I think maybe this guy is playing me with my own dumb act.
“Are you taking the piss?”
KFC is wounded. “Nah, man. You shot me. My mind is a little fuzzy with the pain and whatnot.”
Whatnot? I like this guy.
“Okay. The deal is that Shea and Freckles want to kill each other. Is that clear enough?”
Everyone nods. Even Shea and Freckles.
“So you people have a schism in the ranks.”
KFC’s hand goes up. I do not have time for this.
“A split,” I tell him. “A split in the ranks. Okay?”
KFC leans on his bloody knuckles. “Yeah. I got it. You couldn’t shoot me in the arm? That’s my career fucked?”
“I could shoot you in the arm now. Would that shut you the hell up?”
KFC realizes that there is no right answer to this question and so wisely decides to keep quiet.
I get back to the point. “The point is that this group is not working as a unit. I don’t know who’s loyal to who, but you guys need some private time to sort it out. You know, brainstorm or make a graph or whatever. This has nothing to do with me so I’m gonna absent myself.”
Shea gets a little antsy. Probably wondering if Freckles has paid off his boys.
“Take the guns, McEvoy. You need to protect yourself.”
I shrug. “I got plenty of guns. I’m gonna leave those two on the table there. I don’t like to overstock in general. I only kill what I can eat, like the Apaches.”
Shea is sweating now. “You can’t leave me here. I’m not one of these guys.”
The kid is good as dead and he knows it. I wonder will I feel guilty about this? Probably. But if an Irish Catholic made his decisions based on guilt avoidance then he wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and he certainly wouldn’t play with himself while he was in bed in the morning.
I back away from the group, mentally assigning survival odds to each one. My money would have been on Freckles but he gets a handicap on account of the dropped pants. KFC is shot in the leg but his hand is already on the table. Shea is getting dead unless he jumps out the window or gets abducted by aliens in the next ten seconds, and the other guy is still blubbering. So overall, I gotta stick with Freckles.
I back out the door, holding my guns steady.
“Nobody moves until I’m in the elevator, after that you make your own decisions.”
It’s a tense situation. Freckles is trying to hitch up his pants with knee flexes and KFC’s hand is crabbing toward the weapons. I shoot a hole in the desktop to stop him jumping the gun.
“Nu-uh,” I say, like a kindergarten teacher to an impatient toddler. “Wait for the elevator door.”
Shea is sobbing uncontrollably, squeezing Freckles’s hand like the guy is his prom date. I try to feel sorry for him but the kid has got food on his face, which counts against him. I realize with a jolt that I am more pissed off with Shea over the hummus than the attempted murder.
Shit. That is messed up.
But there’s whole lot more to eating with your mouth open than just the chewing involved. It says: I am arrogant. I don’t give a shit. I care so little about you that I can’t even be bothered to close my mouth.
In my opinion if you see a person eating with their mouth open, then that person is probably psychopathic at the very least.
I need to do a little more research before I publish.
I knuckle the elevator button and I can hear the car cranking and the cables working in the shaft. Not far, I’m guessing. Maybe one floor down.
“You got options,” I tell the foursome. “You can all just walk away.”
It’s bullshit, I know, but I am trying to kid myself that I’m not passively murdering at least half of these people. I’m separating myself from the bloodbath that is about to happen. It’s like the Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, except in reverse, with homicide and only one degree.
The elevator sighs and I skip smartly inside, jabbing the lobby button with my silencer. The gun battle commences before the mirrored doors slide across and give me a look at myself when I’m not expecting it. I flinch with every shot, like they’re shooting at me. But also I flinch because in that unexpected reflection I catch myself looking like my father.
I try to deflate the swelling in my head with a zinger.
“You should have kept your mouth shut, kid,” I mutter at myself.
I Am Not So Bad. No no, I am not so bad.
My arse.
The valet barely glances at me, I suppose one Mick tough guy looks much the same as another after thirty years of facial hardship. He just scans the ticket with his handheld gizmo and five minutes later I’m buckled into a Cadillac that has more kit than the USS Enterprise.
Freckles’s phone synchs with the on-board computer, which asks me if I would like to send a message, and this gives me an idea that could buy me a little time. I dictate a text from Freckles to Mike Madden that reads simply: It’s done, partner.
Hopefully Mike will embark on the traditional celebratory shit-faced binge and will not know what hit him, when I hit him, as I now must. Maybe once upon a time I would have simply pointed the car westward-ho and kept my foot on the gas until the radiator split, but now I have taken responsibilities upon myself.
Sofia. Jason. Even Zeb. They have all wiggled through cracks in my armor.
If my armor was actual physical armor I would be bringing it back to the armor store and having stern words with the armor salesman.
It would be standard counter-surveillance procedure for me to tool around SoHo for a while and shake off any tail that I might have picked up. For all I know the Feds are up on Shea’s people and I could be popped driving a vehicle stuffed to the door panels with contraband, but I don’t have time for spy games. People are in danger because I didn’t lie down and die like I was supposed to, so I gotta deal with the threat.
I ask the car to call Sofia and it says:
“Call Sofia Dominatrix?”
Dominatrix? Freckles won’t have my Sofia in his phone. But he has been busy in his downtime.
“No. Negative. Cancel call,” I shout, in my eagerness to not get into a row with a leather-clad hooker.
“Canceling call,” says the car, in a voice that takes me a second to recognize as Clint Eastwood’s.
Wow. Freckles is/was a tough guy. Even his software kicks ass.
I dictate the number as I swing the Caddy into the Holland Tunnel and drum the steering wheel waiting for Sofia to pick up.
Three rings, then:
“Welcome to the House of Jesus. Can I interest you in our latest publication, Living Rent Free in the House of Jesus?”
This is a standard Sofia pickup. She has a whole ream of responses calculated to make the caller instantly hang up. Another classic: “This is an automated ordering service, please speak to be redirected to our credit card debit line.” My personal favorite is lifted from Ghostbusters. Sofia treats the unfortunate caller to ten seconds of harrowing screaming followed by the growled word, “Zuul.”
Sofia calls this technique the Reverse Jehovah. I once asked her why she bo
thered keeping her line connected and she replied: “You are such a sad sack. Don’t you want to laugh whenever you can?”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“I don’t leave the house much anymore,” she’d continued, poking my chest with a finger, backing me into a corner. “And you have that stupid goddamn casino. So all I do is take junk calls and do my look. You like my look today, baby?”
I did like her look. She was done up in a leather coat belted at the waist, torn tights and earrings so big they could pick up stations from space. I think Paula Abdul might have been the inspiration.
“You look great. You sure do.”
Sofia stroked my cheek and I blushed like a virgin. “If look so great then why don’t you do something about it?”
I ask what I always ask when something like this comes up.
“What’s my name? Who am I?”
Sofia’s gaze muddied and she stamped her kitten heels. “Why do you always ask me that question, Carmine? Ain’t we been married long enough? I make all this effort and you quiz me up and down. You shouldn’t be putting any questions to me unless the answer is ‘Oh baby.’”
Sofia was up against me like a molten bar, her curves finding all my hollows.
I’m only human for Christ’s sake.
I needed to cool her down and I knew just how to do it.
“Sofia, have you taken your lithium?”
She pushed me away in disgust. “Lithium? You have all this jammed up on you, and you’re asking me about meds? Christ, Daniel.”
And just like that the well was dry.
How come I’m always Daniel when she’s not horny anymore?
If Sofia is coming on really hot and heavy I ask her what happened to Carmine. That cools her down real fast and the only answer she’s ever given me is:
The same thing that will happen to you if you don’t stop asking about him.
Which doesn’t bode well for our fledgling relationship.
I speak into a little microphone on the visor, probably louder than I need to given the multidirectional specs of these things.
“Sofia? It’s me, Daniel.”
“What’s the code, Dan?”
I had forgotten Sofia Delano’s paranoia. The weekly code was usually the title of an eighties dance-floor filler.
“Sofia, darlin’. I don’t remember the code.”