Tick Tock

Chapter 46

HOW THE HELL DID I get myself into these things?

As I drove toward the Rockaway Inlet for the second time, I couldn't believe I was actually agreeing to participate in some kind of crazy Irish mobster meeting. Had I fallen asleep at work and was I dreaming this? Of course not. You hang with an old-school Irish lunatic grandfather like mine long enough, the surreal becomes your normal.

We heard the fireworks before we turned the corner for the Flahertys' street. There were whistling bottle rockets and deafening strings of firecrackers. A giant flower burst of yellow lit up the sky behind the Flaherty compound's dilapidated split-level as we pulled up in front of it.

"I thought the Fourth of July was over," I said as we got out. "Are you sure the Vatican would approve of this?"

"You just follow my lead and keep quiet," Seamus said. "These gangster people only listen to man talk."

I shook my head as I spotted my old pal, Mr. Pit Bull, trying to chew a hole in the chain-link fence as we came up the steps. This time I couldn't actually hear the dog going batshit with all the noise of the ordnance from the backyard.

When no one came to the door, we decided to go around the side of the house to the back. The sulfurous smell of gunpowder hung in the air, which I thought was fitting, since we were now walking through the valley of the shadow of death, straight into the gates of Hell.

The rear of the place was almost completely overtaken by a large deck and one of those cheap aboveground pools. On the deck, the muscle-headed punk patriarch of the Flaherty clan, "Tommy Boy," as he was known from his rap sheet, sat with his tattooed brother Billy, book-ending a keg. I realized why no one had called the cops, when I saw the third Flaherty for the first time. I didn't know what his name was, but I noticed that he was still wearing his white NYPD captain's shirt as he tossed a lit bottle rocket toward the house next door.

Tommy Boy looked over with bleary eyes as Seamus cleared his throat by the deck steps.

"What the-?" he said. His pale face split into a grim grin. "Hey, guys. Check this out. How's this for a joke: A cop and a priest walk uninvited into a private party."

"We're here to have that sit-down, Flaherty," Seamus said. "We've come to work this thing out, and we won't leave until we do."

"Sit-down?" the illustrated Flaherty brother, Billy, said, balling his hands into fists as he stood. "Only thing that's gonna happen to you, coot, is a serious beat-down."