39

Dansk stepped inside the confessional. He noticed a scab of pink chewing-gum pressed to the wall and a crayoned item of graffiti close to the floor: ‘Jesus Saves at Citibank’. And here on the floor was a wrinkled condom dumped by some moron with a distasteful sense of humour. These signs of decline in the national fibre were everywhere – in churches even.

‘I’ve sinned, Father. Fornication, hookers, call-girls.’

A thread of sunlight sneaking from somewhere illuminated the priest’s skull on the other side of the grille, outlining a frizz of white hair, a halo effect. Dansk heard the priest yawn. Even priests suffered from the general malaise of things.

He thought of his mother and her unlimited piety. She lived in Patterson, New Jersey, occupying three brown twenty-watt rooms over the workshop of a blind violin repairman called Chomsky. To the accompaniment of plucking sounds coming up from below, she prayed a lot in front of a plaster statue of the Virgin that stood on top of the TV. Under the base of the statue were the words, Souvenir from Knock, Ireland. You grow up, Anthony, be an accountant, an optometrist, something people will respect.

Respect was her mantra. And always go to confession when you can.

Three or four times a year he phoned her, told her he was moving around from place to place, going where the oil company sent him in his capacity as a surveyor. He made up names for things that didn’t exist. The calsidron broke down yesterday. There’s one site near Amarillo that’s probably the world’s biggest deposit of vobendum.

His mother never asked questions, not even if he had a girlfriend and if she could look forward one day to being a grandmother. Whenever he thought about her he saw her stooped in front of that statue with her eyes shut, praying for her dead husband, Albert, who’d succumbed to a cardiac arrest on Dansk’s fourth birthday. All Dansk could remember of his father was the smell of fried food that clung to his clothes from the fourteen-hour days he spent as a short-order cook in a truck stop on the edge of Patterson. Some memory. Some life.

‘Do you believe in God?’ the priest asked.

‘I believe,’ Dansk said. Confession boxes made him apprehensive. They were filled with the echoes of millions of sins, ghostly voices asking forgiveness.

‘Ten Hail Marys,’ the priest said.

Dansk said, ‘Thank you, Father.’

‘Bless you.’

Business done. Religion was a hurried affair like everything else in these days of acronyms and sound bites and nobody with the time to listen. Dismissed, Dansk stepped out of the box. I pay for sex, I consort with call-girls. I’m Chief Surveyor for Transamerica Explorations Inc. A man to be respected in spite of his sexual inclinations. I have nothing to do with death.

Ten Hail Marys, low-impact aerobics for the soul. You wouldn’t even break sweat. He dropped some coins in a collection box for a Patagonian mission and went out to the street. He moved towards his car where a tall black man was leaning with folded arms against the hood. Dansk kept going, slowing his pace just a little, hearing the drone of imminent danger.

‘You Dansk?’ the man asked.

Dansk reached the car. He studied the man quickly. Black silk bomber jacket, black polo-neck, the face with the monstrous overhanging brow, huge hands, no rings. Dansk had the general impression of brutality.

‘I wanna word,’ the guy said.

Dansk said, ‘I don’t know you.’

‘You’re about to,’ the guy said.

Dansk could feel it in the air around him, a kind of static, and somewhere in his head a sound that reminded him of Chomsky stretching a violin string to breaking-point.

The black guy had his hands clasped in front of him. ‘Let’s you and me walk over there,’ he said.

Dansk looked, saw an entrance to an alley, dumpsters, plastic sacks, one of which had broken and disgorged its contents. He saw chop-bones and a lettuce oozing brown slime. ‘I don’t walk into alleys with strangers,’ he said. ‘Rule of mine.’

The black man said, ‘We can do this right here on the street.’

Dansk gazed the length of the street. He saw quiet houses, empty sidewalks, palm trees, and a few blocks beyond, the high-rises of downtown. Nobody moving. This was one of those upmarket streets, reclaimed from disrepair by lawyers, ad executives and local media types.

The black guy prodded Dansk’s chest with a thick finger.

‘This a mugging?’ Dansk asked.

‘You’re gonna wish.’

Dansk looked into the man’s eyes, which were the colour of smoked oak. What he saw there was a palpable dislike. ‘So it’s personal?’ he asked.

The guy kept prodding, and Dansk backtracked.

‘What you done to that girl’s fucking shameful. Cretins like you need some serious discipline.’

The call-girl, Chaka, Dansk thought. She runs to her personal enforcer. She sets free the brute from her zoo. Dansk stepped a few paces back but the guy kept prodding. Keep this up, Dansk thought. I’m in the mood, and I’m one fit son of a bitch.

‘The alley or right here. You choose,’ the guy said.

‘Touch me one more time.’

‘And you’re gonna what, Dansk? Slap me? Punch me a coupla times? I ain’t some skinny little whore, if it ain’t escaped your notice.’

The guy stuck his finger in Dansk’s breastbone again. ‘The joke’s over,’ Dansk said.

‘Ain’t no joke, asshole.’

‘See if you find this funny.’ Dansk had the Swiss Army knife out of his pocket in a flash, and before the big man could react he’d stuck the corkscrew attachment directly into the guy’s right eye, hearing it puncture the gelatinous orb, a squelching sound. The guy said, ‘Oh Jesus fucking Christ’ and Dansk twisted the corkscrew round then pulled it free and the big man took a couple of unsteady steps to one side, his hand clamped over his eye and blood seeping between his fingers. Dansk kicked the guy’s legs out from under him and he went down like an axed tree. He lay rolling around on the sidewalk and Dansk dragged him into the alley.

‘What you need is a matching pair,’ Dansk said.

The black man raised a hand to protect himself, but Dansk was way too fast for this cumbersome asshole and was already driving the corkscrew into the left eye, where he twisted it as if he were opening a bottle of cheap wine. The guy dropped his hands from his bloodied face and turned his head this way and that, his mouth open, no sound coming out, unless you counted the weird noise that suggested difficulty in breathing, some kind of shock reaction to his pain.

Dansk stood up, stepped back, feeling very calm, very detached. ‘You fucking pimp,’ he said. ‘You piece of shit, worthless maggot.’

The guy started to groan. Bewildered, he stretched his hands out as if to grab something solid. Dansk crushed one hand with his foot, stomping it into the ground, then he walked to his car. Inside, he cleaned the knife with a tissue and stuck the tissue inside the ashtray.

He rolled down his window and called to the guy, ‘You can always find work as a trainee violin repairman, jack.’ He drove away amused, pleased with himself. He looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror and laughed.

His phone rang, it was Pasquale. ‘You oughta see her, Anthony. Pacing round outside the hospital and looking like her womb just fell out. It’s a picture would break your heart.’

A picture.

‘You know what to do next,’ Dansk said.

‘I’m moving.’ Pasquale cut the connection.

Dansk laughed again and looked at himself laughing until all sense of self-recognition had left him and he was looking at somebody else, a roaring wet-eyed red-haired stranger, hugely satisfied with the day’s work so far. A guy on a roll that didn’t end here.