Maid of the Mist (25 page)

'I know. I heard she was planning to skip town.'

Cindy nodded.

'She didn't love me or the fat guy.'

Cindy shrugged.

'Was she going to take Aimie with her? Without a word?'

'I think she was going to leave Aimie. With you.'

Corrigan shook his head. 'Jesus,' he said, 'didn't she love anybody?'

'People are complicated. She changed. She felt tied down.'

'You're only eighteen and you only met her half a dozen times and you know more about her than I do. What are you studying? Psychology or philosophy?'

'Marine biology.'

'Figures,' said Corrigan. He put a sandwich in each pocket of his tracksuit bottoms. He stood up. 'I have to go.'

'Coffee's nearly ready.'

'Sorry,' he said.

She smiled weakly. He stopped and kissed her on the top of the head. 'Don't worry about him, he'll be fine.'

'You can't promise me that.'

'Yes I can.'

She looked into his eyes. 'What are you going to do?'

'I don't know. Something. Right at the start Mark said this was too big for us and I laughed it off, but he was right.'

He turned for the back door.

'Frank?'

He stopped. 'What?'

'Take another sandwich.' She had the plate in her hands. 'And don't do anything stupid.'

'I'll meet you halfway.'

He took a sandwich.

Over the back fence. It was daylight, so he had to move more carefully. Everybody seemed to be at work. There were some dogs, but they didn't bark. They sniffed at him. They followed; he had to kick them off without drawing too much attention to himself. It was raining, but not as heavy, a fine rain but the kind that could soak you through without your noticing. Still, it justified wearing the hood up. When he slipped out on to the main road he looked back up at Stirling's house and saw the police car was still there, although they must have seen him get picked up for work. So they were watching everyone. Just in case.

He walked into town, thinking all the way about what to do and what not to do.
The Magnificent Seven.
They issued parking tickets and drank beers and watched ice hockey and drove steamboats on the great Niagara. They could not storm and destroy. If there was something to be done, he should do it alone. Get to the Old Cripple's mansion first, find Lelewala, get her out of there, cause something to happen that would make it impossible for the conventioneers to escape or prosper.

Something.

He knocked on the door of the women's refuge. A big woman in a wedding dress answered. 'Things must be looking up,' Corrigan said and the woman burst into tears and ran away up the stairs.

Annie Spitz came out of a back room, tutting, and pointed Corrigan towards her office. He sat and looked at the pictures of the bruised women on the wall for five minutes until she returned, all apologies. 'She was supposed to be getting married today. He arrived drunk at her house and kicked her down the stairs.'

'Why?'

'Since when did you need a reason?'

'You tar us all with the same brush.'

'Yes.'

They looked at each other. 'I came to see Aimie. And to borrow some things.'

'She's out back. She would sleep on that swing if she could. She heard about her mum on the radio.'

'Shit.'

'Shit indeed. I had to explain about bad men and her mommy going to a big hotel in the sky.'

'What'd she say?'

'She inquired about getting a room in that hotel.'

'Shit.'

'Shit indeed. What do you want to borrow? We don't have much, Corrigan, and you're welcome to none of it.'

'Thanks.'

She gave him a weak smile. 'Sorry. OK, what are you after?'

'Of all the places I've visited in this town, you have the best- equipped arsenal of any. Better than the gun club, even.'

'You want to borrow a gun?'

'No. I want to borrow several guns.'

'Why? Why several?'

'There are things I have to do. And none of them are legal. I need your help.'

'Does it involve the people who killed Nicola?'

Corrigan nodded.

She drummed her fingers on the table for several moments. She lit a cigarette and offered him one. He refused.

'Eighty per cent of battered women smoke,' he said.

She gave a wan smile and said: 'Ninety. What do you want guns for?'

'Silly question.'

'I know. Nevertheless. I can't just go giving out guns. I'd be an accessory to a crime.'

'As far as I'm concerned it won't be a crime. Besides, you can say I stole them. I came to see Aimie and sneaked them out. Nobody need ever know.'

'Corrigan, I hardly know you, but I really don't want your death on my conscience.'

'Who said anything about
me
dying?'

'You or anyone else. Corrigan, give yourself up.'

'It's gone beyond that.'

He stood up. 'I'm going to see Aimie. I'd appreciate if you'd leave the door to the gun room open.'

He left the room. Annie sat on, smoking and staring at the wall.

Aimie was sitting on the swing, but not swinging. 'I saw you through the window,' she said.

'I saw you too, sweetheart.'

'Is Mommy with you?'

'No, love, she's not.'

He began to push the swing gently.

'She's still at the hotel?'

'She's still at the hotel. I think she's going to stay there.'

'Must be a great hotel.' 'It certainly is.'

'Do you think they have cable?'

'Absolutely.'

'What about
Nickelodeon?'

'I don't think so, honey, I don't think they have children's TV. Only for grown-ups.'

'Oh. They'll have swings though, Daddy?'

'No, love, they don't have anything for kids at all.'

'Aw.'

'I know. It's not fair. Tell you what, you stay here for a little while longer, then Daddy'll come and get you and we'll go somewhere that has
Nickelodeon
and swings too, OK?'

'Promise?'

'I promise.'

'Daddy?'

'Mmmm?'

'Who shot Mommy?'

He swallowed. 'A bad man.'

Aimie nodded thoughtfully. 'Was it that fat bastard?'

He almost laughed, but held on to it, then thought for a moment.

'Yes, love, it was. But he's dead too now.'

'Is he at the hotel with Mommy?'

'No, love, there's no fat bastards allowed in that hotel.'

When he went inside the door to the gun room was lying open and Annie was nowhere to be found. When he opened the front door the fat woman in the wedding dress was standing there with her arms around a tiny guy in a morning suit.

The rain continued to follow him, his own personal black cloud. He should have just called a cab and taken Aimie with him and sneaked across the border and started all over again. He'd done it before, escaped from Ireland and rebuilt his life. Maybe he was fated to have his life shattered, maybe he was fated to walk with evil.

Lelewala had come back to fight evil.

Not that she existed.

She was a myth.

She was a psycho.

She was a prostitute.

She was a prisoner.

She was devastatingly attractive and would suck your cock for seventy bucks.

And if none of this was true and she really was that good an actress, then she deserved to go to Hollywood and find fame and fortune with David Hasslefree.

His head was buzzing. He wondered if the brain was as much like a computer as people said. If it got so overloaded with information that eventually MEMORY FULL flashed up on your eyeballs and then it closed down. Or self-destructed. You could buy a new computer or upgrade its memory. But what could an ordinary or extraordinary man do, short of shooting himself in the head to let a little air in?

He just wanted to:
sit with Aimie and tell her good things.

Stand by my wife's grave and tell her sorry.

Put my good arm round the mad whore Lelewala.

And now he was walking through the rain with a gun in each pocket and one in his sock, just in case.

He arrived at the Skylon Brock hotel and entered through the car park. He got hold of one of the valet parkers and said he was looking for an Irish guy who was attending the horticultural convention but couldn't remember his name. He slipped the valet twenty bucks and told him to go and find out. He reasoned that with Ireland at what passed for peace the gangsters there would have nothing better to do with their time than peddle drugs, so the chances were somebody would be attending the convention claiming Ireland as their territory.

The valet came back ten minutes later. Sure enough, there was an Irish delegation on the fourth floor. Six of them in three rooms. He'd gone to the trouble of writing the names and the room numbers down. Corrigan gave him an extra ten dollars.

'Not a word,' Corrigan said.

'Of course not, Inspector,' the valet said.

Corrigan shook his head and walked to the elevator. He arrived at the fourth floor. He counted the numbers off as he passed each room, then knocked on 467. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.

'Mr Adams?' he called.

There was no response.

He knocked and called again.

'Can you not fuckin' read?' an angry voice spat from within. The accent was Northern, and so was the temperament.

'Fire alarm,' Corrigan said.

'I didn't hear a fuckin' alarm.'

'That's where the fire is, the alarm system. Now if you could just. . .'

The door was flung open. A rotund figure in a Skylon bathrobe and a bandito moustache, his face snarled up, stared out. Behind him Corrigan could see a black girl reclining naked on the bed. She was pretty rotund herself.

It only took the Irish guy a second to realize. 'You're not. . .'

'No,' Corrigan said, raising a gun to his face, 'I'm not.'

He forced Adams back into the room. The girl on the bed didn't seem particularly bothered. She began to gather her clothes. 'Mrs Adams, I presume?' Corrigan said.

'Huh,' she replied. She lifted some dollars off the bedside table and stuffed them into a small red purse. She zipped herself into a tight black dress and sauntered across to the door. 'Bye, sweetie,' she said, running her hand under Adams's jaw.

'Cheerio,' Adams said weakly.

Corrigan opened the door and she slipped by, smiling. He closed the door after her and looked back at Adams's disbelieving face.

'What are you, RUC or something?'

'You mean I haven't lost the accent?' Corrigan tutted. 'No, I'm not RUC. But I may as well be.'

Adams stood like a bouncer. Chest out, arms slightly bent but hung low as if he was ready to swing a left hook. Or a right one.

Corrigan had no doubt that he had at least one gun. He had no doubt that Niagara Falls was currently the most heavily gunned town on the continent. The convention might be all about billion-dollar drug deals and they might like to dress themselves up as international businessmen, but distrust and betrayal went with the territory, and where they went, guns followed. It was inhuman nature.

He pushed Adams down on to the bed, then searched the room. He turned up some coke, keys to a hire car and a pistol, then a pair of invitations to the Horticultural Convention's closing-night ball at the Old Cripple's mansion. Exactly what he was looking for.

Adams said: 'What's your game, mate?'

'It's not a game,' Corrigan said, 'and I'm not your mate. Actually, while we're on that subject, where's
your
mate?'

The name on the second invitation was Patsy Calhoon.

'He won't be back for . . .'

There was a knock on the door and a Northern accent. 'You finished getting your hole yet, sunshine?'

Corrigan shushed Adams by putting the tip of the pistol against his mouth, it's not only in comedy that timing is important,' Corrigan whispered. 'Now tell him to come in.'

'Come on in,' Adams said.

As the door opened, Corrigan was behind it. Patsy Calhoon entered, holding a brown paper package with a McDonald's logo up before him. 'Fillet o' Fish,' he proclaimed, 'just like home!'

Corrigan put one of his pistols to Patsy's head. 'Smith & Wesson,' he said, 'just like home.'

He tied them up. It took longer than it should have because of his shot arm and missing fingers. But he persevered. Patsy and Adams seemed too stunned to question what was happening to them. They just accepted it. As he was securing Patsy's feet Corrigan said: 'How's the football coming along?'

Patsy blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment, then said: 'Sorry? But do I know you?'

Corrigan tapped Patsy's left Adidas sneaker. There was a hole where the big toe was. 'You have a five-a-side-football foot,' Corrigan said. 'It's a common condition among the unemployed of west Belfast. You've nothing else to do all day but play footie at the leisure centre and not enough money to keep yourself in trainers. Which begs the question about how a bunch of cheap- skates like youse get an invitation to the convention.'

Adams looked to Patsy, who shrugged. 'We're just here with the boss, mate,' Adams said. 'Security, y'know, except there's been bugger all for us to do. Quiet as fuck till you showed up.'

'So where's your boss now?'

'He's gone on ahead to the party. He still has some business to finish off.'

'And what's he called when he's at home?'

'Tar McAdam.'

Tar McAdam.
Corrigan couldn't help a smile. Former head of the IRA, now promoted to drug baron. If there was going to be shooting later on, Corrigan resolved to make sure Tar McAdam caught one. 'Not content with bombing people into submission for twenty years, now he has them shooting up for Ireland as well.'

'We're only along for the ride, y'know?' said Adams.

'You're not gonna shoot us, are ye?' Patsy said.

'It's nothing to do with us,' Adams said.

'We just do what we're told.'

Corrigan shook his head. 'As ever it was.'

He stuffed socks in their mouths, then rolled them on to the floor and pushed them under the beds with his foot. He made sure the DO NOT DISTURB sign was in place then headed back down to the car park to find their car. His friend the valet helped him out. Within a couple of minutes he was gunning out of the car park and heading for the Old Cripple's mansion.