Plugged

right? Daniel McEvoy, that’s you, tell me I’m wrong. I seen you work, but never heard you talk.’

And he does a little sideways shuffle, dropping his right hand low.

This is not a great development. The sideways shuffle.

‘You’re a big guy, McEvoy,’ says Barrett, shaking something down his sleeve. David Copperfield he ain’t. ‘I bet you knock shitkickers around pretty good.’

I’m having a hard time believing this is actually happening. Barrett is really going to make a move on me just for being here. Wrong place wrong time for one of us. His hand comes up quick and in his fist there is what looks like a shaft of light.

It looks like a shaft of light, but unless he’s Gandalf it probably isn’t.

Good point, and it’s more than enough for my fighter’s instinct to stand up and dance a jig.

I step to one side, dig my heel into the carpet for stability. Adrenalin shoots through my system like nitrous oxide, slowing the whole thing down. The shaft of light flashes past my eye and I put the key through the side of Barrett’s neck, watch him bleed out, then sit down and think about what I’ve done.

CHAPTER 3

When I finally parted ways with the army after my second tour, I quickly realised that there was nothing for me in Dublin. Every minute I spent in the dirty old town sent me further into the whirlwind of my own mind. I couldn’t find a good memory in there that didn’t end in tragedy. And I have a tendency to live in my head. Shit happens, right? So deal with it.

I did. Took advantage of being born in New York City and boarded a transatlantic jet to JFK. Wore the uniform that wasn’t mine any more to check in and even got myself an upgrade. Oldest trick in the manual, after loading a shotgun with tea bags to scare the crap out of looters. Dumped the beret and jacket in the lounge bathroom. Walked out a civilian with a first-class ticket.

My mother may have been from America, but with her family apartment way up high and hanging over Central Park, she wasn’t what you might call a typical New Yorker, and after touchdown it took me a while to credit the local accent. One day it’s bejaysus and begorrah and the next it’s fugeddabout it. They’re putting this on, I thought. Yadda yadda yadda. Badda bing. Bullshit, no one talks like this.

But they did, and worse. I took a couple of beatings in the early days just because I didn’t understand what the hell people were saying to me. Wadda fucku starin’ at? You fuckin’ retahded? Lookit dis fuckin’ guy.

It got so that I didn’t wait around for the chit-chat. Some guy started strutting my way along a bar, and I let him have it with whatever I could reach. An ashtray, barstool. Whatever. Pre-empting fights comes naturally to me. I always know which guys are gonna go off. Something Simon Moriarty taught me once we got to know each other a little.

Seeing as you’re determined to go back, Dan, I may as well pass on a few useful nuggets.

Such as?

Such as when it’s time to stop peacekeeping and start shooting.

It’s in the eyes and the shoulders, Simon had explained. They get to a point and then think screw it. At that moment consequences mean nothing, so you need to take your hands out of your pockets and start swinging. I swing good, too. Twelve years in the army taught me that much at least. But I still get pains in my back whenever I take a swing, especially in deep dark winter, even though the doctors swore they got every sliver of Hezbollah mortar shrapnel. Phantom pains, they said. Doesn’t seem phantom when the frost is creeping up my window like a silver cobweb and my lower back feels like some demented leprechaun is driving rivets into it.

I stuck New York for four full years, working meatpacking during the day and clubs at night. But my fresh start was starting to seem like a dead end; love never walked around the corner, plus my hair was falling out. A decade in the grave and still my father was sending gifts my way. Four years of New York living and I was up to here with wiseguys and weisenheimers. My knuckles were like acorns from punching people. That’s right, people. The women and children are dangerous in the Big Apple. I see a needle coming at me and I don’t care if the person holding it has got braids and milk teeth. One humid autumn evening I gazed down on the baby-faced Asian hooker I had just decked, and decided to get out of the city. I took her knife, though. Nice butterfly with something Chinese on the handle. I’ve had it ever since.

So I packed my army duffel and took a train to the satellite town of Cloisters, Essex County. Only reason I got off there was because of a billboard they had in the station. Cloisters. For People Who Are Tired Of The City. I sure did like the sound of that.

It turns out that here isn’t much better than there was. For a start, Cloisters has gambling only a bus ride across the Hudson. Which means on the weekends all the city arseholes come to throw away their hard-earned, watch one hundred per cent nude ladies and crash in hotels that are a lot cheaper than Atlantic City. Plus we’ve got our indigenous arseholes too. Six years have gone by and sometimes I think I should have stayed in New York. More than sometimes.

I’m moving on as soon as the hair grows in. Once I have hair I’ll be happy. That’s what I tell myself. I may have left it too late.

I make myself watch Macey Barrett die, because that way it means something. I don’t want to kill a man then shut my eyes while he dies. You make these things hard, or else they get easy. I’ve killed men before, but only three, and never like this. Never so close that I can see eyelashes flickering or hear the rattle in their chest like there’s a handful of beads in there. In the army you could always tell yourself: This is war. You get a pass for war. But here and now, in a pill shop in Jersey, it feels like this sort of thing shouldn’t be happening. Violent death is supposed to be consigned to my past. Dr Moriarty would call it an anachronism.

Barrett goes slow, jerking like there’s a current passing through him. Blood everywhere.

What do you expect? You put a spike in his jugular.

For some reason, my subconscious sounds like Zeb.

In the final spasm, Barrett loses his grip on the stiletto in his fist. It twirls straight up like a cheerleader’s baton, burying itself in a suspended-ceiling tile.

I relax a little. That’s justifiable homicide in my book, but perhaps not in every book. Michael Madden, for example; his book might read a little different. Irish Mike will cut me down for killing his man. Simple as that. I need to confuse this issue as much as possible.

First step, lock the goddamn door, stupid.

The key is still where I put it. I’m not a squeamish individual, but pulling that key out makes me cringe a lot more than sticking it in did. It comes loose with a familiar sucking noise, as though it’s found a nice warm home and doesn’t want to leave.

Familiar sucking noise? No one should be familiar with that particular sound, but I am. It reminds me of the time I decided to have a go at pulling a triangle of shrapnel out of my own side; it was just before I passed out.

I fumble the key into the lock and twist it, about fifteen seconds before one of Zeb’s customers tries the handle.

‘Kronski, you asshole,’ she calls out, in a voice ravaged by thousands of cigarettes. ‘Your tablets gave me the shits. Twenty-six fifty for the shits? Open the door, dammit. I can see you moving.’

The woman’s silhouette trembles with fury, or possibly flatulence, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be letting Zeb poke holes in my scalp when he can’t even hand out the right tablets.

I play statues until the lady moves on, looking for a bathroom maybe, then turn my attention to Macey Barrett, lying blue faced and weirdly cross-eyed on the carpet. Looks like a vampire bit him. Poor bastard.

No. Not poor bastard. Murdering bastard.

Just like me.