Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online Page A

says.
    You don’t reply. But in the silence you agree and look out of the window.

2: DOWNTOWN
     
    T
      hat should have been it. The night should have ended there—but it didn’t. Instead it got dragged out into a jazz of drink and
craic
and bars and cars. I was asleep and abed only about forty minutes when they came calling in their transport. A big yellow van that they must have borrowed. Guy called Marley driving, whom I’d never previously encountered and after that evening did not meet again until the night, several months later in real time and an epoch in psychological time, when I put a screwdriver through his throat and he went down into the embrace of the soft Westchester snow without even a whimper.
    Even though I was knackered it was deemed necessary that I be got up and forced to join in the jollity, for Darkey, when he was on a bender or even a mild celebration, was like a Jack ashore, everyone possible was to be brought within the compass of his merriment. And I, after all, was the star of the evening or so they all kept saying. Sunshine, Big Bob, and Darkey had arrived at the Four Provinces—after their important chin wag—not too long after I’d buggered off home following our own little escapade. Darkey and Big Bob had been drinking, so Sunshine was driving them back (though Marley was doing the actual driving). They’d all ended up in the lounge bar of the Four P. intercepting Scotchy and Fergal just as they were belting one for the road. They were both the worse for drink, but somehow Sunshine got the story out of them and with indignation Darkey had asked how they could have let me go back home on the subway when clearly I was the hero of the hour for my coolness in dealing with Shovel.Darkey is, if anything, a man of the whim and he decided that all of them were going to the hospital right that minute to see poor Andy; and then that done, they were all going to go down to Harlem and call on and subsequently fete me.
    Jesus. Poor me.
    Like I say, I was only asleep forty minutes but I was away, already reasonably untroubled by conscience or anything else. Yeah, I was off somewhere, but resistance was useless.
    They didn’t get in to see Andy but they came on down to 123rd Street anyway. They rang my buzzer, but I had the fan on and cotton wool stuffed in my ears to keep out the racket from east of here.
    Come on you fucking lazy wee hoor’s spawn bastard. It’s us. We’re fucking doing a Petula, Scotchy was no doubt screaming through the intercom. They buzzed for about ten seconds and then Darkey’s patience must have got the better of him for he told Big Bob to jemmy the lock, which Big Bob did. They probably would have broken my door down had I not finally heard their cackling and yelling and banging. For some reason I thought it was a bunch of drunk Serbians up from Ratko’s pad to raise hell and I went to the door with a metal baseball bat in my hand and a revolver in my boxer shorts.
    They laughed when I opened up the door. Boxers, Zoso T-shirt, gun, baseball bat, hair askew, snarl on face.
    Darkey leaned forward and punched me on the arm.
    Well done, you wee fucker, he said.
    Darkey, who had never been to Ireland in his life but who took on a bit of the accent and manner when he was around Scotchy and myself. It was terrifying.
    They dressed me in jeans and boots and leather jacket and hauled me out into the night, dragging me downstairs violently. For just a second or two I thought that perhaps all this bonhomie was a cover and really they were going to drive me down to the Hudson and shoot me in the back of the neck. No, worse. First, Darkey kicks my face in and then when it’s a bloody mess and I’m blinded and brains are coming out my ears, Scotchy says: I’m very disappointed in you, son. And then he fucking tops me.
    But instead of turning left at Amsterdam we turned right and it seemed that we really were going downtown after all. The boys didn’tsee, but my heart stopped