Ach, Audrey Martin wouldn’t harm a fly, Nan said.
No, that’s true. The lower forms of life are safe from her wrath, but you must admit that the sentient creatures have much to fear, I said, trying to be jokey with her, but it didn’t really work. With Nan it never really worked. I started throwing bread and sausages in the frying pan. The conversation with Nan was going as I’d expected—not at all well.
You’ve a cold, she said. Do you go out without your scarf?
Nan, I lost that scarf ages ago.
See, that’s why you’ve a cold.
Nan, I believe in the germ theory of the transmission of disease.
Aye, you’ll see when you catch your death, germ theory up your arse, Nan replied in what for her was uncustomary coarseness. I guessed she was upset about something. Probably me blowing her off for so long.
Look, Nan, I’m sorry I haven’t called. Don’t be angry with me.
Ach, I’m not angry at all now, Michael. But you can’t do this again. Promise me that.
I promise.
Well …, she began and stopped.
There was silence now, and I waited for her to say her piece. I waited still as the bacon, egg, soda, and wheaten bread joined the other components of the Ulster fry sizzling in the big pan. I waited as the smell drifted up and filled the apartment and the sausages blackened and the black pudding crystallized. Finally, Nan came to it.
Michael, is everything ok? she asked.
I nodded and remembered to speak.
It’s fine. Nan, what is it? What’s wrong?
Listen, Michael. Mrs. Martin said you wouldn’t be back for Christmas because people are after you.
What?
She saw a couple of policemen come round the other day and they asked all these questions about you. I was out, it was late-night shopping in town, but they asked about you, asked her if she’d seen you. Well, she sent them off with a flea in their ear and no mistake. And for all your talk about her. But Michael, I was wondering if you were in any trouble. They haven’t been back, and I’ve said nothing.
I stopped cooking the Ulster fry and turned off the gas.
Nan, you’ll have to go get her. I’ll have to ask her about them myself, I said, seriously.
Nan put the phone down and went to get Mrs. Martin, a woman I’d hardly ever spoken to in my life because I’d always been too afeared. I heard them talk in whispers, and then she came on the line.
Hello, young man.
Hello, Mrs. Martin.
How are you in America?
I’m good.
I see….
Listen, uh, Mrs. Martin, I was wondering if you were sure the men who came looking for me were peelers.
I didn’t think they were policemen at all, Michael. Your nan said that they must have been, but they didn’t look at all like policemen. They had crew cuts and they were wearing jeans. They might have been your detectives, but I don’t think so.
What did they ask?
They asked if I’d seen you, and I said that as far as I knew you were in America, and they started asking all these other questions and I sent them off about their business. I’m sure if they were police they would have showed me a card or something.
Local accents?
I think so, of the most vulgar sort in any case, hardly police.
They weren’t police, I said. Listen, thank you. Please put Nan back on. Thank you.
Nan came back on and I told her to tell anyone who came looking for me that she hadn’t heard from me in a long time. I told her to tell Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Higgins the same thing, and Nan said she would do it. She didn’t ask me why and she must have sensed that I was in some kind of shit. She knew it, but she didn’t want to know. I stayed on for a while longer and made up some lies about having a new job and a new girlfriend. I was sure she didn’t believe them.
After I’d hung up, I wondered if they would try to get to me through her. I felt weak as fear went through me, and I was terrified for Nan for a moment or two.
No, it was a tough estate and you’d be the brave boy who’d send hooligans down into that one-way street. And an assassin of an old lady in that part of town would never get out of Belfast alive. No, Mr. Duffy and Darkey would come after me, if they came at all.
I suppose they’d just called local people up to check in on Nan to see if she’d heard from me. An interesting thought occurred to me. Maybe Sunshine hadn’t passed on the rumors about me. Was it conceivable that they weren’t sure if I was alive and out of Mexico? Was that possible at all? Could Sunshine have been telling the truth? Could they really still be in the dark? No. My heart sank. That would be too good to be true. And not after Bob and the boys and Sunshine.
The smart thing, though, would be to keep them guessing. To lie low until it was time. And it’s not as if I was doing anything stupid. I was being patient. It was weeks since Sunshine had got topped and yet it still wasn’t quite time yet. Not quite yet. Relax them down a wee bit more.
I was still living the life.
I knew no one. I’d seen no one.
The talk with Nan had been the first real conversation in a long time.
Every week Ramón had sent a boy round with money. I was no mad ascetic, so I’d taken it and spent it on things. I’d got myself special sneakers, the running machine. I’d put on weight and got stronger. I rarely left the apartment and then sleekitly, and since it was winter always with my hood all the way up. I spent my time in meditation and exercise. I watched TV and ordered in food and learned Spanish from a book.
When I did go out, it was to distant places on the subway line. Places where I knew they wouldn’t find me. I had to go out early in the morning with a crowd. I had to be sly. There was Sunshine’s men, and Mr. Duffy’s, but there was also the black Lincoln to be considered. The peelers might have got wind of a few things, as peelers are wont to do. They might have got it from any number of sources: a tap on Sunshine’s phone, an ID at Bob’s place, a slabber among one of Ramón’s lieutenants. Still, it couldn’t be that exact or they, like Darkey’s men, would have come knocking.
I wondered when Darkey was supposed to be back from his hols, but then I realized he would have come back early once they’d found Sunshine. Aye, he’d have to. Yeah, Darkey would be home by now with Bridget. With Sunshine dead, he’d really have his hands full.
He’d be home, and probably he’d be waiting for me. Even scouting up there would be dangerous. If it were me and I was in his position, I’d have a man at the railway station twenty-four hours a day; I’d have a dozen patrolling the grounds and I’d have half a dozen inside the house. I’d also have a dozen looking for me in my last known location, cruising in cars, maybe stopping people in the street and showing them my picture. No, not the latter, Ramón wouldn’t allow them to do that, it was his turf. They’d have to be discreet or Ramón’s boys would lift them for something, for surely by now Ramón owned the precinct.
I could only guarantee my safety if I stayed in the apartment, but like I say, sometimes I had to move in the outside air.
The day after I called Nan, I woke up freaked and had to get out. I did my usual shifty maneuvers and then rode the bus to the Cloisters and spent a morning freezing up there. A day after that I slipped downtown and took the PATH to some hellhole in Jersey. No tails, no problems.
I was fine, I had outsmarted them. The peelers, Darkey White, that’s how you’ll beat them, Mikey boy. Your native wit. Your charm. Your Celtic cunning. But don’t forget that other legacy of an Irish boyhood. The Paddy curse, not quite American Indian levels, but high enough. Enough to fuck you up. I decided I needed to get drunk, but it would be ok, I could handle it, I could handle anything.
I left the next morning after daylight and took a complicated route to a café on 112th Street. It was a Cuban place and I got rice and beans, fried eggs, and toast for breakfast, as well as a big con leche and a juice. It was good and it buoyed me. I was going to go on the piss, but I was still get
ting paranoid about tails, so I sat in the window seat looking out at the street, memorizing everyone. I walked down to a bar on 79th Street and sat in the blacked-out window, but there was no one I recognized.
The whole week had been depressing. Starting with that call to Nan. I needed this. A release.
The Dublin House, a black hole with Irish bar staff.
Not a good place to start—too chatty. One pint and out.
The Kitchen Bar, the Dive Bar, Cannon’s, the West End. A pint in each. I wanted to have lunch, but too many students. South again.
It was freezing. I had my thick navy coat and my knit hat, but I was still cold.
The Abbey Pub, a Brooklyn beer, a nasty lunch of curly fries and ketchup, a cute Dutch waitress who lived in the youth hostel on 103rd and Amsterdam and had not yet been mugged or worse by Les Enfants Brillants, the Haitian street gang that ran Amsterdam above 100th.
We talked, and I told her to move to a Dominican part of Broadway. She asked if I had plans next week and I said I had to kill a guy and she gave me a wide berth after that and I left her a twenty-dollar tip.
I was half tore by now, clearly. I went east towards Central Park and into a library to get out of the cold. Read the last few months of Time and Newsweek. Things and people I’d never heard of: Hurricane Andrew, Murphy Brown. The security guard said I was singing and asked me to leave. I walked to the subway, stopping outside a liquor store. I stared at the window for a while, and the man gave me an are-you-coming-in-or-not look. I went in. I bought a pint bottle of brandy, and he gave it to me in a brown paper bag. I was thus constitutionally protected against unlawful search if I drank it in the street. It was only encouraging me.
I decided to walk all the way home and drink the brandy as I walked. It was snowing now and I’d lost my hat somewhere. I shivered. I drank the bottle and went into another liquor store and got another one. I drank most of it, too. I’d only walked up to about 106th Street and Broadway when I thought it might be a good idea to take a wee nap in the middle of a snowstorm on a bench in the traffic island.
A cop car came by and some kindly peelers clearly didn’t want me dying on their patch, so without further ado they decided to lift me. I think they were only going to move me on or suggest a shelter, but unluckily, as soon as they laid paws on me, I reacted fast, turned, and belted one in the chest.
They were pretty quick with the old pepper spray and it hurt like hell. I went down like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t see them at all now and they were right on me. Two of them. Just two. I put it down to the drink. They cuffed me behind my back and walked me without any fuss to a cop car. The cop car already had three dodgy-looking characters inside it, so they radioed in for backup. They searched me and found the driving license that Ratko had rescued for me. That license had never been good for anything and now it apparently was bad for something, because while I leaned against the car and the peeler talked on the radio, I could see his expression change (even through pepper tears). My name was obviously known to someone. I thought of the black Lincoln. The Feds? The other cop was standing beside me. The door was closed. The pepper spray had caught the left side of my face only; if it had been full on, I would have been unable to do anything; as it was, I was pretty fucked, gasping for air and barely able to stand. The snow helped a little, though. Copper number two inside was nodding and getting excited but copper number one was stamping his feet and looking out for the other paddy wagon. My hands were cuffed behind my back, so it would have to be something pretty special, and special isn’t easy with a fake foot. Still, it was worth a go.
I shuffled back from the car and made as if to puke. (I’d been crying the whole time, hamming it up as you do if you’re still figuring what you’re capable of doing and what you’re going to do.) The copper turned his head to spit. I tensed, and the copper was looking up and was about to say something, but by then I had jumped straight up and was making my body go horizontal. With my good foot I kicked him in the balls. He was wearing a cup, but I heard it crack. He went down in a sitting position against the door. I landed hard on the ground on my side, got up—try doing that with your hands cuffed behind your back and with a prosthetic foot—and set off running.
The other cop would take a half a minute or so to get his partner away from the door or else he’d have to climb out the driver’s side. It would be enough.
I ran up Amsterdam and kept running and cutting streets until I was at Morningside Park. The only people around did that New York thing and completely ignored me. I was handcuffed and crying and running and not a man jack chose to see me. Not even at the Columbia law library, where you’d think they’d be a bit more public-spirited. At the brow of the hill I stopped, took a quick breath or two, sucked in the deep cold air, and ran down into the park, slipping on the big wide steps after a few feet and almost doing a header and breaking my neck. Instead, I righted myself, got my balance together, and skipped on down. I didn’t look back once until I was safe in the park at the basketball courts. There were no signs of pursuit. Jesus H. Christ. I’d bloody lost them.
I laughed and jumped about. I’d lost them. I’d lost them. Peeler Pete and his Porky Pals.
Bastards, I yelled, delightedly.
Aye, I’d lost them, but suddenly it put the fear of God in me. It was close. And Jesus, I was on a list somewhere. My name was on a list. My real name. Shit. Drunken Mick stupidity had almost got me lifted. Fucking Paddy Curse.
Farther into the park I found a bloke with a quarter, and he was nice enough to dial the phone for me too. He was a good guy, well into his sixties, skinny, really sweet, and sadly some kind of downer junkie. He didn’t like the look of me one little bit, but since I was cuffed, he figured I couldn’t be all bad. Ramón came down half an hour later, and I asked Ramón to give the bloke twenty bucks. Ramón did just that.
Ramón and I went back to his place and they cut the cuffs off me in about five minutes.
I haven’t seen you for a long time, man, Ramón said later.
We were alone now, the boys gone. I sipped some of Ramón’s hot chocolate mixed with cream and brown sugar and wicked Dominican rum.
No.
We’re ok, aren’t we? he asked.
Yeah.
Good.
He stuck his hand out over the couch, and I shook it. He gave me the gangbanger shake and I went along with it.
You want something for the pepper spray? he asked.
What ya got?
Home remedy.
Ok.
He went off to his kitchen and made a poultice to shove on my bad eye. I thanked him and he said it was no problem. We sat for a while, silent. I had nothing to say and Ramón didn’t want to upset me again. I was the first to break the ice:
Listen, I, I probably won’t see you again, Ramón. It’s going to be this week. I’ve delayed too long. Darkey’s boys are after me and I think the cops now, too. They’ve forced my hand. It has to be now. After it’s done, I’m leaving.
Where to?
I don’t know. Australia, Ireland, I don’t know.
Ramón looked at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I never could. He was a smart guy in a dumb guy’s business, though like I say, all those brains couldn’t do a thing to stop the gun of edgy young Moreno F. Cortez, a gun and nineteen fucking bullets (and Moreno a cousin and trusted lieutenant). Moreno, incidentally, got shot in the head about a month later by José Ramírez, who in turn … but you know how it goes.
We sat there and talked about trades and signings during the offseason. In Tampa there was some kid from Michigan who was going to be the future shortstop. 1993, Ramón predicted, was going to be the Yankees’ year, this year, next year, very soon, he said. He didn’t live to see the World Series, or Sosa in the Home Run Derby—it would have pleased him very much.
So, Michael, it will be soon, because of the heat, he said.
Yeah.
You will be careful?
I will.
Do you
need any help?
No.
I stood up. We embraced. I didn’t say goodbye and afterwards I didn’t see him again. His death was just one more stat in the bloody catalog of uptown deaths in the early nineties.
The next day I went down to Gray’s Camping and Sport. I looked at camping equipment and sleeping bags. I decided against a tent. I placed an order for a down sleeping bag, which would take two days from the warehouse. That was ok, I said, I’d be back. I bought a big bowl rucksack that was like a Royal Marine Bergen.
I dyed my hair black and shaved everything but a mustache, which I also dyed black. I dressed in jeans and desert boots and a sheepskin coat. I got on the Metro-North at 125th. I took an early morning train to Peekskill, got off, and went to the nearest bar. I found a place to observe the railway platform. I sat there all day. There were no watchers, or if there were, they were very good. I went back to Manhattan and adopted a dog from the ASPCA volunteers on Union Square. They needed my name and address but that was ok too. I took the dog up to 181st Street. I called him Harry. He was a mongrel. A lazy character, who had been housetrained for a house and not an apartment. There is a difference, and I soon discovered what this was. I bought a Peekskill town map and studied it. I found Darkey’s place. I lost the mustache and dyed my hair red with blond streaks in it. I dressed in a black coat and brown cords and tasseled brown loafers. I bought myself a pair of clear-lens glasses and a walking stick. I caught the train from Grand Central. I got off at Peekskill. I walked the dog and found the house. From the map it had seemed to be about a thirty-five-minute dander from the Metro-North stop, but when I got up there, the walk ended up taking over an hour. (The map lacked contour lines.) I strolled past the property and checked the initial security. No gatehouse, and I couldn’t see anyone in the grounds. A Jeep and a Bronco in the driveway. A Jag in the open door of the garage. I went by, and I let the dog off in the trees. The dog and I found a back area that was thickly wooded and seldom trekked through. There was a boggy wee swamp that you had to wade through, knee-high, to get to a convenient little copse with thorny bushes. If you could make it through the swamp to the bushes, and you had a good pair of binocs, it would make a wonderful place for lying up. Your average private security guard wouldn’t think much of it because your average private security guard was a lazy arse and he’d have to wade through the little swamp to get there; and in any case, it seemed far too far from the house. If, however, your average private security guard was a thorough bastard and had a dog sniffing about, well, then you’d be fucked.
Dead I Well May Be Page 31