The Dead Yard

5: SALISBURY MISTAKE

Salisbury was the very last town in Massachusetts and the End of the State Bar was actually just over the state line in New Hampshire. Massachusetts had strict gun controls, bans on fireworks, high taxes on cigarettes, blue laws, and other regulations. The “Live Free or Die” state had none of these things. Booze was cheaper, you could drink all night if you wanted, the blood alcohol limit was higher, and if you were driving home drunk, smoking your cheap cigarettes, and letting off fireworks, you weren’t even required to have car insurance.

The pub was packed full of youngsters with fake IDs, as well as fishermen, illegal immigrants, frat boys, tourists, and the regular town drunks. The lighting was poor, the ventilation nonexistent, and the jukebox would have you believe that the greatest epoch in popular music was the era of hair bands and Englishmen playing synthesizers.

I spotted Simon at the bar, talking to some girl, and I saw Gerry McCaghan up in a corner booth that had walls on two sides and afforded a view of the whole establishment. He was with Sonia McCaghan, Touched McGuigan, and Jackie O’Neill.

People Kit thought I had never seen or heard of before, but already I was pulling up the briefing notes on all of them.

Kit let go of my hand and waved at Jackie.

“When you meet everyone don’t, like, go mental if Dad winds you up a bit, and whatever you do, don’t fuck with Touched. You’ll like him but seriously don’t mess with him,” she said, concern dripping into her voice and those cornflower blue eyes taking on an anxious iodine tint.

“Understood,” I said.

The Sons of Cuchulainn had never been a big group. About nine or ten “volunteers” at its greatest extent. Samantha said that following the hit on Gerry there had been several defections and that now she thought it was down to a rump of about six or seven. Kit, Gerry, Sonia, Touched McGuigan, Jackie, Seamus (one of the two bodyguards I’d seen that night in Revere), and possibly one or two others. But Touched and Gerry were the only two I was concerned about.

Gerry, fifty-five, an old-school hard-nosed Provisional IRA man from Derry. Violent, clever, charming, unpredictable. In the 70s, responsible for more than a score of bombings and attempted bombings. British Intelligence couldn’t be precise about these things but they reckoned he’d killed and maimed at least three dozen people in his career.

Gerry wouldn’t hesitate to cut out the cancer or risk civilian casualties, and you couldn’t be fooled by his girth-you didn’t need to be a lithe man to pull a trigger or push the button on a radio-controlled bomb.

But as much as Gerry put the fear of God in me, it was Touched who worried me most. Davy “Touched” McGuigan, forty-nine, Gerry’s second-in-command, was a gunman from Belfast exiled from Ireland by an IRA tribunal. Quick tempered, violent, and even more unpredictable than Gerry (hence the nickname Touched, i.e., crazy). He looked and dressed like an aging rock star. Black jeans, white embroidered shirt. He was tall, well built, square-jawed, and quite the handsome devil if you didn’t mind the ear that had been partially burned off in a premature explosion, an ear that Touched covered with a long mane of partly graying hair.

Touched had committed at least six murders that we knew about. Two cops, a guy he thought was having an affair with his fiancée, a man he stabbed in a bar fight, an eighteen-year- old who had stolen Touched’s car (Touched finding him three days later, beating him, tying him into the car, dousing car and kid with petrol, and torching the pair of them), and an IRA informer that Touched grabbed from a Glasgow Celtic social club in broad daylight, bundled into a van, drove to a safe-house, tortured for two days, and finally shot, after he had revealed everything that he knew.

Touched had known Gerry since the old days and had been living with him at the house on Plum Island for the last year, ever since he’d screwed the wife of a comrade who was doing fifteen to life in Belfast’s Long Kesh prison. Touched would have been given the death sentence if they’d had anyone with the bottle to kill him. Exile for life was the safer alternative for all concerned.

So both Gerry and Touched had been expelled from Ireland and both had an axe to grind. The other two people at the table were nothing to worry about. Sonia was around forty years old, from Portland, Maine, and for the last year, Gerry’s wife. She was a history professor at UNH, a Marxist, anticolo-nialist Edward Said type who almost certainly knew about Gerry’s activities but probably saw him as a romantic hero. Sonia was pretty in a skinny, blond, washed-out kind of way. Harmless, I suppose, but you never knew, sometimes the quiet ones were the ones who’d fucking cut your throat in your sleep. The FBI didn’t have much on Sonia, she was too young to have been a sixties radical, she hadn’t been to Ireland with Gerry on his trips, and since the SOC had more or less been a sleeper cell for the last five years, it was unlikely that she had done any mischief.

In fact, none of them had carried out any recent terrorist activity and it was only the IRA’s tip-off that the SOC was reactivating its operational command that alerted MI6 in the first place. Still, Gerry was not a stupid man and he was bound to know that the FBI was probably watching him. Maybe the hit, the FBI interest, and his advancing years would be enough of a deterrent, and the SOC really was going to disarm despite Gerry’s defiant communications to the IRA’s Army Council. My job was to find out. ’Course, it was much harder to prove a negative, but it was still my job.

The final person at the table was Jackie O’Neill. The file on Jackie was only a couple of paragraphs long. Born in County Sligo, he had run away from home, lived in Manchester, England, for a while, and had moved to America when he was just fifteen. He’d spent the last five and a half years Stateside cutting his teeth terrorizing black and Latino kids out of his old neighborhood in Roxbury. He had a few convictions for vandalism and theft but nothing to write home about. He’d met Touched at a Troops Out rally and Touched had offered him a job working for Gerry. He’d been in the construction company for about a year. Hard to say how long he’d been in Sons of Cuchulainn but probably the same amount of time.

Jackie was clearly going for the bad-boy look. Leather jacket, white T-shirt, hair gelled back like Brando in The Wild One. Long-nosed, sallow-featured, slightly pigeon-chested- the T-shirt sagged and the jacket was too big.

Still, this was the boyfriend Kit had been talking about. And I liked Kit and I felt she had good judgment about people, so there must have been something about Jackie, some redeeming attribute. Maybe he had a great fucking personality.

The rest of the group wasn’t there. But Touched and Gerry were the players. Get something good on them, send those boys to the chokey, and the whole organization would fall to pieces.

Kit prodded me in the back. We walked across the bar and stopped in front of the booth.

“Hello, my dear,” Gerry said, and I was struck immediately by his ease of bearing and his ursine confidence.

“Hi, Dad,” Kit said.

They were all drinking from a pitcher of Budweiser, except for Sonia, who had a glass of sparkling water. Touched and Gerry looked relaxed. Jackie was pissed off.

“Dad, I’m really sorry I’m a bit late,” Kit said.

“It’s ok, but punctuality is a sign of respect, Kit, honey,” Gerry said. He had lost some of his Irish country accent and now had a slightly pompous NPR-ish voice. It was interesting. I wondered if it was a cultural cringe-a reaction to his humble beginnings and newfound wealth. Or perhaps it was his wife’s recent influence. Sonia was old money and old New England.

“Sorry again,” Kit said, looking at me.

“Where have you been, Kit?” Gerry asked.

“Aye, where the fuck have you been?” Jackie asked in a distinct South Boston drone. It threw me a bit and Kit had already answered before I had understood Jackie’s question.

“Nowhere. Anyway, I want you all to meet someone,” Kit said.

“You must have been somewhere?” Jackie asked, reddening with anger.

“Nope,” Kit said.

I shuddered involuntarily. Yup, this fine specimen was definitely the boyfriend.

“Who’s this?” he asked Kit while looking furiously at me.

“This is Sean,” Kit said.

I put my hand out.

“Nice to meet ya,” I said.

Jackie had no real option but to shake my hand. His touch was cold, clammy, sweaty. As he leaned across the table and into the light, I saw that he was a thin but sinewy wee shite, with a weak attempt at a mustache on his upper lip. Bit of a pong off him too. Nice.

“I’ll introduce everybody,” Kit said, not in the least nonplussed by Jackie’s rudeness.

“My dad,” Kit said, beaming.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“The same, I’m sure,” Gerry replied with some diffidence and gave me his left hand. For his visit to the End of the State Bar, Gerry was wearing a green polo shirt and enormous white shorts. He seemed mellow, at ease, happy. Christ, if the Provisional IRA had me on its death list, or at least had attempted to kill me, I’d be squatting in a cave in Patagonia, not having a few beers down the local pub. It impressed me, and I shook his proffered hand with something approaching genuine admiration.

Kit leaned over and whispered something in his ear. A big un-Belfast smile broadened across Gerry’s face. Un-Belfast because the teeth were white, capped, straight, and symmetrical. Gerry transferred his cigar from his right to his left hand and offered the right to me. This time his grip was powerful and enthusiastic.

“You’re the hero that saved my daughter’s life,” he said, laughing.

“Hardly that,” I said.

“He was totally heroic, he jumped on top of me,” Kit said with a grin.

“Oh aye?” Jackie said, his face contorting as if he were in a high school production of Othello.

“Steady on there, big fella,” Touched said. Jackie looked at him for a second, nodded, and forced a grin.

“Allow me to present Sonia, my better half,” Gerry said.

“Nice to meet you, Sonia,” I said.

She smiled demurely.

“And over here we have David McGuigan and Jackie O’Neill, my associates, confederates, and all-round comrades-in-arms,” Gerry said again in this florid style that he definitely must have picked up in America. No one ever spoke like that in Belfast, where Laconian immigrants would be known as chatterboxes.

I sat down next to Kit.

“Nice to meet you all,” I said.

“Charmed,” Sonia said.

Touched and Jackie kept their own counsel. Touched merely nodding, Jackie pretending not to see me.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Gerry asked.

“Whatever you’re having,” I said.

Gerry poured me some Budweiser.

“Kit told us about you,” Touched said. “You helped her out in a big way.”

“Aye.”

“And what exactly were you doing in the bar that night?” Touched asked, raising his eyebrows slightly.

Gerry looked at Touched as if he had committed a social faux pas by being so impertinent, but he let the question stand, so I had to answer it.

“Well, I was itching to be in a gun battle and that looked like just the right place,” I said.

Touched grinned and his penetrating eyes bored into me for a moment.

“And the real answer?”

“Looking for a job, really,” I said.

“A job. I see. And where are you from again?” Touched asked.

“Belfast. Ma was from Carrickfergus.”

“Thought that was a Proddy town.”

“Everybody thinks that. Not all of it,” I said.

“There’s a song about it, isn’t there?” Gerry asked with a smile.

“Aye, there certainly is. Dreary, bloody awful song it is, too,” I said.

“Family still over there?” Touched asked.

“Cousins in Cork but my ma and da are both pushing up the daisies,” I said.

“Sorry to hear that,” Touched said with no sorrow at all in his sleekit, suspicious face.

“How long you been on the fair shores of the New World?”

Gerry asked.

I looked at Touched. How could he stand to listen to Gerry talk like this? Kit and Sonia would be indifferent but Touched was an old guerrilla buddy.

“I’ve been on the fair shores about a month,” I said with slight sarcasm and a straight face.

“Doing what precisely?” Touched asked.

“Anything. Christ, you should see what I’m doing now. Kit’ll tell you, bloody embarrassing,” I explained, trying to get Kit back into what was becoming a difficult one-sided conversation.

“Oh, Daddy, he’s a gladiator on the beach, fighting the Christians or something, isn’t that right, Sean?” Kit said.

“Sort of.”

“I’ve heard about that, it’s the Greek festival, isn’t it?” Sonia asked, suddenly brightening.

“Yes, we’re dressed up as Hector and Achilles,” I said.

“Aye, I seen that too, pair of you dressed up like a couple of fruits, skirts and everything,” Jackie said.

Well, Achilles was passionately in love with Patroclus, I nearly said to tweak Jackie, but I remembered that Sean McKenna would probably never have heard of Patroclus, so, alas, Jackie’s remark went untweaked.

“I think it’s a very good idea to boost our cultural heritage like that,” Sonia said.

I smiled at her. Not a bad-looking lass really. If she gained a few pounds, saw a bit of sunlight now and again, and renounced the dark side, she might just be an acceptable piece of ass.

“And are you happy in your job?” Touched asked.

“It’s ok,” I said.

“You like the fucking skirts?” Jackie mocked, laughing as heartily as if he had just cracked a devastating Wildean bon mot.

“They are popular among the warrior peoples of the Celts. But I can tell you don’t know much about warriors, Jackie,” I said with a twinkle in my eye.

Jackie started going for me, but Touched put a hand on his shoulder. Light aphorisms were clearly the way to get to the wee shite. Have to remember that one for the future.

“Well, I, for one, am very happy to have met such an enterprising young man, it’s not easy to be magnas inter opes inops,” Gerry said, pleased with himself.

“His name’s Sean, not Magnus, Daddy,” Kit said.

I would have loved to be able to source Gerry’s remark to impress him but that probably would also have been a mistake. Besides, I had no bloody clue what he was talking about.

Gerry struggled to his feet, pulled his polo shirt over his enormous stomach and holstered gun, and gave me a wink. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make use of the facilities.”

Touched nodded at Jackie. Jackie stole a look at me, got up, and followed Gerry out of the booth. He was protection tonight, which meant that he also had a piece on him.

“I’ll take the opportunity too,” Sonia said and looked at Kit.

“Me, too,” Kit said in that bubbly voice of hers.

“Fucksake, are they giving out twenties for turds tonight?” Touched said, laughing. But I could see that they were giving him five minutes alone with me. It was a bit obvious, but I’m sure they were thinking, you can’t be too careful these days.

“Because of the incident. Jackie or me go everywhere with Gerry,” Touched said when they had gone.

“You’re both armed,” I said.

“Aye.”

“The incident,” I mused.

“The incident,” Touched said without inflection, his eyes narrowing.

“Kit said her da got caught up in that shooting by accident,” I said.

“But you don’t believe that, do you?” Touched asked.

“No,” I said.

“Tell me what you know,” Touched said.

“I asked around. Kit’s da was a player back in the olden days. So I reckon it wasn’t an accident at all. I reckon the hit was on him,” I said.

“Why would the boys want to hit an old pal like Gerry?” Touched asked.

“A million reasons. He wasn’t making his payments, he pissed off the wrong guys, or maybe he didn’t like the new direction the movement’s been taking recently,” I said confidently and took a sip of my beer.

“By direction you mean what?” Touched asked.

“The bloody cease-fire, what else? Fucking capitulation, if you ask me.”

Touched nodded, lit himself a cigarette.

“When you were doing your snooping, did you ask around about me?”

“First of all, mate, I wasn’t doing any snooping. Just asked a few questions. Second of all, I never heard of you until five minutes ago. You weren’t there that night,” I said.

“Aye, more’s the pity,” Touched said and rubbed his chin.

We sat in silence and I took another sip of beer.

“So,” Touched continued, “you have Gerry pegged as an old Provo that the Ra either wanted rid of or scared into toeing the party line. Am I right?”

“Something like that.”

Touched nodded and shook the hair out of his face.

“What do you have me pegged as?” Touched asked.

An aging nutjob who looks like a roadie for the Grateful Dead.

“I don’t have you pegged as anything yet,” I said.

Touched sat back in the chair.

“You’re a keen guy,” Touched muttered.

“I just read the papers like everybody else,” I protested.

“Where did you go to school?”

“Didn’t really. Bounced around. Belfast High School for a few years, then I left.”

“What did you do after?”

“I was a brickie in Spain, dicked around London for a while.”

“You’re not one of those fucking illiterate Paddy navvies, are you? You can read and write though, can’t you?” Touched asked with disgust.

“Of course. I’m a big reader,” I said indignantly, maybe a bit too indignantly.

“Ever been inside?”

“Never.”

“Never?” Touched persisted.

“Well, do you mean jail or prison?”

“Prison.”

“Never. Couple of overnight bins here and there, police lockups, never what you might call real prison time,” I said.

“That’s good, the smart ones never do a day’s time in their lives,” Touched said, beginning to warm to me. He took a knot out of his gray hair and wrinkled his brow, maybe remembering his own numerous stretches in joints and lockups all over the British Isles.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Aye,” he said cautiously.

“What happened to the two geezers who were with Gerry that night in Revere Beach? Are they still inside? I know they shot their guns and I’m sure the peelers lifted them.”

“No, no, both made bail. It was a real fuckup, though. The serious charges are against Seamus. Worried about him.

They’re charging him with attempted murder. Even though it was obviously self-defense. He doesn’t want to plea, wants to fight it, and Gerry says ok. Seamus is a good bloke.”

“What about the other guy?”

“We won’t talk about Big Mike. That weasel went yellow on us, heard nothing from him since we paid his bail, fucked off the next day, didn’t even leave a place where we could forward his wages. He’s gonna cost Gerry fifty thousand if he doesn’t show for court, which he won’t.”

“Don’t blame him getting scared, it was pretty intense.

Local, was he?”

“Aye, ex-Boston PD.”

“There you go, he didn’t grow up with it,” I said, hinting that I, by contrast, had grown up with it.

“I should have been there,” Touched said, clenching his fist at the thought of the assassination attempt.

“I wish I hadn’t been there, except for being able to help Kit,” I said and took a long drink. Touched smiled.

“You did well, anyway, for a civilian,” he said and slapped me on the back.

“It was just something I had to do, get the wee lass out of there,” I said.

Touched leaned over, grabbed my hand, shook it deliberately.

“Well, we’re all happy that you did,” he said.

“Don’t even need to say it, mate.”

Touched reflected for a few seconds, tapped his nose, and pulled his shaggy locks into a ponytail. He tied back his hair and looked at me.

“What do you make of this?” he asked and rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of the legendary Irish hero Cuchu-lainn, the Hound of Ulster. Except that the Cuchulainn of the tattoo did not resemble the famous statue in the GPO in Dublin. This one had been done in prison with a needle and smuggled ink by an artist of questionable skills. With big hair and equine features, he actually bore a strong resemblance to the queen of England-an unfortunate circumstance for Touched, a staunch Republican and anti-Royalist.

“What’s that mean to you?” Touched asked, pointing at the tattoo.

“It’s not Queen Elizabeth, is it?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said furiously.

“Looks like her, or some member of that selective breeding program they have over there for picking the royals. Wait a minute, it’s not the Queen Mother, is it?”

Touched was boiling with rage. I’d pushed him too far. He let go of my hand.

“For your information, mate, that is Cuchulainn, hero of the Táin, Hound of Ulster, greatest Irishman since Finn McCool. Clearly, you are one very fucking uninformed bog Paddy.”

“Sorry, no offense meant, I’m just not a big history buff,” I said.

“Aye, well I can see that,” Touched said, finished his drink, and poured another from the pitcher.

“So in school you never even read the Táin Bó Cúailnge?” he asked after a long pause.

“Sorry, no,” I said.

“Aye, I forgot you said you were a laborer, despite your protestations you probably didn’t learn your letters at all, did ya?”

“I read just fine,” I said angrily, letting him see that I had limits too.

We sat in silence for a minute, Touched glaring at me and shaking his head. I took a big drink from my glass.

But then his anger began to slip and he looked at me and suddenly laughed.

“Well, I suppose it is a bit of a fucking shite tattoo,” he said.

The break in the tension made me laugh too.

“No, it’s good,” I insisted.

“It’s shite. The guy who did it, did a lot of murals but he couldn’t work in miniature. He bollocksed it up.”

“I was only joking with that queen remark. I knew it was Cuchulainn, sure I seen that statue of him on O’Connell Street,” I said.

“Taking a hand out of me were ya, ya wee shite,” Touched said with a huge attractive grin playing over his face.

“A wee bit,” I said.

“Jesus, have to watch you. You’ve got back doors to you, haven’t you? Well, ok, Sean, we’ll drop it now. Change the subject, bit of a sore topic for me and I’m trying to fucking relax.”

“Are you into music?” I asked, trying to think of some other conversational opening.

“Nah. Not really.”

“What do you like to do?”

“You like to gamble?” Touched asked. Touched, I recalled, grew up near Down Royal racetrack. Maybe this was a place to butter him up.

“Well, I haven’t really had much opportunity, but I have bet on the gee-gees now and again. It’s fun,” I said.

“Oh aye? What do you prefer, flat or the fences?”

“Flat,” I said. “Fences is too much of a lottery. Jesus, any punter could win the Grand National, but the Derby or the Triple Crown, that’s more of a science.”

Touched liked my answer.

“Aye, you’re right there, Sean,” he said. “I used to go over to the Cheltenham Gold Cup all the time and then sometimes the Derby. I went to Ascot one time; Jesus, do you know they don’t search you going in there? Talk about the queen. I swear to God, if I’d brought a wee revolver in there with me I could have bloody assassinated half the British establishment.”

He waited to see what my reaction would be. I didn’t hesitate.

“Aye, and half the world would have thanked you,” I said.

He smiled. His large gray-blue eyes relaxing, radiating genuine affection for me.

“I couldn’t then, you see, didn’t have the authorization. Actually had a few problems back in the Old Country. Little local difficulty, had to come to America, you know.”

“What was the problem?” I asked, to see how far he was going to trust me on a first meet.

“Well, since you’ve asked, mate, it was fucked up for a start, totally fucked up. I was sent out here under sentence. Told not to come back,” he said bitterly, his face growing white with anger. I let the rage boil in him for a while and decided to probe a little deeper. I knew the story but I wanted to see how much he would give me.

“Why?” I asked.

“You heard of Corky Cochrane?”

“Yeah, IRA man in South Armagh, everybody’s heard of him. He’s inside.”

“Aye, hardly the most bloody discreet of characters; anyway, I was doing Corky’s ex. Divorced. All legal like and everything. Seeing her. All aboveboard. Jesus, one night, dragged me from my bed down to Corky’s house. His two brothers there waiting for me. Went at me with pistol butts, the bastards, said I’d raped Corky’s old lady or something. Anyway, long story short, either I go to America or England or I was going to get a bullet in the fucking brain.”

“Jesus.”

“Aye.”

“So you came here and started working for Gerry?”

“Nah, I see it more like working with Gerry, subtle difference,” he said.

“I see that,” I agreed.

Across the bar I spotted Gerry and Jackie coming back from the toilet. They were having a heated discussion about something. Gerry looked pained. Jackie, animated. They had to be talking about sports or kung fu movies or some other tedious thing in which Jackie considered himself an expert.

“Believe me. I’m telling you, corned beef in Ireland comes from Brazil or Argentina,” Gerry was saying despairingly.

“Saint Patrick ate corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes,”

Jackie was insisting. “That’s why you eat it on Saint Patrick’s Day.”

“Hardly likely, since potatoes are also from South America.

There wasn’t a potato in Ireland before the seventeenth xcentury,” Gerry said as he sat down next to us. A look passed between him and Touched that I couldn’t interpret.

“Saint Patrick ate potatoes,” Jackie muttered as he slunk down in his chair and knocked back his beer in one.

“What’s your opinion, Sean?” Gerry asked me.

“What’s the debate?”

“Jackie, bless his heart, believes that you eat corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage on Saint Patrick’s because that’s what Saint Patrick himself ate as he wandered round the emerald isle.”

“Well, I’m no history expert.” I nodded at Touched and he nodded back. “But I thought Walter Raleigh brought back the spud from South America and that was a good bit after Patrick, I believe,” I said.

“You are absolutely right, Sean. And you are put in your place, Jackie,” Gerry said and turned to Touched. “Now let me hope that your conversation with young Sean here was more riveting than mine.”

“We chanced over many subjects, Gerry. I was just finished telling Sean here about me and Corky Cochrane’s old lady,”

Touched replied.

“Oh aye, I remember her, she has the MS now, doesn’t she?” Gerry said.

“No, no, not MS, she has lupus, early-onset lupus,”

Touched said. “Funny story, actually. Tell you, Sean, just before I had to, uh, gather up my stakes, shall we say, she tells me she has lupus. Right, well, I’m a good Catholic and I did Latin to A level, and I never heard of lupus before and I think bloody hell, lupus, she’s been bitten by a werewolf.”

Gerry and Touched both laughed. Jackie did not and I knew that this was a good opportunity to establish a bit of character. It might have been a bit much rubbing it in his face with that Walter Raleigh line.

“I don’t get it, sorry, David,” I said to Touched.

“Lupus, lupin, the wolf, you know? You see, I got it mixed up with lycanthropy,” Touched said.

I looked at him blankly.

“Do you get it now?” Touched asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, it’s not important,” Touched said and raised his eyebrows at Gerry as if to say, nice kid, but bloody hell, could be a bit of a dumbass.

Sonia and Kit appeared, sat down.With the women among the men, the mood changed completely. Gerry became more gregarious, Touched less suspicious. The subject changed to what was playing at the cinema.

We chatted and drank.

I was the last to arrive, so I knew it would be my shout next and when Jackie finished the last of the beer I went to the bar to get a pitcher of Sam Adams. And suddenly, of course, she was there. I hadn’t seen her before, but obviously she’d been there all evening. Watching me. She was wearing skintight black jeans, a black silk blouse, and high heels. She was deliberately, overly made up, but the fake glamour couldn’t hide her good looks. Her shock of red hair and those proud crimson lips that were sipping gin. She saw me but she didn’t acknowledge me. She was talking to a surfer boy and had positioned herself so that she could see McCaghan’s booth quite clearly. I didn’t know how long she’d been there but Simon must have given her the heads-up.

Our eyes met briefly. She looked away and laughed at something the surfer boy said and her laughter came across the room delicately, like a waterfall breaking over the edges of the rocks. I took the pitcher back to the table, more confident and reassured. My guardian angel was on the case, a step ahead, as all guardian angels should be. And when I sat down, Gerry, Touched, and Jackie were all eclipsed. Diminished. They didn’t know who they were dealing with, with their foolish talk of the Cuchulainn of the Uladh and Patrick and potatoes. She was the brains, the spikenard, the white-shirted predator among the thistles. And I was no mean boy. I had been there. To the depths. Mastering the hard places of the nocturnal world. I had brought destruction on greater men than these. Darkey White, Sunshine, Big Bob, all the while careful, professional, ice cold, singing happily the sweet songs of the hammer of retribution.

I was not afraid of them. If anything it should have been the reverse.

The evening was drawing to a close. I was comfortable and relaxed. Kit, unfortunately, was wedged between Jackie and her da but the center of gravity was at my end of the table.

The conversation drifted among music and movies and television. I contributed now and again but the interrogation phase was over.

I excused myself to go to the toilet. I didn’t need to go to get my shit together or calm my nerves. Gerry was fine and Touched wasn’t the monster of the Six report. Nah. I just needed to take a piss.

This was a scumball bar, but they had tried to gentrify the toilet by putting in electric hand dryers, burlesque prints, and a chalkboard above the urinal for graffiti. The graffiti was stuff about surfers and the Red Sox and there were a few anti-Mexican comments. Above the board and deep into the wall someone had scrawled “Fuck your chalkboard, you yuppie fucks” in six-inch-high letters. I’d bet money it was Touched.

I’d have to ask him about it, I was musing, when, without looking round, I knew Jackie had come in behind me. The kid had a presence and a distinctive smell. Old Spice, surf wax, and zit cream. He was standing there, thinking he was invisible, trying to decide what he was going to say or do.

I took a piece of chalk and wrote: “You like staring at my cock, Jackie?”

I zipped up, turned.

“So you are fucking queer then, are you?” Jackie said, sneering.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said, neutral, calm.

“Wipe my name off that fucking board,” he demanded, his pupils dilated, ready.

“You wipe it off,” I said with a smile.

“Wipe it or I’ll fucking make you wipe it.”

I let the tension fall from my shoulders and waited for him to come at me. He’d swing first. He’d had about six or seven beers. He’d be slow. I stuck out my jaw to give him a target. He’d come at my head with a big right hook. Just needed a wee bit of encouragement.

“Now you’re starting to annoy me,” I said. “Why don’t you piss off before I have to teach you how to act around your elders.”

“Aye, and before I brain you, you better tell me what you think you’re fucking playing at with Kit,” he snarled.

“I don’t know what you mean, pal.”

“You were all over her, don’t think I couldn’t see it. She’s my girl. You fucking lay off. Ok? Unless you’re looking for trouble, that is.”

I took a breath. What was the right thing to do? What would Samantha want me to do? What would Kit want me to do? Of course I knew. Taking him would be fun but bad form.

“Listen, mate, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kit is a nice girl, but she’s not my type. I just want a job and a quiet life,” I said, figuring that defusing the situation was probably the better way to go. I stepped backwards to give him more psychic space to think.

Jackie, however, was spoiling for a fight. His blood was up and he was not going to be denied.

“I seen you looking at her, I’m gonna have you, fucker,” he said, squaring up to throw that obvious opening punch.

I backed off again.

“I’m not going to fight you, it’s ridiculous, I don’t want to fight you.”

“Chickenshit,” Jackie said.

“Aye, call me what you like, I’m leaving,” I said.

I washed my hands and headed for the door.

“Wipe my name off that board.”

“Piss away off, you wee shite,” I said.

Jackie lunged at me. He did indeed lead clumsily with the right and, in his haste, he caught one foot behind the other and practically fell on me. I stepped to one side and let Jackie’s momentum carry him into the hand dryer. His head banged into the swivel head of the blower and he collapsed to the floor. He scrambled away from me, blood oozing into his left eye from a two-inch cut above the eyebrow.

“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.

“Bye,” I said.

Touched went in to get Jackie, leaving Gerry with the two women in the wide blue yonder, without a bodyguard, for nearly five full minutes. Not the sort of thing I would have done even if my boss hadn’t been the victim of an assassination attempt a few weeks before. Touched clearly had a soft spot for his young apprentice. This made him vulnerable and in my eyes weak. It was good. Gerry was careless, Jackie was unpredictable, Touched had mellowed. The Sons of Cuchu-lainn were on the skids. That suited me just fine. The more cracks, the more fault lines, the better. Easier for me to slip between them.

Even so, I was a little nervous for Kit until Touched came out again. Without a piece I couldn’t have done anything to stop a hit, but by God I would have tried.

When Touched did finally materialize, the protégé was cleaned up and appeared half-respectable. Still, a look of disgust passed across Gerry’s face. Hmmm, maybe the time was ripe to move someone else into the role of junior bodyguard.

“Bye,” Kit yelled across the room.

“Bye,” I said.

Jackie didn’t look at me but Kit did and with a final wave from her they left the bar. I finished the rest of my pint, well pleased with a very successful night’s work on every conceivable front.

Drizzle. Cold for summer. The amusements deserted. The sound of generators guttering off, stalls being closed, people leaving.

Someone pulled the master switch and the colored lights swayed on the cables for a moment and went out.

Her eyes were dark. Her skin alabaster.

She’d been waiting for me.

“Spare a couple of hundred?” a homeless man asked and I gave him a buck.

We crossed to the ocean side of the road. The town like a deserted film set. Oppressive reds and a frail green light bobbling on the concrete.

“This is how every episode of Scooby-Doo starts,” I said to lighten the mood. “An abandoned fairground, a dark and stormy night.”

She smiled and looked confused.

“A TV show,” I explained.

The rain ceased.

A few insects, a few seabirds. Quiet.

Her tousled hair falling beneath her hood. She was wet, younger now. Her legs a wee bit unsteady in heels and tight black jeans. I’d heard her murmur something to herself. She was a little tipsy and it was almost as if I were the older one.

Novice and initiate.

The field agent and his control.

“You made a successful contact?” she asked finally.

“Yes.”

“We’ll talk in my car.”

“Are you sure you should be driving?”

“Don’t make me cross, darling. I had to have a couple of G &Ts to keep up the act of the desperate woman on the prowl. But I’m fine.”

The big plum-colored Mark 2.

“You met them,” she said when we were inside.

“Yeah.”

“Did you make a good impression?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you did,” she said, grinning.

“Gerry offered me a job, I said I’d take it.”

She nodded, drove south. She opened the sunroof and wound the windows down. Not for mood, but to clear her head and help her drive. She was slightly more intoxicated than she was letting on.

I knew enough not to ask why we weren’t going to my apartment in Salisbury. She drove over the Merrimack bridge and into Newburyport.

She parked the car in the lot behind the All Things Brit store.

“What about Touched?” she asked as she turned off the ignition.

“What about him?”

“Did he frighten you?”

“No.”

“That’s what I was afraid of, dear. Well, we’ll talk about that.”

“I have to say, I’m not impressed. The Provos have put the fear of God into them. I met most of the whole crew. Can’t be more than five or six of them.”

“I saw that, too.”

“Six people. Come on. All this for six people?”

“That’s the definition of a cell, darling. Now save your breath just for the moment while I look for the keys to the…

I suppose I should have put them on the same ring as the car key, I hope I haven’t left them back in… no, there they are. Thank goodness. My ability to retain keys is not my best virtue.”

She walked me to her flat above the All Things Brit store.

She’d painted it Mediterranean blue and filled it with numbered Picasso prints and Andalusian pottery. There was a Moroccan throw rug and of course that skylight that let in half the galaxy.

The air-conditioning had cooled the apartment to fifty degrees.

She removed her coat. She’d been watching me all night. Watching me with Kit. I may not be an expert at intelligence but I can read a situation.

Of course she was beautiful. Seductive. Almost the polar opposite of the way Kit was beautiful. This was a woman, not a girl. A poppy bloom, not a daisy.

Her hair wild and wet. Soaked dark strands plastered inside her blouse between her breasts.

She unbuttoned the blouse, removed her watch and a pearl necklace. She sighed as she kicked off her shoes.

“What else do you want to know?” I asked.

She leaned over the bed.

“Help yourself to a drink, darling,” she said, her breath carrying the scent of juniper.

“Uh, where is the booze again, over in the-”

“In the little study. The drinks are in the bloody globe, if you can believe it. I know it’s terribly bourgeois but it came with the place. Have a drink, I need to freshen up.”

She went to the bathroom. I opened the globe. A twenty-five-year-old Glenfiddich, a thirty-year-old-Bowmore, and a venerable bottle of brandy that looked as if it had been laid down to celebrate one of Napoleon’s more famous victories. I helped myself to a full glass of the brandy but before I could sip it she came out of the bathroom in only the high heels. She marched across the room, took the glass out of my hand, knocked it back, and lay down on the bed.

“Fuck me,” she said in an imperative tense that was impossible to refuse.

I took off my T-shirt and jeans, dimmed the light.

Her body was ruddy and pale and her breasts were huge and perfect. I climbed on top of her. Her lips like a dollop of strawberry jam on a cream scone. I kissed her. She was hot, aching with desire, her body bending up to meet mine.

“Don’t think I’m always this unprofessional,” she said.

“Of course not,” I assured her.

“I don’t screw all my agents. Not even all the good-looking ones.”

“No.”

“Clouds the judgment.”

“Yes.”

And I laid her down, and eased my body on top of hers.

I was an amputee but it meant nothing. Not to her, not to me, and I could do wet work just as well with a prosthesis as your average bloke.

Her hands stroked my back and pulled me close. I kissed her breasts and her neck but she was impatient for sex. She pushed me off her and kissed my belly and stroked my penis and sucked it till it was hard.

She smelled good.

And we kissed and I thrust my way inside her and we made love, our bodies moving together like singers in a duet, a new song, but one, somehow, that we knew by heart.

And I forgot Kit.

And I thought only about her.

Her snowy English arms and thighs, hungry lips, and assassin’s eyes that were warmer now, burning and alive. The only sound, the harbor boats; the only light, the rotating galaxies and nebulae and stars. We made love until Orion set and the big bear rose. The heavens peaceful, silent, and fair; and, for once, here on Earth, we were in perfect symmetry with the world above.