Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

The boys were drinking and doing an excellent job of not seeing me. After a while, they put the stereo on and started fucking around with Ramón’s stuff.

I went over and told them to cut it out.

They asked me who the fuck I thought I was, and Moreno stood up and started cursing me out a few inches from my face. He’d clearly had it with me. A freeloading fucking Yankee who Ramón was fucking in love with or something. He was yelling, and his nose was an inch from mine now and I was thinking, So this is how it ends, the fucking ignominy of it. Me and him grabbing our pieces at the same time. Me getting one off, the lads spraying me so that I’m more hole than cheese.

Moreno was shouting at me and showing me a bullet scar in the shoulder he must have taken in loyal service to Ramón.

Fuck it, Moreno, I said. You boys wanna see a real fucking wound?

They didn’t understand, but they stopped while I rolled up my trouser leg, took my foot off.

They didn’t know.

Moreno shut up. All of them shut up.

In that silence, standing there with my foot off and feeling utterly ridiculous, Ramón came back.

He slipped in as normal, dressed in a coat too big for him. He looked at us for an embarrassing moment and said nothing. He was with his boys, and he muttered something to José, and José said something in Spanish, and everyone went back to the lab. He called me over, and I sat next to him on the white sofa. I gathered my wits and pulled myself together. He waited until I’d strapped my foot on again.

You’re bored, he said.

I shook my head.

Are you strong? he said.

I nodded.

He came straight to the point. His voice was low and in a whisper.

Michael, they stagger things now, they’re careful, different places, but we know their meeting is tonight in the old place, and if you want to go we can give you a lift up there.

I didn’t need to be told what meeting or who he was talking about. It was time for business.

Ok, I said.

Ramón drove me. We didn’t talk. He was smoking a cigar and listening to some crazy Dominican music low on his CD system. He left me ten blocks from the Four Provinces and asked if I needed anything. I told him I was ok. I walked to the spot where I’d waited for Bridget, the alley between the buildings that gave me a good view of the front door.

I waited for three hours, until it was after midnight. Come on, Darkey, come on, Darkey, come on, Darkey, I was saying over and over. But no bloody Darkey.

People going in and out, strangers, all of them. Ramón had said something about a change in routine, but I didn’t see how that would affect the regulars at the Four P. Eventually, though, at near to bloody closing, I did see a couple of old stagers I recognized, and a wee while after that, Mrs. Callaghan appeared at the side entrance with a box of rubbish. But even so, it was getting late, and I was thinking that Ramón’s intelligence wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when who should appear in all his Lundy-Quisling-Vichy glory but Big fucking Bob.

I recognized his ugly shadow before I saw him slinking out the side entrance of the Four Provinces, swaying a bit and singing. Cramped, I staggered to my feet and went after him. He was walking down the alley next to the Four P., heading for the empty lot that people used as a car park. I ran across the waste ground and pulled out the Colt. Bob didn’t know I was after him even though I was making enough noise to wake the dead and damned, a sort of a half-run, galumphing, and making progress but not exactly doing Warp Factor 8. Bob had stopped at the corner of the lot, and when I got to the street a little up from the bar, he climbed into a red Honda Accord and drove off. I leveled the.45 and took aim, but he was so far away and in the dark and with that gun I’d never get a good shot off. I ran to the main street and flagged down the first car I saw. A cream-colored Cadillac, turning at the corner, probably pulling into the same car park for the Four Provinces. The driver either didn’t see me or was ignoring me. I sprinted over and pointed the Colt at the windshield.

Hey, fucker, I yelled.

The driver was a bald man in his forties, dark lawyer suit, somewhat distracted, fiddling with his seat belt, playing around with it, and trying to turn into a space at the same time. He didn’t see or hear me and was still driving and almost hit me.

I banged his window and turned the gun on him.

Get out of the fucking car or I’ll fucking kill you, I said in pure West Belfast, and that was enough to get his attention.

He stopped the car and looked at me white-faced. He was shitting himself, perhaps literally. I opened the door.

Get the fuck out, I screamed.

He was sweating and nearly crying.

My seat belt’s stuck, it’s stuck, it’s stuck, he was saying in a complete panic.

I leaned over and clicked the release button.

Get out, I said. He still didn’t move, so I had to tug the fucker out by his lapels.

He tumbled onto the pavement.

I pointed the gun at his head.

Wait until morning before calling the police, understand, otherwise I fucking kill you and your fucking wife and your fucking dog. Geddit? I said, and got into the car without waiting for a reply. There was a huge box of Huggies blocking the view out the passenger-side window. I chucked them out, stuck the vehicle in drive, and headed off. Bob, of course, was nowhere now to be seen. Jesus.

I drove down the road. Tons of traffic. I turned the corner, heading her up towards Broadway. He’d either have gone left or right. I decided on left and went fast and by pure jammy-dodger luck at the turn across Van Cortlandt I saw him.

Driving cautious, drunk-man speed, but keeping a cool head and not too slow. He was heading east either up the shore or onto Long Island or maybe even doing a turnabout to go down into Manhattan. I tried to think if I’d ever heard anyone speak about where Bob lived, but I didn’t recall it ever coming up. He tried to make a traffic light and then aborted the plan and stalled the car, coming to a screechy stop. He was a bit freaked, and he took a couple of tries to get it going again. Someone behind honked him, and I saw Bob undo his seat belt as if he was going to get out of his car and have words.

Bob, stay in the car, don’t get yourself arrested, you big shite, I was saying.

He changed his mind about the seat belt and got going again. He took a wrong turn or two and had to double back, and I wondered if he was being especially clever trying to figure out if there was a tail on him. But he wasn’t that smart or collected-just half blitzed probably.

He took us on a path through the South Bronx and somehow we ended up in Queens. Bob pulled in at a newsstand and got himself some cigs and a Coke and a copy of Penthouse . The newsstand was fairly isolated and I thought about doing it there, but this was no place for business; and besides, I wanted to have a word with the big ganch. So I let him go. He drank the Coke, and it improved his driving.

We went together out past La Guardia and Shea and I became reasonably convinced that Bob lived somewhere on the North Shore of Long Island. It was late and traffic was light and I had a job keeping the big cream-colored Caddy far enough away to avoid getting in Bob’s paranoid rearview mirror.

The highway was brightly lit and the cars going too fast, but at least it was an automatic so that my left foot wasn’t always on the clutch. It was the first time I’d driven since I’d come back from Mexico and the straps that held the foot onto my leg had almost given way on the run across the waste ground. I wasn’t in the mood to do any Long John Silvers, so I was glad they’d stayed on. I made a mental note, though, to go see Dr. Havercamp about those running lessons he was offering before.