The suspicion came to him now as dread. Maybe Malone wasn’t drunk after all.
“You’re a sort of decent stupid, Jammy. A soft touch, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean, man-Terry.”
“Cash to your old mate? Christ. You’d think he’d have used it to get well to hell out of here, wouldn’t you? What a gobshite. What a total gobshite.”
They know, he thought. Malone’s face creased into a lopsided grin.
“Oh, he really rooked you, Jammy. Didn’t he?”
He felt suddenly heavy, like in a dream he’d had over and over again when he was a kid. In some strange place, trying to avoid someone, trying to run before they caught him, but his feet wouldn’t move. His mind couldn’t put the bits together. They’d found Leonardo, or he’d found them.
“Don’t you get it, Jammy?”
“I… Well…”
“Ah, you’re thick, Jammy. Thick! But maybe it’s being thick saves your neck now! Funny, isn’t it? Someday I’ll tell you just how close you came. With Eddsy, I mean. Eddsy… Jesus. Goes just fucking bananas… Totally out of it. He’s a sadist, isn’t he?”
He nodded.
“He wanted to hack Hickey’s nuts off with a breadknife. What do you think of that?”
He took a breath and looked down at the path worn into the dry grass.
“Okay, I’ll tell him you’re speechless. ‘No comment, Eddsy.’ How does that sound?”
“Jesus, Terry. Why would Eddsy, you know…?”
“Weird, huh? But that’s life. Listen to me. Things don’t look good for you, do they?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know, you know?”
“Look. You could walk away from this. Or it’s over for you. It’s your choice. Hickey put on a good show before he pulled that stunt-Christ, that little bastard can run! For a minute, he nearly had me believing him. Maybe he could even have Eddsy believing him.”
He was rooted to the ground now. Something was working its way up his spine toward his neck.
“So. You wanted to see Hickey, right? He called you. What for? For more jack?”
“Well, he didn’t say really.”
“Oh, come on, don’t give me that shite, Jammy! Come on over here then.”
Malone took a step away and stopped.
“Ah, I get it. You think I brought some lads here to get you, do you?”
He didn’t answer. The smell from the canal was all through his head now.
“Don’t be an even bigger gobshite than you were already, Jammy. Look at it this way: you came out to talk to a guy who would have pissed you down the fucking drain to save his own skin. I could have taken you myself if that was the job.”
Malone reached under his denim jacket and opened his fist to show an automatic so small that at first he thought it was a cigarette lighter.
“Yeah, Jammy. It’s all business tonight. The Boys Are Back in Town, you know? Boom-boom! You should have seen the bastard tearing off down the lane when he saw me!”
Buildings were sinking down toward him. It was like a hard punch, without the pain.
“What’s the matter, Jammy? Lost your tongue? Come on, man!”
His legs began to move. He followed Malone up the path to the footpath.
“Oh, the other lads are long gone now, Jammy. Didn’t want to hang around.”
Malone was off his rocker because he’d done something terrible.
“Job’s done, so they go home,” Malone murmured. He turned and leered. “Have a bit of a wash-up before they sit down to their tea.”
Malone stopped by the van. Already he had a piece of cloth in his hand. He turned the handle to open one side of the door. He looked up and down the street.
“Just don’t touch anything. Unless you want to take the twenty-year trip. Ha ha.”
The door squeaked at first. Something had crept into Malone’s voice now.
“Hurry up! The van’s robbed, so don’t be worrying. I can do without any crowd.”
The smell struck him as familiar. It was something that belonged with pressure, pain, fear. He held his breath. Malone tapped him in the arm.
“Take the torch. Quick.”
The blood looked purple. He held his breath. It was all over the floor and the panels. They’d tied him up. Made a mess of his face. His hair to one side glistened with blood. His chest was rising and falling still. There was a hiss coming from somewhere by his face.
“He’s alive. About ten percent though. Do you want to check him up close?”
He shook his head.
“He’d be a hell of a lot more alive if he hadn’t pulled that stunt, I tell you. Did you ever chase a jackrabbit like him, a guy scared for his life, with a van? I mean to say, what am I going to do, me on me own? Go back to Bobby and tell him I had him, but I lost him? Hickey knew he was a goner. The half of him is still back on a steel door at the end of that lane.”
He took a step back. The yellow light from the street lamps made everything look sick, diseased. He turned with the bile rising in his throat and saw a hammer and a piece of pipe. The door slammed and Malone was beside him.
“Come on, man,” he said. “I want to talk to you. Where’s that bike of yours?”
He couldn’t think. Malone’s hand was on his arm, steering him across the street.
“You think he’ll live long enough to talk to Eddsy?”
He swallowed. He didn’t want to get sick.
“I wonder what he’d tell Eddsy. What do you think, huh?”
Tierney shook his head. His stomach was making these weird tics and he couldn’t stop them. He’d heard that Terry the Bull was vicious in the ring, but this was way over the top.
“Nothing, huh?”
He looked up and nodded. They had reached the motorbike.
“Attaboy. Here, nice bike! What would you do? Bring him over to Eddsy while he’s still with us, maybe? Get him to tell Eddsy what he told me?”
He looked into Malone’s face.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know either. I mean to say, you have to ask yourself: does it all add up? Hey. You’re so quiet. Don’t you want to know what he told me?”
“Leonardo could say anything, Terry! I mean, no one could believe him, you know?”
“Bobby could. What do you think? ‘Hey, Eddsy. Leonardo Hickey told me Jammy Tierney had something to do with what happened that night at the canal.’ ‘Really?’ Eddsy says. ‘That’s right. The cops are sniffing around about him, real sly, like.’ ‘Gee, I always thought that Jammy was straight. Why would I want to believe he was involved in that?’ ‘Well, Eddsy, Mary really screwed herself and she knew how you and the family would take what she’d tried to pull. The only place she could turn was Jammy. Yeah, Jammy’d do anything for her.’ You think Eddsy believes in true love?”
“I don’t know anything about it, man,” he managed to say. “I swear to God.”
“Yeah? So what are you here for then?”
“Leonardo sounded totally crazy on the phone, you know? I thought, well… I don’t know. Terry, this is all so weird, man. You don’t know how he can lie and stuff. Really.”
“Jases, Jammy, maybe you’re all right. It didn’t really add up, what he was saying, did it. Maybe if he wakes up he’ll make more sense, though. Maybe Eddsy’ll understand.”
“He lies-Leonardo, I mean. All the time! Eddsy knows that, right? You tell him-”
“I what?” Malone wagged his finger. “Big mistake there, Jammy. No matter how it happened, you know something. Eddsy’ll find out that you gave Leonardo money to split. Yeah, he told me. So that makes you Leonardo’s buddy, doesn’t it? So if Leonardo did the job up there that night, then he would have told somebody. The only mate he had left was you. Jammy Tierney. Didn’t you go around together when yous were young fellas?”
Tierney found no words. Terry Malone tapped his forehead.
“Let’s go. There’s a van-load of trouble I have to decide about. So, how about it? ”