We Were Kings Read Online Free PDF Page B

that it was carrying guns, possibly other contraband, for the IRA. We had the whole harbor locked down.”
    “Sounds like you didn’t find out what they were carrying. Did they figure you?”
    “They sure did—they knew we would be waiting and came in sometime last night instead. We found the boat empty, tied up at Ross Wharf. The harbormaster said he had no records of it coming in. We know it’s from New York but we’re still trying to find out who the owner is.”
    “And no one saw any of its crew leaving the docks?”
    “We think someone might have, but that someone is dead. We’ve got a body but no ID yet. They tarred and feathered him, shot him in the head, and left his corpse tied to the Charlestown locks.”
    Owen picked up his cigarette from the ashtray and sucked on it.
    “What’s the meaning of that?” Dante said.
    “It means,” said Cal as he finished his whiskey and signaled the barkeep again, “that he was a rat, an informer, or at least they believed he was.”
    “Yeah, that’s exactly what it means.” Owen ran a hand through his hair; some color had returned to his face with the whiskey.
    Dante frowned. “The IRA in Boston? I’ve never heard of it.”
    “Neither have I. Not since my father’s day, anyway. And it worries me—if there’s a boat that was supposed to be going somewhere and it doesn’t get there and the IRA’s involved…”
    “There’s going to be payback—but do you really think they’re that organized? Aren’t they mostly just shooting at their own or blowing themselves up?”
    “Some of the Feds I talked to seemed to think so, say that they’ve seen more and more arms being smuggled out of the country to Ireland in the last six months, that something is about to happen. Which is the last thing we need here. The town’s a powder keg already with every gangster and his brother thinking he’s the next Blackie Foley, all trying to get a piece of what he left behind.”
    Dante and Cal exchanged a look. It had been two years since any of them had mentioned Blackie’s name, although whenever they saw one another, the weight of the thing left unsaid was like a tenuous chain that bound them all—that and Sheila’s daughter, Maria. After Blackie’s death, Sully had taken back some of his dealings and territories that, over the years, his general had gradually adopted as his own, and for the first year, with Shaw at his side, Sully had seemed like the Sully of old, a force to be reckoned with, someone not even the mob or the new gangs emerging in Roxbury and Chinatown would mess with. But in the past eight months, his mind had begun to deteriorate—he was suffering from the early onset of dementia—and with his mind went his ability to manage the town. Now, on the days when he could remember who he was and he wasn’t shitting himself, Sully ran everything out of a nursing home in Dorchester, up on the hill, in Mount Bowdoin, above Ronan Park, with Shaw as his errand boy, and the only thing he seemed to care about was clean sheets.
    “We’ve had twelve murders in the month of June,” said Owen. “You know the last time we had a number like that? And that’s just in Dorchester, Southie, Roxbury, and Charlestown. And now the Italians are pushing in as well, which doesn’t help any.”
    “They must have unloaded the cargo in a hurry,” Cal said, “which means they most likely transported it somewhere local. They’ll need to find another way to get it to where it was going.”
    “Probably,” said Owen. “Although they might always have had a contingency plan. Our tip-off thought it was a done deal, but someone else already had the get on us.”
    “And on him,” Cal said. “You think this dead guy on the docks is the rat, your informant?”
    “We don’t know—that’s the thing, we don’t know much of anything right now. I have to wait for an ID on the body and for the registry on the boat.”
    “That’s some birthday present,” said