'I'd beg to differ, if my sister wasn't in there with them.'
And then I spotted something, and inspiration flowed again. I grabbed McLiam by the shoulder. 'We smoke them out,' I said. 'We what?'
'Smoke them! Smoke them out of their lair!'
'Starkey, settle down. Explain.'
'The fire alarm.' I pointed along the corridor to a red square on the wall and the fire extinguisher beneath it. 'Smash it and wait for something to happen.'
He shook his head. 'They'll just phone downstairs, find out nothing's wrong.'
'We'll make something wrong. They'll clear the building, they're obliged to. Rules is rules.'
'They'll poke their heads out, see nothing's wrong, and stay put.'
'Not if they see smoke.'
'What're you suggesting, lighting a pipe or burning the building down?'
'Burning something.'
'Starkey, there's at least eight hundred rooms in this hotel.
Could be two thousand or more people in the building. You can't just set fire to it.''
'I can set fire to part of it. It's in a good cause.'
'Is that really the best you can come up with?' I nodded enthusiastically. 'God help us then,' said McLiam.
But he went along with it, because he knew that it was an idea in a vacuum otherwise free of ideas. We returned to the lobby. We bought three copies of the New York Times and a lighter. We returned to the thirteenth floor. The guard was still in the same position. The corridors were still quiet. I set fire to the Mirage Hotel.
It wasn't a major fire. A boy scout with a water pistol could have brought it under control, but it did the trick. McLiam smashed the alarm, the alarm went off. Fifteen seconds later, as I held the burning newspapers up to a smoke detector, the sprinklers came on. I dropped the papers and stamped on them.
We ran back to where the corridors intersected and turned towards the guard. He was standing facing us, looking helplessly up at the ceiling as the sprinklers soaked him. We started banging on doors.
'Fire! Fire!' McLiam shouted.
'Everyone out! Everyone out! Head for the lifts!' I shouted.
'What's going on!' the guard bellowed along the corridor. Plumes of smoke snaked round the corner behind us.
I looked up towards him. 'Fire! Fire!' I shouted.
'Everyone out! Everyone out I' yelled McLiam.
The guard turned and opened the door to the suite. He closed it quickly behind him. We kept yelling, but skipped up half a dozen doors.
One of the first doors we had banged on was yanked open and a middle-aged man in a dressing gown peered anxiously out. 'Is there a fire?' he called up to us.
'Fire! Fire!' yelled McLiam.
The man closed the door behind him and stepped out, wincing as the first sprinkles landed. 'Where do I go?'
'Take the lift!' I shouted.
'In a fire? Aren't you suppos-?'
'Take the fucking lift!' I yelled.
He turned quickly. Up ahead several other doors opened. 'Fire! Fire!' I shouted.
'Everyone out! Everyone out I' yelled McLiam.
There were a dozen people in the corridor then. Damp people hurrying along, but calm enough with it.
We came inevitably to the door of all doors. We listened for a second. Raised voices. Indistinct though, with the hiss of the water and jabber of the evacuees.
I nodded at McLiam. He winked back. I banged on the door. 'Fire! Fire!' I yelled.
'Everyone out! Everyone out!' shouted McLiam.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned. An elderly nun.
'Is this the way to the lift?' she asked.
'Fuck away off' I yelled McLiam. 'Sister,' he added. She took a step back and then followed everyone else.
I banged on the door again. 'Get out now!' I yelled. 'The roof's coming in!'
The door was pulled open. The guard. Behind him two men. Between them, supported, Mary McMaster, head down, pastyfaced, wasted.
'We're coming!' shouted the guard.
McLiam raised the fire extinguisher he'd been cradling all along and unleashed it full force in the guard's eyes. It wasn't much more than soapy bubbles, but he recoiled like it was acid. He staggered back, and McLiam hit him with the cylinder across the top of the head and he fell.
'Drop her!' I screamed.
Wide-eyed, shock-faced, they dropped her like a sack of potatoes. McLiam threw the cylinder at them. They veered off.
I ducked down into the room and ran my hand inside the guard's jacket. A gun. I pulled it out and shot the television in the corner of the room. The tube exploded. Both men dived for the ground and covered their heads. 'Don't shoot,' said one.
'We can explain,' said the other.
McLiam looked at me quickly, chest panting, surprised both at the suddenness and completeness of our victory.
I shook my head and smiled, breathing hard as well. I closed the door. He ran to his sister and lifted her up. I trained the gun on her captors.
'Are ye all right?' he asked, holding her under the arms and gently shaking her.
'Uhhhhhhh,' she said and her head flopped sideways. There was a suggestion of a smile on her lips, although it could easily have been a precursor to a particularly nasty drool. McLiam was happy, she was alive, she was in a stupor, but she was alive. Even if she did start drooling, it was a drool of the living. Drooling has never really caught on as a fad, or at least not in the same way as, say, skateboarding, although it's a lot cheaper and you don't have to wear kneepads, but at least if you can drool you can breathe, and if you can breathe, you're alive, and that was all we had hoped for.
'We were just trying to help Ireland.'
'Because Ireland won't help itself,'
'The IRA's gone soft.'
'As margarine.'
'We didn't mean any harm.'
'Or not much.'
Their names were Sean Mac and Brendan McFarlan, as if it mattered. They were Sinn Fein councillors; both had been quartermasters for the Provisional IRA in the good old days, a couple of months before. They had come ostensibly to publicize the cause of Republicanism in the States, and had managed to bluff their way into the country on false passports. Pro-Irish as it is, the States has never been particularly fond of IRA terrorists or Sinn Fein politicians. Publicizing the cause didn't take much of their time as they spoke mainly to the converted. This left them plenty of time to set about their real agenda, buying guns to open up a new front back home, or would have if they hadn't got talking to a drunk Noraid official who'd told them about a certain boxer's wife. And so the plot had unfolded. They'd nabbed her in the hotel lift, marched her up a couple of floors and kept her locked and mostly drugged in their suite ever since. They were quite talkative, really. The gun in Sean Mac's ear helped. Standing them both in front of the window and threatening to blow them out of it was an added incentive.
McLiam worked on his sister. She looked ill. The drools hadn't really developed. He slapped, he tickled, but he didn't get a great deal of sense out of her. She lay sagged and sallow on the settee.
'What the fuck did you use on her?' McLiam growled.
'Nothing lethal,' said McFarlan, medium height, middle-parted hair, business suit. 'I don't know what, exactly. A doctor gave it to us. A sedative or something. She comes out of it after a couple of hours. She'll be okay.'
McLiam looked daggers at him. 'She'd better be.'
'I'm sorry,' said Mac, smaller than his comrade but looking much the same. 'We wouldn't have hurt her.'
'You have hurt her. Look at her. She doesn't know where the fuck she is.'
'I know, but..
.'
McLiam wagged a finger. 'You've hurt her!'
Mac nodded apologetically. He tried to give me a reassuring smile. I had the gun.
McLiam shook his head. 'When I think of all the work I put in for you bastards, Jesus . . .'
'No man, no woman, is more important than the cause,' said McFarlan. He was quoting something, so
meone, but he said it without conviction, quoting from duty rather than belief.
'So you're quite happy to lay down your life for it?' I asked. McFarlan nodded slowly. Mac looked quickly at his companion, then at McLiam and his sister. 'We just wanted to raise some money, get some publicity. We wouldn't have killed her. Jesus, mate, it was the ideal opportunity. And we could hardly ask you, could we? You weren't likely to agree, were you?'
'It's always nice to be asked. Especially when we're supposed to be on the same side. You never know what I might have suggested.
Kidnapping the manager. Kidnapping the trainer. Kidnapping Starkey here.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'I'm serious.'
'I know.'
'And now you've fucked it up.' McFarlan nodded.
'What'll the boys back home be thinking when all the bad publicity comes out?' I asked. 'Damage limitation strategy already established, is it?'
Mac looked at McFarlan. McFarlan looked at Mac. They both shrugged.
'They don't know anything about it, do they?' McFarlan shook his head. 'It was our idea.'
Mac stared at him. 'It was your idea,' he snapped. 'You went along with it.'
'You made me.'
'I did not. You suggested the drugs.'
'Only because you wanted to cut her ear off and send it to them!'
'You fuckin' liar!'
'Fuckin' liar yourself'
'Children, please!' I shouted.
They looked at me.
'Sorry,' said Mac.
McFarlan nodded.
I looked over at McLiam. 'Any improvement?'
He gave a little shrug. 'Difficult to tell. We should get a doctor.' I reached for the phone. 'What should we do with them?' They twitched nervously against the Manhattan backdrop and shifted their attention to McLiam.
'Maybe this is the time to call the police.'
'Now that we've done the rescuing hero bit.' I smiled. Mac and McFarlan visibly relaxed.
And we had done it. Mary McMaster was alive. Everything was working out. Maybe we could all live happily ever after.
'I'll call Bobby. Let him know she's alive.' I checked my watch again. The parade would be mostly over and he'd be repairing to Madison Square Garden for the weigh-in and press conference at which he had been ordered to promote Republicanism. 'Maybe we can stop him before he makes a fool of himself on international television again.'
'Ahm,' said Mac.
'Shut the fuck up,' snapped McFarlan.
'You shut the fuck up for a change!' shouted Mac. 'I'm sick and tired of you getting me in the shite! You shut up! We tell them now and maybe we can do some good...'
'Keep your fuckin' trap. . .'
I butted Mac with the muzzle; he fell back and let out a little scream of fear, forgetting for a moment that there was glass between him and the ground thirteen floors below. 'Tell us what?'
'Keep your fuckin' . . .'
I hit McFarlan hard on the nose with the handle. He turned away, cupping his face in his hands. Blood squeezed between his fingers. It was good to see someone else's nose bleed for a change.
'Tell us what?' I asked again.
Mac looked a little sheepish. 'You won't shoot me?'
'Tell us what?'
He looked quickly at his comrade, then at McLiam. He didn't look at me at all. 'We have a man shadowing McMaster on the parade. He'll be at Madison for the weigh-in by now. He's in radio contact with Damien...' He nodded at the unconscious figure of the guard sprawled across the floor. 'Checks in every half-hour. His instructions were to shoot McMaster if something went wrong, if he couldn't make contact.'
'And when was he supposed to call?'
Mac looked at his watch. 'Five minutes ago.'
41
There were firemen in the corridors. Policemen in the lift. 'Smoke inhalation!' I shouted as we helped Mary through the door and punched for the lobby. 'There's others along the way!' I coughed for good measure. The cops nodded and hurried on. It was no time to get into complicated conversations. They'd find McFarlan and Mac trussed together with their own ties soon enough.
McLiam cradled Mary against his chest, one arm round her, one hand stroking her brow. She wore a grimy white shirt and crumpled Levi's. She was soaked. We all were. I drummed my fingers impatiently against the lift doors.
'We can leave her in the lobby,' I said, 'make a run for Madison. It's only a couple of blocks.'
McLiam shook his head. 'I'm not letting her out of my sight.'
'We haven't time, Marcus.'
'I'm not letting her out of my sight.'
The doors opened. A fat guy in a Republic of Ireland T-shirt blocked our way. He clutched a beer glass to his chest, then suddenly thrust it towards us. 'Happy St Patrick's Day!' he yelled, spraying us with spit.
'Fuck away off,' McLiam growled and pushed past, pulling Mary with him. She was starting to move under her own steam, hesitant Bambi steps which weren't helped by being hurried along, but a good sign nevertheless.
'Happy St Patrick's Day!' the drunk yelled again, his face resting against the back wall of the elevator. 'Senpadrik,' Mary mumbled.
'It's okay, love,' McLiam said.
We left the hotel and threaded our way through the traffic jam outside. The blare of horns was music after the bagpipes. I took one of her arms, McLiam the other, we lifted, then skipped her towards Madison Square Garden.
It took us ten minutes where it should have taken five. We should have left her, but I could see his point. We laboured up the steps into the ticketing area, then moved left to an escalator. I fished out my press pass, but there was no need for it. The human tidal wave of support which had surged around McMaster at the head of the St Patrick's Day parade had followed him to Madison and washed away the security put in place for the weigh-in and press conference. At the top of the escalator we turned right into the Sports Bar and a chaotic pre-fight celebration. Maybe three hundred singing Irishmen were congregated there, swamping the television cameras which had been set up with the expectation that the most hectic event they would have to cover would be the ritual eye-balling between champion and challenger. The news teams didn't quite know what to make of the horde of drunks singing'Here We Go Here We Go Here We Go Here We Go Here We Go Here We Go-o' again and again. McMaster was at the top of the room on the left of the scales, flanked by Geordie McClean, Jackie Campbell and Sissy Smith; he looked tense, and slightly embarrassed. To the right of the scales Tyson shuffled tentatively from foot to foot; Don King had an arm round him. A dozen or more of his entourage were grouped about him, looking nervous.
'Gentlemen, please!' The master of ceremonies wore a white dinner jacket. He looked like Bogie in the latter stages of a terminal illness. He tapped the mike again. The singing abated a little. 'You were good enough to keep order for the weigh-in, now if we could just extend that into the press conference - I'm sure you'd all like to hear what the boxers have to say.'
'BOBBY! BOBBY! BOBBY! BOBBY!' 'EARWIG JOE EARWIG JOE EARWIG JOE!'
'Gentlemen, please!'
'TYSON'S GOIN' DOWN, TYSON'S GOIN' DOWN ...
'Please!'
'UP YOUR HOLE WITH A BIG JAM ROLL, DO-DAH, DODAH...'
McLiam set Mary carefully on a seat at the back of the bar, made sure she was comfortable. 'Maybe he's been scared off by the crowd,' he said.
'Maybe.' We both scanned the throng as best we could, but it was like looking for a needle in a box of needles. We'd a rough description of one Denny Doyle, a shooter hired in from some quasi-Irish Mafia in New Jersey, but it could have fitted most anyone of vaguely Caucasian appearance.
McLiam put his hand out. 'Gimme the gun,' he said.
'What for?'
'I'm going to tell Bobby that Mary's all right.'
'You need a gun for that?'
'Jesus, Starkey, there's an assassin up there somewhere. Now gimme the gun.'
I fished it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He clasped it in his hand. This time there were definitely bullets
in it. He nodded and turned. He started to push his way through.
Mary slipped off her seat. 'Sanpatrik,' she mumbled.
I pulled her back up. She slumped forward and went to sleep on the table.
McLiam was making good progress towards the front. A reporter was speaking to McMaster, but he wasn't miked up and his question was lost in the hubbub. I could hear McMaster, though, breathing heavily into a hand-held mike and nodding slowly. Geordie McClean bent forward, straining to hear the question himself. Behind him Sissy suddenly looked left and broke into a smile. I followed her gaze. Stanley Matchitt was edging along the back of the bar towards her, his face puffed up; he saw suddenly that Sissy had spotted him and he grinned. Then something else caught his attention.
McLiam broke through the line of questioners.
Matchitt recognized the face.
Matchitt saw the gun.
Matchitt pulled at his jacket and produced a gun. He raised. He fired. Everyone started screaming. McLiam fell. Pandemonium.
I raced forward. Everyone raced backwards. They took me with them.
I forced my way back. Tyson had been lifted bodily by his team and rushed out a side door.
McMaster pulled himself up from the ground, pushing McClean off his back.
Matchitt held the gun out in front of him and slowly advanced on McLiam. His eyes were wide with excitement, the tip of his tongue just showed red between his swollen lips. 'You okay, Bobby?' he said breathlessly. McMaster nodded and bent down to McLiam. Matchitt knelt beside him.
'I . . .' he began.
'STANLEY!'
Sissy's voice, shrill, panicked ... a man in a green football jersey stepped out from behind a camera and raised a gun. He fired once. Matchitt fired twice. The man fell.
'Two outta two!' Matchitt yelled.
Then he fell over and Sissy screamed.
The rage of volume: the silence within. I sat at the bar sipping beer while all around the reality of human drama was played out as on a television screen; I had my seat and my remote control and my beer. Barely moving, I could flick through a dozen channels, I could be alternately fascinated and repelled, brought close to tears and bounced edgily along the rim of laughter.
I flicked to the panoramic shot, where the panic had given way to panic control and military administration: police, paramedics, journalists, boxers, sports officials, all carrying out their appointed tasks with single-minded efficiency.
Of wee sweetie mice and men Page 29