by Paul Bishop
"The pub is two streets over, facing the docks," he explained. "It has a long history of being a safe house for scum, especially those sympathetic to the Irish cause." He stuck out another of his skeleton-like fingers and traced a route along the floor plan. "The stairs are off to the side of the front door, which gives us a slight advantage. In a short while a squad of uniformed rozzers are going to raid the pub and cause a ruckus in the main room. We'll be going through the door right behind them and heading straight up the stairs. With any luck we'll reach the back room before Brody and Donovan even know anything is amiss."
"And if we're not lucky, we'll give 'em a belly full of this," Watford stated blandly, and swung out a sawed-off shotgun from under his overcoat. It was suspended from a lanyard looped over his right shoulder.
Den stared hard at his partner. "I hope we're not lucky," he said under his breath.
The silence seemed to stretch out after Den's statement until the radio unit on the lapel of Leggit's coat crackled.
"The uniforms are standing by." Leggit interpreted the barely audible static for us.
"Let's do it, then," said Den. He picked up the items from the sedan hood and stuffed them into an inside coat pocket.
' 'What about armament for Sir Adam and me?" I asked.
Sir Adam looked slightly startled. "I won't be needing anything. I'm too old for this sort of tommy rot. I'll just be standing by to pick up the pieces."
"All right," I said. 'But that still leaves me."
"I'm sorry, Ian.' Den spoke quietly. "I'm letting you come along on the raid as a favor to Sir Adam, and because I know your form, but I draw the line at issuing shooters to civilians. If you want to come, you'll have to rely on your size and your hand-to-hand skills if it comes down to it. Are you still in?"
I flexed my shoulders to ease the tension in them. "Last one to the top of the stairs buys the beer."
There were two lookouts outside the pub. One, a youngish looking boy with thinning hair, a pockmarked face, and wire-rim glasses, lounged in the front entranceway. Every few minutes he would walk out into the street and casually look up and down the main road which fronted the dock causeway.
The second lookout was slightly less obvious. He was hidden in the shadows of the rise and fall of the roofing, in a position that commanded a view of the entire dock area. His presence was given away by the laziness of an ill-hidden cigarette glow. Den, Sir Adam, Harry Martin, and I watched from the cover of a large freight container. Behind us, a huge deserted ship creaked at its docking like it was possessed.
Suddenly, the glow of the roof lookout's cigarette arched out into the night and his body completely disappeared into the shadows. Within seconds the dark silhouette belonging to Reggie Leggit appeared in his place. He raised a hand slightly in our direction.
"One down," said Den, and we turned our attention to street level where Watford was initiating a drunken gait toward the pub entrance. The lookout in the entry chose that moment to step out into the street for a glance around. He looked directly at Watford, whose features were scrunched up in the face-swallowing contortion he'd shown off earlier. Watford stuck out a palm and said something to the lookout which none of us could hear.
The lookout responded with harsh noises, and Watford began to grope at the man's jacket lapels in his appeal for charity. When the lookout pushed him away, Watford sat down hard in the street. A more pitiful heap of humanity I'd never seen, but he didn't seem to faze the lookout who walked toward him and kicked an unfriendly foot into Watford's midriff.
Like a phoenix rising from drunken ashes, Watford grabbed the offending foot and pushed it into a far higher arc than its owner initially intended. Off balance, the lookout slammed to the roadway on his back, the air driven from his lungs—cutting off any chance of a warning cry. Watford rolled onto his feet with the grace of flowing water and smashed the back of his fist, hammer-like, into the face of his adversary. The man slumped like a rag doll with no stuffing and was dragged into a dark corner of the night by his belt and trouser cuff. The entire incident had taken less than ten seconds.
Den nodded at Harry Martin, who spoke into the radio pinned to his lapel.
"Charlie ten to Zebra one—it's a go. I repeat—it's a go."
With Sir Adam hanging back, the rest of us moved out from behind the large shipping container and scrambled to meet Watford at the pub entrance. Before we could get there, though, a half dozen panda cars roared onto the dock front roadway. Lights and sirens were ominously absent.
The small police cars pulled up in front of The Squire and Pipe, and each disgorged four bobbies of such gargantuan size it was a miracle of modern policing that they all fit into the tiny vehicles. Without hesitation, and with obvious glee and determination, the uniformed mob charged up the three steps leading to the entrance and barged into the pub with drawn truncheons.
Hot on their heels, Den pushed by me and took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. Behind me, Martin and Watford each had a hand on my back pushing upwards. We passed Reggie Leggit in the top hallway as he was dropping down through an overhead skylight.
Watford had his shotgun unsheathed and was covering our back for any activity from the doors we were passing in our quest for the back room. Dispensing with any legal technicalities, Den hit the last door on the landing with the surprising force of his meatless shoulders and blasted it off its hinges. The sight which was revealed staggered all of us into momentary non-action.
The scene in the room looked like something out of an X-rated film. Brody and Donovan were each on separate, sheet-worn, sagging beds. Both of them were naked and coupling athletically with thin angular women.
The montage was stunning in its surprise, it was the last thing we'd expected to find behind the locked door, and our hesitation was deadly. Brody was the first to recover, throwing himself off the bed and toward us with all the power of an enraged bull. The revolver in Den's hand cracked twice and blossoms of red spurted through the hair on the big man's chest. The trauma didn't even slow him a little. The women began screaming hysterically.
Still in the saddle, Liam bent sideways to grab a stiletto from the bedside table. Quick as a ferret, he threw it with incredible accuracy into the throat of Harry Martin, who was trying to bring a shotgun to bear on the action. Martin dropped the gun, which discharged into the floor, and grabbed at his neck as he tumbled to the ground.
Liam reached for another knife, but I had no chance to see what he did with it because Brody, his legs pushing him forward like pile drivers, wrapped his arms crushingly around Den, and drove him backward into me and through the door.
I heard Den cry out in pain as Brody tried to punch his head through Den's body. Behind the pair of them, I was hopelessly pinned against the far wall of the hallway. A fourth body piled into our scrum as Watford entered the fray. He scraped Den and Brody off of me with a driving tackle which took the three of them to the floor. When I looked up, I saw Liam framed in the doorway, a look of hatred on his face as his arm pulled back to let fly with the other knife.
This time there was no hesitation on my part as I dove to the floor. The knife thudded into the wall where I'd been standing a millisecond before. Rolling to my feet, I charged toward Liam's naked figure.
I wasn't fast enough, however. Liam moved with startling speed. Seemingly in one movement, he turned back into the room, bounced off the bed, and crashed out through the pane window on the far side of the room.
I ran to the shattered window and looked down. Liam's woman began hitting me with tiny, hard fists. I grabbed both of her hands and shoved her away from me. Outside the window, it was a fifteen-foot drop to the roadway, but Liam had survived it and was staggering upright on shaky legs. A couple of old dock goats, who had been making their way to the pub, stood staring in fascination at the naked apparition which had crash-landed at their feet. I couldn't believe Donovan's luck.
It was funny how my world had changed. A week earlier, I'd merely been goi
ng through the motions of living—not happy, not sad, just existing. And it was okay by me. I didn't care anymore. I had cut off my nose to spite my face. If I couldn't be what I wanted to be, or do what I wanted to do, then fine, I'd continue to go through the motions-no more, no less—until it was over.
Since then, though, I'd been beaten, pushed, provoked, and forced to confront the evilness of my self-pity. The dying embers of the man I once was had been fanned to life again. I'd started on the road back, and now all the old fighting reactions within me screamed for me not to let Liam escape.
With a pillow from the bed, I knocked out the worst of the remaining glass shards from the window and climbed through. I maneuvered quickly but carefully until I hung down from the sill facing the outside pub wall. Tiny splinters of glass cut into my fingers, but I pushed out from the wall with my feet, released my grip, and dropped into space.
I landed on the balls of my feet, cushioned the shock with my knees and rolled forward on my shoulder, which brought me up sharply against the pub wall again. The gravel of the roadway had abraded my hands and torn through my trouser knees and jacket shoulder, but I didn't have time to worry about the damage. I scrambled upright and took off at a fast jog in the direction I'd last seen Liam heading.
The trail was easy enough to follow. The glow from the streetlights eerily illuminated splashes of fresh blood from Liam's wounds. It would be amazing if the man didn't bleed to death before I could catch up with him.
As I rounded the bulk of a freight container, a slight sound made me duck instinctively. A two-by-four stud whistled over my head and smashed into the corner of the container right over a "Fragile" sticker. Liam pulled the board back for a second swing, but I stepped inside and hit him twice in the face as hard as I could.
The blows staggered him, but he didn't go down. Instead, he jabbed out with the board and caught me in the side under the ribs. I dropped to the ground and lashed out, my foot striking his knee. That got him, and he went over backwards, his head striking hard on the edge of the dock. Another two feet further and he would have been in the water.
"You!" he said as we both regained our feet and forced air down our lungs in preparation for a second bout. "You one-eyed git. We should have done for you upon that bloody farm."
"Why didn't you?" I asked.
"Made the mistake of trying to follow orders instead of instinct."
"Whose orders?"
"Get stuffed." Liam feinted toward me with his right fist and then followed up with a left jab which caught my cheek as I rolled away from the punch.
The blow opened up the gash originally made by Sean's knife. Blood ran down into my mouth. The taste was...invigorating. The pain...ecstatic. Yes, ecstatic. I was living now. Living again.
Even in the dim light, Liam must have seen the change of intensity in my features. I'm sure he did because suddenly I became aware of the fear in him. We circled each other warily.
"Wot you grinning at?" he asked unsurely.
I hadn't realized I was. Then I felt the tension at the corners of my mouth.
"I'm enjoying this," I said.
"You're crazy. There's no difference between you and me. You know that, don't you?"
"There's a world of difference."
"Hardly. You love pain. I can see it in your face."
"I love your pain," I corrected him. We were both standing still now, Liam with his back to the water, both panting like rabid dogs. "How does it feel?"
"How does what feel?"
"To see your mate killed before your very eyes. Sean was your best mate, wasn't he? You'd finally found a kindred spirit, and now he's gone. He's lying up there right now, a hulking pile of flesh and bones festering in his own excrement. Think about how you feel. And then think about the feelings of all those left behind by the victims you've murdered.”
"I'll get you, you bastard. I'll come back and get you. And then I'll kill everyone in your entire family." Liam took a fake step forward and then turned to run for the side of the dock. A heartbeat later, he was diving into the murky waters of the harbor.
I was right behind him, but I still wasn't fast enough. The shock of the cold water exhilarated my entire body, but my groping fingers failed to connect with anything even remotely human. I thrashed around and around, dove under the surface again and again until my lungs screamed for mercy. I searched the waterline of every ship within swimming distance. Liam was gone. But I knew he wasn't dead. He'd be back. He'd promised.
"What the hell happened to you?" Sir Adam asked as I dripped back into the pub.
"Had an urge to go fishing."
"Catch anything?"
"Nothing but a cold. You should have seen the one that got away, though."
Sir Adam nodded his understanding. "We'll get the river police out."
"Won't accomplish anything. If he's alive, he'll be long gone by now."
"Still, we have to go through the motions. If they can drag up a body, we'll be able to fill in another integer in the equation."
"Aye, you're right. But you know as well as I do that, like Brody, Liam is not the sort to die easy." I paused as a uniformed constable came up and whispered something in Sir Adam's ear and was then waved away. "How are things here?" I asked.
"A bit of a bloody mess."
The uniformed bobbies had herded everyone over into the public bar to keep better control. The private snug where we were was empty except for official presence. I walked to the bar and helped myself to a brandy. I knocked it straight back and poured another which I took over to the table where Sir Adam sat.
"Den is upstairs filling in the locals." Sir Adam indicated the direction with a shrug of one shoulder. "There are two dead."
"Harry Martin?" I asked.
"Yes. And Sean Brody. He died hard. He took three blasts from a shotgun, but he still kept coming forward like something out of a nightmare. A fourth blast finally took him down."
"Did he live long enough to tell anyone anything."
"Only long enough to tell us to sod off. That was it."
"Damn."
"How about Donovan?"
I thought about our conversation, to try and remember anything pertinent. "He said something about acting under orders at Wren's Haven."
"Interesting, but we figured as much. He tell you who?"
"Fat chance."
"Hmmm ..." Sir Adam made a noise in acknowledgement. "What now?"
I looked at him. "There's too many coincidences for all of this not to be tied together somehow. The death of Maddox, the problems with the Ravens, and Sean Brody, Liam Donovan, and their mysterious orders." The taste of blood reasserted itself in my mouth. "They're all pieces of a puzzle which fit tightly together. I can feel it, and I won't stop until l've found out how. I 'm not going to sit around waiting for Liam to pop up out of the blue to wreak his vengeance. "
The second brandy burned down my throat, and when I spoke again my voice was coarse. "When does my plane leave for America?”
Chapter 8
The Ravens popped for first class seats on British Airways. During the twelve-hour trip from London to Los Angeles, Sticks and I considered the gesture nothing short of a blessing. Wallowing in the luxury, Sticks kept up a steady patter with the stewardess and imbibed vast quantities of free champagne and beer. I stayed confined to mineral water in hopes of getting the upper hand on jet lag—which is often aggravated by alcohol.
I had eaten the fairly decent food, watched the fairly indecent movie, and napped on and off while constantly trying to find a comfortable position for my legs. Sitting in the first row behind the bulkhead helped, but flying has never been my favorite mode of transportation. I don't have a fear of flying; it's just that, even in first class, it's so uncomfortable.
"I was in the States with Wolverhampton back in 1967," Sticks said suddenly.
"In Los Angeles?"
"That's right. Well before your time."
"Was it some kind of tour?" I asked.
&
nbsp; Sticks settled himself back in his seat with another can of beer. "We played a whole summer season here. Back then there was a huge effort to get soccer off the ground in America. There were three business groups interested in starting a professional league, but only one, led by an entrepreneur mannie by the name of Jack Kent Cooke, was able to obtain official sanction from the United States Soccer Federation."
I nodded my head to show Sticks I was listening. It didn't take much more to keep him going once he got started on the history of the team he'd been with since year one.
I already knew the USSF was the national controlling body for soccer in America. They had been both a blessing and a curse for the game in the States, but anyone connected to a professional soccer league not sanctioned by FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, or a FIFA-ordained national controlling organization—such as the USSF—would be branded as outlaws and banned from playing anywhere else in the world.
FIFA had recognized the USSF in the early 1900s when soccer in America was little more than pick-up games between colleges and occasional ethnic leagues started by immigrants homesick for their national sport. It was this ethnic factor, however, which played hell with soccer gaining a footing among traditional American sports. Teams with names like Clan McKenzie, New York Hungarians, Anglo-Saxon F.C., Spanish-American F.C., and Over-Seas F.C. tell the story. Each team was composed of immigrants, each jealously guarding the honor of the old country, which did little to spread or endear soccer to the American mainstream fan.
Sticks was continuing with his monologue. "The Cooke mannie had a two-year plan to start importing players for his league from around the world and from the American colleges. However, the two business groups who didn't receive the nod from USSF got together and decided to get in a year ahead of Cooke by starting a 'pirate' league."
"They actually tried to buck the FIFA sanction?" I was shocked. Right or wrong, FIFA had a worldwide monopoly where soccer was concerned. Going up against them was like David taking on Goliath and forgetting to bring his sling.