Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

With my cracked foot I can only get halfway up the stairs before the thing goes off. A boiling white ball of fire. You bury your head, but you don’t put your hands over your head. You’ll need your hands in a second to shoot people and at this stage you can’t have them disabled or worse, burnt off completely. As it is, my back’s on fire as I roll onto the landing. I take my T-shirt off before it melts on me. Not badly burnt. I catch my breath. Calm down. Ok, he’ll be round after me in a sec, but there’s still that blind spot at the bottom of the stairs and he’ll be cautious after seeing his mates all curled up there in the hall. He’s thinking the grenade got me, but he didn’t hear any screaming, so he’ll go slow. My trousers are on fire. I pat myself down, and as quick as I can I drag myself to the upstairs bathroom. I open the window, climb out, lower myself down onto the kitchen roof, and then drop from the gutter onto the patio. My leg gives way under me. Somehow I get up. I limp in the back door of the house and through the kitchen and then gently open the kitchen door that leads into the hall. He’s there still, slowly making his way to the bottom of the stairs. His gun is one of those nifty Belgian jobs. He’s tall, curly-haired, with a denim jacket and black jeans. He’s wearing sunglasses. He’s inching along. He’s assuming I’m dead, but taking no chances. You have to be careful but, you know, sometimes you can be too careful.

Drop it, I say, and he spins wildly around. The Glock smiles and shoots him in the chest four times. He goes down, and I take a breath.

Thank you, Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles, I say to the statue in the hall. It’s a joke Ganesh and I share and he grins with his elephant head. For the obstacle is not them, or me, it’s the past that cannot be unwoven.

I do a thorough scout, and this time there are no more surprises. They were five of them. But, like eejits, they split themselves up. You’ve got to hand it to her, after all this time and after all that’s been happening on the earth. But don’t go cheap, love, get pros. Come on, you’re in New York, and I’m in L.A., my dear, isn’t that punishment enough? Ha.

Will there be a next time? There will. I know you. I know you now, not then, but now I do.

I hobble to the fridge and crack open a Corona. I take a big gulp. I pick up the phone and dial a number I’ve memorized these ten years. Ever since they took out that slug and saved my life and came and threatened me and I made a deal to save my sorry ass. I give my code name and then my handler’s.

They put me all the way through to his mobile. He’s outdoors somewhere near water. It’s lapping but it’s not breaking; he’s on a lake.

How’s the fishing? I ask him.

How- he begins, but I have to interrupt him; I’m going to need help quick before the peelers show and there’s not much time for idle chatter.

Listen, you were right, my mistake, I want back in the program, I say.

Ok.

Somewhere you get seasons.

Seasons, he says. You get seasons in L.A. It’s just that they’re all good.

Ok, somewhere with more rain.

More rain? he asks quizzically.

Yeah.

I think that can be arranged, he says.

I’ll need to go to a hospital.

Are you hurt?

Just a burn. I’ll live.

Lucky us.

Lucky you.

Are there casualties?

Yeah, it’s messy.

How many?

Five.

Shit.

Yeah.

Don’t worry, we’ll keep you safe, he says.

That would be nice, I say. The lie going down as easily as the booze.

I hang up. I pull in Paddy. The smoke alarm goes off and I play around a bit with the fire extinguisher. I make my way to the kitchen and put salve on my burned neck and scalp. I look at the scorch mark in the mirror; it doesn’t seem too bad. I grab another Corona. I get a bottle of gin and some aspirin. Shouldn’t really be drinking. I limp into the backyard and sit next to the pool.

Omar comes bounding over and barks at me through the gaps in the fence.

Good boy, good boy, I tell him, and he wanders off, pleased.

I finish the Corona and let the bottle drop. I sit up, swallow two aspirin with some gin and water.

I take a long look around…

A south wind is stirring the slender stems of pines. The hawsers bend, and there are murmurs in the clay figurines as the sun dips behind the fence. The evening star waits, beguiled, while airplanes and birds mark boundaries in all that blue abandonment.

The cars sing, the grass creaks in parks and cemeteries. I am calm, erased of all extraneous emotion. Collected. Easy. I feel the pine needles, the warm roads, the scent of butterflies, the sniff of coyotes in those teeming hills.

These are my last days in this town. And when the heat’s cooled down and I am safe and far away, I’ll disappear. Find you easier than you found me. I can see it. You and I, my honey love. Oh yes, Bridget, I can see your face. You and I in the still of the dark together. And in that moment, and in that place, Death incants a name and, somehow, it doesn’t sound like mine.

I close my eyes.

It well may be.

Adrian McKintywas born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles. He studied politics at Oxford University and after a failed law career he moved to New York City in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, postman, door-to-door salesman, construction worker, barman, rugby coach, book-store clerk and librarian. Having lived in Colorado for many years with his wife and daughters, he and his family have moved to Melbourne, Australia.

In addition to Dead I Well May Be , Serpent’s Tail publishes the other two volumes in Adrian McKinty’s The Dead Trilogy – The Dead Yard and The Bloomsday Dead , as well as Fifty Grand and Hidden River .