Eoin Colfer - Plugged

‘When you send me a cheque, you can be my patient.’

There is no point trying to outsmart this guy; he does it for a living. So I forge ahead.

‘Usually these devil’s advocated internal conversations happen when I want them to. They’re kinda vague and in the background. But this guy, Zeb, is here all the time, distracting me, poking his nose in. Then, when I actually need some advice he disappears.’

‘Is he there now?’

‘No, Zeb doesn’t trust doctors.’

‘I see. And what does the real Zeb do for a living?’

‘He’s a doctor,’ I say, smiling.

I hear Simon’s pen clicking half a dozen times, then: ‘You’re not a dummy, Dan, even if you pretend to be. You know this guy Zeb is just a part of you.’

‘I guessed as much. So no need for a straitjacket yet.’

‘Not so long as you’re in control. Lot of your murderers swear the voices told them to do it.’

‘Don’t worry, Zeb has been urging me to kill people for years. I’ve ignored him so far.’

‘So far. Maybe I should write you a prescription. A couple of gentle antipsychotics could do you the world of good.’

I know some vets who took antipsychotics. Every one of those guys thought Tweety and Sylvester were hilarious.

‘No thanks, Doc. I think I’ll pass on the meds. I need my wits about me right now.’

‘Whatever you say, Sergeant. Keep tabs on yourself then, if such a thing is possible, and if you find yourself sawing bodies into pieces on the suggestion of this Zeb voice, then drink a fifth of whiskey, put yourself to sleep for eight hours and call me in the morning.’

‘So I’m your patient now. Should I send you a cheque?’

It’s Moriarty’s turn to snort. ‘Yes, that’s it, Dan. You send me a cheque.’

I hear another voice in my ear. A bed-rumpled female.

‘Come on, Sim-o,’ says the woman, not a patient, I’m guessing. ‘You can’t stop in the middle.’

‘I better let you go,’ I say.

‘One of you better,’ says Simon, and hangs up.

Ghost Zeb comes out from beneath the synapse bridge he was hiding under.

Shrinks , he says, and I can feel his shrug like a cool bottle of beer rolled across my forehead. Witch doctors, every one of them .

Cloisters’ seedy street isn’t too obvious as these places go. On New York’s 8th Avenue you know exactly what kind of street you’re walking. The flashing billboards and windows stacked high with lingerie-clothed mannequins never let you forget it. The smell of lust rises from the pavement and the door handles are coated with grease and guilt.

Cloisters doesn’t have so much in the way of billboards and guilty handles. We have three gentlemen’s clubs that you wouldn’t know were there unless you knew they were there, with nothing but a small neon sign, square of red carpet and a velvet rope to drop a wink to those on the lookout. There are eight casinos in Cloisters, each one marked by a sign that city regulations restrict to a size slightly larger than a pizza.

After my transatlantic phone call, I take a brisk walk through the rain to the bus station to pick up my savings, then cross town to the strip and announce myself at the casino door.

‘Ta-dah,’ I sing, spreading my arms wide.

Jason gives me the diamond-fang smile. ‘Hey, Dan, buddy. Where the hell you been? Fucking Ireland or some shit? Seriously, Victor lost his nut here yesterday. Fired your ass in absentia.’

This is bad news, but I was expecting it. You don’t pull a no-show on Victor Jones and expect him to let it slide. Victor never lets anything slide.

That fucker wouldn’t let anything slide at a baseball game .

I chuckle. Zeb made this pronouncement one night after Victor cut off his tab.

Jason is not expecting a chuckle in response to his litany of doom. ‘I respect your balls, Dan. Chuckling and shit, showing up here like it’s business as usual after missing a shift, but you’re gonna have to pull some hocus-pocus outta your hat for Victor. You feel me?’

I envy Jason his ability to confidently use phrases like you feel me or off the hook , another of his favourites.

‘Okay. I better get inside and grovel.’

Jason cracks his neck, which always makes me wince.

‘Come on, Jason. I hate that. Do you want to give yourself arthritis?’

‘Sorry, Dan. I’m aggravated. We got no customers yet, so Vic’s rolling a couple of the new girls.’

Rolling the new girls is not as bad as it sounds.

Okay. Maybe it is as bad as it sounds. Just different bad.

Rolling the girls is one of Victor’s favourite pastimes, and he’s going to keep on doing it until one of the rolled girls goes crazy and spikes his Dom P with rat poison.

This thought brings on a dreamy sigh.

‘Hey, Dan, you dreaming about Oirland again?’

It’s Marco, the little barman, peeking out across the empty bar, smiling but not laughing because I’m a lot bigger than he is.

Then he notices my bruised face and his smile shrinks a few molars. ‘Holy shit, man. What happened to you?’

‘I was dreaming about Oirland ,’ I say straight-faced. ‘And this guy interrupted me, so we had a talk. You should see the state he’s in.’ I mime drinking through a straw in the side of my mouth.

Marco wipes a glass like he’s trying to climb inside it. ‘You’re a funny man, Daniel. Hilarious. You know I’ve got a weak heart, right?’

I cut him some slack with a soft smile. ‘I know, Marco. Victor’s in back?’

Marco wipes harder, not happy with giving bad news to big people. ‘Yeah. Doing his favourite thang . He said to send you back if you showed up.’

‘Those exact words?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Give it to me straight.’

‘What he said exactly was “If that Irish monkey-fucker shows up, you send him back here for a bitch slapping.”’

My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline of old. ‘Monkey-fucker?’

Marco almost disappears behind the bar. ‘Not my words.’ Then he gets brave. ‘I would probably have said leprechaunfucker, to tie in with the Irish thing.’

‘Yeah, that’s much better. Do me a favour, Marco. Pour me a large Jameson; I should be out in a minute to drink it.’

‘You got it, Dan,’ says Marco, reaching for the optic. ‘I’m gonna miss you, man.’

‘I’m getting fired, not dying,’ I mutter and head for the back room.

The back room in Slotz is the only original part of the building. Nice little red-brick room with a row of head-height postbox windows. Vic installed a polished wooden bar in the corner that’s way too big for the space, and there’s an old green baize card table with brass corners wedged into the leftover room. This is where the real money is made in Slotz. The back room has been running a high-stakes game since Prohibition. To hear Vic tell it, you’d think that every New York gangster from Schultz to Gotti had lost a bundle in here.

When I push through the door, Vic is swizzling a green cocktail and treating a couple of teenage girls to a social studies lesson.

‘The entire room is living history. This table. This exact table is fifty years old.’

The girls are nodding eagerly hoping for Vic’s approval; I on the other hand have decided not to beg for my job back. I have realised suddenly that without Connie, this dump holds zero appeal for me. So I do not have to listen to Vic’s shit for one more second.

‘Fifty years? Back home we have fast-food joints older than that. We have bloody walls older than this entire country.’

Victor jumps. He was so into his spiel that he didn’t even notice me coming in.

‘What the hell?’ he stammers, for some reason grabbing at his purple bowler hat, like that’s the first thing a raider would go for. I notice that he’s wearing a bandanna under the hat, and another stuffed into his breast pocket. ‘McEvoy! You’re like a case of the clap. You arrive quiet, then flare up.’