His train of thought was derailed by something heavy slamming into the back of his head. His legs buckled from under him and he crumpled to the hardwood floor.
Everything swam before his eyes. “What the fuck—”
As he tried to pull himself upright using the side of the bed, someone punched him in the kidneys, causing all the air to expel from his body.
A hand roughly grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. Then he felt wet lips brush against his ear.
“The reason I don’t like to talk is that I know men don’t like to listen.”
Then she giggled again.
It didn’t sound so cute now.
Chapter Eleven
“I’ll tell you what would go well with this.”
Amy diverted her gaze from the street and looked down at the plate in front of Bunny. “What?”
“A nice bit of bacon.”
“It’s a bagel.”
“Sure, don’t I know that! I ordered the fecking thing. I’m just saying, nice bit of bacon would go fantastic with it.”
“You’re in a deli.”
“And?”
“A Jewish deli.”
Bunny shrugged. “What? So the Jews don’t eat bacon, does that mean I can’t?”
“You don’t come here to eat bacon. There’s like a thousand places within walking distance where you can eat bacon. If you want bacon, you’ve got to go somewhere else or, y’know, bring your own.”
“Do you think they’d let you do that?”
“Well, I doubt they have a rule forbidding it, mainly because nobody has thought to do it.”
“I don’t suppose—”
“No, I do not have any bacon on me.”
On the street outside, exhausted and elated people walked by, wrapped in silver recovery blankets. On the way over they’d seen signs warning that there was a half-marathon happening today. It seemed odd to Amy. At ten o’clock last night, some guy had tried to rough her up. At seven o’clock this morning, somebody had tried to kill her. With her world so utterly screwed up, it was surreal to realise that lots of people were just having the Sunday they had been planning for months.
Bunny interrupted her train of thought.
“Are you a member of the Lost Tribes yourself?”
“No.”
“So, what’s your problem with bacon?”
“I’m a vegan.”
Bunny rolled his eyes, which was particularly unnerving, given the lazy one. “Oh, for feck’s sake.” He lifted the bagel and shoved half of it in his mouth. Amy wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“You’re a pig.”
Bunny gave three energetic chews and swallowed. “Thanks very much. I’m assuming you meant that as a compliment.”
Amy thought better of what she was about to say, instead clamping her lips shut and turning back to look out the window. They had been at this for over an hour now, not counting the almost two hours it had taken to find the place. She was sure this was the street. Almost definitely sure. West 88th Street. The picture on Brad Bradley’s Facebook page had been taken from a height, but Amy was pretty sure the tree-lined street in the background was this one. It was harder to tell than she’d expected. It turned out most of the streets around Central Park were lined with the same kind of trees. They were also similar in width. The deli in which they were currently sitting was opposite a currently closed-for-renovations dry cleaners, which she was ninety per cent sure was the one in the picture. She really wished they’d left the signs up though.
The understandable anxiety she already felt was, if anything, exacerbated by the tedious time spent watching as nothing much happened on the street outside. She was still trying Matt’s number every fifteen minutes, hearing the opening two words of the same voicemail message again and again.
“When you think about it,” said Bunny, “I feel sorry for chickens.”
Despite herself, she turned back and looked at him. “What?”
“Think about it. The Jews and the Muslims, Lord knows they don’t agree on much, but neither of them will eat pig – or prawns, come to that.”
“So?”
“So,” continued Bunny, “the Hindus won’t eat cow – sacred animal and all that.”
“So?”
“So,” Bunny repeated, “everybody eats chicken. Poor delicious little fuckers are the entire planet’s go-to dish.”
“Well, I don’t eat chicken – or any other meat.”
“Do ye mind if I ask why?”
“I don’t believe in animal cruelty.”
“That’s ironic, given your job and all.”
Amy turned back to looking out the window. “No, it is not.”
“So, hypothetically, if a chicken asked you to spank it on the bot-bot and call it a naughty boy, you’d be fine with it?”
Amy ripped at the cardboard of her coffee cup with her fingers. “No, because chickens do not possess free will and they’re also not boys. Now can we stop talking about nonsense and start doing what we came here to do?”
“Relax, would ye? You’re awful tense.”
She turned back to him, the anger that’d been building finally bubbling to the surface. “Well maybe if you even attempted to do the damn job you’ve been hired to do I’d be a little more chilled. As it is, we’ve spent an hour here and all you’ve done is spend my money stuffing your face while paying no attention to the street where the guys who are after me hopefully live.”
Amy took a deep breath. By the end of that little speech it had gotten away from her and she’d ended up putting more venom in it than she’d intended.
Bunny calmly picked up the second half of his bagel and spoke without taking his eyes off it. “The woman who walked by fifteen minutes ago was walking the same poodle that the fat guy with the beard was walking an hour ago. I’d lay good money that they’re a couple having an argument who can’t stand to be in the same apartment together, so that poor little sod is going to get walked to death. The same white van has passed by here three times in just over an hour – maybe the guy is just doing deliveries, maybe he’s lost or maybe it’s something else. Speaking of deliveries, the guy with the neck tattoos who delivered pizza just up the road there has been inside for fifteen minutes, which makes me think he’s not just delivering pizza. Best guess, someone is right now having a joint with their dealer. The dude smoking on the corner is doing so because his wife won’t let him in the apartment and he’s none too happy about it. And of the forty-six cars currently parked on this street, thirty-four of them have stayed put the whole time we’ve been here, but the guy on the third floor above the dry cleaners keeps looking out his window, possibly because he’s the new owner of that gaudy penis extension of a Porsche sitting over there and the sad gobshite just likes looking at it. And the couple at the table behind me… The woman is having an affair, guessing by the way she looks at her phone when he goes to the counter or the bogs. I could be wrong – maybe she’s planning a surprise party. Any questions?”
“How did you…?”
“Because the trick to seeing is not watching. You should always be doing something else. Now, you’ve had nothing but coffee all day and it’s making you cranky. Relax and have a fecking bagel, would ye?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll have one of them twirly jobs. Thanks.”
“A pretzel?”
“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to have one of them. Could you ask about the tea again?”
“The guy said they were out an hour ago. They’re not going to have had a delivery on a Sunday.”
Bunny shook his head. “How in the feck did you people ever become a superpower?”
“I’ve not studied a lot of history, but I’d guess a combination of can-do spirit and big weapons.”
Bunny licked a blob of mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth. “Well, bit of bad news for you then – the Chinese have both of them now, and a shitload of tea. Famous for it.”
“Oh well, I guess we…”
Amy stopped talking as she noticed a change in Bunny’s facial expression. She turned to see an SUV with tinted windows driving past. It stopped at a canopied entrance just up the street. The rear passenger door opened and Brad Bradley got slowly out, walking in a cautious manner that indicated they had correctly identified him earlier.
“That’s him,” hissed Amy. “That’s him! The asshole…”
“Relax,” said Bunny. “Keep your head down. Don’t stare.”
“Let’s go over there and you…” Amy raised her finger to point and Bunny’s hand shot out and snatched it down. A black man in a suit with a tightly trimmed beard and a shaven head got out of the other side of the car.
“What are you doing?” asked Amy indignantly. “Don’t put your hands on me.”
The couple at the next table, who wouldn’t be a couple in two months, looked at them in concern.
Amy watched as the black guy casually followed Bradley into the building’s foyer.
“We’ve been made.”
“What are you talking about?”
Bunny threw twenty bucks of the two hundred Amy had fronted him down onto the table top and headed straight out the door. Amy followed.
“Seriously, what’s your problem?”
“The black fella made you.”
“He didn’t. He never even looked our way.”
Bunny glanced left and right. “Run down towards the park now, head straight across and through and don’t stop until you reach the far side.”
“But…”
“Then grab a cab or keep moving fast until you can find one.”
“But my car?”
“Anyone tries to stop you, scream rape.”
“But…”
Bunny pushed her in the back towards the park.
“I’ll meet you at the apartment in two hours – or else get out.”
“But where are you—”
“Go!”
It was the way he said it, the certainty in his voice. Something primal in her responded to it – like even though her brain wanted to rationalise what the rustling noise in the bushes could be, her body was not in the mood to find out. So, she ran. When she had nearly reached the corner, she slowed and looked back up the sidewalk behind her – and what she saw made her run for all she was worth.
There, about sixty yards behind her, with a mobile phone clamped to his ear, was a black guy with a shaven head and a tightly trimmed beard, running after her at full pelt.
Chapter Twelve
As soon as Cole stepped into the lobby, he moved to the side and pulled his cell phone out of his inside jacket pocket. Brad Bradley stopped huffily and looked at him.
“What are you—”
“Shut up and get upstairs now.”
“But—”
Cole ignored him and dialled a number. “I’m at their building. She’s here now. Possibly someone with her. Send backup.”
Bradley took a step back towards the door. “Fuck, she’s here?”
Cole grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him roughly towards the elevators. “Upstairs now, asshole.”
The building’s concierge, a Puerto Rican man in his sixties called Raul, watched this exchange in confusion. On the one hand, a man had technically just assaulted one of the building’s tenants. On the other hand, he more than anyone knew that the tenant in question was indeed an asshole.
As Bradley started and then reconsidered a couple of retorts, Cole speed-dialled another number. “She’s here. The deli across the street. Bring the car back around the block and…”
Cole took a couple of casual steps towards Raul, although Raul noticed that he wasn’t actually looking in his direction. “Shit!”
He ran out the door and looked left and right. “She’s in the wind.”
He ran across the street and saw the figure of Amy Daniels running down the sidewalk. He took off in pursuit, still holding the phone to his ear. “She’s running towards Central Park – blue sweatpants, red hoodie. There was a man with her…”
Cole stopped talking as two things struck him in quick succession. The first was the thought that the man in question had disappeared. The second was the man in question.
Bunny McGarry’s philosophy on fighting had been developed over many hard lessons. He had then gone on to teach it to other deserving souls, through the dishing out of even harder lessons. It was built around five fundamental beliefs.
Firstly, the easiest way to win a fight is if the other fella only realises he was in one when he wakes up in hospital. In his youth, Bunny had been a good, but not great, boxer, mainly because he knew how to take a punch. He was an excellent street fighter though – mainly because he knew how to throw a punch before the other fella had heard the bell. Or, in this case, how to leap out from behind a car and rugby tackle him before he knew you were there.
The two men collided, and Bunny sent his opponent crashing messily into a half-dozen stone steps leading up to the stoop of an apartment building.
Although he’d long since lost track of exact numbers, in his life Bunny McGarry had won more fights than he’d lost. His winning percentage rose considerably in those scraps where his opponent made the mistake of letting him get the first shot in. It was therefore an unpleasant surprise when he reared back to deliver a roundhouse right into his current opponent’s face only to have his head sent snapping backwards as an elbow, delivered with velocity and precision, connected with the bottom of his chin. A gush of blood filled his mouth as he bit his own tongue. This was closely followed by a kick to the chest.
Kicks, as far as Bunny was concerned, with the dishonourable exception of the boot to the kneecap, were largely useless in a hand-to-hand combat scenario. They looked fancy, but Bruce Lee would’ve still had his arse handed to him in a disagreement over a car parking space in Ballyfermot. Yes, there was the all-time classic boot to the bollocks, but while in the McGarry fighting philosophy that region was often targeted, it was rarely through a kick. He’d more often use the punch, elbow, knee or headbutt to the nether regions. Once, memorably, the bite. And, come to think of it, including that morning, the hot drink, twice. His current opponent, however, was forcing Bunny to re-evaluate his prejudices vis-à-vis the kick, because he seemed to really know what he was doing with it. This one caught Bunny right in the solar plexus and sent him flying backwards to slam against a car, briefly knocking the wind out of him.
The second tenet of the McGarry fighting philosophy was that hesitation meant defeat. Never giving your opponent a second to gather themselves was an essential concept. This was why he instinctively bounced straight back, aiming the aforementioned boot to the kneecap at his opponent’s standing leg.
Unfortunately, his opponent must have also been familiar with this move, as his kicking foot came down with unerring accuracy to slam into Bunny’s instep, causing him to howl with pain. It would have hurt anyone, and most other people hadn’t previously been shot in the foot by a psychopath.
The third principle of the McGarry fighting philosophy was to go for the weak spots. In no particular order, his favourites were the eyes, throat, knees and knackers. Ideally, within the first three seconds, your opponent should be unable to either see, speak, walk or conceive.
Bunny was nothing if not eager to learn, which was why the open-handed smash, delivered to his left ear that made his head ring and his balance desert him, was certainly educational. He’d never considered the ear slap as a go-to move, and it turned out he’d been missing out. Bunny’s re-education continued as he found himself in the middle of one of those full-body judo throws, which he had previously scoffed at as being only good for people who believed in bowing first and fighting in your pyjamas.
As he flew through the air, the thought struck Bunny that he was very definitely losing this fight. Nothing about his bone-crunching landing on the stone steps dissuaded him from that conclusion.
He heard a shocked gasp and looked up to see an elderly white-haired lady standi
ng in the doorway, looking down at him through jam-jar-thick spectacles. She looked horrified by what she was seeing. To be fair, Bunny wasn’t wild about it either.
The fourth principle of Bunny’s fighting philosophy was to use anything to gain an advantage. Therefore, on an intellectual level he could not fault his opponent for using this gap in proceedings to pull a gun on him, but on a personal level, he found it a disappointing development.
Bunny looked around and quickly raised his hands in surrender. He was dimly aware of the old lady shuffling back towards the door.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked the black guy. He sounded dishearteningly in control as he did so, not to mention not even being out of breath. He held his gun like a man who’d held one quite a lot, and nothing about him said he might not use it.
“I’m just… I’m just a guy trying to buy a little time.”
The black guy shrugged. “She got away, but I got you.”
Bunny nodded. “Fair play to you, fella, you did – you got me bang to rights and there’s not many who can say that. Although you misunderstand me.”
“Do I?”
“To put it another way” – Bunny raised his voice to a frankly girlish trembling falsetto – “please don’t shoot me! I’ll give you my wallet.”
The thing with the “use anything you can” nature of the fourth principle was that it worked both ways. Bunny watched as several emotions flitted across the face of the man who’d just kicked his arse seven ways to Sunday:
Surprise at Bunny’s sudden appeal.
Realisation of what it meant.
Anger at what the realisation meant.
Then the quick flicking of his eyes right and left to confirm.
“NYPD. Put the gun down!”
They both turned to see a nervous-looking patrolman with his service weapon drawn and trained on the big guy with the gun.
“It’s not…”
“Drop it, motherfucker. Last warning.”
The lad looked barely old enough to drink. Bunny would have laid good odds that this was the first time in his life he’d ever pulled a loaded weapon and aimed it at another human being in anger. The situation could go one of two ways: either he’d lose his nerve and be unable to pull the trigger, or his nerves would cause him to pull it immediately. A lot of people had ended up dead over the years after calling that coin flip wrong.
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