A Devil is Waiting. Jack Higgins
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the number checked on my phone bill and found it was to a phonebox in Belfast on the Falls Road.’
Holley said, ‘Whoever they are, they’re being very careful. That would have been untraceable.’ He paused. ‘Could Jack Kelly be who I think it is? It’s a common enough name in Ireland, God knows.’
‘You mean the Jack Kelly we ran up against, working for our old friend Jean Talbot?’
‘I know it doesn’t seem likely,’ Holley began, and Dillon cut in.
‘The same Jack Kelly who became an IRA volunteer at eighteen, was involved for over thirty years in the Troubles, and served on the Army Council?’
‘And never too happy about the peace process,’ Holley said. ‘So if it is him … I wonder what he’s up to.’
‘That’s for Ferguson and Roper to decide.’
‘Strange, us having a foot in both camps,’ Holley said. ‘How do you think that happened?’
‘Daniel, me boy, if I was of a religious turn of mind, I’d say God must have a purpose in mind for us, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine what it would be.’
‘Well, I’m damned if I can,’ Holley said. ‘Although I should imagine that the general will pay Kelly a call sooner rather than later.’
Dillon turned to Murphy. ‘Happy, are you, Patrick, now that you’ve come clean? I mean, as you did turn out to have lied, you must have thought I might take it the wrong way?’
‘Of course not, Mr Dillon,’ Murphy said, but there was a gathering alarm on his face.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dillon carried on. ‘You’ve done us a good turn. Although it would help the situation, restore mutual trust, you might say, if you produced my friend’s Colt .25. It doesn’t seem to be on the spring clip, which I can see quite clearly inside the rain hat on the desk there.’
Murphy managed to look astonished. ‘But that’s nonsense,’ he said, and then moved with lightning speed behind Holley, grabbed him by the collar, and produced the Colt.
‘I don’t want trouble, I just want out, but if I have to, I’ll kill your friend. So just drop that Walther into the sewage, and then we’ll walk to the door and I’ll get into my car and vanish. Otherwise, your friend’s a dead man.’
‘Now, we can’t have that, can we? Here we go, a perfectly good Walther down the toilet, in a manner of speaking.’ Dillon dropped it in.
Murphy pushed Holley towards the entrance, the Colt against his skull, and as Dillon trailed them, cried, ‘Stay back or I’ll drop him.’
Holley said to Murphy, ‘Hey, take it easy. Just be careful, all right? I hope you’re familiar with the Colt .25. If you don’t have the plus button on, those hollow-point cartridges’ll blow up in your face.’
They were just reaching the door. Murphy loosened his grip, a look of panic on his face, and fumbled at the weapon. Holley kicked out at him, caught him off guard, then ran away and ducked behind one of the old vans. Murphy fired after him reflexively and then, seeing that the Colt worked perfectly well, he realized he’d been had. He turned and ran out through the heavy rain into the courtyard.
Dillon had a replica of Holley’s Colt in a holder on his right ankle. He drew it now, ran to the entrance and fired at Murphy, who was trying to open the door of a green Lincoln. Murphy fired back wildly, then turned, ran across the road and up the stone steps leading to the walkway, the East River lapping below it. At the top, he hesitated, unsure of which way to go, turned, and found Dillon closing in, Holley behind.
‘No way out, Patrick. So have you told me the truth or not?’
‘Damn you,’ Murphy called, half-blinded by the heavy rain, and tried to take aim.
Dillon shot him twice in the heart, twisting him around, his third shot driving him over the low rail into the river. He reached the rail in time to see Murphy surface once, then roll over and disappear in the fast-running current.
Holley moved up to join him. ‘What was all that about? Sometimes you play games too much, Sean.’
‘Sure, and all I wanted was to make sure he was telling the truth. He’d lied at first – isn’t that a fact?’
‘So is the name really Jack Kelly?’
‘We’ll see, but for now, it’s time for the joys of the Plaza and our first meeting with the intriguing Captain Sara Gideon.’
‘Definitely something to look forward to,’ Holley said, and followed him down the steps.
At the same time they were driving away in their delivery truck, Patrick Murphy, choking and gasping, was swept under a pier two hundred yards away downstream. He drifted through the pilings, banged into stone steps with a railing, hauled himself out, and paused at the top, where there was a roofed shelter with a bench.
He sat down, shivering with cold, pulled off his soaking jacket, then his shirt. The bullet-proof vest he’d been wearing was the best on the market, even against hollow points. He ripped open the Velcro tabs, tossed the rest down into the river with his shirt, struggled back into his jacket, and walked through the rain to the warehouse.
He expected Dillon and Holley to be long gone and went straight inside and up to his office. He peeled off his jacket, pulled on an old sweater that was hanging behind the door, then lifted the carpet in the corner, revealing a floor safe, opened it, and removed a linen bag containing his mad money, twenty grand in large bills. He got a suitcase from the cupboard, put the money into it, and sat there thinking about the situation.
He had to get away for a while, the kind of place where he’d be swallowed up by the crowds. Vegas would be good, but he needed to cover his back, just in case he wanted to return to New York. He rang a number and, when a man replied, said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a problem, Mr Cagney.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘You sent me a nice piece of business. The man from Ulster, Michael Flynn.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I had a client calling himself Grimshaw. He said he was seeking a consignment of weaponry, but the truth was he wanted information about the Amity and who’d been behind it.’
‘And did you tell him about Michael Flynn?’
‘Of course I did. He and another man with him killed Ivan and threatened to do the same to me if I didn’t tell them. Anyway, your client’s name isn’t Flynn, it’s Jack Kelly. He got careless using my phone one night.’
‘How unfortunate. Have you any idea who these people are?’
‘One posed as an NYPD officer, had an Ulster accent, and was called Dillon. The other was English, named Holley.’
‘They seem to have been rather careless with their names.’
‘That’s because I was supposed to end up dead, which I nearly was. Look, they claimed to be members of the Provisional IRA. I thought your client, Flynn or Kelly or whatever his name is, should know about that.’
Cagney said, ‘I appreciate your warning, Patrick. What do you intend to do now?’
‘Get the hell out of New York.’
‘Where can I contact you?’
‘I’ll let you know.’
Murphy replaced the phone, grabbed the suitcase, and went out. Within minutes, he was driving the undamaged car, a Ford sedan, out of the courtyard.
Shortly afterwards, Liam Cagney, a prosperous 60-year-old stockbroker by profession and Irish American to the core, was phoning Jack Kelly in Kilmartin, County Down, in Northern Ireland.
‘It’s Liam, Jack,’ he said when the receiver was picked up. ‘You’ve got a