The Bloomsday Dead (22 page)

“Sorry, Mr. O’Neill,” Tim said.

“He came into my holy of holies and shoved a .38 in my face. You can imagine how surprised I was. I thought he was bloody dead already.”

“Really sorry, Mr. O’Neill.”

“I thought Sammy was going to take care of him at that boat? Eh? Was that not the plan? And it turns out Sammy did not take care of him at the boat?” O’Neill asked.

“Sammy’s dead, Mr. O’Neill, the whole thing was a disaster. Jimmy fired the RPG at a peeler foot patrol. There were injuries. I don’t know what went down. But the cops killed Sammy,” Tim said.

“Hey, where to?” Mikhail asked from the front.

“Just drive around for the moment, eventually we’ll have to take him out to the country,” O’Neill said.

Mikhail nodded.

“Tell me what happened,” O’Neill demanded.

“It’s not that clear yet but apparently Jimmy fired the RPG at him on the boat at the same time a foot patrol was coming. I suppose Jimmy thought he could get him and get away before the peelers got involved,” Tim explained.

“Jesus Christ. And you’re telling me there were casualties?” O’Neill asked. “Did anybody die?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tim responded.

“Holy Mary. Where’s Jimmy now?”

“He’s in custody.”

“Oh for Godsake, that’s just terrific,” O’Neill said.

We drove in silence for a moment.

“What do we do about Forsythe?” Tim asked.

“Next time Seamus Deasey asks me to help him out, somebody remind me that wee shite is more trouble than he’s worth. Have to see about replacing him,” O’Neill said almost to himself.

“Aye, but what do we do about Forsythe?” the goon persisted.

“Oh, I suppose we have to top him now, it’s the very least we can do after this bollocks,” O’Neill said.

“Aye, he’s a rat anyway,” Tim said.

“Aye, he is too, he is too,” O’Neill said reflectively.

“Take us out of town, the usual spot,” he told Mikhail, and he leaned back to us.

“Aye, lads, better get this over with.”

I writhed, but it was useless. Tim was kneeling on my left arm. And the others had me locked to the floor. The only way I was getting out of this was to talk my way out. I cleared my head fast. I stopped struggling, bit the handkerchief, partially swallowed it, gagged, and managed to puke it out of my mouth.

“O’Neill, listen to me. This will start a mob war with America. I’m working for Bridget Callaghan now, I’m trying to find her wee girl. You don’t want her pissed off at you, do you?” I screamed.

“You say you’re working for Bridget Callaghan?” O’Neill asked, surprised.

“Yeah, ask Seamus, I’m working for her. I’m looking for her daughter. Ask Seamus if you don’t believe me. That’s what this is all about.”

“Seamus wants you dead. Bridget Callaghan wants you dead. We’ll be doing everyone a favor,” O’Neill said.

“No fucking way, you haven’t got the latest news. Bridget does not want me dead. I’m working for her now. If you kill me, Bridget will make sure you all pay a very heavy price.”

O’Neill shrugged in the front seat, took off his bifocals, cleaned them.

“Ach, they’ll never find you, will they, Tim?”

“No, sir,” Tim said, placing the handkerchief back in my mouth and attempting to squeeze my jaw shut with his big hands.

“How will we do it, Mr. O’Neill, cut his fucking throat?”

“No, no, no, I don’t want blood all over the van, and you can put your guns away. I just bought this wee number and I got to move the grandkids’ play box on Saturday. I do not want blood or holes in the bodywork.”

“So what do we do?” Tim asked.

“Throw one of them plastic bags over his head. Suffocate him. Anybody ever seen someone die like that? It’s very instructive. Completely bloodless. Very efficient way to do someone if you do it right.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tim said.

“There’s some rubber bands back there, you can use those to keep it tight, ok?” O’Neill said.

Tim reached behind him and the other two lads gave him one of the bags. With his hands off my mouth, I could just about speak.

“Now wait just a goddamn minute, I haven’t done a thing to any of you people, this is a huge mistake,” I said.

O’Neill turned around to face me.

“Make your peace, Forsythe, it’ll be easier on yourself. Just get composed, this doesn’t have to be ugly for anyone. We all have to go sometime and it’s the manner of our death that tells us whether we have dignity or not.”

“Nice speech, but you’re not killing me,” I said, and struggled as hard as I could against the three men. But they were over seven hundred pounds of deadweight. I had no chance.

“You’re making a huge mistake. I’m the only one that can bring that girl back alive. Bridget will have you all killed. She’ll have every one of you executed, you don’t know the depths to which she—”

They slipped a clear plastic bag over my head and fastened it around my neck with a thick rubber band. Almost immediately I found that I was having difficulty breathing.

I tried to bite the bag, but it was thick, heavy-duty material. I tried to claw Tim with my fingernails, but he simply adjusted his weight so that he was sitting on my wrist rather than my hand.

Within seconds all the good air in the bag was gone.

“Help,” I called out. “Help me, please.”

The three men looking at me through the clear plastic. The inside of the bag filling with condensed water vapor from my lungs. My temples throbbing. My eyes stinging.

Not this way, not now. No. Please. I have so much to do.

I bit at the bag, thrashed my legs and arms. Screamed. I lifted my head off the van floor and banged it, trying to create any kind of rip in the plastic. Tim simply forced my head down with his fist.

Tim’s hand and the wet plastic on my forehead—the slimy touch of death.

The bag full of CO2 now. The oxygen had been burned away. I panic-breathed, dragged the poison down into my lungs. My throat burned and I breathed even deeper. In a few seconds the lack of oxygen in my brain would force me into a blackout and that would be the— All three men clattered down on top of me.

A pocket at the bottom of the bag.

I sucked air.

A siren.

Something was happening. The car violently skewed to the left and then to the right, accelerated.

I managed to free a hand. There was a huge crash and I was smashed against the roof of the van, just missing one of those ugly hooks. Suspended for a moment in free fall, I ripped the bag off my face as the van turned over on its side and tumbled onto its roof before the windshield smashed, the ceiling buckled, and the air bags inflated in the front seat.

We were still moving upside down, me and the three goons tangled up together. I elbowed the nearest one in the eye, sticking my elbow deep in the socket. I grabbed his fat head in my two hands and banged it into the side of the van. I reached inside his coat and pulled out an Uzi machine pistol.

The van continued skidding on its roof for a second before smashing into a wall. Tim thumped into one of the meat hooks, his flesh neatly skewered through the neck, the other two goons tumbled into the rear doors.

I dropped the gun, regrabbed it, braced myself.

The van stopped spinning and came to a dead halt.

I got into a half crouch, took the safety off the Uzi, made sure the magazine was slammed in properly, and machine-gunned all three of them, riddling them with bullets, for a blast of about three seconds. Two were unconscious, but the third put his hands up defensively. I shot through his palms and pumped a dozen rounds into his neck and head.

I Uzied the rear doors, kicked them open, and jumped outside.

We were still in Belfast, on a blasted piece of waste ground, which was what was left of the projects near the old markets district. The tenements had been demolished and were being replaced with neat semidetached houses. The van was upside down and the cab had a police Land Rover wedged into the side of it, the Land Rover lying on its side with the wheels spinning. Mikhail’s mangled body cut in two, his legs in the van and his torso on the Land Rover’s windshield.

I didn’t have much time. The cops would be out of there just as soon as they recovered and got those big armor-plated rear doors open.

I ran to the front of the van, saw that O’Neill was bleeding from a scalp wound but very much alive. I pointed the Uzi at him.

“You’re coming with me, you old bastard,” I said.

I dragged him out of the van, ran, and practically carried him away from the scene before the peelers got out and shot or lifted the both of us.

I let it drip onto my tongue.

Where were we?

Safe.

An alley behind the Peace Line between two rows of new houses. The Peace Line, a twenty-foot-high wall that separated the Protestant housing development from the Catholic one.

No one around here, but they were close and they were coming.

Cops starting to mill about the crime scene. A helicopter flying above us. I had about five minutes to question the old man. We were three hundred yards away on the other side of a playground from where the police Land Rover had rammed the van. Already there were two other cop Land Rovers there with a forensic team.

We’d gotten away so fast the peelers hadn’t seen us. But it was standard cop procedure to fan out from the scene of a violent incident. Soon there would be dozens of constables walking three-sixty in every direction, looking for witnesses. We’d have to move on if we didn’t want to get arrested. Like I say, five, ten minutes tops.

But that was ok.

All I needed was a quick debrief with O’Neill and then I’d pop the old git and make a run for it.

O’Neill was slumped against a wall. Breathing hard, dabbing at his scalp. Let him bleed, let him fucking hemorrhage. But be damn quick about it. The helicopter might spot us and sooner or later the police would realize that someone had run. I needn’t worry about eyewit-nesses, at least, there’d been no one about. (Even if there had, nobody would have seen a thing.)

O’Neill coughed and spat blood.

Didn’t look like an internal wound, just a gash in the mouth.

I was still holding the Uzi but I felt uncomfortable with that bulky weapon, so I searched O’Neill, removed my .38, the bag of shells, the money he’d taken from me, and all his dough too. I wiped the Uzi clean of prints and threw it over the Peace Line.

“Open your eyes,” I said.

O’Neill looked at me.

“If you’re going to kill me, just fucking kill me,” he said.

“Patience, Body, patience; we don’t have a lot of time, those pigs are going to be over in a minute and we want to be gone.”

“You’re not going to top me?”

“I haven’t decided. O’Neill, listen, I want you to answer some questions for me, I don’t want you to piss me about,” I said.

O’Neill sat up.

“There’s some pills in my trouser pocket, can I get them? For my angina.”

“Get your pills, but hurry up.”

O’Neill reached into his pocket, pulled out a bottle of morphine pills, and chucked a couple into his mouth.

“I’ll take a few of them too,” I said, and pocketed a couple. I was in a hell of a lot of pain myself. O’Neill breathed deep and seemed a little better now.

“Ok, what do you want to know?”

“I want to know why you’ve been trying to kill me since I landed in Dublin,” I said.

He looked puzzled.

“I haven’t been trying to kill you since you landed in Dublin.”

“You bloody have. Your wee pal Jimmy told me you authorized the RPG attack on me. You said so yourself in the van.”

“I did. But I didn’t try to get you in Dublin,” O’Neill said.

“Why did you try to kill me at the boat?”

“You fucked with one of my boys. Seamus Deasey. You embarrassed him in front of his men, you hit him, you came into his place of business and you shot Eliot Mulroony, who was his right-hand man. I couldn’t let you get away with that. Seamus was furious. He told me where you were going to be and I told him I’d take care of it.”

“You’re lying to me. You sent that guy to the airport and the other guy in the brothel. You tried to get me twice in Dublin.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did. I talked to Moran and he told me that it wasn’t him. I looked him right in the eye and he said it wasn’t him.”

“Listen, Michael, can I call you Michael? The first time I heard you were in the bloody country was this afternoon when that eejit Deasey calls me gurning that you’ve humiliated him and he wants you dead.”