"Yeah, yeah, yeah, center ice, if you're lucky, you'll catch a puck in the teeth."
Valentine took the stack of two days' worth of mail brought from home — ignored during this round of deal making gone horribly sour — and slapped it back onto the driver's seat through the open window of his car. He stepped away from the door and stretched; autumn in the Massachusetts countryside, there was really no place he would rather be. The pulse and throb of Boston was left behind — he could breathe up here, could take refuge among the trees and listen to the icy wind in the last of their leaves. In the city, wind was just that: wind. Up here it was a voice that all predators heeded, and all prey feared, for on it was borne the scent of hunger.
Valentine motioned Teddy to follow and they began to walk up the gentle slope of the drive, toward the barn. It was more than merely old, with low foundation walls of stone, and the upper wooden remainder had not seen a paintbrush in his lifetime. The barn sat in the center of his property in Essex County; the nearest neighbors were a mile distant, and if they were outdoors, it would only be chance if the shimmer of a cry of misery floated to them on the wind. They would wonder if wind was all the sound was, and go back to work.
"'A criminal is frequently not equal to his deed: he makes it smaller and slanders it.' Nietzsche said that." Valentine nodded and drew his longcoat tighter against the wind as husks of dead leaves crunched underfoot. He pointed toward the mouth of the barn as it resounded with a fresh warble of pain. "One more exhibition of living proof."
They entered the barn, shut the side door after them.
They walked past a small cluster of pens into the main clearing, dirt-floored beneath peaks and rafters where birds built nests and paid no heed to what transpired below. A scent of age clung to the air. No more horses, nor cows, nor other animals of the herd, just the smell of time.
The other three men were already inside. Two of them nodded at Valentine while standing a little straighter, and one of those still held a hammer. The third remained where he was, kneeling on the floor with hands wired behind his back, and his left ear nailed to one of the heavier posts.
"Hello, Shay," Valentine said. "Don't get up."
He was answered with a little yelp, and could see one eye widen, roving in search of his voice. Valentine stepped around him, knelt to bring them face-to-face. A few smears of blood trailed down Shay Cavanaugh's cheek.
"We can work this out, can't we? Can't we?" Begging already, and Cavanaugh's unruly black hair, crow's hair, looked electric in his pain.
Valentine grabbed a sweaty fistful and gave the entire head a fierce shaking, side-to-side — no no no — and the man screeched with every tug of ear against nail.
"It's gone a little far for that, Shay. Put yourself in my place. And when's the last time you let a hostage cut a bargain with you?" Valentine shook his head at the glisten of tears in the man's blue eyes; here was a sorry sight. "Listen to you, you're a disgrace to your cause. Forgotten Long Kesh, have you? Doesn't the memory of Bobby Sands do anything for you anymore? If somebody's going to try to rip me off, I'd just as soon it be a Muslim. Give me somebody from Abu Nidal's group. Spend all day pounding nails into one of those sons of bitches, and the only thing you'll hear is him cursing your entire family."
He shook his head again, and stepped away to take a coffee can from one of his men. A paintbrush with a two-inch width jutted against its rim, and Valentine stirred lazily on his way back, sniffed the heady fumes.
Shay Cavanaugh, the transatlantic point man for a breakaway cell from the Provisional IRA, had genuinely surprised him. A month ago Valentine had met with him in the back of a Chelsea pub to arrange the sale and dockside delivery of, among other sundry ordnance, several Heckler & Koch .308 assault rifles, a dozen drum-fed laser-sighted American 180s, several Ruger Mini-14s, and three cases of Semtex plastic explosive. The financing had been solid, had come from a few of the Manhattan Westies and some remnants of the old Emerald Society that Valentine knew were sympathetic to the rogue elements splitting from the traditional army. So what went wrong? Maybe Cavanaugh and his fellow travelers thought they could get away with both the weapons and the cash.
Last night, at the transfer drop in a warehouse along the docks of Gloucester harbor, Cavanaugh's people had turned greedy, treacherous, then bloodthirsty. Four of Valentine's freelancers were dead of head wounds. Others had been outside, a precautionary measure, and, for once, required.
The first time anyone had ever tried to blatantly rip him off and it had to be a countryman. They had gotten it all back, but then there was that small matter of disrespect.
Valentine squatted before the kneeling Cavanaugh and swirled the coffee can, wafted kerosene fumes to the man's nostrils like a chef teasing someone with the scent of his most savory meal.
How old was Shay, anyway? Thirty, thirty-five, around there. Valentine knew that, ten or fifteen years ago, he himself might have done just the same. Might even have tested his luck and skill for no better reason than to see if he could have gotten away with it, not really caring one way or another in the end. Though he would have had a better excuse than Shay Cavanaugh.
He listened to the last shreds of dignity come stammering from the man's bruised mouth, all please and don't and failed persuasion. For a moment, a fresh seizure clouded thoughts and gripped muscles and made him itch to inflict punishments more savage still, and Valentine simply could not think straight.
Down with you, he told it, down with you, I'm better than that…
He breathed deeply, and the kerosene made his head swim.
And so Valentine began to paint.
He slathered kerosene along the heavy post, from the ground up to Cavanaugh's perforated ear. It would be cold, surely, having sat in this barn all through an early November night; cold and stinging on the perforated ear. More and more he added, letting it soak into the wood while tears flowed just as freely.
"I've got a question for you, Shay…"
Valentine flicked the brush clean, returned it to a waiting hand.
"You tried to rip me off. You killed four people who worked for me…"
From the can he poured a thin trail from the base of the post to a larger puddle five feet away, out of reach of a wildly swinging hand.
"But I'm not going to ask you why. Nothing you could say about that would much interest me…"
Tossing the empty can aside.
"No, what I really want to know is: How steady is your hand?"
From Teddy he accepted a heavy pair of cutters and stepped behind Cavanaugh to snip through the wire binding his wrists; gave them back as Cavanaugh pulled his hands around and began to massage the raw chafing burns glistening with blood blisters.
Valentine tossed a single-edged razor blade onto the dirt and waited until Cavanaugh picked it up, staring at it with a mute and terrible comprehension. There was always that silence, the silence that transcended circumstance. The silence of knowing — "If you're steady, you can cut around the nail head and save most of your ear" — followed by the worst cries of all.
Kneeling again, taking no pleasure in this, just as he felt no remorse, Valentine lowered a lighter to his end of the kerosene's liquid fuse. "Outside, a few minutes ago, I quoted Nietzsche, but here's one for your benefit: 'Whoever rejoices on the very stake triumphs not over pain, but at the absence of pain that he had expected.' So rejoice, Shay. I could've made it a lot worse for you."
And he set flame to the trail.