Page 43
I moved quickly once I shook off whatever it was that had immobilized me. While he cleaned out the safe, sweeping stacks of money into a couple of canvas sacks, I wiped away any prints either of us might have left. I retrieved the cassette from the VCR, stuck it in my coat pocket, and tossed the coat over my arm. I stuck the. 38 back in my belt and put Micks SIG Sauer in my pocket. I grabbed the attach? case and followed Mick down the hall and up the stairs.
Tom was right next to the door, propped into a sitting position against the wall. His face looked bloodless, but then he was always pale. Mick set down the sacks of money, picked Tom up in his arms, and carried him out to the car. Andy had the door open and Mick tucked him into the back seat.
Mick came back for the money while Andy opened the trunk. I tossed in everything I was carrying, and Mick returned and added the sacks of cash and slammed the trunk lid hard. I went back into the arena and checked the room where wed done the killing. They were both dead, and I couldnt spot anything Id overlooked. At the top of the stairs I found the two guards, and they were both dead, too. I wiped the whole area where Tom had been sitting on the chance hed left his prints there, and I dug most of the chewing gum out of the lock so that it wouldnt be stuck open. I wiped the lock, and parts of the door we might have touched.
They were motioning to me from the car. I looked around. The neighborhood was deserted as ever. I ran across the pavement. The Fords front door was open, the front passenger seat empty. Mick was in back with Tom, talking softly to him, pressing a wadded-up cloth against his shoulder wound. The wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, but I didnt know how much blood hed already lost.
I got in, closed the door. The engine was already running, and Andy pulled away smoothly. Mick said, "You know where to go now, Andy. "
"That I do, Mick. "
"We dont want a ticket, God knows, but step as lively as you dare. "
MICK has a farm in Ulster County. The closest town is Ellenville. A couple from County Westmeath, a Mr. and Mrs. OMara, run the place for him, and their name appears on the deed. Thats where we went, arriving somewhere between three and three-thirty. Andy drove with the radar detector switched on, and even so didnt stray too far over the speed limit.
We got Tom inside and made him comfortable on a daybed in the sun parlor, and Mick went out with Andy and woke up a doctor he knew, a sour-faced little man with liver spots on the backs of his hands. He was with Tom for almost an hour, and when he came out he stood for a long time washing his hands at the kitchen sink. "Hell be all right," he announced. "Tough little bastard, isnt he? I been shot before, Doc, he tells me. Well, my boy, I said, will you never learn to duck? I couldnt get a smile out of him, but hes got a face that doesnt look as though its smiled much. Hell be all right, though, and live to get shot again another day. If youre on speaking terms with the Creator you might want to thank Him for penicillin. Used to be a wound like thatd turn septic on you, kill you a week or ten days down the line. Not anymore. Innit a wonder we dont all live forever?"
While the doctor worked the rest of us sat at the kitchen table. Mick cracked a pint of whiskey, and most of it was gone by the time Andy ran the doctor home. Andy made a beer last as long as he could, then had a second one. I found a bottle of ginger ale in the back of the refrigerator and drank that. We just sat there and nobody said much of anything.
After Andy dropped off the doctor he came back for us and pulled up next to the house and tapped the horn. Mick rode up front with him and I sat in the back. Tom stayed at the farm; the doctor wanted him to spend the next several days in bed, and planned to see him again over the weekend, or sooner if he got feverish. Mrs. OMara would nurse him. I gathered shed performed that function before.
Andy got on the Thruway and retraced our route. We picked up the Saw Mill and the Henry Hudson and wound up in front of Grogans. It was six-thirty in the morning and I had never been more wide awake in my life. We carried the sacks of money inside and Mick locked them in the safe. We gave Andy our guns, the ones that had been fired; hed drop them in the river on his way home.
"Ill settle with ye in a day or so," Mick told him. "Once I count it all and figure out shares. Twill be a decent sum for a good nights work. "
"Im not worried," Andy said.
"Go on home now," Mick said. "My love to your mother, shes a fine woman. And youre a grand driver, Andy. Youre the best. "
WE sat at the same table again, with the doors locked and only the light of dawn for illumination. Mick had a bottle and a glass but he wasnt hitting it hard. I had drawn a Coke for myself and found a piece of lemon to cut the sweetness some. Once I got it the way I wanted it I barely touched the damned thing.
For over an hour we spoke scarcely a word. When he got to his feet around seven-thirty I got up and went with him. I didnt have to ask where we were going, and he didnt have to go in back for his apron. He was still wearing it.
I went with him to collect the Cadillac and we rode in silence down Ninth Avenue to Fourteenth Street. We parked in front of Twomeys, mounted the steps, entered the sanctuary of St. Bernards. We were a few minutes early as we took seats in the last row of the little room where they hold the butchers mass.
The priest this morning was young, with a smooth pink face that looked as though it never needed a shave. He had a thick West-of-Ireland brogue and must have been a recent arrival. He seemed confident enough, though, before his tiny congregation of nuns and butchers.
I dont remember the service. I was there and I was not there. I stood when others stood, sat when they sat, knelt when they knelt. I made the indicated responses. But even as I did these things I was breathing in the mixed scent of blood and cordite, I was watching a cleaver descend in its furious arc, I was seeing blood spurt, I was feeling a gun buck in my hand.
And then something curious happened.
When the others queued up to receive Communion, Mick and I stayed where we were. But as the line moved along, as each person in turn said Amen and received the Host, something lifted me up onto my feet and steered me to the end of the line. I felt a light tingling in the palms of my hands, a pulse throbbing in the hollow of my throat.
The line moved. "The Body o Christ," the priest said, over and over and over. "Amen," each person said in turn. The line moved, and now I was at the front of it, and Ballou was right behind me.
"The Body o Christ," the priest said.
"Amen," I said. And took the wafer upon my tongue.
Chapter 24
Outside the sun was bright and the air crisp and cold. Halfway down the church steps Mick caught up with me and gripped my arm. His smile was fierce.
"Ah, well burn in hell for sure now," he said. "Taking the Lords Communion with blood on our hands. If theres a more certain way of getting into hell I dont know what it is. My sins unconfessed for thirty years, my apron still wet with that bastards gore, and Im up at the altar as if Im in a state of grace. " He sighed at the wonder of it. "And you! Not a Catholic, but were you ever baptized anything at all?"
"I dont think so. "
"Sweet Jesus, a fucking heathen at the altar rail, and Im following after him like Marys lost lamb. Whatever got into you, man?"
"I dont know. "
"The other night I said you were full of surprises. By God, I didnt know the half of it. Come on. "
"Where are we going?"
"I want a drink," he said. "And I want your company. "
We went to a meatcutters bar on the corner of Thirteenth and Washington. We had been there before. The floor was covered with sawdust, the air thick with smoke from the bartenders cigar. We sat at a table with whiskey for him and strong black coffee for me.
He said, "Why?"
I thought about it and shook my head. "I dont know," I said. "I never planned it. Something picked me up off my knees and set me down in front of the altar. "
"Thats not what I mean. "
"Oh?"
"Why were you
out there tonight? What sent you to Maspeth with a gun in your hand?"
"Oh," I said.
"Well?"
I blew on my coffee to cool it. "Thats a good question," I said.
"Dont tell me it was the money. You could have had fifty thousand dollars just by letting him have the tape. I dont know what the sharesll be, but they wont reach fifty thousand. Why double the risk for a smaller reward?"
"The money didnt have all that much to do with it. "
"The money had nothing to do with it," he said. "When did you ever give a shit for money? You never did. " He took a drink. "Ill tell you a secret. I dont give a shit about it either. I need it all the fucking time, but I dont really care about it. "
"I know. "
"You didnt want to sell them their tape, did you?"
"No," I said. "I wanted them dead. "
He nodded. "You know who I thought of the other night? That old cop you told me about, the old Irishman you were yoked up with when you first started out. "
"Mahaffey. "
"Thats the one. I thought of Mahaffey. "
"I can see how you would. "
"I thought of what hed said to you. Never do something you can get somebody else to do for you. Isnt that how it went?"
"That sounds right. "
"And I said to myself that there was nothing wrong with that. Why not leave the killing to the men in the bloody aprons? But then you said you wanted more than a finders fee, and for a moment there I thought I had you wrong. "
"I know. And it bothered you. "
"It did, because I couldnt see you as a man with that kind of money hunger. It meant you werent the man I thought I knew, and that did bother me. But then in the next breath you cleared the air again. Said you wanted to earn a full share, said you wanted to go in with a gun. "
"Yes. "
"Why?"
"It seemed easier that way. Theyd be expecting me, theyd let me in the door. "
"Thats not the reason. "
"No, its not. I guess I decided Mahaffey was wrong, or that his advice couldnt apply in this particular situation. It didnt feel right, leaving the dirty work to somebody else. If I could sentence them to death the least I could do was show up for the hanging. "
He drank and made a face. "Ill tell you," he said, "I serve a better glass of whiskey at my own bar. "
"Dont drink it if its no good. "
He tasted it again to make sure. "I couldnt call it bad," he said. "You know, I dont care much for beer or wine, but Ive had my share of both, and Ive had beer thats thinner than water and wine thats gone to vinegar. And Ive known of meat thats turned and eggs that are off, and food poorly cooked and poorly made and spoiled. But in all my life I dont think Ive ever had bad whiskey. "
"No," I said. "I never had any. "
"How do you feel now, Matt?"
"How do I feel? I dont know how I feel. Im an alcoholic, I never know how I feel. "
"Ah. "
"I feel sober. Thats how I feel. "