Screwed: A Novel

by Eoin Colfer

  I do not give two shits about any of this. All I want to do is breathe. This is beyond a joke. Why can I not breathe?

  I paw at my throat with handcuffed hands to find a seat belt cinched tight across my Adam’s apple.

  It’s probably the belt across your windpipe that is stopping you breathing, genius.

  And why am I handcuffed? Did Buttons handcuff me?

  The belt is tight across my chest like a Band-Aid and I can’t get a finger under it, so now I have a dilemma: leave the belt on and suffocate, or take it off and be killed on impact. Is this Murphy’s Law or a Hobson’s choice or a Catch-22? I can never distinguish between those three. Murphy’s Law has something to do with potatoes, I’m pretty sure about that. If this run of bad luck continues, they might have to coin a phrase in my honor, posthumously of course.

  Daniel’s Dilemma.

  Catchy.

  Got a ring to it.

  Screw it. I have to breathe. My fingers crab down toward the safety buckle but the choice is taken from my hands when the car crashes into the impact barrel, smashing the barrel flatter than an unassembled coffee table, sending water seething through the cracks with enough force to fracture the side windows. The safety belt holds, but cuts through my clothing to the skin below. My shirt pocket bursts into flame and I cannot understand why until I remember the book of matches I keep in there to light the tipped cigars Zeb and I smoke to celebrate staying alive for another week. Is the matches’ flaring symbolic somehow? I am showered with glass and water, which is painful but at least the fire goes out. Every cloud as they say.

  I am held in place by the belt but I still cannot bloody breathe. For feck sake. Gimme a bloody break. God, Buddha, Gandhi, Aslan. Whoever. I remember that I have hands when the body of the car settles on its buckled chassis and stops moving. I unsnap the buckle, slide across the seat and draw a greedy breath that feels like I’m swallowing glass, but I don’t care. My brain was seconds away from starvation and I do not have spare brain cells to lose. I breathe again, deeper, and feel my panic subsiding. Confusion quickly fills the vacuum.

  What is happening?

  What part of my life is this?

  Am I in Ireland or the Lebanon or Jersey?

  I do not know exactly who the guys in the front are but I imagine they were planning on doing me harm so I am glad to see that they are not moving, their heads enveloped by the mushroom sprawl of air bags. Maybe they didn’t survive. I think I am safe enough, conscience-wise, to hope that they didn’t.

  So this is a rescue? Could that be it? My friends have grouped together, pooled their resources and come to save me.

  Doubtful. Do I have friends? No one springs to mind. Something about Madonna and the Bee Gees.

  Two dead now. Tragic, what a band.

  There is a horrendous creaking of twisting metal as the Hummer backs up a few feet, taking the side door with it.

  I hope this is a rental, I think unkindly. So those two bent cops will be hit with the bill.

  Cops? They’re cops. I remember that now. Krieger and Fortz.

  A shadow falls across me and I am relieved to see a human framed by a doorway that until recently had a door in it. I am relieved because the figure is human and not simian, though it is wearing an Obama mask.

  Simian? Buttons. That couldn’t be real.

  The figure moves quickly leaning in and grabbing fistfuls of my lapels.

  My savior, I try to say but there is something hard in my mouth so I let it dribble onto my lap.

  A tooth. One of my molars. All those years flossing, wasted. And I hate flossing too.

  The guy is familiar.

  “Thanks for rescuing me,” I say. Well you don’t want to be rude.

  “This ain’t no fuckin’ rescue, retard,” says a familiar voice.

  Freckles. I remember.

  Friend or foe?

  Foe. Most definitely.

  I spit out a lump of bloody gum. “Freckles. I was rooting for you, dude.”

  He drags me out of the car, gets up real close.

  “Don’t call me Freckles,” he says. “My boss calls me Freckles and guess what? I am the boss now.”

  It’s a reasonable request. “No problem. What do I call you?”

  Freckles hustles me to the blacked-out Hummer. The freeway is quiet so it must be very late or very early. Regardless, it won’t take the blues more than a minute or two to get here and a bashed-up Hummer won’t be so hard to spot. I can see the Silvercup sign near the off-ramp. There can be only one.

  “You can call me Mr. Toole.”

  He has got to be joshing. “Your name is tool?”

  Freckles hoists me so we’re nose to nose. “That’s right. Ben Toole.”

  Sometimes you gotta laugh even though it could get you killed. “Bent Tool? Get the feck out. What is wrong with parents?”

  Ben blushes with rage and his freckles disappear. “Ben . . . Toole. With an E.”

  I am still not altogether together, if you know what I mean. My face feels like it’s been flayed, my body is for shit, but I think it’s important to keep the conversation going.

  “Everyone knows there’s an E in Ben, Freckles. I’m not a fecking tool . . . No offense.”

  Freckles jabs me in the solar plexus, which is probably doing some damage, but my pain levels are so off the scale that the blow doesn’t even register.

  “The E is in Toole. At the end.”

  I get it. “Oh, like O’Toole, without the O.”

  This apparently is a vowel too far for Freckles because he howls with that particular anguish brought on by decades of taunting and bundles me into the back of the Hummer. I get an upside-down glimpse of the driver and it’s the kid: Shea.

  I am confused.

  Freckles climbs in behind me and slams the door.

  “Did you see that, Ben?” asks the kid. “I nailed those fucking cops. I fucking crushed them. Who’s a college boy now? Who’s got soft hands now?”

  And then, I cannot believe this, they actually high-five each other. These guys are tight. It’s like they watched Sesame Street and learned all about tolerance and seeing the other person’s point of view.

  Shea jerks a thumb toward me. “Tell me we’re going to torture this motherfucker, old school.”

  Bent Tool pulls off his mask and knuckles me in the temple. “You know it, kid. Old school.”

  Old school? I remember when Run-D.M.C. were old school, now it’s torturing the Irish guy.

  Fecking old-school, hummus-eating, catch-Murphy’s-22 bullshit.

  Shea follows Freckles’s directions and pulls the Hummer into a chop shop two blocks back from Javits. I always wondered who had the brilliant notion to drop the city’s biggest convention center in this neighborhood. Every year dozens of accountants and IT guys get themselves in hot water because they take the wrong cross street on the way back to their midtown Holiday Inn. The lucky ones get a couple of taps and their wallets lifted, the unlucky ones end up hooked on smack. I heard a rumor of a pimp who runs a specialty stable of ex-librarians that he picked off from the pack and turned out. Probably an urban myth.

  I take advantage of the drive to pull myself together a little, and by the time Freckles hauls me out of the vehicle I am pretty certain that I was not handcuffed by a gorilla. On the negative side, whatever Edit gave me is wearing off and I realize that I am just about the most messed up I have ever been. My bruises have got bruises and those bruises have got welts, and don’t even get me started on the lacerations. I reckon my left ear is cauliflowered for good and one of my eyes has a weird shelf above it that doesn’t feel like any swelling I’ve ever had.

  What I am is past caring.

  If it was up to me, I would throw in the towel right now and spare myself the rest of this shitty day.

  Freckles jostles me across the factory floor, which is occupied by luxury sedans mainly, but with a couple of cannibalized mopeds lying around like busted Terminators. There’s a grease monkey in Texaco ov
eralls poking around in the guts of a yellow cab but he doesn’t even take his head out from under the hood. I guess whatever goes down in here, he doesn’t want to witness it.

  With rough encouragement from the barrel of Freckles’s pistol I stumble through an oil puddle to an office area that has been blocked off by a rank of filing cabinets on one side and a dirty partition on the other. Freckles sits me down in a plastic chair that squeaks with fright under the sudden trauma of bearing my weight. He never takes his gun off me for a second.

  Shea follows and takes a moment to study a wall-mounted Miss July 1972 who is holding a wrench and biting her bottom lip like holding wrenches is pretty stressful.

  “What the hell did you do to those cops, McEvoy?” asks Shea, when he is done with ogling. “Whatever it was, they took it real personal.”

  “I did a number on them with a dildo,” I say, which is about the strangest statement I’m ever likely to make. I don’t elaborate because I can’t. I only got enough energy for breathing. I try to speak anymore and I could asphyxiate.

  This suits Edward Shea just fine, because even though the whole dildo thing is an incredible conversation starter, he wants to get back to his favorite subject: himself.

  “I bet you weren’t expecting to see me again, huh, McEvoy?” he says perching on the corner of the desk. And he’s right, I would have bet big money on long odds that this particular fly was out of my ointment.

  “Yeah, I bet you thought that the Shea kid was sleeping with the fishes.”

  I nod and it hurts my brain but it’s easier than talking.

  Did he really just say “sleeping with the fishes”?

  “You wanna know what went down after you set us up to kill each other?”

  I don’t want to know. Why doesn’t this kid just go play with himself or go wait in line somewhere to buy Call of Duty?

  Wait! I do want to know.

  I can’t nod anymore, so I blink. Once for yes.

  Shea starts talking without even registering my blink signal. Why would you ask a person if he wants to know something if you’re just going to go ahead and tell them regardless? Between that and the hummus I am running out of things to like about this kid.

  “You did us a real favor, McEvoy,” says Shea. “We’ve been bitching and sniping between ourselves since Dad died. Ain’t that right, Benny T?”

  Benny T? Who the hell is Benny T?

  “That’s right, Shea-ster,” says Freckles, flushed with pride at hearing his new Mafia-type handle.

  I don’t believe it, these dicks are celebrating their new partnership with buddy names.

  Shea-ster and Benny T?

  Just fecking kill me now.

  “But now we been through shit together. That shit bonded us, McEvoy. You left us with two guns on the table, remember?”

  I blink once.

  “So the elevator closes and we all dive in scrabbling, but not Benny T, because he’s got a weapon on his ankle.”

  Crap. I was so busy congratulating myself on setting up the big bloodbath that I forgot to check for concealed weapons.

  “So Benny bends over and comes up loaded.”

  “And I don’t know who to shoot,” says Ben Toole, laughing, a little rueful like he just discovered he was wearing odd socks.

  “Yeah. He don’t know who to shoot. Cracks me up.”

  “And I sure underestimated this guy,” says Benny T, punching Shea’s shoulder. “The guy you leg shot was hobbling to the door so it was just the movement really. I saw him go and shot him.”

  “Right in the heart,” says Shea. “And from behind with a moving target, that’s a hell of a shot.”

  I want to point out that the hell of a shot was like three and a half feet, and a chimp with one eye could’ve made it, but I don’t say any of this because it would cost too much and the comment ain’t funny enough to warrant more suffering.

  “So then the other guy, Frank? Yeah, Frank. He goes for the table and I wing him. I’m just fucking shooting at this point. Ain’t got a strategy as such.”

  Shea takes up the thread. “So he goes down, screaming so fucking much he’s gonna wake up the building. Freckles . . . I mean Benny T, goes around the table to finish him off.”

  “I’m not even factoring in the kid,” says Ben. “Fuck the kid, is what I’m thinking. I got time to spare now. But he showed me. You got some stones on you, Shea-ster.”

  Maybe making these two hold hands was a mistake.

  “I go for a gun,” says Shea. “And when Benny gets around the far side of the desk, then he finds to his surprise that I’m covering him and he’s covering me.”

  “This guy. This guy right here. Steady as a rock. He’s facing down Benny T, who ain’t got such a shabby rep, and not a fucking shake to be seen. You gotta respect that.”

  Yeah, like I gotta respect musical theater.

  Actually that’s not fair. I enjoyed the shit out of Rock of Ages.

  “So we stay like that for a coupla minutes,” continues Shea. “And it occurs to me that I haven’t a fucking clue how to run the practical side of Dad’s company.”

  Benny laughs his fond laugh again. “And it goes without saying that I ain’t no books person.”

  I think using the phrase no books person pretty much guarantees that you aren’t one.

  “So the kid walks around the desk and calm as you like puts two into the guy I clipped, finishes him off. Now we got stuff on each another, see?”

  I figure Shea’s dad must have been an ungodly asshole and Ben never had any kids. It’s like they have a second chance at life. I bet they got autumn-hued plans for kite flying and shit.

  “We got a bond now,” says Shea. “A blood bond. We are two sides of the same coin.”

  “This asshole is probably wondering how we found him,” says Freckles.

  To be honest, the asshole is past caring. They found me and knowing how they did it won’t make me any less found. Actually if they hadn’t found me, I’d be dead by now.

  “My car has GPS, moron,” says Freckles, knuckling my head like I’m stupid. “I called the monitoring company and they told me where it was parked. We was staking out the hotel garage when the two cops came out and rolled you into the back of their cruiser. I oughta thank them really. Taking bodies out of hotels is a bitch.” He winks at Shea. “As we know only too well, right Shea-ster?”

  “You got it. Benny T. I’m gonna feel it in my quads tomorrow.”

  “These fucking kids,” says Bent Tool. “Fucking quads and shit. I gotta whole new lingo to learn.”

  “That’s so wack,” I grunt, giving him his first lesson.

  Shea pats himself down until he finds an energy bar and I think, No, don’t start eating.

  But he does, right up in my face. Making a gooey paste of the bar, smacking his beard-rimmed fleshy lips, which from this angle, God forgive me for even thinking it, look a bit like a pussy.

  I think about head-butting Shea, but then I might get some of his crud on my face, so I hang my head low and wait for this to be over. He’s still chewing, I can hear it.

  “I went through your pockets, McEvoy,” says Freckles. “Took back what was mine. Checked your calls. Seems the only text you sent to Mike was a confirmation that the kid was dead. Is that all Mikey knows?

  “Everyone knows,” I manage to splutter. “I got a friend in the cops.”

  “Nah,” says Freckles. “Bullshit. You were trying to buy a little time. If I know Mike, he’s out in—what the fuck is it? Cloisters? Celebrating. Tying one on. For the next coupla days Irish Mike Madden, the double-crossing asshole, is wide open. And let me tell you, I’m gonna drive a spike straight up that open asshole.”

  Normally I would not be too broken up at the idea of someone lethal paying Mike a visit, but then it occurs to me that I will be extremely dead before that happens and plus Zeb could be at Mike’s too. Though if Zeb suffered a flesh wound or lost half a testicle I wouldn’t be all that upset.

  “I
swear,” I say. “I put the word out. You guys are fugitives.”

  Shea buys it. “We’re fugitives, Benny.”

  Freckles, the pro, ain’t in the market for bullshit. “My guy tells me there’s nothing on the scanners, or Web site. Not a dickie. But just to be sure, we hang on to this guy for a few hours in case we need a hostage. I reckon if we ain’t heard anything by morning, then we’re in the clear.”

  “So all we gotta do is wait until the cab is ready and have a few of the boys to take you for a little drive.”

  Freckles is an old hand at the body disposal racket. He won’t shoot me here ’cause of me being a hefty sonuva bitch and it would take six of them to carry the dead weight. So they got a tricked-out death cab. I’ve seen these hearses in the Lebanon. I remember we seized a standard-looking Renault one time to find the trunk all wired up with a freezer box for body parts. Freckles’s boys will transport me in the taxi then, make me climb down into a dug grave and shoot me on-site. Makes sense. That’s what I’d do to if I was a cold-blooded killer, maybe roll Krieger and Fortz in there for good measure and a couple of animal parts just to screw with the crime lab. And if I had a spare minute I’d scrawl a few verses of Klingon poetry on Shea’s forehead with a Sharpie. I could tie up Homeland for months.

  “Come on, Benny T,” says Shea then and I swear his voice doesn’t sound like it’s broken yet, maybe it’s the excitement. “Let’s do it. Me and you.”

  This is a step too far.

  Oh, wait. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.

  “Let’s finish the job, T. We can kill this fucking mook. Me and you.”

  Thank Christ. The kid just wants to kill me personally.

  “I don’t know,” says Freckles. “This guy is a handful and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Come on, Benny,” the kid is pleading now, like he wants to break Santa’s rules and open a present on Christmas Eve. “Tomorrow I’m back to the corporate life, but tonight I wanna be a gangster, like you.”