Ok,” she replied.

“Last chance to pull out,” Touched said to the pair of us.

“I’m in,” I said.

Kit thought for a moment. “Me, too,” she said finally.

“Ok, leave it all to me, not a word from either of you and do everything I say, understood?”

We both nodded.

“Seamus, are you ok?”

Seamus nodded, produced his own.38, spun the barrel, snapped it in his hand. Seamus was pretty confident with a pistol, I remembered.

We put on our ski masks, got out of the car, and walked through the woods to the back of the bank.

There were two cars outside. Route 128 was quiet.

“Me first,” Touched said, adjusting his ski mask.

He walked into the bank. I heard Kit behind me, gagging back vomit.

The bank was tiny.

One woman clerk behind the counter, one man helping her in the back. No customers. Fan in the upper left of the room. Desk for filling out forms. Handmade posters advertising yard sales and a stock show. Glass partition between customers and tellers. A smell of resin, wood glue, and coffee. And as Touched had told us, one big old-fashioned surveillance camera.

Touched walked up to the woman teller. She saw the four of us, the guns, the masks.

“Can, can I hel…” she said, her voice trailing off into a whisper. Betty, according to the nameplate in front of her, was an older woman, with dyed red hair and a perma tan that actually suited her. She was dressed in a garish yellow frock she must have bought at Woolworth’s in about 1971.

“It’s like this,” Touched began calmly. “We plan to be out of here in two minutes. No one is going to get hurt. What you’re going to do, love, is fill this bag full of money and then we’re going to go and when you’ve waited for twenty minutes you’re going to call the police.”

Touched pushed a black bag under the six-inch gap in the glass partition. The woman picked it up absently.

“Harris, we’re being robbed,” she said, and finally the man behind her looked up from whatever he was doing. He was also elderly, in a gray shirt, black woolen tie, and glasses. He looked the flighty troublemaking type to me. I kept him between me and Kit in case he was going to try anything.

“Oh my God,” Harris said.

“It’s ok, everything is going to be fine,” Touched said.

“Mr. Prescott isn’t here yet today. Of all days, why today? He’s not here, he’s still in Manchester,” Harris said in a voice trembling with panic. The woman looked at Harris and then at Touched.

“Fill the fucking bag,” Touched said, and for the first time he raised his pistol to the horizontal and pointed it at her. She froze.

“I think we should wait until Mr. Prescott comes back,” Harris said.

Touched was getting angry now.

“If you don’t start filling that bag with money, I am going to fucking butcher the pair of you,” he yelled.

Betty started to tear up and let the bag drop on the floor.

“Please go away,” she said.

Harris put his hands over his head.

“Mr. Prescott should be back in half an hour, please, can you not wait, or come back then? We won’t tell the police. I give you my word as, as an Elk,” he pleaded, sweat shining on the bald spot on his head and appearing under the arms of his polyester shirt.

Touched clicked the hammer back on his revolver.

“One more word out of you, mate, and you’re going to be fucking toast,” he growled.

Betty began to sob. Harris began to hyperventilate and backed away into a filing cabinet, which banged shut. Touched turned to Seamus, Kit, and myself.

“We’re going to have to shoot through the glass,” he said. “You two stay back. And can someone take out the bloody camera?”

Seamus shot the surveillance camera, something he should have done as soon as we’d walked into the bank.

The noise was deafening.

Betty began to sway.

This was all spinning out of control. Bank tellers are trained to give you the money. They want to give you the money. This should be easy. I put my hand on Touched’s shoulder and whispered: “Let me try.”

Touched was about to say something, changed his mind, nodded. I walked as close to the glass as I could and put the gun down on the counter so that Betty could see I was not pointing it at her.

I spoke gently: “Betty, please, pick up the bag, if you put some money in it we’ll be gone and out of your life forever and this will all be over.”

“I, I, I dropped it,” she said.

“That’s ok, you’re bound to be nervous. But don’t worry about it, you’re really doing very well. Mr. Prescott is going to be very proud of you. Now pick up the bag and fill it with money.”

She looked at Harris. He nodded.

“Come on, Betty. It’ll be something to tell the TV news and your grandchildren,” I said as kindly as I could, but hoping that mentioning the grandkids would also remind her that this was life or death.

Touched seethed impatiently beside me.

Betty looked at me for a moment, picked up the bag, opened the drawer for the twenties, and threw in all the stacks. About a dozen in total.

“What about the other drawers?” I asked.

“Mr. Prescott has the keys for those, but, but he should be back directly.”

“That’s ok, just give me that bag,” I said.

Seamus suddenly came to life.

“There’s someone coming in from the parking lot,” he yelled, eyeing the door.

I looked at Betty and Harris.

“No silent alarms, no tricks, you two just do your job and give me the bag,” I said to Betty.

She flattened the bag and calmly pushed it under the glass.

I picked it up, chucked it to Touched.

“He’s definitely coming in,” Seamus said, peering outside.

“I can’t believe this, they usually get one customer an hour,” Touched growled nervously.

Kit was rocking back on her heels, looking like she might be about to pass out. I reached over and steadied her shoulder.

“What’s he look like, Seamus?” I asked.

“Old guy in a red cap,” Seamus hissed.

“Let him come in, smack him on the head as soon as he’s through the door,” I commanded.

“I’ll do it,” Touched said, trying to assert some of his authority.

Touched walked to the front of the bank and almost immediately the door opened. An old woodsman came in out of the bright sunlight and before he had time to adjust to the interior dimness Touched had savagely clobbered him with the butt of his pistol. He went down like a puppet with the strings cut.

I turned to Betty and Harris.

“Thank you, Betty, now make sure you give us twenty minutes to get away before you call the police, because if we’re captured before then, we’ll make sure our associates kill you and Harris before the trial. They’ll torture you with arc welding gear until you’re begging for death. A good twenty minutes, do you understand?”

Betty’s eyes widened and the color drained from her cheeks. She nodded and tried to speak but could not.

“That’s about the best we’re going to do,” I said to Touched. “I think we should head.”

“Aye. Let’s go,” he said.

We ran out of the bank and into the sunshine. We sprinted through the woods and climbed into the Toyota. Ski masks off.

Kit was breathing hard and her face was white. Touched drove us up 128 like a goddamn maniac, hitting a ton before he came to an intersection. Kit threw up into her ski mask. She opened the window to dump it out, but I shook my head.

“No, just wait,” I said.

At the intersection, Touched headed us south back towards the Massachusetts border along the Alan B. Shepard Jr. Highway.

When he reckoned we were safe, Touched playfully slapped Seamus on the back of the head and looked at Kit and myself in the rearview mirror.

“You did well, lads. Did well. We did it. We fucking did it. Yeah. Jesus. Sweet and fast. Shit, yeah,” Touched said, driving now at a more sensible speed.

“Went pretty smooth,” Seamus said.

“Oh my God, yeah. So quick. Under two minutes, I reckon. Dead impressed. You all did very well…”

We drove to Route 1 and pulled the Toyota onto a swampy piece of land where Touched had left his own car, a green Mercedes, behind an old ruined factory or warehouse. We got out of the vehicle. Touched collected the ski masks and the gloves, put them in a bag and threw them in the swamp. Kit had left vomit on the floor of the Toyota.

“What about the vomit?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“Can you trace DNA through vomit?” I asked.

“Better scrape it up, Kit,” Touched said.

“I’ll do it,” I said and used the baby wipes to clean up the mess.

We got into the Mercedes. Seamus in the front, very quiet now. Touched, exhilarated, flipping through the rock channels until he found Garth Brooks. Kit looking like one of the undead, all the color gone from her cheeks and pale lips. I put my hand on her neck, rubbed the tension out of it, smiled at her. She put on a brave face and smiled back. I took her hand and held it. She’d been a lot more terrified about this than she’d been the night her father had been shot at. I suppose she’d known about this plan for a while and had been dreading it all morning.

“You did great,” I whispered.

“I didn’t do anything,” she replied.

“No, you were fabulous,” I said.

Within fifteen minutes of getting in the Mercedes we were pulling up to Gerry McCaghan’s enormous house on Plum Island. Kit held my hand all the way to the front door. I squeezed it and let go only when Gerry came in sight.

The house sat above the dunes right on the Atlantic Ocean. The previous owner, Gerry proudly told me later, was a vice president of the Penthouse company and before that it had been the summer retreat of a New England shipping family.

Gerry had extended the already “improved” Penthouse dwelling both laterally and vertically and now it was an eleven-bedroom mansion with a five-bedroom guesthouse on the other side of a four-car garage. The style was 1920s Hamptons Long Island Estate meets 1990s Internet Millionaire Monstrosity.

The original structure had an elegant wood facade, painted a dull white that had weathered into a lovely pinkish gray. The extensions were brash, futuristic abutments that seemed to be all tinted windows, harsh metallic angles, silver paint, and a few space-age air-conditioning ducts. A set of flagpoles dominated the driveway. In defiance of convention, the highest-flying flag was the Irish tricolor; slightly lower there was a “Harp on a Green Field”-an old flag of Irish republicanism-and lower still the Stars and Stripes. There was no garden, merely dunes and crabgrass on the ocean side and a sandy driveway at the back.

It was a house in poor taste and it made me wonder about Gerry’s overall judgment and certainly his construction skills; but perhaps it looked better from the sea. Preferably out beyond the three-mile limit.

Gerry had seen the Mercedes arrive and came out to greet us. He was dressed in a white Lacoste polo shirt and enormous blue shorts. His feet were bare and his Red Sox hat was on backwards. He ignored me and approached Touched. I was ill at ease, but my doubts were dispelled when, after a brief conversation, he walked over to me and gave me a hug.

“I’m glad you’re with us, Sean, Touched says you were great,” he said, squeezing the life out of me in what, for a moment, I thought was the subtlest murder attempt I’d ever experienced in my life.

He released his grip and embraced Kit, too. He lifted her up in the air. Kit so small and frail, Gerry a man mountain. For a moment it was like the footage of the little kid who falls into the gorilla cage.

“I heard you were great too, Kit,” Gerry said.

“I was ok. Sean was the star,” Kit said.

Touched slapped me on the back.

“Damn right he was. You know me, Gerry, I’m a bit liable to fly off the handle. Fucking Sean, cool as a cucumber. He was a bloody natural.”

“Is that right, Sean?” Gerry asked happily.

“Nah, wee bit of exaggeration. Touched ran the show. I was just helping out.”

Gerry patted me on the head with his meaty paw.

“He’s modest, too, unlike some people I could mention,”

he said, looking inside the house. Hinting, perhaps, that Jackie was not flavor of the month. Touched put his arm round me and led me to one side.

“Ok, mate, do you trust me to divvy up?” he asked, his cold, greedy eyes waiting for an answer.

What choice did I have?

“Of course, Touched.”

“Good lad. One thing about me, I’m honest, never cheated a mate in me life. Pal of mine will buy the stash for eighty percent of cost. He’ll wash it in one of the casinos in New Hampshire. We’ll lose a fifth but still, it’s going to be a good score,” Touched said.

I knew what that meant. After the “washing” and the divvying up, Touched was going to steal about half the money for himself.

Gerry dragged me away from Touched’s claws.

“Come on inside. We’re sitting down to dinner and then we’re all going to go to the beach. We’ve had the maid make up your room in the guesthouse, you’ll be living here now, not in that shithole,” Gerry said.

“Thank you very much, but my stuff is over at-”

“It’s already been brought over. You’re one of us now, Sean. Part of the family. Now come on in, Natalia has made the most amazing dinner for us and Kit has been working on a pie.”

I walked inside the house.

“Kit, you give him a quick tour, but it has to be quick, we’re sitting down to dinner in five minutes.”

Kit breezed me through the house. All eleven bedrooms, six bathrooms, observation deck, TV room, lounge, and finally dining room. It was actually worse than I was expecting, the McCaghans combining their talents to create a bad-taste masterpiece. Sonia, who seemed to have an old-money sophistication about her, was either colorblind or had decided that decor was not a place to fight her battles.

The paint scheme was gold, green, and silver. The carpets three-inch-thick white shag on which zebra-patterned throw rugs had been placed for contrast. No window was free of lace curtains, taffeta bows, ivy, and other elaborate treatments. Entire rooms were filled with white leather furniture, pictures of dirty gamins, kittens, and puppies. They had delicate and unfunctional chairs that you wouldn’t dare touch, never mind use, and the beds were huge puffy affairs on which stuffed animals slept in cozy proximity. It also wasn’t unusual to find antique porcelain dolls sitting on chairs, gazing out to sea with creepy eyes. No books anywhere but the coffee tables displayed copies of Architectural Digest, New England Home, and France Sud. Gerry had also invested in a great store of contemporary Irish art. The usual tat: the stony fields of the Burren, rain in the Mourne Mountains, sheep in the Antrim Plateau, deserted beaches in Donegal, gap-toothed children sitting in rowboats. Dozens of these artworks, in lovely antique gilt frames and placed seemingly at random all over the house.

The whole thing would have turned the stomach of a weaker man, but fortunately I was made of sterner stuff.

Kit’s room was the only sane one in the house and even that was a bit overboard. She had painted the walls black, hung a massive Indian shawl from her ceiling, and put up several askew posters proclaiming her loyalty to The Cure, Nick Cave, and, alas, Poison. There were statues of the Buddha, Ganesh, and that scary deity with swords and lots of legs.

“Nice,” I said.

She brought me downstairs to the dining room, which was relatively subdued and dominated anyway by a spectacular view of the Atlantic coast: the curve of Plum Island and Cape Ann stretching to the south, New Hampshire and Maine to the north.

“Amazing view,” I said to Gerry.

“Can you believe they only had a tiny window in this room before we bought it? I knocked out the wall and stuck in support columns. Best view in PI.”

Sonia showed me to my place next to Kit and facing the ocean. The sun had set, so the sea had become a bewitching shade of lavender and it would have been perfect had I not been sitting opposite Jackie, who looked as if he’d fallen off a bus. Something that gave me a tremendous and childish feeling of satisfaction. Two black eyes, a cut chin, a cut lip, bruises on his cheeks.

“Goodness, Jackie, are you ok? Kit told me you’re thinking of suing the End of the State, because something fell on you? Is that right?”

“Aye,” he said sourly and sipped from a Waterford crystal glass that was filled with fizzy beer.

Touched sat next to Jackie. Gerry sat at one end of the table, Sonia at the other. Seamus, Touched explained, was not feeling well and had gone next door to the guesthouse for a wee lie down.

There were two Mexican servants who brought in several bottles of expensive white wine and a formal dinner of soup, lobster, another fish course, and finally lamb. Although it seemed that their command of English was not particularly impressive, I could see that we were not to allude to this afternoon’s events except in the most oblique of terms.

Gerry, though, was in rare form and pontificated on international politics, domestic politics, and baseball. Touched contradicted him here and there and Sonia was the voice of reason. Or if not reason exactly, at least of more informed comment than either of the other two. Jackie remained sullen for most of the meal and before the dessert came, asked permission to excuse himself from the table.

“Gerry, do you mind if I leave? The tide marker is giving me the heave-ho,” he said.

“No, of course not, we’ll all be joining you later. Off you go, Jackie,” Gerry said.

Jackie stood and it was then that I noticed he was wearing board shorts and wet-suit booties. He ran to the guesthouse next door and appeared on the dunes in front of the house wearing an ankle strap and black rash guard, and carrying a surfboard.

“What was he talking about? The tide marker?” I asked Kit.

“That thing on the wall,” she said, pointing at a clock with LOW and HIGH where the twelve and six should be.

“So what does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, if you look, the arrow is almost into the low, so that means for the next few hours surfing conditions will be pretty close to perfect on the Plum Island beach break.”

“Jackie surfs?”

“Yeah, he’s very good. He had an amateur tryout at Mon-tauk a few weeks ago. He was seventh out of about forty or fifty. We all surf, well, me and Jackie do. Jamie as well, before he ran away. But Daddy and Sonia both bodyboard.”

“I love the ocean,” Gerry said. “I love the feeling of being in the ocean.”

Sonia nodded in agreement.

“It’s really the best feature of living on Plum Island,” Sonia said. “It can be such a hassle, sometimes the bridge is closed and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Sean, but there can be a lot of insects…”

“No.”

“Well, that’s the downside but the upside is a beautiful unspoiled beach, and you should see what it’s like in the wildlife refuge, it’s America before the white man came and wrecked the place,” Sonia continued.

“I’ll have to check it out,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

“Oh, it’s a family rule, if you live in this house, you have to do something in water,” Gerry insisted.

“Even made me boogie board and I hate the fucking stuff,”

Touched said.

I turned to Kit.

“Where did Jackie learn to surf? He’s a goddamn Mick. We don’t surf. Charley don’t surf. Micks don’t surf. That’s it.”

“Oh no, he’s from Sligo, that’s a big undiscovered surfing mecca. Amazing breaks out there, completely unspoiled. He’s very good,” she said with admiration.

Many a good pejorative Yeats line about the eejits from Sligo but Sean wouldn’t know them.

“So how come you’re not going out there with him?” I said, trying to keep the sneer out of my voice.

“Oh, it’s too gnarly at the moment, I need the really low tide. But Jackie’s good enough to surf it right now.”

Something remarkably like jealousy was growing in my breast and Gerry mercifully changed the subject to the island itself.

“It’s all changed, Sean. Plum Island used to be very poor. Irish crab, lobster, and clam men eking out a desperate living on a bleak spit of sand south of the Merrimack River. Thoreau once called the dunes of PI the ‘most desolate walk in New England.’ And in the book Albion’s Seed… well, anyway, I’m growing prolix, but things are quite different now. Boston spreads her influence north and more people have begun commuting into the city using the highway or Route 1.”

“The real boom is going to start once the light rail hub’s finished in Newburyport, the train taking you to North Station in downtown Boston in less than an hour,” Sonia added.

“Oh yes, Sean, I could see all this a couple of years ago when we moved. What was once an unwholesome spot for poor crabbers and a couple of summer houses is now valuable real estate. Once we get water and sewage lines here it’s going to be paradise itself.”

When the meal was over, we were going to eat a rhubarb tart that Kit had made early this morning, refrigerated, and then immediately popped in the oven the moment we’d come back. Bank robber, wannabe revolutionary, goth girl, and rhubarb tart maker-obviously a Renaissance woman.

She went to get it and a brief moment later there was a scream from the kitchen. She came back into the dining room with a furious expression on her face.

“Daddy, did you eat all the ice cream? You know we have to have it with vanilla ice cream because it’s the perfect combination. You know I put that ice cream to one side, because I was saving it,” she said furiously.

“I took it,” Touched lied, saving Gerry’s bacon. “Sorry about that, Kit.”

“Well, we can’t not have ice cream,” she said, huffing.

“I’ll go to White Farms and get some more,” Touched said.

Kit shook her head.

“No, they don’t do good vanilla. I’ll have to go to Grandma’s in Newburyport. Anyone come with me?”

“I’ll go,” I said, seizing the opportunity.

She ran upstairs to get her car keys and her sunglasses. Touched led me out the back onto the porch. He reached in his pocket and brought out a huge wad of twenty-dollar bills and gave it to me.

“Your cut. Five grand,” Touched said.

“For me?” I asked.

“For you, me old mucker. A fifth to my laundryman, five percent to the general fund, and the rest between the four of us. Equal shares, too, you, me, Kit, and Seamus, no finder’s fee for me or anything,” Touched said without a trace of a lie in that cold, unemotional face.

“Cheers, mate,” I said happily, knowing now that he must have pocketed at least twenty thousand for himself.

“Nay probs, Sean boy, now don’t go crazy, flashing it about. Rainy day and all that,” Touched said in what was about as close to a speech on fiscal prudence as I was likely to get. “Anyway, that should keep you in eggs. Ok, I have things to do, wee thing to scout tonight, down at the National Guard, shit, shouldn’t have said that. Wipe that from your mind. It’s the next wee op we might be going on, don’t worry about it.

Anyway, I’ll be gone when you get back. You just look after yourself, don’t let that young lady talk you into risking your life on a bloody tree in the middle of the bloody ocean.”

“I won’t.”

Kit appeared, grabbed me.

“We’ve got to get the ice cream before the pie cools,” Kit said.

She led me to the four-car garage and got in a pink Volkswagen Bug that had Greenpeace and WWF stickers on the back windshield. Hardly the vehicle of a committed terrorist. Maybe the signs of complexity in her character.

We drove into Newburyport and I let Kit chat about surfing and music. She wanted to talk about anything, just not what had happened that day, which was fine by me. She blabbed away and I stole looks at her and was a good listener. As we pulled into State Street she scanned for parking and I spotted the All Things Brit store.

“Kit, have you ever tried clotted cream? It’s fantastic, it would go really well on the rhubarb tart. It’s an English thing. I’ll bet we could get some at that British food store.”

“But I was going to get ice cream.”

“We can get both. It’ll be a real treat. Your da will love it and if you want to be really decadent, you can even put it on the ice cream.”

Kit nodded and luckily found a parking spot right in front of All Things Brit, which was only a block from the ice-cream store.

“I’ll check out this cream of yours, and then we’ll have to dash to Grandma’s. I mean, look, the line is out into the street.”

All Things Brit was just closing down for the night. The woman who ran it was wearing a frumpy orange and brown floral dress and a huge grin.

“I’m just closing up, can I help you darlings at all?” she asked happily.

“Yes, we’d like some clotted cream, please,” Kit said.

“Certainly, my dear, and can I just say that you’re the prettiest girl we’ve had in here all day,” Samantha said.

I rolled my eyes behind Kit’s head. Samantha’s face was transparent with delight.

“We have a full selection in the refrigerator by the door,” Samantha said.

Kit walked over to look.

“Oooh, this does look good, we’ll get have to get some for everyone,” Kit said.

“Kit, I know which ones to get, I’ll pick them out, you run and get on line for the ice cream and I’ll meet you up there,” I said.

“You don’t mind paying?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m flush at the moment.” Kit smiled and dashed outside to join the line at Grandma’s.

There were no other customers in the shop but someone could come in at any minute. I knew I would have to speak fast.

“I’m in,” I said.

“To the cell?”

I nodded.

“Congratulations,” she said with a condescending grin that I didn’t like at all.

“It’s as I’ve said, Samantha, it’s a bit of a shambles. I think they’re falling apart. They’ve had three defections altogether. That Mike guy, someone called O’Neill, and a kid called Jamie. They’ve been decimated by the assassination attempt on Gerry. Don’t think the IRA isn’t smart, because they are. The psychological effect of that hit has paid dividends. They’re running. They’re running scared and I don’t think they’re going to do anything major at all. They’re all talk.”

“So who’s left in the group?”

“The total group is just Sonia and Gerry, Touched, Jackie, Kit, Seamus, and me. That’s it. Sonia’s no player, though, and Kit is just a wee girl and Seamus has been knocking back two bottles of vodka a day since the hit in Revere. So I think this whole goddamn mission has been a waste of time. Everyone has basically got the IRA’s message and they’re not going to do anything. I think you can let me go back to Chicago with a handshake for a job well done.”

Samantha looked at me.

“What else?”

I sighed.

My hand was on the counter. She put hers on top.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said.

“It’s really nothing.”

“What is it?’

“Well, it’s very stupid, you might have heard about it on the radio. That bank robbery in New Hampshire. That was us.”

Samantha’s eyebrows raised.

“It’s not what you think. God knows, Gerry doesn’t need the money, it was just a test, to see if I was up to it.”

“Was Gerry involved?”

“No.”

“Gerry’s the one we want.”

“I know.”

Samantha smiled.

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we give it a couple of weeks. If it doesn’t look like they’re going to do anything-if, as you think, they are running scared-I’ll pull you out. We’ll see. Who was in on the robbery?”

“Touched, Kit, me, and Seamus.”

“Hmmm. I’d take three convictions for armed robbery and consider this a successful operation. We might even agree to suspend Kit’s sentence if Gerry would return to Northern Ireland to stand trial. He might do that to keep his daughter out of jail. What do you think?”

“No, Kit waited in the car. She wasn’t involved at all. You can’t arrest her for anything,” I lied, firmly.

“Of course we can, she’s an accessory. Anyway. You’ve done well. I’ll check out the robbery to see if the police have any leads. We might have to get the locals to slow-play if you left any clues. And I hope you’re right, I hope they’re not trying anything. But you’ll have to tell me the truth. If they are planning something big, we’ve got to know.”

“But if not, I’m out. Right?”

“Right.”

Kit came back in with the ice cream.

“What’s keeping you?” she asked.

Samantha hurriedly removed her hand from mine. I don’t know if Kit saw but if she did, she didn’t think anything of it. We drove home, distributed the ice cream, and as she had predicted the combination of rhubarb and vanilla was close to perfect…

An hour later.

Kit and me sitting on the dunes. Gerry and Sonia body boarding on the beach break. Sonia had changed into a neat one-piece swimsuit that showed off her lithe body and long legs. Gerry, unfortunately, was also showing off his body, in a pair of size 48 board shorts.

Touched was off doing something secretive that involved the Massachusetts National Guard and Seamus was sleeping away his hangover.

Kit had changed into a black Body Glove one-piece wet suit and was resting her feet on a surfboard that said “Hello Kitty” above an anime cat.

There were about a dozen surfers on the water and at least twenty or thirty kids and older people body or boogie boarding on the breakers. Amazingly, Gerry was one of them. Amazing and a bit terrifying. A wave could easily have swept him up and plonked him down on some poor unsuspecting five-year-old.

“How long has your dad been into that?” I asked Kit.

“Since we moved here from Boston.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Since my mom died.”

“It looks like fun.”

“Family that surfs together stays together.”

We sat and watched her da and Sonia and then she pointed out Jackie on the beach break. Of all the surfers there, he was catching the most waves. He really was very good.

“Jackie is definitely the best one there,” I said generously.

She turned to me and I caught her looking at my prosthetic foot.

“Come on, let me show you some moves,” she said.

“It looks easy in theory,” I said.

“It’s not that hard.”

I lay back in the sand.

“Maybe another time. For now I just want to be mellow, sit down, enjoy the evening.”

Kit nodded. “We got the rest of the summer to learn to surf and at least into October. If you’re wearing a wet suit nobody would even notice your, uh…”

“My foot. You can say it, I don’t give a shit.”

She smiled.

“Hey, I was thinking, you know what we’re a bit like today?” she said after a moment’s pause.

“What?”

“You ever see that movie Point Break?” she asked.

“No, I don’t go to the movies much.”

“You haven’t seen it? I thought everybody had seen that movie.”

“Is Lee Marvin in it?”

“Who’s Lee Marvin?”

“Ok, I guess he’s not in it. So, ok then, I haven’t seen it.”

“It’s Keanu Reeves. Have you at least heard of him?”

“Of course.”

“It’s like us, it’s about this gang of bank robbers who go surfing. And look at us, we robbed a bank today and now we’re going surfing,” Kit said with obvious pleasure at the intersection of celluloid and reality. I smiled.

“Listen, if you want to get into the water to complete the similarity, don’t let me stop you, I’m fine here,” I said.

“I’ll go in a minute,” Kit said. “I’ll sit beside you for a little bit more. Maybe encourage you to body board at least.”

I shook my head.

“Honestly, I’m not going in. I’m no Keanu Reeves.”

She laughed.

“You wouldn’t want to be anyway. He was the bad guy, well sort of, he played this undercover FBI agent who wants to stop them robbing all the banks…”

Kit’s talk continued for at least another two or three sentences, but I didn’t hear a goddamn word. The blood had chilled in my veins and I was trying not to show it.

“Ok?” she asked finally.

“Yeah. Sure.”

I had obviously agreed to her departure. She got up, grabbed her board, said hi to Gerry and Sonia, and paddled out into the water.

FBI agent. Jesus. Out of the mouths of babes.

Kit sat in the water for a long time and finally took a wave. Jackie had also selected the same wave. He cut back and forth several times and even attempted a 360. Kit just rode it sedately into shore.

She ran back up the beach.

“See how easy it is?” she said, sheer joy making her look cool and confident and happy. Big contrast from earlier in the day.

I nodded. She sat down on the sand. The sun had long disappeared over the salt marsh and the sky behind us was a burnt amarillo. And in front, from Cape Ann all the way up to Canada, a pink haze dissolving into black.

Kit leaned back beside me and we sat together watching a fleet of fishing boats from Gloucester heading up to the Grand Banks.

Beautiful.

The still Atlantic. The endless shore. Golden light disappearing beyond the Earth’s curve. The sea breeze tousled her hair and calmed me and I imagined us out in that blue swell. Dissolving, becoming part of all that space.

My fingers went down into the wet sand.

Kit’s were there too. The darkening sky. Birds. The tide coming in.

Water lapping at our ankles.

Her fingers touching mine. She was beautiful and young and I liked her. She had a depth that she let no one see. Not Jackie, not her dad.

She was in that stage of transition from teenager to woman.

She was breaking out of the mold she’d been in for years and anything was possible. College, the pro surf world, or smalltime terrorism.

She reminded me of Bridget. Bridget in the half minute after she found out I was alive and as she was deciding that she was going to have to kill me.

I looked at her.

Could Kit kill me?

Could I kill her?

Before the week was out, I’d know the answer to both those questions.