Falling Glass Read online

  “What’s your name?” Killian asked.

  “Luke.”

  “You know mine, where the car?”

  “Outside in the—”

  “Let’s go.”

  A black Chrysler 3000 up Route 1.

  Killian didn’t know this part of America so he looked out the window. Clam shacks, cranberry bogs, ice-cream stands, forests, old wooden houses.

  The rain stayed off and the sun came out as they caught the bridge over the Merrimac River.

  It looked cute.

  The kid wasn’t a yapper which was something. They crossed the border into New Hampshire and within a few clicks they were at Hampton Beach. It was a typical New England resort town: a big strand, amusement arcades, junk-food stalls, sporting goods shops, and, significantly for Killian, a medium-sized casino.

  “Pull in,” he said.

  The kid parked. Killian got out.

  “Wait here,” he said. He ducked into a Dunkin Donuts, ordered a coffee and called Sean again.

  “What’s he do for a living, this client of ours?” Killian asked.

  “You know what time it is here?” Sean asked. “I was sitting down to me tea.”

  “This boy that they’ve flown me three thousand miles to see, what does he do for a living?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “I don’t want to get involved in a war. This is strictly per diem for me. I don’t need any markers, bad blood.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sean asked.

  “This is a company town.”

  “Rackets?”

  “Legit. A casino. Could be a power play. Wouldn’t be the first time my best mate M.F. fucked me up would it? Check it, will you?”

  He drank the coffee, watched kids in wetsuits walk across the two-lane with their long boards. Killian was wearing a sports coat jacket, white shirt, dockers, plain blue tie – not exactly dinner with the in-laws but he still felt overdressed for Hampton Beach on an early spring day.

  Sean called back. “M.F. says that he doesn’t work in the casino business. He’s a banker. Married old money. This is his third marker. Hometown, Atlantic City and Foxwoods. Everyone has been very patient. There are no cross tabs, he is not connected in any way.”

  “Law enforcement?”

  “No family links.”

  “You buy that?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, if I had a gambling problem, I don’t think I’d live in a town with a fucking casino on the boardwalk.”

  Sean sighed. “Should I call it off?”

  Killian rubbed his chin. “Nah. I’ll check it and I’ll call you when it’s done. You should also know this…he sent someone.”

  “Babysitter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You just be careful, big man,” Sean said in the camp West Belfast tones of BBC TV announcer Julian Simmons.

  “You know it,” Killian said.

  He tossed the coffee, went back to Luke.

  They found Carpenter Street four blocks back from the beach.

  American dream. Picket fences, sprinklers, kids, cul de sac.

  Number 21: big New England Tidewater style, made to look two centuries old but in fact vintage 2002. The irony hit: guy with a gambling problem lives in number 21.

  Five- or six-bedroom house with a triple garage. A boy with a wiffle bat trying to play baseball with himself. About thirteen, brown hair, green eyes, Watchmen T-shirt. The 3000 wouldn’t attract attention in this neighborhood but someone waiting inside would.

  “You come with me,” Killian said.

  “What are you going to do in there?” Luke asked warily.

  “What do you do for Mr Forsythe exactly?” Killian wondered.

  “I work for Express Cars, I’m a driver.”

  “What do you think I do, Luke?”

  “I really don’t know,” Luke said but his eyes were telling a different story. He knew, or suspected…

  “If you come it’ll be worth a couple of thousand experience points,” Killian prophesied.

  Luke didn’t look convinced so Killian changed from the subjunctive to the imperative mood: “Follow me, keep your mouth shut.”

  Killian got out, straightened his jacket, walked to the front gate. The boy’s Red Sox hat was slightly askew and he was doing a baseball commentary to himself just the way he would if this were an early Spielberg movie. Killian looked for a golden retriever to complete the set up but there was no dog.

  He swung open the gate.

  “Who are you?” the kid asked in a lazy Mainer drawl.

  “I’m a friend of your father’s. Is he home?”

  “He went to Shaw’s.”

  “Is your mother home?”

  “She went to Kittery.”

  “Who’s watching you?”

  “Nobody. I’m watching me,” the kid said.

  “Brothers or sisters?”

  “Mum took Flannery to Kittery.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t take Kittery to Flannery.”

  The kid laughed.

  “What’s your name, son?” Killian asked.

  “Toby.”

  “Toby, I like that, when are you expecting your dad to get back?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, half an hour?”

  Killian reached into his pocket and took out two fifty-dollar bills. “I’m an old friend of your father’s. I suppose I owe you a couple of birthday presents.”

  He gave Toby the money. “Why don’t you get yourself a real baseball bat at one of those sporting goods stores on the seafront. A good one,” Killian said.

  Toby’s eyes were wide. “I could get a David Ortiz.”

  “Yeah. Good idea. Run along now. Surprise your dad.”

  “Can I take my bike?”

  “Sure, you got a helmet?”

  “Yeess,” the kid groaned.

  “Put it on and scat.”

  Toby got his bike and helmet and pedalled off. Killian walked to the front door, turned the handle, went inside. “Come on,” he said to Luke.

  A pristine, upscale, well laid out, utterly soulless residence.

  Killian did a brace of the bedrooms looking for a safe. He found a loaded .38 in a locked gun case and he took the ammo and left the gun. Under a floorboard in an upstairs spare room he discovered a collection of soft-core pornography and two grand in Canadian dollars. Killian left the mags and the cash. He found nothing else, nothing major. The most interesting room was a ground floor study/library which had about a thousand volumes. Old ones. Some valuable. To his amazement he found a book on Le Corbusier.

  He started flipping through it.

  He sat down.

  “What do we do now?” Luke asked.

  “We wait.”

  Luke pulled out his iPod, plugged in the earphones and lay on an ottoman.

  “What are you listening to?” Killian asked, always slightly curious as to what the weans were into.

  “What?”

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Ocean sounds.”

  Killian nodded casually but his ears were up. He’d seen a snub-nosed Saturday Night Special shoved in the back of Luke’s pants. He thought cross and double cross. Insurance. Luke, really an iceman, kills the mark, pins the murder on the shnook from outta town.

  Plausible but perhaps not likely. Michael had a rep for straightness and for a complicated play like that you’d need someone with ten years under their belt and this kid was a punk. Furthermore that gun wasn’t the weapon of a professional.

  “It’s nothing,” he told himself and went back to his book.

  He didn’t like Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier didn’t understand human nature. Humans were biophilic. Half a million years of living on the Savannah was bound to select for adaptations linked to open plains, grasslands. In his concrete dreamscapes Le Corbusier didn’t allow for any kind of spiritual longing for vistas, for greenery, for other mammal species, for space. Like other twentieth-century
social engineers Corbusier wanted to remake man in his own image. Hmm, he thought, that was pretty good. He took out a pencil and began to make notes for his term paper and was so engrossed that he didn’t hear Marcetti come in. He should have put Luke on point. A mistake. Hopefully not a fatal mistake.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Marcetti said.

  Killian looked up. Marcetti wasn’t Italian. At least not New York Italian. White, pale, about thirty-eight, thin, crumpled, with that vacant expression Killian knew all too well from the midnight shift in Atlantic City. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, slip-on shoes; his eyes were watery, weak, had a wildness to them. He was balanced on one foot, something Killian didn’t like because Marcetti was pointing a sawn-off shotgun at him.

  Worse than that, pointing it at him and then at Luke, spinning it to the left and right, all on that one unbalanced leg.

  “Well, motherfuckers, what do you want?” Marcetti repeated.

  “Hey man, I’m just here to—” Luke began, but Killian put a hand up to stop him.

  Killian looked at Marcetti. “You know why we’re here,” he said dispassionately.

  Marcetti nodded. “I don’t fucking have it.”

  Killian set the Le Corbusier and his notebook on the bookcase, smiled. “That’s too bad. I had a phone conversation with Mr Forsythe earlier in the day and he made it clear that either I get the money or I send you expeditiously into your next incarnation – if you believe in that kind of thing.”

  Marcetti was shaking. “What?”

  Killian pointed at the chair opposite. “You should probably sit. The gun’ll work just as well from a sitting position.”

  Marcetti blinked.

  Those eyes again. Old man eyes. Beaten. Killian didn’t like them, Marcetti probably didn’t feel that he had a whole lot to lose.

  Luke was on the fidgets. Killian gave him the Do Not Pass Go he’d perfected over the years. Do not even attempt a play for that gun of yours.

  Luke nodded slightly.

  “Sit down,” Killian insisted.

  Marcetti sat.

  “How did you know we were here?” Killian wondered.

  “I saw Toby on the boardwalk, he told me everything.”

  Killian nodded. Just a bit of bad luck. Couldn’t be helped. He admired Marcetti’s cojones, coming here to confront a shark’s enforcer instead of run, run, running. Didn’t seem a New England move. “Where are you from, originally?” Killian asked.

  “You’re not playing that game with me. We’re not going to fucking jaw like we’re old friends. You’re fucked, pal, I’m the one with the gun.”

  Killian nodded. He had enough anyway, the accent was South Jersey. He could imagine the traj: street, or half-street kid, pretty smart, scholarships, college, banking, marries into money, moves to the Boston burbs and gradually migrates north. Perfect until, like some atavistic demon, the grifter comes out: a visit to the local casino, maybe he wins, in any case the hooks are in, he starts playing, starts losing, starts borrowing. In a year, he’s under the ocean, deep down, Robert fucking Ballard territory, the Mariana fucking trench.

  Marcetti was trembling, sweating, the gun was shaking. Killian knew that unless it was loaded with talcum powder, at this range and at this angle it would decapitate him. Even birdshot could kill him. Wouldn’t have to be on purpose, a screen door slamming, a car backfiring, Marcetti reacts. Both triggers. Never get the stain out of the dry wall.

  “You carry a sawed-off shotgun in your car. You were expecting me. Someone like me.” Killian said.

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “You know why they asked me to come in?” Killian asked.

  “No.”

  “Because I’m from out of town.”

  Marcetti shook his head. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m from out of town. If you’re going to kill someone you don’t go local. See, if I was just coming to get money out of you, they would have sent up guys from Boston. I’ve come all the way from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Across the Atlantic.”

  “Like Forsythe,” Marcetti said.

  “We’re old pals.”

  Marcetti blinked fast. Sweat beading on his upper lip. He stood up again and pointed the gun “What if I just fucking kill you right now,” he said. “Both of you.”

  “Take a seat, Andrew, you’ll be more comfortable and you can still kill us any time you want,” Killian insisted.

  Convinced by this information Marcetti slumped back into the leather chair.

  Killian gave him a reassuring smile. Salesman smile.

  “Mind if I smoke?” Killian asked.

  “No, Susannah doesn’t allow…Sure, go ahead and…no, wait a minute, don’t try anything,” Marcetti said. “One false move and I’ll—”

  Killian nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes. Lit one. He offered the pack around, the kid and Marcetti shook their heads.

  “Bad habit,” Killian agreed. He let the nicotine coat his lungs and drifted for a quarter minute. The world played behind Marcetti’s head. Aquamarine sky. A heat transparency to the elms and chestnut trees. Kids on bicycles sailing past the window like extras in a movie.

  “How do you think this is going to end, Andrew?” Killian asked.

  Marcetti shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Can I tell you a story?”

  “What kind of a story?”

  “About the last man I killed.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “No, you should hear it, it’s interesting. How someone dies is pedagogical.”

  Marcetti said nothing so Killian cleared his throat.

  “I was in Uruguay. Two years ago. I’ll give you the coda first. The thing was so bad that when I got back to Ireland I decided that I was going to change everything. I was going to quit The Life, go to college, get married, get some exercise, eat spinach, I had a whole notebook filled with stuff like that. And the funny thing is I more or less did it. I bought a small block of apartments, I gave my gun away, I enrolled at the University of Ulster just outside of Belfast.”

  “Did you get married?” Luke asked.

  “Didn’t get hitched but I have incorporated spinach into my diet. Okay, back to my story,” Killian said. He took a draw on his cigarette, wondered if the shotgun really was loaded. “Okay, so, there’s this guy and he thinks he’s pretty smart and he owes. He owes because he steals. Stole. Five of the big M. From friends of friends in London. Escape plan worked in advance, new identity, new face, new everything. But it doesn’t work. Someone tracks him down to an obscure little town in Uruguay. Next thing you know there’s me sitting on this guy’s patio deck on a Sunday morning. I’m watching this line of yachts coming across the Rio de la Plata, the River Plate, coming across in this almost straight line that stretches all the way to the horizon, each boat about fifteen minutes behind the next. The final boats are under the horizon, under the Earth’s curve. You get me?”

  Marcetti nodded.

  “They’re coming from Buenos Aires in Argentina. I guess it’s a popular Sunday sailing destination for the rich. Up early, pack some booze and sail to little Colonia in Uruguay. Have lunch, have a stroll, back before it gets dark. It’s a nice place: beautiful old colonial buildings, shady plazas, cobble stones, lots of cafés. I walked around for a bit, started to get noticed, so I found the house I was looking for, broke in. Of course, he’s gone. Bed unmade, coffee still warm. He’s just popped out to get a newspaper or croissants or something. While I’m waiting I go out onto his deck and watch the boats. As they get closer you can see the people on board; some of them wave at me as they steer into Colonia’s marina but I don’t wave back, you know, cos I’m a professional. Twenty little boats come over from Buenos Aires and it’s getting warm and even more beautiful and I’m so caught up in this lovely wee moment I almost don’t hear our boy come back. He’s driven all the way to Montevideo to get his girlfriend. Nothing in the notes a
bout a girlfriend. You can imagine the scene…”

  Killian sighed and scratched his neck.

  Marcetti was on board. “What happened?”

  “They’re in kitchen and I go back in through the French windows and get the jump on them. They’d given me a silenced Smith and Wesson .38, but what good is that if she’s screaming her head off, you know? I tell him to shut her up. He’s crying, begging, flipped. She’s hysterical. Gorgeous too and only about nineteen. I can’t kill her. Just can’t. Wouldn’t be right. Now, I know a bit of Spanish from jobs in the Costa del Sol so I tell her straight: she can stay here and die or leave and forget about this. She’s a good girl, she wipes her face and walks out. He’s begging her not to go. She doesn’t look back. He’s really bawling now, but it doesn’t matter – our boy’s wearing his funeral suit – nothing he can say can change the judgement. But you never know though, do you? So I let him talk a little. He tells me he’s got money. Millions, he says. We open his safe. It’s not millions. It’s about twenty grand in euros.”

  Killian paused, finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the wooden window sill.

  Marcetti was pointing the shotgun at the floor now. Killian let the seconds crawl.

  “What happened next?” Marcetti asked.

  “While he’s spinning some scheme about gold bullion I sidle next to him and shoot him in the head behind the ear, easy, bullet expands in his brain case, exits through his face, kills him instantly. But I have to work fast now. The client demanded torture, a lesson, you know, all that East End cockney geezer bullshit.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Yeah, but listen, that’s not the story. The story’s coming up. So I’m cutting off his penis—”

  “You were what?”

  “They wanted me to cut off his penis and make him eat it before I killed him. Not my scene but easy to replicate. Anyway I’m doing that and not really paying attention and guess what happens?”

  “He wakes up,” Luke said, horrified.

  Killian laughed. “Man you’ve some imagination. No, the girlfriend comes back. And she’s got a pair of heavies with her. One of them has a fucking AK-47, another has an Uzi. I’m minding my own business, sawing at this guy’s dick with my Swiss Army knife and before I know what’s happening – World War Three.”