Screwed: A Novel

by Eoin Colfer

  Anyway, back to the Lebanon. There we were, in the rear of a truck driving straight into the aftermath of a massacre. I know for a fact, because we took a poll in the truck, that twelve point five men out of sixteen had no clue what PFLP or DFLP stood for, never mind the difference between the groups. I don’t know how we arrived at point five of a guy in those calculations.

  In the course of our sweep we happened on a Phalangist militiaman inside the gutted church with half a dozen Japanese Red Army terrorists trussed up in the aisle. There had been talk of Red Army guys helping out with the Popular Front but I always thought that was barracks’ bullshit. But here these guys were, Japanese no doubt about it, down on their knees being all stoic for the most part, about to pay the ultimate price for their roles in the recent massacre. I don’t know how a lone Phalangist managed the logistics of wrapping six enemy soldiers in restraints but it was pretty clear that he to take advantage of their immobility to speed the Red Army boyos directly to whichever pearly gates they believed in, fervently hoping there would be a distinct absence of virgin hosts there to greet them.

  We just kinda looked on for a second, a little perplexed to be honest. Intrigued too, like we were watching the whole show on TV. Peacekeepers aren’t on anyone’s side as such, so plugging this super-soldier would lead to one clusterball of a debriefing. Tommy Fletcher let his trademarked cow-scaring roar at the guy, followed by:

  “Hey, gobshite. Step away from the prisoners.”

  The Phalangist responded by shrieking in shock, then shooting the first Red Army guy in the head. The guy looked minorly disappointed for a second, like his car wouldn’t start, then keeled over.

  “Balls!” exclaimed Tommy and rushed the gunman. We all followed suit and there ensued a macabre version of Duck Duck Goose with us jabbering while the Phalangist dodged between the Red Army lads plugging as many as he could before we subdued him.

  By the time we piled on, the guy had a score of five and he would have completed the set had his frankly ancient Luger not blown up in his hand and shredded his fingers.

  Is that a funny story in retrospect? Is there a touch of humor to be gleaned from a domino line of Japanese terrorists?

  Not for me.

  I think on it too long and the strength of the images really drags me under. The guy with the gun staring in shock at his own mangled hand. The last Japanese soldier singing a simple melody high and clear. I’ve been trying to find that song ever since. Don’t know why. It sounded like he was repeating the phrase abandon we but that can’t have been it. Wrong language. The air in the church was baked orange and heavy with moisture, a miasma that clung to our uniforms. And Tommy squatting on the Phalangist, who was maybe eighteen, taking a poll as to whether we should report all of this or just go on our merry way and pretend nothing had ever happened.

  So we took the path of no resistance. We cut the surviving prisoner loose, used the bonds to tie up the Phalangist, which must have earned us a grudging nod from the gods of irony and got ourselves the hell away from that bloodbath, because there is no way to come out of a three-way balls up like that smelling of anything but fear and death.

  By the way, we worked out what fear smells like one night in the barracks and I still stick by the formula: 50 percent stale sweat, 30 percent gas and 20 percent stink of your own private hellhole. Wherever what bad thing happened to you happened.

  When fear creeps up on me, my first sensory clue is the stink of that church with trussed corpses clogging up the aisle trumping the ghosts of brides being escorted by their proud fathers.

  I voted the same as everybody else. Get the hell out.

  Abandon we.

  I know. Sounds a lot like a flashback, but I don’t get flashbacks.

  There’s only one iron left in the fire now. It ain’t my iron and I didn’t light the fire but I gotta put it out before this metaphor gets away from me and no one has a clue what the hell I’m talking about.

  Writ simple: Irish Mike Madden reckons I still owe him. After all the shit that happened, Mike still reckons I got a tab to settle. I am starting to think it’s never gonna be enough with this guy.

  Also I know damning stuff like how he rolled me into the whole Shea/Freckles thing like some kind of Trojan horse: shiny on the outside, deadly on the inside. And then when you open a door to the inside the deadly comes out through the hole, like Achilles. I guess if you have to explain the imagery, then the imagery is kind of redundant. Still, I think the Trojan horse thing would have worked if I’d left it alone.

  Anyways, now I gotta swing by his place and hope he’s feeling magnanimous on account of how things turned out with the Shea situation. Not only is Mike out from under New York’s shadow but there’s talk of him picking up the Shea slack, making him a genuine player, which could come in handy if any of the Jersey Boys get fed up listening to stories about a Mick operating locally.

  So, it is possible that Mike will call it evens and we can all get back to business.

  Possible, but about as likely as a hyena spitting out a hunk of red meat, which is then eaten by a supermodel, which is not probable firstly because hyenas don’t ever not eat meat and supermodels hardly ever do, then there’s the obvious hygiene issue and thirdly there’s the geographical factor, as in there are not many supermodels hanging around sub-Saharan Africa.

  Apart from Iman.

  And Waris Dirie.

  Unlikely is what I’m trying to say.

  I think my shrink was right. Maybe I am too much of a deconstructionist, but I would argue that it’s undeniable at this point that watching Fashion Police can be educational.

  In this spirit of optimism for the future, I do not bring any guns along. Also I know whoever’s on the door will be giving me the cavity search.

  From experience I know never talk to Mike until he’s had his first blow job of the day, which is usually about eleven. Even though Mike’s blood is green, he’s big on the whole English feudal lords conjugal rights law that got Mel Gibson so riled in Braveheart. So I stroll over just after the midday deadline to give Mike a chance to let off steam. To be honest, I feel a little weird to be out on the street without anyone pointing a gun at me. Every now and then I do a little jinky sidestep just in case there’s a guy on a rooftop watching me through a Zeiss, and I make it to Mike’s block without anyone taking a potshot so either I’m just paranoid or my zigzagging actually works.

  I guess I should enjoy not being a target while it lasts.

  Mr. Nose Beard, Manny Booker, is outside on the door giving the world his best tough-guy face but I’m guessing he’s sweating bullets inside the navy suit Mike forces his men to wear. You put the facial hair and the suit together and you got a lot of heat bearing down on a little brain. That’s a recipe for violent disaster.

  I approach Manny slow and obvious, because I reckon this guy is close to the edge with me and it’s my own damn fault. I can’t help screwing with Booker because he’s so earnest about the whole gangsta thing. He spends his days fretting over saving face or someone disrespecting him. Every little thing is end-of-days important to Manny. Just walking down the block he has to be bristling with menace. Someone should tell Manny that he just comes off as constipated. When God sends a guy that intense your way it is your duty to take the piss, as my quotable buddy Zebulon Kronski said: When you find a prick this big, you gotta play with it a little.

  Never a truer word.

  So I make sure Booker gets a good look at me as I come up the steps.

  “Hey, Manny,” I say. “How you doing today? Beard looks good. Verdant.”

  I realize that I have screwed with this boy too much and now he doesn’t recognize sincerity when he sees it.

  “Ver-fucking-what? Fuck you, McEvoy. I’ll be doing good when I cut off your prick and ram it down your throat.”

  I’d swear this is a line from some Godfather-lite movie.

  “We all live for that day, Manny,” I say amiably, then I get down to business. “How’s Mike
? Has he got his morning . . . ?”

  Instead of finishing this question I wink twice, which is Goodfella code for blow job.

  “Nah,” says Manny. “He’s auditioning a new dancer. Calvin brought her in.”

  Mike presides over a couple of lap-dance joints on Cloisters’ strip, which is precisely two blocks long. He considers it a good business practice to give every potential new hire a personal looksee. He runs a diner too, but the waitress’s interview ain’t quite so stringent as they gotta carry stuff in their hands that Mike’s gonna put in his mouth.

  So Mike is still harboring his morning tension. Not a great time to broker a truce.

  “Okay. I’m gonna get a latté and come back in an hour.”

  Manny glares at me. “You fucking better come back in an hour.”

  Here we go.

  “I just said I was coming back.”

  Manny tilts his head for maximum badness and his beard bristles. “And I just said you fucking better come back.”

  Manny is using the age-old tactic of intimidation through repetition with added fucketry (WINAWBSB).

  I decide to throw him a curveball. “Yeah, you want something, Manny-o? Latté? No, you look like a skinny mocachino guy to me, right?”

  Manny is predictably incensed by this exotic sounding brew. I hear he once punched a lady in the throat because she asked him if he’d read Twilight.

  “Moca-fucking-what? Is that a fruity drink? Are you calling me a skinny fruit?”

  I gotta lay off, or this goon is gonna knife me in an alley some night.

  “Okay, Manny. Chill. I’ll be back in an hour, honest. One gunman to another. Gangster’s honor.”

  Manny’s phone rings. His ringtone is Eye of the Tiger and we both bam bam-bam-bam along with it for a few seconds until he answers. That’s the problem with having a good tune for your ringtone; sometimes you wanna hear the chorus.

  “Fuck yeah,” he says. “Fuckin’ A.”

  A man of many fucks. It’s like Manny has a quota to fill.

  “You ain’t drinking no fag drinks, McEvoy. The boss seen you on the fucking security cam, so get up here and assume the position.”

  I glower at the plastic beetle clamped to the door frame. It seems like I have a date with a horny Irish mobster.

  Inside the atmosphere is buzzing with anticipation. The lights are low and Mike and his guys are seated in a little semicircle in front of a makeshift stage with a screen rigged behind it. I can tell Mike is all amped up by the way he’s slapping his thighs and if the lights were any lower I swear he’d have his dick out. I need to get my spiel in now or I could be here all day.

  “Mr. Madden. Hey, Mike, we need to talk.”

  Mike barely spares me a glance. “Yeah, McEvoy. Gimme a minute, laddie. Maybe two. Sit your ass down.”

  I seriously consider going operational right there. Technically I’m unarmed, but I can do a lot of damage without a gun. And these buckhawks virtually got their tongues hanging out for Christ’s sake. I could make a decent amount of bones go crack before Mike knew what was happening.

  Attractive as this idea is, it would be suicide. They can take a dozen casualties, I can only take one. So I sit my ass down and run through the speech I gotta make to this bunch o’ perverts.

  Mike’s number two, Calvin, hops up on the stage and pats the air for silence.

  “Okay, guys. Mr. Madden. I got something a little different here but give it a chance. This gal is a money machine.”

  “She better be,” says Mike, tugging the crotch of his trousers. “The last gal you brought in danced like she was being electrocuted. I was paying that donkey money to keep her clothes on.”

  Everyone laughs, but it is good-humored stuff. Mike does not seem to be suffering any negative aftereffects from the shootings at his home. Why would he? He’s alive and several grand richer, all for the price of two windows that probably needed replacing with bulletproof panes anyway. And today is another day in paradise for Mike: ogle a dancer, take a few minutes in the back room, shoot me in the face.

  It’s all good.

  A girl steps from behind a curtain and mounts the stage. She’s something, no doubt about it: long gymnast’s legs, shimmering belly-dancing rigout and a face too pretty for these animals.

  “Okay, Cal,” says Mike. “She’s a looker, I’ll give you that, laddie. But I got plenty of lookers.”

  “Wait, Mr. Madden, you need the light show for the full effect.”

  Calvin hops down from the stage and taps a few keys on his laptop. Psychedelic spirals swirl on the screen and one of Sadé’s better pop jazz classics fills the room.

  Sadé. There ain’t a hetero alive who doesn’t drift off into a soft-focus scenario when that lady sings.

  The girl’s movements match the mood perfectly. None of the usual bump and grind, this dancer is all about the slow seduction. Her arms do something a little Indian and her pelvis moves like there’s a coupla extra joints in there.

  It’s very distracting.

  Calvin knows he’s brought in a winner.

  “I told you she was a mover, Mr. Madden,” he says.

  Here we go. Three two one . . .

  “I got something moving right here, laddie,” says Mike, right on cue, then: “Come on, darlin’, enough of the tease, let’s see the merchandise.”

  The dancer undulates down from the stage like a human Slinky. She knows who butters the bread around here and zeroes in on Mike like he’s some kind of demi-god. She’s got eyes on her too, big brown numbers that could fool a guy into believing that this ain’t a professional relationship. Just like every man Jack in the room, I forget all my troubles and I know in my heart of hearts that if this girl asked me to leave with her right now I would give it serious consideration.

  I never understood the Salomé thing until this instant.

  The dancer is up on Mike and he’s trying to play it casual like this kind of thing happens every day. I notice Calvin is a little jittery, like he’s nervous about something, and then I notice something else. There ain’t nobody without an Adam’s apple in this room.

  Holy shit. Brave move, Calvin.

  I lean forward in my seat and wait for the explosion.

  The dancer shucks off her sequined top and there ain’t any boobs underneath. The gal is a guy and I think Calvin may have overestimated his boss’s tolerance levels.

  It takes Irish Mike a moment to get it, but when he does his reaction is comical. Mike executes a move that I can only describe as a reverse lunge, which I would not even have believed was possible for a portly geezer had I not seen it with my own eyes. He pulls out his gun and waggles it a little, giving genuine thought to killing everyone in the room.

  “It’s a male . . . guy,” he finally blurts.

  I cannot stop myself and I know Zeb would be proud. “A mail guy? Like a postman?”

  Mike swings his gun toward Calvin, who may be the favorite but he’s overstepped the mark this time.

  “What kind of crying, Brokeback, queen-of-the-birdcage bullshit is this, Calvin?”

  “I thought you knew right off, Mr. Madden,” says Calvin and I swear he executes a craven little bow.

  Mike breathes through his nose furiously, reining himself in. “Yeah, I knew. ’Course I knew. Who wouldn’t know? I screwed enough broads to know when someone ain’t a broad.”

  “Yeah. Of course. You’re like a broad guru, Mr. Madden.”

  No one kisses ass less subtly than Calvin, but Mike’s been getting his ass kissed for so long that he can’t see the truth anymore.

  “That’s right. A broad guru. You ask any woman in this town.” He sneaks a glance at the dancer, who is huddling behind Calvin.

  “People pay for this?”

  “Are you kidding? Big money. Mona was pulling in five grand in the Corral. Five grand per week.”

  Money talks as they say. “Five grand? In one week.”

  “Six days to be precise. She’s off on Wednesdays.”

>   Mike snorts. “She’s a he is what she is. And she’s on seven days from now on. Get her started in the Parlor tonight.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Madden. She’s grateful for the chance.”

  Mike frowns, which he does when he’s thinking. “Yeah, but put up a sign or something. You know, some of the clientele ain’t as perceptive as me. I don’t want any of our counselors getting a heart attack.”

  Calvin is open to all suggestions. “Yeah, a sign. Saying ladyboy or something like that.”

  “How about mailman?” I say innocently.

  Mike’s brain is grinding through his options here, eventually he arrives at the conclusion that finding the whole episode hilarious is the best move for him.

  “Mailman,” he says, slapping the thigh that was recently adjacent to a visible erection. “That’s a good one. You crack me up, laddie.” He drops Calvin a loaded wink that says it’s time for serious business, and his number two hustles Mona out the side door.

  “I like to make people laugh,” I say. “When I get the opera-toonity.”

  Mike squints. “Hey, watch your mouth. Just cause we’re laughing don’t mean I’ve gone soft.”

  Please Jesus, shut my stupid coping-mechanism mouth.

  Mike sits up straight, composing himself for the serious speech. Enough joking around with the strippers, etc.

  “You signed your death warrant last night, laddie,” he says, getting straight to it.

  I reckon it was signed long before then, maybe I hurried on the execution a little, but I recently got beat on with a dildo so my judgment is a little out of whack.

  Also I got a card to play. The Tommy video.

  “Okay, Mike. Why don’t you give me a chance to make my case?”

  “You nervous, Danny?” Mike asks, rolling an empty whiskey glass on the table. It click-clacks on each facet, which is really annoying and I have to grind my teeth to stop myself slapping Mike’s hand.