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In a way, Susan’s like my mother. She asks my opinion, assuming I’ll have a useful answer. She supports me. She believes in me.
If my mother were alive, she’d be just about Susan’s age. She’d probably have Susan’s gray hair. Might even have her fashion sense, too, with practical dresses and blazers with pockets and no-nonsense shoes to wear for hours and hours on end.
I realize Susan’s waiting for me. I’m free to acknowledge the thing she just said, the trust she’s placing in me. She’s the first person to accept that Trap and I are a unit, that we’re more than a man and a woman who happen to work together. The rush of pleasure I feel at that recognition is utterly unexpected.
“Thank you,” I finally say. “I appreciate that.”
And then, like she hasn’t given me an incredible gift, she says, “So if we’re adding to legal and accounting…”
She lets me finish. “We could move them both to the fourth floor. Shift logistics to six. And that will give us room to add a workspace for the junior conservator upstairs.”
Susan nods, studying the floor plan.
Her silence helps me to trust her even more. I can offer an idea I’ve had, one I haven’t even shared with Trap yet. “Based on what I’m seeing in New York auctions, our clients may be acquiring more works on paper in the foreseeable future. We might hire an expert just to work with those.”
I don’t know if Susan realizes this is the first time I’ve thought about freeport business as something I have the power to build and shape. She just says, “Even more of a reason to make this shift then. Will you tell Trap?” she asks. “Or would you like me to?”
“I can,” I say.
Her smile feels like an alliance. It feels like sun shining through a window on a clear spring day. It feels like approval, and I’m grateful down to my toes.
12
TRAP
* * *
Idrive to Philadelphia, because some conversations shouldn’t be had over open phone lines. Braiden Kelly agrees to meet me at the Hare and Harp, around the corner from the Mummer’s Museum on Two Street. I walk by the place twice before I see the green lettering over the nondescript door. It’s three steps down to a hardwood floor so dark it looks black. Heavy paneled walls press in from every side.
Kelly waits for me behind the scarred mahogany bar. “Guinness?” he asks as I blink in the dim light.
It’s two in the afternoon. “Why not?” I say.
He pulls a pint for me and another for himself. Passing my glass across the bar, he says to the ancient man next to him, “We’ll be in my office, Fergus.”
The old man nods and picks up a clean glass, holding it to the fly-specked window like he’s looking for spots. Kelly leads the way to the back of the bar, through a door covered with brass-studded burgundy leather.
There’s storage back here and a passage that must lead to the alley. I can make out stairs heading toward a basement, steep enough to break someone’s neck without a lot of trying. There’s another door of solid wood, fitted out with three heavy locks. Kelly pushes that one open and gestures for me to go first.
A massive desk fills half the room. It’s carved so deeply it looks like it’s alive, with Celtic knotwork and fistfuls of shamrocks and buckled top hats that might have belonged to leprechauns in the old country. Papers are stacked over the surface, anchored by a computer monitor that looks like it’s twenty years old. A hand-size statue of a woman in a brown robe is conveniently labeledSt. Brigid Pray for Us.Three mass cards are tucked beneath her feet.
Instead of fighting his way behind the desk, Kelly gestures to the two leather armchairs that fill the rest of the office. I sink into the one closest to the door, letting him put his back to the wall.
He takes a deep draught of his Guinness, which gives me permission to do the same. The stuff is lukewarm and heavy as a loaf of soda bread. I could drain my pint and not need another meal till breakfast tomorrow.
“You sounded urgent on the phone,” Kelly said. That’s one reason I like him. He doesn’t fuck around.
“I don’t know if you can help me.”
He doesn’t answer. And that’s another reason I like him. He’s patient, when it pays.
I fortify myself with another gulp of Guinness before I dive in. Kelly’s no fool. I have to believe we can’t be overheard here, that what’s said in this office doesn’t go any further.
“It’s come to my attention,” I start, “that some business acquaintances are throwing their weight around. Interfering with my territory. I’m wondering if you know anyone who can deliver a message. One that can’t be ignored.”
Braiden Kelly is the captain of the Irish mob in Philadelphia, which makes him an expert at reading between the lines.
“This message,” he says. “Do you want youracquaintancesspreading the word? Or do you want their mouths shut?”
