Shamrock Alley (43 page)

“I wanna call Mickey,” John said out of the blue, “set up a buy for the silencers tonight.”

“Tonight? John, tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.”

“We don’t need a whole team. Just you and me. We’ll make it quick.”

“You’re hoping Kahn shows to sell the silencers?”

He was. He would have much rather nailed Jimmy Kahn for counterfeiting, but they had no direct evidence linking him. And now, with their counterfeit money mysteriously taken from the storage room, the million-dollar deal would be called off… unless they had a stash someplace else, which he didn’t think they did. They had Mickey O’Shay by the balls, could lock him up for the rest of his life. If selling silencers was the only thing they’d be able to pin on Jimmy Kahn, then that would be better than nothing. Right now, he didn’t want to think about Kahn slipping through his fingers.

“I just think we should pick up the pace,” he told Kersh.

Kersh sighed. “What’s the matter? Doesn’t anyone make plans for the holidays anymore?”

T
HERE WAS A STILLNESS TO THE NIGHT
that seemed to presage some imminent disaster. Beneath the somber paleness of a midnight moon, the streets were wet and forbidding. Light traffic trickled north in a constant wave. Through the Camaro’s windshield, John could see warm, yellow lights on in many of the high-rise windows. Christmas, like most everything else, came to Hell’s Kitchen differently than to other parts of the city. Times Square and the Theater District, which flanked the eastern border of the Kitchen, celebrated festively, all shimmering lights, glitter, and glamour. Additionally, the more upscale locales along the Upper West Side, teetering on the cusp of a frozen Central Park, enjoyed a holiday ripe with new promise. But the residents of Hell’s Kitchen were different. Their holidays were personal, quiet, and sacred, spent only with the closest of family members and in the solidarity of one’s home. For them, there was no glittering lights or street decorations. There were no promises of good things to come.

Earlier on the phone, Mickey had been surprisingly receptive and anxious to meet with him. “Five silencers sittin’ here waitin’ for ya,” he’d said, the hint of joviality in his voice more than just peculiar. Katie, on the other hand, had not been so pleased to hear her husband was putting in late hours around the holidays.

Now, as his eyes bounced between the console clock and the illuminated window of Calliope Candy, John just wished Mickey would hurry the hell up. As usual, the shade on the candy store window was pulled, but he could make out nebulous gray forms moving behind the shade toward the rear of the store. An indeterminate number of people were inside.

A figure appeared on the corner of Tenth and West 53
^rd
Street—slumped, shoulders hunched. He knew immediately it was Mickey O’Shay.

“Mickey’s coming down Tenth,” he said into the transmitter. “He’s alone.”

Mickey got into the car, slammed the door, and slid his hands through his hair. He exhaled with great exaggeration, frosting his side of the windshield in a cloud of vapor.

“You’re in a good mood,” he said, looking at Mickey’s profile silhouetted in front of the candy store’s window. “Must be getting everything you asked for this year.”

“Almost,” Mickey said, turning to face him.

“Jesus Christ…” He shook a finger at Mickey’s face. “You got—”

“What?”

“Your nose is bleeding.”

A dark tassel of blood trickled from his left nostril and over his lips. It was a wonder he couldn’t taste it.

“Shit,” Mickey muttered, flipping down his visor and peering at his reflection in the small, rectangular mirror. He touched the line of blood with one finger, with the delicacy of someone pressing a finger to fine silk. “Look at that…” He pulled off one of his fingerless wool gloves and blotted his left nostril with it, keeping his head cocked slightly back. He remained in this position for several minutes—John watched the clock tick by—until the bleeding stopped and Mickey slipped the bloodied glove into the breast pocket of his coat.

“You know,” John said, “me and Sean been sitting outside that restaurant for over a week now. That bartender Laughlin ain’t showing up, and I’m wasting my time.”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, “I heard he ain’t been around.”

“So what’s up with that?”

Mickey shrugged and glanced again at his reflection in the visor’s mirror. “You see him, take the hit. You don’t, then forget about it.”

“Just like that? I could use that five grand.”

“The hell you want me to do? Guy’s a drunk with a big goddamn mouth. Somebody either nailed him first, or he just drank himself to death. Works for me either way.” This final notion seemed to strike a chord with Mickey, and the corners of his mouth jerked upward into a bitter grin. Turning away from the mirror, his lips still stained with blood, Mickey said, “You got the money?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Where’s the silencers?”

Mickey blinked his eyes in what seemed like slow motion. “They’re up in my apartment,” he said. “Come on—we’ll get ‘em.” One of his hands, the one still wearing the glove, pawed feebly at the door handle.

“Why didn’t you just bring ‘em down?”

“Five of them,” Mickey said, his voice disjointed.

“Go up and get ‘em,” John said.

That same hungry grin was again threatening Mickey’s lips. “Come on,” he said. “Come on up.”

He didn’t like the look on Mickey’s face. Again, he recalled Tressa Walker’s nervous warning, remembered the way she shook and the way her eyes darted about the interview room.

They’re asking questions about you …

“It’s freezing out there. Why can’t you just bring ‘em down?” he said, suddenly conscious of his gun stashed away in his jacket pocket.

But Mickey’s demeanor was softer than usual, probably from the coke he’d snorted, and he wouldn’t let it go. “Come on. I’ll show ‘em to you. Five of ‘em. Let’s go.” And he was out on the sidewalk before John could utter another word.

The instant John opened his door, a strong wind shook his body. It was damn cold. He could feel the rumblings of his fever boiling inside his stomach, could feel a mechanical throb at the center of his head.

Mickey was already halfway across the street.

He felt vulnerable walking across the street. Traffic along Tenth Avenue had dwindled to only a few passing motorists. Somewhere in the darkness, he knew Bill Kersh was silently cursing his name.

The money for the silencers was stuffed in an envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. Once in Mickey’s apartment—once the silencers made an appearance—he’d tell Mickey the money was back in the car somewhere. As long as Mickey didn’t think he had the money on him, he might not try anything stupid in the apartment…

Mickey slipped into a tenement doorway and disappeared into the darkness. John hurried across the street, his footfalls echoing dully on the cement, and hopped the curb on the other side. His right hand in his jacket pocket and around the hilt of his gun, he passed through the tenement doorway and followed Mickey down a chilly, green-tiled corridor. A vent in the wall pumped cold air into the hallway. Overhead, fading fluorescent tube-lights hummed in their fixtures. They sounded alive and angry, filled with bees.

At the end of the corridor, Mickey hunched before an elevator, waiting for the doors to open. He did not look in John’s direction, did not acknowledge him, and could have faded into the tiled walls with ease if he so desired.

The elevator doors opened, and John expected—
something
. The soft
ding!
and his hand tightened around the gun in his pocket, his finger lightly on the trigger, ready to start shooting at anything that might spring out of the elevator at him. But nothing did.

Mickey entered the elevator in silence and held the doors open for him.

The elevator hummed slowly up the floors, coming to a shaky standstill on the ninth floor. The doors opened and Mickey remained standing with his back against one wall, his eyes more lucid now than John had ever remembered seeing.

“Go on up to the roof,” Mickey said. “I’ll meet you there with the silencers.”

They’re asking questions about you
.

Mickey stepped out into the hallway, and the elevator doors closed behind him. Running his eyes down the panel of buttons, he selected the top floor.

On the roof, the wind was fierce and unrelenting. The moment he stepped onto the tarred roof, he felt his body surrender to the whim of the wind. Before him, the lights of the city seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

Pulling his jacket tight around his body, he took a number of steps away from the door and out across the roof. Bullied by the wind, he could feel his fever returning with frightening rapidity, could feel his gloved hands trembling while they pulled tight the corners of his jacket. The throbbing in his head was tremendous now.

He stepped closer to the edge of the building. Twelve stories below, vehicles negotiated the one-way streets of Hell’s Kitchen like rats in a maze with no reward.

Behind him, the tin door of the roof banged open. John spun around.

Mickey appeared in the doorway, half masked by night, and shuffled over to where John stood at the edge of the roof. In Mickey’s hand was what looked like a .25 Beretta, held waist-high and pointing off to one side like an extension of his body.

The wind, coupled with the din of traffic, was all John could hear.

Mickey stepped up to the edge of the building and casually peered over the side. Like a bird, he seemed undaunted by the height. Mickey’s eyes shifted from rooftop to rooftop, then settled momentarily on John. His eyes were bloodshot and raw-looking, the pupils dilated to pinpoints.

“You nervous?” Mickey said, facing back out over the city.

“Cold.”

From his coat pocket, Mickey produced a silencer. With little emotion, he began screwing the silencer to the muzzle of the gun. His hair, bullied by the wind, covered his face.

“There’s been some problems,” Mickey said, his eyes still trained on the lights of the city.

“Like what?”

“We ran your plates,” Mickey said, now turning to look back at him. He looked drained of life and as hard as granite. “They don’t match your car.”

“So what?”

Slowly, Mickey continued to screw on the silencer. “You come from nowhere. Nobody knows who the hell you are.”

“That’s better for you,” he said. “I’m not hot.”

“What happened to Ricky Laughlin?”

A peal of thunder far off in the distance seemed to underscore the question.

“Mickey,” he said, pulling his coat tighter around his chest, “you got somethin’ to say, say it.”

Mickey O’Shay leveled the gun at John’s head.

In an instant, the world seemed to freeze. Everything that had mattered just moments before suddenly ceased to exist. The world, in all its infinite authority, was now nothing larger than the breath of two mammals. Looking at Mickey O’Shay, John felt no fear inside his body at all—just an unrestrained hatred for his opponent, and for the fact that his
own
world could be deleted so completely and indifferently by the actions of a petty
nothing
, a lousy bullshit
nothing
.

It had come to this, and he was already imagining their deaths, their bodies spiraling down the side of the building and to the street below. He would die here tonight and resigned himself to that … but refused to die alone. One jump, before Mickey could even fire the gun, and a strong tackle would send them both over the edge of the roof…

Mickey turned and pointed the gun out over the city, pulled the trigger and fired two quick rounds. The gun bucked in his hand, and the silencer coughed twice and belched out a cloud of smoke.

John started breathing again.

“Hear that?” Mickey said, grinning. “Sounds like a goddamn baby fart.” He fired two more rounds out over the street. One struck a tenement window on the other side of Tenth Avenue, shattering it. Mickey did not seem to notice. Still grinning, his eyes glowing, he held the gun out to John. “Wanna try?”

T
HE MORNING OF
D
ECEMBER
24,
AND IT
was just another day in Hell’s Kitchen.

Sitting at the bar in the shaft of daylight, Mickey ordered himself a drink and watched the lights of the jukebox across the room. Corky McKean, wearing a mistletoe necktie, placed the drink in front of him without bothering to look in his direction.

“Working the late shift tonight, Mickey. Goddamn holidays.”

Mickey hardly heard the man. His brain was pulling slow revolutions in his head, and he could feel a migraine coming on. Once, when he was sixteen, he’d suffered a migraine so bad that he’d collapsed at the top of a tenement staircase and tumbled, unconscious, all the way to the bottom. When he awoke two days later, he was propped up in a bed with a busted nose, three fractures ribs, a broken wrist, a bruised coccyx, and an assortment of lacerations.

Thinking about John Esposito and the counterfeit money only made his headaches worse. Depending on his mood, Jimmy Kahn’s opinion of Esposito vacillated, and he constantly unloaded his suspicions on Mickey. Some days, Jimmy was certain Esposito was a snitch. Other days, he didn’t know
who
the guy was yet still wanted to do business with him. Jimmy’s wavering opinions were starting to push Mickey over the edge. He respected Jimmy’s opinions, but by this point, he could give two shits about Esposito and his background. They’d been dealing for over a month. If something was going to come down, he was already in the middle of things. Not that he was afraid. Besides … snitch or not, when Esposito’s time was up, all bets were off. Good night.

Now it seemed like a million years since they’d gotten involved with the counterfeit money. In reality, it had only been a number of months ago, right after the whack-and-hack job on that Jewish bookie, Green …

Horace Green’s death was quite fitting for the bastard: slow and painful. The only thing Mickey O’Shay despised more than a loan shark collecting vigs in his neighborhood was a
Jewish
loan shark collecting vigs in his neighborhood. And the night he and Jimmy had surprised him coming out of the Cloverleaf … Christ, the look on the bastard’s face had been
priceless
.