He grappled the keys from his pants pocket as he ran and used the unlocking device to open the doors from twenty feet away. The customary beep sounded like a siren in the echoing, hard empty streets of Belfast.
He shoved Gandolph around the Mondeo’s rear and into the passenger side. The older man clutched his computer and briefcase to his chest as Max leaped around the car’s front, then slammed himself into the driver’s seat, gunning the engine and careening down the left side of the narrow way. No headlights, no seat belts, no time.
The wheels screamed around a corner, into the so-far-deserted dark.
They heard muffled voices bursting out into the night and the choked sound of at least two cars or vans hastily starting behind them.
“Damn!” Max’s fist pounded the steering wheel.
“Damn for the interruption or because Kathleen may still be alive?” Gandolph grunted, with frequent interruptions, wrestling to buckle his seat belt while keeping hold of his precious computer and briefcase.
“Damn everything,” Max muttered, watching his side and rearview mirrors. “There they are,” he exclaimed, as the inside of the car was washed with a streak of headlights from the rear.
“I can get up a street map of this section,” Garry huffed, opening the laptop and making keys cluck like chickens.
“I haven’t time to crane my neck and eyes at small-screen maps,” Max said in frustration.
A screech of corner-turning wheels at an upcoming deserted cross street made him suddenly veer into the right lane . . . the wrong lane for this city.
Behind the Mondeo, a black Morris Mini crammed with men streaked forward fast . . . and toward the front fender of a crossing Ford Focus. Max squinted into the rearview mirror, watching both cars swerve away from a collision. He lurched the Mondeo into the proper left lane as a pair of high, bright headlights riding behind a sustained horn was about to smash into them head-on.
“Oh, my God, Max!” Garry averted his face. “I’ll expire from cardiac arrest.”
“They had the near miss, not us,” was Max’s reply. “Why did the ex-IRA raid the alternate IRA, and why they are now both after us?”
“Money. Kathleen was a master moneymaker, and both sides see no reason to let any hidden funds go to the other, or to foreign pilgrims like us seeking something as intangible as closure.”
“We wouldn’t keep any of that money, but give it to a common cause,” Max said.
He jerked the steering wheel and car down another side street, which turned out to be one-way the wrong way. He gunned the motor to shorten the time exposed to a head-on collision. Another cross street flashed by, with oncoming cars from both ways. Both drivers hit their brakes, and both cars spun sideways.
“Duck!” Max cried, as bullets slammed the Mondeo broadside from both directions. He covered the steering wheel with his crossed forearms and hit the gas so the oncoming cars would be shooting at each other.
A seat belt would have kept him from banging up his legs and head in this seesaw maneuver. Too late to buckle up now.
Max heard the driver’s window shatter and felt a hot zing of air behind his head as his forehead jerked toward the windshield. He braked reflexively.
His right foot reversed the slowdown with a to-the-floor shot of gas. The Mondeo jackrabbited forward. His forehead bounced briefly off the windshield. He leaned back hard and applied the brakes to the floor again.
The two pursuing cars were spinning into each other’s now-bullet-riddled frames with engines steaming as they crashed in a glassy, metallic shower of body parts.
Max released a huge breath. “Close call. Are you all right?”
He glanced over, glad to see Garry upright in the seat. The passenger-side window was shattered too.
“We need to dump this car and hoof it to our hotel to decamp ASAP,” Max thought aloud. “Good thing you belted yourself in. I almost gave myself another memory concussion, but I’m okay. I think.”
Something tickled down his right forehead, making his eyelashes wet and sticky. Head wounds bled. Awkward, but not serious.
His hands and feet tingled as if they’d been “asleep” at the wheel. His knees and hips felt jolted, but solid. Best to get going while his body was still numb and couldn’t tell him where it had broken down until he was committed to moving it, to running.
“You take the briefcase,” he told Garry. “I’ll manage the computer. What’s the matter? Is your seat belt jammed?”
Max brushed the blood from his forehead, checking the rearview mirror. He heard a distant siren.
“Come on, we’ve got to move.” He grabbed Garry’s shoulder.
The older man was staring straight ahead. He should be moving by now, Max thought. He’d always been Max’s goad, not the other way around. Max focused on the shattered window haloing his friend’s familiar profile. Ruby red mixed with the diamond-edge crackle pattern shining in the light of a semidistant street lamp.
No. . . .
His stunned brain replayed the moment. The bullet that had shattered his window, meant for him, to stop their escape, had sped by a millisecond behind his head as the brakes jolted him forward, no seat belt to impede his reflexive motions.
Garry, belted in, held still, became the perfect target.
Now Max could see the small round hole in the grayish hair at Garry’s temple.
“No!” he cried, ripping Garry’s seat belt out so hard it gave at the door mount.
He pulled the old man’s body onto his shoulder, shedding bloody, blinding tears.
No, no, no. Not this loss too. You up there, take it back!
Garry—the name ran through his hobbled brain in a rhythm like a song—Garry, I hardly knew ye. Again.
Move, Max. The voice came out of the aching, blinding despair in his head. No matter who, no matter what. You’ve got to move on. Mourn your losses later. Move now!
“Why?” Max asked the empty car interior. “This isn’t a mission to save anything but my sorry past. Garry, I won’t leave you. You’ve never left me.”
And his faltering memory hadn’t resurrected all he’d known of the living man. Maybe it never would, now.
Listen to me. No matter how bad the situation, you have only one option. Always. Action. Move, Max!
“Why am I remembering your advice now? When it’s too late. It’s too late, Gandolph. I can’t do a damn thing about anything. That fucking seat belt!”
His voice and questions filled his mind, the car. There were no answers but the mantra that Gandolph had planted in his head over the years, released like a long, old-fashioned tape recording.
Trust me. Move, Max. Move on. It’s what you’d want if the situation were reversed. Let it go. Let me go.
“No. Your body. Who will claim your body? Buried and forgotten like a Magdalen asylum woman? No!”
A vehicle was rushing into the shattered night of broken cars and men, flashing blue lights.
The Belfast police.
Max, for God’s sake, move!!! Find out what you must, do what you must, what we determined we must do. Find Kathleen O’Connor, if she’s there to be found. Tell her “Sláinte” for me. Then find your heart’s desire.
Max pulled the torqued driver’s-side door open, grabbed both legs, and kicked them out as battering rams against the balky steel, hoping they’d break again. The door creaked agape. And Gandolph’s body slid farther into the driver’s seat Max was abandoning.
He let a calm thought cross his mind, then grabbed the laptop and briefcase, Gollum’s “my precious” times two. He’d read The Lord of the Rings, even if Garry claimed he hadn’t.
Everything they’d learned, that Gandolph had learned, for his sake, rested inside these fragile cases, one of paper and leather, one of pixels and plastic.
Max pushed himself up, out of the Mondeo’s stuck-forward seat, into the clean, misty night air. The sirens screamed louder, and blue lights washed over the street like a Kmart special offering capture and unanswerable quest
ions.
He needed escape and survival.
With no glance back but in his heart, Max lurched down the empty wet cobblestoned street, unerringly finding the shadows and blending with them. He knew he could operate under the dark of the moon with the best of them, but he had a long way to go as just a crippled shadow of himself.
Moving Issues
“Matt!” Temple rejoiced into the cell phone as she recognized his voice. “You won’t believe what mayhem we’ve had here, solving the Chunnel of Crime murder.”
“Mayhem in Vegas,” he answered. “What’s not to believe?”
“Right now, I want to hear all about The Amanda Show appearances and the family soap opera,” Temple said.
“Oh, it is a soap opera, way more exciting than anything currently on TV. But I’ve got other news, something that could really remodel our lives.”
“Oh?”
“For the better. I’m getting tired of working night shifts.”
“I can live with that.”
“That’s just it. We don’t have to. The Amanda Show producers have offered me my own, ah, gig.”
“Your own gig?” Temple felt confused. “You don’t sing. . . . Is it the dancing?”
“Lord, no. It’s what I do. Talk to people.”
“A talk show?”
“Right. A daytime talk show. No more me rushing out before midnight six nights out of seven like Cinderfella.”
“But . . . you are Mr. Midnight.”
“When we’re married, I want to work normal daytime hours, like you do.”
“Talk shows are tricky, Matt. Eighty zillion more have gone down than have made it.”
“The Amanda Show producers think it’s time to bring on a guy who isn’t Jerry Springer. Something more substantive. They say my Q-ratings go through the roof whenever I’m on Amanda’s show. The time’s ripe for a spin-off with Oprah’s retirement coming up. That’s a seismic event, and opportunity. Don’t you see, Temple? We could be together more.”
“Well, yeah. That’s great, Matt! I just couldn’t believe it at first. That’s right about Oprah. This is a major, major offer. Dinner at the Paris Eiffel Tower restaurant for that!”
“Tony Valentine, my agent, will be rarin’ to go on this. And we can do the wedding in Chicago, because we’ll need a house here. Not too suburban. You don’t want a long commute.”
“Chicago? Living there?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Wouldn’t Vegas be a great talk-show city, lots of celebrities buzzing through?”
“This wouldn’t be the usual celebrity gab-and-promo fest. I’d do something similar to the radio counseling, only on a TV screen during the daylight hours.”
“The Circle Ritz . . .”
“We can keep my unit. Visit.”
“My job. The Crystal Phoenix.”
“Chicago has big hotels too. I’m sure your PR ideas will knock ’em dead around here too.”
“Literally?”
His laughter made the phone vibrate in her palm.
“I’m sure you could find a murder or two to solve here.”
“The Chicago winters . . .”
“We both grew up in winters like that. Look,” he said, “this has to be a joint decision. But it’s such an amazing opportunity. The show would be structured to do people some real good.”
“Elvis will miss you.”
“That’s another thing. No more eerie call-ins.”
“And . . . Midnight Louie.”
“He can move.”
“He couldn’t own the town, like here.”
“Maybe he’d have to hold down your condo, and we’d visit. Anyway, I’ll be home in a few days and we can discuss it. I have to stay on for more talks. I admit I was bowled over by their presentation. A whole conference room, huge TV screen, network VPs. Then there’s the latest mind-blowing wrinkle in my family. We’ll talk when I’m not semi–out of my mind from pressure on all sides.”
“Ooh. Sounds like a trip full of surprises.”
Temple clung to the phone, trying to calculate all the pros and cons of leaving Las Vegas.
“Too much to discuss on a phone call,” Matt said again. “I just couldn’t wait to tell you. We’ll find what works best for both of us. Love you.”
“Matt, I am so happy for you. I love you too.”
The line went dead, and Temple felt something pressing against her calves. Talk about pressure from all sides.
She looked down.
Midnight Louie looked up with solemn green eyes.
“That was Matt,” she told him. “How’d you like to be the biggest, baddest get-around-town dude in Chicago?”
She was not to know what Louie thought of that. The phone rang again. She wondered what Matt had forgotten to mention.
The voice wasn’t Matt’s. It was strange and fuzzy, as if coming from a bar or a street corner or a distant star.
“Can you hear me?” it asked. “The line is fading in and out.”
“Barely,” she answered, wondering if she should just hang up on a crank caller.
“You’re supposed to know me,” the voice was continuing. “Sorry if I sound slurred. I’m calling from Northern Ireland, wouldn’t you know? Yes, I’ve been drinking. That’s what we Irish do at wakes, even private ones.”
She was about to end the call, except something in the distorted voice rang disturbingly true. It went on.
“Hang up anytime you’re feeling bored. I’ve got two recently broken legs that will ache in this blasted damp weather for the rest of my life if I stay in the damned country, and I’m a wanted man, anyway.
“I’ve got a case of amnesia, where all I’m remembering is a bit about the IRA, a dead woman named Rebecca, or a possibly live one named Kathleen, and a crew of crazy-ass has-been magicians who think they belong to a secret society called the Synth.
“The man who was my only family for half my life is dead, as good as assassinated, and I suppose I’m next on the list. I don’t know if there’s any point for anything but another three fingers of Black Bush whiskey, but I’ve been told by the only man I ever trusted you’re a pretty smart and gutsy girl, and the Las Vegas weather would be better for my legs and my lungs, if not my long-term ‘health,’ so I have a decision to make as to where I’ll live and die or if there’s any point to the years in between those states.
“I don’t know anyone now, here or anywhere, who knows anything about me but enemies.
“They tell me my name is Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella, and I know I need to get the hell somewhere else fast. I guess there’s only one question to ask or answer before I decide where.
“Is it possible . . .
“Do you . . . love me?”
Temple had slowly slid down from shock until she was sitting on the hard parquet floor, her back braced against the sofa front, her legs and feet disappearing into the thick long hair of her faux-goat-fur rug.
Midnight Louie was now sitting right beside her, his soft, warm, sturdy bulk bracing her side and shoulder on the left side, the heart side.
There was no time to dither. She heard a hard-breathing silence on the other side of the world, from the other end of the satellite high in the sky, up there with Ophiuchus looking down and almost shaking the stars out of the sky from laughing at muddled mortals and that nasty upraised third finger of fate that seems to direct all the traffic in the universe.
She had no options either. So she listened to her voice break the silence and say three little words.
Three little inevitable, critical, dangerous, life-altering little words. She sighed and spoke them.
“Come home, Max.”
Midnight Louie Decries Sex and Gore
Actually, I do not decry sex. I am actively trying to acquire it, but the pool of possibilities continues to shrink during a politically correct age. Also I am turning up too many female relatives lately. I actually have begun to miss the evil Hyacinth, the late Shangri-La’s Siamese magician
’s assistant.
All of my assorted human associates have been distressingly dull and monogamous, until just lately, which is not setting a good example for my species.
Nor am I against Al Gore. I am all for saving the planet and its many glorious species, every one, including my sorely tried larger cousins, the Big Cats. And no one can say I have not done my personal part for overpopulation.
What I do object to is “all gore,” the profligate and gratuitous use of truncated human body parts to pander to the popular taste.
It is bad enough that eaten-away legs figure in this last case. A floating severed arm on semipublic display does not polish the badges of the German or British police forces, even if it is from the last century.
My species is not known for shirking blood and guts, since we are carnivores, something we try to downplay in our domestic lives. We are only carnivores because nature has honed us for thousands of years to eat on the run.
Clearly, we can be rehabilitated.
Humankind I am not so sure about. Certainly, recent turns of events abroad put Kitty the Cutter in a whole new light. I must also take the powers-that-be to task for putting our absent Las Vegasites through so much misery and danger. I expect the usual murder victim, deserving or not, but I do not expect to lose anyone really nice. This is fiction, after all! I do not want it to be “a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing”!
Wait a minute! Ignore that last, borrowed turn of phrase. Sometimes I get carried away. I tell a good part of this tale, and I am not implying I have an idiot bone in my body or hair in my coat.
Anyway, since Mr. Gandolph the Great was falsely thought murdered in one of my earlier books, during the Halloween haunted-house séance to bring Harry Houdini back from the dead, I am hoping for a second resurrection.
It may be too much to hope that my heedless collaborator is listening to my druthers. She is part and parcel of a savage breed.
Homo sapiens is notorious for playing with its kill, as witness the watery end of poor Boots or the vicious slaughter of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, an ironic piece of mob violence if ever there was one.
Me, I do indeed think there should be a mob museum in Las Vegas or even elsewhere; in fact, several of them. The public thirst for gory details should be satisfied and showcased, so the rest of us natural-born carnivores do not look so bad.
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