I take my seat beside my father, and pierce Nolan and Boner with stern looks. Boner’s fucking right. Nolan’s eyes are bloodshot and glassy, and I notice he wobbles a little when he sits at the table. Irishmen are no strangers to drink, and we’re no exception, but I worry Nolan’s gone to the extreme. I make a mental note to talk to him about this later. I won’t tolerate him fucking up our jobs because he can’t stay sober. I watch him slump to the table and clear my throat. His eyes come to mine. I shake my head and straighten my shoulders. Nodding, he sits up straighter.
Cormac, the middle brother, sits to my left and notices everything. Six foot five, he’s the giant of our group, and, appropriately, our head Bonebreaker. With a mop of curly, dark brown hair and a heavy beard, he looks older than his twenty-five years.
He nods to me and I to him. We’ll talk about our concerns about Nolan later, not in the presence of our father. Or any of the others, really.
“Thank you for coming so early, boys,” my father begins, scrubbing a hand across his forehead. I notice a tremor in his hand I’ve never noticed before and stifle a sigh. He’s getting older.
“It came to my attention early this morning that Father Finn has something to relay to us of importance.” He fixes Boner and Nolan with an unwavering look. “And since some of you haven’t gone to bed yet, I figured we should strike while the iron’s hot, so to speak.”
I can’t help but smirk when Nolan and Boner squirm. When Boner’s father passed, one of the few gone rogue in our company, my father took Boner under his wing and treated him as one of his own. I love the motherfucker like a brother myself. Though he’s got a touch of the class clown in him, he’s as loyal as they come and as quick with a knife draw as any I’ve seen, his aim at the shooting range spot-on. He’s an asset to The Clan in every way. When he’s fucking sober, anyway.
Now, under both my gaze and my father’s, he squirms a little. My father keeps tabs on everyone here, Boner no exception.
“I think it best I let the Father speak for himself, since he needs to leave early to celebrate mass.” None of us so much as blink, the Father’s duties as commonplace as a shopping list. We’re used to the juxtaposition of his duties to God’s people and to us. We have long since accepted it as a way of life. He has a certain code he doesn’t break, though, and out of respect for him, we keep many of the inner workings of The Clan from him. We give generously to the church, and though God himself may not see our donations as any sort of indulgence, the people of Holy Family and Ballyhock certainly do.
Father Finn sits on my father’s left, his heavy gray brows drawn together.
“Thank you, Seamus.” He and my mother are the only ones who call my dad his Christian name. Finn speaks in a soft, gentle tone laced with steel: a man of God tied by blood to the Irish mob.
My father nods and sits back, his gaze fixed on his younger brother.
Father clears his throat. “I have news regarding the… arms deal you’ve been working on for some time.”
My father doesn’t blink, and I don’t make eye contact with any of my brothers. We’ve never discussed our occupations with Father so out in the open like this, but like our father, he sees all. The church he oversees is sandwiched between our mansion that overlooks the bay to the east, and Ballyhock’s armory to the west. Still, his blatant naming of our most lucrative endeavor is unprecedented.
Though we dabble in many things, we have two main sources of income in The McCarthy Clan: arms trafficking and loansharking. Though neither are legal, Father Finn’s insisted we keep out of the heavier sources of income our rival clan, the Martins from the south, dabble in. They’re known for extortion, heroin imports and far more contracted hits than we’ve ever done. Rivals since before my parents married, we’ve held truce ever since my father took the throne. Both his father and our rival’s former chief were murdered by the American mafia; the dual murders formed a truce we’ve upheld since then.
“Go on,” my father says.
Father Finn clears his throat a second time. “There’s no need to pretend I don’t know where you’re planning to get your bread and butter,” he says in his soft voice. “Especially since I’ve advised you from the beginning.”
My father nods, and a muscle ticks in his jaw. His brother takes his time when relaying information, and my father’s not a patient man. “Go on,” my father repeats, his tone harder this time.
“The Martins are behind the theft of your most recent acquisitions,” he says sadly, as he knows theft from The Clan is an act of war. “Their theft is only the beginning, however. It was a plot to undermine you. They fully plan on sub-contracting your arms trafficking by summer. They have a connection nearby that’s given them inside information, and I know where that inside information came from.”
Boner cracks his knuckles, ready to fight. Nolan’s suddenly sober, and I can feel Cormac’s large, muscled body tense beside me. My own stomach clenches in anticipation. They’re preparing to throw the gauntlet, which would bring our decades-long truce to a decided and violent end.
“Where would that be?” I ask.
Finn clears his throat again. “I’m not at liberty to give you all the details I know,” he begins.
Boner glares at him. “Why the fuck not? Are you fucking kidding me?”
The Father holds up a hand, begging patience.
“Enough, Boner,” I order. There’s an unwritten rule in my family that we don’t press the Father for information he doesn’t offer. I suspect he occasionally relays information granted him in the privacy of the confessional, something he’d consider gravely sinful. Father Finn is a complex man. We take the information he gives us and piece the rest together ourselves.
“I can give you some, however,” the Father continues. “I believe you’ll find what you need at the lighthouse.”
I feel my own brows pull together in confusion.
“The lighthouse?” Nolan asks. “Home of the old mentaller who kicked it?”
“Jack Anderson,” the Father says tightly.
The eccentric old man, the lighthouse keeper, took a heart attack last month, leaving Ballyhock without a keeper. Someone spotted his body on the front green of the lighthouse and went to investigate. He was already dead.
Since the lighthouses are now operated digitally, no longer in need of a keeper, the town hasn’t hired a replacement. Most lighthouse keepers around these parts are kept on more for the sake of nostalgia than necessity.
The man we’re talking of, who lived in the lighthouse to the north of our estate, was out of his mind. He would come into town only a few times a year to buy his stores, then live off the dry goods he kept at his place. He had no contact with the outside world except for this foray into town and the library, and when he came, he reminded one of a mad scientist. Hailing from America, he looked a bit like an older, heavier version of Einstein with his wild, unkempt white hair and tattered clothing. He muttered curse words under his breath, walked with a manky old walking stick, and little children would scatter away from him when he came near. He always carried a large bag over his shoulder, filled with books he’d replenish at the library.