“Yeah, Terry.”
“Okay. That’s good. It’s important we got off on the right foot. You don’t want to waste time, you know? Time. Hey, do you know how you do time? How you get through? Loyalty. You don’t rat on anyone. You don’t stool. You stay loyal to the man you were before they took you off the street. You don’t hang around with gobshites. You don’t do favours and you don’t ask favours. You don’t ask stupid questions, you don’t tell lies to your mates. You keep your self-respect. Under all conditions. Fella comes at you with a blade, you have to take him on. Whether you want to or not. Doesn’t matter if you end up taking a rap for it either. You just do what you have to do. You might have to kill a man. That’s how it is. There’s no arguing. People will see that about you and they’ll think, ‘There’s a guy, there’s a guy to stick with.’ You with me here?”
“Yeah, Terry.”
“So here I am, man. Eddsy knows what I can do. But there’s a price for everything, isn’t there? All this crap Eddsy talks. Loyalty this and loyalty that. Let me tell you this: Eddsy has no loyalty. Did you hear that? None. Fuck- all. Eddsy, Bobby, Martin even-they’re just fucking maniacs.”
Malone nodded at the van.
“Surprise, surprise, huh? That’s the price. Right over there. Eddsy tells me to find this Hickey. He wants me to bring him in. That proves my loyalty, see. See how everything comes around again? Now Eddsy’s got something on me. I’m tied in. I get paid up-maybe even take over Lolly’s job. See? Your fucking mate Hickey was my test. My loyalty test.”
The suspicion came to him now as dread. Maybe Malone wasn’t drunk after all.
“You’re a sort of decent stupid, Jammy. A soft touch, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean, man-Terry.”
“Cash to your old mate? Christ. You’d think he’d have used it to get well to hell out of here, wouldn’t you? What a gobshite. What a total gobshite.”
They know, he thought. Malone’s face creased into a lopsided grin.
“Oh, he really rooked you, Jammy. Didn’t he?”
He felt suddenly heavy, like in a dream he’d had over and over again when he was a kid. In some strange place, trying to avoid someone, trying to run before they caught him, but his feet wouldn’t move. His mind couldn’t put the bits together. They’d found Leonardo, or he’d found them.
“Don’t you get it, Jammy?”
“I… Well…”
“Ah, you’re thick, Jammy. Thick! But maybe it’s being thick saves your neck now! Funny, isn’t it? Someday I’ll tell you just how close you came. With Eddsy, I mean. Eddsy… Jesus. Goes just fucking bananas… Totally out of it. He’s a sadist, isn’t he?”
He nodded.
“He wanted to hack Hickey’s nuts off with a breadknife. What do you think of that?”
He took a breath and looked down at the path worn into the dry grass.
“Okay, I’ll tell him you’re speechless. ‘No comment, Eddsy.’ How does that sound?”
“Jesus, Terry. Why would Eddsy, you know…?”
“Weird, huh? But that’s life. Listen to me. Things don’t look good for you, do they?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know, you know?”
“Look. You could walk away from this. Or it’s over for you. It’s your choice. Hickey put on a good show before he pulled that stunt-Christ, that little bastard can run! For a minute, he nearly had me believing him. Maybe he could even have Eddsy believing him.”
He was rooted to the ground now. Something was working its way up his spine toward his neck.
“So. You wanted to see Hickey, right? He called you. What for? For more jack?”
“Well, he didn’t say really.”
“Oh, come on, don’t give me that shite, Jammy! Come on over here then.”
Malone took a step away and stopped.
“Ah, I get it. You think I brought some lads here to get you, do you?”
He didn’t answer. The smell from the canal was all through his head now.
“Don’t be an even bigger gobshite than you were already, Jammy. Look at it this way: you came out to talk to a guy who would have pissed you down the fucking drain to save his own skin. I could have taken you myself if that was the job.”
Malone reached under his denim jacket and opened his fist to show an automatic so small that at first he thought it was a cigarette lighter.
“Yeah, Jammy. It’s all business tonight. The Boys Are Back in Town, you know? Boom-boom! You should have seen the bastard tearing off down the lane when he saw me!”
Buildings were sinking down toward him. It was like a hard punch, without the pain.
“What’s the matter, Jammy? Lost your tongue? Come on, man!”
His legs began to move. He followed Malone up the path to the footpath.
“Oh, the other lads are long gone now, Jammy. Didn’t want to hang around.”
Malone was off his rocker because he’d done something terrible.
“Job’s done, so they go home,” Malone murmured. He turned and leered. “Have a bit of a wash-up before they sit down to their tea.”
Malone stopped by the van. Already he had a piece of cloth in his hand. He turned the handle to open one side of the door. He looked up and down the street.
“Just don’t touch anything. Unless you want to take the twenty-year trip. Ha ha.”
The door squeaked at first. Something had crept into Malone’s voice now.
“Hurry up! The van’s robbed, so don’t be worrying. I can do without any crowd.”
The smell struck him as familiar. It was something that belonged with pressure, pain, fear. He held his breath. Malone tapped him in the arm.
“Take the torch. Quick.”
The blood looked purple. He held his breath. It was all over the floor and the panels. They’d tied him up. Made a mess of his face. His hair to one side glistened with blood. His chest was rising and falling still. There was a hiss coming from somewhere by his face.
“He’s alive. About ten percent though. Do you want to check him up close?”
He shook his head.
“He’d be a hell of a lot more alive if he hadn’t pulled that stunt, I tell you. Did you ever chase a jackrabbit like him, a guy scared for his life, with a van? I mean to say, what am I going to do, me on me own? Go back to Bobby and tell him I had him, but I lost him? Hickey knew he was a goner. The half of him is still back on a steel door at the end of that lane.”
He took a step back. The yellow light from the street lamps made everything look sick, diseased. He turned with the bile rising in his throat and saw a hammer and a piece of pipe. The door slammed and Malone was beside him.
“Come on, man,” he said. “I want to talk to you. Where’s that bike of yours?”
He couldn’t think. Malone’s hand was on his arm, steering him across the street.
“You think he’ll live long enough to talk to Eddsy?”
He swallowed. He didn’t want to get sick.
“I wonder what he’d tell Eddsy. What do you think, huh?”
Tierney shook his head. His stomach was making these weird tics and he couldn’t stop them. He’d heard that Terry the Bull was vicious in the ring, but this was way over the top.
“Nothing, huh?”
He looked up and nodded. They had reached the motorbike.
“Attaboy. Here, nice bike! What would you do? Bring him over to Eddsy while he’s still with us, maybe? Get him to tell Eddsy what he told me?”
He looked into Malone’s face.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know either. I mean to say, you have to ask yourself: does it all add up? Hey. You’re so quiet. Don’t you want to know what he told me?”
“Leonardo could say anything, Terry! I mean, no one could believe him, you know?”
