CRONIN HAD FOLLOWED FRANCIS Dempsey and the blonde back from Harlem on Sunday night. The Plaza had been a surprise, but then Dempsey was full of surprises: the fancy clothes, the giant bottle of wine, already a girl on his arm, and now a night at one of the poshest spots in the city. Cronin had seen petty criminals like this before—yokes who would clean out the till of a speakeasy and go on a spree. Fresh pair of shoes. New hat. Drinks all around and always the best woman they could afford. Yokes who believed that a pile of stolen cash conferred protection not just from life’s hard knocks but from the dollar-a-day avenging angels on the payroll of the local bosses. It always ended the same way: their battered bodies would turn up behind a row of trash cans, stripped of life and those flashy shoes.
But this Dempsey was up to something bigger. Early in the morning Cronin had seen the blonde leave the Plaza in a rush, and at the very same time, the littlest Dempsey, the one who’d been only a baby back when Cronin knew the family, swept into the hotel. So this was their hidey-hole? And then that same night Dempsey was off for hours at some Fifth Avenue mansion, only to return in a Rolls-Royce polished to such a shine that it seemed to move invisibly, reflecting the night and the street lamps. The eagerness, the hot certainty that Cronin had felt outside the Savoy to swoop down on Dempsey and dump him with Gavigan, had mellowed into caution. Gavigan wanted Dempsey found, but that wasn’t quite the same as saying he wanted Dempsey brought to his doorstep. Plus, as the days ticked by, Cronin was starting to think that Dempsey wasn’t acting alone. He had someone looking out for him, guiding him, and that must be what was giving him such blithe confidence. Cronin knew the feeling, had once basked in its warm glow himself. For many years he knew what it was to live under Gavigan’s umbrella, back when that meant something. There were many who knew Cronin to be untouchable, for fear of what Gavigan could take from them, and many more who kept their distance from Gavigan for fear of what Cronin could do to them. But this Dempsey? He had the IRA after him, and the Irish police—whatever they were worth—had to be aware that they had let one get away, and yet here he was, swanning around the city like a gentleman on holiday. He was either a worldly fellow, clever and confident, or the biggest dullard to have set foot in the city in years.
Tuesday morning came and Cronin sat on a bench, his back to Central Park and his eyes on the Plaza, waiting for Dempsey’s next move. This was what Frank Dempsey had taught him. To be patient. To know a man’s route footfall by footfall. You didn’t ambush a man by following him; you had to be in front, awaiting his arrival. How many times had they lain in wait, ready to ambush a British patrol, only to abandon the attack when the conditions weren’t in their favor: the Brits were meant to be on bicycles, not in lorries; the patrol was scheduled to cross the bridge at half twelve but arrived early, before the rifles were in place. Seize the day, Frank had taught them, but don’t force the moment. Better to wait than to stumble. The men in West Cork had said it best: The purpose of the flying column was to exist. There was nothing to be gained by a glorious defeat. So he had waited patiently for Francis Dempsey, but his patience hadn’t yet paid off. During the war they would observe a target for weeks before carrying out a strike. It was important to know routines, numbers, armaments. A man’s habits were his undoing. There had been an officer in the Auxiliaries who kept himself under lock and key in the barracks—never went out on patrol, never took part in operations, never walked alone through the city. Even on Sundays, he had an armed escort to church. Except—except his escort left him at the church gate and it was twenty steps from the gate to the stone porch that fronted the church doors. And one day on those steps, as the bells rang overhead to announce the Mass, Cronin and a fellow called Devlin approached the officer on the steps and fired two shots from their revolvers, Devlin into his gut and Cronin into the side of his head. He was dead before he hit the stones and Cronin and Devlin were gone before the bell had stopped tolling.
But this business with Dempsey was different. Partly because it wasn’t an out-and-out hit but a kidnap, which was loads more difficult. In a hit, you only had to pull the trigger and be on your way, but to grab a man and deliver him without too much commotion was a job of work. A man who thought he was fighting for his life could be a whirligig of kicks and punches, eye gouges and foot stomps and knees to the groin. And who knew what surprises Dempsey carried in his pocket? Cronin had seen men gutted with a sharpened screwdriver, blinded by a ha’penny nail.
Aside from the difficulty of the task itself, there just wasn’t time to plan it out properly. The Bronx one day, then Harlem, then the Plaza, then the Upper East Side? Cronin couldn’t yet find a pattern, and every day left Alice and the boy and the baby exposed, unguarded. It hadn’t been like this in the old days, when no one waited for him at home. There had been only the operation, the orders, the cause. Other men had families and he saw the strain it placed on them: the worry of being away from wife and babies, the fear of what would happen if the Black and Tans, knowing that you were planning ten ways to put them in their graves, went calling on your wife. Cronin never had to worry about any of that, but now everything was different. He had been five days away from Alice and each day hung on him like a length of chains. She was a capable woman, but this business with Dempsey and Gavigan—this was a different order of trouble. This was a world she did not know, a world that Cronin had hoped she would never see.
CRONIN CROSSED THE street, leaving the park for a walk-by of the hotel. Just as he reached the middle of the road, with cabs on each side honking at him, the two brothers sauntered down the front steps and ducked into a waiting taxicab. He cursed his luck. His car was all the way on the west side of the park and a man dressed like Cronin could not expect the bell captain to hail a cab for him. He took a deep breath. They would return, but for now he had the hotel to himself. As the Dempseys’ cab lurched into the morning traffic, Cronin reached into his pocket for one of Gavigan’s crisp ten-dollar notes. He approached the bell captain and held up the bill.
“The man who’s after getting in that cab,” he said. “He dropped this when he reached in his pocket for your tip.”