With Help from Michael O'Leary Pt. 05

By delaying her transaction at the counter, by not closing the caged door behind her, as was bank procedure, he felt responsible for her death. Then, he recalled what the robber had said, "No one gets hurt her, No one gets hurt, as long as they behave," and believing that the robber would have left had she kept her big mouth shut; that thought relieved his guilt, somewhat.

"I know you." He remembered she said to the thief. "The fish eat the eyes of your no good bastard father for killing my babies." He remembered her saying that without an Italian accent. He wondered about her identity, now, and about the history behind their conversation.

"And I know you," he recalled the thief's response to her. "You had my father and my mother murdered, you vengeful witch." Obviously, the two knew one another and were responsible for or were accessories to some murderous spree.

Already, guilt tormented him for taking the white envelope. Even as a child in Conroy's Five and Dime with Mitchell McCauley, forced to play lookout as Mitch shoplifted whatever he could conceal in his pockets, Michael never stole anything. Moreover, he faithfully confessed every sinful thought to Father Murphy each Sunday before Mass where, as the smallest alter boy, he looked like a cherub without wings. Then, after confession, he donated money to the poor box in an attempt to pay for whatever Mitch had stolen, but with an allowance of just one dollar, he never could donate enough to make up for his guilt.

Just as he had the opportunity to take the white envelope, there alone with Mrs. Enunzio's stiffening body, he had the opportunity to return it to her clenched fist. He did not understand his impulsive compulsion to take her property. Perhaps, an envelope important to lock away in a bank vault overwhelmed his curiosity. In a morbid sense of revenge, he justified his thievery by her miserable attitude towards him. She made him feel smaller inside than was his height outside, and tired of people making him feel less than he was, unable to bring himself to give it back, he felt compelled to keep it.

Still, he wondered who she was and what her connection was to the bank robber. He wondered what was in the white envelope that he was so afraid to remove from his pant pocket.

Chapter 24 Sergeant Flaherty

Sergeant Flaherty was the first detective to answer the silent alarm after a small army of police officers secured the bank minutes after the robbers had left. The police checked the identification of drivers leaving the area hoping that the robbers were still within the North End. Although SWAT, with their automatic weapons, helmets, body armor, and police negotiator, had already come and gone, yellow police tape tied to light poles and to rearview side mirrors of parked cars still cordoned off that part of Hanover Street. A huge crowd lined the sidewalk outside the bank and news vans filled the street while reporters impatiently waited for someone to interview. Everyone wanted to know what happened.

Flaherty double parked his unmarked, gray, Ford Crown Victoria and got out. He unzipped his Celtics jacket to expose dual forty-fours, one his gun and the other his waistline. He removed his Red Sox baseball cap and pulled out his handkerchief to wipe away the sweat from the hot Italian sausage that he had just eaten for breakfast. This was supposed to be his day off but, since he was in the area, he answered the call.

He peered at the crowd and called over Butch Fitzgerald, the police photographer, before entering the bank.

"Videotape the crowd," he said as Butch stepped away, "and try not to be obvious about it. I don't want to spook whoever is out there watching us."

With a pencil no bigger than the one that he used at Emerald Isle Bowling Alley to keep an inflated score and a pad smaller than the one that the barmaid uses to take his beer order at O'Malley's, looking at everything, talking to everyone, missing nothing, and noting it all, Sergeant Flaherty skulked around the bank seeking evidence. Continually, he licked the lead from his pencil point writing down whatever he found and licked his finger each time he needed help from it to turn a page.

"Tape that off," he said to one officer idly standing by. "Try not to touch anything," he said to another who knocked a calendar from someone's desk. "Don't allow anyone over here," he said pointing to the vault to another officer who passed the time talking with a cute bank teller.

"I'm Mr. Florentino, the Branch Manager," he said to Flaherty shaking hands.

"I need to preserve the crime scene," Flaherty said. "Which room did the robbers not enter?"

Mr. Florentino looked around the bank turning full circle before he could answer Flaherty's question. He looked older, suddenly; the robbery had taken its toll on him.

"My office," he said. "My office," he pointed. "They did not enter my office."

"Please ask all of your employees to gather in your office and I'll be in momentarily to interview each one."

"Everyone, please, everyone." Mr. Florentino addressed the employees who spread out in small groups talking as if they were at a cocktail party. "Everyone, please, everyone. The detective wants everyone to wait in my office. Please, come now."

The employees filed in Mr. Florentino's office and, like fish in a crowded bowl, watched the police proceedings from behind the glass office window. Flaherty followed the group to Mr. Florentino's office and waited for the last employee to enter.

"You are only to leave to go to the bathroom and an officer will escort you there and back," said Flaherty before closing Florentino's office door.

Michael still sat on the floor with his back to Mrs. Enunzio with his head bowed in prayer when Flaherty poked his head around the vault door.

"Michael, me boy!"

"Flaherty," relieved to hear a familiar voice, Michael looked up with a smile. "It is nice to see a friendly face at a time like this."

"You hurt?" Flaherty looked him over for wounds. "Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

"No," said Michael standing and getting up from the floor. He brushed the dust from his pants and tucked in his shirt.

"Stay where you are," he said to Michael, "and don't touch anything," he said looking around the vault. "You didn't touch anything did you?" Michael lied to the detective and nodded his head no and pushed the white envelope further down in his pant pocket. Flaherty turned back to look at Michael. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he said nodding his head.

"Who's the stiff?" Flaherty walked to Mrs. Enunzio and, like the alter boy he once was, knelt on one knee to put a finger to her neck.

"That's Mrs. Enunzio."

"Mrs. Enunzio, huh, spell it for me."

"E-n-u-n-z-i-o."

Flaherty wrote her name in his pad. Although his face showed no recognition of the victim, his voice betrayed him.

"You know her?" Michael asked noticing Flaherty's inflection.

Flaherty did not answer. He pushed back Mrs. Enunzio's black, lace shawl with his pencil and pulled her gray wig by a few strands of hair to reveal a hairline full of bright red hair.

Just as he suspected by her youthful hands and quick mannerisms of walking and talking fast, Michael could now see the makeup line from her forehead to her hairline. Mrs. Enunzio or whatever was her name wore a mask of makeup to make her appear much older than she was.

"Michael O'Leary, may I introduce you to Shannon O'Day, also known as Shannon Kelly, and, of course, the infamous and recently deceased Mrs. Enunzio."

"Oh, my," Michael slumped to the floor against a row of locked boxes. "Oh, my."

"You okay?" Asked Flaherty peering at him over his shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"You know her?" He turned to Michael watching for his reaction.

"We went to high school together. She was my first love." He held his head in his hands resting his elbows on his upraised knees. "She was the reason why I almost became a priest," he looked at Flaherty, "and she was the reason why I didn't."

"I'm sorry. You can wait outside with the others if—"

"No, I'd rather stay."

Now that Michael found Shannon, he did not want to leave her. The name Shannon Kelly ran through his brain like an electrical charge. A flood of memories raised the hairs on the back of his neck. She was the girl that he loved for so long, wanted to marry, and spend the rest of his life with. She was the girl that he had asked to the prom and the one who rejected and laughed at him because he was too short.

"I don't understand," he said staring at her and then looking up a Flaherty, "Why the disguise?"

"We believe," Flaherty stood, brushed the dust from his knee and looked over his shoulder before divulging police business to Michael. "That she cashes extorted winning lottery tickets that were coerced from their victims to surrender," he said lowering his voice. "They, they being the IRA, use the proceeds to fund their violence in Ireland." He shrugged, "But with no witnesses willing or alive to testify, with those willing to talk never making it to court, we never had enough evidence for an arrest," he said. "Especially now, since her case is officially closed with us, but open with homicide."

Michael figured she must have been desperate for money. He heard her husband was an unemployed alcoholic. He heard that they were collecting welfare somewhere in New Jersey but this was ridiculous. Then, he heard through the neighborhood grapevine that her husband and three kids were targeted and murdered by protestors hoping to get the United States involved in their civil war of religion. Still, he wondered, how could she have done such terrible things?

"Why don't they have security cameras in the vault?" Flaherty asked looking up and pointing at the walls with his pencil.

"This is an area where the customers expect privacy. They feel that inside the vault is a secure enough area without having to have additional camera surveillance." He answered Flaherty's sour look, "Besides, we never leave the customer alone, that is, until they take their box to a private room, and we always close and lock the cage to the vault." The color drained from Michael's face.

"What?" Flaherty looked at Michael.

"I was supposed to close and lock the cage to the vault behind me, but she only took two minutes, every week, she had the same routine. I left the cage ajar figuring that we would be in and out."

Flaherty scribbled Michael's words in his notebook.

"It is my fault she is dead."

"It is not your fault, Michael. It is her fault that she is dead." He put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. "She was the one who was involved in criminal activity. She was the one who put herself in harm's way and everyone else at risk. She was the one who chose this lifestyle. You were only doing your job."

"Do you know what the robbers took from here?" Flaherty walked to Shannon's opened safety deposit box and peered inside.

The question jarred Michael's thoughts and he answered without making direct eye contact hoping that Flaherty would not press him for any more information.

"I don't know, cash and jewelry, I suppose. The guy told me not to look up, so I didn't." He took a deep breath and said, "Especially after he shot Mrs. Enunzio, I mean, Miss O'Day, I mean, Shannon, I did not want him to kill me, too." He tried not to look at Shannon stretched out dead on the vault floor, but he was unable to removed his eyes from her.

"Yeah," Flaherty looked long and hard at him before folding over a new page in his notebook, "she probably kept undeclared cash and stolen jewelry." He folded over his page and looked again at Michael. "Did you get a look at him?"

"Briefly, and as I said, he told me not to look up, so I didn't." Michael's eye for detail went into overdrive. The game that he played, noticing details about his customers, now proved invaluable. "He wore a disguise, dark glasses, a fake beard, and a baseball cap."

"Which team?"

"What?" Still in shock, Michael stared through Flaherty not understanding his question.

"On the cap, which team logo was on the cap?" He removed his Red Sox cap and pointed to it for Michael's benefit.

"Oh, Yankees, I think, or, yeah, Yankees, yeah, definitely, Yankees."

"What about height, weight, hair and eye color, scars or tattoos, anything like that will help us to identify him.

"He was tall, but not as tall as you." He shrugged a laugh. Everyone is tall to me. I didn't notice any scars or tattoos." When Michael pulled down his shirt cuff and adjusted his shamrock cufflink, he remembered. "Oh, wait, he did have a tattoo." Michael raised his left hand and, pointing with his right index finger, identified the exact location of the tattoo for Sergeant Flaherty. "He had a tattoo of a green shamrock on his left hand. I only noticed it when I looked up before he told me not to look up."

"About how tall?" Flaherty, who towered more than a foot over Michael, held his hand palm down at shoulder level. "This tall?"

"Yeah, maybe, an inch or two taller."

"About 5'9" to 5'11"," Flaherty spoke as he wrote.

"He had dark, brown hair and brown eyes, I think."

"Hair brown, eyes brown," repeated Flaherty as he wrote.

And he weighed about one hundred seventy pounds."

"Weight one seventy." Flaherty scribbled as he asked, "What or black?"

"Huh?

"Was he a white guy or a black guy?"

"White."

"Did he have a gun?"

"Yeah."

"Did you notice what kind of gun?"

"No, I don't know about guns. I never have had one and will never have one."

"Well, we'll know the caliber of the bullet once we retrieve the bullet from the deceased, but any description that you can add about the gun, now, will help."

Michael shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, no.

"Was it big like this one?" Flaherty removed his gun from his holster and held it up."

"No, smaller."

"Was it squared off like this one or round like a cowboy pistol?"

"I know," said Michael as a glimmer of recognition flashed though his eyes. "It looked like the one that Spencer used, but not the one he carried in his holster, the one he sometimes strapped to his leg as a backup."

"My favorite show, Spencer for Hire, why they took that off the air, I dunno. Spence carried a blue steel, snub-nosed .38, as his backup piece."

"Yeah, a blue steel, snub-nose .38. I remember the Lieutenant asking Spencer for his backup piece in one of the episodes and he referred to it like that. The same way that Robert Parker wrote it in his book, a snub-nose .38."

"Did you see how many were involved?"

"I heard only one other voice coming from outside the vault on the main floor. He kept a running count of time, 45 seconds, 75 seconds, like that, as he yelled, C'mon, c'mon."

"So," Flaherty pointed to Mrs. Enunzio, "tell me what happened."

"The robber shot her when she said that she knew who he was." Flaherty looked at Michael. "She recognized him."

"The robber shot her when she recognized him?"

"No, not right away, they had words first."

"What words?"

Eager to help Flaherty with his investigation, racked with guilt for not only leaving the cage door open but also for taking the white envelope from Shannon, Michael paused to think the make sure that he repeated their verbal exchange as it happened.

"I know you, she said. The fish eat the eyes of your no good bastard father for killing my babies." Michael answered Flaherty's look with a shrug. "I don't know what she meant by that." Flaherty abruptly looked back down at his pad and Michael asked, "Do you know what she meant by that?"

"And..." Flaherty did not answer him, did not look up at him, but scribbled every word in his small pad, filling the page with the one sentence that Michael said. "What did he say?"

"He said, you had my father and my mother murdered, you vengeful witch."

"Then, what?"

"She had the fatal habit of giving everyone the Italian salute."

Flaherty looked up from his pad to identify the quick motion that Michael made with his right arm. "Yeah, okay, continue."

"Maybe the robber thought she had a gun." He looked at Shannon. "He fired once."

Flaherty escorted Michael out of the vault and deposited him by Mr. Florentino's office asking him to wait in there with the other bank employees.

Chapter 25 Four Leaf Clover

Michael had to wait to be interview by the FBI and did not leave the bank until after 4:00pm, when they told him, finally, that he was free to go. He kept his hand in his pocket most of the time fingering the small, white envelope that he had taken from Shannon's hand, wondering about its contents and, based upon what Flaherty had said to him, believing it to be a winning lottery ticket. He wondered how to cash it without arrest and wondered what to do with the money when he did. He felt guilty for leaving the cage door open and for taking her property.

More than once, he thought about tossing the envelope on the floor where the police would find it, but Flaherty had been over every square inch of the bank and would know that he had tossed it after having second thoughts. Besides, the bank had cameras everywhere. Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck with Mrs. Enunzio's or Shannon Kelly O-Day's envelope, whatever was its content. Guilt riddled him for taking it and guilt riddled him for leaving the vault's cage door open.

"Thank you," he said looking up to God. "The biggest thing that stayed with me, more than my ability to fall to my knees and pray for anything or anyone at any given moment, is guilt. The Catholic Church has instilled in me enough guilt to last me my lifetime."

He wondered how much money the ticket was for and thought about all the things that he could buy with the winnings. He already had everything, he believed, a nice apartment that overlooked Boston Harbor in Mrs. Dooley's three family house, a dependable used car, a green Ford Mustang GT, that he bought from his best friend, Billy Ryan, and a dog, a Beagle named Casey that he adopted from the Animal Rescue League of Boston after Angel died.

Still, the money from the lottery ticket would buy him is freedom, he hoped. Depending how much were his winnings, he may have enough that he would no longer have to work. He could retire with the proceeds and take control of his life. Cashing in a winning lottery ticket mean that he could to anywhere, anytime, and do anything he wanted. He imagined himself with Gabriella and her daughter, Angela, on a cruise around the world.

It was not for the money that he took Mrs. Enunzio's, a.k.a. Shannon Kelly-O'Day's envelope, if it, indeed, was her envelope and contained a winning lottery ticket, it was for something else that he took her envelope. He figured it had to do with the torment that he received during his childhood due, in large part, to his small proportions, especially the extent that he suffered throughout high school and, even now, as an adult. He wanted to get back at Mrs. Enunzio, so he took the thing that she most valued. He took whatever it was she hid in the bank vault. He stole her lottery ticket. She would not need it anymore, anyway; she was dead. Besides, no one would know that he took the ticket. For all anyone knew, the ticket belonged to him, another lucky lottery winner. The ironic thing, he realized, was the he got back at the person who had scarred him the most, Shannon Kelly.

Most people never made fun of him to his face. Most people, especially now that he was an adult, never called him names, but their looks pierced his heart. It was their looks and his distorted perception of what their thoughts were behind their looks that hurt him. The dumbest man walking down the street who, because of his gene pool, was born six foot tall, would give Michael that look that said that he was better than him, just because he was taller than him. Shannon Kelly-O'Day, as did Mrs. Enunzio, gave him that look. Shannon Kelly O'Day brought all of those emotions back. She always gave him that look. He wanted to scream at her, "Why are you looking at me like that?"