The Hard Bounce - страница 17
“Hey, Boo, I can help you with this!” He’d perked up at the thought of being useful.
“Fantastic.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my tone, but it crept in at the edges. “Does the name Kelly Reese mean anything to you?”
He rolled his eyes back in thought. “Kelly Reese. Kelly Reese…” He stared at the floor in concentration. “Kelly Reese, Kelly Reese…”
It looked like he had something on the tip of his tongue.
“Kelly Reese,” he said. “Kelly, Kelly… Oh, wait!”
The batter swings. “What?”
“Kelly Reese. Big Irish guy. Bartends at The Dublin Pearl. IRA refugee, right?”
And misses.
“That’s Kelly Reed. And he’s not IRA, he’s a douchebag. It’s a bullshit line he gives the sorority girls to make them think he’s hardcore. He grew up in Quincy. He’s about as IRA as Jackie Chan. Kelly Reese is a girl.”
“What? No. Wait. Yeah. That’s right, Reed. Nope. Don’t know any Kelly Reese.”
I sighed. The ache paid a return visit to the bridge of my nose. “What about a Danny Barnes?” I remembered the way he introduced himself. Like the name meant something. Maybe it would to Dog.
His face blanched instantly. “Aw no.”
“Aw no, what?”
“Not Danny the Bull.”
“Is Danny the Bull a cop? Maybe ex-cop?”
“Unless you know another one, yeah. And I hope to God there aren’t two of them running around.”
“What’s his deal?”
“Bad news, Boo. Stay away from that crazy bastard.” Dog glanced around the room as though he feared Barnes might jump up from behind a table. Just speaking Barnes’s name made Dog nervous. Which was making me nervous.
“What’s his deal?” I asked again.
“He used to run the Organized Crime Division for years. Stuck his badge in the business of a lot of scary people.”
“You keep using the past tense. So he’s not a cop anymore?”
“No. Retired a few years back. But once in blue-”
“Blue for life,” I finished for him.
“You got it. Barnes built a rep for having an ass harder than a diamond. The guy was flat-out notorious.”
“For what?”
“For everything a cop can be. Probably still the title holder for brutality reports filed against the department.”
Considering most of the cops I’d dealt with, that was one hell of a title to hold. “What’s he up to now?”
“Damned if I know. Don’t want to know.” He shuddered.
“You afraid of this guy, Dog?”
“I was… would be today if he came walking in the door.”
“Well, he walked in the door yesterday.”
“Jesus! Why? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Whoever wants this girl found has Barnes on his payroll. You ever work with the guy?”
Dog shook his head. Dandruff or dust floated onto the table. “Different divisions. He worked Organized Crime. Led the task force that put the screws on everybody connected with The Mick. I mean, he nailed all of them. From the right-hand guys down to the runners who picked up the football cards on Saturday afternoons.”
“But not The Mick.”
“Nobody ever got to The Mick. That’s not to say that Barnes didn’t try. Or that The Mick didn’t try to get back at him. They just never got each other.”
If you yelled out “Mick” in a Boston bar, 90 percent of the room would turn around. And if you yelled it loud enough, another two dozen would come in the door. But I knew exactly who Underdog was talking about.
Francis “Frankie The Mick” Cade. Boston’s answer to John Gotti, if John Gotti had been federally investigated on a couple of occasions for filtering money to the Irish Republican Army. The charges bounced right off him every time. The guy was rubber in a sweat suit.
And Boston being Boston, Cade was treated like something of a local hero, a Southie Robin Hood who provided Irish grandmothers with free hams every Christmas eve.
When The Mick’s daughter passed away a year back, the funeral procession down Dorchester Ave would have made a Kennedy jealous.
A few years back, a rumor circulated that one of Frankie’s old buddies was set to testify that he’d seen Frankie stomp a degenerate gambler to death, back when he was doing collections in the late ’70s. Full federal protection. Ten days before trial, UPS delivered somebody’s right pinkie finger to the witness safe house. The next day, a ring finger. Complete with a custom-made Claddagh ring. The same Claddagh ring that said informer gave his niece on her sweet sixteenth. The guy’s story made a U-turn before the sun set.