Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

I sat down next to Kit.

“Nice to meet you all,” I said.

“Charmed,” Sonia said.

Touched and Jackie kept their own counsel. Touched merely nodding, Jackie pretending not to see me.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Gerry asked.

“Whatever you’re having,” I said.

Gerry poured me some Budweiser.

“Kit told us about you,” Touched said. “You helped her out in a big way.”

“Aye.”

“And what exactly were you doing in the bar that night?” Touched asked, raising his eyebrows slightly.

Gerry looked at Touched as if he had committed a social faux pas by being so impertinent, but he let the question stand, so I had to answer it.

“Well, I was itching to be in a gun battle and that looked like just the right place,” I said.

Touched grinned and his penetrating eyes bored into me for a moment.

“And the real answer?”

“Looking for a job, really,” I said.

“A job. I see. And where are you from again?” Touched asked.

“Belfast. Ma was from Carrickfergus.”

“Thought that was a Proddy town.”

“Everybody thinks that. Not all of it,” I said.

“There’s a song about it, isn’t there?” Gerry asked with a smile.

“Aye, there certainly is. Dreary, bloody awful song it is, too,” I said.

“Family still over there?” Touched asked.

“Cousins in Cork but my ma and da are both pushing up the daisies,” I said.

“Sorry to hear that,” Touched said with no sorrow at all in his sleekit, suspicious face.

“How long you been on the fair shores of the New World?”

Gerry asked.

I looked at Touched. How could he stand to listen to Gerry talk like this? Kit and Sonia would be indifferent but Touched was an old guerrilla buddy.

“I’ve been on the fair shores about a month,” I said with slight sarcasm and a straight face.

“Doing what precisely?” Touched asked.

“Anything. Christ, you should see what I’m doing now. Kit’ll tell you, bloody embarrassing,” I explained, trying to get Kit back into what was becoming a difficult one-sided conversation.

“Oh, Daddy, he’s a gladiator on the beach, fighting the Christians or something, isn’t that right, Sean?” Kit said.

“Sort of.”

“I’ve heard about that, it’s the Greek festival, isn’t it?” Sonia asked, suddenly brightening.

“Yes, we’re dressed up as Hector and Achilles,” I said.

“Aye, I seen that too, pair of you dressed up like a couple of fruits, skirts and everything,” Jackie said.

Well, Achilles was passionately in love with Patroclus, I nearly said to tweak Jackie, but I remembered that Sean McKenna would probably never have heard of Patroclus, so, alas, Jackie’s remark went untweaked.

“I think it’s a very good idea to boost our cultural heritage like that,” Sonia said.

I smiled at her. Not a bad-looking lass really. If she gained a few pounds, saw a bit of sunlight now and again, and renounced the dark side, she might just be an acceptable piece of ass.

“And are you happy in your job?” Touched asked.

“It’s ok,” I said.

“You like the fucking skirts?” Jackie mocked, laughing as heartily as if he had just cracked a devastating Wildean bon mot.

“They are popular among the warrior peoples of the Celts. But I can tell you don’t know much about warriors, Jackie,” I said with a twinkle in my eye.

Jackie started going for me, but Touched put a hand on his shoulder. Light aphorisms were clearly the way to get to the wee shite. Have to remember that one for the future.

“Well, I, for one, am very happy to have met such an enterprising young man, it’s not easy to be magnas inter opes inops,” Gerry said, pleased with himself.

“His name’s Sean, not Magnus, Daddy,” Kit said.

I would have loved to be able to source Gerry’s remark to impress him but that probably would also have been a mistake. Besides, I had no bloody clue what he was talking about.

Gerry struggled to his feet, pulled his polo shirt over his enormous stomach and holstered gun, and gave me a wink. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make use of the facilities.”

Touched nodded at Jackie. Jackie stole a look at me, got up, and followed Gerry out of the booth. He was protection tonight, which meant that he also had a piece on him.

“I’ll take the opportunity too,” Sonia said and looked at Kit.

“Me, too,” Kit said in that bubbly voice of hers.

“Fucksake, are they giving out twenties for turds tonight?” Touched said, laughing. But I could see that they were giving him five minutes alone with me. It was a bit obvious, but I’m sure they were thinking, you can’t be too careful these days.

“Because of the incident. Jackie or me go everywhere with Gerry,” Touched said when they had gone.

“You’re both armed,” I said.

“Aye.”

“The incident,” I mused.

“The incident,” Touched said without inflection, his eyes narrowing.

“Kit said her da got caught up in that shooting by accident,” I said.

“But you don’t believe that, do you?” Touched asked.

“No,” I said.

“Tell me what you know,” Touched said.

“I asked around. Kit’s da was a player back in the olden days. So I reckon it wasn’t an accident at all. I reckon the hit was on him,” I said.

“Why would the boys want to hit an old pal like Gerry?” Touched asked.

“A million reasons. He wasn’t making his payments, he pissed off the wrong guys, or maybe he didn’t like the new direction the movement’s been taking recently,” I said confidently and took a sip of my beer.

“By direction you mean what?” Touched asked.

“The bloody cease-fire, what else? Fucking capitulation, if you ask me.”

Touched nodded, lit himself a cigarette.

“When you were doing your snooping, did you ask around about me?”

“First of all, mate, I wasn’t doing any snooping. Just asked a few questions. Second of all, I never heard of you until five minutes ago. You weren’t there that night,” I said.

“Aye, more’s the pity,” Touched said and rubbed his chin.

We sat in silence and I took another sip of beer.

“So,” Touched continued, “you have Gerry pegged as an old Provo that the Ra either wanted rid of or scared into toeing the party line. Am I right?”

“Something like that.”

Touched nodded and shook the hair out of his face.

“What do you have me pegged as?” Touched asked.

An aging nutjob who looks like a roadie for the Grateful Dead.

“I don’t have you pegged as anything yet,” I said.

Touched sat back in the chair.

“You’re a keen guy,” Touched muttered.

“I just read the papers like everybody else,” I protested.

“Where did you go to school?”

“Didn’t really. Bounced around. Belfast High School for a few years, then I left.”

“What did you do after?”

“I was a brickie in Spain, dicked around London for a while.”

“You’re not one of those fucking illiterate Paddy navvies, are you? You can read and write though, can’t you?” Touched asked with disgust.

“Of course. I’m a big reader,” I said indignantly, maybe a bit too indignantly.

“Ever been inside?”

“Never.”

“Never?” Touched persisted.

“Well, do you mean jail or prison?”

“Prison.”

“Never. Couple of overnight bins here and there, police lockups, never what you might call real prison time,” I said.

“That’s good, the smart ones never do a day’s time in their lives,” Touched said, beginning to warm to me. He took a knot out of his gray hair and wrinkled his brow, maybe remembering his own numerous stretches in joints and lockups all over the British Isles.