Jig (48 page)

‘How did my speech go?' Mulhaney asked one of the priests, knowing the answer in advance.

‘It was
choost
delightful. Delightful,' the priest answered, happy to fawn on Mulhaney, who provided the best free cuisine in the whole diocese.

Patrick Cairney stood against the wall. The music was deafening. The hubbub of voices droned in his head relentlessly. He lightly touched the gun he carried inside the waistband of his pants. The problem here was to get Mulhaney alone. It would come. Even if he had to conceal himself inside the building until the party was finally over, the moment would come. He continued to observe Mulhaney, who was now standing face to face with a priest. Both men had clearly drunk too much.

Cairney closed his eyes a moment. He was thinking about Nicholas Linney and trying not to. And those two dead girls. That whole thing in Bridgehampton had been a disaster. No, it was more, disaster was too feeble, too mild for the carnage that had gone on in that house. He remembered Linney's face at the moment when he'd blown half the head off, the torrent of blood, the abrupt searing of the man's scalp, the splinters of bone and gristle that hurled themselves against the wall.

He couldn't let these images plague him now. He couldn't afford to. He wanted to salvage something here in Brooklyn, provided Mulhaney didn't go in for amateur heroics. He didn't look as if he had the kind of
edge
Linney had had. Just the same, Cairney was thankful he was armed. He opened his eyes, remembering Frank Pagan arriving in Bridgehampton and wondering if the Englishman were somewhere nearby now. If so, he'd have to work fast. He'd have to get information out of Mulhaney quickly if he could, which was where the gun would be useful to him.

There was a tension inside him, when what he needed most was cool.
Don't be your own worst enemy
, Finn said once.
A man like Jig has so many real enemies, he doesn't need to make himself one
.

Jock Mulhaney drained his brandy glass and, still shaking outstretched hands, rubbing shoulders, exchanging pleasantries, made his way out along the hallway. His bladder ached from all the drink he'd consumed. He walked quickly in the direction of the toilets. The first one he came to was jammed. Standing room only and an atmosphere heady with urine and cigars. He backed out of it. He went towards the reception area, passing silent desks and covered typewriters and unlit lamps. There was a bathroom here the receptionists used. He liked the notion of skipping inside a woman's john.

Cairney saw the big man slip along the corridor and followed quietly. The band was playing
Kitty of Coleraine
. Mulhaney had paused outside a door marked
LADIES
. He appeared uncertain about whether to go inside or not. Cairney was conscious of the vast expanse of the reception area and the black street beyond the plate-glass windows and the limousines parked out there.
Go inside, Mulhaney. Open the door, go in. Let's be alone a moment, you and I
. The moment he wanted was coming sooner than he'd expected.

Mulhaney stepped into the toilet, noticing a tampon machine and a dispenser of packaged colognes and the fact that all the cubicles were empty, their doors lying open. He moved inside one of the cubicles. He unzipped, emptied his bladder, flushed his cigar butt away. He rinsed his hands, dried them under a hot-air machine which roared inside the empty toilet, and hummed the tune the band was playing.

He was leaning towards the mirror and fluffing his thick hairpiece with a comb when the door swung open behind him. He saw a young man come in. Dark hair, blue suit, well built, unknown to Mulhaney. But with three hundred guests here, how could he know everybody?

‘Good speech,' the young man said.

Mulhaney smiled. He slapped the young man on the back.

‘We've met before,' Mulhaney said. He had a practised way of pretending to remember everyone, as if names were forever on the tip of his tongue. ‘Aren't you with the Syracuse contingent?'

The young man shook his head. ‘I don't think we've ever met.'

‘I never forget a face.' Mulhaney farted very quietly just then, and looked cheerful. ‘Better an empty house than a bad tenant, huh?'

‘Right.' Cairney turned on the cold water faucet full blast but made no move to dip his hand in the stream.

Mulhaney gazed into the fast-running stream of water a second. He was conscious of the way the young man stared at him in the mirror. What was about the intensity in those hard brown eyes that disturbed Mulhaney just then? He turned away from the young man, which was when he felt a circle of pressure against the base of his spine and the warmth of the man's breath upon the back of his neck. Glancing into the mirror, Mulhaney saw the gleam of the pistol pressed into his back. Horrified, he heard himself gasp, felt his body slacken. In his entire lifetime it was the first time anyone had ever pulled a gun on him. How did some fucking mugger find his way inside this place?

‘My inside pocket,' he said. ‘The wallet. Take the whole fucking wallet. There's probably a couple hundred bucks in it.'

The young man jammed the gun hard against the backbone. ‘I'm looking for more than that, Jock,' he said.

Pain brought moisture into Mulhaney's eyes. There was an awful moment here when he felt himself slip into cracks of darkness, saw his own hearse roll through the streets of Brooklyn, heard Father Donovan of All Saints deliver the graveside eulogy in that hollow voice of his –
He was a flawed man, but a good one
. Even imagined the
wake
, for Chrissakes, boiled ham and stale sandwiches curling and flat Guinness and drunks babbling over his open coffin.

‘Jesus Christ,' Mulhaney said. Darkness had become realisation. And realisation brought him a sense of horror.
This young man was The One
.

‘Linney said you took the cash.'

‘Linney?'

‘Don't bluff it out with me, Jock. Just point me to the money.'

‘I don't have it, Linney's a fucking liar.'

The gun went deeper this time. Mulhaney, catching a glimpse of his face in the mirror, barely recognised himself. His big red face had turned pale like a skinless beet boiled in angry water.

‘Where is it?' the young man asked.

‘I told you, I don't know,' and Mulhaney wondered why nobody was looking for him, why his goons weren't stalking the goddam corridors for him right now. God knows, they were paid enough to take care of him.

The pressure of the gun was enormous. Mulhaney thought it would bore a hole in his spine. The young man sighed. ‘I'm tired, Jock. And I don't have a whole lot of time.'

‘I don't know where the money is, I swear it.'

Cairney thought about bringing the gun up, smacking it against Mulhaney's head. Something to underline his seriousness. Some token violence. It was tempting, and he felt pressured, but he didn't do it, didn't like the idea of it. He just kept the pistol riveted to Mulhaney's spine and hoped he wouldn't have to use force.

‘Linney said you took it. Talk to me, Jock. Talk fast. Don't make me hurt you.'

Mulhaney twisted his head around, looked at the young man. It occurred to him that he could play for time here. Sooner or later somebody was going to come looking for him. He could stall, though the hard light in the man's eyes suggested that stalling was a precarious business. But he didn't like the position he was in and he didn't care for being at someone else's mercy, and his pride, that cavernous place where he lived his life, was hurt. And he hadn't scratched his way to the top of the union without having more than his share of sheer Irish pig-headedness.

‘You're not going to walk out of here,' he said, and his voice was stronger now. ‘You're not going to walk away from this, friend. I've got a small army out there. I've got people who take care of me.'

Cairney rammed the pistol deeper into Mulhaney's flesh and the big man moaned. ‘I don't have time for this, Jock. Tell me what I need to know and I'm gone.'

‘Look, Linney's a liar. Linney wouldn't know the truth if it hit him in the goddam eyes. He makes shit up all the goddam time. If he sent you here it was to make a fucking idiot out of you.'

Cairney felt the intensity of fluorescent light against the top of his head. ‘
Where's the money?
' There was a note of desperation in the sound of his question. He didn't like it, didn't like the way he had begun to sound and feel. He know that at any moment somebody was bound to come inside this room, that his time alone with Mulhaney was very limited.

‘I won't ask you again, Jock.'

Mulhaney thought he had seen something in the young man's eyes. A certain indecision. The signs of some inner turmoil. He said, ‘Even if I knew anything, do you honestly think I'd fucking tell
you?
'

Cairney brought the gun up and smacked it against Mulhaney's mouth. Blood flowed out of Big Jock's lips and over the small shamrock he wore in his lapel. The pain Mulhaney felt was more humiliating than insufferable. He lost his balance and went down on his knees. His expensive bridgework, three thousand dollars worth of dental artistry, slid from his mouth and lay cracked on the tiled floor. He reached for it, but Cairney kicked it away, and the pink plate and the gold inlays and the plastic teeth went slithering towards one of the cubicles where it struck the pedestal of a toilet and broke completely apart.

‘Jesus Christ,' Mulhaney muttered.

Cairney was trembling slightly. He felt sweat under his collar. He shoved the gun against Mulhaney's forehead and pressed it hard upon the bone. ‘Talk, Mulhaney. And make it fast.'

Mulhaney, whose vanity was as enormous as his pride, covered his empty mouth with his hand. There were streaks of blood between his fingers. He blurted out his words from behind his hand. ‘Kev Dawson. You're looking for Kevin Dawson. He's the only one who could have taken it. It couldn't have been the Old Man.'

‘The Old Man?'

‘He's been at this game too long to start thieving now,' Mulhaney said. He was conscious of the pistol on his brow. It was a terrible feeling.

‘Tell me about The Old Man, Jock.'

Mulhaney looked down at his blood on the white-tiled floor. ‘The Old Man had nothing to do with this,' he said, and his voice sounded funny to him when he spoke. Without his teeth, the inside of his mouth felt like a stranger's mouth. He'd give this bastard Dawson, but he wasn't about to give him the Old Man immediately. He'd do it in the end, he'd be a damn fool not to, but meantime he'd hand Dawson over gladly. ‘My bet is Kev took some heat from his big brother. There was pressure. Something like that. It had to be politically too tricky for Tommy. The Old Man couldn't have had a goddam thing to do with it.'

As Mulhaney spoke, the toilet door swung open and a middleaged man in a black tuxedo stepped inside from the hallway. He wore a frilly pink shirt and matching cummerbund, into which was tucked a pistol. The man was called Keefe and he was one of Mulhaney's bodyguards, a Union heavy who was paid a hefty fee to protect his boss.

‘Keefe,' Mulhaney cried out.

Keefe, formerly a bouncer in a Las Vegas nightclub, was a tough man but slow. He reached inside his cummerbund for his gun and even as he did so Cairney, possessed with a feeling of inevitability, with a sense of things sliding away from him in a manner he couldn't stop, shot Keefe once through the centre of his chest. The sound of the gun roared in the white-tiled, windowless room. Keefe staggered across the slippery floor, his legs buckling and his hands stretched out in front of him. He collided with a cubicle door and he fell forward against the john. His gun dropped to the floor and slipped across the slick tiles to Mulhaney's feet. Cairney watched Big Jock's hand hover above the gun a moment.

‘Don't,' Cairney said. ‘
Don't even think about it
.'

Jock Mulhaney pulled his hand back to his side. It wasn't worth it. The young guy would shoot him if he even moved an inch towards Keefe's weapon. And Jock had no appetite for violent death.

Cairney kicked the gun away. The music had stopped. The whole building had become quiet. The only sound he registered was Mulhaney's heavy breathing.

Mulhaney said, ‘You got a problem, kid. In about ten seconds three hundred guys are gonna descend on this room.'

Cairney looked at the door. Three hundred guys. The suddenness of silence was unsettling to him. He glanced at Mulhaney, who was still on his knees. Blood ran down from the big man's mouth.

Cairney opened the toilet door a little way. He stared across the reception room. Drawn by the sound of gunfire, men in tuxedoes were emerging slowly from the banquet room. Cairney bit his lower lip. If he acted now, if he moved promptly, he could get out of this toilet and through the reception area to the street before any of the men could reach him.
Provided none of them were armed
. He glanced back at Mulhaney, who was staring at him open-mouthed.

‘Get up on your feet, Jock.'

Mulhaney gripped the rim of the washbasin and hauled himself to a standing position.

‘Now move over here,' Cairney said.

Mulhaney came across the floor.

‘In front of me, Jock. You're about to be useful.'

Cairney pressed his gun into the small of Mulhaney's back and pushed the big man through the door, out into the reception area. Men were still coming down the corridor that opened into the reception room.

‘Tell them, Jock. They move and you're dead. They call the cops and you're history.'

Mulhaney, whose vanity caused him to hold a hand up against his toothless mouth, mumbled. ‘You hear that, you guys?'

Cairney, moving sideways towards the front doors with Mulhaney as a shield, stared at the faces that watched him. Each one had the slightly imbalanced look of a man wrenched suddenly out of inebriation into sobriety. Their eyes bored into him, and Cairney realised he'd never felt quite this exposed before. It didn't matter now. It didn't matter because his anonymity had already been shattered by Frank Pagan. The only important thing was to get out of here in one piece. He felt fragmented, though, as if the whole reason for coming to America had broken and, like smashed glass, lay in shards all about him. He was halfway across the reception room now and none of the watchers had moved and Mulhaney, he knew, wasn't brave enough to try and break away. He was going to get out of here, but he was leaving empty-handed, and the perception depressed him. Finn had entrusted him with a task and he wasn't even
close
to achieving it. Maybe it was luck. Maybe that was it. Maybe he'd been lucky in the past and now that vein had run completely dry. And maybe he wasn't the man Finn thought he was, that all his achievements in the past had been purely fortunate. Jig, the dancer.
Why am I not dancing now?
he wondered. He didn't feel like the man who had assassinated Lord Drumcannon and had blown up Walter Whiteford on a Mayfair street. He didn't feel daring and carefree and composed and cold-blooded. His past actions seemed like those of some other man.