Dead I Well May Be Read online

  I hardly remember reconnecting it but I must have. Duty, responsibility, that’s me.

  I let it bleat. It goes on and on and it wears me down. I finish the last of my drink and hurl the can off the side of the rail trying to hit Ratko’s pit bull, but I don’t and the dog looks up at me and starts barking. I climb in through the fire-escape window and tramp across the bedroom and into the hall. I turn off Nevermind on the cassette player. I pick up the phone.

  It’s Scotchy. I can tell by that nasally intake of breath before he speaks. He’s excited.

  Hey, Bruce, something’s come up.

  Name’s not Bruce, I say wearily. Scotchy’s perpetual little joke.

  Bruce, gotta get uptown. Andy got a hiding. You know Darkey’s away, right?

  I don’t answer him.

  Bruce, are you there?

  Must have the wrong number mate, no Bruce here. No Bruce, no spider, no cave, no salvation for Bonnie Scotland.

  Stop fucking around, Bruce, you dickless wonder, this is serious.

  I choose again the path of silent resistance. There is a good fifteen seconds of dead air on the phone. Scotchy starts mumbling and then in a bit of an exponential panic he says:

  Hello, hello, hello, oh Jesus, Mike, are you still there?

  I’m here, I say with just enough lassitude to irritate the hell out of him.

  Well, what the fuck? Christ. Jesus man, I’m holding the fucking ship, you know. Look, Andy got a hiding and Sunshine and Darkey are out of the picture, so I’m the boss, right?

  You’re the boss? I say, hoping to convey as skeptical a tone as if he’s just told me that he is, in fact, Anastasia, lost daughter of Tsar Nicholas the Second.

  Aye, he says, my clever intonation going over his head.

  Is that how the chain of command goes? I ask in a more neutral voice.

  Aye, it does.

  Fergal’s been with Darkey a wee bit longer than you, hasn’t he? I ask mischievously.

  Fergal’s an idiot, Scotchy says.

  Pot calling the kettle black? I suggest.

  Bruce, I swear to God, I’ll fucking come down there, he says, right on the verge.

  Line of succession bumps you up is what you’re claiming, I say.

  Yes. De factso, I’m in charge, he says, a bit hesitant with the Latin.

  De facto, surely, Scotchy, I say condescendingly, to really take the piss.

  He’s angry now.

  Look, I’m in charge and I’m giving the fucking orders, so get the fuck up here, you bastard, he says.

  Keep going, Scotchy. I have to admit you’ve almost convinced me with your earthy machismo.

  Jesus Christ, were you put on this planet to fucking give me a stroke? Fuck me. Will you stop acting the fucking eejit, stop wanking off down there and get up here, Scotchy barks out in frustration.

  Is he all right, is he in the hospital? I ask with belated concern about our Andy.

  No, he isn’t, he’s over here. Bridget’s looking after him. We’re maybe taking him to the hospital. He’ll be ok, though. Shovel, you know. That lamebrain Fergal thought it was the fucking Mopes but it was fucking Shovel. I know it. I mean big Andy. Shovel must have been half tore. Andy was unconscious, in the street, in the street, Bruce, hasn’t come round yet, I mean he …

  I’m not listening because I don’t care. I don’t care what Shovel has done or what has happened to Andy or what Scotchy is going to do about it. I don’t giving a flying fuck but of course he tells me everything anyway. The boss has gone and he, Scotchy, is going to take the initiative. Lesser men than me could foresee trouble in the tea leaves. Scotchy’s always been an ill-starred unlucky lout and chances are we’ll go over to Shovel’s house, me and him, and then Shovel or Shovel’s girlfriend will end up throwing hot fat on us or shooting us or calling the bloody peelers or sticking our fingers in the toaster or something worse. That would be typical of Scotchy. ’Course, whatever happened he would live and in the incident I’d be blinded in one eye or lamed or scarred for life. That would just be the way of it.

  Suddenly a thought occurs to me.

  If he hasn’t spoken, how do you know it was Shovel? I ask.

  Stands to reason, doesn’t it? He was over at Shovel’s asking for cash; Shovel had already told me he wasn’t paying nothing. Bastard must have got Andy in the street, from behind.

  Oh yeah, stands to reason, Sherlock. Clearly that’s the only fucking explanation, I mutter sarcastically.

  Fucksake, Bruce, you fucker. Fucking fucker. Listen to me, you insubordinate wanker, just get the fuck up here, Scotchy yells furiously.

  Oh Scotchy, keep your hair on. Look, I’m on my way, ok? I say with just a hint of deference now.

  Scotchy hangs up. I take the phone and kill a water bug on the wall with it. I hang up and go back into the bedroom and close the window.

  I’m going to have to take the train after all. This also is typical and it’ll cost me another token. I sigh and splash water on my face. I get my jacket, and in case it’s going to be an all-nighter I put cigs, reading material, matches, and cash in the pockets. I pull on my Doc Martens, brush my hair, shove in extra ammo, the wee .22, and go out.

  I know at least five Scotchys. Scotchy Dunlow, who beat the shit out of me every Friday night at Boy’s Brigade for seven years. Scotchy McGurk, who was a player and whom I personally saw drop half a cinder block on some guy’s chest for a tremendously minor reason and who got shot in a typically botched robbery on a bookie’s. Scotchy McMaw, who lost a hand in a train-dodge accident in Carrickfergus and who was quite the weird one after that but who ended up saving a boy’s life when they were out fishing in a boat, swimming to shore with one arm and later getting some bravery award from Princess Diana. Scotchy Colhoun, who also was a bad lad and got himself nicked for racketeering and murder and went in the Kesh (though he must be out by now because of the Peace Process). Finally, of course, is our Scotchy, Scotchy Finn. None of them needless to say has or ever had any connection whatsoever with Scotland. How they all became Scotchy is a matter of mystery to me and probably them as well.

  Scotchy Finn himself does not know. He grew up in Crossmaglen and then Dundalk, which, if you know Ireland at all, could only mean one thing. And sure enough, it turns out his da, ma, three brothers, two uncles, and an aunt were all at one point in the Lads. They started Scotchy early and he did time at some kind of juvenile prison for something. He says it grew too hot for him across the sheugh, which is why he ended up first in Boston and then the Bronx. To be honest, I’m a bit skeptical about all his stories of “ops” and “encounters” with the Brits, the Proddies, the Intelligence Corps, the SAS, and the cops. He says it was the Irish peelers, the Garda Síochána, that gave him his limp for petrol smuggling (a limp that only ever appears when he wants sympathy for something), but I heard from Sunshine he fell off the roof of a parked car after he’d had eleven pints at Revere Beach. This was before he started working for Darkey, and you can’t really imagine Scotchy at the beach because his skin is as thin and pale as fag paper and he looks like yon boy that gets beat up at the beginning of the Charles Atlas ads. Red hair, white skin, bad teeth, bad smell disguised by bad musk and that’s our Scotchy. I don’t know how long he’s been here. Ten years, fifteen? He still has a Mick accent (funny one too, touch of the jassboys Crasssmaglayn) but he has Yank clothes and Yank sensibility to money and girls. He doesn’t whine on about the Old Country like some wanks ya run into, which I suppose at least singles him out from your average Paddy bastard. That’s not to say that he’s likable. Not at all. Sleekiter wee shite you’d be hard pressed to meet, but he’s ok if you don’t mind that kind of thing, which personally I sort of do. He’s a bloody thief, too, and he robs me blind behind my back, and if I wasn’t the new boy on the block I’d say something but I am and I’m not going to.

  Our man, our fearless leader for one night only, thank God. Typical that it would be this night Scotchy was running the show. For, of course, I wasn’t to know,
but tonight was going to be a night that helped set off a whole wonderful series of violent and unpleasant events. Indeed, the only caveat you’ll get is right now when I say that if someone grows up in the civil war of Belfast in the seventies and eighties, perhaps violence is his only form of meaningful expression. Perhaps.

  The train ride was uneventful. I brought a book with me about a Russian who never gets out of bed. Everyone was upset with him, but you could see his point of view. I got off at the end of the line and walked up the steps. It was this walk every day that was the only thing at all keeping me in shape. These steps that separated Riverdale from the rest of the Bronx. Hundreds of the buggers. When the Bronx rises up to kill us, at least we’ll have the high ground, Darkey says.

  I was nearly up, hyperventilating, almost at the Four P., when one of the old stagers grabbed me. It was dark and he scared the shite out of me. Mr. Berenson was in his seventies, very frail, and was hard pressed to frighten anyone, but I suppose I was feeling jumpy. I didn’t really know Mr. Berenson and only found out his name later. Much later, when it had all started to go pear-shaped and I felt bad and he was topped and I did some research and discovered he wasn’t really called Berenson at all, but was actually some East German geezer who’d changed his name because probably he worked for Himmler in Poland or something. Anyway, he’s not at all important in the big picture, so I’ll just say that he was stooped, with one of those vague East European accents that you think only exist in the movies. His fingers were stained with nicotine; he was waving them in my face and he was in a mood.

  You wor for Scoshy? he said.

  No, I work with him. I work for Mr. White, I said.

  I tell him, mons ago someone bray in house, prow around.

  Someone broke in your house? I said.

  Yes, I’m telling you, I get up, I frighten him, he go.

  When was this?

  December.

  Maybe it was Santa Claus.

  He was a bit pissed off at that.

  Now you lissen to me, young man. Some nigger bray in house, steal nothing, no come back. I thin to myself, why? Why do this? Time passes, I forget. Two neiss ago, he comes back. I am out. But I know he has been.

  He take anything?

  No.

  What’s your problem?

  He bray in.

  Go to the peelers.

  What?

  Cops, go to the cops. Or get a locksmith. Aye, a locksmith.

  He wasn’t too happy at what I considered to be a sensible solution. But I wasn’t too happy either. You’re a sort of social worker when you come up here, especially with the old timers. There’s never really anything wrong or anything they want. They just want to peg you down and chat away their loneliness for a while. Scotchy’s better at deflecting them than me. I’m too new, look too understanding.

  I was going to say something comforting and bland but just then Fergal saw me at the top of the steps and shouted down:

  Hey, Michael, get your arse up here pronto.

  I excused myself and went up the stairs. It’s diverting to think that if Fergal hadn’t picked that particular moment to see if I was off the train yet I might have investigated Mr. Berenson’s claim a little more carefully and maybe he wouldn’t have gotten killed by some character looking for a hidden stash a week or two later. But Fergal did so intervene and I went up. (The final burglar, incidentally, was one of Ramón’s lieutenants, and if you think this is a coincidence you don’t know Ramón, for even back then, clearly, he was making stealthy incursions into Darkey’s territory, testing its limits, finding its boundaries, plundering its goodies.)

  What’s the craic, Fergal boy? I asked him, using the Gaelic word for fun or happening, which is pronounced the same as “crack,” so you could see how it could lead to confusion in some circles.

  The craic, Michael, is all bad, he said sadly.

  Fergal shook his big head at me. Fergal was tall and brown-haired, with a disastrous russet beard covering cadaverous cheeks. He wore tweed jackets in an attempt to appear sophisticated. It was a look that he just might have carried off at, say, a Swiss tuberculosis clinic circa 1912, but it was hardly appropriate for a hot summer in New York eight decades later.

  I said it was a shame about young Andy, and Fergal nodded glumly and we went across to the Four Provinces. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood to speak tonight, which was good because when he did it only annoyed people.

  The Four P. is such a prominent place in all our lives that it deserves description. Alas, though, if you’ve seen one faux Irish theme bar you’ve seen them all. The original Four Provinces burned down in a mysterious fire a few years back and the reconceived version lost the snugs and the back bar and sawdust floor and instead took on an open-plan Cheers look with vintage Bushmills whiskey posters, Guinness mirrors, pictures of aged Galway men on bicycles, a “leprechaun in a jar” next to the dartboard, and above the bar, in a glass display case, a large stringed harp that undoubtedly was made in China. It was normally unobservant Andy who noticed that the shamrock carvings on the wood paneling had four leaves, which made them four-leafed clovers and not shamrocks at all—Saint Patrick having used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity. The best you could say about the place was that at least Pat and Mrs. Callaghan kept it clean.

  I nodded to Pat tending bar and followed Fergal up the stairs. Scotchy was there waiting for me, eating a bun, cream all over his nose. Andy was lying in the bed. He looked all right. Bridget was bathing his forehead with water like I suppose she’d seen Florence Nightingale do in some picture. She looked at me and I tried to make it seem as if it was just a casual look, which of course made everything much more suspicious.

  There’s cream all over your big nose, I said, under my breath, to Scotchy.

  He wiped it on his sleeve and looked at me, irritated.

  How is he? I asked Bridget kindly.

  A little better, she said, and her breast heaved after she stopped speaking. She was wearing a tight T-shirt that said on it a bit confusingly: Cheerleader Leader ’89. It was very distracting and I would have asked her what the T-shirt meant to cover the fact that I was staring at her breasts, but in the circumstances of Andy being at death’s door and all, it seemed inappropriate.

  Fucking finally arrived. Right, we’re going right now, Scotchy said.

  Here I should point out that every time you hear Scotchy speak you must remember that each time I put in the word fuck there are at least three or four that I’ve left out. You’ll have to take my word for it that it would begin to get very tedious hearing Scotchy the way he actually speaks; for instance, a sentence such as the one above in reality was much like:

  Fucking finally arrived, fuck. Fucksake. Right, we’re fucking going, right fucking now.

  Shouldn’t I pay my respects or something? I asked.

  Bugger can’t hear you, can he? Scotchy said, tense, and tight all around the edges. He had that wee-man syndrome though he was only a couple of inches shorter than me and I’m nearly six foot.

  Shouldn’t we get a doctor at least? I suggested.

  Fucksake, Michael, would you shut the fuck up and come on, we’re taking care of it, Scotchy said.

  I looked at Bridget but the wee girl was lost in the high drama of it all. She was clueless about anything medical. I knew that for a fact from when she tried to take a tiny wood skelf out of my finger with a hot knitting needle. I still have the fantastically large scar. Poor oul Andy could have a goddamn hemorrhage or anything, she wouldn’t know. Still, it was Scotchy’s call.

  Ok, I said, and went downstairs with Fergal and Scotchy.

  Scotchy began: So the plan is—

  I interrupted him with a hand.

  Scotchy, listen, before we go and do anything stupid, shouldn’t we talk to Darkey? I asked gently.

  Aye, Scotchy, really we should talk to Darkey, Fergal said, for once erring on the side of sensible.

  Scotchy was angry.

  Jesus Christ, you
se boys would ask Darkey if it’s ok to take a shite and ok afterwards to wipe your fucking arse. Didn’t you see Andy up there?

  As a matter of fact, both Fergal and I probably would have asked permission to take a shite if Darkey were around. Darkey White didn’t get to be Darkey White by putting up with kids thinking they could run the show when he was off the stage. Don’t think of Darkey as Brando in The Godfather, think of him as Brando slumming it as Jor-el in Superman, all full of himself, overacting, clever, pretentious, and clearly a bit fucking bonkers. But still a heavy presence, distorting the well of gravity around him. Even when, like now, he was off the screen.

  Scotchy, look, I began, I just don’t want us to get in trouble. Sunshine told me everything was off for today and—

  Fucking Sunshine, are you afeared of him, too, ’fraid of your own shadow, Bruce? Now come on.

  Fergal looked at me and shrugged. I sighed and followed them outside.

  We piled into Scotchy’s brand-new brown Oldsmobile Something-shite, which was very uncomfortable and extremely uncool besides. The window wipers would come on every time you put on the left turn signal, but this was never a problem for Scotchy because he never used the turn signals. We drove for about ten minutes, up into some winding streets in Riverdale, into not a bad area but not a great one either. None of us said anything except for Scotchy, who was busy muttering to himself.

  We were nearly there. Like I say, if it were me I wouldn’t have done anything until I’d talked to Darkey or at least Sunshine, but Scotchy wasn’t built that way. He wanted to show that he could handle things. He couldn’t but he wanted to show that he could. That was why we were the lowest members of the totem pole. That was how we ended up with the rubbish jobs and Bob’s crew ended up with the money jobs.

  We stopped outside Shovel’s apartment building. This was the point for me to make a final plea for a quick wee phone call to Darkey, a minute, that’s all it would take. One of us had to be the grown-up and if it meant me, the youngest, taking on that role then so be it. I was going to do it too, but Scotchy got out of the car too fast and by the time I’d caught up to him, the moment was gone and I’d lost my nerve.