Minogue heard the squeal as the tires bit in. He stopped. He looked to his left to see the car bearing down on him. A silhouette and beads of old rain on the glass. The engine roared and gulped as the automatic grabbed onto second gear. A pulse ran up to Minogue's scalp. Where? Minogue's body was all wrong for heading for the kerb ahead.
Still he moved a foot awkwardly in that direction. He dropped onto his flexed knees with his arms spread in a move from a deadly Chubby Checker dance. This can't work, he was thinking, as his body ran ahead of him, shifting from foot to foot awaiting a decision. / can't stay here I'll be run over and killed. Where? Don't think. Minogue's take-off foot wrenched him back toward the parked cars. His brain followed. He could feel rather than see the speeding car change direction. His legs seemed so long and so slow. They weren't really propelling him, he was tottering. The car was a breath away, bigger, final. The space between the Fiesta and the Mini parked ahead of him seemed huge but unattainable. The colours of the cars were now almost luminescent. The rush of the approaching car filled up all the space under the clouds.
Then Minogue was on his knees, pitching forward. His palms grazed along the wet tarmac. His shoulder bounced off a panel. His legs took him over on his side and he catapulted over the downed shoulder, heels drumming a door on a car and the tar grinding and pulling his hair as his head came over. The cars trembled and wavered as the white car shot by the gap. Tiny drops of water sprayed up from its wake fell lightly over Minogue's face as he lay there. A dull burning came from his forehead. He tried to get up, his hands splayed on the tar. They might come back, I don't know.
His leather soles slipped and he fell down again. It felt dangerous to be so near the underside of cars, so close to the wheels. As he elbowed up again, he felt wetness at his knees and in his socks. He crouched between the cars. Then he darted to the back of the car and looked up through the back window. A white car was speeding out onto the Kilmacud Road. It bounced on a kerb and moved abruptly around cars. As it passed out of his sight, Minogue heard horns blowing. He was trembling, ready for doing something but there was nothing now. His body was twitching. He began to breathe deeply as he leaned on the Fiesta. He looked up to find a middle-aged woman, head and shoulders, two car roofs over from him.
"Are you a'right now?" she called out.
Minogue's body was beginning to tighten and ache.
"Did you see that, Missus? Did you see that car?"
"What car, now?" she said, softer.
"A white car. This minute."
"No, I didn't."
Minogue swore.
"And your head. Is your head all right?" she asked.
Minogue reached up to the burning. His fingers showed orangey blood.
"Here, I have an elastoplast in the car. Come here. What happened to you at all?"
Minogue leaned on the bonnet of the car. His neck was beginning to hurt.
"Well, Missus, unless I'm mad entirely, someone tried to run me over."
The woman stood away from Minogue and raised a hand to her mouth. Her eyes widened.
"On purpose? Go away, you're codding me," she whispered.
"Indeed and I'm not, ma'am," Minogue said resignedly.
"But that sort of thing only goes on in…" she hesitated.
"In America? In the movies is it? I wish you were right," Minogue replied.
"Shouldn't we call the Garda then?" she whispered.
Minogue had found enough control over his trembling to flick at the particles of wet dirt which had been ground into his coat. He looked quizzically at the woman who was suspended, tongue over lip, in that ageless motion of trying to get the sticky parts of the elastoplast away from the wrap without dropping the whole thing or sticking her thumb into it. He bowed to let her apply it to his forehead.
"Thanks very much now. Sure I am the police, there's the rub," Minogue murmured.
The tanned man hissed as he spoke into the phone.
"I don't give a shit. Take anything that'll lead them further out of there and get to hell out of the place as fast as you can."
The tone of the man on the other end turned more petulant.
"After all the trouble we went to? There's a lot of me own tools in there as well. That'll take time. I mean to say, I can't just walk out the door. Look-"
"Shut up for a minute and listen. There's been a royal screw-up with that Mercedes you had in the place. Sooner or later the cops will trace that car to your place, and you won't be whining about your tools then. Just get them and get out. Go take a holiday or something."
"Here, it wasn't me who handed over the car. And those tools cost me a fortune, mister. Lookit, whoever you are I don't care. I just did the plates and built hidey holes for a few cars. I don't ask any questions."
"Exactly. You don't ask any questions. No one will know you worked out of that place. We looked after everything else. If you did what you're supposed to do, there'll be nothing to tie you to that place. It's all a dead-end, the cheques and the rental thing. Christ, you couldn't have been in the place more than half a dozen times."
"But who'll pay for me tools?"
"Look. You've never been fingerprinted so no one can trace you unless you damn well hang around! Don't you know they have one of those guys in custody?"
"Here now, hold on a minute," the mechanic said. "I don't want to know who I'm doing this for. A job is a job. I do the work and I gets me pay. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. I'm like the three monkeys, you know what I mean? And I don't like being let in on this stuff either. It's none of my shagging business."
The tanned man spoke quietly into the telephone now.
"Listen here now. It'll become your business if you don't get out of there inside of five minutes. If by any little remote chance, I get the slightest irritation because you screwed up somewhere… you'll be getting a new face knitted for yourself. You'll be playing with fucking Lego for the rest of your life, do you hear me?"
"I'm not deaf."
"Where did you leave that Merc off for those guys anyway?"
"Ah sure I didn't have to leave it off anywhere. Just outside in the back lane here. I left the key under the wheel like that other fella told me. Your pal, whatever his name is."
The tanned man almost threw the phone across the room. His hand tightened around it. Outside the bloody garage, of all the places on this island. Outside the garage. That was the bitter end.
The mechanic listened but heard only breathing on the line.
"Are you still there…?"
"When did that other car go out, the one with the new tank?"
"Yesterday. Picked up, no bother."
At least the main part of the operation was intact, the tanned man thought. He eased his grip on the phone.
"No hitches?"
"No. Your pal must have come over some evening and packed in whatever it is. All I know is I came in and there was a note saying bolt the thing back on, the thing is packed in and sealed. That's what I did. Dirtied it up good like I was told and left it parked on what-you-me-call-it Street, er… Nassau Street."
The tanned man felt his body ease into the chair more. So that part had gone fine.
"Look. We'll pay you for your tools or whatever you can't get out of there in five minutes."
"Five minutes?"
"The cops will look around the lane first probably, damn it! Just make sure there's nothing with your initials or that sort of thing. Go to the post office in Rathmines tomorrow. There'll be an envelope in your name."
The mechanic's voice lightened.
"Right you be, chief."
"And remember what I said. If I get so much as a ripple because of anything you do, the organisation will take care of that too. There's nowhere to hide."