Fegan listened to the sounds of McGinty’s hard breathing and Ellen’s soft cries. Three shots left. If he didn’t have more ammunition, that was. Fegan had to gamble on that. He had to make McGinty waste them.
It was dark at the foot of the stairs. The only light came from the window behind McGinty and, even then, it was the thin glow of early morning. McGinty knew Fegan was a poor shot and he couldn’t risk hitting Ellen while trying to wing the politician. But McGinty also thought Fegan was crazy enough to try.
Fegan looked around the room. The chairs lay scattered across the floor, and beyond them was a pile of old curtain material. He righted one of the chairs and draped a thick sheet of dark velvet over it. It was heavy, but he could manage with his good arm. He took quiet steps towards the door and raised the chair so it was level with his own shoulders. The woman and the butcher stepped back to give him room.
He extended his arm, letting the curtain-draped chair’s shoulder creep out into the shadows of the hallway. Inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter, he let the oblique shape reveal itself to McGinty, hoping the folds of darkness might make it seem—
A boom filled the hallway, and the chair jerked from Fegan’s grip to fall to the floor with a wooden clatter, the torn curtain fabric fluttering after it.
Ellen’s scream was followed by seconds of silence, and then McGinty hissed and cursed. One more shot wasted.
“You’ve only two left, Paul,” Fegan said.
“That’s one for each of them, Gerry. You don’t want that to happen. Don’t make me do it. Don’t come up here.”
“I have to, Paul.”
“Don’t! Don’t, or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
“You’ll what?”
“Christ,” McGinty said.
“Killing isn’t easy, Paul. Not when it’s your own finger on the trigger.”
“I’ll do it. Believe me, I’ll do it.”
Fegan stood back from the doorway. He saw McGinty’s shadow against the wall as early light made its way down the stairs. “You’ve never had the guts to do it yourself, Paul. It was always people like me. The ones you filled full of hate. You never got blood on your own hands.”
McGinty’s shadow moved back and forth as he paced above, Ellen locked in his grip. “Don’t push me, Gerry.”
“You used people like me. You told us we didn’t have a future. You said we had to fight for it. You put the guns in our hands and sent us off to do your killing for you.”
“You volunteered, Gerry. Just like the rest of us. Nobody made you do anything.”
“You lied to us.”
“Nobody made you pull the trigger, Gerry. Nobody made you plant that—”
“You lied to me.” Fegan rested his forehead against the wall, feeling the cold dampness against his skin. “You said there was a Loyalist meeting above that butcher’s shop. You told me there was UVF and UDA, all sitting together. You said the timer was set for five minutes. Time to get the people out.”
“It was a war. Sometimes innocent people get hurt.”
Fegan laughed. “Sometimes. It’s never the guilty, is it? But everybody pays. What day’s today?”
“What?”
“It’s Sunday, isn’t it? Is it a week ago? Jesus. This day last week an old woman told me everybody pays, sooner or later. A woman whose son I killed. Michael McKenna paid for him. Now you have to pay. Three of them died. A butcher. A baby, for Christ’s sake. A mother and her baby.”
Fegan lifted his forehead from the wall and looked back out to the hall. McGinty’s shadow was still now.
“Just go, Gerry. Just get out of here. No one else has to get hurt.”
“She’s here, Paul.”
“Who?”
“The woman. And her baby. Christ, I don’t know her name. She’s here and she wants you. Her and the butcher. You remember how it happened? It was on the news at the time. He went to pick it up, probably thought someone had forgotten their shopping. Him and the woman were closest.”
“Don’t, Gerry.”
“And what was it for?”
“I was told the same as you. The Loyalists were meeting above the shop.”
“You’re lying. You knew it was just storerooms above that shop. What was it for? Tell her what she died for.”
McGinty’s shadow struggled with a writhing shape. Ellen jerked in his arms, still trying to break free.
“Tell that woman and her baby what she died for, Paul. She deserves to know.”
“There’s nobody there, Gerry. Don’t you understand that? She’s in your head.”
“Tell her, Paul.”
McGinty’s sigh slithered down the walls of the stairwell. “To make my mark.”
Fegan brought his right hand to his left shoulder, feeling the heat there. Blood trickled down to his fingertips. “Make your mark.”
“Yes. To make the leadership notice me. I’d been on the sidelines too long—I needed something big to get the headlines they wanted.”
“You had me plant that bomb, kill those people, for headlines? To make a name for yourself?”
“I had to, Gerry. And it worked. I saw the way things were going, even then. The politics, the elections. I had to get a leg up then, or I never would. I’d just be another foot soldier like you or Eddie Coyle.”
Fegan looked to the woman and her baby. And the butcher with his round, red face. “To make a name for yourself. They died to make your name.”
“But I did good, Gerry. Think about it. I helped build the peace. I kept the boys on the streets in line. Me, Gerry. It would’ve fallen apart if it wasn’t for me. But you’ve risked it all. Do you hear me? All those lives for nothing, all that labor, the heartbreak, the years—you might have wasted them all. And what for? For some figments of your imagination?”
McGinty’s voice had taken on that familiar color: the politician’s sheen, the twisted rhetoric.
Fegan rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, the Walther still in his grip. “What was her life worth?”
“Enough, Gerry.”
“And her baby’s?”
“Come on, you know the—”
“And the butcher. What was his life worth? Or any of them? What were they worth to you, Paul?”
“It was you, Gerry. You killed them. Nobody else.”
Fegan brought his bloodied hands to his temples, the Walther cold against his scalp. “I know.”
McGinty’s voice hardened. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like it. Don’t tell me you didn’t love the power of it.”
“Shut up.”
“All that respect you got. Everywhere you went, people looked up to you. The great Gerry Fegan. And you pissed it all away. What are you now, eh?”
“Shut up.”
McGinty laughed. “You’re just a drunk who’s gone soft in the head. So you turn against your own just so you can make yourself feel like a big man again. Is that it, Gerry? Is that what this is about? You’re just a lonely, drunk has-been who’s nothing without a gun and someone to point it at.”
Fegan screwed his eyes closed. “Shut your mouth!”
“And what about when it’s over, eh? What then? What’ll you be, Gerry?”
Fegan dropped low and ducked his head out into the hallway, the Walther aimed upwards. McGinty’s revolver flashed and a bullet threw splinters and plaster dust into Fegan’s face. He fell back into the room, coughing as dust hitched in his throat. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes.
One left.
He looked up to see the woman and her baby, the butcher at their side. The infant squirmed as the woman and the butcher pointed up at McGinty. Fegan watched the shadow move along the wall as the politician paced. Ellen whimpered and moaned, seemingly too exhausted to wail as she had before.
“You didn’t answer the question, Gerry.”
Fegan got to his feet, wincing at the throbbing from his left shoulder. His arm grew heavier by the moment and his legs quivered as fatigue dissolved his strength. He had to end it soon.
“You’ve only one bullet left,” he said.
“One’s enough,” McGinty said.
“Not if it doesn’t put me down.”
“It’s not for you. It’s for her.”
Fegan looked to the shadow. The shape was becoming clearer, harder in the growing light. He could make out McGinty’s form, crouched, Ellen held close. Where was the gun?
He looked to the woman. “Jesus, where’s the gun?”
She had no answer; she just kept her fingers trained on McGinty. The politician’s shadow shifted on the wall.
“Come and see, Gerry.”