“You fucker, you shot me, I’m dying, I’m fucking dying,” he gurgled, writhing in agony.
I knelt beside him.
“No one ever died because of a bullet in the kneecap. One time, many years ago, I shot a man in the kneecaps, the ankles, and the elbows. Christ, you should have seen the state of him. Well, that’s what I’ll do for you. To begin with.”
“Why, why, you bastard?” he said.
“Now listen to me, Slider. I’m not fucking around here. I’ll torture you and I’ll kill you unless you tell me where she is.”
A sudden burst of pain rode through him.
Tears were running down his face.
“What do you want to know?” he managed.
“Do you know what’s going to happen tonight at the exchange?”
“I know a bit.”
“Well, talk then.”
“Bridget Callaghan’s getting a phone call at the Albert Clock in Belfast,” he said, every word an effort.
“I know that. What happens after that?”
He groaned and shat himself. He was in agony. Goddammit. I looked around the room and saw that there was a bottle of Johnnie Walker next to the dead man who’d been reading the Belfast Telegraph. I went across the floor, grabbed the bottle, poured a full measure into a coffee mug, handed it to him.
“Drink the whisky,” I said.
He sipped and then gulped it. I let it bubble through him for a minute. He started doing a wee bit better.
I spoke softer.
“Ok, Slider, what happens tonight? Tell me everything.”
“They’re supposed to make her drive to a couple of different call boxes over the city,” he muttered.
“Go on.”
“And then there’s the swap. We’re supposed to wait here. We couldn’t all go, but we’re rendezvousing back here with the money, after Bridget and the girl are dead.”
“What are you talking about? After you swap the girl for the money, you mean?”
“Nah, I don’t think the boss wants to do it that way. I think he wants to kill the pair of them or something. Maybe for security reasons. But we get the money anyway.” Slider groaned again and I forced him to drink another mug of whisky. He sobbed a little.
“Get that down your neck, mate, go on,” I said.
He drank gratefully, looking at me as if I were an old friend.
“Tell me about this boss. Who is he?” I asked.
“I don’t know, he’s from Dagoland, probably the Mafia or some-thing, for all I know. Dead good English, though.”
“Ok, Slider, you’re doing great, now where’s the girl?” I asked.
But the whisky was working too well. Slider recovered some of his bravado. He looked at me suspiciously.
“Who are you?” he asked, his eyes still filled with tears.
“I’m asking the questions. Where the’s girl?”
“She’s gone, she’s not here,” he said.
“So I see. Listen, mate, my finger’s getting awful itchy, so you better keep talking.”
“I don’t know anything more,” he said.
“Slider, I want to know where the exchange is going to be.”
“We’re not in on that. The boss comes back here. He didn’t want to tell us the place. You know how it is, some things you have to keep secret. It was on a need-to-know basis,” he said, thinking he was pretty smart wasting time like this.
“Slider, listen. Your mate outside already told me that you know where they’re doing the fucking swap. If you don’t tell me, I’ll fucking kill you,” I said.
“You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood,” he said with a half-drunken smile and closed his eyes.
I smacked him across the face with the barrel of the gun, opened his eyes with my fingers, and made sure he saw me standing over him pointing the gun at his head. I had to end this little chitchat right now. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I was only bluffing about the torture. There was no time to torture the information out of him. I didn’t have all bloody night.
“Slider, you’re taxing my patience, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Are you a reader? I’m a big reader. Have you ever read Zeno? He’s the Greek guy that says an arrow can’t move, because it has to cross an infinite number of slices in the air between the shooter and the destination. So let’s do an experiment. You keep your head there and I’ll keep the gun here and I’ll pull the goddamn trigger and we’ll see what happens with the bullet. Fingers crossed for Zeno, huh?”
I began squeezing the trigger.
“Wait, wait, wait, oh God, wait,” he screamed. He was shaking and the terror was locked in his eyes.
“You don’t want to do the experiment?”
“No.”
“Ok. Talk. Where’s the rendezvous?”
“The boss asked Jackie to ask the boys if they knew any out-of-the-way places, you know, discreet. Well, I came up with somewhere. I used to go fishing at—”
“Not the whole goddamn story, just the place.”
“On Islandmagee, there’s a path called Black Head Cliff Path; it splits, the top path goes to Black Head Lighthouse, the bottom path works its way round to the Witches’ Cave. They scouted it out yesterday. Boss really liked it. Single route in and out. Bump Bridget over Belfast and bring her down to Islandmagee. I think that’s what he’s going to do.”
“Islandmagee, Black Head Cliff Path, lower path to a cave,” I repeated.
“Exactly.”
“Whereabouts is Islandmagee?”
“About ten miles or so from here,” he said, his face more relaxed now.
“Quickest route?” I asked.
“Drive down to the lough, go through Carrickfergus and White-head.”
“How will I find this path?”
“Ask anybody in Whitehead, you can’t fucking miss it. Right under the lighthouse, you’ll see it,” he said.
“You better not be lying, Slider,” I said.
“I’m not fucking lying, it’s the honest truth, I swear it.”
I had a million more questions. What was the girl doped with? What were the goons carrying? Tell me everything about the boss. How many in the team? What was the backup plan? But there was no time. I stepped away from him.
What I was going to do next was going to hurt.
Cold blood was cold blood.
But time was the operative word. I didn’t have the time to be smart, to make the right call.
“Well, Slider, you’ve been very helpful and I’ll be honest with you, I thought about not killing you. It’s very good the way you look after your wee brother and everything but I don’t have the time to tie you up.”
“What are you saying?”
“Slider, I can’t have the possibility of you escaping on me and alerting your boss that I’m on my way to stop him,” I said.
I was trying to convince myself as well as him. What was the less wrong thing to do? Was it less wrong to leave him and risk it? Or was it better to shoot him and rule out any possibility of him screwing with me? My watch said five minutes to eleven. I didn’t have the luxury of thinking it through.
“Y-you’re going to kill me? But I helped you. You can’t kill me.”
“I have to kill you, I’m close now. Can’t afford interference. And after all, you did assault the wee lass.”
“You’re not serious. I’m a good guy. You know I have a kid brother, I look after him.”
“I am serious. Like I say, I was in two minds about it, but this is the only prudent course of action. I’ll do something for your wee brother, I promise.”
“You fucker, you fucker, you can’t. I’ll fucking see you in hell,” Slider sobbed.
“Nah, with all your good deeds, Slider, you’ll be going to the other place,” I said and shot him in the chest and then in his stunned, half-open auburn-colored eye.
On the tabletop there was a box of shotgun shells and assorted ammo for a handgun. I grabbed what I could, picked up the shotgun, and went outside.
&nbs
p; Raining again.
I slipped in the mud, dropped all the weapons, picked them up, walked over to the body of old-knife-in-the-neck, removed the blade, and pocketed it.
I wanted to run to the car. I had to run to the car. Time was of the essence.
But I walked.
It’s never easy.
I don’t care what anybody says.
It’s never easy.
I avoided the puddles and the mud.
Alone now, save for the hawks.
And sparrowhawks.
Rain.
A breath of wind.
One foot followed another down the Knockagh lane to where the road curved and the woods came and the path wound its way back to the other millions of souls huddled in this green lifeboat of an island in the western sea.
The taxicab.
The key.
I threw the guns in the trunk.
I started the car.
Drove.
I’ll come on the halo. I’ll come on the white water. I’ll come from the cinder sky.
Yes.
Greenisland, Carrickfergus, the small town of Whitehead.
A lighthouse above the cliff.
A storm barreling in from the North Atlantic.
I ditched the Toyota in a seafront parking lot. I popped the trunk, quickly checked the mechanism on the shotgun. It was so filthy with mud I knew I couldn’t rely on it. My pistol, however, was clean.
Slider had said that the boss had several men with him. If there was going to be a shootout, I’d have to be ready to be outgunned.
Outgunned, outnumbered, outflanked.
Exhausted, wounded, done.
I smiled.
What else was new?
I loaded six more rounds in the .38 and went to get Siobhan.
12: ITHACA (ISLANDMAGEE—JUNE 16, MIDNIGHT)
Wild horizon. Black sea. Prisoner path to the trapdoor floor. A banshee wind. The storm throwing water up the cliff. Thick clouds concealing the full moon and innumerable stars. Arctic waves. Heavy weather. The cliffs the anvil, the waves the hammer.
It had been raining all day on the high bog. Slurry and muck had sluiced down from the lighthouse hill and seaweed and kelp had been cast up from the lough.
The way was treacherous, and it wasn’t helped by a murderous gale escaped from its holding cell near the pole.
It was midnight.
Somewhere it’s always midnight.
The now distilled to basics: Cold. Pain. Fear.
Darkness, except in the eastern sky, where those pinpricks of lights were the meteors of the June Lyrids.
I was poised at the very edge of Ulster, the dominating feature no longer earth or grass but rather the jet-colored vacuum that was the Irish Sea. And here, in the cauldron, at the meeting point of island and ocean, all land seemed impermanent, fragile, existing on a knife edge.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I muttered as I slipped and nearly went down onto the rocks.
A big breaker could carry me out into Belfast Lough and the Atlantic. I’m no swimmer, but the cold would stop my heart in any case.
I took a second to steady myself. Thunder rumbling over from Scotland. Foghorns, bell buoys. A canopy of porter-colored clouds. The pistol sweetening in my sweat.
The front not even an orchestra tuning, but rather one loud, continuous, shrieking note.
Have to go carefully. Unlikely that they would be here already. But you never knew. I checked my watch, tapped it, something wrong. I examined it but it had stopped at eleven o’clock. I shook it, goaded it, but the rain had finally spoiled the action. I’d bought it for a half a sol in a market in Lima, so I couldn’t really complain.
Sheep loomed out of the murk in front of me, coming down from one of the upper fields. Bedraggled, waterlogged. Even an older, more experienced ewe drenched with muck, staring at me with desperation in her dead eyes.
“Go on, scoot,” I told her, and she and the other sheep scrambled away into the heather. I stopped for a second.
Unnerved.
I found the path again. A concrete-and-gravel job. “The path to the future,” I muttered. Soaked, slippery, unseen—the adjectives working for both literal and metaphoric journey.
I followed it farther around to Black Head. Slider had been right. It split here. The upper path wound up to the lighthouse at the top of the cliff, the lower made its way down almost to the water.
“This way,” I said to myself, and found my place along the lower route. The direction of the cave.
I hoped my information was correct. But it had to be. I had frightened the truth out of that son of a bitch. And if he was lying, if he had pulled this wee hidey-hole out of his arse, he was a more impressive individual than I gave him credit for.
The path worked down to the bottom of the cliff. Spray hitting me every time a wave broke.
Lightning had transformed the sea between Ireland and Scotland into a landscape spectral and fantastic. Splintered light showing the hills in Galloway and their mirrors in the Glens of Antrim. And for a moment, if you were so inclined, you could almost imagine that the boiling waters between Ireland and Britain were, in fact, a silent valley of writhing souls in Hades.
I shivered.
The wind howling up to thirty or forty miles an hour now, ringing in my ears. I cursed, but I couldn’t hear my own voice.
I walked a little farther, turned a corner, looked up, the lighthouse suddenly seventy-five feet above on the clifftop. A spectacular sight. The large white structure silhouetted against the storm clouds and the big mirrored bulb radiating powerful beams across the water—visible from Scotland and the Isle of Man. I stood transfixed. I had never seen anything like it. Great sheets of light above me, rotating and hyp-notic. Millions of candlepower warning ships about the coast of Ireland from as far away as the Earth’s curve would allow.
And all of it coming together.
Like I knew it would.
The crescendo.
The climax.
The lighthouse. The lightning. The storm. The night. The frothing sea and rain. It was a coda from Götterdämmerung and enough to make you scrap your disbelief in the sympathetic fallacy.
“A hell of a night,” I said to no one.
I walked farther along the lower path. The tide was high and the sea was only a few vertical feet beneath me. And, Jesus, of all places to meet, why this one? I was hard pressed to think of a more desolate spot in the whole of Ireland. You certainly couldn’t make a quick getaway from here and you couldn’t count the money and you couldn’t wait in comfort. The only advantage would be the certitude with which you could verify Bridget’s adherence to the plans. You’d see her coming from a mile off. She’d have to be alone. No cops and no goons could possibly follow her without being seen. If she approached from the south, from the direction I was taking, you’d come from the north, over the fields. You’d do the exchange at the cave and both parties would go home the way they came.
I turned another corner as a deck of cold water smashed into the bottom of the cliff, the initial break missing me but the bounce off the cliff catching me full on the back.
Bugger.
The path had a safety rail here now. But I wasn’t going near it. Rusted and warped by wind, rain, and spray, it didn’t look at all safe. I hoped Bridget wouldn’t put her trust in it. Christ, it would give and she’d be in the Atlantic, doomed, drowned, dead.
I shook my head.
There it was again.
A contradiction of emotions. For wouldn’t that be in my best interests, if Bridget did somehow end up in the sea? Wouldn’t things be much easier for me if Bridget was erased from my life forever? No more vendetta, no more blood feud? No more waking in the middle of night, my heart pounding, reaching for the Glock under my pillow?
A dead Bridget would be my chance for a normal existence. The first chance in twelve years.
I turned the final corner and the sound of the sea changed. A hollow, booming noise echoing off the
walls. A black void in the cliff face.
I took out my revolver.
This was the cave. The Witches’ Cave. The name an unwelcome dose of melodrama in a spot that was bloody tight enough.
Why hadn’t I thought to bring a flashlight? I walked over the slime-covered rocks into the cave mouth. I clutched the revolver. Maybe the girl was here already. Maybe she was tied up and I’d rescue her and save the day and Bridget’s eternal love would shine down from on high. Maybe all would be forgiven and I’d live happily ever after.
Aye.
I crouched and hunched farther into the pristine darkness. The cave went back a good bit into the cliff, but sea spray could still make it this far and on the seventh wave it smacked into the walls and drenched me again. I crouched lower and moved forward a little. How deep did this bastard go?
I stooped almost horizontal and inched ahead even more slowly. I was being careful, but despite my caution I still managed to slip on the rocks and cut myself badly on the left hand. Fortunately, the revolver was in my right, but I didn’t want to lose it now, so I put it back in my jacket pocket.
I kept still for a moment and got on my haunches.
My eyes adjusted, and from the ambient light and odd lightning flash, I could see for certain that the cave was empty. No girl, no kid-napper, no Bridget.
Garbage, seaweed, beer cans, sodden paper, some luminous graffiti but nothing that looked as if anyone had even been here recently.
Shit. Had Slider stroked me after all? This was no place for an exchange. Jesus, this was no place at all.
“Is there anybody here?” I called out.
Not a sound. Not even a goddamn echo.
I looked at my watch. 11:00, it said. Oh, yeah. Broken. But it was bound to be after midnight now. Bridget would be on the move. Juking from phone box to phone box and car to car. Probably heading for Dublin or Donegal or the hill of Tara. Anywhere but here. What a waste of time.
“Ya did it to me, Slider. Conned me. Stroked me,” I said.
Well, I was committed to this place now in any case. The only course would be to wait. If they didn’t show up at midnight, I’d have no option but to head for the nearest ferry port or air terminal. Get out of Ireland as soon as possible. Bob’s brother had been very clear. If Bridget gets the girl or the girl dies, all bets are off. He and the whole organization would be coming to kill me and with the full wrath of Bridget and her men I wouldn’t last a day in this country.
The Bloomsday Dead Page 29