Chapter 4

Paddy led the way to the house. It wasn’t far from either the shop or the Pub, but was on a side street. It was the first floor of the three story house that we would have. The front door was right off the street with a very narrow sidewalk. Inside the entryway, there were stairs to the other floors plus the entry door for the first floor. The apartment, as that is what it was, had a living room, a small dining room, and a kitchen. There were two bedrooms with a bath between them in the back of the house. The place was clean and the furniture was plain but unbroken. It would be all right for the few days we would need it.

“You should get a better coat, it’s getting colder out,” Paddy told Maureen who headed upstairs to get one. Paddy went with her, as he had the keys to the apartment.

“What do you think?” I asked Jill when they were gone.

“It will be all right for the few days we are here,” she answered. I sat on the floor more or less in the middle of the apartment and cast my wards in the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. I was finished before Paddy and Maureen returned. We headed back to the shop shortly after that, as Paddy had received a call while upstairs. Being late afternoon, it was colder and growing darker as we moved back toward the rear of the shop.

“I need to order some parts for one of the jobs,” he told us on the way. We entered through the back door of the darkened shop. The lights had no more than been turned on when the front door was suddenly smashed open and three young toughs with guns drawn rushed into the shop.

I didn’t have time to cast a spell, so only said, “Tine (TIN-AH)’ the word for Fire in Gaelic, and Magic Fire appeared in my hand before I threw it at the men. It expanded as it moved to cover an area about eight feet square in the air. I stopped it a couple of feet in front of the frightened men. It hung there in front of them while I quickly cast the ammunition spell, while Jill cast a freeze spell on the three of them.

Quickly canceling the wall of Magic Fire following that, it was obvious that nothing had been burned, but the front door to the shop was a mess. Paddy was staring at them and us in shock during this, as was Maureen. I finished by casting a collection spell on the ruined front door parts and then a repair spell to fix it as good as new. Following that, I removed the guns from each of them and sent them to the bay out past the end of Broadway.

“What the hell is going on here?” Paddy demanded, as he recovered. Maureen had moved over against Jill and clutched her skirt with a death grip. The entire episode was over so quickly that it hadn’t attracted the attention of passersby, at least none that those who saw anything would admit to.

“We need to question one of them,” I told him.

“You expect to get anything out of them?” he asked doubtfully.

“Oh yes, but which one?” I asked, as he looked them over very carefully.

“This one,” he finally said pointing to the one on my left, but their right. He had been the first one through the door. I went over and physically picked his skinny ass up and moved him over behind the counter, before changing the freeze spell to a partial one, so he could talk to us but still couldn’t move.

“What... ?” he grunted in shock on recovering his senses. He was looking around wild eyed at the four of us staring at him, and then at his friends still frozen in place on the other side of the front counter before noticing that he no longer had a gun.

“We have questions, you will answer them or else,” I told him.

“What are you going to do if I don’t, call the pigs?” he answered in a snotty voice.

“I don’t have any use for the police. I have methods of my own. You won’t like it if I am required to use them,” I told him and smiled. Since he only smirked at my remarks, I cast the pain spell on him and at a high level. He quickly started to sweat and moan, so I changed the freeze spell back to a full body one.

“Go ahead and call in your parts order. This will take ten minutes or so until he is ready to talk,” I told Paddy who was still staring at the three of them in shock.

“You should get your car and park it in the back,” he told us after shaking his head in wonder, and then dialing a number on his phone.

“Right, Jill let’s transfer to the car, and you can drive it back here after I cancel the wards around it,” I told her.

“Are you going to leave us here with those men?” Maureen asked in a terrified little voice.

“We’ll take you with us, dear,” Jill assured her. In the meantime, I had been wondering if those here had more friends who might come looking for them, and cast a ward around the shop before we transferred to near where Jill’s SUV was parked further up Broadway on this side of the street. We appeared in the shadows in an alley between two buildings. I could see the SUV parked up the street a little ways, and could also see the squad car parked behind it with its lights running.

“Time for a little fun,” I told Jill who was standing beside be.

“Fun! They look like they want to impound my car,” she said in an exasperated voice.

“They can’t impound it or give you a ticket, if they can’t see it,” I told her with a smile.

“What are you going to do?” Maureen asked, confused.

“You need to go with us, Maureen. That way we’ll look like just a normal family passing by. I’ll cast an invisibility spell and throw it at the SUV as we walk by. The police won’t know what happened, and will think someone drove it off,” I told her.

We all joined hands and started walking toward the end of the street and the two vehicles. We had passed the SUV with me on the inside close to the buildings when I threw the invisibility spell at the SUV. It vanished from sight with a flash of light. The police must have been waiting there for quite some time, and weren’t paying attention because it took them a number of seconds to realize that the SUV was no longer there. They immediately panicked, looking around wildly but not seeing it. The one on the passenger side rolled down his window and hailed us.

“Hey you... , “ he called, and I turned to look at him in surprise with a blank expression on my face, as if to say ‘what me’.

“Yeah you, did you see anyone get into the SUV that was parked in front of us?” he demanded after I had pointed at us.

“What SUV?” I asked in a puzzled voice.

“Shit... !” the cop blurted, rolling up the window. They quickly pulled out with all of their lights flashing and headed east on Broadway looking for the SUV. We waited until they were well out of sight, before I canceled the invisibility spell and then my wards around the vehicle. Jill and Maureen quickly got in, and she started the vehicle.

“Will you be all right without me?” I asked. She just nodded before I transferred back to Paddy’s shop to begin the interrogation of the first prisoner. My sudden appearance in the shop startled Paddy, but he quickly got over it.

“Do you have a large container here?” I asked when he had recovered.

“How large?”

“Large enough for him to throw up in,” I told him. He retrieved a large metal bucket from the back of the shop.

“Hold it up near his throat while I cancel the pain spell,” I told him and canceled the pain spell after changing the freeze spell back to a partial one. The prisoner barfed for a good minute following that and didn’t look well at all.

“Are you ready to cooperate now?” I asked when he finished.

“Yes,” he wheezed through a sore throat.

“Who are you, and what do you want here?” I demanded after casting the truth spell, even if he was willing to cooperate.

“I’m Billy Shea, and we came here to find out why the two we sent here this morning hadn’t returned. What did you do to them?” he demanded at the end, although he hadn’t wanted to give us his name.

“We’ll ask the questions. What gang are you in?” Paddy demanded in a harsh voice.

“The Fourth Street Gang. This is part of our territory,” he insisted.

“Where is your leader?” I asked. It took him a while to answer, but the truth spell is compulsive, and he finally gasped out the answer.

“He’s at a house on Monks Street,” he finally gasped. Jill and Maureen had returned by now and were watching.

“Did you have any trouble?” I asked them.

“No, Maureen knew which one way streets to take to get here,” Jill told me with a smile.

“Paddy and I are going to take this one to Monks Street to see his gang leader. You and Maureen remain here,” I told her.

“What about the other two?” Jill asked.

“I’ll transfer them to where ever their boss is later,” I told her.

We went out the back door. One of Paddy’s vans had pulled into the parking area, and a man got out just as we exited the shop.

“We’ll be back shortly. There is a young woman in the shop with Maureen. She’s a friend. Don’t worry about the other two in there. They aren’t going anywhere,” Paddy told the man, as we moved away from the parking area and out onto 4th Street. Monks Street was a couple of blocks east and several blocks south of the shop. It didn’t take long to arrive near our destination.

“Which house?” Paddy demanded, as we reached Monks Street.

“That one,” the prisoner said pointing to a house part of the way down the street.

“Lead on,” I told him. Having kept a tight grip on him all of the way from the shop, I didn’t release it now. The house was your typical Southie row house; three stories and narrow. There wasn’t any front yard, just a sidewalk in front of the steps to the front door.

“Get those inside to open the front door,” I told him, releasing my hold on him and moving to the side, so as not to be seen by those inside. He moved up the steps and knocked on the door in a code. The door opened two inches or so in a couple of seconds, and someone said, “About time,” before the door opened the rest of the way. Paddy and I followed Billy through the door in a rush, startling the one who had answered it. Before he could go for the gun he had, I hit him with a freeze spell, stopping him in place.

“Which way?” Paddy demanded of our frightened prisoner.

“In the back most likely,” he answered after a few seconds, and we all moved in that direction after I closed the door and cast a spell to keep it from being opened.

The entry hall passed the parlor, the dining room, and the kitchen before coming to a closed door at the back of the house. Billy knocked again and the door was quickly opened. I hit the one opening the door with a freeze spell and marched into the room ahead of the other two. I had cast the ammunition spell before entering the house, and it was just as well that I had because the fairly large man sitting behind the desk had a large caliber pistol in his hand and fired it as soon as I was all of the way into the room. The shock on his face when all that he got was the click of the hammer falling was something to see. He quickly racked back the slide ejecting the previous cartridge and feeding a new one into the chamber but got the same result on pulling the trigger. After the third time, he threw the gun away in disgust.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded in an angry voice. I just smiled.

“I’m Max Hardtrick. I’m the one who caused all of the trouble in Atlanta and Elizabeth, New Jersey. I hanged the pimps, the drug dealers, the Mafia boss and his men plus several politicians in Atlanta. In New Jersey, I destroyed the Palladino Family’s business and hung the Don.

“Paddy O’Farrell is a friend of mine. He, his Family, his business, and the people working for him are not to be bothered. If I even hear a whisper of something being planned against him or his, I’ll be back to hang you and the rest of the Fourth Street Gang from the lampposts here in Southie. If the lampposts are too short, there are plenty of three and four story buildings to hang you from, especially along Broadway,” I told him.