Dead I Well May Be (6 page)

You drive, he said.

I wasn’t used to driving on the right, but I took the keys and started her up. I headed back. There was a McDonald’s drive-through and I saw this as another opportunity. I turned the wheel.

You boys want anything? I asked. I’m narving.

Scotchy was pale in the front seat. Fergal dry-heaving now in the back. Both shook their heads. I pulled in and ordered a Big Mac meal and ate it as I drove. Fergal would spread this around too. It would reach Sunshine. It would reach Darkey. It might even reach Mr. Duffy. We stopped outside the Four Provinces and went in to get cleaned up. Bridget took my clothes. Andy was no better.

I seriously think you should take him to the hospital, I said.

Scotchy was in no mood to argue now and Mrs. Callaghan dialed the number. I showered and waited until the paramedics came.

When we were alone, I found Bridget and kissed her.

I absolutely have to see you, I said.

She didn’t say anything.

Tomorrow, I said.

I don’t know, Michael, she said.

For God’s sake, Bridget, we’ve both been through the mill. Tomorrow, please. Come on, we’ll do something fun.

She nodded her head ambiguously and went downstairs.

I stood there for a moment. Was she tiring of me? Would she come? Who knew? I shook my head wearily and followed her down.

I had a free pint off Pat and drank it and chatted about the upcoming English football season, ate some Tayto crisps, and went down the steps and caught the train….

All over.

Done.

You got through.

You got through. Ugly, but it was Scotchy’s fault, not yours. No.

You look for that paperback about the Russian guy but it’s gone. You sit in the subway car and you think. Not your fault. Not your fault. The train rattles and it nearly rocks you off to sleep. It stops at the stop and doesn’t move again. After a while a man comes with information. There’s a problem on the line and you have to get off at 137th. You get out and they give you a useless transfer.

It’s dark now in Harlem.

You walk down the hill from City College and St. Nicholas Park. The streets are empty. No junkies, no hookers, no undercover cops, no delivery boys, no workers, no nothing. Bodegas are shut and barricaded. The moon. The deserted avenue. The tremendous sleeping buildings and the rusted octopi of fire escapes. It is still warm and Harlem is all around and comforting. It’s straight here. Simple. You know how things stand. You know who you are and who they are. You know your place. You know how things will be. You know everything. You can exist here without pressure, without history. You can be anonymous.

It’s a pleasant walk down Amsterdam. A gypsy cab comes by and honks. You look at it and nod. It stops. You get in. Three bucks to 123rd and Amsterdam, you say.

The man nods, smiles.

Some day, huh, he says.

You don’t reply. But in the silence you agree and look out of the window.

2: DOWNTOWN

T

hat should have been it. The night should have ended there—but it didn’t. Instead it got dragged out into a jazz of drink and
craic
and bars and cars. I was asleep and abed only about forty minutes when they came calling in their transport. A big yellow van that they must have borrowed. Guy called Marley driving, whom I’d never previously encountered and after that evening did not meet again until the night, several months later in real time and an epoch in psychological time, when I put a screwdriver through his throat and he went down into the embrace of the soft Westchester snow without even a whimper.

Even though I was knackered it was deemed necessary that I be got up and forced to join in the jollity, for Darkey, when he was on a bender or even a mild celebration, was like a Jack ashore, everyone possible was to be brought within the compass of his merriment. And I, after all, was the star of the evening or so they all kept saying. Sunshine, Big Bob, and Darkey had arrived at the Four Provinces—after their important chin wag—not too long after I’d buggered off home following our own little escapade. Darkey and Big Bob had been drinking, so Sunshine was driving them back (though Marley was doing the actual driving). They’d all ended up in the lounge bar of the Four P. intercepting Scotchy and Fergal just as they were belting one for the road. They were both the worse for drink, but somehow Sunshine got the story out of them and with indignation Darkey had asked how they could have let me go back home on the subway when clearly I was the hero of the hour for my coolness in dealing with Shovel.
Darkey is, if anything, a man of the whim and he decided that all of them were going to the hospital right that minute to see poor Andy; and then that done, they were all going to go down to Harlem and call on and subsequently fete me.

Jesus. Poor me.

Like I say, I was only asleep forty minutes but I was away, already reasonably untroubled by conscience or anything else. Yeah, I was off somewhere, but resistance was useless.

They didn’t get in to see Andy but they came on down to 123rd Street anyway. They rang my buzzer, but I had the fan on and cotton wool stuffed in my ears to keep out the racket from east of here.

Come on you fucking lazy wee hoor’s spawn bastard. It’s us. We’re fucking doing a Petula, Scotchy was no doubt screaming through the intercom. They buzzed for about ten seconds and then Darkey’s patience must have got the better of him for he told Big Bob to jemmy the lock, which Big Bob did. They probably would have broken my door down had I not finally heard their cackling and yelling and banging. For some reason I thought it was a bunch of drunk Serbians up from Ratko’s pad to raise hell and I went to the door with a metal baseball bat in my hand and a revolver in my boxer shorts.

They laughed when I opened up the door. Boxers, Zoso T-shirt, gun, baseball bat, hair askew, snarl on face.

Darkey leaned forward and punched me on the arm.

Well done, you wee fucker, he said.

Darkey, who had never been to Ireland in his life but who took on a bit of the accent and manner when he was around Scotchy and myself. It was terrifying.

They dressed me in jeans and boots and leather jacket and hauled me out into the night, dragging me downstairs violently. For just a second or two I thought that perhaps all this bonhomie was a cover and really they were going to drive me down to the Hudson and shoot me in the back of the neck. No, worse. First, Darkey kicks my face in and then when it’s a bloody mess and I’m blinded and brains are coming out my ears, Scotchy says: I’m very disappointed in you, son. And then he fucking tops me.

But instead of turning left at Amsterdam we turned right and it seemed that we really were going downtown after all. The boys didn’t
see, but my heart stopped beating like a steam engine and the tension eased out of me. It’ll be a bad night: drink, smoke, and some terrible restaurant at the break of dawn, but at least I’m going to live, which is something.

Darkey poured a half pint of some single malt down my throat and fell asleep in the backseat. With him practically out of it, Big Bob and Scotchy got to arguing about where we were going to go and, of course, with Scotchy and Big Bob trying to get things done it all ended farcically with us being pulled over by a cop. It was left to Sunshine in the front seat to deal with the peeler and take us to the first den of I., which was a strip joint in the vicinity of Madison Square Garden.

Darkey was revived and led us in. He was well received. The place was standard fare: dark booths, a gangway, stripper poles, main act, side acts, filthy glasses, spaced-out clientele.

I found a quiet corner to try and kip and I really must have nodded off, for Fergal’s droning voice woke me with talk about a redheaded girl he’d fallen in love with. Fergal was maybe traumatized by the whole Shovel business or maybe he was just being Fergal. He was a gangly bloke and always a bit of a high-strung character. He’d been a thief back in the O.C. Fingers, he tried to get everyone to call him, but no one did. He had a good five years on me, but I was the older brother.

There she is. Tell me, Michael, tell me isn’t she amazing. Jesus, look at her, Michael, come on, look.

I took a look and I thought he was pulling my leg, but he was serious. Aside from the fact that she was a working girl and coked out of her mind, she was four inches taller than him and with the heels it was nearly a foot. She was dancing at a side booth, not even the main show, and added to that she was skin and bones, she hadn’t eaten or seen sunlight in a good few moons, and the hair was a wig. Fergal is six foot two, so there was at least a possibility that the girl was in fact an emaciated, coked-out bloke.

I see what you’re saying, Fergal. She might be the one for you, right enough. Fair skin, red hair—man, you’re made, and you a big-time player and all.

You really think so? Really, Mike? Mike, I’m dead serious. I just looked at her and I had this feeling come over me. No, not what you
think. It’s like this feeling of love or something, you know. Love at first sight. I mean, you can’t help it. It just happens. Jesus, out of the blue. You could be riding the bus and see somebody and they’d be gone forever. Could be anybody….

During this neat dissection of love, which wasn’t exactly Ovid, I was scanning the ill-lit club for a sign of the others. I didn’t see any of them and assumed that they’d either left us or retired to a private room somewhere. Either way, it was a sly move to leave me with love-drunk Fergal, and I thought I was supposed to be the man of the hour.

Bastards.

What?

Not you, Fergal. I was wondering where the others were.

I don’t know, Mike. Have you been listening to what I’ve been saying?

Of course, Fergal, your words are pearls.

Well, look, what do you think I should do? I have this warm feeling in my stomach.

I have that too, Darkey’s so-called single malt, I think—

Michael, for fucksake, be serious. What do you think I should do? I mean, she’s a dancer, maybe even a—he lowered his voice—hoor or something. Jesus, that would be bad. And anyway, I mean, do you think it would be right if I went over, and if I did go over, what would I say?

I beckoned him close.

Listen, Fergal, she seems like a perfectly charming girl. She might, for all you know, be a divinity student who dances to pay off her school fees. You simply go over to her and say politely: Madam, I wonder if it might be possible to see you sometime when you finish working in this establishment, not for any untoward purpose but rather merely to have a coffee or something similar, a meeting of minds, ideas and cultures, that would, I believe, be mutually rewarding.

You think that would work?

Undoubtedly, Fergal, my son of the sod, with your native wit and good looks she will be bowled over.

Fergal finished his Dutch and did go over. I slapped him on the back and watched him begin his little speech. He didn’t get terribly far into it before she said something to him. He immediately clammed up
and came back broken and reasonably distraught. You wouldn’t have thought he was the same boy shooting people earlier.

She says they can’t go out with customers. It’s a rule.

I took Fergal by the scruff of the neck and pulled him over beside me.

Fergal, do you love this woman? Do you want her? Do you?

He nodded.

Then tell her that you are a Celt of noble race and you care nothing for rules, that if she will be yours, you will remove her from this place and give her a pad of her own and pay her divinity school fees and library fines and you will work tooth and nail twenty hours a day if necessary to keep her in the lap of luxury, anything to see her happy. Now, go. Say as I have told you and do not come back until victory lights your drunken Paddy cheeks.

I shoved him and he went over, and I closed my eyes again and leaned back in the chair. Sleep came like a welcome assassin and kept me away from all the crap for a while.

I was back in the gorse and heather for a brief but delightful moment. Slemish at my left and it was all fields and white flowers, bog grass and the loughs over the water to the low hills on Galloway. All of the highlands before me, blue and mysterious, and it must have been dawn or dusk or some other part of the Golden Hour because I could see lighthouses and counted six of them before being summoned back to the more prosaic world.

The next time it was Scotchy who woke me, kicking the chair leg from under me and laughing as I sprawled onto the dubiously stained floor. Darkey, Big Bob, and Marley were all laughing too, everyone in fact except Sunshine, who nearly always contained his emotions splendidly.

Ahh, you idle wee fucker, missed out, so you did, lap dances for all of us, Scotchy was saying.

Aye, there was this Thai girl, gorgeous she was, and I says, Where are you from? and she says, I’m Thai, and I says, I’ll tie you with this, love, Big Bob declared. I could see that he was attempting to be funny, but not feeling particularly generous at this moment, I said that I doubted that she would find anything but fat in the ample area of Bob’s lap.

Bob was too drunk to get it, but he knew it was an insult and called me a wetback bastard.

I was about to get into a long thing about
his
ancestry, but Scotchy shook his head at me.

Where’s Fergal? Sunshine asked.

And true enough, Fergal had vanished.

He went off with some ginger tart, I said.

For a quickie or the night? Darkey asked.

I think the night, I said.

Well, in that case, we’ve lost a man, because we, my friend, are moving on to pastures new, Darkey said and helped pull me up off the floor.

You should have seen your face, Scotchy said as we walked back out to the car.

Aye, you’re lucky you can still see yours, Scotchy, I said.

Is that supposed to be a threat? Scotchy mocked.

It is a threat, I said, getting angry now.

Aye, you talk the talk, big man, but I don’t see you doing anything about it, Scotchy said with a toty wee bit more than his usual sneer.