Paramol. I find a bottle and run a finger along the instructions.
‘Fuck the dosage!’ howls Zeb. ‘Give them all to me.’
Not happening. In Zeb’s state he would chew those things until his heart went asleep.
I pop the bottle, shake out a double dose and Zeb eats them out of my hand like a pony chewing sugar lumps. By the time I’ve torn the tape from his wrists, my restored friend is enjoying a little chemical calm.
‘Where were you, man?’ he sobs, then finishes with a jagged giggle. ‘I’ve been broadcasting. Sending out signals. Holding complete conversations with you. Couldn’t you hear me call?’
I didn’t hear shit, says Ghost Zeb.
‘I heard you, brother,’ I say. ‘I’m here. Now you’ve got to tell me what you did.’
‘I stayed alive. That’s what I did. Not proud, but I did it.’
I shake him gently. ‘What did you do? Come on, Zeb, tell me.’
Zeb blinks like he’s about to nod off. ‘I did Mike Madden’s hair. Like I did you, Dan. Sweet set of transplants.’
Hair transplants! No way. Not all this.
‘Asshole’s paranoid, let me tell you. Brought in students from China to assist, so they wouldn’t know who he was. Little hands they had, did lovely work. In six months you’ll never know. Mike will have a head of hair that would make Pierce Brosnan crap himself.’
Time is a-wasting. ‘Lovely work. Great. So what’s the problem?’
Even with a mashed face Zeb manages a guilty expression. ‘It was an opportunity. I couldn’t pass it up.’
From outside, ‘Two minutes, McEvoy. You better pull the rabbit out of the hat, laddie.’
Zeb chuckles. ‘Laddie. Always with the laddie. You Irish, all retards.’
‘What opportunity? Zeb, these people are going to kill us.’
‘Not you, Dan. Not you, my big pet Schwarzenegger. I bet you’ve fucked up a few of them already.’
He has a point. ‘Maybe. But why are they after me, Zeb?’
Zeb studies the blood on his fingers; no clue where it came from. ‘I told Mike I filmed the procedure. Said I’d put it on YouTube. The Irish in New York would piss themselves. You should have seen him during the operation: big baby cried like a . . . baby. Wouldn’t let me smoke or anything.’
‘That is unbelievable.’
‘I know,’ said Zeb thickly. ‘I’m always careful with the ash.’
‘Not the cigarette. You tried to blackmail a crime lord?’
‘Hardly a lord. What has he got, like a dozen men? Only twenty grand, that’s all I asked for. Twenty grand to destroy the disk. ’S a bargain.’
‘But there was no disk.’
Zeb hiccups and blood rims his gums. ‘Course fucking not. Do you see any cameras? It only occurred to me later.’
I grit my teeth. ‘And when did you tell Mike that I had the disk?’
Zeb wheels himself backwards. ‘Two days, Dan. For two days I swore that it was all a lie. Two fucking days with the teeth-punching and the head-banging against the wall. Some fucking warehouse in Ackroyd. There’s pieces of me all over that shithole.’
‘Then you told Mike that I had it.’
‘Yeah, I said that.’ Zeb’s chin drops to his sternum. ‘What else could I do? You’re a tough Irish motherfucker, Dan. I knew these whiskey gangsters couldn’t drop you. No way. You’d kill them all and save me. It was my only hope.’
This is a lot of talking for a man with broken bones and missing teeth, and Zeb collapses into a spasm of wet coughs.
‘Idiot,’ I shout at his shuddering frame. ‘For eight hundred years all we Irish have had is our pride, and you try to strip it away from a dangerous man.’
Zeb spits blood and a tooth. It sits like an iceberg in the sunset sea.
‘A mistake, Dan, I see that now. But don’t let me die here. Work something out. Play the Celtic card.’ Zeb is crying, wringing his hands.
The Celtic card. I do have one up my sleeve. Maybe.
The front door booms as a forearm is repeatedly bashed against it. Lights flicker with the force. I’m guessing that the five minutes are up.
‘To hell with both of you,’ calls Irish Mike Madden. ‘To hell in flames.’
Orange flickers beyond the blinds. Could be a cop car; more likely a makeshift torch. Mike is going to burn us out.
I rack my brain for the thread of an idea. Something to reel sanity back in. Nothing. Just more lunacy.
Concentrate really hard and teleport. Dig an underground tunnel. Call the cops.
‘Brite-Smile,’ says Zeb.
Bright smile? Or Brite-Smile. Of course. Go through the dentist’s where I deposited Steve. I’m a little embarrassed that a punch-drunk surgeon came up with that before me.
I take two steps towards the jagged hole before the breeze chills the sweat on my forehead. There’s someone in there.
Then a voice. ‘Steve’s out cold. McEvoy took his gun.’
Steve? No way.
Irish Mike calls from outside: ‘We got the exits covered, McEvoy. You try to run and you’re dead.’
Maybe on my own I could make it, but not hefting Zeb.
I tap a finger on my temple, trying to focus. ‘Okay, Mike. You win. Let’s talk.’
Close quarters is my speciality. But I need to get them close before I can be special.
Irish Mike mulls this offer over for a minute. ‘Very well, laddie. Throw Steve’s gun next door, and your shoes too, then go stand in the corner.’
Shoes? What’s that all about? What does he think, I’m a sole ninja?
I toss the Colt through the hole, and my boots, then traipse into the corner behind Zeb, feeling like a naughty schoolboy. I bet Mike would be an arsehole to work for.
‘Pussy,’ says Zeb, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘I held out for two days.’
If his ear was no
t crusted with blood and mucus, I would smack it.
‘You shut up or pass out and let me handle this.’
‘Yeah, maybe you can take off your pants. That’ll teach ’em.’
Zeb never lets up. At least when he was in my head I didn’t have to look at him.
And that is my best friend. Christ.
Irish Mike comes in the back door, flanked by two of his lieutenants. One is hobbling and the other is sporting a nose that wouldn’t look out of place in a boxing ring. Mike himself wears a sunburn of anger. A little less cocky, though, I think. They shuffle slowly forward through the blood tracks and the supplement boxes, never taking their eyes off me. A third heavy appears at the hole in the wall, squinting down the barrel of a machine pistol.
Mike swallows and gags. ‘You prick,’ he says, gingerly massaging his throat. ‘Who hits people in the neck? What kind of person are you?’
I don’t answer. What’s the point?
After a minute’s scowling, Mike is done feeling sorry for himself.
‘I’ll live, I guess.’ He lights a cigarette with a long wooden match, sucking hard, bending the flame. ‘So, McEvoy, where’s the disk?’
Zeb is whimpering softly; maybe he has the right idea. There are three criminals pointing weapons at us and I don’t have any good news for them. We are flanked in a small room with no hope of escape except if these people are sufficiently dim to relax their guard again.
‘Here’s the thing, Mike. There is no disk. Never was.’ I can’t resist rapping Zeb’s crown. ‘This gobshite tried to bluff you, then dragged me in when negotiations turned painful.’
Mike conducts with his cigarette. ‘Yeah, see that’s what the doc told me shortly after he told me there was a disk. So what’s true and what ain’t? I can’t tell.’
‘Trust me, Mike. I’m Irish. We’re Irish. I swear on the tricolour there’s no disk. This dick wouldn’t know how to use a camera.’
Mike reaches under his soft cap, scratching his head. ‘That’s touching, laddie, the Irish connection, but you know as well as I do that the Gaels have been cutting each other’s throats for centuries. It’s gonna take more than that. So what else have we got in common?’
‘We got that itch,’ I say, pointing a finger.
Mike whips his hand down like he’s been slapped by a nun. ‘What itch? What the hell are you talking about?’