Screwed

CHAPTER 4

AS SOON AS THE DOOR CLOSES BEHIND ME I FEEL WEAK AS a kitten in a sack. The righteous adrenaline drains down to my feet and I have to lean my forehead against the wall to stop myself throwing up. The Taser burns on my chest feel like they might be smoldering and my thoughts are suddenly swirling down the drainpipe of my confused cortex.

At least that’s what it feels like.

Maybe I should go back in there and put those cops down, because the first thing they’re going to do is come after me. They have no choice.

On a purely practical level this is a good argument. Just finish off Krieger and Fortz and be done with it, but killing cops would pretty much ensure that my case would never make it to trial, even with a buddy in the department.

I spent a night on the town with Deacon and her captain a few months ago and we ended up in the back room at Slotz with a bottle of Jack Daniels and sloppy grins on our faces. The conversation got around to the dumb excuses cops actually committed to paper for firing their weapons.

This one guy claimed that he had to shoot the suspect because the suspect was wearing a T-shirt with writing on it, the captain said, hand on heart. The writing was, quote, “un-American” and this dumb rookie motherfucker thought he saw the word jihad in there somewheres—the Cap paused for a slug of whiskey and we knew the punch line was coming. And the rook felt he couldn’t let this guy live ’cause he wasn’t more than five miles from an airport at the time. Turns out the writing was from Lord of the fucking Rings. Elvish or some shit.

And Ronelle said, Elvish has left the building.

How we had split our sides in drunken laughter at the time. That war story doesn’t seem that funny now. If Krieger and Fortz ever do catch up with me, they will have their excuses all figured out in advance.

Ronelle Deacon is a cop’s cop. True blue back to her granddaddy, who was one of the rare African-American members of the Texas police force, and one of the famous group who stormed the university tower in seventy-seven to bring in the Austin City Sniper. Ronnie picked up the baton from her father who walked a beat in Rundberg, where it takes guts to put one foot in front of the other when you’re a black man wearing the blue. Ronnie was raised tough but straight. By the age of twelve she was spotting her daddy while he bench-pressed in the garage. By fourteen she was bench-pressing a hundred pounds herself, and by twenty-two she was a rookie in the NYPD, working hard on her arrest rate and harder on her studies so that she could make detective by thirty. She managed it with two years to spare.

Krieger and Fortz used my friendship with Ronelle to get me into their cruiser in the first place. They gotta know she’s the first person I’m calling once my hand stops shaking. Them being cops won’t mean shit to Ronnie, she hates bent cops more than normal criminals. So now she’s on the danger list too. Fortz does not strike me as the kind of guy to leave loose ends floating around. They gotta come after me and then make Ronelle’s death look like an accident.

I need to handle this.

I call Ronelle but it goes straight to voice mail, so I leave a terse message, trying to inject the words with urgency but not desperation.

Ronnie. It’s Dan. We need to meet. I am überscrewed.

My tone implies, I hope, that this is really serious. It strikes me that Ronnie doesn’t know about the über thing, and if you don’t know that then the message could come off a little jokey. Hopefully she will infer from my tone. But more than likely Ronnie won’t infer shit. She will listen to the words and apply the usual meaning to them. I have this terrible habit of reading in layers that nobody else sees or that are simply not there. It’s like in my mind everybody’s speaking in metaphors or broadcasting their intentions through micro-movements and I’m trying to dig down to what they really mean. That’s what happens when you grow up with an abusive parent: always trying to read the signs, predict the mood, keep yourself clear when it breaks bad.

What you eventually realize is, that when people blink they are mostly just blinking, not spelling out some kind of code, or when they shift away from you in bed, it ain’t because they don’t love you anymore, it’s because you have sharp elbows.

Sometimes a tiger, tiger, burning bright is just a tiger.

I know this, but still years of beatings have made this habit reflex to me.

Watch for signs. Everything means something.

In a way, it’s handy having had an abusive parent. Pretty much every bad thing I’ve ever done can be traced back to Dad on a big thick blame arrow.

For some reason I had thought myself in a detached house, out in the country a little. Maybe with a garden. Someplace the neighbors would be horrified when they found out it was a porn studio.

I cannot believe it. That house was always so quiet. Kept itself to itself and never threw parties.

But as I settle enough to take stock, I realize that my spatial sense has probably been bamboozled by the porn room’s soundproofing. I am in a New York high-rise hallway, no doubt about it. I can tell by the street noises jostling each other in the stairwell. Traffic and fat throngs of pedestrians. New Yorkers shouting terse messages into their cells, the delighted cooing of tourists getting their first glimpse of the Donald’s golden tower or the Apple Store, and a blend of Middle Eastern dialects that you wouldn’t find in Guantanamo. The smells are familiar too; street food, hot asphalt and the rubber of a million tires.

New York. Those clowns humped me to New York.

There is a tight elevator cab to my left, which would take me down to a back door but I choose not to trap myself inside. Contrary to what the movies would have us believe there is often not a handy escape hatch in the roof that is left unbolted in case of action-hero distress. If you get caught in a lift, then you are, as the gamers say, totally pawned.

It’s hard to keep up with the kid lingo. I said FUBAR to a college jock in the club recently and he looked at me like I was in black-and-white.

Tango and Cash, junior. Buy a DVD, why don’t you?

So I don’t get in the lift for that reason. But also because I have a phantom memory of being manhandled into that shaft with Fortz’s snide laughter wet in my ear and just looking at the steel door gives me the shivers.

Feck it. I’m just gonna kill them.

No. I’ve done a lot of desperate things in my life, but I’ve never killed a person when there was another way. Any other way.

That arsehole Fortz better learn from his mistakes, because next time I can’t promise this level of self-control, especially when I’ve had time to brood on the wrong done to me.

After a few breaths to steady myself I take the stairs. Three stories down past a nail spa and a meat refrigerator and I’m out on the street. I turn right and walk head down just in case there is some sort of surveillance. Putting a little mileage between me and that building is my priority. When my heart stops pounding, then I can try to figure my whereabouts. It shouldn’t be too difficult. All I have to do is ask my phone.

As it turns out, I’m way down in Manhattan on Forty-second and Eighth, which is an area I know pretty well from my years bouncing the Big Apple clubs. I could jump a cab to SoHo and get this accursed envelope dropped off, but I need a little headspace to ride out the after-tremors of combat neurosis that I feel coming my way, and also food would be a very good idea. It’s after two and I haven’t eaten a crumb.

After two? How the hell did that happen?

Krieger must have given me a shot of something in the car, to make sure I stayed out. Another reason I should have finished those guys off. I decide to ask Zeb for a thorough once-over if I make it home, to make sure there are no alien chemicals floating around my system. A lot of sedatives cause side effects unless you get them flushed. Anything from amnesia to paranoia can crop up for days after taking a shot. The last thing I need is to be wandering around, convinced that people are trying to kill me but unable to remember who exactly.

I’d probably ask a cop for help and that cop would be Dirk Fortz.

I hike the dozen or so blocks to the Parker Meridien, glad of the density of human camouflage on the streets, and grab myself a small table in the famous Norma’s breakfast restaurant.

Dirk Fortz. What kind of stupid name is that? It’s like his parents couldn’t decide if they were in Dynasty or Star Wars.

This guy has gotten under my skin in a way nobody else ever has. He didn’t just want to kill me, he wanted to go beyond that.

My hands are shaking and I hide them under the table when the waitress comes over with the menu. Sorry, not waitress. Server. The server is maybe ten years younger than me, so just about eligible for the fantasy league, with an open face and eyes that are bright with good diet or speed.

“No need for a menu,” I say. “I’ve been before. Bring me a pot of coffee and the french toast, with everything.”

The server’s smile is so wide that she makes me believe in it. If there’s one thing Americans know how to do, it’s how to make people feel welcome.

Shit, I feel like a regular and I haven’t been up the steps in years.

“French toast,” she says, writing the order on her pad. “Some comfort food, huh?”

“Yep,” I say. “I need a little comfort right now.”

I used to treat myself to breakfast here when I’d had a rough night on the doors. A lot of joints have the Best Breakfast in New York City sign in the window, but Norma’s might actually deserve it.

I read the server’s name tag. “Nothing like french toast to make a guy feel comforted, Mary. You Irish, Mary?”

Mary is thrilled with the question. “Oh my God. I am like, totally Irish. My great-granddad came over from County Wales.”

I am glad to have an excuse to smile. “That’s great. I got cousins in County Wales.”

Mary thrusts out her chest with some determination. “Well, I hope you’re hungry, cousin. ’Cause this toast will be big enough to feed an army.”

I like Mary already and if I hadn’t been recently electrocuted and abducted I might even put some effort here. But I have bearer bonds in my pocket and the truth is Mary is probably working on her tip and even if she isn’t I feel a crazy loyalty to Sofia like a bipolar angel sitting on my shoulder.

Mary strides off to the kitchen and I lay my hands on the table, daring them to shake.

Deal with it, assholes, I beam at them. You got stuff to do.

Norma’s is a lot swishier than my usual diner but sometimes you gotta tolerate a little class in the name of toast. Even at close to three in the afternoon, the high-ceilinged room is half full of businessmen loosening their ties and buttons, and out of towners here for the famous pancakes. I bet a girl like Mary could pull in a couple of hundred extra a day in tips.

Maybe I’ll offer her a job.

While I’m contemplating my server’s totally over-the-top reaction to my imagined job offer, in the real world Mary has plenty of time to grab a pot of coffee and swing back around to my table.

“Hey, cousin,” she begins, then freezes, staring at my hands. No, not my hands, something between my hands. I look down and see that I have put one of the Glocks on the table. I don’t remember doing it. Why would I do that in a restaurant? I feel a cold sweat push through the pores of my neck.

Mary is not fazed for long. This gal works in NYC.

“Oh, I get it. Irish, right? So, you’re a cop?”

It’s nice when people invent your excuses for you. I wish it happened more often.

“This is a cop’s gun,” I say truthfully, sweeping the Glock off the table. “I was just making sure the safety was on. I wouldn’t want to shoot any of your customers.”

Mary leans in close and pours me a cup of java that I know is top class just from the aroma.

“See those two guys in the corner with their eyes on stalks every time my ass swishes by?” she whispers.

“Yeah, I see ’em,” I reply.

Of course now that she has said the words ass and swishes, my eyes are going to be on stalks too.

“You can shoot those two if you like, Officer,” Mary says, and I feel her breathing in my ear, which almost cancels out the memory of Fortz doing the same thing.

The toast is everything I remember and twice as big, buried under fruit, cream and syrup, made all the sweeter by the discreet hip bump Mary throws me on the way past. It’s like tossing a bone to a drowning dog. I appreciate the gesture, but it doesn’t really improve my situation.

I go to work on the toast, which is so good that I grudgingly enjoy it even though any respite is temporary.

It’s fuel, I tell myself. There is a lot of business to get through before sundown. You still gotta make the trip to SoHo.

I put down my cutlery and think about reneging on that deal. After my brush with the wrong arm of the law, I can’t help thinking that I could go fetch my weapons’ stash out of my locker at the bus station and deal with this Mike Madden situation myself. The Irish government spent a lot of money training me to do wet stuff and quiet stuff and it would be a pity to waste that investment.

Better the devil you know, right? This touchy guy in SoHo could be some goodfella arsehole who will not give shit one about my lousy day.

I go at the toast again and pour myself another cup of coffee, feeling the caffeine opening up my heart’s throttle all the way.

Yeah. Just take Mike’s whole gang out, why not? Wouldn’t take more than an afternoon and a coupla clips.

Maybe in a war zone. But this is New Jersey we’re talking about. Plenty of cameras and concerned citizens.

And if you screw up?

Then Mike will block the club’s exits and torch the place. Jason, Marco and the girls would be gone.

Sofia. Don’t forget Sofia.

Yeah. Sofia would be as good as dead.

So, how’s about I just kill Mike? Cut off the snake’s head?

Nope. Calvin is waiting in the wings. Maybe Manny too. There are plenty more snakes where Mike came from. And these guys love to make examples.

I decide to text Sofia for no more practical a reason than to make myself feel better.

So I send: ?

That’s all, just a question mark. It used to be: Hey, what’s up? How are you? But we got a shorthand now and I guess that’s progress.

A minute later I get back: ✓?

Which means: I’m fine. How are you?

So I send: L8R?

And get back a big smiley face.

Which is good. It means Sofia’s taken her meds, or at least is not in one of her near-suicidal troughs, and she wants to see me later.

I feel a little guilty for making a date I might not show up to or be recognized at, but sometimes a man needs more than french toast to buoy him through the day’s shenanigans.

While I have the phone in my hand I check for missed calls and see there are six from Mike and three from Zeb.

Screw those guys.

My malicious side half hopes that Mike takes Zeb hostage to hurry me along. A little light torture would not go astray on that guy. Nothing life threatening, but as far as I know Zeb rarely uses all of his toes.

My Twitter icon is chirping, telling me that there is a Tweet from my psychiatrist, who is doing online wisdom now, which he assures me was inevitable, so he might as well be in the vanguard. I have never actually Tweeted, but I do follow Dr. Simon and Craig Ferguson, who is one funny Celtic fecker.

There is something compulsive about Tweets, so I read Simon’s latest:

Remember, my phobic posse: it’s always darkest before the dawn unless there’s an eclipse.

I wonder who that’s supposed to comfort.

I swipe back to Sofia’s brief final message and just the sight of that simple emoticon makes me feel a couple of degrees warmer.

Sofia. Could there be a chance for us?

Shit. I’m gonna be writing poetry soon.

My proximity sense tingles and I know someone is standing before me. I know without looking that it’s a woman. My subconscious throws up the clues: perfume, footsteps leading up to this moment, the sound of her breathing. A woman, but not Mary.

So, I look up and there’s a rich lady not three feet away, staring at me like she’s seen her maid in Tiffany’s. This gal is maybe forty but with ten years of that slate wiped clean by spas and exercise. She’s got burnished blonde hair framing her striking face, which is horsey in a good way, and a gym body being hugged very nicely by a red velour sweat suit that I just bet has something provocative writ large on the ass. I can tell this lady is rich by the glitter-ball diamond on her finger and the fact that a cluster of waiters is bobbing six feet away, worried that something might happen to her.

I have no idea what this is but I do not have time for it.

I go for pre-emptive dismissal.

“Lady,” I say. “Whatever you think—”

She cuts me off. “Mr. McEvoy? Daniel McEvoy?”

This is a surprise. Rich folk do not generally recognize me, since I let my country-club membership lapse when Enron went under.

“Who’s asking?” I ask, seeing as we’re in a noir movie.

Uninvited, the lady pulls up a chair and sits opposite.

“Daniel,” she says. “I think that I may be your grandmother.”

We must be watching different movies.

Mary pours more coffee and reinforces her earlier hip-bump with a high-beam cleavage flash because, as a professional, she knows that statistically even the presence of another female will drop my tip by 5 percent.

Get a grip, soldier. The girl is pouring coffee and you’re forty-three years old.

I can’t help it. I read layers of meaning into the actions of everyone around me. I guess it’s because sometimes it seems as though everyone around me has bad intentions toward my person. And as my shrink Simon once told me: being paranoid never got anyone killed, not being paranoid on the other hand . . .

The glam gran has slid onto a chair opposite me and is busy muting her phone so we don’t get interrupted. She orders a grapefruit juice from Mary without even glancing at my lovely server, then eases herself into the story.

“I go to the gym here. It’s really good. And I have a trainer who comes to my house. Pablo is fantastic. I’m more flexible now than I was at twenty.”

I don’t comment; effective as Pablo’s techniques may be, this is all preamble.

“You look good too, Daniel. Solid. Are you married? Do you have kids?”

I shake my head once to cover both questions.

“Me neither,” she says. “Not really. Anymore.”

Three short sentences. All loaded.

“I’m really sorry . . . eh . . . Nana, but I’m under a bit of pressure today.”

She slaps her own cheek gently, dislodging a tiny puff of foundation, which I would have sworn she was not wearing.

“Oh my God. Where are my manners?” she offers her hand for a shake, at a weird sideways angle, like royalty. “I’m Edit Vikander Costello.”

She pronounces Edit to rhyme with Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

I shake the hand. To be honest it’s less of a shake and more of an undulation, but I feel strength in the soft dry skin.

“Costello?” I say. “So you married old Paddy?”

“Wife number four,” she says. “The first to outlive him.”

This was something of a feat. Paddy Costello had always seemed to be carved from granite.

“So, you’re not my blood grandmother?”

“No. I’m the later model. Version Four point oh.”

“And how would you know about me, Edit? How could you possibly recognize me?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Daniel. For six months I’ve had Irish detectives on your trail. And you turn up here, two blocks from my apartment on Central Park South.”

“Why are you looking for me? Did old Paddy leave me a whack?”

Edit was embarrassed and refolded her napkin. “No. You were disinherited, along with your mother. I’m looking for you because Evelyn is missing and she’s the only family I have left.”

Evelyn Costello. Just hearing the name shoots me back to nineteen seventies Dublin. My mother’s baby sister, the girl who defied her own father to cross the Atlantic and visit with us. The girl who told my dad she would skewer his sausage with an icepick if he ever accidentally wandered into the wrong room again.

That was so cool. We didn’t even have an icepick. No one I knew did.

Evelyn Costello. My first hero. I saved every penny for weeks just to make sure we did have an icepick if she visited again.

My Aunt Evelyn, who used to bring me to the swimming pool except for that time when she couldn’t for some mysterious lady-reason that I didn’t understand at the time and don’t know a whole lot about now.

“Evelyn’s missing?”

Edit began folding my napkin. “Yes. She had addiction issues, like her mother. We put her in Betty Ford the last time she relapsed, but you know Evelyn, don’t fence me in, right? She checked out and we haven’t seen her in over two years. She missed her father’s funeral.”

If Edit is expecting my Aw face, she doesn’t get it. I don’t hold fathers in the same esteem as 1960s sitcoms. One hundred percent of my father figures were drunken, abusive devils who walked the earth.

Edit realizes my heartstrings have not been plucked.

“Sure, they had their differences, but Ev loved her father, and Patrick loved her. It’s a tragedy that she may not even know he’s dead.”

She knows, unless she’s been living under a rock, and even then, most rocks these days have network. When Paddy Costello’s heart finally shattered in his chest under the sledgehammer blow of massive coronary, all the major studios had a video obituary ready to air. Big Paddy Costello: the last magnate. The man who built America, or some such shit.

My grandfather.

We know all about empire builders in Ireland. I saw a couple in the army too. I figure if a man is serious about putting together a major hunk of kingdom, then he’s gotta keep a laser focus on that prize his whole life and burn anything that might distract him. His competitors for example. His family for example.

“I thought she might contact you, Daniel. You guys were close, right? She talked about you.”

It’s true. We were close, even though she only stayed with us maybe a dozen times. Evelyn always had spirit. When I was fourteen and she was sixteen, Evelyn came home from a grabby date one night and gave me a stern lecture on the proper way to handle a girl’s boobs. A boy never forgets something like that. Never ever.

“Yeah, we were close. Ev was like a big sister to me.”

Edit nods. “Exactly. She said that. Danny’s big sister, she looked out for you. So I thought that maybe you might have heard something . . .”

Edit Costello’s face is downcast. She has had so many disappointments in life that she’s shielding herself against another one. I hate to be the bearer of zero news but . . .

“No, sorry, Edit. I haven’t spoken to Evelyn in twenty years. She sent me a few letters when I was in the army, but it was small-talk stuff. I heard she was in Betty Ford a few years back and sent a get-well-soon card. But I have no idea where she is.”

Edit holds herself steady so she will not slump. “Of course. Why would you? At least I can call off those investigators, right?”

“Yeah. They didn’t even narrow it down to a continent.”

We smile, but I’m stressed and she’s disappointed so we don’t exactly light up the room.

Edit runs her finger down the glass. “Mr. McEvoy. Daniel. Perhaps you could call me if Evelyn does make contact. She doesn’t have to see me if she doesn’t want to, I just want to know if she’s okay. If she needs money, there’s plenty there for her.” Edit closes her eyes halfway, like she’s visualizing mountains of gold. “I mean plenty.”

Part of me hopes that there’s an extra clause to that sentence—i.e., there’s plenty for you too, but my step-gran has finished talking.

I take the card she pulls out from God knows where, then I see there’s a zip pocket in her sweatband. I didn’t know they made those. Handy.

“Sure. I’ll call. But after all this time . . .”

Edit is so trim that she stands without pushing back the chair. “I know. It’s a long shot. But sometimes long shots pay off.”

I look in her eyes and she’s got that desperate look. Like an addict at the racetrack.

“Look, Edit,” I say, not believing that I’m jumping into another hole. “I got a few things on this week. Important stuff or I wouldn’t put you on the long finger, but next week I can make a few calls. Maybe Ev went over to Ireland. You ever think of that?”

“Yes, of course. She loved Dublin. I’ve had my investigators on the lookout for her too. No luck.”

I push my meal aside, wishing I had a plate of hash browns and bacon instead of this kiddie food.

“These detectives of yours don’t sound so hot. They couldn’t even detect that I left the old country years ago. I know a few guys who have fingers in pies. I’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks, Daniel,” says Edit, automatically sucking in her almost nonexistent stomach, so I can see her rib cage through the velour. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

I gotta do something noble so as this meeting does not end with me looking like a pancake-eating hillbilly.

“That’s not necessary,” I say, hoping my chin isn’t smeared with breakfast. “There’s no charge for doing family a favor.”

Edit is affected by my grand gesture and she leans forward to kiss me on the cheek and comes away with syrup on her lips.

We both ignore it and she leaves, wet-wiping her face on the way to the door.

I am such a douche.

My Twitter bird chirps. I swipe the phone screen and read:

Don’t overanalyze everything. You know what the first two syllables of analyze are?

I can’t help noticing that there’s nothing written on the ass of my gran’s sweat suit.

Classy.

I triple-tip Mary, and she rewards me with a smile that could almost make a man forget about the people trying to kill him. I decide in the afterglow of that smile that if Sofia ever boots me to the curb, then I will definitely make the trip into Manhattan and see if I can tempt this lady to accompany me to another restaurant where she can actually sit down.

The thought makes me feel a little guilty, but at my age you gotta lay the tracks, right? There are not that many single fish in the sea anymore.

I hit the john on the way out and a good thing too because I get an attack of the shakes and the whole pancake mess comes up again before most of it had the chance to go all the way down.

Goddamn Fortz and Krieger. Screw those guys.

What kind of sick individuals do roadside pickups for snuff streams? I regret letting those bozos live for a full minute as I lean over the bowl. It’s amazing how one short, sharp shock can completely change a person’s views on murder.

Bozos? That’s a bit mild. Arseholes at the very least.

On the plus side of this toilet break, it’s a clean retch. I get it all up in one heave and feel instantly better.

French toast. Maybe that was ambitious.

I wash up as best I can and trot up the steps into the lobby all casual and energetic, like no puking whatsoever has occurred in the fancy restroom. I am feeling a bit delicate though and susceptible to paranoia and I am convinced that every tourist gazing vacantly at their cell-phone screen is actually snapping a picture of the big goon who just threw up in the stalls.

It is entirely possible that I am already a wanted man, with my mug shot posted on the blues’ Web site. Everyone with a badge in this great city could already have my photo and history on their smartphone.

I guess I’m banking on Fortz trying to take care of the McEvoy loose end himself before trusting it to his comrades.

At the very least there will be two bent cops on my tail.

Enough of this bullshit. I have a job to do.

But once these bonds are delivered, I gotta get right back on the Krieger/Fortz situation.

Only Ronnie can help me there.

I pick up a pack of Lifesavers at the lobby concession then push through the revolving doors into the Manhattan afternoon. I feel like it should be midnight at the very least but the day’s travails have managed to shoehorn themselves into the span of a baseball game, which—God forgive me for saying it—is the most boring thing to do on a sports’ field apart from sweep it. First time I went to a game, half the crowd was gone before I realized the game was over. Zeb brought me to a game and spent most of the game pointing out the guys from the visiting team who had syphilis. Apparently half the dugout had the clap.

I am too frazzled for public transport so I flag a cab on the corner of Broadway and tell the cabbie to head straight down to SoHo. You would imagine that the guy would be ecstatic with a plum fare like this but he hammers on the steering wheel like I just admitted to boning his mom.

Usually, I am sensitive to people’s moods, even when they’re assholes, but today is not usually, so I knock on the Perspex.

“Two things, pal,” I say to him. “First turn off this mini-TV thing here. I could give a fuck about Lady Gaga’s fashion sense.” This is kind of a lie, Gaga is fascinating and she can belt it out too. “And second, if you don’t stop beating on that wheel I am going to shoot you in the head with one of the four guns I got here.”

The guy shapes up a little after that, but if it ever comes to it he will be thrilled to pick me out of a lineup.

Thanks to midtown traffic I got a little downtime to call Tommy Fletcher in Ireland. I search through my phone’s contacts and the little cropped head shot beside his details flashes me back to our army days. I remember when that photograph was taken. It was on the day Corporal Tommy Fletcher lost his left leg during an early-bird minesweep. Tommy was bitching about the heat and flies that flew into your face like bullets. And there was sweat in my eyes and I could hear blood rushing in my helmet, and I could not believe that people were looking to me for leadership. Kids were watching us pass by like we were boring them at this point, and the old men lounged in Nike track bottoms and sandals drinking their tiny glasses of sweet tea, playing their version of backgammon, conversing in the haranguing tones that I used to think were arguments but now realized was just business as usual, paying us absolutely no mind.

I remember thinking: This place should be a paradise. They got the weather, the ocean. Beautiful girls. Bloody hell, they got the best surfing in the med.

Then a Katyusha rocket streaked from the unfinished top floor of an apartment block, its vapor trail hissing like a snake. It missed Tommy and me but rolled the truck over Fletcher’s leg. The shooting started then and we were suddenly in a vortex of bullets. To stop myself from freaking the hell out, I decided I would save Tommy. One simple instruction for my brain that allowed me to slice through the confusion. I dumped my weapon and pack and slung Corporal Fletcher over one shoulder. After that I don’t really remember much about the heroic rescue until we were back at the hospital. When the medic sliced off Tommy’s trousers his leg fell off and on account of all the morphine in his system Tommy took it really well and said; “Jesus Christ, kid. Be careful with the scissors.”

Later on, he made me sit on the bed beside him with the bagged severed leg across our knees for a photograph. And that’s the one I use for his contacts.

I press call and Tommy answers on the first ring like he was hunkered over the phone.

“What do you want?” he says in a Belfast accent. Tommy is from Kerry, but that accent ain’t scary unless you can see the psychopathic face it’s coming out of. The Belfast accent, on the other hand, is what they should broadcast from satellites to scare off aliens.

“Tommy. It’s me. Danny.”

“Jaysus, Sarge,” he says, reverting to his normal voice. “This is freaky. I was punching the numbers to call you.”

The line is digital clear and it’s like my old comrade is in the cab beside me.

“Yeah? Why’s that, Tom? You got some news?”

“You are not going to believe what happened to that old cross-country lady you had me scoping.”

“I heard. Lightning. One in a million.”

Tommy draws a breath. “Fucking act of God. I’d actually grown quite fond of that old bird, she had a grand arse on her.”

It’s impossible to know whether or not Tommy is lying. Actually, that’s not true. Tommy is always lying. It’s his default setting. What’s impossible is sorting the outright bullshit from the little white lies.

Why are these people always drawn to me?

“Okay, so you didn’t get bored with the detail and take matters into your own hands?”

Tommy gasps. “That is an outrageous suggestion, Sarge. Sure, I’ve done a few things in my time, but electrocute Marge?”

Alarm bells clang in my skull. “Marge? Marge now?”

There’s a little pause while Tommy figures how clean he’s gotta come.

“Ah . . . the old dear spotted me, Sarge. Eyes like a bloody hawk after laser surgery. Started leaving sandwiches out in the garden. Lovely sandwiches. Lovely.”

It hits me then. Tommy was banging Irish Mike’s mum.

“Jesus Christ, Tom.”

“What?”

“Jesus bloody hell Christ. Is there any situation where you can keep it zipped?”

Tommy was famous for literally screwing his assignments. There was a Ranger legend that Corporal Fletcher’s thorough infiltrations of an Irish Republican cell meant that Tommy was the real father of a current Sinn Fein member of parliament.

“Zipped? How can you say that?”

“Why?”

“I got a monster in these y-fronts, Sarge. Everyone knows that. Zippers are an accident waiting to happen with a weapon like mine. Button fly only.”

Nice deflection. And I suppose me interrogating Tommy won’t bring Mrs. Madden back to life.

“She’s definitely dead, Tommy. You saw the body?”

Tom sighs. “The poor woman had a metal hip, she was fecking spit roasted. I saw enough to know that this assignment is over. I shot some video on my phone that might be of some use to you.”

I close the phone. Metal hip? Spit roasted? I do not need video of that.

No wonder Mike is pissed.

Five minutes later the video arrives. I can’t look at it. The poor old dear was someone’s mother, even if that someone was Irish Mike.

I spend the rest of the cab ride thinking. I try to focus on the lion’s den that I gotta shortly and of my own volition stroll into, but the mind goes where it will and soon my thoughts drift to Ireland and my mother.

God love her, the poor unfortunate.

That’s what people said to me afterward.

Margaret Costello was a rebel. She rebelled herself right out of the frying pan into the fire. Mom hit puberty on the tail end of the free-love generation, when it was all about sticking it to the man. And who was the man incarnate in New York City? Paddy Costello. Her empire-building, union-breaking, back-room-dealing, peerless son-of-a-bitch daddy. Paddy had bent so many good men to his will by threatening their children that his own kids seemed to him potential chinks in the Costello armor. He hardened his heart against them and put Margaret and Evelyn in convent schools with high walls, stern nuns and big knickers.

But Paddy needn’t have worried. Nobody turned his kids, he managed to do that all on his lonesome. Evelyn took to the booze and pills like her mother, and Margaret married a guy that she thought she loved because her daddy hated him.

I’m oversimplifying maybe. Perhaps my mother did love Arthur McEvoy for the first couple of years or so, until he started slapping her around every time she set foot outside the kitchen.

Mr. and Mrs. McEvoy moved back to Dublin, where Dad sat back and waited for the trust-fund money to roll in. He believed himself to be, as they say in Ireland, on the pig’s back.

Paddy, as they say in the US, did not play that shit. If his daughter wished to tie herself to exactly the kind of drunken throwback that gave the Irish a bad name in their new country, then she was on her own. Margaret was warned before the wedding: Choose. The family or that man.

Rebel Margaret squared her jaw and said: I have found my family.

So she was cut off.

Arthur McEvoy was not put out by this development. Grandchildren will break any man’s resolve, he thought, and quickly sired a couple of sons to forever intertwine the McEvoys and the Costellos. Even insisted on naming the second boy Patrick.

How cravenly transparent is that?

Still Paddy did not come around and the marriage descended into drunken violence, not bit by bit as is the usual pattern, but in a single day.

Margaret woke up with a charming rogue one morning and went to bed with a drunken devil. Margaret McEvoy felt like she had fallen off a cliff. The charming rogue never showed his face again. I find it difficult to believe that he ever existed. I certainly don’t remember meeting him. Mom used to whisper stories to me and Pat when the three of us were squeezed into the same bed. How our daddy used to sing to her in bars, right out there in front of everyone. How our father once climbed the tall oak in Carthy’s field to pluck her windblown scarf from the highest branch. I loved my mom, but I never believed a word of those stories.

My mother made the choice to live for her children, and that, along with visits from her baby sister, kept her going, until a sozzled Arthur ran the family Morris Minor into a donkey outside Dalkey Village, killing everyone but me and the donkey. The donkey was knocked over the ditch, the car went into a wall and I was thrown clear into the army.

Because that’s the sensible thing to do when your entire family has been killed in a traumatic accident caused by an alcoholic sociopath: join a bunch of homophobes in a small tent and learn how to murder people.

Still, I gotta admit. I was an empty vessel and the army filled me to overflowing with attitude, guns and knives.

A goddamn donkey.

This is exactly the kind of stuff, along with this latest skiing/electrocution malarkey, that makes the whole country seem like some kind of twee tragi-comic fairyland. And don’t even get me started on Waking Ned Devine. Thank Christ we have a few serious buckos like Jimmys Heaney and Sheridan to give the country a bit of gravitas.

Fucking leprechaun, Riverdancing, thatched cottage, diddly diddly, Quiet Man bullshit.

So I got this envelope for this guy and believe me I know what the obvious question is:

Why in the name of the holy virgin do I not take off to Mexico with the two hundred grand?

Because Mike made me a promise:

This is an important transaction, laddie, he told me back in the Brass Ring. You get the opera-toonity to run, you better think again because that’s a deal breaker and I go to work on your nearest and dearest. Mrs. Delano gets the first visit.

Nearest and dearest.

That used to be my little brother. We shared a room for all his life.

Even after all these years, thinking about little Pat brings on a cramp of pain. I can remember his smile of crooked teeth like an old sailor, but his eyes are lost to me.

I snuffle and think Edit. She has me maudlin when I need to be sharp.

The cab driver speaks.

“Hey, bud. You crying back there?”

I pull myself together. “That’s Mr. Four Guns to you, mac. We there yet?”

The cabbie taps his window. “We been there for ten minutes. You ain’t having a flashback or something, are you? You ain’t one of those flashback to Nam motherfuckers?”

Flashback to Nam? How old does this guy think I am?

Nam sounds so quaint. It’s all about the flashbacks to Desert Storm these days. Those Desert Storm vets are so smug and current, but the Iraq boys will soon wipe the smiles off their faces once their post traumatics kick in.

“Don’t worry. If I shoot you it’ll be on purpose.”

“Good to know,” says the cabbie, whose balls have descended. “That’s twenty-two fifty, buddy.”

I am tentatively liking this guy now, so I give him a fifty on account of I might not be coming out of this hotel and I would hate for the scumbags inside to fleece my wallet.

“Thanks, man,” says the guy. “You want me to wait?”

I slide across the seat to the curb side. “You can, but I ain’t giving you any more tips.”

The car is moving before my fingers leave the handle.

New York, New York, where it’s okay to be an asshole so long as you’re local.

Dan McEvoy, doorman theory number three: New Yorkers believe absolutely that any place that is not New York is by geographical definition inferior to the great five-borough nation. The Bronx has got better seafood than the Cote D’Azur. The beaches of Staten Island are far superior to anything Rio de Janeiro has to offer and it goes without saying that there isn’t a commercial boulevard on the planet that can hold a candle to Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Therefore most New Yorkers do not travel—why the hell would they? And the ones who do venture out into the vast mediocrity are businessmen or intellectuals and not likely to start trouble. Except for the East Village guys. Those artist types have been in buttoned-down über-PC mode for so long that they go batshit at the sight of décolletage. Jason and I always keep a close eye on anyone sporting a ponytail. Those bastards are likely to grab a server’s boobs and claim they were only trying to liberate her.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Jason and I had a lot of free time on our hands when we bounced Slotz, and a person can only do so many sit-ups in a club lobby.