The Bloomsday Dead Read Free

sped me up to the penthouses on the fiftieth floor. It was a boast of the hotel that it was one of the tallest buildings in South America but even the express elevators seemed to take forever.
    I took the time to adjust my appearance in the mirror.
    My hair was in the crew cut of an Israeli commando, dirty blond, but recently I’d noticed a couple of gray strands around the ears. I hadn’t had a chance to shave, and I looked a little rougher than usual, though the Peruvian sun had done much to erase the obvious Paddy pallor in my features. I’d do.
    The elevator doors clicked.
    I checked guns one and two, hitched down the bottom of my trousers, drank the rest of my coffee. I turned left and strolled toward room LY.
    The sound of fighting coming down the hall. No, not fighting, someone smashing things up.
    So he hadn’t got himself exhausted just yet.
    I hastened my pace.
    Nice up here. Plush golden carpets, paintings of the Andes and Indian women in bowler hats. Fresh flowers, views up and down the foggy coast.
    I turned the corner. There was a maid I didn’t know and Tony, one of my boys, standing patiently at the stateroom’s entrance. Tony smiled at me and jerked his thumb through the door.
    “How bad is it?” I asked.
    “Not bad, he’s trashed the room, but he hasn’t hurt himself yet,” Tony said.
    “He alone?”
    “He’s alone and lonely. He tried to grab Angelika here,” Tony said. “She doesn’t speak Spanish so good; she didn’t know what he wanted.”
    Angelika nodded. She was a flat-faced Indian girl, probably just in from the highlands. I pulled out my wallet and removed ten twenty-dollar bills. I gave them to Angelika and said to Tony, “Tell her she didn’t see anything, nothing happened here.”
    Tony nodded and told her the same thing in Quechua, the Indian language of the mountains.
    Angelika took the money, seemed very pleased, and curtsied to me.
    “She can take the rest of the week off,” I said. “Maybe have a little vacation.” I gave her five more Andrew Jacksons.
    “ Muchas gracias, Señor Forsignyo,” Angelika said.
    “It’s nothing, I’m sorry this had to happen to you,” I said and Tony translated.
    I gave her my empty coffee mug and said “Yusulipayki,” the only word I knew in Quechua. She thanked me in return and shuffled off down the corridor. She’d be ok. The crashing continued from inside the room.
    “He keeps saying that he’s not happy,” Tony said.
    “Nobody’s bloody happy.”
    “No. Except my dog,” Tony said.
    “Hey, it isn’t Peter Buck, the rock star, is it?” I asked.
    “Peter Buck? Which group is he a member of?”
    “R.E.M.”
    “This one I am not very familiar with,” Tony admitted. “But the gentleman is fifty or perhaps sixty years old, bald and fat, he does not look like a rock star to me.”
    “Maybe it’s Van Morrison,” I said, took a deep breath, and barged into the room.

    I rode the elevator down to the seventh floor and walked along the corridor to my corner room. Here the carpets were less plush and the pictures on the wall were prints. But it was still nice.
    The business hadn’t taken long.
    I’d forced Mr. Buck to sit down on the bed and we’d talked. Apparently, the maid had refused to have sex with him even though he’d offered her good money. While I sympathized, Tony slipped a Mickey into a gin and tonic that knocked the bastard out. The cleaning service would fix his room while he dozed. Probably wouldn’t remember a thing about it until he got a five-thousand-dollar extra on his hotel bill.
    Still, as incidents go, not one to write home about.
    I found the key card and opened my door.
    The room was dark. I yawned again. I wouldn’t even turn the light on. Straight ahead past the sofa and the boom box, a left turn into the bedroom. Go to sleep, wake up, and have some eggs with steak.
    “Señor Michael Forsythe?” a voice asked from the sofa.
    I said.
    The lights came on.
    “Do not move.”
    There was a