In the Morning I'll Be Gone (11 page)

“Hello, ladies,” I said to the girls, and again none of them so much as registered me.

A curtain moved on the left-hand side of the room and a moment later two guys pushed it aside and came into the room. Classic double act. One big, one small. The big guy clearly the heavy: he was wearing a leather jacket over a lumberjack shirt, with the butt of a shooter sticking out from the jacket pocket. Not the most useful place for a firearm, but perhaps that wasn’t his weapon of choice. Resting on his shoulder was a large aluminum baseball bat.

“I’m looking for Poppy Devlin,” I told them.

“That would be me,” the little one said. He was a cadaverous, jaundiced wee shite with thin lips and beady black eyes. His greasy hair was combed to the right, in a style that Hitler had made fashionable, and on his left shoulder there was a tame white rat. There was a certain jumpy magnetism about him and I could tell that he was no dummy. He’d be the sort of boy who would know exactly who he could fuck with and who he couldn’t, and I’d bet he never missed a payment to the local IRA and INLA chieftains who provided him with area protection.

A small-time hood. Hoors and H. They could tolerate that.

“I’ll need some of the brown stuff,” I said.

“I’ll need to see some cash,” he replied.

I reached under my raincoat for my shoulder holster. I whipped out the revolver and before anyone could react I smacked the big dude in the face. I didn’t give him a chance to squeak. I cracked him in the forehead with the butt and kicked him in the kneecap. When he still didn’t fall I hit him again in the temple, and this time his legs trembled and he went down like a hundred-year-old maple in the Ontario woods.

He smashed through the glass coffee table and the TV upended and landed on the floor in a dull explosion. The girls started to scream.

I pointed the revolver at Poppy Devlin.

He wasn’t fazed. “You’ll answer to McGuinness for this,” he said.

“I need some brown,” I said.

“This way,” he muttered.

I followed him into a side room with a dartboard and a TV showing the same episode of
Coronation Street
. There was another room beyond it with a couple of mattresses lying on the floor. This was where you fucked the girls or where the girls slept or both.

The heroin was in a metal filing cabinet that Poppy unlocked with a key.

He had about half a pound of the stuff in there, refined and probably cut with any old shite, packaged into scores of convenient dime bags. I grabbed a handful of them and a roll of banknotes.

“You can keep the rest,” I said.

“You really don’t know who you’re fucking with, pal,” he said.

I smiled at him.

“Let’s get back to the ladies.”

Hysteria, screaming, crying and the appearance of the guy from the cash register with a sawn-off shotgun. I ducked behind Poppy and used him as a human shield.

“What are you going to do with that?” I asked the kid.

I had my left hand on the scruff of Poppy’s jacket and I was pointing my revolver squarely at the kid.

“I’m going to bloody shoot you,” he said.

“Nah. A sawn-off machine like that will hit everybody in here except me. Your boss will take the brunt of it and even if I do catch some, I’ll make sure he’s dead before your ears stop ringing.”

He thought about that and nodded.

“It’s a bit of an impasse, then, isn’t it?” the kid said.

“No, no impasse. Drop the gun or your boss gets it in the head,” I said, shoving the barrel of the revolver into Poppy’s neck.

“Drop the gun, Skinny,” Poppy said.

The kid shrugged, set it on the floor, and put his hands up.

“What’s your name, son?” I asked him.

“Everybody calls me Skinny Mickey.”

“What do you call yourself ?”

“Michael Forsythe.”

“OK, Michael, you and Poppy are going to drag your mate outside. You carry him under the arms. You, Poppy, you lift his feet.”

Michael was wiry tough and without too much difficulty they dragged their prone associate through the offy and out into the street, where it was still pouring.

“Now what?” Poppy asked.

“Now this.”

I clobbered him in the noggin and knocked him out cold. I pointed the gun at Michael. “Run along home, Mikey boy, this isn’t any of your business,” I said.

He shook his head.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“If you stay here I’ll have to kneecap you and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t want that, but I don’t want anything to happen to the girls,” he said rather gallantly.

I looked him in the eye. “Listen, son, I’m not going to harm the girls. Quite the opposite. I’m getting the girls out of here. Away from here. I give you my word on that.”

We held the look for ten seconds.

“All right,” he said. “I believe you.”

“Good, now fuck off, before I have to impart a further lesson.”

He set off at walking pace and I saw him stop at a bus shelter on the far side of the street just to keep an eye on me, which was fair enough.

I went back inside, jumped over the counter, and got half a dozen bottles of the strongest hooch I could find—110-proof vodka from Poland. I ran into the back room.

“OK, ladies, everyone outside now!”

“What are you going to do?” one of them asked.

“If you have things to get, get them and go outside!” I yelled. I broke open a bottle of the vodka and began pouring it over the room. I broke open another. The soberest of the three girls got the picture, grabbed the other two, scurried them into the back room, and came out with a handful of bags and clothes.

“Outside, ladies, wait for me under the overhang!” I told them.

I poured the contents of the vodka bottles over the back room, making sure to coat the locker containing the heroin. I went to the toilet, grabbed two bog rolls, and lit one of them with my Zippo. When it was good and burny I threw it at the sofa. There was a whoosh of red flame that nearly took my eyebrows off. The plastic in the sofa began to peel off in strips and the foam combusted immediately.

“Bloody thing’s a death trap,” I muttered to myself.

I picked up the dropped baseball bat, walked into the off-license, beat open the till, took out the bills, and put them in my pocket. Then I smashed as many spirit bottles as I could, lit another toilet roll, and threw it into the mess.

The flames leapt from bottle to bottle like some kind of demonic entity and soon the white ceiling tiles were on fire. The white rat sprinted between my legs into the dark. I went back outside, where it was drizzling. The limpid sun had long set behind Donegal and it was full dark now. The girls were sharing a cigarette and seemed OK. I counted the money. About a grand all told, which represented quite an impressive little score.

I gave the two bleached blondes two hundred quid each and told them to fuck away off from here and never come back. They were dazed and initially uncomprehending and I had to give them a shove to get them moving.

“What about me?” Orla asked without much concern.

“We’ll get to you in a wee minute,” I said.

Poppy was coming round now.

I bent down toward him and shook him awake. When he had fully come to I pointed the revolver at his greasy face.

“Do you know who this is?” I asked him.

“Who are you?”

“No. This girl. Do you know who she is?”

“It’s Orla.”

“Her name is Orla McCann.”

“So?”

“She’s Dermot McCann’s sister.”

“So? Dermot McCann? He’s yesterday’s news, chum. He has no sway here.”

The off-license was really starting to burn now and we’d have to move away in a minute . . .

“Yesterday’s news, you say? You couldn’t be more wrong. He’s tomorrow’s news, Poppy. You’ve only gone and hoored out the sister of one of the IRA’s top commanders. Hoored her out and got her hooked on H.”

I cocked the revolver and put the barrel against his forehead.

“No, please, I didn’t know, I didn’t—”

I put my finger to my lips.

“Ssssh, Poppy. Sssshhh and listen. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got one hour to leave Derry. You’ve got twenty-four hours to leave Ireland. If you ever come back you’re dead. If you ever talk about what happened here today you’re dead. This is a message from the very top. Is that understood?”

“I won’t, I—”

“Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now start running.”

“Where?”

“I don’t care. Just start fucking running!” I screamed at him.

He ran across the parking lot and kept going until he was out of sight.

The fire was buckling the glass front of the offy now so I slapped the big goon on the cheek until he started to come round.

I took Orla by the arm. “You’re coming with me.”

I put her in the front seat of the Beemer and drove across the car park to where the kid called Michael was still waiting.

I wound the window down and beckoned him over.

“You seem like a good kid, take this and get yourself sorted out,” I told him, and offered him two hundred quid.

He shook his head.

“It’s your money, mate, you earned it working for that greasy fuck,” I said.

He grinned at that, nodded, and took the cash. I wound the window back up and drove across Derry to Mrs. McCann’s building on Cowper Street in the Ardbo Estate.

“I’m not fucking going here,” Orla said.

I grabbed her by the back of the neck and squeezed hard. “It’s here or the fucking river. Your choice.”

I kept the squeeze on until she was close to blacking out.

“Here,” she gasped.

“If you run away, I’ll know and I’ll find you, do you understand?”

“Who are you?”

“Get out of the car.”

We walked up the stairs to the fourth floor. I knocked on the McCanns’ door.

Fiona opened it. She saw me and she saw her sister. Fiona was about to begin a harangue but she caught the look in my eyes and buttoned it, hugged Orla, and both of them burst into tears.

I let them hold each other for a minute and then I walked them inside the flat.

Mrs. McCann observed the scene. “Oh, the wee hoor’s come running back, has she. Well, she can—”

I silenced her with a look.

“You will say nothing. Not one fucking word,” I told her.

I reached into my raincoat pocket and produced the bags of heroin. I gave them to Fiona.

“You were a nurse, weren’t you?” I asked.

She nodded. “This will stop her from getting sick. You’ll have to figure out the dose. And once she’s weaned off, then it’ll have to be cold turkey. You think you can manage that?”

“We can manage,” Fiona said.

“This is her money,” I said, handing over four hundred quid. “It’s hers, this will help you see her through.”

“Thank you.”

“Remember, no lectures. No nonsense. She’s back and that’s all that matters,” I said to Mrs. McCann.

“All right,” she said, crying now too.

“What about Devlin?” Fiona muttered. “He’ll come for her.”

“No he won’t. You’ll never hear from Poppy Devlin again.”

We stood there for a few seconds and I turned to go.

“We’re still not going to tell you where Dermot is,” Fiona said.

“I know. That’s not what this was about.”

“What was it about?”

“It was for old time’s sake.”

I went downstairs, got in the Beemer, and turned the lights on. The rain was harder than ever so I maxed the wipers and the defogger. I drove through the Shantallow. Fire engines were arriving from the Waterside to put out the fire in Poppy Devlin’s off-license, but, as was traditional, a mob had turned out to gawp at the blaze and throw milk bottles and stones at the firemen to keep them away. I rummaged in the cassette box and sought out my Blind Willie Johnson tape. I fast-forwarded until I got to track four: “Tear This Building Down.” The box guitar strummed and Blind Willie Johnson growled the words: “Well, if I had my way Lord, in this wicked world Lord. If I had my way Lord I would tear this building down . . .”

The rain finally came to an end and I made good time on the ride south. When I got back to Carrickfergus it was only ten o’clock but I was so tired I went to bed immediately and, for once, I slept the sleep of the just.

I made a cup of Nescafé, added some condensed milk, one sugar, stirred it all up, and carried it into the hall. I put on the radio. It was The Smiths, and Morrissey’s Manky whingeing carried me through breakfast and a lightning shower.

I dressed in black jeans, a black polo neck, and my black sports coat jacket. I put on my shoulder holster and noticed there was dried blood on the butt of my Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special.

I washed it under the tap in the kitchen. A pimp’s blood from a crazy last night, and I wondered why I hadn’t kept just one block of the smack. I was still wondering that when McCrabban found me spacing out in the CID incident room at Carrick station.

“What are you doing, Sean?” McCrabban asked cheerfully.

“I came in to get some maps of Antrim town, but now I’m just sort of daydreaming,” I told him.

“May I ask why you are going to Antrim?”