the side of the road. Years ago, in what almost felt like a past life, she’d gone on honeymoon to the Far East and had stopped off in Singapore for two days. The climate and the rigid adherence to the speed limit reminded her of the island republic.
“You here to see your man?”
Mary frowned. “My man?”
The driver laughed, a deep-throated rumble that vibrated through his body. “Yeah, your Prime Minister. He’s coming here in a week or so, didn’t you know?” He watched her in the driving mirror. Mary shook her head. “Yeah, he’s going to a Bird’s game,” he said. “Stopping off on the way to Washington, I guess.”
“What’s a Bird’s game?”
He laughed again. “The Orioles,” he explained. “They’re our baseball team, and Maryland’s state bird. We’re coming up to the ball park on our right.” Mary looked over to the right and saw the stadium looming up like a modern-day coliseum. “We had your queen here in 1990. She went to a Bird’s game in the old Memorial Stadium, north of the city. Don’t know if she enjoyed it much.” He laughed. “Your man’s going to throw the first pitch,” he continued.
“Really?” replied Mary.
“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “The President’s going to be there and everything.” He laughed throatily. “Last time the President was here he threw the first pitch — and they measured it at 39 mph. He never lived that down. I mean, there’s ladies’ softball teams with faster throws than that, know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Mary, even though she only understood half of what the man was saying. The stadium was brick-built with huge arches that gave it a cathedral-like form. Overhead were huge banks of floodlights. The building looked brand new.
“Built in ninety-two,” said the driver as if reading her thoughts. “It’s a great ball park. You should go while you’re here in Baltimore.”
“I’ll certainly try,” said Mary.
Joker plumped up the pillow, shoved it against the top of his bed and sat with his back against it, his long legs stretched out towards the television. A woman with frosted hair and glasses with red frames was hosting a studio discussion about eating disorders. She was directing questions from her audience to three young women all of whom claimed to be suffering from anorexia nervosa, though to Joker they all looked to be in good shape. The questions were almost all accusatory in nature, along the lines of “Why the hell don’t you eat more?” It was the hostility from the distinctly overweight audience which surprised Joker. Generally he found Americans to be easy- going people, but there seemed to be something about food and eating which brought out the worst in them. A woman with elephantine legs and flabby arms stood up and the host stuck the microphone under one of her three chins. “I may not be thin, but I still feel good about myself,” the woman bellowed. “Being large is not something to be ashamed of.”
The audience whooped and clapped and the woman looked around, nodding her enormous head. Joker smiled to himself. The show abruptly changed into a commercial for a seven-day diet which promised dramatic weight loss or your money back. It was one of the ironies of the country, thought Joker, that some people consumed so much that they had to pay to lose weight, while in the inner cities children were dying because they weren’t inoculated against childhood illnesses and adults were begging in the streets.
He leaned across to the bedside table and poured more Famous Grouse into his tumbler. As he raised the glass to his lips he registered movement at the periphery of his vision and his hand jerked, sloshing whisky down his hand. It was a white cat at the window, standing with its back legs on the ledge outside and resting its paws on the glass. It was staring at Joker with emerald green eyes. The cat’s left ear was mangled and torn and its fur was matted and streaked with what looked like oil. Joker raised his glass to the cat and drank. He turned to watch a commercial for fat-free, cholesterol-free blue cheese salad dressing, but the cat began to pat its paws against the window to attract his attention. Joker went over to open the window. As soon as he raised the lower section of the window, the cat jumped onto the carpet and padded over to the bed. Joker stood and watched as the cat leapt up onto the bed covers and walked stiff-legged over to the table. It sniffed delicately at the alcohol, screwed up its nose and looked disapprovingly at Joker.
“It’s only whisky,” he said. The cat meowed. She was female, Joker decided. “No, I haven’t got any milk,” he said. The cat sprang off the bed, stalked around the room, popped its head around the bathroom door, sniffed, and then jumped onto the window ledge. She looked up at Joker, gave him another plaintive meow as if telling him to have milk next time, and then ran down the fire escape.
Joker settled down to concentrate on what he was to do next. He had no problems thinking while watching television. Most of his childhood had been spent in a two-bedroomed tenement flat with two younger brothers and an unemployed father, where the television was on eighteen hours a day and privacy was a luxury he rarely experienced. At seventeen he’d joined the Army and life in the barracks wasn’t much different from life at home, and before he’d left his teens he’d grown accustomed to concentrating, no matter what the distractions.
He’d now spent more than a week working behind the bar at Filbin’s, usually with Shorty, though he’d met two other part-time barmen, both of them teenagers from Belfast and, like Joker, working without the proper visas. There had been no sign of Matthew Bailey, though Joker had seen several faces he recognised from photographs in files he’d read before his last undercover operation in Northern Ireland. Two were IRA hit-men who’d done time in the H-blocks of Long Kesh, not for murder but for armed robbery, and the third was a bombmaker, a small, shrewish man in his thirties with a Hitler moustache who chainsmoked Benson amp; Hedges cigarettes. He was calling himself Freddie Glover but Joker knew him as Gary Madden, wanted in the UK for an explosion which had killed four Army bandsmen and injured another nine.
The men were clearly at home in the bar, where they were treated almost as folk heroes — heads turned whenever they entered, smiles and nods were exchanged as they moved to their regular table and throughout the evenings free drinks would be sent over, usually the gift of one of the construction workers. Joker had asked Shorty how long the men had been in New York. Shorty had just tapped the side of his nose knowingly and winked. “Careless talk costs lives,” he’d said and Joker hadn’t pressed it.
Joker had yet to meet the owner of Filbin’s. Though Shorty had hired him and paid his wages each evening in used dollar bills, the little man clearly wasn’t the owner because Joker had seen him surreptitiously pocket money from the till on several occasions. Shorty knew everyone in the bar by name, and from conversations they’d had Joker had learned that he had been a member of the Provisional IRA since his teens, moving to the States in the early eighties. He had been one of thousands of Irish granted US citizenship in 1991 and was the only barman who was working legally in Filbin’s. Joker had wanted to raise the subject of Matthew Bailey with him, but had been loath to tip his hand so soon. Shorty had a sharp mind and a quick wit, and Joker doubted that he’d give much away, especially about active IRA members. If anything, it was Shorty who was doing the probing, asking Joker about his past and testing his views as he cleaned glasses and served drinks. Joker had little trouble sticking to his cover and after the first few days Shorty’s conversations had become less probing and more friendly.
The bar was a centre for the IRA’s fund-raising in the city, with a small room at the back frequently used to sort and count cash, and Joker had seen several men come out of the room putting their wallets in their pockets as if they’d been collecting money. In one of few revelations, Shorty had told Joker that some IRA men on the run from the UK weren’t able to work and that they drew regular wages from the organisation’s funds. The bar also acted as an unofficial employment centre for the Irish community. Representatives of several construction companies would sit at tables, drinking Guinness and reading Irish newspapers, and there would be a constant stream of visitors, mainly young men, who after a few whispered words would leave with an address scrawled on a piece of paper. The construction companies always needed workers, and they paid in cash. When Joker had made it known that he’d worked as a bricklayer he’d been offered several jobs at a much higher rate of pay than he got from the bar. He’d turned down the offers, knowing that Filbin’s was a far better source of information about the IRA than laying bricks would be.
Joker used the remote control to flick through the channels on the television set:
