Plugged

by Eoin Colfer

  Vic’s lip hangs fat and low like a slug. He’s getting a glimpse of his own future. Come collection day, things are going to be a little tight. He can’t afford to let that money leave the table.

  ‘That cash is not mine to lose. I owe Irish Mike twenty grand.’

  Irish Mike again. The man is like a cancer.

  ‘All you have to do is buy a look at my cards.’

  ‘I’m out. Tapped.’

  I reach in for the pot, hoarding it with my arms. ‘Sorry, Vic. No pay, no play.’ This is fine; this will do.

  Vic watches the pot move across the table like it’s his life’s blood draining away.

  ‘There must be some way to work this out. I can owe you.’

  ‘Not an option. Your rules.’

  ‘I can kill you.’

  ‘You can try. Bigger men than you have tried. Go for your nine, see what happens.’

  Vic bought a nine millimetre because that’s what the gangsters rapped about. I suspect that’s because of the easy rhyme.

  ‘It’s thirty grand just to see your cards. This is Cloisters, for Christ’s sake. Where am I going to get that kind of money?’

  It’s laughable really. Has this man never heard the word irony?

  ‘Vic, you’ve been rolling girls back here for years. Every one of them begged you for a little leniency. You screwed them all. Cheated them, then screwed them.’ I pile up the cash and chips. ‘You still owe me for the chips. That’s four grand give or take. And I’ll take, if you don’t mind.’

  Vic’s poker face has collapsed in on itself, and in its place is raw desperation.

  ‘Fuck you, doorman. I’ll see you. Let me see those cards.’

  ‘Show me your money.’

  Vic wrings his hands, and the chains around his neck jangle. ‘I got the club.’

  Bingo.

  ‘You don’t even own this fire hazard, shithole.’

  Vic does not dispute my description. ‘I got a twenty-year lease. That’s gotta be worth fifty grand.’

  ‘Yeah? And I got a shoe that’s worth half a mil.’

  ‘Come on, Daniel. I’ll throw in the lease for a look-see.’

  I mull this over. ‘If you win, you cut these girls loose anyway. And if you lose, then this club and every stick of furniture and bottle of booze in it belongs to me. I don’t want any haggling; this isn’t a divorce.’

  Vic nods, not able to speak the words.

  I push the pot back in. ‘Show me the lease.’

  Brandi hurries to the open safe and fishes about. She can see where this is going. In two minutes there could be a regime change around here. She returns with a manila envelope tied with string.

  ‘This it?’

  Vic looks like he’s going to puke. ‘Yeah.’ And then adds, ‘Bitch.’

  Brandi is aching to respond; it’s in the square of her chin, the flash of her tawny eyes. But this deal is not sealed just yet. No one outside the game speaks, because this is one of those situations that will be talked about for years whatever happens, and details are important. Also the whole thing has an unreal quality about it, like something out of a TV show, and not the good ones with budget behind them; the afternoon reruns from the seventies with stereotype villains and a cheap set that wobbles every time a door is closed.

  I check the document. Most of it is legalese; could be a guarantee for a deep-fat fryer for all I know. Even if it is legal, the entire situation is probably bullshit that any halfway-decent attorney would tear apart without spilling his latte.

  In spite of all that, I say: ‘Okay. Looks good. I accept the wager.’

  A little formal, but it’s that kind of night.

  Vic’s jowls are shuddering. ‘Show me, goddamn you, doorman.’

  Calm drapes me like a shroud and I know the club is mine.

  ‘Two pair,’ I say, flipping the cards. ‘No bluffing on this side of the table.’

  Vic doesn’t bother with his cards. He’s screwed, and killing a few people is the only way out.

  His nerve-clumsy fingers crab down his body towards the nine in his belt. He’s way too slow. I reach across and crush his hand in mine. Brandi puts him away with a vicious elbow to the side of his face. That girl changes allegiances in a heartbeat. No, that’s wrong. Our girl Brandi only has one allegiance. Vic slides off his chair, moaning, blood pouring from a cut above his nose.

  AJ is moving, but I have so much adrenalin in my system that he might as well be wading through mud, coming around the side of the table at my ten o’clock with a look on his face that’s more animal than human.

  I draw my little Glock 26 and put a shot in the bar mirror over his head. Fragments rain down spectacularly, glittering icicles, slicing AJ’s neck and hands.

  I don’t have to say anything. Even AJ is not dumb enough to go up against a gun. He lies on the floor and starts crying.

  I turn to Marcie and her friend. ‘Go now. Don’t ever come back in here. Stay off the strip.’

  They kiss and hug me for a minute, like I’m an old rock star.

  ‘Thanks, Daddy,’ blurts Marcie. Then, ‘Oops. Sorry. I mean thanks, mister.’

  Then they’re gone, skittering across the casino, sandals slapping the floor.

  ‘Thanks, Daddy,’ says Brandi, imitating the California/MTV twang that all kids speak with these days, then she cracks up laughing. ‘I don’t believe this, Dan. You own the club.’ She stamps the heels of her Catwoman boots with sheer joy. ‘That asshole’s time has come. I should crack his skull for all the shit I’ve had to put up with these past months.’

  ‘Don’t crack anything yet, Brandi. Vic hasn’t signed the lease over.’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Brandi.

  She rouses her ex-boss with a sleet of ice from a steel bucket. As soon as he signs, she cold-cocks him with the bucket.

  ‘Finally this club is going to rock,’ she sings, pouring herself a healthy shot of bourbon. ‘We can get some professional girls working in back. Maybe cut a deal with Irish Mike for some product. Make us some serious money.’

  I can see I’m going to have staff problems.

  Jason shows Vic and AJ the door with unseemly glee. He actually sings them out using the tune from ‘YMCA’ and his own lyrics:

  ‘Get-the-Fuck-Out,

  You pair of assholes.

  Get-the-Fuck-Out,

  And don’t come back here!’

  I’m impressed. I haven’t seen Jason this happy since his signed Lou Ferrigno T-shirt arrived.

  News spreads across the club like electricity across water, spasming everyone it touches. Pretty soon the entire staff are gathered outside the back room waiting for some kind of pep talk.

  Talking to staff is not my area. Having staff is not my area, for Christ’s sake. Travel light has always been the code I live by, and yet somehow here I am with a casino and a dozen people depending on me for a living.

  My transplants are itchy.

  Thank God the wages were paid yesterday.

  What about me? Ghost Zeb pitches in. Don’t forget about me.

  And Zeb is still Irish Mike’s captive. Irish Mike who collects a little tribute every month from Slotz. It seems every time I crawl out of no-man’s-land, the earth tilts and rolls me back in.

  I hear Brandi’s steel heels clacking across the casino floor and I decide to face the music before she launches into another tirade. I rise, check my skullcap in a remaining shard of busted mirror and duck under the door frame to meet my public.

  It’s a weird feeling to have subordinates smiling at you; didn’t happen a lot in the army. Mostly in the army people muttered gobshite under their breath when I was dishing out orders. But here, all I’m getting is happy faces.

  Jason is still riffing on ‘YMCA’.

  ‘Dan-Mac-Evoy,

  Is fucking awesome,

  Dan-Mac-Evoy,

  Kicked Victor Jones’ goddamn ass!’

  He abandons the song’s structure for the last line, but nevertheless his efforts earn him
an enthusiastic round of applause.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘Okay. I thank you, Jason. The Village People thank you.’

  More laughing. Marco tickles Jason in the ribs, which opens my eyes about a couple of things.

  ‘For tonight, we do everything as normal. Except the booths; no more hands-on in the booths. Anyone has a problem with that, talk to me later. Also, anyone working off a debt, you don’t owe me a dime, so from now on we all get paid.’

  A couple of smiles from those no longer in the hole, but the hands-on girls don’t seem too thrilled.

  ‘If you get the opportunity to piss off Victor Jones, do not take it.’

  ‘Too late,’ chortles Jason, accepting multiple high fives. High fives? Christ, these guys are happy.

  ‘Don’t take it, because I don’t know how legal that poker game was.’

  ‘Legal?’ says Jason. ‘Vic’s been rolling girls for years back there. How legal was that?’

  This is a good point.

  ‘You know any good lawyers, Danny?’ continues Jason.

  Sure he does, says GZ. ’Cept Danny here has a tendency to get lawyers shot dead.

  Marco trots across the floor, bearing a large Jameson on a scarred martini tray.

  ‘Here you are, Dan. You earned it.’

  I accept the drink gratefully. The Irish whiskey is smooth going down, but has an aftershock like a jolt from a defibrillator.

  ‘Back to work everybody, enjoy the new management while it lasts. I need to think for a while.’

  Brandi positions herself at my side. ‘That’s right, people. You heard the boss: back to work. We need to negotiate the booth action.’

  Looks like I have a second in command.

  First thing I do in Vic’s office is to kick Brandi out; the second is to rip down the porn. It’s not that I find naked women offensive; it’s just that I prefer the real thing. Also the pictures remind me of the previous occupant, and all the acts he claimed to have performed with the various club employees. Not images you want popping into your head in the course of a work day. Plus if Vic does manage to legal me out of here, I would like out of sheer vindictiveness to mess up his system as much as I can before he does it.

  I don’t know how Vic got anything done. His work surface is a jumble of magazine towers, burger cartons and wadded foil wrappers. There’s a trash can in the corner that looks like it exploded some time in the nineties, and the window blinds are streaked brown and yellow from decades of cigar smoke.

  I wipe the boss’s chair off and sit down, and that’s about as far as my plan extends.

  Adjust the chair.

  It’s a nice touch. I lower the chair six inches so Vic will get an unexpected little shock. Little nuggets like this keep a man going.

  So sit down, and then what? Payrolls, overheads, rent, booze orders, cash deposits.

  My transplanted follicles are begging for a scratching, something Zeb forbade me to do.

  I didn’t employ five students and spend eight hours separating your follicles to have you scratch the little bastards out again. No touching for a month.

  Hands flat on the table, I tell myself. Do not touch the new hair. It’s hard to believe how difficult not scratching is. I’ve waded through plenty of hard and distasteful tasks in my careers, but right at this moment, keeping my palms glued to the desk ranks right up there with any of them. Including latrine digging in the Lebanon.

  I try to focus on something else, and the first thing that pops into my head is: Kee-rist almighty beep.

  What did Sofia mean by that? Where did the beep come from? There was no beep mentioned the first time around. Where the hell do you even hear a beep these days? Maybe there was a car passing by.

  Or maybe . . . Something almost occurs to me, but I don’t let the thought materialise fully in case there’s something to it. I can deal with this eventuality if it becomes a possibility.

  I follow the cable across Vic’s desk and unearth the phone beneath a pyramid of ledgers. There’s no one at the number I’m calling. Of course not, it’s my own number. I count the rings until my answer machine cuts in, then punch in my password.

  One message.

  Hey, guy. Doorman guy. Listen, you probably don’t remember me, you get schmucks all the time, right? Kee-rist almighty, I hate machines. Okay. Anyway, listen . . . Oh, this is Jaryd Faber, by the way, the lawyer you ejected last night. Deservedly so, I might add. I got your number from Vic, and the thing is that I enjoy Slotz, the club, shithole though it may be. Passing a few hours with the cards and the babes. I don’t want to give that up, so I just wanted you to know that I smoothed things over with Vic, what a prince, and I’m back in. In case you see me before you see him, no need to throw a punch. What do you say, let bygones be bygones? Live and let live. Maybe I can buy you a drink or a new suit. Okay? We straight? No hard feelings. I hate saying fucking sorry for anything, but there it is. Accept it or not, you should be fucking delighted by the way, if you knew who I was and what I could do to you. Kee-rist almighty.

  Then the tape runs out and there’s a beep.

  Kee-rist almighty beep.

  I hold the phone at arm’s length, like it’s lied to me.

  Sofia heard my answerphone. Faber was never at the apartment. I set the cops on the wrong man.

  He was the right man for the cops, says Ghost Zeb. Just the wrong man for killing Connie and trashing your place.

  And he’s dead now. It’s my fault.

  No arguing with that.

  So who did kill Connie? Who wrecked my apartment?

  A shadow falls across my face and I look up.

  ‘Well it’s about time,’ says Irish Mike Madden. ‘I’ve been chasing your pale arse all over town.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Irish Mike stands framed by the doorway, like it was built for the purpose. He is a big man, huge, with whiskey veins popping in his nose and cheeks. His teeth are crooked and cracked from a hundred bar fights and he smiles broadly, displaying them like medals. He sports a soft fisherman’s cap, worn rakishly to one side with a shamrock pin on the peak. And when he speaks, his accent is more Hollywood Irish than a living dialect.

  Irish Mike. A Mick who has never been to Ireland. An immigrant who never emigrated. A plastic Paddy who learned all he knew about the old country from grandma’s stories and Boy’s Own.

  ‘Daniel McEvoy,’ he says gently, shuffling into the room, like a crooner about to break into a number. ‘A hard man to find.’

  ‘Not for my friends.’

  Madden is all leprechaun charm. ‘Are we not friends then, Daniel?’ His eyes are dull green, and his skin reminds me of a plucked chicken.

  I am too old for this.

  ‘Cut the shite, Mike. What do you want?’

  Mike chuckles fondly. ‘Shite. I like that.’ He leans against the wall and it creaks. ‘I want the money you owe me.’

  Groan. He isn’t even here for me. I’m a bonus.

  ‘Vic owes you money, not me. He owes me money too, but out of respect for you and your organisation, you can collect first.’

  Mike is a little surprised by this backchat, but amused too. ‘Thanks, McEvoy. Very Catholic of you. But I’d rather you pay.’

  ‘Not the way it works, Mike. Even God can’t transfer debt. I don’t owe you a cent, and if you don’t stop weaving it into the conversation, I’ll squeeze my way through all that fat on your shoulders and break your thick neck.’

  Might as well try bravado, see if it works.

  If it was fear and submission I was hoping for, then my bluntness does not have the desired effect. Mike Madden looks tired and resigned, like he is so fed up of doing things the hard way and why can’t it just be easy for once.

  ‘Righto, laddie. I hear you. Now you listen to me. I’ve been searching for something.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask the universe? Seems to work for a lot of people. That’s a secret, by the way.’

  Madden grinds his teeth. ‘You know wh
at I’m talking about.’

  We both know where this is going.

  ‘I don’t know, Mike. Believe me. But I know how you search for things.’

  Mike spreads his hands wide. ‘Couldn’t be avoided. The disk could have been in your apartment.’

  I am surprised. ‘A disk? A bloody disk. What do I look like to you? Jason goddamn Bourne?’

  Mike Madden hooks the flap of his tweed sports coat over the revolver at his belt.

  ‘Any road, laddie. You’re going to have to quit work early tonight.’

  He’s right. I can’t see any way out of leaving here with him.

  ‘I have a gun too, you know.’

  ‘Maybe, laddie. But I have several. One hostile move from you and the floors run with blood. Wooden floors, though, so at least the blood will wipe off, if you get to it quick.’

  I place my gun on the desk. ‘No one has said laddie for a hundred bloody years, you phoney.’

  ‘My heart is Irish,’ objects Mike, worried more by the insult than the weapon.

  ‘Your heart is clogged with bacon and beer and will drop you in your tracks any day now.’

  Which is an unusual thing to say to a person you just met.

  Two freckle-faced potato-head types squash themselves into the doorway, fumbling guns from their pockets. I know them both from Faber’s kitchen.

  ‘You put that gun back in the drawer, laddie. Or my boys will execute everyone in this club.’

  That’s what I thought. I glare at Madden, so the murder in my eyes is all he can see.

  ‘If I were like you, Mike, if I didn’t care about those people out there, then you would be dead right now. I just wanted you to know that and show a bit of respect.’

  Irish Mike actually winks. ‘Point taken, laddie. Now come over here and let’s pretend we’re friends.’

  Mike takes my phone, then we stroll out of the office and across the casino floor like a couple of swells, and consequently none of his four escorts are forced to shoot anyone. Jason is ready to fight, chest out, arms dangling, but I calm him with a lateral two-fingered slice, which sounds a bit complicated but is one of our door signals. Doesn’t matter how big your pecs are, bullets cut right through.