Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

  “I can wait,” says the driver. “I’ve got to go back to the city myself, man. I can hang on for half an hour, if you ain’t gonna be long.”

  McAvoy feels a sudden surge of affection toward this virtual stranger. “You’re sure?”

  “There’s a diner on the boardwalk,” says the driver. “I’ll go get something to eat. Meet me there if you and your friend need to get back to the city. Otherwise you’re stuck out here, and this is no place for a tourist to be on a night like this.”

  McAvoy wishes he spent more of the journey talking to the man. Instead, he has been glued to his phone, cursing the quality of the cab’s vaunted complimentary Wi-Fi service and trying to piece together the two stories becoming increasingly linked in his mind. He knows that Brishen, Shay, and Valentine came here for an underground fight. It was talked up into a grudge match, spiced with a little national pride. Those in the backyard fight game would have been bristling for a chance to see the two countries clash. The tryout at Dezzie Estrada’s was little more than a cover. Marcel was the man in the middle.

  McAvoy pauses, trying to channel his thoughts into a shape. What happened next? The fight occurred. There was no winner. Valentine demanded money. He ended up hurt and in the hands of the Chechens, and the other Irishmen took Chebworz away in a car. At some point before, all three Irishmen visited Peter Molony’s apartment. In that apartment is a wall containing the names of the dead and a carpet of ashes and earth. Molony spent time in the same seminary as James Whelan—the man who helped secure Valentine’s passport to the States. McAvoy can see all the pieces of the puzzle but cannot make sense of the picture.

  “I’m Rey,” says the cabdriver. “Hope to see you later.”

  McAvoy stands on the curb until Rey has pulled away. He watches as the vehicle moves slowly over the gathering snow and turns left past a blue warehouse and disappears from view. Then McAvoy turns and walks in the opposite direction. The snow is blowing against his back and the streetlights turn his shadow into a Gothic vision, all flapping wings and elongated limbs. To distract himself, he tries Roisin again. He has left her four messages and texted her half a dozen times. She’s not answering, and the fear that rests in his stomach is for her safety and not his own.

  “Hey, you,” he says, trying to sound bright. “No problems. Just wanted you to know I’ve got some information. And, y’know . . . I love you.”

  Despite the chill, he finds himself blushing. He wonders how he looks with his pink face and his red hair and his dirty clothes. And then he doesn’t have time to worry about anything anymore because he is across the road from the address that Alto so reluctantly gave him.

  McAvoy stands in front of a chain-link fence at the corner of Neptune Avenue and Brighton Third Street. It is a mostly residential neighborhood with wooden-fronted houses and squat apartment blocks. The signs on the handful of shops he has passed are written in Cyrillic, and the company working on the abandoned building across the street advertise the services of Khlebnikov Construction.

  It is the building on the opposite side of the intersection that has McAvoy’s attention. It is a long, single-story block painted an unpleasant shade of cream and devoid of any writing or graffiti, save the wooden sign of the construction crew. From his vantage point, squinting against the darkness and the snow, McAvoy fancies that the warehouse looks like a trio of trailers parked at the curb and then uncoupled from the wagons that pulled them. The architect who designed this place had clearly done his work in a hurry. Either that, or the client had a fondness for rectangles.

  Without giving himself time to change his mind, McAvoy crosses the road. The door to the premises is painted green and as he approaches he hears noises inside. He strains his ears and makes out heavy rock music. He slips his phone into his pocket and bangs hard on the wood. When nobody answers, he kicks it several times. Then he takes a step back.

  Moments pass. McAvoy looks around him at the deserted street. The vehicles at the curb are largely nondescript Hyundais or Fords, dotted here and there with a ten-year-old Lexus. Snow is piling up on their hoods and roofs to make perfect white canvases that McAvoy has a fervent desire to go and write his name in. He feels his heart thump. He counts out the seconds as he waits . . .

  “The fuck you want?”

  McAvoy spins back to the door and looks into the face of a white man with a shaved head and a broad, flat face. He is looking at McAvoy without malice, and despite the profanity, he seems genuinely interested to know what he wants.

  “I’m McAvoy,” he says flatly. “I’d like to talk to somebody but I don’t really know whom.”

  The man at the door looks at him like he’s a little slow. “What you want? You a Mormon? We don’t want Mormons, man, but you’re brave if you are . . .”

  McAvoy shakes his head and says the name he does not think it is really wise to use.

  “Chebworz Khamzateyev,” he says. “I’d like to talk to him.”

  The doorman looks at McAvoy with renewed interest.

  “You’re lost, man. You should go home. It’s a cold night.”

  McAvoy stands his ground. “Please,” he says. “It’s important. Look, this is me . . .”

  As McAvoy puts his hand in his coat to remove his warrant card, the doorman raises the silver handgun he has been holding by his side.

  “Easy, big man. No quick moves, yeah? I don’t like people moving too quick. Makes me jittery. That’s the word, yes? ‘Jittery’?”

  McAvoy stands perfectly still, hand inside his coat. “Can I?” he asks.

  “Slowly.”

  McAvoy retrieves his warrant card and hands it over to the doorman, who keeps the gun on McAvoy while he examines it. Then he shrugs. “What’s this, man?”

  “Like it says. I’m a detective. A policeman.”

  “No shield,” says the doorman. “This is shit, brother.”

  “No, please, if you’d just listen . . .”

  As McAvoy speaks, the music emanating from behind the door suddenly comes to a stop. The street sounds eerily silent in its absence.

  “Tomasz! Stanovitsya kholodno. U nas yest’ dela. On razogrevayetsya. Izbav’sya ot nikh.”

  McAvoy hears authority in the voice of the man calling from behind the gatekeeper. He cannot help himself. He begins to shout.

  “Chebworz Khamzateyev. I need to speak to you. Please! Chebworz!”

  “You got a death wish, man?” asks Tomasz, sticking the gun under McAvoy’s jaw. He seems to be looking at McAvoy’s hair quizzically. “You fucking Irish?”

  “Scottish. I’m here for the Irishman.”

  “Fuck,” spits the doorman, and he pulls McAvoy inside.

  McAvoy finds himself in a corridor painted the same cream color as the outside of the building. Tomasz has pushed him up against the wall and is checking his pockets. “You just walk up and bang on the door, eh? Some balls, you Irish. Some balls . . .”

  “Tomasz?”

  McAvoy looks down the hall to where a short, stocky figure is standing with his hands on his hips. He’s in his late twenties and wears running trousers and white trainers, wife-beater and a fur-lined leather jacket. There are thick black tiger-stripe tattoos on his chest and a chunky gold necklace hangs between his well-defined pectoral muscles. He has a round head, shaved down to the skin.

  “Who’s this fuck?” asks the man.

  “Looks Irish,” says Tomasz. “Says he’s here for you.”

  “For me? I don’t know him.” Chebworz sneers at the newcomer and reveals the space in his bottom row of teeth where three incisors have been dislodged. He speaks directly to McAvoy. “Who are you?”

  “Says he’s a cop but he got no shield,” says Tomasz. “Here,” he spits, tossing the warrant card to Chebworz.

  Chebworz picks it up and considers it. “McAvoy,” he says. “You’re the Englishman, yes? The musor?”
>
  McAvoy nods, letting out a nervous breath. His palms are sweating. “I’m not English but yes, I’m from England. I’m here to find somebody who matters to my family. I don’t care about anything but getting him back.”

  Chebworz’s face changes and he barks a laugh at McAvoy.

  “Two friends of mine had a chat with you last night,” he says, showing the gap in his teeth again and poking his tongue through. “You were told to go home. My father made that very clear. We’re drinking the memory of a good man and saying good-bye to another who we are going to have to hurt for becoming a rat motherfucker. So yes, I know you, and I know what you want and I think you should get the fuck out of here before I lose my shit.”

  “This is him?” asks Tomasz, looking at McAvoy like a doctor inspecting a cadaver. “He doesn’t look tough.”

  “Slapped down some bitch in the Village,” says Chebworz.

  McAvoy tries hard not to speak. But he wants to explain himself, to try and make these men understand reason.

  “I want Valentine,” he blurts. “If he’s alive, I want him back. Whatever’s happened, that will be the end of it.”

  “The end of it?” asks Chebworz. He strides toward McAvoy. “Look at this, man,” he hisses, pointing at his missing teeth. “Gun to my head, blood in my mouth. They shoved me in their piece-of-shit car. They drove me out to Buttfuck County. And then some Sicilian piece of shit smashes me in the mouth with his gun. He starts cutting off Brishen’s nose while he was kneeling in the dirt! I had to walk through snow and mud up to my fucking balls, man.”

  “I’m sorry,” says McAvoy, forcing himself to meet the smaller man’s stare. “I don’t know what happened—”

  “The wop fucks tried to kill me is what happened,” says Chebworz. Up close, he smells of paprika and meat.

  “Kill you? But you got away.”

  “Too fucking right I did,” says Chebworz. “I ran. Kept running. You think this country’s cold? I’m Chechen. This is fucking summer for me.”

  “Who was the Italian?” asks McAvoy, unable to help himself.

  “You hear this guy?” asks Tomasz, grinning. “Gun to his balls and he’s still asking questions.”

  McAvoy looks down and sees the weapon. He does his best to ignore it.

  “You know all this,” says Chebworz. “Cops know it all, don’t they? That’s what they think. Putting that bitch in our crew and thinking we wouldn’t sniff her out.”

  “You knew?”

  “We kept her busy. A few errands. Let her feel like she was part of the team. Even let her exercise a little muscle with you. Seems she was a good distraction, because when the wops tried to hit us last night, all they got was two soldiers and a fed.”

  “I thought the Italians and yourselves had come to an arrangement.”

  “They’re greasy lying fucks and they’re going to pay the price,” says Chebworz. Then he hits McAvoy in the stomach with a perfectly executed right hand.

  For a moment, McAvoy feels nothing. And then it seems like he is folding in on himself. He feels as though he has been punctured, as though a hole has been stamped through his guts. He locks his jaw around the pain and refuses to let himself slide down the wall the way his body is telling him to.

  “Tough bastard,” says Chebworz, nodding. “Tomasz, bring him.”

  McAvoy finds himself being dragged down the corridor, which emerges into a large storage area. There are no windows and the floor is bare concrete. The supporting columns that hold up the roof have been stripped down to their metal skeleton. Only two of the ceiling lights are switched on and they spill a lurid yellow light onto a boxing ring with sagging ropes and a stained canvas floor. In the ring, a man McAvoy recognizes from his YouTube video is pounding right hand after right hand into the body of an elderly man protected by thick brown padding. Each time the boxer lands a right the older man grunts, but whether in admonishment or praise, McAvoy could not say.

  “Byki,” says Chebworz, and Tomasz drags McAvoy forward. In the shadows of the warehouse he sees dozens of folding chairs stacked neatly against the wall. He looks down. Broken glass, cigarette butts, and rubbish litter the floor.

  Chebworz takes McAvoy’s arm from Tomasz. “This is the English cop,” he says to the two men in the ring. “Came for the Irishman. Thinks it’s that easy.”

  In the ring, the gray-haired man considers McAvoy. “You must want him bad,” he says, smiling slightly. It sounds familiar to McAvoy. His thoughts are a blur, but he remembers his helplessness in the car just twenty-four hours ago. Was this the man who told him to leave things alone? He is shorter than Chebworz and his short gray hair is brushed forward to hide his bald patch. He wears blue sweats beneath the padding.

  “He’s family,” says McAvoy breathlessly.

  “He said we owed him money. Money for a fight he ruined. He embarrassed us.”

  McAvoy shakes his head. “He has a temper. He made a mistake. Everything got out of his control. Please, don’t make it worse.”

  “Worse for who?” asks the man, smiling slightly. “I have no problems.”

  “The Italians,” says McAvoy. “I don’t think they wanted Chebworz at all.”

  The old man twitches a smile. “They wanted the Irishmen and Cheb was just an unlucky fuck? Maybe. But things happened. A boss’s son was killed. Peace will be expensive, one way or another.”

  “None of that is anything to do with Valentine. Or me. Whatever he’s done, he’s paid for.”

  “Has he?”

  “In the car,” says McAvoy, thinking aloud. “You said you wanted to talk to him. But you had him.”

  “An act of kindness,” he says, shrugging. “If you knew he was with me, you would have kept pushing. Kept being an irritant. I would have had no choice but to harm you in some way, and I do not embrace violence when there is an alternative. I preferred to let you blunder around. Is that the right word? ‘Blunder’? Yes. But you have blundered your way here, my friend. Perhaps I was wrong to be so kind.”

  McAvoy looks around the room, desperate for an ally. Then the old man gives a wide grin. “Tomasz. A warm-down for our boy.”

  McAvoy feels Tomasz’s hands pulling his coat from his shoulders. As he turns, Tomasz rips the buttons from his shirt. Instinctively, McAvoy grabs at his clothes, but then Chebworz drags them from his back. He protests, turning, but the two men have done this before. He changes his stance, ready to lash out, and then he hears the snick of a switchblade.

  “Easy, musor,” says Tomasz, and he slices McAvoy’s undershirt from waist to neck.

  McAvoy hears himself protest but there is nobody in the room who gives a damn. Panic sets in as he realizes he is standing in this cold, lonely place with men stripping him down to his bare skin. His instinct is to run. To hit and move and sprint back into the blizzard and the anonymity of the street beyond.

  “Tomasz, show me.”

  McAvoy finds himself being pushed forward. The cold blade is against his cheek. The old man leans down from the ring and peers at McAvoy’s many scars.

  “That one,” says the old man, pointing at the ugly trench in McAvoy’s shoulder. “A knife. A big one. Chopping down, yes? And there. That was fire, am I right? These little ones. A small blade? These scratches. You have suffered.”

  McAvoy looks away as the man reads his life story on his ruined skin.

  “Maybe you can help me and then I will help you, yes? My man here. He makes me a lot of money. He fights people who are strong. He beats them. Then he fights again. He fought with your countryman. It was a good fight but Byki got no satisfaction. It was stopped short. And it is many days until he fights again. He is hungry. I hear you can fight. I see you know pain. So my contract with you is this—survive a round with Byki and I will give you your friend. Fall down, and so will he. Can I be fairer?”

  McAvoy’s insides feel as though they
are burning, and it takes him a moment to understand the offer being placed before him. Wild-eyed, he looks at the bearded colossus in the ring, who looks back at him with eyes like a dead fish. He is so hairy, he puts McAvoy in mind of a barbarian.

  “I can’t . . .”

  “One round, my friend. You came all this way and now you have the chance to make everything right. One round.”

  McAvoy’s skin prickles as he feels the knife dig a little deeper into his cheek.

  “In the ring,” says Chebworz. “Now.”

  McAvoy finds himself moving forward. He puts up a hand and grabs the bottom rope, pulling himself onto the dirty canvas. It smells of blood and spilled beer.

  “He is family, yes? This boy who causes you so many problems. Is he worth this? You can go. You can return home. You have done enough, have you not?”

  McAvoy does not answer. He watches as Tomasz pulls the huge man’s gloves off to reveal massive hands beneath. He flexes his taped fingers and looks at McAvoy like he is a fly to be stepped on. McAvoy forces himself to concentrate. He looks at Byki. The hair disguises the fact that his muscles are not particularly well defined. He is big, but some of his muscle runs to fat. And there is something about his face, beneath that great beard. The way his jaw sits . . .

  “One round,” says the old man, unburdening himself of the padding and climbing through the ring ropes to lean against the side. “And then your world is your own again.”

  McAvoy stares at him. Realizes how pitiful he looks. Turns to the brute bouncing on his toes and making the whole damn ring shake.

  “Ding fucking ding,” says Chebworz.

  McAvoy barely has time to get his hands up. Byki pushes him backward with the strength of a bull, and in moments McAvoy feels the rope against his back as the huge man starts raining down left hooks that thud into his forearms. He hears the three spectators shout words of encouragement and tries to remember the things he was taught so many years ago. Without thinking, his posture changes. He rises onto the balls of his feet and as Byki swings a wild right, McAvoy slips inside it and spins off the ropes to a chorus of appreciative cheers.