The man nodded.
The chill in the air seemed to blow through her bones.
He said, “I’ve learned a lot about Charlie in the past several days. A lot I couldn’t have known before our paths crossed. He was just a regular guy, but a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, working the wrong job for the wrong employer when the wrong thing was done to the wrong person.”
Softly, with apprehension and no small amount of confusion in her voice, she said, “Aye.”
“I’mthe wrong person,” he said, confessing, it seemed, to the murder of her husband.
Deirdre did not speak. She could tell he wanted to talk, so she decided to let him. Still…her hands shook now. Her body shivered.
The American said, “He got me good.” He touched his breast. “Right here. Any other day, he’d have been the one walking away from that encounter, not me.” He shrugged. “I had a vest.”
When he said nothing else, she finally found the words. “You had to kill him. That it? Youhadto fight it out with Bulgarian mobsters, couldn’t have stayed home in America and watched the telly, gone to work in an office, paid yer taxes, and raised yer bloody children like the rest of the world? You’se sayin’ it wasn’t your fault, that you was forced to pick up a gun and go swinging it around a nightclub full of gangsters.
“You justhadto. That yer story, yeah?”
A long exhale, nearly silent, came from the man; his body slowly deflated with it. He looked to Ronan, then back to Deirdre. He said, “It won’t make any sense to you. It won’t change a thing. But…yes. I went there with a purpose, a purpose I believed in. Still believe in. Everything after that, everything that happened to those men. To your Charlie…it wasn’t my plan, but I know that what I did, in the end, did manage to make a—”
She shouted over him. “Why the feck are you here? You can’t be so daft to think I’m gonna believe ya, gonna forgive ya. Sure, if you need me to beg for the life of me boy, for me own life, I’ll get down on me bloody knees, but there’s nothing else I have that you could possibly want, so why don’t you feckin—”
“I told you I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I just need to find your father-in-law.”
She pulled swirling locks back over an ear. “I’d have thought it would’ve been’imtryin’ to findyou.”
“That’s already happened. He came to America. A lot of people have died because of it. I need to put an end to this.”
“End it by killing Campbell Coyle, ya mean?”
The American shrugged. “End it, one way or the other.”
“ ‘One way or the other’ won’t bring my Charlie back.”
The American shook his head now. “No. It won’t do anything like that.”
“And an old man’s vengeance on you is not my problem, is it?”
“It’s not about vengeance with your dad.”
“He’s not my da. He’s my dead husband’s da. He’s Campbell bloody Coyle to me, when I’m not calling him ‘that eejit son of a bitch.’ ”
She cocked her head. “But…if it’s not about vengeance, what’s it about, then? All the killin’ you say he’s done?”
The American said, “It’s about this little innocent guy right here. Campbell has it in his head that someday, in eighteen years, maybe, your little boy is going to pick up a knife or a gun and come looking for the American who killed his father. I thought it was insane when Campbell told me this a few days ago. Now…now things have changed. Now I feelexactlywhat Ronan might someday feel.”
Deirdre scoffed. “My Ronan won’t be a Coyle. He’ll be a McDermott, just like his ma, as soon as I get me maiden name back.” She added, “He won’t know about the legacy of murder and depravity and foolishness on his da’s side.”
The man said, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You raise that kid right, not the way I was raised, not the way Campbell was raised, Charlie was raised. You raise him pretty much any other way, and none of us have anything to worry about.”
“I plan on raising him right.”
“I have money. If you need—”
“I don’t want yer money. I have a job now. I pay me bills.”
“But I can help.”
“You’ve done yer damage. There’s no makin’ up fer it.”
