I have obviously abandoned my psychological tactics at this point. I didn’t last too long. Premature exasperation.
“Maybe I’m just gonna kill you,” says Mike, peeved at being predictable. “You ever think of that?”
“No, Mike. Because if you wanted me dead, then four or five of your guys would be in the hospital and I’d have a flesh wound. Maybe.”
This comment sends us sailing past Mike’s shit limit and he closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, we are in the presence of Dark Mike. Mike the Merciless. This guy has shed the veneer of civilization like a snake sheds its dead skin. Irish Mike is carrying the race memories of bloody revolution, prison protest and back-alley shankings around inside him and a few decades in New Jersey making the occasional pilgrimage to a Broadway show is not gonna wipe those away for long.
“Okay, you know what? Fuck you, Dan. Fuck you. I am getting a fucking migraine listening to your fucking shit.”
That’s a lotta fucks all of a sudden. When I was a doorman full-time, I developed a theory that stated that there was a definite correlation between the amount of fucks in a sentence and the imminence of the fuck-utterer taking a swing.
Four fucks, and you took your hands out of your pockets.
The room seems to heat up. Mike’s boys lean inward like tall flowers attracted to the sun. They sense that the time to earn their salaries could be at hand.
“Here’s the situation, okay?” says Mike, spit flecking his lips. “I own this town and you fucking owe me, McEvoy. Whatever way you want to dress it up. So, there are two ways for you to get yourself out of the hole. Either Calvin plugs you in the head right now and I have to Clorox the floor, or I need a dummy to deliver a package to a guy called Shea in Soho, who can be a little touchy. That’s it. Two choices. A or B, no option C. Oh, actually, wait. There is an option C. Option C is Calvin shoots you in the balls first, then shoots you in the head.”
Option B sounds less immediately terminal than the others. Seems too easy though: Deliver a package to a guy who can be a little touchy?
A little touchy. I bet that’s the understatement of the century.
This is bullshit.
Mike is probably setting me up as the biggest fall guy in history. I could end up looking dumber than those Trojan guys who towed a hollow wooden horse into their until recently besieged city, gave the sentries a night off and had themselves a drunken orgy. On the plus side I probably wouldn’t stay dumb for long as a swift death would surely be hot on the tail of the dawning dumbness.
“No, Mike. Screw that. I’ll take my chances right now. Why don’t we do a death match scenario kind of thing? I’ll take your boys two at a time.”
Mike reaches into his pocket and pulls out a baggie of cocaine, which he pours onto his palm and licks right off there, like a donkey chowing down on sugar.
“I gotta have something to take the edge off,” he says after a minute of zone-out. “Otherwise, laddie. I would just kill you and fuck it. You think I don’t know you’re crapping bullets? You can give me lip until Judgment Day, but the truth is you’re scared and that’s a smart way to feel right now.”
Shit. Cocaine seems to have smartened Mike up.
“Yeah, I’m scared, but I ain’t jumping outta this frying pan to put out your fire. I need more details. What’s in the package? How do I know this Shea guy won’t shoot me on the spot?”
“I could deliver the package, Mr. Madden,” says Calvin, eager to claw his way back up the popularity ladder after the opera-toonity giggle.
Mike rubs his eyes with stubby thumbs. “No, Calvin. You’re my guy and I need you here. Shea is a live wire, so I need a peacekeeper.” He looks at me. “You’re a peacekeeper, ain’t you, McEvoy?”
Mike pulls an envelope from the drawer, takes out its contents and fans the sheaf on the table.
“Bearer bonds, McEvoy. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth. These are better than cash. I owe this guy Shea, and this is how he wants to be paid. These little bastards are fifty years old and have seen more blood than the Bay of Pigs, and yet they are squeaky clean and easier to transport than money. I want you to take these bonds and deliver them to Mr. Shea at this SoHo hotel in the middle of the day. Simple as that. You do this one thing without any more of your wiseass bullshit and I will consider you twenty-five percent outta the hole.”
“Twenty-five percent, bullshit,” I say. “Make it fifty.”
“Sure,” says Mike with a curling grin. “Fuck it, fifty.”
Damn, I got played by Mike Madden.
“And what if I turn down your offer?”
“You know what.”
“Tell me. Spell it out, we ain’t got no wires in here, do we?”
Mike licks the wrinkles in his palm and I see for the first time that the man is honestly grieving, in his own twisted way. When some guys are feeling blue they can’t feel better until everyone else feels worse.
“If you don’t do this for me I’m gonna do something to you, or that nutcase Sofia that you got under your wing, or maybe that partner of yours. I don’t know. Something. I can’t really think about it now, but it will be totally out of proportion, violence-wise, to what you are owed. Nothing is more certain except those bearer bonds.” Mike’s pupils focus to pinholes. “So you guard those bonds like your life depended on it.”
Which of course it does.
He doesn’t need to say it, I can infer.
CHAPTER 2
MY DAY JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT MORE COMPLICATED AND I can’t help feeling that a large percentage of that is down to the poison chalice of friendship with Dr. Zebulon Kronski. But my own mouth has gotta shoulder some responsibility too. Every time I have a face-to-face with Mike, I find myself back talking and slinging zingers. When I get too anxious it’s like my mouth runs independently of my mind, which is shriveling like a cut of meat on a hot rock. Simon Moriarty, my sometime shrink, commented on this tendency during one of our sessions when I’d made a stab at humor to gloss over my shell shock.
“You have two problems, Sergeant McEvoy.” He told me as I stood by the window looking out over the quad.
“Only two,” I remember saying. “We are getting somewhere.”
“You see that’s one of your problems right there. All the chatter. The verbal diarrhea.”
“Verbal diarrhea gives me the shits,” my mouth said.
Simon clapped his hands. “There it is again. The technical name for this tic is denial. You use it as a coping mechanism.”
“Denial. That word is too complicated for a lowly sergeant, Doctor.”
“Once upon a time you were vaguely amusing, but now you’re wasting your own time.”
I relented. “Okay, Simon. Tell me.”
“Denial is a classic defense mechanism. It protects the ego from things that the individual cannot cope with. So the patient will basically refuse to believe that he is experiencing stress, and I imagine you crack wise in any stressful situation without even realizing it. The more dangerous the situation, the more smart-assed you get.”
I mulled this over. It was undeniably true that I often shot off my mouth and hit myself in the foot. I had thought this was bravado, something for other people to grudgingly admire.
Something occurred to me. “Hey, Doc. You said I had a second problem?”
“That’s right.”
“You planning on telling me?”
Simon scooted to the window on his office chair and lit a cheroot, blowing the smoke outside.
“Your second problem is that you’re not very funny, and the only way people are going to tolerate a smart-ass is if he’s amusing.”