Maid of the Mist (26 page)

Anxiety was etched on Stirling's face like the menu at the Last Supper. He'd told them he was going out on patrol – them, Dunbar and his crew, pacing the station like relatives at the reading of a will, knowing that there was one night of the convention to go and then they could relax into their fat bank accounts – then slipped the car that was following and made it to the Skylon Tower just as darkness started to fall.

The place was still buzzing with tourists. The Falls were illuminated and the view from the revolving restaurant up top was spectacular, if you were in the mood for spectacular views. Stirling was in the mood for hiding, or running away, or both. He had called home and checked with Cindy how the Internal Affairs guys in the boot were doing, speaking all the time in a surreal code in case anyone was listening, and he was sure they were.
How are your grandparents? Are they getting enough exercise? Are they eating enough?
And leaving out
Are they pissing in the boot of my car?
He had a chill feeling that even if this whole crazy misadventure did work out, if they did catch all the bad guys and lived to tell the tale, that he would be the only one arrested for smothering two Internal Affairs guys.

Then Cindy told him about Corrigan leaving. Again, she didn't say it in so many words. He asked if her sore arm was feeling any better and she said sure, the pain just got up and walked out the door.

Stirling hurried down the steps into the closed amusement park, then made his way across to the store room. As he approached he could hear the dull thud of gunshots as the Magnificent whatever practised under Morton's supervision. He opened the door carefully, just in case they were shooting in that direction. Then he nodded around the volunteers: Morton, the seventy-year-old, Madeline in a neck brace, Bill the cop. That was four. Five including himself. No Corrigan. No Maynard.

Morton told them all to keep shooting and hurried across. The seventy-year-old was smiling from ear to ear. Evidently he had at last managed to hit the outer edges of a target. Madeline was shooting video. Morton looked worried. Stirling matched him, and then some.

'I thought Corrigan would be here,' he said.

'I thought he was at your place.'

'He was. He left.' He tutted. 'Where's Maynard?'

'Didn't show up.'

'Fuck.'

'I know.'

Stirling looked glumly at their diminishing little team. 'This is hopeless. It was hopeless when we had seven. Now we have five. Fuck it.'

'I know.'

'We're going to have to call it off.'

Morton rubbed the toe of his shoe in the dust on the floor. 'We can't just give up. We have to make the best of what we've got.'

'We've got nothing. We've got you and me and Bill, the A team; we've got Madeline in a neck brace and Methuselah there'll have a heart attack as soon as someone says boo to him. Jimmy, we have to call it off, we're not only going to look foolish, we're going to die looking foolish. They'll put it on my grave. Here lies Foolish Mark Stirling. He died Foolishly. You and me both.'

Morton rubbed his other toe in the dust. 'I know you're right. But I can't just walk . . .'

The store-room door burst open.

As Stirling turned three men in army fatigues stepped into the doorway and stared menacingly across at them. They were wearing balaclavas and pointing automatic rifles at the Magnificent Five.

Stirling was rooted to the spot, his mouth suddenly desert-dry. Morton's autumnal look had returned in an instant. The seventy- year-old's gun fell out of his hand and landed on the floor. Madeline slowly dropped the camera away from her face until it hung limply by her side, filming her feet. Even Bill, the only one with his gun still in his hand, looked like he'd forgotten about it.

The three men in fatigues kept their weapons trained, but stepped to either side of the doorway. One gave a hand signal back out into the hallway, and the clatter of heavy boots on the steps followed a moment later.

Stirling tried to swallow, but could not.

A procession of similarly attired soldiers came trooping through the door. Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. They formed up in two lines, two deep across the back wall.

The only one not carrying a rifle withdrew a pistol from his belt, checked that it was loaded, then stepped up to Stirling.

'We can explain,' Stirling rasped.

'Good,' said the soldier, whipping off his balaclava. 'So can I,'

It was Maynard.

It was
fucking
Maynard.

'I hope you don't mind,' he said, 'but I was able to recruit some help.'

Perhaps he had matured. In his previous life he wouldn't have thought twice about killing IRA men. They were terrorists and had every right to expect it. Drugs were just another form of terrorism. He could have shot them and not worried about his conscience, but instead he had put
socks in their mouths.

Because he was not a killer any more. He had come to Canada to start afresh. He had changed, even if death in its wisdom had followed him.

Now he was driving to the Old Cripple's mansion with no idea other than to save life rather than take it. Save Lelewala. Save the Magnificent Six. Save the world from the poison the drug barons were peddling.

Was he that noble?

Was he doing it because it was right?

Corrigan lit a cigarette and laughed. He had no idea what he was doing. He had an invitation to the ball. He had a hire car and three pistols located about his body. He was driving into the lion's den with no plan other than not to have a plan. To play it by ear.

If you didn't examine him too closely, he was looking pretty dapper. He'd called into a second-hand clothes shop and bought a tux and a dinner suit. The woman behind the counter said they belonged to a dead guy, and he could well believe it. She said she got most of her clothes the same way. Corrigan suggested she change the name of the shop to Dead People's Clothes, but she didn't think that was very funny.

Warm pockets, as if the guy had only recently taken his hands out of them, musty smell.

Corrigan had combed his hair. He was wearing gloves with cotton wool stuffed in to cover the two missing fingers. He reasoned that not bearing a resemblance to either Adams or Patsy would not hinder him greatly. They were all drug dealers and gangsters and international money launderers and they were bound to spend half their lives in disguise. Morton had told him that more drug dealers died on the operating table undergoing plastic surgery, their cocaine- savaged bodies unable to cope with the stress of an operation, than were ever gunned down in true Hollywood fashion. Even with airport security as lax as ever, somebody was going to get recognized: you couldn't have a hundred and fifty of the world's drug players waltzing through without someone checking out the Most Wanted posters. No, disguise was the order of the day. Possession of an invitation was ninety per cent of it. And confidence was the other ten.

As Corrigan approached the mansion he joined a tailback of cars from the front gate. Stretch limos, mostly. Inside them hoods in dinner suits drank wine and ran their fingers up inside the fine dresses of their hired companions. It was a convention, but it wasn't the kind you brought your wife along to. Classical music floated over the perimeter wall. Corrigan lit a cigarette and drummed his fingers lightly on the steering wheel. When his turn came he wound down the window and smiled familiarly at the closest of the six burly security guards and handed the invitation to him. He was asked to step out of the car while a metal detector was run over his body. It buzzed. The security guard said: 'Can you remove any metal objects, please?'

Corrigan removed two of the pistols.

The guard nodded appreciatively. 'I'll just check these with the armoury; you can collect them when you're leaving.'

Corrigan grunted, then got back into the car. He still had one gun in his sock. And he presumed everyone else did as well. He lit another cigarette, then drove up towards the mansion.

It was some place. His first view of it, emerging floodlit through the overhanging trees, was almost overwhelming, and he slowed the car to allow him to take in some of the finer details. He noted the splendid doric columns, then the rows and rows of white-slatted windows, nearly seventy of them. Off to the left he could see the bandstand, complete with band, and beyond that a glimpse of umbrellas flapping in the breeze around a swimming pool. He saw white doves hunting for worms on the immaculate lawn, then followed their flight back to a splendid white-painted loft on the right, bigger and probably more luxurious than his own apartment. He was impressed. And depressed. All over the world impressive houses had memorable names like Tara or Checkers. There was no brass plate here that he could see, but if there was a name for this place it would be Den of Iniquity. Or the House that Coke Built. To the right, beyond dove control, five helicopters sat in the full glare of the floodlights. There were half a dozen tour buses, about twenty limos. Guards patrolled the forecourt.

Corrigan parked. Then, as he approached the front door, a short girl in a short skirt greeted him and looked at his invitation then pointed him towards a large hall from which emanated the sounds of cutlery and chatter. He lifted a glass of white wine then surveyed the scene within for several moments. Everywhere, drug barons at leisure. It was a buffet affair. They milled and queued and gossiped while holding on to expensive-looking china plates and jabbed their forks in the air to make their points. A tingle went up Corrigan's spine. So normal, so fucking normal, yet they'd killed hundreds of thousands of people between them, directly or indirectly. He knew from home that monsters weren't monsters all the time. They ate bread, they drank milk, they haggled over the price of furniture. They bought underpants and died of cancer. But they were still monsters.

He drained his glass of wine, set it on a waitress's tray as she passed, then joined the queue for the buffet table. It seemed to be about half a mile long. The queue
and
the table. He made small talk. The weather. The ice hockey. He presumed it would be bad form to bring up the hell of heroin addiction. When he reached the food, the quality and quantity of it did not surprise him. He lifted a tray and began to spoon chilli into a small china bowl. He turned, looking for bread, and jolted the arm of a square-jawed mountain of a man dressed in a suit sharp enough to slice pepperoni. A suit with a fresh chilli stain, which matched the one on Corrigan's own.

'You spill my chilli,' said the Italian, with the intonation others reserved for 'You raped my sister.'

They glared at each other, and as they did silence fell around them. There was no backing down. The house was big, but the egos were bigger.

'You stained my jacket,' the Italian said.

Corrigan had no way of knowing if this was the first confrontation of the evening or if they came along every five minutes, but one thing was certain. Whoever he was, he had friends. He could feel their eyes bearing down on him, their hands groping for guns, real or imaginary. Five or six of them had just been standing nonchalantly in his general vicinity, but at the first hint of trouble had become a tight little phalanx of loyal bodyguards.

The idea had not been to draw attention to himself. But nevertheless, it was not the time to back down. It was about
respect.

'Fuck off or I'll kill you,' Corrigan said.

The Italian's bronzed cheeks coloured. His bottom lip quivered. Then his top.

'Or alternatively,' Corrigan said, 'send me the dry-cleaning bill. Here,' he said, picking up a napkin, 'let me have a go at it first.'

He reached forward to dab at the stain. The Italian's brow furrowed, he glanced at his bodyguards, then he boomed suddenly into laughter, great shotgun guffaws. All around, the distribution and consumption of food recommenced.

'Naw,' said the Italian, fending off Corrigan's help, 'that's OK, my fault too. What about that stain on your . . . can I. . . ?'

'Naw,' said Corrigan, 'that's OK. No damage done.' He flicked at it with his hand, then smiled at the Italian again. He lifted his tray and walked on, heart thumping.

There were no completely free tables. He asked a black guy with flaky skin and curiously Caucasian features if it was OK to sit down. He looked Corrigan up and down and nodded warily. Corrigan sat, took a spoonful of chilli, then said: 'So, what line are you in?'

The guy started to answer, but Corrigan wasn't listening. From somewhere, somewhere near, but also frustratingly far away, there came the sound of an electric guitar, and over it, around it, permeating it, a light, earthy, rhythmic voice that he recognized immediately as Pongo's: but it wasn't the music, or the singing, it was the words, their very meaninglessness, that got to him. Repetitive, like drums, rhythmic like dancing, powerful, like a once great Indian nation . . .
hum, hum, hum, hum, hum-hum-hum-hum . . .

Corrigan followed the humming trail to a large hall where waiters with cotton wool in their ears were busy setting tables for the closing ceremony and trying to ignore Pongo's soundcheck. Corrigan passed between the tables then mounted the half-dozen steps on to the stage. For several moments Pongo, lost in the music, didn't notice him. He came to the end of what could loosely be described as a tune, stopped, stroked his guitar as if it was a prelude to masturbation, which it might well have been, then suddenly looked up as the power died. He went pale as he saw Corrigan standing by his guitar amp. Then he snapped: 'What the fuck are you doing here?' and his eyes flitted warily about the hall.

'Music Police,' Corrigan said.

There was no reaction; he just said bluntly, 'I thought we had a deal.'

'No, I believe you had a deal with Lelewala.'

'Same difference.'

'I've come to get her back.'

'That'll be the day.'

'Good song, ever think of writing one yourself ?'

Corrigan moved a little closer. Pongo strummed a little acoustic riff. 'That'll Be The Day'. Corrigan put his hand across the bridge, killing the sound. 'Take me to her.'