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(BELFAST—JUNE 16, 7:45 P.M.)

The day has shed its skeleton and the dark is finding corners all over the city. It has taken until this time for the sun to finally dip behind the surrounding hills. A night of smothering blackness and a yellow moon. Stars beginning to show between the clouds.

Dusk is when Belfast really clicks. Fights. Murders. Burglary. A thousand calls about someone we’re doing over. Someone we’re lifting. Sober men rubbing their hands and performing with clear consciences wee jobs and the breaking of bones.

Not that it bothers me. I’m impervious. My story is that of the escape artist, the killer. It’s taken me a while but now I have momentum.

Children in front of me throwing footballs at one another across the street. Not much younger than Bridget’s child. That poor lost girl.

“My turn, mine.” “Is not.”

“Is too.”

I give the ball to the nearest kid, a redhead whose face is one big freckle.

“It’s her turn,” I insist.

The girls look up from their game and their dirty summer clothes. Glad that an adult has restored order.

“And can somebody please tell me where Brazil Street is?”

“Down there on the left. Are you looking for the Dove?” Red says.

“Aye.”

“It’s right in the middle of the street, the steps that go down,” her friend explains.

I thank the kids and reach the corner. I’m ready. I see a board above a small entryway with an arrow pointing to the basement. A neon sign that says “The Dove.”

I cross the street, walk down the steps, and knock the door. A big metal job that can sustain a petrol bomb attack or a police battering ram.

A man opens it a crack. A sleekit character with a reconstructed nose, no hair, paramilitary tattoos. Bouncer type.

“What do you want?”

“Here for the fight,” I say. “What fight?”

“Henry Joy McCracken.”

“Why didn’t you say so, come on in.”

I hear a heavy chain being unhooked and the door swings open.

“Two-pound cover,” the bouncer says.

“Ok,” I say, and give him a two-pound coin.

“Down the bottom,” he says, and goes back to reading The Bridges of Madison County.

Murk. A stink. A creaky set of wooden stairs. “Down these steps?” I ask.

“Aye, watch you don’t break your neck,” he says without looking up.

Carefully I walk down the steep staircase.

A lot of noise coming from behind a metal door. I push on it, go in.

A wall of cigarette smoke. Screaming, shouting, yelping. The aroma of defecation, blood, spilled beer, and sweat. A gloomy room with an arc light swaying from a concrete beam. From the noise, the fight must have already begun. A ring of about thirty men. I walk closer. A barrier of sandbags, sawdust on the floor, and two pit bull terriers tearing the hell out of each other. A brown one and a black one. Both dogs are caked with gore, the brown one’s ear has been ripped off, the other’s eyes are filled with blood. They’re tired and snapping at each other with desperate weary lunges. But it’s clear that no one is going to stop it. This is a fight to the death. I watch for a moment and then head farther into the crowd. Don’t want to stand out. Maybe all these men know one another.

A bookie comes over to me. Skinny character in a suit, tie, and chestnut wig. You can tell he’s a bookie even without the chits he’s carrying, because he has that wiry bookie energy and a hungry look.

“Wager?” he asks.

“It’s all over by the looks of it,” I say. He gazes back at the fight.

“Give you two to one on Danielle,” he says. “Which one is Danielle?”

“The bay,” he says.

There’s no point on getting on the wrong side of him, and bookies love marks more than anything in the world. I give him a tenner and he gives me a paper chit.

“Listen, it’s my first time here. Supposed to meet a mate of mine, Gusty McKeown, you know Gusty? Bit of a joker.

Whereabouts is he?”

“Gusty’s right over there,” he says, pointing to a tall, spiderlike man with a black bowl haircut and hollow eyes.

Just then the black dog falls on the brown one, sinks its teeth into its throat, and begins biting through its windpipe. It’s something I’ve seen lions attempt on TV but never witnessed a dog do. It’s awful. The brown dog’s howls are silenced and it slowly suffocates.

“You can’t win them all, sorry,” the bookie says.

“Should have offered me ten to one,” I tell him, to keep him sweet.

He smiles.

I edge around the ring of perspiring, heaving low-lifes and find Gusty yelling as the brown dog expires in a blood- curdling spasm. When the cheering dies, a man comes in with a snow shovel and scoops up the dead dog. Another man muzzles the winner and leads it off. A third man throws more sawdust on the floor. The crowd is buzzing with cathartic release and expectation about the next bout on the card. Mixed crowd of Prod and Catholic paramilitaries together—you can tell because of the tattoos. Maybe underground dog fighting is one of those cross-community schemes everyone is always trying to encourage.

The bookie, who seems also to be master of ceremonies, walks into the center of the ring and begins a spiel about the next two unfortunates.

“Gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed our pedigree tussle. Quite a performance. Now it’s a mongrel battle. Sparky is a wee fighter from Doagh, this is his first time in a formal competition, but let me tell you, I have seen this dog go on mutts twice his size….”

“Gusty…Gusty,” I whisper in the big lad’s ear. He turns and looks at me.

“Who the fuck are—”

I get real close, lift his T-shirt, and put the snub of the .38 against his belly fat. I grin at him for show and pat him on the back like we’re old mates. But I’m angry now. Those kids outside, all this, what’s happening to Siobhan, it’s finally getting to me.

“Gusty, listen to me, me old china plate, this is a fucking .38- caliber revolver and I’m going to blow your guts apart if you don’t tell me what happened to Siobhan Callaghan,” I say quietly.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

I push the revolver tight into his stomach so hard that it’s bound to be hurting.

“Gusty, I’m serious here,” I say.

The arc light swaying on the crossbeam swings above our heads and the bookie ringmaster catches my eye. The bottom halves of our bodies are blocked from him by the people in front, so he can’t see the gun, but Gusty has turned several degrees paler and it doesn’t look so good.

“Another wager, stranger?” he shouts over. A few men turn to give me the once-over. Have to reply fast.

“Aye, twenty quid on that thing on your head against any dogs you got back there,” I shout back and keep the revolver tight on Gusty’s belly button so he won’t try anything heroic. The crowd hoots with laughter and the bookie gives me a black look and goes back to his spiel.

I pull Gusty’s hand behind his back and twist it hard. Gusty winces. The bookie gives me another suspicious glance. That son of a bitch doesn’t like the look of me one bit, but he’s immediately caught up in a dozen wagers; while he writes them down, two unfortunate terrier mixes are led out on ropes.

“Who took Siobhan, Gusty? Where is she?” “I don’t know.”

“I’ll kill you right now, Gusty. I don’t give a shit what happens to you or me; tell me where Siobhan is and you’ll

live, don’t tell me and I swear to God I’ll fucking plug you in two seconds,” I say, looking him square in his dilating pupils

—attempting in that look to convey what a badass motherfucker I am, how little Gusty’s life means to me, and how easy it would be to let him die.

Gusty gets some of it but not enough. He’s still more afeared of them than he is of me.

“Gusty, I know you murdered Barry on the Ginger Bap. I know you’re working for the kidnappers. Tell me where she is,” I say.

The dogs begin ripping each other to shreds.

The room. The sweat. The stink. The bookie yelling. Me pushing. Gusty trembling.

And then just like that, a tidal wave of exhaustion ripples through me. It’s hard to keep this up. Hard to go at it hour after hour, day after day. Tired of all of it. This sordid wee place. People like Gusty. This whole town, in fact. Belfast with its surface changes. But these generations of old blue-white fat men have to die first for real change. Gusty’d be a good start.

“Ok, mate, you’re done, I’ve had it,” I say and make the mental decision to kill him just to see what happens. I squeeze the trigger.

Luckily, in a piece of telepathy or empathy, he sees exactly what I’m thinking and starts begging for his life.

“Please don’t. I don’t know where you get your fucking information, but really I don’t know a thing about that wee missing girl,” he says rapidly.

Make the present terror more incipient with a countdown, I tell myself.

“Ok, Gusty, it’s an old saw, but I’ll give you five seconds and then I’m going to shoot you in the kidney. One—”

Gusty’s no Braveheart. No one who goes to a dogfight is a bloody Braveheart.

“Ok, ok, fucking Jesus. Don’t shoot me, I’ll tell you everything. Don’t shoot me for fucksake, my wife just had a bairn.”

“I don’t give a damn if she gave birth to the bloody Messiah, now talk.”

“Ok, ok, ok, I’ll tell you everything I know, which isn’t fucking much,” he says.

To show that there’s a bit of quid pro quo in the transaction, I remove the gun from his gut but I keep my hand as close to his belly as if it were J.Lo’s arse.

Time must have passed because two more dogs begin ripping each other to shreds and it occurs to me that we seem a wee bit suspicious standing here stock-still, whispering.

“Go on, my son,” I yell when one of the dogs bites the other on the bridge of the skull.

“Cheer the dog,” I tell Gusty. “Kill the fucker,” he yells.

“Ok now, Gusty, you better talk; I’m like Doctor Kevorkian, no fucking patients left,” I say.

“Ok, yeah, I helped top the kids. It was ugly. I didn’t do the actual killing. A boy from County Down did it. Bangor, I think. I didn’t know him. He was working for an outfit from out of town. I swear I didn’t kill them boys.”

“I don’t give a shit; what was your partner’s name and who was he working for?”

“All I have is the name, that’s all I know, I wasn’t involved. I swear it.”

“Give it.”

“Slider McFerrin.” “Address?”

Sweat on his forehead. His eyes darting from side to side.

“I don’t know. He’s from Bangor. I didn’t know he was a player. I had no idea it was to do with Bridget Callaghan’s daughter.”

“There was no girl on the Ginger Bap?”

“Fuck no, I would have told Seamus if I’d thought there was more to it than a wee hit.”

A fake smile of reassurance over his pallid face. “What exactly did Slider say to you?” I ask him.

“First of all, Slider heard about me as a man who could get him guns. He needed guns. He said he was working for a serious hard-men outfit from over the water and he was coming into a big score on June sixteenth and I’d get a cut of it if I could get him all the weapons he needed.”

“And?”

“I said no problem, for the right dough I could get him anything.”

“Where did the kids come in?”

“Well, after I said I could get him the guns, he wanted to know if I’d be willing to help take care of one of his boss’s enemies. Kid called Barry, who was a drug dealer working for Seamus Deasey.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him it would be tough, you’d have to sweeten Seamus; and Slider says, there’s ten gees to kill Barry, ten gees for the guns, ten gees to sweeten Seamus, and ten gees for me to keep my mouth shut.”

“You couldn’t say no to that, could you?” “No.”

“What next?”

He gulps, tilts his head to the side, takes a breath.

“I got the guns from Seamus; they wanted Pechenegs, big Russian jobs, handguns, silencers, the works. I paid Seamus

off, had to tell him about Barry, but he knew to keep mum; it was a big score for him and he didn’t want to pass the cut on to Body O’Neill.”

“And then you killed Barry and his mate?”

“No, no, I didn’t touch them. I just showed Slider where the boat was and helped him out. He shot the Scottish lad, but he had to question Barry first to make sure he hadn’t blabbed.”

Another fake grin. “Then what?” I ask.

“That was yesterday. He gave me half my score. The rest tomorrow by FedEx when he gets the big money. Haven’t seen him since then.”

“And you knew nothing about the kidnapping?”

“Not a thing. Slider’s a hard case and says if I ask any questions or breathe a word, no kneecapping, no Belfast six- pack, but instead a bullet in the neck from those over-the- water types.”

“Better not be lying, Gusty,” I say.

“It’s fucking gold, so it is. I swear it.” I nod.

I know with a dead certainty that Gusty is lying through his teeth. He didn’t stand idly by while Slider topped those two lads on the boat. It’s more likely that Slider is the middleman and Gusty iced them. He certainly helped. Whether he’s deeper in the kidnapping than this I don’t know, but somehow I doubt it. Probably hired him for this one job. Doesn’t seem like a criminal mastermind. The real person I need to speak to is Slider McFerrin.

“Slider told you nothing about these over-the-water players?” “Nothing. He was keeking it, no way he was saying.”

“I swear to God, Gusty, if you’re keeping anything back, you’re fucked. Slider and Barry are mixed up in the

disappearance of Bridget Callaghan’s daughter. Bridget’ll fucking kill you and Seamus’ll fucking kill you and O’Neill will kill you.”

“I don’t know anything about any kidnapping. This was just a wee job. Guns and a hit. That’s all,” Gusty says.

“Whereabouts in Bangor is this Slider fella?”

“I don’t know. He let it slip he was from Bangor, but he wasn’t saying. I don’t know any of the hoods from Bangor, but you could ask around.”

I grimace and take a step away.

“You keep your trap shut until the girl’s back with her ma. Understood?”

“I understand.”

He nods at me and I begin making my way through the throng. What next? Up the stairs, out into Belfast, somehow get to Bangor. A town about fifteen clicks away in northern County Down. Make sure I call the cops about that murdering bastard Gusty, although that can wait until after midnight too.

Never turn your back.

It’s an old lesson and a good ’un.

“He’s a fucking peeler,” Gusty suddenly screams at the top of his voice. “He’s a fucking undercover. Get him.”

Like in a club when a drunk falls into the DJ’s turntable, the noise in the room immediately ceases. Even the dogs stop killing each other for a second.

I run for the stairs. I don’t make it.

Two men immediately on top of me hammering punches into the side of my head. I thump one off. The other tries to butt me in the nose, misses, and smashes me in the forehead. I stick a fingernail in his right eye and kick him away. But it’s too late now and the rest of the room is running over. A couple of

punches and then an aluminum bat smacks into my ribs. You know you’re in trouble when someone produces a baseball bat. Baseball isn’t played in Ireland. Men who carry baseball bats for a living are professional skull smashers. Another bat crashes into my legs. I go down yelling. A kick lands on the side of my head. More kicks in my ribs. I see the glint of a knife. Baseball bats and knives. Well, that’s it then. They’re not messing about, they’re going to kill me. An undercover cop, fair game in their eyes.

The bat comes down heavily a couple of inches from my head, breaking someone’s foot instead. A kick just misses getting me in the balls. But someone succeeds in stamping on my chest, knocking the wind out of me.

And finally I manage to pull out the revolver.

I shoot someone in the leg and someone else in the gut. Both men fall to the floor with heavy thuds, too shocked even to yell.

The kicking stops, the men freeze for a moment. I fire into the ceiling. The attackers take a step back.

I am badly hurt and I realize immediately I’ve a window of only a few seconds before I’ll pass out. Blood is pouring into my mouth, my head’s pounding. I get to my feet. Almost fall, steady myself.

“I’m not a fucking cop,” I say and swing the pistol around wildly, pointing it at various individuals. They’re scared now, ready to believe me. “Gusty owes me ten grand, I’m his collector.”

They turn to look at our old pal.

Need to further concentrate their minds. I shoot him in the crotch. He falls to the ground, screaming.

“Next person to fucking look in my direction is off to the fiery pit,” I tell them.

I shamble-run to the stairs. The doorman blocking my path. I shoot him in the left thigh, push past him, and scramble up the

steps. The mob boiling behind me, debating whether to follow me or not. Am I a cop? Am I not? A confusion in the stories and the fact that I still have a gun. I have one round left. One for any one of them.

I open the metal door and run into the street. Down one alley, then another, losing myself.

Losing myself.

The blood pouring out. My head throbbing.

Pain mounting.

Those flashing lights again. Take a look back, no pursuit.

Another alley. I slip, fall into a pile of garbage cans. Aye, that’s me. In the goddamn rubbish. At home here. In Belfast.

In Dublin.

And back.

I fall way back.

Across countries. Oceans. Years. Lima.

Los Angeles.

Farther.

All the way to a cold January in the Bronx, where my mind wants to take me for reasons that I don’t get now but I’ll understand by midnight.

Tsssfffff…We came running down the lane, between the railway tracks and the security fence. A red number 2 train approaching and Andy afraid that we were going to be sucked

over onto the line the way Goldfinger got sucked out of the plane in the Bond flick.