Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

I looked at Michael. “So much for Mr. Fitz’s bad racing luck.”

I stepped closer to Manny so I could keep my voice down. “Manny, I need something else, and you better put your heart into it. Marty Trait wasn’t doing this on his own. Who was in it with him? Give me anything.”

There was silence, but this time I knew Manny was thinking, not stalling. Finally he whispered, “There’s a guy comes out to the stables about once a week. Big Cadillac. Marty always drops everything to talk to him. They go out behind the stable a few minutes. Then he leaves.”

“You ever hear a name?”

“Yeah. He got a phone call one time on the stable phone. I heard the guy who answered the phone call him Paddy Burke.”

On the drive back into Boston, Michael called Mr. Devlin. He filled him in on the events of the day and asked if he’d ever heard of a Paddy Burke. I heard Mr. Devlin make a low, slow whistle.

“We’re into the big time, gentlemen. Paddy Burke is a lieutenant, a capo, whatever the Irish equivalent is, of one Seamus Doyle. Mr. Doyle is one of those people who never seem to go to jail, but any kid in South Boston can tell you he’s the big shot in the Irish Mafia. It gets worse. Rumor, for what it’s worth, has it that he’s connected with the worst element of the IRA. They say he’s into fundraising for munitions. This is not someone to take lightly.”

Mr. Devlin was right about the Irish Mafia part. I’d been hearing the name Seamus Doyle for years around Southie. I’d never had the pleasure of meeting him, nor wanted it.

By the next day, I had the skeleton of an idea. While Michael and Mr. Devlin handled the legal moves, I figured that I’d tend to the personal side. It started with a visit to Mr. Fitz.

When he walked into the visiting room at the lockup, I thought I was looking at his father. He’d aged about a generation. I think it brightened him a little to see someone from the stable.

I spent the first ten minutes bringing him up to date on what we knew so far. He seemed pleased to hear that there was a team out there that believed in his innocence. It was counterbalanced by the shock of knowing that he was betrayed by a man he’d trust with his life, Marty Trait.

The real setback was when I told him that Marty had gone over to the camp of Seamus Doyle. In a way, though, it put fire back in the furnace. He seemed willing to give in to defeat until I mentioned Doyle’s name. The despair was consumed by anger and the will to fight back.

“Doyle has been after my stable of horses, Billy. We started this losing streak about four months ago. It got so bad that I had to borrow money to keep it going. The banks aren’t interested in a racing stable as collateral. I finally went to Doyle. I thought we’d pull out of it and I could pay him back, but it just got deeper. He started a couple of months ago offering to buy me out and cancel the debt. The amount he was offering was a joke, but the more races we lost, the less the stable was worth. I still had a little cushion, but that last race ate it up.”

That was the moment I decided to lay out my idea. In any other state of mind, he’d never have gone for it. I explained it as well as I had it thought out at that point.

Mr. Fitz’s jaw was set, his back was rigid straight, and he was back in his own generation when he said, “Billy, do whatever you think is right. You’ll have my backing.”

I got up to leave fast before he had a second to think of what I’d be doing. It wasn’t fast enough. I was nearly to the door when he called, “Billy, wait. I can’t let you do it. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. They could hurt you worse than you think.”

I came back to the table. “I’ve thought of all that, Mr. Fitz. I’ll stay out of danger. I guarantee it. The course is set now. And it’s the right course. We can’t go backward.”

That held him long enough for me to reach the door. I was through it before I could look back into those moist eyes that were filled with more conflicting emotions than he could handle.

The next stop was the one that counted. I, and everyone else in South Boston, knew that Seamus Doyle held court in a tavern that he owned on D Street called The Shamrock, wouldn’t you know? It was eleven o’clock in the morning when I walked through the door. A few of the town’s early drinkers were decorating the bar. The other five spread around the tables were sober, old-country Irish, and large. From this jockey’s point of view, they were enormous. I decided not to fight my way in.

I walked up to the one who seemed to have the most intelligence, which did not necessarily make him a candidate for Mensa, and announced that I was there to see himself.

“And would he be expectin’ ya?”

“I doubt it. Tell him two things. I’ve come from Mr. Fitzroy, and I’m here to make his day.”