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airport failing an audition for the part of Airport. The jetway was on the fritz. The replacement bus took forever. Inside nothing worked. The ceilings were low, flickered, leaked. Cops, state troopers and National Guard milled. Frozen lines snaked across and into one another. Baggage came to the wrong carousel.
    Of course because it was St Patrick’s Day there was a festive air: bunting, green cardboard things on string, inappropriate drunkenness.
    He called Sean. Sean wasn’t available so he asked Mary to connect him directly to Michael Forsythe in Park Slope. He worked his way through a couple of flunkies before Michael came on.
    “Yes?” Forsythe said.
    “It’s your mate from Belfast.”
    “They told me. We were all looking for you last night.”
    “I didn’t want to be found.”
    “When you’re working for us you make yourself available,” Michael said coolly.
    “With respect, if you’ll allow me to correct you, from this morning, I’m working for you. Last night I was on my own clock,” Killian said.
    Killian and Michael came from the same world: self-improving north Belfast petty criminality. Michael knew the type and the angles. But more than that he knew Killian of old. He wasn’t going to out-argue him. Michael decided to let it go. “I just wanted to catch up, not a big deal. Where are you now?” he asked.
    “Logan.”
    “Good. Do you know the Fairmont Hotel?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Go to the concierge, I’ll fax you the address.”
    “Okay.”
    “You’ll need a car.”
    “It’s not in the city?”
    “No. The North Shore. You can drive, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Maybe I can get you someone, we’ll see.”
    “It’s not necessary.”
    “Call me if you have any problems, I’m anxious to get this resolved today.”
    “I can assure that one way or another this will be resolved in the next few hours.”
    “Good. The old lady’s coming back from Chicago this afternoon for our big Saint Paddy’s Day do and I’d hate to have to tell her that this eejit is still giving us shite.”
    “You won’t need to,” Killian said.
    “My people booked you a room if you want it, unless you’re taking the red-eye.”
    “I’ll see.”
    “Do your lot celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, Killian?” Michael asked in a friendly but borderline racist kind of way.
    People had a lot of crazy ideas about tinkers.
    “Of course we do,” Killian said. “In fact last night I was giving a wee lad in the Bronx your trademark spiel about the Trinity and shamrocks.”
    “How did that go down?”
    “Like talking to a wall.”
    “Aye. All right. Happy Saint Pat’s. Good luck, mate.”
    Killian hung up, grew thoughtful. He and Mike had met several times. The most memorable, of course, Christmas Eve 1992 when Michael had murdered his employer Darkey White while he and another couple of guards were humiliatingly out of commission.
    Killian had been outmatched then by Forsythe, who was his own age and in his own profession, but just so much better at it than he.
    Killian had quit New York after that and gone back to Belfast which had turned out to be good timing as the ceasefires had begun by then and the paramilitaries were moving into regular criminality. Everybody needed help for the brand new narco trade and Killian with his “New York experience” was a man in demand. Previously the IRA and UDA had killed drug dealers to prove that they were the legitimate defenders of the community, but after the ceasefires and the end of the Troubles, drugs became the vector for their boredom and ambition and by the mid-2000s narco trafficking and manufacture had become the paramilitaries’ primary raison d’etre .
    Killian had risen and got a reputation, initially as a heavy and then as a persuader, so that even a year after his retirement an “old pal” like Michael Forsythe could put in a call and get him to cross the Atlantic.
    Still he wouldn’t have come – Mike Forsythe or no Mike Forsythe – but for