The Dead Yard (14 page)

I shook my head.

"Well, it’s not important," Touched said and raised his eyebrows at Gerry as if to say, nice
kid, but bloody hell, could be a bit of a dumb-ass.

Sonia and Kit appeared, sat down. With the women among the men, the mood changed completely.
Gerry became more gregarious, Touched less suspicious. The subject changed to what was playing at
the cinema.

We chatted and drank.

I was the last to arrive, so I knew it would be my shout next and when Jackie finished the
last of the beer I went to the bar to get a pitcher of Sam Adams. And suddenly, of course,
she
was there. I hadn’t seen her before, but obviously she’d been there all evening.
Watching me. She was wearing skintight black jeans, a black silk blouse, and high heels. She was
deliberately, overly made up, but the fake glamour couldn’t hide her good looks. Her shock of red
hair and those proud crimson lips that were sipping gin. She saw me but she didn’t acknowledge
me. She was talking to a surfer boy and had positioned herself so that she could see McCaghan’s
booth quite clearly. I didn’t know how long she’d been there but Simon must have given her the
heads-up.

Our eyes met briefly. She looked away and laughed at something the surfer boy said and her
laughter came across the room delicately, like a waterfall breaking over the edges of the rocks.
I took the pitcher back to the table, more confident and reassured. My guardian angel was on the
case, a step ahead, as all guardian angels should be. And when I sat down, Gerry, Touched, and
Jackie were all eclipsed. Diminished. They didn’t know who they were dealing with, with their
foolish talk of the Cuchulainn of the Uladh and Patrick and potatoes. She was the brains, the
spikenard, the white-shirted predator among the thistles. And I was no mean boy. I had been
there. To the depths. Mastering the hard places of the nocturnal world. I had brought destruction
on greater men than these. Darkey White, Sunshine, Big Bob, all the while careful, professional,
ice cold, singing happily the sweet songs of the hammer of retribution.

I was not afraid of them. If anything it should have been the reverse.

The evening was drawing to a close. I was comfortable and relaxed. Kit, unfortunately, was
wedged between Jackie and her da but the center of gravity was at my end of the table.

The conversation drifted among music and movies and television. I contributed now and again
but the interrogation phase was over.

I excused myself to go to the toilet. I didn’t need to go to get my shit together or calm my
nerves. Gerry was fine and Touched wasn’t the monster of the Six report. Nah. I just needed to
take a piss.

This was a scumball bar, but they had tried to gentrify the toilet by putting in electric hand
dryers, burlesque prints, and a chalkboard above the urinal for graffiti. The graffiti was stuff
about surfers and the Red Sox and there were a few anti-Mexican comments. Above the board and
deep into the wall someone had scrawled "Fuck your chalkboard, you yuppie fucks" in six-inch-high
letters. I’d bet money it was Touched. I’d have to ask him about it, I was musing, when, without
looking round, I knew Jackie had come in behind me. The kid had a presence and a distinctive
smell. Old Spice, surf wax, and zit cream. He was standing there, thinking he was invisible,
trying to decide what he was going to say or do.

I took a piece of chalk and wrote: "You like staring at my cock, Jackie?"

I zipped up, turned.

"So you
are
fucking queer then, are you?" Jackie said, sneering.

"You’d like that, wouldn’t you?" I said, neutral, calm.

"Wipe my name off that fucking board," he demanded, his pupils dilated, ready.

"You wipe it off," I said with a smile.

"Wipe it or I’ll fucking make you wipe it."

I let the tension fall from my shoulders and waited for him to come at me. He’d swing first.
He’d had about six or seven beers. He’d be slow. I stuck out my jaw to give him a target. He’d
come at my head with a big right hook. Just needed a wee bit of encouragement.

"Now you’re starting to annoy me," I said. "Why don’t you piss off before I have to teach you
how to act around your elders."

"Aye, and before I brain you, you better tell me what you think you’re fucking playing at with
Kit," he snarled.

"I don’t know what you mean, pal."

"You were all over her, don’t think I couldn’t see it. She’s my girl. You fucking lay off. Ok?
Unless you’re looking for trouble, that is."

I took a breath. What was the right thing to do? What would Samantha want me to do? What would
Kit want me to do? Of course I knew. Taking him would be fun but bad form.

"Listen, mate, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kit is a nice girl, but she’s not my
type. I just want a job and a quiet life," I said, figuring that defusing the situation was
probably the better way to go. I stepped backwards to give him more psychic space to think.

Jackie, however, was spoiling for a fight. His blood was up and he was not going to be
denied.

"I seen you looking at her, I’m gonna have you, fucker," he said, squaring up to throw that
obvious opening punch.

I backed off again.

"I’m not going to fight you, it’s ridiculous, I don’t want to fight you."

"Chickenshit," Jackie said.

"Aye, call me what you like, I’m leaving," I said.

I washed my hands and headed for the door.

"Wipe my name off that board."

"Piss away off, you wee shite," I said.

Jackie lunged at me. He did indeed lead clumsily with the right and, in his haste, he caught
one foot behind the other and practically fell on me. I stepped to one side and let Jackie’s
momentum carry him into the hand dryer. His head banged into the swivel head of the blower and he
collapsed to the floor. He scrambled away from me, blood oozing into his left eye from a two-inch
cut above the eyebrow.

"Now you’ve done it, you’re in big trouble now, you fucking bastard," Jackie said and then
muttered something in that South Boston dialect I couldn’t understand at all.

He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a flick knife. He pushed the button, revealed the
blade, and locked it into place. He staggered to his feet. His jacket was open and I could see
that, as I’d suspected, he was packing heat. A little .38 Saturday Night Special, but he was
going for the knife, not the gun. Not even Jackie was that stupid. Even drunk he had his limits
and this was not meant to be a fight to the death. He just wanted to hurt me. He’d probably try
to slash out with the switchblade rather than try to grapple me and stab me. It was good to
know.

Jackie was between me and the door, so I was going to have to deal with him one way or
another. To give myself more room I backed into the center of the toilet, away from the
cubicles.

"Aye, you can run but you can’t hide," he said, an ugly little grin appearing on his face. His
eyes squinting from the blood dripping into them.

"I don’t know what Kit sees in you," I said, articulating a thought I had been pondering for
at least the last couple of hours. And he really was an unattractive creature. Pale, skinny, and
not exactly endowed with brains.

Jackie attacked with the knife. He was faster than I’d been expecting and the blade nicked my
shirtsleeve. He laughed.

"Have you now," he sneered.

I moved towards the rear wall. He had a knife but I had all the advantages. He was drunk, I
was sober. He was clumsy and I was poised. He had no idea what he was doing whereas I had been
bloody sword fighting for a week, had been trained by the army in unarmed combat, and had been
boxing shites like him since I was fifteen.

I remembered a move from this afternoon.

I pretended to slip on the bathroom floor.

I half went down.

"Gotcha," Jackie said gleefully. He bent down and swung the blade in a big arc, trying to cut
me on the left arm, which I’d raised in a defensive posture. I dropped my hand so that the edge
of my palm caught him on the forearm. I tugged him towards me, kicked at his feet, and hooked my
thumb into the nerve bundle on his wrist. He let go of the knife and lost his balance. I wrenched
him to the floor, pushed his head down, got up, snatched the chalkboard from above the urinal,
and smacked it down on the top of his skull. Jackie yelled as the board broke in half and I
smacked him again with one of the pieces, knocking him spreadeagled to the floor.

Blood drooled out of his mouth and he groaned incoherently.

I picked up the knife and began walking it across the room to the nearest trash bin.

That was my only mistake.

I’d thought he was out for the count and I’d forgotten about the firearm.

Jackie was now so enraged that any notion of proportionality had long since departed his dazed
consciousness.

He sprawled on the floor, rolled to one side, and tried to pull the revolver out of the
shoulder holster under his jacket. He got the gun into his hand. I turned round, saw what he was
about, ran at him, and jumped. My big Stanley boots landed on his back, knocking the wind clean
out of him.

I placed one knee on his throat, pushed the other hard down on his wrist, bent over, removed
the gun from a hand already turning purple.

I squeezed his throat with my knee until his face reddened and he began to pass out.

"Will I kill ya, Jackie?" I asked.

The fight was out of his eyes. He was frightened.

"Nah, I won’t. At least not today," I said.

I stood, emptied the shells from the revolver, and dropped knife, gun, and shells into the
nearest toilet bowl.

Jackie was only semiconscious now.

"Fugga, have you, keep fugga mits off her."

But the adrenaline was pumping through me, so maybe that was my excuse for piling on. I pissed
onto the gun, knife, and bullets, zipped up, washed my hands, kicked Jackie in the stomach for
good measure, and exited the men’s room.

I fixed my T-shirt, wiped his blood off my steel toe caps, and walked back across the bar.

Back at the booth, they’d been talking about me.

"What took you so long?" Kit asked as I sidled in next to her.

"In one of the toilet cubicles there’s a portal to the land of Narnia. I went through, got
married, met Aslan, became a prince, and had fifteen kids; of course, only minutes passed for
you, that’s because of the time-dilation effects of general—"

Kit grabbed my leg to shut me up.

"Dad wants to say something to you," she announced significantly and looked at her father.

Gerry cleared his throat.

"Yes. Kit tells me that you’re a very hard worker and she mentioned that you’re looking for a
new job," Gerry said.

I faked an aw-shucks and stared at Kit.

"Well, I suppose so," I said, as diffidently as I could.

"Have you done any construction before?" Gerry asked.

"Oh aye, sure enough, hod carrying, mixing cement, brickie stuff," I said.

"In this country the dwellings are made of wood, so that won’t be much good to you here,"
Gerry said sternly.

"Ach, Gerry, stop teasing him, offer him the fucking job," Touched said, winking at me.

"Would you like gainful employment?" Gerry asked with a grin.

"I certainly would," I said.

"Then it’s yours, my young friend," Gerry said, stretching his big paw across the table. I
shook it and said politely:

"Thank you very much, Mr. McCaghan."

"Gerry, call me Gerry, the only one that calls me Mr. McCaghan is the bloody magistrate."

"Thank you, Gerry."

"Come by tomorrow, I’ll fix you up and give you a place to stay, rent-free if you want it,"
Gerry said.

"That’s very generous," I said.

"No, it’s not really, you’ll stay in one of the premises we’re renovating; it means I can rise
you earlier and work you longer," Gerry said and started to laugh, his big body shaking with
unaccountable mirth.

We talked a little about construction and Gerry launched into a story about a Portuguese man
who fell into a cement mixer, Touched hinting that he had pushed him in as a practical joke. At
the end of the story Sonia yawned behind her hand. Gerry took the sign and got slowly to his
feet. When Gerry stood, everybody stood, and such was his presence I found myself getting up as
well.

"Look, we better head on to pastures new. Come by the company tomorrow. It’s on Plum Island.
You know how to get there?" Gerry asked.

"Aye," I said.

"Where’s Jackie?" Kit asked.

"Last I saw he’d collapsed in the toilet, think he was the worse for drink," I explained.

Touched looked at me, at first with suspicion but then a glimmer of understanding came into
his eyes.

He’d been watching Jackie and he was astute. He reckoned he knew what had transpired in the
bog. He pushed hard on my shoulder as Gerry and Sonia started putting on their jackets. Touched
leaned in to whisper to me, all the while keeping his eyes on the bar.

"Jackie’s my boy, he won’t bother you again, I’ll see to that. But, just so as you know, if
you lay a finger on him one more time without my say-so, I’ll fucking kill ya. Savvy?" Touched
said.

He squeezed a little on my shoulder to emphasize the point.

"If he doesn’t bother me, I won’t bother him," I said.

Touched nodded. "Good," he said. "We understand each other."

"We do. Make sure Jackie understands too," I muttered, glad that I’d gotten the last word.

Touched turned to Gerry and led him towards the toilets to gather up their fallen comrade.

"Bye," Kit said happily to me, catching her dad and looping her arms between him and
Sonia.

"Bye," I said.

Touched went in to get Jackie, leaving Gerry with the two women in the wide blue yonder,
without a bodyguard, for nearly five full minutes. Not the sort of thing I would have done even
if my boss hadn’t been the victim of an assassination attempt a few weeks before. Touched clearly
had a soft spot for his young apprentice. This made him vulnerable and in my eyes weak. It was
good. Gerry was careless, Jackie was unpredictable, Touched had mellowed. The Sons of Cuchulainn
were on the skids. That suited me just fine. The more cracks, the more fault lines, the better.
Easier for me to slip between them.