Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“Now you’ve done it, you’re in big trouble now, you fucking bastard,” Jackie said and then muttered something in that South Boston dialect I couldn’t understand at all.

He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a flick knife. He pushed the button, revealed the blade, and locked it into place. He staggered to his feet. His jacket was open and I could see that, as I’d suspected, he was packing heat. A little.38 Saturday Night Special, but he was going for the knife, not the gun. Not even Jackie was that stupid. Even drunk he had his limits and this was not meant to be a fight to the death. He just wanted to hurt me. He’d probably try to slash out with the switchblade rather than try to grapple me and stab me. It was good to know.

Jackie was between me and the door, so I was going to have to deal with him one way or another. To give myself more room I backed into the center of the toilet, away from the cubicles.

“Aye, you can run but you can’t hide,” he said, an ugly little grin appearing on his face. His eyes squinting from the blood dripping into them.

“I don’t know what Kit sees in you,” I said, articulating a thought I had been pondering for at least the last couple of hours. And he really was an unattractive creature. Pale, skinny, and not exactly endowed with brains.

Jackie attacked with the knife. He was faster than I’d been expecting and the blade nicked my shirtsleeve. He laughed.

“Have you now,” he sneered.

I moved towards the rear wall. He had a knife but I had all the advantages. He was drunk, I was sober. He was clumsy and I was poised. He had no idea what he was doing whereas I had been bloody sword fighting for a week, had been trained by the army in unarmed combat, and had been boxing shites like him since I was fifteen.

I remembered a move from this afternoon.

I pretended to slip on the bathroom floor.

I half went down.

“Gotcha,” Jackie said gleefully. He bent down and swung the blade in a big arc, trying to cut me on the left arm, which I’d raised in a defensive posture. I dropped my hand so that the edge of my palm caught him on the forearm. I tugged him towards me, kicked at his feet, and hooked my thumb into the nerve bundle on his wrist. He let go of the knife and lost his balance. I wrenched him to the floor, pushed his head down, got up, snatched the chalkboard from above the urinal, and smacked it down on the top of his skull. Jackie yelled as the board broke in half and I smacked him again with one of the pieces, knocking him spreadeagled to the floor.

Blood drooled out of his mouth and he groaned incoherently.

I picked up the knife and began walking it across the room to the nearest trash bin.

That was my only mistake.

I’d thought he was out for the count and I’d forgotten about the firearm.

Jackie was now so enraged that any notion of proportionality had long since departed his dazed consciousness.

He sprawled on the floor, rolled to one side, and tried to pull the revolver out of the shoulder holster under his jacket. He got the gun into his hand. I turned round, saw what he was about, ran at him, and jumped. My big Stanley boots landed on his back, knocking the wind clean out of him.

I placed one knee on his throat, pushed the other hard down on his wrist, bent over, removed the gun from a hand already turning purple.

I squeezed his throat with my knee until his face reddened and he began to pass out.

“Will I kill ya, Jackie?” I asked.

The fight was out of his eyes. He was frightened.

“Nah, I won’t. At least not today,” I said.

I stood, emptied the shells from the revolver, and dropped knife, gun, and shells into the nearest toilet bowl.

Jackie was only semiconscious now.

“Fugga, have you, keep fugga mits off her.”

But the adrenaline was pumping through me, so maybe that was my excuse for piling on. I pissed onto the gun, knife, and bullets, zipped up, washed my hands, kicked Jackie in the stomach for good measure, and exited the men’s room.

I fixed my T-shirt, wiped his blood off my steel toe caps, and walked back across the bar.

Back at the booth, they’d been talking about me.

“What took you so long?” Kit asked as I sidled in next to her.

“In one of the toilet cubicles there’s a portal to the land of Narnia. I went through, got married, met Aslan, became a prince, and had fifteen kids; of course, only minutes passed for you, that’s because of the time-dilation effects off General-”

Kit grabbed my leg to shut me up.

“Dad wants to say something to you,” she announced significantly and looked at her father.

Gerry cleared his throat.

“Yes. Kit tells me that you’re a very hard worker and she mentioned that you’re looking for a new job,” Gerry said.

I faked an aw-shucks and stared at Kit.

“Well, I suppose so,” I said, as diffidently as I could.

“Have you done any construction before?” Gerry asked.

“Oh aye, sure enough, hod carrying, mixing cement, brickie stuff,” I said.

“In this country the dwellings are made of wood, so that won’t be much good to you here,” Gerry said sternly.

“Ach, Gerry, stop teasing him, offer him the fucking job,”

Touched said, winking at me.

“Would you like gainful employment?” Gerry asked with a grin.

“I certainly would,” I said.

“Then it’s yours, my young friend,” Gerry said, stretching his big paw across the table. I shook it and said politely:

“Thank you very much, Mr. McCaghan.”

“Gerry, call me Gerry, the only one that calls me Mr.

McCaghan is the bloody magistrate.”

“Thank you, Gerry.”

“Come by tomorrow, I’ll fix you up and give you a place to stay, rent-free if you want it,” Gerry said.

“That’s very generous,” I said.

“No, it’s not really, you’ll stay in one of the premises we’re renovating; it means I can rise you earlier and work you longer,” Gerry said and started to laugh, his big body shaking with unaccountable mirth.

We talked a little about construction and Gerry launched into a story about a Portuguese man who fell into a cement mixer, Touched hinting that he had pushed him in as a practical joke. At the end of the story Sonia yawned behind her hand. Gerry took the sign and got slowly to his feet. When Gerry stood, everybody stood, and such was his presence I found myself getting up as well.

“Look, we better head on to pastures new. Come by the company tomorrow. It’s on Plum Island. You know how to get there?” Gerry asked.

“Aye,” I said.

“Where’s Jackie?” Kit asked.

“Last I saw he’d collapsed in the toilet, think he was the worse for drink,” I explained.

Touched looked at me, at first with suspicion but then a glimmer of understanding came into his eyes.

He’d been watching Jackie and he was astute. He reckoned he knew what had transpired in the bog. He pushed hard on my shoulder as Gerry and Sonia started putting on their jackets. Touched leaned in to whisper to me, all the while keeping his eyes on the bar.

“Jackie’s my boy, he won’t bother you again, I’ll see to that. But, just so as you know, if you lay a finger on him one more time without my say-so, I’ll fucking kill ya. Savvy?” Touched said.

He squeezed a little on my shoulder to emphasize the point.

“If he doesn’t bother me, I won’t bother him,” I said.

Touched nodded. “Good,” he said. “We understand each other.”

“We do. Make sure Jackie understands too,” I muttered, glad that I’d gotten the last word.

Touched turned to Gerry and led him towards the toilets to gather up their fallen comrade.

“Bye,” Kit said happily to me, catching her dad and looping her arms between him and Sonia.