Dead I Well May Be (42 page)

I laughed and jumped about. I’d lost them. I’d lost them. Peeler Pete and his Porky Pals.

Bastards, I yelled, delightedly.

Aye, I’d lost them, but suddenly it put the fear of God in me. It was close. And Jesus, I was on a list somewhere. My name was on a list. My real name. Shit. Drunken Mick stupidity had almost got me lifted. Fucking Paddy Curse.

Farther into the park I found a bloke with a quarter, and he was nice enough to dial the phone for me too. He was a good guy, well into his sixties, skinny, really sweet, and sadly some kind of downer junkie. He didn’t like the look of me one little bit, but since I was cuffed, he figured I couldn’t be all bad. Ramón came down half an hour later, and I asked Ramón to give the bloke twenty bucks. Ramón did just that.

Ramón and I went back to his place and they cut the cuffs off me in about five minutes.

I haven’t seen you for a long time, man, Ramón said later.

We were alone now, the boys gone. I sipped some of Ramón’s hot chocolate mixed with cream and brown sugar and wicked Dominican rum.

No.

We’re ok, aren’t we? he asked.

Yeah.

Good.

He stuck his hand out over the couch, and I shook it. He gave me the gangbanger shake and I went along with it.

You want something for the pepper spray? he asked.

What ya got?

Home remedy.

Ok.

He went off to his kitchen and made a poultice to shove on my bad eye. I thanked him and he said it was no problem. We sat for a while, silent. I had nothing to say and Ramón didn’t want to upset me again. I was the first to break the ice:

Listen, I, I probably won’t see you again, Ramón. It’s going to be this week. I’ve delayed too long. Darkey’s boys are after me and I think the cops now, too. They’ve forced my hand. It has to be now. After it’s done, I’m leaving.

Where to?

I don’t know. Australia, Ireland, I don’t know.

Ramón looked at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I never could. He was a smart guy in a dumb guy’s business, though like I say, all those brains couldn’t do a thing to stop the gun of edgy young Moreno F. Cortez, a gun and nineteen fucking bullets (and Moreno a
cousin and trusted lieutenant). Moreno, incidentally, got shot in the head about a month later by José Ramírez, who in turn … but you know how it goes.

We sat there and talked about trades and signings during the offseason. In Tampa there was some kid from Michigan who was going to be the future shortstop. 1993, Ramón predicted, was going to be the Yankees’ year, this year, next year, very soon, he said. He didn’t live to see the World Series, or Sosa in the Home Run Derby—it would have pleased him very much.

So, Michael, it will be soon, because of the heat, he said.

Yeah.

You will be careful?

I will.

Do you need any help?

No.

I stood up. We embraced. I didn’t say goodbye and afterwards I didn’t see him again. His death was just one more stat in the bloody catalog of uptown deaths in the early nineties.

The next day I went down to Gray’s Camping and Sport. I looked at camping equipment and sleeping bags. I decided against a tent. I placed an order for a down sleeping bag, which would take two days from the warehouse. That was ok, I said, I’d be back. I bought a big bowl rucksack that was like a Royal Marine Bergen.

I dyed my hair black and shaved everything but a mustache, which I also dyed black. I dressed in jeans and desert boots and a sheepskin coat. I got on the Metro-North at 125th. I took an early morning train to Peekskill, got off, and went to the nearest bar. I found a place to observe the railway platform. I sat there all day. There were no watchers, or if there were, they were very good. I went back to Manhattan and adopted a dog from the ASPCA volunteers on Union Square. They needed my name and address but that was ok too. I took the dog up to 181st Street. I called him Harry. He was a mongrel. A lazy character, who had been housetrained for a house and not an apartment. There is a difference, and I soon discovered what this was. I bought a Peekskill town map and studied it. I found Darkey’s place. I lost the mustache and dyed my hair red with blond streaks in it. I dressed in a
black coat and brown cords and tasseled brown loafers. I bought myself a pair of clear-lens glasses and a walking stick. I caught the train from Grand Central. I got off at Peekskill. I walked the dog and found the house. From the map it had seemed to be about a thirty-five-minute dander from the Metro-North stop, but when I got up there, the walk ended up taking over an hour. (The map lacked contour lines.) I strolled past the property and checked the initial security. No gatehouse, and I couldn’t see anyone in the grounds. A Jeep and a Bronco in the driveway. A Jag in the open door of the garage. I went by, and I let the dog off in the trees. The dog and I found a back area that was thickly wooded and seldom trekked through. There was a boggy wee swamp that you had to wade through, knee-high, to get to a convenient little copse with thorny bushes. If you could make it through the swamp to the bushes, and you had a good pair of binocs, it would make a wonderful place for lying up. Your average private security guard wouldn’t think much of it because your average private security guard was a lazy arse and he’d have to wade through the little swamp to get there; and in any case, it seemed far too far from the house. If, however, your average private security guard was a thorough bastard and had a dog sniffing about, well, then you’d be fucked.

I hopped the train back to Grand Central and took a subway to Union Square. I gave the dog back, using the pooping problem as an excuse. I donated fifty bucks to cover my embarrassment.

I washed the dye out of my hair and packed a rucksack with a week’s worth of pork and beans and digestive biscuits. Seven cans of beans, seven packets of digestive biscuits. Multivitamins. I bought some Marie biscuits for variety. I bought some water purification tablets and two plastic liter bottles. I bought a funnel with a connecting tube, so I could take a piss without moving. I bought a large bivouac bag and spent a day scraping it from emergency orange to white. I bought the expensive down waterproof sleeping bag and a pair of night-vision binoculars. I bought silk undergloves and thick ski gloves. I bought long johns and sweatpants and fatigues. I bought a stopwatch and binoculars that came with a tripod. I bought a snow camouflage jacket, a snood ski mask, a black wool hat, a black cotton scarf, and a wind-breaker. I bought two pairs of wool socks and a pair of cotton ones. I bought a flashlight and boots and, unable to find a knife I liked, I
sharpened a long screwdriver and bought a nice new Stanley box cutter. I bought two T-shirts, a sweat top, and a black sweater. I bought a notepad, pens, pencils, and plastic bags. I bought rope, duct tape, and thin leather gloves. On impulse I bought a pneumatic nail gun, but I didn’t bring it. I bought matches, a water can, a big bag of Peanut Butter Cups, and a toothbrush. Finally I bought a box of AA batteries, a Walkman, and an audio version of
War and Peace
. Some people think you should get listening gear or infrared body-heat sensors or motion detectors or a device for tapping into cellular phones, but then some people are fucking eejits.

The house lay on a quiet road, with about two acres around it. A house on each side, all three of them what in Ireland we’d call mansions. The lucky break was that opposite the house was a thick, swampy wood that eventually curved all the way down to the Hudson. I suppose the marsh was why this area hadn’t been developed. It was winter and the cover wasn’t what it would be like in the summer but still pretty substantial flora nonetheless. There were bushes and big old deciduous trees and some pines and because of the water and the muck it wasn’t the place you’d go for an idle walk or take the pet pooch.

Peekskill is up the river, past Sing Sing. It’s famous for being the birthplace of Mel Gibson, the scene of an important 1950s race riot and a 1980s sitcom. It’s also the home of Governor Pataki and a couple of 1930s socialist Utopian communities. Darkey lived quite near one of these communities but in winter almost all of its residents went down to Florida. So really there were very few people around and if you found yourself a convenient little bunker, established yourself in the cover in your bivvy bag, and coated yourself up with snow, you could lie unfound for weeks, months, or maybe even until the spring. Aye, I had to admit that it was a nice wee spot and the only drawback was that it wasn’t that near the house and you’d need at least a 12 × 50 pair of binocs or a telescope. I had the binocs only because they were less bulky.

Things had gone smoothly. Napoleon was invading Russia and having a wry old time of it. A couple of the main characters were dead and
this was a relief because I’d gotten a bit mixed up anyway. The lying up had been easy. I’d taken the first morning train from 125th and doubled away from the station and back through the woods. I established the OP in darkness and by first light it was snowing lightly and this made things pretty sweet. It snowed all week, and this suited me fine. Peeing was no problem and because of the cover, if I’d chosen, I could have even stood up to go, but I didn’t. Water was good too. I used the swamp and the snow. I had water-purifying tablets and with them there was a new development: a pill you put in that made it so that it didn’t taste of iodine; this was a terrific invention, and I felt very happy about it. The pork and beans were good too; I ate them cold, but I was warm enough, snug even, and most important of all, I could see a good three quarters of the house through my binocs.

A couple of times, I saw Bridget go in and out. My heart leapt and it was all I could do not to stand up and wave and let her see me. Darkey left and came back every day. He drove the Bronco; Bridget, the Jeep; when they went together they took the Jag. Darkey left early, came back late. He had two personal bodyguards and there were two more who lived on the estate and who came in rotation. There were also two servants: a man in his sixties and a woman about the same age. Four guards, that was all. I was surprised, but not that surprised. Darkey didn’t know for certain that it was me. It had been a long time since Sunshine’s death. No one knew where he lived and besides, he could look after himself, he was a big boy, hadn’t he proved that after twenty years on the street? It took me a full seventy-two hours to be sure of the routine and another three days to check it. I was all ready to go on the 23rd of December, but they’d gone out to a party and they hadn’t come back until early in the morning. I was worried about Christmas Eve, too. Wasn’t that also a party night? But by one
A.M
. the cars were still in the driveway and I was fairly sure they weren’t going anywhere.

Technically now, it was Christmas Day.

My batteries had finally died. I was three quarters of the way through
War and Peace
and finally getting into the book but if all went well I’d come back and dismantle my OP and sweep it over and take all traces with me to a dump somewhere. I could finish
W&P
on the plane ride to wherever the plane was going.

It still wasn’t quite late enough, but there was just enough battery
life to listen to the radio. I stuck on classical to calm my nerves. They were doing the nine symphonies and I had enough third-form German to switch off after
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
….

It was time.

I put away the Walkman and listened to the stillness of the woods.

I checked through the binocs again, but there’d been no change. The domestics had been given the day off and aside from Darkey and Bridget, only one guy was walking the grounds, three other guys in the house. The lights were out and you could assume that Darkey and Bridget had gone to bed. If the three men were in shifts, I guessed one other would be awake in the house. That’s how you’d do it, split the night into two. One man on the grounds and one man waiting by the radio. The other two would sleep until it was their watch. So hopefully there’d be only two people awake to deal with. That was all. Unless, of course, I’d been a complete idiot. But I didn’t think I had. Shifts would be the smart thing to do. Four guys, Darkey, and Bridget. Not one of them had thought to get a dog. Jesus. I mean, did they want to be murdered?

I put on my black sweater, boots, thin black gloves, and combat trousers. I pocketed the duct tape, screwdriver, and Stanley knife. I carried the Glock, too, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use it just yet. I left the OP and went to a closer spot where I could see the groundsman. There was a small window of opportunity because they did a radio check every fifteen minutes at night, which at least was something you could give them credit for. I spotted the guard. I walked around the hill, following him in his circuit. I’d tail him until I saw him do his check. I knew this character, guard B. His call-ins were irregular. I assumed he was a young guy. The earliest he’d done a check was thirteen minutes and fifteen seconds and the latest he’d left it was seventeen minutes and fifty seconds. He was in darkness, but I knew him and I was well accustomed to the night now. He picked up the radio and called in and said something about it being freezing. He put the radio down and muttered to himself about the cold. I went quickly to the wall. It was eight feet high and topped with glass. Not a problem. I wouldn’t even need rope. I went up and over and lowered myself onto the snow on the other side.