Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

  Estrada balls up one cheek, pulling a face that indicates the situation was not so clear-cut.

  “You gotta understand, a lot of people want me training them,” he says, and the words do not sound like bragging. “I got a dozen kids a week coming in for tryouts, wanting to show me what they can do. Most times I tell them they’re not ready. Sometimes I tell them to join the gym and I find them a coach from my staff and tell them I’ll oversee but it won’t be a day-to-day thing. I ain’t got a lot of room on my team. I train four different world champions and another four who have title fights coming up inside twelve months. Brish had never asked me to take a look at anybody before. I took him at his word that he wasn’t going to waste my time. I made no promises, but yeah, if Shay’d been good enough, I would have sponsored any application to spend a few months in the States and I’d have trained him, no question.”

  “If he’d been good enough?” asks McAvoy. “You weren’t impressed?”

  Estrada pulls a face. “The kid could punch, no doubt about that. And man, he had stamina. He trained like he was trying to generate enough power to keep the city lit up. It was his footwork. He was a year off ready, I think. Needed a rope tied to his legs, to watch the ballet, or keep a thumbtack in the heel of his shoes. He was too flat-footed. I think Brishen knew it, but he wanted a second opinion.”

  “Could you tell me the exact sequence of events?” asks McAvoy, trying to make it sound like Estrada would be doing him the biggest favor imaginable.

  “No problem,” says Estrada. “The cops came by when they found the bodies. Asked pretty much the same questions you’re asking. You sure they’re cool with me talking to you?”

  “I’m here as their guest,” says McAvoy as blithely as he can. “I was having a drink or two with Detective Alto last night.”

  “Alto, yeah, he was the guy. If he’s cool, I’m cool. So, yeah, what you wanna know?”

  “The chain of events,” says McAvoy, and subtly starts recording the conversation with his phone.

  “Well, they were here for a few hours on Wednesday morning. Worked the bag, some light cardio, sparred with a couple of my boys. Around noon, they said they were going to see the sights. I had another fighter in Shay’s weight division I wanted to see him in the ring with, so I said they should come back around six-thirty. It didn’t go the way Shay wanted it to. Brishen neither. That was that, y’know. No hard feelings. We shook hands and they went off to drink and see more sights. Next thing I heard was they’d been found upstate. Shay dead, Brish dying. Fuck, man, I don’t know who they pissed off but I had to sit down when I heard.”

  McAvoy puts a hand out and finds himself giving Estrada a manly rub on the shoulder. Estrada gives a little smile of thanks at the gesture.

  “Brishen’s phone records indicate he called you late on Wednesday evening. You spoke for one minute and fifty-four seconds. Can I ask you what that was in connection with?”

  Estrada looks confused. He pauses, and for a moment all McAvoy can hear is the squeak of rubber-soled sneakers on the hard floor. “My cell phone or the gym phone?” he asks. “The detective didn’t ask me nothing about that.”

  “I’d already told him, boss,” says Marcel, listening in. “The detective, I mean. It was the gym phone. The Irishman was asking about his friend.”

  “Shay?” asks McAvoy, puzzled.

  “No, the little fucking weasel,” says Marcel, scowling. “Valentine.”

  McAvoy swallows. Tries not to let his emotions show on his face. “Valentine?”

  “Oh, the other one,” says Estrada, nodding. “Sorry, man. He didn’t seem to matter. Showed up here late Wednesday night. Maybe ten? Brishen and Shay were done by then. Said he was Brish’s brightest prospect and wanted a tryout, like he’d been promised. I didn’t like the kid’s attitude.”

  “You weren’t expecting him?”

  “Hell, no,” says Estrada. “Brish hadn’t mentioned him. There was no way I was giving him the time of day, man. I told him to come back when he’d sobered up.”

  “He’d been drinking?”

  “I’d hate to think he was sober.”

  “He left?”

  “He didn’t want to but Marcel here can be persuasive.”

  “You threw him out?” asks McAvoy, turning to the huge man.

  “Didn’t need to. He called us a few names in a language that sounded like it was from Lord of the Rings and then he punched a couple of the lockers and left. I tried to call Brish to tell him some kid had been using his name but his phone was off.”

  “You left a message?”

  “Nah, man, I don’t leave messages.”

  McAvoy turns to Marcel. “But Brishen called you back asking about Valentine?”

  “He sounded a bit liquored up himself,” says Marcel in a conspiratorial whisper that puts McAvoy in mind of old ladies gossiping at a bus stop. “He wanted to know if one of his other prospects had come by. Told him he must have a sixth sense. I said he’d been in and made a bit of an ass of himself. Brish swore a bit, but more to himself than to me. He said thanks and told me to call if the kid came in again. Said bye and hung up.”

  “And you told this to Detective Alto?” asks McAvoy, wondering why it hadn’t appeared in his report.

  “Shit, man, I didn’t put it together,” says Marcel apologetically. “Cop was asking me about Brishen and Shay, so that’s what I told him about.”

  “Me too,” says Estrada, shrugging. “Cop asked about the two who got shot. Didn’t think nothing of some kid using Brish’s name. It matter?”

  McAvoy gives a little nod. Estrada is looking at Marcel and McAvoy wonders if something unspoken is passing between them.

  “Is this the person who came by?” asks McAvoy, and he pulls a photograph of Valentine from his pocket. Until three days ago, it had sat in a frame atop the fireplace of Papa Teague’s caravan. It shows a pale, freckly youth with a pointed face and hair that hangs long at the back and short at the front, with tram lines shaved above his left ear.

  “That’s the little weasel,” says Estrada, nodding, and Marcel concurs. “Eyes looked like he had raw ginger up his ass. I swear, Brishen never vouched for anybody but Shay.”

  “Was there anybody else in the gym when he showed up?”

  “Just Marcel and me,” says Estrada. “Marcel left and I wasn’t far behind.”

  “And you didn’t see him again?”

  “No, didn’t pay him no mind until you brought it up.”

  McAvoy nods. Pockets the photograph. “You should probably contact Detective Alto,” he says. “I’m here only as an observer. It’s his case.”

  “Damn strange,” says Estrada, scratching his jaw. “Should be Homicide South or the County Mounties. The Seventh only get seventy-two hours, and that’s only if the body’s in their precinct.”

  McAvoy frowns. “Yes?”

  “Hell, they change the boundaries often enough, what do I know?” says Estrada, backpedaling a little. “Like you say, I’ll call him.”

  McAvoy smiles in thanks and shakes Estrada’s hand. The grip is less crushing this time.

  “You wanna hit the bag?” asks Estrada playfully. “Can teach you a little hate, you Shrek-looking limey motherfucker.”

  “‘Limey?’” asks McAvoy, smiling.

  “I don’t know the curse word for a Scot,” says Estrada. “But whatever it is, you’re it.”

  He raises his hands and slips out a couple of jabs that fall well short of where McAvoy stands. Behind the counter, Marcel grins.

  “I’ll just go home and cry,” says McAvoy. “Crying beats fighting, if you ask me.”

  Estrada shakes his head and gives a little salute before turning his back and moving to where a man in a red tracksuit is twisting at the waist while holding a heavy ball. McAvoy feels pain in his arms just looking at him.

  �
��I think I need to own a Dezzie Gym T-shirt,” says McAvoy companionably, leaning on the desk. “Am I an XL?”

  “Not here, brother,” says Marcel, laughing, and he turns to the cabinet behind him. “Not much more than a medium.”

  “Excellent,” says McAvoy. “My wife will be delighted I’ve gone down two sizes while I’ve been away.”

  Marcel puts the shirt in a clear bag and then frowns as McAvoy offers him a fifty-dollar bill. “Nothing smaller? I ain’t got much change.”

  McAvoy raises his hands in apology and Marcel pulls out his wallet. He hands McAvoy a twenty-dollar bill.

  McAvoy gives his best smile as he moves back from the counter. “Thanks again,” he says and waves a hand vaguely in Estrada’s direction.

  He is halfway up the stairs when he raises his phone to his mouth and records his own voice asking the question rubbing at his frontal lobes like sandpaper.

  “Why is the witness statement from a Marcel Costa, when the big guy’s driving license says his surname is Aguilar?”

  As he emerges back into the cold, gray air of Thomas Street, McAvoy ends the recording and starts making a call. He is so engrossed that he does not notice the girl with purple hair and glasses in the coffee shop opposite, her endearing smile replaced with a cold, dead-eyed scowl.

  SEVEN

  . . . Against everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and near. I summon today all these powers between me and those evils, against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of pagandom, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of witches and smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul . . .”

  He’s at it again. Holy fecking Joe. Our Father, our Father, our fecking Father. Jaysus, but give it a rest. He hears you. He gets the point, man. Pick another bloody book. Put the radio back on. Sing me a fecking song. Or speak up. It’s just mumbling. The same dull monotone, day after bloody day. Asking for forgiveness. For himself. For me. I know those words. Know them to my bones, whoever’s bones they may so be. I can taste his body, his blood. I can feel the glass beads between finger and thumb and see the light through the colored glass. I just don’t know my fecking name. I tell you something for nothing, my friend, whatever sins I’ve committed, I’m serving my sentence for them. This is purgatory. This is the place between. Trapped here, not something nor nothing; not feeling, not knowing, only half remembering, waiting for an alien body to decide if it wants to live or die. I know that prayer. I recognize it just from the words I can pick out. Idolatry. That’s what you’re apologizing for. Jaysus, there are worse sins. God in heaven, He understands. The Bible’s centuries behind the times and He’s in no rush to come and update it. Can you blame Him? Who would look at this world and think of it as somewhere worth visiting? Feck, those words are familiar, too. I remember them in a voice of purple silk. Not like this beige bastard, droning on, saying his pleases and his thank-yous every time the orange nurse offers him coffee and tells him he’s doing the Lord’s work. Feck it, sister, I don’t know the man. Don’t know myself. But whoever the feck I am, I know that I can only take so much prayer. He’s interrupting. Breaking my concentration. Every time I think I’ve got hold of the memory he stutters out another “Amen” and it pops like a soap bubble. But I’m nearly there, I tell you. It’s all just ripped-up pictures and swirled smells right now but I’ll unpick it, by God I will. I see a man. Beard like a bear. The sort of man who can blunt a razor in one shave. Angry eyes and big fists. And the little lad. Ratty eyes and red hair and temper like a ferret. The kid in the gold tracksuit. Gaffer tape and bruises. The fat man. Bald as a worm, glasses and blue stones. Snow hitting the windscreen like I’m driving through static. Lights on the road, then cold on my skin; shouts and bangs and a mouth full of blood and stones. My face in my fecking pocket. Christ, don’t listen to the beige man. Hear this. Hear me. Help me find the strength to wake, Lord. Help me remember. And let me have my vengeance.

  EIGHT

  Tuck your chin in. Right to your chest. That’s it. Good girl. Now, one, two . . . three!”

  There is a splash as the seven-year-old girl with the mass of curly black hair and the soft mocha skin hits the water with the grace of an elephant falling from a plane. The water has not yet rolled back when she emerges, her goggles on her cheeks like a second pair of eyes, and screwing up her features in the way that people do in the moment before they are shot in the face.

  “Getting better,” says Claudio as the little girl doggy-paddles over to him, wiping her hand over her face and coughing through her giggles. “Better than a mermaid.”

  “Mermaids can’t dive. How would they stand on the side?” asks Belle, between splutters.

  “There are two types of mermaid,” says Claudio softly. “Some have fish tails and human bodies. Others the other way around.”

  Belle considers this. “Like, a massive fish head and skinny human legs?”

  Claudio nods. “They’re not as popular as the other type.”

  “No,” says Belle, considering the picture in her head. “Do they wear pants? Because if they didn’t, they’d have their butts out.”

  Claudio sucks his cheeks in. It’s the closest he gets to a grin.

  “Did she see me?” asks Belle, scanning the spectators who sit in ones and twos in the blue and yellow plastic chairs that overlook this heated swimming pool in Society Hill, Philadelphia. Belle is reveling in this unexpected day off from school. A special treat, Claudio had said. A secret. “Momma. Did she see?”

  “I’m sure she did,” says Claudio, treading water and enjoying his stepdaughter’s weight around his neck. He looks at the spectators but fails to see Mia. He refuses to let his disappointment show on his face. “I bet she’s just popped out to call her friends and tell them how good you’re getting.”

  “It’s cold out there,” says Belle, concerned.

  “She has her coat.”

  “But her tummy is bare.”

  “That’s because she has a nice tummy.”

  “Will it snow again?”

  “Her tummy?”

  “No, silly. The sky.”

  “Do you want it to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then yes, it will.”

  “You think I’ll get the dive right next time?” asks Belle, looking into his eyes in the way that makes him feel like the only man in the world.

  “I think you’ll be the greatest diver in history,” says Claudio.

  Belle pauses a moment, looking at his face. “You should smile when you say a nice thing,” she confides, like wisdom. “You have a nice smile.”

  Claudio twitches his lips. “Like that?”

  “It’s a start. But you should show your teeth more.”

  “I don’t have nice teeth,” says Claudio. “If I smile in here, people will think I’m a shark.”

  Belle grins. “Be a shark!” she says. “I’ll be a mermaid. You can chase me and I’ll hit you with my tail.”

  Claudio nods. “I doubt I’ll catch you,” he says. “I’m old and slow and you’re young and gorgeous and the best swimmer in this whole pool.”

  Belle considers this. There are no more than a dozen people in the twenty-five-yard swimming pool but she sizes them all up as if preparing for a contest. “Maybe,” she says. “That old man isn’t fast but he has stamina.”

  “That’s a good word,” says Claudio. “When I was your age, I wouldn’t have known that word.”

  “How many years ago were you my age?”

  Claudio does the math on his fingers. “Fifty-seven years ago,” he says. “And I wasn’t so pretty.”

  “You’re not very pretty now, either,” says Belle regretfully.

  Claudio is in no position to disagree. He’s out of shape and his skin is pale and malleable,
like a bowl of oatmeal left out since yesterday. There is a mess of ruined skin on his left biceps and he lacks all the teeth save two in his lower set. There is a redness across his cheeks and his nose is crooked. His short gray hair is thinning on top. He looks every one of his years. His is a face that has witnessed violence, and though some of the other swimmers may be wondering what his relationship is with the little brown-skinned girl, nobody looks at him long enough to risk catching his attention. He looks like a man capable of causing harm.

  “Are you going to be a shark or not?” asks Belle, kicking away from the man who has been sharing her mother’s bed for the last couple of years and who has brought a little stability into a life that previously lacked much structure.

  Claudio is about to do as he is asked when the older man who impressed Belle with his stamina comes and breaststrokes between them.

  “You practice your front crawl,” says Claudio. “I won’t be far behind.”

  Belle pulls a face and glances at the older man, who is now treading water next to Claudio. “You might have stamina but I’m faster,” Belle tells him confrontationally.

  “I don’t doubt it, sweet pea,” says the older man, grinning to expose a full set of perfect white teeth. “You show me what you can do.”

  Belle turns and does a good impression of a motorboat, churning through the water in a whirl of foam, her dark head popping up and disappearing again like an otter.

  “She ain’t elegant but she’s motivated,” says the elderly man. “Take after her momma?”

  Claudio looks at the older man, and with the subtlest of nods they move to the side of the pool. They each place an elbow on the wet tiles and bob there, water up to their throats.

  “Where is Momma?” asks the old man, his lower lip dipping below the water.

  “Supposed to be watching,” says Claudio. “Think she’s gone for a cigarette.”

  “You sure that’s all?” asks the man.

  “Sure enough,” says Claudio.