Billingsgate Shoal (36 page)

When I opened my eyes after no second shot, was fired
John was still kneeling. He was looking at the floor right beside
him, dumbfounded. Laura Kincaid was on the floor. She was doing a
horizontal waltz there. She was dying. I couldn't figure out why. I
saw a flicker of movement out of the comer of my eye. Schilling was
gone, rushed out the small doorway that ended in darkness. He'd
killed her, perhaps to take the loot for himself. I looked back at
the woman on the cement floor four feet away. Part of her throat was
missing. It was pale white: fish-belly white. The white that no
healthy skin ever gets.

And then the paper-white rift under her jaw grew
dark. It oozed bright red. The whiteness was from the shock of the
slug as it passed through her flesh, driving all the blood far away
from it. But the, blood came back through the thousands of tiny blood
vessels, and now poured forth faster and faster. There was no big
spurting; no artery had been severed. But I soon heard a sound from
her that will haunt me for the rest of my days. I'd heard it before,
when I was a kid, on an Iowa farm. They had slit a hog's throat, and
beat it with sticks to keep it running around the yard so its heart
would pump all the blood out. And I heard screams coming through the
blood. Underwater screams. Underblood screams.

Laura Kincaid, what was left of her, kicked and
slapped herself around on the cement like a sea turtle at a Caribbean
marketplace. She flapped and flipped, and made ugly noises. She was
nowhere near dead and suffering terribly. The wound in her throat had
cut her windpipe, and she was in enough pain so her jaw was clenched
shut. She breathed through her wound, and screamed and cried through
it too. A huge football-shaped mass of brownish-red froth rose up
from it, bubbling like perked coffee.

It was so ill-fitting for the pretty slim lady I had
met in the big elegant house. It was so—clumsy. So embarrassing. In
a grotesque way it was as if she had just stumbled at a debutante
ball, or thrown up on somebody's priceless Nahin rug.

"Oh pardon me," her soul seemed to be
saying, 'I'm sooo sorry—you see, I cannot help it. I'm dying. .
.and it hurts and there's nothing I can do."

She swung her head, now pale gray-blue, back and
forth hard against the cement floor. Then she settled down and
grabbed at herself all over with her hands, whimpering. She was doing
a slow, sad side stroke into eternity.

Then they came.

I didn't notice either of them until I smelled the
faint sweet reek of whiskey.

The taller one stepped forth with his pistol. He
aimed, at the thrashing woman. Much as I hated her, I would be glad
when he ended it.

His partner ran over to the small doorway where Jim
Schilling had disappeared. He flung his head snakelike around the
edge for a millisecond, then flung it back inside. I saw his arm
flicker, and heard a tremendous crashing boom, then two more. The
noise was so loud I could feel it in my chest. His right hand held a
huge revolver in stainless steel. He held it deftly, cradled it
casually as if it were a water pistol. I didn't like these guys at
all.

The man stayed put in the doorway, glancing back at
the three and a half of us.

The big man nearest me wore a navy blue pea coat. His
face was scary because it was a caricature of a face, one you might
find on a totem pole. The brown ski mask was decorated in coarse,
wide-weave patterns that bespoke Navaho, Aztec, Eskimo—the American
aborigines in general. His partner's mask was pure dark wool, a
balaclava helmet that covered the entire face except for an eye slit.
He looked like a medieval executioner. In fact he was.

The big man breathed heavily, odoriferously, and
stared down at the thrashing form. He heard the thick bubbling from
the tom throat, the muted scrape of skin and flesh on rough cement.

"For God's sake, man," whispered John.

The big man glanced quickly at John, as if
temporarily distracted, then turned his gaze back to the woman on the
floor.

"Thank your stars we've saved you,
O'Shaughnessey. Say a prayer of thanks and be done with it. You know
who I am. If you interfere now I'll put you away, same's we put the
coont here away."

He aimed the pistol at Laura Kincaid again and I
thought he was going to end it.

But he didn't. He seemed to enjoy watching her.

"Brian McGooey" he said to her.

I don't think she heard him.

"Michael Tomlins," he said.

Nothing but more of the same.

"Patrick Cahill ."

Nothing much at all now.

"Bernard Upshaw; " said the other, "and
Eamon Dmmele, Sheila Coone, Aden Berry—"

PTOU!

The man fired, and Laura Kincaid's left kneecap
exploded. The men in ski masks leaned over her as she thrashed in the
immense pain of it. A great dark wet stain spreadin her crotch.
Still, they did not put her away. The room and the world rocked by
me. I saw John's face dimly in the background. It had a look of
profound sorrow.

Laura Kincaid had but a few seconds; she kept up her
pitiable, spastic, and partnerless dance until, with a grunt, the
taller one pushed his foot into her twitching form and shoved it into
the hole.

"And now," he said turning in my direction,
"who in blazes might you be?"
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"I ASKED YOU a question."

"Charles Adams, M.D. I've been hunting this
woman, Laura Kincaid, because I think she and her associates killed a
friend of mine."

"Hmmmph! Well yer not alone in that department,
Doctor, we can tell you. The question is, shall we have to kill you?"

"No,"' said John.

"And why not, assuming of course a couple of
brigands like ourselves should be listening to you, O'Shaughnessey?"

"He's not one of 'em, I'll swear it,"
replied John, rising to his feet.

The second thug moved back over to the doorway again.

"Come on!" he whispered hoarsely. "There's
two more upstairs we didn't get; let's go out this way."

"Did he have a gun?" the big man asked
John.

"Not when he ran out, I don't think. But knowing
him, he probably has one by this time, and you bloody well don't want
to be on the receiving end of it either. It'll hit you, tear you in
pieces before you hear it."

There was a faint stirring above us. I heard what
sounded like a slamming of a door.

"That's probably Hartzos returning," I
said.

"Naw. Hartzos is no longer among the living."

"We've got to move now" said Thug Number
Two.

Almost as these words were spoken all of us heard the
sound of feet on the metal stairway. From the noise, there was more
than one person on them.

"Where does that tunnel lead?" the big man
asked John.

"It's an old cartway back to the main factory
building. It goes underneath ground level."

"Then that's for us. Is he in there waiting?"

"I would imagine he's as far away as possible by
now, and still moving."

"Just so, you two will go first." He
prodded the gun in our direction. "Move," he said.

O'Shaughnessey saw the Walther on the floor and
started for it, but the big man saw him and kicked the pistol into
the hole.

O'Shaughnessey and I went through the narrow doorway.
It was black on the other side. I felt myself beginning to trip on
something very hard raised up about two inches. A rail. Then another
rail. Then a brick wall. It was a narrow-gauge railway. . . a
miniature railroad in which carts ran, very reminiscent of the type
used in old mines. O'Shaughnessey seemed to know his way about, and
lost no time in turning to his left and moving quickly along between
the rails. I followed. Had I any choice? Thug Number One had his
silenced Luger pointed at my kidneys. If Schilling were indeed
waiting for us, we'd go down first. It was just tough luck. Of course
after what I'd been through I could scarcely gripe.

Still I found it excruciating to walk. Until the past
few minutes the fear and shock had held the pain at bay. But now I
HURT. I hurt very, very much. I had received two hard kicks to my
Sport Section and scores to my belly and back. My right testicle was
aflame. I had taken Laura Kincaid's belly kicks well because I had
managed to tighten my stomach muscles just as the blows landed. But
my back had no such protection. I would probably piss blood for a
week or two if I were lucky and it was nothing more serious than a
bruised kidney.

"Coont!" growled Thug Number One as he
gazed back into the dreary chamber before joining us in the dark
tunnel. I

"Yah
coont
yah!"

"I entirely agree," I murmured, and felt
the encouraging prod of the big man's Luger.

We walked quite fast, knowing that remnants of the
Kincaid Schilling staff were at our heels. I heard a grunt of pain in
front of me, and a metallic screaking. O'Shaughnessey had bumped up
against an old cart. It was a low wooden platform used to haul spools
of wire and cord, but had a metal handle like a supermarket cart
running along the back side, and he had run into it, knocking his
breath away. When Number One Thug caught up with it and saw—with
his flashlight—that the front end of the carriage was piled with
old spools, he directed us to push it along the rails. Thus, under
this crude armor, we advanced, with the two of them—well protected
from Schilling should he be lying in wait—bringing up the rear. But
as I leaned into the load I saw movement behind me. Number Two Thug
whirled around, his leather coat flaps swinging outward with the
spin. A yellowish rectangle of light showed behind us where the
doorway was being opened.

A dark figure blocked out a large part of the
rectangle. I turned my head still farther back, and could see he was
flapping his arms up, as if directing a concerto. His elbows stuck
out to the side. Funny looking. No it wasn't funny. He was aiming a
pistol with both hands. I dropped to one knee and spun over until the
wall stopped me.

"Down, everybody!" I said.

I saw two things at once: the orange-white burst of
flame from the dark figure's chest, and that same figure flung
backward against the opened door as if hit by an express train. Some
recoil his pistol must've had. But no—

The figure slumped down like a dishrag, and my ears
were splitting, bursting with pain. The retort from Number Two Thug's
pistol thudded into my chest cavity like a funny heartbeat. It must
have been a .44 magnum. In the closeness of the tunnel the noise was
unbearable.

And was he a pistol shot.

Four years at the range with small-bore weapons and I
thought I was pretty damn good, But this guy, whoever he was, was in
another league entirely. I heard John's heavy breathing next to me. I
leaned forward close as I dared and asked him the question
sotto
voce
:

"Who are these guys?"

"Shhhhhh! IRA Provos. The best they've got,
kiddo. They'll kill us in a wink if we give them any trouble. Now
mind, do what I do—"

"Who are you?"

"I am Stephen O'Shaughnessey of the Garda
Siochana, the Irish National Police. 'John' is a pseudonym."

"Uh, which Ireland? The south?"

There was a pregnant pause, during which I heard a
very distinct sigh of disgust and a slight smacking of lips which
told me that my question had not registered favorably with the law
officer. I felt an iron grip on my upper arm, and the growly grunt of
his voice extremely close to my head. "There is only one
Ireland, Doctor Adams. The Repooblic of Ireland. If you learn nothing
else out of all this shite, let it be that. Yah
twit!
"
He shoved me away, hard.

"Move! Move on with yah!" called a hoarse
whisper, and we began again to push the cart. No, said Number One, it
was too slow. Leave it to slow the others down. We crept around it
and jog-walked the rest of the way through the transport tunnel, the
two thugs (and one, at least, a superb shot with a big-bore handgun)
at our heels., We kept up the pace until I saw a faint rectangular
square of very pale blackish gray. Two seconds later, we were
emerging from the tunnel, and looking up a gradual incline of old
granite cobblestone.

The two men stood directly behind us.

"Why don't you two lads go on up and see if it's
safe?" demanded Number One. So we did. I had it in mind to
spring like hell as soon as I reached the top. It was still too dark
to see well. After all I'd been through, all I wanted was to run,
find the fence (any fence), and scale the sombitch.

"Up yah go now! Goddamn me, I say!" said
the Number One Thug in a very persuasive tone. "I've got six
rounds left and will kill the both of you. The only sound they'll be
ahearin' is an ounce of lead squirtin' through yer guts like a jet
plane. Now up!"

We reached the top of the ramp and didn't get our
heads taken off. Gee, tonight was my lucky night. I could see that it
was darker to the sides than it was straight above me. We were in one
of the big courtyards that opened off the main factory roadway. In a
while the other two came up behind us, and we moved on. I assumed the
Provos wanted out of Cordage Park as badly as I did, perhaps to slink
back to their car and skedaddle. Plymouth was only minutes away from
Southie, where an Irishman down on his luck could find a haven for as
long as he needed it. And then there was Charlestown. Talk about
rough. I believe I would rather parade around in Harlem on a Saturday
night dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit than hang around some sections
of Charlestown. If they elected to hide there until this thing blew
over nobody could pry them out. Not even the Marine Corps.