Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (23 page)

The man turned back in the doorway, the chill blue light framing his worn countenance. “An’ on your own, man. Chance should find you again in Mab’s Harbor one of these days, there’ll always be an open door an’ a place at the kitchen table.”

“Thank ye, I’ll keep it in mind should I happen this way,” Casey replied softly.

The house was silent around him after the man left, other than the occasional creak and the sound of the fire crackling in the stove. The lady of the house had left him a good breakfast of ham, hotcakes, and partridge berry preserves.

The house was small, and the idea that ten people lived within its walls astounded him. He took in the cracked and faded linoleum, the peeling paint and the worn furniture. It was shabby but it exuded the warmth of a real home.

He ate the food quickly, clearing his dishes away after. Then he reached in his bag and withdrew the bloody fistful of dollars that Olie had forced into his hand as he was dying.

He peeled off the outer bills, the ones stained rusty with blood. The remainder he left on the table, tucked between the sugar bowl and the fat bottomed creamer. Then slinging his bag over his shoulder he opened the door and turned toward the sea.

He was going home for good, and to hell with any man who stood in his way.

AGENT GUS HAD TOLD HER that if the tag in the book was ever red, it meant they had to meet right away because some unforeseen calamity had occurred. Though Pamela could plainly see the scarlet length of paper that lay in Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
her mind wanted fiercely to deny it. Wanted to hope that some patron had left it behind. The mildewy smell that emanated off the pages told her otherwise, however. The only time this book was ever taken off the shelves was when Agent Gus removed it to place that week’s marker inside and when she retrieved it to see what color lay within the brittle yellow pages.

That little strip of scarlet had brought her here, to their agreed meeting spot. It had been three months since she had told him about the secret meetings held between Love Hagerty and Mark Ryan. Thus far that particular trail had led nowhere. It was as if the Agent had sensed that someone might be onto him and Hagerty, and neither, as far as she knew, had been near the other in all that time.

It was cold by the pond, a fine drizzle of rain rippling the surface of the water that still had a thin coating of ice upon it. Agent Gus was waiting there for her, wrapped in a gray trenchcoat, hair mussed and tie askew. He looked slightly ill. As she’d never seen him less than composed in his manner if not his dress, she got a sick feeling herself immediately. The news was going to be bad, and there was no way that could bode well for her and her part in this play.

“How are you?” he asked with a wobbly smile.

“Let’s skip the small talk,” she said, “you look like you’ve just swallowed a worm.”

“I think maybe I have,” he said and there was no mistaking the worry that radiated off the man like a doom-filled fog.

“What do you mean?” she asked, through lips that suddenly felt ice-cold.

“I think Love Hagerty has been brought in as an informant, so the boys here can take down the Bassarelli family.”

“Could you say that again?” she said, praying that she’d heard him wrong.

“I think Love Hagerty is partnered up with someone above me in the field office. It was your telling me about seeing him and Mark Ryan together that got me looking into this. But now something else has happened that makes me certain you were right.”

Oh sweet Jesus, she
had
heard him right.

“What?”

“Because my boss is trying to shut down your file, saying you’re of no more use to us. Which is just feeb-speak meaning they’ve got bigger fish to fry and are trying to protect someone they consider a better asset. I can’t see who else they’d be protecting if it’s not Love Hagerty.”

“That’s not all there is to it, though, is it?” Pamela asked, the blood in her veins running very cold so that she could feel every movement of it under her skin.

“No. The agent I think is running Hagerty got a ‘tip’ about where to find the remains of an old girlfriend of Blackie’s—Cassandra Neil—that’s been missing for six years. The police had always pegged Blackie for the disappearance but they couldn’t build the case well enough without the body.”

“And you think Love told them where to find the body?”

“He wants Blackie gone. He’s ready to move on. Thinks it’s the right time to become respectable. I can’t see why else they’d be trying to shut down your file. Odd that the remains of a girl that’s been missing for six years suddenly conveniently turn up, when no one had a clue where to look before. The case has been cold for years. It hadn’t been re-opened either.”

“Blackie had her killed?”

“Yes,” Agent Gus swallowed, “and that’s not all. Diane Killian is missing as well. The staties called us two days back saying her mother was frantic, hadn’t been able to get ahold of her in a few days. Usually Diane never missed Sunday dinner with her family and so when she didn’t show up last Sunday she got worried. Went to the little apartment Diane shared with Blackie down in Dorchester and there’s not a thing missing. Looks like she was interrupted in the middle of making dinner. There were onions shrivelling up on the chopping block but no sign of Diane.”

Pamela shut her eyes, head whirling. Pretty curvaceous Diane, with her bright blonde hair and long manicured nails. She’d occasionally done temp secretarial work for Love in the Back Bay office. She was the sort who brought in fresh baked muffins a couple times a week, and knew whose aunt was sick, whose kids were starting kindergarten and when everyone’s birthday was. Pamela had liked her, she was easy to talk to and had never treated Pamela as Love’s high-priced whore.

The wind suddenly felt terribly cold, and she wrapped her scarf tighter around her throat, knowing nothing was going to help the chill that now penetrated her very bones.

“Her mother was real worried in particular because Diane had been talking about a new man she’d met, a banker from downtown. She was going to make the move away from Blackie. Cassandra was going to leave him just before she disappeared too—seeing the pattern here?” he asked bleakly.

“Nobody leaves Blackie,” Pamela replied, “unless they have his permission first.”

What she didn’t add was that nobody left Love either, including herself. That he and Blackie were two sides of the same coin, only both sides of the coin were black.

“What are the odds of this field agent telling Love I’m the one selling him out?” Pamela asked.

Agent Gus shook his head, “I don’t think he knows yet, I think my boss figures if he shuts the file down now we’ll be able to cut you loose without Hagerty ever having to know.”

“But there are no guarantees, are there? I mean they could use the information to get Love to tell them more.”

Agent Gus was positively gray at this point.

“They could, if they find out.”

She put her head in her hands, thinking she might actually throw up.

“So everything I’ve done—prostituting myself, risking my marriage and my life, was all for nothing?”

“No,” Agent Gus said, and she was startled by the ferocity of his tone. “I won’t let it be for nothing.”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“I’m not completely without friends and resources myself. I’m not going to let them can my whole investigation because someone can’t get over his boyhood worship of Hagerty.”

“So it’s not just any old agent,” she said faintly, “it’s Ryan, isn’t it?”

Agent Gus nodded, face set like stone.

She felt as though all the air had been sucked from her lungs. It might be too late already, Ryan had seen her with Love a few times. She knew the agent had never trusted her, but that he was blinded by the old Southie loyalty, and the glamor that the mere mention of Love’s name conjured up for people. If he found out the informer against Love was her, he’d tell Love right off to protect his asset and to preserve a friendship that had been forged in blood and the position of insiders to a closed neighborhood.

“I got a glimpse at the file they’re building and the Riordan name cropped up fairly often, and it wasn’t your name preceding it.”

She felt a wave of rage sweep from the top of her head to bottom of her feet.

“He’s still trying to get Casey out of the way.”

“Yes, and I think you know he doesn’t much care how he does it.”

Yes, she knew that all too well, but thought Love had understood how the deal worked. If anything, even a minor accident happened to Casey, she was off limits. Though she’d underestimated his treachery, she knew she was the biggest weakness the man had. She could make his whole house of cards come burning down around his ears. Given time, which she no longer had.

“What do I do now?” she asked, the question rhetorical as she was in a disastrous quagmire with no rope in sight.

“You’re not entirely without options,” Agent Gus said, “but you are running out of time.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer as it half-formed itself in the pit of her stomach.

The agent looked at her, eyes cool and assessing as if once again taking her mettle.

“Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but I’m of the opinion that Guilio Bassarelli would be very interested to hear what Love Hagerty’s been up to.”

“The Bassarellis would kill him,” she said bluntly. Agent Gus looked down into the pond, where a bit of waterweed swayed gently beneath the paper-thin ice. “I’d be making murder happen.”

Agent Gus shrugged, “I can make your husband’s name disappear from the files. It’s only a matter of time before they get the Bassarelli clan anyway. Love Hagerty is a bonus, but he’s not essential to making a case.”

“Are you certain about that?”

Agent Gus looked up, and she saw there the steel in the spine that had put him in the ranks of the Bureau in the first place.

“They know what they’ve done to you, and they don’t care. They are jeopardizing your life and that of your husband. I made you a promise when we made this deal. I believe in keeping my word. Screw them, if they don’t.”

“You could lose your job, or worse,” she said.

“Do you think I care at this point? I didn’t sign on to work for a bunch of corrupt bastards. Besides,” he smiled, “they’ve severely underestimated me, and I really don’t like that.”

“Neither,” she said, “do I. How much time do you think I have before it blows wide open?”

“You’re the one blind spot Hagerty has and that buys you a little time. He’s going to want to believe it’s anyone but you when he finds out. Still when he does find out he’ll turn like a snake. Whatever you decide...” he trailed off, not wanting to say the words. “It has to be soon.”

“There’s a party at his house tomorrow night, but I’m not due to be alone with him until Tuesday.”

Agent Gus nodded.

“That’ll have to do then—you’ve got two days to decide.”

IN THE DARK, IT SEEMED, he could feel every sensation magnified to its limits. Each flake of snow burning into his skin, the very shape of it discernible to his fevered surface. The light from the windows fell in hard distorted rectangles across the swiftly whitening grass. Though the glass separated him from the party of elegantly dressed people, he could smell the food, and was slightly nauseated by the spices and heavy sauces. And the people themselves, milling about, flutes of pale liquid gold in their soft hands, smelling of ambergris and oranges, cinnabar and sandalwood. He had never belonged to such a world. He didn’t speak the language, had never been able to train his tongue around the elongated vowels and clipped consonants.

It was cold out here, in the night, but he stood fast as if paralyzed by the sights before him, a child looking through the eternally locked doors of a sweetshop. Though, if he were honest, he’d never tried. It wasn’t his world and he did not desire it.

All the rooms were lit for the party, soft, flickering, flattering light to gild away the wrinkles or the telltale tucks and nips of the surgeon’s knife. The dining room, table massed with hothouse flowers, orchids and amaranth. The ballroom, marble floor polished to an icy glitter, fragranced with topiary trees of roses, pinked in the golden light. And through it moved the women, hair bound up or spilling down over powdered white shoulders, lips painted in a dazzling array of reds as though they’d all just risen from a feast of blood. Blondes, brunettes, redheads but none with a wild spill of blue-black falling across ivory skin. And yet he knew she was there, could sense her movement amongst the sparkle and spun sugar of the crowd, as if the same blood pumped beneath their respective skins.

He shivered, stomach rumbling as it scented food and drew his coat tighter, its wool scratching his neck, the stink of fish rising up into his nostrils. It hardly bothered him now.

He stretched his neck back, adjusting several cricks and caught sight of Orion climbing up from the horizon. His own star, pulsating steadily, hot red and dying with every throb of its overgrown heart. Betelgeuse. He whispered the name to himself like a prayer, the odd Arabic syllables comforting him, seeming less foreign than the gilt-edged world inside the glass.

When he looked back he started, feeling that odd slippage of skin against flesh that fear caused. Love Hagerty, unrelentingly glamorous in evening wear, hair polished to a bluey sheen, was looking directly out the windows at him, a balloon glass of brandy in one hand, a cigar in the other. Shielded though he was by the light within and the dark without, Casey knew instinctively that the man saw him plain as a bug on a white sheet. Love had a criminal’s backbone, he knew what was coming and which direction it was coming from before
it
knew. He’d developed this particular talent from long years of dishonesty, of having to have eyes in the back of his head, and a general distrust of all who surrounded him.

Casey stepped back further into the shadows, feeling the finger-like shape of pine branches sliding across his right-hand side. He never once took his eyes off the man in the window, while his mind tried to decipher the distance to the nearest exit off the estate.