Flawless(51)

“No. Never. That was the thing—say nothing. Not to your girl, your mother or the priest in the confessional. That was the agreement we had.”

“Okay, let’s try another angle. Where did you meet to plan your jobs? Where did you talk about what you were up to?” she asked. “Did you meet in public? At someone’s apartment?”

“The gym, sometimes. Franchise place downtown on Broadway. They keep the music too loud for anyone to overhear. And other places, too. Bars and restaurants. Never the same one twice. At the end of a haul, we’d pick a place to meet next.”

“You’re sure no one breathed a word to a girlfriend, a sibling, a mom or dad, a best friend?” Kieran asked.

“We’re all each other’s best friends,” Sam said gravely.

“If you think of anything at all, will you ask someone to get hold of me?” she asked him.

“Will it help me get a shorter sentence?”

Kieran couldn’t answer that.

Eagan spoke up. “It might. It might also be the decent thing to do, since people are dying. The victim was practically a kid, nice girl, twenty-two years old.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I’ll make sure I get ahold of you,” he said huskily.

“Sam, can you do something else for me?” Kieran asked.

“Yes.”

“Make a list of all the places you guys talked. Every place you can remember.”

“Will do. Without asking for anything,” he said quietly.

Sam Banner was taken out and Robert Stella was brought in. The questions were the same, and the answers were just the right amount of slightly different to assure Kieran that Robert Stella was just as perplexed, and that the men hadn’t planned or rehearsed what to say if they were caught. She asked him to write up the same list of places, hoping he might remember at least one Sam had forgotten.

Next up was Lenny Wiener. Everything went the same way with him, too.

Last in was Mark O’Malley. He looked at Kieran and shook his head. “You’re back.”

“I am.”

“I know that you’re the one who clocked my buddy in the van,” he told her.

“It seemed necessary,” she said.

“Pretty good hit.”

“I have three brothers.”

He grinned at that. “Irish women. They’re tough, huh?”

“Irish-American,” she said.

“It’s all the same. Something of the old country comes with us,” he said. “I wasn’t born there, but my mom...what a tyrant, God rest her soul.”

Kieran smiled. “I think mine was an angel. I was just ten when she died.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he frowned, looking at her. “Finnegan? You any relation to the Finnegans that run that place down on Broadway?”

Kieran felt a strange, creeping sensation shiver through her and tried to keep her unease out of her expression. She wasn’t sure why she felt so uneasy. The pub was well-known, so it wasn’t a crazy question, and yet...

“Family owned,” she said.

He nodded and looked away. “Cool place,” he said. “Real Irish bands—or at the least bands playing actual Irish music. Not everyone brings in the real thing anymore.” He looked at her and grinned.

“So you’ve been to Finnegan’s?” she said, filled with tension.

“Just a few times.”

“Is it by any chance one of the places the four of you met to plan a job?”

“No, no. We were there once, but just celebrating. I’d been before, and I brought the guys with me. Just for the music, you know?”

Apparently even jewel thieves loved good music.

“So where did you do your planning?” she asked him. “Tell me what you can remember, but I’m going to ask you to write down anyplace you can remember for me, too.”

“Sure,” he said, and he looked up at Eagan. “It’d be nice if maybe that helped us at trial.”

Eagan glared at him.

“Whatever!” Mark said, taking the hint and shutting up. “Offhand...” He paused to think, then rattled off the names of five restaurants, three dives and two expensive places.

It was time for the guards to take him away. When he was gone, Kieran sat silently at the table for a minute.

“Thank you, Miss Finnegan,” Eagan said, joining her. “I think they talk to you more easily than they would ever talk to an agent.”

She nodded.

“You’re upset,” he said.

She looked at him. “They’ve been to Finnegan’s.”

He smiled and sat down across from her. “You know, most New Yorkers have been to dozens of restaurants at least once.”

“You’re not concerned.”

“He said that they didn’t do any of their planning there,” he reminded her.

“But...what if they did say something? Anything? Any little thing?” She hated the thought of Finnegan’s being involved in any way. Hated to think what an investigation of the pub might turn up about her brothers.

“Then whoever the killers are, they could have followed them out and kept an eye on them from there. But most likely they overheard them somewhere else,” Eagan said.

“You’re just trying to make me feel better. And I know now you’ll have to investigate Finnegan’s up the wazoo,” she said softly.