The Bloomsday Dead

8: SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS (BELFAST-JUNE 16, 6:00 P. M.)

He had finally gotten my attention. Having failed to kill me three times in half a day, each time a little more spectacularly, I knew I had to sort him out before I did anything else. Body O’Neill, whom I’d never even heard of before. Belfast Commander of the IRA.

Probably Darkey White’s long-lost brother. Or Bridget Callaghan’s tragic lover. Or a kid I used to bully in primary school. It would be something stupid. And if I had to murder the son of a bitch so he’d leave me alone, then so be it.

I wasn’t exactly sure where the Linen Hall Library was, but every-body else in Belfast was, so I was there pretty sharpish.

An attractive, dark, squarish building near the city hall with a bunch of people outside standing around a stall that was selling books, bootleg videos, and “comedic” singing fish.

“Get your copy of Star Wars: Episode III, the final film in the series, release date May of next year,” a hawker called out.

“Is this the entrance to the Linen Hall Library?” I asked him pointing at a pokey wee door.

“Aye, up the stairs. You want to see the new Star Wars? It’s got wookies in it.”

I ignored him and entered the building. An old concierge sitting at a desk. Behind him a glass door that led up the stairs to the library.

“Evening,” I said, walked past the desk, and tried the handle on the glass door.

“See your card,” the concierge said.

“I don’t have a card.”

“No card, no admittance.”

He was one of those sons of bitches who had spent their entire lives thwarting the interests of people like me. Sleekit wee bureaucrat. It had made him shriveled, small and boney. He looked half dead under a peaked security guard’s hat.

“Listen, I need in to the library,” I said.

“Well, you can’t get in without a card. You’ll have to get a card.”

“I don’t want a card, I just want to see somebody up in the reading room. I don’t need to join or anything.”

“I cannot let you in without a card,” he insisted.

“This is ridiculous, I just need to see somebody in the bloody reading room.”

“Well, you’ll have to go through me,” he said, eerily echoing the extremely violent thoughts that I was having that very moment. Let’s see, shoot the bastard, break through the door, run upstairs…

But that was a crazy idea. This was the center of Belfast, the cops would be here in two minutes. And besides, a gunshot down here would send everyone upstairs into a panic. Give O’Neill a chance to run for cover.

“Can I send a message up to someone in the reading room? It’s quite urgent.”

The concierge thought about it for a moment.

“Shall I send Miss Plum down to see ya?” he asked.

“Miss Plum from the library?”

“Yes.”

“Aye, and get Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe as well,” I said.

“What?”

“Please get her, it’s quite urgent, it’s a matter of life and death,” I said solemnly.

He raised an eyebrow and picked up the phone.

“Miss Plum, yes, it’s Cochrane. I’ve got a young man here who wants to get in to the library. He says it’s very urgent. Could you see your way to coming down here with a temporary card at all?”

Apparently Miss Plum said yes.

“She’s coming right down,” Cochrane told me.

I tapped my foot on the floor. I was bristling with anger and impatience. I had to deal with O’Neill right now while my blood was up. I had to know why he had been trying to kill me ever since I had arrived in this fucking country, and I had to put a bloody stop to it. Three attacks in one day: that was miles better than even Bridget’s record. And holy mother of God, now they’d even taken to sinking ships in order to nail me. What would be next? Aerial bombing? Anthrax?

Aye, well, we’d see O’Neill about that.

But there was another reason for seeing him too.

Something that had been nagging me since I’d been in the Rat’s Nest, and had become apparent on the Ginger Bap.

Something Seamus Deasey had said. Outside the pub, when he had told me Barry’s name and the fact he lived on a boat on the Lagan, Seamus had slipped in a boast that having Barry’s name and address wouldn’t do me any good. At the time I hadn’t even considered it, but now it seemed that Seamus had known that Barry was already dead. Seamus knew that Barry had been murdered.

How?

Unless he was the all comers’ lying champion of Sicily five years in a row, I didn’t think he was stroking me. When I’d looked in Seamus’s eyes, he seemed to have no knowledge whatsoever of the kidnap. I think the word kidnap even surprised him: he thought wee Siobhan was still missing. And he was genuinely shocked when I’d suggested that one of his boys might be involved.

I could be wrong, though. He could be in it up to his eyeballs and I might have missed the one chance to break the case wide open. Would have been easy: kidnap Seamus, take him to a wee hidey-hole, and get cracking with my experimental interrogation techniques. But nah, even then I don’t think he would have fessed up to knowing anything about Siobhan Callaghan.

So where did that leave things?

It meant Seamus didn’t know why Barry had been killed, but he knew that he was dead. And thinking back, I’m no crime-scene expert but I don’t think Barry’s corpse had been disturbed. Donald hadn’t seen anyone go on board the Ginger Bap and that lock looked untouched since the murderers had jury-rigged it.

Since no one had messed with the scene, the only way Seamus could have known about Barry’s murder was if something had leaked out about it, or he had heard some word on the street, or perhaps the murderer had actually asked for Seamus’s permission to kill his boy. If he’d been a Belfast assassin, he probably would have had to do that. You don’t go around whacking members of other people’s crews, be they capo, soldier, or lowly drug dealer, without getting the ok from on high. ’Course, if the hit men were from abroad, London or Dublin, say, then it wouldn’t matter, but a Belfast-based assassin would have had to get a permission slip. Oh, you’d maybe explain that Barry had raped your sister or insulted your granny or some such shite like that. You’d give Seamus a couple of grand blood money and he’d be happy enough.

It was pure speculation. But the more I thought about it, the more I was reasonably certain that Seamus had not only known that Barry was dead but that he had a fair idea who’d been involved in it. Following my little stunt in the Rat’s Nest, I wouldn’t be able to get within a million miles of Seamus, but Body O’Neill was one floor above me. One minute up the stairs. For if Body O’Neill was the commander of the IRA in Belfast, it meant he was Seamus Deasey’s superior. O’Neill could order Seamus to tell me what he knew about young Barry. All it would take would be a sufficiently persuasive argument to convince O’Neill of the justice of my cause.

Maybe a Belfast six-pack would do the trick.

But certainly he could solve a lot of the questions that were troubling me. And I was damn well going to get the information I bloody needed about the hits on me and everything else I wanted to know.

I looked at the concierge.

“She’s taking her time, isn’t she?”

He nodded awkwardly.

“Know much about the library?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said with the sinking feeling that he was going to tell me.

“When the Luftwaffe bombed Belfast in ’42, the military target was the docks and the shipyard but Göring instructed several Heinkel 111s to hit cultural and civic targets, and among those were the city hall and the Linen Hall Library.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Thousands died but the incident doesn’t even merit a mention in most histories of World War-”

“Shocking.”

“And did you further know-”

I had to interrupt.

“Look, I’m sorry to be rude, but you wouldn’t mind paging Miss Plum again, would you?”

He paged her.

“Miss Plum, that gentleman is in quite a rush to get in,” he said into the speakerphone.

“It’s not André with the lobsters, is it?” Miss Plum’s voice replied.

The concierge looked at me.

“You’re not André with the lobsters, are you?”

My knuckles whitened.

“Do you see any lobsters?”

“It’s not André, Miss Plum,” the concierge said.

“But it is very urgent,” I said into the intercom.

“I’ll be right down,” she said.

“Great.”

Eventually, after I’d endured more tedious tales of the library’s fascinating history, Miss Plum’s legs appeared at the top of the stairs.

She opened the glass door and came out to meet me.

A chubby, redfaced Kate Winslet type, brown eyes, tight skirt, pert, snarky mouth.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi, look, I have an urgent message for a Mr. O’Neill upstairs.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, do you know Mr. O’Neill? Is he here today?”

“He’s here,” she said.

“Well, I wonder if you might let me up to see him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. You’ll have to join the library to get in, at the very least you’ll have to get a temporary card. Oh, don’t get so worried. You just have to fill out a few forms, provide proof of residence,” she said, looking with displeasure at the burnt fiberglass that had stuck to my leather jacket.

“Please, I’m in a big rush, I don’t have time for forms, I really just need to see him,” I said. I didn’t have time for bloody paperwork, and it was years since I could produce any proof of Belfast residence.

“I’m sorry, it’s the policy, this is a very select institution,” Miss Plum said with a winning smile.

She was a charming girl and in general I avoid killing women, but I was right on the goddamn edge here.

“Ok, look, Miss Plum, what’s your first name?”

“Jane,” she said with a tiny sniff of suspicion.

“Look, Jane, first let me say I completely understand the policy. Very sensible, keep out the riffraff. Second of all, let me compliment you on your style, appearance, and professionalism. Has anyone ever told you that you resemble a thin Kate Winslet? You have an extraordinary skin tone. If you ever want a job with the Olay people, look me up, my cousin’s the vice president. But this is an emergency. Mr. O’Neill’s mother is dying. He’s turned off his cell phone and I just need to see him, to let him know, so he can rush to her side for the final moments. The priest has already read the last rites, we all believe she’ll pass within the hour.”

“His mother?” Jane said, shocked.

“Yes, his poor wee mother,” I said, staring off into the middle distance.

“Bloody hell, she must be over a hundred,” the concierge said.

“O’Neill’s an elderly gentleman then, is he?” I thought but some-how also said aloud.

“Oh aye, he’s well into his seventies,” Jane said.

“Well, I’m just the messenger,” I said, a bit thrown.

“His poor old ma, she’s probably in the Guinness Book of Records or something,” the concierge mused.

“Could be,” I began hesitantly. “But the information I have is that she’s on her last legs. Could I just go up and let him know? It really is at a matter of life and death, surely you can make an exception for that?”

I smiled at her and placed my hands in a pleading gesture.

“Well, it’s not really the done thing…”

Thank Christ, I thought, and followed her up the stairs.

I was in such a hurry now that I didn’t even admire her bum waggling from side to side as it rose up the marble steps.

The reading room was a charming little affair, with old book tables, neat shelves, and a tidy Georgian appearance. Various oddball types reading magazines, newspapers, and books. The more stereotypical iron-faced librarians, with horn-rimmed glasses and a capacity for unspeakable deeds, patrolled the reference area, enforcing the strict rules on silence, shelving, and pencils only.

“That’s him sitting at the alcove behind the window seat,” Jane said.

“I don’t see him.”

“That’s because he’s in the corner, in the alcove.”

“Ok, yeah, that’s the top of his bald head, is it?”

“Uhhuh.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

“Now please, try hard not to cause a disturbance,” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry, love, disturbances are not my thing at all.”

I thanked her and walked to the corner alcove. The most secure spot in the whole place. Walls on three sides, near the emergency exit, but his one mistake-he had shifted his chair around so that he could get more light on his book from the alcove window. Silly old fool. Now his back was to the entrance. Anybody could just walk over.

I watched him for five minutes to check for goons. Really should have been a couple of hours, but time was of the essence. No one that I saw. No one that wasn’t born before World War I, anyway.

I stood next to him.

A bald, wizened seventy-year-old, with a bit of a Parkinson shake, round reading glasses, and a wispy beard. Depressingly, this scholarly looking gent, who apparently was one of the most feared paramilitary commanders in Belfast, was also dressed in leisure wear: a white UCLA sweatshirt and black jeans. I checked that no one was paying attention and removed the.38.

“Body O’Neill?”

He looked up.

I pointed the revolver at him, real close so that he could see it through those thick lenses.

“Yes?”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

“Who are you?”

“Michael Forsythe,” I said.

Mild surprise in his watery yellow eyes.

“Ahh, I see, Michael Forsythe. For some reason I thought you might be dead by now,” he said.

“You know, funnily enough, that’s what I want to talk to you about,” I said, winking at him.

He smiled, stroked his limpid cheeks, looked around the room.

“Sit,” he suggested.

“Why not?”

I sat beside him.

“You don’t mind if I just check you for a gun?” I said.

“I would rather you didn’t touch me. I assure you, I am unarmed,” he said.

“Well, just to be on the safe side,” I said and patted him down. He did not have a gun, which was a bit odd, but there was a little lump under the L in UCLA.

“What’s that? A pacemaker?” I asked.

“I asked you not to touch me,” he said, embarrassed.

“Yes, but I have the gun,” I explained.

He frowned, looked around the room.

“You know why I like this place?” O’Neill said.

“What place, the city?”

“No, the library,” he said.

“No, why?”

“It’s eclectic. Postmen, dockers, students, everyone. You can bump into Seamus Heaney, and occasionally you’ll see Gerry Adams in here researching his socalled memoirs.”

“Now listen to me, O’Neill. I’m sure you’re just fabulous at playing for time, but I have a whole series of questions and my patience is already stretched very thin.”

“You have questions for me?”

“Yes, I bloody do. First, why have you been trying to kill me since Dublin?”

O’Neill regarded me with some distaste, not fear, but rather a condescending scowl that verged on utter contempt. I wasn’t going to let the old bat intimidate me. I was holding the gun, after all. I leaned back in the chair and rested the revolver on the book he’d been reading. I closed it with the barrel, aggressively snapping it shut.

“Better start talking, O’Neill,” I said with menace.

“The interview form is not one I enjoy, Mr. Forsythe. Question-and-answer is such a barbaric manner of discourse. If you have any questions, you should probably take them up with Mikhail.”

“And who the fuck is Mikhail?”

“I’m Mikhail,” Mikhail said, thumping my hand with a knuckle duster and removing the revolver from my grip in a fast, continuous motion. I winced and turned. Mikhail was a six-foot-six Neanderthal. Shaven head, narrow Mongolian eyes. Clearly the bloody bodyguard, fresh in from slaughtering insurgents in Chechnya.

My hand was killing me. Mikhail shoved a snubnosed silenced.22 automatic into my ribs. He passed his boss my.38.

“We don’t want a scene, Mr. Forsythe, but Mikhail will kill you stone dead if you say another harsh word,” O’Neill said quietly.

“Kill me in front of all these witnesses?” I asked.

“What witnesses? No one will hear a thing and we’ll shove you under the alcove desk and walk straight out of here. No one will find you until closing time and by then I’ll have an alibi and the case will be insoluble,” O’Neill said.

“Miss Plum knows I wanted to talk to you.”

“Look around, no one can even see us here, and I assure you, Mikhail is very nervous about going to prison. He had a bad experience in a Communist gulag. If you look even a wee bit like you’re going to shout or cause trouble, he’ll shoot without a second thought,” O’Neill said.

I nodded.

“Ok, or what?” I asked.

O’Neill looked baffled for a second. He hadn’t thought about the “or.”

“Or you come with us outside,” O’Neill said.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“In case you decide you’d like to join us, I’ll just make a phone call,” O’Neill said sarcastically.

He popped open his cell.

“You won’t bloody believe it, Tim. Meet me outside the Linen Hall right now with the van and a couple of heavy lifting boys,” he said.

I nodded at Mikhail.

“How did you get a library card, you don’t seem the literary type?” I asked.

Mikhail ignored me. O’Neill hung up, smiled.

“I’m curious, how did you find me here, Mr. Forsythe?” O’Neill said.

“I’d love to tell you, but question-and-answer is just such an uncivilized form of discourse. Spot me a couple of Manhattans and we’ll have a right old chin wag about anything you like.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll be doing much talking, Mr. Forsythe. Very little of what you could say would interest me,” O’Neill said.

“I think you’ll find you’re mistaken, I’m quite the amiable companion. For instance, I’ll bet you didn’t know that today is Bloomsday. Down in Dublin they are having a real shindig. And this might interest Mikhail: on this date in history Yuri Gagarin-”

I’d been trying to say all this in an increasingly loud voice, not so loud that Mikhail would pop a cap in my stomach, but loud enough to bring Miss Plum over. Regardless, O’Neill stopped me with a wave of his hand since his cell phone was vibrating.

“Hello… It is… Excellent… We’ll be down in two minutes,” he said.

He turned to face me with the grisly smile of an executioner.

“Stand, please, Mr. Forsythe.”

I stood.

“Mikhail, I think Mr. Forsythe and you and I will take a walk outside. We’ll go down the fire escape. I’ll want you to walk ahead of us very slowly, Mr. Forsythe, and if you stumble or fall, or cry out or do anything I don’t like, Mikhail will shoot you in the brain.”

I hesitated and stared at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We reached the stairwell.

An echoing concrete space, devoid of people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mikhail nodded sullenly.

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

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

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

He looked at me.

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

I nodded.

He opened the fire exit door.

I stepped outside.

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

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

“Faster,” O’Neill instructed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O’Neill slid back the glass partition.

“Do you have him, Tim?” he asked.

“Aye, we got him.”

“Good.”

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

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

They violently searched me.

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

They stared at the prosthesis.

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

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

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

“Sorry, Mr. O’Neill,” Tim said.

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

“Really sorry, Mr. O’Neill.”

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

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

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

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

Mikhail nodded.

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

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

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

“I don’t know yet,” Tim responded.

“Holy Mary. Where’s Jimmy now?”

“He’s in custody.”

“Oh for Godsake, that’s just terrific,” O’Neill said.

We drove in silence for a moment.

“What do we do about Forsythe?” Tim asked.

“Next time Seamus Deasey asks me to help him out, somebody remind me that wee shite is more trouble than he’s worth. Have to see about replacing him,” O’Neill said almost to himself.

“Aye, but what do we do about Forsythe?” the goon persisted.

“Oh, I suppose we have to top him now, it’s the very least we can do after this bollocks,” O’Neill said.

“Aye, he’s a rat anyway,” Tim said.

“Aye, he is too, he is too,” O’Neill said reflectively.

“Take us out of town, the usual spot,” he told Mikhail, and he leaned back to us.

“Aye, lads, better get this over with.”

I writhed, but it was useless. Tim was kneeling on my left arm. And the others had me locked to the floor. The only way I was getting out of this was to talk my way out. I cleared my head fast. I stopped struggling, bit the handkerchief, partially swallowed it, gagged, and managed to puke it out of my mouth.

“O’Neill, listen to me. This will start a mob war with America. I’m working for Bridget Callaghan now, I’m trying to find her wee girl. You don’t want her pissed off at you, do you?” I screamed.

“You say you’re working for Bridget Callaghan?” O’Neill asked, surprised.

“Yeah, ask Seamus, I’m working for her. I’m looking for her daughter. Ask Seamus if you don’t believe me. That’s what this is all about.”

“Seamus wants you dead. Bridget Callaghan wants you dead. We’ll be doing everyone a favor,” O’Neill said.

“No fucking way, you haven’t got the latest news. Bridget does not want me dead. I’m working for her now. If you kill me, Bridget will make sure you all pay a very heavy price.”

O’Neill shrugged in the front seat, took off his bifocals, cleaned them.

“Ach, they’ll never find you, will they, Tim?”

“No, sir,” Tim said, placing the handkerchief back in my mouth and attempting to squeeze my jaw shut with his big hands.

“How will we do it, Mr. O’Neill, cut his fucking throat?”

“No, no, no, I don’t want blood all over the van, and you can put your guns away. I just bought this wee number and I got to move the grandkids’ play box on Saturday. I do not want blood or holes in the bodywork.”

“So what do we do?” Tim asked.

“Throw one of them plastic bags over his head. Suffocate him. Anybody ever seen someone die like that? It’s very instructive. Completely bloodless. Very efficient way to do someone if you do it right.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tim said.

“There’s some rubber bands back there, you can use those to keep it tight, ok?” O’Neill said.

Tim reached behind him and the other two lads gave him one of the bags. With his hands off my mouth, I could just about speak.

“Now wait just a goddamn minute, I haven’t done a thing to any of you people, this is a huge mistake,” I said.

O’Neill turned around to face me.

“Make your peace, Forsythe, it’ll be easier on yourself. Just get composed, this doesn’t have to be ugly for anyone. We all have to go sometime and it’s the manner of our death that tells us whether we have dignity or not.”

“Nice speech, but you’re not killing me,” I said, and struggled as hard as I could against the three men. But they were over seven hundred pounds of deadweight. I had no chance.

“You’re making a huge mistake. I’m the only one that can bring that girl back alive. Bridget will have you all killed. She’ll have every one of you executed, you don’t know the depths to which she-”

They slipped a clear plastic bag over my head and fastened it around my neck with a thick rubber band. Almost immediately I found that I was having difficulty breathing.

I tried to bite the bag, but it was thick, heavy-duty material. I tried to claw Tim with my fingernails, but he simply adjusted his weight so that he was sitting on my wrist rather than my hand.

Within seconds all the good air in the bag was gone.

“Help,” I called out. “Help me, please.”

The three men looking at me through the clear plastic. The inside of the bag filling with condensed water vapor from my lungs. My temples throbbing. My eyes stinging.

Not this way, not now. No. Please. I have so much to do.

I bit at the bag, thrashed my legs and arms. Screamed. I lifted my head off the van floor and banged it, trying to create any kind of rip in the plastic. Tim simply forced my head down with his fist.

Tim’s hand and the wet plastic on my forehead-the slimy touch of death.

The bag full of CO2 now. The oxygen had been burned away. I panic-breathed, dragged the poison down into my lungs. My throat burned and I breathed even deeper. In a few seconds the lack of oxygen in my brain would force me into a blackout and that would be the- All three men clattered down on top of me.

A pocket at the bottom of the bag.

I sucked air.

A siren.

Something was happening. The car violently skewed to the left and then to the right, accelerated.

I managed to free a hand. There was a huge crash and I was smashed against the roof of the van, just missing one of those ugly hooks. Suspended for a moment in free fall, I ripped the bag off my face as the van turned over on its side and tumbled onto its roof before the windshield smashed, the ceiling buckled, and the air bags inflated in the front seat.

We were still moving upside down, me and the three goons tangled up together. I elbowed the nearest one in the eye, sticking my elbow deep in the socket. I grabbed his fat head in my two hands and banged it into the side of the van. I reached inside his coat and pulled out an Uzi machine pistol.

The van continued skidding on its roof for a second before smashing into a wall. Tim thumped into one of the meat hooks, his flesh neatly skewered through the neck, the other two goons tumbled into the rear doors.

I dropped the gun, regrabbed it, braced myself.

The van stopped spinning and came to a dead halt.

I got into a half crouch, took the safety off the Uzi, made sure the magazine was slammed in properly, and machine-gunned all three of them, riddling them with bullets, for a blast of about three seconds. Two were unconscious, but the third put his hands up defensively. I shot through his palms and pumped a dozen rounds into his neck and head.

I Uzied the rear doors, kicked them open, and jumped outside.

We were still in Belfast, on a blasted piece of waste ground, which was what was left of the projects near the old markets district. The tenements had been demolished and were being replaced with neat semidetached houses. The van was upside down and the cab had a police Land Rover wedged into the side of it, the Land Rover lying on its side with the wheels spinning. Mikhail’s mangled body cut in two, his legs in the van and his torso on the Land Rover’s windshield.

I didn’t have much time. The cops would be out of there just as soon as they recovered and got those big armor-plated rear doors open.

I ran to the front of the van, saw that O’Neill was bleeding from a scalp wound but very much alive. I pointed the Uzi at him.

“You’re coming with me, you old bastard,” I said.

I dragged him out of the van, ran, and practically carried him away from the scene before the peelers got out and shot or lifted the both of us.

The rain fell and muddied grass, flooded drains, and made petrol float and turn to filthy rainbows, manufacturing a slimy membrane on rooftops, streets, and lanes.

I let it drip onto my tongue.

Where were we?

Safe.

An alley behind the Peace Line between two rows of new houses. The Peace Line, a twenty-foot-high wall that separated the Protestant housing development from the Catholic one.

No one around here, but they were close and they were coming.

Cops starting to mill about the crime scene. A helicopter flying above us. I had about five minutes to question the old man. We were three hundred yards away on the other side of a playground from where the police Land Rover had rammed the van. Already there were two other cop Land Rovers there with a forensic team.

We’d gotten away so fast the peelers hadn’t seen us. But it was standard cop procedure to fan out from the scene of a violent incident. Soon there would be dozens of constables walking three-sixty in every direction, looking for witnesses. We’d have to move on if we didn’t want to get arrested. Like I say, five, ten minutes tops.

But that was ok.

All I needed was a quick debrief with O’Neill and then I’d pop the old git and make a run for it.

And if I survived this day, I’d make sure I bought a bloody copy of Star Wars III from that bootleg video man. His phone call to the peelers had undoubtedly saved my life. I’d thank the coppers, too, if I hadn’t made it a rule never to thank the peels for anything.

O’Neill was slumped against a wall. Breathing hard, dabbing at his scalp. Let him bleed, let him fucking hemorrhage. But be damn quick about it. The helicopter might spot us and sooner or later the police would realize that someone had run. I needn’t worry about eyewit-nesses, at least, there’d been no one about. (Even if there had, nobody would have seen a thing.)

O’Neill coughed and spat blood.

Didn’t look like an internal wound, just a gash in the mouth.

I was still holding the Uzi but I felt uncomfortable with that bulky weapon, so I searched O’Neill, removed my.38, the bag of shells, the money he’d taken from me, and all his dough too. I wiped the Uzi clean of prints and threw it over the Peace Line.

“Open your eyes,” I said.

O’Neill looked at me.

“If you’re going to kill me, just fucking kill me,” he said.

“Patience, Body, patience; we don’t have a lot of time, those pigs are going to be over in a minute and we want to be gone.”

“You’re not going to top me?”

“I haven’t decided. O’Neill, listen, I want you to answer some questions for me, I don’t want you to piss me about,” I said.

O’Neill sat up.

“There’s some pills in my trouser pocket, can I get them? For my angina.”

“Get your pills, but hurry up.”

O’Neill reached into his pocket, pulled out a bottle of morphine pills, and chucked a couple into his mouth.

“I’ll take a few of them too,” I said, and pocketed a couple. I was in a hell of a lot of pain myself. O’Neill breathed deep and seemed a little better now.

“Ok, what do you want to know?”

“I want to know why you’ve been trying to kill me since I landed in Dublin,” I said.

He looked puzzled.

“I haven’t been trying to kill you since you landed in Dublin.”

“You bloody have. Your wee pal Jimmy told me you authorized the RPG attack on me. You said so yourself in the van.”

“I did. But I didn’t try to get you in Dublin,” O’Neill said.

“Why did you try to kill me at the boat?”

“You fucked with one of my boys. Seamus Deasey. You embarrassed him in front of his men, you hit him, you came into his place of business and you shot Eliot Mulroony, who was his right-hand man. I couldn’t let you get away with that. Seamus was furious. He told me where you were going to be and I told him I’d take care of it.”

“You’re lying to me. You sent that guy to the airport and the other guy in the brothel. You tried to get me twice in Dublin.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did. I talked to Moran and he told me that it wasn’t him. I looked him right in the eye and he said it wasn’t him.”

“Listen, Michael, can I call you Michael? The first time I heard you were in the bloody country was this afternoon when that eejit Deasey calls me gurning that you’ve humiliated him and he wants you dead.”

I sat on my hunkers in an uncomfortable squat.

“You’re saying you haven’t been trying to kill me since this morning?” I said.

He shook his head.

“Believe me, Michael, I just did what I had to do to keep my boys in line. It was nothing personal, it was nothing to do with you being a rat, er, I mean…”

“It’s all right… So it wasn’t you.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“So who was it?”

“Maybe you have old Belfast enemies.”

“I don’t. I was small-time. Nobody that would want to kill me that bad.”

“Maybe somebody who knew that there was a bounty on your head.”

I sat on the pavement beside O’Neill. The cops were starting that line thing they do, where they pace very close to one another, looking for evidence. Be over here sharpish.

“You’re telling me that it wasn’t you?” I muttered to myself. It was a rhetorical question, but O’Neill wanted to reassure me.

“It wasn’t me, Michael. I authorized just the one attack on you. That’s all. I don’t know about these others you’re talking about. Just the one attack.”

“The RPG hit at the boat,” I said.

“Aye, the apparently fucked-up RPG attack on the boat.”

I looked into his tired eyes. I believed him; there was no reason for him to lie. It was just that one op. Which unfortunately reopened the question, what the hell was going on? Two attacks in Dublin, not by Bridget, not by the IRA. Someone as yet unknown. I put the.38 back in my pocket. I offered him my bloody palm.

“Listen, Body, I want to talk truce.”

He shook my hand.

“Talk away.”

“Ok. I messed with your boy Seamus and you’re pissed off about that. But I have other things on my plate. Bridget Callaghan’s right-hand man, David Moran, wants to see me dead. He’s vowed to kill me when they get Siobhan back at midnight. If they don’t get her back, he’s going to kill me anyway. Now, as I see it, it would be bloody redundant of you to waste your time trying to kill me. You’ve more than paid me off for Seamus, ok?”

He nodded.

“So what do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to leave me alone. You don’t want me around. Ok. Give me twenty-four hours to leave Ulster. One way or another, I’ll either be out of here or I’ll be dead. Keep off the goddamn hounds until then.”

He straightened himself, thought about it.

“Michael, if you’re sparing me right now, and it sounds like you are, you’re a bigger man than I thought. I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you; if the peelers hadn’t rammed the van, you’d be dead. It’s rare to see that these days. I know what they say about you, you’re a rascal and all that. But I give you my word that no one from the IRA or any other group that I have influence over will bother you in the time you’re in Belfast.”

“Including Seamus?” I asked.

“Including Seamus,” he confirmed.

“Do you have the clout to do it?”

He seemed offended.

“I do.”

“You’ll keep Seamus Deasey off my back?”

He nodded.

“And there’s something else. I need Seamus to do me a favor,” I said with a little smile.

“From Seamus? Of all people in the world, you need a favor from Seamus? That’s not happening, mate,” O’Neill said doubtfully.

“Bridget Callaghan hired me to find her daughter. The person who lifted her was on that boat, the Ginger Bap. Kid called Barry. He’d been murdered, execution style. Seamus knew he was already dead. Don’t ask me how he knew, because I’m damned if I know.”

“Seamus is mixed up in the disappearance of Bridget Callaghan’s daughter?” O’Neill asked. The old man’s face looked even more ashen. His lip was trembling. He was clearly upset.

“I don’t know about that. But he knows something about Barry’s death. Maybe the gunman needed Seamus’s permission to kill one of his dealers.”

O’Neill scoffed. “Seamus couldn’t give permission to get a dog’s hair cut. I’m in charge round here and nobody asked me about it.”

“Well, he heard something. I need to know about it. Time’s running out. When Seamus told me where Barry lived, he told me specifically that the information wouldn’t do me any good. He knew Barry was topped. The cops hadn’t found him and the neighbors didn’t know.”

O’Neill looked thoughtful.

“You really think the person who killed this Barry is involved in Siobhan Callaghan’s kidnapping?”

“He has to be.”

“And Seamus knows who did it?”

“I went to the boat before it sank, nothing had been touched. The lock was all done up with wire. The last person there was the killer.”

“Maybe somebody blabbed,” he said, coming to the conclusion that had also occurred to me.

“Belfast’s a pretty closemouthed town,” I added with a touch of skepticism.

“Aye, but it’s not like in your day, Michael. We can’t go around murdering witnesses anymore, not with the cease-fires.”

“Will you help me?” I asked.

“Michael, we’re both intelligent men. You and I know that it’s in our own best interests that Bridget Callaghan gets her daughter back in one piece. If finding who killed that boy can bring you closer to Siobhan, I’m sure Miss Callaghan will look more favorably upon us rather than her other potential business partners.”

“I’m sure she would.”

He nodded.

“Give me a minute,” he said. He pulled a cell phone out of his inside pocket and dialed the number. He turned the volume loud so I could hear the conversation too.

“Seamus, it’s me,” O’Neill said.

“Are you ok? Been hearing lots of things,” Seamus said with a tiny trace of disappointment in his voice that both O’Neill and I picked up on.

“Seamus, you listen to me and you listen good. I have heard that you have been fucking playing me. I have heard that you have been trying to make a fucking monkey out of me,” O’Neill began.

“What are you talking about?” Seamus complained.

“You better start packing your bags, Seamus, because I’m putting a contract out on you right now. You only wanted Michael Forsythe killed because he was close to finding out that you were involved in Siobhan Callaghan’s disappearance. That whole fucking operation at the boat was to cover your white Irish arse.”

“It’s a lie. I had nothing to do with that wee girl’s disappearance,” Seamus protested.

“Did you not? Well, I have information to the contrary. You wanted that boat sunk, you wanted Forsythe dead because one of your dealers lifted her. You wanted Forsythe out of the picture because he knew the fucking truth.”

Body’s eyes twinkled with merriment. He was enjoying this.

“That’s bullshit, I didn’t know the boat was going to sink. I swear to God, Mr. O’Neill, I knew nothing about any kidnapping,” Seamus said in a panic.

“How did you know Barry was already dead on the boat? How did you know he was fucking dead?”

“Gusty McKeown did it. Him and some fella from out of town. Gusty got the guns from me. Wanted a whole lot of guns. I had to ask him what it was about and he told me they had to top some wee fuck for reasons that he wasn’t allowed to divulge. So I said what wee fuck is that and he tells me and I say that’s my wee fuck and I ask for extra as compensation, you know. But I says ok cos they wanted Russian machine guns and Glock pistols and the whole works and were paying top dollar. With the guns and the compensation, it was fifteen large. I swear to God I was going to give you your cut, but I just hadn’t got round to it.”

O’Neill put his hand over the receiver and looked at me.

“Is that what you need?”

“Where would I find Gusty?” I said.

O’Neill spoke into the phone again.

“Where would I find Gusty?” he asked Seamus.

“Shit, I have no idea, Mr. O’Neill, he lives in the… oh, wait a minute, I think Andy knows something. Hold on… Mr. O’Neill, Andy says he’ll be at the fights at the Dove Tavern on Brazil Street.”

I nodded at O’Neill. That’s what I wanted.

“Talk to you later, Seamus,” O’Neill said and hung up his phone.

He looked grim. He had discovered a lot about Seamus. The poor wee blabbermouth would be lucky if he saw out the night.

“You going over to the Dove?” he asked me.

“Aye.”

“You’ll need a password to get into the fights. It’s always a historical figure. This week I think it’s Henry Joy McCracken.”

“I just say ‘Henry Joy McCracken’?”

“Aye, that’s it.”

O’Neill put out his hand. I shook it and helped him to his feet.

“I like you, Michael, I’m glad things worked out the way they did,” he said. “You are not lacking in honor.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I better get cracking. You, too, if you don’t want those peelers down your neck.”

“Good luck. And remember, Forsythe, this is my town. I hope you don’t keep leaving a trail of bloody destruction in your wake.”

“Well,” I said, reflecting upon his words, “the night is young.”