Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

  McAvoy braces himself, fighting down the urge to raise his hands.

  “Perhaps once, I would have ordered such an action,” says the man thoughtfully. “Today I am reluctant to insist upon such measures. Executions are a young man’s luxury. I have reached an age where I believe life to be valuable. Yours, in particular, seems to have worth. Your children are beautiful. Your wife loves you. Even your boss seems to think you are a soul that matters. I do not feel I can extinguish all of this as punishment for trying to do your job.”

  Cautiously, McAvoy unclenches his fists. He concentrates on his breathing.

  “I see from your phone that you have discovered how Marcel makes his side money,” comes the voice, ruefully. “You should be aware, Marcel is not what you would think of as a bad man. People like violence. They like blood. In the fights he arranges, people get to see that and almost nobody ends up dead. It is no different from the boxing we see on television but instead of the millions of dollars going to promoters and TV companies, a few thousand dollars go to fighters who truly need the money. And yes, there are people like myself who take a little cut to make sure all goes well, but there is nothing evil about what we do. Men have always wanted to know who is the toughest kid on the playground. We give them an opportunity to find out.”

  McAvoy cannot help himself. “Brishen hated bare-knuckle bouts,” he says.

  “He did, he did,” agrees the man. “But principles are expensive and Brishen had run out of credit. I would so dearly love to tell you that your Irish boy died because of a falling-out at a bare-knuckle boxing match. That would be so very neat and it would send you home. But I think we both know that you would not believe me and in truth, I am as mystified as you are about what happened to the Irishmen after they left the company of my associates.”

  McAvoy hears himself snort, a sound of disbelief. “Who did they fight? Who won? Where were the bouts? How many men were with Brishen?”

  “So many questions, Detective,” says the man. “And I have so few answers. But you should know that the question over which nation breeds the superior fighters remains inconclusive. The Irish hit hard. But so do my boys.”

  There is silence in the car and McAvoy hears the man to his left sigh.

  “I understand New York cops,” the man continues. “They work hard. They understand death. They see bad things and they have pressures that I can help them with. I do not know how to persuade you to do what I want and for that reason, there are people in my employ who believe it would be best to kill you.” He breathes out wearily. “You cannot comprehend how much has been undone in just a few days. The Irishmen stumbled into something and we are only beginning to see how the pebbles they dropped in the ocean became a tidal wave. People with whom we wished to do business fear that we have broken our word. And despite many efforts, it is proving difficult to persuade them of the truth. The man you say you came for—it would do you well to forget him.”

  McAvoy’s eyes slide shut. “Valentine.”

  “He is an extraordinarily difficult person to like,” says the man, almost in wonder. “He was in my city for under forty-eight hours. Now we have bodies, missing people, cops from the far side of the world. The boy knows how to make an impression. I have no doubt his whole family are of the same mold. Your wife, perhaps, is the exception. If it transpires that Valentine has told lies, if he has his own agenda, the Teagues will be made to pay. Out of respect for your efforts, I will try and avoid any injury to your wife. But for her, there are threats closer to home. The Heldens want blood. They will get the wrong blood, but it will satisfy them nevertheless.”

  McAvoy’s mouth opens and he finds himself about to warn his captor what will happen if any harm should come to his family. He realizes the futility of such words. The man already knows everything he needs to about how McAvoy feels about Roisin and the children.

  “You have no reason to believe me, but I promise you, this was not my people. Things went wrong, but what happened to Brishen and Shay was unforgivable. I am as motivated as you are in discovering who did this. Focus your gaze elsewhere, Detective. Looking at me and mine will get you hurt.”

  The far door opens and McAvoy feels another gust of cold air. A moment later, he can smell the closeness of the girl. She puts his wallet, glasses, and cell phone back in his pocket.

  “Nice family,” she says. “Your boss . . . is she always like that?”

  McAvoy drops his head back, trying not to let the relief make him tremble. “I just came here to help,” he says, not knowing why. “I didn’t want any of this . . .”

  “You seem okay, for a policeman,” says the girl. “I’m sorry this had to happen. Things get complicated sometimes. We’re searching for the same thing. I saw you slap that man outside the club and it made me sad to think that we would have to hurt you. But you are what you say you are. Even so, you’re a long way from home and you will find that New York is a very lonely place for the friendless.”

  The rest of the journey passes in silence. Half an hour later, gentle hands remove the mask from McAvoy’s face. The door to his right is already open. He clambers out, unsteady on his feet, and the girl gives him a curt, professional nod. In her hands, she holds a purple cardigan and a gun.

  “You can find your way from here,” she says. “I hope if we meet again, it is for the right reasons.”

  The vehicle moves away even as the girl continues to talk. McAvoy memorizes the license plate and watches the car until it turns right and disappears. Only then does he drop to his knees and begin retching, bringing up spit and bile and blood. He stands as though he is testing out his muscles after a car crash and looks around him. He sniffs the air and begins to stagger in the direction of the river, his feet unsteady on the hard snow, looking for something he might recognize.

  From his pocket comes a vibration. He pulls out his cell phone. Roisin and the children have woken up. They write that they love him, and are very proud. They wish he was there.

  McAvoy manages to convince himself that the tears that sting his cheeks are from the retching, and not the cold, hateful loneliness in his belly.

  —

  Claudio continues to follow the BMW. He had been surprised that the Chechens let McAvoy go. He’d watched the whole thing from the shadows and barely disturbed the snow beneath his feet. He’d been waiting for a gunshot. Had expected them to put a bullet in his forehead, then cut off his hands, face, and feet and dump him somewhere off Staten Island. The Scotsman must have some cards up his sleeve, he reckons. That, or a silver tongue.

  He decides to act before they reach Brighton Beach. That is their turf, not his. And he needs seclusion and privacy. At one time in his career, he would have scouted out locations and learned all he could about his targets before embarking on a piece of work. But this situation is unique. He does not have the luxury of time.

  He waits until they are on a quiet stretch of road, bordered on one side by car lots and the dark shape of an empty mall on the other. Then he reaches into the backseat and finds the blue light. He stretches his arm out of the window and sticks the magnetic light to the battered roof of his car. The rig on his dashboard contains several different types of sirens. He gives the short, two-note burst of a cop car and watches with satisfaction as the vehicle in front rolls to a stop on the deserted street.

  Claudio gets out of his car. He is dressed like a detective, in rumpled suit and comfortable shoes. He keeps his face in shadow, scratching at his hairline as he approaches the car. Automatically, the window slides down in the driver’s door. Claudio turns his face away from the glass and reaches, gently, into his coat.

  “What was I doing?” asks the big, hairy man at the wheel.

  “License and registration,” says Claudio, still half turned away from the car.

  The hairy man scowls. “You’re not a patrol car. You a narc? This is fucking harassment, man. You a faggot or som
ething?”

  “No,” says Claudio. “But I’ll let you suck my dick if you ask nicely.”

  The driver’s temper blazes through his caution and he grabs for the handle of the door. Claudio’s gun has been in his hand since he pulled up. He raises it and there are soft pops as he puts a bullet in the driver’s shoulder and another in his knee. From the front passenger seat of the car he hears a shout and looks up to see a man fumbling with a semiautomatic weapon. Claudio shoots him in the hand before he has a chance to start firing. He puts another bullet in the man’s knee.

  Claudio turns as the rear door on the driver’s side swings opens. He stares into the face of a girl who seems too young to be playing with such terrible people. She does not look afraid of him.

  “I don’t want to have to shoot you,” says the girl. “I can’t see your face. I don’t know who you are. Just go. This can be the end of it.”

  Claudio knows he could shoot her through the glass of the rear door before she has a chance to pull the trigger. But he is proud that the only woman he has ever killed was by accident. The groaning men in the front of the vehicle will be able to provide him with what he needs. Still, it always pays to be thorough.

  “Your friends are going to help me find out what I came for. But it pays to be thorough. Did you copy his cell phone?” asks Claudio.

  “The Scotsman?” Her face creases and she looks taken aback by the unexpected question. “Of course. Why? What is it to you?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “No.”

  “Disappointing.”

  “I have it on my e-mail account. Give me your name and address and I’ll send it right away. But you have to back off. Things aren’t what you think.”

  Claudio gives a half smile. She has a confidence that feels familiar.

  “I’m getting a tingling feeling,” says Claudio. “I get like that when people tell lies. And I feel like every fucker has their own agenda right now. I feel like snorkeling through bullshit. There’s a stink coming off you—”

  He stops talking as a thought occurs to him. Without betraying his intentions in his body language, he unleashes a kick at the car door. It slams back into the girl’s body and she stumbles backward. In two swift strides he is upon her, pushing the car door against her torso. He sees her face up close. Now she’s scared.

  “Good night, Officer,” says Claudio, and his voice is that of a lover.

  He strikes her on the side of the head with the barrel of his gun. Her eyes roll back and her body slumps, still pinned between the door and the rest of the vehicle. He releases the pressure and she slides to the hard ground. There is a clatter as her gun hits the road.

  Claudio bends down and lifts up her shirt. On her pale, flat belly is a tattoo of a skull skewered by an Orthodox crucifix. Taped in the space between her breasts is a small black transmitter. He leans in and speaks directly into the tiny microphone.

  “I could kill your agent. But I won’t. I hope you appreciate this.”

  Out of decency, Claudio refastens the undercover agent’s shirt. He grabs her by the cuff of her jeans and drags her to the other side of the street. He checks his watch. Probably under a minute until they get here. He crosses back to the car. The driver of the vehicle is hissing and bubbling through the pain and the blood loss, so Claudio hits him, hard, in the temple, and the man’s head falls forward as though he has been shot. Then he grabs the driver by the lapels of his leather jacket and drags him onto the pavement. The icy surface makes it easy to slide him the fifteen feet back to Claudio’s car, though he notices that it takes more effort than it used to do to get him into the trunk. By the time Claudio has repeated the routine with the passenger, he is almost out of breath.

  For the sake of completeness, Claudio checks the backseat of the car. Slipped underneath the passenger seat is the laptop that the girl had been working on when Claudio pulled them over. He retrieves it and slides a finger across the screen.

  Claudio’s face changes and the light of the screen seems to seek out the abrasions and hollows of his countenance. The agent was going through the information she had taken from the large detective’s phone.

  Something changes inside Claudio as he sees a face he remembers. A face from then. From before. From that time of bullets and bombs, when he carved out his own conscience and cooked it on the flame of a church candle. He feels as though pieces of shattered glass are forming a shape in his mind. He senses a setup. Senses that all roads are leading him to one door. Claudio takes the notebook. He nods to himself, like a boxer who knows the next round will hurt.

  Emerging from the back of the car, Claudio takes a revolver from his pocket and slips a special, fat-headed bullet into the chamber. Then with practiced precision, he shoots a hole in the side of the car. The fuel tank explodes a second later.

  Claudio climbs back behind the wheel and drives away, just as the first burning chunks of metal rain down, slamming into the compacted snow like meteors into the earth.

  FOURTEEN

  Never say a word, chava. Not so long as you breathe. You’ll have honey poured in your ear and whiskey in your mouth but this place, this secret, you carry to the grave . . .”

  I was a boy, I think. I remember that feeling, that sensation of doing something that was part of a world I wasn’t a part of and that was so fecking exciting I might just piss myself. It was just me and Da. Full moon and the feel of silver between finger and thumb. That cold, glaring light of a moon made of the same stuff as the still, looming statues that stood to our left. There wasn’t a sound, except the scrape of Da’s big strong fingers scratching through the roots and the earth.

  “Ye want to scare yerself, imagine your great-great-grandfather. He were here, chava. Here just like we are now. Same tree, same earth, same stones. Picture yer da, no older than you are now, shivering.”

  There wasn’t much of a ceremony, but it felt like one. He found the pouch in moments. Dug it out of the ground and held it up like he’d unearthed a diamond. Wasn’t much bigger than a pebble and it didn’t shine. But it was gold.

  “Yer great-great-grandfather took a coin from every member of the clan and he melted it down and buried it beneath this tree on the night of a full moon. Only the oldest sons in the Ayres line have known about this place, or the secret of our good fortune. There’ll be those who tell you it was dark magic but that’s bollocks. It was hard work and the knowledge of a good shuvani that meant we didn’t suffer like most. Now, kiss the rock, put it back, and don’t expect to see it again until you’re a father yerself.”

  I did as I was told. Felt the thrill of it. Tasted the soil of my people. Felt the shower of loose earth as he ruffled my hair.

  “You’re my boy, Brishen. You’re my blood, no matter what.”

  Brishen Ayres. Fecking hell, I remember it. Jaysus, keep hold, man. Don’t let it go. You’re Brishen Ayres. You’re a traveler. Your father was Roddy, your Ma was Fionnula. You were a fighter. You got hurt. Feck, you did! Metal and bright lights and the hard road against your face. But you fought back. You kept swinging. Became someone. A teacher. And the boys came from fecking miles around and you made them into men. The big lad—he could be something. Someone. The little gobshite, too.

  I see it now. Brishen Ayres. You made a bad call. Backed the wrong horse. You made a mistake and you had to put it right.

  —

  On the monitor that sits next to Brishen Ayres’s bed, the display registers a sudden spike. Above the crisp, clean sheets, two of his fingers begin to twitch.

  The Penitent looks up from his Bible. He sits in the floral, hard-backed chair and drifts in and out of sleep as his concentration permits. He reads aloud when the mood takes him and wafts lazily through the rooms in his mind when he does not care to speak.

  He wonders what Brishen can see, trapped in that place between life and death. Wonders whether he can see God’s
face, and whether it is as glorious as the one that he carved from the baby boy as he lay in a dead girl’s arms and suckled upon a brown breast, inches from her unbeating heart.

  1973: THE THIRD ABSOLUTION

  He asked for you by name, Father. Said you were his friend. Doesn’t want a lawyer. Won’t talk to anybody else. We wouldn’t have called at all but the duty sergeant’s a Catholic and he suffered a bout of guilt and compassion. Lethal brew. I hope you don’t mind, but we couldn’t leave him like this and we sure couldn’t walk away. Poor bastard—he’s taken the beating of a lifetime but he won’t point the finger.”

  Father Whelan likes the earnestness in the tall, handsome detective’s eyes. He looks like he’s of German ancestry. He has pale skin and blue eyes and he parts his hair neatly just above his left ear. He’s wearing a smart beige suit, which looks too flimsy to provide much protection against the bitter autumn chill.

  “I’ll do what I can,” says Father Whelan, and reminds himself how many times he has told his flock that this, along with trusting in the Lord, is all that can be asked of anyone. He wonders whether he believes it.

  Father Whelan and Lieutenant Lofgren are whispering together in the corridor of the emergency room at St. Clare’s Hospital. It makes Father Whelan feel strangely discomfited to be back in Hell’s Kitchen, where half the people still call him Jimmy and the others look disappointed in him for leaving to go to swanky St. Colman’s. He doesn’t begrudge them their displeasure. He has made a lot of poor decisions in past months. He has listened to confessions that made his blood turn to water. He has absolved bad men of terrible deeds.

  “You ready, Father? I’ll leave you with him. If he wants to file a report, you got my number.”

  Father Whelan nods a curt thanks. He finds it harder to smile than he used to. He finds good manners wearisome. When he raises his hands to bless people, he looks as though he is lazily swatting flies. His soul is beginning to weigh him down.