Page 108 of Playing By Ear

“Nah, in the crowd.”

“You put on a disguise to watch me play?” He knew Martin had paid people to monitor him occasionally for security purposes, but this was a whole other level of intrusion. “Why?”

“Curiosity. Concern.” His father shrugged. “Pride.”

Jamie put up an instant emotional block against this attempt at manipulation. “Were you ever tempted to rip off your disguise?”

“It took everything in me not to show myself. There you were, all grown up, singing like an angel and working Wendy or Lisa like a wizard.” He side-eyed Jamie. “But I knew you didnae want to see me.”

“You know why I left home, right? It had nothing to do with me being gay.”

Martin nodded but wouldn’t meet his gaze. “It was cos of the firm.”

“Exactly.”

“But you were never in any danger from the polis.”

Christ, did his father really think that was the issue? Jamie had no more respect for the police than anyone else in the family did. “I wasn’t feart for my liberty, Dad, I was feart for my soul.”

He expected Martin to scoff, or to tell Jamie he’d got special dispensation from Father Borelli.

Instead, Martin just rubbed the twin gray streaks of his auburn beard, the streaks that flanked the space between lips and chin like guardrails. “You still believe in hell, Jimmy?”

“I believe in not hurting people. Not stealing. Not terrorizing.” His dry throat clicked when he swallowed. “Not killing.”

“You think it’s all so black and white?”

“I’m not simple-minded. If I couldn’t see shades of gray, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

His father nodded. “Did I ever tell you how it all started? With the firm?”

“Aye, you and Uncle Mickey were the first to do business with both Protestants and Catholics, and that’s how you got so big.”

“Before that. When we were lads. I never telt you.”

“I reckoned you filled in those aptitude quizzes at school and it came back ‘ruthless kingpins.’”

Martin didn’t take the banter bait. “You never knew your grandda.”

“He and Gran died before we were born. Or so you said.” The family had never visited their graves when Jamie was a lad, so he’d always wondered.

His father picked up another crisps packet. “Not him, not until a few years ago. I telt you he was dead so you and Bel wouldnae ask to see him.”

Well, this was interesting. “Was he in the jail?”

“Hah. If there was any justice in this world.” Martin scowled as he tried to open the packet of crisps. Jamie refrained from helping, knowing his aid would be rebuffed. “Your grandda left us after your Auntie Rosemary was born. Me and Mick were seven, Norma was four. Your gran took to the drink, until she was barely there herself. She was good-looking, so for a few years there were men who’d buy us food and clothes—for a price.” As he spat the last word, the packet came open with a pop. Three of the crisps tumbled onto the grass. “But the bottle made her old fast, and the men stopped coming round. When Mick and I were twelve, we promised Norma and Rosie they’d never end up like Ma.”

Jamie tried to resist the sympathy swelling within him. This hard-knocks story might be an exaggeration or even a lie. But why tell a tale the aunties could refute?

Martin continued. “A few years later, we were leading one of the Young Teams, and a couple of big Catholic firms were trying to recruit us. But me and Mick weren’t content to work our way up through the ranks. What was the point, if the way they did business was stupid? See, we had a dream of uniting all the Scottish firms, cos if we didnae stick together, the foreigners would pick us off one by one.” He shook his head. “Some joined us, but never all. Too much history. Most families had rivals they said they could never work with, the petty wee cunts. And what happened to them? Fought each other until they were so weak the foreign firms swallowed them whole.”

Jamie waited for him to continue, then said the truest thing that came to mind. “I wish I’d known him. Uncle Mickey.”

His father scratched his jaw fiercely, as if bitten by a midge, though it wasn’t yet the season. “As from today, I’ve been alive without him as many days as I was alive with him.”

Shit. Jamie’s mind leapt forward twenty-six years, when he would reach the same milestone with his father.

“Never thought I’d live this long,” Martin continued. “Thought for sure someone would—” He made a throat-slitting motion with the tip of his thumb. “Suppose I’ve been lucky.” He patted the mossy rock between them. “Mick and I came here to celebrate our first…well, call it our first victory.”