Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty – Excerpt

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet,
Work your hands from day to day, the wind will blow the profit,
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
And if you break the bloody glass, you can’t hold up the weather.

- Louis MacNeice Bagpipe Music (1937)

Prologue on 238th Street

“My point, friend, is that this is not an affectionate homage. This is not an interior critique. This is not Jay Z using, what I advisedly call, the N word. This is a collection of clichés that actually undermines what it is supposed to be celebrating. This whole ethos is a paradigm in need of shifting. And the fact that it is generated by people, no offence, with only a tangential connection to the ur source of that culture makes it all the more embarrassing.”

The bar man nodded. “So do you want another pint then? One without a shamrock on the head?”

Killian sighed. “It’s not even about the shamrock is it? It’s the entire ‘vast moth-eaten musical brocade.’ The whole shebang. This entire scene, brother, is, at best, a pastiche. But while we’re on the subject of the shamrock, what’s with the four leaves? Nothing could be simpler to remember. The Celts are polytheistic, they have many gods, Saint Patrick wants them to worship one God so he employs the shamrock to represent the Trinity: God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Trinity. Three leaves. A four leaved shamrock isn’t a shamrock, it’s a four leaved clover. Do you see? I mean, at the bare minimum we should both be able to agree on that?”

The bar man – bar boy really – nodded more firmly this time. “I’ll get you another pint, without the shamrock. I didn’t know you was from the old country itself so to speak.”

“Thank you,” Killian said.

“Although,” the kid added, with a twinkle in his eye which Killian might have caught if he had been paying attention, “You’ve got to give him credit for the snakes.”

“Who?”

“Saint Patrick.”

“You’re Irish?” a voice asked from behind him, in the blind spot – a dangerous place for anyone to be. Killian flinched and turned, with his hand reaching inside his pocket for a ghost piece.

A big guy in a Rangers shirt. NY Rangers that is. Not Glasgow. Different thing all together.

“Yes,” Killian said.

“Your accent’s not Irish though is it?” the man said skeptically. His voice had a hint of crazy and his eyebrows were madder than Freddie Jones’s in David Lynch’s Dune.

“I’m from Belfast,” Killian said slowly.

The man nodded slowly. “Oh, I see, so not Ireland, Ireland. Have you ever been to Dublin? That’s a real Irish city.”

Killian’s fresh pint of the black stuff appeared on the bar in front of him a mere forty five seconds after he’d been promised it – not a great sign. The barman however must have had concentration or even psychiatric problems because there on the top was another four leaved clover masquerading as a shamrock.

Killian knew it was time to hit the exit. But before he did: “Dublin’s a nice place but you have to remember that it was a Norse settlement for three centuries before it became an English town for seven centuries more. It’s been an Irish city for 90 years. Are you familiar with the Aboriginal concept of The Dreaming?”

“The Aboriginal what of the what now?”

“The Aboriginals believe that we live two lives. A life here on Earth in what we call the real world and a life in The Dreaming which is really the real world, where everything has a purpose, where we are more than thinking reeds, but are part of some great scheme of things. And in The Dreaming certain places are special, certain landscapes, certain settlements. Belfast is one of those places. The neolithic people thought so. To them it was a holy site. Pristine birch woods in a river valley only just freed from a retreating ice sheet a mile thick. The Celts weren’t interested in Dublin – it lacked a significance in their cosmology which is why they let the Norwegians have it. Belfast lies at the confluence of three holy rivers. In Irish it means Mouth of the Farset, one of those sacred streams.”

The man in the Rangers shirt nodded sagely, “So, you’re Australian then?” he asked.

Killian sighed inwardly. Some instinct had told him that this was going to mistake. Even before the plane had entered the airspace of Newfoundland he’d begun to have doubts. You can’t go home again and the New York of crack wars, quadruple digit homicide rates, David Dinkins, Mike Forysthe and 50,000 illegal Micks was long, long gone.

He abandoned the pub, the pint and the man and hoofed it downhill to the subway stop on 242nd Street.

He found a Daily News that had a picture of Dermaid McCann, Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson having a pint with the President.

They were drinking Guinness.

Obama’s grin had get me the hell out of here, Rahm written all over it.

Killian yawned. He was dog tired and in the morning he had a job to do in Boston that could well be the death of him.

The train came after an epic wait.

It was now after midnight.

“Happy Saint Patrick’s Day,” the driver said on the intercom.

“Aye, I suppose we’ll see about that,” Killian muttered to himself.

Chapter 1 Go Down Fighting

Cursing the dog’s name, she took the gun barrel from her mouth and set the 9 millimetre on the kitchen table.

The metal had felt good. Like it belonged there. A cold, perfect piece of engineering.

She sat on her trembling right hand and stared at the weapon.

Ice crystals were melting on the Heckler and Koch’s polymer grip and running over the magazine as it lay on the yellow and green Formica, waiting.

Seconds ticked past in long increments of raw time.

She found herself fixating on the disarmed hammer safety and trigger lock, imagining the terrible power of the chambered round. In an instant it could all be at an end. Click. A chemical reaction. An expanding piece of molten lead. Big Dave would kick in the door and take out her kids, the peelers would arrive from Coleraine and find her note, Tom or Richard’s lawyer would wake him with the good news, hacks would drive up from Belfast and someone would put that stock photograph of her with the blonde hair on page 1 of the bloody Sunday World.

But she’d be out of it.

To be dead in the black earth, to be alive only in yesterdays. . .

The P30 had eight in the magazine, one in the breech – that was the one she could ride into nothingness.

Thresher barked again. If it had still been raining, of course, she wouldn’t have heard him at all. Tonight she might really have done it. Wouldn’t have thought so long and hard and let the barrel slide off her tongue.

But not now, now she was on alert in case this really was something. Someone.

She killed the lights, picked up the gun went to the door.

She cracked it open and listened.

Surf in the distance, cars on the road, a football match on a distant radio.

“Thresher?” she whispered but he was quiet now. “Thresher, where are ya, ya big eejit?”

She breathed the night air. It was damp, cold. She looked up. The clouds had blown through and the star-field was rich. The Milky Way, the crescent moon, Orion.

She knew about the stars. She’d taken astronomy at Queens for a year before dropping out. Of course none of Richard’s lawyers ever mentioned that in their depositions. They preferred to paint her as the gold digger, the cultchie, the junkie. . .

Her nails were digging into her palm. She unclenched her fist.

She closed the trailer door and went inside. Sat back down at the kitchen table. The P30 was still in her hand. A micro second. That’s all it would take.

She reconsidered for one beat, two. . .

She shook her head. “No,” she said aloud. She safetied the weapon, put it in a plastic bag in the freezer box, closed the refrigerator door.

Ended her conversation with death.

She walked the length of the trailer to check on the girls.

The nightlight was casting a pink glow over the buckled aluminum walls. Sue’s blanket had fallen to the floor. She picked it up, replaced it. Claire was sleeping like a rabbit, curled on all fours, hunched. The barking dog hadn’t woken either of them.

Rachel stared at them trying to feel love rather than resentment.

But she was so damn tired. Tired of lying, hiding, running.

“Good night,” she whispered and went back to the front door.

She opened it and took a last look out. “Go ahead, Richard. Send your men, I don’t think I even care anymore,” she whispered sadly.

She locked the door and put the chain across.

She tip toed to her room – the only real bedroom in the caravan – and sat on the fold out bed. The blankets hadn’t been tossed in a week. They gave off an odor.

She reached for her fags, opened the box, discovered that it was empty.

Rain began to fall on the metal roof.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. . .

“Christ,” she muttered.

Surely the girls would better off without her. Rachel looked about her, this, this was madness.

She fished in the ashtray and found a ciggy with an inch left in it.

She flipped Big Dave’s Zippo. The tobacco tasted of sand. She blew smoke at a midge and lay back on the sheets.

The roof dissolved.

Pine trees. Constellations. An arrow of cloud intersecting with the moon. There were poppies along the granite wall and a wind bringing the smell of fennel, saffron and boggy emptiness.

She turned off the night light and stared through the lace curtains at the caravan park. A green phosphorescence was playing on the TV aerial of Big Dave’s trailer. She’d seen it before and she watched while it fizzed there for a moment – if fizzed was the right word – before dissipating into the black air. Most everyone was asleep now. Dave was on earlies and the football match appeared to have finished. Stu and that girl of his were probably the only ones still up, amped out of their minds or cooking blue belly to sell in Derry, or, to her.

She finished the smoke, climbed under the sheets.

Darkness.

And when the traffic on the A2 died away, quiet.

She couldn’t sleep. Yes, the meth amphetamine was still in her system but she hadn’t pulled an eight for years.

She was lucky these days to get four.

He wasn’t the problem. She no longer thought about Richard or that Sunday morning. . .No, the problem wasn’t the past but the present. Money, Claire, truant inspectors, Sue, lawyers, private detectives, the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Drugs.

Rachel tugged the sheet over her face.

Wind.

Rain.

And, finally, at around two, a few hours of erased existence. . .

Photons from a different star.

Prayers seeping through the bedroom wall.

She stirred. The room was heady, the smell: eucalypt, pine, seaweed. She lifted the sheet from her face. Rubbed her eyes. Her fingertips were soft. Uncalloused. Unworked. She noted this with neither satisfaction nor regret. Work was for workers.

She lowered her legs to the floor. She looked for her watch but remembered that it had fallen off her wrist in town. Always sly the Rolex had seized its chance to keep forever its knowledge of date and time, second and minute. Perhaps it was even a bold attempt on the watch’s part to set her free of such notions. She smiled, she liked that, but it wasn’t true – the watch was a present from Richard, it was his ally not hers. And it wasn’t even funny. She could have hocked it for five hundred quid in Coleraine.

She yawned, pulled back the curtain.

Blue van, red van, van so old it had lost all its color, V-W Beetle.

She pushed the window open. A cold wind from the Atlantic. She shivered.

The prayers from the Jehovah Witnesses next door continued. Seven of them crammed into a caravan same size as hers.

She grabbed the dressing gown from the back of her chair and put it on. She opened the window a little wider and listened to the babble. The chanting was neither a pitch for the Lord’s intervention nor even His understanding, but rather a simple plea that the Almighty hear them. That’s all they wanted. Just hear us, Jesus, know that we exist.

“Well I can certainly hear you,” she said getting off the bed.

She slid open her bedroom door and checked on the girls.

Claire was reading Little House on the Prairie at the kitchen table; Sue was still out for the count.

“Morning,” she whispered.

Claire didn’t look up.

“Morning,” she repeated.

“What?” Claire said.

“When someone says ‘good morning’ to you, it’s customary to respond,” she said.

“Sue’s sleeping, I didn’t want to wake her,” Claire muttered.

Rachel nodded. Always with the answer, that one, but she quickly saw another line of attack. Claire was sipping from a glass of orange juice. There were ice cubes in it.

“I thought I told you never to go in the freezer,” she said.

“Mum, please, I’m trying to read,” Claire snapped.

Rachel walked the length of the trailer and sat down opposite her daughter. There were two ways to go here: get angry and give her a punishment or ignore it.

She thought for a minute and then picked the latter.

“What’s happening in your book?” she asked with a benign smile.

Claire looked up “They just got Jack back, ok?”

“Who’s Jack?”

“Their dog, they thought he was drowned, please mum.”

“Fine,” Rachel muttered and walked to the front door, ruffling Claire’s hair a little roughly as she went past. She undid the locks, opened the door, looked between the branches of the Scotts spruce. A sky like irises, low clouds, vapor trails.

The sun had not yet cleared the trees to the east.

Dave’s paper was lying on his porch and his car was still there. He was, apparently, sleeping late.

She felt lonely.

Now there weren’t even stars. She rubbed her chin, scuffed her flip flop on and off, on and off. She peered through the line of trailers to catch a glimpse of the ocean but there was only a gluey sea mist down there today.

She sat down in the door opening. At her feet an empty vodka bottle, a half smoked cigarillo, a wine glass containing rain water and several water melon rinds now covered with hundreds of black ants.

The prayers to her right suddenly stopped and after a minute the whole clan came out and began maneuvering their way into the Volvo 240. Four boys, two girls. Eldest 9. Dad run off to England.

Rachel waved. Anna waved back.

“Rachel honey, after I leave the weans off, I’m swinging past the Spar. Need anything?” Anna asked sweetly.

She had a good heart, Anna. Rachel couldn’t bring herself to really like her but she had a good heart.

“Nah, I’m ok. . .Wait, no, I need some fags.”

“Sure. Usual?”

“Usual.”

The Volvo backed out, wove through the trailers and down the dirt track. A new Toyota Hilux was half blocking the way out, so Anna had to swerve over almost into the ditch.

“Some people, no consideration at all,” Rachel said to herself. Probably yuppie scum here to buy blue belly from Stu.

Rachel got up and transferred herself to the deck chair next to her house. She lifted one of last night’s wine glasses, plucked out a dead fly and drank.

Perhaps she dozed a little.

She woke with a start. The sun was higher, the mist had burned off. It was March 17 so it was never going to be warm but it was shaping up to be a-

Something was wrong.

“Claire?” she said.

No answer.

She stood. “Claire?”

“What is it?” Claire demanded from inside the caravan.

“Is your sister awake?”

“She’s in the bathroom,” Claire said with the verbal equivalent of an eye roll.

Rachel nodded to herself but it still didn’t feel quite. . .Something Claire had said, something about a dog.

She turned and looked at Dave’s house. The newspaper. The truck. Wasn’t Dave supposed to be on earlies?

She walked back to her own caravan. Looked in. Toilet flushing. Claire reading.

“Claire, darling, could you do me a favor and tell me what time it is?” she asked.

“Mother, please!” Claire said.

“What time is it?” Rachel asked more firmly.

“It’s eight, ok? Now can I read?”

Eight o’clock. Dave should have left an hour ago. She stared at the new Toyota down the trail. No one in the cab. The thing just sitting there.

And what about Thresher? Where was he?

“Thresher?” she called. “Thresher, boy.”

She waited.

Nothing.

“I’ve got a treat for you. Thresher? Thresher!”

No barking, no running.

“Thresher!”

A chill along her vertebrae.

She dropped the wine glass, tied the robe about her and ran back inside the caravan. She took the book from Claire’s hands.

“Mom!” Claire screamed.

She grabbed Claire’s wrist, squeezed.

“Mom you’re hurting me.”

“Get dressed. Pack a bag. Everything you need. Grab my stuff too and get your sister dressed. Now!”

“What’s the matter?” Claire asked. She looked frightened.

“Get dressed, do it now! Tell your sister.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t argue with me. Go!”

Rachel went to the freezer, took out the Heckler and Koch P30, flipped off the safeties.

“Mom, Claire says I have to get dressed,” Sue whined.

“Do as your sister says! Do it! Get dressed and pack a bag,” Rachel ordered with cold authority. She took a deep breath and exited the trailer. She held the P30 two handed in front of her, finger next to but not on the trigger. She couldn’t shoot a cop. It was 25 years minimum if you killed a peeler.

Her flip flops were onomatopoeing so she kicked them off. She walked barefoot to Dave’s, looked in. Blinds down. TV dead. She tried the door. Locked. She crouched down and pushed open the dog flap. She peered inside but she couldn’t see anything.

“Dave?”

No answer, but most nights he slept with ear plugs.

She walked round the back of the caravan. Here the clayey dirt became sand and the sand showed a russet colored blood trail that went off into the woods.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

She knelt down and touched it. Dry but not caked.

Swallowing hard she followed it into the trees.

“Thresher?” she tried quietly.

And then she thought of a worse scenario: “Dave?”

She looked back at her caravan. Everything seemed ok.

She stepped over a fallen tree and there, about fifteen yards into the big firs, was Thresher covered in ants with a puncture wound in his head.

She bent down. Cold to the touch. Died a few hours ago. He’d gone after whoever had come and they’d killed him.

“Good boy,” she whispered. “You did well. Good boy.”

She was surprised to see that the blood trail did not abruptly end at Thresher’s body but instead went deeper into the wood.

She followed it easily over the dense layer of pine needles on the forest floor. Even if she hadn’t been schooled by her scoutmaster da she still could have tracked this guy.

Heavy footprints, a couple of coins, blood, one leg dragging behind the other.

At one point he’d fallen and it had taken him a while to get back up again.

He was crawling now, not walking.

She found him barely a hundred yards from the caravan park.

Thresher had torn him up pretty well. He was about 35, wearing a leather jacket, black jeans, white sneakers. He had two gold ear-rings, a pale pock marked face, a thin moustache and a Mafiya tear-drop under his left eye. Lovely.

He was covered in sweat and he’d contrived to break his leg.

In his left hand was a cell phone, in the right a hand gun.

He was definitely not an Irish cop nor Interpol nor Special Branch.

His eyes were closed but he looked up when she approached.

“Spacaba,” he said.

Rachel approached carefully. She stepped on his wrist, leaned down and took the gun out of his hand. She threw it into the forest.

“Spacaba,” the man repeated.

She stepped on his other wrist and picked up the cell phone.

“Cigarette,” he said.

She scanned the recent calls. Four of them to London.

“Cigarette.”

“When are the others coming?” she asked.

“Cigarette, please.”

“Are they coming from London?”

“I don’t know.”

She pointed the P30 at his face. “London or Dublin or Belfast? Tell me!”

“London,” he said.

Keeping the gun on him she searched him and found car keys and a wallet. She took a step back.

“You tell your boss. . .You tell your boss. . .” she began she didn’t want him to tell Richard anything. She threw away the keys and kept the wallet. She ran back to the caravan park and banged on Big Dave’s door until he appeared bleary eyed, confused.

“Rachel, what. . .what time is it? Jesus, what time is it? Thresher gets me at six, it must be nearly-”

“Dave, I need the Subaru, Richard’s found me. His goons are flying in from over the water.”

Dave was pushing sixty five and first thing in the morning he looked a lot older than that. His face was greyer than his hair and his eyes seemed far away.

“Dave,” she said, looking at him, squeezing his shoulder through his denim shirt.

“What? Oh. The Subaru?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, went inside the caravan, brought the car keys and a roll of money.

“I don’t need it,” she said.

“Take it.”

“No.”

“For god’s sake, take it, get the girls something.”

She put the roll in her pocket. She kissed him on the cheek. “It wasn’t peelers, Dave, he sent muscle, bloody Russians or something, they killed Thresher,” she said.

Dave staggered a little, recovered, shook his head.

“Guy’s a nutcase.”

“I know. I better go. I’m sorry about Thresh. He was a good dog.”

She kissed him again and ran back to her caravan.

“Girls, are you ready?” Rachel called as she vaulted the cinder block steps.

“Sue won’t get dressed,” Claire said.

Rachel looked in.

Claire was ready. Standing there with a stuffed suitcase, wearing three shirts and two jackets. Sue was naked.

“Jesus Christ, Sue, you’re not even dressed!” Rachel said. .

The goon’s mobile rang in her hand. She pressed the green button.

“Misha, we’re here, where are you?” a voice said in a cockney accent.

She put her finger to her lips so the girls wouldn’t speak.

“Misha, where are you? We made it, we’re here.”

She hung up and looked outside. At the bottom of the dirt road behind the Toyota there was now a black Range Rover. Two men inside, maybe more in the rear.

“Claire, go to Dave’s car, get in the back put your seatbelt on,” Rachel said fighting the panic.

“What’s wrong with our car?”

“They might know our car. We’re just going to try and drive past them.”

“Mom they’ll see us.”

“Do as I say, Claire, get in Dave’s car and put your seatbelt on,” Rachel said calmly. It wasn’t hard for Claire to see the fear in her mother’s eyes. There was only one way in and out of the trailer park and unless they made a desperate run through the woods they were going to have to risk it. Rachel gave her the emergency bag which was always packed with underwear, money, Snickers bars and the laptop, Richard’s laptop – the only insurance they had.

“Go!” Rachel said.

Claire ran out and Rachel wiped the tears so Sue wouldn’t freak.

Sue wasn’t paying attention anyway, standing there sucking her thumb looking at Dora the Explorer on the TV set.

Rachel knew there was no time to do the usual minefield walk with her. She went to the bathroom, grabbed a beach towel and wrapped Sue in it. “Come on honey,” she said. “You can get changed into some of your sister’s clothes.”
“Wait a minute, where are we going?” Sue asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t want to go!” Sue insisted.

“Honey, it’ll be fun, now come on,” Rachel said.

“I’ve got no clothes on!”

“You can wear your sister’s.”

“I don’t want to wear her clothes, they won’t fit me!” Sue said, wriggling from her mother’s grip and falling to the floor.

Rachel could feel a scream welling up inside her. She ran to the door jam. The men had parked and were coming up the dirt trail on foot. Two of them, both in T shirts and aviator sunglasses which definitely meant private muscle not coppers.

Sue had picked up the TV flipper and put on Spongebob.

Rachel grabbed the beach towel from the floor and wrapped it tight around her.

“No!” Sue yelled.

Rachel picked her up and ran outside.

“Mom! Stop it! This is a good one!”

Sue didn’t weigh much but she fought all the way, wriggling, scratching, biting.

Rachel opened the rear door of Dave’s Subaru Outback and threw her inside.

“Get Sue’s seat belt on,” she ordered Claire.

Sue was screaming “Noooo!” at the top of her voice.

“Would you just shut up!” Rachel said.

“You better get moving,” Dave said. He had pulled on a dressing gown and he was carrying a long barreled shotgun.

She nodded, got in the car put the key in the ignition.

Stick shift, Jesus H., Richard had always bought automatics, how did these things work again? Clutch and brake. She turned the key, stalled the car.

Ahead the men coming up the trail ID’ed her.

They pulled something out of their pockets and began running.

“I see them,” Dave said.

She turned the key, let the clutch out easy. Sue leaned over, grabbed a chunk of her hair and tugged hard. Rachel screamed and the car stalled again.

“Stop it!” Rachel shouted. “Claire, hold her down!”

The two men were close, twenty yards, less. They were wearing medallions round their neck and the black T shirts said “Licensed Bounty Hunter” in yellow letters across their chests – which of course counted for absolutely nothing in Northern Ireland.

“I don’t want to go!” Sue yelled.

“Mom, I’m scared,” Claire said.

“Come on girl,” Rachel told herself. She turned the key. “Clutch out slow, petrol in slow,” she muttered. The engine caught. She drove forward. The men were here. Big white guys, moustaches, salt and pepper hair on the first, the second younger, meaner.

The younger one jumped on the bonnet, smashed the driver’s side window, leaned in through the broken glass and sprayed her with Mace.

Her retinas burned.

“Aaaahhh!” she yelled.

She slammed down hard on the accelerator. The Subaru leapt forward.

She heard the shotgun tear the air.

She couldn’t see.

Thumping on the windscreen.

The kids yelling.

She tried to open her eyes but they were flooded with tears.

She heard Dave shouting.

She grabbed the steering wheel.

It was a straight drive, except she remembered, for the big Toyota.

“Claire, tell me when to turn so I don’t hit the truck!” Rachel yelled.

“Mom there’s a man on the windscreen!”

“Tell me where to turn!”

` “Now! Now!”

The car went into a pot hole, shuddered, she felt Claire’s hand on her neck.

“I think he’s got a gun!” Claire cried.

Pain from her burnt pupils. She blinked open her eyes, swerved to avoid a caravan, closed her eyes again, grabbed the bottle of water in the cup holder, opened the bottle with one hand and threw it in her face.

Rachel let go of the wheel for a second and rubbed the mace out of her eyes as best she could. If she squinted she could see a little but what she saw wasn’t good. The bounty hunter/private detective was desperately holding onto the windscreen wiper with his right hand and trying to point a Tazer at her with his left.

They were at the entrance to the caravan park now near Stu’s cabin.

“Give it up bitch!” the man yelled, finally getting a good grip on his Tazer and pointing it through the broken window.

The shotgun blast had brought Stu and Stacey out. Stu was standing there naked, covered in tattoos holding a hurley stick. She’d never been fond of Stu but when he took a side he took a side and he went all in – especially for his customers.

“Pull over!” the bounty hunter yelled again.

She shook her head.

“I’m authorized to use-” he began before Stu clubbed him in the back.

He bumped off the car and Stu kept hitting him in the rearview.

“Thank you Stuart,” she said and headed east for the crossroads.

They drove to Coleraine, stopped at a petrol station and filled the tank.

A little further along they found a McDonald’s.

She wondered how long Big Dave would hold the men before having to let them go. How many hours did she have? It couldn’t be too long or he’d be looking at a kidnapping rap.

The girls ate their food. She couldn’t touch hers.

It grew cold in the booth by the window. Heavy rain clouds had rolled in from Donegal and lightning was stabbing at ships lost in the immensity of the Atlantic.

The rain turned to hail.

Sue played with the Power Puff toy from her Happy Meal while Claire, concealing her worry, affected sang froid and asked: “Mummy, where exactly are we going?”

Now too far with a broken driver’s side window.

Rachel stared at the grey water and black clouds and shook her head.

“I really don’t know,” she said.

Chapter 2 Back in The Life

Someone must have been telling lies about the Special K. He wasn’t an expert on breakfast cereals, but this stuff, advertised as Kellogg’s, was an ersatz concoction of toasted corn shavings injected with flavorings, high fructose corn syrup and molded into quarter sized wedges. He poured half and half into the plastic room-service bowl and ate. A chemical buzz on the roof of his mouth. Shooting pains near his heart.

It actually tasted rather good. He sipped the thin coffee. That didn’t.

Killian picked up his luggage, had a final look in the mirror and left a twenty dollar bill on the dresser. He’d wanted to leave a five but after shepherding it all day he’d foolishly put it into the candy machine last night to get a Kit Kat; now it was either twenty or change.

He walked across the quad of the Union Theological Seminary and skidded to a halt in front of the chapel. A friendly sign said “All Faiths Welcome”. The wooden door was locked. The key hole was iron. He had it open in forty seconds. He took a pew at the back and sat and tried to feel something. This went on for a dispiriting couple of minutes before he finally slipped away.

He left his guest room key with a dozing security guard and stepped out onto Broadway. A shiv attack wind from the Hudson. An empty soda can blowing along the sidewalk like a demented xylophone. The sky had a jet-lagged, early-morning-ferry-terminal aspect to it that he didn’t like at all. He saw a taxi and hailed it with a fading “Taaaa. . .” but it cruised on by. Two more did the same and finally a gypsy cab stopped. He got in, heaving his bag into the backseat next to him.

“Which airport?” the driver asked.

“The Logan shuttle.”

125 blurred. He name checked memories from his twenties. M&G, the Manhattanville post office, the A train stop, the boys of Engine Company 37/Ladder 40.

A line of people in business suits was weaving out of La Guardia into the parking lot. From long experience of the misery of human existence the taxi driver said: “I bet this is the Logan shuttle right here.”

Killian nodded and rounded the fare up from thirty six to an even forty dollars. The driver, some kind of Russian or East European, thanked him without sarcasm. He took his place at the rear of the line.

“Excuse me, is this Boston?” he asked the guy in front – a large man in a blue overcoat.

Getting no response, he tried again. “Is this the line for Boston?”

The guy in front twitched but nada surfed. Killian looked beyond him to the airport where planes on their skittery approach down the East River consistently seemed to miss disaster by only a few seconds. A wave of depression hit him. He was tired, off kilter, punchy. The Special K crash was coming and it wasn’t just that. It had been a hard week, hard month, hard year. He had three hundred thousand quid negative equity on those Laganside apartments, the Northern Irish property crash typically coming after 12 years of solid growth and just when he had quit The Life and turned the trajectory of his existence in a new direction at the University of Ulster.

To mention that it was raining and he had no coat would have been redundant. Course it was. Drizzly greasy stuff that got you so much wetter than a hard rain because people felt it was ok to stand out in it.

He tilted his head back, let the drops spatter on his cheeks, closed his eyes, listened: trucks on the Cross Bronx, planes at the Marine Terminal and a banshee wind blowing through the parking lot as if across the mouth of an Absolut bottle.

A rain drop caught him in the left eyelid. He opened his eyes. That sky again. Malevolent, not exactly evil, but certainly not good – the sky of a petty thief, or a drunken, sentimental spousal abuser. He considered poking the man in front between his broad shoulders. What was his problem? He checked for a hearing aid and, seeing none Killian’s fight-or-flight response began to kick in. Adrenalin flooded his endocrine system. His pulmonary artery expanded and his funereal white cheeks became red. He clenched and unclenched his fists, his hands remembering a hundred ways of disabling a man even though that wasn’t exactly his metier.

“Hey mate, is this the line for the Boston shuttle or what?” he asked in bass-profundo, old timey West Belfast.

On this iteration the man turned. He was reading the New Yorker and without looking up and after a pause which seemed to communicate some deep but inexplicable contempt, he said: “What do you want?”

Killian felt pleased and then irritated by this reaction – really what was so terrific about getting into a fight with a stranger in a damp airport parking lot? These days they processed you for a thing like that. Central booking, the Island, many hassles. The guy was big and broad, but Killian was bigger if considerably less broad.

“What do you want, asshole?” the man barked.

A 1990 freshly minted Killian, trying to impress Darkey White might have kicked him in the left kneecap, pulled him down by the hair, taken the man’s briefcase and smashed it on his head. But this was not 1990.

“Look at me,” Killian said in a voice like the rasp of steel on flint.

The man looked. “Yeah?”

In forty years on planet Earth – 23 of them in The Life – Killian’s eyes had seen a lot of unpleasantness and he knew that they could convey a frighteningly deep well of seriousness. A person with any expertise in human relations could read them immediately: this is not a man to be fucked with.

As it was, Killian’s interlocutor took a second or two before he got it.

“Is the queue for Logan?” Killian asked.

Belated recognition, fear, panic.

“Oh. . .yeah, I’m sorry, yes this is the shuttle,” the man muttered, lips trembling, eyes downcast – a posture Killian had seen a tedious number of times before. It failed to gratify him. It bored him. This whole world bored him which was part of the reason he was at the University of Ulster.

“Thank you,” Killian said and released him from the look.

“You’re welcome,” the man replied and brought the New Yorker up to his face like a shield. Killian looked behind him where a dozen more people had joined the line which hadn’t moved an inch.

“How long is this going to be?” he wondered aloud.

The guy in front flinched but sensed Killian was being rhetorical.

How long?

Fifty minutes in the queue.

Forty in the plane.

A grim forty. Middle seat/wedged/talkers/baby/five fucking dollars for a Coke.

Logan looked like an airport failing an audition for the part of Airport. The jetway was on the fritz. The replacement bus took forever. Inside nothing worked. The ceilings were low, flickered, leaked. Cops, State Troopers and National Guard milled. Frozen lines snaked across and into one another. Baggage came to the wrong carousel.

Of course because it was Saint Patrick’s Day there was a festive air, bunting, green cardboard things on string, inappropriate drunkenness.

He called Sean. Sean wasn’t available so he asked Mary to connect him directly to Michael Forsythe in Park Slope. He worked his way through a couple of flunkies before Michael came on.

“Yes?” Forsythe said.

“It’s your mate from Belfast.”

“They told me. We were all looking for you last night.”

“I didn’t want to be found.”

“When you’re working for us you make yourself available,” Michael said coolly.

“With respect, if you’ll allow me to correct you, from this morning, I’m working for you. Last night I was on my own clock,” Killian said.

Killian and Michael came from the same world: self improving north Belfast petty criminality. Michael knew the type and the angles. But more than that he knew Killian of old. He wasn’t going to out-argue him. Michael decided to let it go. “I just wanted to catch up, not a big deal. Where are you now?” he asked.

“Logan.”

“Good. Do you know the Fairmont Hotel?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Go to the concierge, I’ll fax you the address.”

“Ok.”

“You’ll need a car.”

“It’s not in the city?”

“No. The North Shore. You can drive, right?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I can get you someone, we’ll see.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Call me if you have any problems, I’m anxious to get this resolved today.”

“I can assure that one way or another this will be resolved in the next few hours.”

“Good, the old lady’s coming back from Chicago this afternoon for our big Saint Paddy’s Day Do and I’d hate to have to tell her that this eejit is still giving us shite.”

“You won’t need to,” Killian said.

“My people booked you a room if you want it, unless you’re taking the redeye.”

“I’ll see.”

“Do your lot celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, Killian?” Michael asked in a friendly but borderline racist kind of way.

People had a lot of crazy ideas about Tinkers.

“Of course we do,” Killian said. “In fact last night I was giving a wee lad in the Bronx your trademark spiel about the Trinity and shamrocks.”

“How did that go down?”

“Like talking to a wall.”

“Aye. All right. Happy Saint Pats. Good luck, mate.”

Killian hung up, grew thoughtful. He and Mike had met several times. The most memorable, of course, Christmas Eve 1992 when Michael had murdered his employer Darkey White while he and another couple of guards were humiliatingly out of commission.

Killian had been outmatched then by Forsythe who was own age and in his own profession, but just so much better at it than he.

Killian had quit New York after that and gone back to Belfast which had turned out to be good timing as the ceasefires had begun by then and the paramilitaries were moving into regular criminality. Everybody needed help for the brand new narco trade and Killian with his “New York experience” was a man in demand. Previously the IRA and UDA had killed drug dealers to prove that they were the legitimate defenders of the community, but after the ceasefires and the end of the Troubles, drugs became the vector for their boredom and ambition and by the mid 2000′s narco trafficking and manufacture had become the paramilitaries primary raison d’etre.

Killian had risen and got a reputation, initially as a heavy and then as a persuader so that even a year after his retirement an ‘old pal’ like Michael Forsythe could put in a call and get him to cross the Atlantic.

Still he wouldn’t have come – Mike Forsythe or no Mike Forsythe – but for those bloody apartments. Killian tried Sean again. This time Mary put him through.

“Where were you a minute ago?” he asked.

“Where were you last night?” Sean asked.

“I asked you first,” Killian said.

“Crapper and you?”

“A place I know,” Killian said.

“Like that is it?”

“Aye.”

“I rang a few of the hotels.”

“I knew you would.”

“Don’t be smart. You bollicksed it ya big eejit. There were a couple of extra clients we could have squeezed in.”

“No way. Not my scene. This is a one off for you know who.”

“You weren’t staying in Jersey were you?”

“You’re not going to get it out of me, Sean. Quiet little spot right in Manhattan. Nobody knows about it but me.”

Sean considered pursuing this further, but time was money. “Ok, you’re in Boston right now?”

“Aye.”

“You know the Fairmont?”

“He already told me. Said I got to rent a car.”

“Get a receipt.”

“You are such a fucking miser.”

“A four wheel drive but nothing fancy.”

“Jesus, it’s not Maine is it?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Sure you don’t want a piece? I can give you a few addresses.”

“Nah, you know me. And those people put you off your breakfast.”

“What people?”

“Gun sharks.”

“Killian, this is a pretty big score, you might have to get epic,” Sean said ominously.

“How big a score?”

“Five large.”

“Jesus. And he wants it all today?”

“Uh huh, so watch it, when people get backed into a corner like this sometimes it’s not pretty.”

“I’ll be on my toes.”

“You watch yourself, ok?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to, mate?”

“A burned out, semi retired, jetlagged old geezer on his first job in over a year.”

“Forty’s not old,” Killian muttered, hung up, turned off the phone, grabbed his bicycle messenger bag, dodged a WC Fields lookalike handing out green balloons and walked into the world.

A cab came. The Afghani driver was wearing a paper “Kiss Me I’m Irish” adjustable hat.

Killian thought about the five large. How could anyone come up with a sum like that on short notice?

They rode the Ted Williams. The tunnel led him nicely into existential crisis mode.

What the hell was he doing here?

He’d seen Tony Robbins once at a convention centre in Birmingham. Robbins said you either lived in the past or the future. Course it took him 57 hours to say that.

The future had classrooms and exams and major life changes. It did not have guns or desperate men.

If it wasn’t for the bloody apartments. . .

Out into daylight.

Rain.

A touch of sleet.

Downtown Boston and the beginnings of the Parade: peelers on horses, spectators in leprechaun get up, dress uniformed firefighters, shivering, red-cheeked girls in Irish dancing kit.

The Fairmont.

No respite from the Oirishness. The staff were wearing plastic bowler hats and from concealed speakers Celine Dion was singing Mick standards in her dramatic coloratura soprano.

He found the concierge who was hat-less but apparently channeling Vincent Price: “Ye-es? Can I help you?”

“Fax for me. The name’s Killian.”

“Are you staying at the hotel, Mr. Killian?”

“No. The fax is from Erin Realty Investments,” he said to short-circuit the chit chat. Everybody in the Boston-New York corridor knew what that meant.

“Of course, sir,” the concierge said.

Killian retired to a comfy chair and read the fax.

It was blank but for one line that said: “Andrew Marcetti, 21 Carpenter Street, Hampton Beach, NH – 500K”

He memorized the name and address and scrunched the sheet. Some lack of confidence made him call Sean. “I’m all set,” Killian said.

“What’s that awful racket? Are you torturing someone?”

“It’s Celine Dion. Listen, I just wanted to, uh. . .”

“What?”

“Nothing. Call you when it’s done.” Killian said goodbye and hung up the phone. He was wondering if the hotel could somehow get him a rental car when a shadow appeared in front of him.

He looked up. A big fella standing there looking awkward. A pinched, lanky character, 22 or 23, blonde, dressed in a hasty shirt and tie.

“Aye?” Killian asked.

“Are you Mr. Killian?” the kid asked in a flat, monotonal Southie.

“Who wants to know?”

“Mr. Forsythe thought you might need a driver.”

Decent of him. Killian liked to work alone, but it was better than the bus or trying to negotiate holiday traffic.

“What’s your name?” Killian asked.

“Luke.”

“You know mine, where the car?”

“Outside in the-”

“Let’s go.”

A black Chrysler 3000 up Route 1.

Killian didn’t know this part of America so he looked out the window. Clam shacks, cranberry bogs, ice cream stands, forests, old wooden houses.

The rain stayed off and the sun came out as they caught the bridge over the Merrimac River.

It looked cute.

The kid wasn’t a yapper which was something. They crossed the border into New Hampshire and within a few clicks they were at Hampton Beach. It was a typical New England resort town: a big strand, amusement arcades, junk food stalls, sporting goods shops, and, significantly for Killian, a medium sized casino.

“Pull in,” he said.

The kid parked. Killian got out.

“Wait here,” he said. He ducked into a Dunkin Donuts, ordered a coffee and called Sean again.

“What’s he do for a living this client of ours?” Killian asked.

“You know what time it is here?” Sean asked. “I was sitting down to me tea.”

“This boy that they’ve flown me three thousand miles to see, what does he do for a living?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“I don’t want to get involved in a war. This is strictly per diem for me. I don’t need any markers, bad blood.”

“What are you talking about?” Sean asked.

“This is a company town.”

“Rackets?”

“Legit. A casino. Could be a power play. Wouldn’t be the first time my best mate M.F. fucked me up would it? Check it, will you?”

He drank the coffee, watched kids in wet suits walk across the two lane with their long boards. Killian was wearing a sports coat jacket, white shirt, dockers, plain blue tie – not exactly dinner with the in laws but he still felt overdressed for Hampton Beach on an early spring day.

Sean called back. “M.F. says that he doesn’t work in the casino business. He’s a banker. Married old money. This is his third marker. Hometown, Atlantic City and Foxwoods. Everyone has been very patient. There are no cross tabs, he is not connected in anyway.”

“Law enforcement?”

“No family links.”

“You buy that?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, if I had a gambling problem, I don’t think I’d live in a town with a fucking casino on the boardwalk.”

Sean sighed. “Should I call it off?”

Killian rubbed his chin. “Nah. I’ll check it and I’ll call you when it’s done. You should also know this. . .he sent someone.”

“Baby sitter?”

“I don’t know.”

“You just be careful, big man,” Sean said in the camp West Belfast tones of BBC TV announcer Julian Simmons.

“You know it,” Killian said.

He tossed the coffee, went back to Luke.

They found Carpenter Street four blocks back from the beach.

American dream. Picket fences, sprinklers, kids, cul de sac.

#21: big New England Tidewater style, made to look two centuries old but in fact vintage 2002. The irony hit: guy with a gambling problem lives in #21.

Five or six bedroom house with a triple garage. A boy with a wiffle bat trying to play baseball with himself. About 13, brown hair, green eyes, Watchmen T shirt. The 3000 wouldn’t attract attention in this neighborhood but someone waiting inside would.

“You come with me,” Killian said.

“What are you going to do in there?” Luke asked warily.

“What do you do for Mr. Forsythe exactly?” Killian wondered.

“I work for Express Cars, I’m a driver.”

“What do you think I do, Luke?”

“I really don’t know,” Luke said but his eyes were telling a different story. He knew, or suspected. . .

“If you come it’ll be worth a couple of thousand experience points,” Killian prophesied.

Luke didn’t look convinced so Killian changed from the subjunctive to the imperative mood: “Follow me, keep your mouth shut.”

Killian got out, straightened his jacket, walked to the front gate. The boy’s Red Sox hat was slightly askew and he was doing a baseball commentary to himself just the way he would if this were an early Spielberg movie. Killian looked for a Golden Retriever to complete the set up but there was no dog.

He swung open the gate.

“Who are you?” the kid asked in a lazy Mainer drawl.

“I’m a friend of your father’s. Is he home?”

“He went to Shaw’s.”

“Is your mother home?”

“She went to Kittery.”

“Who’s watching you?”

“Nobody. I’m watching me,” the kid said.

“Brothers or sisters?”

“Mom took Flannery to Kittery.”

“I’m glad she didn’t take Kittery to Flannery.”

The kid laughed.

“What’s your name, son?” Killian asked.

“Toby.”

“Toby, I like that, when are you expecting your dad to get back?” he asked.

“I don’t know, half an hour?”

Killian reached into his pocket and took out two fifty dollar bills. “I’m an old friend of your father’s. I suppose I owe you a couple of birthday presents.”

He gave Toby the money. “Why don’t you get yourself a real baseball bat at one of those sporting goods stores on the seafront. A good one,” Killian said.

Toby’s eyes were wide. “I could get a David Ortiz.”

“Yeah. Good idea. Run along now. Surprise your dad.”

“Can I take my bike?”

“Sure, you got a helmet?”

“Yeess,” the kid groaned.

“Put it on and scat.”

Toby got his bike and helmet and pedaled off. Killian walked to the front door, turned the handle, went inside. “Come on,” he said to Luke.

A pristine, upscale, well laid out, utterly soulless residence.

Killian did a brace of the bedrooms looking for a safe. He found a loaded .38 in a locked gun case and he took the ammo and left the gun. Under a floor board in an upstairs spare room he discovered a collection of soft core pornography and two grand in Canadian dollars. Killian left the mags and the cash. He found nothing else, nothing major. The most interesting room was a ground floor study/library which had about a thousand volumes. Old ones. Some valuable. To his amazement he found a book on Le Corbusier.

He started flipping through it.

He sat down.

“What do we do now?” Luke asked.

“We wait.”

Luke pulled out his iPod, plugged in the earphones and lay on an Ottoman.

“What are you listening to?” Killian asked always slightly curious as to what the weans were in to.

“What?”

“What are you listening to?”

“Ocean sounds.”

Killian nodded casually but his ears were up. He’d seen a snub nosed Saturday Night Special shoved in the back of Luke’s pants. He thought cross and double cross. Insurance. Luke really an iceman, kills the mark, pins the murder on the shnook from outta town.

Plausible but perhaps not likely. Michael had a rep for straightness and for a complicated play like that you’d need someone with ten years under their belt and this kid was a punk. Furthermore that gun wasn’t the weapon of a professional.

“It’s nothing,” he told himself and went back to his book.

He didn’t like Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier didn’t understand human nature. Humans were biophilic. Half a million years of living on the Savannah was bound to select for adaptations linked to open plains, grasslands. In his concrete dreamscapes Le Corbusier didn’t allow for any kind of spiritual longing for vistas, for greenery, for other mammal species, for space. Like other twentieth century social engineers Corbusier wanted to remake man in his own image. Hmm, he thought, that was pretty good. He took out a pencil and began to make notes for his term paper and was so engrossed that he didn’t hear Marcetti come in. He should have put Luke on point. A mistake. Hopefully not a fatal mistake.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Marcetti said.

Killian looked up. Marcetti wasn’t Italian. At least not New York Italian. White, pale, about 38, thin, crumpled, with that vacant expression Killian knew all too well from the midnight shift in Atlantic City. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, slip on shoes, his eyes were watery, weak, had a wildness to them. He was balanced on one foot, something Killian didn’t like because Marcetti was pointing a sawn off shotgun at him.

Worse than that, pointing it at him and then at Luke, spinning it to the left and right, all on that one unbalanced leg.

“Well, motherfuckers, what do you want?” Marcetti repeated.

“Hey man, I’m just here to-” Luke began, but Killian put a hand up to stop him.

Killian looked at Marcetti. “You know why we’re here,” he said dispassionately.

Marcetti nodded. “I don’t fucking have it.”

Killian set the Le Corbusier and his notebook on the bookcase, smiled. “That’s too bad. I had a phone conversation with Mr. Forsythe earlier in the day and he made it clear that either I get the money or I send you expeditiously into your next incarnation – if you believe in that kind of thing.”

Marcetti was shaking. “What?”

Killian pointed at the chair opposite. “You should probably sit. The gun’ll work just as well from a sitting position.”

Marcetti blinked.

Those eyes again. Old man eyes. Beaten. Killian didn’t like them, Marcetti probably didn’t feel that he had a whole lot to lose.

Luke was on the fidgets. Killian gave him the Do Not Pass Go, he’d perfected over the years. Do not even attempt a play for that gun of yours.

Luke nodded slightly.

“Sit down,” Killian insisted.

Marcetti sat.

“How did you know we were here?” Killian wondered.

“I saw Toby on the boardwalk, he told me everything.”

Killian nodded. Just a bit of bad luck. Couldn’t be helped. He admired Marcetti’s cojones, coming here to confront a shark’s enforcer instead of run, run, running. Didn’t seem a New England move. “Where are you from, originally?” Killian asked.

“You’re not playing that game with me. We’re not going to fucking jaw like we’re old friends. You’re fucked, pal, I’m the one with the gun.”

Killian nodded. He had enough anyway, the accent was South Jersey. He could imagine the traj: street, or half street kid, pretty smart, scholarships, college, banking, marries into money, moves to the Boston burbs and gradually migrates north. Perfect until, like some atavistic demon, the grifter comes out: a visit to the local casino, maybe he wins, in any case the hooks are in, he starts playing, starts losing, starts borrowing. In a year, he’s under the ocean, deep down, Robert fucking Ballard territory, the Marianas fucking trench.

Marcetti was trembling, sweating, the gun was shaking. Killian knew that unless it was loaded with talcum powder at this range and at this angle it would decapitate him. Even birdshot could kill him. Wouldn’t have to be on purpose, a screen door slamming, a car back firing, Marcetti reacts. Both triggers. Never get the stain out of the dry wall.

“You carry a sawed off shotgun in your car. You were expecting me. Someone like me.” Killian said.

“Yeah, I was.”

“You know why they asked me to come in?” Killian asked.

“No.”

“Because I’m from out of town.”

Marcetti shook his head. “What does that mean?”

“I’m from out of town. If you’re going to kill someone you don’t go local. See, if I was just coming to get money out of you, they would have sent up guys from Boston. I’ve come all the way from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Across the Atlantic.”

“Like Forsythe,” Marcetti said.

“We’re old pals.”

Marcetti blinked fast. Sweat beading on his upper lip. He stood up again and pointed the gun “What if I just fucking kill you right now,” he said. “Both of you.”

“Take a seat, Andrew, you’ll be more comfortable and you can still kill us any time you want,” Killian insisted.

Convinced by this information Marcetti slumped back into the leather chair.

Killian gave him a reassuring smile. Salesman smile.

“Mind if I smoke?” Killian asked.

“No, Susannah doesn’t allow. . .Sure, go ahead and. . .no, wait a minute, don’t try anything,” Marcetti said. “One false move and I’ll-”

Killian nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes. Lit one. He offered the pack around, the kid and Marcetti shook their heads.

“Bad habit,” Killian agreed. He let the nicotine coat his lungs and drifted for a quarter minute. The world played behind Marcetti’s head. Aquamarine sky. A heat transparency to the elms and chestnut trees. Kids on bicycles sailing past the window like extras in a movie.

“How do you think this is going to end, Andrew?” Killian asked.

Marcetti shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Can I tell you a story?”

“What kind of a story?”

“About the last man I killed.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“No, you should hear it, it’s interesting. How someone dies is pedagogical.”

Marcetti said nothing so Killian cleared his throat.

“I was in Uruguay. Two years ago. I’ll give you the coda first. The thing was so bad that when I got back to Ireland I decided that I was going to change everything. I was going to quit The Life, go to college, get married, get some exercise, eat spinach, I had a whole notebook filled with stuff like that. And the funny thing is I more or less did it. I bought a small block of apartments, I gave my gun away, I enrolled at the University of Ulster just outside of Belfast.”

“Did you get married?” Luke asked.

“Didn’t get hitched but I have incorporated spinach into my diet. Ok, back to my story,” Killian said. He took a draw on his cigarette, wondered if the shotgun really was loaded. “Ok, so, there’s this guy and he thinks he’s pretty smart and he owes. He owes because he steals. Stole. 5 of the big M. From friends of friends in London. Escape plan worked in advance, new identity, new face, new everything. But it doesn’t work. Someone tracks him down to an obscure little town in Uruguay. Next thing you know there’s me sitting on this guy’s patio deck on a Sunday morning. I’m watching this line of yachts coming across the Rio de la Plata, the River Plate, coming across in this almost straight line that stretches all the way to the horizon, each boat about fifteen minutes behind the next. The final boats are under the horizon, under the Earth’s curve. You get me?”

Marcetti nodded.

“They’re coming from Buenos Aires in Argentina. I guess it’s a popular Sunday sailing destination for the rich. Up early, pack some booze and sail to little Colonia in Uruguay. Have lunch, have a stroll, back before it gets dark. It’s a nice place: beautiful old colonial buildings, shady plazas, cobble stones, lots of cafes. I walked around for a bit, started to get noticed, so I found the house I was looking for, broke in. Of course, he’s gone. Bed unmade, coffee still warm. He’s just popped out to get a newspaper or croissants or something. While I’m waiting I go out onto his deck and watch the boats. As they get closer you can see the people on board; some of them wave at me as they steer into Colonia’s marina but I don’t wave back, you know, cos I’m a professional. Twenty little boats come over from Buenos Aires and it’s getting warm and even more beautiful and I’m so caught up in this lovely wee moment I almost don’t hear our boy come back. He’s driven all the way to Montevideo to get his girlfriend. Nothing in the notes about a girlfriend. You can imagine the scene. . .”

Killian sighed and scratched his neck.

Marcetti was on board. “What happened?”

“They’re in kitchen and I go back in through the French windows and get the jump on them. They’d given me a silenced Smith and Wesson .38, but what good is that if she’s screaming her head off, you know? I tell him to shut her up. He’s crying, begging, flipped. She’s hysterical. Gorgeous too and only about 19. I can’t kill her. Just can’t. Wouldn’t be right. Now, I know a bit of Spanish from jobs in the Costa del Sol so I tell her straight: she can stay here and die or leave and forget about this. She’s a good girl, she wipes her face and walks out. He’s begging her not to go. She doesn’t look back. He’s really bawling now, but it doesn’t matter – our boy’s wearing his funeral suit – nothing he can say can change the judgement. But you never know though do you? So I let him talk a little. He tells me he’s got money. Millions, he says. We open his safe. It’s not millions. It’s about twenty grand in Euros.”

Killian paused, finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the wooden window sill.

Marcetti was pointing the shotgun at the floor now. Killian let the seconds crawl.

“What happened next?” Marcetti asked.

“While he’s spinning some scheme about gold bullion I sidle next to him and shoot him in the head behind the ear, easy, bullet expands in his brain case exits through his face, kills him instantly. But I have to work fast now. The client demanded torture, a lesson, you know, all that East End cockney geezer bullshit.”

“You killed him?”

“Yeah, but listen that’s not the story. The story’s coming up. So I’m cutting off his penis-”

“You were what?”

“They wanted me to cut off his penis and make him eat it before I killed him. Not my scene but easy to replicate. Anyway I’m doing that and not really paying attention and guess what happens?”

“He wakes up,” Luke said, horrified.

Killian laughed. “Man you’ve some imagination. No, the girlfriend comes back. And she’s got a pair of heavies with her. One of them has a fucking AK 47, another has an Uzi. I’m minding my own business, sawing at this guy’s dick with my Swiss Army knife and before I know what’s happening – World War Three.”

Killian chuckled, shook his head and looked down. He was talking conversationally but he knew he had them now. He was good at this. He was a minstrel. A salesman. A preacher.

“That was a scene, but lucky for me they didn’t know what they were doing – jazzing each other, shooting for the rafters. I dive for the sofa, roll behind a wall where they can’t see me and then it’s tea and crumpets at the Palace. I run to the bathroom, out through the window, back in through the front door behind them.”

“What happened next?” Luke asked.

Killian gave him a shut the fuck up look.

“I shot both the hoods in the back and checked them in the skull, neat checks, two rounds a piece and I ran over and smacked the girlfriend hard in the face, broke her nose, knocked her clean out. Ran back over to our boy, cut off his dick, put it in his mouth. Then back to the girlfriend. She’s the problem.”

Marcetti nodded. His lips were purple from holding his breath. Killian blew smoke at him and Marcetti finally sucked in air through his open mouth. “What did you do?” he asked.

“What would you do?” Killian asked.

“I, I don’t know.”

“I can’t kill her, not in the contract. But you can’t let her go, not after all this.”

Killian nodded at Luke, now was the time for him to speak. Kid caught on quick.

“What did you do?” Luke asked.

“I went to the kitchen and found a steak knife and cut her throat,” Killian said. “Her blood came out crimson. She was young, her heart was beating fast. Frothed out all over the floor and all the way to that wooden patio deck.”

He nodded at Luke and then turned his attention on Marcetti. “You see, Andrew, I’m only the advance guard. If you kill me other men will come, wherever you are. Before your eyes they will castrate your son and rape your wife and hurt them until you are begging for their deaths. You need to be made a lesson of. Your story will be legend. It’s worth it to them, losing the half mill for that.”

Marcetti started crying.

Killian got up, walked to him, put his hand on the barrel of the shotgun and lifted it gently from him. He broke it open and took out the shells. Luke had whipped out his Saturday Night Special but Killian shook his head and Luke put the gun away.

“I don’t have any options, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what I can do,” Marcetti sobbed.

Killian let him cry for a bit, went to the window stared out at the street. He did a standing ten count and still with his back turned said: “When did you buy your house?”

“What?”

“When did you buy this house?”

“2005.”

“What’s the equity?”

“I don’t know, we haven’t-“”

“You don’t know? Guy with your problems, give me a fucking break, you know every penny you’ve got or can get.”

“Things around here haven’t been moving.”

“What’s the base.”

“One, one point two.”

“And you bought for?”

“650, 150 down from me, another 100 down from my parents and a 100 000 no interest loan from my bank.”

Killian turned to look at him. “Did you refinance? The truth.”

“No. Not yet.”

“How much do you owe now?”

“Three.”

“Who signed the mortgage?”

“I did.”

“Need your wife’s signature?”

“Yes.”

Killian nodded. “Sell me your house right now and you and your family will live. Otherwise, well you know. . .Otherwise you’re all dead.”

Killian walked to him stuck out his hand. Marcetti looked at the big meat-axe paw in front him. He wiped the tears from his face and after a moment’s hesitation he shook it.

“Good, now go to the kitchen, make us some coffee. Mine’s black, no sugar, a wee bit of water in the cup.”

Marcetti went to the kitchen, stunned, like a car crash survivor.

Killian called Sean, got patched through.

“Yeah?”

“Sean, can you get lawyers up from Boston, maybe through Charlie Bingham?”

“Why?”

“We’re buying the mark’s house.”

Sean didn’t blanche. “We’re transferring the escrow to Bridget?”

“You catch on quick. She and her better half will need it today. Can you do it?”

“It’s a holiday, but I’ll figure something out. We make anything on the house?”

“50k.”

“That plus our commission. Profitable 24 hours. Sure you don’t want to come back to work for me full time? A dozen scores like this and you’re laughing me bucko.”

“I’m hanging up Sean. We need your boys pronto. M.F. will give you the address.”

“You tell me.”

“We don’t leave that spilled over the airwaves.”

“Ok, I’ll ask him. . .So, how was it working in the mines after all this time?”

“Bye, Sean.”

Marcetti came into the living room with three cups of coffee. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was a gambler, he liked the high stakes aspect of all of this. He was digging on the drama.

Killian took a cup, gave one to Luke.

“I wanted cream,” Luke started until he saw Killian’s eyes.

“Ok, here’s the deal Andrew we’re going to buy your house from you for 900,000 dollars. That’s a price we can sell at it immediately. We’ll pay off Michael and give you 50 000 in cash to tie you over.”

Marcetti’s face was ashen, distant, but still he nodded.

“What’ll I tell my wife? What can I tell her?”

Killian put his hands on Marcetti’s shoulders. He placed his own cool forehead on Marcetti’s sweating furnace of a forehead.

“I’ll speak to her,” Killian said.

Marcetti closed his eyes. Tears again. They were close now. Like brothers. Closer.

“You’ll talk to her?” Marcetti asked.

“Andrew, paisano, I’ll take care of everything.”

Marcetti nodded gratefully.

The wife came back.

The kid came back.

Killian explained.

Long shadow.

Highway lights.

Dusk.

Darkness came down like a shroud across the sun.

There would come a time when he’d be dead, when everything would be dead and all the suns were gone and the universe was black. That time would come, but it was not now.

He was alive. Tired but alive.

He took off his jacket and folded it carefully on top of the bike messenger bag.

They drove over some new bridge he hadn’t seen before. A white concrete cable stayed affair with inverted Y shaped towers. He didn’t like it. It was modern, self important, showy. He preferred slow, incremental change, but the Zeitgeist was for revolution.
Luke dropped him outside the Fairmont.

“Cheers,” he said and getting out passed him ten fifties as a tip.

Luke took the money but didn’t thank him. “Can I ask you something?” Luke said.

“Sure.”

Luke hesitated and found his voice: “That story. . .Uruguay. . .did you really have to cut that poor woman’s throat?”

Killian slung his bike messenger back behind his back, tightened the strap, folded his jacket over his arm.

“Son, when I saw your gun, for a second there I thought you were a player that Michael had sent to keep an eye on me or cross me,” Killian said.

“I’m not a player,” Luke muttered.

“No you’re not. Stick to driving.”

Killian walked into the hotel. He checked at reception and sure enough Forsythe’s people had booked him a room. Big suite on the upper level. Luke came up behind him at the elevator. He was breathless, there was something in his hand. The five hundred bucks. Killian was impressed by his integrity. So was Luke.

“Take your money, I don’t want it,” Luke said.

Killian pushed the call button, grabbed the five hundred, took Luke’s arm in his powerful grip and shoved the money deep into Luke’s pants pocket.

The elevator dinged. The doors opened. Killian went inside. He pressed 6.

“I don’t want it,” Luke said. His face was shivery, nervous, very young. He was grubbing in his pocket to get the readies back out.

“Let me tell you something ya stupid wee shite,” Killian said.

“What?”

“I’ve never been to Uruguay in my life.”