what?” pressed Piggy Eyes.
As the two men waited for him to answer, Joker heard a pattering on the fire escape outside. He realised it was the cat coming for its milk and that she would soon start banging on the window. It was a small chance, but in view of what his visitors already knew, it could prove to be his only chance.
“I’ve got friends,” said Joker, “and they’re not far away.” He wanted them edgy so that they’d over-react when the cat made its presence felt.
“Yeah, of course you have,” said The Frowner. Both men laughed. That was when the cat began hitting her paws against the glass as she had done every night for the previous week. The two heavies whirled round and faced the window. As The Frowner aimed his gun, Piggy Eyes stepped to the side and reached for the cord that controlled the blinds. Joker sprang up from his chair and lunged for the bottle. The Frowner heard him move and began to turn, but Joker already had the neck of the bottle in his grasp. He threw it as hard as he could at The Frowner’s head and it caught the man on the temple. The bottle bounced off his skull and hit the bed. Before the man could react, Joker rushed forward, his hands forming fists, and he hit him twice, once in the throat, once in the sternum, and the big man went down, blood pouring from a gash on the side of his head. Joker bent down smoothly to pick up the gun which had dropped from The Frowner’s nerveless fingers. Piggy Eyes kicked Joker in the side, his speed belying his bulk, sending him sprawling across the bed, but before he could continue his attack Joker had the gun up and his finger on the trigger. “Easy,” said Joker, “just take it easy.”
“Yez move fucking fast for a barman, O’Brien,” said Piggy Eyes. On the floor, the other man groaned. Joker stepped back slowly, putting more distance between them. He rubbed his ribs gingerly. Nothing was broken but he’d be black and blue within twenty-four hours. The cat continued to pat at the window. Piggy Eyes turned to look at the window. “My friend,” said Joker.
The cat meowed and Piggy Eyes shook his head. “A fucking cat,” he said.
Joker chewed the inside of his lip as he ran through his options. Whatever cover he had was now blown. He had no choice but to leave New York, and Washington seemed the best bet, even though Beaky Maguire had probably told the heavyweights about Patrick Farrell, the man Bailey had been talking to. But what was he to do with the two men in his room? Killing them was out of the question, yet he needed several hours to get clear of the city. He gestured with the gun at the wounded man on the floor. “Take his clothes off,” said Joker.
“You’ve got to be joking,” said Piggy Eyes.
“I don’t know how quiet this gun is with this silencer, but I’m willing to try it,” he said. He levelled the gun at the man’s groin.
“Okay, okay,” said Piggy Eyes, hurriedly going down on one knee and stripping off The Frowner’s raincoat.
“And the rest,” said Joker. “Be quick about it.”
The Frowner moaned and tried to resist but Piggy Eyes told him to lie still. A few minutes later and The Frowner was lying naked on the floor like a beached seal, his clothes and shoes in an untidy pile by the window. “Good, now use his tie to bind his wrists behind his back,” said Joker. “And make sure it’s tight because I’ll be checking.” Piggy Eyes did as he was told, then straightened up. “Now your clothes,” said Joker. Piggy Eyes obeyed, his eyes hard. He stared meanly at Joker as he undressed and Joker knew that he was looking for an opportunity to resist. He kept the gun aimed at his groin. “Don’t even think about it,” Joker warned.
When the man was naked Joker had him turn round and kneel down, facing the window. Folds of fat had gathered around his waist like pink inner tubes and the flesh hung loosely around his arms. “Hold your arms out behind you, and link your fingers,” said Joker. As the man followed his instructions, Joker stepped forward and clipped the gun hard against his temple, knocking him out. Piggy Eyes slumped across The Frowner’s prostrate body. Joker quickly used Piggy Eyes’ tie and expertly knotted it around the man’s wrists. He used their belts to tie their legs together, and quickly checked that The Frowner’s wrists were tightly bound. The Frowner began to cough and tried to sit up. Joker knocked him senseless with the butt of the gun. He tucked the automatic into the back of his trousers and pulled up the blinds. The cat stared at him and meowed. Joker opened the window for her and she jumped down onto Piggy Eyes and then across to the bed. Joker ripped open the carton of milk and poured some into a glass. “You, young lady, have earned yourself a drink,” he said. The cat lapped happily as Joker filled his suitcase with his belongings and the clothes stripped from the heavyweights.
He found two handkerchiefs and used them as makeshift gags for his two prisoners, then picked up the bottle of Famous Grouse. He took a long pull at the whisky and then put the bottle into his suitcase. The cat finished drinking and padded back to the window and leapt smoothly onto the fire escape. She turned and meowed once as if to say goodbye and then disappeared into the night. Joker closed the window behind her, switched off the light, and carried his case downstairs.
Kelly Armstrong pounded her horn and cursed the old woman in the car ahead of her. Phoenix had one of the worst traffic accident rates, and highest insurance premiums, in the country, not because of drunk drivers or joyriding teenagers but because of all the retirees who moved to Arizona in search of a better climate. Their failing eyesight and slowing reactions meant that the city’s emergency services were forever pulling them out of their wrecked cars. The woman who was holding up the traffic ahead of Kelly was a typical snowbird, a tiny, white- haired, thin-boned woman with wrinkled skin and thick-lensed glasses, hunched over the steering wheel of a car which was far too big and powerful for her. She was, thought Kelly, probably sitting on a stack of telephone books with blocks on the pedals so that she could reach them and planned her routes so that she never had to make a left turn.
“Come on you bitch, go!” Kelly fumed, pounding her horn again. Eventually the old woman realised that the traffic light had turned green and she pulled away in a series of jerks. It was a beautiful day, the sky a cloudless bright blue, the temperature in the low seventies, and to Kelly it seemed that all the snowbirds had come out to play. She savagely punched at the buttons on her car radio, hunting for a halfway decent station that would make the crawlspeed less frustrating. Eventually she found a Pet Shop Boys track and she tapped her steering wheel as she followed the snowbird at precisely five miles an hour below the speed limit.
Fergus O’Malley ran a construction company based in Litchfield Park, to the west of Phoenix and close to Luke Air Force Base. He had a reputation for quality work at reasonable prices, and he’d built up a good solid business, employing more than fifty workers. Though he’d lived in Arizona for most of his fifty-seven years he continued to play on his Irish roots, to the extent of having a shamrock logo on all his trucks and speaking with an Irish lilt. Kelly drove her Buick onto the O’Malley lot and parked next to a flatbed truck piled high with scaffolding. Two young men in overalls stopped work to watch as she climbed out of the car and walked to the office building, a white envelope under her arm. One of them whistled, but Kelly didn’t react. She was used to the attention, and no longer resented being whistled at by strangers. She knew that the time to worry was when the whistles stopped.
O’Malley wasn’t a man to spend money on expensive furnishings, and his offices contained only the bare essentials. There was no couch for visitors in the reception area, just a desk where his secretary laboured over an old manual typewriter. She was pulling a file from a battered filing cabinet when Kelly walked in and asked to speak to the boss. Barely had she spoken to Fergus O’Malley over the intercom than the man came rushing through the door like a whirlwind, grabbing Kelly in a flurry of arms and clasping her to his chest. He lifted her clear off the ground so that her feet swung from side to side. “Kelly my darling girl, what’ve you been doing with yourself?” he boomed, squeezing the breath from her body. The envelope slipped from her grasp and landed on the floor.
“Uncle Fergus, would you put me down?” she asked. “Please.”
“Are you telling me I can’t hug my own fair niece?” O’Malley said, tightening his grip and planting a kiss on her cheek. She could smell whisky on his breath.
Eventually he lowered her to the ground, picked up the envelope and ushered her into his office. Like the reception area, a thin film of dust coated most surfaces. He saw her look of distaste and produced a handkerchief from his trouser pocket with a flourish which he used to wipe clean a chair. “Sit, sit,” he said, handing her the envelope and leaning against his paper-strewn desk. “And tell me what brings you out to my neck of the woods.” Kelly opened her mouth to speak but O’Malley held up his hand. “Drink?” he said. “Coffee? Tea? A drop of the hard stuff?”
Kelly shook her head. “I’m fine, Uncle Fergus. But don’t let me stop you.”
“Kelly my girl, I was hoping you’d say that,” he said with a smile and dashed around the desk with a speed that belied his bulk. He was a bear of a man, his work jeans stretched tight around an expanding waistline and the sleeves of his plaid shirt rolled up around thick forearms. His big hands were square and weatherbeaten and the skin on his face was roughened from years working out in the open. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk
