Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

I’m not listening because I don’t care. I don’t care what Shovel has done or what has happened to Andy or what Scotchy is going to do about it. I don’t giving a flying fuck but of course he tells me everything anyway. The boss has gone and he, Scotchy, is going to take the initiative. Lesser men than me could foresee trouble in the tea leaves. Scotchy’s always been an ill-starred unlucky lout and chances are we’ll go over to Shovel’s house, me and him, and then Shovel or Shovel’s girlfriend will end up throwing hot fat on us or shooting us or calling the bloody peelers or sticking our fingers in the toaster or something worse. That would be typical of Scotchy. ’Course, whatever happened he would live and in the incident I’d be blinded in one eye or lamed or scarred for life. That would just be the way of it.

Suddenly a thought occurs to me.

If he hasn’t spoken, how do you know it was Shovel? I ask.

Stands to reason, doesn’t it? He was over at Shovel’s asking for cash; Shovel had already told me he wasn’t paying nothing. Bastard must have got Andy in the street, from behind.

Oh yeah, stands to reason, Sherlock. Clearly that’s the only fucking explanation, I mutter sarcastically.

Fucksake, Bruce, you fucker. Fucking fucker. Listen to me, you insubordinate wanker, just get the fuck up here, Scotchy yells furiously.

Oh Scotchy, keep your hair on. Look, I’m on my way, ok? I say with just a hint of deference now.

Scotchy hangs up. I take the phone and kill a water bug on the wall with it. I hang up and go back into the bedroom and close the window.

I’m going to have to take the train after all. This also is typical and it’ll cost me another token. I sigh and splash water on my face. I get my jacket, and in case it’s going to be an all-nighter I put cigs, reading material, matches, and cash in the pockets. I pull on my Doc Martens, brush my hair, shove in extra ammo, the wee.22, and go out.

I know at least five Scotchys. Scotchy Dunlow, who beat the shit out of me every Friday night at Boy’s Brigade for seven years. Scotchy McGurk, who was a player and whom I personally saw drop half a cinder block on some guy’s chest for a tremendously minor reason and who got shot in a typically botched robbery on a bookie’s. Scotchy McMaw, who lost a hand in a train-dodge accident in Carrickfergus and who was quite the weird one after that but who ended up saving a boy’s life when they were out fishing in a boat, swimming to shore with one arm and later getting some bravery award from Princess Diana. Scotchy Colhoun, who also was a bad lad and got himself nicked for racketeering and murder and went in the Kesh (though he must be out by now because of the Peace Process). Finally, of course, is our Scotchy, Scotchy Finn. None of them needless to say has or ever had any connection whatsoever with Scotland. How they all became Scotchy is a matter of mystery to me and probably them as well.

Scotchy Finn himself does not know. He grew up in Crossmaglen and then Dundalk, which, if you know Ireland at all, could only mean one thing. And sure enough, it turns out his da, ma, three brothers, two uncles, and an aunt were all at one point in the Lads. They started Scotchy early and he did time at some kind of juvenile prison for something. He says it grew too hot for him across the sheugh , which is why he ended up first in Boston and then the Bronx. To be honest, I’m a bit skeptical about all his stories of “ops” and “encounters” with the Brits, the Proddies, the Intelligence Corps, the SAS, and the cops. He says it was the Irish peelers, the Garda Síochána, that gave him his limp for petrol smuggling (a limp that only ever appears when he wants sympathy for something), but I heard from Sunshine he fell off the roof of a parked car after he’d had eleven pints at Revere Beach. This was before he started working for Darkey, and you can’t really imagine Scotchy at the beach because his skin is as thin and pale as fag paper and he looks like yon boy that gets beat up at the beginning of the Charles Atlas ads. Red hair, white skin, bad teeth, bad smell disguised by bad musk and that’s our Scotchy. I don’t know how long he’s been here. Ten years, fifteen? He still has a Mick accent (funny one too, touch of the jassboys Crasssmaglayn) but he has Yank clothes and Yank sensibility to money and girls. He doesn’t whine on about the Old Country like some wanks ya run into, which I suppose at least singles him out from your average Paddy bastard. That’s not to say that he’s likable. Not at all. Sleekiter wee shite you’d be hard pressed to meet, but he’s ok if you don’t mind that kind of thing, which personally I sort of do. He’s a bloody thief, too, and he robs me blind behind my back, and if I wasn’t the new boy on the block I’d say something but I am and I’m not going to.

Our man, our fearless leader for one night only, thank God. Typical that it would be this night Scotchy was running the show. For, of course, I wasn’t to know, but tonight was going to be a night that helped set off a whole wonderful series of violent and unpleasant events. Indeed, the only caveat you’ll get is right now when I say that if someone grows up in the civil war of Belfast in the seventies and eighties, perhaps violence is his only form of meaningful expression. Perhaps.

The train ride was uneventful. I brought a book with me about a Russian who never gets out of bed. Everyone was upset with him, but you could see his point of view. I got off at the end of the line and walked up the steps. It was this walk every day that was the only thing at all keeping me in shape. These steps that separated Riverdale from the rest of the Bronx. Hundreds of the buggers. When the Bronx rises up to kill us, at least we’ll have the high ground, Darkey says.

I was nearly up, hyperventilating, almost at the Four P., when one of the old stagers grabbed me. It was dark and he scared the shite out of me. Mr. Berenson was in his seventies, very frail, and was hard pressed to frighten anyone, but I suppose I was feeling jumpy. I didn’t really know Mr. Berenson and only found out his name later. Much later, when it had all started to go pear-shaped and I felt bad and he was topped and I did some research and discovered he wasn’t really called Berenson at all, but was actually some East German geezer who’d changed his name because probably he worked for Himmler in Poland or something. Anyway, he’s not at all important in the big picture, so I’ll just say that he was stooped, with one of those vague East European accents that you think only exist in the movies. His fingers were stained with nicotine; he was waving them in my face and he was in a mood.

You wor for Scoshy? he said.

No, I work with him. I work for Mr. White, I said.

I tell him, mons ago someone bray in house, prow around.

Someone broke in your house? I said.

Yes, I’m telling you, I get up, I frighten him, he go.

When was this?

December.

Maybe it was Santa Claus.

He was a bit pissed off at that.

Now you lissen to me, young man. Some nigger bray in house, steal nothing, no come back. I thin to myself, why? Why do this? Time passes, I forget. Two neiss ago, he comes back. I am out. But I know he has been.

He take anything?

No.

What’s your problem?

He bray in.

Go to the peelers.

What?

Cops, go to the cops. Or get a locksmith. Aye, a locksmith.

He wasn’t too happy at what I considered to be a sensible solution. But I wasn’t too happy either. You’re a sort of social worker when you come up here, especially with the old timers. There’s never really anything wrong or anything they want. They just want to peg you down and chat away their loneliness for a while. Scotchy’s better at deflecting them than me. I’m too new, look too understanding.