It was a bad death. It bothers me to this day I was a part of it. I got to tell somebody, while I still got the breath in me.

This is what happened:

It was raining like hell, and after midnight. My bar was nearly empty. That winter was colder than a witch’s tit. Now, this was in the mid-1960s, so a lot of the regulars had crowded in to catch the Bears and the Packers play a grudge match. I had maybe two hundred and change in the till, not bad for back then, and I was feeling pretty good. The only one left by closing time was Tom O’Malley. He was dancing alone in the hallway, humming ‘Galway Bay.’ I knew Tom would try to slip out the door and stiff me for the tab, the prick. But then he’d be back tomorrow night with most of the cash and an apology. That was the way things worked back then.

Sean Moloney came blowing through the door like he was riding an evil wind. He was twenty-three, maybe twenty-four that winter. I’d known him since he was a lad. He was a good boy, Sean, that red-haired, freckle-faced kind of Irish. Sean was quick with a grin and loved to gamble, but no one would ever have taken him for a hard case.

“Patrick, I’m freezing my balls off,” he said. He was watching Tom dance.

“I’m not surprised,” said I. “You’re out on a night fit for idiots.”

“Tullamore Dew straight up.”

“Already pouring, son. Already pouring.”

Sean sat himself on the barstool, downed the shot glass of whiskey and rubbed his hands together. Tom O’Malley reached the high notes and left through the front door, still dancing all by his lonesome. Now we were alone.

Sean leaned forward suddenly. For the first time I noticed how pale he was, and sweating despite the chill. He seemed scared.

“You’ve got to help me, Patrick,” he said. “I’m in deep shit.”

“Why boy, whatever is the matter?” I stopped what I was doing and leaned over close to him, to listen to what he had to say.

“I got up to my ass in markers,” he says. “You know how it is. Jimmy Bones tells me I only got one way to square it up. I got to do him a favor.”

I shook my head and frowned. A favor for Jimmy Bones could land you a seven-to-ten stretch in Humboldt. Sean smiled like he thought this was funny, but we both knew it wasn’t.

“Exactly,” he said. “But what choice I got, Patrick? I’m into Bones for twenty large, and the vig is piling up. Sure, I say. Anything I can do to help out, Jimmy. I mean what else am I gonna do, right?” He didn’t need an answer.

“So Bones, he hands me over to O’Leary, but Michael don’t know what to do with me. He gives my name to somebody else. I’m told I should just stay home and wait. A week goes by, I’m wondering what’s the story?

“Finally someone calls and tells me where there’s this pay phone. Now I’m shitting bricks, you know? That I gotta go and stand in the fucking rain down at Chester and 45^th until somebody calls that number. Some guy I don’t know calls it, he’s got a real low voice. He says to be ready to be picked up by Rainbow Liquor in maybe fifteen minutes. I go there and wait. Car pulls up and the door opens like something out of a horror flick, right? Voice says I should get in, so I do.

“Patrick, I’m spooked, but I keep on thinking about that twenty large and how much I appreciate having my balls still attached to my body. This guy driving, he’s a scary mother. Real tall and thin, you know? Does his hair and nails like a broad. Nice suit, wearing on his ass what I paid in rent this month, right? But he’s got no color, like he ain’t seen the sun in a few years. I’m thinking he maybe just got out of the joint.

“I stick my hand out real friendly, and he ignores it. He says can I be a wheel man and a back up, and I say sure. I done that on a couple of jobs here and there. Patrick, don’t look at me that way. It wasn’t nothing big, just a supermarket now and again. I say what’s going on, and he don’t answer.

“We pull up in front of this beauty parlor, just as it’s closing. We watch all the fags pack up their hair dryers and kiss each other and split. Then we watch these two broads talk. One is pretty ugly, you know? Big hair, mouth full of bubble gum, see through blouse you don’t really want to see through. The other one, she’s okay. She’s a brunette. Maybe over thirty, but nice. Well dressed, good body with muscle tone. Like she hits the gym three, four times a week at least.

“I say are we knocking this joint off? This guys laughs at me. He thinks I’m cute or something. Patrick, he tells me were gonna hit somebody.”

I shook my head again and poured myself a drink. Sean nodded, and I gave him another. “Bad business, my boy,” I say. But he already knew all that and then some. I finished counting out my two hundred bucks where he couldn’t see them, folded the bills in half and sighed. I said: “Go on. What happened then?”

“My fucking heart is about to blow right out my chest, I’m so scared. Sweet baby Jesus, I never hit nobody and I don’t want to start now, but what am I supposed to do? Here’s one sin I won’t be confessing to Father Shayne, you know? I’m thinking what I maybe do is, he gets out to do the dirty deed, and I drive like a fucking bat out of hell for Vegas. I just leave his ass there. Take my chances in Nevada, see if my luck changes. But I know I do that and Bones will have my guts in a sandwich.

“The girl who’s kind of a dog, she comes out first, starts her car and screws around with her radio. The guy starts to get out the driver’s side, then he turns back. I feel something nail me in the gut. I look down and it’s a piece, one of those big 357. Magnum fuckers. I about piss myself.

“This guy says the pretty girl was out running in the park that weekend, and she ended up a witness to a hit. Some guy he whacked on account of Jimmy Bones. The girl, she ain’t done nothing wrong yet. Not gone to the cops, nothing like that. But she could identify him, she wanted to, and Jimmy Bones don’t like loose ends. So I should understand that this is urgent business.

“He gives me the gun. Anybody comes along to fuck with us, I’m supposed to take them out. Then he says I’m not here when he gets back, maybe Jimmy has me skinned alive and sold as fish bait down by the wharf. I nod, and man I don’t mind telling you I’m shitting bricks by now.

“He takes some rope out of his pocket, like some little kids jump rope, you know? Wooden handles at both ends. Then I see the rope, it’s got wire wrapped all around it, too. And it’s just long enough to drop around her neck from behind. He’s gonna yank once and hold on tight, and then that’s all she wrote.

“What am I gonna do, Patrick? I don’t want to help this asshole kill some broad, but Jimmy Bones scares me worse than God.

“The ugly girl drives off. The pretty one, she locks up the beauty parlor and comes out. I’m sitting in the car shaking, man. I think I’m gonna throw up. It hits me maybe I should honk the horn to warn her or something. I could say it was an accident, but I was just too chicken to do it.

“He starts walking up behind her like he’s out for a stroll. She’s not looking back, just walking along towards her car, swinging her purse. I’m dying inside, Patrick. Everything slows down, like when you get in a pile up on the interstate and something awful is gonna happen and you know it but you can’t do anything to stop it. He looks up and down the street. Nobody there. He drops that rope around her neck and starts to pull on it. I close my eyes.

“When I open them again, they’re gone.”

“Gone?” I say. I’m thinking about what Sean said about a wreck on the Interstate. Because now I can’t stop listening and I got to know what happened.

“Gone,” Sean says. “I get out of the car and try to decide what to do. I start over to where they were, and I see something I never want to see again in my life.”

“Saints preserve us,” I say. “What did you see?”

“I see this pretty women and she’s got her mouth open and her teeth clenched and her head up. It’s like she’s howling at the moon, except she’s not making a sound. She’s kneeling over him. He’s face down on the pavement, his neck bent back and she’s pulling hard as she can, finishing him off with his own damned rope. Blood starts going all over the fucking place, Patrick. I liked to puke.

“She stares up at me, the way a mean dog stares at you. Like you’re no big deal. Like he’s just wondering if you’re even worth coming down off the porch. She looks at the car and back at me. She sees I don’t raise the gun, and kind of figures things out. She gets up, dusts herself off and picks up her purse. I guess she ain’t packing heat, and I am. She shrugs and looks at me. She says this like I should know it anyway. She says: ‘Jimmy Bones don’t like loose ends.’ And then she gets in her car and drives away.”

 “Mary, mother of God,” I said. Sean Moloney laughed, but his voice was too high and thin. “The whole thing was to set him up,” he said. “She fucking hit the hit man, Patrick. Don’t that beat all?”

“What did you do with the gun, lad?” I ask.

“I threw it in the fucking river,” Sean says. “I’m no bad ass, Patrick, you know that.”

“I know, boy.”

I poured Sean another shot and he downed it. He said: “I’m a little short on cash right now.” He was slurring his words a little.

I waved him off and poured him yet another. “Take it for free,” I said. “There may not be enough whiskey in Ireland to wash away this night.”

“Amen to that, Patrick,” Sean says. He grabs my hand. I can feel him shaking. “You got to help me,” he says. “It’s late and I got nowhere else to go. I need money. I need to get out of town. I seen too much, you know.”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe you should go at that,” I say.

“Can you spot me a few bucks, Patrick?” Sean said. “I need to hitchhike to somewhere like Vegas, just start over. I need to be half way across the country before the sun comes up.”

“I didn’t have a very good night,” I lied. “I only cleared sixty and something.”

“Whatever you can do,” Sean said. “Anything at all.”

“It’s all yours,” I said. And I pressed some of the twenties and tens into his hand. Sean Moloney was so grateful he like to cried.

“I knew I could count on you, Patrick,” he said. He got up to leave. I handed him the rest of the fifth of whiskey.

“Take this with you, boy” I said. “It’s cold out there.”

He stopped a few feet away, big and freckled and smiling to beat the band. He was pretty drunk by now, feeling no pain. “I’m owing you, Patrick” Sean says.

“Maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe this will give me the fresh start I’ve been needing.”

“Maybe so, son,” I said. “As my sainted mother used to say: May the roads rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back and may the good Lord hold you in the palm of his hand forever.”

He smiled and left through the back door. I put the four hundred I had left into my shoe. I took my time packing up and closing down the bar. I never said a word to anyone.

 ***

When Sean Moloney turned up dead in the East River, people said the fool had gotten too drunk for such a rainy night. That somehow he got himself mugged and killed. I didn’t say anything. Even when that shoe box with a thousand dollars in it showed up at my door one morning, I didn’t say anything.

I only did what I was told. I gave the boy some money and all the liquor he asked for. That’s all. That should have been the beginning and the end of it. Because you see, nobody ever found out he’d gone and told me the whole story. If they had, I would have been in a body bag too.

But I never forgot.

I let that kid walk out into the night, all drunk and feeling good. I sent Sean right into the back alley, where she was probably waiting for him.

Jimmy Bones don’t like loose ends.

Copyright(c) 2003 by Harry Shannon