Portrait In Death

"Better hope you do." Roarke hauled him up, heaved him toward a filthy sofa. "You can try it," he said, kicking a chair around when Grogin's eyes flicked toward the rear window. "We'll be on you like jackals, of course. But I'll just hunt up someone else for the answers I need."

"What do you want?" he whined. "There's no need for all this, lad. Why, I'm practically an uncle to you."

"You're nothing to me but a bad memory." Sitting down, Roarke ran the tip of the knife over his thumb, watched the thin line of blood bead. "Keep it honed, I see. That's fine. I'll start with your balls, if you've still got them. Siobhan Brody."

Grogin's gaze stayed locked on the knife. "What?"

"You'd best remember the name, if you want to live so long as another hour. Siobhan Brody. Young and pretty, fresh. Red-haired, green-eyed."

"Lad, now be reasonable. How many young girls such as that might I have known in my life?"

"I'm only interested in this one." Stone-faced, Roarke sucked blood from his thumb. "The one who lived with him more than two years. The one he planted a child in, and she gave birth to me. Ah there now." Roarke nodded as he saw Grogin's pupils widen. "That's stirred the juices some."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Before Brian could move in, Roarke simply reached over, and snapped the bone in Grogin's index finger. "There's one for Siobhan. I'm told he broke three of hers, so I've two more to even that score."

Grogin went deathly white and let out a long, thin scream.

"I'm feeling superfluous here," Brian complained and settled himself on the ratty arm of the sofa.

"He beat her," Roarke said flatly. "Blackened her eyes, broke her bones. She was all of nineteen. He let you have a go at her, Grogin? Or did he keep her to himself?"

"I never laid a hand on her. Not a hand." Tears leaked from Grogin's eyes as he cradled his injured hand. "She was Patrick's woman. Nothing to do with me."

"You knew he beat her."

"A man, well, a man's liable to need to teach his woman a lesson now and then. Paddy, he had a heavy hand, you've cause to know yourself. It's not my doing."

"She left him for a while, took me and left him."

"I can't say." He jerked when Roarke leaned forward again, and yelping, cupped his hands at his own throat. "For God's sake, have pity. It wasn't me! How am I to know what went on behind Patrick's door? I didn't live in the man's pocket, for Christ's sake."

"Brian," Roarke said smoothly. "Have a go here."

"All right, all right!" Grogin was shouting before Brian so much as shifted his weight. "She might've gone off for a bit. Seems I recall him saying something."

When Roarke's hand snaked out, took a hold of Grogin's wrist, the man curled into a ball, weeping as his bladder let go. "Yes! I'll tell you. She took off with you, and he was mad to get her back. A woman didn't walk out on a man, take his son that way. Had to be shown her place, you know? Had to be disciplined, so he said. She came back."

"And was shown her place?"

"I don't know what happened." Grogin began to sob now, fat tears, snotty sobs. "Could I have a drink? God's pity, let me have a drink. My hand's broken."

"One bleeding finger, and he's crying like a lass." On a huff of disgust, Brian heaved himself up and fetched the bottle of whiskey from a table, poured some into a cloudy glass.

"Here then. Fuckingslainte to you."

Wrapping his good hand around it, Grogin brought the glass to his lips, gulped down the whiskey. "He's dead now, you know. Paddy's dead, so what does it matter? It's him that done it," he said to Roarke. "You know how he was."

"Aye. I know just how he was."

"And this night, well, he was drunk when he called me. Stinking. I heard the boy-heard you wailing away in the background, and him saying I was to come straight away, to cop a car and come. Well, you did what Paddy said you were to do in those days. You did it or you paid dear. So I boosted a car and came straight away. When I got there… I had nothing to do with it. I can't be blamed for it."

"When you got there?"

"Another drink, then? Just to ease my throat."

"Tell me the rest," Roarke demanded. "Or you won't have a throat to ease."

Grogin's breath wheezed. "She was dead already. Dead when I got there. It was a bloody mess. He'd gone crazy on her, and there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing I could've done. I thought he'd killed you, too, as you were quiet. But he'd given you something to put you to sleep, a bit of a tranq, is all. You were on the couch sleeping. He'd called Jimmy, too. Jimmy Be

"Give him another drink, Bri."

"Thanks for that." Grogin held out his glass. "So you see, you understand, the deed was done when I got there."

"What did you do with her? You and Jimmy and the one who murdered her."

"We, ah, we rolled her up in the rug, and carried her out to the car." He gulped at the whiskey, licked his lips. "As Paddy said. We drove along the river, as far as we could. We weighed the body down with stones, and dumped her in. There was nothing else to be done. She was dead, after all."

"And then?"

"We went back and cleaned things up, in case, and we put 'round that she'd dumped the boy and taken off. And how if anyone spoke of it, of her, they'd pay. No one lived in the neighborhood that wasn't scared of Roarke. He got Meg to come back, don't know how. Paid her I think, promised her more. And called her your mam, so everyone did."

He swiped his good hand under his dripping nose. "He could've killed you as well. Nothing to it. Bashed your brains in, smothered you."

"Why didn't he?"

"You had his face, didn't you?" Grogin continued. "Spitting image. A man wants a legacy, doesn't he? A man wants a son. If you'd been a girl, he might have tossed you in the river with your mam, but a man wants a son."

Roarke got to his feet, and whatever was on his face had Grogin cringing back. "His pocket cops went along with it?"

"Wasn't nothing to them, was it?"

"No, it was nothing to them." Just a girl, beaten to death and tossed aside. "They came looking for her, her family, some time after. Her brother, I'm told, was set on and laid into. Who'd have done that?"

"Ah… Of course, Paddy would've wanted to see to that matter himself."

A lie, Roarke thought. "As I recall, that was the sort of petty business he had you for."

In a lightning flash, Roarke had the man's head jerked back by a hank of dirty hair. And the knife at his throat.

"How do I know?" Spittle slid out of Grogin's trembling lips. "For pity, how do I know? I bashed heads for him. Too many to count. You can't do me for it now. You can't. It was years back."

One easy move of the wrist, Roarke thought. That was all it would take to have the man's blood flooding out on his hands. He could feel his own muscles trembling for that single, simple action.

He could hear ugly shouting on the street. A brawl brewing. He could smell Grogin's terror in stale sweat, fresh blood, in the urine spreading a new stain over the crotch of his pants. For a heartbeat, for eternity, the keen edge of the blade bit against flesh. Then he stepped back, slid the knife into his boot.

"You're not worth killing."

They left Grogin sitting in his own piss and sobbing.

"There was a time," Brian said as they walked, "back in the day, when you'd have done more than break his finger."

"There was a time." Roarke fisted his hand, imagined the satisfaction of pummelling it, again and again, into Grogin's face. "Not worth it, as I said. He was nothing but Patrick Roarke's pet cur. Still, he'll wonder for a while, a long while, if I might come back and do more. And that'll keep him cold at night."

"You knew already most of what he told you."

"I had to hear it said." It was cooler in Dublin than in New York. And he could see the river. The River Liffey, with its lovely bridges shining in the summer sun. The river where they'd tossed the broken shell of her. "I had to see it, how it was, before I can go on to the next."