Nearest and dearest.
That used to be my little brother. We shared a room for all his life.
Even after all these years, thinking about little Pat brings on a cramp of pain. I can remember his smile of crooked teeth like an old sailor, but his eyes are lost to me.
I snuffle and think Edit. She has me maudlin when I need to be sharp.
The cab driver speaks.
“Hey, bud. You crying back there?”
I pull myself together. “That’s Mr. Four Guns to you, mac. We there yet?”
The cabbie taps his window. “We been there for ten minutes. You ain’t having a flashback or something, are you? You ain’t one of those flashback to Nam motherfuckers?”
Flashback to Nam? How old does this guy think I am?
Nam sounds so quaint. It’s all about the flashbacks to Desert Storm these days. Those Desert Storm vets are so smug and current, but the Iraq boys will soon wipe the smiles off their faces once their post traumatics kick in.
“Don’t worry. If I shoot you it’ll be on purpose.”
“Good to know,” says the cabbie, whose balls have descended. “That’s twenty-two fifty, buddy.”
I am tentatively liking this guy now, so I give him a fifty on account of I might not be coming out of this hotel and I would hate for the scumbags inside to fleece my wallet.
“Thanks, man,” says the guy. “You want me to wait?”
I slide across the seat to the curb side. “You can, but I ain’t giving you any more tips.”
The car is moving before my fingers leave the handle.
New York, New York, where it’s okay to be an asshole so long as you’re local.
Dan McEvoy, doorman theory number three: New Yorkers believe absolutely that any place that is not New York is by geographical definition inferior to the great five-borough nation. The Bronx has got better seafood than the Cote D’Azur. The beaches of Staten Island are far superior to anything Rio de Janeiro has to offer and it goes without saying that there isn’t a commercial boulevard on the planet that can hold a candle to Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Therefore most New Yorkers do not travel—why the hell would they? And the ones who do venture out into the vast mediocrity are businessmen or intellectuals and not likely to start trouble. Except for the East Village guys. Those artist types have been in buttoned-down über-PC mode for so long that they go batshit at the sight of décolletage. Jason and I always keep a close eye on anyone sporting a ponytail. Those bastards are likely to grab a server’s boobs and claim they were only trying to liberate her.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Jason and I had a lot of free time on our hands when we bounced Slotz, and a person can only do so many sit-ups in a club lobby.
CHAPTER 5
OUT ON THE STREET, I FEEL EXPOSED. THERE’S STILL PLENTY of foot traffic down here, but not so much that a marksman wouldn’t be able to thread a bullet through it. I could certainly take someone’s head off from a rooftop without a problem. The crowd is different here, more discerning, less sneakers, and even the light is more oblique—somehow not so much in your face, in keeping with the subtle fashions of the SoHo natives.
I used to walk around this neighborhood wasting a lot of mind-space feeling all superior and grounded, but right now I would hand over a couple of years of my life just to be a guy out shopping in tucked-away places for on-trend pieces.
The best thing to do, I decide, would be to get my big burly frame into the Masterpiece hotel.
Sounds like a pretty grandiose name for a boutique hotel; the Masterpiece, right? But on account of the fact that I’ve been here before, I happen to know that this is the nickname given to the building by the locals because of the ornate cast-iron façade that the area is known for.
The Masterpiece. I was here a few years ago with Zeb during New York Fashion Week when Zeb was doing Botox outcalls and I was humping his wedge. This gorgeous—and frankly, way out of my league—senorita zones in on me in the bar and within two lemon gingerinis is all over me like cling film on a frankfurter. I was sporting a goatee at the time trying to draw attention from my expanding forehead and this girl who had a name like some herb or other tells me that my moustache is overpowering my beard. She let slip later on that she was using me to piss off her boyfriend who was chatting up an übermodel while she herself was merely a supermodel. How Zeb and I sneered at these subclassifications later when we were going home on our own. Also that’s where I picked up the term über, which I already told you about.
Cilantro, that was her name.
The lobby is dark and moody with plenty of floating light orbs and wave machines. If I ever get a few beers in me and meet the interior designer, I’ll probably let slip that this place reminds me of a strip club I once bounced in Joburg, except for the strippers wore longer skirts than the girls in here.
The concierge desk is a swathe of curved steel with a glass worktop that changes color every few seconds, which causes the young lady behind it to wince with every fresh wash of color. That’s gotta be bad for the brain so I try to be extra nice.
“Hi. I have an envelope for Mr. Shea.”
The girl is severe/pretty in her steel gray smock but she’s going to have frown lines before she hits twenty-five if she can’t get away from this desk.
“You can leave it with me. We don’t allow delivery men in the private elevators.”
We don’t allow. She’s a shareholder now?
I persist good-naturedly. “I’m also kind of a visitor. Can you call Mr. Shea and tell him that the package from Mr. Madden has arrived?”
Mr. Shea. Another Irish name. They say there are 20 million Irish Americans and it looks like I’m gonna bump into most of them before this day winds down.
“You’re Mr. Madden?” she asks, picking up a phone the same color as her smock.
“No, I’m Mr. Madden’s . . .” I search my brain for a term that will bestow upon me the importance I deserve. “Gopher.”
I hope the girl will interpret my wry smile to mean that I am underplaying my own importance in this whole package-dropping enterprise. She does not.
“Mr. Shea,” she says into the phone, frowning as the desk turns green. “The gopher is here from Mr. Madden.”
Five seconds later she hands me an electronic lift key, which is ironically in the shape of an actual key.
“Penthouse apartment,” she says. “The private elevators are at the back.”
Ironic hotels. Only in Manhattan.
I stop off in the restroom and deposit one of the Glocks in a stall just in case I have to shoot my way out, wild west style. And by wild west I mean Limerick, not Texas. O’Connell Street can get a little jumpy after turfing-out time on the weekends. The other three guns I keep on my person hoping to hocus-pocus at least one past the search that will undoubtedly be waiting for me at the top of the shaft.
I am walking blind into this situation with no idea what kind of scenario awaits me up there. I don’t know the exits; I don’t know how many hostiles. Weapons, intentions, bargaining positions. Nothing.
The odds are good that things will not escalate in a shi-shi SoHo establishment. What kind of moron would kick off a gunfight in a place like the Masterpiece?
The elevator has mirrored doors and I study myself as the lights flicker upward toward PH, trying to decide which version of Daniel McEvoy I’m gonna present to whoever is on the other side of the doors.
I’ll give
them a blast of ice-cold professional, I decide, but then reconsider. Let these guys underestimate me. Play it big and dumb, like a guy trying to look professional who is actually out of his depth. Keep the mouth under wraps. Speak when spoken to and no backchat. This was what Mike had advised:
Remember, act stupid, McEvoy. I want Mr. Shea to feel this letter is being dropped off by a shaggy dog. So none of the usual back-answering bullshit. The more stupider you are, the faster they let you leave. If they ask you specifics about my operation, you ain’t got any. Clear?
More stupider? This guy runs an organization?
I do a little shadow boxing in the elevator to get my blood up, then practice my chosen look in the mirrored doors. I want Mr. Shea to see a guy who’s big and dumb but trying his darndest to look bigger and less dumb. It’s time to accept that I’m going through with this drop and use whatever skills I have to ensure I come out the other side.
In other words, I need to become a soldier again.
The elevator tells me in the sexist voice I have ever heard that we have reached the penthouse. At this point most elevators would ding but this one actually sighs, which almost breaks my focus.
Soldier, I tell myself. Stupid soldier time.
The doors open onto a corridor with plush red carpet like you’d get spilling out of the queen’s plane, and there are three guys on sentry duty.
These guys ain’t military, two of them are sitting down for Christ’s sake. One of the sitters is eating chicken. But the third sentry is in my face, waiting right there by the door, big smile all ready. One of those hearty smiles favored by people in public office. It comes on like a lightbulb but there isn’t any warmth in it.
I size him up from behind my dumb trying to look not dumb eyes. He’s big but a little soft, should’ve moved up a shirt size a while back but is holding on, strangling the buttons in their holes. He’s got a flat face and a weird constellation of teardrop freckles that look like he shotgunned someone close quarters and got spattered. He’s light on his feet and I can see muscle in his shoulders and arms. Also, I hate to say it, but there’s plenty of smarts in those eyes, which is the best weapon of all, at close quarters. From far out, a good scope and steady hands will trump smarts every time.