9

15 Sept 90—NEW YORK CITY

Devereaux felt very bad all morning and into the afternoon. He tried to walk it out of his system. The walking helped but it made him think about her all the more. He tried to think of a way out of it but there didn’t seem to be any. He had given it four weeks; could he go to Pendleton, cap in hand, and ask to be relieved, saying it had all failed? No, there was no possibility of that. And without that option, every other option collapsed.

The city was bright and warm; women in colorful dresses filled the sidewalks and some of them looked like Rita Macklin.

Night came in dark streets shadowed by tall buildings long before the sun set. He went back to the low-rise West Side of red brick tenements and Italian delis and Irish saloons. Give it another try. Devereaux walked to Dougherty’s on Eleventh and climbed on the stool he usually used. The night man was skinny, with oily, curly hair worn long behind his ears.

“You wanna Harp?” His usual. He had come in enough times to have a usual drink.

“I want Scotch.”

“We got no Scotch. Irish.”

“Irish on the rocks.”

The whiskey was smoky and harsh. No Scotch. Harp on tap. Erin go bragh behind the bar and a sign advertising a fundraiser for Northern Ireland Aid. Brits out. The hardness of the place had amused him at first and then it had begun to seep into his bones. It was too hard, harder than it had to be, but that was what the neighborhood was like. It was tough old New York with stickball, stickups, and a casual sense of life and death. He finished the drink sooner than he thought he had. He looked at the ice and then at the barman and nodded.

“Monday Night Football” was being played out on a color screen at the other end of the bar. The Giants were banging hard into the Bears and there were bodies all over the field. He stared at the screen—to stare at something—and thought he might just go back to Washington and wait until Pendleton called for his limousine and he would be the driver and he would take Pendleton out on Indian Head Highway down in Maryland south of Washington where there was a place to get rid of a body. He thought about that while he stared at the mayhem on the screen.

The man settled against the bar next to him. He had a long leather coat and it squeaked against the bar rail. Devereaux turned and looked at him. He was a small man with a face as pale as death. His eyes were very blue behind the wire-rimmed glasses. The line of his jaw and set of his teeth showed that he had seen everything in the world at least once. Devereaux had not expected this, not tonight, not this soon. He had already finished one whiskey and was halfway through another and he didn’t feel ready for it.

“I like football. Reminds me of war. The way it really is fought, not the video games.”

His voice was soft with the hard traces of an Irish accent in it. Devereaux turned to him. The barman had already poured a tall shot of whiskey for the man and left the bottle of Black Bush on the bar.

“That’s why we like it, fella. You get the risk of death along with the game and you can bet on the whole thing besides. Snap a body, a tendon, break a back like Montana got his back broke a few years ago. That Stingley fella, paraplegic. That’s war, a lot of broken bodies. God, they love it. Look at ’em.” His contempt was as soft as his voice and it seemed to come so naturally, from such a deep place, that Devereaux could not say anything at all. The contempt was complete in itself.

“You don’t look like a fella that likes football,” the man said.

“I was out of the country when it got popular,” Devereaux said.

The man smiled and raised his glass and drained it. A dash of color touched his pale cheeks. His hands were very large and he wore a wide golden band on the third finger of his right hand. His hair was thin and fine, spun with brown and gray threads.

“You been looking for me,” he said.

“You’re Mickey Connors,” Devereaux said.

“The same.”

“I been looking for you.”

“You done all the right things. You stood out there and made your trail for me. You asked but you asked discreet. I like the way you did it. Even went up to the UN and tried to get a job. Jesus, I liked that. And looked up someone at Columbia. You think you’d like to go back to teachin’ after what you been doing the last twenty years?”

“I need a job.”

“You gone down pretty far, ain’t you, fella? Your girlie kicked you out, didn’t she?”

“Nobody named you my father confessor.”

Slow smile. Even smiling, there was an edge to him.

“You’re a beautiful piece, Devereaux. I like all the little touches. You even call her from a pay phone because you figure I tapped the line. I did tap it. She sounded sloshed to me, does she drink heavy? I would guess she picked that up from you—”

“You would, huh? Go fuck yourself,” Devereaux said.

Still smiling. “What are you, a tough guy? Lemme buy you a drink. Don’t drink that shit he was giving you, drink this.” And he poured from the Black Bush bottle on the rocks. “Slanté.” And they raised glasses and drank the whiskey.

“I just bought a drink for a drowning man,” Mickey Connors said. He couldn’t seem to get rid of the slow, contemptuous half smile that came naturally across his face.

Devereaux said nothing. The barman was down at the television set, watching Phil Simms set and throw. The same half dozen were at the bar, some staring at the dusty mirror and their own faces, some trying to focus on the game. The place smelled of bad beer pipes and spilled liquor. It was a party room that no one ever cleaned up after.

“You wanted me for something in particular?”

Devereaux judged the hard blue eyes. They were waiting for a lie. He couldn’t do it, he knew he couldn’t do it. It came up to this moment and he wasn’t any good at it. He had known that from the start and it had sickened him all the more, thinking of Pendleton with that piece of blackmail paper on the desk between them, thinking he had to do his best and it wouldn’t be good enough.

“I guess not,” Devereaux said at last and turned away.

“Was it something I said?” Mocking still and just as softly delivered. He had been born in County Clare, Ireland, but he had come to New York at the age of five. Was the brogue just an affectation? But Devereaux had decided in that moment there wasn’t an affected bone in Mickey Connors’s body.

“I figure you stole enough in your time, you don’t need a job,” Mickey Connors said. “I know some things about you, Devereaux. Devereaux. Could be French or Irish, couldn’t it? Or even English. What is it?”

“I’m from Chicago,” Devereaux said.

The grin opened up. “That’s a far country too, ain’t it? But you ain’t in Chicago now, fella, you’re in Westie territory.”

“What’s this leading to?” Turned back to Mickey. Stared now. His eyes were as hard as the other man’s but they were made of gray pewter, dulled by experience and the years.

“Come on, let’s go for a ride.”

Devereaux got off the barstool and scooped up his change. He noticed that no one in the place ever left a tip. And the barman never seemed to mind.

Eleventh Avenue was bright and dark at the same time. Orange lights cast orange shadows. The car was a stretch Cadillac sedan and the rear door was already open, held by a huge young man with wild black hair and black eyes.

They climbed inside and the big man slammed the door behind them and went to the driver’s side. The glass between the front and back seats slid shut with a push of the button by Mickey’s left hand.

Mickey Connors opened the bar and took out another bottle of Black Bush and two glasses. He poured and handed one to Devereaux.

“Slanté,” he repeated the Irish language salute.

Devereaux did not say anything. He sipped the whiskey. The car was moving south in the light traffic toward the towers of lower Manhattan.

“Sit over there, I want to look you in the eye,” Mickey Connors said. He nodded toward the jump seat. Devereaux shifted to the jump seat and stared across at Mickey. His arms rested on his knees.

“So what’s the game, boy?”

“The same old game,” Devereaux said.

“You in the trade or out?” Mickey Connors said, the half smile still teasing on his face.

“It depends,” Devereaux said.

“The thing is, you dropped my name at a half dozen bars in the last month. You live like a fucking monk in that rathole room at the Croydon Hotel. I got interested in someone droppin’ my name in my own block, so to speak. I checked around on you, all the way back. You was named November and you did a lot of shit in your time in Section.”

“Did I?”

“Aw, come off it, fella, we’re not doing ‘Sesame Street’ here. I see they gave you the dirty stick. Disability. You took out that fella in London was more than a year ago, name was Henry McGee, and they stuck you because of your accident. I even checked the accident. You were really hurt, no fake in that. I saw the X rays, how’d you like that? They was giving you LSD for a while there, didja know that?”

“The flashes were familiar.”

“So they scrambled your brain and then they wiped you off the ledger.” He shook his head. “The government is not a grateful employer.”

He didn’t have to lie for an answer. “They’re assholes.”

“I’ll drink to that.” He did. “I was involved in LSD, you know, in the early days when we were experimenting at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Middle sixties. Couple of the volunteers decided to fly, some just went down the rabbit hole with Alice and never came back. One asshole did a Brody off the Flatiron Building. You figure you can fly, boy?”

“Only on United.”

“So there’s nothing wrong with you, is there? Except your girlie kicked you out and your life is taking a turn down the shit road?”

“We don’t talk about her.”

“Why didn’t it work out? You were with her—”

“We don’t talk about her.”

“Well, I appreciate that. Leave the ladies out of it. Let’s just say you were gettin’ old and she noticed.”

“The alternative to getting old isn’t pleasant.”

Mickey shook his head. “Death isn’t so much, boy. It can be a positive release.”

“I haven’t swallowed so much philosophy since junior year at U.C.”

“I ain’t offering philosophy, boy.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re offering anything except whiskey and a ride around the park.”

“Oh, no. We’re goin’ someplace all right. Everything has a purpose.”

“What’s the purpose?”

Mickey ignored him. He stared out the window at the sullen streets and he might have been talking to himself. “Your clout in Section was this fella Hanley. He’s the one kept you outta trouble. Now Hanley’s been bumped and Pendleton is running Ops. Pendleton, that blue-eyed smoke bastard, I don’t think he liked you.”

“Maybe it was the other way around.”

“It could have been. I can’t get into Section very easy. I never dealt with them. But I know about that smoke. He’s a mean bastard without a trace of humankind in him.”

“You’d know about those things.”

Mickey stared at him. “I know about those things.”

Devereaux said nothing.

“You know where I come from? My old man and old man Kennedy was two corkscrews opening the same bottle of stolen wine, that’s how far. My old man worked for him off the boat. I was five years old and I saw the way it was. Old man Kennedy liked to get Irish with my old man, sit down and have a few jars and talk about the old sod. Ah, fuck him. I saw the way it was. I did what my da dreamed of doing. He was never top man, couldn’t get close.”

“But you made it.”

“I made it and I’m makin’ it every day. I got a piece of a hundred coppers in Boston, New York, and Chicago. That’s all you need, those three towns, good Irish lads every one of them and you can leverage all the rest. Those boys got eyes and ears. They can hear all the way into the heart of the G.”

“What’s the business, Mickey? Gunrunning for the IRA?”

“That too. That’s my contribution, you might say. But you heard of me, don’t be a shy fella now. You knew about someone named Mickey Connors when his name popped up in Nicaragua, didn’t ya?”

“I might have.”

“Y’see, Langley and me have a deal. I do for them unto others what they wouldn’t be caught dead doing themselves. And they do unto me. If I can steal them a fur coat, I do it and they give me a pat on the back for it.”

“You’re an independent contractor.”

“Among the big fellas. Like Consortium out in Denver. Like the Hairless Arab down in south Florida. The government needs us and we need the G. One dirty hand washing the other. You think what I do is bad compared to all the things you did in Section?”

“I don’t think about Section. I’m thinking for myself.”

“About time.”

Silence. The big car swung into a narrow street that ran toward the docks on the Hudson.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll know when we get there,” Mickey said.

“So everything has a purpose?”

“See, there was this copper. Copper from Chicago, in fact. Named Tubbo. One of my boys, he gets a regular check in the mail. Didja know a copper when you was little named Tubbo O’Neill?”

Devereaux stared at the man with the ghostly face.

“Tubbo O’Neill. I got connections and connections. He was part of my Northern Ireland connection. We get guns to the right people and Tubbo had his hand on my money in connection with doing my business. So the poor sap thought he’d steal some of my money, money for the cause.”

Devereaux felt it then; it was like a chill. The words were runny and warm but they were hurtling along to someplace at a hundred miles an hour and Devereaux knew when they hit, it would be very bad.

“I caught him and made him pay up and put the juice on him. The vig goes on and on, that’s the thing about it, you never can wriggle off it if I don’t want you to. And I wanted to teach Tubbo a lesson and a lesson for any of the other boys who think stealing is for amateurs. I don’t steal myself but I appreciate the pros.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

Mickey Connors stared at him and for the first time, he let the smile fade. The car stopped. They were somewhere south of Hell’s Kitchen in a neighborhood of darkened warehouses and meat lockers.

“It’s going here,” Mickey Connors said.

The big driver opened the door and Mickey Connors stepped out, the bottle of whiskey and the glass in his hand. He gestured with his head and Devereaux followed. They stood on the sidewalk. It was very dark here; the street’s lights were out as though on purpose.

They crossed to a stairwell that led down to a steel basement door. The big man preceded them and opened the door.

They stepped into a boiler room. The lights were ablaze and there were three other men seated on packing boxes.

The fourth man must have been Tubbo. He was naked and hanging by his ankles from ropes tied to ceiling pipes. His white whale’s belly was huge and flabby. His face was mottled red and he was breathing heavily.

Devereaux stepped into the circle of light. The other men looked up at him. They were making judgments, all of them. Devereaux stared at each of them. This was no time to look away. Finally, he stared at Tubbo.

“This fella is Devereaux. He made an inquiry or two into me and I been figuring out about him. He knows me and now I think I know him. He knows he might be useful to me and I think the same thing. But you never know, do you, boys?”

They didn’t move or nod or make any gesture.

“Jesus, Mickey, for the love of God, lemme down,” Tubbo cried. It was a strangled sound because the weight of his body was pressing on his diaphragm.

“In a little bit, Tubbo, just shush now,” Mickey said. “I was saying, you gotta take the mark of a man. The way he handles whiskey or women. But I ain’t in the business of women or whiskey.” He looked at the bottle in his hand as though it startled him. He poured into the shot glass and drank it down. Again, color flashed briefly on his cheeks. He looked down at Tubbo’s face and bulging eyes.

“Give him the piece, Kevin,” Mickey Connors said. The big driver who had been standing next to Devereaux opened one giant hand and revealed a .38-caliber snub-nose revolver. Devereaux took it in his hands.

“All right, fella.”

Devereaux looked at Mickey. He nodded at Tubbo. Devereaux took a step forward and then looked again at Mickey Connors. The grin was back, lopsided on that deathly face.

Tubbo said, “Oh, my God.”

Devereaux aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger. The shot exploded in the little room and Tubbo screamed. He pulled the trigger twice again.

There wasn’t a mark on the screaming body.

He turned to Mickey Connors and no one had moved.

“Cut him down, Kevin,” Mickey said.

Tubbo’s body fell in a heap on the bare concrete floor. The three men on packing cases had not even flinched at the sounds of the shots.

“You can give Kevin the piece,” Mickey Connors said in a calm voice.

Tubbo was sobbing on the floor.

“So what was the test about?” Devereaux said. His voice was flat, without any edge to it.

“About you and me, boy,” Mickey said.

“No. I don’t need it that bad. I don’t kill people for a living.”

“You were going to kill Tubbo.”

“It was him or me, wasn’t it, Mickey?” Devereaux said.

And Mickey Connors nodded now. “Exactly. It was indeed, lad. It was him or you. Except I wouldn’t have used blanks on you, boyo.”

“I guess I can walk back to the hotel now,” Devereaux said. “I missed the end of the football game.”

“Giants by ten,” Kevin said. It was the first thing he had said.

Mickey Connors said, “Naw. We’ll drive you back. You and Kevin run along; I gotta talk to Tubbo some.”

“So what do I do next?” Devereaux said.

“Next? Next you meet me down at the Golden Dragon at noon. Place on Ninth.”

“I know it.”

“We’ll eat some chink food and talk about next, fella.”

And Devereaux could scarcely believe it. It had worked after all.