Plugged

by Eoin Colfer

  So with all this in mind, I use my army stealth training to creep into the apartment. There could be a cell of jittery terrorists holed up on the second floor and they wouldn’t hear Company Sergeant Daniel McEvoy slipping down the hallway to his own door.

  Which is open. The busted triple-bar lock lying shamefaced on the floor.

  I forget all about operation under the radar when I see the whirlwind that has rolled through my apartment.

  ‘Christ Almighty!’ I shout, wading through the detritus that was my life. I used to do that metaphorically with Simon; now I’m doing it for real. It’s just as painful and I don’t feel better with every step.

  The place has been wrecked. Destroyed. I’ve seen bomb sites with less shredding. They pulled down the wallpaper, disembowelled the sofa, dismantled the appliances. My fridge is lying on its side, leaking mayo; looks like a dying robot. The AC unit is in pieces on the table; reminds me of a mechanic’s course I took once. Pictures on the floor. A Jack Yeats West of Ireland print I carried in a tube from Dublin, slashed for malice.

  I walk around flapping my arms, kicking through the debris. Where do you start? How can you fix this?

  Then Mrs Delano pipes up. She was waiting for me to come home, I’m sure of it. Probably been up all night injecting her eyeballs with caffeine. I know that sounds crazy, but when you live underneath crazy, some of it drips downwards.

  ‘Kee-rist almighty,’ she calls, voice wafting through the light fixture. ‘Kee-rist fucking almighty.’

  I am absolutely not in the mood for this lady right now. The best tack, I know, is not to rise to the bait, because if I react she wins, and we could be at this all morning and at the end of it my stuff is still trashed.

  ‘You down there, Irish? Can’t you keep your monkey friends under control?’

  Monkey friends? Screw it. Zeb, Barrett and sweet Connie. I need to loosen the valve, let off some steam. So I throw my head back and roar like Tarzan.

  ‘Shut the hell up, you crazy bat.’

  She comes back with ‘Hell is shut for crazy bats.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I shout, and I can feel my tendons stretch. ‘Or I swear to Christ I will come up there and wring your neck.’

  ‘No Christ in this neck of the woods.’

  This kind of carry-on is infuriating, and now that Delano has me on her hook, she could keep it up for hours.

  ‘Drop dead, you lunatic. Why don’t you drop bloody dead?’

  My face is red and tight. I’m not just shouting at Delano, I know, but I keep shouting anyway.

  ‘That’s right. Drop dead. The world would be a better place.’

  ‘Dead is a better place? You think dead is a better place for lunatics, Irish?’

  There’s a new note in her voice. Wild, past caring. I’m a bit that way myself.

  ‘You heard me.’

  She doesn’t respond, which is unusual. Ominous, even. Echoes of my own voice circle me like ghosts.

  If this was a movie, something really bad would be just about to happen.

  What is she going to do? What’s the big tease? How can Delano haunt me for ever?

  There’s one sure way.

  Something thumps on the ceiling overhead.

  Four dead? Four in one day? Come on.

  I race to the door, skirting my ruptured easy chair. The corner of my eye notices that they even took the weights off my barbells. Thorough.

  Up the stairs three at a time, sick to my stomach, heart bouncing around like a lottery ball in the cage.

  Please God, not too late. What the hell did she do?

  Delano’s door is pretty solid, with a couple of extra bolts, but I’m running on adrenalin and take them out with a bull charge. Momentum carries me inside, and I lurch across the threshold, heaving breaths, shoulder throbbing, afraid to look and see.

  I do look, in case time is of the essence, and I see Delano sitting in a straight-backed chair, a cigarette between two slim fingers. There is a large book on the floor beside her. A bible, I think.

  ‘Hello, hero,’ she says, smoke leaking from between her bow lips. ‘You owe me a door.’

  I am such an idiot.

  ‘Sucker,’ Delano adds, which is a more accurate word.

  My first thought is to launch into a rant, but by the time I draw breath I realise there’s no point. It’s funny; this whole thing is hilarious. Not ha-ha funny, so I don’t laugh.

  ‘You might cut me a break,’ I say quietly, ‘if you realised the kind of day I’ve had.’

  ‘I’ve been up all night listening to your friends,’ she snaps, without a shred of mercy.

  This is the closest I’ve stood to Delano. She’s my age, a few years younger. Blonde hair, straight and long. Maybe a figure, hard to tell in a towelled robe. And blue eyes rimmed with kohl, staring right into me like she’s got mind powers. I notice for the first time that this lady has got cat’s eyes, like Ava Gardner or Madonna. Beautiful but dangerous.

  The apartment is freaky neat, but cold. There’s a tube of wind coming in through a hole in the window.

  She notices me looking. ‘I was having a moment,’ she explains. ‘Goddamn satsuma. Can you believe that? Made a helluva hole.’

  Something to do, thank Christ. Take my mind off those eyes.

  Get those idle hands to work, soldier, and do not even contemplate strangling this woman.

  You learn to use your hands in the army. Things break down in the field and they need to be fixed; no use waiting for a requisitions crate. Ireland is a long way from the Lebanon, and even if your package makes it through the grifters on both ends of the pipeline, you’re still talking half a year. There was a guy in my squad fixed an old 77 radio with parts from a Rolf Harris stylophone he bought on Mingi Street. A real live MacGyver. I wasn’t good with electronics, but I could manage basic household repairs.

  So I size up the window with a squint, then go foraging underneath the sink for something I can use.

  ‘Hey, Irish, what are you playing at?’

  Maybe Delano thinks I’m looking for trash bags to wrap her body.

  Good.

  A pity she doesn’t know about my pro-tective instinct. Perhaps I’ll tell her later.

  Nothing under the sink to plug a hole, so I rifle the storage. This woman has more pills than a New York pusher and more drawers than an underwear store.

  Boom-boom, chuckles Ghost Zeb. You’re a funny killer, Daniel McEvoy, yes you are.

  ‘Stay out of my drawers, Irish.’

  I laugh. ‘No need to worry on that account, Mrs Delano.’

  ‘Screw you.’

  ‘You screw?’ I say, twisting her words. Childish I know but I need a laugh.

  Most of the drawers are half empty, so I pour one into another and punch the board out of the first. The wood comes away clean, nails red with rust like they’ve been sealing a coffin.

  Stay away from the imagery, Simon told me once.

  Because it deepens my pain?

  No. Because you are shite at it.

  I’d like to read the manual that came from. Chapter Six: Shiteness At Imagery and its Effects on Latent Arseholery.

  Delano doesn’t ask what I’m playing at, but she’s pulling hard on that cigarette now, tip pulsing red and white.

  Showboating is what I’m doing. I could just tape over the hole, there’s a roll right there, but this board seems a more appropriate expression of the shape of my mood, as a mate of mine might say. I place it over the broken pane, then hammer the nails into the frame with a meat tenderiser from the draining board. The wind is downsized from a gale to a whistle. Not too shabby.

  For once Mrs Delano is dumbstruck. She sits like a statue, smoke curling out of her fist.

  ‘I’ll call a buddy of mine,’ I say on my way out. ‘Twenty-four-hour lock guy, for your door and mine too. Until he gets here, I’d keep the noise down. You don’t want to attract any undesirables.’

  In spite of my day, I’m smiling on the steps. There’s not a word f
rom Delano’s apartment. Not a peep.

  CHAPTER 6

  Before I had more serious things to worry about, I often spent the days leading up to the first transplant session searching my past trying to figure why I wanted hair plugs so badly. Why does a shiny skull prey on my mind so much? I’ve spent enough hours on the couch to know that these wants often have their roots in my own history.

  I could never come up with anything. My father was dead before he got the chance to go fully bald. No bald guy ever beat me, or humiliated me that I can recall. I don’t have any hairy heroes that I want to be, or hairless guys that I don’t want to turn into.

  It’s in the subconscious, Zeb informed me one night in the park. The two of us were sharing a pint of Jameson after the bars closed. A hefty ox like me squashed into a child’s swing, chains cutting off the blood flow to my feet. I must have been drunk.

  Believe me, Dan. Something happened.

  I know what happened. Zeb offered me a good deal, started showing me pictures, got my vanity stoked.

  If you got hair, then maybe you ain’t so old and your life ain’t so over.

  Zeb could sell shit to a sewage plant. Zeb is such a good salesman that he can literally charge a guy to inject him with the fat that he just sucked out of his ass.

  ‘Bloody bastards. This is a sterile environment’ were the first words Zeb ever spoke to me, and I knew straight away by the scout boots sticking out of his scrubs that this guy was Israeli army, something Sergeant Fletcher was too busy to notice as he had a finger jammed halfway up his nose.

  ‘I got this bump in my nose, see?’ he said, voice muted by the digit in his nostril. ‘Makes me snore something terrible. I need you to fix it.’

  The doctor looks a little like the Bee Gee who married Lulu, if he had just run into a sheet of plate glass. You either get that or you don’t.

  He finished injecting the unconscious guy’s penis and petulantly threw the syringe into a metal sink.

  ‘Come on, guys. I’m doing dick fat here. It’s touchy work. This man is a big shot in some militia or other.’

  I have to say, I was a little surprised. Even for Mingi Street, an underground cosmetic surgery was pretty radical, though I had heard of a place in Sudan that did organ transplants. You’d be amazed how quickly a matching donor can be found. This Israeli guy was a real entrepreneur, especially since ninety per cent of the locals would have no hesitation sticking him with every one of his own needles. I guess you get a pass if you provide a valuable service.

  Fletcher withdrew his finger. ‘What about my nose, Doc?’ ‘Does this look like a Swiss clinic? Injectables only,’ said the man I would later know as Zeb. ‘No rhino.’

  ‘Who are you calling a rhino?’ said Tommy, and shot Zeb in the kneecap.

  Okay, that didn’t happen, but I can dream.

  I don’t sleep so well after my run-in with Mrs Delano. Probably has something to do with me realising that my upstairs neighbour is beautiful-ish in a psycho kind of way, though all the dead and dying, Connie especially, has put a dent in my libido. I feel a little treacherous that I’m not mourning Zeb yet, but I haven’t seen him on the asphalt so I’m nursing a spark of hope.

  Not feeling safe is the main thing keeping me awake, even more than the morning sun, though I reckon the hoods won’t be making the rounds till noon at least. These Celtic gangsters are whores for the Jameson and Coke. But once the sun crosses the yardarm, Mike Madden’s boys might pay another visit, see if they can’t find a few more things to break. I cover the door with a wardrobe. If any arseholes come through that, they’ll think they’re in Narnia. I hang a Joshua Tree poster over the window. Not bulletproof, but a puzzler. It’s all misdirection, which only works if the misdirected are somewhere in between dumb and smart. Many of the best soldiers in the world have shit for brains and a photo of their target.

  How did they find me anyway? Does Irish Mike have something specific, or just a list of known associates?

  I puzzle on this, as eventually my mind sinks down into the black rings of sleep. Trust in Bono.

  Thank God. Nearly there. Some rest finally.

  Then, wouldn’t you know, a thought occurs to me. One of those notions that banishes sleep, like a stiff wind blowing away cobwebs.

  Kee-rist almighty.

  That’s what Delano said. Kee-rist. Not plain old Christ. Now where have I heard that recently? Yesterday. The day before.

  And suddenly I’m bolt upright in my bed. That guy, with the Styrofoam hair. The licker, what was his name?

  I have it even before I pull the card from my wallet.

  Faber, the attorney. With all the rioting in the club that night, this guy Faber completely slipped my mind.

  Delano repeats what she hears, and she heard Kee-rist. Faber was here, and he trashed my place.

  I’m on my feet, pacing around the room, punching a fist into my palm, which I stop doing when I realise how drama queen it feels. There’s no sitting this out even if I wanted to. Faber knows where I lay my head and he’s obviously got backup. A runt like him didn’t do this damage on his own. That arsehole couldn’t even lift the microwave.

  This is not about Zeb, this is about Connie. Faber killed her and he’s looking for me.

  That’s it. It must be. Christ, surely nobody kills anybody over an arse-licking? I witnessed Faber’s beef with Connie and I broke it up. Could it be that straightforward?

  Everyone wants to kill me lately; it’s enough to make a fellow paranoid. As Dr Moriarty often quipped, You know something, Dan. Just because everyone really is out to get you doesn’t mean you’re not insane. I always thought that sentence had a couple too many negatives.

  Three hours later, I’m still awake, thinking. The old grey cells keep churning out the theories, which I hammer out with Ghost Zeb.

  Faber killed Connie.

  Possibly.

  And you know this how?

  Because a crazy lady used his pet phrase.

  That is pretty fucking thin, as Riggs and Murtaugh have been known to say.

  The world is built on thin. Ask George W.

  So, assuming it was the guy Faber. Why?

  Because Connie slapped him. Because he’s a psycho.

  Pretty harsh revenge for a slap. And Faber did not seem like a weapons guy.

  What about his help? You don’t know who’s carrying steel for him.

  Good point.

  Thank you.

  So, we’re going to the police.

  There’s no we, just me. And I do not want the police poking around in my business.

  Because of the whole killing-a-gangster thing.

  Exactly. So what should we do next?

  There’s a we now?

  I flash on Tommy Fletcher. At this point he is back to being a corporal, following an incident where he doused a sheep with gasoline, set it on fire then actually ate a large portion. There was quite a lot of home-brewed hooch involved. Tommy is belly down on a bluff overlooking no-man’s-land, loosing rounds from his FN at rangy wild dogs.

  ‘You shooting mutts, Corporal?’ I ask him.

  ‘Nah,’ says Tommy, grinning. ‘I’m shooting close to the mutts, watching ’em jump.’

  I close my eyes and feel sleep rolling over me like a wave of thick fog.

  Shoot close and watch them jump. That’s more or less doing nothing. It’s aggressive passivity.

  Simon would be so proud.

  I met Zeb for the second time when I was doing my time on a door in Brooklyn. It was a club called Queers, which was trying to attract the pink pound but was pulling in the irony-loving New York arty-farts. This was not my finest hour, as the boss had his bouncers in spangly waistcoats and mascara. Any photos from this era would not be going on my website, if I had one. It was a brief era anyhow, I lasted about a week before I got a rash on my eyelids and decided it was either buy some hypoallergenic make-up out of my own pocket, or quit. I chose the latter.

  So I was on the door on my last nigh
t at Queers, figuring the shit quotient went up roughly two hundred per cent when the doorman was wearing mascara, when this guy rolls up off his face on just about whatever he could stuff in there. I did the five-finger spread on his chest, just so he’d know right off how big my hand was.

  ‘Sir, don’t even ask. You are not coming on the premises.’

  Something about this guy struck me as familiar. He looked a little like one of the Bee Gees after a rough couple of years.

  ‘Come on, man,’ he whined. ‘I got the cash, plenty. You wanna see?’

  I did not wanna see. You bring cash out in the open air for more than five seconds outside a club and someone is gonna start a fight.

  ‘No, sir. Keep it in your pocket.’

  The man ignored me, as was to become his habit, flashing a roll of fifties that could have plugged a rat hole.

  ‘You know what this is?’

  I put a little pressure behind my fingertips, enough to back the man up a step or two.

  ‘I know what it is, sir.’

  ‘No, sir. You do not. You think you know.’ The drunk tapped his nose like there was a great secret stashed up there. ‘This here is a couple of silicone boobies and a tummy tuck. Sweet job too. If you let me in, I’ll give you a grand. How about that? One thousand dollars just to step aside.’

  I stood my ground, not because I couldn’t be bought, but because this guy thought he could buy me, if that makes any sense.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Put your money away.’ And then the guy looks me in the face, possibly to plead or up his offer, and something pings between us.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, wagging a finger. ‘I know you.’

  And then I had him. The pasty complexion, the eyes a little shiny. The doctor guy, from the Lebanon.

  But what I said was, ‘No. I don’t think we’ve met.’

  Zeb stood back and spread his arms wide like a ringmaster introducing himself.

  ‘Hey, it’s me. Dick-fat guy.’

  He kept talking like I didn’t have enough information. ‘You know, that militia man, his cock exploded in battle. I’m a national hero.’