Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

  “They adapt,” he says, as if explaining to a small child. “You know about the history of the Mob? How this obscure code from a little island kicked into the sea off Italy ended up as one of the biggest economic forces in America? Man, there’s more to the Mafia than racketeering and drugs and killing people off. Their structure is the basic model used by some of the most successful businesses in America.”

  McAvoy continues to look blank and Tiz throws up his hands, exasperated. Looking around him, he finds a copy of a free newspaper on top of some glossy magazines beneath his desk.

  “Take the Pugliesca family,” he says, pointing at a small article in the bottom right-hand corner. “Boss of the family will be doing time until he’s about five hundred years old but the company, the family, is more profitable than ever before. They hide their profits, see. No different than any big company that wants to get away with paying half a cent in tax on billion-dollar reserves. This case here,” he says, pointing again at the paper, “it’s a failed RICO attempt on the acting head. They’re trying to get old Paulie’s assets but on paper he’s worth less than the cost of a slice of apple pie. Every company they try and link to him turns out to be a dead end, or registered to somebody who died and left his assets to some benevolent fund that nobody seems able to take credit for. They’re technical wizards and their accountants and lawyers would be enjoying corner offices and six-figure salaries at blue-chip companies if they weren’t already making twice that working for the Mob.”

  McAvoy raises his eyebrows. He isn’t sure what response is required but he gives an encouraging smile. “Oh,” he says. “That’s better than killing people, I suppose.”

  “They do that, too,” says Tiz, beaming. “You want to hear about Sally Boy in ’eighty-one? They found half of one leg and the rest hit a parked car two streets away . . .”

  McAvoy nods a polite good night and hurries his way down the short corridor to the elevator. His room is on the seventh floor and moments later, he is pushing open the white door to a room not much longer and taller than he is. A mirrored wardrobe and a dressing table take up one wall, and the rest of the room is covered by the bulk of the king-size bed. The rectangular window offers him a view of only his own reflection, but when he presses his forehead to the cool glass, he can see the backs of towering buildings and the roofs of apartment blocks, all covered with the same hard snow. On the top of one building, he can make out the shape of a boat, partly covered in a tarpaulin, which sags under the weight of the snow. McAvoy starts to wonder how its owner intends to get it to the water, and then decides that in this hipster area, the owner may well be preparing for environmental disaster and the sudden swelling of the East River.

  A small bathroom containing toilet, sink, and shower completes the tour of the room. McAvoy wonders if Brishen and Shay experienced the same mild sense of disappointment upon opening the door. He wonders, too, whether they expected the room to come with twin beds rather than one large one that they’d have to share. He files the question away for later.

  Sighing, he sits down on the bed and starts unpicking the damp laces of his boots. He has one boot on and the other off when a wave of homesickness and bewilderment seems to rise out of the floor and soak him to the bone. He feels as though everything he knows and loves is a million miles away. He lies back on the bed and fumbles in his coat for his phone. It’s a little before midnight. It may only be five a.m. back home, but McAvoy knows from painful experience that Roisin and the children will be wide awake and desperate for some words from Daddy. He wishes he had something to tell them. He wants to hear their voices so badly that it feels like a physical pain. He tries to picture them, but the images that flood his mind threaten to make his eyes spill over and he screws up his face, wishing to God he could reach out and stroke Roisin’s soft, dark skin. He is here for her. Here for his children. Here because the Heldens turned up at Roisin’s little sister’s confirmation and threatened Papa Teague with all the torments of hell in payment for Valentine’s crimes.

  Lying there on the warm, soft sheets, McAvoy lets his mind drift. Was it only a few days ago? He feels as though he has been carrying this pain inside of him for an age. But there is no mistake. He got the call on Saturday. Shay Helden had already been dead a week. Roisin had spent the previous couple of days in Galway, unaware of what was brewing across the Atlantic or how much trouble her little brother was in. The children had gone with her. Fin’s school had been understanding about the fact that he had gone to Ireland in term time, once Roisin had explained that there was a family bereavement. McAvoy had bitten back his objections when Roisin had put her hand on his cheek and told him to shush, and that all the boy would miss would be some coloring in and another fecking lesson about the Tudors. McAvoy had found himself silently hoping that nobody at the school ever got round to counting up how many grandmothers Finlay had lost during his school career.

  McAvoy was decorating the living room in preparation for their return when the call came. He’d been invited to Sinéad’s confirmation but Roisin had spared him the agony of coming up with an excuse when she said that she’d rather he got on with the decorating. She’d known that the presence of a policeman at an occasion for travelers would be awkward for all concerned. She had only recently started mending bridges with her family, who had all but disowned her nine years ago. Her crime was marrying the Scottish detective who loved her to his bones.

  Roisin is a strong enough person not to give a damn about other people’s opinions, but she had been unable to disguise her delight at being invited to Sinéad’s big day. Roisin is the second oldest of eight children, and Sinéad had been only three years old when she left the family home. But family is family, and the event had been important to both factions. McAvoy had been pleased that Roisin was happy, though in truth, he had felt some disquiet at the idea of her taking the children across to what he knew would be a raucous affair near the family’s home turf in Galway. Roisin had settled his nerves. She’d told him that it was only for a couple of days, and that all she wanted was to show off her children. She promised that anybody who tried to get Fin drunk would feel the back of her hand, and McAvoy had no doubts she was sincere when she said it. He gave her his credit card and said she should buy the children new outfits for the occasion. She came back with a three-piece tweed suit and matching flat cap for seven-year-old Fin, and an ocean of sapphire taffeta and silk for two-year-old Lilah. It was going to be a Big Fat Gypsy Confirmation, and Roisin was keen to show she that had not lost sight of her roots. She may live with a policeman in a battered house by the sea, but she has never been ashamed of her origins and her family.

  McAvoy had been holding up a strip of gaudily patterned wallpaper when his mobile rang. He was halfway up a ladder, bare-chested and paint-spattered, sticky with wallpaper paste and with half a Mars bar sticking out of his mouth, as if he were smoking a cigar. He answered the phone to Roisin’s tears. Ten minutes later, he was on the road to Trish Pharaoh’s house, his knuckles white around the steering wheel as he crossed the Humber Bridge, a soft, sideways rain blowing in from the east and jeweling the glass of the cursedly slow minivan he had bought for its safety record.

  He called his boss Pharaoh en route. Chewed on his bleeding cheek as he spat out the details Roisin had cried into his ear. She had her front door open the moment McAvoy’s car pulled into the drive of her semidetached home on the Scartho estate in Grimsby. She had sent her four daughters into town. They had the place to themselves. Nobody would hear if he decided to break down. And by Christ, that’s what he wanted to do. Wanted to sob with frustration and fear. Wanted to be pulled into the safe folds of her curvy body and lose himself for a moment in the smell of her perfume and cigarettes. She was his boss and his best friend and aside from his family, the person he cared most about in the world. Instead, he kept her at arm’s length. Paced the living room, repeating himself, pushing his hands through his damp hair until he looked clownish
and ill, asking questions, questions, questions . . .

  “You’ve heard of him, yes? Brishen Ayres. Great boxer. Got hurt. Hit-and-run. Real shame. I was boxing myself in those days and he was the one everybody feared. Great coach, too. Bad lad in his youth but doing great things for Irish boxing. He’s made peace between the Heldens and the Teagues, Trish, I swear it. Valentine was so excited about going over to America. It was his big chance. He’d said he would hope to be back for the confirmation. Family hadn’t heard from him in days. Then the news started filtering through. Roisin’s family heard about what happened around the same time as the Heldens. Papa Teague said the confirmation had to go ahead. He had some of his boys on the lookout, just in case. Nothing happened at the church but once they got to the reception, that was when it all kicked off. Papa Helden was tooled up. Toting a shotgun, he was. Had half the lads with him. Roisin swears she thought her father was going to get shot dead right then and there. It was only the priest who calmed things down. He was there as a guest, representing Brishen. He put himself between Helden and Teague. Managed to get them to hold off on killing each other. He said he would make inquiries, that he had friends in America who would get to the bottom of what was happening. They’ve agreed to a cease-fire until he gets to the bottom of it. But it looks like Papa Teague thinks the worst of his son, because as soon as he had Roisin alone he begged her to use her connections—that’s what he called our marriage, a damn connection!—to make sense of it all. And she agreed! Told her daddy that her husband would fly out there and make sense of it all. Find Valentine, or at the very least save him from what the Heldens would do if they get hold of him. Trish, I’m just a Yorkshire copper. She doesn’t understand. She and the kids—they think I’m some sort of superhero who can make the bad stuff all go away. And now word has got to the Heldens that I’m going out there and that means Roisin has put herself directly in harm’s way, because if I find out that Valentine did it, they’ll expect me to help him run, and if he didn’t, they’ll think I’m lying! I don’t know what to do!”

  He had wailed for an age, half to himself, half to his boss. She smoked her black cigarettes and drank her wine and untangled her hair from her big hooped earrings and plucked the dropped ash from her cleavage. Her brain was turning over so fast, he expected her eyes to spin. But she knew what to do, who to call. And she waited until he’d run out of breath before she delivered her lecture.

  “Your family thinks you’re Superman and you’re complaining? Do you know what most people think of their loved ones, Hector? They think they’re thick, or weak, or so fucking boring they may as well be a brown loaf. Your problem is that your family has faith in you. Well boo-fucking-hoo. Hector, do you know what sort of a person you have to be to deserve optimism? Do you know how vastly better than everybody else you need to be for people to presume that you will win? You are the only man I’ve ever met who deserves to be thought of in entirely glowing terms, and I say this as somebody who spends a good portion of every day wanting to kick you in the teeth for being so fucking wholesome. Now, stop sniveling, be quiet, and go get me another bottle from the cupboard. I’ve got some calls to make. And if you want me to take you seriously, you’ll wipe the chocolate off your lower lip. Now, bloody move.”

  McAvoy finds himself smiling as he begins to doze off. If nothing else, he is here. He’s spoken to a real New York City detective. He has drunk spirits in a Manhattan bar. He’s closing his eyes in a king-size bed in a cheap hotel on the Lower East Side. He has a list of times, places, and people. Tomorrow, he will take comfort in the simple act of procedure. He does not truly expect to find Valentine Teague, but he can at least prove himself worthy of his family’s belief in him. If he does happen to find him, he wonders whether the little sod will even be grateful. McAvoy has had little to do with him these past years. He has memories of him as a child, with his red hair and freckles and tram lines shaved into the side of his head. He was always up to mischief. Could get McAvoy’s wallet from his back pocket and empty his account while his prey was still sitting down. And as a grown man he has been little better. Fighting, stealing, ripping the lead from abandoned buildings or stealing the scaffolding from building sites. Even so, it’s hard to dislike him. He’s a beguiling soul, with his twinkly eyes and his easy charm. He’d given McAvoy all kinds of gentle abuse when they were invited to the sit-down intended to mend the bridges between Roisin and her parents, but something told McAvoy that his brother-in-law, on some level, didn’t completely hate him. That felt like a result.

  In this spirit of uncertainty, McAvoy drifts off to asleep, one boot on and the other one off; sprawled in the bed where Brishen Ayres and Shay Helden slept before they sped out of New York as if hell were chasing them, on their way to damnation down a quiet road in the midst of a snow-covered forest.

  As the blackness takes hold, McAvoy reaches out in his mind. Brushes his fingertips against the soft skin of a woman with dark hair and kind blue eyes. He does not know whose flesh he touches, but it brings him comfort and keeps him safe inside his dreams.

  FIVE

  This is a gray place, a sketch in pencil smudged with a licked thumb.

  It is a cavern of flickering darkness and weak firelight made into an ethereal, shapeless space by the wraiths of smoke that drift up from the candles, which have burned down to the base.

  It is a place that smells of man and earth, of pig and plant, as though hot animal fat has been poured onto fresh-cut lilies.

  There is a figure at the center of this smear of smoke and dust. Naked and corpulent, a scarred mess of jellied flesh. He calls himself the Penitent, and were he presented with an image of how he appears at this time and in this place, he would not recognize the figure who stands in front of the perfect white altar cloth and holds the short bone-handled knife in his right hand.

  The Penitent stands upon the sacred ground and allows himself the faintest moment of idle human thought. He considers his feet, and enjoys them.

  The Penitent wonders whether his face is as pale and fleshy as his toes. They are the part of himself he considers most often. His hands, though clean and unlined, have always felt like sinful things so he has never truly examined them for fear he will see his suspicions confirmed and be forced into an act of atonement. His toes, however, are sinless things. He has never utilized them as implements of his own debasement or pleasure. They are tools. They are beneficial to his work. They are entirely without sin.

  Here, now, he finds himself questioning the goodness of his feet for the first time. In studying them, he is allowing himself to open the door to vanity. The Penitent does not know what he looks like. He does not allow himself the luxury of a reflection. He is aware of his appearance only in the way others respond to it. He is not repulsive enough to warrant a second glance, but he has never been looked at in a way that suggests he is attractive. The parts of himself that he can see are pinkish and plump, as though he is made up of uncooked meatloaf. There is a curious mottling around his hips. The blemishes are the only ones on his skin that were not put there by a human hand, though he does not truly believe them to be God’s work. He presumes they are a sign of advancing age. He has never seen the naked form of a man of his own years, so would not be able to say with any certainty whether he looks as he should.

  There are moments, sinful moments, when he would like to consider himself in the clear liquid loveliness of a full-length mirror. He would like to strip himself of all clothing and ornament and consider himself in his entirety. He feels like a painter who has spent years completing a masterpiece, only to have his eyes put out before being able to see it completed. To blind the artist would be no sin. The Penitent would have no regrets in sliding needles into Michelangelo’s eyes before ever allowing him to marvel at his own creations. The works should be for the glory of God and not for human vanity. He sees his own work in the same way. He has transformed his appearance into something that rejoices in celebration of the Cr
eator. To step back and look upon it would be to give in to pride, and he knows this sin to be almost irredeemable.

  Naked, he stands upon the earth and feels cold brown soil tickle the bare soles of his feet. In the light of the candles he sees his own shadow cast upon the far wall. It is a bulbous, misshapen thing. He turns away from the shadow before it can look back at him. Watches the flame dance on the mosaic of brass leaves. They form the shape of a tree. Each leaf carries a name. Each name represents a life taken and a soul transformed. They flow outward from a carving of a rose; a simple engraving of a perfect bloom, folding in upon itself; white lines against gold.

  He has begun cutting himself before he realizes it. Only the warm trickle of blood running over his penis to puddle upon his perfect fleshy toes alerts him to the damage he is doing to his skin.

  The man leans down and takes a pinch of ash from the urn that stands upon the altar cloth laid out on the mound of earth. He opens the inch-long wound he has carved into his breastbone and places the ash inside as if he were seasoning meat. The pain is a sharp, precise thing, and he allows himself a hiss of ecstatic agony. He reaches out and takes the fat church candle from the altar cloth and drips hot wax onto the lesion. When healed, the nugget of scar tissue will blend seamlessly with the concentric circles of similarly blackened skin that spin outward from the center of his sternum to cover much of his torso and his upper arms. He would like to continue the work on his back, but he knows that the skin there is already too abraded to serve as a canvas for such an offering.

  Unsteadily, the Penitent reaches forward and takes the clay chalice in his right hand. He pours its contents upon his skin, washing away the blood and dirt and allowing the blessed water to trickle down over his skin to pool with the sacred earth beneath his toes.

  Only when he has finished his ritual does he pick up the leather-bound book that sits upon the altar cloth. He opens its pages at random and begins to read aloud.