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I looked out over the harbor. There were many parts of this job that didn’t sit well with me, but I did them anyway. After my cousin’s death, I owed the family big time. It was my actions that had put Aiden in the ground, so while I couldn’t bring him back, I could at least protect my family and the good people in our community. If the trade-off was leveraging my soul with the blood on my hands, then so be it.
“Those things will kill you,” Alfie said as I lit the cigarette I'd bummed off him earlier.
“It’ll either be this or a bullet, and this is by far more pleasurable,” I said.
“Well ain’t you a ray of sunshine.”
“You know me.”
“Yeah. I do.” Alfie sat on the fender and knocked his shoulder into mine. “That’s why I’m out here checking on your miserable ass.”
I scoffed. “You just don’t want to get blood on those pretty new shoes of yours.”
“That, too. Mostly that, actually.” Alfie stuck out a toe, admiring the way the harbor lights reflected on the soft Italian leather. “These things are a lot prettier that your ugly mug. Better at conversation, too.”
I barked out a rare laugh, and Alfie grinned at me like he’d won some kind of a prize. He was always on to me to lighten up, and in a way, I wish I could. Not necessarily devoid of all morals and standards like Tommy, but just…able to shrug things off a little easier. Sometimes it felt like the weight of my past was going to crush me.
“How many did we lose?” I asked.
Alfie was our Master-at-Arms. He had a finger in every pot, an ear on every sidewalk. He kept records of people, collected information from reconnaissance teams, ran background checks, and held contraband. He had a head for numbers and a brilliant mind that was utterly (but proudly) wasted. “Three, but the other two just have flesh wounds. Doc’s taking a look at them, now.”
Since the “Doc” Alfie referred to was a retired veterinarian, I sincerely hoped for those men’s sake that a flesh wound was all it was. “Who’d we lose?”
“New guys.” Alfie folded his arms. “We lost the guns, too.”
“Bloody hell.” Three men down and an entire shipment lost.
“You got that right,” Alfie agreed. “Moretti knewexactlywhen that shipment would be arriving, and they got the drop on us. Our guys never stood a chance.”
My jaw clenched in frustration as Johnny’s warning came back to me. It looked like we indeed had a mole in our ranks.
The wetthudof wood hitting flesh followed by a garbled scream made us turn. Tommy had worked his way up to the bat. I snuffed out my cigarette and led the way back into the warehouse where the interrogation was quickly coming to a close.
Alfie made a face. “Jesus, Tommy…what a mess. I think he’s had it.”
Gordie had seen better days. The right side of his face was a grotesque, swollen mass, and the gurgling wheeze when he breathed indicated he wasn’t much longer for this world. I didn’t feel bad for him. Gordie was a two-timing, greedy rat who, in addition to running guns for us, was dealing blow to kids behind the high school. The latter might have cost him a broken arm or a kneecap, but betraying us to Moretti? That would cost him everything.
“Who is your contact, Gordie?” I asked quietly. “I know about the mole.”
Next to me, I felt Tommy and Alfie go still. There was a brief flicker of something in the one eye of Gordie’s that wasn’t glued shut, so Tommy slapped him in the ear. Hard.
“Gah—I don’t know his name, I swear! All I’d ever get was a c-couple texts, telling me what to pass and when. If you’ve got my phone, then you know I’m telling the truth. I never met ‘im face-to-face!” Gordie started crying. “Please, you’ve got to believe me.”
He tried to lift his head to look at me, but in the single eye that remained to Gordie was the stare of a dead man. He knew it, and I knew it.
I calmly reached into my jacket and pulled out my gun. “I believe you, Gordie.”
I didn’t feel anything when I pulled the trigger.
The back of Gordie’s head painted the wall a shock of crimson and grey. He jerked once, slumped over, and I watched his blood soak into the warehouse floor. “Dig into that phone, Tommy, and find out who else he’s been talking too,” I said. “Thiscannothappen again.”
Tommy nodded, already wiping the blood off his bat. “Already done, babe. Give me an hour, and my techie’ll be so far up this guy’s ass I’ll be able to tell you his proctologist’s shoe size.”
“Gross.” Alfie nimbly stepped around the gore. “Bootsie just pulled in. I’ll go flag him down.”
Tommy swung the bat up on his shoulder, looking like the world’s most demented little-leaguer. “You should’ve let me cap the little fucker, Con. You were way too quick about it.”
Shrugging by way of an answer, I tapped the muzzle of my gun against my leg thoughtfully as I regarded the mess on the floor. There was no denying it now. We had a mole.
