Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

I helped him out of the hammock and he walked over to the Portuguese. I stood behind him.

“You won’t work?” he said to the lead rebel. The man shook his head.

“You’re fired.”

The man stared at him.

“You’re fired. Get the fuck out of here. Translate, Sean.”

I told him in Spanish that he’d been axed and someone translated my Spanish into Azorean Portuguese. To further make things clear, Seamus slapped him in the head and kicked him off the building site.

“Who else won’t work? You?” he asked, pointing at one of the youngest men on the crew. “You’re fired too, get out of here. Anybody else?”

The rest of the men picked up their tools and got their backs into it. Seamus looked at me, satisfied.

“That’s it, Sean. Break the will of the leaders and the rest fall into line. That’s the dago mind-set all over. Now don’t fucking wake me again, or you’re on the chopping block yourself.”

An hour later. The boys had carved out two shallow ditches, three feet wide by ten feet long. The bulldozer path was complete.

“Señor, por favor…”

I shook my head.

“Sorry, lads. But if the bishop has given the ok-” I was about to explain that this was no longer God’s house when I noticed Samantha, ostensibly coming up from Plum Island beach carrying an umbrella, wearing outsize sunglasses and a big floppy hat. She was sauntering past the construction site and paying no attention to any of us. You could tell she was English: the last thing this big and this white in Massachusetts was Moby Dick. She washed her feet with a water bottle and walked to the car park at the lighthouse. No signal, no acknowledgment, nothing. But I knew this wasn’t a casual beach trip. She hadn’t been to the sea at all. She’d wanted me to see her, to let me know that something was happening.

She drove past in the big Mark 2 five minutes later, with the sunroof down, blaring “Like a Virgin” from her car stereo.

It was a very un-Samantha piece of music. She, who hadn’t heard of Scooby-Doo, liked Madonna? It made me think. Like a virgin… Of course.

“Touched for the very first time” was the second line of the chorus.

Jesus. Touched was up to something. Dan Connolly, who was a big Madonna fan, must have given her the idea.

I grinned.

Maybe those eejits weren’t so dumb after all.

I’d have to find an excuse to go into Newburyport later.

But for now the job at hand. I climbed into the big yellow bulldozer, turned the key in the ignition, and pushed the red starter button. The bulldozer growled into life. I lifted the massive steel-toothed bucket to about three-quarters elevation and drove the machine down the path that the Portuguese had cleared.

The church was a wooden single-story structure, simple, beautiful in a very un-Catholic, Puritan kind of way. I edged the bulldozer gently into the porch and pushed with the grabber. The entire edifice buckled.

The bulldozer had a fully enclosed cabin and I was wearing a hard hat but even so I ducked as the roof wobbled, the back wall caved in, and the church began to fall to pieces with an enormous crash. When the cross from the spire came tumbling down and smashed on the ground the Portuguese howled a few incantations to the Holy Ghost and Seamus genuflected when he thought I wasn’t looking. I reversed the bulldozer, lowered the grabber, and drove into the remaining wall and support beams.

The site was leveled in under ten minutes. The Portuguese men crossing themselves and muttering Ave Marias. No one on Plum Island seemed to care, no protests and no gawkers. I got out of the cab and brushed the debris off my white T-shirt, cargo pants, and Stanley work boots.

However, through the spirals of dust I noticed that there was someone who had seen and had come to see me. Aye, something was up.

“Well done, Sean,” Touched said and offered me his hand. Touched must have been watching from McCaghan’s house, which was about a quarter of a mile farther up on Plum Island’s Atlantic side.

“Thanks, Touched,” I said, trying out the nickname to see how it would play. He wasn’t fazed at all.

“Gerry will be pleased. Hell of a job, we can work on building those houses now,” he said with a distracted air.

“Ok.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and a gleam came into his eye. A gleam that could mean anything on that handsome, generous, psychopathic, murderous face.

“But not you though, Sean.”

“Not me?”

“I’ve been checking you out, mate,” he said. “Checking you out. Got something special lined up for you, if you’re up for it.”

Checking me out? So that’s what Samantha was trying to let me know. He had accessed his buddy on the Boston PD and run the files on Sean McKenna. Well, well, well.

“Something special? Will there be more money in it?” I asked.

“Could be.”

“Ok, then. I’m in.”

Short walk to Touched’s car. Me, Touched, Seamus. A big Toyota Land Cruiser that he’d obviously just stolen because it was still full of toys, a box of diapers, and wipes.

Touched handed Seamus and myself a pair of gloves. We put them on without asking why.

I got in back. Kit sitting there, smoking a cigarette. She was also wearing gloves, black tank top, black jeans, no bra. The nipples on her small breasts were erect because of the Land Cruiser’s powerful air-conditioning.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello. We saw you, like, totally bring down that church. Dude, that was pretty awesome,” she said. “I didn’t know you could drive one of those things.”

“One of my many hidden talents,” I said.

Touched and Seamus got in the front.

“How’s your boyfriend, Jackie, I believe he had a bit of an accident?” I said innocently.

“Yeah, that graffiti board in the End of the State totally fell down on him while he was peeing. He’s thinking of suing, you know?”

“Is that what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he should sue, open-and-shut case, I would have thought.”

“How do you like living on PI?” she asked, to change the subject.

“Nice place if you don’t mind getting eaten alive. The Pilgrim Fathers were on to something when they decreed that no flesh should be exposed. Sound religious reasons, possibly, but certainly practical common sense in the boggy, marshy coast of Massachusetts.”

“The pilgrims didn’t come up here,” Kit said.

Touched turned round to look at us.

“Listen, you two. Enough of the chitchat. This is serious. If you don’t want to go, now’s the time to opt out,” he said.

Kit shook her head, her eyes wide, slightly frightened, her chin jutting out with determination.

“Might help, Touched, if I know what I was opting out of,” I said.

Touched looked at Seamus, who nodded.

“What do you think? Is he one of us?” Touched asked.

“Seems ok to me,” Seamus said.

“What I say in this car is totally between us, if you’re not interested, you keep your fucking mouth shut and we’ll forget the whole thing, ok?” Touched said to me.

“Ok.”

“Aye. Sean, I heard that you were lifted in Northern Ireland for attacking a police car. And I heard that the peelers knocked the shite out of you. Heard you were a bit of a wee rebel when you were a kid,” Touched said cautiously.

“Where did you hear that?” I barked, trying to sound pissed off.

“Don’t fly off the handle, Sean, I don’t want to cause you any trouble, in fact quite the reverse. I had to check you out. These are very difficult times that we’re living in. It’s quite possible that Gerry is being watched by the cops or the FBI, although I think we might have heard about it before now. But that’s neither here nor there. The thing is, Sean, I have a wee contact in the Boston pigs and I got them to run you on the computer. I read about your past and I know where your sympathies used to lie, and I want to know if you still feel that way?”