…The
Queen of Paflagonia presented his Majesty with a son and heir; …. It was
thought the fairy, who was asked to be his godmother, would at least have presented
him with an invisible jacket, a flying horse, … or some other valuable token of
her favour; but instead, [she] went up to the cradle …, and said, “My poor
child, the best thing I can send you is a little MISFORTUNE;” and this was all
she would utter, to the disgust of [his] parents, who died very soon after,
when [his] uncle took the throne.
The Rose and the Ring, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Callum
Donaghue had been in New York for about a year before he’d raised the money to
send for his family. He waited
impatiently for them to clear customs at New York airport and smiled with
delight, waving enthusiastically, as he saw Rosaleen emerge from the Arrivals
hall with Ciara and Patrick clinging to her coat as she wheeled the luggage
trolley through.
“Over
here, Rosa!” he called, and hurried to
the exit where he crouched to enfold his two wide-eyed children in his
arms. Five year old Ciara hugged him,
but Patrick clung to his mother, wide-eyed and shy. “Come here, son,” Callum encouraged and the dark-haired,
bright-eyed child advanced a little closer.
“I’m your Dadda, don’t you remember me?”
Patrick
shook his head and Rosaleen put her hand on his thick, wavy black hair.
“Give
him a while, Cal, and he’ll be okay; he’s tired and he’s only a baby.”
Callum
buried his disappointment and stood to wrap his wife in his embrace. “I guess so. It’s so good to see you, Rosa!”
He kissed her hungrily, believing her reluctance was merely due to being in a
public place: Rosaleen’s shyness and
seeming reluctance to surrender herself to him was a big part of her attraction
for him. Smiling, he led them all out
to the subway.
As
they travelled, Rosaleen looked at the man she’d married. Callum had always been a good-looking,
smart-talking man, with a confident swagger and highfaluting ambitions. As such she’d been dazzled by his attentions
to her – until they were married, that was, and she’d began to realise he was
far more of a braggart than the dynamic go-getter she’d expected.
Her
mother had not and still did not like him, and she’d tried to talk her daughter
out of going to America to rejoin him. “Yer better off without him, Rosa: you
and the babies.”
The
words came back to haunt her as she looked at him now. His thick, black hair was too long and
unkempt, his clothes creased and none too clean. She saw him stretch out a hand to stop a case from toppling over,
and noticed with distaste that his fingernails were dirty. Fastidious to a fault, that one instance condemned
Callum before he had any chance to win her over.
She
looked away and fingered the rosary beads in her pocket. She’d made her marriage vows willingly
enough and she’d stand by them, as it was her duty to do. She’d do it – whatever it cost her personally
– for the sake of her babies. She
smiled at Ciara and at her darling Patrick; they were her reason for living now
and she would devote herself to making their lives better than hers.
When
they reached the cheap apartment building and Callum had lugged the suitcases
upstairs, he looked apologetically at his wife as she surveyed the cramped
rooms and dilapidated furniture.
“I
didn’t want to waste money on a decent place, until we were all together. I want us to find the right place together,”
he lied, hating the disillusion in Rosa’s expression.
She
gave a brisk nod and replied, “It’s fine, Cal.
We’re all together, that’s what matters. I can clean the place up in a
trice and we’ll look for a better place in a few weeks, when we’ve settled in
properly. Now, the babies are tired,
where can they sleep?”
“There’s
a small bedroom through here, they can share it. I bought an inflatable mattress that we can use for now, on the
floor here…”
Rosaleen
nodded and took off her coat. “We’ll
manage.”
Callum
relaxed. He should have known that
Rosaleen would make the best of everything; as she’d always done, ever since
he’d known her. However, he’d forgotten
her air of perpetual disenchantment with him that had driven him to try his
luck in the New World. But it was grand
to see her again; he’d missed having a woman in his bed of a night and Rosa was
still a very sexy woman.
She
set about making drinks for the children and gave them a biscuit from the
supply she’d brought for the journey.
Then as the sun began to set between the high-rise buildings, she washed
them and got them ready for bed.
“I
don’t want to go to bed yet,” Ciara said, annoyed at being treated like her
younger brother.
“Today
you do,” Rosaleen said. “It’s much
later than you think, and you’ll be having jet lag to cope with. Look, Pat’s
yawning already.”
“He’s
just a baby,” Ciara remarked, although she was fond of her brother and didn’t
mind having to share the single bed with him.
Rosaleen
dropped her voice and said to her daughter, “Keep him company then, Ciara, I
don’t want him upset.”
“Okay,
Mam.”
Once
she’d helped them say their prayers and tucked them both in bed, Rosaleen
crooned a lullaby, smiling as Patrick’s eyes fluttered closed and Ciara
snuggled into the bedclothes.
She
left them and went back to her husband.
“They’re
asleep, or next to it. It’s been a long
day for us all.”
“We
can unpack tomorrow and sort things out then,” Callum suggested. “Let’s enjoy our time together, Rosa; I have
missed you…” He embraced her, kissing
her as his hands fumbled with the buttons at the front of her dress.
“Cal…”
she protested, struggling a little. “We
have nowhere to sleep as yet.”
“Oh,
sure.” He dragged the mattress out and
set to with a foot pump to inflate it, while she gathered sheets, pillows and a
few blankets from the cupboard.
Once
their ‘bed’ was made, Rosaleen busied herself tidying things away and opened
one suitcase to find her nightdress.
“You
won’t be needed that, Rosa,” Cal said, with an inviting smile.
“And
what if the children need me in the night?”
“They
won’t…”
He
started to undo the buttons once more, and buried his face against the soft
skin of her bosom, while his hand lifted the hem of her skirt.
Patrick
woke suddenly and whimpered in the darkness.
He didn’t like this strange room and even the presence of the sleeping
Ciara was not enough to make him feel comfortable. He listened for a moment and heard strange noises coming from
the other room. He slipped from the
bed, clutching the worn, blue blanket that was his main comforter, and padded
to the door.
His
mamai was lying in a bed on the floor and the strange, dark-featured man who
had said he was his Dadda was on top of her.
He was making deep, moaning noises and mamai’s head was turned away from
him, her eyes closed. Her nightgown,
with the pink roses embroidered around the neckline was lying on the arm of the
chair.
“Mamai,” Patrick
whimpered, and his mother’s eyes flew open as his father swore and cursed the
small boy.
Rosaleen scrambled into her nightgown and led the sobbing child back to the bed, comforting him as best she could without waking her daughter. When she went back into the other room, her husband was glaring at her.
“The
boy will have to learn to stay where he’s put of a night,” he stated angrily.
“He
was frightened. It’s only natural. He’ll settle all right, you’ll see,”
Rosaleen replied, getting back onto the mattress. But when Callum reached for her, she turned onto her side. “Goodnight, Cal; I’m awful tired…”
Cursing
again, Callum Donaghue tried to get some sleep, but the sun was starting to
rise before he managed to doze off properly.
Children
are amazingly resilient and Ciara and Patrick settled into their new life with
comparative ease; although Rosaleen found it harder. Homesick and unhappy, she
increasingly turned to the church for support and solace from the hardship of
their lives.
It
wasn’t long before she realised that Callum wasn’t earning a decent wage, or
even regular money, and that the plane tickets had been paid for by a loan at
an extortionate rate of interest. She
used her meagre savings to pay that off and, with what Callum thought of as an
air of martyrdom, started scrimping and saving to make ends meet.
When
Callum lost his labouring job not long after his family arrived, Rosaleen found
herself a cleaning job at a supermarket until her advancing pregnancy forced
her to quit. They left the small
apartment and moved to one across the district. Rosaleen got work at home, stuffing envelopes and packing boxes
for a pittance. The children helped
when they could and Patrick often fell asleep at the table surrounded by
envelopes and merchandise.
Just
before she gave birth to her third child, Niamh, they left the new apartment
late one evening and moved to a smaller one, in an even cheaper area of the
district.
This
was the pattern of Patrick’s early life.
Callum found what work he could and in between confinements, Rosaleen
worked too. By the time Patrick was 6, and
ready to start elementary school, they’d moved countless times and the family
had increased to four children.
“We
have to settle now,” Rosaleen said, as she sat and nursed her new baby,
Brendan. “It was bad enough having to
move Ciara from school to school, but I don’t want that for Pat. The boy’s clever, Cal. He needs to be educated properly.”
“You
know we can’t afford a decent place with good schools,” Callum responded. The years were not treating him kindly, and
his handsome face was starting to coarsen with disappointment and stress.
“We
can try. I want us to get a place and
settle there. There must be help we can
get, for the children’s sake.”
“I
won’t take any charity,” Callum snapped.
“Besides, we stand a risk of being sent back to Ireland if we bring
ourselves to the attention of the authorities.”
Rosaleen
winded Brendan and settled him to her other breast before she answered. “I
won’t risk the children’s futures. I’d
rather go back.”
“You’re
saying I can’t look after my own?”
She shook
her head, not wanting to anger him; Callum’s temper was fierce and he had
trouble controlling it. There had been
an occasion when he had raised his hand to her, although she had told him then,
that if he ever struck her again she’d leave him and take the kids back to
Ireland. He knew her well enough to
know she’d meant it, but he was free with his fists with the children and
Patrick was usually the one to suffer.
Even in the red haze of anger, Callum hesitated to strike the girls.
“Things
haven’t been easy, Cal; I know you’ve done all you can and hopefully, this new
job will last and you’ll make a go of it.
You deserve some luck.”
It
was getting harder to find legitimate work if you didn’t have the necessary
documentation and in the confusion of the exodus during the European Atomic
War, Callum Donaghue had neglected to formalise his emigration and that of his
family. Recently the government had
been discussing an amnesty for people who qualified to live and work here
officially, and Rosaleen was hopeful that they’d be able to regularise their
stay soon.
Unknown
to her husband, who would not have approved, she’d been talking to the priest
at the local church about their problems with inadequate accommodation and her
hopes for her boys. He’d listened
sympathetically and had spoken of how he might be able to help them and what
options they had.
She
kept her voice neutral as she said, “I have heard of an apartment not that far
from here, and I know where I can get a job cleaning offices downtown. That pays much better than any job I could
get locally. If we’re both in work,
we’d qualify for the immigration amnesty and that’d be worth applying for,
wouldn’t it, Cal? There’s a school
close by that apartment that has a good reputation, it gets special help from
the Church. If we move soon, we could
get Patrick and Ciara enrolled there for the new semester.”
“Where’d
you hear all this?” he asked suspiciously.
His resentment at Rosaleen’s close involvement with the church fuelled
his feeling of inadequacy.
“Someone
at the baby clinic mentioned it.”
Callum
bit his thumb as he considered her words.
He was a proud man and he didn’t want to admit he couldn’t cope alone,
but he hated the feeling of helplessness their lack of money created in him. He didn’t like the idea of his wife having
to work so soon after she’d had a baby either, but without money you couldn’t
get anywhere in this life.
“I
don’t know about the amnesty, it might be more trouble than it’s worth,” he
said, although he’d no doubt he’d end up doing what Rosa wanted – as usual. He
continued, “I suppose you might as well see what it’d cost.” Rosaleen beamed encouragement at him. “How much do we owe here?” he muttered.
“Just
two weeks’ rent and we can pay that easy enough.”
He
glanced at her, amazed she’d managed their finances so well. Rosaleen kept her expression blank and tried
to forget the handout Father Dempsey had given her when she’d explained that
they were probably going to be thrown out of their digs again.
“Well,
no one can say we don’t pay our way,” Callum said, with a glimmer of
pride. “If you want that new apartment,
my love, and it isn’t too much, then we’ll take it. Be sure it isn’t going to cost too much though, I’m already doing
two jobs.”
“I
sure will, Cal. I know we won’t regret
it; it’ll be a fresh start for us all.”
Rosaleen smiled in contentment: the rent of the Church-owned apartment
was subsidised and it had more rooms than this one, as well as qualifying for a
place at the Church-aided school. It had
to be better than this hand-to-mouth existence.
She
glanced across to the table where Patrick was busy drawing and Ciara was
listlessly turning the pages of an old magazine. It would be the first step on Patrick’s ladder to success – she
was sure of it.
The
elementary school was an old fashioned building, but even here there were metal
detectors at the entrance to the building, because of the reputation of the
neighbourhood. Yet inside the
classrooms and walls of the long corridors were brightly painted and decorated
with examples of the children’s art work and crafts.
Patrick excelled at figures and found maths
no problem, although he was not a fluent reader, but the teachers encouraged
and supported all the children who wanted to learn, and he was soon in the top
stream and doing well. Rosaleen’s pride
in his progress was all-pervading: she delighted in talking about ‘my Patrick’s
intelligence’ to her neighbours and unintentionally disparaged the other
children’s achievements accordingly.
While
she was not as academically gifted as her brother, Ciara was a bright and
clever child; but she struggled to motivate herself when she saw that whatever
she did never matched Pat’s achievements in her mother’s eyes. She preferred to hang out with her friends
and skipped classes when she could.
When she was ready to move to Middle School, she failed to get a place
at the better of the two local schools, but Patrick made the grade and moved on
to a more academic school some distance from home, where he flourished. By the end of his first year, he was in the
top stream and holding his own amongst the best scholars.
He
was a friendly child, free from any personal pride and with a wicked sense of
fun, so he had no problem keeping his friends amongst the rowdy neighbourhood
boys, as well as the new ones he made at school. Then a minor brush with the law during one long summer vacation
scared his mother into clamping down on his freedom to roam the streets with
the local gangs. She drew Patrick and
the younger children into the social life of the church, determined to protect
them from the crime and ill-discipline she saw around her on the streets.
Callum,
who was working every hour he could to feed his family, had more or less washed
his hands of his eldest son; he felt embarrassed by his own lack of education
in the face of Patrick’s knowledge and so, apart from an occasional cuff to let
the boys know who was boss, he left the raising of the kids to his wife.
Rosaleen’s
dark hair was liberally scattered with grey now, and she had lost the slender
figure of her youth through repeated pregnancies. How she managed to keep her seven children under control was a
mystery, but out of them all the only real tearaway was Ciara. Patrick was a good role model for his
younger brothers, Brendan, Jack and Thomas, and was adored by his younger
sisters, Niamh and baby Kayleigh.
Ciara
had developed into an attractive teenager.
She had the luxuriant black hair inherited from her father and, although
she was not overly tall, her buxom figure was in perfect proportion and she
managed to dress to emphasise her figure.
She had a roving eye and saucy way with her that brought her into
frequent conflict with her strait-laced mother. Patrick often acted as a buffer between them, but although
Rosaleen idolised her eldest son, she would not be deterred from criticising
her eldest daughter.
Ciara
left school as soon as she could and got herself a job in a downtown hairdressing
salon. Hopeful that her problem child
was going to be settling down, Rosaleen breathed a sigh of relief, but couldn’t
stop using Ciara as an example of failure to her other children.
“You
need to work hard at school, Pat,” she insisted. “I don’t want you leaving
before you’ve got a good education, like Ciara did.”
Pat
looked up from the table, where he was doing his homework on the second-hand
personal computer he’d bought with wages from his weekend job and reconditioned
for himself. “I’d sure like to go to
college, if I could,” he admitted. “But
I know that’d be too much for you and Dad to manage. There are the others to
consider.”
Rosaleen
sat beside him for a moment, and thought about the problem. “You deserve the chance, Pat; I’ve yet to see
the others do as well. I’ll pray over
it, and ask Father Murphy if he has any ideas how to arrange it – if you do
well enough,” she promised, patting his arm.
“The good Lord will provide, Patrick, you’ll see.”
“It’s always seemed to me that the good Lord helps those who help themselves, but don’t let that stop your God-bothering on my behalf,” he muttered under his breath, as he watched his mother walk away to stop a squabble between Thomas and Kayleigh becoming a fight.
“You
worthless trollop!” Callum raged over the figure of his weeping
daughter. “Do you blame your mother and
me for raising you to go and do such a thing?
How could you shame us so, Ciara?”
“I
didn’t mean to… it was an accident…”
“Who
is this boy?” Rosaleen asked. Calmer
than her husband, she was nevertheless looking shocked and there was no
sympathy in her voice, even as she fingered the beads of her rosary.
“He’s
a guy I met at work.”
“I thought they were all
shirt-lifters at your work,” Callum retorted scathingly.
“No, he was a customer,” Ciara
admitted. “He’s a rich man, he always
asked for me to do his hair and he’s a good tipper…”
“He sure tipped you well,” Callum roared, as Ciara began to cry again.
“Well, we must make the best of
it, I suppose. At least you say he has
the money to support you. He’ll have to
marry you; have you told him yet?” Rosaleen asked.
Ciara’s sobs grew louder as she
hiccoughed the words: “He can’t marry
me; he’s already married, Mamai!”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,”
Rosaleen moaned.
Callum’s arm swung round
towards Ciara, who cowered back in expectation of the blow, but Patrick stepped
between them and grabbed his father’s arm.
“Leave her be, can’t you? She knows better than you that what’s
happened is wrong.”
“Keep out of this,
Patrick. Your sister is nothing but a
dirty, little whore and she deserves
a damn good thrashing! If we’d done it
before now, she’d have known better than to bring such shame on us!”
“We should be asking her what
we can do to help,” Pat exclaimed angrily.
“We’ve always looked out for each other; we can’t turn our backs on one
of our own now!” He looked at his
mother. “’Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone’: isn’t that what
it says? Ciara needs our help.”
“I’m so sorry, Mamai, I’m
sorry, Dad; I never meant it to happen. I was a fool and I listened to his
lies. I’m so sorry – forgive me,” Ciara pleaded.
Rosaleen looked at her daughter
for a long time, but Patrick couldn’t see any softening of the anger and
disapproval in her face. She looked
away and dropped her eyes to her beads.
“She’s not staying in my
house,” Callum snapped, as if his wife had given him a signal to speak. He backed away from his son as he said so;
Patrick was nearly as tall as him and although he was lanky, he was already
strong – his grasp on his arm had proved that.
“I’m having no bastards under my roof.”
Ciara wailed again and turned
to look beseechingly at Rosaleen. “Mamai…”
“Your father has spoken,”
Rosaleen said, her voice devoid of any sympathy. “I will help you pack your things and I will telephone to Father
Murphy; he’ll be sure to know of some place you can go to have the… the child.”
“Mam,” Pat said, “you don’t
mean that?” He knew Callum’s judgment
would change if Rosaleen insisted otherwise.
“Please, say that you don’t mean it!
You’re talking about Ciara but you’re behaving like you don’t care about
her!”
Rosaleen looked at her
son. She was proud of him; proud of
his healthy, good looks, proud of his mental abilities and now proud of his
compassion, but he would have to learn that there were times when the offender
did not deserve kindness. Ciara had
been headstrong for years; wilful and disobedient, she had utterly failed to
live up to her mother’s ideals. And if
that were not sin enough in itself, she’d brought shame on the family by her
wantonness while her mother had had to endure the attentions of a husband she
no longer loved, or even respected, because it was her duty to do so.
That her daughter had chosen
not follow her strict moral code was, in Rosaleen’s eyes, unforgivable. She had taught them all that loyalty to the
family was essential; but they had to realise that condoning such sinful
excesses was not. And Patrick needed
the lesson as much as the other children. Besides, she didn’t dare take the
risk of her younger daughters following in Ciara’s footsteps, and believed it
imperative that her eldest child must be sacrificed for the family’s good.
She gave the merest shake of
her head, indicating that she would not reconsider.
“I ‘m not going to go to some
appalling home for unmarried mothers,” Ciara said, finding some strength in her
brother’s support. “I admit I’ve been
careless, but it’s nothing more than many women do these days. You’re living in the past, Mamai. If you throw me out, I will go back to…
him. He’s said he’ll look after me, if
I… if I get rid of the baby.”
Rosaleen crossed herself. “If you do that, I shall never see you
again, Ciara,” she warned.
“And when will you see me if I
have the baby?” Ciara asked her mother.
“On your deathbed, maybe?”
“What choice are you giving
her?” Patrick demanded.
“She has made her bed – in
every way – now she must lie in it,” Rosaleen said.
Ciara shook her head and spread
her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Then, I’ll have to do as he asks,” she
said.
“May God forgive you, Ciara,
for I never shall.” Rosaleen rose from her seat and walked to the bedrooms,
where they heard her dragging a suitcase from under the bed and opening the
wardrobe.
Pat carried the bulging
suitcase down the stairs for Ciara and along the street to the entrance to the
subway.
“What will you do?” he asked
her, as she rifled in her bag for ticket money.
“As I said, I’ll go back and
tell him I will get rid of the baby.
Then I’ll start again as best I can.”
“Ciara… I wish I could help.”
“You did, Pat.” She hugged him fondly. “Don’t worry about me; you work at getting
to college. You’re the best hope that
family has of ever leaving this cesspit town.”
“Let me know where you go and
how you are,” he pleaded, scribbling an email address on a scrap of paper from
his pocket. “You can reach me here –
any time. I’ll do whatever I can, if
you need any help.”
“Oh, I’ll be all right. I’m no saint, Pat, and there are always
opportunities for people who aren’t too choosy about where the next dollar
comes from.”
“Ciara!”
She grinned. “No, I don’t mean it like that. Whatever Dad thinks, I’m not a whore and I
never will be. I promise you that.”
“Look after yourself,” he said,
and hugged her again.
“You too. Goodbye, Pat.”
She picked up her suitcase and
went down into the station to catch the train. He watched her until he could no longer see her and the train
pulled out across the tracks. Then he
turned and slowly made his way back to the family apartment, as a wisp of
resentment at the conspicuous lack of charity in his mother’s dogmatic
attitudes settled in his heart.
Miss Anita Haymes,
battle-scarred and cynical after 25 years’ service in local schools, still
struggled to get some rudimentary knowledge into the kids that had no choice
but to attend her classes. She was an
optimist and believed that every child she encountered had the potential to be
a genius, but she had finally moved to the Church school in an attempt to find
the one child who exhibited those characteristics. She quickly spotted Patrick’s first-class mind and targeted him
for special tuition. Finding him a
willing pupil, she devoted herself to getting him properly educated.
“You see, Mrs Donaghue, I can
give Patrick the extra tuition so that he can take the scholarship exams. I have spoken to Father Murphy and he will
pay most of the fees, but not all of them.
Even that is more than he should do, but he recognises Patrick’s abilities
too.”
Rosaleen nodded slowly and
pushed the plate of cookies across towards Miss Haymes, who gladly took one –
Mrs Donaghue’s cookies were legendary at the school.
In the sweltering heat of the
summer, the apartment was uncomfortably hot, but Rosaleen had still baked: it
was Monday and that’s what she did on a Monday. The Donaghue children were all outside, or at work, and Callum
was sleeping in the main bedroom as he was working the night shift. Miss Haymes’s visit was unexpected, but she
noted that despite the number of people living in the apartment, it was neat
and spotlessly clean.
“I am glad to hear that
Patrick’s working hard, Miss Haymes,” Rosaleen said. “He’s been… less communicative recently.”
“Patrick works very hard, Mrs Donaghue,” Miss Haymes
reassured her. She knew that he had
been disturbed by his elder sister’s departure from the family home, although
Pat had not told her the full story. “I
think he’s ready to move on,” she said, recalling the vehemence with which the
youngster had condemned his parents’ narrow-mindedness.
“We’d have trouble paying
anything for extra tuition,” Rosaleen said, although it hurt her pride to admit
it. “But if you really feel it will be
of use to Patrick, we will do what we can, of course.”
“I assure you, the charges will
be the very minimum possible.” Anita
nibbled the cookie and then said, “I’ve been in teaching for a long time, Mrs
Donaghue, I’ve seen thousands of children, some bright and some not so bright;
but I tell you plainly, Patrick is probably the brightest child I have ever had
the pleasure of teaching. I’d like him
to apply for an Ivy League scholarship, because I feel sure he’d do well. They take more into account than just the
family’s background, their economic well-being. They look at the
extra-curriculum activities of the applicants.”
“How do you mean?”
“I know Patrick was closely
involved with the church – until recently – and I wondered what he does instead
now.”
Rosaleen drew in a sharp breath
and sat upright. “He had a falling out
with the priest… over a family misfortune.
You know how passionate young men can get about things they don’t really
understand, Miss Haymes? Patrick has a
kind heart and he’s too soft on the mortal sins of others. I’m sorry to say that I can’t get him to go
to church now, although I pray every day that he’ll come to his senses
soon. He spends his time down at the
library or working his job in the drug store.
He’s also been helping at the elementary school he used to go to,
teaching the youngsters about computers and such things in an after school
session. He’s always had a knack with
machines and such.”
Miss Haymes nodded. “That’ll go down well with the selection
boards. I really think we can get him
into a first rate university, Mrs Donaghue.
Do I have your permission to try?”
Rosaleen nodded. “Patrick’s a
good boy, Miss Haymes, and I’ve always known he’d be a clever one. I want what’s best for my son.”
“Good.” Anita Haymes stood and extended her
hand. “Thank you for your time, Mrs
Donaghue; I will be in touch as soon as I have any news.”
Pat worked hard to get ready
for the examinations and Miss Haymes coached him in interview techniques,
although she was wise enough not to overdo it so that the youth’s natural charm
wasn’t buried under responses learned by rote.
His mother almost burst with pride when they heard that he’d been
offered a place at
Patrick chose to travel to
He was excited, but a little
nervous of what the future held. He
knew he could hold his own academically, but he fretted about how he’d get on
with the other students, many of them bound to be from wealthy
backgrounds. It was for that reason
that he didn’t want his parents to accompany him. The fact that he was ashamed of them cast a pall over his
excitement.
He enrolled along with a noisy
crowd and was shown to his room in the extensive quadrangle of the Old Campus.
Even in the small room with its worn furniture he felt a surge of
amazement and happiness: this was his
room – he didn’t have to share it with anyone, there were no noisy youngsters
racing about, or pestering him for help with their schoolwork. He sat on the bed and gazed out of the
window at the venerable buildings and found it hard not to squeal and drum his
heels on the floor with delight.
It took him a week or two to
settle in and find his way about, but he set about making friends with
determination, and as a good-looking, personable young man, he was of interest
to the female students. His self-confidence
soared once more as the lectures and tutorials started in earnest and he found
himself well-able to keep up and rated amongst the top students on his
course.
Delighted to realise that his
views were valued by his companions, he started attending some of the political
meetings on the campus, although he quickly discovered that he was too radical
for most of the established parties.
Outspoken and increasingly opinionated, he managed to draw attention to
himself by his eloquence and found himself welcomed by the older and more
politically radical students who ran an organisation known as ‘Group 22’. They took their name from a group of 22
dissidents in the right-wing military dictatorship of Bereznik who had been
imprisoned for their opposition to the regime.
An idealist, for all that he
had grown up on the hard streets of
He practised his oratory at the
regular meetings and was encouraged by the reactions from the others, flattered
by the consequence given to his pronouncements, until he began to see himself
as a popular demagogue standing up for the rights of the masses against the
tyranny of big business and the oppressive bureaucracies that still existed
around the world beyond the reach of the World Government. What he failed to realise was that for many
of the members, radicalism was as much a fashion statement as a cause, and the
number of genuine die-hard believers was small.
The decision of the American
government to invite the Bereznian Head of State to
The members of Yale’s Group 22
joined the thousands of other protestors in
The Bereznian officials made a
formal protest about the approaching demonstrators, threatening to withdraw
from the talks. Because the
negotiations were at a delicate stage and the World Government was keen for
them to be a success, the inexperienced, popularist mayor sent in the police
and state troopers to disperse the marchers.
“Look at that,” one of Pat’s
fellow marchers said. “The cowards have
sent in the troops to prevent our legal protest! We’ve got them on the run!”
“Forward, to protect our
freedoms!” someone behind them yelled and Pat yelled too, adrenalin surging
through him as the mass of marchers speeded up, pushing him towards the line of
police in riot gear.
Things quickly started to get
out of hand and he realised he was in danger of being crushed between the
surging crowd behind him and the immobile line of police in front. There was no way he could duck out and
avoid the clash, so at the last moment he struck out with the banner he was
carrying to try and force a gap.
Something dark whirred down
towards him, a shattering pain radiated through his body and his knees gave
way….
Everything went black.
Patrick came to in the back of
a police van, tried to rise onto his hands and knees and was violently
sick. More people were thrown in with
him until a dozen of them – some nursing bloodied heads or black eyes – were
driven away to state holding cells.
They were documented, photographed and charged with various offences
under the public order acts and civil disobedience. One by one they were called out into the interview rooms to meet
their appointed attorneys.
Pat’s lawyer was a middle-aged
man with thinning brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He glanced up as Pat came in and pointed to a chair across the
plain wooden table he sat at.
“Patrick Donaghue,” he read
from the documents in front of him.
“You’re a student at Yale?” Pat
nodded, wincing at the pain in his head.
“Then you should know better.
What’re you doing here?” He
flicked through his paperwork and answered his own question. “Ah, you’re in
Group 22?”
Pat nodded again.
“They’re well known as
troublemakers; there won’t be much sympathy for you in court.”
“We were making a peaceful
protest on behalf of the Bereznian dissidents,” Pat retorted.
“You were embarrassing the
mayor and costing the policing budget a fortune,” the lawyer corrected. “Keep your mouth closed in court, unless
you’re asked a direct question – then keep your answers short and as neutral as
possible – and you may just walk away with a fine.”
“I want justice,” Pat
exclaimed. “I was attacked by a state
trooper.”
“Look, Patrick, this whole
affair has played badly locally and in
“I will not be silenced!”
The lawyer sighed. “Have it your own way, but I wash my hands
of you the first time you step out of line.
They can throw the book at you if they like, and believe me, they will.”
The courtroom was small and
stuffy and Pat faced the judge with a belligerent feeling of injustice already
bubbling beneath his pale face. The
main witness for the prosecution was a policeman, and Pat listened as he gave a
highly-charged and impossible account of the activities that had led to the
arrest. Pat knew that he’d done
nothing – he must’ve been just about one of the first protestors to be knocked
down – and his sense of anger and injustice grew, as no one questioned the
veracity of the events as the officer related them.
The judge looked at the defence
attorney, who was about to concede the case when Pat sprang to his feet.
“Your honour,” he began, “I
protest – the officer’s evidence was a tissue of lies! He must’ve mixed me up with someone else,
because all I remember is being knocked out cold by one of the troopers as we
marched. I woke up in the police
van. I can’t have done the things he
says I did.”
The judge banged his
gavel. “Sit down,” he ordered.
Pat ignored him and the hand of
his lawyer on his arm. “We were
protesting peacefully – as is the right of every free-born American – against
the presence in our country of the iniquitous leader of a totalitarian state…”
“Mr Acheson, control your
client,” the judge demanded, banging his gavel again.
The lawyer got to his feet and
tried to make Pat sit down, but the youngster was too fired up now and
believing that he was not getting a fair trial, he was determined to have his
say. He made, what was for him, a brief
political speech, denouncing state intervention in the rights of the
individual. Carried away with his own
oratory, he called the hearing a political show trial and a travesty of
American justice.
The judge continued to bang his
gavel, demand silence and finally gave Pat 90 days for contempt of court.
“Cocky young devil,” Acheson
remarked to the prosecuting attorney as the shell-shocked Pat was taken below
to start his sentence.
“Agreed,” his colleague said.
“But he might still have escaped so long in prison if he hadn’t impugned the
chastity of the judge’s mother…”
Acheson nodded in agreement
and, sighing, picked up the details of his next client.
Pat was shackled and shoved
into a security van with half a dozen other men, all destined for prisons
around the city. He watched the guards
disembark the men at various locations until there were just the three of them
left. The door slammed on them and the
engine started again with a wheezing roar.
The eldest of the three of
them, a solidly-built, grizzled-haired, black man, spat. Pat tried not to shrink as the phlegm landed
close to his foot.
“Fuck it – you know where we’re
going, doncha?” he muttered.
Pat shook his head and glanced
at the third man; a skinny young man, with pale skin and lank fair hair. There was a film of sweat on his face as he
too shook his head.
“Blackwell’s.”
Patrick shivered. The old island prison was notorious. It had recently been reopened many decades
after being closed because of the dilapidated state of its buildings. Given the urgent need for more prison
housing, the Governor had decided it was cheaper to reopen Blackwell than build
any new wings elsewhere; but given the inadequate facilities, there were
frequent riots and lock-downs, which even the state government couldn’t keep
secret. It was generally thought that
the prison was run by a brutal regime of prison gangs.
Beside him the fair-haired man
whimpered.
“What’re you in for?” Pat asked
him, feeling a need to make some sort of human contact. “I got 90 days for public order violations.
I was arrested after the anti-Bereznik march.”
“Listen,” the older man advised
him, “I’m givin’ you free advice. Don’t
ask that, you never know what the answer’ll be and you might not like it.”
“Sorry,” Pat said.
The man gave a dismissive
snort. “You still wet behind the ears,
boy; if you lucky you get out in 90 days with your ass and your spirit intact;
but don’t bet the farm on it.” He
leered at Patrick, but then glanced across at the third man. “Now him – he don’t stand no chance.”
Horrified, Pat glanced at the
man. He was already frightened and at
these words he shivered and shrank back.
“What’s yer name?” the prison
expert asked.
“Patrick Donaghue.”
“Irish? Huh!” he spat again. “My name’s Darnell – Darnell Shaw – and just
so you know, Irish, I’m a pimp. Who’re you?” he demanded of the other prisoner.
“C-Cody Brown.”
“You gonna suffer, Cody.
Ain’t no two ways about it.”
“I only got busted for
possession – just a reefer…”
Shaw laughed. “Makes no odds. They’ll be after you, lady-boy.”
The young man’s face crumpled
and he began to cry and Pat swallowed his fear as best he could. Shaw shrugged and turned to Pat.
“What you do at the march to
get yerself arrested?”
“They say I hit a cop with a
banner…” Pat began to explain, but Shaw burst out laughing.
“Yes-sah, that’d make ‘em send you to a tough hole like Blackwell’s,
sure enough; they don’ like cop-beaters.
Still, you should come out safe, Irish. Keep your head down and you’ll
do okay – if your luck holds. I’ll let
‘em know what you in for.”
Pat smiled gratefully, even
though the idea of being beholden to this man was not something he looked
forward to.
The police wagon stopped and
then juddered forward to stop again.
The door was opened and the three men ushered across a gloomy quadrangle
into a tall, brick building. There were
three guards waiting for them and they signed the receipt for their charges and
the ‘delivery men’ left.
The older of the guards looked
the prisoners up and down and read out their names. They mumbled acknowledgements and he gabbled through a list of
instructions.
To his consternation Patrick
was forced to strip and shower in a grubby communal shower. The soap was hard, green carbolic and the
small towel threadbare and none too clean.
As he finished drying himself he was handed the ubiquitous orange
boiler-suit of the prison uniform. Then
he was given a list of his belongings which he had to sign over to the prison
guards before receiving the few small luxuries he was allowed to keep, along
with some thin bed linen.
“You’ll spend tonight in the
holding cells and move to your main cells tomorrow,” the guard snapped. “Move!”
They were taken to a bleak
corridor of cells and ushered into one each.
Patrick surveyed his temporary quarters with dismay: it contained a
narrow, solid metal bed, bolted to the floor, a metal toilet against a wall and
a small metal sink. Thrown on the bed were a thin, stained mattress and two
threadbare blankets.
It stank.
He was ordered to make his bed,
and stay in the cell until further orders.
He did what he could to make the bed look remotely inviting, and sat on
the edge of it just to confirm that it was as uncomfortable as it looked. Despite his determination to take his punishment
‘like a man’, he couldn’t stop the lump rising in his throat and the burning
sensation in his eyes, that watered as he blinked.
The memory of his comfortable
room at Yale, and even the utilitarian comfort of home made this place seem
even worse. He shivered and had
difficulty stopping his lip from trembling.
In the distance he could hear the clanking of doors and the shouts of
men. He recognised the smell of boiled
cabbage and assumed it must be meal time.
He hadn’t given it a thought and on reflection decided he wasn’t really
hungry.
A bell jangled loudly, making
him jump. The guard shouted his name
and he wandered to the door to see what was required.
“Come on – to the canteen –
now!”
Cody and Darnell came out and
lined up with him, then they shuffled forward through a metal grill and along a
corridor to a garishly bright hall. At
one end were serving hatches, and long trestle tables ran along the length of
the room. The place was heaving with
men, waiting in line for their food, or already seated. Pat was given a pre-formed plastic tray and
as he was hustled along the line by the men behind him, various scoops of
largely unidentifiable food was thrown onto the tray.
The noise was deafening as all
around him the prisoners queued for their food and bickered and fought. The
newcomers sat at a special table together, and he although he tried to eat the
bland, soggy food, he had no appetite and the food was not tempting enough to
make him hungry. He felt hot tears
prick his eyes as he recalled the wholesome food his mother had always tried to
give them, and his own lack of appreciation for her efforts.
Darnell nudged him in the
ribs. “If you ain’t gonna eat that,
Irish, send it over here. We don’t get
nuthin’ else till morning.”
Pat took another mouthful
almost retching as he tried to swallow, and then pushed his tray across. Darnell pushed his empty tray away and
started on Pat’s food.
Cody was having similar
trouble, although he was making better inroads into his food than Pat had been
able to. When a shrill bell jangled,
all the men stood and moved with their trays to the counter hatch, before
marching out into the ‘leisure hall’ for their ‘free association’ time.
Darnell disappeared into the
crowd, eager, no doubt, to establish himself with the leaders of the prison
factions, so Pat drifted into a grubby lounge, where an old television, its
sound ruined by blaring out full blast everyday, was showing sit-com
reruns. Cody followed him, looking
more and more nervous as they walked past the other prisoners. Pat quickly became aware that the other men
around him were showing more interest in him and Cody than the maniacal antics
of the rubber-faced comedian on TV. It
was most unnerving and when he got the courage to move from his seat, he
wandered over to look for something to read from a shelf of dilapidated books
by the small, barred window.
Trying to appear unconcerned,
he began to look at the books: heart-broken to see the limited variety and poor
quality of the selection, he took what looked to be the best of the bunch and
went back to his seat. Most of the men
were watching TV now, and it kept their interest allowing him – and Cody – to
sit in silent fear.
The night bell jarred at
As they reached the door one
voice called out:
Tomorrow
you’re mine, sonny boy.
Pat walked into the bleak cell
and was still facing the wall as the door slammed behind him. He started, spinning round to see the metal
door blocking the exit to the cell. He
stood there listening with mounting terror to the rasp of metal bolts sliding
home. No sound he’d ever heard was like
this: nothing in the world had ever been so frightening, so final and so
depressing as the clang of that prison cell door as it was shut.
He was numb with terror; unable
to even construct a meaningful thought in his head, and aware only of the
thumping of his heartbeat and the burning in his throat and eyes.
When he regained control of his
limbs, he went and sat on the hard bed and muttered to himself:
“It’s only for 90 days, and I
am a political prisoner, they won’t put me with the hard cases… they can’t… I
haven’t done anything. But then – why
am I here in a top security prison? Oh,
mamai… oh, Holy Mary, please don’t let anything happen to me…”
He bit his bottom lip but the
tears came and he smothered his sobs in the rough blanket until he had regained
his calm. Then he washed his face in
the cold water from the one tap and dried it on a threadbare towel.
He put the few private
possessions he had been allowed to keep onto the one metal shelf and settled
down as best he could to read the book he’d chosen from the ‘library’ in the TV
room.
He stared at the page for long
minutes before he realised he had the book upside down.
“Get a grip, Donaghue,” he
chided himself, and gradually found himself able to blot out his surroundings
and lose himself in the story. He
turned to the next chapter just as the lights went out.
“What?” He glanced at the luminous hands on the dial
of his small clock:
It was the longest night he’d
ever experienced.
The harsh jangle of the morning
bell jerked Pat from his troubled doze and he stretched, stiff and drowsy and
dragged himself out of bed. After
relieving his bladder and having a wash that his mother would have called ‘no
more than a lick and a promise’, he
tidied his hair by running his fingers through it and waited by the door to be
let out for breakfast. His stomach was
rumbling from hunger and he felt sure there’d be something he could eat this
time – after all what could anyone do to ruin breakfast?
He discovered that breakfast
consisted of porridge and plain wholemeal bread. The porridge had the consistency of lumpy wallpaper paste and
tasted like it as well, but he wolfed it down and chewed on the heavy bread
after wiping it around the bowl – as everyone else was doing.
He noticed that Cody had not
eaten much before a burly man sitting across the trestle from him reached out
and took the bowl from him. Pat glanced
around waiting for someone to remonstrate, but the guards, who must have seen
it, said nothing and Cody merely looked down.
He nibbled at his bread, until that was taken from him by another
man.
Pat wondered why he hadn’t had
his food taken too, but he was grateful enough to have been allowed to eat his
in peace.
After breakfast the men
dispersed to their allotted workplaces and Darnell, Cody and Pat were marched
to the office of the Assistant Governor to be assigned tasks.
Henry Lancer looked at the
three men lined up before him and gave a shrug.
“You back again, Shaw? I thought you were going to go straight this
time?” he said. There was an overtone
of disappointment in his voice and a complete lack of surprise on his face.
“I tried, sah, but I gotta eat
and there’s no work,” Darnell said.
Lancer shook his head. “I’ve heard it before, Shaw. You can go and work in the prison allotment
– for now. There’s digging to be done.”
“Yes, sah,” Darnell gave a
grin. He’d be outside for the day,
which was always a plus.
Lancer looked at Cody. “What’re you good at, Brown?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m studying art.”
“We don’t have any decorating
going on at the moment. You’d better
report to the kitchen and see if you can peel potatoes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Patrick met Lancer’s eyes with
a confidence he really didn’t feel.
Lancer glanced at the documents in front of him.
“Ninety days for shooting your
mouth off about the government, Donaghue?
You must’ve said some terrible things.” Lancer raised an eyebrow. Pat gave a slight shrug. “Says here you’re studying at Yale…”
“Yes, sir.”
“You a communist?”
“No, sir!”
“Good. What’re you studying?”
“Physics, electrical engineering
and technology, sir.”
There was a knock on the door
and frowning Lancer called: “Come in.”
A matronly black woman, dressed
in a plain bottle-green dress and comfortable shoes, poked her head around the
door.
“Sorry, Mr Lancer, but the
computer’s gone haywire again and that urgent report you wanted isn’t going to
get done, so I thought I’d better let you know as soon as possible.”
“What? Tarnation
– that has to go out today, Mrs Moore!”
She came in a bit further and
shrugged. “I called the engineers and
they say it’ll be this afternoon – or probably tomorrow – before they can
come. Our maintenance policy doesn’t
give us priority repair status,” she reminded him with an ‘I-told-you-so’
expression on her face.
Patrick glanced at her and she
gave him a distracted, but friendly enough smile.
“Have you tried running an
anti-virus and a diagnostic checkdisk, before rebooting and running a restore
disk program?” he suggested helpfully, without thinking.
“How would I do that?”
“Do you know what you’re
talking about, Donaghue?” Lancer asked, frowning intently at the young man.
“Yes, sir; I’ve rebuilt and
upgraded my own computer dozens of times.
I even taught IT skills at the local elementary school before I went to
college.”
Lancer glanced at his secretary
who gave a supportive shrug. Pat looked from him to Mrs Moore with a rueful
expression. “I was only trying to help,
sir,” he said.
“Go fix it, and – if you do,
Donaghue, you can work here in admin… we could do with someone who understands
the technology – the damned stuff is always going wrong.”
“That’s because it all came out
of the
Mr Lancer blushed
slightly. “Well, get on with it,
Donaghue!” he growled.
“Yes, sir.”
Mrs Moore was a friendly soul,
and she sat and watched with interest as Patrick tapped away at the keyboards
and the computer lurched into reluctant, but submissive compliance with his
instructions.
As the screen flickered and the
monitor scrollbar worked through the disk’s programming she made coffee and
shared her choc-chip cookies with Pat.
“What did you do to end up
here?” she asked him.
“I went on a protest march
which got a bit out of hand.”
“What were you protesting
about?”
“The repression in Bereznik and
the government’s refusal to help the political dissidents,” he explained.
“I read about that.” She dropped her voice slightly. “The Governor got a bit heavy-handed, it
seemed to me. But we don’t mention that
here, Patrick.”
“No, Mrs Moore, I guess not.”
He concentrated on the
computer, and eventually he managed to solve the problem and then he stood and,
smiling, presented the completed job to his new friend.
“It should work now, Mrs
Moore.”
She took her seat and opened
the document files. The machine pulled
up an emergency saved version and she opened it with a sigh of relief.
“I haven’t lost much work. You’re a genius, Pat.”
“Hardly,” he said
modestly. “But I do know my way round a
computer.”
She went and reported to Mr Lancer
and when she came back she smiled at him.
“He says you can work here with me.
You can start with some filing, in fact, you can start with those.”
“Sure…” He picked up the bundle
of court documents and began to sort them into alphabetical order.
It kept him occupied until the
lunch bell sounded.
By the end of the day, Mrs
Moore had secured him access to the second computer in the office and let him
check and enter invoice records onto the prison database.
When the bell went, he was
collected by a guard who led him to a different corridor and a new cell in a
corridor where the trustees stayed – those prisoners allowed greater privileges
and wider access around the facility.
The conditions were not much better, but the bed was softer than the one
in the holding cell, and Pat wondered if it were the same everywhere or if he
had a superior mattress on his moulded-metal framed bed.
Exhausted by his poor night’s
sleep and with a feeling of relief, he slept well.
The next morning he breakfasted
and went back to Mrs Moore, where he spent the day data-entering and
filing. Mr Lancer nodded acknowledgment
of his presence as he came and went and Mrs Moore, kindness itself, had brought
him some candy from outside and shared her cookies with him again. There was some urgent work to do, so he
stayed over his lunchtime, and while Mr Lancer was away and Mrs Moore was out
of the office, he went online and surfed the net, checking his emails and the
forums he used to frequent.
It was the end of the week before he saw Cody again, and then he
didn’t recognise him at first. He was
delivering some files to the hospital when he noticed the figure in a bed,
hooked to a drip, black and blue with bruises and with a crust of dried blood
around his mouth.
“What happened?” he asked the
orderly in horror.
“He’s a pretty boy – or he
was,” the man said, with a shrug. “And
some men here ain’t seen a woman in a mighty long time.” He looked him up and down and gave him a
friendly wink. “Count yourself lucky
the Assistant Governor decided to keep you out of the main cell blocks.”
Pat stared at Cody and realised
what must have happened to the young man and what could have happened to
him. He felt himself start to shake
with a terror that almost paralysed him.
As the acrid taste of bile rose into his throat, he sprinted from the
ward to the nearest latrine and vomited his terror into the bowl.
He rested his face against the
cool partition wall of the stall and tried to control his fear. He’d not given much thought to the brutal
realities of prison life, preferring to turn a blind eye to the instances of
bullying and the abuse he’d witnessed, so this was a rude awakening. He realised he owed his continued safety to
Mrs Moore’s patronage and determined to do everything he could to make himself
indispensable to her.
Sunday was visiting day. Patrick hoped his parents might come, but as
the afternoon wore on, he concluded that they weren’t going to make it. Disappointed, he had already sat down to
write them a letter, when his name was called.
“Donaghue, you got a
visitor. Cubicle 28.”
He hurried to the visiting room
and found the small booth that gave some illusion of privacy. He opened the door and went inside. To his surprise he saw Miss Haymes sitting across
the table.
She picked up the phone as he
sat down and he picked the receiver at his side of the Perspex partition.
“Miss Haymes; how nice to see
you,” he began with genuine pleasure.
“I wish I could say the same,
Patrick. I never thought I’d see you in
here – a good many of my pupils do end up in prison, but I hoped for better
from you.”
“I was a fool, Miss
Haymes. I’ve learnt my lesson.”
“So I should hope. However, I’m not here for
recriminations. I’ve spoken to the
authorities at Yale and obtained their agreement for you to continue your
studies while you’re… away from the college.
I’ve brought you some of the necessary books and the next series of
assignments you have to work on. The
college has spoken to the Governor here and he’s agreed to let you have them
and continue your studies, providing you remain a good prisoner. I had to hand everything over to the
wardens, but you should get it all once they’ve checked them. I suppose they have to make sure I haven’t
hidden a file in them, so you could make a break for it.”
Patrick was speechless. Then as she waited he stammered, “Miss
Haymes, I… I don’t know how to thank you-”
“By getting the very best
degree you can, Patrick,” she replied briskly.
“I was so angry that you’d been assigned to this prison, just for being
a rude and foolish hothead, but they justified it by saying you were a
subversive. I told them they were being
almost as foolish as you’d been, but they were unforgiving. Once I realised you were stuck in here, I
determined to get you the chance to continue your education. Don’t
disappoint me, Patrick.”
“No, ma’am; I won’t,” he
promised fervently.
She relented enough to give him
a dry smile. “It won’t be for long,
Pat; and I hope you will have learned your lesson.”
He nodded. “Miss Haymes… have you… have you seen my
parents, by any chance?”
She shook her head. “I did see Thomas the other day. He said
your mother was… saddened by what had happened and your father… well, he was
angry. I expect they’ll come round, Pat.
Don’t worry.”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah, sure they will. I know I’ve let everyone down, Miss Haymes.”
“You were silly, but you were
doing what you thought was right and it was in a good cause, Pat, even if you
chose the wrong way to support it.”
The bell for the end of the
visit shrilled.
“I’ll come again in a week or
so, if you’d like?” Miss Haymes asked.
Not trusting his voice, Pat nodded.
“Good; just let me know if you need more paper or any more books…”
“Thank you, Miss Haymes – I… I…
thank you.”
“Take care, Pat,” she said
gently, and left him.
The Governor was as good as his
word. Patrick found that he was allowed
a bedside light to work in the evening when locked in his cell, and permitted
to submit his college work to his tutors, after careful checking by the
Assistant Governor.
He tried to spend every minute
of his free time buried in his books.
When he was forced to associate with the other prisoners he found them
contemptuous of him, but although they bullied and mocked him ceaselessly, he
was not assaulted or victimised in the way many of the younger men were. He grew to welcome the soulless clang of
locking up time, as a respite from the stresses of the day.
Word had got round amongst the
prisoners that Patrick Donaghue was a computer
buff, and one evening as he was queuing for his meal, a hulking man, his face
scarred and his brawny arms plastered with tattoos, came to stand beside him
and ‘invited’ him to meet ‘The Boss’.
Pat knew enough by now to realise that such an invitation was in effect
a command; the man in question was part of a wide-ranging and powerful crime
syndicate and effectively, he ran the prison.
Rumour had it that the man was so powerful he’d done a deal with the District
Attorney’s office to spend a couple of years in jail on a minor charge, for tax
purposes.
Pat thought that was going a
little too far; there were easier ways to avoid paying tax – if you knew how to
work the system – and he had made a thorough study of the subject.
When the bell rang for the end
of the mealtime, instead of returning to his cell or the library, Pat followed
the man through the crowded hallway to ‘The Boss’s’ cell. It was far more comfortable than any of the
others, and had a view over the walls to the distant skyline of the city across
the river. Men hung around the door
and landing, waiting to do whatever they were ordered, and they stared at him
with antagonism as he was ushered through their ranks to the head of the queue.
Dante Gubitosi was in his
forties; a fairly non-descript man, not overly tall or broad, dark-haired and
swarthy-skinned, with small, black eyes, beneath strong, straight brows and a
thin-lipped, wide mouth that seemed to be set in a permanent frown of
annoyance.
“Donaghue,” he said in a
friendly-enough manner, as Pat stopped across the carpet from his desk and
chair. “I want you to do me a little
favour.”
“Me?” Pat asked. “Why me?”
“Because a little bird tells me
you’re something of an adept with computers and – even more useful – you have
access to an internet link. Is this
so?”
Pat nodded. “I work in the
Assistant Governor’s office and I have permission to use the Net for my
university work.”
“And you can use it for more
than that?”
“Not officially.”
“But for a friend you would do
this? And am I not your friend,
Donaghue?”
“I… I hope so, Mr Gubitosi.”
“I am, Patrick – may I call
you, Patrick? No one has made your life
difficult or interfered with you, have they?”
Pat shook his head. “And why do
you suppose that is? I shall tell you,
Patrick. Because I told them not
to. Leave the kid alone, I told them,
and they listen to me, because I am a good-hearted man and they all like me.”
“Sure, Mr Gubitosi – and thank
you,” Pat remembered to add.
“My pleasure, Patrick. Now, you will do just a little thing for me
in return, won’t you?”
Pat nodded; he remembered Cody
in the hospital and asked himself what choice he had.
“You’re a wise man,
Patrick. Now, what I want you to do is
bring me the results of certain sporting events, before the news of these
results becomes common knowledge. You
understand me?”
Pat nodded.
“It is nothing you need to
worry about, Patrick, just the issue of some small wagers I might have with my
friends. Nothing more. Now, one of my associates will deliver you a
list of the sporting events I am most interested about and you will then report
back – before free association time.
Sometimes, I might ask for the results to be delivered as soon as they
are known… can you do this, Patrick?”
“I can get them online for you,
certainly; but I don’t know how easy it would be for me to deliver the
details. If I keep leaving the office,
Mrs Moore might get suspicious.”
“You will not need to leave the
office; I don’t want you to leave the office.
I will send someone to you and he will give you a slip of paper
authorising you to give him the results.”
“Sure, Mr. Gubitosi.”
“Good, then we have a contract,
Patrick. You supply me with what I
want, and I extend my patronage over you and you can sit out your remaining
days in safety.”
Pat nodded and was ushered from
the cell by one of the lackeys. As he
was left at the foot of the staircase, the man handed him a copy of the Prison
Newsletter inside of which was a list of the information he was required to
provide.
The next morning he was busy
entering data when Mrs Moore went into speak to Mr Lancer. It was well
within his capabilities to make a few little programming changes to the –
supposedly access-controlled –
computer
and he was able to circumvent
the prison firewall and log onto the gaming website specified by Mr.
Gubitosi. He copied down the details of
the races and games results as requested and when the trustee who acted as the
prison post messenger came round with a pile of files for Mrs Moore, he handed
Patrick a slip of paper in exchange for the list.
Thereafter he spent a nervous
afternoon waiting to be denounced and sent back to the main prison cells, but
nothing happened. At that evening in
the refectory, one of ‘The Boss’s’ known henchmen came over to where he sat,
picking at his plate of stew, and handed him a small bar of chocolate
candy.
“The Boss is pleased with what
you did,” he said, looking the youngster up and down. “Inside the wrapper is a list for tomorrow. Keep doing it.”
Patrick exhaled as the man walked
away, feeling as if he’d been holding his breath all day.
That was the pattern of the
days and weeks that followed: he copied the results for whatever he found
written on the inside of candy wrappers and handed them over in the pages of
papers or magazines he was given to distribute and later he’d get another candy
bar with new questions. Apart from that, Patrick tried to keep himself to
himself, and worked hard on the college work Miss Haymes delivered for
him.
Pat was slowly filing a large
pile of police reports about new inmates one afternoon, while Mrs Moore chatted
on about the forthcoming wedding of her son to the daughter of one of the
guards here, when he heard the sirens begin to wail.
Mr Lancer came out of his
office looking flushed and angry. He
caught sight of Pat and snapped, “Get back to your cell, Donaghue. This will be a lock down.”
“What’s going on?” Mrs Moore
asked before the Assistant Governor could leave.
“Open warfare’s broken out
between Gubitosi and Stockman. It seems
Gubitosi has been running a sting on Stockman for some weeks. Now Stockman wants his revenge.”
“You stay here with me,
Patrick, I don’t want to be here alone if there’s a fight going on out there,”
Mrs Moore ordered as Pat made to leave. “Don’t worry about Mr Lancer; I’ll deal
with him if he makes any fuss about it.”
“What does he mean: a sting?”
Pat asked, sitting back down.
Mrs Moore poured them both a coffee and settled back to
chat. “Well, from what I can work out,
Stockman is the prison bookie – oh, I know they’re not supposed to gamble, but
they do and the wardens know about it, but reckon it doesn’t do too much harm.
They probably take a cut of the proceeds, if they think no one’ll notice.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “They do say corruption breeds corruption
and this is no place for decent folks to work,” she said, apparently oblivious
to the irony of her situation.
She sipped her coffee and
continued, “Well, it is common knowledge amongst the guards that over the last
few weeks Stockman’s been losing heavily on bets made by members of Gubitosi’s
gang. Maybe they were just on a lucky
streak, but you can’t trust these cons.
Anyway, now it seems as if the Stockman gang is out for blood.”
Pat choked on his coffee.
“Don’t you worry, Pat; they
won’t get this far. Mr Lancer will lock
down the wing before there’s any trouble.”
“I sure hope so.”
With
good behaviour Patrick was released on
Instead,
Miss Haymes was there to meet him, and had brought his sister Niamh with her,
which was a pleasant surprise.
Niamh
hugged him and clung to his arm as they walked back to Miss Haymes’s car.
“Mamai
and Dad send their love,” she lied glibly.
“They’re sorry they couldn’t come and meet you. They’re both at work.”
“Sure,
it’s no problem,” he said, accepting the statement at face value as he was
unwilling to make Niamh suffer for his disappointment.
“You’ll
be going straight back to Yale, won’t you?” his sister asked.
Patrick
looked at her and felt his heart sink.
He had hoped to at least be received back home for a bit of cosseting
from his mother, but he saw the anxiety in Niamh’s eyes and realised that, just
as she had done with her eldest daughter, Rosaleen had disowned her favourite
son.
He
nodded. “I have a lot to do there to
catch up. I worked while I was inside,
but there’ll be other stuff…”
“You
can come with us, if you like? I’m
going to drive Patrick back,” Miss Haymes offered, but Niamh shook her
head.
“Better
not,” she replied. “I didn’t want Pat
to come out of prison without someone from the family to meet him – and give
him a big hug-” She suited her actions to her words. “But I’m expected home after school and I cut lessons to come
here. I can easily get back to school
before I get into trouble; if you’ll drop me at the subway?”
Miss
Haymes nodded and opened the doors to her battered car. She drove to a convenient subway station and
let Niamh out.
“Take
care, Pat. See you soon, I hope,” Niamh
called, as she got out and shut the door.
Miss
Haymes pulled out into the traffic and Pat watched his sister waving goodbye on
the sidewalk until they turned the corner and she vanished from his sight.
It
was a very quiet ride back to
For
the remainder of his time at Yale, Patrick worked hard. He avoided the company of his former friends
in Group 22, and kept his opinions to himself. He wrote to his parents to say he was back at college and
received nothing more than a polite acknowledgement in return. Thereafter, he distanced himself from his
family as well; angry at their refusal to forgive him for what had been rash,
but youthful, folly.
The
following year he became romantically involved with a young woman who came from
a well-to-do
“Hey,
Pat, we can all make mistakes. No one
with any true understanding can approve of a totalitarian state that persecutes
its own people. My parents won’t care
about that – and I don’t care either. I
think you’re sweet to worry about it.”
She leaned over and kissed him.
Pat
was delighted; he had come to care for Lauren and thought her the most
attractive girl he’d met. Their affair
was conducted with some secrecy to begin with, but gradually they relaxed and
took no pains to hide their involvement.
Because
he had nowhere to go out of term time, in the summer of 2054 he was invited for
a holiday with the family in
On
Independence Day, they were guests of the fabulously wealthy Svenson family at
a swanky barbecue held at their impressive family home. He quickly discovered that even money did
not prevent family feuds; he heard the whispered asides that ‘we all know why Adam isn’t here, don’t we?’
and learned that the eldest son and his father were at loggerheads. When he was introduced to the formidable
John Svenson and his vivacious wife, Pat vowed to himself that one day, God
willing, he’d have luxury like this at his command.
To that
end, he devoted himself to working hard at getting good degrees, and was
rewarded with excellent results in physics, electrical engineering
and technology when he graduated in 2055.
His
relationship with Lauren ended amicably at the same time, as she prepared to
travel to
He
now had to support himself and with Miss Haymes’ help, and a character
reference from Mr Hasket, he secured himself a position as a programmer in a
large insurance company based in
Miss
Haymes was his rock through these months, and she encouraged him to consider a
reunion with his family.
“I
know you’re mad at them, Pat,” she said, as he ate the Sunday lunch she’d
prepared for them both. “But, see it
from their point of view: they felt
they had to keep the family out of something so political. Your father came to this country without all
the proper paperwork and they worried what happened to you might’ve jeopardised
their position. I know,” she
interjected as he began to protest. “I
explained it doesn’t work like that, but… well, I don’t think they believed me. Now you’ve graduated so well and have a good
job and a place of your own, I’m sure they’d like to see you. I know your brothers and sisters would.”
“Miss
Haymes, have you heard anything about Ciara?” he asked suddenly.
Her
eyebrows rose in surprise. “No, dear, I
haven’t. She doesn’t seem to have been
in touch with any of the family.”
“I’ve
been thinking about her a lot recently and I want to find her,” Patrick
said. “At the very least, the black
sheep of the Donaghues should stick together.”
“She
may not want to be found, Pat.”
“She’ll
want me to find her.”
“Good
luck with it then,” Miss Haymes said softly, adding, “Only, please, Patrick,
don’t be disappointed if she’s not on the pedestal you’ve built for her.”
He
grinned suddenly, vividly reminding her of the boy he had been.
“Hey,
Miss H, you’re talking to a jail bird here.
Whatever Ciara’s done, can’t be worse than that.”
Privately,
Miss Haymes hoped he was right.
Patrick found life numbingly
mundane over the next few months: he dedicated himself to the reputable – if
boring – downtown company. The pattern
of his life appeared to be cast in stone and to stretch into a grey future;
although part of his rebellious nature still wondered if there wasn’t something
better than this.
It
was strange to be back on the familiar streets of
Then,
in the fall of 2058, Miss Haymes got sick and was admitted to hospital. She asked if she could put him down as her
nearest contact number.
“My
sister lives so far away, it isn’t possible for her to come visiting or dealing
with my affairs. I shall need someone
to keep an eye on my house and bring me my mail,” she explained anxiously.
“Hey,
anything you need, you only have to ask,” he told her. “You’ve done so much for me over the years,
this is peanuts for payback.”
He
smiled to see the concern evaporate from her expression.
“Good,
it means I will still get to see you.”
“Wild
horses couldn’t keep me away.”
He
visited her regularly, alarmed to see how frail she was growing. Sometimes she was too tired to talk, or was
sleeping, and he would sit beside her bed until the bell went to leave and go
without her knowing he’d been there.
The nurses always assured him that they’d tell her he had come by when
she woke, and he would thank them and leave the small gifts he’d brought for
her with them.
One
Wednesday afternoon, he made his way back to the hospital. It was December and the streets and shops were
bright with decorations. On an impulse
he paused to buy some expensive, long-stemmed, red rosebuds at a florist shop:
they were her favourite flowers and he thought it might cheer her up. Outside the hospital there was a Christmas
tree, with a Santa collecting for hospital funds. He dropped his remaining change into the bucket and hurried into
the warmth of the building, and along to the wing where Miss Haymes was.
As
he walked down the corridor towards her small room, one of the nurses
approached him.
“Oh,
Mr Donaghue, thank goodness you’ve come,” she began. “We’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“I
had the afternoon off to do some Christmas shopping,” he explained. “Didn’t you ring my cell phone?”
“It’s
unobtainable,” she replied.
He
drew it out of his pocket to see the battery was flat, even though he had
charged it overnight.
Sighing,
he asked, “What’s wrong? If there’s
something she needs I can go and fetch it now, there’s still time-”
The
nurse shook her head. “She’s taken a
turn for the worse, Mr Donaghue.” She
laid a hand on the sleeve of his coat.
“I’m afraid the doctors don’t hold out much hope.”
He
stood stock still as the image of the young woman’s kindly and earnest face,
the smell of the disinfectant and the glare of the over-bright fluorescent
lights imprinted themselves on his memory.
“You
mean she’s dying?”
She
nodded. “It won’t be long now.”
She
accompanied him to the room and followed him in.
Miss
Haymes was wired up to monitors and drips and lay on a bank of pillows, her
eyes were closed and the skin of her face so shrunken it already looked like a
death mask.
Pat
laid the flowers on the bedside cabinet and drew up a chair. The nurse took
them and came back with them in a plain ceramic vase, placing them where Miss
Haymes would be able to see them.
He’d been sitting there for an hour or more
before she opened her eyes and saw him.
“Patrick,”
she whispered, pleasure at seeing him drawing her lips into a faint smile.
“Hello,
Miss Haymes,” he said.
She saw
the roses and her dull eyes brightened momentarily. “Did you buy them for me?”
He nodded, too emotional to speak.
“Oh, they’re beautiful, Patrick.
Thank you.”
“I’m
glad you like them,” he muttered.
“I…I… Oh, hell!” He wiped a tear
away brusquely with the back of his hand.
“Never
fret, Patrick. We all have to go in
God’s good time.” He shook his
head. “You’re a good man, Patrick
Donaghue; I count myself lucky to have known you.”
“No,
I’m lucky to have known you,” he said earnestly, and took her frail hand in
his. “I wouldn’t’ve amounted to a hill
of beans without you, Miss Haymes.”
Her
smile widened slightly. “I think the
time has come for you to call me Anita, don’t you, Pat?”
“I’d
be honoured to,” he said.
She
closed her eyes again and he had to lean forward to hear her whispered
response. “Will you stay with me until
the end, Pat?”
“Yes,
Anita. I’ll be here.”
The
funeral was held on the Friday before Christmas. Pat took the day off work and went along. He was surprised to see how many people were
there: kids he’d known at school and their parents, teachers and standing by
the Priest, an elderly woman who looked like Miss Haymes and she was introduced
to him as Miss Cynthia Haymes.
He
saw his parents and brothers and sisters come in, and he knew they saw him
where he was sitting towards the front of the church as one of the main
mourners. At the graveside he
supported Cynthia Haymes and then led her back to the car.
There
was a polite wake at Miss Haymes’ house, but he made no attempt to speak to his
parents, although his brothers and sisters came to speak to him. When everyone had gone the lawyer read out
the will. Anita Haymes had divided her
property equally between her one remaining relative, her sister, Cynthia, and
her ‘best pupil and dear young friend’, Patrick Donaghue.
Miss
Haymes’s money gave Patrick a feeling of independence. He resisted the temptation to spend it all
and invested part of it in shares, playing the stock market with some
success. He moved to a better
apartment, bought himself a few luxuries and was able to affect a kind of
reconciliation with his parents, who seemed to be appeased by the notion that
he was a man of means now. However, he
felt like an outsider in a way that he’d not expected and he rarely made the
trip home unless there was a good reason to.
There
wasn’t enough money to allow him to quit his job though and he persevered at
the insurance company, growing increasingly disillusioned with a future that
stretched ahead of him in a grey miasma of mediocrity, but he dedicated himself
to the job nevertheless, determined to be above reproach and worthy of his old
teacher’s generosity.
He was spending some of his
hard-earned salary one Saturday night, having ditched his friends earlier and
gone on the prowl for a willing girl, when he literally bumped into his
past.
“Oof! Sorry, mister.”
He apologised before he
realised who he’d bumped into: Dante Gubitosi. The head of one of the biggest New York Syndicates – and the man
he’d run the numbers for in prison
“Little Pat Donaghue,” drawled
the well-known and justifiably feared voice.
“How’re you doing, Pat? Working
hard? We don’t see you around the place
and I think that’s a shame. There’s a brotherhood amongst the souls who have suffered
incarceration, you know? And it means
that it isn’t nice to lose track of your friends.”
Patrick gave a shaky smile,
unsure of how to take the comments.
“Good to see you too, Mr Gubitosi,” he stammered, unnerved by the
coterie of big, bulky bodyguards glaring at him for his effrontery in impeding
their boss’s progress.
In contrast Gubitosi seemed
unconcerned and almost friendly. He
turned to address the others.
“Listen to the man, you bums; Mr Gubitosi – he’s a well-brought-up
guy. You could learn from him – if you
was even capable of learning anything!”
He threw an arm around Pat’s shoulder and continued in a confidential
bellow that was meant to be heard, “You would not believe how much money these
dumb asses have cost me today, Pat. Oh,
I can hire all the brawn I want, but what I need
is brains. Now, you could be just the
kind of guy I’m looking for – a clever man – and one I know I can trust. What are you doing now, Pat? Because, I can better whatever you’re
getting.”
“I’m a computer programmer for a downtown insurance company.”
“S’that so? You intrigue me, I’d have thought a man with
your talents would have started your own company and been riding high in the
community by now. Come along wi’ me,
Patrick; I’m going for a little bite of supper and I think I could put some
business your way that might get you out of that rut, and into the way of
making yourself some serious cash. There’s a little job I think you could do
for me – it’d be right up your street.
What do you say? Come along and talk with me, Pat.”
Patrick drew a deep breath and
looked at the people surrounding Gubitosi.
Amongst the bodyguards was a girl: the prettiest he’d seen in a long
time. His eyes widened as she gave him
a shy smile. Gubitosi noticed where
his interest lay.
“Hey, Irene, be nice to the
man, ask him to come along.”
She didn’t speak, but turned
her large, baby-blue eyes on him and smiled.
His libido took over and he found himself saying ‘sure, why not?’
Over a first-class meal and excellent
wine, Gubitosi made small talk, while Irene flirted and teased Patrick into
submission. As the waiter brought them
coffee, the Boss waved his guards away and told Irene to ‘go powder her nose’.
Then he turned to Patrick.
“Will you work with me,
Patrick?”
He hesitated and then
confessed, “I’ve sworn that I’m never going back to prison, Mr Gubitosi; and I
don’t want to take any risks…”
“I don’t think there’s much
risk of that, Pat. But I need a man I
can trust, a clever man with a working knowledge of computers to work with me
on this. Now, it won’t surprise you to
know that there are times when I have to work with some men who are definitely
not legit. And, because of that, some
of my business is – shall we say – borderline with regard to the legal
niceties. This causes me much
heartache. I also prefer to keep out of
prison myself. So I can do without the
cops nosing about. You’ll be working
directly with me, and together we’d make sure we keep close to the right side
of those legal niceties, Patrick.”
Patrick sucked on his lower lip
thoughtfully.
“What do you say, Pat? You wanna stay with the insurance company,
you can go now, and this meeting never happened. Next time we meet; don’t expect no favours, though.”
“I’m flattered by the invitation,
Mr Gubitosi; and tempted.”
Gubitosi made no reply, but
sank back against the leather chair he was in and waited. He was fairly sure of
his companion.
Patrick never discovered if it
had been a genuine coincidence that he’d met Gubitosi that evening, or if ‘The
Boss’ had been watching him for a while, but before the night was over, he’d
agreed to do the ‘little job’ Gubitosi had in mind, and taken the step from the
right side of the law, to the wrong one.
But, as he later congratulated
himself, Irene was worth it.
Gubitosi provided Patrick with
a small downtown office, equipped with all the technological machinery he
needed. Pat would do a day’s work and then
go into the other office and spend another two to four hours working
there. At the weekend he’d spend the
best part of Saturday there as well, setting up programs to monitor the
accounts Gubitosi was interested in and cream off funds from them without it
being too obvious. He was able to salve
his conscience by reminding himself that the money was from the accounts of
other Syndicate bosses, and had probably been acquired by them through equally
illegal means.
In a matter of months his
conscience had adjusted so perfectly to his new lifestyle, that it accepted the
expansion of his commission into siphoning money from legitimate businesses
with barely a qualm.
The reputation of the New York
Syndicate 5 continued to rise amongst the criminal community and Gubitosi was
more than satisfied with Pat’s work. In
fact, the young man found his advice being sought more frequently and he
enjoyed the influence he had with The Boss.
Behind his legitimate business
of clubs, bistros and restaurants, Gubitosi’s illegal network of gambling dens
and bordellos prospered. When the national IRS and the World Government’s
International Tax Office ran audits on the books, Pat took particular pride in
the fact that they not only didn’t find any irregularities, but did find that
the business was entitled to a substantial refund. For a business that only paid tax on a small part of its
turnover, this was quite a coup.
When Gubitosi made Pat
responsible for a largely autonomous operation based in
It also left Pat with time to
branch out on his own. To cover his new
found affluence, he started a small firm offering improved protection against
corporate hackers. When his product was
accepted by any company, Pat personally went in and boosted their
cyber-defences, incidentally including an undetectable sub-routine that allowed
him to divert money into dummy accounts and off-shore banks that then invested
the money in legitimate ventures and loans.
Some companies were better targets
than others; he would go in and hit the bigger firms with one substantial money
grab, the sub-routine was self-deleting in these cases and whoever went in to
investigate would never find anything wrong with Pat’s firewall. Smaller firms were bled for less over a
longer period, never enough to ruin them, and so he escaped largely unnoticed
there as well.
Pleased with his protégé,
Gubitosi assigned him three minders from his own bodyguard, and Patrick grew
used to being driven in a bullet-proof limo through the streets of
As he rose through the
Syndicate, Patrick quickly learned what to do to get ahead, and how to handle
the dangerous and disreputable individuals he encountered. The established members of Gubitosi’s
Syndicate, as well as the bosses of the other New York gangs, soon discovered
that the genial Irishman was not the kind of man you double-crossed; he knew
ways of siphoning off money and re-routing goods that made their old ways look
amateurish, and anyone who crossed him or his boss found themselves
considerably worse off in no time.
Gubitosi agreed to ‘lend’ Pat
to other Syndicates across the country.
He knew that there would be a time when such favours might need to be
called in and that influence was a valuable commodity. Under one such arrangement, Pat moved to the
West Coast for the best part of a year, and then to Las Vegas, where he
assisted in an inter-gang quarrel and – while he was at it – feathered his own
and Gubitosi’s nests substantially.
When he moved back to
Gubitosi was an efficient boss
of his organisation, but he was notoriously insular and disliked the risks of
‘foreign entanglements’. Yet Pat knew
that the risks were no greater than those in America – especially given the
shaky position of the Chicagoan Syndicate – and, if you took the right
precautions, there was an entire new world just waiting to be exploited. For the first time, Pat felt ready to take a
major step on his own and he accepted a partnership, with the job of recruiting
American interest in the scheme.
As Christmas approached, Pat
began to look forward to his most extravagant season yet. He had plenty of spending money and decided
to buy presents for all of his siblings, even if his parents didn’t want to see
him. He bought gifts for ‘his’ team and
lavished presents on the young woman who had replaced Irene in his
affections. He sent an anonymous
donation to the Church school and another to a city charity for disadvantaged
kids, but there remained something missing in his life and he was unseasonably
morose.
Gubitosi called him in for a
meeting one late December afternoon, and they went over the latest figures and
the projected cash flow from their various scams. Then the older man leant back in his leather chair and said:
“You don’t look too happy,
Patrick, and this worries me. You’ve
done a great job, so far. But since you
got back from Vegas, you’ve been less… forthcoming.”
Pat gave a shrug and brushed
that insight away with some contempt.
Gubitosi wasn’t fooled. He
continued, “I don’t want you should think of moving on, or quitting my
syndicate, Patrick. We’re in this
together, remember?”
“I’m not thinking along those
lines, Mr Gubitosi. It’s just that I’ve
been thinking about my family lately.
They – well, my parents – they didn’t want to see me after I got out of
jail and I don’t think they’d be too pleased to know what I’m doing for a
living now. I don’t know if my brothers and sisters feel the same, but I’d hope
not. My mam’s a seriously devout woman, with a strict moral code, and if you
transgress, you’re never forgiven, but I hope the others are more pragmatic.”
Gubitosi nodded. “Sure, don’t I know it? Some mommas are like that, Pat, but a man’s
gotta do what’s best for him and think of himself before he worries about what
his mama thinks.”
“I know.” Patrick sipped the fine bourbon and gave a
rueful smile. “Besides, I’m a hedonist:
I like my comforts too much to back out now.”
“You’re a good man, Patrick
Donaghue; a man I can trust.” Gubitosi
paused thoughtfully. “I think the time
has come. I have someone I’d like you
to meet.”
They travelled in Gubitosi’s
limousine to the private club he ran in the entertainment district. This was the flagship of his empire, and
accounted for most of his income; at least, the part he paid taxes on, although
Patrick knew that was the tip of the iceberg.
It was a cabaret club with dancing and entertainment open to the general
public as well as members, but for those discerning customers who became
Down a plush corridor was a
second club, more intimate that the public one, where the entertainment was
more risqué, the ‘girls’ friendlier and willing to provide such ‘personal
services’ as any of their clientele might require, and there were enough
roulette wheels, blackjack and craps tables to amuse even the most determined of gamblers.
Patrick had never been to the
place, although he knew about it; Irene had always shown a marked reluctance to
dine there, which he’d put down to her having worked there at some point in the
past. The club was managed by a woman
called Maxine Portinari, a close associate of Gubitosi’s and a shrewd
businesswoman from the reports Patrick had seen. He wondered if it was ‘Miss Maxie’ they were going to meet.
Gubitosi walked through the
club and along to the private rooms, where the small stage was occupied by
several athletic pole dancers. Pat
slowed to watch their performance, stuffing a handful of bills into their skimpy
costumes before strolling after his boss, who was waiting by the open door to
an office.
Smiling apologetically, Pat
followed him into the room and closed the door.
He turned towards the desk and
stared in surprised disbelief. The
woman at the desk rose to her feet and smiled at him. She was average height, shapely and with
large, dark-brown eyes that suggested her blonde hair was not entirely
natural. She was oddly familiar.
“Hello, Patrick,” she said.
“Ciara!”
She came round the desk towards
him, ignoring Gubitosi, who stood aside, like a magician watching his trick
play out.
“Hello, Pat,” she said, and
held out her hands to him.
“It is you,” Pat gasped. “After all these years…”
Suddenly he hugged her, smiling
fit to burst. Gubitosi broke up their
reunion with flutes of champagne.
“A toast, to family!” he
exclaimed.
“Family,” they both
chorused.
Ciara settled on a couch and
patted the space beside her for Pat to sit too.
“It’s good to see you again,”
she said, studying her brother’s face intently.
“I searched for you,” he replied,
“when I’d finished at Yale.”
“I didn’t want to be found,
then.”
“No, I can see that now. You changed your name and got a job
here?” He looked across at his boss,
who was now sitting at the desk, refilling his champagne glass.
She glanced at Gubitosi and
explained:
“After I had the baby, I needed
a job. Mr Gubitosi offered me work here
and – to be honest – I found my vocation.”
“You kept the baby?” Pat asked.
Ciara glanced away. “He was adopted by one of his father’s
family.”
“Do you see him? What’s his name?”
She shook her head. “I don’t see him often and he doesn’t know
who I am – we all agreed it was better for him that way. But, I know he’s healthy and happy and has
everything a child could wish for. He
will do well.”
“Does Mamai know? That you kept the baby, I mean.”
“No. I haven’t seen her, or any of the family, since that day. And I don’t want to. I did hear about you; the march and your
spell in prison. I worried about you
but then I heard how well you did at Yale.
But when Mr Gubitosi told me you were working for him, I wasn’t sure I
wanted to see you; I have left that part of my life behind, Pat. You understand, don’t you?”
Pat looked at Gubitosi. “Sure I do; we all have to move on,
Ciara. But what’s changed, why am I here
now?” He knew better than to ascribe
Gubitosi’s motives to sentiment.
He was right. Gubitosi’s genial expression faded and he
was instantly the hard man of business.
“There is a job coming up – a big one – and I want you two to work
together on it. You’re the best I have
at what you do.”
“What job?” Pat asked, helping
himself to some more champagne, although his glass wasn’t empty and he didn’t
drink any of it.
“
Pat waited a moment and then
replied, “City by a lake: cold, wet and windy.”
“You’re a funny man, Patrick,
I’ve always said so. Listen: the
syndicate in
“When that happens there is
usually a way to remove the cop,” Pat pointed out. “What’s different with this one?”
Gubitosi’s self-satisfied smirk
broadened to his usual wolfish smile.
“This time the cop’s gonna crack the syndicate wide open. There’s gonna be a great deal of regret and
disquiet amongst the other members of the Syndicate Council, and while they’re
battening down the storm cellars and hiding from Detective Fraser, we are gonna
be moving in, friendly-like, offering shelter and gainful employment to the
unfortunate Chicagoans who are not incarcerated but have no means of making
their living.”
“You want
“No, I don’t want
Pat nodded.
“I don’t think we can stop it
now,” Gubitosi continued. “Fraser is
good and too smart for those dumb-ass
“So it does,” Pat agreed. “I suppose you’re planning to move in and
take over.”
“I figure the boys in
“Us?”
“I thought I’d send you – you
and Miss Maxie – to open a new club there, just to test the water. You can put out feelers, do all those little
courtesies that make you so popular, Patrick.
Prepare the way, so to speak.”
Patrick took a sip of his
champagne and cocked his head a little, as if in doubt. “
Gubitosi looked angry, but he managed to keep a civil tone as he
asked with false jocularity, “You scared this Fraser might outsmart you,
Patrick?”
Pat smirked. “Hell, no.”
“Then we have a deal,” Gubitosi
concluded.
“Maybe.”
“What?” The older man’s
brows knit together in a ferocious frown.
Sitting next to Patrick, Ciara
laid a warning hand on his arm.
“You heard: I said maybe. It
may be that what needs to be done can be done from here. Maybe I just don’t want to go, and –
certainly – you’re no longer in a position to make me.”
“Donaghue, don’t cross me,”
Gubitosi growled.
“We’ll think about it, shall
we? I’ll look into the situation, as
you suggest, and let you have my decision.”
Slowly, Gubitosi got to his
feet. He stared at the younger couple
on the couch, seeing anxiety in Ciara’s eyes, and indifference in
Patrick’s. Anger flared in his mind,
but he was experienced enough to know that his current position with the
Syndicate Council wasn’t secure enough for him to ‘remove’ Patrick at that
time. The young man had made himself
useful to the other bosses – and he was undoubtedly good at what he did – so,
he’d have to wait to move against him.
He managed a dry smile.
“You think about it, Pat,” he
growled, “and then you come and tell me when you’ll be ready to move to
“Maybe,” Pat replied
calmly.
“You know me, Donaghue: I don’t
allow no one to disobey me. That’s why
I am the top man here. And why the
Council listens to what I have to say.
You will do as I tell you.”
Pat gave a thoughtful
shrug. “And I say that maybe I will,
but I’m not going to agree to something as important as this without due
consideration. You wouldn’t really
expect me to, Mr Gubitosi, because you know me as well as I know you. I wonder if you’ve given this enough thought
yourself?”
“You questioning me?”
Gubitosi’s eyes flashed with anger. “I
don’t take kindly to it, Pat – even from you.”
Despite his reservations about
Gubitosi’s business sense, Pat did feel some loyalty to the man who had started
him off in the business and he made one last attempt to influence
Gubitosi.
“I’ve worked with several
Council members recently – you sent me to them. I don’t think they’re going to share your pleasure at the thought
of
“Tcha!” Gubitosi spat the word out with an ugly frown on his
face. “Those bums in
“And the Canadians?”
“Don’t make me laugh. They’re small fry.”
Pat said nothing; he had first
hand knowledge of the ambitions of the French-Canadians and the quietly
efficient way their Anglophone companions had developed a formidable criminal
infrastructure. He doubted that the
expanse of
He sniffed. “Maybe,” he said again.
Gubitosi snorted, and as he left,
he said, “Remember, Patrick, I am the man you work for and I give the orders.”
As the door closed behind him,
Ciara let out a deep sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath.
“You’re a fool to antagonise
him,” she said. Her brother poured himself another drink and without asking,
the same for her. She took it from him
and drank it down. “Be careful,” she
advised him. “Dante Gubitosi is a
dangerous man.”
Pat sat back beside her and
sipped his drink. When he spoke his
voice was gentle, without any hint of recrimination. “Was he the man? The
father?”
Ciara looked up at him,
half-shocked, half-amused. “No. Dante had a brother. Cesare was a charmer but, alas, also a much-married man. His wife was the daughter of a
Pat said nothing but his dark
eyebrows rose at this; all too many of the people who opposed the syndicate’s
rules died due to faulty brakes in their cars.
Ciara continued, “After the
funeral, his wife went back to Daddy, with her kids and when my baby arrived,
Dante and his wife adopted him. They
had no kids of their own, and Dante said that his brother’s kid was half
Gubitosi and that was better than no Gubitosi blood at all. It was his way of
being revenged on his sister-in-law and her family, I think, but he’s been a
good father, nevertheless. He’s taken
care of me too, in a sort of way. Gave
me this job and taught me how to manage a club. I owe him, Pat.”
“So do I,” Pat admitted. “He made my spell in jail as tolerable as it
was ever going to be, I guess. But,” he
continued, “I hate to say it, Ciara, he’s losing the plot, if he hasn’t already
lost it altogether.”
“He’ll crush you.”
He leant back on the couch and
gave a self-confident smile. “No, he
won’t. He can’t – or he’d have done it
this evening. I made sure I was safe,
before I refused to obey him.”
“How?” Ciara asked, just a
little too quickly.
“That, my dear sister, is my
secret. But you can tell Gubitosi that
unless he wants his syndicate to fall even before Fraser cracks
“Pat, you don’t think that I would-”
“Ciara, I’m not stupid. Why else would Gubitosi bring me here,
today?” he patted her arm. “But it’s
okay, sis. One thing I’ve learned – the
hard way – is never trust anyone: family, first and foremost.”
For whatever reason, Gubitosi
backed down within a few days, probably because the much-anticipated crash of
the
Sensing that Gubitosi no longer trusted him as implicitly as he
had done, Pat began to make arrangements for his own security, while remaining
on decidedly strained terms of cordial politeness with his boss.
The money he had sequestered
for his own use now amounted to a small fortune and, through careful legitimate
short-term investments and astute overnight loans, Pat doubled it within a
matter of weeks. The longer term loans
made on his own behalf were primarily to other syndicates across the country
and once, through the auspices of Jean Lebrun,
his French-Canadian connection, to a well-known and respected – at least
by his Canadian business friends – Frenchman, Pierre Capet.
It was at the grateful
invitation of Capet that Pat travelled to
The European business looked so
promising that Pat felt it was well worth his while to attend meetings with the
French bosses. He made a few
suggestions to improve the security aspects of the business and the Frenchmen
were grateful enough to offer him a personal slice of the profits, if he wanted
it. Pat declined, feeling that it was not the safest time to be diverging
from the mainstream American syndicates.
The collapse of
On his return to
Gubitosi greeted him with a
veneer of bonhomie, but Pat recognised the hostility in the older man’s dark
eyes and wasn’t fooled. He nodded
acknowledgment to the two bodyguards that stood by the small window of the
office, noting that these two were amongst the elite squad who were always
armed and extremely dangerous. He also
noted that they were not asked to leave before the meeting began.
“You have a good holiday, Pat?”
Gubitosi asked, pouring them both drinks.
“I did, thank you.” He spent
some time extolling the delights of Paris, before adding, “It wasn’t all
pleasure though; I have identified several business opportunities that might
interest you – if you’re thinking of going global, that is.”
“You know I don’t rate
Pat gave no sign of alarm; he’d
suspected his summons was linked to Gubitosi having heard about his private
business dealings in
“I’m not so sure,” he replied
evenly. “A small businessman might find
opportunities to get in on the ground floor of what should become pretty
substantial operations.”
“And did you?” Gubitosi
growled. “I don’t like it, Pat, when my
friends try to double-cross me. Nor do
I like it when they try to bail out.”
Pat put his glass down with
exaggerated care. “Listen, Dante,” he
said, using the man’s Christian name for the first time in a conversation, “I
think it is time we were honest with each other, don’t you?”
“I thought you were honest with me,” Gubitosi snapped.
“I have always trusted you.”
“And I have repaid that trust
many times over,” Pat declared. “Now I
want to move on. I’m ambitious, you know that, and I take my chances. This is one of them, Dante. You’ve had a good run for your money – and
mine – so, I think you’d better look forward to a long and peaceful
retirement.”
“Retirement? Who the hell d’you think you are?” Gubitosi’s face suffused with anger. “I don’t take no orders from nobody –
especially not the likes of you – a two-bit Irish hoodlum whose ass I saved
from getting buggered in the slammer!”
Pat merely contemplated the
whisky in his glass, swirled it around and drained it in a gulp. His heart was pounding with nerves, although
no one would ever have guessed from looking at his calm exterior.
“You have two choices,” he
explained carefully. “Go now, go
peacefully, and you will enjoy a happy retirement-”
“Or?” roared Gubitosi. His explosive temper was justifiably
well-feared amongst his operatives and although Pat had witnessed it many times
he had never been on the receiving end before.
He swallowed and continued as
if nothing had interrupted him, “Or I will make you go.”
“You? Hell, Pat, you can’t make
me do anything. You’d need the combined
weight of the Council behind you and I don’t think you’ve got it. I got friends on the Council, I know the way
the wind’s blowing.”
“You’re out of date,
Gubitosi. I can make you go and I
will.”
“Don’t try to bluff me,
Donaghue. I’ve destroyed better man
than you without breaking into a sweat.
I ain’t ready to retire. You’ve
played a losing hand, Pat. You won’t be
welcome anywhere in the Syndicate once I’ve told them about your
treachery.” He turned to the henchmen,
now standing menacingly by his desk.
“Throw him out, fellas!” He
turned back to Pat with an air of smugness.
“One day I might accept your apology, Donaghue, and find you a job
somewhere in the organisation, but your ‘good run’s’ at an end, as of now! You ain’t welcome here!”
Gubitosi gestured towards his
bodyguards. “I’ve done with him – throw
him out!” The men remained motionless and Gubitosi growled, “D’you hear me, you
dumb-asses? Throw him out!”
The men glanced at Patrick,
obviously seeking orders from him.
Gubitosi drew a deep breath, staring at Pat’s face, where an apologetic
smirk spoke volumes. The truth of his
situation became blindingly obvious and he was momentarily bewildered.
“You dirty whore’s son,” he
growled. “You won’t get away with
this.”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong there,
Dante; I have already ‘got away’ with it.
The Syndicate Council has appointed me as the new boss of New York
Syndicate Five, with immediate effect.
If you don’t believe me you can call any – or all – of them. Now, I suggest you go quietly and that way
you should enjoy a long retirement.”
“To hell with you! You’re a dead man, Donaghue!”
Pat got to his feet and faced
his old mentor across the room. When he
spoke his voice was less conciliatory.
He knew he had to exert his authority in the face of Gubitosi’s
explosive anger. “I have the backing
of the majority of the Council. They
support my leadership of the
NYS5. It’s a done deal, Gubitosi; you’ve been ‘retired’, whether you like it
or not.”
“You’re a fucking slime ball –
a traitor!”
“No – I’m doing you a
favour! You go now, and I take over,
and you get to live and enjoy the rest of your life. You wait, or you fight me
for the syndicate, and you’re the dead man, Dante. Believe me, you’ve been on borrowed time for
a while now; since before
“I don’t believe you.”
“Listen – and listen good –
some of the Council members got the notion that you’d been casting eyes on
Gubitosi spluttered in anger
and more than a little anxiety.
Pat continued, “Oh, I don’t say
it was down to you, but the Council – well, they’re not the most imaginative of
men. Follow me? They see a syndicate busted apart, so they
look for insiders.”
“You set me up – you son of a
two-bit whore!”
Pat assumed an expression of
startled innocence. “Me? No, if I heard
talk when I was working with other syndicates, I always said you were a sound
man. Always.”
“You expect me to believe that?
You wormed your way in-”
“Working with maggots there’s
little choice!”
“I’m gonna kill ya and throw
your corpse at the Council’s feet. No
one betrays Dante Gubitosi and walks free.”
Gubitosi had moved to his desk
and from the top drawer he drew a gun.
The two henchmen, who until this time had made no move at all, both drew
their weapons, but Pat sensed they were both unsure as to which side they were
on.
“I’m unarmed,” he stated,
ignoring the presence of his own weapon in his shoulder holster. He knew he wasn’t fast enough to draw it and
defend himself and the slightest suggestion that he intended to try would undoubtedly
prove fatal anyway. Gubitosi wouldn’t
give him a chance. “I came here in
good faith to deliver the Council’s decision, Gubitosi. They’ve made you a fair offer – if you
refuse it you’re putting your life at risk!
Killing me won’t save you – it will only bring the wrath of the Council
down on NYS5 and everyone in it.
They’ll take it as proof that you sold
“Says you – you always were
such a plausible liar, Patrick!”
Gubitosi crowed. He glanced at
the armed men between him and his quarry.
One of the men, a youngster with a deserved reputation as a sadist,
cocked his gun and waved it between
Gubitosi and Pat, while the elder of the two waited without expression to see
what would happen next.
“What’s wrong with you guys?”
Gubitosi growled. “Can’t you
spot a loser when you see one?”
As Gubitosi aimed his gun at
him, Patrick was careful to show no anxiety or fear, even though he could feel
his innards turning cartwheels with dread.
He heard Gubitosi cock his pistol and there was a deafening sound of
gunshots as bullets ricocheted around the room. The air reeked of sulphur.
Pat stared into the smoke. Gubitosi’s face was frozen in an expression
of surprise. His pistol slipped from
his grasp as blood seeped through his white shirt and spread across his
chest. A thin trickle of red ran down
his chin. Suddenly his cheeks bulged
and he vomited a shower of blood across the room. His mouth remained open, his teeth stained red as, in slow
motion, he sagged at the knees and sank to the floor. One hand stretched out towards Pat and scrabbled at the carpet
for a moment before his body convulsed, breath rattling in his throat just
before he collapsed completely and lay still.
It was over.
After the initial shock
dissipated, Pat had been careful to show no emotion. In the split seconds after the first shots, he had realised he
was unhurt and stood rigid and silent as the scene played out before him and
his henchmen. He was sickened by the
sight of the bleeding corpse of the man he admitted he owed so much, but
weakness now could still be fatal. He
turned away with a carefully assumed air of dispassionate authority.
“Get rid of it. You’d better tell his wife where you’ve
taken the body, but no cops.”
“Yes, Mr Donaghue.”
He walked towards the door
adding, “Then get this room gutted, cleaned and refurbished by next weekend.”
“Yes, Mr Donaghue.”
Pausing with his hand on the
handle, he continued, “There will be changes around here; things will be done
my way. Anyone who doesn’t like the
idea has a chance to leave now with no recriminations. After that, I expect you to ensure I receive
the unquestioning obedience I demand.
If you can’t guarantee me that, I will find you alternative work.”
“Whatever you say, Mr Donaghue,
is fine by us.”
“Good. Get on with it.”
There was already a small crowd
of interested people gathering in the casino beyond the office when Pat stepped
out, closing the door behind him.
He saw Ciara by the bar,
already in an evening dress and make-up in readiness for the evening’s
trade. Even so, her face was
unnaturally pale in the blue-haze of the lights.
Without hesitating, he moved
forward displaying total confidence. He
saw several of the club’s bouncers amongst the bystanders and hoped he wouldn’t
have to use his gun – he had no doubt every one of them was armed.
“Where’s Bersani?” he demanded
of no one in particular.
The crowd looked around and
parted to allow the largest of Gubitosi’s bodyguards to face Patrick.
“Tony and Frank will be
clearing up in there for some time; there has been… an unfortunate
accident. See that they’re not
disturbed and give them all the help they ask for; the punters can’t be allowed
to see anything. It might be best to
post guards front and back as well… can’t be too sure that some well meaning
public-spirited citizen hasn’t reported the… disturbance.”
There was a shuffle of unease amongst
the crowd as Bersani said nothing but looked towards the office door. The smell of the gunfire had permeated into
the casino and no one had any doubt what must’ve happened. The older man looked Patrick over without
speaking.
Pat waited a moment and then
said briskly, “I want my car here in five minutes. I have a meeting downtown with Mr Francisco to report to the
Syndicate Council. When I get back I
want this place open and earning as usual.”
Tension increased until – after
what had seemed like an age, but was mere seconds – Bersani said, “Yes, Mr
Donaghue.” He waved a hand at one of
the waiters who slipped out to order the car.
Pat continued, “There will be
changes; but no one need worry. Mr
Gubitosi’s unfortunate accident won’t affect the club or its employees.”
Bersani nodded and addressed
the lingering witnesses. “Get on with
your work, will ya!”
As the crowd dispersed, Ciara
walked over to her brother and asked, with a quiet irony, “Accidental death?”
Pat met her gaze with
composure. “Yes, he accidentally failed
to take the opportunity the Council offered him to retire. He drew his gun and took his own life.”
“In a hail of bullets?”
He looked at her with
astonishment. “Yes; drawing a weapon against the head of the New York Syndicate
Five in the presence of two armed bodyguards is – in my opinion – committing
suicide. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss
Maxie?”
Ciara swallowed and drew a deep
breath. “I guess it is at that.”
He stepped towards the door and
she followed him, adding, “What about me, Pat?”
“That’s your choice,
Ciara. You have the same rights as
anyone to leave, if you want. You
probably felt you owed Gubitosi something-”
“No, I don’t. I never wanted to
get involved in this racket, but once I was I was trapped. Now, I don’t think I could handle any other
sort of life.”
“Fine; I’m more than pleased
for you to stay, Ciara. But, remember,
if you stay, you’re with me. I will not tolerate any divided loyalties –
even if you are my sister.”
“Sure, Pat.”
He studied her face for a moment,
nodded and walked out of the club with his head held high. She watched him go, marvelling that her
little brother – the open and cheerful child she’d known – had grown into such
a ruthless man.
The car was a black limousine
with smoked-glass windows. Bersani
opened the door for him and Pat stepped into the back, giving the driver his
destination.
“You want me to come with you,
Mr Donaghue?” Bersani asked, before he closed the door.
“No; I want you to do what you
do best – run that club.”
“Sure thing.”
As he drove away, Pat closed
the communication window to the front and let out a deep sigh of relief as he
sank back into the plush leather.
He knew just how lucky he was
to still be alive. From now on he’d
have to watch every ambitious youngster out to make a name for himself, every
employee who felt he had some right to feel slighted, and each and every
Syndicate Boss with a mind to expand his empire into
It’s
going to be quite a challenge, he
thought. Bring it on!
The change of command at the
top of the NYS5 caused barely a ripple on the Syndicate Council proving, to
anyone who had doubted it, that Donaghue was their preferred man. Although an effective manager of an existing
organisation, Gubitosi had lacked imagination and vision which, given the
recent failure of a major syndicate, meant that they feared the operation was
in danger of atrophy. The loss of the
Chicagoan revenues meant the American Council members were anxious to find new
revenue sources and Pat’s approach offered an inexhaustible stream of new
capital through white-collar ‘cyber’ crime.
His convoluted scams and impenetrable audit trails made detection
unlikely and everyone was keen to benefit from the change.
Although he was the new boy on
the ruling council, Patrick Donaghue was quickly accepted and, in less than no
time, widely respected by his peers.
Gubitosi’s deputy, a man with less pride and more imagination than his
erstwhile boss, apparently accepted the new situation without any rancour, for
few months at least. Then he asked for
a meeting and made it clear that he wanted out. Pat was more than willing to pension him off; try as he might he
could not warm to the man who had seen his friend murdered and watched a
younger man take his place – even if that younger man was himself – without
considering extracting retribution.
If he had learned nothing else from what had happened to Gubitosi, Pat
had learned that a successful leader needed men around him who were committed
to protecting him from the predators that circled a Syndicate boss; men who
owed their own prosperity and security to him and were ready to defend it – and
him – to the death.
Therefore, he was liberal with
his rewards, punctilious in paying his dues to the other Council members, and
ruthless in exacting the dues owed to him.
Slowly he weeded out the old guard and placed his own men in key
positions. Only then did he start to
relax enough to sleep the night through.
The only member of the old
regime who survived this civilised cull was Miss Maxie. Ciara Donaghue watched her brother’s back
for him and he accepted her allegiance without hesitation. It was a load off his mind to know that she
was running the bread-and-butter operations: the casinos, numbers rackets and
hookers who kept the cash flow healthy, while he was occupied organising –
generally hostile – ‘take overs’ of the smaller businesses that Gubitosi had
been unable to prevent from springing up while he’d been in charge.
Within a twelvemonth of
Gubitosi’s death it was being said in the
Pat remained careful not to
flaunt his ever-increasing wealth. He
had opened a legitimate investment consultancy, which he called ‘Pat-broke’,
and devoted enough of his time to making a success of that in order to provide
cover for his executive lifestyle. He
was scrupulously honest and paid all his taxes on that income. The rest he salted away in overseas and
off-shore accounts, invested in other syndicate projects or laundered through
the legitimate banks and brokerage houses of Wall Street. When he found himself wined and dined by the
‘Fat Cats’ of Wall Street, anxious to accommodate his investment needs, he
found it hard not to smirk as they diligently laundered his illicit profits
through their strait-laced establishments.
The
He’d felt a slight twinge of
guilt, recalling the lavish hospitality of that long-ago Independence Day
party. The young man who had stood
open-mouthed at the luxury of a lifestyle he could only dream about seemed like
a different person from the sophisticated Patrick Donaghue of the New York
Syndicate. In his naivety at the time
he’d vowed that one day he would share that lifestyle, but never in his wildest
imaginings had he truly believed it was possible.
With his reputation secured by
his success, Pat had felt able to turn his attention to other matters. He began to advise other Syndicates on
maximising their profits and streamlining their ‘business systems’ and sided
with the ultimately victorious underdog in an internecine war that broke out in
LA over control of the drugs racket.
He established effective ‘business’ links with the Canadians and their
French associates, and dabbled on the London Stock Exchange in order to exploit
weaknesses in the World Government bond market.
He was careful not to repeat
his major successes too often and while the amounts he filched from SvenCorp
and the other big finance houses became more modest, they also grew more frequent. He changed his approach every time, keeping
one step ahead of the companies’ cyber patrols, pilfering and fraud detection
systems. When SvenCorp grew
suspicious, he moved on to other firms and their subsidiaries where the
scrutiny was less assured. It became a
thrilling game of living off his wits, with him and his syndicate opposing the
over-mighty and often cumbersome titans of Wall Street.
It was an exhilarating
existence. He bought a large apartment
in a desirable location, a sports car for himself and a limo for the
‘business’, a wardrobe of clothes from the best design houses, and part shares
in a promising racehorse. He was seen
on the arms of starlets and models at fashionable clubs and venues, dined at
the best restaurants, drank the best wines.
After Irene there had been a
succession of blonde, shapely and biddable young women in his bed. Although he had a dream of finding the
perfect woman, he couldn’t get emotionally involved with any of them and each successive
relationship left him feeling more disconcerted and longing to meet a woman who
was his equal.
For intellectual companionship
he increasingly turned to Ciara. With
her he felt there was no need for him to maintain his façade of cool detachment
and the pair of them grew as close as they had ever been as children. Neither of them made any attempt to contact
their family; although they both kept an eye on what was going on through
mutual friends and contacts, they both admitted that they’d considered
themselves as orphans for years. When
his younger brother Jack lost his job, Patrick found him legitimate work out of
the state and he gave Niamh the money to buy a decent apartment when she
married her childhood sweetheart.
One Sunday afternoon Pat turned
up at Ciara’s apartment at a loose end.
He was rather surprised to see Bersani sitting in front of the TV screen
watching a major league game, but after raising an eyebrow at his sister he
merely acknowledged the man and took his glass of wine out onto the balcony,
where Ciara followed him.
He turned and smiled at
her. “How are things?”
“Fine,” she replied. “I sent you my weekly returns as usual.”
“Yes, I saw them this morning,”
he replied, omitting that it was at about
“I’m good.”
“And Bersani?”
“Danny and I… are friends. You
wanna make something of it?”
“No, but he’s a vicious killer,
Ciara.”
“And you’re not?”
“I’ve never killed anybody.”
“Pat, the man who orders the
killers is just as culpable as the men with the guns.”
“If there is an alternative
solution, I find it,” he retorted sharply.
Ciara laid a hand on his
arm. “Hey, I’m sorry, Pat; forgive
me? I know you do your damnedest to
avoid killing.”
“You should get out of this
business,” he said to her seriously.
“This isn’t the life for a decent woman like you.”
“This is my life and I’m resigned to it. Danny may not be a knight in shining armour, but I’m not sure I’d
know what to do with one of those even if I found one. Besides, he knows me for what I am and he...
he cares for me in a way that I know doesn’t rely only on my being the boss’s
sister. I need to have a man I can
trust to act as my bodyguard.”
“What makes you say that? There’s nobody going to take NYS5 from
me, I have made damn sure of that, and
while I’m around you’re perfectly safe.”
“Oh sure, no one can take it
from you, but that doesn’t mean you won’t give it away, one day.”
Pat shook his head, snorting with quiet laughter. “If you think you’re in too deep, what makes
you think I’m not? I know more about
the rest of the Syndicates and their bosses than you can imagine. It gives me some protection, true, but it
also makes me a dangerous man to anyone with a guilty secret or lofty
ambitions.”
“Sure; but this isn’t the life
you want, Pat, is it? You’re
restless. I don’t pretend to understand
why, or what it is you think the world beyond the Syndicates has to offer you,
but I recognise the signs.”
“I like a challenge, Ciara.” He
turned and rested his elbows on the balcony rail, looking across the park
opposite and added thoughtfully, “I don’t know what there might be out there,
either. But there has to be something
more than this.”
“You’ve made this the most
successful and important syndicate in the state – maybe the country – isn’t
that enough?”
He shook his head. “I don’t
think so.”
“You are worried, Pat, aren’t you?
Is it the police campaign? Is Fraser after you?”
He laughed. “Bring him on! I’m not scared of some Chicagoan tough.”
“Pat,” she exclaimed with
concern at this statement of bravado, “you better watch it! You might overreach yourself – even you
can’t take on the World Police Corps.”
“No; and I don’t intend
to. Besides, however good he may be,
Fraser’ll go for the obvious; he’ll be after the LA syndicates or
“How?”
“Slowly. Listen, Ciara, I’ve been setting up
companies, hiving off assets – paying for them, of course, so as not to attract
attention. In a few more months I’ll be
ready for the next ‘out-sourcing’ operation, and for that I’ll need your help.
The clubs, the legitimate ones, will be transferred to a holding company, which
will pay a fee to the Syndicate to manage them.”
“How’s that going to work?
Won’t the takings be less?”
He shook his head. “The profits will be split between the
holding company and the Syndicate, but as far as the Council knows, both of
those belong to me.”
“And do they?”
“At the moment, yes. But that’s where you come in. I want you to take over the holding company,
you and Bersani, if you want it that way.
You’ll no longer be a part of the Syndicate, but a legitimate
businesswoman. It will still be the
murky world of nightclubs and gambling, sis, but it will be the legal
one.”
“They’d come after us if we
left the Syndicate.”
Pat shook his head
briskly. “I have a deal coming to
fruition – a real estate scam. Part of
it involves transferring the clubs’ assets to the independent holding company
in exchange for more profitable sites – office buildings, retail stores,
warehouses – you know the type. It’ll
make millions for them, so they won’t take too much notice of what happens to
the clubs. And you and Bersani will be
out of the game; I doubt they’ll come after you for what they’ll see as old
fashioned revenue earners.”
“And what about you?”
“I have my own resources and
the day they offer me ‘early retirement’ I will be ready and willing to
go. I know I can make my way in the
world without them far more successfully than they can make theirs without me,
but by then, it’ll be too late for them to retrace their steps. Patrick Donaghue will be whiter than white
and no one – not even Fraser – will have anything they can pin on me.”
His sister looked at him
thoughtfully and sipped her drink to gain some time. Then with a nervous glance inside at Bersani, she said, “I
started working in this world when I was barely more than a kid, and I ‘m not
sure I could live any other way now; I’m in so deep. But you’ve never really been happy living this way, have you?”
Pat drew a deep breath and went
back to staring out into the street below.
Ciara moved to stand beside him, her arm resting against his in wordless
empathy.
“It isn’t what I wanted, or
expected,” Pat admitted speaking quietly and slowly as if he was trying to
formulate the right words in his mind.
“I hated the mundane world of a 9-5 job,” he admitted, “but I hoped the
excitement would come in some… legal way.
If I could have got into investment banking or finance – that sort of
thing – but one look at my resume and I was out without a hearing.”
“It wasn’t fair…” she murmured
in agreement, “you didn’t really commit a crime…”
“I had the misfortune to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time and to be too naïve to realise. I was – and always will be – grateful to
Gubitosi for saving my ass in jail – literally, in some ways – and I have to
admit there used to be a frisson of excitement whenever I pulled off a big
sting against those ‘oh-so-self-righteous’ bankers. But, now even that’s becoming commonplace. I need a challenge, Ciara, a new challenge,
to prevent myself becoming a stale, old hoodlum who thinks every problem can be
solved with a gun.”
“They won’t let you go,
Pat. They wouldn’t have let Gubitosi
either; for all that you meant the
offer of retirement. The Syndicates
have long memories and nothing is ever forgotten or forgiven.”
“That’s true – but they’ve
never come up against Patrick Donaghue before.” He grinned. “I’ll outwit
them, never fear.”
Ciara grinned at him: it had
been some time since she’d seen the spark of enthusiasm in his dark eyes. She hugged his arm.
“I’m sure you will, Pat.”
“Now, do you want to run the
clubs after they’re hived off?” he asked, getting back to important matters.
“Sure. I may not know much, but I can do that, and do it well. I promise you, whatever happens I’ll be
there for you, Pat.”
“And Bersani?”
Ciara glanced back at her
lover. “Not yet. Maybe, in time; but only when I’m good and
ready.”
“Good girl,” he said
approvingly. “Donaghues don’t need no
one to lean on.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Ciara
said.
Reaching for the wine bottle she filled their glasses and they
pledged allegiance to each other with a chink of crystal against crystal.
One morning, in the spring of
2066, Patrick Donaghue woke earlier than usual and glanced across at his
companion. He’d met her last night at a
cocktail party and knew her to be an aspiring young actress. She’d been honest enough to explain that she
was looking for a wealthy backer and as much publicity as she could get.
Her face – even in sleep – had
the unexceptional beauty of her ilk, although the arched eyebrows gave her a
look of perpetual astonishment and her plump lips were just a little too wide
for her face. Her cheekbones were high
and her chin narrow, while her nose was pinched, as if the skin was stretched
too tight. In a few decades she might
well look gaunt and much older than she was.
Her complexion was fashionably pale and her golden hair was long and
tousled.
“It’s a good job,” he thought, “I
believed she was a real blonde until we got down to that lacy underwear… I just wish I could remember her name.”
The encounter had been one of
mutual satisfaction – or she was a better actress than he gave her credit
for. He slipped from the bed, leaving
her sleeping, and went to the kitchen, via the bathroom.
The kitchen was probably his
favourite room in the apartment, especially in the morning when the sun shone
through the glass walls and gilded everything with its brightness. The coffee machine was humming quietly and
the freshly-squeezed orange juice inside the fridge door proved that Mrs Gomez
had already started work.
He chose coffee and took his
cup to the breakfast bar where the newspapers lay neatly arranged for his
perusal.
Mrs Gomez, his housekeeper,
knew his habits and was paid enough to keep her opinions about his choice of
lifestyle to herself. She would be out
shopping, or collecting his laundry, or any one of the hundred tasks she did
that made his life flow smoothly. He
knew he could rely on her to ‘clear up’ after him.
The Daily USA’s banner headline
screamed: WORLD GOVERNMENT DECLARES WAR ON TERRORISM!
“What? Again?” he muttered, as he picked it up and
read with cynicism how the World Government in Futura was about to launch a new
campaign against the forces opposed to their enlightened rule.
He flicked to the financial
pages and checked a few stock and shares, using his personal notepad-sized PC
to make a few calculations and email some instructions to his brokers. He glanced at the 62 emails waiting to be
read and replied to a few. The rest
could wait.
Then he read the sports
pages. Grimacing at the results, he
threw the paper down and finished his toast and coffee.
By the time he had showered and
shaved, the woman was awake.
“Hi, honey,” she purred, as he
emerged from the bathroom to dress.
“Hi there; do you want coffee
or juice?”
She pouted and patted the bed
beside her. “Come here, honey.”
“I don’t have time,” he
replied, trying to look suitably regretful.
“I have an early meeting downtown.”
She sat up, pulling the sheet modestly
over her breasts. “That’s a
shame.” She watched him dress.
“Please help yourself to
breakfast,” he continued. “Mrs Gomez
will be back soon; she’ll lend you a hand if you need anything.” He walked across and bent to kiss her,
slipping a wad of notes into her hand.
“Take a cab home and buy yourself a pretty new dress.”
“When will I see you again?”
she asked anxiously. He gave her credit
for not immediately counting the notes.
“I’ll call you,” Pat promised,
adding to himself, ‘when I can remember your name.’
“I’ll leave my number,” she
assured him.
“Sure thing.”
Pat heard the front door
opening and thanked God for his deliverance.
“Mrs Gomez,” he called, “send for my car, please.”
He kissed the young woman again
and put on his jacket, strapping a gold watch to his wrist as he made for the
door.
“Bye, honey,” he said.
“Bye, Patrick,” she answered
mournfully.
Mrs Gomez opened the front
door, handing him his briefcase and the newspaper as he approached.
“I’ll be home for dinner
tonight,” he told her, “alone.”
She nodded and closed the door
after him before taking off her coat and moving towards the bedroom to deal
with the ‘debris’ of yesterday’s evening out.
At the offices of ‘Pat Broke’,
he occupied the morning doing deals and dispensing advice. The brokerage had a small staff, all
legitimate, and because he paid well, they worked hard and ignored the rumours
that their boss was involved in the seamier side of the business. He usually devoted his evenings to the
Syndicate’s business preferring to keep his two lives distinct.
At about
The Syndicates had a fall-back
method of contacting each other, should the need arise, and Pat made a point of
checking every day to make sure there was nothing going on that he needed to be
aware of amongst the other branches of the organisation. The messages were inserted into a personal
small ad section of the World Government’s newspaper, ‘The Daily USA’, because
it was one of the few papers that covered the entire country.
He turned to the relevant page
and started to read down the list.
One ad caught his eye.
Donaghue, Patrick, son of
Callum and Rosaleen, last known of in New York. Will Patrick Donaghue please contact Mr Snow
at the Dewar Elf building in New York, where he will learn something to his
advantage.
There followed a telephone
number and a date.
Pat was intrigued. This wasn’t the usual format of the
Syndicate’s messages and Dewar Elf was not one of their fronts. The company was a reputable law firm, which
had branched out into other work for the World Government, and they were
squeaky clean. It was rumoured that
they did nothing but work for the WG, especially when the authorities didn’t
want their name directly associated with whatever scheme it was.
Pat chewed his sandwich and
pondered on the likelihood that this was some sort of trap. It was not inconceivable that someone in the
Syndicate was trying to set him up as a traitor by making it appear he’d sold
out to the authorities, although at the moment everything was remarkably
amicable amongst all of the bosses.
He felt the familiar surge of
excitement at the unknown provenance of the message. Even if this was a ploy by an ambitious rival, or even the World
Police Corps, he knew he’d have to investigate it to satisfy his own
curiosity.
On an impulse he threw the
sandwich down on the plate and slurped a mouthful of coffee before reaching for
his jacket. He wrote the phone number
on his wrist, where it was covered by his cuffs, and closed the newspaper,
leaving it on his desk, just as he always did:
nothing must indicate that he’d acted in any way out of the ordinary
because of the ad.
“I’m going out,” he told Miss
Maloney, as he walked past her desk.
“It’s too nice a day to spend it all cooped up in here. I may take the afternoon off, or I may be
back later. Not sure, as yet.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.
“Okay, Mr Donaghue. I’ll take any messages and email anything
important to you, as usual, shall I?”
“Yeah, if anyone phones, I’ll
get back to them.”
She watched him leave and
noted the time in her desk diary, before carrying on writing the latest report
on investment opportunities in the retail sector.
Pat took the subway and
doubled back around the city watching to see that he wasn’t being
followed. He wandered into a gadget
retailer’s premises and browsed the shelves before taking his selected
purchases up to the till. He paid cash.
It was a pleasant afternoon,
so it was no hardship to stroll into the park and buy a coffee from a vendor’s
stall, before finding an isolated bench that offered a good view in all
directions of the approaches.
There’s no point in taking chances, he reminded himself, as he opened his
carrier bag and drew out the reconditioned pay-as-you-go cell phone he’d
bought.
He dialled the number he’d
written on his wrist and listened to the slow ‘brrrurp’ of the call tone. He smiled when his heart skipped a beat as
he heard the call being accepted.
“Snow speaking. How may I help?”
“That’s for you to tell me,
Mr Snow,” Pat replied. “Something to my
advantage, that’s what you said.”
“Mr Donaghue?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thank you for calling. In the mail tomorrow you will receive a small,
padded envelope. It will contain a key
to a left luggage locker at Grand Central Station. Inside the locker will be a small briefcase containing details of
the offer I have been instructed to make to you.”
“Who instructed you?”
“Should you wish to accept the offer, you will find
instructions of where to go and when.”
“Who’re you working for?”
“I am aware of the nature of your business ventures
and of the need for caution and trust between potential associates. My security is as important as yours, so I
am not going to discuss this over a phone.
If, when you’ve read the documents, you have no further interest in
doing business, you will not hear from me again. Nor will you be able to trace me, so don’t waste your time
trying.”
“Why should I trust you if I
don’t know who you are?”
“Why should I trust you when I am perfectly well aware
of who you are? The choice is yours, Mr
Donaghue. Thank you for expressing an
interest; I hope we can do business.
Goodbye.”
“Wait!”
Pat glared at the cell phone
as the connection was closed.
“Damn-and-blast!”
He drew the sim card out and
tossed the handset into a trash can as he walked out of the park. He continued walking until he found a coffee
shop and slipped inside for a drink and a slice of cake.
‘Snow’ was obviously an alias
for someone acting on behalf of someone, or something, else. The only clue he had was that the advert had
mentioned ‘Dewar Elf’, but he was sure that even if he hacked into their
personnel files, he wouldn’t find the name there.
There was nothing for it but
to wait for the mail delivery tomorrow and fetch the documents from the rail
terminus.
For the first time in months,
he felt he was alive – and kicking.
Ciara Donaghue was busy in the
office of the headquarters of her small, but profitable, chain of nightclubs
and casinos. She was checking over the
accounts and doing a stock inventory before re-ordering essentials, but her
mind was only half on her task.
There was a knock on the door
and Danny Bersani walked in.
“Any news?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “No one’s seen him for the best part of six
days, Maxie.”
“I’m worried. It isn’t like Pat to disappear without
warning. Have you contacted the other
Syndicates?”
“Yeah; they ain’t seen him and
there’s no Council meeting scheduled.
His phone’s on voicemail, his e-mail’s got an ‘out of office’ and his
bed’s not been slept in – not even by a whore.”
Ciara frowned. “What’s going on, Danny?”
“I dunno; but you shouldn’t
worry. The other bosses, they need Pat
right now. They’re edgy about the World
Police – rumour has it that something’s going down… maybe in
“Sure, but if he disappears,
they’ll mark him as an absconder and there’ll be a price on his head,” Ciara
said fearfully. “I wish he’d call me.”
“He’ll be okay, I’m
thinking. There’s no flies on Pat
Donaghue. Look, maybe he’s working a
scam? He’s done that before now.”
“Not without backup.”
Bersani shrugged. “Don’t worry. He has enough on every boss to bring them down.”
“That’s exactly what does worry
me,” she said sharply.
The evening was at its busiest
when Ciara was called to the phone. She
went to her office, and removed one of her trademark diamond earrings to put
the receiver to her ear.
“This is Miss Maxie,” she
said. “What can I do for you?”
“Ciara,
it’s me – Pat.”
“Patrick! Where the hell are you?”
“
“What? What the hell are you doing in
“Ah,
you wouldn’t be believing me if I were telling you.”
Ciara relaxed slightly, Pat only
talked ‘Oirish’ when he was in a good mood.
He continued, “Listen, I have some things I need you to
do.”
“I can hardly hear you,” she
confessed, with a slight emphasis on the pronoun to remind him that the phone
might well be bugged.
“I’ll
email. Follow the instructions to the
letter. Understand?”
“Sure, Pat. I always do.”
“I
know, but these instructions might seem weird; however, my life depends on
this, Ciara. Don’t let me down.”
She reassured him and asked,
“When’re you coming back?”
“My
flight’s tomorrow.”
“Safe journey, Patrick.”
“Bye,
honey.”
The line went dead and she went
back out into the club to alert the security men to the fact that she would be
off the floor for a while. Then she
went back to the office and fired up her personal PC.
Patrick had given her this one,
loaded with security routines and firewalls of his own devising, for private
emails between them. She went through
the layers of security with the complex passwords and opened the email
account. True to his word, Pat had sent
instructions.
She read them through, concern
furrowing her brow and making her bite her bottom lip.
There were instructions to sell
shares, money to be moved to off-shore accounts and loans to be called in. Even to her it smacked of liquidating his
assets, and that spelt trouble.
Nevertheless, she did as he asked.
By the time Pat arrived back in
He went straight to the
club.
“What’s going on?” Ciara
demanded, as soon as he’d closed the office door behind him.
“I may have to cut and run –
and quickly,” he explained. “I heard
news in
“Where will you go?”
“I can’t tell you; the less you
know the better, but eventually I’ll be in Porto Guava.”
“
“So it is, but a
‘mosquito-ridden backwater’ without an extradition treaty with the World
Government.”
“I see. This is serious then? Are you going to warn the Council?”
“If I do that the police will
be here quicker than a twister. I
wanted to make sure you’re okay. That’s
the main reason why I came back. I’ve
transferred the sole rights to the clubs to you, from
Ciara put her head in her
hands.
Anxious to say everything he
felt he needed to, Pat continued, “Keep running them, Ciara, whatever the
police or the Council says. They’ll
install a new Syndicate boss in time, but you have the law on your side, so
don’t take any crap from him.”
“Who will it be?” she asked,
looking up at him.
He shrugged. “My guess is Frank Falconi; he’s capable but
not exciting. You’ll be okay with Frank
– he owes me plenty and he won’t rock the boat.”
“Pat…”
She looked so worried, he
hugged her.
“Listen to me: we may never see each other again, but I
will be in touch and you will always be able to reach me. I promise.”
She hugged him tightly. “I believe you. It seems like I’ve always underestimated you, Patrick.”
He smiled. “Everyone does, that’s my good fortune. Lull people into a false sense of security
and you’ll always have the advantage, that’s my motto, Sis.” She gave a weak smile and he added,
reassuringly, “I’m gonna be okay.”
She looked at him through
eyes that were suspiciously moist. “But
I’ll never see you again,” she whispered.
Patrick’s face grew sombre;
having lost meaningful contact with the rest of their family, they only had
each other and they’d grown close.
Accepting the sacrifice of losing Ciara from his life was a price he was
prepared to pay in order to move on, but he felt guilty that he hadn’t
considered it as a price she’d have to pay as well.
He found it impossible, in
the face of her misery, to be totally honest with her. “Not for a while, at least – but I… I mean,
I won’t to lose touch. Not ever. And it
is quite possible that I’ll be back… around… sometime. You mustn’t worry… whatever you hear about
me. Promise? I’ll be okay, and I’ll be doing what I want, and making a
difference – at last!”
She looked confused and he
realised that there was no way he could explain to her what he was about to
do. He accepted that to do so would be
to put her in jeopardy and he would never do that. He hugged her once more.
“Now… let’s get this show on
the road - for the last time.”
Two days later Bersani was
watching the TV news when he called Ciara across.
The broadcaster said:
Sources close to the World Police say that raids in
Ciara turned it off. She looked at Bersani and put her arm
through his.
“They’ll never catch
him. Pat’s too clever for them.”
Despite the underlying sadness and concern on her face, there was an
unmistakable pride in her voice.
He nodded. “I’m gonna miss him, you know. He was a good boss, played fair and did
right by his people. We’ll be lucky if
the next one is as good.”
“Yeah, but Pat thought about
that too and we’re out of the loop now, Danny.
We have a chance to go straight.
Whoever would’ve thought it?”
Bersani shifted slightly. He had more to worry about than Ciara – his
past was full of ghosts. “Yeah; we’ll
make it.”
She smiled at him and he saw
a ruthless gleam in her eye. For the
first time he was conscious of the similarity between her and her brother and a
shadow of doubt fell across his mind, shaking his confidence.
“You and me, together, eh,
Babe?” he said with false confidence.
Ciara’s smile broadened to a
grin.
Bersani’s confidence took
another plummet as he recognised a previously unsuspected iron fist in the
elegant velvet glove of her personality.
“It’ll be okay,” she
murmured, “I’ve learned from the best.”
Take care, little brother…
Three days later, Assistant
Police Commissioner Richard Fraser was assassinated in
The council of the American
Syndicates breathed a sigh of relief and thanked Pat Donaghue for his foresight
and timely warning. There was no proof that Donaghue was behind the
assassination - he was too smart for that - but they all knew that they hadn’t
done it, so who was left? It was a
shame he wouldn’t be here to enjoy the freedom a weakened Police Corps would
afford.
They agreed to reply to the
email from Donavan Plunkett, saying that they appreciated his offer of handling
their offshore financial transactions, and agreed to his terms.
On the airborne headquarters
of Spectrum, the World Government’s latest anti-terrorism force, hovering
40,000 feet above the
Author’s Notes
This story started as part of a series of
vignettes set around significant birthdays in the lives of the Spectrum
Captains. It sort of grew into a
back-story for Captain Magenta over time, and I was very conscious that I was
following in the footsteps of the marvellous stories by Sue Stanhope, which
chronicled the life of Patrick Donaghue in such exciting detail.
My story eschews such excitement and
concentrates on the essentially nice chap who becomes Captain Magenta. I have to admit, I never liked the
character much, but on reading the biographies about him, I have to say that I
grew more and more certain he couldn’t be the accident-prone, over-enthusiastic
clown he seems on the show. I hope this
story goes some way to redress the balance.
My thanks are due to my magnificent
beta-reader, Hazel Köhler. She is
ever-tolerant of my eccentric spelling and wayward punctuation. It goes without saying really, that any
mistakes still in the text are mine and mine alone.
My thanks also go to Chris Bishop, for the
continuing delight of her website and its associated forum.
Patrick Donaghue, Captain Magenta of Spectrum,
is one of the main characters in the TV show, Captain Scarlet and the
Mysterons™, which is owned by Carlton International and possibly other people
too numerous to mention. I know for
certain that the show was the brainchild of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, one in
the line of fantastic shows they produced in the 1960s. I have taken great delight in the show and
the characters ever since and I thank them for that tremendous gift.
It isn’t as easy for me to write now as it
used to be, due to changes in my personal circumstances, and I was beginning to
think I might never finish another story!
Therefore, I hope you enjoyed reading the story as much as I enjoyed
writing it.
Marion Woods
May 2010
Other stories from Marion
Woods
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