Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online

blinked fast. Sweat beading on his upper lip. He stood up again and pointed the gun “What if I just fucking kill you right now,” he said. “Both of you.”
    “Take a seat, Andrew, you’ll be more comfortable and you can still kill us any time you want,” Killian insisted.
    Convinced by this information Marcetti slumped back into the leather chair.
    Killian gave him a reassuring smile. Salesman smile.
    “Mind if I smoke?” Killian asked.
    “No, Susannah doesn’t allow…Sure, go ahead and…no, wait a minute, don’t try anything,” Marcetti said. “One false move and I’ll—”
    Killian nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes. Lit one. He offered the pack around, the kid and Marcetti shook their heads.
    “Bad habit,” Killian agreed. He let the nicotine coat his lungs anddrifted for a quarter minute. The world played behind Marcetti’s head. Aquamarine sky. A heat transparency to the elms and chestnut trees. Kids on bicycles sailing past the window like extras in a movie.
    “How do you think this is going to end, Andrew?” Killian asked.
    Marcetti shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
    “Can I tell you a story?”
    “What kind of a story?”
    “About the last man I killed.”
    “I don’t want to hear it.”
    “No, you should hear it, it’s interesting. How someone dies is pedagogical.”
    Marcetti said nothing so Killian cleared his throat.
    “I was in Uruguay. Two years ago. I’ll give you the coda first. The thing was so bad that when I got back to Ireland I decided that I was going to change everything. I was going to quit The Life, go to college, get married, get some exercise, eat spinach, I had a whole notebook filled with stuff like that. And the funny thing is I more or less did it. I bought a small block of apartments, I gave my gun away, I enrolled at the University of Ulster just outside of Belfast.”
    “Did you get married?” Luke asked.
    “Didn’t get hitched but I have incorporated spinach into my diet. Okay, back to my story,” Killian said. He took a draw on his cigarette, wondered if the shotgun really was loaded. “Okay, so, there’s this guy and he thinks he’s pretty smart and he owes. He owes because he steals. Stole. Five of the big M. From friends of friends in London. Escape plan worked in advance, new identity, new face, new everything. But it doesn’t work. Someone tracks him down to an obscure little town in Uruguay. Next thing you know there’s me sitting on this guy’s patio deck on a Sunday morning. I’m watching this line of yachts coming across the Rio de la Plata, the River Plate, coming across in this almost straight line that stretches all the way to the horizon, each boat about fifteen minutes behind the next. The final boats are under the horizon, under the Earth’s curve. You get me?”
    Marcetti nodded.
    “They’re coming from Buenos Aires in Argentina. I guess it’s a popular Sunday sailing destination for the rich. Up early, pack some booze and sail to little Colonia in Uruguay. Have lunch, have a stroll, back before it gets dark. It’s a nice place: beautiful old colonial buildings, shady plazas, cobble stones, lots of cafés. I walked around for a bit, started to get noticed, so I found the house I was looking for, broke in. Of course, he’s gone. Bed unmade, coffee still warm. He’s just popped out to get a newspaper or croissants or something. While I’m waiting I go out onto his deck and watch the boats. As they get closer you can see the people on board; some of them wave at me as they steer into Colonia’s marina but I don’t wave back, you know, cos I’m a professional. Twenty little boats come over from Buenos Aires and it’s getting warm and even more beautiful and I’m so caught up in this lovely wee moment I almost don’t hear our boy come back. He’s driven all the way to Montevideo to get his girlfriend. Nothing in the notes about a girlfriend. You can imagine the