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  He watches now as Bartok traces the point of the icepick down the face of Rocca. Onto his neck. Then down his torso. Doyle listens to the scraping sound it makes.

  ‘See here?’ says Bartok. ‘Four holes, though not the best grouping in the world, Doyle. The slugs are still in there. Your bullets. From your gun. The cops would know that, wouldn’t they? I mean, if I was to give them Rocca’s body here and they took a look inside, they’d be able to figure out who did it, wouldn’t they?’

  Doyle has always dreaded this day. Last Christmas, Bartok told him he had Rocca’s body. Told him, too, that one day he would come back to Doyle for a favor. As the months came and went, Doyle started to believe it was a bluff. He almost convinced himself that Bartok had dumped the corpse.

  But no. Here it is. Bartok kept it. Put it on ice, literally. And now he’s found a reason for using it as his bargaining chip. Doyle is no expert on ballistics, but he knows that discharged bullets bear rifling marks unique to the weapon that fired them. If the tech guys get to the bullets inside Rocca, it won’t be long before Doyle is fingered as the owner of the gun involved. Especially if someone like Bartok helpfully points them in that direction.

  ‘What do you want, Lucas?’

  Bartok smiles again, and his grin seems even more malevolent below those unruly pupils of his.

  ‘Anton Ruger.’

  ‘Who’s Anton Ruger?’

  ‘Piece of shit used to work for me.’

  ‘Used to?’

  ‘Yeah. We didn’t see eye to eye.’

  Another cue for a wisecrack. Doyle is starting to think Bartok is acting the straight man on purpose, just to test him. He lets it ride. He’s decided he wants to get out of here alive.

  ‘What’s your beef with him?’

  ‘He’s got something belongs to me.’

  Bartok steps back to his desk. He flips open a folder that’s lying there, then takes out a large photograph and hands it to Doyle. The photograph shows Lucas Bartok and his brother, Kurt, posed at a desk. Kurt is smiling into the camera. It’s hard to tell what Lucas is looking at. He could be checking his watch for all Doyle knows.

  ‘Ruger’s got your brother?’

  ‘You know, Doyle, that’s some fucking mouth you got on you. Cut the clown act before I shove this icepick up your ass, you get me?’

  Doyle returns his gaze to the picture. ‘All right, so what am I looking at?’

  ‘Our hands, dick-brain. Look at our fucking hands.’

  Doyle looks. The siblings are sporting matching rings. They’re garishly huge, and shaped into a letter B. At the center of each curve of the letter is a large sparkling gem.

  ‘Solid platinum,’ says Bartok. ‘And those rocks? Diamonds. We bought them for each other.’

  Doyle can almost swear he hears Bartok’s voice catch as he says this. Very touching, he thinks. Or at least it would be for normal brothers. With Bartok, this uncharacteristic display of sentimentality makes him seem even more deranged.

  ‘Very nice. I’m lucky if I get socks.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a nobody, Doyle.’

  ‘Thanks for the confidence booster. And what do you want this nobody to do?’

  ‘When Ruger left my employ, he didn’t go empty-handed.’

  ‘He took your ring?

  ‘You catch on fast for a dumb mick cop.’

  ‘You should put in an official police complaint. We take that kinda thing very seriously.’

  ‘This here is my police complaint. And I know you’re gonna take it deadly serious.’

  ‘Meaning what? What is it you’re asking me, Lucas?’

  Bartok leans forward. He has the icepick out in front of him, its tip pointed directly at Doyle.

  ‘What I’m telling you, Doyle, is that you’re gonna kill this fucking piece of crap.’

  Doyle stares at Bartok for several seconds.

  ‘Okay,’ he says.

  Bartok flinches. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Sure. When do you want it done?’

  Bartok’s eyes rove even more uncontrollably than usual. His lip twitches. ‘Are you fucking with me, Doyle?’

  ‘’Course I’m fucking with you, Lucas. I ain’t killing nobody. Now are we done here? Because I got places to be.’

  He sees the look of sheer evil on Bartok’s face. The icepick is still aimed between Doyle’s eyes. He braces himself. Waits for the onslaught. Tries to figure out how he’s going to defend himself.

  But Bartok smiles. Not the most comforting of expressions when it’s worn on a man like this, but surprising nonetheless. Bartok steps away from Doyle. His smile develops into a low chuckle, then a deep-throated laugh. He looks across to his men, and they join in with the merriment. Nervously, it seems to Doyle.

  Bartok continues walking away. He steps past the rigid contorted figure of Sonny Rocca.

  And then he spins back to face Doyle. And as he turns, he raises his arm, the one carrying the icepick, and he lets out a huge angry roar and he brings that arm down again. Brings that icepick down. Sinks it handle-deep into Sonny Rocca’s skull. Doyle hears the crunch of bone. He winces. The laughter stops. Somebody sucks air through their teeth. Bartok releases his grip, leaving the icepick still embedded in the top of Rocca’s head. He’s dead, Doyle tells himself. It doesn’t matter. But still it hits Doyle as a shocking, senseless act of violence.

  And then Bartok is advancing on Doyle again. Coming straight at him, charging at him, fists bunched, teeth bared. And Doyle cannot read his intent. Cannot work out what those crazy eyes are looking at. .

  And then Bartok stops. He stops and he points at Doyle. He laughs again. He holds a hand against his paunch as he laughs, like this is the funniest thing ever. And again the men join in, but still it is not genuine amusement: it is a release of tension. Because everybody in this office except one knows that they are in the presence of insanity.

  ‘You should see your face,’ says Bartok to Doyle. ‘What a picture.’

  Doyle is the only one who isn’t laughing. He doesn’t find this the least bit funny. He finds the whole situation unsettling and scary in its unpredictability.

  Says Bartok, ‘I know you wouldn’t kill this hump. Don’t matter what goods I got on you, you wouldn’t whack somebody for me. I know that.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘My ring. I want my ring back.’

  ‘You want me to get your ring back for you?’

  ‘That’s what I want.’

  Doyle considers asking one more time whether he’s heard correctly. It seems such a mundane request, unrepresentative of Bartok’s fearsome reputation.

  Says Doyle, ‘What about Ruger?’

  ‘Ruger is nothing. He’s less than nothing. One day our paths will cross again and I’ll waste him. Until then, all I want is what belongs to me.’

  ‘Why don’t you waste him now? Get your ring back yourself?’

  ‘Because I don’t know where he is, dumbass. That’s why you’re here. You’re a detective. I want you to do some detecting. Find this cocksucker and get my property back. If it helps, think of it as returning stolen goods to their rightful owner.’

  ‘You really think Ruger’s still got it? I’m no expert, but I’d say a ring like that has to be worth a lot of money.’

  Bartok shakes his head. ‘Nah, he’s still got it. For one thing, I put the word out that I’m looking for it. Everybody who Ruger could possibly sell it to knows who it belongs to. Ruger tries to sell it, I find him. That’s the last thing he wants, believe me. Besides, what I’m hearing is that Ruger likes to wear it himself. His story is that it’s my brother’s ring, and that he whacked him to get it. It’s his way of trying to build up some respect. Anyone who would dare to cap one of the Bartok brothers has to be a real bad-ass, right?’

  Doyle mulls it over. Considers his options. Decides he doesn’t have any.

  ‘And that’s all you want me to do? Get the ring?’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like a walk in
the park, Doyle. Ruger, he don’t wanna be found. And if he hears you’re looking for him, he’s gonna try stopping you. He may be an asshole, but he’s an asshole with teeth.’

  Doyle thinks some more. Okay, so maybe it’s not such an innocent request after all. Maybe I’m underestimating the amount of danger involved in this operation.

  ‘If I do this? What then?’

  Bartok strolls back toward the gruesome seated corpse. ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I get my ring, you get the wop. You want, you can dig the slugs out yourself. I’ll make sure he’s nice and defrosted for you. You got till eight o’clock on Sunday morning. Drop it in on your way to church.’

  ‘Sunday? It’s already Thursday. No dice, Lucas. I need longer.’

  ‘Sunday morning. After that, I get rid of the body before it starts to smell. I’ll tie a ribbon around it and leave it outside police headquarters, somewhere like that, and you can start looking forward to your jail time.’

  Doyle looks at the sad spectacle of Sonny Rocca. Sitting there, all hunched up, with four bullets in his chest, a length of steel in his brain, and every cell in his body turned to ice. Could the guy be any more dead?

  Doyle sighs. ‘How do I get in touch?’

  ‘Sven will give you a number. You don’t call, then he comes looking for you. Don’t make him have to do that, Doyle.’

  Doyle stands. ‘You better keep your side of this, Lucas.’

  Bartok returns to the chair at his desk. ‘I told you. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Just make sure Ruger don’t scratch you first.’

  The four meatheads escort Doyle out of there then. It’s a relief to be away from Bartok, but he could do without this new mission.

  As he clatters back down the iron staircase he thinks, Don’t I have enough on my plate already? Now I have to go on a quest for a damn ring.

  Now I’m Bilbo fucking Baggins.

  ELEVEN

  Stanley Francis Proust sits at his table and stares at the man opposite.

  He doesn’t like bringing people back here, into his living quarters. The shop, fine. He can keep things professional out there. He can be in charge. But here, the presence of others always makes him feel defensive.

  He wonders what the man thinks of his home. There is nothing expensive here — Proust doesn’t make a lot of money and hey, we’re talking Manhattan rental here. The furniture is old and battered. The wallpaper is peeling in several places. The paintwork is faded and scratched. Proust has done his best to liven things up with some pictures and photographs and arty curios from charity stores, but he always feels that visitors can see through to the cheapness and nastiness that lurks beneath.

  The man’s name is Ed Gowerson. Other people may call him Eddie or Edward, but Proust will stick with the name that was given in the introduction. He doesn’t want to risk causing offense.

  Gowerson is one of those men who shave their head completely to hide their premature baldness. Proust guesses he can’t be much older than thirty. He is wearing a black sports jacket and a blue striped shirt, open at the collar to reveal a silver chain around his neck. He has incredibly square teeth, like a row of Chiclets. Unlike his head, his lower jaw is darkened by a pall of stubble that threatens to erupt from his face at any moment. If Proust were to make a tattoo of Gowerson, or even just a sketch, he would focus on that darkness and make a feature of it. He would echo it in the blackness of the man’s eyes. That is how he sees this man: a figure of intense shadow.

  Proust clears his throat, then wishes he hadn’t because it makes him sound nervous. Which he is.

  ‘You, uh, you want a coffee or something?’

  Gowerson shakes his head. ‘No, I’m good.’

  ‘A soda, maybe?’

  Gowerson leans forward and places his arms on the scarred wooden table. His shoulders strain against the fabric of his jacket. He is not a large man, but Proust guesses that there is a mass of muscle tissue rippling beneath that jacket. Proust glances at Gowerson’s hands, now lightly clasped together. There are no rings on his fingers, but his wrist bears a huge watch with lots of dials on it. Like one of those diver’s watches. Proust can imagine this guy at the bottom of the sea, pounding the shit out of a Great White.

  ‘Mr Proust, why did you call me?’

  Mr Proust. So formal. It seems anomalous in the circumstances.

  He clears his throat again. How to put this? How to be clear in such an unusual request?

  ‘You. . I mean, I heard you were good at this kind of thing.’

  ‘What kind of thing would that be?’

  ‘Hurting people.’

  There, thinks Proust. It’s out there. In the open. We both know what we’re talking about here.

  Gowerson stares for a while. ‘Yes. Yes, I am good at hurting people. But what I often find is that those who employ me don’t truly understand the nature of my work.’

  Proust wants to say, You beat the crap out of people. What is there to understand? It ain’t exactly splitting the atom. But he doesn’t.

  ‘I. . I’m not sure I get you.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say to you is that it’s not like on TV or the movies. You’ve seen those fights they have, where they go back and forth, back and forth, smacking each other hundreds of times until one falls unconscious and then the other one walks away with no more than a cut lip and a bruise? Well, it’s not like that. What I do is brutal and messy and it hurts. And sometimes people never get up again after I’m finished with them.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to kill anyone. Jesus, why are you saying all this? This isn’t what we discussed on the-’

  Gowerson holds up the palm of his hand. ‘All I’m trying to do is make sure you know what you’re getting into, okay? There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when a client starts bleating afterwards about how they didn’t know what they were buying from me. I will do exactly what we agreed. I won’t go beyond the boundaries you mentioned. Occasionally, however, things don’t always go as planned. A guy might have a weak heart or something wrong with his brain. It’s like there’s a bomb in there, and all it takes to make it go boom is something as small as a light tap to the chin.’

  ‘You’re saying there are risks involved.’

  Gowerson nods. ‘Is what I’m saying. You need to be aware of those risks. You also need to be aware that there will be blood and there will be pain. Now, are you still certain you want me to go through with this?’

  Proust wishes he hadn’t been asked this. He doesn’t want to be confronted with all this doubt and uncertainty. He doesn’t want to think about risks and ramifications. He thought he would just meet the guy, pay him, and the job would get done. Clean and simple.

  And so the upshot now is that he’s having second thoughts. Does he really want this to happen? Does he really want to unleash this Rottweiler of a man?

  And yet what choice has Doyle left him? Doyle will never let up. He has made that crystal clear. The man is obsessed. He needs to be taught that he can’t keep harassing people like that.

  ‘I’m certain,’ says Proust.

  Gowerson watches him for what seems like an age. Proust can feel himself withering under the man’s gaze.

  ‘All right,’ says Gowerson. ‘Then there’s just the little matter of payment for my services.’

  Proust gets up from the table, glad to be moving away from this man, if only for a few seconds. He goes over to a low bookcase and pulls out an envelope that he previously secreted between two science fiction novels. When he turns around again, he sees that Gowerson is on his feet. He is not tall, but he is imposing, and Proust suddenly wishes he could pass the envelope across on the end of a long fishing rod. His steps toward Gowerson are tentative, and his arm has a discernible tremble to it when he presents the envelope.

  ‘Once I take the money,’ says Gowerson, ‘that’s it. Our agreement is binding. There’s no going back, no calling me off. Think of me as a cruise missile. Once you launch me, you can’t pull me back
in. You cool with that?’

  It’s the point of no return. Proust considers pulling his hand back. Forget it, he’ll say. I made a mistake. I don’t really want to do this. .

  But he doesn’t do or say any of this. He can’t back out now.

  He takes a step closer to Gowerson. Puts the envelope right under Gowerson’s nose.

  Gowerson reaches up a hand and takes the envelope. He doesn’t open it. Just slips it into his inside jacket pocket.

  ‘It’s all there,’ says Proust. ‘You can count it if-’

  The blow comes from nowhere. One second Proust is talking, the next a fist is crashing into his jaw with the force of a sledgehammer. He feels something explode in his mouth and he reels backwards. He blinks furiously to clear his vision and sees Gowerson coming toward him, his fists clenched. Proust puts his hands up to protect his face, but then another blow smashes into his ribcage. He swears he hears his ribs shatter into a thousand pieces as the air is forced out of his lungs, and as his arms drop again another cannonball lands on his cheek. His head snaps back and forth like a punchbag in the gym, and now he wants to tell his attacker to stop. He wants to say he’s had enough, but he knows it will be fruitless. This is just the beginning. He knows this. He has signed up for this. He has handed over good money for this. And so the beating continues, and he continues to endure it. He absorbs blow after crushing blow, wondering when he will die or fall unconscious or simply fragment. He sees blood on his hands and on his clothes, and then he loses the ability to see because of the blood in his eyes — at least he hopes that is what it is and that he hasn’t been made blind. And when he loses the will to do anything but be a target he drops to the floor and curls into a ball and puts his hands over his head and listens to the thud, thud, thud as feet and fists pummel his body into mush. And while he does this he reaches a curious state of detachment. It feels to him as though he leaves his body, rising above it to watch as it is mercilessly battered. Pain leaves him. Fear leaves him. The experience becomes almost. . exquisite.