Shamus found fifteen-year-old Liam tucked in a sleeping bag, eyes closed. There was only one bed in the two-room furnished apartment, and Caitlin used it.
Shamus gently kicked Liam’s leg. “Wake up,” he said, pulling off his suit jacket and loosening his tie. “I got a job for you, lad. Right now.”
The youth sat up and rubbed his shaggy hair, red-gold like his sister’s. “Hey, Shea. What time is it?”
Shamus laughed and tossed a pair of sneakers at the boy. “Time for you to earn two hundred dollars up front, another hundred when you’ve done the job.”
Liam was instantly awake. He rolled up the sleeping bag and tossed it behind the small couch in front of the tiny television set. Then he began to dress— jeans, white T-shirt under a navy blue sweatshirt, the dirty, scuffed sneakers Shamus had tossed him.
The man sat down on the couch, slid the case across the floor to Liam. “You’re to deliver this to Taj and no one else. By subway. No taxi or car service. Remember how to get there?”
Liam nodded. Shamus reached into his wallet and took out two hundred in cash, thrust it into the boy’s hand. “If there’s any trouble, do what I told you to do. You remember?”
The youth nodded. Shamus eyed the attaché case warily. “And whatever you do, don’t open the case. Got it?”
“I got it, Shamus.”
“Then take off. And on your way out, tell your sister to get up here. I’m waiting for her…”
“Look, Tina. All I said was I wanted to go out with my friends on Friday night—”
Even from her chair in front of the monitor, Captain Schneider could hear the tearful sobs on the other end of Milo’s cell connection.
“I never said I was bored with you, honey. I don’t care what that magazine article said, I’m not like that,” Milo insisted.
“Don’t cry, I—”
Captain Schneider faced Milo. “I hate to interrupt, Mr. Pressman, but I’m having some trouble connecting to the DOD database.”
Milo covered the phone. “That’s because you’re using the wrong routing protocol. Use our own network connection. CTU maintains a constant link with the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency, too. The security code is thirty-three dash zeta zed backslash.”
Captain Schneider tapped her keyboard. A moment later CTU’s random sequencing program was searching through all of the DOD’s stored digital files for a long string of numerals that matched the serial number printed on the memory stick.
“Look, Tina,” said Milo, the cell phone close to his ear. “There’s a situation here, I really have to go—”
“I think I just lost the feed from the Commerce Department,” Captain Schneider said. She directed Milo’s attention to a black data window on the massive HDTV monitor.
“No,” said Milo, covering the phone. “See the blinking red cursor. Your search is completed. Engage the sequencer for a printout of your results.”
“How do I do that?”
Milo lifted his finger, pressed three numbers, then enter.
“Yes,” Milo said into the phone. “You did hear a woman’s voice. It’s my supervisor…Yes, Tina, you’re right. That doesn’t sound like Jamey because it isn’t Jamey…Yes, Jamey Farrell is still my supervisor. But I’m talking to another supervisor right now.”
“Mr. Pressman? What does this mean?”
Milo looked up, at the data window for the Department of Defense database. It was blinking yellow. His girlfriend chattered on, but Milo wasn’t listening anymore. He rose to get a better look at the data window, absentmindedly closing his cell and dropping it back in his pocket.
“I can’t believe it,” gasped Milo
“Believe what?”
Milo blinked. “I thought this whole thing was a waste of time. Like finding a tiny needle in an immense digital haystack. But you did it, Captain Schneider. You located a match.”
Liam’s scuffed, thrift shop sneakers bounded down the stairs. The pub was empty. Donnie Murphy had just left for Forest Hills where he still lived in the tiny brick house he and his late wife had shared for the past twenty years. Donnie trusted Caitlin to take care of the place when he wasn’t there; it was part of the deal he made with her in exchange for access to the dingy apartment upstairs.
Caitlin handed Liam a cup of hot tea. “I’ll need it to go, sis.”
“You’ll sit down and drink that before you go traipsing all over town in the middle of the night.”
“But Shamus is waiting for you. He told me to send you up.”
Caitlin bristled. “I’m not a servant that he can be summoning at will. Who’s Shamus Lynch think he is, the Prince of bloody Wales?”
Liam laughed, slid into a booth. Caitlin brought him a sugar bowl and a dish of shortbread cookies. She glanced at the case on the floor. “What’s in the case. Where are you going tonight?”
“Some computer thing, I think,” shrugged Liam. “I’m taking it to a guy named Taj in Brooklyn—”
“Brooklyn!”
“Brooklyn Heights. It’s no big deal. I’ll take the 7 train to Times Square, then switch to the Number 2. That’ll take me to close to Atlantic Avenue. I’ll have to hoof it from there. It’s a gatch walk but I’ve done it before—”
“But not in the middle of the night.”
Liam swallowed the dregs of his tea, ignoring the cookies, and lifted the case.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”
“Nah, ain’t hungry.”
Caitlin rubbed her hand through his mop of hair, the red-gold bangs hanging in his face like a sheepdog. How did it get so long, so quick? she wondered. First thing tomorrow, she was giving it a trim. “Tell me, Liam, and don’t lie. Is this delivery on the up-and-up?”
“Sure, what do you think? Shamus owns an electronics store, he’s not some criminal.”
Caitlin sighed. She knew Liam looked up to Shamus like an older brother. They owed him for his help, that was certain. Finding her a job. Paying for Liam’s Catholic school. But Shamus and his brother weren’t exactly freshly washed sheets. She’d seen them talking quietly in this pub with enough shady types to guess they didn’t get all their computer parts by way of legitimate wholesale. Whether they were moving stolen merchandise for small-time thugs or buying crates that “fell off” trucks driven by patsies for organized crime, she didn’t know for sure. She just didn’t want Liam involved in that part of their business. She wouldn’t abide having her brother turned into a common thief.
“Liam, tell me what Shamus said. I want to know exactly what he’s putting you up to.”
He shrugged. “Taj has some store in Brooklyn — a deli. He has one of those computerized registers that takes credit cards and bank cards and stuff. It’s probably broken. I’m taking him some kind of component, that’s all.”
“Anything else?”
“Chill out, Cait. I’ve done this before, you know.”
“But not at such an ungodly hour.”
Liam laughed. “And I’m bein’ paid well for it, which is fine by me. Take it easy, will you? Shamus said he never even met Taj. He’s just a customer. They do all their work over the phone!”
Caitlin sighed. “All right, all right…it sounds like it’s on the up-and-up…and you might as well know that Shamus talked to me about giving you a job—”
“He did!”
“Hush. Yes, he did. But you’re not to mention that I told you. I just want to make sure what Shamus is doing is honest work, that he won’t involve you in anything shady.”