House Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

never repay the loan. The bar was called the Shamrock. The brothers desperately wanted to change the name of the place to McNulty’s — never mind where the apostrophe was supposed to go—but they never seemed to have enough cash on hand to afford a new neon sign.
    The Shamrock was the sort of place you see all over America in small towns and in the not-so-classy neighborhoods of large cities: twelve stools in front of a scarred mahogany-stained bar, the stools padded with cracked and split red Naugahyde; four wobbly tables with three or four mismatched chairs per table; a much-abused pool table with cushions so soft you couldn’t make a bank shot. Neon BUDWEISER and MILLER HIGH LIFE signs occupied the two small windows facing the street.
    The previous owner of the Shamrock had been a Boston Celtics fan, and three-decade-old pennants were thumbtacked to the walls, the pennants moldy and curling from age. Prominently and proudly displayed behind the bar was an autographed photo of Larry Bird, arguably the most famous white guy who ever played the game. Had it been Bill Russell’s picture, the McNultys would have removed it the day they bought the place.
    The other thing about the Shamrock was that the McNultys now owned the bar, free and clear. They’d initially gotten a mortgage with a little help from Sean, and struggled every month to make the payment, then a real miracle happened. This was a miracle on par with Moses parting the Red Sea, comparable to Lazarus rising from the dead. An unmarried uncle—and maybe the only McNulty in generations born with a brain in his head—made a lot of money during his lifetime, then died unexpectedly and without a will. The McNultys inherited a hundred and fifty grand from a man they barely knew and thought might be queer, and that was enough to pay off the mortgage on the decrepit, narrow, two-story building in a bad neighborhood in Revere.
    The Shamrock had a regular clientele of maybe twenty people, but most of the time there’d only be two or three customers in the place, old-timers with nothing better to do, alcoholics who went there because it was the closest place to home. The only time the Shamrock did a booming business was the day people got their Social Security checks and St. Paddy’s Day. The main reason the place stayed financially afloat, if just barely, was the McNultys had a lady named Doreen who was, just possibly, tougher than the brothers and she managed the place. To compensate for her irregular salary, they let Doreen live in the small apartment above the bar.
    But the McNultys were perfectly satisfied with the Shamrock the way it was—except for the sign over the door. It may not have been the grandest bar in Beantown, but it was their bar.
    Sean took a seat with Ray and Roy at the back of the main room, near a dartboard that hardly anyone used. The people who patronized the Shamrock rarely had the hand-eye coordination to throw a dart and hit a target. Sean had a draft beer in front of him that he had no intention of drinking; he could see a lipstick smudge on the rim of the glass even as poor as the lighting was. There was only one customer in the place, a guy in his eighties who’d gotten there when the place opened at eleven a.m. and he’d been sipping beer for four hours since then.
    Sean had dressed down for the meeting, wearing a wash-faded golf shirt, old jeans, and running shoes. The McNultys were wearing camo shorts with cargo pockets, white V-necked T-shirts that were tight on their bulging biceps and across their muscular chests, and high-top black tennis shoes without socks.
    â€œAbout the old lady,” Sean said. “You gotta back off her for a while. Just leave her alone. Don’t mess with the power or the air-conditioning or anything like that. Thanks to that fuckin’ Mahoney . . .”
    Sean had noticed—he couldn’t help himself—that when he was alone with the McNultys