Falling Glass

by Adrian McKinty

  Killian chuckled, shook his head and looked down. He was talking conversationally but he knew he had them now. He was good at this. He was a minstrel. A salesman. A preacher.

  “That was a scene, but lucky for me they didn’t know what they were doing – jazzing each other, shooting for the rafters. I dive for the sofa, roll behind a wall where they can’t see me and then it’s tea and crumpets at the Palace. I run to the bathroom, out through the window, back in through the front door behind them.”

  “What happened next?” Luke asked.

  Killian gave him a shut the fuck up look.

  “I shot both the hoods in the back and checked them in the skull, neat checks, two rounds a piece and I ran over and smacked the girlfriend hard in the face, broke her nose, knocked her clean out. Ran back over to our boy, cut off his dick, put it in his mouth. Then back to the girlfriend. She’s the problem.”

  Marcetti nodded. His lips were purple from holding his breath. Killian blew smoke at him and Marcetti finally sucked in air through his open mouth. “What did you do?” he asked.

  “What would you do?” Killian asked.

  “I – I don’t know.”

  “I can’t kill her, not in the contract. But you can’t let her go, not after all this.”

  Killian nodded at Luke, now was the time for him to speak. Kid caught on quick.

  “What did you do?” Luke asked.

  “I went to the kitchen and found a steak knife and cut her throat,” Killian said. “Her blood came out crimson. She was young, her heart was beating fast. Frothed out all over the floor and all the way to that wooden patio deck.”

  He nodded at Luke and then turned his attention on Marcetti. “You see, Andrew, I’m only the advance guard. If you kill me other men will come, wherever you are. Before your eyes they will castrate your son and rape your wife and hurt them until you are begging for their deaths. You need to be made a lesson of. Your story will be legend. It’s worth it to them, losing the half mill for that.”

  Marcetti started crying.

  Killian got up, walked to him, put his hand on the barrel of the shotgun and lifted it gently from him. He broke it open and took out the shells. Luke had whipped out his Saturday Night Special but Killian shook his head and Luke put the gun away.

  “I don’t have any options, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what I can do,” Marcetti sobbed.

  Killian let him cry for a bit, went to the window, stared out at the street. He did a standing ten-count and still with his back turned said: “When did you buy your house?”

  “What?”

  “When did you buy this house?”

  “2005.”

  “What’s the equity?”

  “I don’t know, we haven’t—”

  “You don’t know? Guy with your problems, give me a fucking break, you know every penny you’ve got or can get.”

  “Things around here haven’t been moving.”

  “What’s the base?”

  “One, one point two.”

  “And you bought for?”

  “Six hundred and fifty – one hundred and fifty down from me, another hundred down from my parents and a hundred thousand no-interest loan from my bank.”

  Killian turned to look at him. “Did you refinance? The truth.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “How much do you owe now?”

  “Three.”

  “Who signed the mortgage?”

  “I did.”

  “Need your wife’s signature?”

  “Yes.”

  Killian nodded. “Sell me your house right now and you and your family will live. Otherwise, well, you know…Otherwise you’re all dead.”

  Killian walked to him, stuck out his hand. Marcetti looked at the big meat-axe paw in front him. He wiped the tears from his face and after a moment’s hesitation he shook it.

  “Good, now go to the kitchen, make us some coffee. Mine’s black, no sugar, a wee bit of water in the cup.”

  Marcetti went to the kitchen, stunned, like a car-crash survivor.

  Killian called Sean, got patched through.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sean, can you get lawyers up from Boston, maybe through Charlie Bingham?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re buying the mark’s house.”

  Sean didn’t blanche. “We’re transferring the escrow to Bridget?”

  “You catch on quick. She and her better half will need it today. Can you do it?”

  “It’s a holiday, but I’ll figure something out. We make anything on the house?”

  “Fifty K.”

  “That plus our commission. Profitable twenty-four hours. Sure you don’t want to come back to work for me full-time? A dozen scores like this and you’re laughing me bucko.”

  “I’m hanging up, Sean. We need your boys pronto. M.F. will give you the address.”

  “You tell me.”

  “We don’t leave that spilled over the airwaves.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask him…So, how was it working in the mines after all this time?”

  “Bye, Sean.”

  Marcetti came into the living room with three cups of coffee. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was a gambler, he liked the high stakes aspect of all of this. He was digging on the drama.

  Killian took a cup, gave one to Luke.

  “I wanted cream,” Luke started until he saw Killian’s eyes.

  “Okay, here’s the deal, Andrew. We’re going to buy your house from you for nine hundred thousand dollars. That’s a price we can sell it at immediately. We’ll pay off Michael and give you fifty thousand in cash to tide you over.”

  Marcetti’s face was ashen, distant, but still he nodded.

  “What’ll I tell my wife? What can I tell her?”

  Killian put his hands on Marcetti’s shoulders. He placed his own cool forehead on Marcetti’s sweating furnace of a forehead.

  “I’ll speak to her,” Killian said.

  Marcetti closed his eyes. Tears again. They were close now. Like brothers. Closer.

  “You’ll talk to her?” Marcetti asked.

  “Andrew, paisano, I’ll take care of everything.”

  Marcetti nodded gratefully.

  The wife came back.

  The kid came back.

  Killian explained.

  Long shadow.

  Highway lights.

  Dusk.

  Darkness came down like a shroud across the sun.

  There would come a time when he’d be dead, when everything would be dead and all the suns were gone and the universe was black. That time would come, but it was not now.

  He was alive. Tired but alive.

  He took off his jacket and folded it carefully on top of the bike messenger bag.

  They drove over some new bridge he hadn’t seen before. A white concrete cable-stayed affair with inverted Y-shaped towers. He didn’t like it. It was modern, self-important, showy. He preferred slow, incremental change, but the zeitgeist was for revolution.

  Luke dropped him outside the Fairmont.

  “Cheers,” he said, and getting out passed him ten fifties as a tip.

  Luke took the money but didn’t thank him. “Can I ask you something?” Luke said.

  “Sure.”

  Luke hesitated and found his voice: “That story…Uruguay…did you really have to cut that poor woman’s throat?”

  Killian slung his bike messenger bag behind his back, tightened the strap, folded his jacket over his arm.

  “Son, when I saw your gun, for a second there I thought you were a player that Michael had sent to keep an eye on me or cross me,” Killian said.

  “I’m not a player,” Luke muttered.

  “No you’re not. Stick to driving.”

  Killian walked into the hotel. He checked at reception and sure enough Forsythe’s people had booked him a room. Big suite on the upper level. Luke came up behind him at the elevator. He was breathless, there was something in his hand.
The five hundred bucks. Killian was impressed by his integrity. So was Luke.

  “Take your money, I don’t want it,” Luke said.

  Killian pushed the call button, grabbed the five hundred, took Luke’s arm in his powerful grip and shoved the money deep into Luke’s trouser pocket.

  The elevator dinged. The doors opened. Killian went inside. He pressed 6.

  “I don’t want it,” Luke said. His face was shivery, nervous, very young. He was grubbing in his pocket to get the readies back out.

  “Let me tell you something, ya stupid wee shite,” Killian said.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never been to Uruguay in my life.”

  chapter 3

  richard coulter

  A KEY. A ROOM. LIKE ALL THE OTHERS. THOUSANDS OF HOTEL rooms over the years. This one was New Orleans themed. Antebellum paintings in pastel shades, fake Victorian lamps, uncomfortable high-backed chairs, fluted light fixtures, four-poster bed. He sat up and walked to the bathroom. He stared at his own face. His tight, narrow mouth. His slate-grey eyes. His iron-heavy black eyebrows. His slab of black hair.

  His body was long.

  His face was long

  And he looked tired. But despite what Sean said he didn’t look old. Not yet. Forty in dog and tinker years was old but not out there among the civilians.

  And so what if he seemed a bit lived in anyway? He wouldn’t have minded looking like a mature student, or better yet, a happy middle-aged married professor. Something normal like that.

  He turned on the TV news; it was dominated by diabolical herds of local children disguised as leprechauns saying things like “top of the morning to ya,” and “where’s me gold?” The weather lady’s eyes were wide with merriment. “Those are some great kids!” she said.

  The hotel room phone rang. Killian found the merciful release of the mute button.

  “Hello?”

  “Nice work,” Michael said. Live music in the background, laughter.

  “Thanks.”

  “So is this you officially unretired?” Michael asked.

  “Why?” Killian asked suspiciously.

  “No reason,” Michael said. “A potential rival on the block, maybe.”

  “Ha! Me tangle with you, no thanks mate. I’m on the Continental cheapie back to Belfast tomorrow.”

  “Well, you’re impressive, pal. We’re different schools of thought you and me.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m the local badass and you’re all softly softly catchee monkey.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so, pity we couldn’t have hooked, I gotta go back to the dinner, enjoy your stay in Boston. And thanks.”

  The phone went dead and Killian looked at it for a long time before it started making that annoying beeping noise that American phones made.

  He hung up and went to the bathroom, which was in a different part of the suite and was all brushed titanium and Star Trek: The Next Generation flat cabinets.

  He had a piss and out of habit took the Fairmont’s toothbrush, sewing kit, moisturizer and a hand towel they wouldn’t notice and packed them in his messenger bag. Satisfied with this he sat back down in front of the big TV. Through the window he saw that the New York rain had migrated north.

  He turned on the telly. He flipped news and movies. Men with guns.

  He thought about the day.

  It was good to get something like this under your belt. The legit world had shaken his confidence. All his decisions in the last year had been suspect.

  He spaced. It was full night outside now.

  Night in America. A night that was the absence of love. A night of malls, car parks, chain restaurants, houses. A clumsy washing-line of things strung between aeons of darkness.

  He got room-service pizza.

  The tomato sauce had been dyed green.

  Sometime after midnight he went to the ground-floor exterior courtyard. The piano bar was finished. The night bar closed. Cardboard debris everywhere reminded him of the date. He took a fold-up chair and sat by a fountain with his smokes. It was cold and everything was pretending to be something else. The stars were camp fires. The clouds a naked girl. He wasn’t ready to buy into it. For a city so huge it was remarkably quiet. He closed his eyes. Listened to the nothing. Crickets. A faint trickling of water. He wished it were a stream. To take him away. Away from this place, from these people, away from all of it. It didn’t matter where. Anywhere. He wanted to lie back and let the current float him out.

  He drifted and woke chilled.

  Back in the hotel room the light on the phone was blinking.

  It was 4.00 a.m. Nine in Belfast.

  He played the message: “Killian, something’s come up. Call me.”

  He called Sean. “Well?”

  “Richard Coulter.”

  “What about him?”

  “Not a surrogate. Not Tom. Mr C himself. Asked for you by name, wants you to look for his daughters.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “Weans were with his ex-wife. She was keeping her end of the visitation agreements until one day she didn’t. His lawyers tried to get in contact with her and lo and behold it turns out she’s just fucking vanished.”

  “UFOs I suppose. It’s common enough these days.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Have you been drinking?”

  “The bars are closed. On Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston.”

  “Look, mate, this is a thing.”

  “What kind of a thing?”

  “A missing persons case.”

  “Why are you telling me, Sean? You know I’m semi semi. And Dick Coulter? Fuck him. I’ve flown Coulter Air, the bastards charged me two quid to use the fucking toilet.”

  “That’s an urban myth.”

  “Not on my flight it wasn’t. They’re worse than Ryanair! Charged you for water, the bog, they’ll be charging you for bloody oxygen next.”

  “Nice routine but listen, mate, this is a score.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite.”

  “Fifty thousand for taking the case and the first month’s retainer. Four hundred and fifty thousand more if you find her.”

  “Half a million quid?”

  “Half a million quid.”

  Killian had to sit down. With a half million quid he could clear the debts, sell the apartments, buy a small three-bedroom in Carrick and do the course at Jordy full time.

  “Why me, Sean?”

  “He’s heard things.”

  “Come on.”

  “Okay, okay, so your pal told him about you.”

  “Michael Forsythe?”

  “Who else?”

  “When?”

  “About four hours ago. Michael was evidently impressed by your work.”

  “So Michael calls Coulter, Coulter calls Tom, Tom calls you, you call me?”

  “No. Mr C called me personally.”

  “It’s basically a wandering-daughter job?”

  “Coulter’s married again. His wife’s pregnant. He wants his kids back before the new one comes along. One big fucking happy family.”

  “How many kids?”

  “Two. Look, we’re the good guys. The missus is off the deep end. Fucked up. The kids are in genuine danger. It’s all true. She’s had drug problems. Didn’t you read about her last year in the Sunday World?”

  “I don’t read the Sunday World.”

  “You should keep in touch with current events. You know they have a black President now?”

  “Why so much money?”

  “He’s got money to burn.”

  “Still.”

  “Ease up on the paranoia. They still want to do this on the hush hush before they have to bring in the peelers.”

  “Peelers sounds like a good idea.”

  “It’s complicated. Coulter doesn’t want the publicity. Not when he’s looking shaky.”

  “Shaky? I thought he was making money hand over fist. I thought he was going to be the
first fucking Irishman in space.”

  “The airline business is in the bog. Coulter Air lost a hundred and fifty million euros last quarter. And after that Iceland volcano they were already in the shitter. They’ve cut half their routes out of Luton. That’s why he’s in Macau. Diversifying.”

  “Macau?”

  “Macau, it’s a former Portuguese colony in China, next to Hong—”

  “I know where it is, Sean. What’s he doing there?’

  “Opening a casino.”

  “Aye, sounds like he’s really on the skids. That and the half million for finding his wife.”

  “That’s not his money, incidentally, that’s coming from the kidnap insurance.”

  “Oh right, the kidnap insurance, very small time.”

  “Look, they want a decision immediately. Will I tell him you’ll meet him or not?”

  “When did this doll go missing?”

  “Five weeks ago.”

  “This thing reeks, Sean. Five weeks and now they wanna start looking? They’re considering contacting the peelers?”

  “Okay, okay, so we weren’t the first guys they went to. They tried the rest and now they want the best. Believe me this time we’re the good guys. Come on, whaddya think? Does it sound like something?”

  “It sounds like something,” Killian admitted.

  “What will I tell him? He wants to meet you ASAP.”

  Killian thought for a full half minute and then said: “Aye, why not.”

  “Good. I booked your flights. Non-refundable.”

  “You booked my flights?”

  “Boston to LA, LA to Hong Kong. Coulter wants to talk to you in person.”

  Killian stared at the phone for a moment. He knew that he should be angry. Sean had gone ahead and the booked the trip?

  Was he really so predictable?

  “What time do I have to have to be at Logan?”

  “Eleven o’clock. UA 323.”

  “Eleven o’clock this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose I better get some kip then.”

  “Aye, that might be a good idea.”

  chapter 4

  an oyster in the mirror sea

  THE AIRPORT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN, DREDGED up Dutch-style and poured into gigantic rectangles from which the water was pumped. It was the newest and flattest part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.