Cormac meets Scarlet at The Leprechaun

Cormac meets Scarlet at The Leprechaun in a scene where a charged private attraction meets the obligations of an investigation. Summoned by a confidential informant, Scarlet arrives prepared to keep her distance; instead, Cormac discloses a pattern of disappearances and possible federal involvement that neither of them can explain. Their exchange makes trust—between an agent and a criminal—the scene’s most consequential, and most precarious, currency.

The summons and Scarlet’s resistance

Scarlet receives Cormac’s call on her personal phone, not the work phone she is searching for in her bag. The distinction marks the meeting as a crossing between her official role and the private channel through which Cormac reaches her. She answers with deliberate restraint, addressing him formally and guarding her voice against warmth. His casual manner, by contrast, treats her attendance as almost inevitable: because her job obliges her to meet him, he expects her to arrive soon. Scarlet hangs up without agreeing, leaving him to wait; half an hour later, she is on her way.

Her arrival is not simple compliance. Scarlet changes into something less recognizably associated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but her thoughts remain fixed on the danger of confusing work with desire. Before the meeting, Max Smithson has suggested that her interest in Cormac might be personal, teasing her about meeting confidential informants she wants to sleep with. Scarlet rejects that interpretation to herself, recalling that Cormac is a mobster and a killer, even as she questions whether she has let him get too close. Her outward composure is thus an effort, not proof of indifference.

The bar and the attraction between them

The Leprechaun makes the meeting feel removed from Scarlet’s office while keeping it firmly in Cormac’s world. Outside stands a giant leprechaun model, its once-green clothes weathered grey, beside a new, flashing green sign. Inside, the smells of whisky, fried meat, cigarette smoke, sweat, and perfume create a crowded atmosphere unlike the controlled space of an FBI workplace. Scarlet finds Cormac at a booth, one foot in the aisle and a finger tracing the edge of his glass.

The narration lingers on the reason her professional distance is difficult to maintain. Cormac is twenty-eight, a year older than Scarlet, six-foot-one, broad-shouldered, and built like a soldier rather than a bodybuilder. His thick dark-red hair, brown-and-red beard, and striking blue eyes sharpen her awareness of him; his smile leaves her wondering what joke she has missed. When he offers her a straw to protect her lipstick, she accepts it despite wanting to refuse defiantly. The small courtesy is practical, but in Scarlet’s mind it also becomes another test of the distance she is trying to preserve.

The information Cormac brings

Scarlet states that Cormac said he had information. He first denies having anything useful to offer, knocking back his whisky and making her wait while a waiter brings another. The delay leaves Scarlet impatient and wary: she reminds him that their past cooperation against his rivals does not make his own organization untouchable. Their contact has been useful to both sides, but it has never erased the difference between an FBI agent and the criminal she meets.

Cormac’s explanation arrives amid an incongruously ordinary celebration. A man in a new, elaborate leprechaun costume comes from the kitchen carrying a birthday cake and singing to ten-year-old twins in matching red shirts. Against that festive interruption, Cormac describes troubling changes in his organization: deliveries have gone missing, people have disappeared, and his cousin Mickey MacFarland has been out of contact for about a week. He has also learned that two of the missing men are locked up in Los Angeles, far from New York City. The contrast between a children’s birthday and the account of vanishing men gives the disclosure a matter-of-fact setting without making its stakes less serious.

Trust and the unresolved investigation

Cormac suspects that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has someone inside his organization, but Scarlet says honestly that this is the first she has heard of the events. She considers a possible explanation: an agent might have arrested the men locally and transferred them to Los Angeles to keep the matter quiet. She is careful to present this as conceivable, not established; she has no report confirming it. Cormac asks whether she can find out.

The exchange changes the meeting from a strained summons into a request for cooperation, though it does not resolve what has happened. Cormac accepts Scarlet’s denial quickly, without cross-examining or second-guessing her. She is touched by that trust precisely because she knows that trusting an FBI agent is dangerous for a criminal. Her mind briefly imagines the two of them together somewhere far from the investigation, then suppresses the fantasy. That impulse sits beside her grief for her younger sister Tess, whose drowning led Scarlet to discipline her emotions; she feels Cormac slipping past defenses built to keep such feeling contained. The scene ends with an unanswered question about missing men and a practical next step, while its emotional tension rests on the possibility that professional cooperation and personal attachment are becoming harder for Scarlet to separate.