Screwed Read Free Page B

County. The façade has got a half-assed nautical theme going on that extends to the wooden cladding and porthole windows but not to the door, which is brushed aluminum with several chunky locks dotting the metal like watch bezels.
    There’s a guy out front, smoking. He’s not that big, but he’s mean and twitchy. Also, this goon isn’t overly fond of me because I put a little hurt on him a while back. Actually I’ve kicked the living shit out of most of Mike’s crew at one time or another, so while I am welcome in this club, it’s the kind of welcome piranhas extend to raw meat.
    “Yo, Manny,” I call, waving like we’re tennis buddies. “Mike is expecting me.”
    Manny Booker jerks like he’s been slapped and I figure he’s flashing back to our last meeting.
    “Just fucking calm down, McEvoy,” he says, his hand strangling the air in front of his breast pocket. This is because he’s aching to pull his cannon and shoot me, but he’s under orders never to draw in public.
    “I am calm, Manny, but you look a bit jumpy. You worried I’m not outnumbered enough?”
    “We got your friend inside, with a gun pointed at his face.” Manny blurts this out, right on the street.
    I can’t look at Manny for too long because of his beard. He’s got one of these Midlake folk-singer bushes that are springing up on cool faces all over these days, which is okay, I don’t have a problem with that, had a nice beard myself back in the nineties. What makes me squirm is the fact that his wiry nose hair is so long that it grows right into the beard, so in effect he has a beard growing out of his nose. I’m not surprised Mike keeps him on the door; who could get any work done with a nose beard hovering around the place? Fecker’s beard hair is red too, so from a distance it looks like Manny got himself punched in the face and is fine with blood all over himself.
    Nosebleed beard? People are animals.
    I give Booker a nice shoulder-check on my way in, just to remind him of past pains. You never know, if negotiations break down, he might choose to run away.
    The Brass Ring has got nice carpet, chocolate brown with golden thread. Plush is the word. And the bar has a comforting walnut burnish that gives a drinker confidence in the barman before he ever sets eyes on him. Irish Mike and eight of his boys are seated in the lounge with their pieces right out on the table. And there, in the middle, sits Zebulon Kronski, spinning one of his war stories. I think it’s the one about how we met in the souk outside UN headquarters in the Lebanon, where Zeb had set up an underground cosmetic surgery, supplying fillers to religious fanatics.
    “So, anyways. In marches Daniel palooka McEvoy just when I’m about to inject a syringe of fat into the militia guy’s dick.”
    Mike laughs, but his goons don’t because they’ve seen me come in. They jump out of their seats, scrabbling for weapons. Two guys get their guns mixed up and argue like kids until one guy actually produces a photo of his gun that he keeps in his wallet.
    It’s embarrassing.
    Mike’s impulse is to stand up but he checks himself. He is the boss after all.
    “Daniel, laddie,” he says. “Sit yourself down.”
    I walk around the tables a few times, mapping the layout, banking the positions of the chairs in case I have to toss a few.
    Mike is antsy. “Sit down, for fuck sake. You ain’t a spaniel.”
    In olden days, his boys would have guffawed at this, but now I’m a known quantity and it’s like there’s a gorilla loose in the room.
    I sit between Mike and the bar, with the door in my eye line and Zeb on my left in case I have to slap his stupid head for getting this ball of shit rolling downhill.
    “Mike,” I say, giving him the sad face. “Sorry to hear about your mother.”
    Mike has a picture of his old ma in a lace frame pinned to his lapel. If this is an Irish custom I never heard of it, and I lived there for twenty-odd years.
    “Yeah, she was a great