Screwed

CHAPTER 5

OUT ON THE STREET, I FEEL EXPOSED. THERE’S STILL PLENTY of foot traffic down here, but not so much that a marksman wouldn’t be able to thread a bullet through it. I could certainly take someone’s head off from a rooftop without a problem. The crowd is different here, more discerning, less sneakers, and even the light is more oblique—somehow not so much in your face, in keeping with the subtle fashions of the SoHo natives.

I used to walk around this neighborhood wasting a lot of mind-space feeling all superior and grounded, but right now I would hand over a couple of years of my life just to be a guy out shopping in tucked-away places for on-trend pieces.

The best thing to do, I decide, would be to get my big burly frame into the Masterpiece hotel.

Sounds like a pretty grandiose name for a boutique hotel; the Masterpiece, right? But on account of the fact that I’ve been here before, I happen to know that this is the nickname given to the building by the locals because of the ornate cast-iron façade that the area is known for.

The Masterpiece. I was here a few years ago with Zeb during New York Fashion Week when Zeb was doing Botox outcalls and I was humping his wedge. This gorgeous—and frankly, way out of my league—senorita zones in on me in the bar and within two lemon gingerinis is all over me like cling film on a frankfurter. I was sporting a goatee at the time trying to draw attention from my expanding forehead and this girl who had a name like some herb or other tells me that my moustache is overpowering my beard. She let slip later on that she was using me to piss off her boyfriend who was chatting up an übermodel while she herself was merely a supermodel. How Zeb and I sneered at these subclassifications later when we were going home on our own. Also that’s where I picked up the term über, which I already told you about.

Cilantro, that was her name.

The lobby is dark and moody with plenty of floating light orbs and wave machines. If I ever get a few beers in me and meet the interior designer, I’ll probably let slip that this place reminds me of a strip club I once bounced in Joburg, except for the strippers wore longer skirts than the girls in here.

The concierge desk is a swathe of curved steel with a glass worktop that changes color every few seconds, which causes the young lady behind it to wince with every fresh wash of color. That’s gotta be bad for the brain so I try to be extra nice.

“Hi. I have an envelope for Mr. Shea.”

The girl is severe/pretty in her steel gray smock but she’s going to have frown lines before she hits twenty-five if she can’t get away from this desk.

“You can leave it with me. We don’t allow delivery men in the private elevators.”

We don’t allow. She’s a shareholder now?

I persist good-naturedly. “I’m also kind of a visitor. Can you call Mr. Shea and tell him that the package from Mr. Madden has arrived?”

Mr. Shea. Another Irish name. They say there are 20 million Irish Americans and it looks like I’m gonna bump into most of them before this day winds down.

“You’re Mr. Madden?” she asks, picking up a phone the same color as her smock.

“No, I’m Mr. Madden’s . . .” I search my brain for a term that will bestow upon me the importance I deserve. “Gopher.”

I hope the girl will interpret my wry smile to mean that I am underplaying my own importance in this whole package-dropping enterprise. She does not.

“Mr. Shea,” she says into the phone, frowning as the desk turns green. “The gopher is here from Mr. Madden.”

Five seconds later she hands me an electronic lift key, which is ironically in the shape of an actual key.

“Penthouse apartment,” she says. “The private elevators are at the back.”

Ironic hotels. Only in Manhattan.

I stop off in the restroom and deposit one of the Glocks in a stall just in case I have to shoot my way out, wild west style. And by wild west I mean Limerick, not Texas. O’Connell Street can get a little jumpy after turfing-out time on the weekends. The other three guns I keep on my person hoping to hocus-pocus at least one past the search that will undoubtedly be waiting for me at the top of the shaft.

I am walking blind into this situation with no idea what kind of scenario awaits me up there. I don’t know the exits; I don’t know how many hostiles. Weapons, intentions, bargaining positions. Nothing.

The odds are good that things will not escalate in a shi-shi SoHo establishment. What kind of moron would kick off a gunfight in a place like the Masterpiece?

The elevator has mirrored doors and I study myself as the lights flicker upward toward PH, trying to decide which version of Daniel McEvoy I’m gonna present to whoever is on the other side of the doors.

I’ll give them a blast of ice-cold professional, I decide, but then reconsider. Let these guys underestimate me. Play it big and dumb, like a guy trying to look professional who is actually out of his depth. Keep the mouth under wraps. Speak when spoken to and no backchat. This was what Mike had advised:

Remember, act stupid, McEvoy. I want Mr. Shea to feel this letter is being dropped off by a shaggy dog. So none of the usual back-answering bullshit. The more stupider you are, the faster they let you leave. If they ask you specifics about my operation, you ain’t got any. Clear?

More stupider? This guy runs an organization?

I do a little shadow boxing in the elevator to get my blood up, then practice my chosen look in the mirrored doors. I want Mr. Shea to see a guy who’s big and dumb but trying his darndest to look bigger and less dumb. It’s time to accept that I’m going through with this drop and use whatever skills I have to ensure I come out the other side.

In other words, I need to become a soldier again.

The elevator tells me in the sexist voice I have ever heard that we have reached the penthouse. At this point most elevators would ding but this one actually sighs, which almost breaks my focus.

Soldier, I tell myself. Stupid soldier time.

The doors open onto a corridor with plush red carpet like you’d get spilling out of the queen’s plane, and there are three guys on sentry duty.

These guys ain’t military, two of them are sitting down for Christ’s sake. One of the sitters is eating chicken. But the third sentry is in my face, waiting right there by the door, big smile all ready. One of those hearty smiles favored by people in public office. It comes on like a lightbulb but there isn’t any warmth in it.

I size him up from behind my dumb trying to look not dumb eyes. He’s big but a little soft, should’ve moved up a shirt size a while back but is holding on, strangling the buttons in their holes. He’s got a flat face and a weird constellation of teardrop freckles that look like he shotgunned someone close quarters and got spattered. He’s light on his feet and I can see muscle in his shoulders and arms. Also, I hate to say it, but there’s plenty of smarts in those eyes, which is the best weapon of all, at close quarters. From far out, a good scope and steady hands will trump smarts every time.

“I got the package,” I say, trying to sound gruff. “For Mr. Shea.”

The guy speaks and I am surprised to hear actual first-generation Irish-Irish. Maybe he emigrated on account of the recession, but I doubt it. I bet he threw a few things in a holdall and skipped the country with the laser eyes of law enforcement searing the seat of his pants.

“We were expecting you, Daniel. We have been for the past couple of hours. Mr. Shea is getting antsy.”

I don’t even bother offering a platitude. I give him a shrug that could mean traffic, fuck you or both. That’s what I like about shrugs: their ambivalence.

The guy beckons me out of the lift and my toe catches on the lip, which kind of puts a dent in my tough-guy routine, but also gives me an excuse to stumble forward and slip the lightweight Kel-Tec concealed in my paw into his jacket pocket.

“Easy there, big fella,” says the guy, like I’m a horse being led to the bolt room.

He pushes me away, gentle, then raises his arms high, wiggling his fingers.

“You trying to lev’tate me?” I ask, figuring my mispronunciation puts the comment in dumb guy trying to be a smartass territory.

“Just get ’em up,” he says, so I do. And he moves in for a thorough frisk. This guy knows how to frisk, I’ll give him that. In some cultures we’d be married now. It takes him five seconds to locate the two remaining weapons and a couple of probing minutes to ensure that there aren’t any more. No gentle hands here. This ain’t JFK. Nobody’s gonna be pressing molestation charges.

“You came prepared,” he says and passes my weapons off to one of the chair goons who gets chicken grease all over the holster before tossing the hardware into a bucket under his chair. Greasy fingers on my stuff is one of my pet hates and the only reason I hold it together is because those guns haven’t been in my possession long enough for me to consider them mine.

“Prepared is my middle name,” I say, which I figure sounds stupid enough to cancel out the levitation crack.

My frisker’s laugh is about as warm as his smile. “Really? That’s nice, Daniel. Now, why don’t you get your prepared arse into Mr. Shea’s office?”

Arse. Now there’s a word you don’t hear enough of.

“Couldn’t I just give this envelope to you?” Might as well ask.

“Nope. This is one of those in person situations. Mr. Shea is anxious to meet you.”

I am anxious to meet absolutely no more new people today.

“Okay, let’s get this over with.”

I walk toward the door, each step laden with doom, which sounds melodramatic, I know, but that’s how it feels. The tension churns my stomach and I am gripped by an almost irresistible urge to take on this group of sentinels, and then knock on the door and introduce myself to this Shea person. The seated guys hop to attention like they can read menace in my aura and treat me to vicious squints. I may have rushed to judgment about these two with all their sitting/chicken scarfing. Vertical, they look pretty formidable. My urge to violence fizzles out and I decide to let this situation play out a little more.

“You guys stay out here and watch the elevator,” says Spatter to his boys. “On your toes, please. No more bloody KFC.”

They’re staying outside. This is good, unless something is about to happen in the room that Spatter does not want anyone to witness.

The thing about witnesses is they never start out that way. People see nothing and know nothing until law enforcement types help them remember. Most people can be pressured into turning, and a good boss knows that. So if mortal injuries are about to be inflicted, the less people who see it the better.

The door is cast iron and ornate and I realize that it is a scale reproduction of the hotel’s façade right down to the arched entrance.

“It’s a little hotel,” I say, ladling on the stupid.

“That’s right, Einstein,” says Blood Spatter, shouldering me out of the way, which gives me that one second of up close I need to reclaim the little nine-millimeter from his jacket pocket. He doesn’t feel a thing and I feel a kinship with the tiny Kel-Tec now; this gun is truly mine as we’ve been through shenanigans together.

Now I have seven surprises for Mr. Shea and his boys, I think, slotting the featherweight pistol into my own pocket. Seven, and one in the pipe.

I don’t want to kill anyone if I don’t have to, but to be honest I’m less anti-homicide than I was yesterday. If I even smell rubber, then the gloves are coming off if you’ll pardon the expression.

This day is turning into a long series of confrontational meetings with angry men. It seems that no matter how far up the food chain you go, the head honcho is always a bag of insecurities just itching for some poor sap to underestimate his importance. This place, the Masterpiece, is pretty top end, but I just bet this Shea guy has a “high and mighty” routine he would switch on for all and sundry right down to the pizza boy. I never met a boss or an officer who was comfortable in his own skin.

As I go through the doorway, I’m visualizing how it’s gonna go. Even though Shea has been pacing all morning for me to show up with this valuable package, he’ll probably make me wait while he finishes his salmon blinis or shouts sell sell sell into his iPhone.

I am dead wrong.

This guy is out of one of those weird backless stool-chairs running at me with a mouthful of hummus.

I do not believe this. That’s my third thing: sucking coffee, greasy fingers, eating with your mouth open.

You know what? People are animals.

You’re not a monkey, I want to tell this guy. Shut your goddamn face.

It’s too much tension. So I giggle.

“It’s about time, McEvoy . . .” he begins, then hears the giggle and his techno trainers squeak to a halt on the wooden floor. “What? You’re laughing at me?”

Shea has got bits of food in his limp goatee. How am I gonna take this person seriously?

I remind myself that I am pretending to be dumb. Or more accurately dumber than I am. If I wasn’t dumb, would I be here in the first place?

“No, sir, Mr. Shea,” I blurt. “I got this condition. It’s a stress thing, Mom says. It’s like A . . . D . . . something and another D. I got stuff, like medicine, but we’re outta Cheerios so I didn’t take it. You’re like the real deal, Mr. Shea, and I ain’t never been in a penthouse. You know your door is like the hotel but shrunk down?”

I fear I maybe have played the shit-kicker card too strong but Shea is moved to laughter by my speech.

“Do you hear this bullshit, Freckles?” he asks Blood Spatter. “Mike said he was a retard and for once the man was right.”

I have one new piece of information now and an inference; The head muscle’s nom-de-goon is “Freckles,” which by the law of inverse proportions means he must be meaner than a snake.

Shea zigzags himself back into the ergo-stool and I take a heavy-lidded look at the guy, trying to see past the hummus for the moment, though I’m not ruling out bringing it up later.

Shea isn’t much more than a boy. Maybe twenty-two, dressed straight out of Abercrombie, probably stands in line with the other kids on the weekends. He’s got acne traces on his forehead and really well conditioned blond hair, artfully sticking up a hundred ways all at the same time. If this youngster is at the top of whatever organisation is being run out of this place, then he just got here.

Maybe the king is dead and this kid found himself on the throne.

Shea drums the desk a little with his forefingers and nods at me to sit.

“See, here’s what happened, McEvoy.”

I do not want to hear what happened. Finding out what happened rarely leads to happy ever after.

“You can tell me if you want, Mr. Shea,” I say, wondering how long they can possibly buy this dumb act for. “But if I gotta repeat it back, Mr. Madden says to record it on my phone.”

Shea smirks at Freckles and I know I’m screwed. “No need to record anything, McEvoy. You won’t be repeating shit.”

“Okay, then.”

Shea resumes his storytelling, shoveling food into his mouth from a deli carton as he speaks. “Mike. Mr. Madden. My dad let him have his own little operation out in the suburbs because he owed Mike a favor or two. Mike’s deal is small time, who gives a shit? But now Dad is gone and we’re in a recession, so all the small times need to be amalgamated. You stack up a hundred cents and they make a dollar, right?”

“That is right,” I say, amazed.

“I sent a representative to speak to Mike. A friend of mine. Nice guy, grew excellent weed. Harvard graduate like me, you know.” Shea wiggles a finger and I see a Harvard ring all pimped out with diamonds. “What a school? Wall-to-wall smart pussy.”

I nod along with the beat of his patter, waiting for the point.

“So there’s a misunderstanding with one of Mike’s people and now my boy is out of action for half a year at least and his nerves are shot to fuck, which really inconveniences me personally. My pot parties are legendary, man. You ever hear about my parties, McEvoy?”

“No. I never hear about ’em. Was I invited?”

This is outrageous bullshit, but they’re hooked now. I hear snickering behind me.

“I wanna do Irish Mike,” continues Shea. “But Freckles convinces me to settle ’cause he’s tight with old Mikey.”

Shea’s Harvard accent is slipping and I hear the nasal wah-wah of Brooklyn bashing through.

“So Mike agrees to partnering up and promises to reimburse me for my trouble and send me the name of the man who decked my boy in an envelope, as a peace offering. You got that envelope, Daniel?”

My confused look is now genuine as I am not sure what Mike’s play is if I’m supposed to be the guy who decked his Harvard buddy. He’s gotta know I’m not going down easy.

Shea snaps his fingers and hummus plops onto the desk. “Hey, rocket scientist. Do you have my envelope?”

I reach into my pocket slowly. “I got it here somewheres. This jacket has so many pockets but my other jacket is at the cleaners. It’s at my mom’s really but I don’t like to say that in front of the guys so I say cleaners.”

Shea nods at Freckles. “Looks like we’re talking to the dumbest guy on earth.”

Freckles taps his temple. “He ain’t all there, boss.”

“Don’t call me boss,” snaps Shea. “My father was boss. Like some plantation owner. Call me sir.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Shea. Just reflex. I’m an old dog, you know?”

Shea nods like ain’t that the truth. “Well, we know what happens to old dogs.”

Oh. Hello there. A little tension in the camp.

Shea drums the table again. “Envelope, please.”

I slide it over and begin visualizing my moves. Freckles has shifted slightly, out of my field of vision, so he’s what my Ranger buddies would call the prime hostile. Shea is just a kid and I can tell by his posture that he’s not a physical guy, but I still gotta factor him in. You never know who’s a crack shot or can throw a knife. Maybe this prick grew up on Duke Nukem and can decapitate a rat at fifty paces.

I still can’t figure the play. Why would Mike throw me into this mix? I’m chaos and unpredictability. If Mike wants to suck up to this varsity kid, surely he’s gonna sacrifice one of those mooks he keeps around the Brass Ring.

He should know that at some point I am going to see an opening and bludgeon my way through and then come home in the dark.

Shea counts out the bonds then slides one across to me. “This word, dumb ass,” he says, tapping the bond. “What is it?”

“Bearer,” I say, sounding out the syllables.

“You know what that means?”

I can guess but I give him the answer he might expect.

“Something about being like naked?”

“It means that you’re the bearer, the guy. I don’t know if you’re the actual guy but Mike has no use for you.” Shea slides the empty envelope back to me like it’s Long John Silver’s black spot. “I think your boss is trying to kill two birds with one stone and, Mr. Daniel McEvoy, you’re one of those birds.”

I have a road to Damascus moment, the penny drops from a great height, and I see Mike’s vision of the future stretched out before me. Irish Mike is as dumb as moss, but he has a condition that makes him very dangerous; he sincerely and in spite of all evidence to the contrary believes himself to be clever. A master strategist.

And I think he’s bumped into some other dumb smart guy.

This is what I think: Freckles and Mike have partnered up.

Freckles asked Mike to send over a patsy so Freckles can shoot Shea and blame the patsy and step into the vacant top slot. This poor college grad is getting disinherited.

But Mike is also running his own game. Instead of sending some clumsy stumblebum he sends ex-military Daniel McEvoy in the hope that I will be forced to kill both of these guys just to stay alive.

I gotta admit it, he suckered me with that fifty percent outta the hole bullshit.

“You got it wrong, kid,” I say, normal cadence, hoping he’ll take notice. “I’m not one of the birds. I’m the stone.”

This is a really good line and I can just imagine the movie trailer guy doing it in a promo, but it doesn’t impress Shea much.

“You’re speaking fast now? What, you’re a smart guy all of a sudden?”

“Okay, everyone. The important thing now is that we all stay calm. I’m gonna lay out what I think is going on, and everybody just keep it in your pants till I’m finished.”

“You’re gonna lay it out?” says Freckles. “Who the fuck are you? Shaft?”

Second time today. One more and I gotta consider that I might be a little Shafty.

“What are you talking about?” says Shea. He ain’t worried but at least he’s listening.

“Shea. Focus on me now. Forget everybody else. This situation is about to escalate.”

“Yeah, escalate into you being dead.”

“I like the way you took my verb and used it again. That’s good stuff but listen now. I think you’re being played here.”

Food jets outta Shea’s throat as he guffaws. “Played? Mister, I invented the word. I come from the world of business. Great white sharks, man. I’ve worked the floor on Wall Street. The bear pit, man. These goons can’t play me.”

This guy is in his own little bubble. I don’t have the time it would take to get through to him.

I twist in my seat, keeping an eye on Freckles. “I bet if you ask Freckles here to turn out his pockets, you’re gonna find a silenced pistol in there somewhere.”

Shea is young and so still thinks he’s immortal.

“Yeah? So what? The bullets are for you.”

“Really? You shoot guys in the penthouse now, Junior?”

Shea frowns. “Shut the fuck up, dummy. Freckles doesn’t have a silencer. Do you, Freckles?”

“’Course not, Mr. Shea. This prick is winding you up.”

“I thought he was stupid.”

“So did I. Mike said he was thick as pig shit.”

I lean back on the chair to give myself a bit of spring if I need it. “Mike has played us all, gentlemen. He is one hundred percent aware that I would be the most dangerous person in this room, and still he put me here with both of his prospective partners.” I see doubt flickers across Freckles’s brow so I press on. “Oh yeah, it’s win-win for old Mike. If you manage to plug me and your boss on the quiet and set me up as a patsy, then he’s off the hook with the kid, in tight with the new king and settles a score with me. If I go operational on the two of you, then he’s forgotten in the chaos and his little cottage industry in Cloisters stays independent.”

Shea is still eating but half-listening too. “But you ain’t got a silencer, right Freckles?”

Freckles is glaring death rays at me. “No, I fucking ain’t. But I got a gun. Can I please shoot this prick?”

I point a finger gun at the kid. “He draws a weapon and you’re history, Harvard.”

“Your gun, it don’t have a silencer on it?” asks Shea.

His accent is pure Brooklyn now, university washed away.

Freckles frowns for a second and I see he’s making a decision and that decision is Fuck it.

“No,” he says, pulling a gun from a holster behind his back, then a suppressor from his pocket and expertly screwing it to the barrel. “But it does now.”

It takes him three twists to get the silencer onto his pistol, which gives me plenty of time to duck under his gun arm and come up underneath with the Kel-Tec already in my hand. I twist the small barrel into the soft flesh below his chin hard enough to tear the skin and say gently:

“Shhhhhh.”

Freckles freezes like he’s perched on a landmine, and because he can’t nod perceptibly, blinks twice to show he understands. He does not need to know how my pistol has come to be pointed at his brain, he just needs to know that it is.

“Good,” I say. “Now drop your weapon.”

What the hell am I doing?

Drop your weapon?

This is not how battles are fought in the real world. A guy has a yearning to shoot you, you put that guy down. You do not purposely engineer the situation so that the guy gets to draw further breaths.

Freckles’s gun makes a couple of clacks as it hits the floor, not enough to draw the boys in from outside.

“Come clean,” I say to Freckles and if he gives me so much as one syllable of bullshit, so help me God I will send him bullshitting into the afterlife.

“Power play,” he says. “Me and Mike. I was moving him up.”

As I thought. Freckles and Mike: two Shakespearean wannabes spinning tangled webs.

I nod at Shea, who has stopped chewing and sits slack jawed.

“From the horse’s mouth,” I say.

And before Shea gets the words out I know exactly what’s coming:

“I could use a man like you.”

Then:

“Execute that motherfucker.”

Ah, Harvard. Thine veneer has faded like dew in the morning sun.

I should kill Freckles and Shea. I could do it easily with the silenced gun and probably take out KFC and his partner in the hall, but you’re talking carnage. Mass murder.

And if I gotta do mass murder, I want to go the whole hog. Get Mike and his boys and Krieger/Fortz while I’m about it.

I’m drifting toward war criminal with those numbers.

And I like to tell myself, on the cold winter nights when I’m flashing on all the ghosts of violence past that haunt my sleep-deprived spirit, that I Am Not So Bad. Sounds juvenile, I know, but it’s a good 3-A.M. mantra.

I Am Not So Bad. Sometimes I sing it to the tune of U2’s “In the Name of Love.” I try to remember not to do this if I have someone sleeping over.

“I can pay you, McEvoy,” says Freckles, making the inevitable counter offer. “I got some bricks of cash in my car. An escape fund. A hundred grand.”

I slap the back of his head, hard, knocking him over onto the desk into what doormen refer to as the Deliverance position.

“I bet you do, Freckles. Thanks for the tip.”

Shea glares at Freckles. “You fucking shitbag. I trusted you.”

The older man’s head is ringing and he is not interested in Shea’s bullshit.

“Fuck you. You ain’t even a man. I don’t owe you shit.”

“Shoot him, McEvoy. Freckles is my employee, so I have more funds than he does. Stands to reason.”

I pick up Freckles’s silenced gun and poke him in the arse cheek with it. “That does stand to reason, Freckles. How are you, an immigrant from Donegal, gonna up that ante?”

“You can take the money and the car. Keys are in my pocket.” He wiggles his arse and the keys jangle. This is humiliating for him. No man should be forced to arse wiggle after the age of fifty. There should be a waiver.

I follow the jangle and find a ring of keys, a valet ticket and a phone. No car key.

“These are house keys, Freckles.”

“It’s the key ring McEvoy. Remote starter.”

Now that is convenient.

“That is convenient,” I say, pocketing the keys, ticket and phone.

I can see the attraction of robbing folks now. You just go around with a gun and take what you want.

“So are you going to shoot this little prick?” presses Freckles. “He’s killing the business.”

Shea takes a handful of hummus and smears it across Freckles’s cheeks. “You go straight to fuckin’ murder? We couldn’t talk it over?”

The kid is still in cloud cuckoo land. I should shake him up a bit to make him think twice about coming after me should he survive. I take two rapid steps around the desk and force his head into his carton of food, mashing it in there.

“Like you were talking it out with me?” I say. “Is that what you mean?”

“I was trying to scare you,” he protests.

“Bullshit. As far as you were concerned, you were talking to a dead man.”

“You were totally dead,” Freckles confirms. “We had the plot all picked out, McEvoy. This prick wanted to shoot you himself, make his bones, like anyone even says that anymore.”

I got one guy with his head on a table and another with his arse in the air. This is unsustainable. I need an exit strategy.

“Okay, over by the window, both of you.”

“But . . .” says Edward Shea, so I crack him on the crown with Freckles’s silencer.

“Shut up, kid. Talking just gets you dead faster. By the window.”

They go, glaring and elbowing like two kids. Freckles is all mutter and bluster but he knows I could give him his gun back, put one hand in my pocket and still beat the bejaysus out of him, so he’s gonna bide his time.

The effect by the window is what I’d hoped for. Sunlight blots out their features, makes it difficult to see who’s who.

“Okay. Now drop your pants.”

Freckles has some balls, and he doesn’t want to show them to me.

“Fuck yourself, McEvoy. I ain’t going out with my pants down ’less I’m getting blowed by Jennifer Aniston.”

It’s a nice ambition but Freckles has gotta accept that it’s aspirational to say the least.

I cock the weapon. “I’ll call Jenn. You get yourself ready.”

Freckles goes to work on a buckle in the shape of the classic Playboy bunny silhouette, which I’m sure would impress the hell out of Ms. Aniston.

The one where the superstar blows the Paddy mobster.

“What about you, kid? You got any conditions?”

“Sure. Why don’t you blow me?”

All credit to the kid. Maybe he has some moxy too.

But he wiggles out of his little hipster jeans and holy shit I cannot believe it, the two of them are wearing matching underpants. White y-fronts with yellow piping.

I’ve been teetering on the brink of hysteria the whole day and this sends me tumbling over the edge. I cough through ten seconds of ragged laughter and wipe tears from my eyes, because blurry eyes when you’re covering hostiles is for amateurs.

“You gotta be kidding me. I don’t know why you guys are fighting, you have a lot in common.”

“I’ve been wearing these shorts for years,” says Freckles sullenly. “Not this exact pair.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” says Shea. “I broke into your house and stole them.”

“I don’t fucking know, do I?” says Freckles. “Who can understand kids, these days. I saw a movie the other day where this Saw guy was peeling faces. What kind of shit is that?”

Freckles is showing initiative by trying to appeal to me as a fellow oldie, but it’s having zero impact.

“Now, hold hands,” I order, stony faced. I know they’ll object, which I have no patience for, so I shoot a hole in Shea’s stool, knocking it over backward. The falling stool makes more noise than the bullet.

“Hold hands, girls. Squeeze fucking tight.”

What choice do they have? They hold hands. I wonder would they kiss, if I insisted?

The clatter brings a goon to the door. He raps gently.

“Eh, boss? Everything okay?”

“Don’t call me boss!” screams Shea, impulsively I guess.

“Sorry, Mr. Shea. You all squared away in there with the guy . . . situation?”

I wiggle the gun a little and Shea gets the message and calms down.

“Yeah, it’s all cool. Come in here, both of you. There’s a little heavy lifting to be done.”

I back up, keeping one gun on the window and the other on the door. This is the tightrope bit, keeping the balls in the air, to mix my circus metaphors. It’s all smoke and mirrors and windows. And two douche clowns outside.

The clowns walk in with that tough-guy, rolling-shoulders nonchalance and stop dead in their tracks when they catch sight of what is framed by the window.

“What . . .” says KFC.

“The fuck?” completes his partner with comic timing that would make Ferrel and Rudd crap themselves.

I feel myself waiting to see how these two would interpret the situation so I decide to jump in.

“Okay, boys. Guns on the table.”

KFC moves a little faster than I’m expecting, jinking left and diving for cover, with the result that I shoot him in the calf rather than the foot, and he face-plants into the desk, stunning himself. His partner is frozen by indecision and stands there shuddering until the opportunity has passed. His massive shoulders hitch as he begins to sob, disgusted with himself, and he takes his gun out and meekly lays it on the table. I frisk KFC and find a single pistol and a knife. I keep the knife hoping I don’t have to go through a metal detector anytime soon as I am fast becoming a walking arsenal. The gun I place on the office table.

I grab KFC’s collar and drag him to his feet.

“You better belt that,” I say, pointing to the bullet wound.

“You’re dead, man,” he says, but it’s just for show. His face is pale and he’s already halfway into shock, but he has enough motor skills left to remove his belt and tie off the wound.

When I have everyone by the window, I give them my speech.

“Let me summarize the situation. You guys are some kind of hooligans. Drugs, money, whatever, I never heard of you.”

“Mostly drugs,” says KFC, a little addled by his situation. “And we off folks and shit.”

“Great. Okay. We’re all on the same page. So here’s what happened; I got dragged into the middle of a gang dispute. Freckles here was gonna shoot the kid, and set me up as a patsy.”

KFC raises his hand. “What’s a patsy?”

I was not expecting interruptions. “It’s a stool pigeon.”

“No,” says KFC. “You’ve lost me.”

I think maybe this guy is playing me with my own dumb act.

“Are you taking the piss?”

KFC is wounded. “Nah, man. You shot me. My mind is a little fuzzy with the pain and whatnot.”

Whatnot? I like this guy.

“Okay. The deal is that Shea and Freckles want to kill each other. Is that clear enough?”

Everyone nods. Even Shea and Freckles.

“So you people have a schism in the ranks.”

KFC’s hand goes up. I do not have time for this.

“A split,” I tell him. “A split in the ranks. Okay?”

KFC leans on his bloody knuckles. “Yeah. I got it. You couldn’t shoot me in the arm? That’s my career fucked?”

“I could shoot you in the arm now. Would that shut you the hell up?”

KFC realizes that there is no right answer to this question and so wisely decides to keep quiet.

I get back to the point. “The point is that this group is not working as a unit. I don’t know who’s loyal to who, but you guys need some private time to sort it out. You know, brainstorm or make a graph or whatever. This has nothing to do with me so I’m gonna absent myself.”

Shea gets a little antsy. Probably wondering if Freckles has paid off his boys.

“Take the guns, McEvoy. You need to protect yourself.”

I shrug. “I got plenty of guns. I’m gonna leave those two on the table there. I don’t like to overstock in general. I only kill what I can eat, like the Apaches.”

Shea is sweating now. “You can’t leave me here. I’m not one of these guys.”

The kid is good as dead and he knows it. I wonder will I feel guilty about this? Probably. But if an Irish Catholic made his decisions based on guilt avoidance then he wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and he certainly wouldn’t play with himself while he was in bed in the morning.

I back away from the group, mentally assigning survival odds to each one. My money would have been on Freckles but he gets a handicap on account of the dropped pants. KFC is shot in the leg but his hand is already on the table. Shea is getting dead unless he jumps out the window or gets abducted by aliens in the next ten seconds, and the other guy is still blubbering. So overall, I gotta stick with Freckles.

I back out the door, holding my guns steady.

“Nobody moves until I’m in the elevator, after that you make your own decisions.”

It’s a tense situation. Freckles is trying to hitch up his pants with knee flexes and KFC’s hand is crabbing toward the weapons. I shoot a hole in the desktop to stop him jumping the gun.

“Nu-uh,” I say, like a kindergarten teacher to an impatient toddler. “Wait for the elevator door.”

Shea is sobbing uncontrollably, squeezing Freckles’s hand like the guy is his prom date. I try to feel sorry for him but the kid has got food on his face, which counts against him. I realize with a jolt that I am more pissed off with Shea over the hummus than the attempted murder.

Shit. That is messed up.

But there’s whole lot more to eating with your mouth open than just the chewing involved. It says: I am arrogant. I don’t give a shit. I care so little about you that I can’t even be bothered to close my mouth.

In my opinion if you see a person eating with their mouth open, then that person is probably psychopathic at the very least.

I need to do a little more research before I publish.

I knuckle the elevator button and I can hear the car cranking and the cables working in the shaft. Not far, I’m guessing. Maybe one floor down.

“You got options,” I tell the foursome. “You can all just walk away.”

It’s bullshit, I know, but I am trying to kid myself that I’m not passively murdering at least half of these people. I’m separating myself from the bloodbath that is about to happen. It’s like the Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, except in reverse, with homicide and only one degree.

The elevator sighs and I skip smartly inside, jabbing the lobby button with my silencer. The gun battle commences before the mirrored doors slide across and give me a look at myself when I’m not expecting it. I flinch with every shot, like they’re shooting at me. But also I flinch because in that unexpected reflection I catch myself looking like my father.

I try to deflate the swelling in my head with a zinger.

“You should have kept your mouth shut, kid,” I mutter at myself.

I Am Not So Bad. No no, I am not so bad.

My arse.

The valet barely glances at me, I suppose one Mick tough guy looks much the same as another after thirty years of facial hardship. He just scans the ticket with his handheld gizmo and five minutes later I’m buckled into a Cadillac that has more kit than the USS Enterprise.

Freckles’s phone synchs with the on-board computer, which asks me if I would like to send a message, and this gives me an idea that could buy me a little time. I dictate a text from Freckles to Mike Madden that reads simply: It’s done, partner.

Hopefully Mike will embark on the traditional celebratory shit-faced binge and will not know what hit him, when I hit him, as I now must. Maybe once upon a time I would have simply pointed the car westward-ho and kept my foot on the gas until the radiator split, but now I have taken responsibilities upon myself.

Sofia. Jason. Even Zeb. They have all wiggled through cracks in my armor.

If my armor was actual physical armor I would be bringing it back to the armor store and having stern words with the armor salesman.

It would be standard counter-surveillance procedure for me to tool around SoHo for a while and shake off any tail that I might have picked up. For all I know the Feds are up on Shea’s people and I could be popped driving a vehicle stuffed to the door panels with contraband, but I don’t have time for spy games. People are in danger because I didn’t lie down and die like I was supposed to, so I gotta deal with the threat.

I ask the car to call Sofia and it says:

“Call Sofia Dominatrix?”

Dominatrix? Freckles won’t have my Sofia in his phone. But he has been busy in his downtime.

“No. Negative. Cancel call,” I shout, in my eagerness to not get into a row with a leather-clad hooker.

“Canceling call,” says the car, in a voice that takes me a second to recognize as Clint Eastwood’s.

Wow. Freckles is/was a tough guy. Even his software kicks ass.

I dictate the number as I swing the Caddy into the Holland Tunnel and drum the steering wheel waiting for Sofia to pick up.

Three rings, then:

“Welcome to the House of Jesus. Can I interest you in our latest publication, Living Rent Free in the House of Jesus?”

This is a standard Sofia pickup. She has a whole ream of responses calculated to make the caller instantly hang up. Another classic: “This is an automated ordering service, please speak to be redirected to our credit card debit line.” My personal favorite is lifted from Ghostbusters. Sofia treats the unfortunate caller to ten seconds of harrowing screaming followed by the growled word, “Zuul.”

Sofia calls this technique the Reverse Jehovah. I once asked her why she bothered keeping her line connected and she replied: “You are such a sad sack. Don’t you want to laugh whenever you can?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“I don’t leave the house much anymore,” she’d continued, poking my chest with a finger, backing me into a corner. “And you have that stupid goddamn casino. So all I do is take junk calls and do my look. You like my look today, baby?”

I did like her look. She was done up in a leather coat belted at the waist, torn tights and earrings so big they could pick up stations from space. I think Paula Abdul might have been the inspiration.

“You look great. You sure do.”

Sofia stroked my cheek and I blushed like a virgin. “If look so great then why don’t you do something about it?”

I ask what I always ask when something like this comes up.

“What’s my name? Who am I?”

Sofia’s gaze muddied and she stamped her kitten heels. “Why do you always ask me that question, Carmine? Ain’t we been married long enough? I make all this effort and you quiz me up and down. You shouldn’t be putting any questions to me unless the answer is ‘Oh baby.’”

Sofia was up against me like a molten bar, her curves finding all my hollows.

I’m only human for Christ’s sake.

I needed to cool her down and I knew just how to do it.

“Sofia, have you taken your lithium?”

She pushed me away in disgust. “Lithium? You have all this jammed up on you, and you’re asking me about meds? Christ, Daniel.”

And just like that the well was dry.

How come I’m always Daniel when she’s not horny anymore?

If Sofia is coming on really hot and heavy I ask her what happened to Carmine. That cools her down real fast and the only answer she’s ever given me is:

The same thing that will happen to you if you don’t stop asking about him.

Which doesn’t bode well for our fledgling relationship.

I speak into a little microphone on the visor, probably louder than I need to given the multidirectional specs of these things.

“Sofia? It’s me, Daniel.”

“What’s the code, Dan?”

I had forgotten Sofia Delano’s paranoia. The weekly code was usually the title of an eighties dance-floor filler.

“Sofia, darlin’. I don’t remember the code.”

“Well then you better stop calling me or I’ll send some voodoo down this line that will shrivel your balls like raisins.”

That is a graphic threat and the superstitious Paddy in me swears that his goujons are tingling a little, which jogs my memory.

“The code is; When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

“Dan, honey,” Sofia says all treacle and promise now. “Where are you?”

Girls putting on the baby voice usually make me wince, but Sofia does it with such need and conviction that it would break the hardest heart. If old Paddy Costello had met someone like Sofia he might have actually enjoyed his miserable life of untold wealth.

“I am on my way over,” I tell the microphone. “I’ll be with you in ninety minutes max.”

I’m coming up on the Newark Turnpike and traffic is slow but moving, which is about as good as it ever gets, so I might make it in an hour twenty.

“Are you feeling hot, baby?”

I think maybe Sofia Delano sincerely believes that sex is the only reason anyone would give her the time of day. This Carmine asshole screwed her up good. From what I can glean from her neighbors, Carmine was the jealous type who turned a vivacious young girl into a virtual recluse—think cat lady without the cats—and people will go to extraordinary lengths for attention when they have been systematically starved of it for years. I remember having a physical as a kid and half hoping the pain in my head was a tumor because fathers always love their sick kids, don’t they?

So I understand, sort of.

I tried to track down Carmine a couple of months ago to put Sofia out of her misery. I even put a computer genius friend of Jason’s on the case, but the guy has disappeared off the face of the earth, like aliens took a shine to him.

A guy like that is mostly likely dead or locked deep in the bowels of a Mexican prison. I can’t help worrying about it though. Bad pennies have a habit of showing up.

“No, Sofia. It’s not like that. Some people might come to see you, before I get there. I want you to put the brace on the door and don’t open up for anyone but me.”

“Are they bad people, Dan?”

She doesn’t sound afraid, a little eager maybe, and I’m worried she won’t lock the door because she’d appreciate the company. Mike could send over a couple of stone killers and my girl could mix them a shaker of martinis. Then again, she might cut them open and tell the future in their entrails. I’m exaggerating at both ends, but the point is that Sofia can’t tell good from bad when it comes to attention.

“Yes, these are bad people, Sofia. You have to trust me and lock the door. What weapons do you have?”

Sofia amps up the little-girl voice so I know she’s lying. “I don’t have any weapons, Danny. No guns on this premises.”

“I know you have at least one gun, Sofia. I found a shell box in the trash.”

“So I like to scorch patterns on the carpet, that’s not proof positive of a firearm.”

Shouting at ladies is bad so I stop myself from doing it.

“Please, Sofia. Protect yourself until I get there. Do whatever you have to do.”

“Whatever I have to do?”

“Whatever.”

There is a clunk as Sofia drops the phone. She is so excited that she has forgotten to hang up.

I don’t fully understand the strange hold that Sofia has over me. There’s an old Gaelic word, geasa, which is about as close as I can come to explaining it. My class learned all about geasa in school from this dick teacher we had one year: Mr. Fitzgerald, liked all the kids to call him Fitz. Winked at the girls and gave the boys cigarettes. Creepy customer. So anyways, Fitz asks a question about geasa, what they were and so forth. This was a genuine hard question and holy shit if I didn’t know the answer.

“Is that hand connected to your arm, Daniel?” said Fitz, when he saw who was volunteering. “I should take a photograph.”

“Geasa are magical bonds,” I rattled off, before my brain lost it. “Cast over a man to bind him to the woman who loves him.”

Fitz was stunned and I couldn’t blame him. In the three months he’d been teaching me mythology, I didn’t do it was only answer I’d ever offered. It wasn’t that I was slow, I just didn’t know the answers.

“Fuck me,” he said, big eyebrows arching like slugs.

It was a laugh. Fitz got suspended and I got to slit his tires without anyone looking too deep into it.

I only knew this particular term because my mom, wise in the ways of Irish folklore to the extent that only the child of an immigrant can be, suspected that perhaps my father had reversed the trend and magically bound her to him. Maybe she was right. Margaret Costello McEvoy certainly never got free of her husband. He even bore her down into the dirt with him.

And when his elder daughter died, even then Paddy Costello had not broken and hurried to her graveside to comfort his grandson.

Guy’s a rich asshole. Only difference between him and regular assholes is monogrammed shirts.

So, like I was saying, Sofia Delano has me under a spell. And I think the main reason I don’t break free is that I don’t really want to. Part of me hopes she’s gonna snap out of it and we’ll have end-of-days sex and then embark on a series of adventures in a Caddy convertible.

Even Zeb knows enough about mental illness to realize that I am being slightly optimistic, or as he put it:

You have your head shoved so far up your ass that you’re working your own mouth from the inside.

I could have misheard that metaphor, or it’s possible that even Zeb didn’t know what he was talking about, he does favor the graphic image. Among his more confusing references is the description of his morning boner: Danny, I got a hard-on like a vengeful baboon who just won the jungle lottery.

I have no idea what the hell that means, and I would emigrate before asking, as Zeb would drone on circuitously for hours to justify his choice of words.

All I know for sure is that I cannot allow harm to come to Sofia because of my situation. I hope I can get to her before Mike hears the sound of his shit hitting my fan. Or as Zeb might say:

Before Mike realizes his plan is more fucked than a waxed badger walking backward through a flamingo patch with honey on its ass.

See what I mean? Just thinking about what the guy would say is enough to bring on migraine.

Sofia is squared away for now and there is no more I can do on that front until I get there, so I turn my mind to the other cold fronts that are closing in from the north and east. Jason, I put on red alert with a quick text. He’s gonna love that, tooling up his beefcake brigade. I pity the mobster who goes knocking on the Slotz door now. Jason’s guys will kick the shit out of him, then do his color palette.

If you have a fashion problem. If no one else can help you. Maybe you can hire the Gay Team.

Was that homophobic? Am I allowed to tease the other team at all?

Best to say nothing. Keep out of harm’s way.

I make it to the city limits in just over an hour and then I gotta sit in off-ramp traffic for ten minutes while some fender bender gets sorted out. There are a couple of bike cops on buffer duty between the drivers so I don’t lean on the horn and vent my frustrations. Mike’s boys could be on their way to Sofia’s apartment right now and I gotta sit here watching some hedge-fund, Armani-wearing, winter-tanned asshole do kiddie hysterics over his E-Class bumper. The notion that I could toss him off the ramp and be on my way grabs hold of me and I have to squeeze the steering wheel until it cracks to stop myself acting on it.

By the time they get around to waving us through with traffic wands, I am so wound up that I take off like a bat out of hell clipping a wand on my way past.

Way to stay below the radar in your stolen car, moron.

That’s what Sofia does to me. All reason goes out the window.

I avoid Cloisters’s main street, such as it is, and go across Cypress to hang the technically illegal U-turn that everyone does, which saves me a couple of blocks. Sofia’s building is so commonplace that I often find it difficult to believe that she lives inside, that some of her mercury has not bled through to the walls, staining them with violent slashes of color.

Now who’s the psycho? Mood walls? I really should call Dr. Moriarty and fill him in on some of my new theories.

I abandon the car on a yellow line and take the steps two at a time, catching a break when my ex-neighbor old Mr. Hong shuffles out the front door dragging his shopping buggy on a cord trailing between his bowed legs, pulling tight against an area where I would not want a cord to be.

“Mr. Hong,” I say, reflexively courteous.

“My balls are smarting,” he says to me crossly. “Like they’re tied in knots.”

The first hundred times he said this to me, I pointed out the cord dividing his nethers. Now I just make shit up.

“It’s the New Jersey damp,” I say, not putting too much effort into it. “Notoriously bad for balls.”

Hong grunts, produces a peach from somewhere, stuffs the entire fruit into his mouth and begins the daily race to gum the peach into a paste before it chokes him. I slip past into the brownstone lobby thinking, We are all mad here.

Sofia’s place is on the third floor and I take great bounds up the stairway, shouldering the wall on each turn rather than slow down. I knock a dent in the sheetrock on the second floor and it occurs to me that I will have to pay for that at some point, which bothers me, because a person should get a pass when he is trying to save someone’s life for Christ’s sake.

The banister bears the brunt of my shoulder charge on the final turn and I make splinters of the railings, which crack loud enough to warn any intruder that I am on the way. Even a deaf intruder could feel the vibration of my thundering approach.

What happened to stealth? I was a specialist once upon a time.

No time for softly softly. My Celtic sixth sense that only predicts bad stuff is bubbling in my gut. It’s like a spider sense that brings on the shits, which would be a very bad look for Peter Parker, swinging over Manhattan.

Bad things have happened. I’m too late.

This notion is confirmed by Sofia’s door, which yawns open, still creaking, so I’m seconds late. Seconds.

Oh Sofia, darlin’, I think, fearing the worst, what other way is there to fear? I did not protect you. I could not save you to be my own.

If she is dead I will hunt down that husband of hers and take my time with him, I promise myself. Maybe sell the video to Citizen Pain.

I barrel inside, my momentum carrying me across the room, totally off balance.

Stupid amateur. Stupid.

First thing my senses pick up is the tacky resistance as my soles leave the floor. My life is a trail of bloody footprints so I know what’s sticking to my boots. I look anyway to confirm it, and there is a lattice of blood following the grout patterns in the floor tiles, forming an irregular triangle. At the tip is a woman’s head, cracked open by a blow, hair fanned like a halo. Sofia lies awkwardly, the quirky spirit bludgeoned out of her.

I forget everything I ever learned about violent situations. I do not compartmentalize. I do not defer my grief. Instead I behave like a civilian who has had the blindfold of civilization whipped off to reveal a first look at the ugliness of the world.

I collapse from the inside out, tumbling forward as my brain cuts off motor commands. I fall to the floor cursing the men responsible for this brutality. I curse the banker at the off-ramp. Mike Madden, Zeb, Freckles. All those guys. A pox on their heads and a plague on their families.

All bullshit of course. I’m the one who brought this on poor deluded Sofia. I kissed her on the lips and lit her up for the bogeymen.

So I curse myself and my bloodstained hands. I curse my tangent-driven mind that cannot seem to focus in even the most urgent circumstances. I cry for everything that has ever happened. The line of bodies that dog me from the past all the way back to the tangled pile of limbs inside a crushed car in Dublin.

I am a rotten fruit with barely a scrap of untainted meat left. One more bite and I am lost.

I lie there on the floor, head half under the settee watching the sunlight draw laser lines in the blood pattern, when Sofia’s hand twitches and I notice the nails bitten to the quick.

Sofia doesn’t bite her nails anymore. She is proud of her painted talons. She likes to purr like a cat and scratch the air.

Not Sofia? Not dead?

This is too much for me. I feel dull and stupid, and left out of the joke.

I roll to my knees.

“Sofia?” I croak.

And she comes out of the kitchen, all in black, plenty of pockets, military style.

Janet Jackson. Rhythm Nation.

“Hey, baby,” she says, a hammer dangling from her fingers, a ribbon of bloody scalp in its claw. “You were right. Someone came a-looking for you, but I did what I had to do. No gun necessary.”

Who is on the floor? Who is nearly dead?

I need answers to fill this awful vacuum.

Crawling seems achievable. I crawl across the floor, dragging my knees through the darkening blood and with infinite care, turn the woman’s head and gaze upon her face.

I have finally gone mad.

It was only a matter of time. I should pay attention now, because Simon is going to want details when we go over this in therapy.

The woman is my mother.

Dead these twenty-five years.

My sweet mom. Looking not a day older.

“Mom?”

I hear the word and I know it came from my mouth but I am a little out of body right now. Shell shocked on seashells by the seashore on Blackrock beach, where we used to walk.

The woman’s eyes flutter open and she coughs a lungful of booze fumes in my eyes, scalding them.

“Danny,” she says like we talked yesterday. “Something happened to my head. I forgot again.”

My long-term memory fizzles into life and I get it in a jumbled rush of memories: ice picks, chaste good-night kisses, boob lectures.

Not my mother. Her baby sister, with enough of a resemblance to fool my frazzled brain.

Clearly not your mother, idiot.

Evelyn Costello reaches up a hand; her nail stubs are painted blood red. No, not painted. It’s real blood, her own.

“Danny. I found you. You treating girls with respect, Danny?”

Her eyes flicker and she is gone again, borne off by head trauma.

Just as well. I need to think.

I feel Sofia behind me. “Who is this, Carmine? You got some whore stashed away? Is that it?”

So I am Carmine again. Figures.

There’s a lot of blood on the floor.

“No, Sofia. This is not some whore, this is my aunt.”

Sofia sniffs like this is such a crock. Who can blame her? Evelyn is only a few years older than me.

“Aunt? Really, baby?”

It’s not her fault. Sofia was only doing what I told her to do, but suddenly I’m angry.

I jump to my feet and snatch the hammer. “Yeah, really. You brained my aunt.”

Sofia knows crazy when she sees it and backs off.

“Sorry,” And she cocks a hip and salutes. “Just following orders, Carmine.”

Dan-Carmine. Carmine-Dan.

Maybe I am Carmine. How hard could it be?

This is all too labyrinthine. There are too many strands for me to follow. Soldiering was simple:

You have one enemy.

His face will be darker than yours and he will be wearing desert shit. Not camo gear, genuine desert shit. Goatskin, rough scarves, vintage Levis.

Find your enemy.

Kill your enemy.

But here and now, my enemies are multitude and look all the bloody same. Mike, Freckles, Shea, KFC, Krieger and Fortz.

I need a friend. Someone who can out-sneaky the sneakers. A person with paranoia in his veins who owes me his life.

This apartment is too bright. Everything seems bleached. How does that happen with small windows?

Evelyn moans at my feet.

I need a doctor.

I pull out my phone to call Zeb.

He better not give me the runaround. I am not in the mood.

I punch Zeb’s number and while the phone chirps in my ear, I pray that my friend is not stoned already.