Ken Bruen - Bust

Max told her to lock the door, then motioned with his hand weakly toward the desk and the picture. Angela picked up the photo, stared at it for a few seconds, said, “That bollix.” Then she started smiling, said, “I look pretty good, don’t I?”

Max snatched the photo and said, “I can’t believe this day is happening. First herpes, now this!”

“What did he ask for?”

“The bastard wants two-fifty K or he’s going to the police.”

“So?”

“So, did you hear what I just said? Are you an idiot or something? Once the cops find out about me and you they’ll be on our backs for good.”

“That wasn’t nice.”

“What?”

“Calling me an idiot. You do that in Ireland, you better be holding more than a fookin drink.”

“Jesus, I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” Max said. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

“I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Fuck coffee! There’s only one way out of this,” Max said, and he covered his face with his hands. How the hell did it come to this? “Can you get in touch with your cousin today?”

“My cousin?”

“I think we have another job for his friend Popeye.”

The coffee burned Dillon’s tongue. He was in the Starbucks beside Penn Station, and he spat out the scalding liquid, going, “Fookin thing.”

A guy, yuppie-looking, gave him a long stare. Dillon was up for it, was he ever, glared at the guy, snarled, “The fook you looking at?” He was delighted how his New York accent was coming along, and the brogue still riding point. The guy quickly looked away. But Dillon was antsy, needed to wallop someone, some bastard needed a hiding and soon. When the compulsion hit him, as it did more and more, he had to have an explosive interlude, blow the cobwebs out.

He got out of there, an employee asking, “Everything okay, sir?”

Dillon paused, then said, “Hunky fucky dory yah wanker.”

Translate that.

It was evening, the darkness bringing out the predators, skells in abundance. Even though Forty-second Street was now more a tourist attraction than a sleaze zone, it still had pockets of peril and Dillon had quickly found them. He stood in a doorway near Ninth Avenue, saw a lost Japanese tourist, camera hanging from his neck, a T-shirt with “Giuliani Rules” on it.

Dillon moved fast, hit the guy from behind, his knife out and the nip’s throat sliced before he could mutter, “Banzai.”

Dillon said, “Call it quits on Pearl Harbor a cara.”

But, for fook’s sake, all the guy had was plastic. Where were the bucks? He also had a packet of Menthol Lights and a Zippo, with the inscription Small change. No truer words. Dillon kicked him in the head for good measure and, as he headed up the block, he lit a menthol, enjoying the crank of the lighter, thinking, Johnny Cash and Zippos, it was a mighty country.

He began, like a mantra, the sports lingo he’d been learning, measuring out the phases like a new language. You grew up in Ireland and hurling was the sport of necessity, this American deal was a whole new territory. But he loved the sound of it, like praying but without the guilt or the bartering you had to do with god. He started, “Them Knicks need to take it to the next level, what to plug in and take out, they need a point guard, Isaiah Thomas better get his head outa his arse, the old days, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, they had a core, then the Bulls, ah they had it, the fookin Lakers, what was going on there, and the Sox, way to go boyos.” Like that. No idea what he was saying but getting off on the melody.

No one paid him any heed, just one more crazy fuck, with a menthol cig and a bug up his ass.

New York, you gotta love it.

Walking down Fifth Avenue, all Angela could think about was the way Bobby Rosa had looked at her. On his way out of the office, he’d winked at her and smiled and said, “Goodbye, sweetheart.” He wasn’t really her type. She didn’t mind the wheelchair, but guys with beards had always kind of disgusted her because they reminded her of her uncle Costas from Astoria who used to try to feel her up when she was thirteen. But Bobby didn’t seem like a bad guy. She felt bad that they were gonna have to kill him.

Angela didn’t know how everything had gotten so screwed up. It was bad enough that that innocent girl had to die, but then Dillon had to go and kill a cop. Getting Max’s money was turning out to be a lot harder than she’d thought it would be. Besides, after hearing on the news about how brutal Dillon had been with the two women and then seeing him stick that knife into the cop’s chest like he was getting off on it, she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry him anymore anyway. You marry a whackjob like that, were you expecting white roses? Yeah, right. She didn’t know where all that rage came from. One minute, he was talking about all that Buddhist peace shit or quoting the poetry of that Yeats guy, and the next thing he’d smack her across the face.

She’d go, “The fook did I do?”

Nothing, was the answer, but he’d laugh, go, “Just in case you were thinking of fooking me over, and there’s more where that came from – call that a taster.”

Then he’d take out a knife and start cleaning his nails with it, staring at her with that deadeye look.

But she couldn’t break up with him now. She had to wait until this mess was over with and then decide what to do.

It started to rain as Angela continued along Fifth Avenue. She didn’t feel like taking a bus or paying for a cab so she just kept walking, hardly realizing that she was getting soaked.

When she got home Dillon was sitting in his underwear on the bed watching music videos saying, “You brung me fookin dinner, I hope.”

“I figured we’d just order in or something,” Angela said.

“You said you were gonna pick it up, yah bleedin bitch.”

“So I forgot. What’s your problem?”

“I’ve been trapped here all day and guess what, I’m starving – that’s what my problem is, so get in the kitchen, get me some stew – you’re Irish, stew is yer birthright. Put lots of cabbage and bacon in there, and don’t forget the spuds, you got that, bitch?”

“I’m not your bitch,” Angela said.

Now, his voice getting all gentle again, he asked, “What’s that, mo croi?”

“Shut up.”

He laughed. “That’s funny,” he said. “I really like that, mo croi.”

Angela sat at the kitchen table and started taking off her wet shoes.

“Food, now!” he roared.

“You could’ve ordered in something yourself,” she said.

“And have a delivery boy come up here and ID me? It’s all on the news and shite. They’re talking about how that cop you brought up here is missing and they got a cartoon of me in the paper, tis the spit of me too. That Chinese hoor informed on me arse, the one I dumped that jewelry on in Chinatown. What if the cop I did told other cops he was following you last night? I’ve been sitting here all day, waiting for the cops to show up – Jaysus, it’s worse than the Falls Road, waiting for the Brit patrols.”

“I told you you shouldn’t sell that jewelry.”

“Well, I did and get this right in yer dumb head, you don’t tell me dick. You have two jobs, and both begin with f. One is food.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, and that’s the other one.”

“If we wind up in jail now it’s because you sold that jewelry.”

He got up suddenly, a bad sign, and said, “I don’t do jail, get that?”

There was something in his voice. “That’s it,” Angela said. “I’ve had it.”