There’s only one iron left in the fire now. It ain’t my iron and I didn’t light the fire but I gotta put it out before this metaphor gets away from me and no one has a clue what the hell I’m talking about.
Writ simple: Irish Mike Madden reckons I still owe him. After all the shit that happened, Mike still reckons I got a tab to settle. I am starting to think it’s never gonna be enough with this guy.
Also I know damning stuff like how he rolled me into the whole Shea/Freckles thing like some kind of Trojan horse: shiny on the outside, deadly on the inside. And then when you open a door to the inside the deadly comes out through the hole, like Achilles. I guess if you have to explain the imagery, then the imagery is kind of redundant. Still, I think the Trojan horse thing would have worked if I’d left it alone.
Anyways, now I gotta swing by his place and hope he’s feeling magnanimous on account of how things turned out with the Shea situation. Not only is Mike out from under New York’s shadow but there’s talk of him picking up the Shea slack, making him a genuine player, which could come in handy if any of the Jersey Boys get fed up listening to stories about a Mick operating locally.
So, it is possible that Mike will call it evens and we can all get back to business.
Possible, but about as likely as a hyena spitting out a hunk of red meat, which is then eaten by a supermodel, which is not probable firstly because hyenas don’t ever not eat meat and supermodels hardly ever do, then there’s the obvious hygiene issue and thirdly there’s the geographical factor, as in there are not many supermodels hanging around sub-Saharan Africa.
Apart from Iman.
And Waris Dirie.
Unlikely is what I’m trying to say.
I think my shrink was right. Maybe I am too much of a deconstructionist, but I would argue that it’s undeniable at this point that watching Fashion Police can be educational.
In this spirit of optimism for the future, I do not bring any guns along. Also I know whoever’s on the door will be giving me the cavity search.
From experience I know never talk to Mike until he’s had his first blow job of the day, which is usually about eleven. Even though Mike’s blood is green, he’s big on the whole English feudal lords conjugal rights law that got Mel Gibson so riled in Braveheart. So I stroll over just after the midday deadline to give Mike a chance to let off steam. To be honest, I feel a little weird to be out on the street without anyone pointing a gun at me. Every now and then I do a little jinky sidestep just in case there’s a guy on a rooftop watching me through a Zeiss, and I make it to Mike’s block without anyone taking a potshot so either I’m just paranoid or my zigzagging actually works.
I guess I should enjoy not being a target while it lasts.
Mr. Nose Beard, Manny Booker, is outside on the door giving the world his best tough-guy face but I’m guessing he’s sweating bullets inside the navy suit Mike forces his men to wear. You put the facial hair and the suit together and you got a lot of heat bearing down on a little brain. That’s a recipe for violent disaster.
I approach Manny slow and obvious, because I reckon this guy is close to the edge with me and it’s my own damn fault. I can’t help screwing with Booker because he’s so earnest about the whole gangsta thing. He spends his days fretting over saving face or someone disrespecting him. Every little thing is end-of-days important to Manny. Just walking down the block he has to be bristling with menace. Someone should tell Manny that he just comes off as constipated. When God sends a guy that intense your way it is your duty to take the piss, as my quotable buddy Zebulon Kronski said: When you find a prick this big, you gotta play with it a little.
Never a truer word.
So I make sure Booker gets a good look at me as I come up the steps.
“Hey, Manny,” I say. “How you doing today? Beard looks good. Verdant.”
I realize that I have screwed with this boy too much and now he doesn’t recognize sincerity when he sees it.
“Ver-fucking-what? Fuck you, McEvoy. I’ll be doing good when I cut off your prick and ram it down your throat.”
I’d swear this is a line from some Godfather-lite movie.
“We all live for that day, Manny,” I say amiably, then I get down to business. “How’s Mike? Has he got his morning . . . ?”
Instead of finishing this question I wink twice, which is Goodfella code for blow job.
“Nah,” says Manny. “He’s auditioning a new dancer. Calvin brought her in.”
Mike presides over a couple of lap-dance joints on Cloisters’ strip, which is precisely two blocks long. He considers it a good business practice to give every potential new hire a personal looksee. He runs a diner too, but the waitress’s interview ain’t quite so stringent as they gotta carry stuff in their hands that Mike’s gonna put in his mouth.
So Mike is still harboring his morning tension. Not a great time to broker a truce.
“Okay. I’m gonna get a latté and come back in an hour.”
Manny glares at me. “You fucking better come back in an hour.”
Here we go.
“I just said I was coming back.”
Manny tilts his head for maximum badness and his beard bristles. “And I just said you fucking better come back.”
Manny is using the age-old tactic of intimidation through repetition with added fucketry (WINAWBSB).
I decide to throw him a curveball. “Yeah, you want something, Manny-o? Latté? No, you look like a skinny mocachino guy to me, right?”
Manny is predictably incensed by this exotic sounding brew. I hear he once punched a lady in the throat because she asked him if he’d read Twilight.
“Moca-fucking-what? Is that a fruity drink? Are you calling me a skinny fruit?”
I gotta lay off, or this goon is gonna knife me in an alley some night.
“Okay, Manny. Chill. I’ll be back in an hour, honest. One gunman to another. Gangster’s honor.”
Manny’s phone rings. His ringtone is Eye of the Tiger and we both bam bam-bam-bam along with it for a few seconds until he answers. That’s the problem with having a good tune for your ringtone; sometimes you wanna hear the chorus.
“Fuck yeah,” he says. “Fuckin’ A.”
A man of many fucks. It’s like Manny has a quota to fill.
“You ain’t drinking no fag drinks, McEvoy. The boss seen you on the fucking security cam, so get up here and assume the position.”
I glower at the plastic beetle clamped to the door frame. It seems like I have a date with a horny Irish mobster.
Inside the atmosphere is buzzing with anticipation. The lights are low and Mike and his guys are seated in a little semicircle in front of a makeshift stage with a screen rigged behind it. I can tell Mike is all amped up by the way he’s slapping his thighs and if the lights were any lower I swear he’d have his dick out. I need to get my spiel in now or I could be here all day.
“Mr. Madden. Hey, Mike, we need to talk.”
Mike barely spares me a glance. “Yeah, McEvoy. Gimme a minute, laddie. Maybe two. Sit your ass down.”
I seriously consider going operational right there. Technically I’m unarmed, but I can do a lot of damage without a gun. And these buckhawks virtually got their tongues hanging out for Christ’s sake. I could make a decent amount of bones go crack before Mike knew what was happening.
Attractive as this idea is, it would be suicide. They can take a dozen casualties, I can only take one. So I sit my ass down and run through the speech I gotta make to this bunch o’ perverts.
Mike’s number two, Calvin, hops up on the stage and pats the air for silence.
“Okay, guys. Mr. Madden. I got something a little different here but give it a chance. This gal is a money machine.”
“She better be,” says Mike, tugging the crotch of his trousers. “The last gal you brought in danced like she was being electrocuted. I was paying that donkey money to keep her clothes on.”