I am confused.
Freckles climbs in behind me and slams the door.
“Did you see that, Ben?” asks the kid. “I nailed those fucking cops. I fucking crushed them. Who’s a college boy now? Who’s got soft hands now?”
And then, I cannot believe this, they actually high-five each other. These guys are tight. It’s like they watched Sesame Street and learned all about tolerance and seeing the other person’s point of view.
Shea jerks a thumb toward me. “Tell me we’re going to torture this motherfucker, old school.”
Bent Tool pulls off his mask and knuckles me in the temple. “You know it, kid. Old school.”
Old school? I remember when Run-D.M.C. were old school, now it’s torturing the Irish guy.
Fecking old-school, hummus-eating, catch-Murphy’s-22 bullshit.
Shea follows Freckles’s directions and pulls the Hummer into a chop shop two blocks back from Javits. I always wondered who had the brilliant notion to drop the city’s biggest convention center in this neighborhood. Every year dozens of accountants and IT guys get themselves in hot water because they take the wrong cross street on the way back to their midtown Holiday Inn. The lucky ones get a couple of taps and their wallets lifted, the unlucky ones end up hooked on smack. I heard a rumor of a pimp who runs a specialty stable of ex-librarians that he picked off from the pack and turned out. Probably an urban myth.
I take advantage of the drive to pull myself together a little, and by the time Freckles hauls me out of the vehicle I am pretty certain that I was not handcuffed by a gorilla. On the negative side, whatever Edit gave me is wearing off and I realize that I am just about the most messed up I have ever been. My bruises have got bruises and those bruises have got welts, and don’t even get me started on the lacerations. I reckon my left ear is cauliflowered for good and one of my eyes has a weird shelf above it that doesn’t feel like any swelling I’ve ever had.
What I am is past caring.
If it was up to me, I would throw in the towel right now and spare myself the rest of this shitty day.
Freckles jostles me across the factory floor, which is occupied by luxury sedans mainly, but with a couple of cannibalized mopeds lying around like busted Terminators. There’s a grease monkey in Texaco overalls poking around in the guts of a yellow cab but he doesn’t even take his head out from under the hood. I guess whatever goes down in here, he doesn’t want to witness it.
With rough encouragement from the barrel of Freckles’s pistol I stumble through an oil puddle to an office area that has been blocked off by a rank of filing cabinets on one side and a dirty partition on the other. Freckles sits me down in a plastic chair that squeaks with fright under the sudden trauma of bearing my weight. He never takes his gun off me for a second.
Shea follows and takes a moment to study a wall-mounted Miss July 1972 who is holding a wrench and biting her bottom lip like holding wrenches is pretty stressful.
“What the hell did you do to those cops, McEvoy?” asks Shea, when he is done with ogling. “Whatever it was, they took it real personal.”
“I did a number on them with a dildo,” I say, which is about the strangest statement I’m ever likely to make. I don’t elaborate because I can’t. I only got enough energy for breathing. I try to speak anymore and I could asphyxiate.
This suits Edward Shea just fine, because even though the whole dildo thing is an incredible conversation starter, he wants to get back to his favorite subject: himself.
“I bet you weren’t expecting to see me again, huh, McEvoy?” he says perching on the corner of the desk. And he’s right, I would have bet big money on long odds that this particular fly was out of my ointment.
“Yeah, I bet you thought that the Shea kid was sleeping with the fishes.”
I nod and it hurts my brain but it’s easier than talking.
Did he really just say “sleeping with the fishes”?
“You wanna know what went down after you set us up to kill each other?”
I don’t want to know. Why doesn’t this kid just go play with himself or go wait in line somewhere to buy Call of Duty?
Wait! I do want to know.
I can’t nod anymore, so I blink. Once for yes.
Shea starts talking without even registering my blink signal. Why would you ask a person if he wants to know something if you’re just going to go ahead and tell them regardless? Between that and the hummus I am running out of things to like about this kid.
“You did us a real favor, McEvoy,” says Shea. “We’ve been bitching and sniping between ourselves since Dad died. Ain’t that right, Benny T?”
Benny T? Who the hell is Benny T?
“That’s right, Shea-ster,” says Freckles, flushed with pride at hearing his new Mafia-type handle.
I don’t believe it, these dicks are celebrating their new partnership with buddy names.
Shea-ster and Benny T?
Just fecking kill me now.
“But now we been through shit together. That shit bonded us, McEvoy. You left us with two guns on the table, remember?”
I blink once.
“So the elevator closes and we all dive in scrabbling, but not Benny T, because he’s got a weapon on his ankle.”
Crap. I was so busy congratulating myself on setting up the big bloodbath that I forgot to check for concealed weapons.
“So Benny bends over and comes up loaded.”
“And I don’t know who to shoot,” says Ben Toole, laughing, a little rueful like he just discovered he was wearing odd socks.
“Yeah. He don’t know who to shoot. Cracks me up.”
“And I sure underestimated this guy,” says Benny T, punching Shea’s shoulder. “The guy you leg shot was hobbling to the door so it was just the movement really. I saw him go and shot him.”
“Right in the heart,” says Shea. “And from behind with a moving target, that’s a hell of a shot.”
I want to point out that the hell of a shot was like three and a half feet, and a chimp with one eye could’ve made it, but I don’t say any of this because it would cost too much and the comment ain’t funny enough to warrant more suffering.
“So then the other guy, Frank? Yeah, Frank. He goes for the table and I wing him. I’m just fucking shooting at this point. Ain’t got a strategy as such.”
Shea takes up the thread. “So he goes down, screaming so fucking much he’s gonna wake up the building. Freckles . . . I mean Benny T, goes around the table to finish him off.”
“I’m not even factoring in the kid,” says Ben. “Fuck the kid, is what I’m thinking. I got time to spare now. But he showed me. You got some stones on you, Shea-ster.”
Maybe making these two hold hands was a mistake.
“I go for a gun,” says Shea. “And when Benny gets around the far side of the desk, then he finds to his surprise that I’m covering him and he’s covering me.”
“This guy. This guy right here. Steady as a rock. He’s facing down Benny T, who ain’t got such a shabby rep, and not a fucking shake to be seen. You gotta respect that.”
Yeah, like I gotta respect musical theater.
Actually that’s not fair. I enjoyed the shit out of Rock of Ages.
“So we stay like that for a coupla minutes,” continues Shea. “And it occurs to me that I haven’t a fucking clue how to run the practical side of Dad’s company.”
Benny laughs his fond laugh again. “And it goes without saying that I ain’t no books person.”
I think using the phrase no books person pretty much guarantees that you aren’t one.
“So the kid walks around the desk and calm as you like puts two into the guy I clipped, finishes him off. Now we got stuff on each another, see?”