3

The fucking coca leaves. Perfectly legal in Peru, useful for calming nausea and helping you get through the night shift. Really quite benign. You stick a couple in your cheek, they slowly dissolve, and you’re set. Almost impossible to refine cocaine from the leaves in their dried form and completely impossible with the tiny amount I had left in my backpack. But even so, most western governments had declared them illegal controlled substances.

The dog stopped barking.

“I’d loike ye ta come wit me, sur,” the customs agent said. I hadn’t heard that hardcore North Dublin accent in a long time and I could barely understand the man. The words were there but it was like hearing Anglo-Saxon or being aurally dyslexic. It took me a while to process what he’d said.

“Of course,” I said after a long pause.

I accompanied him into an antechamber.

“Look, I know why the dog is going crazy, I’ve got these coca leaves in my pack, the dog probably thinks they’re cocaine.”

“Iz zat so, sur?” “Aye it is.”

“Yaar fra America?”

“No, originally I’m from Belfast. I work in America now. Well, Peru. It’s complicated…. Until yesterday I was the head of security at the Miraflores Hilton in Lima. We used to take the leaves for the night shift.”

The customs agent found the bag of coca leaves and sniffed them. He was an older gentleman, fifties or sixties, a shock of white hair, dead capillary nose, ruddy cheeks, chubby body squeezed into a faded white shirt. The sort of desperate character who would like nothing more than to fuck someone over at four in the morning. It looked bad. If the authorities were feeling ungenerous I knew that this could be seen as an attempt to smuggle coke into Ireland. I could be looking at jail time.

“What ya doin in Oirland?”

“I’ve come to help an old girlfriend of mine. Her daughter has gone missing and she’s really cracking up and I’ve come to support her and maybe help find the girl.”

“What’s hur neem?” “Bridget Callaghan.”

He didn’t mean to show a reaction but he did. His eyes widened slightly. He knew who she was.

“What’s yur neem?” “Michael Forsythe.”

“Ok. Did ye breeng anyting else illegal?”

“No,” I said and turned out my pockets. The customs agent went through my stuff anyway. He noted the fifteen thousand dollars of Bridget’s money and a couple of grand of my own there too. He stared at me for a moment and his eyes drifted back to the cash.

It gave me an idea. I toyed with it, dismissed it, floated it again.

But this was the situation. If they arrested me, it would take me a couple of days to hit bail, and the wee lassie could be dead, or in the Hare Krishnas, or a member of a biker gang, or taking drugs in some dingy flat, long before I could be of any assistance. Once again I’d be bloody straight into Bridget’s bad books. Michael the traitor, Michael the fuckup. And to overegg that custard Bridget or anyone else then would have an excellent opportunity of killing me while I waited on remand in an Irish jail.

That was option 1.

But there was always option 2.

What about it then? Just looking at him, I knew he wasn’t going to let me go with a stiff talking to. I was too old and he was too old for that. Aye, it would have to be the other way.

His greedy eyes on the money.

Bringing in a few harmless leaves was no big deal but attempting to bribe a government official could get me seriously fucked. If he took it badly, he’d report me and they’d throw the book at me. I could be facing years, not months; also, there was no way he could ignore it. He might be irked. Beyond irked. Seriously pissed off. “Some Yank scumbag comes in here attempting to bribe me with his wad of cash. I’ll bloody do you, mate.”

Yeah, but…

I was a friend of Bridget Callaghan and he’d heard of her. Maybe even was a little afraid of her. Jesus, it was a lot to weigh in my mind.

“Why don’t ya teek a seat and I’ll inform ye of yer rights,” the man said and I could more or less follow him completely now.

I sat down. Now or never.

Every year The Economist publishes a table of the countries whose public officials are amenable to bribery. Denmark is always near the bottom of the table, the very least subornable in the world. Try to talk your way out of a traffic ticket in

Copenhagen and they’ll bung you in the slammer. India is at the top with the most corrupt officials. It’s not even really seen as corruption out there, it’s just the way business gets done. Now where did Ireland fit in on the scale? I tried to remember. Somewhere between Britain and America on the lower part of the page.

I gave the agent the final once-over. An old whiskey-breathed sad sack, who clearly hated work, me, himself. He might just respond to the right level of incentive program.

“I’m really sorry this had to happen; I use the coca leaves for purely medicinal purposes, they’re not illegal in Peru, I forgot they were in my bag. Of course, it’s no excuse. Is there any way I can pay an on-the-spot fine and get out of here? Bridget Callaghan is expecting me.”

The man regarded me closely. He looked at the fifteen thousand dollars in bills sitting on the table. He closed his eyes.

He was thinking about it. Good.

“De ye have a contact for Miss Callaghan?” he asked.

“I do,” I said and gave him Bridget’s phone number in the Belfast Europa.

“Jus a moment,” he said, took away my passport, and left the room.

He hadn’t given me his name. He hadn’t told me where he was going. I sat down on the chair. Waited.

Twenty minutes later he came back.

“You’re who ye say ye are. I have a great deal of respect for Miss Callaghan. The fine’ll be about two thousand dollars, that’s the equivalent to the euros,” he said, and involuntarily licked his lips in anticipation.

“I’d like my passport back,” I said.

He gave me the passport and took the coca leaves and threw them in a garbage can behind him. I counted out two thousand dollars, gave them to him.

I wondered if he had indeed called Bridget at the Europa. It would have woken her up, but more than that, it would have alerted her that I was back in the country. I’d have to be on my toes.

Then again, he didn’t seem the type to call. He was just killing twenty minutes out there, making me sweat while he thought it over. He could really do what he liked. It was four in the bloody morning. There were no other customs inspectors on.

I was pleased with myself. A good guess on my part. Two thousand was about the right price for this unimaginative, pathetic, small-time shitehawke.

“Thanks very much,” I said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

I repacked my bag, patted the dog, left the customs office, and walked through the Green Channel.

My trials, however, weren’t over just yet. A man from the department of agriculture. “Did you visit any zoos in America?”

“No.”

“Farms?”

“No.”

“Agricultural research stations?” “No.”

An assassin entering the country was one thing, but the prospect of diseased feed or potato blight or another mad cow epidemic sent the Irish around the bend.

“Have you ever had occasion to eat squirrel, flying squirrel, capybara, or other rodents?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes and answered all the stupid questions.

Another half hour of officialdom and when I was done finally I went to the bathroom, washed my face, walked out of the airport and into my first Irish day in a very long time.

Buses had taken away most of the passengers from my plane and the rest had gotten the few remaining taxis. A typical charming summer’s morning in Ireland. A cold, gray sky and a freezing wind skewering in from the Irish Sea. I shivered in my thin leather jacket, Stanley work boots, and jeans. I didn’t even have a hat. At least the sun was already coming up. June 16 marks the earliest sunrise in the northern hemisphere and there would be light now until close to midnight since it was the week of the summer solstice. I went to the taxi rank. Only one car lurking over there. A black, slightly beat-up, Mercedes. The cabbie drove over and stopped the car beside me. I hopped in the back.

“Connolly Station,” I said.

“The station it is,” the driver said, and after that encounter with the customs agent I could understand the accent completely now. It just took you a minute or two to get back in the game. Ireland has about three or four major regional accents. Some of them very hard to follow. In Northern Ireland I can put a man within twenty miles of his hometown and in the south fifty. Or at least I could before my long years of exile.

The driver looked at me in the mirror, switched off the engine, turned around.

“That’ll be twenty euros, is that all right?” he said. “Sure…but I’ve only got dollars, ok?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t take dollars.”

I swore inwardly. Another Irish subtlety I’d forgotten. Don’t give details when you don’t have to.

“Come on, mate, just get going,” I said.

“I don’t take dollars, you’ll have to get change,” the taxi man insisted.

“You don’t take dollars at all, never?” “No, I could lose me license.”

“Come on, do me a favor. I’ll give you fifty bucks if you just get cracking,” I said.

“You’re going to have to get change, pal, euros, or else you’ll be walking where ya want to go,” the driver said, getting somewhat hot under the collar. I looked at him in the mirror. He was about my age, wearing a Manchester United beanie hat and a thick sweater with reindeer on it. Big build, fat, frothy lips, the skin tone of a granite statue. A Dublin accent, but a hint of the north in it too.

I was about to give the bastard a piece of my mind but then stopped, unclenched my fists, and found a place of inner tranquility.

“Ok, mate, I’ll get the bloody euros,” I said through the window and smiled reassuringly at him. He didn’t smile back. He seemed nervous. He wiped tiny beads of sweat off his forehead. Interesting, but I didn’t have the time to probe the inner psychology of a cabbie, I was freezing out here. I sprinted back to the overhang outside the terminal. I asked a pair of cops where I could change money.

“Inside couple of bureaus de change, Eire Bank’s got a better rate than National,” one said.

“And a prettier girl,” his partner added.

I found the two bureaus de change and headed for the National Bank. Old habit: whatever a peeler says, play safe and do the opposite.

I gave the girl three thousand dollars. She gave me back two thousand four hundred and ninety euros.

“Happy Bloomsday,” she said.

“Thanks, happy Bloom to you, too, love.”

I walked back out to the taxis. The driver was on his cell phone. He hung up hurriedly when he saw me, gave me a big fake smile.

“Ok, mate, where to? Connolly?” the driver asked.

“I haven’t been here in a while, is it Connolly Station where you get the trains to Belfast?”

“It is too now, and is that where you want to go?”

“No, I was just asking that to make small talk. Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, once again betraying my irritation.

“Connolly Station it is,” the driver said, and I knew he was going to take the most expensive route that he bloody could.

Streets.

Trees.

Cars.

Dublin is a city I don’t know well. Drop me a few blocks from O’Connell Street and I’m banjaxed. I can get you to Trinity and St. Pat’s and a brothel opposite the Four Courts but that’s about it. It’s not my town at all. When I lived in Belfast I’d be down about twice a year for a rugby match. Don’t think I’ve ever stayed overnight. Lot of beggars about back then, now it’s yuppies with cell phones and PDAs.

Dubliners have changed quite a bit. Nowadays they’re increasingly like Londoners. Cosmopolitan, busy, cheeky. They think just because they know where to get a decent pint of Guinness or a half-decent cup of coffee that this gives them the right to put on airs. I suppose they’re arrogant because they live in a nice town. Good new statues, new architecture, and a really lovely Georgian zone near Trinity. Belfast, by contrast, is a bloody disaster area. The old ugliness from before the war, the 1970s bomb-damage ugliness, the 1990s rebuilding ugliness. Belfast never makes Lonely Planet’s list of most beautiful cities. Still, salt of the earth. Scotchy used to say, “Scratch a Dubliner and underneath you’ll find a snob; scratch

a man from Belfast and he’ll punch you in the face for taking liberties.”

Anyway, I don’t know Dublin, so it wasn’t until I saw that the cabbie was driving over a Liffey River bridge that I began to get suspicious.

Dublin Airport is in the north of the city.

Connolly Station, as far as I remembered, is also in the north of the city. Certainly north of the Liffey. Driving from the airport to Connolly should not for any reason involve crossing the river.

I reexamined the driver. Scars on his hands. Big guy, bruiser, you would have thought. Slow, but you wouldn’t want to mess with him. Knock your block off, he would.

No, I didn’t like him at all.

And now that I checked out the cab, I began to notice a few odd things as well.

There was no meter, but that wasn’t so unusual, a lot of minicabs in Dublin didn’t have meters, same with gypsy cabs in New York. But there was no glass partition between the driver and me. No credit card machine, no identity card hanging from his mirror, and he had no sticker allowing him into airport parking.

In fact, there was nothing in the cab that looked like a cab at all.

A wee moment of interior monologue: Michael, don’t be so paranoid. He’s just a working stiff. He’s not out to get you. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you and your fucking problems. You know what the word solipsism means? Well, look it up in the dictionary, you eejit.

Aye, but then again who exactly had the driver been on the phone with that he was so fucking anxious to hang up on when I came back? And further on that point, why send me away in the first place unless it was to make a call? Of course he could

take dollars. Everybody took dollars, especially when it was off the books.

I tried to peer through the window to figure out where we were. The last of the night had been more or less banished but it was hard to see now through the morning mist. Vague buildings went past, but there were no landmarks, not that I could have recognized the landmarks anyway. Maybe St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity College, but anything else would have left me none the wiser.

“Do you have a cigarette?” I asked the driver, for something to say.

“I do not. I have given up. Since my birthday. Over a month now.”

“Good for you, it’s a filthy habit,” I agreed.

“Aye, well, for me the encouragement was the pubs, you know,” the driver said.

“What?”

“The pubs, you know, the ban,” he said.

“They banned smoking in Irish pubs? Hadn’t heard.”

“Every pub in the south. No smoking anywhere; I was opposed, but it’s a good thing, I see that now, helped me quit. Social thing, out with your mates. I notice the difference when I go up to Belfast, Jesus, the smoke would knock you out.”

“You go up to Belfast often?” I asked in a completely neutral voice.

“Aye, now and again. Business, you know?” “What sort of business, what’s your line?”

“Oh, nothing you would be interested in. The taxi business, that’s it. Stuff to do with that. You know how it is.”

I did not know how it was. The taxi business, in Belfast? The more he talked the more I didn’t like this little scenario.

“Are we near the station?” I asked.

“Not too far now, I’ll have you there for the first Enterprise train. Think that goes off at six o’clock. You’ll have time to get your breakfast and get a paper and a seat. You should reserve your seat, though, it’s very popular. Faster, too, just a couple of hours and you’ll be in Central Station in Belfast. It’s great. Really quick now that the Provos have stopped bombing the line,” the driver said rapidly.

“What’s your name if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.

“Padraig Lugh. But it’s funny, you know, nobody ever calls me Paddy or Pad or anything like that, everybody always calls me Padraig.”

“Do you want them to call you Paddy?” “No, I do not. I like Padraig.”

“How do you spell that last name?” I asked, wondering if it was fake.

“L-u-g-h. He’s the old Irish sun god, you know.” “I know,” I said.

“And what’s your name?” he asked.

“Name’s Michael,” I said slowly, not liking his curiosity.

“Pleased to meet you, Michael,” Padraig said and put his hand behind his head for me to shake.

I shook it. It was cold, clammy, trembling.

Jesus, was Padraig a player? It couldn’t be coincidence if he was. Maybe they were waiting for me. Maybe the customs guy had tipped them off and told his mates that he would hold me just long enough for them to get there. Maybe Paddy had been on the phone to them. Sent me back in to get euros just to confirm my ID.

Or maybe he was just an ordinary driver with a touch of palsy, taking me on the magical mystery tour to bump up his fare.

I let go of his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Padraig. Listen, I was wondering, I couldn’t help noticing that we’d crossed over the Liffey.”

“Aye, we did, too,” Padraig agreed with a sigh.

“Isn’t Connolly Station on the other side of the river?” “Do you know the city well at all now?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Well, I’ll tell you, it’s actually quicker for me to scoot over the bridge and skip along the south side and skip back than it would be for me to try to get through all the construction around the Abbey and the station and the Customs House, you know.”

“Oh sure, I wasn’t impugning your abilities as a driver. Not at all. I was only asking,” I said a little apologetically.

“It’s all right. Listen, I take taxis when I’m abroad and I’m always wondering if the bloody driver is ripping me off,” Padraig said with a laugh and turned around to reassure me. He seemed hurt and I felt embarrassed now.

No. Padraig wasn’t an assassin or a goon or a player. He was just a cabbie taking me on the quickest route to the station.

Well, that’s what happens when you’ve spent twelve years on the run. You’ve got a Ph.D. in suspicion. It helps you stay alive but it doesn’t do much for interpersonal contacts.

I frowned. Aye.

And wasn’t that the heart of everything.

The reason I was here. Not for Bridget. For me. Since 1992 I hadn’t had a relationship that lasted more than six months. It wasn’t the fact that I had to lie to every woman I met. It was more the nagging distrust that would creep in between her and me. A slow imploding destruction. They could always tell I had secrets. I was suspicious of everything they did. It put the mustard in the chocolate cake. Lies, lies, and more lies. You couldn’t build anything on that. And I’d never been tempted to

tell anyone the truth. That I was a wanted man. That I had killed a mob boss and the FBI had cut me a deal to keep me out of jail. That I’d killed six more people in Maine and Massachusetts, two of them women. How could you tell someone that? Especially someone you loved? You’d be putting her in danger. Jeopardizing her life. You could never share, you must always dissemble. Aye, and it would continue to be that way. The way things had to be. Living in shadows, always on guard, always a skeptic.

Like being in the Masons without the social contacts or the aprons.

“So you can’t smoke in any bars at all? What about clubs?” I asked, for something to say.

“Clubs, I don’t know, I am not a member of any clubs, to tell you the truth now.”

“They’re probably exempt,” I said.

“Aye, well, it’s a pity you’re leaving for Belfast; if the weather stays nice there’s going to be quite the shindig in Dub today.”

“Yeah, I heard about that, Bloomsday, right, something to do with James Joyce?”

“Aye, you’re right. I haven’t read the book meself. I’m not a big reader. And I’m not likely to be now. I just got satellite, you know. Four hundred channels, powerful stuff. Who would want to read with all that carry-on. And bejesus, have you seen the length of that book? But a lot of famous people are coming to town. I heard Gwyneth Paltrow was staying at the Gresham.”

“Gwyneth Paltrow?”

“That’s what I heard, she’s big into literature like, and I think she’s Irish way back, so she is.”

“Who else is going to be here?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Liam Neeson, I think, people like that. You know, famous people.”

“Who’s the most famous person you ever had in your taxi?” I asked, trying to see if he really was a taxi driver.

“I have had all of U2.” “Nice guys?” I asked.

“Great. Great guys. Really great. Wonderful lads…. Hate that Bono, though. Can’t stand him. Lecturing all of us to give money to Africa, while he, an Irish artist for all love, has never paid a fucking red cent in tax in his life and, I might add, whose personal fortune could clear the debts of about twenty of the poorest countries in the world. Fucker.”

“Stiffed you on a tip, huh?” I guessed.

“No, not really, could have been better, though; anyway, this was back when I had my own cab, you know, when I was doing it for a living. Back in the 1980s. Had all the boys in here at one time or another,” the driver said and in the mirror I caught a wistful look on his face.

Back when he had his own cab? Back when he did this for a living? So what exactly was he doing now?

He wasn’t a taxi driver anymore. Now my antennae were really up, and I wasn’t too surprised when he said:

“Shite, do you feel that? Oh, do you feel that? Ah, Jayzus.” “Feel what?”

“The bump, boom, boom, boomp.” “I don’t feel anything.”

He turned with a leery smile of broken yellow choppers. Slight nervous twitch to the eye.

“Aye, it looks like we got a flat on the left front. You probably can’t feel it back there. Would you mind if I just got out and checked? Station is only five minutes away, but I don’t want to fuck the wheels.”

I tensed.

The car slowed.

“Just be two secs to take a look at it,” he said.

Christ, I had been right the whole time. A plot. There was something rotten in Denmark.

The car stopped.

“Don’t mind if I go out?” he asked.

“Sure, go, you can check the tire,” I said. He opened the door, left it open.

I looked out the window and I knew it was a play. We were definitely somewhere near the docks or the water in the east of the city, south of the Liffey. A warehouse district. I couldn’t tell exactly where, because I didn’t know and also because the fog had reduced the visibility to about forty or fifty feet. But no houses, anyway, no cars. The perfect place for a hit.

I readied myself. What was he going to do? Get out of the car, pull out a piece, and shoot me through the window? If it wasn’t his car, sure, why not? Maybe he’d hijacked it last night. And what was I going to do? I didn’t know yet. Have to figure it out very soon.

I watched him carefully. He bent down to check the tire. His hands were hanging by his sides. He knelt down again. Here it comes, I thought. I put my fingers on the far door handle, ready to slide out backward, get up, and sprint off into the fog as best I could.

Aye, that would be the move. Turn the handle, push the door, roll, and run.

It would depend upon how good a shot he’d be and what his shooter was.

Padraig stood, smiled at me.

“Shite, there’s something wedged between the tire and the rim, you couldn’t just give us a wee hand there, could you?” he said.

“I can’t, sorry, I have a business meeting, don’t want to get my hands all dirty,” I said with an apologetic look.

“No, no, you won’t have to touch anything. I’ll just need you to hold the torch while I try and see what’s wedged in there. I’ll get it from the boot.”

I didn’t see how I could say no to that. Gingerly, I opened the door, edged out of the car, keeping the vehicle between him and me. He popped the trunk and removed a flashlight. Turned it on.

“Come on round, I’ll need you to hold this for me,” he said. “I’ll knock a couple of bucks off the fare.”

“I thought you didn’t take dollars,” I said.

“Euros, I’ll knock a couple of euros off,” he corrected himself with a laugh.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You just hold the light. I can’t see under the rim. I’ll bang whatever’s there out with this,” he said, holding up a tire iron and giving me another wonderful welcoming Irish smile.

So you want me to bend down and hold the flashlight, meanwhile you stand beside me with a fucking tire iron and thump it repeatedly into my skull. I don’t think so, mate.

“Something stuck in the wheel rim, eh?” I asked. “Aye.”

“Let’s get the light on it,” I said. “Oh, I see it, there it is,” and as he bent down to take a look I smacked the flashlight onto the top of his head and rammed it backward into his nose. Blood squirted, cartilage broke.

“That enough goddamn light for you?” I said.

I went to kick him but the blows to the head had hardly dented that thick skull. He swung the tire iron at me. It crashed into the Mercedes, scraping a big chunk out of the door.

In the Book of Five Rings and other Chinese manuals of martial arts, there’s a maxim that says: “If there’s a big bastard with a tire iron trying to murder you and you’re armed with only a flashlight, a good option is to fucking leg it.”

I legged it.

I ran straight for the dense bank of fog farther down the street. I got about ten paces before he rugby tackled me to the ground. Jesus. For a big guy he sure could move. He was holding me around the legs. I stuck my thumb in his right eye socket and gouged and he let go of me and screamed. He lashed out with the tire iron but I slid out of the way as it came crashing down on the pavement with a nasty discordant clanging noise. I got to my feet but the strapping around my prosthesis had come undone. It would take a minute to fix it. A minute, a thousand years, no difference in this situation.

I leaped on his back and put my arm around his throat and squeezed. He somehow managed to stand up with me on top of him and then he staggered and fell deliberately backward in an attempt to crush me underneath him. I let go of his throat and pushed him away. He grabbed me by my leather jacket, threw me violently to the street, lost his balance, fell down, and bounced to his feet again like Gene Kelly on crack.

Something flashed and I saw that now he had a knife in his left hand and the tire iron in the other.

“Bloody attack me, would you? I’ll kill you for that, you bastard,” he said.

“Jesus, me attack you? You were going to brain me,” I said, breathing hard.

“I wasn’t going near you,” he said, gasping. “What did you say?” I asked.

“I wasn’t going near you.”

“What are you saying? You weren’t going to attack me?” I asked.

“Hell, no, what are you talking about?”

“Are you saying this is all a misunderstanding? I thought you were about to beat me to death,” I said incredulously.

“What the fook would I do that for?” the cabbie asked.

“I thought you were a hit man,” I said, my voice becoming a little less disbelieving.

“A hit man, Jesus Christ, have you some imagination. I wanted to check me tires.”

“Oh, shit,” I said and groaned. That was my problem all over

—I knew how to go from zero to a hundred, but I didn’t know how to dial it down.

“Shit is right, I’ll be taking you to the Garda, me bucko. I think you broke my nose. Sue you, I will, and I’ll press charges.”

“Jesus, I’m really sorry, mate, I read the situation all wrong. Usually I get it right but this time—”

“Save it for the judge. Don’t know what your problem is. You better wait in the Beemer, we have some haggling to do if you don’t want me to call the peelers,” the big man said, getting his breath back and turning away from me. That was all I needed to hear. I readied myself.

He began walking back to the car.

I ran at him and drop-kicked him in the back. He went down hard with a crash. The tire iron slipped out of his hand and he rolled around fast and lashed out with the knife. I was so close it caught me in the stomach, tearing my leather jacket and T- shirt and gouging a four-inch slash below my belly button.

I held my hand over the wound, blood pouring out between my fingers, and reeled for a quarter of a second, gathered my wits, grabbed the tire iron, and smashed it into his head so fast he didn’t have time to get a protective arm up. I thumped him on the temple and behind the ear. And again. And again.

I kicked the knife out of his hand.

Blood was everywhere, his skull was cracked, synaptic fluid oozing out onto his face.

“Why?” he said and gave me a look of such confusion that I thought, is it possible that I’m wrong?

I sank to one knee.

“What did you say?”

He looked at me with desperation.

“Why?” he whispered almost inaudibly.

I leaned next to him. Doubt took over. I cradled his head. His eyes were blinking fast, his body shaking. I had made a terrible mistake.

“You called your car a Beemer, and it’s a Merc. How could you forget the make of your own car? I thought you’d hijacked it.”

“Christ,” he said.

I set down his head and got to my feet.

“Help, can anybody help?” I managed to shout, but there was no one around. I knelt down again.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Padraig.

His face was a mess, his skull smashed in. If he didn’t get assistance he’d be in serious trouble. Blood on the brain, coma, death.

I had really cocked up this time.

His hand reached up and he pulled me close.

He was barely there, about to pass out, almost choking from the blood in his mouth.

“You fuck…Forsythe…” he said weakly. One second. Two. Three.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Fucking kill you…Forsythe,” he mumbled, his voice trailing away.

His eyes closed and he fell into the black pit of unconsciousness.

I stood, nodded.

Well, well, well.

He was an assassin. No other way he could have known my name. Son of a bitch. I had been right.

Finish the bastard off? Nah. Wasn’t worth it.

But, oh Jesus, Bridget. What were you playing at? It didn’t make any sense. Didn’t she realize I’d get the first flight out now?

Blackness at the edges of my eyes. I fell down onto the street.

I examined my belly. Losing blood. The gash wasn’t deep, but I didn’t like the look of it.

Blinked.

Stumbled.

Got up again.

The fog was lifting but I couldn’t see any houses or pedestrians or passing cars. I went to the Mercedes and got in. He’d left the key. I started the car and drove it about half a mile, anywhere, just to get away.

Pulled it into an alley. Passed out. Woke.

Blood flowing through my fingertips. Oozing, not pouring. Looked in the car for anything to do first aid. Nothing.

Opened the door. A swaying pavement, houses.

A sign said we were on Holles Street, which was near Marrion Square. Miles from Connolly. The cabbie’d had no intention of taking me to the train station. He was heading for the docks the whole time.

His job was supposed to be to lift me or kill me. But it was still puzzling. He had no gun. Why not? And why only one of him? And if it was a purely random shakedown how in the name of Jehovah did he know my name?

I grabbed my backpack, opened it, swallowed a couple of Percocet, got out of the car, popped the trunk.

Washer fluid, oil, spare tire, rags, assorted tools, big roll of duct tape. Do the job. I took off my T-shirt, ripped a rag in half, poured on the washer fluid, cleaned the wound.

Jesus.

Ride that pain.

I dried my belly with another rag, used a third as a bandage, and wrapped it on with four good turns of duct tape. Do for now.

Had to go, cops would be on me, needed to get some agua. In a minute. In a minute.

I got back in the car, closed my eyes, and the blackness came and I was gone again.