“Yes, Mammy,” says Mike automatically, and if any of his men want to get themselves gut shot, now is the time to snigger.
“Michael, a dear friend of mine reliably informs me that you are up to all sorts of shenanigans in the United States of America. Now a man’s business is his own and I am proud of what you’ve made of yourself and I am fully aware that sometimes eggs need to be broken to make an omelet.”
“Yes, Mammy. Exactly, Mammy. Thanks, Mammy,” recites Mike, a beatitude of obedience.
“But Thump . . . my good friend has a good friend himself, and you are holding a gun to this man’s head.” Mrs. Madden’s tone ratchets up an octave into the hysterical bracket. “And he an Irish soldier.” The elderly lady sits forward. “A soldier, Michael, like two of your own possible fathers.”
I’ve seen souls laid bare before but rarely with such brutal efficiency. For all intents and purposes, Mike is an eight-year-old boy weeing down his own leg.
“Mammy,” he says, pleading, as though this is live. “All the boys are here.”
“Now you listen to me, Mikey boy,” says his mother, her eyes hard. “You let this Daniel person off the hook. Throw him back, son, and kill yourself a couple of English boys if you have to get it out of your system.”
“I can’t, Mammy,” whines Mike. “I gave my word.”
Mrs. Madden steamrolls over him. “And I don’t want to hear any old rubbish about debts or duty. I am your mother and I am telling you to call off the dogs. I never asked you for anything, Mikey, and I’m not asking now.” She leans toward the camera. “Just do what your mammy tells you or I will haunt you for all eternity. Good-bye, Mike. Call me on Friday.” Mrs. Madden smiles demurely at whoever is holding the camera. “How was that, Thumper?”
“Thumper?” says Mike.
A male voice off-screen says, “Perfect, Bunny.”
This voice has a Kerry accent, though sometimes it goes all Belfast if he needs that extra oomph of menace.
“Bunny?” Mike coughs the word. “I . . .”
Words fail him. If I were him I would shoot the computer or Calvin before things got worse, but his wits are not about him at the moment.
And there’s worse to come. Mucho worso.
“Turn off the camera,” says Mrs. Madden.
“Oh sure I turned that off already,” lies Tommy Fletcher.
Tears spring into Mike’s eyes and he stuffs his hand into his own mouth to stop a sob jumping out.
I feel guilty suddenly. Mike has seen enough. No son deserves to see what’s coming up on this tape.
Okay. Point made. I had intended to rub Mike’s nose in it, but honestly I would prefer to shoot Mike than inflict this on him.
“That’s fine, Calvin,” I say. “You can hit the pause.”
Calvin’s eyes do not leave the screen. “Shut the hell up, McEvoy. You ain’t the boss of me.”
There isn’t time to argue. Every second this video rolls is another nail in Mike’s soul, so I rise and take two quick steps toward Calvin, and hit the space bar on his keyboard, freezing the video on Mrs. Madden’s face.
“You don’t wanna see the rest of it,” I tell Mike. “Trust me.”
“Mammy,” says Mike. “Mammy.”
Manny and his nose beard choose this moment to pop in. “Hey, Mike. Nice MILF. She dancing later?”
Mike reaches into his pocket and his hand emerges with the dull glint of brass adorning the knuckles.
“Get the hell out,” he says to me and I swear to Christ I would not bet against this man right now even if he was going into the ring with Mike Tyson in his heyday.
I wink at Calvin and mouth I’ll just get my phone.
Five seconds later and I am outta there, not letting the door swat me on the ass and so on and so forth.
I hope Manny Booker doesn’t get dead because I like how his name rhymes with tranny hooker. The sound of breaking glass slides under the door and I know at the very least Manny’s gonna be eating through a straw for a while.
Who cares? Let them prey on each other. Maybe Manny will come out on top.
I don’t care, I tell myself. It was me or someone else who was not me.
The sharp crack of splintering wood spills out on to the street.
I check my phone for weirdly appropriate Tweets. But there is nothing. Even my gadgets refuse to give me comfort.
Abandon Wii.
Chapter 12
THE KEY TO STAYING ALIVE UNTIL YOU DIE IS TO NOT GET yourself killed.
I saved this nugget till close to the end on account of how bleeding obvious it reads, which might bring on a little gnashing of teeth. But to most people not getting yourself killed involves nothing more than just doing what you’re already doing and maybe cutting down on mayonnaise, which is more or less liquid fat.
Not so for Daniel McEvoy. Lately, it seems that I gotta go far out of my way just to avoid the clusterfuck hot spots that are springing up all over this New Jersey picture-postcard town, which seems to be an oasis of calm and safety for almost everyone else.
I gotta admit to being a little aggrieved by all this attention from the grim reaper. Okay, you’re on the front line wearing a flak jacket, you expect your daily dose of missiles and shrapnel, but I’ve been out of that game for nearly two decades now and still I’m dodging bullets on a daily basis.
At least I’ve earned some sort of reprieve from Irish Mike Madden, though I have no doubt it’s temporary. Mike will figure a work-around soon enough and send me off on some other hare-brained suicide mission. I cannot keep this up indefinitely. I need to put a full stop on the Mike situation.
My Twitter bird chirps and I check Simon’s latest characters of wisdom.
Normal is all about perspective. Unless you’re killing people or exposing yourself to schoolgirls. That ain’t normal.
When is it my turn to be normal?
I stand on the sidewalk outside Sofia’s building and feel my heart pound just from proximity and I think:
If you want to be normal, Dan, walk away now.
I don’t walk away. I am not even tempted.
Sofia answers the door in a robe, hair wet and face scrubbed. I don’t really know what to make of this. Usually when Sofia isn’t playing a part then she’s lost to me in the shadowy folds of depression. These are the nights I bunk on the couch, just to make sure nothing bad happens. Sofia made it solo so far, but I feel responsible because I have allowed her to become dependent. My broad shoulders have taken some of her massive burden, and without me this beautiful lady would be utterly alone.
Or maybe it puffs up my ego to kid myself that Sofia Delano depends on craggy old war vet Daniel McEvoy.
“Hey, Dan,” she says and I can tell two things from this short greeting. One: Sofia knows who I am. And two: She’s calm, which means she’s taken her lithium.
It’s easier for me when Sofia is on her meds—I’m not saying it isn’t—but part of me wishes there was a place where her particular brand of electric crazy was acceptable right out on the street. When she turns on that personality I am drawn in like a moth to t
he neon.
Maybe we should move to Hollywood. Or Galway.
“Hi Sofia, darlin’,” I say, laying my hands on her shoulders, like epaulettes. “How are you feeling?”
She leans into me, pressing her cheek to my chest and if we could stay like this forever it would be fine with me, but sooner rather than later little Dan would start to get ideas. I savor the moment while it lasts, brushing her blonde hair flat to her crown, thinking that cradling a woman’s skull is about as intimate as it gets, and also thinking that I will not be voicing this theory to Zeb, who would laugh it out of court.
“I’m feeling better,” she says. “Still cloudy in my stupid head, but better. I had a dream about a hammer.”
I pull her closer. “That was a dream. No hammers around here.”
She shudders in my arms. “Good. I’ve done stuff, Dan, but hammers? It’s time to jump off the bridge when hammers come into it.”
“No hammers,” I say again. “Just a nightmare. You need to keep taking your pills.”
Sofia backs off a few steps and I’m sorry I brought up the meds.
“You don’t understand, Daniel,” she says, frowning. “I’m not myself with the pills. They drain the life right out of me. Maybe I don’t have the strength to hurt anyone but I can’t really love anyone either. What I am is a cardboard cutout. You can’t understand how that feels but it’s not your fault.”
She holds out her hand, an olive branch, and I let her draw me inside.
“You’re the only one, Dan. If it wasn’t for you coming around, I don’t know what would become of Sofia Delano. Nothing sunny, that’s for sure.”
I shut the door with a swipe of my heel. “I am coming around, darlin’, for as long as you want me. Don’t worry about that. Things will get better.”
She laughs because this is such a crappy line, but I don’t mind because laughing has gotta be good, right? Better than hammers.
“Better? Oh, Dan, you Irish asshole. How long you been around here? Things don’t ever get better. All the nasty shit topples out of New York and whatever doesn’t drown in the Hudson ends up in Jersey.”
This is a pretty grim metaphor and a little close to home for me, so I argue even though I know I’m wasting my time.