by Eoin Colfer
It’s strange, all this melodrama in one afternoon. But it doesn’t seem real or wrong in the heat. My brain sizzles inside the gourd of its skull and the walls sizzle and crack.
Bloody flies are huge.
Two women in floral head wraps argue over a Madonna article.
‘Sorry, miss,’ says Tommy. ‘We’re on a schedule.’
Things happen quickly then, and when I try to piece it together, images jump and flicker like an old VHS that’s been taped over one too many times.
The nurse comes out of her seat and she does indeed have a large handgun in her tiny fingers. Suddenly the gun is in my hands. I must have twisted it away from her. Don’t recall really. Training took over. Tommy’s gone down the corridor and I remember thinking: Okay, enough is enough. I don’t know what this is, but I need to extricate myself. Hell, I could bash my way out into the street through one of these walls.
But I don’t go anywhere except after my sergeant.
The corridor is lined with posters, faded in the sun. I remember seeing ET and one of the Connery Bonds, then we’re at a door. Someone has written DOCTOR in thick marker.
‘Oh Jaysus,’ says Tommy. ‘Isn’t that handy now?’
And in he goes, with me at his elbow and the nurse close behind cursing us both for sons of bitches. Inside the door we see a rudimentary surgery with plastic on the floor and a man in a white coat sticking a large needle of reddish gunk into another man’s dick.
I’m suddenly no longer curious, and Tommy throws up on the covered floor, sending rivulets running along the polythene.
‘Bloody bastards,’ says the doctor guy. ‘This is a sterile environment.’
And that was how I met Zebulon Kronski.
More later.
Once upon a time, I could have driven the Lexus to Newark airport and abandoned it in the long-term. Now with Homeland Security they’d be shoving mirrors under it in a New York minute, so I pick the local bus station instead and park the SUV by the dumpsters. I should get ten days’ grace before the blues are called. With any luck some kid will jack the vehicle, dump the body and screw up the chain of events for anyone trying to follow it.
I walk half a dozen blocks from the station, then pay for a cab with one of Barrett’s fifties. Guilt free.
Screw him, he tried to stick me.
I can’t say this aloud, even mutter it, because I have never killed anyone outside a combat zone and I am shaken to my core.
You don’t think that was a combat zone? What would you call it then?
In the taxi, I give myself brain ache trying to wrap my head around the morning’s events. Zeb has a good phrase for this kind of situation. A poor hand of poker or bad luck with a woman could set him off.
A total donkey’s cock, this is, Dan. Donkey’s fucking cock.
I don’t know what that phrase means exactly, but somehow it catches the mood.
My friend has something that Irish Mike Madden wants. Something so important that Macey Barrett was cleared to stick any witnesses without even calling it in. If Zeb were alive, there’d be no need to toss his place; he’d give the something up. No doubt about it, zero pain tolerance. I once took him to emergency for a heart attack that turned out to be a trapped nerve. A trapped bloody nerve. Shit, I got a dozen of those a week in the army.
So this means that Zeb is probably gone. And if he’s not, what am I supposed to do about it?
Nothing. Head down and pray the storm passes over. Grieve quietly and wish it away. All that movie soldier crap about never leaving a man behind is just that. Movie soldier crap. A man goes down behind enemy lines and he’s gone. First rule of combat.
CHAPTER 4
I spend an hour and a half over a ten-minute lunch in Chequer’s Diner by the park. I expect the turkey club to taste like ash, but it doesn’t. Sweetest sandwich I’ve ever had in this place, and I’ve had plenty.
I’m alive, I realise. And food tastes good.
I remember now. You make it home from reconnaissance, and gritty water from the neck of an oil can tastes like nectar. This trauma is bringing the memories back. I’m starting to think like a soldier again; maybe that’s no bad thing.
Once I get over the magical goodness of food, I start brooding on Zeb. He’s a friend, I suppose. The only one I have. A man passes forty and he’s supposed to have a handful of guys in his inner circle. Maybe in Ireland there’s a couple of army buddies who would step up for me, but here, no one. Even Zeb wouldn’t have tolerated any actual discomfort on my behalf. One night I made him get out of bed to pick me up, and I had to listen to it for a month.
Probably dead. More than likely. No sense hoping.
The park is still green. That’s unusual for this time of year; even the leaves are hanging in there. Through the railing I see a dad and his boy tossing a baseball like something from a happy-family TV show.
It’s too late now for me. No baseball-tossing, or kids with my eyes. All I have to look forward to is staying alive until tonight so I can listen to my crazy neighbour mouthing off upstairs.
It’s true what they say about Irish people: we have a great love for the maudlin. For every silver lining there’s a cloud. Maybe that’s why I get on with Zeb so well. It has to be said that the two of us love a good moan, though Zebulon’s beyond moaning now.
Don’t count on it, you Mick asshole.
Except in my head, apparently.
I spend the afternoon watching my own apartment from across the street. There are three delis and an Italian restaurant within ten yards of my front door, so I load up on comfort carbs and coffee. With that concoction inside me, my brain is telling me to get up and go while my stomach is begging for a nap.
I am knocking back my fourth espresso when a couple of suits mount the steps to my building, but they’re peddling the afterlife rather than an end to this one. Definitely not pros of any sort. They walk up side by side and don’t even check the door before knocking. Anyone so inclined could shoot both these guys through the mail slot.
I keep up my vigil for a couple more hours, but nobody suspicious or even suspiciously ordinary shows up. But that doesn’t mean I’m clear. Macey Barrett won’t even be stiff in his rug yet.
Eventually the caffeine in my bloodstream beats down the dough balls in my gut so I make the short walk to the club and arrive at eight, mildly surprised to find myself alive and unmolested. Not so much as a crooked look from a passer-by. Well, no more than the usual. Because of the way I look, people project stuff on to me as I walk past. All of a sudden I’m their mean old daddy, or their arsehole boyfriend, or their handsy boss.
Maybe if you smiled once in a while, Simon Moriarty had suggested during one of our sessions.
So I tried that, until my fixed grin reminded a new girl at the club of some serial killer on the FBI’s most-wanted list and she phoned it in. That was an interesting afternoon in the tombs. Especially with me being handy with a knife and all. Luckily for me, the actual killer was caught the same day when he passed out under a park bench having hit a vein trying to tattoo a psalm on to his dick. It pains me mightily to say it, but the guy did look a little like me.
The upshot of all this is that I don’t smile now unless someone I like says something to me that they think is funny. One of the people I like is too young to get my humour and the other is missing presumed dead.
It doesn’t really surprise me that no one is on my tail.
Still too early, I tell myself. Macey Barrett hasn’t been gone more than half a day.
Which hasn’t stopped Irish Mike sending a dozen texts wondering where his employee has gotten to. They start civil enough.
Hey, M. What’s the story?
Deteriorate a little.
M. You trying to be funny? M.
And by the end are openly hostile.
You report in, Barrett, or I’ll cut your forking head off.
Forking? Predictive text.
I don’t read any more after that.
I get to the club early, but hang back for almost an hour, see if anyone is making enquiries. Nothing suspicious. The only dangerous-looking Irish guy around here is me, so I push through the black leather doors. Jason is at the coat check shooting the breeze with Brandi, one of the older hostesses. I say older, but Brandi is barely thirty, which is just out of her teens as far as I’m concerned. Brandi has been angry at the world for about a year, since she had to hang up her stripper’s G-string and downgrade to a hostess job at Slotz. Forced retirement at thirty.
Jason is leaning on the counter with that fond faraway look in his eyes that tells me tonight’s subject is childhood memories.
‘I remember getting pissed on by my old man,’ he says dreamily.
Brandi shoots me a look like maybe she should hide in the coats.
‘Yeah, Jason,’ she says, rolling her eyes at me. ‘That sounds swell.’
Jason catches the tone. He’s big, but not stupid. ‘No. Nothing like that. It was a game we had, you know, two of us at the bowl, pissing as hard as we could. A race. Dad always let me win, even if he was blue in the face holding on. Sometimes there’d be spray, you know.’
‘Those were the days,’ I say sincerely, passing my coat to Brandi. Any good memory is a valid good memory.
Jason tears the foil from a protein bar, bicep bulging in his sleeve. ‘You got anything, Dan? Any good memories of your pappy back home in Ireland?’
‘Yeah. There was this one day when he beat me with his hand because he couldn’t find the shovel. I’ll never forget it, still brings a lump to my throat.’ I try not to be bitter, but it’s hard.
People are usually embarrassed when I start in on my father, but Brandi has heard a million sob stories in her years on the podium. ‘Jesus, Dan, lighten the hell up. This place is gloomy enough with Connie scaring away all the big tippers.’
Some of the girls are not opposed to getting frisky in a booth if it means an extra few bucks. Most of the guys, too.
‘Come on, Brandi. Guy licked her arse.’
‘You can say ass, Dan. You’re in America now.’
I sigh. ‘Arse is the last piece of Irish I have.’
I decide then and there to give half of Macey Barrett’s wad to Connie. Her kids could probably do with a weekend away; maybe they’d take me along. We could toss a baseball.
I’m clutching at straws now. Never look out the window in a diner.
‘Where is Connie? She in yet?’ I’m already seeing myself making the gesture.
‘No sign,’ says Jason, checking his teeth in a tiny mirror on the back of his phone. ‘She better get here soon, Victor’s due.’
Vic’s favourite pastime is docking the staff. Any excuse he can find. A while back he put a timer on the staff washroom, which lasted about ten minutes before someone set fire to it and took out half the rear wall. Still, gives you an idea of the kind of person he is.
‘Yeah, that Vic, what a prince,’ says Brandi with a sneer.
Everybody’s on the same page on the Victor subject.
Then the man himself stumbles in. Victor Jones, the world’s oldest white rapper, fifty-five, resplendent in a Bulls sweatsuit and cap, wraparound shades and gold ropes up to his chin. More than a stereotype; a cartoon stereotype. Simon Moriarty could spend the rest of his life analysing this guy. I’m surprised Victor doesn’t get beaten up on a daily basis.
Matter of fact, he looks like he got beaten up tonight. There’s a drool pendulum swinging from his chin, and what looks like puke in little triangular pools between the laces of one ruby sneaker.
Ruby sneakers? I mean, come on, man. You’re mid-fifties from Hunterdon Country. Have some self respect.
Brandi is all over the boss, plumping his shoulder with a boob. ‘Hey, Vic, honey. What’s up? What happened to your shoe?’
Hypocrisy is a survival skill in Slotz. Five minutes ago she was spitting on Vic’s name.
Victor bends over, wipes his chin.
‘In the . . . fucking . . . out in the . . . I don’t fucking believe this . . .’
He pukes on the other sneaker.
‘Hurghhh . . . fuck it . . . fuck.’
I am not too upset. To be honest, seeing Victor doubled over is kind of amusing, takes my mind off my own gangster trouble.
‘Get it out, Mister Jones,’ I say, winking at Jason. ‘You’ll feel better.’ And then I add, ‘Bejaysus.’ To let Victor know I’m being Irish and charming.
‘Yeah, get it out, boss,’ adds Jason, smiling so wide I can see the little diamond in his fang. ‘Musta been one of those kebabs.’ He shoots a few seconds of video with his phone.
‘Shut the hell up the both of you,’ gasps Victor, spitting into the puddle between his feet. ‘We got work to do.’
He’s up straight now, wiping the tears from his scheming eyes.
‘Okay, McEvoy, make sure there’s nothing sub-v going on in the club. I mean nothing. You find someone holding, toss ’em. Any of the girls doing side business, tell ’em to zip it up. Jason, I want you to make absolutely sure there’s no disk in the security camera’s recorder. If there is, wipe it. Wipe them all. I want us squeaky clean before the cops get here.’
Brandi is snuggling his elbow again. ‘What can I do, baby?’
Vic shrugs her off like a wet jacket. ‘You, baby? You can clean up the puke.’
Kissing arse doesn’t get you anywhere with this boss.
Then I register what Victor said.
Before the cops get here.
Why would the cops be coming here?
Connie generally parks her old Saturn out back and slips in through the delivery entrance. She’s not ashamed of herself, just her job, and she doesn’t want any of the cling-ons to doorstop her at the front sidewalk. The police eventually cordoned off a ten-metre square around the Saturn with yellow crime-scene tape. But not before I ignored Victor’s instructions and rushed outside.
Connie lay dead beside her car. One shot through the head it looked like, between her arched eyebrows. She’d struggled some; her blouse was ripped and her right shoe lay apart from the body.
I felt numb; it was too much. Sensory overload. My brain steamed as though it was packed in ice.
I’ll feel this later, I thought.
I was right.
Generally I’m not much for scenery. I don’t slow down to gaze at the stars, never rise early to watch the sun pulse over the skyline, but sometimes a picture gets etched on to your brain and you know it’s there for good. Always the violence, shit and misery. I barely remember my own baby brother’s face, but every night dear old Dad haunts my dreams. Three-quarter profile, hooded eyes, tacks of grey stubble, and me falling away from his fist, left eye filling up with blood.
I will remember this night too. Connie lying beside the Saturn, slightly on her side, as though turning in her sleep. One cheek scuffed like a boy’s shoe, limbs brown, elbows sharply pointed. Car door open, cab light casting a yellow glow on her face. Cracked and buckled asphalt with cigarette butts in the grooves. Blue shift dress with some kind of sparkly material, sequins or metallic thread, I don’t know. Hip curved. Hair frizzed on the wet road.
And a hole in the head.
I stumbled back inside, gasping for air.
Did I have something to do with this? Is it connected?
The cops assemble us in the bar and announce that we are shut down for the foreseeable. Vic goes ape.
‘What the hell?’ he rants, going nose to nose with a detective, who’s got that look in her eyes that should tell Vic that there’s a shit-limit and he’s fast approaching it. ‘Shooting didn’t even happen on the premises. This is victimisation, fucking police brutality. Something.’
Vic never could see the line between saving face and talking stupid.
‘There’s a bakery on the other side of the lot. You pricks better shut that place down too or I’m suing somebody.’
‘I’m a cop, sir,’ says the detective, black, thirties, strong features like you’d get on a woo
d carving. ‘We don’t shut down bakeries.’
Vic almost has an aneurysm. ‘Fucking funny, lady. If I wanted to take shit from a bitch, I coulda stayed at home.’
The cop has a comeback for that too. ‘Yeah? Well maybe if you click the heels of those ruby slippers together, you could do us all a favour and magic yourself off to whatever dream world manufactures culture-raping assholes like yourself . . . sir.’
These are strong words, but Vic started in with the B word, so the cop is probably on safe ground complaints wise. I decide not to get on her bad side.
The blue puts up with five more minutes of Vic’s obstruction, then gets tired of making the effort and sends him up to the plaza for a night in the cells.
Brandi objects loudly until the door closes behind her boss, then she sparks a cigarette and says, ‘Thank heaven. That boy was about to feel the sting of my boot on his behind.’
I am surprised. Behind is a delicate word to be coming out of Brandi’s mouth.
So for two hours we sit around in the bar, waiting for a crime lab crew that has to come all the way from Hamilton in their paper suits. Then another ninety minutes while they scrutinise the area for trace. Good luck to them. That back lot has seen more pot deals and blow jobs than the Amsterdam red-light district. I bet they get semen samples going back to the nineteen fifties.
I keep an eye on the scene through the high window. All I can see of Connie is her foot, but it’s enough to make me want to cry for every sadness I’ve ever known. I don’t break down, though. Tears from a big man are as good as an admission of guilt to a zealous cop.
A couple of the CSIs are not as processional as they might be, pulling down their masks to smoke cigarettes and bobbing along to whatever’s on their headphones. Maybe that’s how they deal, or maybe they genuinely do not give shit one.
And all the time, while the trail is growing cold, the staff is sitting jittery around the casino’s poker table; that is until Brandi hits upon the notion of getting hammered on the boss’s dime. Victor’s locked up, Connie’s shot dead. So, screw it, we all need a drink.