Then she’d looked at the door, and from beneath the waves of emotion that had battered her remorselessly all morning, a feeling of doubt finally bobbed back to the surface. She was putting all of her hopes on a man she had known for twenty-four hours. She’d given him a couple of hundred dollars and he’d disappeared to chase down what he said was her one way out of this situation, leaving her alone. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. He’d been gone four hours now. He could be out of the state by now. He might sell her out. How did she know she could trust him? OK, he’d helped her out yesterday – twice, in fact – but still. Amy had always had some trust issues, and that was before someone she’d considered a friend, in a way, had told her something he shouldn’t have and then tried to have her killed.
There was one further wrinkle. Amidst the ambulance chasers and talking heads on TV, there was one man she recognised. Amy was definitely having a worse day than him, but she was guessing his Monday wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops either. His name was Douglas Randall and he was the afternoon anchor on Channel 8 News. He was the ultimate professional – reading the teleprompter, asking guests the expected questions, his expression the appropriate mix of dignity and journalistic endeavour.
The reason Amy was so impressed with Douglas’s quiet dignity was that normally when she saw him, bent over with a ball gag in his mouth, he was quite the screamer. She wondered if he felt like screaming now? He must be thinking it: I was a client of the Dominatrix of Death. What are the odds of that not coming out?
Amy had had just about enough of sitting around doing nothing. She was going to do what she did best – take control.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Hello again, fathead,” the woman said with a dazzling smile.
Bunny had been walking around Chinatown for a couple of hours now without much luck. He was starting to think that this might be the point where the trail ran cold. He knew this Smithy character owed some guy money from a card game, but Bunny wasn’t sure what to do with that information. You couldn’t just ask about for a loan shark. The closest thing he had to a plan was to find out where the card games were. How many dwarfs could be frequenting them, after all? Someone would know this Smithy fella. But that still left the problem of how he was supposed to find an illegal card game he wasn’t invited to. Bar anything else, it was only lunchtime – Bunny assumed most such games happened after dark. If this were Dublin, he’d know what to do. Of course, if this were Dublin, he’d have a hundred trees he could shake for information. As it was, he found himself wandering the streets of Chinatown, treeless and fast becoming hopeless.
Then, in its way, inspiration hit.
As he’d walked around, people in suits on their lunch break, plus the normal mix of tourists, thronged the pavements. Shops had fruit and vegetables on display outside, or arrays of suspiciously cheap branded merchandise. The place also smelled gorgeous, with aromas flying at you from every direction. Bunny had been tempted to eat, but he was on a budget, and filling his face was not an option. He’d passed a restaurant as the hostess opened the door to let out a family of four, all in matching “I Heart New York” T-shirts. The hostess gave a cheery wave and shouted, “Don’t come back with your ugly kids!” This was met with a gale of laughter and cheery waves back. The hostess went back inside and Bunny stopped to look in the window. The sign on the door proclaimed it was “Madam Wong’s – home of the world’s rudest staff. Guaranteed offence or your money back.” That wasn’t what caught Bunny’s attention though. It was what was written below it: “Home of the unhappy fortune cookie.” He remembered the piece of paper in his pocket: “Death comes to us all.”
The hostess followed up “Hello again, fathead” with an equally cheery “It pains me to see your stupid face again so soon.” She was a pretty girl of diminutive stature in a blue patterned kimono, and she delivered each insult with a beaming smile.
“Yes – ehm, yes,” said Bunny. “I was here at the weekend.”
“I remember it well. We have still not removed the stink.”
“Right. Sorry about that. Ehm, I was wondering if it, if I…” Bunny looked at the woman, at a loss for what to say next. “Ehm…”
She lowered her voice and leaned in, her accent suddenly becoming a lot less Peking and a lot more Pittsburgh. “Is this about your card, sir?”
Bunny’s face lit up. “Yes. Yes, it is. Did I leave it here?”
The woman gave him a confused look. “No, definitely not. And I double-checked this morning – the payment was definitely cancelled correctly.”
“Right. Ehm, could you… Would you mind explaining what happened, exactly?”
She nodded to another woman in a similar dress and touched Bunny’s arm to guide him to the side. She raised her voice – “Come with me, poison-breath” – then lowered it once more to a conspiratorial whisper. “Sorry, we get into trouble if we don’t, y’know… Owner wants us to always stay in character. Now, as I said, I really do think everything should be fine with the payment, but if you’d like me to check again…”
“No,” said Bunny. “I’m sure it’s fine. Could you… My memory is a little fuzzy on exactly what happened. Could you just remind me?”
She nodded as if this was a natural request. If there were an illegal poker game nearby, they’d better hope this lady and her poker face didn’t ante up, as she would clean the place out. “You were here having dinner.”
“With my two friends?”
She nodded. “The black dude and the…” She looked momentarily unsure.
“The little fella?”
She smiled. “Yes. He was dressed as, like, a leprechaun or something? Anyway, all of you had the early bird special and, well… your waiter, Jimmy, is new and he’s not familiar with the card machine. So, when you went to pay, he mistakenly put through nine thousand dollars instead of ninety.”
“Fecking hell!”
“Yes, but he noticed it and then came to me. We rang the company and the payment was stopped, I assure you.”
“But, like – it could’ve gone through?”
“Yes.” She gave him a nervous smile. “It was a lucky escape, I guess.”
Bunny nodded, no doubt doing a much worse job with his poker face than the hostess had. He had been told the card had a $200 withdrawal limit per day. Apparently, that didn’t hold for direct card payments. He could imagine that this news had been pretty exciting at the time.
“So it all got sorted out?”
She nodded again. “Absolutely, and your whole party left looking very happy, may I say.”
“Yeah, I’d imagine we did alright. Did we happen to say where we were going?”
“Actually, you asked me to recommend a bar. I suggested the Rhinestone Lounge Karaoke Bar over on Grand Street.”
“Oh God, really?”
“Is everything OK, sir?”
“Sorry, yes, thank you. You’ve been very helpful. I’ve just not got a great singing voice.”
“Oh, on the contrary, sir.”
“What?”
“You and your two friends treated us all to a very rousing rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ before you left. It was pretty epic.”
“Oh God, did we? I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK. You got a round of applause.”
“We did?”
Bunny looked around, suddenly self-conscious, as if the diners would still be the same people two days later.
“Is that everything?” she asked.
“Yes, ehm – thanks for your time.”
Her accent and volume returned to its default setting. “Do not mention it, donkey-face.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bunny was unsure how long his first visit to the Rhinestone Lounge Karaoke Bar had lasted, but the second one lasted about twenty-six seconds.
The neon signage was off and the place was clearly not open for business, but Bunny spotted some movement inside. He knocked on the doors but got no response. He walked around the corne
r and down the alley at the side of the building, where he found a fire exit that had been propped open. A delivery van stood there with its doors open, and two men were arguing over the best way to get a table through a door that it definitely wasn’t going to fit through. To the side of the van lay the smashed remnants of the old furniture. Bunny gave the delivery men an “I’m supposed to be here” nod as he walked past.
The inside of the Rhinestone Lounge Karaoke Bar was like every other nightclub Bunny had been in outside of work hours. It looked smaller than it no doubt appeared when full of high-spirited punters, and in the dim daylight that fought its way through the frosted glass, the furnishings looked cheap and worn, the silver looked tarnished and the whole thing felt a bit tawdry. It was like seeing somebody you knew making the walk of shame dressed in glittery spandex on a Sunday morning as you were heading to mass.
Not that Bunny had much time to take in the ambience. Behind the bar stood a short Asian man wielding a clipboard with menace. The collar of his shirt could compete with a commercial airliner for wingspan. He also looked like he was in a bad mood.
Bunny cleared his throat politely. “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you…”
He stopped talking as recognition closely followed by rage spread across the other man’s face.
“You! Stay there! Where’s my motherfucking gun?!”
Throughout his life, Bunny had picked up many rules for survival. While it had never come up before, staying where you were while someone tried to find their gun rocketed to number one on the list of stupid mistakes you don’t get to make twice.
“Alright,” Bunny said, raising his hands in contrition. “Look…”
“MANNY!” screeched the man.
Bunny heard a rumbling from the back of the building. He turned and headed out the door, unfortunately just in time to meet the two men who delivered tables for a living and yet, inexplicably, couldn’t see when a table wasn’t going to fit through a door. Their efforts to figure this out were further hampered by some lunatic with a beard jumping onto and sliding across the table, making a surprisingly nimble landing on the other side. Five seconds later, they found a solution to their problem when the table met Manny and suddenly it was in several considerably easier to carry pieces.
Bunny turned at the sound of shattering furniture to see an enormous slab of humanity standing in the middle of the remains of an awkwardly sized table.
Without being boastful, Bunny McGarry could describe himself as a big man. He’d boxed as a heavyweight in his younger days. He had a bit of heft to him. But behind him in the alleyway appeared to be half of the entirety of human existence rolled into one Hispanic man and placed in a suit that Bunny guessed was not off the peg. The last time New York had seen something this big, it was climbing up the Empire State Building with a girl over its shoulder while being shot at by biplanes.
For the second time in two days, Bunny found himself running from a fight. While that may hurt his pride, he could live with it, on the proviso that he actually got to live. Unfortunately, as well as his pride, it was hurting his foot. The old injury was now sending stabbing pains up his left leg which meant he was able to engage only in a shambling run that was about half his normal speed, and it wasn’t like he was much of a runner to begin with. Manny wasn’t built for velocity, but he didn’t have to be. Bunny was the wounded animal at the side of the herd and the predator could smell blood.
Bunny tried to bob and weave his way down the street, half on and half off the sidewalk. If he’d been in a film, he’d have dodged around some people and then Manny would’ve ploughed into them. That always annoyed Bunny, how film directors did that to give an easy reminder to the audience of who was a goodie and who was a baddie. It was also unrealistic. Bunny was the first through – he was the one having to clear obstacles. Behind him, people were diving out of Manny’s way. Bunny made a decision and turned a corner at the side of a convenience store.
When Manny followed him into the alley a few seconds later, he found his foe leaning over a metal trash can, gasping for breath.
Manny stopped. The alleyway was a dead end. He advanced slowly towards Bunny, who was panting heavily, bent double and defenceless. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Manny glancing around nervously.
Bunny was indeed a big man, but throughout his life, he’d fought plenty bigger. It was in his nature that he didn’t like a bully, which meant that since his school days, bigger had frequently come looking for him, quite often with company.
Bunny spoke through gasping breaths. “Look, fella, I don’t want any trouble.”
“Yeah, well, the boss does.”
“Fair enough.”
Manny didn’t have a weapon, which was what Bunny had been counting on. Manny was the weapon.
Bunny bet that throughout his life, Manny hadn’t had many fights with bigger. Bar anything else, he’d have had difficulty finding it, unless he went around accusing buildings of looking at him funny. This meant that, crucially, he’d never learned guile. A kind of feral, street-smart guile was the primary reason that, despite what a gravestone in Glasnevin Cemetery might suggest, Bunny McGarry was still alive. It was also the reason a lot of other people walked with limps and, in at least one instance, spoke with a stammer.
Without seeing it, Bunny felt the movement in the air above him that meant Manny’s right fist was heading down towards his head. When it got to where Bunny’s head was supposed to be, Manny’s fist found the lid of a steel trash can hurtling towards it at a well-judged angle that caused him to howl in pain as it connected with his wrist. Bunny, now standing, was proving considerably more sprightly than Manny had expected. Manny’s left fist came around in a haymaker that found nothing but foul-smelling air, as his opponent had ducked down again and was busy vigorously applying the steel trash can lid to Manny’s left kneecap.
Manny stumbled forward, which was when his unprotected face met the trash can lid, now ascending at maximum velocity. His head flew back, blood spurting from his newly broken nose, and, slowly, an avalanche of stunned humanity, Manny started to fall backwards. It took a while – there was a lot of him for gravity to get hold of. Bunny stood there watching, holding a trash can lid that would from now on bear an indent of what Manny’s face looked like when presented with a very unpleasant surprise. He dropped the lid. It hit the ground a full second before Manny did.
Of all the peculiar phrases that Bunny disagreed with in life, the one he found most inexplicable was “You shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down.” As far as Bunny was concerned, when he was down was the perfect time to kick a man. You may’ve put considerable effort into getting the man down, and a well-judged kick was an excellent way of making sure he didn’t get back up again. Bunny admired people who didn’t think like that, generally while he was standing over them while their noble blood coloured the ground.
Bunny was therefore morally fine with delivering a well-judged boot to Manny’s head. His yelp of pain was not from his conscience – he’d just forgotten not to use the left foot, which wasn’t going to do much for his limp.
Manny came to a couple of seconds later when a shaft of pain bolted up his arm from his shattered right wrist.
“You broke my wrist!”
“I know,” said Bunny, “that’s why my foot is on it. It’s up to you to decide how much more pain there’ll be.”
“None!”
“Good answer. Now, what’s your boss’s problem with me?”
Bunny looked down and was surprised to see he didn’t have Manny’s undivided attention. Instead, he was looking at the trash bags and discarded crates that lay on the ground beside him. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched. “Do you think there are rats around here?”
Bunny glanced around. “I’d imagine there are alright.”
Manny’s eyes widened with real terror. “I hate rats.”
“Well, you shouldn’t start fights in alleys then.”
“It was nothing personal. I
was just following orders.”
Bunny tutted. “I don’t know if you’ve read much history, but that isn’t typically considered a great justification.”
Manny’s head was now swivelling back and forth so much that Bunny was forced to apply a bit more pressure with his boot.
“Manny! Focus!”
Manny nodded his head furiously. “Alright, alright, alright!”
“What’s your boss’s problem with me?” Bunny repeated.
“What are you talking about? You smashed up his place.”
“I did?”
“Well, you and the…” Manny’s eyes darted back and forth again. Bunny increased the pressure a little.
“Ahhh.”
“What exactly happened?”
“OK, OK, OK, OK! Jesus! What? You want me to say it wasn’t your fault? Fine. They started it.”
Disaster Inc Page 14