Middle Eastern dust roads? Jesus Christ.
Mike bought the Brass Ring at a knockdown price after the previous owner found himself with a few extra holes in his person. The joint is about as classy as clubs get in Cloisters, Essex County. The façade has got a half-assed nautical theme going on that extends to the wooden cladding and porthole windows but not to the door, which is brushed aluminum with several chunky locks dotting the metal like watch bezels.
There’s a guy out front, smoking. He’s not that big, but he’s mean and twitchy. Also, this goon isn’t overly fond of me because I put a little hurt on him a while back. Actually I’ve kicked the living shit out of most of Mike’s crew at one time or another, so while I am welcome in this club, it’s the kind of welcome piranhas extend to raw meat.
“Yo, Manny,” I call, waving like we’re tennis buddies. “Mike is expecting me.”
Manny Booker jerks like he’s been slapped and I figure he’s flashing back to our last meeting.
“Just fucking calm down, McEvoy,” he says, his hand strangling the air in front of his breast pocket. This is because he’s aching to pull his cannon and shoot me, but he’s under orders never to draw in public.
“I am calm, Manny, but you look a bit jumpy. You worried I’m not outnumbered enough?”
“We got your friend inside, with a gun pointed at his face.” Manny blurts this out, right on the street.
I can’t look at Manny for too long because of his beard. He’s got one of these Midlake folk-singer bushes that are springing up on cool faces all over these days, which is okay, I don’t have a problem with that, had a nice beard myself back in the nineties. What makes me squirm is the fact that his wiry nose hair is so long that it grows right into the beard, so in effect he has a beard growing out of his nose. I’m not surprised Mike keeps him on the door; who could get any work done with a nose beard hovering around the place? Fecker’s beard hair is red too, so from a distance it looks like Manny got himself punched in the face and is fine with blood all over himself.
Nosebleed beard? People are animals.
I give Booker a nice shoulder-check on my way in, just to remind him of past pains. You never know, if negotiations break down, he might choose to run away.
The Brass Ring has got nice carpet, chocolate brown with golden thread. Plush is the word. And the bar has a comforting walnut burnish that gives a drinker confidence in the barman before he ever sets eyes on him. Irish Mike and eight of his boys are seated in the lounge with their pieces right out on the table. And there, in the middle, sits Zebulon Kronski, spinning one of his war stories. I think it’s the one about how we met in the souk outside UN headquarters in the Lebanon, where Zeb had set up an underground cosmetic surgery, supplying fillers to religious fanatics.
“So, anyways. In marches Daniel palooka McEvoy just when I’m about to inject a syringe of fat into the militia guy’s dick.”
Mike laughs, but his goons don’t because they’ve seen me come in. They jump out of their seats, scrabbling for weapons. Two guys get their guns mixed up and argue like kids until one guy actually produces a photo of his gun that he keeps in his wallet.
It’s embarrassing.
Mike’s impulse is to stand up but he checks himself. He is the boss after all.
“Daniel, laddie,” he says. “Sit yourself down.”
I walk around the tables a few times, mapping the layout, banking the positions of the chairs in case I have to toss a few.
Mike is antsy. “Sit down, for fuck sake. You ain’t a spaniel.”
In olden days, his boys would have guffawed at this, but now I’m a known quantity and it’s like there’s a gorilla loose in the room.
I sit between Mike and the bar, with the door in my eye line and Zeb on my left in case I have to slap his stupid head for getting this ball of shit rolling downhill.
“Mike,” I say, giving him the sad face. “Sorry to hear about your mother.”
Mike has a picture of his old ma in a lace frame pinned to his lapel. If this is an Irish custom I never heard of it, and I lived there for twenty-odd years.
“Yeah, she was a great old dame.”
“How come you’re not on a plane?”
Mike reddens like I’m making some kind of subtle accusation that he’d rather be here taking care of grudge business than in the auld sod burying his mother. Of course this is exactly what I’m doing. The thing about this situation is that Mike is holding nearly all the cards. The only thing he can’t control is my attitude, so I don’t intend handing over that last card until I have to.
“I am not exactly welcome in Ireland. They got a photo of me in the customs booth. I did a bit of Semtex business with the boys.” He drops me a wink on the boys so I know he’s talking the Republican movement, though the mention of Semtex had pointed me in that direction.
“Yeah, that would be a problem. Why don’t we cut directly to the part where you tell me why I’m here?”
Mike enjoys a bit of drama and so this request pains him. This pain shows in his expression, though with Mike’s bar-fight potato head it’s a bit like watching someone squeeze a fat, old sponge.
“It ain’t that simple, laddie,” he says, touching the picture of Ma Madden on his lapel. “I’m grieving. I got the sweats, the shits and mood swings. I been drunk since yesterday.”
His guys mumble sympathetically. They sound like faraway monks.
Zeb pipes up. “I got stuff for all that. Three pills twice a day. Suppositories though, so you gotta get them right up there.”
Tarantino is the man, but I never really bought those indoor triangular shoot-outs he’s done a couple of times. Who’s gonna get annoyed enough to start blasting with a barrel pointed at their own head? But now I’m starting to think that with Zebulon Kronski somewhere in that triangle, everyone’s past caring about their own lives. Zeb could get the Dalai Lama to shoot dolphins. Here I am trying to jockey for some leverage and he just comes out with some shit about suppositories.
“Do me a favor, Mike,” I say hurriedly. “Get this little prick outta here before someone can’t take it anymore.”
Mike clicks his fingers at Manny. “You are so fucking right. I nearly strangled him three times already. The wife loves him though. Her little miracle worker Zeb.”
Something clicks with me.
Zeb ain’t on the hook anymore.
Just me.
Zeb has done more than make himself invaluable to Mike, he has made himself and his Botox needle indispensible to Mrs. Madden. Maybe he’s not as cavalier with his own life as I thought.
Manny hauls Zeb outta there and he’s trying to make eye contact the whole way, but I blank him. Zeb’s been running a game, and all the time playing it like we’re down the same hole.
“Come on, Daniel. Danny boy. What is it?”
Zeb’s got that guilty whine in his voice. He bloody knows. I want him to know I know, which kind of typifies the juvenile relationship we have, so I let him have a blast of my ire.
“You guys don’t like Jesus, right? How about Judas? You got him in your book?”
I gotta hand it to Zeb, he’s not a bad actor. He pulls off shock and hurt pretty well. First his entire head jerks with the force of my words, then the pain creeps into his eyes. Not too shabby.
“What are you saying, Dan? Talk to me.”
This is where Zeb’s gig falls down. Anyone who is familiar with Dr. Kronski knows all too well that his response to any false accusation is a bilingual litany of variations on the phrase fuck you.
I look him square in the eye. “You’re drifting out of character, Zeb. You’ve lost your motivation.”