In Death 12 - Betrayal in Death

onlookers got into the spirit and began to punch each other for the fun of it."
    It was easy to picture, and easy to remember how many times they'd started such an evening's entertainment themselves. "How many pockets did you pick during the show?"
    "I lost count," Mick said with a grin, "but I made up a small portion of my lost fee. Chairs began to fly, and bodies with them. I couldn't help but get caught up in the thing. And damned if the two who'd started it didn't end up sticking each other. Mortal, too. I could see that right off by the blackness of the blood. And the smell of it. You know how that whiff of death hits the nose."
    "Yes, I do."
    "Well, most of the crowd backed off then quick enough, and began to disburse like rats leaving a ship. And the barman, he goes to call the cops. So it comes to me, like a flash of light, this one dead man here's my coloring and close to my build as well. So, it's fate, isn't it? Mick Connelly needs to vanish, and how better than to be dead on the floor of a Liverpool pub? I switched IDs with him and ran.
    "So Michael Joseph Connelly died bleeding there, as his mother had predicted, and Bobby Pike took the next transpo for London. And that's my story." He drank deep, let out a breath of pleasure. "Christ, it's good to look at that face of yours. We had some times, didn't we? You and me and Brian and the rest."
    "We did, yes."
    "I heard about what happened to Jenny, and to Tommy and Shawn. It broke my heart knowing they died as they did. There's only you and me and Bri left from the old Dublin gang."
    "Brian's in Dublin still. He owns The Penny Pig, and mans the bar himself half the time."
    "I've heard it. I'll wind myself back to Dublin town again, and see for myself one day. Do you go back much?"
    "No."
    Mick nodded. "Not all the memories are good ones, after all. Still, you got well out, didn't you? Always said you would." He rose then, carrying his half-empty pint as he strolled to the glass doors. "Think of it. You own this whole bloody place, and Christ knows what besides. Last years, I've been over the world and off it, and nowhere I've been could I say I haven't heard the name of my old boyhood mate bandied about. Like a damn religion." He turned back and grinned. "Fuck me, Roarke, if I'm not proud of you."
    It struck Roarke, oddly, that no one who had known the boy had ever said those words to the man. "What are you doing with yourself, Mick?"
    "Oh, bits of business. Always bits of business. And when some of it brought me to New York City, I said to myself, 'Mick, you're going to get yourself a room in that fancy hotel of Roarke's and you're going to look him up.' I'm traveling under my own name again. Time enough's passed since Liverpool. And too much time's passed I'm after thinking since I had a pint with old friends."
    "So you've looked me up, and we're having our pint. Now, why don't you tell me what's behind it all?"
    Mick leaned back against the door, lifted the pint to his lips, and studied Roarke with those dancing eyes. "There never was any getting over on you. A natural radar you've always had for bullshit. But the fact is what I've told you is true as gold. It just so happens that it occurred to me that you might be interested in some of the business I'm here to conduct. It's a matter of stones. Pretty colorful stones just wasting away in some dark box."
    "I don't do that sort of thing anymore."
    Mick grinned, let out a short laugh, then blinked as Roarke merely sat watching him. "Oh come now, this is Mick. You're never going to tell me you've retired those magic hands of yours."
    "Let's just say I've put them to different uses. Legal ones. I haven't needed to pick pockets or lift locks in some time."
    "Need, who said anything about need?" Mick said with a bluster. "You've a God-given talent. And not just your hands, but your brain. Never in my life have I met anyone with a slick and cagey a brain as yours. And for larceny it was created." Smiling again, he walked back to sit. "Now you're not going to expect me to believe you run all of this fucking empire of yours on the up and up."
    "I do." Now. "And that's a challenge in itself."
    "My heart." Dramatically, Mick clutched his chest. "I'm not as young as once I was. I can't take this kind of shock to the system."
    "You'll live through it, and you'll have to find another setting for your stones."
    "A pity. A shame. A sin, really, but what is, is." Mick sighed. "Straight and narrow, is it? Well, I've got