Shannon was but part of his name, not the first nor the last, but the middle, after his mother's people, and he chose it as his only identification when they released him from prison rather than to use an alias. Should he resort to the full Andrew Shannon Connelly there were those, he felt, who might remember him, although it was doubtful there in Canada. Generally, the sportsminded were hockey people, some football, but baseball had yet to come into its own, even with the new Montreal Expos; still, he wanted no ties nor to be reminded of that segment of his life if only by chance, and especially now with what he had in mind.
He'd been sixteen-years in the majors, a husky corn-fed farm boy of eighteen from upstate New York in the beginning, foregoing college in '47 to sign with St. Louis, and later with Boston, then Milwaukee. He'd been good, having two no-hitters to his credit with the Sox, and great things still expected of him even at thirty-four, but Maggi had ended all of that.
Maggi Delaney Connelly, his wife of thirteen years, mother of Paulie, their six-year old son, had been an ardent baseball lover, an excellent hostess, and a Godamned promiscuous woman. One afternoon in July, six-years past, Paulie, left alone had struck his head on the side of their swimming pool, tumbled into the water and drowned. He, Shannon, had been in Chicago and they'd wired him there. It was two days following the funeral that a friend advised him of seeing Maggi in a bar with a man at the time the accident occurred.
He'd said nothing to her, only pretended to return to the team. That night he'd found them together in his bed and attempted to kill them both with his bare hands. He might have succeeded, he remembered, had not Maggi managed to floor him from behind with a chair, knocking him unconscious and breaking his arm… his left arm… his pitching arm.
But the ironical part had come later when her lover, who had turned out to be a prominent, local political hack, had engineered an attempted murder charge against him and made it stick, netting him a year and a day in prison. When it was done, a bitter ex-baseball player named Andy Connelly was advised by a benevolent warden that he might do better in another part of the country… or even another country. Had he thought about that?
In fact, he'd thought about a lot of things, and that was but one of them. Divorced, broke and overflowing with hate, he had migrated north of the border, found employment in a small factory in Ontario, then, fumbled a stupid attempt to hijack its payroll.
So, once again here he was, five-years later, no less bitter, but seasoned, and happy to be breathing free air once more as he walked along a side street off St. Catherine in the warm September sunshine, enjoying the pleasurable sounds of Montreal's bustling activity. Twenty years had passed since his last visit to the fabulous city… since that exhibition game with Montreal's then International League team, and he was satisfied that its stellar attraction had not changed… the women were still beautiful… and God, how he needed one.
A half-dozen times he paused to ogle after a pair of pretty legs or a voluptuous figure wearing a piled-up, exotic coiffure… radical, ridiculous, but beautiful… slender ankles, rounded calves and curvaceous hips and buttocks… tripping off on high, needle-like heels in every damned direction. Christ, it was enough to set him wild; his love-starved cock jerked uncontrollably in his pants. He didn't intend that another day would go by without him knowing the satisfaction of a woman's warm, soft, receptive body. How he'd gone these last forty-eight hours since his release was almost more than he could fathom right at the moment, but then, with a little thought that wasn't too difficult to reason either.
There were other things besides the need for normal sexual satisfaction one became obsessed with when he was buried "inside"… and in this case it had been a plan to extort a half-million dollars. A thousand and one nights he had lain awake plotting, planning, learning all he could from his vindictive cellmate, Antoine Poirier, regarding the latter's infamous crime czar "uncle", Gaston Larreau; until he was certain he had devised a workable scheme. Nothing else seemed to matter all those long months and years except this fantastic coup that was going to even every score for him, even the medieval torture of being denied the biological need for a woman.
At first, when he'd walked onto the street and heard the big gate clang shut behind him the sensation of being a free man once more had nearly over-powered him. By God, he was going to kick things off with a few drinks, then, a woman, and he was going to fuck that doll, whoever she would be, until she couldn't walk, until he'd drained the last drop of stored-up semen from his aching, ravenous loins… but he hadn't done either. Instead, he'd gone directly to the CNR station, bought a ticket for Montreal and spent the day enroute, his brain cogitating in a never-ending pattern of hashing and rehashing, for it was the enormity of such a scheme and the aftermath should it fail that caused him to break out in periodic cold sweats.
The big gamble existed in the fact that he was playing at a game he knew nothing about, where the stakes, win or lose, were the ultimate… financially fixed for life, or very, very dead. The payroll escapade had been a foolhardy thing; the proof of that had been his tackling it single-handed and without a carefully prepared program. They'd caught him flat-footed. This time, he intended to minimize the gamble with methodical planning. There was no room for error, or else he would damn sure wind up in a basket; not that he feared death so much, but it was the uncontrollable ways one could achieve the state that bothered him.
Anyway, his carefully conceived plans called for a woman and one he could trust all the way. Tony Poirier had lauded the praises of his voluptuous young wife the entire length of time that they'd shared a cell, long enough and with sufficient enthusiasm to lead Shannon to believe that she might be just the accomplice he was looking for… if he could enlist her help. He'd told Tony nothing of his intentions, simply picked his brains until he was satisfied that he knew Madeleine Poirier as well as did the young husband, himself, even to every inch of the soft, white flesh of her delicious body… and this was why he hadn't wasted any time sating his immediate carnal desires. He'd managed to survive for five years and another day or so wasn't beyond his realm of endurance; besides, from the small picture that Tony kept of her on the wall above his bunk, plus the untold hours he had listened dry-mouthed with his prick anvil-hard and throbbing painfully while the Frenchman expounded on her sexual charms and abilities, he was convinced it was going to be worth the extra short abstinence.
Of course, there were still questions he had no way of knowing the answers to, yet; questions like: how much had she changed since Tony'd been sent to prison? Did she still love him? What was she doing; how was she getting along? Could she really be trusted… and was he going to have to rape her, or would she fuck willingly? Because he damned sure intended to have her, one way or the other.
He'd formed a few ideas of his own and based them on the fact that her letters to her husband had fallen off to one every two or three weeks, and dropped from six and seven pages to one… it all added up to one thing, little Madeleine had had it with her Tony. New things were in the wind for her, which might well play right into his hand. Besides, he still had his main ace-in-the-hole… her kid, and this was what he was counting on to swing things his way.
Shannon's mind churned busily as he hailed a cab, gave the address he had copied from one of her letters to Tony, and leaned back to contemplate his financial situation briefly. It wasn't what he could call sound; he had fifty-three dollars to his name and he was going to need a little bundle to set the wheels in motion. Someway, somewhere, somehow, he had to garner a sizeable stake, and for some reason he was convinced that Madeleine Poirier was also going to be his answer in this department.
The cabbie swung around the corner onto a narrow side street and slowed to study the housenumbers. Shannon noted the semi-shabbiness of the section with its near-ugly three and four storied red-brick buildings and their long ascending porch-steps. Momentarily, he speculated that Tony's little wife might not be making it too well and this didn't please him.
The Frenchman pointed out the right entrance and Shannon hopped out, paying but ignoring the tip.
"Merci, M'sieu'," the driver stressed sarcastically tossing his fare a disgusted side glance, as he pulled away from the curb with a squeal of rubber.
Shannon spat after him and cursed under his breath. Lousy frog. He climbed the steps irritably, hardly prepared to walk into the building superintendent. He had just entered the dingy, musty-smelling vestibule when the other appeared out of nowhere before him, a thin, narrow-shouldered, elderly Englishman with a fat little belly and a pinched face. His hair had long left him and his eyes bore a strange cloudiness about them that reminded Shannon of a junkie he had known a long time before in Syracuse. The little man looked at Shannon's six-feet from head to toe, appraising the close cropped, almost white hair, the hard blue eyes and straight lipped mouth in a manner that indicated he didn't like what he saw.
"Well?" he said with a near cockney accent.
"Madeleine Poirier? She live here?"
"Maybe. Who're you?"
"Which apartment?" asked Shannon, ignoring the question.
"She ain't in. Saw her leave a couple of hours ago," the little man told him snidely, working his milky-eyes up and down Shannon's face once more. "Who're you, anyway?"
"Her brother."
His pinched face twisted into a contemptuous grin. "Now I've got yuh, wise guy. You don't look like her; you don't look French either. So, let's try a better one, eh…"
Shannon lost patience. He caught him by his long necktie, winding it around his big hand until his fist was shutting off the breath in the other's windpipe. "Which apartment, Pop?" he hissed without moving his lips.
The Englishman attempted to swallow. It seemed difficult. "You… you better not try any rough stuff here, mister," he gasped, the haze temporarily clearing from his eyes. "This is a respectable house, see… No rough stuff… I… I don't know anything about her… I ain't sure she lives here… okay…?"
Shannon let go of him and stepped back. He sighed and brought bills from his pocket, peeling off one of the precious tens and extending it to him.
"W-Well… well," the little man stammered, simultaneously massaging his throat while his eyes darted from the money up to Shannon's face. "W-Why didn't you say you were her brother?" He made a more acceptable grin and grabbed at the money, shoving it deep into his shirt pocket. "Follow me… I'll let you in to wait for her, eh? She ought to be 'long any time. Been gone quite awhile now." He winked and spun around.
"Thanks," said Shannon drily, falling in behind him to climb the stairs.
"Yeah…" he repeated as he led the way to the third floor, "… should've told me that in the first place, mister…"