Falling Glass

by Adrian McKinty

  Fans turning overhead, heavies watching the line from behind a partition. Good heavies, really focusing.

  Many of the people getting off the planes had that humorless fixation, that manic whiteness about the eyes of the degenerate gambler.

  “Purpose of visit to Hong Kong?”

  “Tourism.”

  “How many days will you be staying here?”

  “Two days.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  He walked through the overlit, white, antiseptic Green Channel and nodded to a short young man who was holding up a sign that said “Killian”.

  Behind him Killian could see sharp, brown hazy mountains.

  “Are you waiting for me?” Killian asked.

  “Mr Killian?”

  “That’s me.”

  The young man bowed slightly and tried to take Killian’s bag from off his shoulder. Killian didn’t let him.

  “This way please,” the man said.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you have any objections to taking a boat?” the man asked.

  “No,” Killian said nervously.

  “Excellent. This way.”

  The man didn’t take him to a car or a boat. Instead they rode a train into the city. Killian honed his pitch and spent the rest of the ride watching very pretty Chinese girls on the flat-screen TV explaining the multifarious delights of Disney World Hong Kong.

  They got off at Hong Kong Central and took an escalator to the first floor.

  “Merely a short walk,” the escort said.

  Some people might have thrown a huff now, demanded a car, not this subway/walking/boat operation, but Killian couldn’t care less. He’d been in a box for fourteen hours, hoofing it was fine.

  They yomped an air-conditioned corridor to the Kowloon Ferry Terminal. He caught glimpses of office buildings and apartment blocks dizzyingly perched on terraces cut into the mountains. The streets were full of small Chinese-built taxis and German luxury cars. Few people outside. Most were inside buildings or air-conned walkways. Close to the ferry terminal exit a crowd of sweating Chinese people poured into the corridor, all of them going in the opposite direction, short bustling elbowy people. Killian was six foot four and here he felt like bloody Gulliver.

  Coulter’s man led him through a set of sliding doors to the outside.

  Heat. Humidity. Spain could do 110 but he’d forgotten what 90 per cent relative humidity felt like. It was late in the day, nearly five o’clock in the afternoon, but it probably wasn’t going to cool down any time soon.

  “Jesus,” he muttered to himself and took off his jacket.

  “This way,” the nameless young man said and led him towards a pier on the water’s edge.

  Concrete gave way to a boardwalk, glass walls to food stands, newspaper outlets and a ticket office. A western girl standing behind a row of taps in a large, air-conditioned bar caught his eye. She had blonde hair in a short crop. She was pale, wan. The place was empty. He smiled at her. She smiled back.

  “Down here,” Coulter’s man said.

  “Where?”

  “Down here,” the man said pointing to a wooden staircase that led to a jetty on the water.

  He looked back at the girl and she was still smiling at him. He nodded and then negotiated the rickety, heaving staircase.

  A long speedboat was tied to the jetty. A driver was waiting for them, ominously dressed in a splashcoat and waterproof leggings.

  His guide untied the boat from its moorings.

  “Would you care to step in?” he asked.

  Killian fought the blind panic and made sure that it didn’t show on his face.

  He shook his head. “Smoke first, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He lit himself a small cigar and walked back up the steps. He crossed to the bar, went inside and sat down in front of the girl. His hands were shaking. Sean hadn’t said anything about boats.

  “What would you like?” the girl asked.

  “Your name and a glass of cold beer.”

  “Peggy and a beer’s coming up,” she said with a generic American accent. She was about twenty-five. Lithe, slender, with green, sylvan eyes. She was wearing a white polo shirt that said “Pier #11 Pub” on it.

  “Peggy, now there’s a name you don’t hear that much these days, I like it.”

  “It’s short for Margaret.”

  “Yeah, I think I knew that,” he said, wondering what year she was born in. 1985? 1986? By ’86 Killian’s father had drunk himself to death, his mother had killed her boyfriend in a knife fight, four of his nine siblings were in borstal, his younger sister Keira was pregnant and Killian, sixteen years old, had stolen fifty cars, had been the getaway driver on a post-office robbery, couldn’t read or write and was in love with a girl called Katie.

  “What do you do?” the girl asked and pushed a cold Carlsberg in front of him.

  “I’m in human resources – I find people, manage people, you know the kind of thing,” he said.

  She nodded. “Headhunter. Isn’t that what they call it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  He drank half the Carlsberg and grinned at her, but this time she didn’t smile back. She was a million miles away.

  “You look lonely,” he thought and found to his annoyance he had actually said it. Too personal too quick.

  She shrugged. “I am a bit, but I’m okay. I’m fine.”

  He drank the rest of the beer in one gulp. He passed her a twenty-dollar bill.

  “You take US?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Listen, I have a boat waiting for me. I’ve got to go, but, uh, you wouldn’t want dinner tonight or something? I know this is—”

  “Yes.”

  “When do you get off?”

  “Midnight.”

  “See you back here around then,” he said, picked up the jacket he’d left on a bar stool, and made for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” she said.

  “What?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Killian.”

  “See you at midnight, Killian.”

  “Until then Cinderella.”

  Back at the boat a trim, tall, balding man, with wisps of grey hair, a perma-tan, sunglasses and a linen suit was talking into a mobile phone. He had a long Gallic nose and under the sunglasses, Killian remembered, grey eyes. “There you are! I thought I was going to miss you,” he said, offering Killian his hand.

  “Good to see you again, Mr Eichel,” Killian replied.

  “Have we met?” Tom Eichel asked.

  “Yes, but it’s been a while,” Killian said.

  Eichel frowned. He obviously did not remember the encounter, which had been at a party in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin years ago, before Killian had even gone to New York, must have been 1989 or 1990. Killian was still a kid and had been lifting wallets from the coat check and Eichel had had two of Coulter’s bodyguards take him out the back and knock the living shite out of him, while Eichel laughed and called him “a thieving wee tinker bastard”.

  Eichel had been about thirty-five then and he looked much the same. Good doctors or good genes or both.

  “I meet so many people,” Eichel said apologetically.

  “It’s okay,” Killian said.

  “Of course Sean and I go back,” Eichel said.

  “Aye, I know.”

  Eichel looked at his watch. “Listen, I was hoping to catch you, I’m afraid I can’t join you tonight, but if Richard likes you, I’ll have someone leave off the files later, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Great. I’m really sorry but I’ve got to go. Richard’s doing the whole ribbon-cutting thing tomorrow and as you can imagine nothing’s ready. It was nice meeting you again. I’ll talk to you for real in Belfast,” Eichel said and turned. He was about to walk back to a white BMW which had been waiting for him but instead he took his sunglasses off, turned and looked Killian in the eye.<
br />
  “You’ll consider it won’t you? Sean says you’re trying to move out of this line of work.”

  “I’m looking for a change of direction, yes, but Sean says this time we’re on the side of the angels.”

  “He’s right. She is a fucking headcase. A druggie. If you found her you’d be doing the girls and her some good. They need to be out of that environment and she needs to be in a clinic somewhere,” Eichel said.

  Killian nodded, stepped into the boat and put on a brave face as it sped out into the Pearl River Delta. The scene was a mash-up of Canaletto and Ridley Scott: in the Kowloon–Hong Kong harbour area the buildings were on top of one another like a squeezed Manhattan, the architecture functional, a dizzying vertical city that was all about maximizing space with few flourishes, but further out the Pearl River was crammed with junks, cargo boats, ferries, fast ferries, oil tankers, trawlers, yachts.

  How many people lived here? Five million, ten? He’d forgotten to do his homework and instead he had spent what time he had available catching up with all the latest news on Dick Coulter. Which actually turned out to be pretty interesting. Sean wasn’t kidding about trouble. Coulter Air was slashing routes left and right, had cancelled all their flights out of Derry and Glasgow and Coulter had been complaining in the tabloids that the British Airports Authority was killing his business with their taxes. The Icelandic volcano had cost Coulter Air close to fifteen million dollars and the world recession wasn’t helping either. Also nothing, nothing at all in the press about a missing ex-wife and kids, which was impressive. That showed real clout.

  Further out from Hong Kong city Killian spotted newer apartment buildings on the mainland marching up and down tropical mountainsides. It reminded him a little of Rio, except there the jungle was being colonised by favelas and there was an organic give and take to the process. This was all take. Hong Kong was owned by man and its sea and earth and mountain were being made to bend to man’s will.

  Killian wondered if it might make a good dissertation project but before he could think about it Mr Coulter’s pilot gunned the big cigarette boat up to twenty and then thirty knots, bouncing it off the waves, beelining for some point on the horizon.

  Now all Killian could think about was keeping down his Cathay Pacific breakfast. He stood near a gunwale and gripped a metal rail.

  “How long will this take?” he asked, but neither man could hear his plaintive croak over the engine noise.

  He closed his eyes and that made things worse. He took deep breaths. For Killian this was far more terrifying than having a loaded shotgun pointed at him.

  Like most tinkers he had never learned to swim but for him it was a real phobia. He was terrified of water. When he was thirteen he had ridden a horse over the Bann for a dare and the horse had dumped him mid-stream.

  Luck, nothing else, had saved him.

  He still had the nightmares.

  “How far to Macau?” he shouted again.

  “There!” one of the two men said.

  He looked ahead and saw the Las Vegas Strip on the South China Sea. Even more vertiginous buildings in parallel blocks on a thin slice of land. The illusion continued all the way to the harbour – what was missing was the desert but it was dusk now and the darkening sea filled that gap; money and geography did the rest.

  He couldn’t appreciate it. He staggered to the back of the boat and returned the breakfast scampi to its native element.

  One of the two men laughed and the other said something in Cantonese which made the first laugh louder.

  Bastards, Killian thought half-heartedly.

  The boat docked at a wooden pier with tyres bobbing on the side as fenders. A European man wearing a chauffeur’s uniform and already speaking into a mobile was waiting for them. Killian wiped his mouth and allowed himself to be helped from the boat. His head was spinning. The jet lag and lack of sleep weren’t helping much either.

  Mercifully, the car was close. He walked to an open limo and got in the back.

  The Strip analogy continued but it was denser than Vegas as land was at more of a premium. The people were Chinese but the names were familiar: the MGM, the Venetian, Caesars Palace.

  They pulled into an underground garage. The driver walked him to an elevator, put in a card key and pressed the PH button. He held the door for Killian but didn’t get in with him.

  The lift doors closed and Killian counted forty floors before the penthouse.

  He’d been steeling himself for the chunky, potato-faced Coulter he’d seen on telly and in real life a few times at various things in Dublin and Belfast, but when the doors opened, standing there was a pregnant woman, late twenties, long brown hair, deeply tanned. Very attractive.

  “Hello, I’m Helena,” she said.

  “Hi, I’m Killian.”

  They shook hands. Her fingers barely touched his, which made Killian think that she shook a lot of hands in any one day. Charity fund-raisers, that kind of thing.

  “My husband’s running a little late and Tom’s in the city,” she said.

  “I saw Mr Eichel briefly already.”

  “Oh, I see. Would you like a drink?”

  “Yeah I would, thank you, that boat journey…”

  “Boat journey? Ah, right. We didn’t take the boat. It must have been very beautiful.”

  The woman had a funny way of speaking English. She was Italian, French, something like that, but with an English boarding-school education. Almost certainly an ex-model or actress or TV presenter. Just the thing Coulter thought might impress everybody back home.

  Killian unslung the bicycle messenger bag from his shoulder and let it drop to the floor while she walked to a long bar that was stacked with bottles, cocktail shakers and draft beer taps.

  “Let me do that,” Killian said.

  “No, no, you sit down,” she insisted. “Now, what can I get you?”

  “Vodka tonic, heavy on the tonic and a lot of ice, please.”

  She brought him the drink and sat on a complementary black leather sofa opposite his. He removed a plastic stirring stick and looked around the room. South-western motifs. Leather furniture. Animal heads. Brick fireplace and a real chimney. In this locale it was ridiculous.

  “You like it?” she asked, following his gaze.

  “It’s nice.”

  “It’s just our flat for here. We live in Ireland.”

  “Aye, I know. Me too,” Killian said.

  “Oh, I didn’t recognize the accent – whereabouts in Ireland?”

  “You know Carrick?”

  Helena shook her head.

  “It’s near Belfast. You must have driven through it.”

  “Possibly, I don’t know.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Six months.”

  “Congratulations.”

  He took a sip of the vodka tonic, it was at least half vodka.

  “You pour a mean drink,” he said.

  “Is it too strong?” she asked with a conman smile that immediately got her into his good books.

  “How do you get here from Hong Kong if you don’t take a boat?” he asked.

  She made a little helicopter sign with her fingers which Killian also found adorable.

  “Hello?” Coulter called from another part of the flat, his Ballymena accent unmistakable. His brogue had got defiantly stronger the more famous he had become until now it was a parody of itself, sort of a cross between Ian Paisley, Seamus Heaney and Liam Neeson, all of whom grew up in the same general area.

  “We’re in the living room, darling,” Helena said.

  “The peeler’s with you?” Coulter shouted.

  “The man you hired, yes.”

  “Did you tell him anything?”

  “No.”

  Coulter opened a door and came into the room. He looked sprightly, cheerful, like a demented elf. He was about five-seven, with dyed black hair and a tanned freckled face that had not been untroubled by the knives of gifted surgeons. H
e looked healthy and good. Killian knew that Coulter put it about that he was in his mid-fifties but actually he was closer to sixty.

  In his heyday, four or five years ago, he’d been on the box frequently doing chat shows, variety shows, showing up as a rent-a-quote when there was news about the airline industry.

  On the tube he had a stage Irishman, slightly sleazy air about him but in real life he seemed more like a successful ex-footballer or boxer a few years from the ring. There was a sort of rural Mick integrity to him.

  Killian stood up. Coulter nodded to him, kissed his wife and got himself a drink from the bar.

  “Where’s Tom?” he asked Helena.

  “Stuck in the city,” she replied. He kissed her again, sat down and then leaned forward and offered Killian his hand.

  “Tom talked to Sean Byrne about you, Sean says you’re the best,” Coulter said. Killian nodded. “Sean’s my manager, what else is he going to say?”

  Coulter ignored this. “And apparently you know Bridget and Michael Forsythe?”

  “I’ve met Michael a couple of times and I’ve done a few wee jobs for him over the years,” Killian said truthfully.

  “Well, he speaks highly of your work,” Coulter said and then added in an undertone, “and he would know.”

  Killian winced. It reminded him again of that Christmas Eve when he and a bunch of other guys had fucked up their bodyguarding gig and let Michael make fools of them and top their boss. If he’d been Japanese, no doubt the only honorable course after that would have been bloody suicide. But he wasn’t Japanese, he was a Pavee and half of all Pavee were dead before they were forty. Suicide was the luxury of long-lived people.

  “How was your trip?” Coulter asked.

  “No problems.”

  “They brought you in a speedboat, right?”

  “Aye, it was very Bond villain, I was impressed.”

  Coulter smiled. “And who did you fly with?”

  “Cathay Pacific.”

  “They’re good. Fully horizontal chairs, right?”

  “Well there was a bit more room than bloody Coulter Air,” Killian just about resisted saying and instead offered the safer: “Very good service. How is the airline business these days?”

  Now it was Coulter’s turn to wince. “We lurch from crisis to crisis. Passenger numbers are off, fuel’s still historically high, taxes are through the roof. They’re killing the goose. You know I had to cut half our routes out of Luton? The taxes were three times the cost of the ticket. Bloody BAA. Idiots. The volcano dust! Volcano dust is it? My God. No, no, it’s still not good. We’re gonna be in the red all this year and probably the first quarter of next.”