Mickey Finn Volume 2, page 28
He checked his watch. Ten-fifteen. It wouldn’t be long. She was never late for anything.
He recognised her feet as soon as they appeared. The trademark leather boots under the flowing skirt and the delicate grace with which she descended, it couldn’t be anyone else. She entered the café, unwound her neck scarf and looked around. When her eyes settled on his, she froze.
“Rex?” she asked, as if she wasn’t certain it was really him. “Jesus, Rex.”
Justine stood before him, her lips twisting into a shape Skates couldn’t recall seeing before. He opened his arms and stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. He allowed his fingers to run over her ribs, counting them through the quilted fabric of her coat and finding there were as many as there had always been. He tightened his hug and her whole body began to move, shoulders bobbing as she sobbed into his chest.
The outpouring of emotion was more than he could have hoped for. It proved what he suspected – that she still loved him and wanted him back.
They remained rooted to the spot until a couple of customers needing to use the door headed their way. He manoeuvred Justine into the space by the coat stand to let them pass and kept her there until she became still.
When the crying stopped, he reached for her hair, the brown curls he’d longed to touch so many times in the past year. They were cold and soft and smelled of apples.
She pushed at his chest and he allowed her to take a step away, kissing her forehead while she fished around in her pocket. Her hand returned with a tissue and she dabbed at her cheeks and her nose.
“Let’s talk things through over coffee. See if we can’t sort this mess out,” he said, the mature voice of reason. They walked over to his table and sat facing each other.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I heard things were bad, but I had no idea they’d gone this far.” She looked him up and down and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Rex, I really am.”
None of this was in the script. Her voice was full of pity rather than admiration. Still, pity was something he could use to his advantage. Life, he knew now, didn’t follow the straight lines and neat paths drawn by logic. It was more like the rough streets he skated along. Places where you had to be ready to adjust. “It’s been tough,” he said. “You were the centre of my universe.”
And she was. When she left, he couldn’t fathom what had gone wrong. She wanted for nothing for the entire time they were together. He gave her chocolates every Monday to start each week and hand-picked bouquets to bring them to an end. They had Saturday sex and Sunday roasts, ate in the finest restaurants, saw all the touring shows and their home entertainment system was second to none. The BMWs she drove were replaced before ever requiring an MOT and her horse was stabled with an outfit that provided better accommodation than many a hotel.
The day she gathered her possessions to leave, she might as well have packed the sun in her case. Without her, the days were dark and lonely. Nothing made sense. He had no purpose and no desire to find one.
“Perhaps that was part of the problem.” She pushed her coffee to the side.
“It’s a gingerbread latte with skimmed milk, just the way you like it.”
“I’ve changed, Rex. I’m saving the planet. No eggs, no meat, no dairy.”
Course she was. “Maybe if you’d put as much effort into saving our marriage, things wouldn’t have come to this.” His chest rose and his nostrils flared. This was no good. He needed to keep a level head or all his hopes would turn into a rotten pile of mess.
“There wasn’t anything either of us could do. Neither of us could change, even if we’d wanted to.”
He recalled his old self and shuddered. The man she was talking about. The mundane, play-it-safe accountant who thought money was the currency of life. Someone for whom everything had its place and risk was something confined to board games and choice of wine. In hindsight, he could understand why she left. Which was why he had decided to do something about it. To reinvent everything about himself to get her back. And here she was, seemingly unable to see anything positive in what he had achieved.
“We could. I did. It wasn’t easy, but I managed.” He leaned back in his chair to give her the full view. He’d grown a beard, lost over a quarter of his twenty-three-stone mass and added piercings and tattoos to make it clear there was no turning back.
“You go to work like that?” The way she said it, the look of disgust as her eyes scrunched up, he wanted to reach over and grab her by the throat.
“I’ve taken a back seat. One of the perks of being the boss.” First thing he did when he came through his mid-life crisis was to allow his employees to take the strain. The move turned out to be a stroke of genius. Not only did it free up his time, income was up by twenty per cent. What was more, if they landed the contracts that were in the pipeline, they would have to move into bigger premises.
“That’s great. I thought the job was going to kill you.” She reached down into her bag, pulled out a large white envelope and removed a sheath of documents. “This is the reason I wanted to meet. It’s what we agreed. The wording’s just the way you asked, I promise. All I need is a signature.”
She held the papers out, the word divorce in the heading catching his eye and igniting old resentments in his brain. In no time at all, there was a forest fire raging in there. “No,” he told her, folding his arms across his chest and refusing to take them. He wasn’t giving in as easily as that.
“What do you mean? We’ve spent ages getting it right. Had the solicitor go through it all with a fine-toothed comb.”
Skates sat so far back in his chair that its front legs left the floor. He gave his beard a stroke and savoured the sensation of having the upper hand. Perhaps it was all going to work out just fine. “I don’t mean no, exactly.” He smiled. “Just not like this. I want you to be happy, you have to understand that. But I need personal closure as much as you need my agreement.”
“Closure?” Her head tilted to one side like a wary bird. “I don’t understand.”
Course she didn’t. “I want to meet him. This Colin bloke of yours.” The bastard. “Then I’ll sign anything you want.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” She sounded worried. “I know what you’re like. It’ll only end up hurting you more.”
He didn’t mean to laugh, but the irony exploded from his mouth before he could stop it. Colin would be the one feeling pain when they met, no doubt about that. “It’s a chance I’m prepared to take.”
“When were you thinking?”
“Tomorrow.”
She looked at her watch, a rather nice Chanel number he’d picked out for their anniversary some time ago, as if it would tell her how to answer. “Tomorrow’s Friday,” she said.
“I know.”
“And Colin usually plays golf in the afternoon.”
“Isn’t golf for squares and Tories?”
“It’s a way to network and get things done. Sometimes the ends justify the means.”
“Fair enough. So let’s meet at three.” Just to make it as awkward as possible. “I’m sure your boyfriend won’t mind missing a few holes to get this mess sorted.”
Justine slid the papers back into the envelope, stuffed it into her bag and zipped it closed. “Couldn’t you just have been nice?”
“I bought you a latte, didn’t I?”
She stood up, slipped the bag over her shoulder and stepped towards the door. “If he agrees, I’ll email you the address.”
“Thanks,” he said. “That would be handy.” Not that he needed it. He’d kept an eye on her since she left.
Even as she stormed through the café door and up the steps to freedom, there was still a grace to her movements. Nothing, not even a burst of rage, could change that. He watched her leave, full of admiration for the woman he loved and proud of himself for the way he’d stood up to her. He pulled her drink over to him. Took a sip through the gingerbread foam. The spice was delicious and the coffee divine. She really didn’t know what she was missing.
Friday, October 31: Kingfisher Mill
For the first time that day, Skates hesitated. His fist was poised at the door ready to knock while he thought things through. Everything he’d done so far was in accordance with his plan, yet surely he wasn’t really going to go through with it. Sanity might still prevail. There was only one way to find out. He rapped the old wood with his knuckles and stepped back, ready to discover what the future held.
The door opened to reveal a tall man in a bright-red pullover and yellow-checked trousers. “Hello there. Welcome to our humble abode.” It was a line he must have used with all new visitors and was no doubt delivered with the same quantities of smugness every time. There was nothing humble about their house. It was an old mill developed over centuries, the waterwheel dipping its paddles into the stream and spinning perpetually while ducks played on the pond. “I’m Colin.” He held out his hand. “You can call me Col if you like. You must be Rex.”
They shook, Col with the firm grip of a golfer, Skates with the passive squeeze of someone past caring. “They call me Skates,” he said.
Justine’s face appeared behind her man. “They?”
“The crowd I hang around with.”
“The less said about them the better,” she said, shaking her head.
“Now, now darling,” Col told her. “We’re not here to pass judgement. This is all about making peace. You’d better come in, Skates. The kettle’s just boiled.”
“Make sure you wipe your feet,” came the order from his disappearing ex.
It was a fair request – his boots were muddy from the long walk along the footpath through the woods – but the barbs in her tone suggested it wasn’t just the dirt she objected to.
“No worries, I’ll just take them off.” He knelt down, undid the laces and eased his feet out. Maybe she’d be impressed. Last time she saw him do anything like that, he no doubt wore himself out from the effort of folding his huge bulk and getting back up again. “And I brought something else, just in case.” He took off his knapsack and removed the pair of disposable plastic overshoes he’d taken from the swimming pool after one of his twice-weekly aqua aerobics sessions.
“There’s no need for that,” Col said.
“But I insist.” Skates reached down and slipped the covers over his socks, pleased to manage the operation without needing to hold onto anything while maintaining his balance.
“Then follow me.” Col walked along a dark hallway, Skates following and studying his rival.
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Chapter 1
Five people tried to hire Armand Cole to drive them home on the night he made his first kill. His employers gave him an old Ford Fusion, spray-painted yellow, a bogus number stenciled on the side, and a pizza-car sign on top with all the decals scraped off. Armand kept the sign unplugged to appear off-duty. That did not matter. With temperatures plunging, the only thing people saw was a yellow car with its motor running.
It never occurred to Armand that “off-duty” cabs only sat idling downtown near the hotels off Gotham Square. His only instructions had been to “blend in” while he waited outside Skip’s, a bar in Huron Junction, for the Super Bowl to end.
So, while he waited, he turned down would-be fares, patiently explaining to them that his car was not available, while slipping in questions about the old man. The fourth guy, a fat black guy in a Steelers jacket, said the old man regularly drank at Skip’s. Armand didn’t know much about Huron Junction, but he knew Skip’s was the only bar in the neighborhood with a gringo name.
The old man would be inside on his usual stool. All Armand had to do was wait for the game to end and watch for the old man to come out. Too bad, he thought, that the Steelers were up by six with just over two minutes to play. With the ball on Chicago’s twelve-yard-line, people were already streaming out of Skip’s and the other nearby bars, but Raul Carcinira was not one of them. The old man would wait until the very end, and maybe even beyond.
Then it happened. Pittsburgh’s quarterback, their overhyped rookie out of Rutgers, threw an interception in Chicago’s end zone, which Chicago ran back eighty-four yards. Risking his cover, Armand shouted “Go! Go! Go!” while beating the steering wheel. The Bears got the ball down to the Steelers’s sixteen-yard-line. They would come out of the two-minute warning running a no-huddle offense. Armand knew he had less than ten minutes.
Armand took the little .22 out of his pocket and checked the magazine. He slipped the gun into the door well and settled back in his seat. The old man would be out soon, long enough to finish his beer after the Bears put this one away. Somebody knocked on his window.
“Hey, man,” said a Hispanic man whose face was obscured by his parka, “You take me down to Serievo?”
“Off duty,” said Armand, glad he’d slipped the gun into the door well.
“I’ll give you twenty bucks, man. Had too many shots to drive myself.”
“Sorry,” said Armand. “My boss says no fares until the game ends.” When it was clear the man in the parka was going to push him on it, he added, “Bears have the ball on Pittsburgh’s sixteen with a minute to play.”
“Really?” The man staggered back across the street to Skip’s, nearly getting clipped by a MORT bus lumbering down Carnegie Avenue. The snow began as the game resumed. Chicago’s quarterback faked a handoff to the running back, found a hole in the Steelers’s secondary and ran the ball in. They were now up by two. Chicago decided to run the ball again for the conversion. Chris Collinsworth was freaking out, unusual for that white boy to lose his cool. Armand wished he was home watching it.
The Steelers began a half-hearted drive to get into field-goal range, but from the sound of the crowd and the commentators’ defeated voices, it was over. The Steelers had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Armand watched the door to Skip’s while mentally counting the cash he’d just won for betting on Chicago.
Five minutes later, the bar started to empty. Half the patrons would stick around, but not Raul Carcinira. His boy had arranged to pick him up within five minutes of the end of the game. The younger Carcinira was nowhere in sight. Right now, he was in a meeting with Armand’s boss, and Armand would provide the father’s transportation.
The old man emerged, dressed just as his son had told them—a dirty Ford cap on his head and a Cleveland Browns jacket that was too light for the Arctic temperatures outside. The snow had really started to come down now. Armand turned on the pizza topper light and made a U-turn in the middle of Carnegie.
The old man wandered along the sidewalk, looking for his son. Armand rolled up in an open spot and lowered the passenger-side window. “Hey, man, you need a ride?”
“I’m looking for my son,” said the old man, his Mexican accent thick. “He’s supposed to give me a ride.”
His eyes were unfocused. He did not beat his arms or fold them against the cold. He only shuffled around, looking for a car that wasn’t there.
“Your son Josè?” asked Armand.
“You know Josè?”
“Sure, man. He sent me. He had to meet a guy. I take you home.”
The man looked around for his absent son.
“Get in, man,” said Armand. “You gonna freeze your ass off out there.” The old man did not move. Armand reached across and opened the passenger door. “Get in, man. Heat’s good in here.”
Actually, the car’s heater probably hadn’t run right since Obama took office. It barely kept the cold outside at bay. Nonetheless, the old man got into the car and slumped into his seat. Armand pulled out into traffic.
After a couple of lights, Carnegie turned into St. Jakob, a winding series of switchbacks that descended into the river valley. Through the snow ahead, the lights of Monticello’s industrial district glowed orange. For now, the Fusion handled the slickening roads well enough. The city had salted the hell out of the streets and freeways. If all went well, Armand would be down on Pier 9 in fifteen minutes.
At the bottom of the hill, Armand jumped onto the freeway, took the next exit, and began climbing a huge yellow-arched bridge dubbed “The Big Mac Bridge” by locals. Officially, it was Francis Rooney Bridge, but it looked like a pair of golden arches spanning the Musgrave River.
“Where are we going?” said the old man, his head lolling from side-to-side now. “Why we going to Vodrey Heights?”
“We not,” said Armand. “We gonna see Josè. He down by the docks.”
“I want to go home.”
Armand ignored him and took the northbound exit to I-73, Monticello’s main interstate.
“Why?” asked the old man.
“Why what?”
“Why is Josè down by the docks?”
Armand said nothing. The snow had started to stick, despite the salt. He felt the car slide a few times, hitting ice patches. About halfway to the old port facility, the snow became blinding. He came up on Studebaker Avenue, a service road that crossed the Musgrave River to a warehouse district servicing the auto plants. The car was sliding regularly now. He was never going to make the piers intact.
“You work for Ralph,” the old man mumbled, “don’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Armand. It was now or never. “Josè gonna miss you.” He pulled the .22 out and shot the old man in the forehead.
Reaching across, Armand popped the passenger door open and shoved Raul Carcinira out. The car began sliding again as Armand pulled the door shut.
