Plugged

Okay. Five targets. Here we go.

First I give Irish Mike the heel of my hand in his windpipe; that should keep him gasping for five minutes. His eyes bug out like he’s been shot in the arse with a harpoon, a vision I will hopefully have a chance to play back for Jason. He loves that kind of thing.

The guys in the back are first to react, so I reach under the middle row seats, yank the adjustment bars and, using my legs as pistons, drive them into the men behind. The seats slide back smoothly on their rails; God bless German engineering. Shins splinter, and maybe an ankle. One guy’s head cracks the rear window. No weapons drawn as yet.

Part of me feels like I’m watching this happen. It’s as though someone else is taking decisive action and I’m somehow observing from a distance and not altogether approving of what’s going on.

Still two guys in front.

I reach past Irish Mike’s spasming torso and flick the seat levers on the front seats. Shifting my weight forward, I slam the seats till their hinges pop, pinning Irish Mike’s men to the dash. One still has an arm free to reach for his gun, so I dislocate the shoulder’s ball-and-socket joint with a punch in the armpit.

This is working out pretty well, all things considered. My giddy side wants to giggle, but I choke it down. Later for the girlishness.

The Benz fills up with groans like we’re under water, and there’s a sea anemone of blood on the windscreen. We roll ten feet and one wheel mounts the kerb, swatting a trashcan.

I give Irish Mike one more whack because he’s such a dick, then I’m out of the vehicle, sprinting for Zeb’s back entrance. My boots crunch on the loose stones and there’s a cold mist on my face that tastes like life. I relish the movement and wetness for a moment until I reach the delivery door and I need to concentrate once more.

All the guns I own, and not one of them in my possession.

The door opens inwards and there’s yet another of Mike’s potato heads, coming wide-eyed to investigate the trashcan ruckus. This guy I almost feel sorry for. His gun is dangling by his side and I’m bearing down on him, snarling like an angry bear.

He manages an oh before I tuck my head under his arm and tackle him into the shop. The oh shoots up a couple of octaves, then we’re halfway across the room. The guy’s toes are dragging the floor and his elbows beat a tattoo on my back, for all the good it does him. Maybe if he had the wits or time to use his gun. .

No wits and definitely no time.

‘Mother,’ he says. ‘Mudda. .’

Swearing or calling for his mom. Who knows.

A wall rears and I put him into it. Through two layers of Sheetrock, a timber frame and neatly on to the dentist’s chair. Can’t be good for a person’s insides. Still, better to be safe than sorry, so I scramble through the jagged hole and clang Mike’s moaning man on the temple with a handy rinsing pan.

No more moaning. No alarm either; an alarm would have been nice.

Wait. There is moaning. Behind me in Zeb’s homeopathic store.

It’s me, idiot. I am alive.

Zeb. No way.

Mike’s man surrenders his weapon without a struggle. A nice shiny Colt.45. Seven in the mag, one in the pipe, presuming this guy, let’s call him Steve, presuming Steve keeps his weapon loaded.

‘McEvoy, you bastard!’

A roar from outside. Irish Mike has recovered quickly and is done with laddie.

‘Come out, McEvoy.’

Good. That’s good. They don’t want to come in. There’s still a slim chance. Of course I should have killed them all, and then the chance might have some weight to it.

I tumble through a haze of chalk and sawdust back into Zeb’s unit. There is blood on the floor, glistening in the tube light, tracked in long arcs across the carpet and concrete. The shiniest track leads to a shivering shape in the corner. It’s my friend Zeb, taped to his own office chair. They’ve been playing human pinball with him.

Zeb’s eyes are half closed, there’s a bruise covering most of his face and blood drips from his fingertips. His crafty eyes are shrouded by bruised lids, and of his sharp hustler features there is no sign. He looks bad and probably feels worse, if he’s feeling anything at all.

I spin the chair to face me.

‘Zeb? Tell me, quick. What did you do?’

‘’Bout time,’ Zeb spits through blood bubbles. ‘Paramol, ibuprofen. Under the safe.’

I shake him and a cut under his eye weeps blood. ‘No. Tell me. What the hell is the disk?’

Zeb coughs and something whines in his chest. ‘No disk. All bullshit. Come on, Dan. Pills.’

This is how it gets. After such a beating, pain is the only thing in Zeb’s life. He doesn’t care about living or dying. Just pain.

‘Okay. Okay.’

I pick through the bottles under the safe. Most of them have handwritten labels. Cheap generic pills. Zeb making a buck any way he can.

‘Five minutes, Mike,’ I shout at the ceiling. ‘Five minutes to find this goddamn disk.’

No answer for a moment, just dragging footsteps and the clink of metal.

Then, ‘Five minutes, McEvoy. I hear any sirens and I burn this place to the ground.’

Great. I have three hundred seconds and nothing to bargain with.

Paramol. I find a bottle and run a finger along the instructions.

‘Fuck the dosage!’ howls Zeb. ‘Give them all to me.’

Not happening. In Zeb’s state he would chew those things until his heart went asleep.

I pop the bottle, shake out a double dose and Zeb eats them out of my hand like a pony chewing sugar lumps. By the time I’ve torn the tape from his wrists, my restored friend is enjoying a little chemical calm.

‘Where were you, man?’ he sobs, then finishes with a jagged giggle. ‘I’ve been broadcasting. Sending out signals. Holding complete conversations with you. Couldn’t you hear me call?’

I didn’t hear shit, says Ghost Zeb.

‘I heard you, brother,’ I say. ‘I’m here. Now you’ve got to tell me what you did.’

‘I stayed alive. That’s what I did. Not proud, but I did it.’

I shake him gently. ‘What did you do? Come on, Zeb, tell me.’

Zeb blinks like he’s about to nod off. ‘I did Mike Madden’s hair. Like I did you, Dan. Sweet set of transplants.’

Hair transplants! No way. Not all this.

‘Asshole’s paranoid, let me tell you. Brought in students from China to assist, so they wouldn’t know who he was. Little hands they had, did lovely work. In six months you’ll never know. Mike will have a head of hair that would make Pierce Brosnan crap himself.’

Time is a-wasting. ‘Lovely work. Great. So what’s the problem?’

Even with a mashed face Zeb manages a guilty expression. ‘It was an opportunity. I couldn’t pass it up.’

From outside, ‘Two minutes, McEvoy. You better pull the rabbit out of the hat, laddie.’

Zeb chuckles. ‘Laddie. Always with the laddie. You Irish, all retards.’

‘What opportunity? Zeb, these people are going to kill us.’

‘Not you, Dan. Not you, my big pet Schwarzenegger. I bet you’ve fucked up a few of them already.’

He has a point. ‘Maybe. But why are they after me, Zeb?’

Zeb studies the blood on his fingers; no clue where it came from. ‘I told Mike I filmed the procedure. Said I’d put it on YouTube. The Irish in New York would piss themselves. You should have seen him during the operation: big baby cried like a. . baby. Wouldn’t let me smoke or anything.’

‘That is unbelievable.’

‘I know,’ said Zeb thickly. ‘I’m always careful with the ash.’

‘Not the cigarette. You tried to blackmail a crime lord?’

‘Hardly a lord. What has he got, like a dozen men? Only twenty grand, that’s all I asked for. Twenty grand to destroy the disk. ’S a bargain.’

‘But there was no disk.’