Shamrock Alley (2 page)

Francis Deveneau laughed at something the bartender said while absently swatting away a fly with his right hand. Tressa shifted within the fold of Deveneau’s arm, caught John’s eyes, and quickly looked away.

Someone screamed. And then there was the sound of a dozen muted reports going off at once: rushing feet. Or maybe it all happened at the same time—the scream, the footfalls, the breaking of glass behind the bar, the swarming of indecipherable shadows: coming together, dispersing, coming together, dispersing. There was too much noise for him to pick out distinct, individual sounds—words; commands—but his eyes assessed the room quickly, processed the information, told him something had gone terribly wrong.

“Police!” A flood of blue nylon jackets spilled into the room, fanned out along the walls, dipping into the nooks and shadows. A table was quickly overturned. Then another. Then one of the mildewed sofas. People scattered. “Freeze! Freeze! Police!” They struck like insects in a swarm, immediate and unified, only to disperse at the last moment and scatter like fractured light.

“Freeze, goddamn it!”

“Police! Nobody move!”

John hit the wall as if struck by a passing locomotive and wasted no time gathering his legs up around his body and rolling behind the corner edge of the bar. His head struck the side of the bar and bright, oily spirals exploded behind his eyelids. Legs flitted past him; a barstool crashed to the floor. Breathing heavy, his throat suddenly burned. Something flailed beside him. It was Jeffrey Clay, the color abruptly drained from his face, his eyes bugging out to the size of chicken eggs. Clay fumbled with a .38, juggled it as if unaccustomed to its weight and texture.

He waved a hand at Clay. “Shit,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Shit, Jeffrey!”

Jeffrey Clay did not hear him.

They were pegged behind the bar and against the wall. One of the officers shouted for them to stand, and no one moved. The room thundered like a series of amplified heartbeats. Frantically, John surveyed his immediate area for any sign of Francis Deveneau. At first he didn’t see him, but then caught a glimpse of the man edging back across the floor on his hands and knees, his face twisted, his eyes darting. He was crawling backward toward a darkened room. Their eyes met briefly and locked.

Tressa Walker had pressed herself against the doorframe behind the bar, her pale, slender arms wrapped tight around her knees. She was visibly shaking; John thought he could almost hear the sound of her head thudding against the wall, her teeth rattling in her skull …

“Stand up!” one of the cops shouted. The voice was too close. John could sense their presence all around him, thick like humidity. The walls vibrated. “Stand up
slow!”

John slid himself against the wall beside Clay. The guy was shaking. He pushed his hand against Clay’s gun. “Chill out,” he half-whispered. “Chill out. You’re gonna blow your own goddamn foot off. Give me the gun.”

Clay didn’t respond.

“Jeffrey …” He closed his fingers around the grip of Clay’s gun, slid his index finger behind the trigger. “Give it to me …”

Clay snapped from his stupor and jerked the gun away. He was struggling with quick, gasping breaths.

“This is bullshit.” The voice sounded oddly composed. John turned and saw the albino creeping along the floor behind the bar. “This is some shit.” The albino pushed his way in front of Francis Deveneau, his knee striking a bottle of whiskey and sending it in revolutions across the floor. Beside John, Clay leaned his head against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut.

“We got guns!” Clay shouted, his voice breaking.

“Put them down, and stand up!” one of the cops responded.

Clay shook his head, eyes still shut. He chewed at his lower lip. Opened his eyes. “Don’t fucking move!” he shouted, more forceful this time. “None of you fucking move! Just stay the hell where you are!”

The albino’s face was inches from Deveneau’s. He was irate. A purple vein throbbed at his temple; cords stood out in his neck, thick as elevator cables. One white hand shot out and grabbed Deveneau’s collar, shook him, slammed his head against the wall.

“You see this? This fucking
mess?”
He relinquished Deveneau with a single shove and Deveneau’s head rebounded off the wall. “What did I tell you? What did I say from the beginning? What—” And his hand shot out again, this time grabbing Tressa by the hair, yanking her across the floor. “You see this? You see it?”

From the other side of the bar: a smattering of footsteps. In an apprehensive burst, Jeffrey Clay shouted at the cops to stop moving, stop moving, stop goddamn moving, couldn’t they understand English?

The albino gave Tressa’s hair another yank, and the girl shrieked. John heard Clay curse under his breath. The albino righted the girl against his chest, wrapped a pale arm around her neck. Tressa groaned.

“I’m on fucking
probation,”
he said to Deveneau. “You insist on dragging this bitch around and you don’t know who she tips off, where she goes shootin’ her mouth off!
And now this?”
He drove a fist into Deveneau’s face.
“What did I tell you about her?
What did I say? Son of a bitch, we’ve been
through
this! Didn’t I say she’s been talkin’ to the cops? Didn’t I say she was trash, she was goddamn—”

In one fluid motion, the albino withdrew a handgun from the waistband of his pants, swung it around, and pressed the barrel to Tressa’s head. His elbow struck a broom that, in turn, struck a tortoiseshell mirror above the bar. The mirror swiveled and repositioned itself, and in an instant John could see a number of police officers, guns drawn, legs spread, hovering just a few feet beyond the bar in its reflection. They were crude renditions of people: no faces, no details. Just guns with legs.

The albino squeezed the girl’s neck, pushed the gun hard against her temple. His face had flushed red, had erupted into colorful magnolia blossoms.

It was as if some merciful and divine being suddenly reached out and turned the dial to slow. The albino—the gun—the entire room—became suddenly magnified. And in his mind’s eye, John could see the hammer being pulled back, could see that pale, slender finger press back on the trigger, could see the slow revolution of the chamber as a fresh round positioned itself…

John fired two shots from his own gun buried deep within the pocket of his leather coat. The first shot hit the albino in the forehead, killing him with an almost bloodless vigilance. The albino’s face remained expressionless. Only his right arm jerked, the fingers tensing on the trigger of his weapon. An arbitrary shot exploded and ricocheted off the ceiling. The albino fell backward like a piece of driftwood. John’s second shot missed completely and shattered a collection of half-empty liquor bottles beneath the bar.

The police began shooting, returning the fire. John flinched, ducked, grabbed Tressa, and pushed her face against the dirty floor. Above their heads, slugs slammed into the wall, bursting bottles and splintering wood. The enormous wall mirror that ran the length of the bar shattered into a blizzard of knifelike shards of glass. Beneath him, the girl struggled to free herself and sit up. He kept one hand against the top of her head, restricting her movement. One of her arms swung up and cracked him against the side of the face, blurring his vision.

“Here, here!” Deveneau shouted at him, motioning for them to take cover behind him in the darkened room. He, too, was now fumbling with a handgun, sliding rounds into the chamber. “Move it!”

Jeffrey Clay, his face now pinched down the middle, his eyes exaggerated a dozen times over, pushed himself from the wall and staggered to his feet. He held his .38 out with a straight arm, his body half-bent at the shoulders, and screamed loud enough to rupture his throat. In constant motion, like a carnival target on a moving track, Clay stumbled the length of the bar and unloaded his gun in a series of sharp cracks. Flame licked from the muzzle. He fired quickly and perhaps even managed to empty the gun before he was hit. The first slug took him in the shoulder, two more in the chest, one clipped his right cheek … then it all went down too quickly for John to make heads or tails. Jeffrey Clay jerked spastically, pitched forward, and struck the top of the bar like a wet sack of flour. He slid and dropped, staggered, collapsed to the floor. His face had gone powder-white, speckled with the brilliant red of blood, like some piece of postmodern art, and he coughed wetly deep in his throat. Blood frothed from his lips.

From there, everything exploded. There was no order, only chaos … like so many pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle arbitrarily scattered across the floor of an otherwise empty room.

He heard sudden movement from across the room, followed by the unmistakable
chuck-chuck-chuck!
of spent cartridges being discarded. Someone was shrieking. John felt a hand grab his shirt collar. He turned and faced Deveneau, who exhaled sour breath into his face. John withdrew his own gun from his leather jacket, the barrel still smoking.

“You said this shit hole was safe,” he breathed. “What happened?”

“Stick close to me,” Deveneau said. “Come on. Quick.” And he was already up on his feet and crouch-walking through the darkness of the adjoining room. John caught the feeble outline of Tressa being raised and pushed forward.

He followed them into the darkness, his heart rattling in his chest. In the room, their breathing was amplified. Their footfalls echoed. John whispered to Deveneau, and the sound of his voice sustained for several seconds. The room was bigger than he’d initially thought. No, not a room—the back opened up and split off into a series of narrow, cylindrical tunnels.

“This way,” he heard Deveneau mutter.

Behind him, he could hear the distant but fast approaching sounds of the police—their voices and heavy feet. The only other sounds audible were the crunch of his own shoes on the crumbling cement floor, Tressa’s soft moaning, and the almost meditative hiss of running water whispering through the walls all around them.

“Where are we going?” he half-whispered. Deveneau and the girl were some distance ahead of him.

“Out,” Deveneau’s voice floated back to him.

He heard Tressa groan louder. Something wet fell into his face, his eyes, and he stumbled and ran himself along the cold, cinder-block wall. His feet splashed through icy puddles.

“Can’t see—”

They rounded a turn and paused, catching their breath beneath grated light. John looked up and saw what appeared to be a rectangular iron sewer grate roughly fifteen feet above their heads. Water splashed down from it and collected in pools at their feet. Curved metal rungs rose up the side of the wall and led to the surface.

“That the street?”

Deveneau gripped one of the rungs. Runoff splashed across his face and down his back, soaking his shirt. His skin showed through. “Yeah,” Deveneau said, nearly out of breath. “Back alley. I’ll go first and remove the grate. Send her up next; then you go.”

“Move it.” He could hear muffled sounds echoing through the tunnels now. “They’re coming.”

Deveneau climbed the rungs quickly. It took him only a few seconds to reach the top. Water from the street above pattered against his face, his hands, his shoulders. He reached out with one hand and grabbed one of the grate’s bars. His hand shook and he muttered something to himself, slid the palm of his hand down his right pant leg, and grabbed the bar again. After a few forceful pushes, the grate came loose, scraping along the rectangular concrete rim.

John grabbed Tressa’s arm, urged her toward the iron rungs. She looked at him, a mixture of confusion and urgency on her face.

He nodded. “Go. Now.”

She paused, and for a moment he thought her body had simply shut down. Then she turned, grabbed one of the rungs with two hands, and hoisted herself off the ground. Above, Deveneau had slid the grate aside and climbed out onto the street. The silhouette of his head briefly blotted out the sodium lights from the street.

John began to climb as soon as Tressa was out of his way. Behind him, he could clearly hear feet crashing through puddles.

Tressa reached the opening, and Deveneau hoisted her out onto the street. John hit the opening a second later, scrambling for a handhold. Deveneau grabbed his wrist, jerked him upward, then grabbed his other wrist. He scrambled out of the ground and was struck by the cold night air and the overwhelming stink of the East River. They were in an alley between the club and a decrepit tenement, countless reams of trash bags and discarded cardboard boxes positioned in a metropolis of swill all around them.

His head was spinning as he uttered, “They’re still coming.”

“Christ.” Deveneau bent and slid the grate back into place. His hands were shaking badly now.

John spotted a large dumpster on wheels against the side of the tenement. He rushed to it, calling for Deveneau to help him without looking back. They grabbed either end of the dumpster, shook it. It was full and heavy, and the sound of rats buried deep inside caused Deveneau to jump back and utter a pathetic laugh. With his foot, John popped the wheel locks and they began rolling it with surprisingly little effort. John heard police sirens wailing up the street.

Deveneau uttered another choked laugh. “Goddamn unbelievable.” The man’s face was torn between a half-grin and the subtle look of fear.

They positioned the dumpster above the grate, and John locked the wheels.

Deveneau finally exploded with laughter. “Son of a bitch!” He punched at the air. “Son of a
bitch!”

“Come on!” Tressa shouted. The sirens were louder.

Deveneau pushed Tressa and urged her to start running down the alleyway. He paused before following her, acknowledging John with lunatic, enthusiastic eyes. “See you around.” Then he took off after his girl, legs pumping through trash bags, his feet crashing through puddles.

John remained standing in the alley, catching his breath, allowing his mind to wind down.
Eleven
, he thought then.
I
counted eleven cops when that mirror spun around. How could this have happened here tonight?