skin mags?’
This gets a laugh from the crowd, and Doyle can see how it irritates Schneider.
‘Just get on with the stupid contest.’
‘All right. When I say go, you pull me toward you, and I’ll pull you in the opposite direction. Ready?’
‘I end up on my ass, I am so gonna slug you, Doyle.’
‘Stop whining. You ready or not?’
Schneider shifts his stance, plants his feet to prevent him being shoved off balance.
‘Ready.’
‘All right. . Go!’
Schneider yanks hard on Doyle’s arm, but instead of resisting, Doyle allows himself to be hauled in. As he collides with Schneider’s chest he loops his left arm around the man’s neck, holding him securely in position.
Taken by complete surprise, Schneider doesn’t know how to react. ‘What the fuck. .’
‘Just hold it like that. A couple more seconds. .’
‘Doyle, get the fuck off me. .’
And then Doyle releases him. Without another word, he turns and starts to walk away. He can see the bemused expressions of the onlookers, and can only imagine the bewilderment on Schneider’s face.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Schneider calls, but Doyle keeps on walking.
‘Doyle! Hey, Doyle! I’m talking to you!’
As he reaches the door, Doyle stops and turns. Schneider is looking at him, his palms out, trying to make sense of it all.
‘Think about it,’ Doyle says. ‘There’s somebody out there hurting people I know and like. People I get close to. He always seems to know where I am, who I speak to. Maybe he’s watching me tonight, through that window behind you. What’s he just seen? Me buying you a drink, shaking your hand, giving you a big hug like you’re my best buddy. Enjoy the rest of your night, Schneider.’
As the bar erupts, Doyle takes the last couple of steps toward the door. Just before he leaves he gets a grinning Paddy Gilligan in his sights, returns the mischievous Irish wink he received earlier.
And then he’s gone.
In his dream, the door isn’t moving.
He’s standing there, staring at that cream door with the crack in its panel. He’s willing it to move, but it doesn’t. He looks for lines on the blue patterned carpet — any kind of marker by which to measure the progress of the door closing. It doesn’t help. That slab of wood is in exactly the same position it was when he entered the room.
He moves to the door and pushes on it, but it won’t budge. He leans on it, drives his shoulder into it with all his might. Gradually, inch by inch, the door opens up. He gets an arm through the gap, then a leg. Straining and squeezing, he eventually gets the rest of his body into the room beyond.
That’s when he sees what was preventing the door from opening.
Body parts. Hundreds of them. Legs, arms, torsos, all piled on top of each other in a grotesque hill of lifeless flesh and bone.
He finds himself desperate to know who they belong to, and so he steps up to the mountain and begins to pull at its sides. Cold sticky cobs of gore come away in his hand. He flicks them away, tries again. Gradually he bores inside, but all he can see is wet redness and shiny gristle.
And then something drops into his man-made tunnel. Something round and heavy. It plops onto the bed of human meat and rolls toward him. As it gathers speed, a similar-sized sphere drops from above and chases after the first. Then comes another, and another. Doyle feels like a lone pin at the end of a bowling alley, about to be struck down by any one of these balls heading his way.
But as they get nearer to him they slow down. He tries to make out their precise nature, but only when all of them come to rest at his feet is he able to see them for what they are.
Human heads. With faces he recognizes. There’s Joe Parlatti, staring at him with uncomprehending eyes and an open mouth. There’s Tony Alvarez, and there’s Spinner, and there’s. .
He decides to get out of there when the heads begin to scream at him.
They let out unpunctuated wails of torment and pain. Long drawn-out cries that can snap hearts and break minds. Doyle scrambles for the door, manages to squeeze himself through the gap as he did before. He pulls the door shut, muting the hellish sounds beyond. Resting his head against the cracked panel, he tries to regain his breath, his composure. He counts to ten, slowly turns.
Then, like Ebenezer Scrooge, he encounters the final ghost — the one he dreads most.
She is facing him, her arms out to him, pleading. Tears are running down her cheeks. She wants to know why.
But Doyle has no answers. All he can do is stare right through the ragged hole in Laura Marino’s chest. .
And scream.
He sits upright in bed, knowing that he has just screamed himself awake.
He’s drenched in sweat. Shaky from the nightmare he has just lived. Laura Marino’s heart-rending face is still imprinted on his brain.
‘It was moving,’ he mutters to himself in the blackness. ‘The fucking door was moving.’
He swings his legs out of bed, then pads naked to the bathroom. He fumbles for the light. Steps through onto the cool tiles. He squints at himself in the mirror over the sink. Not a pretty sight. He doesn’t know what time it is, but he hasn’t slept nearly enough to get the alcohol out of his system.
He moves over to the toilet, takes a pee that seems even to him to last forever, then goes back to the sink and fills it with lukewarm water. He splashes handfuls of it onto his face, his hands rasping against the roughness of his stubble. He dries himself on the fluffy hotel towel, then steps back into the main room, turning off the light as he enters.
He doesn’t know what it is — a sound, an odor, a flash of movement just before he doused the light — but he suddenly realizes that he’s not alone in this room.
EIGHTEEN
He tries to act as though he hasn’t noticed a thing. He knows he’s at a disadvantage for several reasons. First of all, he’s still under the influence of numerous pints of Guinness. Second, he has just blinded himself with the lights in the bathroom, while the intruder’s eyes, on the other hand, are presumably fully accustomed to the darkness. Third, he cannot remember precisely where he put his gun when he got undressed. Last, but not least, he is as naked as the day he was born, which leaves him feeling kind of defenseless.
Straining to build a mental map of the room in front of him, he stumbles his way back to the bed and tries to make up his mind as to what to do now.
The gun, or the light switch?
His best guess is that his Glock is in the drawer of the bed table. But he could be wrong about that. And even if he’s right, he can’t see well enough to shoot anything.
So, he thinks, It’s the light then. But what’s the point in that? It might blind the guy for all of two seconds, but I still don’t have a weapon, and he might just decide to start blasting away.
Final decision — the gun first. He reaches into the drawer, acting all nonchalant like looking for tissues or some such, then dives for the light switch, hoping to get the drop on the guy. Okay, it’s not exactly the most foolproof plan in the world, but hey, I don’t have many options here.
Of course, if he’s mistaken, and there’s nobody else in the room, then he’s going to feel such a dick.
He sits on the edge of the bed, puts his head in his hands and lets out a groan.
‘God, my head,’ he mutters. ‘I so need a painkiller for this.’
He stretches for the drawer, slides it open, dips his hand inside.
Nothing. Except a Gideon Bible. Which in his experience doesn’t make the best of weapons.
‘Jesus, Mr Doyle, you are the world’s worst actor. I hope they never send you undercover on any narco
