Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

“That enough goddamn light for you?” I said.

I went to kick him but the blows to the head had hardly dented that thick skull. He swung the tire iron at me. It crashed into the Mercedes, scraping a big chunk out of the door.

In the Book of Five Rings and other Chinese manuals of martial arts, there’s a maxim that says: “If there’s a big bastard with a tire iron trying to murder you and you’re armed with only a flashlight, a good option is to fucking leg it.”

I legged it.

I ran straight for the dense bank of fog farther down the street. I got about ten paces before he rugby tackled me to the ground. Jesus. For a big guy he sure could move. He was holding me around the legs. I stuck my thumb in his right eye socket and gouged and he let go of me and screamed. He lashed out with the tire iron but I slid out of the way as it came crashing down on the pavement with a nasty discordant clanging noise. I got to my feet but the strapping around my prosthesis had come undone. It would take a minute to fix it. A minute, a thousand years, no difference in this situation.

I leaped on his back and put my arm around his throat and squeezed. He somehow managed to stand up with me on top of him and then he staggered and fell deliberately backward in an attempt to crush me underneath him. I let go of his throat and pushed him away. He grabbed me by my leather jacket, threw me violently to the street, lost his balance, fell down, and bounced to his feet again like Gene Kelly on crack.

Something flashed and I saw that now he had a knife in his left hand and the tire iron in the other.

“Bloody attack me, would you? I’ll kill you for that, you bastard,” he said.

“Jesus, me attack you? You were going to brain me,” I said, breathing hard.

“I wasn’t going near you,” he said, gasping.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I wasn’t going near you.”

“What are you saying? You weren’t going to attack me?” I asked.

“Hell, no, what are you talking about?”

“Are you saying this is all a misunderstanding? I thought you were about to beat me to death,” I said incredulously.

“What the fook would I do that for?” the cabbie asked.

“I thought you were a hit man,” I said, my voice becoming a little less disbelieving.

“A hit man, Jesus Christ, have you some imagination. I wanted to check me tires.”

“Oh, shit,” I said and groaned. That was my problem all over-I knew how to go from zero to a hundred, but I didn’t know how to dial it down.

“Shit is right, I’ll be taking you to the Garda, me bucko. I think you broke my nose. Sue you, I will, and I’ll press charges.”

“Jesus, I’m really sorry, mate, I read the situation all wrong. Usually I get it right but this time-”

“Save it for the judge. Don’t know what your problem is. You better wait in the Beemer, we have some haggling to do if you don’t want me to call the peelers,” the big man said, getting his breath back and turning away from me. That was all I needed to hear. I readied myself.

He began walking back to the car.

I ran at him and drop-kicked him in the back. He went down hard with a crash. The tire iron slipped out of his hand and he rolled around fast and lashed out with the knife. I was so close it caught me in the stomach, tearing my leather jacket and T-shirt and gouging a four-inch slash below my belly button.

I held my hand over the wound, blood pouring out between my fingers, and reeled for a quarter of a second, gathered my wits, grabbed the tire iron, and smashed it into his head so fast he didn’t have time to get a protective arm up. I thumped him on the temple and behind the ear. And again. And again.

I kicked the knife out of his hand.

Blood was everywhere, his skull was cracked, synaptic fluid oozing out onto his face.

“Why?” he said and gave me a look of such confusion that I thought, is it possible that I’m wrong?

I sank to one knee.

“What did you say?”

He looked at me with desperation.

“Why?” he whispered almost inaudibly.

I leaned next to him. Doubt took over. I cradled his head. His eyes were blinking fast, his body shaking. I had made a terrible mistake.

“You called your car a Beemer, and it’s a Merc. How could you forget the make of your own car? I thought you’d hijacked it.”

“Christ,” he said.

I set down his head and got to my feet.

“Help, can anybody help?” I managed to shout, but there was no one around. I knelt down again.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Padraig.

His face was a mess, his skull smashed in. If he didn’t get assistance he’d be in serious trouble. Blood on the brain, coma, death.

I had really cocked up this time.

His hand reached up and he pulled me close.

He was barely there, about to pass out, almost choking from the blood in his mouth.

“You fuck… Forsythe…” he said weakly.

One second. Two. Three.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Fucking kill you… Forsythe,” he mumbled, his voice trailing away.

His eyes closed and he fell into the black pit of unconsciousness.

I stood, nodded.

Well, well, well.

He was an assassin. No other way he could have known my name. Son of a bitch. I had been right.

Finish the bastard off? Nah. Wasn’t worth it.

But, oh Jesus, Bridget. What were you playing at? It didn’t make any sense. Didn’t she realize I’d get the first flight out now?

Blackness at the edges of my eyes.

I fell down onto the street.

I examined my belly. Losing blood. The gash wasn’t deep, but I didn’t like the look of it.

Blinked.

Stumbled.

Got up again.

The fog was lifting but I couldn’t see any houses or pedestrians or passing cars. I went to the Mercedes and got in. He’d left the key. I started the car and drove it about half a mile, anywhere, just to get away.

Pulled it into an alley. Passed out. Woke.

Blood flowing through my fingertips. Oozing, not pouring. Looked in the car for anything to do first aid. Nothing.

Opened the door. A swaying pavement, houses.

A sign said we were on Holles Street, which was near Marrion Square. Miles from Connolly. The cabbie’d had no intention of taking me to the train station. He was heading for the docks the whole time.

His job was supposed to be to lift me or kill me. But it was still puzzling. He had no gun. Why not? And why only one of him? And if it was a purely random shakedown how in the name of Jehovah did he know my name?

I grabbed my backpack, opened it, swallowed a couple of Percocet, got out of the car, popped the trunk.

Washer fluid, oil, spare tire, rags, assorted tools, big roll of duct tape. Do the job. I took off my T-shirt, ripped a rag in half, poured on the washer fluid, cleaned the wound.

Jesus.

Ride that pain.

I dried my belly with another rag, used a third as a bandage, and wrapped it on with four good turns of duct tape. Do for now.

Had to go, cops would be on me, needed to get some agua.

In a minute. In a minute.

I got back in the car, closed my eyes, and the blackness came and I was gone again.

A sliver of moon. A lemon sky. Morning drawing a breath across the window. Bridget’s hair spread out over the white sheets in a gossamer bloom of vermilion and gold.

She’s asleep on the pillow next to me. Eyes closed, mouth open.

The fan’s on, but I can still hear the phone ringing in the other room.

It can only be Scotchy, so I’m letting it go.

A smell of honeysuckle. The faint murmur of the city. Sunflowers poking up through the bottom of the fire escape.

Her body is so still and white and beautiful it could be carved from Botticino marble.