Deadly Diamonds (31 page)

“I do. You're a gem, Mr. Phelan. You'll hear from me.”

We were out of Doyle's and going from a jog to a full run down the sidewalk. Seamus was in the lead. “Keep up, Michael. This'll be faster than a cab this time of night.”

We arrived at the pedestrian bridge across the river that cuts Dublin in half called the Ha'penny Bridge. When it was built in 1816, the price of half a penny was well spent to get from the south to the north side of the river.

At close to midnight on an early week night in the chill of winter, there were not even stragglers on the bridge. We had apparently beaten Kevin's cab to the spot.

Seamus took command. He found me a bench on the south side of the river where a light pole hid me from the view of anyone on the bridge. He gave me the “Sit. Stay.” sign. I did.

An occasional glimpse around the pole was all I needed to see Seamus stagger like a sot in his cups, his coat flapping in the wind, to a point a third of the way across the bridge. He swayed precariously by the side rail of the bridge, and dropped to the floor. It was the perfect performance of a drunk passed out cold.

He had an audience of three. When he was nearly at the passing out point, a cab pulled up on the south side. There were two passengers. I couldn't make them out in the dark. One of them got out of the cab. They exchanged a few words, and the cab drove off with the other.

The man on foot began moving slowly across the bridge. When he passed the drunk, he glanced down, but he scarcely bothered to interrupt his pace.

At about the same time, another solitary figure began the crossing from the other side. The second man walked with a more deliberate step to the center of the bridge. He stopped and leaned against the rail. In the dim light, the only thing I could tell about him was that he was a man of color.

He pulled the lapels of his coat up around his neck against the river wind that had blown up. I could see his head rotate from side to side inside of the collar, scanning both sides of the bridge. When he could make out the features of the man approaching from the
south, he turned to face him full. I heard him call out a name. I couldn't make it out. The first man made no response.

They were now thirty feet apart. They appeared to be looking into each others' faces. There was nothing but silence between them. When they were twenty feet apart, I heard the man of color call out a name. This time I heard it. “O'Byrne!”

There was no response. They were fifteen feet apart. Another call. The white man was walking at that same deliberate pace directly at him. Still no response.

My heart began to pound. I began running toward the center of the bridge. Apparently Seamus sensed an internal alarm at that same moment. In a flash, the drunk was on his feet. He ran like a cat. There was not a sound.

The two men facing each other were now two feet apart. I saw a brief glint of reflected light. The mouth of the black man suddenly sprang open in a look of terror.

I saw Seamus at full speed leave his feet. He sprang straight out in a flying tackle that sent him and the white man tumbling one over the other across the floor of the bridge.

They rolled to a full stop against the wall. An instant later, Seamus broke his grip. He got to his knees. I could see a knife in the hand of the white man thrusting toward Seamus's midsection. I thought it struck solid flesh, but it seemed to have no effect.

Seamus jumped to his feet. He grabbed with both hands. Each hand clamped like a vise onto a clump of the white man's clothing. In a burst of power born of violence, Seamus hoisted the flailing body of the white man above the rail of the bridge and cast him headlong into the river below.

I was close enough at that point to see one last thing. As the body hurtled end over end toward the black rushing water, an instant before submersion, I saw the face. It was not the face of Kevin O'Byrne. It was the face of his classmate, Chuck Dixon.

I didn't know which wounded man to go to first. Seamus was leaning over, supporting himself on the bridge rail, panting for
breath. He nodded to the other. The black man was down on his back, clutching his shoulder. I went to him first.

“Mr. Walker, I'm a friend. Where are you hurt?”

He looked up into my face in disbelief. He looked over at the man who had rescued him. He must have assumed we were together and believed me. He pulled opened his coat. I could see blood streaming from an open wound in his left shoulder.

I ripped open his shirt. There was a handkerchief in my pocket that I used to cover the wound. I took his right hand and put it on top of the handkerchief and told him to press hard. He did.

I ran to where Seamus was beginning to sway back and forth. This was no feigned drunkenness. I grabbed him under the shoulders and slowly lowered him to the ground.

“Where is it, Seamus?”

He pointed to the side of his abdomen. A flow of blood made the point of entry of the knife certain. I ripped off a piece of my shirt and pressed it against the wound. Seamus knew what to do from there.

I dialed the emergency number for an ambulance on my cell. While we waited, I could hear Seamus mumbling. “Damn. I am losing it. When that little pissant juvenile delinquent can stick me, it's time to retire.”

I relayed the information to the emergency phone worker. While I waited for the ambulance, I passed from one to the other to tell them to keep the pressure on.

Seamus never heard me. I could hear him mumbling. “I'll retire. I'll buy a farm in Kerry. Maybe I'll raise some damn sheep.”

It was two thirty a.m. by the time the two wounded had been treated in St. James's Hospital. Mr. Walker was the more serious. The report was that he'd need a few days in the hospital before release.

I suspect that Seamus was worse off than he let on. He insisted on settling for a stitching of the open wound in his lower abdomen. The two of us dropped in on Mr. Walker before leaving.

We briefly exchanged and melded the information we had on the
location of the diamonds. Mr. Walker shared with us in more personal detail why he needed the diamonds and the cash they'd bring. It was easy to see how he'd won the allegiance of Declan O'Connor.

As Seamus and I walked to the front door of the hospital, we shared our conclusion that the diamonds were with Kevin O'Byrne. It was equally clear that he was on his way to make a deal for their sale with the diamond merchant in Antwerp that Declan O'Connor had given him.

“What's your plan, Michael?”

“Who says I have a plan?”

“That look in your eye. The pace you're movin'. I know more about you than you think. I didn't stay alive this long without learnin' what makes the likes of you tick.”

“The ‘likes of me'?”

“Aye.”

I stopped and looked at him. “Okay, Doctor Freud, if you can see into the mind of ‘the likes of me,' what's my plan?”

He looked me dead on. “You're going to be on the next plane to Antwerp. You'll hunt down this pissant O'Byrne. You'll pull off some whacky-ass stunt to get the diamonds from him. Then you'll fly back here and give them to that poor wretch up there in the hospital bed. All of that, I suppose, if you don't get your bleedin'-heart ass shot off in the meantime.”

“If you knew all that, Mr. Burke, why the hell did you ask?”

“I don't know. Just to hear you say it.”

He started walking toward the door. I caught his arm. “And just what are your plans for the immediate future?”

“You should know. It's damn little choice I have, isn't it?”

“The hell. You can go back to Dublin and drink Guinness. I thought you were going to raise sheep.”

“Ah, damn the sheep. I'd die of boredom.”

“Then what?”

“Antwerp. What else?”

“Why you? This isn't your fight.”

“Why me? Because who else is going to be there to wipe your ass
for you when you get yourself into another fine mess, as you like to say?”

I grinned at him. “You're a phony, Seamus Burke. You like to sound like a flippin' Irish tough guy, but in here, you're soft as a mushroom.”

I walked off toward the door. He caught up. We hailed a cab and rode back to the hotel in silence. We planned to meet at breakfast in the dining room the following morning at seven for what could be a busy day. As we walked through the lobby toward the elevator, I heard him mumble in my direction. I could just make out the words.

“The hell I am.”

“The hell you are what?”

“The hell I am soft as a mushroom.”

He started me laughing. Maybe it was the tiredness, but I couldn't stop. By the time we reached the elevator, he couldn't stop laughing himself, even as he was grabbing at the fresh stitches.

“Have it your way, Seamus. Tomorrow, seven a.m. sharp.”

It was shortly before seven in the morning when we were both wading into a full Irish breakfast. It left us just time to catch a ten o'clock plane to Antwerp.

Before checking out, I called Declan O'Connor. He was pleased to give me the name and address of the diamond merchant he had mentioned to Kevin O'Byrne. He was pleased, I think, because it meant to him that some slim hope was still alive that the diamonds would get into the right hands.

Kevin had also asked him for a hotel recommendation. If he followed it, we had another advantage. We needed every break we could get.

The last thing I did before leaving was to take the first step in what Seamus would tell me more than once was, as he predicted, a “whacky-ass” plan.

I called a number I knew by heart from previous adventures. I was, as usual in these circumstances, delighted and relieved to hear on the other end the sleepy voice of my Harvard classmate—Harry Wong.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Harry Wong and I go way back. I got my first good look at that six-foot-plus Chinese beanpole from an odd angle. He was my freshman teammate on our house wrestling team at Harvard College. Since we were both from a more irregular lineage than the ultrawhites who made up the rest of the team—Harry being originally from China, and my mother being a purebred Puerto Rican—the coach avoided unnecessary disharmonies and looks askance by pairing the two of us for practice bouts. My first real look at Harry was a squinting side view from flat on my stomach with him pinning me to the mat.

We became close friends through those four years of college. The friendship has only deepened through the years, in spite of the fact that we seldom see each other more than twice a year. One of those happy times is annually at the Thanksgiving table of my mother. She prepares her Puritan specialty of arroz con pollo, and Harry brings that old Pilgrim favorite, wonton soup.

I'd forgotten the time differential when I called Harry. Consequently, I pulled him out of a deep sleep in his bachelor apartment at MIT. The effect was favorable. Being unable at that hour to fathom what all the babbling about diamonds and gangsters meant, he simply said yes to my request.

Seamus and I flew into Antwerp to coincide with the arrival of Harry's plane. The three of us checked into the Leopold Hotel in the center of the city, across from Central Park. The Leopold had three golden features. It was an outstanding hotel; it was a short walk from the concentrated triangular diamond district bounded by Schupstraat, Hoveniersstraat, and Rijfstraat, and it was a fair distance
separated from the Astoria Hotel where, according to Declan O'Connor, our target, Kevin, had taken up residence.

Harry, Seamus, and I met in my room immediately. I brought Harry up to speed on what had brought us there. He had his usual reticence about his part in one of my plans that could, in his words, get his Chinese neck wrung like a chicken by people he didn't want to know. As usual, I salted the conversation with a subtle, demur implication that if he were doing the asking, I'd be the first one in the starting blocks. That always brought him around. He was gracious enough never to mention that, given the difference in our lifestyles, it was highly predictable that he'd never have occasion to ask.