Dirty Headlines by L.J. Shen

PROLOGUE

Troy

Trinity Chapel

South Boston, Massachusetts

Silence. The most loaded sound in human history.

The only sound audible was the click, click of my Derby shoes against the mosaic floor. I closed my eyes, playing the game I relished as a kid one last time. I knew the way to the confession booth by heart. Been a parishioner in this church since the day I was born. I was christened here. Attended Sunday Mass here every week. Had my first sloppy kiss in the bathroom, right fucking here. I would probably have my impending funeral here, though with the legacy of men in my family, it wouldn’t be an open-casket event.

Three, four, five steps past the holy water font, I took a sharp right turn, counting.

Six, seven, eight, nine. My eyes fluttered open. Still got it.

It was there, the wooden box where all of my secrets were once buried. The confession booth.

I opened the squeaking door and blinked, the smell of mold and the sour sweat of sinners crawling into my nose. I hadn’t set foot in reconciliation in two years. Not since my father died. But I guess confessions were like riding a bike—once you learned, you never forgot.

Though this time, things would go down differently.

It was an old-fashioned booth, in an old-fashioned church, no living-room bullshit design and fancy, modern crap. Classic dark wood covered every corner, an old grid divided the priest and the confessors, and a crucifix hung over the grille.

I settled in my seat on the wooden bench, my ass hitting the rough pew with a bang. At 6’4”, I looked like a giant trying to fit into a Barbie dreamhouse. Memories of sitting here as a boy, my legs dangling mid-air as I told Father McGregor about my small, meaningless sins raced through my mind, tangling into a messy ball of nostalgia. The thought of how big my sins were turning out to be would make McGregor sick to his stomach. But my rage toward him was stronger than my morals.

I folded my suit coat on the bench beside me. Sorry, old man. Today you’ll meet the maker you’ve been preaching about all these years.

I heard him sliding his side of the screen open with a screech, clearing his throat. I did the sign of the cross, reciting, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

The creak of his chair, when his body stiffened at the sound of my voice, filled the air. He recognized me. Good. I relished the thought of his death, and I guess that’d make me, in your book, a psychopath.

But it was true.

I was fucking thrilled. I was a monster, out for blood. I was vengeance and hate, fury and wrath.

“Son…” His voice trembled, but he stuck to the usual script. “How long has it been since your last confession?”

“Cut the bullshit. You know.” I smiled, staring at nothing in particular. Everything in the place was so goddamn wooden. Not that I expected an interior designer’s touch, but this shit was ridiculous. It looked like the inside of a coffin. Certainly felt like one.

“Can we move on?” I cracked my neck and rolled up my sleeves. “Time is money.”

“It’s also a healer.”

I clenched my jaw, balling and releasing my fists.

“Nice try.” I paused, checking my Rolex. His time was running out. Mine, too.

Tick tock, tick tock.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Two years ago, I killed a man. His name was Billy Crupti. He shot a bullet straight into my father’s forehead and blew out his brains, causing my family pain and devastation. I killed him with my bare hands.”

I let the weight of my confession sink in and continued. “I cut his arms and legs, just enough so he wouldn’t bleed to death, tied him up and had him watching as a pack of fighting dogs fought over his parts.” My voice was eerily calm. “When everything was done and dealt with, I tied a weight to his waist and threw him from a commercial pier on the bay, still twitching, to die a slow, painful suffocating death. Now tell me, Father, how many Hail Marys for a murder?”

I knew he wasn’t the type to bring a cell phone into the booth. McGregor was too old and cocky for modern technology. Even though he went rogue on my father, he never imagined he’d be caught. Least of all by me.

But now, as I confessed my sin, he knew I was going to wait at the other end of the booth and claim his life, too. He had no way out.

He was mostly silent, calculating his next move. I heard him swallow hard, his fingernail scraping at the wooden chair he sat on.

I crossed one leg over the other and cupped one of my knees, amused. “Now your turn. How ’bout we hear about them sins, Father?”

He released a breath he’d been holding in a sharp sigh. “That’s not how confessions work.”

“Don’t I fucking know it,” I snorted. “This one’s a little different, though. So…” I brushed the screen dividing us with my gloves and watched as he flinched on the other side. “I’m all ears.”

I heard something drop from his hand and the creak of his chair when he kneeled down to pick it up.

“I’m a man of God,” he tried to reason with me.

I seethed with resentment. He was also a man who spilled secrets from the confessional.

“Not a soul on earth knew about the whereabouts of my father every Tuesday at ten p.m. Not a soul other than him and his mistress. And you,” I drawled. “Billy ‘Baby Face’ Crupti tracked down my father, unprotected and unarmed, because of you.”

He opened his mouth, intending to argue, but clapped it shut, thinking the better of it at the last minute. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking and a woman was yelling at her husband in their backyard. Classic Southie reminders of the people I used to know before I moved to a skyscraper and reinvented myself.

McGregor gulped, stalling. “Troy, my son…”

I stood up, pushing my sleeves farther up my arms. “Enough. Out you go.”

He didn’t move for a few seconds, which prompted me to take out my knife and slice the grid open with a ripping sound. I shoved my hand into his booth, grabbing him by his white collar and pulling his head through the hole so I could take a good look at him. His gray hair stood out in all directions, damp with sweat. The horror in his eyes lightened my mood. His narrow, thin mouth hung open like a hooked fish.

“Please, please. Troy. Please. I beg you, son. Do not repeat the sins of your father,” he chanted, crying out in pain as I jerked him closer to my face.

“Open. The fucking. Booth.” I extended every word like it was a sentence of its own.

I heard a sleek click as he fumbled for the door. I released his hair out of my fist, and we both stepped out.

McGregor stood before me, several inches shorter. A chubby, sweaty, corrupted man pretending to be God’s messenger. A tasteless joke.

“You’re really going to kill your priest,” he pointed out sadly.

I shrugged. I wasn’t a hitman. I drew a thick red line somewhere near homicide, but this was personal. It was about my father. The man who raised me while my mom was too drunk on Pottery Barn sales and Sunday brunch cocktails. She was so absent from my childhood, not to mention adulthood, that I was practically half orphaned. If nothing else, my father deserved closure.

“You’re just like them. I thought you were different. Better,” McGregor accused.

I pressed my lips into a thin line. My job had nothing to do with Irish mobsters. I didn’t need the Feds crawling up my ass every time someone farted in my direction and certainly didn’t take a shine to the framework of gang leaders and soldiers. I was a lone wolf, who hired a few people to help him out when help was needed. I had no buffer between me and my clients, colleagues and enemies. And most importantly, I sailed smoothly under the radar. Didn’t need to hide behind a dozen soldiers. When I needed someone gone, I handled them myself.

And Father McGregor had to pay for his sins. He was already supposed to be dead—collateral damage. But he hadn’t shown up where he was supposed to when I took out the guy he’d ratted my dad out to. Billy Crupti. The asshole.

So now I had to do this in a fucking church.

“Be quick,” he requested.

I nodded grimly.

“You were always his child. Had the Irish mob gene, the ruthlessness in your blood. You had no fear. Still don’t.” He sighed, extending his hand to me.

I stared at it like it was a ticking bomb, finally shaking it. His palm felt clammy and cold, his handshake weak. I pulled him into my body for an embrace, and clasped the back of his neck with one hand.

“And I’m so sorry,” he continued, sniffing into my shoulder, his whole body quivering as he struggled to hold back the tears. “Lapse of judgment on my end. I knew that he’d kill them, both of them. But at the time, thought I’d be doing everyone a favor.”

“It was money, wasn’t it?” I whispered into his ear as we clasped each other, me pulling a knife from a sheath at my waist. “Billy paid you?”

He nodded, still sobbing, unaware of the knife. Someone had to pay him off, and pay him good to spill the beans about my dad. Someone who wasn’t Crupti who couldn’t even afford a fucking filter coffee at his local diner.

“Not just for the money, Troy. I wanted Cillian out of this neighborhood, out of Boston. This place had suffered enough under the realm of your father. Our people deserve some peace.”

“Our people are not your fucking subjects.” I dragged the knife along his neck until I found his throbbing carotid artery and slashed deep, immediately shoving his body back into the booth so that the spray of blood wouldn’t meet my newly tailored suit. “You should have minded your own business.”

He gagged and jerked on the confession floor like a fish out of water, losing buckets of blood. The scent—sour, tinny and thrilling—fogged the air and I knew it would linger in my nose for days to come.

When his spasm died down, I got down on one knee, staring back at his brown irises, still open, still filled with horror and regret. I pulled out his tongue and cut it from his mouth.

This was gang-member code for a snitch. Let the police try and figure out what the fuck Father McGregor did to deserve it and which of the hundred Boston gangs killed him. There were too many of them to count and hell knows they were intertwined with one another more often than not. Gangs took over the streets a decade ago, when my father was dethroned from his seat as the Boss of Boston.

Ironically, in trying to give them peace, Father McGregor had sentenced his parishioners to a life of panic and fear.

The streets were still chaotic—some would say more than ever—with the crime rate picking up at an alarming speed. Keeping an eye on the Irish Mob, I assumed, was far simpler than trying to tame dozens of gangs running the streets.

I knew the police would never get anywhere near me with this murder case.

And I also knew where I’d bury father McGregor’s tongue. In his own backyard.

I casually wiped my knife clean on his pants leg and pulled off the leather gloves I was wearing, shoving them in my pocket. I took out a toothpick and put it in my mouth. Then I rolled down my sleeves and retrieved my suit coat. When I got out the door, I glanced around for potential witnesses, just in case.

The neighborhood was deader than the man I had just dealt with. Going for a stroll wasn’t really our thing in South Boston, especially not around noon. You either worked hard, took care of the little ones at home or nursed a fucking hangover. The only witness to my visit to the church was a bird, sitting on an ugly power line up above, eyeing me suspiciously from the corner of its eye. It was a bland looking sparrow.

I crossed the road and got into my car, slamming the door behind me. Taking out a Sharpie from the glove compartment, I crossed another name off my list.

1 - Billy Crupti

2 -Father McGregor

3- The asshole who hired Billy?

I sighed as I looked at number three, shoving the crumpled paper back into my pocket.

I’ll find out who you are, motherfucker.

I looked out the window. The sparrow didn’t move, not even when a gust of wind sent the power line dancing and the bird lost its balance. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Fucking sparrow, of all birds.

I fought the urge to throw something at it, revved up the engine and spat the toothpick in my mouth into the ashtray after it was thoroughly chewed.

I thought I saw the stupid bird still following my car with its tiny eyes as I stopped at a red light and looked out my side mirror. Averting my gaze down, I checked for blood traces. There weren’t any.

McGregor was dead, but the void in my stomach didn’t shrink an inch.

It was alarming, because in order to keep my promise to my dad, I had one more name to tick off my list.

But this was a person I wasn’t supposed to kill. This was a person I was supposed to resurrect.

I, of all people, needed to be her savior.

Other people—normal people, I guess—would have never agreed to sacrifice this part of their lives for their father. But other people didn’t live under Cillian Brennan’s shadow, didn’t feel the urge to constantly step up their game to be equal to their late legendary sire. No, I’d follow his wishes. And I’d even make it work.

All I knew when I drove away from my childhood church were two things:

My father had sinned.

But I was to be punished.