‘It’s okay, Jason. Hold the fort, I’ll be back in a few hours.’
‘You sure, boss?’
‘Yeah. Me and Mike have a little business to discuss.’
Mike has an R-Class Mercedes Benz waiting at the kerb, and we wait an embarrassing few minutes while two of his laddies squash themselves into the rear seats.
I wink at Mike, since he’s a winky guy. ‘You’re one hell of a mob boss. Two of your boys in the baby seats.’
Mike is prepared to argue that one. ‘You think I should have brought two vehicles? What about the environment? What about my carbon footprint, laddie?’
‘Laddie? You really should drop that. It is too hilarious.’
‘In the car,’ says Mike straight-faced. I can see I’m wearing him down.
We drive across town and I can’t get to grips with the fact that it’s all over for me. Once we get wherever we’re going and Mike Madden ascertains that I do not in fact have this mysterious secret-agent-type disk, then he will most likely shoot me in the heart.
A disk? This is beyond weird. What the hell is Zeb doing with a disk? All he knows about computers could be written on one of those horse pills he sells to irritable-bowel patients, or the stop-go crowd, as he sensitively refers to them.
Nearly dead, I think, trying to nail the idea home. Nearly dead now.
But no sickening feeling of dread seeps through. Even the thought of torture to come doesn’t penetrate my calm.
That’s because I don’t believe any of this. This week has been too bizarre to be real. My brain is waiting for me to wake up in a tangle of sweat-sheened sheets. You can’t go from doorman to superman in a week, not if you want to survive. I do want to survive, but I can’t see how I’m going to manage it.
We pass Chequer’s Diner and the park. I see Carmél, the waitress, joshing it up with a customer, a guy in a hunter’s cap. He swats her behind and she pours him a refill, smile bigger than a slice of melon.
I didn’t know there was a backside-swatting option.
Maybe there wasn’t for me.
Barely ten p.m. and already the streets are drying up. Cloisters is a daytime town. Leafy suburbs and four-wheel drives. Wooden houses filling their lots right to the fences, and expansive parks with soft-fall areas for the little kids. Our sordid world fires a shot across the bows of decency once in a while, but according to the Cloisters Chronicle, this small town has the third lowest crime rate in the country, and the second highest literacy rate. It’s nice to live in a place where people still prefer books to TV.
Ghost Zeb doesn’t let me get too deep into the maudlin. It’s a bit late for community spirit, partner. Don’t tell me, if you survive the night, then Slotz gets turned into a soup kitchen and St Daniel spends his days in a soutane dispensing homely wisdom with every bowl of chowder.
‘Chowder?’ splutters Irish Mike. ‘Jesus, laddie. Don’t crack up yet; the night is young.’
Thinking aloud again. Bad sign.
I really wish that man would stop with the laddie bit. It’s offensive. Maybe a sharp elbow in the ribs would knock the leprechaun out of him, but then I might not reach journey’s end alive and find out what happened to Zeb.
Very good point. Excellent in fact. Hold on to that.
‘Where are we headed?’ I ask Mike pleasantly. You never know, he might tell me.
‘Shut the hell up, McEvoy.’
Then again . . .
We don’t drive for that long. Nowhere is too far away in Cloisters. On our short trip we pass eight churches and three patrol cars. God and guns, that’s what we put our faith in here. Red bulbs buzz overhead, stretching down through the blocks like landing lights.
Pretty soon we’re pulling around back of a familiar strip mall. Zeb’s place. Last time I was here, I was loading a corpse into a trunk. It makes sense to finish things at the clinic. A couple of bodies in a burnt-out fire trap would have accidental death written all over them.
‘End of the line, laddie,’ says Mike, and I feel each stone crunch under the Benz’s tyres as the vehicle slows.
Maybe, I think, suddenly gripped by the absolute certainty that if I go into that building on Mike’s terms I am dead. But not the way you expect it, laddie.
What I’m about to do doesn’t seem part of the real world. It’s one of those ideas that generally would never make it past the good-sense filter in my head, but for the past few days that filter has been switched off. And when a notion like this occurs to me, I fear the switch may be jammed.
So. Two men in front, two behind and Irish Mike to my left. All armed, all dangerous. But all also pretty confined in their movements and probably not expecting me to buck such superior numbers.
If I am going to act, it needs to be right now, before the seat belts come off. I snort a few breaths to psych myself up, then make my move.
Okay. Five targets. Here we go.
First I give Irish Mike the heel of my hand in his windpipe; that should keep him gasping for five minutes. His eyes bug out like he’s been shot in the arse with a harpoon, a vision I will hopefully have a chance to play back for Jason. He loves that kind of thing.
The guys in the back are first to react, so I reach under the middle row seats, yank the adjustment bars and, using my legs as pistons, drive them into the men behind. The seats slide back smoothly on their rails; God bless German engineering. Shins splinter, and maybe an ankle. One guy’s head cracks the rear window. No weapons drawn as yet.
Part of me feels like I’m watching this happen. It’s as though someone else is taking decisive action and I’m somehow observing from a distance and not altogether approving of what’s going on.
Still two guys in front.
I reach past Irish Mike’s spasming torso and flick the seat levers on the front seats. Shifting my weight forward, I slam the seats till their hinges pop, pinning Irish Mike’s men to the dash. One still has an arm free to reach for his gun, so I dislocate the shoulder’s ball-and-socket joint with a punch in the armpit.
This is working out pretty well, all things considered. My giddy side wants to giggle, but I choke it down. Later for the girlishness.
The Benz fills up with groans like we’re under water, and there’s a sea anemone of blood on the windscreen. We roll ten feet and one wheel mounts the kerb, swatting a trashcan.
I give Irish Mike one more whack because he’s such a dick, then I’m out of the vehicle, sprinting for Zeb’s back entrance. My boots crunch on the loose stones and there’s a cold mist on my face that tastes like life. I relish the movement and wetness for a moment until I reach the delivery door and I need to concentrate once more.
All the guns I own, and not one of them in my possession.
The door opens inwards and there’s yet another of Mike’s potato heads, coming wide-eyed to investigate the trashcan ruckus. This guy I almost feel sorry for. His gun is dangling by his side and I’m bearing down on him, snarling like an angry bear.
He manages an oh before I tuck my head under his arm and tackle him into the shop. The oh shoots up a couple of octaves, then we’re halfway across the room. The guy’s toes are dragging the floor and his elbows beat a tattoo on my back, for all the good it does him. Maybe if he had the wits or time to use his gun . . .
No wits and definitely no time.
‘Mother,’ he says. ‘Mudda . . .’
Swearing or calling for his mom. Who knows.
A wall rears and I put him into it. Through two layers of Sheetrock, a timber frame and neatly on to the dentist’s chair. Can’t be good for a person’s insides. Still, better to be safe than sorry, so I scramble through the jagged hole and clang Mike’s moaning man on the temple with a handy rinsing pan.
No more moaning. No alarm either; an alarm would have been nice.
Wait. There is moaning. Behind me in Zeb’s homeopathic store.
It’s me, idiot. I am alive.
Zeb. No way.
Mike’s man surrenders his weapon without a struggl
e. A nice shiny Colt .45. Seven in the mag, one in the pipe, presuming this guy, let’s call him Steve, presuming Steve keeps his weapon loaded.
‘McEvoy, you bastard!’
A roar from outside. Irish Mike has recovered quickly and is done with laddie.
‘Come out, McEvoy.’
Good. That’s good. They don’t want to come in. There’s still a slim chance. Of course I should have killed them all, and then the chance might have some weight to it.
I tumble through a haze of chalk and sawdust back into Zeb’s unit. There is blood on the floor, glistening in the tube light, tracked in long arcs across the carpet and concrete. The shiniest track leads to a shivering shape in the corner. It’s my friend Zeb, taped to his own office chair. They’ve been playing human pinball with him.
Zeb’s eyes are half closed, there’s a bruise covering most of his face and blood drips from his fingertips. His crafty eyes are shrouded by bruised lids, and of his sharp hustler features there is no sign. He looks bad and probably feels worse, if he’s feeling anything at all.
I spin the chair to face me.
‘Zeb? Tell me, quick. What did you do?’
‘’Bout time,’ Zeb spits through blood bubbles. ‘Paramol, ibuprofen. Under the safe.’
I shake him and a cut under his eye weeps blood. ‘No. Tell me. What the hell is the disk?’
Zeb coughs and something whines in his chest. ‘No disk. All bullshit. Come on, Dan. Pills.’
This is how it gets. After such a beating, pain is the only thing in Zeb’s life. He doesn’t care about living or dying. Just pain.
‘Okay. Okay.’
I pick through the bottles under the safe. Most of them have handwritten labels. Cheap generic pills. Zeb making a buck any way he can.
‘Five minutes, Mike,’ I shout at the ceiling. ‘Five minutes to find this goddamn disk.’
No answer for a moment, just dragging footsteps and the clink of metal.
Then, ‘Five minutes, McEvoy. I hear any sirens and I burn this place to the ground.’
Great. I have three hundred seconds and nothing to bargain with.
Paramol. I find a bottle and run a finger along the instructions.
‘Fuck the dosage!’ howls Zeb. ‘Give them all to me.’
Not happening. In Zeb’s state he would chew those things until his heart went asleep.
I pop the bottle, shake out a double dose and Zeb eats them out of my hand like a pony chewing sugar lumps. By the time I’ve torn the tape from his wrists, my restored friend is enjoying a little chemical calm.
‘Where were you, man?’ he sobs, then finishes with a jagged giggle. ‘I’ve been broadcasting. Sending out signals. Holding complete conversations with you. Couldn’t you hear me call?’
I didn’t hear shit, says Ghost Zeb.
‘I heard you, brother,’ I say. ‘I’m here. Now you’ve got to tell me what you did.’
‘I stayed alive. That’s what I did. Not proud, but I did it.’
I shake him gently. ‘What did you do? Come on, Zeb, tell me.’
Zeb blinks like he’s about to nod off. ‘I did Mike Madden’s hair. Like I did you, Dan. Sweet set of transplants.’
Hair transplants! No way. Not all this.
‘Asshole’s paranoid, let me tell you. Brought in students from China to assist, so they wouldn’t know who he was. Little hands they had, did lovely work. In six months you’ll never know. Mike will have a head of hair that would make Pierce Brosnan crap himself.’
Time is a-wasting. ‘Lovely work. Great. So what’s the problem?’
Even with a mashed face Zeb manages a guilty expression. ‘It was an opportunity. I couldn’t pass it up.’
From outside, ‘Two minutes, McEvoy. You better pull the rabbit out of the hat, laddie.’
Zeb chuckles. ‘Laddie. Always with the laddie. You Irish, all retards.’
‘What opportunity? Zeb, these people are going to kill us.’
‘Not you, Dan. Not you, my big pet Schwarzenegger. I bet you’ve fucked up a few of them already.’
He has a point. ‘Maybe. But why are they after me, Zeb?’
Zeb studies the blood on his fingers; no clue where it came from. ‘I told Mike I filmed the procedure. Said I’d put it on YouTube. The Irish in New York would piss themselves. You should have seen him during the operation: big baby cried like a . . . baby. Wouldn’t let me smoke or anything.’
‘That is unbelievable.’
‘I know,’ said Zeb thickly. ‘I’m always careful with the ash.’
‘Not the cigarette. You tried to blackmail a crime lord?’
‘Hardly a lord. What has he got, like a dozen men? Only twenty grand, that’s all I asked for. Twenty grand to destroy the disk. ’S a bargain.’
‘But there was no disk.’
Zeb hiccups and blood rims his gums. ‘Course fucking not. Do you see any cameras? It only occurred to me later.’
I grit my teeth. ‘And when did you tell Mike that I had the disk?’
Zeb wheels himself backwards. ‘Two days, Dan. For two days I swore that it was all a lie. Two fucking days with the teeth-punching and the head-banging against the wall. Some fucking warehouse in Ackroyd. There’s pieces of me all over that shithole.’
‘Then you told Mike that I had it.’
‘Yeah, I said that.’ Zeb’s chin drops to his sternum. ‘What else could I do? You’re a tough Irish motherfucker, Dan. I knew these whiskey gangsters couldn’t drop you. No way. You’d kill them all and save me. It was my only hope.’
This is a lot of talking for a man with broken bones and missing teeth, and Zeb collapses into a spasm of wet coughs.
‘Idiot,’ I shout at his shuddering frame. ‘For eight hundred years all we Irish have had is our pride, and you try to strip it away from a dangerous man.’
Zeb spits blood and a tooth. It sits like an iceberg in the sunset sea.
‘A mistake, Dan, I see that now. But don’t let me die here. Work something out. Play the Celtic card.’ Zeb is crying, wringing his hands.
The Celtic card. I do have one up my sleeve. Maybe.
The front door booms as a forearm is repeatedly bashed against it. Lights flicker with the force. I’m guessing that the five minutes are up.
‘To hell with both of you,’ calls Irish Mike Madden. ‘To hell in flames.’
Orange flickers beyond the blinds. Could be a cop car; more likely a makeshift torch. Mike is going to burn us out.
I rack my brain for the thread of an idea. Something to reel sanity back in. Nothing. Just more lunacy.
Concentrate really hard and teleport. Dig an underground tunnel. Call the cops.
‘Brite-Smile,’ says Zeb.
Bright smile? Or Brite-Smile. Of course. Go through the dentist’s where I deposited Steve. I’m a little embarrassed that a punch-drunk surgeon came up with that before me.
I take two steps towards the jagged hole before the breeze chills the sweat on my forehead. There’s someone in there.
Then a voice. ‘Steve’s out cold. McEvoy took his gun.’
Steve? No way.
Irish Mike calls from outside: ‘We got the exits covered, McEvoy. You try to run and you’re dead.’
Maybe on my own I could make it, but not hefting Zeb.
I tap a finger on my temple, trying to focus. ‘Okay, Mike. You win. Let’s talk.’
Close quarters is my speciality. But I need to get them close before I can be special.
Irish Mike mulls this offer over for a minute. ‘Very well, laddie. Throw Steve’s gun next door, and your shoes too, then go stand in the corner.’
Shoes? What’s that all about? What does he think, I’m a sole ninja?
I toss the Colt through the hole, and my boots, then traipse into the corner behind Zeb, feeling like a naughty schoolboy. I bet Mike would be an arsehole to work for.
‘Pussy,’ says Zeb, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘I held out for two days.’
If his ear was no
t crusted with blood and mucus, I would smack it.
‘You shut up or pass out and let me handle this.’
‘Yeah, maybe you can take off your pants. That’ll teach ’em.’
Zeb never lets up. At least when he was in my head I didn’t have to look at him.
And that is my best friend. Christ.
Irish Mike comes in the back door, flanked by two of his lieutenants. One is hobbling and the other is sporting a nose that wouldn’t look out of place in a boxing ring. Mike himself wears a sunburn of anger. A little less cocky, though, I think. They shuffle slowly forward through the blood tracks and the supplement boxes, never taking their eyes off me. A third heavy appears at the hole in the wall, squinting down the barrel of a machine pistol.
Mike swallows and gags. ‘You prick,’ he says, gingerly massaging his throat. ‘Who hits people in the neck? What kind of person are you?’
I don’t answer. What’s the point?
After a minute’s scowling, Mike is done feeling sorry for himself.
‘I’ll live, I guess.’ He lights a cigarette with a long wooden match, sucking hard, bending the flame. ‘So, McEvoy, where’s the disk?’
Zeb is whimpering softly; maybe he has the right idea. There are three criminals pointing weapons at us and I don’t have any good news for them. We are flanked in a small room with no hope of escape except if these people are sufficiently dim to relax their guard again.
‘Here’s the thing, Mike. There is no disk. Never was.’ I can’t resist rapping Zeb’s crown. ‘This gobshite tried to bluff you, then dragged me in when negotiations turned painful.’
Mike conducts with his cigarette. ‘Yeah, see that’s what the doc told me shortly after he told me there was a disk. So what’s true and what ain’t? I can’t tell.’
‘Trust me, Mike. I’m Irish. We’re Irish. I swear on the tricolour there’s no disk. This dick wouldn’t know how to use a camera.’
Mike reaches under his soft cap, scratching his head. ‘That’s touching, laddie, the Irish connection, but you know as well as I do that the Gaels have been cutting each other’s throats for centuries. It’s gonna take more than that. So what else have we got in common?’
‘We got that itch,’ I say, pointing a finger.
Mike whips his hand down like he’s been slapped by a nun. ‘What itch? What the hell are you talking about?’