It took three days of sweet talk and charm, of sweat-soaked promises and cajoling but we finally got him to come to Paddy’s cowshed. And then there he was, the Mean-Dog himself, all six-and-a-half feet of him, flanked by Killer Muldoon and Razor Riley, the three of them standing in Paddy’s yard late on Sunday afternoon.
My head was ringing from a courtesy smacking Mean-Dog had given me when I’d come to his office; and Pat lips were puffed out again — but Pat was still smiling.
“So, lads,” Mean-Dog said quietly, “tell me again why I’m here in a yard that smells of pigshit instead of at home drinking a beer.”
“Cow shit,” Pat corrected him, and got a clout for it.
“We have a new business partner, Mr. Mulligan,” I said. “And she told us that we can’t provide no more whiskey until you and she settle accounts.”
“She? You’re working with a woman?” His voice was filled with contempt. “Who’s this woman, then? Sounds like she has more mouth than she can use.”
“You might be saying that,” Pat agreed softly. “It’s my Aunt Sophie.”
I have to admit, that did give even Mean-Dog a moment’s pause. There are Cherokee war parties that would go twenty miles out to their way not to cross Sophie. And that was before the comet.
“Sophie Kilpatrick, eh?” He looked at his two bruisers. Neither of them knew her and they weren’t impressed. “Where is she?”
“In the cowshed,” Pat said. “She said she wanted to meet somewhere quiet.”
“Shrewd,” Mean-Dog agreed, but he was still uncertain. “Lads, go in and ask Miss Sophie to come out.”
The two goons shrugged and went into the shed as I inched my way toward the side alley. Pat held his ground and I don’t know whether it was all the clouting ’round the head he’d been getting, or the latest batch of whiskey, or maybe he’d just reached the bottom of his own cup and couldn’t take no more from anyone, but Pat O’Leary stood there grinning at Mean-Dog as the two big men opened the shed door and went in.
Pat hadn’t left a light on in there and it was a cloudy day. The goons had to feel their way in the dark. When they commenced screaming I figured they’d found their way to Sophie. This was Sunday by now and the cow was long gone. Sophie was feeling a might peckish.
Mean-Dog jumped back from the doorway and dragged out his pistol with one hand and took a handful of Pat’s shirt with the other. “What the hell’s happening? Who’s in there?”
“Just Aunt Sophie,” Pat said and actually held his hand to God as he said it.
Mean-Dog shoved him aside and kicked open the door. That was his first mistake because Razor Riley’s head smacked him right in the face. Mean-Dog staggered back and then stood there in dumb shock as his leg-breaker’s head bounced to the ground right at his feet. Riley’s face wore an expression of profound shock.
“What?” Mean-Dog asked, as if anything Pat or I could say would be an adequate answer to that.
The second mistake Mean-Dog made was to get mad and go charging into the shed. We watched him enter and we both jumped as he fired two quick shots, then another, and another.
I don’t know, even to this day, whether one of those shots clipped her chain or whether Sophie was even stronger than we thought she was, but a second later Mean-Dog came barreling out of the cowshed, running at full tilt, with Sophie Kilpatrick howling after him trailing six feet of chain. She was covered in blood and the sound she made would have made a banshee take a vow of silence. They were gone down the alley in a heartbeat and Pat and I stood there in shock for a moment, then we peered around the edge of the door into the shed.
The lower half of Razor Riley lay just about where the cow had been. Killer Muldoon was all in one piece, but there were pieces missing from him, if you follow. Sophie had her way with him and he lay dead as a mullet, his throat torn out and his blood pooled around him.
“Oh, lordy,” I said. “This is bad for us, Pat. This is jail and skinny fellows like you and me have to wear petticoats in prison.”
But there was a strange light in his eyes. Not a glowing green light, which was a comfort, but not a nice light either. He looked down at the bodies and then over his shoulder in the direction where Sophie and Mean-Dog had vanished. He licked his bruised lips and said, “You know, Pegleg…there are other sonsabitches who owe us money.”
“Those are bad thoughts you’re having, Paddy my dear.”
“I’m not saying we feed them to Sophie. But if we let it get known, so to speak. Maybe show them what’s left of these lads…”
“Patrick O’Leary you listen to me — we are not about being criminal masterminds here. I’m not half as smart as a fencepost and you’re not half as smart as me, so let’s not be planning anything extravagant.”
Which is when Mean-Dog Mulligan came screaming back into Pat’s yard. God only knows what twisted puzzle-path he took through the neighborhood but there he was running back toward us, his arms bleeding from a couple of bites and his big legs pumping to keep him just ahead of Sophie.
“Oh dear,” Pat said in a voice that made it clear that the reality that his plan still had a few bugs to be sorted out.
“Shovel!” I said and lunged for the one Catherine had used on her aunt. Pat grabbed a pickaxe and we swung at the same time.
I hit Sophie fair and square in the face and the shock of it rang all the way up my arms and shivered the tool right out of my hands; but the force of the blow had its way with her and her green eyes were instantly blank. She stopped dead in her tracks and then pitched backward to measure her length on the ground.
Pat’s swing had a different effect. The big spike of the pickaxe caught Mean-Dog square in the center of the chest and though everyone said the man had no heart, Pat and his pickaxe begged to differ. The gangster’s last word was “Urk!” and he fell backward, as dead as Riley and Muldoon.
“Quick!” I said and we fetched the broken length of chain from the shed and wound it about Sophie, pinning her arms to her body and then snugging it all with the padlock. While Pat was checking the lock I fetched the wheelbarrow, and we grunted and cursed some more as we got her onto it.
“We have to hide the bodies,” I said, and Pat, too stunned to speak, just nodded. He grabbed Mean-Dog’s heels and dragged him into the shed while I played a quick game of football with Razor Riley’s head. Soon the three toughs were hidden in the shed. Pat closed it and we locked the door.
That left Sophie sprawled on the barrow, and she was already starting to show signs of waking up.
“Sweet suffering Jesus!” I yelled. “Let’s get her into the hills. We can chain her to a tree by the still until we figure out what to do.”
“What about them?” Pat said, jerking a thumb at the shed.
“They’re not going anywhere.”
We took the safest route that we could manage quickly and if anyone did see us hauling a fat, blood-covered, struggling dead woman in chains out of town in a wheelbarrow it never made it into an official report. We chained her to a stout oak and then hurried back. It was already dark and we were scared and exhausted and I wanted a drink so badly I could cry.
“I had a jug in the shed,” Pat whispered as we crept back into his yard.
“Then consider me on the wagon, lad.”
“Don’t be daft. There’s nothing in there that can hurt us now. And we have to decide what to do with those lads.”
“God…this is the sort of thing that could make the mother of Jesus eat meat on Friday.”
He unlocked the door and we went inside, careful not to step in blood, careful not to look at the bodies. I lit his small lantern and we closed the door so we could drink for a bit and sort things out.