Plugged

can collect first.’

Mike is a little surprised by this backchat, but amused too. ‘Thanks, McEvoy. Very Catholic of you. But I’d rather you pay.’

‘Not the way it works, Mike. Even God can’t transfer debt. I don’t owe you a cent, and if you don’t stop weaving it into the conversation, I’ll squeeze my way through all that fat on your shoulders and break your thick neck.’

Might as well try bravado, see if it works.

If it was fear and submission I was hoping for, then my bluntness does not have the desired effect. Mike Madden looks tired and resigned, like he is so fed up of doing things the hard way and why can’t it just be easy for once.

‘Righto, laddie. I hear you. Now you listen to me. I’ve been searching for something.’

‘Why don’t you ask the universe? Seems to work for a lot of people. That’s a secret, by the way.’

Madden grinds his teeth. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

We both know where this is going.

‘I don’t know, Mike. Believe me. But I know how you search for things.’

Mike spreads his hands wide. ‘Couldn’t be avoided. The disk could have been in your apartment.’

I am surprised. ‘A disk? A bloody disk. What do I look like to you? Jason goddamn Bourne?’

Mike Madden hooks the flap of his tweed sports coat over the revolver at his belt.

‘Any road, laddie. You’re going to have to quit work early tonight.’

He’s right. I can’t see any way out of leaving here with him.

‘I have a gun too, you know.’

‘Maybe, laddie. But I have several. One hostile move from you and the floors run with blood. Wooden floors, though, so at least the blood will wipe off, if you get to it quick.’

I place my gun on the desk. ‘No one has said laddie for a hundred bloody years, you phoney.’

‘My heart is Irish,’ objects Mike, worried more by the insult than the weapon.

‘Your heart is clogged with bacon and beer and will drop you in your tracks any day now.’

Which is an unusual thing to say to a person you just met.

Two freckle-faced potato-head types squash themselves into the doorway, fumbling guns from their pockets. I know them both from Faber’s kitchen.

‘You put that gun back in the drawer, laddie. Or my boys will execute everyone in this club.’

That’s what I thought. I glare at Madden, so the murder in my eyes is all he can see.

‘If I were like you, Mike, if I didn’t care about those people out there, then you would be dead right now. I just wanted you to know that and show a bit of respect.’

Irish Mike actually winks. ‘Point taken, laddie. Now come over here and let’s pretend we’re friends.’

Mike takes my phone, then we stroll out of the office and across the casino floor like a couple of swells, and consequently none of his four escorts are forced to shoot anyone. Jason is ready to fight, chest out, arms dangling, but I calm him with a lateral two-fingered slice, which sounds a bit complicated but is one of our door signals. Doesn’t matter how big your pecs are, bullets cut right through.

‘It’s okay, Jason. Hold the fort, I’ll be back in a few hours.’

‘You sure, boss?’

‘Yeah. Me and Mike have a little business to discuss.’

Mike has an R-Class Mercedes Benz waiting at the kerb, and we wait an embarrassing few minutes while two of his laddies squash themselves into the rear seats.

I wink at Mike, since he’s a winky guy. ‘You’re one hell of a mob boss. Two of your boys in the baby seats.’

Mike is prepared to argue that one. ‘You think I should have brought two vehicles? What about the environment? What about my carbon footprint, laddie?’

‘Laddie? You really should drop that. It is too hilarious.’

‘In the car,’ says Mike straight-faced. I can see I’m wearing him down.

We drive across town and I can’t get to grips with the fact that it’s all over for me. Once we get wherever we’re going and Mike Madden ascertains that I do not in fact have this mysterious secret-agent-type disk, then he will most likely shoot me in the heart.

A disk? This is beyond weird. What the hell is Zeb doing with a disk? All he knows about computers could be written on one of those horse pills he sells to irritable-bowel patients, or the stop-go crowd, as he sensitively refers to them.

Nearly dead, I think, trying to nail the idea home. Nearly dead now.

But no sickening feeling of dread seeps through. Even the thought of torture to come doesn’t penetrate my calm.

That’s because I don’t believe any of this. This week has been too bizarre to be real. My brain is waiting for me to wake up in a tangle of sweat-sheened sheets. You can’t go from doorman to superman in a week, not if you want to survive. I do want to survive, but I can’t see how I’m going to manage it.

We pass Chequer’s Diner and the park. I see Carmel, the waitress, joshing it up with a customer, a guy in a hunter’s cap. He swats her behind and she pours him a refill, smile bigger than a slice of melon.

I didn’t know there was a backside-swatting option.

Maybe there wasn’t for me.

Barely ten p.m. and already the streets are drying up. Cloisters is a daytime town. Leafy suburbs and four- wheel drives. Wooden houses filling their lots right to the fences, and expansive parks with soft-fall areas for the little kids. Our sordid world fires a shot across the bows of decency once in a while, but according to the Cloisters Chronicle, this small town has the third lowest crime rate in the country, and the second highest literacy rate. It’s nice to live in a place where people still prefer books to TV.

Ghost Zeb doesn’t let me get too deep into the maudlin. It’s a bit late for community spirit, partner. Don’t tell me, if you survive the night, then Slotz gets turned into a soup kitchen and St Daniel spends his days in a soutane dispensing homely wisdom with every bowl of chowder.

‘Chowder?’ splutters Irish Mike. ‘Jesus, laddie. Don’t crack up yet; the night is young.’

Thinking aloud again. Bad sign.

I really wish that man would stop with the laddie bit. It’s offensive. Maybe a sharp elbow in the ribs would knock the leprechaun out of him, but then I might not reach journey’s end alive and find out what happened to Zeb.

Very good point. Excellent in fact. Hold on to that.

‘Where are we headed?’ I ask Mike pleasantly. You never know, he might tell me.

‘Shut the hell up, McEvoy.’

Then again. .

We don’t drive for that long. Nowhere is too far away in Cloisters. On our short trip we pass eight churches and three patrol cars. God and guns, that’s what we put our faith in here. Red bulbs buzz overhead, stretching down through the blocks like landing lights.

Pretty soon we’re pulling around back of a familiar strip mall. Zeb’s place. Last time I was here, I was loading a corpse into a trunk. It makes sense to finish things at the clinic. A couple of bodies in a burnt-out fire trap would have accidental death written all over them.

‘End of the line, laddie,’ says Mike, and I feel each stone crunch under the Benz’s tyres as the vehicle slows.

Maybe, I think, suddenly gripped by the absolute certainty that if I go into that building on Mike’s terms I am dead. But not the way you expect it, laddie.

What I’m about to do doesn’t seem part of the real world. It’s one of those ideas that generally would never make it past the good-sense filter in my head, but for the past few days that filter has been switched off. And when a notion like this occurs to me, I fear the switch may be jammed.

So. Two men in front, two behind and Irish Mike to my left. All armed, all dangerous. But all also pretty confined in their movements and probably not expecting me to buck such superior numbers.

If I am going to act, it needs to be right now, before the seat belts come off. I snort a few breaths to psych myself up, then make my move.