The Lace Dagger

By John O'Donnell

For three decades, Raymond Patriarca ruled New England’s organized crime with an iron fist from Providence, Rhode Island. But after his era ended, the glory days for Rhode Island gangsters reluctantly faded. Boston wise guys encroached on the territory of The Atwells Avenue crew. Mob members throughout the tiny state scrambled to maintain power – their ordained right. Answering to Boston was disrespectful. And the five families in New York declined to interfere. Risks were taken, mistakes made, weaknesses exposed.

This is the fictional story of even more sinister forces arriving to prey on the crumbling empire. An international crime organization sends a professional burglary team, headed by a brilliant and confident seductress willing to break any rule. She conceals her true intentions.

The local gangsters are no pushovers. The stakes are sky-high. The final chapter decides who will win.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398409354

John O'Donnell

He grew up in La Jolla with his Royal Family. Princess Ashley, Princess Tamsin, and Prince or King Kalen as Prince or King John Michael O’Donnell Jr. Their father John Brian O’Donnell 3rd raised them from youth to be reclusive and hard to find. They like potatoes and enjoy Gaelic football. Amongst their favorite things are Blarney stone, four leaf clovers and a Guinness beer. The prince of Ireland enjoys talking to family on twitter and doing things on Twitter to enhance the world; Facebook is where he publishes notes to get books going and ideas going especially pertaining to space. The author is an expert in Piano playing, a terrorist hunter with notoriety, an expert shot having shot a moving hummingbird with a carbine, an inventor, a contractor, and comes from a famous line of Generals.

Book preview

About the Author

John O’Donnell was born and raised outside Providence, Rhode Island. He received the first sixteen years of his education in Providence. Upon graduation he attended medical school in Newark, New Jersey. He stayed in the medical school and completed a surgical residency and vascular research fellowship. After training, he opened a surgical practice in Southern New Jersey where he practiced for thirty-five years. He is married with three grown boys and one granddaughter.

Copyright Information ©

John O’Donnell 2024

The right of John O’Donnell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398409347 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398409354 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Chapter One

It was mid-September, shortly before sunset, the magical time when the last golden rays of sunshine trap small particles that dance alluringly in the fading beauty. The resultant prism of light collaborates fully with the swirling winds that announce the imminent change from the oppressive heat of summer to the welcomed fall crispness. That pre-autumn partnership energises my every step. My senses are fully awakened. My sensuality is palpable. These are the carefully honed tools I will use to their fullest in the next few hours.

Dress and makeup for this type of work is delicate. Overdress, over-makeup and over-scent will betray me as a woman on a mission, rather than the casual customer brought randomly here by the misfortunes of the day. A small but disabling rental car problem had forced the character that I had become to seek assistance at a local automotive shop. She would be delayed an hour or so while the shop determined the extent of the problem. A simple call to the leasing agency would have had the car towed and serviced. This would, however, not have satisfied her covert purpose. The service manager had, by this point, become an unwitting accomplice. He understood that if it were a minor problem, the convenience of getting the car quickly back to her would outweigh the cost. The recent move from Milwaukee and the new job had created an extremely hectic schedule.

With the car unavailable for at least an hour, it would be natural to walk the short distance to Ciro’s Ristorante. The entire exercise is designed to make contact with my target, Pete Stanza, an upscale bookmaker with a small loan-sharking and occasional fencing side-line. Pete owns Ciro’s, a prosperous enterprise in its own right.

Ciro’s, as presented in the Horizon dossier, is a high-end, pricey restaurant serving Italian and American cuisine, open daily for lunch and dinner. The kitchen is overseen by master chef Roberto Petrocelli. The dining room offers seating for sixty customers, with a wine cellar that is the envy of many Boston competitors. The bar and cocktail lounge, which enjoys its own distinct trade, accommodates an additional twenty-five patrons. Management superbly performs the task of maintaining fine dining in close proximity to a casual lounge, which independently thrives, and is an anchor of the local community.

It is unlikely anyone, irrespective of her anticipated task, could feel more exhilarated than I do as I broach that restaurant door to begin this operation.

This episode begins in late August. I am working in a temporary position providing vacation relief for employees in several departments of a large St Louis chemical company. This position is coming to an end as summer transitions to fall, and vacations are all but done for the year.

Almost simultaneously with me leaving to attend my employer’s Labour Day picnic, a Horizon operations package arrives by courier containing a dossier, a plane ticket from Milwaukee to Boston, a passport with matching driver’s license, Social Security and credit cards. There is also $8,000 in cash. An opened envelope contains my acceptance letter to an executive position with a Warwick, Rhode Island, company called Web Designs. Web Designs is a midsized organisation I was not familiar with prior to the two Skype interviews I did with them, overseen remotely by Horizon’s technical staff. The acceptance letter has been delivered to Milwaukee. My portion of the interviews had likewise originated there, although I had not left my St Louis apartment. The magic of technology never ceases to amaze. Phone service with a 414-area code and a local mail drop had also been established.

It is accepted, even expected, that my character, Sharon Stevens, can and will be traced to Milwaukee, but that is where the trail must vanish. No link to St Louis and especially no connection to me can exist.

The Horizon package, which interferes with my preparation to attend the end-of-summer, adults-only bash, is a job offer, the actual reason for the possible move to Rhode Island. My offer from Horizon is a top-of-the-mark, twenty-five percent share of the operation. That should equal two years’ salary from a legitimate company like Web Designs. It takes me about an hour from the time I receive the package to review the details and decide in the affirmative. Next is a call to the Horizon answering machine in the 212 area code to accept the offer and confirm that I can leave Tuesday, as the plane ticket dictates. I have often fancifully imagined that machine self-destructing with ‘Mission Impossible’ music in the background. I have a lot to do, so I decide to forego the party.

Many thoughts cross my mind, but what is obvious is my St Louis residence has become my home. It had been rented fourteen months earlier with a set of documents as equally impressive as those in this new package. I am never burdened by an abundance of personal possessions, but I have grown fond of my apartment, and find it quite comfortable. September’s rent has been paid. I prepare a check for October’s and attach a note to the superintendent that I will be away for four or five weeks. I know that if November’s rent becomes due before I return, Horizon, or a subsidiary will send one of my personal checks to the rental company. If that becomes necessary, it will be sent from a New York City address, known to house young women for short-term stays. The women who use these locations are mostly, but not exclusively, flight attendants. I was recruited by Horizon from a similar facility in Chicago. A moment of reflection invades my thoughts. Will I return here? If I do not return, that would mean that I am in hiding, and on the run. The life of a fugitive is beyond difficult. There is no rest, no solace and very little hope. The plan is, of course, to retire well before that day arrives. Each new job forces me to confront the reality that my freedom, and my life itself, is tenuous and rests on my ability to successfully complete the tasks assigned to me. If a job such as the one I have just agreed to is undertaken, a positive resolution is the only acceptable outcome. Horizon does not tolerate failure. My tenure with them has been based totally on my unwavering commitment to the job. Those less dedicated have not survived.

Flying is always more than a bit cumbersome. On this assignment, I use two different flights with two different identities that I separate with a ground transport leg in a way that they could never be connected. The cover story demands that Sharon be ticketed from Milwaukee to Boston. I could not fly into Milwaukee because surveillance cameras would certainly record my arrival. To not arrive in Milwaukee, but to leave from there as Sharon, I fly, not to Milwaukee, but to Chicago under my current identity. I travel from Chicago to the Milwaukee airport by Horizon limo. I enter that car as me in Chicago and exit it as Sharon Stevens in Milwaukee. When Sharon is dropped off at the airport in Milwaukee, it appears to be just a local businesswoman taking a local limo for her flight. This was Horizon protocol, not standard limo service. The driver does not open doors or assist with luggage. We do not converse. The slide stays closed. The driver does not really see me, nor do I see him. On the back seat, there is an envelope. All St Louis identification, keys, phone and personal items are placed in the envelope and sealed. The final flight to Boston, mostly enjoyable, comes with a somewhat annoying man in my row, but I’ve dealt with worse and thankfully, I never become the primary object of his attention. Immediately upon arriving, I present myself at the Avis rental counter and contract for a nondescript sedan.

It is a short drive to the Marriott in Providence, Rhode Island. It becomes a stress-free drive, once through the city of Boston. Rush hour has fortunately been over for two hours.

My travel plans seem excessive, but the all-consuming task in my life is to assure that the characters I play cannot be traced to St Louis.

The drive from Boston to Providence is slightly less than an hour. My thoughts drift to my cover. Is it truly impenetrable?

Facial recognition is mostly in use at points of entry into the country and searching for wanted persons. It is not an existential threat to me, as I move around the country using different identities. This could easily change in the future. As of now I continue to use airports without any attempt to disguise my appearance.

I have never been fingerprinted and my DNA is not in any data bank. I have no arrests, gun permits or government employment. I have only one living relative, a cousin in Idaho. I doubt she is in any data bank. Many of my relatives died before data banks became an everyday part of life. Even if I was linked by familial DNA to my cousin, she has not seen me, or heard from me, or even about me in fifteen years. The best information she could provide is what my name was four or five identities ago. The woman living in St Louis is a stranger to her.

My occupation brings with it an isolated life that certainly would not be acceptable to many. I like to think of it as discipline, but I recognise my lifestyle speaks volumes about me psychologically. I imagine there are a lot of shrinks that would love to get my interpretation of their inkblots.

When I arrive at the Providence Marriott, I receive my first Rhode Island lesson. No matter how you spell it there is only one ‘W’ in Warwick. Next order of business, room service. Steak very rare and two martinis. If Pete Stanza lives up to his macho billing, who knows what he will order for me. But, as always, I will follow my first and probably only rule: ‘Give him what he expects until it is time not to.’

Chapter Two

It is an overcast sky that greets me Wednesday morning. I travelled sixteen hours yesterday. Although I am certainly a seasoned flyer, this routine trip left me so weary, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Guilt does not usually allow more than a brief return to morning slumber. Today, however, guilt lost to exhaustion, ensuring that I did not become functional until noon. Hunger, at that point, replaced fatigue. I located the room service menu and selected a club sandwich, iced tea and a special reward, apple pie. I allow desert once a week. Three extra cans of iced tea were purchased to have a ready supply in the room.

While waiting for lunch, a plan is formulated for today’s activities. I am not unpacked, so that is at the top of my agenda. I located the iron, as expected, in the closet. As soon as the suitcase was emptied and stored, I started refurbishing the clothes from that travel bag to wearable condition.

The primary task for today is contacting my legitimate-world employer, Web Designs. The interview, which is really an orientation meeting, is tentatively scheduled for tomorrow but needs to be confirmed.

The call is little more than a formality and it goes well. The human resources person is an engaging young woman who goes out of her way to welcome me and make me feel comfortable. She specifically inquires how she can assist in making my transition to Web Designs as seamless as possible. Now that arrangements are finalised for my interview, I can go about the business of acquainting myself with the area.

After lunch, I spend most of the remainder of the day Web-surfing information about Rhode Island. My goal is to gather information about any person or place I expect to interact with in the next few days.

The hotel directory describes a very upscale, on-site salon. I invest two hours there. It never hurts to look your best when meeting new employers. My only time out of the hotel is a short walk to the Pedestrian Mall. A new phone is required to replace the one that I left in the limo on my trip from Chicago to Milwaukee. Some time is used for window shopping and just generally getting to know the city. That proves to be a relaxing break.

When I return to the hotel, it’s back to the computer. By nine or so, I have a good working knowledge of the location of Web Designs and Ciro’s, also the routes in and out of both locations. Significant attention is directed to I-95 and I-195, the interstates that run through the heart of Providence. Over the next few days I will spend a lot of time driving these roads until their intricacies are completely routine to me.

As I continue to learn what I can virtually, I do take a break to grab a light snack from room service just before they close that I will call a late dinner.

The television has been playing without notice in the background as I search the Internet for valuable local information until a special report on Channel 10 snatches my attention. The reporter is chronicling four hijackings at the Rhode Island-Connecticut border in the last few weeks. Middle-aged, burly men wrapped in blankets are prominently featured. The news crew had managed to get to the area on three occasions before the drivers were removed from the scene by the police. The three drivers each appear to be without shoes or pants. One, a rather outspoken trucker, has a significant amount of blood covering his face. None of the victims offer much in the way of a description of the thieves, but all report that their personal identification had been taken by the crew and that they had been threatened, as had their families. They will be reluctant witnesses at best. I know instinctively this is part of the criminal enterprise described in the Horizon dossier that I have come to take down. This is the handiwork of Pete Stanza. Almost out loud I say, Can’t wait to meet ya.

I think it would be wise to turn in early tonight. I arrange a morning wake-up call. I note to myself that other than waiters and salespeople, I have once again spent the day without human contact. That may be a positive since most of my noticeably sparse human contacts of late have been with the Pete Stanzas of the world.

My wake-up call is polite and punctual at exactly seven. Allowing for driving time, I allocate an hour and fifteen minutes to get ready.

It is the work of today to establish an unshakable cover. If my story is weak, I will not get anywhere near the seat of power. These types of men have their own internal warning systems that are proximate to paranoia and, even more problematic, are often surrounded by people with a suspicious nature that far exceeds even the boss’s.

My background data on Web Designs indicates it is a rapidly growing corporation. Eighteen months ago, the company secured a series of contracts to design and maintain sales portals for some of the largest international retail-marketing companies. The accounts they service comprise a who’s who of Internet mega-companies. The problem is that it is now obvious that they were not fully prepared to handle the sheer volume of the complexities that accompanied the jobs for which they had been contracted. They generally have the expertise in-house; they just do not have enough people across the organisation with the requisite skills to service several accounts simultaneously to the standards demanded by their new clients.

They are in crisis mode so often that it has become the corporate norm. This is rattling the entire company, from the board room to the janitorial crew.

The recurring issues often involve the geographical reality that since the most recent wave of expansion, their largest and most demanding clients are located on the West Coast. It is commonplace that when Web Designs begins its day at eight, the corporate in-boxes are jammed with urgent requests for service. There are invariably several sites that are not functioning adequately. These sites are accessed by the public twenty-four hours a day. Each day Web Designs fields complaints from retail giants about interruption of revenue stream. The West Coast clients feel they are abandoned in the middle of the business day, due in no small part to the three-hour time difference.

Web Designs, to this point, has only maintained a skeleton staff after four local time. This was adequate when most of their clients were smaller retailers on the East Coast. It is not even close to working now that they must service the West Coast behemoths. They immediately must maintain support twelve hours a day, six days a week. Each department head has been directed to provide full service until four o’clock Pacific Time, Monday to Saturday. They have been recruiting and hiring at a furious pace. Their salary and benefits package are now considered among the best in the industry. The full force of the corporation’s effort, however, has been largely unsuccessful. They have not satisfied their employee recruitment or retention goals and their customer satisfaction surveys have been disappointing. Most of their new lucrative contracts have reached the halfway mark of the initial, three-year term. The board has realistically assessed that unless there is dramatic improvement in the next six months there will be no chance for renewal.

Even more acutely, the holiday shopping season is just ahead. Many economic forecasters predict this season will considerably surpass last year’s record-breaking Internet sales. If any of Web Designs’ clients do not share in the predicted expansion, the company astutely senses the lucrative relationship with that lagging retailer will not survive into the third contract year. The original contract will be in litigation; renewal will not even be a dream.

Due to what was perceived as an impending crisis, the board of directors had become active in the day-to-day management of the company. Several internal studies have been commissioned by the board, but only the slightest, if any, progress has been made in client satisfaction.

Department managers fear that their jobs are in jeopardy. They are frantically attempting to implement the board’s directives, but the untoward effects from the changes have altered the corporate culture with consequent decline in morale across the company.

At every level of the company, it is universally held that the workforce must be increased. It is this indelible and unquestioned belief that there is an overwhelming need for more employees that allowed me to be hired without an in-person interview.

My orientation interview is conducted in the Human Resources Department. I had been notified that my department head, Phil Simpson, would be participating. Jean, from HR, said to not worry, Phil is a peach.

He is the nicest of all the managers, she tells me.

Promptly at nine I am ushered into the office. The meeting is informal, friendly, and successful.

A good portion of the time is spent discussing my relocation bonus and salary. To me there really isn’t a lot to discuss. The acceptance letter had clearly stated both. I am satisfied with the offer.

The discussion turns to the future of the company. The board recently leased twenty thousand additional square feet of prime office space in the complex, ten thousand feet for immediate occupancy and ten thousand to be occupied in twelve months. I am notified that the work schedule has changed since I accepted the position. My department will now have two shifts to better serve the West Coast customers. I will be working three twelve-hour days. My hours will be seven to seven, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The three-day workweek is ideal for my purposes.

My interview is followed by lunch with Phil Simpson in the company break room.

As soon as we are seated, Phil says, "What you heard in HR is all true but has the company spin. This company that I love is struggling with the mandates generated from our West Coast clients to an extent that they did not totally reveal. No department is having more trouble