CHAPTER 8

Army basic is a lot like school. You learn a lot of junk that you won’t ever need, and miss out on stuff that could save your life. I’ve been cracking heads for twenty-five years now and not once did spit-shined shoes or a shipshape locker give me an edge.

Some people learn the hard way that life lessons are the valuable ones, like a certain short-lived Private Edgar English who checked his Steyer for blockages by squinting down the barrel. Others are lucky enough to survive the lesson and bank the information. I know because I was that student of the bleeding obvious during my second tour.

One desert-dry evening, Tommy Fletcher and I were leapfrogging ahead of our patrol in the village of Haddataha when we were cut off by sniper fire. Suddenly the air was alive with buzzing, shimmering missiles. Metal sparked against metal and chunks of building rained on our shoulders. Jaded old men played backgammon on their steps, barely pausing to watch the intruders get shot at.

While I wasted time spouting military jargon and making hand signals, Tommy put his elbow through the window of the nearest car and twisted the ignition tumbler with his bayonet. Thirty seconds later we were safe in the ranks of the UN peacekeepers. And you can bet your grandma’s medical insurance that the first thing I did when my heart slowed down was learn how to start a car I don’t have papers for.

Different time, same strategy; I would make my getaway in Deacon’s car, bringing the evidence with me and leaving the detective without a ride.

I take the steps three at a time to the street, and it doesn’t take a genius to spot Deacon’s unmarked cruiser virtually abandoned in the vicinity of the kerb. For a start there’s a Police on Duty card on the dash. Then there’s the fact that I followed this crate around Cloisters on a bicycle not twelve hours since. But the major clue is the trail of blood leading from the popped trunk.

Smear, pool, smear is the pattern. Someone crawled, then rested, then crawled.

Goran’s alive, says Ghost Zeb in a Prince Vultan voice.

A cop leaking outside my apartment. Deacon will have me on death row for this.

I check the trunk to be certain that Goran isn’t in there, but the only thing I find is an In & Out Burger carton run aground on a metal ridge in the congealing crimson lake. No one with that much blood on the outside of their body is crawling very far.

‘What did you do, McEvoy?’

Deacon is beside me, her coat belted tightly at the waist. Pallor shines beneath her dark skin, like a ghost behind a window.

‘Not me,’ I say. ‘I just got here.’

Deacon jams her weapon into my kneecap, and I can see she’s got the hobble word on her mind again.

‘There are people on the street,’ I point out, but she’s beyond caring.

Enough of this.

I grab the gun and twist it clean out of Deacon’s hands. A move every doorman knows well.

‘Oh yeah?’ says the detective, and I glance down to see a small snub-nose tickling my kidney. Her ankle gun. Cobra .32 maybe.

This is insane. I need to eat something and sleep some more. A massage would be nice, and I hear body wraps are good.

It’s just gone sunrise and I’m wrestling a blue on the front porch.

‘You can’t just shoot me, Deacon.’

The detective shrugs. ‘Fuck it, McEvoy. I’m just staying alive until someone kills me.’

I know this fatalism well. There were nights in the Lebanon when death and life held more or less the same appeal.

‘We need to find Goran, Ronelle. It’s the only way out of the tunnel.’

Deacon dips a painted nail in the blood. ‘I put a full clip into her,’ she says, staring at her fingertip.

‘I carried a survivor out of a bomb crater once, and saw another guy killed by a bee sting. You never know.’

‘Jesus Christ, McEvoy,’ says Deacon, snapped out of it by my dime-store philosophising. ‘Bee sting? You on some kind of drugs? Any more crap about bees and I will put a slug into you.’

This is the Ronelle I am comfortable with.

The blood trail meanders across the street, along the kerb for a couple of gouts, then down a basement stairwell.

Deacon snatches her gun from my hand. ‘What do you think, Hawkeye? She at the bottom of the stairwell? Or maybe all that blood is from some guy with a bee sting.’

I am comfortable with this Ronelle; that’s not the same thing as happy.

A street sweeper trundles around the corner from Cruz Avenue, its twin revolving brushes scraping the surface of last night’s leftovers. We watch the bristles turn red as the sweeper ploughs heedlessly through Goran’s tracks. The driver’s forehead smudges the glass and he looks like he would need a defibrillator to get him noticing anything.

‘Christ,’ says Deacon, and I notice the blood on her bare legs.

We splash through the street sweeper’s backwash to the stairwell. Deacon swings herself around a lamppost, her coat balloons and I realise she has underwear and a shoulder holster on under there and nothing more.

Something occurs to me. ‘Careful, Detective.’

Too late. A bullet punches into the lamppost, sending a church bell bong along its shaft.

I pull Deacon away from the stairwell. ‘Did you bother to disarm your partner?’

‘She was dead. Why disarm her?’

Detective Deacon is the kind of person who would argue with St Peter.

‘Obviously she is not as dead as you thought.’

Deacon gets a two-handed grip on her automatic. ‘This is good. If I can take her alive, she can put me in the clear. Ish. The trunk bit could take some explaining.’

‘Call it in, then.’

‘With what? The spy radio in my panties?’

A mailman runs past us shouting into his radio, effectively doing the calling in for us. We have about three minutes before this place is swarming with police.

I lie on my stomach, wiggling my fingers at Deacon. ‘Gimme the Cobra.’

Deacon looks at me as though I’m asking her to donate a kidney. ‘Give you the what?’

‘You’ve read my file, Ronelle. This is what I do.’

Deacon slaps the gun against my chest like it’s a subpoena.

‘Make sure you shoot the right cop.’

I don’t respond. All this wisecracking is more exhausting than the gunplay.

My subconscious flicks through my memories for an appropriate Lebanon flashback, but I force that kaleidoscope of mayhem back down. Now is not the time for dwelling in the past. It would be a shame to take a bullet in the head because I was reliving Operation Green Line.

The basement stairways on my block are pretty uniform: cast-iron railing, eight steps down and a midget door wedged into a concrete alcove. These nooks were not built for someone of my size. I grab a rail and drag myself along the pavement, shirt rasping against the slabs.

There is noise below. Laboured breathing and rustling of material. I sense that Goran is nearly done, but it doesn’t take much energy to pull a trigger one last time. I’ve seen guys fight for half a day, fuelled by nothing more than bile.

I screw my eye socket into the tiny wedge of space between the railing and the pavement.

Deacon tugs on my pants. ‘What do you see?’

‘I see a leg.’

‘Just one?’

‘The other one’s bent back. I think she fell down those last few steps.’

‘Good. You see a weapon?’

I wiggle forward another inch. Goran’s hand is flapping like a fish out of water; her gun glints just out of reach.

‘Dropped it. Let’s go.’

I scramble to my feet, but Deacon is up before me, elbowing past to the first step.

She’s fast, but not fast enough. There is just time to register an impression of Goran’s battered and bloody frame, slumped like a broken mannequin, when the door behind her opens. An extremely hairy pair of hands reaches out, grabs Goran by the shoulders and hauls her inside. She’s gone in a second, like she was never there. The door slams and bolts are shot.

‘You see those hands?’ says Deacon, stunned. ‘Like goddamn monkey hands. Can you believe that?’

I push past her and knuckle the door. It’s steel-reinforced.

‘Get it open, McEvoy. Use some military trickery.’

I try to trick the door with my shoulder. The central panel buckles and wobbles but does not give.

‘Got an oxyacetylene torch tucked into your underwear beside that spy radio, Ronelle?’

‘I’m thinking of a word, McEvoy. Hobble. You remember that one?’

We don’t have time for this. Cloisters is a small place and shots fired is big news. Half the police force will be landing on this block any second, and I don’t think now is a good time for armed company.

‘So, are you waiting for backup?’

Deacon thinks aloud. ‘I can’t wait. I need to follow the monkey hands.’

‘You’re getting in deeper, Ronnie. Every step you take makes it harder to go back.’

Deacon has a look in her eyes, like she’s squinting at the horizon. ‘We’re getting in deeper, McEvoy. Us. Okay, we’re on a tangled road now, but it could straighten out.’

I’m not the only dime-store philosopher in the group. ‘Yeah. With a couple of bee stings maybe.’

Once again, it’s the bee stings that bring Deacon back. ‘Screw you, Daniel. We gotta get out of here. I need Goran alive; without her I’m finished on the force.’ She stares into my eyes and I glimpse a hopeful expression I haven’t seen before; makes her seem at least ten years younger. ‘If I bring Goran in, and you make a statement, I could salvage something out of this shitty day. They’ll bounce me back to uniform, sure. Maybe even make me take some psych sessions, but I can stay on the force.’

My palm is resting on the reinforced door throughout this speech and I feel a sudden shock wave run through my fingers as vibration from the building transfers through the surface. Door slam.

‘They’re out the back door.’

‘To a hospital, maybe?’

‘It must be Faber who’s behind this. And I sincerely doubt they took her to a hospital.’

Deacon smiles, and I am reminded of a wolf that tracked me through the Loup Valley once. ‘They gotta believe we’re on their tails,’ she says thoughtfully.

I see where she’s going. ‘So maybe they’ll drive around a bit.’

‘Except we know where they’re going.’

‘Maybe.’

‘So we can get there before them.’

‘Big maybe.’

Deacon lopes up the stairs.

‘Big maybe,’ she agrees. ‘I’ve survived worse odds than that.’

Deacon makes me sit in the back seat on the drive across town, which is completely ridiculous as I’m not under arrest and it’s not even a secure cruiser. There’s no mesh, and if I had a mind to, I could probably get at the shotgun cradled under the passenger seat. I don’t have a mind to. Instead I use the short trip to grab a little shut-eye.

Power napping doesn’t usually work for me. If I nod off for ten minutes during sunlight hours, I’m groggy for the rest of the day. But in this instance I have no choice. In spite of the few hours’ sleep in the apartment, I am so exhausted it feels like my eyes are bleeding.

Daniel McEvoy is not as young as he used to be.

True as God.

Deacon is driving faster than she should, drawing attention to herself, but I don’t mind. All the bouncing is rocking me to sleep. Even the drone of her voice, stringing together long and complicated litanies of swear words, is soothing.

I slide down on the back seat, cradling my head in the safety belt, which smells of marijuana. My thoughts are just dissolving into dreams when Macey Barrett’s phone rings in my pocket.

The damn thing is leaking radiation into my ear before I think to check caller ID.

‘Hmmph?’ I blurt sleepily.

‘You bloody AWOL asshole.’

‘Hmmph?’ I say again, not sure what’s going on exactly. The military term messing with my reality.

‘Are you stoned, you prick? I warned you about that.’

‘No. Not stoned, Major. Just dog tired.’

The voice is not happy with this. ‘What the hell did you call me, Barrett? Major? Are you trying to be fucking funny?’

Ghost Zeb decides to help me out. Come on, Dan. Whose cell phone is this? And suddenly I’m awake. This is Barrett’s phone, and that’s obviously Irish Mike on the other end.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’s it. I’m trying to be funny, as per usual, Mikey boy.’

‘Mikey boy! Mikey boy?’

‘Too much intimacy? We’re not that close, I take it.’

Silence for a moment, then, ‘Who the hell is this? Put Macey on.’

Deacon clicks her fingers to attract my attention.

‘Here we go,’ she says, all business, as though we’re off to meet our accountant.

I glance out the window. The Brass Ring is closed for business at this ungodly time of the morning, but I bet there’ll be business going on inside just the same. I remember Faber’s Benz from the previous day’s stakeout and see it parked across the road, which pretty much confirms we came to the right place.

‘Hello!’ shouts Irish Mike. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me, your close associate,’ I reply deadpan, hoping the FBI are listening. ‘What do you want to talk about, Mike? The murders, the drugs or the prostitution?’

Irish Mike is suddenly sweetness itself. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister. Actually, I’m betting this is a wrong number.’

‘Nooo,’ I say. ‘I recognise your number, Michael Madden. I put you on my speed dial when we were in Brooklyn, setting up the cocaine pipeline. Remember?’

Irish Mike hangs up.

The Brass Ring has doormen to stop undesirables getting in, whereas Slotz has doormen to eject the undesirables as soon as they’ve blown their wad. It’s hard to understand why a man like Jaryd Faber would spend five seconds in Vic’s seedy den when he’s obviously top dog in this place.

Maybe I’ll ask him before I shoot him.

The club is locked down tighter than a nuclear bunker during the zombie riots the media seems to feel are more or less inevitable, with steel blinds rolled down over the door and windows and not one but two alarm boxes bolted to the wall.

Deacon puts the police mobile in neutral and we spend a quiet moment sizing up the joint. While we are sizing up, I wedge my bundles of cash down behind the cruiser’s back seat. It would prey on my immortal soul if Faber shot me and stole my money.

‘Pretty impregnable,’ Ronelle admits finally. ‘I don’t know if we can take this place down.’

‘Not going through the front door. But they’re not going through the front door, not with a bleeding cop in the back seat.’

Deacon nods slowly. Some of her gusto has drained away. Maybe the truth of this situation is dawning on her, i.e. she’s chasing a wounded officer into a fortified club with only a murder suspect for backup. The uncomplicated days of being a detective must seem like a rosy dream.

‘Okay, so we go around back.’

‘We? I really think now is the time for you to call the cavalry. Faber will soon have a dying cop in there, if he hasn’t got one already. Nobody will believe a word he says. With any luck, he’ll get himself killed during the raid.’

Deacon pouts stubbornly. ‘No. The first thing Faber will do when he hears a siren is put the final nail in Goran’s coffin. And when I say nail I mean bullet and when I say coffin I mean head. I need to wrap this up myself.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘I thought you had a stake in this. Didn’t this asshole kill your girlfriend?’

This is true, and I had pushed it to the back of my mind, but even a reference to Connie sets my blood boiling.

‘Okay. We go around back. But let me have the shotgun.’

‘Not happening.’

I hold up the little Cobra .32. ‘I am not entering a building with this toy. I can barely get my finger through the trigger guard.’

We glare at each other like kids with trading cards until Deacon makes an offer.

‘I’ve got a blade.’

‘Good for you. Why don’t you throw it at the men with guns?’

‘I’ll take the Cobra and the pump. You take my Smith and Wesson.’

‘Any clips?’

‘Two on the holster.’

This is not a bad deal. ‘What about the blade? You going to use it?’

Deacon rolls her eyes, pulling an ivory-handled flick knife from its home behind the sun visor.

‘Anything else, McEvoy? You want my brassiere too?’

I mull this over. ‘What size are the cups?’

There’s only one obvious way around back, and that’s down the same alley where Deacon put half a dozen bullets into her partner. Ronelle moves quickly, keeping her eyes off the crushed bum-shack, picking her way through the black pennies of blood.

Then she changes her strategy, returns to the shack, pulls her gun and acts out the shooting again in total silence.

‘I’m dealing with it,’ she explains grudgingly, due to the fact that I’m looking over her shoulder. ‘By doing it again I dilute the act, making it less powerful.’

‘Ah,’ I say. ‘Freud?’

‘John Wayne Gacy.’

I must look shocked, because Deacon half grins. ‘Kidding. Dr Phil.’

‘Okay. That’s much better. I bet you wish you were diluting the act with shoes on.’

Deacon nods. ‘Dr Phil didn’t mention that.’

There is a small parking lot at the rear of the club which services three or four service entrances for adjacent or opposite businesses. I spot two restaurants and a pet shop that is receiving a shipment of canaries. The little birds sing when their crates are moved. A cacophony of shrill panic.

‘That’s how I feel,’ I comment to Deacon, strategically exposing a sensitive facet of my character that Dr Simon once assured me would encourage a desire to bond.

‘That’s how you sound too, bitch,’ says the detective, who obviously hasn’t read Simon’s article.

The Brass Ring opens on to the north corner of the parking lot, and there is a guy at the door, checking cars every five seconds, looking like he would dearly love to strangle every one of the canaries.

‘They haven’t arrived yet,’ I deduce, crouching behind a green recycling dumpster that smells like smoothies and reminds me that I haven’t eaten. ‘That guy is nervous. Look at him, sucking on his cigarette like his life depends on it. They’ve called ahead, but they’re not here yet.’

‘I concur, Sherlock,’ says Deacon, squatting beside me. ‘Look at that moron. Jumpier than Bambi. All you doormen got patience issues.’

All us doormen. I bet we look the same to Deacon.

‘I have an idea.’

Deacon does not clap delightedly or otherwise seem impressed. ‘You have an idea? That’s what my ex said after he tore the last rubber in the pack.’

This is one of those times when I do not want to know what happened next. I sulk a little until Deacon’s curiosity gets the better of her.

‘Okay, you enormous baby. Dazzle me.’

So I tell her my plan, which sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but all Deacon says is: ‘Who gets to do the hurtin’?’

Which makes me wonder just how much of a police officer is left inside this woman, which reminds me of an old joke that has no place in the modern world, except perhaps in County Sligo, where they love a good misogynism.

I stamp on the dumpster brake and put my weight on the push bar. It lurches forward easily, lighter than I expected. Plastic and cardboard only. Mostly. The lot is busy now with staff arriving for work and the pet guys humping birds into the store. There are a lot of cars for the doorman to keep his eye on.

The dumpster trundles noisily across the lot, and I graze a parked truck to make sure the doorman picks up on my approach.

Yeah, a big green dumpster, says Zeb. I think he might ‘pick up’ on that.

Oh, you’re back.

I never went away. And I will never go away unless you find me.

The doorman spots my head and shoulders bobbing behind the dumpster.

‘Hey, Trash Man. Get off the fucking ramp, okay? I got a car coming in.’

I shout over the tweeting. ‘Come on, guy. How many times I gotta tell you people. I am a recycling engineer, not a trash man.’

Ghost Zeb chuckles. Nice. Build your character.

Build my character? What are you? Al Pacino now?

‘I could give a fuck what you call yourself. Get off the ramp. Or maybe you want me to tear one of your ears off.’

‘That’s a real specific threat,’ I say, trundling closer. ‘Sounds like you might actually do that.’

Doorman is proud. ‘That’s my thing. Specific threats. People don’t believe the vague stuff, but you go specific on their asses, then it’s a whole different thing.’

I stamp on the dumpster brake so it doesn’t slide back down the ramp.

‘I get it. Specific like I’m gonna open this lid and a big pissedoff cop is gonna put your lights out with the butt of her shotgun.’

Doorman chews this over. ‘That’s a little bit overkill. You know. Too much information. By the time I get through digesting that, shit is long over.’

‘Pre-cisely,’ I say in my Moriarty voice.

‘Huh?’ says Doorman.

‘Private joke,’ I say, then pull the lever.

Deacon pops up and puts Doorman’s lights out with the butt of her shotgun.

So now Doorman is in the dumpster with Deacon and I’m the new doorman. When they come with Goran, me and Deacon are going to take the car. Simple as that. Two of us, ready for action. Maximum four of them, not expecting trouble. It should be stressful, but easy.

Unless someone comes to check on you, says Ghost Zeb, ever the pessimist.

Okay. There is that.

And so long as Faber is not in the car. He knows your face.

Point taken. Now can you let me watch the lot?

And let’s not forget the possibility that Goran called someone else, not Faber. You could be in the wrong part of town.

This is a depressing thought and more plausible than Hairy Hands and Goran actually turning up here.

The doorway is a pretty typical delivery entrance, set atop a concrete ramp and flanked by reinforced double doors. From the corridor behind emanate various kitchen sounds and smells as the staff get the food started for the lunch trade, and from somewhere in the bowels comes the dull thump thump of a dance track’s bass line. A big screen over the bar, I’m guessing. A couple of kitchen workers pass me with barely a grunt, shoulders hunched against the chill, cigarette smoke trailing behind them like morning mist.

A black Benz with smoked passenger windows pulls into the lot doing about thirty m.p.h. more than it should be. The car whacks its underside on the ramp, shunting the dumpster across the asphalt. I see Hairy Hands gripping the passenger dash.

The dumpster’s wheels snag on the kerb, sending Doorman and Deacon flying through the air like a couple of superheroes. I swear Deacon manages to throw me a recriminating look before she crashes through the windscreen of a parked Chevy. Doorman lands nice and neat in the rear of the pet van, sending out an oomph of yellow canaries.

I am stunned. So much for stressful but easy. Canaries? Come on. Are there cameras rolling somewhere?

My great plan is completely blown. The car was supposed to stop short of the ramp, because of the great big green dumpster blocking the entrance. Then Goran’s rescuers/abductors would be forced to either move the dumpster or carry their wounded cop to the club door. While they were thus engaged, Deacon would do her hellcat jack-in-the-box bit and I would come in from the flank.

Now, however, Deacon is folded into the front seat of a Chevy and there are four big men getting out of Hairy Hands’ car.

Think, soldier. Improvise.

The lot is in chaos now. Screeching birds everywhere, flapping and launching salvoes of shite. A couple of pet shop guys with nets, calling to the canaries, like birds speak English. Car alarms screeching. Big men shouting at each other.

And then here I am, standing like a stone pillar.

Move. Save Deacon at least.

I must admit, it does cross my mind to fade into the background and save myself much heartache and possibly ballache too, but the notion fades fast and I find myself drawing the Smith and Wesson and sizing up the competition.

Drop Hairy Hands first, I reckon. He was the one who rescued Goran and he gets to sit in front. Plus he has the most expensive sunglasses. Alpha male without a doubt.

I put a shot into Hairy Hands’ elbow. An accident. I was aiming for the shoulder, but this gun is new to me. The elbow is gonna take years to heal up. Maybe later I’ll light a candle for this guy. For now I have his two friends to worry about. In about a second Hairy Hands’ buddies are going to figure out that I am not the house doorman, maybe half a second if they’re not as stupid as they look.

I get a couple of steps down the ramp when I feel twin jabs in my neck. Either I’ve been bitten by the world’s smallest vampire, or those jabs were the darts from an electric stun gun.

High voltage, sings Ghost Zeb. Rock and roll.

Then fifty thousand volts shoot down my spine and send me jittering down that ramp like a monkey with rock and roll in his soul.

AC/DC, I think. ‘Highway to Hell’.

Too easy.

There’s bacon frying somewhere. I can hear it popping in the pan. It’s a cruel thing to fry bacon near a man and not let him taste it. I swear I can smell salsa too, or something tangy, and I am so goddamn hungry.

Garibaldi biscuits. The French soldiers at the off-base observation posts always had Garibaldi biscuits. They charged outrageous prices for them, but I generally paid. Those guys had the best field rations. Stew, lasagne, casserole, topped off with a cool Gitane. I can smell all of those dishes now, and I hang around on the fringe of alertness savouring the memories.

Eventually the dreams evaporate and I come back into consciousness on the tail end of the notion I went out on.

‘Vampire!’ I shout, straining to jump out of the chair I am taped to.

‘Kee-rist almighty,’ says a familiar annoying voice. ‘Vampire? That Taser must have scrambled your brain, fella.’

I’m awake now but I feel like a brittle husk, as if the stun gun hollowed me out. I cough and spit out what feels like a lump of coal. I’m surprised not to be breathing fire. Faber is bent over, hands on knees, two feet away.

‘Faber, you prick.’

‘You know me, cop? Do I know you?’

My eyes are heavy and full of sand, but I force myself to blink until my surroundings sharpen up.

I’m in a kitchen. High-class place, all stainless steel and marble worktops. There’s bacon in the pan. Thank God. That means I’m not having a stroke. My weapons are gone and in spite of the situation I muster a little self-congratulation for stashing my cash.

‘Faber. I am starving. Honestly, man, those stun guns take it out of a person. You think I could have a BLT? Even just a B?’

This freaks Faber out and he does a little dance, clicking and pointing, trying to remember where he’s seen me. I use the time to absorb as much of the room as I can.

Six people that I can see. Faber dancing his ginger jig, dressed in something else from his wardrobe of anachronisms. Looks like a beige mohair suit with honest-to-God flares and Captain Kirk boots. Who the hell is this guy’s stylist? Engelbert Humperdinck?

Three of his guys are ranged behind him, jackets off, sleeves rolled up ready to do business. One new one, must be the stun gun guy. Deacon out cold, taped to what I presume is a meat gurney like some lab experiment, and Goran shivering on the floor, a pool of her watery blood shining on the concrete.

‘Stop pointing at me, man. Or so help me . . .’

Faber does a two-fingered point to show me who’s in charge. ‘The doorman. Daniel. In Slotz with that hostess.’

‘That’s right. Connie. You remember her?’

Something in my voice makes Faber take a few steps back. He puts one of his guys between him and me.

‘Yeah,’ he smirks. ‘I remember her. Someone punched her ticket, that’s what I hear. You ask me, she got what she deserved.’

I consider throwing a fit. Straining against my bonds and cursing Faber’s seed, breed and generation. But I was once a professional soldier and I know any display would only serve to amuse my captors. So I take a few deep breaths and apparently calm myself.

‘We all get what we deserve, Faber. In the end.’

Faber steps from behind his man’s bulk. ‘Really? You think so, doorman? I deserve my drugs, and because of you I can’t get them.’

Okay. We’re about to get to the nub of this whole affair. There are drugs involved. Goran was obviously involved with these drugs.

Thinking about Goran, I glance over at her. She has stopped shivering and is staring at a point in the air. I’m guessing she sees angels.

‘Your pet cop is in a little discomfort.’

Faber doesn’t even look. ‘Screw her,’ he says, waving dismissively. ‘She ain’t getting up.’

‘You’re a sweet guy, Faber. I bet your wife tells you that every night, after you fill her in on your day. Dead hostesses, bleeding cops and whatnot.’

Faber helps himself to some bacon, patting it down with a square of kitchen paper. ‘What happened, Dan? Did you maybe see a movie where the good guy is a smartass and gets to live?’ He rolls the bacon strip and chews it. ‘That’s not how it works outside your shithole club. Okay, you had the muscle in Slotz, but not here.’

I have to ask, so I say: ‘I gotta ask, Faber. What the hell are you doing in Slotz? This is a nice place you’ve got here. Smells good even in the kitchen. I haven’t seen a single roach, for Chrissakes.’

I’m playing for time a little with this kind of small talk, but I would genuinely like to know. Faber is prepared to give me a moment, so long as he gets to talk about himself.

‘That’s an interesting question, Daniel, and I get where you’re coming from. You look at me, wearing a suit that’s worth more than you make in a year . . .’

I order my face not to react.

‘. . . and you ask yourself, what’s a successful, classy guy like Mister Faber doing in a shithole like Slotz.’

‘That’s pretty much it,’ I say, thinking that maybe I’m overplaying the straight face.

Faber checks the buttons on his waistcoat. ‘The thing is, Doorman Dan, all day I’m eating lobster with judges and drinking Dom with millionaires, and sometimes when the day is done, I feel like getting down and dirty, you know what I mean?’

I nod obligingly. ‘Well, it doesn’t get much more down and dirty than Slotz.’

‘Yessir, Vic is quite a character.’

‘He’s the boss.’

The attorney works up the courage to step closer. ‘Here, I’m the boss!’

This mood swing is driven home with a backhanded slap across my face. I roll my head with the blow, but honestly I needn’t have bothered.

I spit on the floor; no blood, just spit. ‘What do you want from me, Faber? How come I’m not dead?’

‘You’re not dead, Dan, because I need to know what you know,’ says Faber, jiggling his glasses for some reason. Maybe it’s supposed to signify that these spectacles can see into my soul.

‘About what? These drugs that you can’t get?’

‘Keep going, doorman.’

‘Goran used to get your drugs. You two had some kind of scam going.’

‘And we have a winner. Give that prick a cigar.’

I feel utterly screwed. Somehow, up to this point I had managed to nurture a spark of optimism. I’ve been in worse scrapes, that sort of thing. But now, with Goran’s eyes filming and Deacon strapped to the gurney, I am suddenly devastated. The steel and concrete are too real, and the walls are closing in.

‘I don’t know anything, Faber. I’m only here because of the girl.’

Faber teases his Styrofoam hair with greasy fingers. ‘What girl?’

‘Take your pick. You got one dead, one more or less dead and one on the gurney.’

‘What? The stripper? That’s why you put the cops on to me?’

‘She was murdered. And it’s hostess.’

‘You think I killed her?’

‘I know you killed her, arsehole.’

Faber paces the kitchen, counting off points on his fingers. ‘So you tip Deacon about my fight with Connie. I freak because of this deal we have tonight. Deacon gets suspicious and Goran makes an on-the-spot decision to whack her, which doesn’t work out. Then Deacon’s whacking also falls a little short. So Goran calls me to come get her.’

Faber is filling in a lot of blanks here. Obviously at this point he doesn’t care what I know, which is never good. Being filled in is okay when you’re a kid and you need basic information about numbers and poisonous foods and such, but in my world knowledge gets a person dead quicker than anthrax.

‘I had a shootout with your boys right outside the door,’ I point out to the pointer. ‘The cops are going to find us soon.’

Faber is delighted by this observation, presumably because it’s way off base.

‘No cops, my friend. I own a lot of property, including this entire lot and the basement where we picked up Goran.’ The attorney squats to think quietly. ‘No,’ he says finally, knees creaking as he stands. ‘I can’t think of a way out. The three of you need to die. It’s tough about the product, but you know, sometimes you gotta eat losses.’

You can’t just let a statement like this fade without argument. ‘Wait a second, Faber. You have heavies. Can’t they get your product?’

I don’t use words like product or heavies. They sound 2D coming out of my mouth. I half expect them to plop in cardboard letters to the floor.

Faber chuckles like he’s fond of me. ‘What? These dummies? I wouldn’t let them pick up my mail. No offence, guys. This whole thing is too complicated without Goran.’

The dummies shrug amiably. No offence taken.

Faber pats his pockets, looking for something, or maybe he’s just twitchy.

‘This is a big step for me. Cop killing. There’s no going back after this.’

The attorney seems genuinely worried, but I feel it’s more a logistics thing than anything to do with a conscience, which riles me enough to comment:

‘Kill a hostess though, that’s okay. No foul as far as you’re concerned. Connie had two kids, Faber.’

‘Can you get off that, please?’ sighs Faber. ‘You’ve got a couple of minutes left. Use it well. Why not beg for your life?’

‘You beg for yours.’

Faber does this weird little tap dance with a ta-dah at the end, which his dummies actually applaud. This whole fake-rat-pack thing has gotta be unhealthy. Simon would get a couple of chapters out of the guy.

‘Okay, sir,’ says Faber, like I’m in the front row of his show. ‘I would like you to know that I regret the whole Slotz thing. Something about that sleazy shithole dump appeals to me and I never wanted to blot my card there. There’s a lot to be said for getting a cheap blow job at the end of the day without bumping into the mayor. I’m not apologising again, it would be a bit rich in the circumstances, but I do regret the incident. That’s all I’m saying.’

Apologising again? I don’t remember the first time.

‘So, I’m gonna have you three killed. I feel okay about that now, but I suppose I’ll probably lose some sleep over the years.’

A single silenced gunshot pops, like a smoker coughing into his fist. Goran spasms, then lies still.

Faber squeaks with fright, then recovers himself. ‘What the hell?’ he shouts, actually stamping a foot. ‘Never when I’m in the room! How many goddamn times? If I don’t see it, then it didn’t happen.’

It happened. It definitely happened. Maybe Goran was dying, but now she’s dead.

‘Sorry, Mister Faber,’ mumbles the shooter. ‘Won’t do it again.’

Faber’s pointing finger is a fan. ‘I know you won’t. I know you fucking won’t, Wilbur.’

Wilbur? I can’t hold in a chuckle. After all this time, done in by a Wilbur.

Wilbur shoots me a venomous look. ‘Can I kill him first, Mister Faber?’

‘Of course you can. Just wait until . . .’

‘Until you’re outside the door.’

‘Very good. When you hear it click, then fire away. Get rid of the bodies at the smelter.’

Smelter? A word like that makes everything real all of a sudden. So practical.

‘Hey, Faber.’

The attorney waves me away. ‘Too late, Daniel. I have to be in court in an hour. As the judge might say, your appeal is denied.’

Tell him you can get his drugs, suggests Ghost Zeb.

Faber has his hand on the doorknob.

‘I can get your drugs,’ I say. I suppose you could say I blurt the words. A bit more squeak in the promise than I’d like.

The attorney steps slowly away from the door as if a sudden movement could make the knob go click.

‘Say that again, Daniel.’

A fly zapper on the wall sparks as some poor insect gets too close to the light.

‘I said, I can get your product.’

Faber drags a chair across the concrete floor and sits himself down facing me.

‘I suppose it couldn’t hurt to talk.’