Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

I hesitated and stared at him.

“But I have no real incentive to go, do I? You’re going to kill me once I get outside and into that van,” I protested.

“We’ll kill you right now. The.22 won’t make a sound. At least if we postpone it, you’ll have more of a chance. Maybe once we get in the van, you’ll talk me out of it, who knows?”

“I might convince you not to top me?” I said.

“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Forsythe, it’s unlikely, but stranger things have happened.”

I had no choice but to do what he said. I began walking toward the fire escape.

O’Neill beside me, holding my gun, Mikhail behind us.

“Maybe you should go back and put your book away. That Miss Plum is terribly overworked,” I said to O’Neill. He was tiring of my glibness now. His lips narrowed into a grim slit.

We reached the stairwell.

An echoing concrete space, devoid of people.

“We could kill him right here,” Mikhail said in some kind of Yugoslavian accent. I knew this because my old landlord in New York City had been a Serbian.

“Let’s not bring the library into it all,” O’Neill said with distaste.

“Dobar dan,” I attempted, trying to get Mikhail on my good side, but the bastard appeared completely unmoved.

Mikhail did a thorough search of my body, gave O’Neill my bag of.38 shells and all the money I had left in my pocket.

We walked carefully down the concrete steps and reached the fire exit door. O’Neill turned to Mikhail.

“You keep the gun on him, I’ll go out and see if there’s any peelers. Shoot him if he so much as blinks.”

O’Neill slipped out into the street. When he had gone, I turned to the big guy.

“Don’t take him literally on the blinking thing,” I said.

Mikhail nodded sullenly.

“Dobar dan again, Mikhail. Misha, my old mate. This could be your lucky day. I work for Bridget Callaghan and she’s the head of the Irish mob in the United States. We’ll pay you ten times what you’re getting in this small town, ten times and a green card, what do you say?”

Mikhail laughed, said nothing. Before I could think of anything else, O’Neill came back.

“It’s all clear, Tim has the van,” he said.

He looked at me.

“One move, one sound, Forsythe, and we’ll fucking kill you in the street, understood?”

I nodded.

He opened the fire exit door.

I stepped outside.

A big red Ford van double-parked twenty feet away along the pavement. A couple of meatpackers waiting beside the rear doors.

I walked slowly onto the sidewalk. The streets were comparatively empty. It was nearly six o’clock and Belfast has a short rush hour. Everyone who needs to get home is usually on a train or a bus by 5:30. Thursday was late shopping night, but today was not, alas, a Thursday. Only two witnesses on the whole street. A religious preacher with a megaphone and the bootleg video salesman.

“Faster,” O’Neill instructed.

The preacher spotted us and asked Mikhail and myself if we knew that our lives were hanging by a thread. Mikhail prodded me with the gun before I could give my ironic answer.

We stopped at the van. One of the meatpackers looked at me.

“That runt’s Michael Forsythe?” he said skeptically.

“That’s him,” O’Neill said. “Mikhail, help him inside.”

I didn’t want to get into the van. The van meant death. I made a last desperate plea to O’Neill.

“Look, please, whatever I’ve done, I don’t think this will solve anything. I’m not a bad lad, I don’t care what you’ve heard. Really, we should talk this over,” I said.

“Just get in the van,” O’Neill demanded.

No way. If I got in that van, I was toast. This would be my last opportunity to make a run for it, even if Mikhail did bloody shoot me.

I dropped to the ground, breaking Mikhail’s hold on my shoulder. I scrambled to my feet.

“Help, they’re gonna murder me,” I screamed at the top of my voice, tried to push past Mikhail and the other goons.

Someone thumped me in the head, I ate tarmac. Mikhail and one of the other boys picked me up bodily and threw me inside the van. I screamed all the louder, attracting the attention of the only person now left on the street.

“What the hell is going on there?” the video guy shouted.

“Get the police, I’m being kidnapped-” I managed before someone belted me in the mouth, the boys jumped in, and the van doors closed. O’Neill and Mikhail got in the front while three goons grinned at me in the back. We sped off into the traffic, Mikhail driving fast for some safe location.

A pretty large van that you could almost stand up in, about ten feet long. It was basically a shiny box with hooks in the ceiling that I didn’t like the look of one little bit. It was either a dry-cleaning delivery vehicle or a portable torture chamber. They weren’t meat hooks because the van wasn’t refrigerated.

The three boys were crouched at one end. I was up near the cab. No chance against the boys, but maybe if I could smash the glass through to the driver’s compartment I could cause an accident.

I thumped the glass with my elbow, it bounced off harmlessly, the van turned a corner, the three boys jumped me at once. I tried to clobber one, but these were big shits who knew exactly what they were doing. We didn’t even fight, they just grappled me to the floor and pinned me down.

One sat on my legs and the other two held down each arm.

O’Neill slid back the glass partition.

“Do you have him, Tim?” he asked.

“Aye, we got him.”

“Good.”

“What do you want us to do with him, Mr. O’Neill?” one of the goons asked. This eejit seemed to be the leader. Tim, tall, well built, viciously scarred, wearing a Man. United goalkeeper’s shirt and a Yankees cap.

“Well, first thing. We just did a cursory pat down, make sure he’s got nothing on him,” O’Neill said.

They violently searched me.

“Hey, he’s got no left foot, see that?” Tim said.

They stared at the prosthesis.

“You would never have known, I seen him walk just like a regular person,” Tim said.

“Get off me, I’ll fucking kill you all,” I yelled, but Tim bitchslapped me across the face and shoved a handkerchief in my mouth to shut me up. Now that I was restrained and quiet, O’Neill could give full vent to his fury.

“What in the name of God is going on, Tim? I thought people were taking care of him and, lo and behold, he comes up to my private sanctuary. You know he pointed a gun at me while I was working on my book?”

“Sorry, Mr. O’Neill,” Tim said.

“He came into my holy of holies and shoved a.38 in my face. You can imagine how surprised I was. I thought he was bloody dead already.”

“Really sorry, Mr. O’Neill.”

“I thought Sammy was going to take care of him at that boat? Eh? Was that not the plan? And it turns out Sammy did not take care of him at the boat?” O’Neill asked.

“Sammy’s dead, Mr. O’Neill, the whole thing was a disaster. Jimmy fired the RPG at a peeler foot patrol. There were injuries. I don’t know what went down. But the cops killed Sammy,” Tim said.

“Hey, where to?” Mikhail asked from the front.

“Just drive around for the moment, eventually we’ll have to take him out to the country,” O’Neill said.

Mikhail nodded.

“Tell me what happened,” O’Neill demanded.

“It’s not that clear yet but apparently Jimmy fired the RPG at him on the boat at the same time a foot patrol was coming. I suppose Jimmy thought he could get him and get away before the peelers got involved,” Tim explained.

“Jesus Christ. And you’re telling me there were casualties?” O’Neill asked. “Did anybody die?”