First Thrills Page 9

  The heavies took position on each side of the desk.

  He said, “What a shit hole.”

  I asked, “You have an appointment?”

  He laughed in total merriment, and the two thugs gave tight smiles; said, “You don’t seem overrun with business.”

  I tried. “Most of my business is conducted over the phone, for discretion’s sake.”

  He mimicked, “Discretion . . . hmm, I like that.”

  Then suddenly he lunged across the desk, grabbed my tie, and pulled me halfway across, with one hand, I might add. He said, “I like Yanks, otherwise, you’d be picking yer teeth off the floor right now.”

  Then he let go.

  I managed to get back into my chair, all dignity out the window, and waited.

  He said, “I’m Jimmy Flaherty and some bollix has snatched me only child; he wants a million in ransom and say’s you are to be the go- between.”

  He snapped his fingers and one of the thugs dropped a large briefcase on the desk.

  He said, “That’s a million.”

  I took his word for it.

  He took out a large Havana and the other heavy moved to light it; he asked, “Mind if I smoke?”

  He blew an almost perfect smoke ring and we watched it linger over the desk like a bird of ill omen till he said, “This fuckhead will contact you and you’re to give him the money.”

  He reached in his pocket, tossed a mobile phone on the desk, said, “Soon as you can see my daughter is safe, you call that number and give every single detail of what you observe.”

  He stood up; said, “I’m not an unreasonable man, you get my daughter back, and the bastard who took her, I’ll throw one hundred large in your direction.”

  He’d obviously watched far too many episodes of The Sopranos and I was tempted to add, “Caprice.”

  But reined it in.

  I said, “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  He rounded on me, near spat. “I said I liked Yanks, but you screw up, you’re dead meat.”

  When he was gone, I opened my bottom drawer, took out the small stash, did a few lines, and finally mellowed out.

  My mind was in hyper drive.

  I had the score.

  One freaking million and all I had to do was . . . skedaddle.

  Run like fuck.

  Greed.

  Greed is a bastard.

  I was already thinking how I’d get that extra hundred-thousand and not have Flaherty looking for me.

  That’s the curse of coke, it makes you think you can do anything.

  I locked the briefcase in my safe and moved to the bookshelf near the door.

  It had impressive looking books, all unread, and moving aside Great Expectations, I pulled out the SIG Sauer.

  Tried and tested and of a certain sentimental value.

  I’d finalized my divorce with it, so it had a warm history.

  I headed for Sheridan’s house on the canal, stopping en route to buy a cheap briefcase, and when the guy offered to remove all the paper padding they put in there, I said, no need.

  I got to the house just after two in the afternoon and the curtains were still down.

  Sheridan sleeping off the Jameson.

  I went round the back and sure enough, the lock was a joke and I had that picked in thirty seconds.

  Moved the SIG to the right-hand pocket of my jacket and ventured in. This was the kitchen. I stood for a moment and wondered if there was a basement, where Sheridan might have put the poor girl.

  Heard hysterical laughter from upstairs and realized Sheridan was not alone.

  “Way to go, lover,” I muttered as I began to climb the stairs.

  Sheridan as late afternoon lover had never entered my mind but what the hell, good for him.

  I got to the bedroom and it sounded like a fine old time was being had by all.

  Hated to interrupt, but business!

  Opened the door and said, “Is this a bad time?”

  Sheridan’s head emerged from the sheets and he guffawed, said, “Fooking Morgan.”

  The woman, I have to admit, a looker, pulled herself upright, her breasts exposed, reached for a cigarette and said, “Is this the famous American?”

  There was a half-empty bottle of Jameson on the table beside Sheridan and he reached for it, took a lethal slug, gagged; said, “Buddy, meet Brona.”

  She laughed as my jaw literally dropped.

  She said, in not too bad an American pastiche, “He’s joining the dots.”

  I put the briefcase on the floor and Sheridan roared. “Is that it, fook, is that the million?”

  He didn’t enjoy it too long; Brona shot him in the forehead; said, “You come too quick.”

  Turned the gun on me and was a little surprised to see my SIG leveled on her belly.

  Nicely toned stomach, I’ll admit.

  She smiled, said, “Mexican standoff?”

  In Galway.

  I said, “You put yours on the bed, slowly, and I’ll put mine on the floor, we have to be in harmony on this.”

  We we re .

  And did.

  I asked, “Mind If I have a drink?”

  She said, “I’ll join you.”

  I got the bottle of Jameson and as she pushed a glass forward, I cracked her skull with it; said, “I think you came too quick.”

  I checked her pulse and as I’d hoped, she wasn’t dead. But mainly, she wouldn’t be talking for a while.

  I did the requisite cleaning up and now for the really tricky part.

  Rang Flaherty.

  First the good news

  I’d got his daughter back and alive.

  Managed to kill one of the kidnappers.

  Got shot myself in the cluster fuck.

  The other kidnapper had gotten away.

  And . . . with the money.

  He and his crew were there in jig time.

  The shot in my shoulder hurt like a bastard and I hated to part with the SIG, but what can you do.

  Wrapped it in Sheridan’s fingers.

  I don’t know how long we were there; Flaherty’s men got Brona out of there right away and I had to tell my story to Flaherty about a dozen times.

  I think two things saved my ass

  1. . . . his beloved daughter was safe.

  2. . . . One bad guy was dead.

  And I could see him thinking, if I was involved?

  Why was I shot?

  Why hadn’t I taken off?

  I even provided a name for the other kidnapper, a shithead who’d dissed me way back.

  He produced a fat envelope; said, “You earned it.”

  And was gone

  Four days later, I was, as Sheridan said, “In the wind.”

  Gone.

  A few months later, tanned, with a nice unostentatious villa in the South of Spain, a rather fetching beard coming in, as the Brits would say, and a nice senorita who seemed interested in the quiet English writer I’d now become; a sort of middle list cozy author persona. I was as close to happy as it gets.

  One evening, with a bag full of fresh-baked baguettes, some fine wine, and all the food for a masterful paella, I got back to the villa a little later than usual; I might even have been humming something from Man of La Mancha.

  Opened the door and saw a woman in the corner, the late evening shadows washing over her; I asked, “Bonita?”

  No.

  Brona, with a sawn off in her lap.

  I dropped the bags.

  She asked, “What day were you born on?”

  I said, “Wednesday.”

  She laughed; said, “Complete the rhyme . . .”

  Jesus, what was it?

  I acted like I was thinking seriously about that, but mainly I was thinking, how I’d get to the Walther PPK, in the press beside her.

  Then she threw the said gun on the floor beside my wilted paella feast, smiled, said, “Here’s a hint, Tuesday’s child is full of Grace . . . so . . .”

  Now she leveled the
sawn off, cocked the hammer; said, “You get one guess.”

  *

  KEN BRUEN was a finalist for the Edgar, Barry, and Macavity Awards, and the Private Eye Writers of America presented him with the Shamus Award for the Best Novel of 2003 for The Guards, the book that introduced Jack Taylor. He lives in Galway, Ireland. To learn more about Ken and his novels go to www.kenbruen.com

  THEO GANGI

  Eddy tells me we can make money together. Eddy is the best police impersonator there is. He hangs out in police bars. He goes into police stations and talks to cops in perfect jargon. He goes down to court and gets search warrants and arrest forms and types them up. Eddy’s fed himself since the seventies by sending little kids into bathrooms to solicit pedophiles. Then he’d go in like a cop and shake them down.

  I’m hanging out on Christopher Street with Eddy. He’s by the phone booth in plainclothes, a sport jacket and black shoes. Eddy told me that’s how you dress like a detective. So now I’m also wearing a sport jacket and plain black shoes.

  I’m going to Brooklyn today and I’m pissed about it. I haven’t crossed that water since I moved to Washington Heights and my father cursed me as a traitor.

  It’s early on a Tuesday afternoon. The lower west side teems with productivity; Starbucks supports a line out onto the sidewalk. People steadily file down into the subway. Busses yawn, stretch, and lumber up and down avenues. Eddy whistles an old song, “If I were a Bell,” the way Miles Davis played it. It’s a show tune, pretending to be jazz genius, about a man, pretending to be a bell. Eddy catches a glimpse of something through the dark window of the bar on the corner. He gets up close to it. I am still by the phone booth, being a detective. He curses, and starts pacing, fixated on the bar window. I go over to him. He curses again, rolling his eyes and smacking himself on his pocket keys.

  “Problem?”

  He wipes the sweat from his old, wrinkled brow.

  “The fuckin’ unit. Gave up three fuckin’ homers in a row.”

  The Big Unit. The Yankees’ biggest disappointment this year. Eddy and I are Yankees fans. We’re both from Brooklyn, home of the former Ebbet’s Field, where Brooklyn’s own Dodgers once played, now a large project. You ask me it’s just as good, replaces bums with more bums. Most native Brooklynites are Mets fans, as if obeying some law of transfer from one non–Yankee New York team to another. The Brooklyn bitterness toward the frequent champions is deep. Eddy chose the Yankees because some aspect of his life deserved to be aligned with a winner. My preference came at greater cost. To my father it was evidence of a great betrayal.

  Many of my teenage years were spent explaining why Mickey Mantle was better than Snider, Pee Wee, Robinson, and Campanella combined. “They’re bums, Pop,” I would tell him. “It’s common knowledge.” His hurt was palpable. I told him it’s only baseball, but he didn’t believe me. “Bums? That what you think of me?”

  The dark bar at daytime reminds me of my father. Three or four drunks sit at the bar stools, faces tilted to the blue wash of the TV screens above. Could be any time of day; it will always be the same time inside. Pop was like that; no matter the pitch, it was always a strike.

  On the three mounted sets, Randy Johnson paces with his hands on his hips, spitting as though the homer was anybody’s fault but his. The Big Unit irritates the hell out of me and Eddy. After he blows a game, I find myself making up my own Post and Daily News headlines. Big Disaster. Flop of Fame.

  “Cocksucker ain’t worth half what we gave for ’em,” says Eddy.

  “Got that right.”

  I’m a New York Times reader. Eddy reads The Daily News and The New York Post. But when the Big Unit loses, I buy The News, too, so I can fully absorb the crass, ruthless abuse my team deserves. Then I talk to Eddy about this year’s two-hundred-million- dollar joke.

  “No word though?” I ask.

  “He’ll be here.”

  Eddy is right about that. He thinks so, but I know for sure. I step back and the TV disappears in darkness, the glass opaque now, with my reflection on its surface. I like to dress a bit better, clean shaven, cuff links now and then, how my wife likes me. She’s Puerto Rican, likes a little shine, some cologne. But Eddy told me how to dress like a detective, so I’m dressed like a detective.

  “Ho shit!” Barks Eddy, attention back on the TV on the other side of the glass. I go up beside him and look through: a replay of a White Sox player who I never heard of knocking an unhittable pitch, up by his eyes, clean out of the ballpark. The big unit, with his giant, gangly frame and trailer- park dismay, stands on top of the wheat shade mound of dirt in utter incredulity.

  “Four!” says Eddy. “Four goddamn dingers in one inning? That pitch wasn’t even a strike. It wasn’t even close, damn near over his head! How’d he hit that? Fucking impossible. Four homers.”

  I shake my head.

  “I can see the headlines. Four! four-get it!”

  “Four-gone conclusion,” says Eddy. “Just four-fit already.”

  I see the kid as Eddy goes on about how the Unit keeps throwing his flat, useless slider. The kid has bleached blonde hair and light eyes, with a don’t-give-a-fuck apathy way beyond typical adolescence. His attitude puts him going on thirty, a couple of jail bids already behind him. In reality, the kid is maybe fifteen, though not even he knows for sure. Got more miles on him than a ’89 VW.

  “Yeah, he was unhittable in the National League, but so fuckin’ what? My friend, you and I could have fifteen wins and an ERA under three with those pansy-ass hitters.”

  My father and Eddy were cast from the same boilerplate, even though Eddy is a European mutt and Pop was one-hundred-percent Sicilian. It must be the Brooklyn in them, the streets that taught them both how to hustle and talk, doing funny things with the letter H, adding it to the end of some words and striking it from the beginning of others. Fuck outta ’ere. Even their stooped countenance is the same: short necks, slumped shoulders, heavy faces pulled to the sidewalk as if losing money at dice.

  Eddy’s cast-iron eyes look just past me as he speaks, just how a real cop might. Though a real cop would notice the kid already. Even when Eddy is pissed, he can’t manage to make those dark, drooping bags of his look anything but sad.

  I nudge him.

  “That the kid?”

  The kid makes eye contact with me. I hope he doesn’t give it up. I hope I don’t give it up. He smirks at me, teasing—a demon with the face of a cherub.

  “Yeah. Hey, kid.”

  “Hey.”

  “What you got for me?” asks Eddy. The kid holds out a tan Ferragamo wallet. Eddy takes it, and opens it up.

  Edward Schalaci.

  “Mr. Edward Schalaci,” says Eddy. For a moment, I think he’s talking to me. “Would you look at that,” he says, “guy’s name is Eddie, like me. One-hundred fifty Columbia Heights. Yeah. Would you look at that, Brooklyn Heights, that’s real money. Guy’s probably married. Wife’s got no clue. Right? Let’s get a move.”

  As Eddy starts to walk down to the subway, the kid turns and smirks at me. Kid’s got a crazy sense of his own power. He’s an orphan from Poughkeepsie who came to The City to live off wealthy pedophiles. Got thrown out of a few downtown lofts and been selling his ass ever since. There’s something supernatural about the way he seems to get younger every time I see him, as though he started at sixteen and now looks fourteen. Pretty soon he’ll be reduced to shaking down sickos from a stroller.

  The thought makes me queasy. My wife is ready, I mean ready for a baby. I’m hesitant, and days like this I know why.

  We have done this a couple of times: we go into the bathroom and pretend to be from the Youth Squad, I take The Kid outside while Eddy talks the guy into giving him money, to avoid being arrested. Eddy has been making money like that all over the west side of Lower Manhattan for years. His biggest moneymaker is this kid.

  Eddy hooked up with The Kid on one of his fugazi raids, took him under his wing and taught him how to hustle, taught him how to
get paid without giving it up. The Kid still did his own thing, and this wallet represented the coup de grace of their partnership. It meant that The Kid had consummated a transaction and then ripped the john off, ’cuz there are just no good deals left in The City.

  When I see the wallet I think of this and only this. I try to joke in my head, but I cannot smile. I see the kid reduced to a baby and wrapped in my wife’s tan arms: a bundle of joy, shock, and heartbreak. Is there a parent alive or dead who hasn’t been heartbroken?

  The wallet now is the source of the evil, clear evidence that Eddy knows exactly what this kid is doing and is an accessory. Eddy takes this confession in his hand like a ticket at a deli. I cannot decide if Eddy is magnificently in tune to his hustle or just facile as cardboard.

  We join the heavy flow of traffic, heading toward the inevitable. There is no point in talking business in front of these strangers, so the three of us keep quiet. Eddy gives me commiserating glances as we squeeze on the crowded train, reminding me of Pop again. Old and red faced, Pop would raise his eyebrow and shrug like that with me, often reduced to the basics of interaction, like we spoke different languages.

  The crowd thins before we leave Manhattan. We get off at the Clark Street station, stepping into the open Brooklyn air beneath the old sign for Hotel St. George. Nothing tastes different about the air, but I’m aware of it. I’m breaking an old promise I made my father by coming here. I didn’t want to see him in Brooklyn, with his Benson-hurst lowlifes and me trying to be a cop. I wonder what borders of mine my wife’s unborn bundle will cross. The Kid looks around, stark baby-blue eyes restless and pissed.

  “Who’s this guy, anyway?” he asks, gesturing to me.

  “That’s Ron.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Detective Ron?” says The Kid, being smart.

  “As far as you’re concerned,” says Eddy, “yeah, he’s a fuckin’ detective.” Eddy clears his throat with a thick, nasty hack. Then, as if his throbbing throat reminds him, he lights a cigarette.

  “You want one?” he asks me, already putting his pack of Marlboro menthols away. It is a running joke between us. I don’t smoke. He offers anyway, hoping someone will join him in being self-destructive.