by Eoin Colfer
A low growling laugh, followed by a statement I get a lot. ‘You talk weird.’
‘I get that a lot,’ I say.
‘What is it? Dublin?’
That’s pretty good. Most people get Irish, but never Dublin. ‘I’m impressed. You got relations?’
The legs uncross and stretch. ‘Nah. I work with a guy, he watches this Irish TV show on the net.’
The pennies drop. I know who this is, and all it takes is a flick of the light switch to confirm it.
Macey Barrett. One of Michael Madden’s soldiers.
Okay. This could be trouble.
We don’t really have much organised crime in Cloisters. Too small. But there’s one guy trying to upgrade from hood to boss. He spent a summer with his cousin in the Bronx and picked up some ideas on how to run an organisation.
Irish Mike Madden. Prostitution, protection and a burgeoning crystal meth business, to pull in the weekend tweakers. And here, sitting in my friend Zeb’s waiting room, is one of Madden’s boys. In the dark.
What the hell is going on?
I tell myself to be calm. After all, hoodlums get bloated stomachs too. Maybe this guy’s here for some aloe.
Barrett looks like an accountant. Expensive haircut, expensive smile, nice golden tan. But he isn’t an accountant. Jason pointed him out to me one night in the club.
You see this guy, with the permatan and the penny loafers. Macey Barrett. Irish Mike brought him back from New York. They call this guy the Crab, on account of this little sideways shuffle he does before he sticks you.
Sticking people is apparently Barrett’s favourite pastime. I knew guys like that in the army; they liked to get their hands red. Liked the feel of the blade sliding in.
‘You waiting on the doc?’ Barrett asks me, like he’s just passing time.
I help myself to a cone of water from the cooler. ‘Yeah, sure. I have an appointment.’
‘You don’t say? You’re not in the book.’
He’s reading the book now. Doesn’t even bother hiding the fact.
‘I’m not an in-the-book sort of a guy.’
Barrett rolls himself out of the chair, coming to his feet casually.
‘So, you and the doc, pretty tight? Talks to you and shit? Confides in you?’
I shrug, conveying: you know, whatever. It’s not much of an answer, and Barrett is not happy with it.
‘I’m just saying, you don’t have an appointment and you got a key in your hand. You give a key to someone, he’s your friend. You meet for a beer after work, shoot the breeze. Talk about who’s getting what done in the back room.’
‘Zeb doesn’t talk about patients. He’s like a confessor with that stuff.’
Barrett doesn’t listen past the first word. ‘Zeb? Zeb, you say? Shit, you two are tight.’
Then he changes tack altogether, goes all buddy-buddy. ‘So, pal. How do I know you? I know you from somewhere, right?’
‘Small town.’
Barrett laughs, like this is some kind of joke. ‘Yeah, sure. Small town. Nail on the head, buddy. But I know you. Come on, man. Don’t tell me you don’t know me.’
Barrett makes knowing him sound like a wonderful gift.
Screw it.
‘Yeah, Macey. I know you. I see you on the strip. Madden’s boy.’
And the friendliness shoots up a notch. ‘That’s right. I work for Mike. It’s that shithole club, isn’t it. Slotz, right? Daniel McEvoy, that’s you, tell me I’m wrong. I seen you work, but never heard you talk.’
And he does a little sideways shuffle, dropping his right hand low.
This is not a great development. The sideways shuffle.
‘You’re a big guy, McEvoy,’ says Barrett, shaking something down his sleeve. David Copperfield he ain’t. ‘I bet you knock shitkickers around pretty good.’
I’m having a hard time believing this is actually happening. Barrett is really going to make a move on me just for being here. Wrong place wrong time for one of us. His hand comes up quick and in his fist there is what looks like a shaft of light.
It looks like a shaft of light, but unless he’s Gandalf it probably isn’t.
Good point, and it’s more than enough for my fighter’s instinct to stand up and dance a jig.
I step to one side, dig my heel into the carpet for stability. Adrenalin shoots through my system like nitrous oxide, slowing the whole thing down. The shaft of light flashes past my eye and I put the key through the side of Barrett’s neck, watch him bleed out, then sit down and think about what I’ve done.
CHAPTER 3
When I finally parted ways with the army after my second tour, I quickly realised that there was nothing for me in Dublin. Every minute I spent in the dirty old town sent me further into the whirlwind of my own mind. I couldn’t find a good memory in there that didn’t end in tragedy. And I have a tendency to live in my head. Shit happens, right? So deal with it.
I did. Took advantage of being born in New York City and boarded a transatlantic jet to JFK. Wore the uniform that wasn’t mine any more to check in and even got myself an upgrade. Oldest trick in the manual, after loading a shotgun with tea bags to scare the crap out of looters. Dumped the beret and jacket in the lounge bathroom. Walked out a civilian with a first-class ticket.
My mother may have been from America, but with her family apartment way up high and hanging over Central Park, she wasn’t what you might call a typical New Yorker, and after touchdown it took me a while to credit the local accent. One day it’s bejaysus and begorrah and the next it’s fugeddabout it. They’re putting this on, I thought. Yadda yadda yadda. Badda bing. Bullshit, no one talks like this.
But they did, and worse. I took a couple of beatings in the early days just because I didn’t understand what the hell people were saying to me. Wadda fucku starin’ at? You fuckin’ retahded? Lookit dis fuckin’ guy.
It got so that I didn’t wait around for the chit-chat. Some guy started strutting my way along a bar, and I let him have it with whatever I could reach. An ashtray, barstool. Whatever. Pre-empting fights comes naturally to me. I always know which guys are gonna go off. Something Simon Moriarty taught me once we got to know each other a little.
Seeing as you’re determined to go back, Dan, I may as well pass on a few useful nuggets.
Such as?
Such as when it’s time to stop peacekeeping and start shooting.
It’s in the eyes and the shoulders, Simon had explained. They get to a point and then think screw it. At that moment consequences mean nothing, so you need to take your hands out of your pockets and start swinging. I swing good, too. Twelve years in the army taught me that much at least. But I still get pains in my back whenever I take a swing, especially in deep dark winter, even though the doctors swore they got every sliver of Hezbollah mortar shrapnel. Phantom pains, they said. Doesn’t seem phantom when the frost is creeping up my window like a silver cobweb and my lower back feels like some demented leprechaun is driving rivets into it.
I stuck New York for four full years, working meatpacking during the day and clubs at night. But my fresh start was starting to seem like a dead end; love never walked around the corner, plus my hair was falling out. A decade in the grave and still my father was sending gifts my way. Four years of New York living and I was up to here with wiseguys and weisenheimers. My knuckles were like acorns from punching people. That’s right, people. The women and children are dangerous in the Big Apple. I see a needle coming at me and I don’t care if the person holding it has got braids and milk teeth. One humid autumn evening I gazed down on the baby-faced Asian hooker I had just decked, and decided to get out of the city. I took her knife, though. Nice butterfly with something Chinese on the handle. I’ve had it ever since.
So I packed my army duffel and took a train to the satellite town of Cloisters, Essex County. Only reason I got off there was because of a billboard they had in the station. Cloisters. For People Who Are Tired Of The City. I sure did like the sound of
that.
It turns out that here isn’t much better than there was. For a start, Cloisters has gambling only a bus ride across the Hudson. Which means on the weekends all the city arseholes come to throw away their hard-earned, watch one hundred per cent nude ladies and crash in hotels that are a lot cheaper than Atlantic City. Plus we’ve got our indigenous arseholes too. Six years have gone by and sometimes I think I should have stayed in New York. More than sometimes.
I’m moving on as soon as the hair grows in. Once I have hair I’ll be happy. That’s what I tell myself. I may have left it too late.
I make myself watch Macey Barrett die, because that way it means something. I don’t want to kill a man then shut my eyes while he dies. You make these things hard, or else they get easy. I’ve killed men before, but only three, and never like this. Never so close that I can see eyelashes flickering or hear the rattle in their chest like there’s a handful of beads in there. In the army you could always tell yourself: This is war. You get a pass for war. But here and now, in a pill shop in Jersey, it feels like this sort of thing shouldn’t be happening. Violent death is supposed to be consigned to my past. Dr Moriarty would call it an anachronism.
Barrett goes slow, jerking like there’s a current passing through him. Blood everywhere.
What do you expect? You put a spike in his jugular.
For some reason, my subconscious sounds like Zeb.
In the final spasm, Barrett loses his grip on the stiletto in his fist. It twirls straight up like a cheerleader’s baton, burying itself in a suspended-ceiling tile.
I relax a little. That’s justifiable homicide in my book, but perhaps not in every book. Michael Madden, for example; his book might read a little different. Irish Mike will cut me down for killing his man. Simple as that. I need to confuse this issue as much as possible.
First step, lock the goddamn door, stupid.
The key is still where I put it. I’m not a squeamish individual, but pulling that key out makes me cringe a lot more than sticking it in did. It comes loose with a familiar sucking noise, as though it’s found a nice warm home and doesn’t want to leave.
Familiar sucking noise? No one should be familiar with that particular sound, but I am. It reminds me of the time I decided to have a go at pulling a triangle of shrapnel out of my own side; it was just before I passed out.
I fumble the key into the lock and twist it, about fifteen seconds before one of Zeb’s customers tries the handle.
‘Kronski, you asshole,’ she calls out, in a voice ravaged by thousands of cigarettes. ‘Your tablets gave me the shits. Twenty-six fifty for the shits? Open the door, dammit. I can see you moving.’
The woman’s silhouette trembles with fury, or possibly flatulence, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be letting Zeb poke holes in my scalp when he can’t even hand out the right tablets.
I play statues until the lady moves on, looking for a bathroom maybe, then turn my attention to Macey Barrett, lying blue faced and weirdly cross-eyed on the carpet. Looks like a vampire bit him. Poor bastard.
No. Not poor bastard. Murdering bastard.
Just like me.
No. Self-defence. Even God is okay with that.
Definitely Zeb’s voice. My subconscious has figured out something that I don’t want to face.
I have plenty of training in the art of killing but zero in the art of clean-up, and any jackass with a TV remote knows how important it is to get rid of trace evidence.
This is a problem. There are litres of blood soaking into the carpet, not to mention a two-hundred-pound family man lying deceased on the bloodstained carpet.
Move the evidence. All of it. No body, no crime.
It’s a big ask, but once I get my head around the job, it’s calming to have something to do. Army mentality: idle hands are the devil’s tools. Busy hands too in this case.
Zeb has a tiny supply closet in the rear. I liberate some scrubs, gloves and a mask. There’s a power bone-saw, but I’m not ready to face that yet. A key in the neck is one thing, dismemberment is another.
I pat Barrett down for his keys, phone, watch and wallet. All the things a thief would lift. The search is rewarded with top-dollar goods. Lexus keys, Prada phone, Omega watch and a stack of fifties thicker than a quarter-pounder.
The carpet comes away easily, just a few glue strings to stretch and ping.
Typical Zeb. Cheap everything.
I yank up the entire waiting room section, rolling Barrett in three layers. Tape around the carpet, trash bags over the tape, more tape. No blood on the tiles underneath, that I can see, but I give them a swab of bleach just in case. They got all sorts of UV lights now; even the criminals have them. There isn’t much you can’t purchase on eBay.
Now I have myself a Cleopatra carpet package that needs moving. It’s heavy, but I’ve humped a couple of bodies in my day, just not directly after killing them. I sling the burden over one shoulder, then take three quick steps out the back door to a white Lexus SUV, this year’s model, blacked-out windows, door even opens itself. Talk about convenient.
The enclosed car park seems deserted, but even if a curtain-twitcher spies me, all anyone can ever testify to is that a masked man rolled a rug into a car. Of course Michael Madden won’t care about due process or reasonable doubt.
I’m adjusting the driver’s seat for my legs when a text buzzes through on Barrett’s cell.
‘I’ll check that, shall I?’ I say to the corpse in the back. He doesn’t object, so I open the text.
It’s from Mike Madden. Irish M reads the caller ID. Barrett has his phone set to display a photo of his boss. This massive guy at an Irish wedding, looks like, stripped to the waist, two of his boys in sweaty headlocks. Mad eyes, flat tweed cap with a shamrock pin on the peak.
I shudder. This person is bad news. I know the type. Irish borderline alcoholic. Death before disrespect. I would be better off swinging by his house and putting an end to this right now. But I won’t, because this is not a war zone, there might be another way, and maybe Zeb is still alive.
I read the message.
Did you get it?
I sigh and pocket the phone.
Did you get it?
Shit. Zeb is most likely dead.
So who is this Zebulon Kronski guy? And how did I bump into him? That’s nearly better than the gunship story. Surprise, surprise, the answer to those questions lies back in the Lebanon, so I’ll keep it brief because this story is about now rather than then, although then seems to be pretty much a part of now most of the time. Someday I’ll tell the full then story when I can even think of a Russian bear without throwing up.
In a nutshell, the UN peacekeepers patrolled the border between Israel and the Lebanon, trying to keep the Israeli troops and the Shi’a Hezbollah and Amal from blowing themselves, each other and us to kingdom come. Those groups had been fighting for so long that they couldn’t even agree which kingdom they would get blown to. Our main objective was to keep civilians safe, but our main function seemed to be as human shields for the Shi’a to hide behind while they fired rockets up at Israeli encampments. Most of the time we wore camouflage, went on patrol and were baked by the sun until our skin cracked, but sometimes things got a little primal, which tends to happen when bunches of hot, grumpy men have loaded weapons and different ideas about God.
One weekend I’m on a supply run in UN headquarters with Tommy Fletcher and he insists on a little detour to Mingi Street, an organic souk that grows like a reef around HQ and where anything is available for the right price. At this point in our military careers I am the corporal and he is the sergeant so I have no choice but to follow his unexplained lead.
Tommy is being a little mysterious about what he’s looking for, so I am less reluctant to tag along than I pretend; curiosity has always been the cat that skinned me. Whenever I ask what we’re after, he just taps his nose and says that’s actually funnier than you’d think.
So we wade our way th
rough the kids nipping at us like cleaner fish, we ignore the electronics merchants, the T-shirt vendors, the gold guys and hashish boys. I keep my finger on the trigger of my Steyer and thumb on the safety. It’s not that I didn’t like the concentrated life of these oven-like alleys, but just because you like a place doesn’t mean it’s gonna like you.
Tommy walks ahead of me, the thousand resentful stares bouncing off him like pebbles off a rhino’s back. With long strides he negotiates the souk, brushing through the hanging sheets of fine silks and elbowing past forests of rolled rugs. About ten minutes after I have totally lost any sense of place, he pounds his fist on a poster of Michael Jackson, which apparently has a door behind it. Michael’s eyes slide back to reveal another set behind and I cannot resist saying, ‘Oh for God’s sake, Sarge! You’re going to buy something from these people?’
But Fletcher is undeterred and passed a few dollars through the slot, which is enough to get us inside. The poster goes up like a roller blind and there’s a steel door behind, which is hilarious because the wall is made of plasterboard.
I’m laughing openly now. ‘You know what, Tommy? We should beat it. Yeah, this is bad. You know it.’ I draw the line at shamon, too obvious.
I follow Tommy into the low-ceilinged corridor and continue walking forwards, even when I see what looks like a waiting room full of locals reading US Weekly and Cosmopolitan. A large No Smoking sign dominates the wall, and amazingly for the Middle East, no one is ignoring it. A pretty nurse talks rapidly on the phone as we enter and ignores us until Tommy taps on her desk with the barrel of his weapon.
‘I need to see the doc,’ he says pleasantly.
The nurse looks American with all the benefits. Big Julia Roberts teeth and boobs that could have some lucky guy’s eye out.
‘Does sir have an appointment?’ she says, and I would guess California by the way she wobbles her head on appointment.
Tommy nods equably. ‘Yep, sir does. Fully loaded with another few clips in his bag.’
The nurse waves a pink nail towards the waiting room. ‘We’re all armed here, sir. I got a Colt pointed at your privates right now. So take a seat, cos if this thing goes off, even the doc can’t do much about it.’