Lawrence Block - Everybody Dies

He hung up. "'The big fellow,'" he said. "It's presumption, hanging that tag on myself. That's what they called Collins."

"And De Valera didn't like it."

"A sanctimonious bastard, wasn't he? Tell me something. Where the hell's Cancún?"

"The Yucatán Peninsula."

"That's Mexico, isn't it? Mrs. McGinley like is there, likes it better than phone calls in the middle of the night. 'I can't wake him, he's sleeping.' Well, if he wasn't sleeping, you wouldn't need to wake him, you silly cow." He sighed, leaned back in the oak desk chair. "How the hell do you know Dev didn't like it? You never went to the movie."

"Elaine rented it," I said, "and we watched it on the VCR. Jesus Christ."

"What?"

"That was last night we saw it. It doesn't seem possible. It feels more like a week."

"It's a fully day you had, isn't it?"

"So much death," I said.

"The two we buried at the farm, and that was what, four nights ago? Then Peter Rooney, but you only know of him from my telling you. And then your friend, the Buddhist. I drank to his memory, and the next minute they were making a charnel house of Grogan's, killing people left and right. Burke was killed, you know."

"I didn't know."

"I looked for him and found him on the floorboards behind the bar, covered with glass from the mirror and with a terrible hole in his chest. Dead at his post, like a captain going down with the ship. I'd say that's the end of that bar. Next time you see it some Korean'll have it, selling fruits and vegetables around the clock."

He fell silent, and after a long moment I said, "I knew her, Mick."

"I thought you did."

"You know who I meant?"

"Of course I do. Herself as was sitting nearby, that you didn't want to be hearing their conversation. I had a feeling right then."

"Did you?"

"I did. Do you know, moving to the next table probably saved our lives. It put us off to the side and gave us that extra fraction of time to hit the floor before the bullets reached us." He cocked his head, looked at something on the wall. "Unless it's all worked out in advance," he said, "and you die when your time comes and not before."

"I wonder."

"Ah, that's man's lot, isn't it? To wonder." He opened desk drawers until he found the one with the bottle of Jameson in it. He cracked the seal and drank from the bottle. He said, "Was she the one, then?"

"The one?"

"Your bit on the side."

"I guess that's as good a phrase as any. We stopped seeing each other awhile ago."

"Did you love her?"

"No."

"Ah."

"I cared for her, though."

"That's rare enough," he said, and took another drink. "I never loved anyone. Aside from my mother and my brothers, but that's a different matter, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Of women, I loved none and cared for few."

"I love Elaine," I said. "I don't think I've ever loved anyone else."

"You were married before."

"A long time ago."

"Did you love her?"

"There was a time when I thought I did."

"Ah. What was this one's name?"

"Lisa."

"She was a fine-looking woman."

My mind filled with a picture of her as I saw her last, her skull shattered. I blinked it away and saw her in her apartment, wearing jeans and a sweater, standing in front of a window with a view of the setting sun. That was better.

"Yes," I said. "She was."

"It was sudden, you know. I doubt she ever knew what hit her."

"But she's gone."

"That she is," he said.

He had the old leather satchel on top of the desk and was poking around in it. "Cash from the safe," he said. "Some papers. All the guns I could grab up. The police can get a court order and torch the safe, or they'll do it without a court order. What they can't use as evidence against me they'll shove in their pockets. So I didn't want to leave them too much."

"No."

"And anything they left would be useless to me, as I couldn't go back for it. They'll have it sealed off, once they've finished with their photographs and measurements, all the scientific things they do. You'd know more about that than I."

"The crime scene routine's changed since my day," I said. "It seems to me they shoot a lot of videotape these days. And they keep getting more scientific."

"Though what's the need for science in this? One man sprays a room with. bullets and another hurls a bomb. I wonder have they finished carrying out the dead yet. I wonder how many dead there were, and others dying."

"We'll hear it on the news."

"Too many, whatever the number. A whole row drinking their pints at the bar, and a stream of bullets to knock them off their stools. Not Eamonn Dougherty, though. Never a scratch on him. Did I not once tell you he'd outlive us all?"

"I believe you did."

"The murderous wee bastard. I wonder how old he is. Jesus, he was in Tom Barry's flying column. He has to be ninety, and he could be ninety-five. A long life to live when you've all that blood on your hands. Or do you suppose the blood washes off after so many years?"

"I don't know."

"I wonder," he said, and looked down at his own hands. "You saw the gunman. Vietnamese, Andy thought. Or Thai, or God knows what else. Did you get a look at the one that threw the bomb?"

"No."

"He got away, and I scarcely saw him myself. There was his big face, looming over the other's shoulder, and then he threw the bomb and after that I never saw him again. It seems to me he was a very pale washed-out sort of white."

"And partnered with an Asian."

"It's the entire United fucking Nations arrayed against me," he said. "It's no more than luck they weren't trying to kill me."

"You mean all that was just to get your attention?"

"Oh, they came to do murder, and it was murder they did. But I'd say the man who sent them never expected to find me there, or yourself either. He sent those two to destroy the place and kill as many people as they could." He hefted the weapon he'd taken from the dead Asian. "If I hadn't shot the fucker," he said, "he'd have gone on firing until he killed everyone in the room."

And if he hadn't been quick as a cat, knocking me down even as he drew the gun…

"A big moon face pale as death. Does that sound like anyone you know?"

"A cop said the moon's full tonight."

"Then maybe that was himself. The man in the moon, come down to pay his respects. What about the two who waylaid you the other night?"

I described them as well as I could and he just shook his head. They could be anybody, he said. Anybody at all.

"And it was a black man did the shooting at the Chinese restaurant. It makes a man long for the old days, when the only people I had to worry about were the Eyetalians. And they may have been bad bastards but you could reason with them. Now it's the Rainbow Coalition, with all the races of man uniting against me. What's next, do you suppose? Cats and dogs?"

"Are you safe here, Mick?"

"Safe enough, for as long as I'll be here. I didn't want to go to any of my apartments. There's people who know about them. Only a few people, and they're people I trust, but how do I know who's to be trusted? Andy Buckley's almost a son to me, but who's to say what he'll do if some bastard puts a gun to his head?"

"That's why you wouldn't let him drop us off."

"No, I wanted a car handy, and a less noticeable car than the Cadillac. But he's no need to know where I am. He can't reveal what's been kept from him."

"Couldn't you go to the farm?"

He shook his head. "There's altogether too many know of the farm. And it's too far away from everything." He took a drink. "If I wanted to be away from it all," he said, "I could stay with the brothers."

That puzzled me for a moment. Then I said, "Oh. The monastery?"

"The Thessalonians, of course. What were you thinking?"