by Declan Burke
'Get Ray sorted?'
'Sure. Karen has him pinned down.'
'Karen?'
'Up north on some beach.' Rossi grinned. 'Man, that Karen. She's a lively one.'
'How come she has him pinned down?'
''Cos Ray hooked up with you.'
'Who told you this?'
'The fuck d'you think? Ray.'
'When?'
'Just now, he rang to say --'
'He rang?'
'Yeah. Said he needed back-up, someone to watch the road into the village, it's the only way in-and-out you're coming from up north. Anyone other'n Sleeps or Ray shows up, I'm following 'em, keeping sketch.'
'He rang you?' Doyle said.
Karen
'Ya needle-dicked bastard!' Karen was usually better at the insults, but this time, her nose a dull, grinding ache, it was too personal to get aesthetic about it. 'Ya cock-sucking monkey-turd motherfucker!'
A good half-hour, maybe more, gone by, and no sign of movement from the shack. Karen wondering if there wasn't some kind of smuggler's trapdoor and tunnel in there. 'Ya think it's cool to beat up on a woman she's not ready for you? Well, I'm good and ready now, ya pussy-dodging fuck. Come on out and we'll do this!'
A cicada chirred in the silence. The sea swuh-swishing on shale.
'Pyle?' she called. 'You see anything?'
'Jesus Christ,' he hissed back, 'we said no names.'
'Yeah, well,' she said, 'you want to think about doing something useful? Like maybe circling out around onto the beach, see what you can see?'
'Are you insane?'
If I'm not, Karen thought, it'll do until the real deal kicks in. She levelled the .32 at the roof of the shack, zinged one off. Waited until the echoes died away, then bawled, 'I'm counting to three, ass-face. You're not out by then, I'm coming in shooting.'
No answer. Karen took a deep breath and bawled, 'One!'
Ray
The moonlight gave the landscape a platinum sheen pitted with black hollows. The only sounds rustles and chirrups, the faint hiss of sand and breeze, and Karen like a docker with Tourette's.
'One!'
Sleeps, still ducked down, looking a little shaken even if the round had gone through the thatched roof a good three feet over his head, regarded Ray with some interest. 'You're a hitter?' he said.
'That's a bad case of mistaken identity,' Ray said. 'She's talking about you or him. And you're saying you never saw her before.'
They both looked at Niko. Ray said, 'Pyle says Karen got her nose busted last night. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?'
Niko, gagged, just stared.
'Two!'
'Whoa!' Ray called. 'Karen? It's me. We're coming out, okay? So no guns.' He said to Niko, 'Man, you better not be the guy she's looking for. It's way too nice a night for digging graves.'
Rossi
'It's past,' Johnny said.
'What's that?' Rossi said.
Johnny raised his head from the rear seat. 'That song you're singing. "Will the love I gave her in the past gonna be enough to last, if tomorrow never comes?" It's not in the ass, it's in the past.'
'Seriously?'
'Lie back down,' Doyle told Johnny. 'See,' she said to Rossi, 'if Ray hadn't gone up there in the first place, Karen wouldn't have him pinned down anywhere.'
The cop, Christ, still kvetching about Ray. Half-an-hour or more now, the jeep parked up beyond the village, Rossi and the cop making out like bandits anyone wandered by, getting in a sweaty clinch not to look bogey just sitting out there.
'What you have to understand about Karen,' Rossi said, 'is the girl's got spirit. I mean, she lives it real, y'know? Me and her, we first got it together, Christ, it was like Bowie and Keechie all over again.'
'Until she ripped you off.'
'You think I'm pissed at her for ripping me off?' Rossi shrugged. 'I was inside, the girl had to live. I mean, it wasn't easy for her, y'know? I'm on my third jolt, she's got the wolf to look out for … The issue,' he said, 'where it became an ethical matter, is when I get back out and she's not stumping up what I'm owed, the stash that'll get me back in the game. That's where me and Karen fell out. You see what I'm saying.'
'You know,' Doyle said thoughtfully, 'there was this time, when we were heading up to the lake to meet you that time, the hand-off?' Rossi nodded. 'I told Karen you were on suspicion of rape,' she said.
'Rape?'
'That girl you snatched, Marsha, to get Karen's number? She made allegations.'
'The fuckin bitch.'
'Except Karen, she was in fast. Said you were a prick, sure, she'd be the first to say it. But no way on any rape.'
'See, that's Karen. Straight up all the way. Although,' he said, 'not recently with me.'
'I could say the same,' Doyle said, 'about Ray. Taking off for this meet, he can't even do me the courtesy of a call.'
'You'd a freaked,' Rossi said, 'Ray even hinted he was going off to get Karen back.'
Doyle mulled that one over. 'Sounds to me,' she said, 'like me and you, we'd be the most to benefit if Karen went away.'
'Went away how?' Rossi said.
'Just, y'know, went away.'
'You're not talking about her doing time?'
'I'm on my holidays, Rossi.'
'And, you're saying, suspended.'
'That too.'
'I get my stash back,' Rossi said, 'the sixty gees, Karen can go anywhere she wants. I'll even buy her the fuckin ticket.'
'What about Anna?'
'The wolf's different. The wolf can't gimme my ear back.'
'You think Karen'll stand for that?'
'No disrespect, Doyle, you're stand-up for a cop. But that's between me and Karen.'
'It's just,' Doyle said, 'I'm wondering.'
'Wondering what?'
'Ray asked you sit out here, right? Keep sketch, you're calling it, to see if maybe Johnny's guy comes through on his own.'
'Perxactly.'
'What's in that for you?'
'Johnny. It was a favour Ray called, how I'd get --'
Doyle glanced meaningfully into the rear of the jeep.
'Oh shit,' Rossi said, 'yeah.'
'What?' Johnny said, his voice coming muffled. 'What now?'
Ray
'I tell you something, people,' Pyle said, 'y'all got a commendable appetite for hardware. You come out here to Ios, paradise in the sun, sleepy little island, and twenty-four hours later it's like Tarantino remade Bull Run. How d'you do it, huh?'
No one answered, the four of them standing in a triangle on the beach, Pyle and Karen split wide, Ray keeping Niko close. Ray watching Karen, the girl dead-eyed, a busted nose and swollen bruise over her right eye, the crooked jaw set. Eyes on Niko.
Pyle said, 'How come, you don't mind me asking, you came down here?'
'We took a wrong turn,' Ray said, 'heading for the castle.'
Pyle pretended to shade his eyes against the moonlight craning his neck up the coast. 'That castle way up yonder? You came down here to get up there?'
'We had the map upside down,' Ray said. Pyle talking too much, Ray with a gun in his hand preferring quiet to any possibility of insult or misunderstanding. Pyle now eyeing Niko up and down. He said, 'So where's Johnny?'
'You'll get Johnny for this guy,' Ray said.
'Okay. But what I'm wondering is, where's Johnny?'
'He's safe.'
'Safe where?'
'Ray?' Karen said. 'You want to take that Johnny shit some place else? Last thing I need right now is witnesses.'
Ray, generally speaking, the situation was any way normal, he'd have used Niko as a shield. But the way Karen was looking, he figured presenting Niko as any kind of target would be a bad idea. For Niko, first, sure. But for Karen in the long run. So he stood beside Niko, Niko on his knees grabbing his ankles, Ray with the .38 cocked and ready to go.
'Where's Anna?' he said to distract her.
Karen showed Niko the .32 and said, '
I've five left. Two for you, one in each ball.'
'Karen --'
'Back off, Ray. He's mine.'
'There's a queue,' Ray said. 'And Pyle got in there first.'
Niko, lids heavy, glanced from Karen to Pyle.
'All we're trying to do here,' Pyle said, 'is get Johnny back safe. Okay? Everything else we can talk about.'
'Last I heard,' Ray said, 'the point of the exercise was to get Karen safe. Now I see she's in one piece, just about, the rest is between you and Niko.'
Niko said, 'Pyle? Bring me up to speed. How come something feels off here?'
'Nothing's off, man,' Pyle said. 'Ray here was just helping out, the Sicilians have Johnny. Except there's no way we're trading you to any Sicilians.'
'Less of the 'we' shit, Tonto,' Ray said. 'Me and Karen, we're out.'
'He got it right about not trading the guy anywhere,' Karen said. 'He's going nowhere 'til I'm done.'
'Guy's a cop,' Pyle said. 'You don't want to go shooting any cops, for Chrissakes.'
Karen swung the .32, pointing it now at Pyle. 'Tell me just once more,' she said, 'what I don't want to do.'
After, when he had time to think about it, Ray consoled himself with the fact that when you take an ankle gun off a guy, you never think he might be packing another on the other ankle. You did, you'd never put him on his knees leaning back to grab his ankles.
But that was after.
Niko, once Karen swung the .32 away, came up fast chopping at Ray's wrist with his right hand, the ankle gun, the Sig's twin, in his left. The .38 went AWOL, Ray rocking back and stumbling in the soft sand as Niko body-charged him out of the way, Niko already sprinting for the village. Not forgetting, the guy cop-trained, to loose off a couple in Karen's direction.
Ray, going down backasswards, heard a high-pitched scream, the sharp crack-crack of Karen's .32.
Sleeps
Ray, before he took Niko out of the shack, told Sleeps he'd try to pull Karen and Pyle as far over on the beach as he could, give Sleeps a chance to get around the back of the shack, sneak up along the headland in the shadows, take up a covering position near the village.
Sleeps'd said, 'You're sure?' Hoping Ray wouldn't change his mind.
'Anything goes wrong,' Ray'd said, 'you're our ace in the hole, they won't be expecting you. Okay?'
Sleeps, ready to pass out in the tight suit, sloshing around in there now, just nodded. Watched as Ray took Niko across the beach level with the shack, not up towards Karen and Pyle, then put Niko on his knees. Sleeps pulled the loose cane at the rear of the shack wide apart enough to struggle through, then crawled on his hands and knees to the nearest outcrop, started back up towards the deserted village. Hearing the murmur of conversation, not able to make out what was being said. He took up a position behind the boulder Karen'd been hiding at and wiped his slick hands on the front of the suit. Checked the Sig, making sure it was ready to go, and then nearly dropped it when the night kicked off.
Sleeps peered around the boulder expecting carnage, saw Niko lurching for the jeep, Ray sprawled on his ass, Karen down and squirming in the sand. The wolf howling like a banshee from the back of the jeep. Ray, hampered by the plaster cast arm, got up on one knee and fired down on Niko, two rounds, both whanging into the jeep. Niko, Christ, like a greyhound hitting the bend, changed direction fast to come shuffling through the sand towards Sleeps.
Sleeps froze.
Had a moment, it wasn't like his life flashed before his eyes, any of that shit, but saw himself, like out-of-body looking down, a fat guy in a small suit holding a gun about to, what, shoot a guy? Gary Rennick from Nelson Mandela Place, a redbrick two-up two-down estate, the nothing special guy, trained to drive fork-lifts and I'm shooting some fucker now?
It was for only a second, no more. But that was plenty. By the time he'd started to bring the gun up, Niko, amped, caught the flicker of shadow and fired from low, still swiveling, not aiming, just squeezing one off. The jolt causing Sleeps' finger to spasm on the double-action trigger, get one away.
The last thing he saw was Niko, framed for a split-second in the yellowy-blue corona of the jeep's headlights, a killer in the sun.
MONDAY
Madge
Madge, out on the balcony in a winged-back cane armchair, a potted palm behind, this back at the Poseidon, said, 'It's just not that simple, Liz. I'm on standby but it's the height of the tourist season here, the place is full of Italians, they can't just yank someone off the plane because Frank died, cause a diplomatic incident ...' She said, 'Say again? I've got a bad line here, I'm losing you … A tragedy? Well, there's tragedies and then there's tragedies. How's Jeanie doing?'
She had a sip of Cristal while Liz snuffled something incoherent down the line. 'Liz? Look hon, I could be on a flight within the hour, there's no way of knowing. But right now you need to be strong for your sister, you know she was always the dependent one … Listen, I don't suppose Doug has said anything about, y'know, the autopsy results, like when they're due?'
She said, 'Uh-huh. Well, I'll definitely be home before then, they're working overtime here to get me on a plane. Meanwhile, keep taking any drugs they'll give you. Oh, and Liz? Tell Doug I said that if any newspapers are buzzing around, the TV, you've got my permission to talk to them. Especially the tabloids. Doug'll work out the fee, don't worry about that. And if Doug gets pissy about prejudicing the trial, some shit like that, tell him I'll sue his ass for freedom of speech … What's that? No, I'm losing you again … I'll ring first thing in the morning, okay? Love to Jeanie. 'Bye.'
She hung up and said, 'Girl thinks she's distraught now, wait'll she meets Rossi, her brand new brother from Knackeragua.'
Melody leaned out of the other wing-backed cane armchair to top up Madge's glass from the chilled magnum in the silver bucket. She said, 'Madge, there's something you really need to know.'
'What's that?'
'Ray and me, we got drunk on the ferry the other night. Well, Ray got drunk. I listened.'
'And?'
'Say someone was to hook you up,' Melody said, 'I mean, prove to you for sure who your son is. Show you his passport. What d'you think, would that someone be due a finder's fee from this inheritance? I mean, nothing too outrageous. Ten per cent, say.'
Ray
Anna's howl had Ray expecting the worst. Which was why, jogging up the beach crouched down, he made his second mistake in two minutes, realising too late Pyle wasn't tending to Karen, he was scrabbling around in the sand for her .32.
Pyle came up pointing at Ray, backing away, saying, 'Just put it down, man.'
Ray, still moving, dropped the .38 and went past him to Karen, hunkered down. A quick murmur for Anna, get the girl onside, Anna with this anxious whine as she butted her muzzle against Karen's shoulder trying to lick her face. A perfectly round hole in Karen's t-shirt just off-centre below her ribs, Niko cop-trained to aim for the biggest target, the torso. The girl white-faced, skin taut, twitching like she'd been electrocuted. Shock already wearing off, pain now starting to burn.
'Karen? Just try to relax. Don't move, okay? The more you move the more blood you'll lose.' Karen, teeth clenched, just nodded. 'I'm taking a look,' he said. 'Watch my eyes.'
Ray eased the t-shirt out of her jeans, gentle as he could, Karen sucking in a sharp breath as he pushed it up over her belly. The girl, Christ, more worried about her weight than Ray'd believed she would be, wearing some kind of corset, a sheet wrapped tight and knotted low above her left hip.
'How's she doing?' Pyle said from off to the side, Pyle like Billy the Kid, the .32 in one hand, .38 in the other.
Ray undid the knot in the sheet, pulled it away, then realised why there was no bleeding.
Pyle shuffled a little closer, grinning now, saying, 'Now that right there is not a sight you see every day.'
The slug just lodged there below her bottom rib, flattened against Karen's extra weight, half-buried in one of the bundles of cash she'd strapped to her stomach. Ray used
a thumbnail to flick it loose. Karen grimaced, the crooked jaw grinding hard. 'Dead man,' she gasped.
'We'll worry about Niko later,' Ray said. 'First we get you to a doctor.'
'Why's she need a doctor?' Pyle said. 'The slug's right there, no penetration.'
'She could be bleeding internally. And I'm guessing she'll have broken ribs, at least. Then there's general trauma, the shock.'
'If it's broken ribs, the doc won't be able to do anything. Meanwhile he's asking how it happened, the girl got this internal bleeding you're saying she might have.'
'She's seeing a doctor,' Ray said, 'fast as I can get her there.'
Pyle held up the .38. 'Sorry compadre, no can do.'
'He wasn't asking for no favour,' Sleeps said stepping out from behind the Punto, both hands braced on the butt of the Sig.
Melody
'Now I know you're shitting me,' Terry said. 'Ray is the kid Israel?'
Madge just stared, lying flopped back in the wing-backed chair.
Mel, nodding, said, 'I have his passport back in the room.' She considered. 'Well, three of his passports to be precise, Ray likes to keep his options open. But yeah, one of them says Israel Brogan. Be a bit of a coincidence if this Israel you're looking for wasn't our Ray. I mean, how many Irish kids were named Israel that year?'
'Any year,' Terry said. 'And it's definitely the right date?'
'The date I can't be certain about,' Mel said, 'but it's the right year, yeah. I mean, Israel Brogan – that one caught my eye.'
'And your maiden name,' Terry said to Madge, 'it's Brogan?'
Madge shook her head. 'That must be his adopted name,' she whispered.
'Maybe they thought he was Jewish,' Terry said. 'Had him circumcised.'
'This isn't a joke, Terry,' Madge said.
Mel said, 'Anyway, this finder's fee we were --'
There came a knockity-knock-knock at the door. Terry went through, let Rossi in, Rossi parading Johnny out onto the balcony like the guy was Lord Lucan, saying, 'Johnny? I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, name's Terry Furlong. You might've heard of him as Terry Swipes.'