Dead I Well May Be (35 page)

They asked me who the fuck I thought I was, and Moreno stood up
and started cursing me out a few inches from my face. He’d clearly had it with me. A freeloading fucking Yankee who Ramón was fucking in love with or something. He was yelling, and his nose was an inch from mine now and I was thinking, So this is how it ends, the fucking ignominy of it. Me and him grabbing our pieces at the same time. Me getting one off, the lads spraying me so that I’m more hole than cheese.

Moreno was shouting at me and showing me a bullet scar in the shoulder he must have taken in loyal service to Ramón.

Fuck it, Moreno, I said. You boys wanna see a real fucking wound?

They didn’t understand, but they stopped while I rolled up my trouser leg, took my foot off.

They didn’t know.

Moreno shut up. All of them shut up.

In that silence, standing there with my foot off and feeling utterly ridiculous, Ramón came back.

He slipped in as normal, dressed in a coat too big for him. He looked at us for an embarrassing moment and said nothing. He was with his boys, and he muttered something to José, and José said something in Spanish, and everyone went back to the lab. He called me over, and I sat next to him on the white sofa. I gathered my wits and pulled myself together. He waited until I’d strapped my foot on again.

You’re bored, he said.

I shook my head.

Are you strong? he said.

I nodded.

He came straight to the point. His voice was low and in a whisper.

Michael, they stagger things now, they’re careful, different places, but we know their meeting is tonight in the old place, and if you want to go we can give you a lift up there.

I didn’t need to be told what meeting or who he was talking about. It was time for business.

Ok, I said.

Ramón drove me. We didn’t talk. He was smoking a cigar and listening to some crazy Dominican music low on his CD system. He left me ten blocks from the Four Provinces and asked if I needed anything. I told him I was ok. I walked to the spot where I’d waited for Bridget, the alley between the buildings that gave me a good view of the front door.

I waited for three hours, until it was after midnight. Come on, Darkey, come on, Darkey, come on, Darkey, I was saying over and over. But no bloody Darkey.

People going in and out, strangers, all of them. Ramón had said something about a change in routine, but I didn’t see how that would affect the regulars at the Four P. Eventually, though, at near to bloody closing, I did see a couple of old stagers I recognized, and a wee while after that, Mrs. Callaghan appeared at the side entrance with a box of rubbish. But even so, it was getting late, and I was thinking that Ramón’s intelligence wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when who should appear in all his Lundy-Quisling-Vichy glory but Big fucking Bob.

I recognized his ugly shadow before I saw him slinking out the side entrance of the Four Provinces, swaying a bit and singing. Cramped, I staggered to my feet and went after him. He was walking down the alley next to the Four P., heading for the empty lot that people used as a car park. I ran across the waste ground and pulled out the Colt. Bob didn’t know I was after him even though I was making enough noise to wake the dead and damned, a sort of a half-run, galumphing, and making progress but not exactly doing Warp Factor 8. Bob had stopped at the corner of the lot, and when I got to the street a little up from the bar, he climbed into a red Honda Accord and drove off. I leveled the .45 and took aim, but he was so far away and in the dark and with that gun I’d never get a good shot off. I ran to the main street and flagged down the first car I saw. A cream-colored Cadillac, turning at the corner, probably pulling into the same car park for the Four Provinces. The driver either didn’t see me or was ignoring me. I sprinted over and pointed the Colt at the windshield.

Hey, fucker, I yelled.

The driver was a bald man in his forties, dark lawyer suit, somewhat distracted, fiddling with his seat belt, playing around with it, and trying to turn into a space at the same time. He didn’t see or hear me and was still driving and almost hit me.

I banged his window and turned the gun on him.

Get out of the fucking car or I’ll fucking kill you, I said in pure West Belfast, and that was enough to get his attention.

He stopped the car and looked at me white-faced. He was shitting himself, perhaps literally. I opened the door.

Get the fuck out, I screamed.

He was sweating and nearly crying.

My seat belt’s stuck, it’s stuck, it’s stuck, he was saying in a complete panic.

I leaned over and clicked the release button.

Get out, I said. He still didn’t move, so I had to tug the fucker out by his lapels.

He tumbled onto the pavement.

I pointed the gun at his head.

Wait until morning before calling the police, understand, otherwise I fucking kill you and your fucking wife and your fucking dog. Geddit? I said, and got into the car without waiting for a reply. There was a huge box of Huggies blocking the view out the passenger-side window. I chucked them out, stuck the vehicle in drive, and headed off. Bob, of course, was nowhere now to be seen. Jesus.

I drove down the road. Tons of traffic. I turned the corner, heading her up towards Broadway. He’d either have gone left or right. I decided on left and went fast and by pure jammy-dodger luck at the turn across Van Cortlandt I saw him.

Driving cautious, drunk-man speed, but keeping a cool head and not too slow. He was heading east either up the shore or onto Long Island or maybe even doing a turnabout to go down into Manhattan. I tried to think if I’d ever heard anyone speak about where Bob lived, but I didn’t recall it ever coming up. He tried to make a traffic light and then aborted the plan and stalled the car, coming to a screechy stop. He was a bit freaked, and he took a couple of tries to get it going again. Someone behind honked him, and I saw Bob undo his seat belt as if he was going to get out of his car and have words.

Bob, stay in the car, don’t get yourself arrested, you big shite, I was saying.

He changed his mind about the seat belt and got going again. He
took a wrong turn or two and had to double back, and I wondered if he was being especially clever trying to figure out if there was a tail on him. But he wasn’t that smart or collected—just half blitzed probably.

He took us on a path through the South Bronx and somehow we ended up in Queens. Bob pulled in at a newsstand and got himself some cigs and a Coke and a copy of
Penthouse
. The newsstand was fairly isolated and I thought about doing it there, but this was no place for business; and besides, I wanted to have a word with the big ganch. So I let him go. He drank the Coke, and it improved his driving.

We went together out past La Guardia and Shea and I became reasonably convinced that Bob lived somewhere on the North Shore of Long Island. It was late and traffic was light and I had a job keeping the big cream-colored Caddy far enough away to avoid getting in Bob’s paranoid rearview mirror.

The highway was brightly lit and the cars going too fast, but at least it was an automatic so that my left foot wasn’t always on the clutch. It was the first time I’d driven since I’d come back from Mexico and the straps that held the foot onto my leg had almost given way on the run across the waste ground. I wasn’t in the mood to do any Long John Silvers, so I was glad they’d stayed on. I made a mental note, though, to go see Dr. Havercamp about those running lessons he was offering before.

Yeah.

The adrenaline was coursing through me. Hours on an OP and suddenly seeing the target will do that for you. And I’d dreamed about Bob, dreamed of this very event, of this very night.

We drove out farther onto the island. The surface of the road went clay-colored and the lines voided themselves into two lanes. I wound the window down, the air cooling my damp skin.

Highway lights, trucks, petrol stations, the city in the rearview, and even in all this light, pollution, stars. Saturn and Venus and a labyrinth of concordances bringing me onward.

Onward to the inevitable. No, it wasn’t Darkey’s night, but maybe it was Bob’s. Aye, and suddenly, there was a cheerlessness within me. And perhaps almost a creeping reluctance. If Bob could only keep driving forever, if only he could keep going. All the way through
Nassau County and Suffolk, all the way to the end of Long Island, where there are potato fields, where Gatsby had his mansion, and on out into the blackness of the Atlantic. Yes, keep driving, over the ocean, and like Alcock and Brown, we’ll crash somewhere near Clifden. I know this pub in Galway town, this lovely pub, we’ll pull in and have a jar and be on our way. Tell ya, Bob, you think the Guinness in the Four Provinces is good, there they take a year and a half to pull your pint.

A session, and then we’ll be off. Sea dogs and rose petals and away from that coast across the Great Bog and up to the mysteries of the Boyne Valley. We’ll be in Newgrange for the solstice, where the pagans brought the returning sun. And down at the river. King William was here and James over there. We’ll climb Tara and look out over the fifths. And then across another
sheugh
, I don’t know, we’ll hit Cumbria and the lakes and the Yorkshire Dales. We’ll go over oil rigs with their great burning lamps of fire. On east through the Baltic and Russia, and we’ll meet the sun again somewhere in the vast wastes of Siberia.

Bob, please understand me, real pain isn’t in the body, no, you may think that, but believe one who knows, it isn’t in the body or the mind. It’s in the spirit.

You’ll see. You’ll see soon.

Trucks, cars.

The teeming anthills, the moon, kisses of houselight in the shadows. A service station. American girls in jeans and white shirts. Fill your tank, Bob, and be about your way. Don’t stop, if you know what’s good for you. His black shirt, his little eyes, his hands like the claws of scorpions.

Amigo, despierta
, I’m coming. I’m coming.

His fat paw on the lever. He puts in exactly ten dollars and curses when it comes up ten dollars and one cent. You need to lower your blood pressure, Bob. You need relaxation techniques. Yoga, tai chi, meditation. Chant the Om for an hour.
Om mani padme hum
. Maybe it’ll help. You’re too stressed. Look at ya. He turns and gazes towards the girls. Says something. One laughs, at him or with him? Who can tell? He twists his neck back and rubs it. Stress. Maybe it’s a conscience, no? Not bloody Jiminy. But hurry now, Bob, pay. Get your
candy bars, you have your smokes already. Pay, go. Back to your car. Hurry. Go.

Amigo, despierta
, I’m coming.

Yes …

He came out muttering and shaking his head. He got back in and stalled the car again. He tried to talk to a girl in a black Corolla, but she wasn’t interested. He drove. I edged out of the shadows next to the car wash. Only another fifteen minutes and his turn signal went on. We cut off the highway somewhere I’d never heard of. People lived here. It was a community. Big houses, streets. Near the water, but actually I had no idea at all where we were. A while ago, there’d been a sign pointing out something to do with Theodore Roosevelt back on the motorway, but this place wasn’t it. It wasn’t anywhere. Quiet town, nice, pretty, I liked it. He drove away from the shops and the town center and up a tree-lined street that was denuded of leaves, of cover. Bob stopped his car and paralleled it into a spot. He got out and went up a path. His house was a white bungalow with a metal fence around a small garden. There was a shriveled pumpkin on the doorstep. When was Halloween? I’d missed it. I was outside of time, somehow. Had the election taken place? Who won? Who was president? The weeks had blurred. I parked the car slowly. Parking’s not my strong suit. Driving’s not my strong suit, but parking’s worse, and I didn’t want to bump anything and have the fucking neighbors coming out and asking me where my fucking parking permit was. Somehow, I squeezed in the big Caddy and crossed the street.

I paused at a tree near Bob’s front gate and checked the road for dog walkers and insomniacs and other assorted trouble. Nothing.

Bob was in the living room, and he’d put the TV on. He got up and went into, presumably, the kitchen, got himself a six-pack of beer, came back, and sat there. He opened a cold one and drank and flipped the channels. He wasn’t going to shower? No, Bob wanted to calm his nerves after driving drunk all the way home. He would have a few drinks, and then he’d get his shit together. Shower, get out his wankmag, go to bed with a job well done. Another day, another drive home blitzed to fuck and no casualties. No probs for Bob. He drank his beer and tossed the can over his head into a trash can. It didn’t go in. I
was out there too long. I checked the street again. Yeah, Bob, you’re the only victim tonight, mate, sorry. Have a beer and get your head straight, you poor love, it must be shite having to do things all by yourself and with a bunch of new boys, most of whom were green around the gills. Jesus. And what with Ramón piling on the pressure and everything. Poor old Darkey, poor old Sunshine, poor old Bob.

I opened the front gate and went down the path. His garden was dry and unkempt. There was rubbish in it. I stared at the pumpkin, which was carved in far too nice a way for Bob to have done it (unless he had hidden talents). I opened the screen door and stood for a moment in a tiny porch. Letters lay trampled into the floor, a bill, a vote reminder, a yellow envelope from a debt collection agency. I picked them up and looked them over and set them down again. I turned the handle on the front door. It was locked. Fuck. He wasn’t so drunk that he hadn’t locked the front door. Well, good on you, mate. At least you weren’t a total useless shite.