For Moira
by Stephen Book

Aiden took a deep breath and stared at the open bottle tucked between his legs.  He’d taken care of the Ingraham matter, and now it was time to report back, tell his father everything he’d found out.  But knowing wasn’t exactly doing, was it?  He took a long pull from the bottle while he considered his parents and what had to be said.

No, he thought.  Knowing isn’t exactly doing.

He leaned his head back, let his mind drift to Moira.  He remembered her long red hair, how she pulled it back over her ears revealing the soft cream flesh of her neck.  He thought about the comfort and warmth of her touch.  Even now, he could smell her fragrance—subtle like the hint of roses on a cool spring breeze.  God, he missed her.

“Boss?”  Aiden glanced over and caught a pair of sunken eyes staring back at him.  “You getting out?”

His driver tonight was Mickey, a man whose hard features and deep-set eyes caused most people to doubt him.  Not Aiden, though.  In spite of what others felt, Mickey was a good man—a loyal man—and those were hard to come by.

Aiden ignored the question.  He swiped the fogged glass with the back of his hand and looked out the window.  Across the yard the old house stood waiting.  Light from inside bled through drawn curtains and spilled out across snow-covered bushes.  He gazed up toward the corner window on the second floor.  As a boy, he’d spent many nights in that room, looking beyond the park across the street.  One night, his older brother Quinn caught him.

“What’re you doing?”

Aiden whirled around.  He hadn’t heard his brother’s footsteps.

“I’m watching for daddy.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.  “I miss him, I guess.”

Quinn stood silent a moment.  Finally, he said, “You wouldn’t if you truly knew him.”

Aiden closed his eyes against the memory.

Well, I know a lot more now.

A couple of years later, shortly after his brother shipped out to fight a war from which he’d never return, Aiden’s father took him downtown to see how a man with humble beginnings could rise up and take the reins of life.  With hard work, he had turned poverty into prosperity like Jesus turned water into wine.  He remembered how his father squeezed his shoulder, the grip solid and unwavering.  “You’re a Cafferty,” the old man said.  “Caffertys make things happen.”  And what he’d learned since then was that his father did make things happen; when they didn’t, he made things disappear.  And this was why he’d dispatched Aiden to Charlie Ingraham’s house tonight.  Apparently Charlie had spent too much time with the authorities and needed to take a vacation.  Of course, Aiden knew what that meant.

Staring into the darkness of the floorboard, the meeting with Ingraham playing through his mind like a movie, Aiden first remembered the dumb look on Charlie’s face, the one that said everything when words failed.  But then the words came.  Only they weren’t exactly what Aiden expected.

“Please, Aiden, you gotta believe me.  I didn’t do this.”  Charlie, down on his knees with tears in his eyes.  “Look, I can help you. I know things.”

“Really?  Like what?”

“Like how Moira’s car accident weren’t no accident.” When Aiden pressed him on it, Charlie begged for mercy and said, “I heard your father and mother sent a man to take care of her.  That’s all I know.”

Looking back at the house now, Aiden heard those words again.  Of course, his father would pass it off as the ramblings of a desperate man begging for his life, but Aiden’s instincts and memory confirmed Charlie’s story.  He remembered how his parents reacted to the news of Moira’s death, how dispassionate they had been.  Hadn’t they told him to quit her?  The Finnegans were bad blood, a bunch of vultures who grabbed at everything and didn’t even know how to show some respect.  Or so his mother had said.

Aiden leaned the bottle against the seat and turned to Mickey.  “Keep the motor running.  This won’t take long.”

He stepped out and stopped for a moment at the edge of the walkway, both hands stuffed inside the pockets of his coat.  Maybe it was just his imagination, but the pistol in his right hand still felt warm from the visit with Ingraham.  Placing one foot in front of the other, Aiden forced himself toward the house.  He could already see the fierce anger in their eyes and hear his father’s sharp Irish tongue.  What did he mean he was quitting the family?  Nobody walks away from the Caffertys.

Aiden inserted his key into the front door lock, thinking yes he could, especially when the bastards had already quit him.

BIO: Stephen’s stories have been published by Six Sentences, Flash Fiction Online and most recently by Crime and Suspense.  Unlike his character, he does not have a grudge against his parents… yet.  You can learn more about him and his writing at his blog, http://powderburnsandbullets.blogspot.com