The Big O (A Screwball Noir) Read online

  THE

  BIG

  O

  Declan Burke

  First published in 2007 by Hag’s Head Press

  First Kindle Original Edition, 2013

  Copyright © Declan Burke 2007, 2013

  The author has asserted his moral rights.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos ([email protected])

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or storage in any information or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher in writing.

  Praise for The Big O

  “Imagine Donald Westlake and his alter ego Richard Stark moving to Ireland and collaborating on a screwball noir and you have some idea of Burke’s accomplishment.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Declan Burke’s The Big O is one of the sharpest, wittiest and most unusual Irish crime novels of recent years … Among all of the recent crop of Irish crime novelists, it seems to me that Declan Burke is ideally poised to make the transition to a larger international stage.” – John Connolly

  “Carries on the tradition of Irish noir with its Elmore Leonard-like style ... the dialogue is as slick as an ice run, the plot is nicely intricate, and the character drawing is spot on … a high-octane novel that fairly coruscates with tension.” – The Irish Times

  “Burke’s the latest – and one of the best – bad-boy Irish writers to hit our shores … the dialogue is nothing short of electric. This caper is so stylish, so hilarious, that it could have been written by the love-child of Elmore Leonard and Oscar Wilde.” – Killer Books

  For Aileen, always

  ‘I asked him one time what type of writing brought the most money and the agent says, “Ransom notes.”’ – Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty

  Wednesday

  Karen

  In the bar, Karen drinking vodka-tonic, Ray on brandy to calm his nerves, Karen told him how people react to death and a stick-up in pretty much the same way: shock, disbelief, anger, acceptance.

  ‘The trick being,’ she said, ‘to cut back on their anger, get them long on acceptance.’

  ‘So you just walk up the aisle ––’

  ‘A side aisle. Never the main one.’

  ‘This is why I don’t see you coming,’ Ray said. ‘And you’re already wearing the bike helmet.’

  ‘Always. Visor down.’

  ‘Naturally. And carrying, it looked like to me, a Mag .44.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But you’re still saying “Excuse me?” at the counter?’

  ‘That’s so no one gets excited. Least of all me.’

  ‘So you’ve got their attention. Now what?’

  ‘I ask if they have kids. Usually they do. Most nights I don’t even have to rack the slide.’

  ‘Lucky me,’ Ray said. He sipped some brandy, watching Karen over the rim of the glass. Karen noting the gold flecks in the hazel that gave Ray tawny, tigery eyes.

  ‘I was aiming wide,’ she said.

  ‘You still fired.’

  ‘See it my way. You came out of nowhere. Snuck up.’

  ‘I was trying to get a strawberry Cornetto from the bottom of the freezer.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Then, I stand up, I nearly get my head blown off.’

  Karen had seen him late in her peripheral vision, the guy coming up fast as if he were lunging. So she’d half-turned and squeezed, dry-firing. It was over before he even knew it was on.

  Except what Karen remembered best was his eyes in the moment when he realised what had just happened. How they got clearer but stayed perfectly still. Karen, knowing he couldn’t see her face behind the helmet’s tinted visor, had been tempted to wink.

  Then the Chinese guy behind the counter said: ‘I just locked up. The money’s in the safe. All I got is bags of change.’

  ‘Gimme your wallet,’ she’d said, and checked the driver’s license for his address. ‘I know where you live,’ she told the Chinese guy, tossing the wallet back onto the counter. The Chinese guy shrugged, glanced at his watch.

  Outside on the forecourt, Ray standing there with his shoulders loose, eyes clear, a strawberry Cornetto in his hand, Karen’d said: ‘Fancy a drink?’

  And Ray’d said: ‘Okay by me.’

  Ray

  Karen had a place where she dumped the bike after a job. Ray said he’d follow on, catch her up at the bar. Now they were sitting at the corner of the L-shaped counter, Ray on the short leg of the L with his back to the wall so he could watch the door. Karen bolted down the first vodka-tonic, ordered another and a coffee for Ray. ‘So what do you do, Ray?’ she said.

  ‘I’m retired.’

  ‘Okay for you. What’re you retired from?’

  ‘Baby-sitting.’

  ‘You’re a baby-sitter?’

  ‘Not anymore. I quit. What about you, you’re a full-time blagger?’

  ‘Nope. Tell me more about the baby-sitting.’

  Ray caught a gleam in her eye, and they were nice eyes to start with. He wondered if he couldn’t get them to sparkle.

  ‘The guy I work for,’ he said, ‘that I worked for, sometimes he needs people held a while. I’m the one does the holding.’

  ‘Held?’

  ‘As in against their will. Sometimes people owe money and they’re in no hurry to pay up. Or you’ll have a job where an inside is needed, the guy who can access the security code. So you snatch someone he knows. Wives, mainly. Kids can get messy.’

  ‘And you take good care of these wives.’

  ‘No one’s ever complained.’

  ‘Nice job.’

  ‘You’re the one brings a Mag .44 to work.’

  ‘You don’t use a gun?’

  ‘Not always. Depends on the circumstances. Some people adapt better than others.’

  ‘I thought no one ever complained.’

  ‘Mostly they’re gagged.’

  Karen sipped some vodka-tonic. ‘So how come you’re retired?’

  ‘It was jump or be shoved. The Fridge checked out. A new shylock took over.’

  ‘The Fridge?’

  ‘The guy liked to eat.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘What happens every fridge,’ Ray said. ‘Bottom of a canal, punctured.’

  Frank

  To work with human flesh, Frank would tell his patients, to work in human flesh, is a privilege that allows a humble surgeon to aspire to the status of an artist. Moreover, the trust that existed between the artist and his living clay was unique. Michelangelo, Frank would say with a self-deprecating nod to the bust of the Renaissance master in the corner of his consultation suite, never had to worry about whether or not the marble trusted him.

  At which point the nervous patient - already dizzy with premonitions of needles, scalpels and the strong probability of public ridicule - would rush to assure Frank of her complete faith in Frank’s abilities, and Frank would reluctantly slide the release forms across his mahogany desk.

  Those were the times when Frank felt most alive. In control of his destiny, a man who was making that elusive difference.

  This was not one of those times.

  ‘You’re actually serious,’ he said, keeping his voice low with some difficulty as he leaned in across the cubicle table.

  ‘It’s foolproof,’ Bryan said airily, tapping imaginary ash from his unlit Ritmeester. ‘Ca
st-iron. Lockdown of the year, I’d call it.’

  ‘Okay. That much I’m not disputing. What I’m asking is, are you serious? Or are you, y’know, back dropping acid again?’

  ‘Jesus, Frank. Keep it down.’ Bryan glanced over his shoulder as he tightened the marble-sized knot in his tie. He hunched closer and put his elbows on the table, which caused his slender glass of Czech import to wobble precariously. ‘It’s all there in the small print, Frank. It’s not like we’re doing anything illegal.’

  ‘The whole fucking point is it’s illegal,’ Frank whispered hoarsely.

  Like, if it wasn’t illegal, why were they whispering in a remote cubicle of the Members’ Bar? Frank tried to remember if he’d ever strayed this far from the bar before but he couldn’t come up with a single reason why he might want to.

  He watched, fuming, as Bryan clipped the Ritmeester. ‘I ask you to, y’know, stop the bitch from crippling me, swiping everyfuckingthing. And this is the best you can do?’

  Bryan pinched a crease in his pants. ‘Relax, Frank. They were bound to find a loophole or two.’

  ‘A loophole? The pre-nup’s a fishing net, Bry. The guy’s pouring through every which fucking way.’

  Frank still couldn’t get his head around how Madge’s lawyer was on his case, working overtime the last six months, a labour of love, the guy coming on like red ants. Not for the first time, Frank was haunted by the spectre of Madge screwing her lawyer so she could screw Frank by proxy.

  Meanwhile, Frank was stuck with Bry the ex-hippy burn-out, this on the basis of Oakwood’s code of etiquette, which stated - as firmly as it was possible for any unwritten rule to state - that it’s bad form to cut any of your regular four-ball partners out of the loop.

  ‘I’ve told you already, Frank,’ Bryan said. ‘My hands are tied. Maybe if you’d told me about the pre-nup before I went into conference ....’ He winced. ‘Cigar?’

  Frank shook his head and began shredding a beermat. Bryan lit up, exhaled an acrid cloud. ‘The best bit about this deal,’ he went on, ‘is that these guys are pros. I mean, they do this shit all the time. It’s what they do. So if you’re worried about Madge ––’

  Frank snorted so hard he burnt sinus.

  ‘Okay,’ Bryan said. ‘So what’s to stop you? You’ve paid up on all your insurance premiums, right? And it’s all there in the small print. They’re the ones put the clause in, expecting you to pay for it.’ He puffed on the Ritmeester. Frank, practically salivating by now, swallowed dry. ‘So you’re entitled,’ Bryan continued. ‘All you need to do is get Doug to sign off for Trust Direct, extending the insurance until Friday week.’ He shrugged. ‘You don’t want to get Doug involved, you don’t want to go down the road of having Madge snatched, then fine. Just remortgage the house and nab the money from the bank instead.’

  Frank gritted his teeth. ‘We did that already, Bry. So Madge could move out and live up in Larkhill Mews, have a swimming pool out back. At the time, if memory serves, you justified it by saying maybe she’d fall in and drown.’

  Bryan, remembering now, nodded. ‘So you go with Doug.’

  ‘Bryan,’ Frank said, as patiently as any recently reformed smoker might while trying to dissuade his lawyer from proposing a major felony, ‘we could go to prison.’

  Bryan sniffed, tapped some real ash from the Ritmeester. ‘I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, Frank, but I’m professionally bound to tell you that you’re fucked. Screwed. Cornholed. The divorce’ll leave you with socks and jocks, and that malpractice suit isn’t going away either. I mean, even if you had it in writing, how that poor woman explicitly asked to look like Bob Mitchum, the jury’d take one look at those eyelids and ––’

  Frank waved for silence, put two beer mats back to back, began shredding. ‘Convince me,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s simple. Grab what you can now. Like I say, it’s all there in the insurance contract anyway. What’s to stop you?’

  ‘The cops?’

  ‘The big house or the poor house, Frank, who gives a fuck? I was you, I’d think long and hard about passing up half a million in cash.’

  Frank boggled.

  ‘I didn’t mention,’ Bryan said innocently, ‘that the indemnity’s for a half mill?’

  Frank swallowed hard.

  ‘Of course,’ Bryan said, tapping more ash, ‘I’ll be needing a finder’s fee. Ten grand, say. And the boys, the pros, they charge a flat fee of fifty large. But four-forty isn’t to be sneezed at. Tax-free, too.’

  ‘Half a fucking million?’ Frank croaked.

  ‘To my way of thinking - and this is just me, mind - five hundred gees is a lowball shot when you’re dealing with, y’know, someone’s life. But I checked it out and that seems to be the standard rate. And with the contract running void this week, it’d smell if we went fucking around now looking for more than the half mill.’

  Bryan fished a scrap of paper from his breast pocket and laid it on the table, ironing its wrinkles with the heel of his hand. ‘All you have to do is ring that number and ask for Terry. He’ll look after the rest. You just sit back and watch the green roll in.’

  Frank polished off his highball in one gulp, reached the number off the table.

  ‘Oh,’ Bryan said. ‘Just one more thing. The boys’ll need twenty grand up front, a good faith gesture. You can stretch to twenty grand, right? In cash?’

  Frank stared, owlish.

  ‘Not to worry,’ Bryan said. ‘In cases like this, and apparently it happens more often than you’d think, the boys’ll put up their own good faith twenty. And don’t sweat the vig.’

  ‘Vig?’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying. But for twenty large they won’t charge more than ten, maybe twelve points. Fifteen, tops.’

  ‘Points?’

  ‘Think positive, Frank. See the big picture. Half a mill.’ Bryan got up. ‘That’s a scotch, right?’

  As Bryan headed for the bar, the spectre loomed large in Frank’s imagination again: the lawyer humping Madge, his pinky finger digging into her belly-button, Madge lying back on the pillows laughing and smoking a Marlboro red.

  Frank gritted his teeth, tossed away the flittered remnants of the beer mats, put three more back to back.

  Karen

  ‘If you’re out of a job,’ Karen said, ‘how’d you fancy you and me hooking up?’

  ‘I don’t know. You always bring a gun on these jobs?’

  ‘Sometimes I bring a tickle-stick. It matches my eyes.’

  Ray pursed his lips. ‘Guns are bad juju. With armed robbery, you’re just asking for trouble.’

  ‘As opposed to, like, just kidnapping people.’

  ‘I told you. I quit.’

  ‘Lucky you. Some of us still have to earn a living. Want another coffee?’

  ‘No thanks, it’s crap.’

  ‘I’ve got some Blue Mountain back home.’ Ray just stared, not exactly the reaction Karen’d been hoping for. ‘It’s Jamaican,’ she said. ‘Pound for pound, the most expensive beans in the world.’

  ‘And this’d be what, like a date?’

  ‘It’d be a lot like a cup of coffee. Maybe, you behave yourself, some conversation.’

  ‘Conversation’s good.’

  ‘Not lately it’s not. So are you coming or what?’

  ‘Okay, yeah.’

  ‘Want to grab some beers?’

  ‘No, I’m good.’

  ‘You driving?’

  Ray nodded. Karen, slipping down off the high stool, said: ‘Impress me. What do you drive?’

  ‘An Audi. German import.’

  ‘Sweet.’

  ‘Although I should warn you, it’s twelve years old.’

  ‘Audi’s Audi. Listen, I have to use the bathroom. You want to wait here or in the car?’

  ‘I like the way you think I’ll wait.’

  Karen grinned. ‘I like the way you think you won’t.’

  Rossi

  Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan saw the light, got
religion, eight months short of a five-year stretch for armed robbery, DUI and resisting arrest. The only break he caught was when the judge directed that the three sentences should run concurrently, on the basis that all the offences occurred within a twenty-minute period that included Rossi’s collision with a motorway median strip, which happened roughly seven seconds after Rossi fell asleep on the back of his Ducati while doing 104 kph.

  But that was the only break.

  ‘My third jolt,’ Rossi said. ‘No remission. So here’s me, five strokes of the cane later.’

  ‘That’s rough,’ said the new guy, Ferret, sprawled on the lower bunk.

  ‘Nothing worse than justice,’ Rossi said. ‘Anyway, I get out in the morning.’ He handed Ferret the joint.

  Ferret had a toke. ‘So you’re saying you got religion from this Pat O’Brien guy. Who’s he, the padre in here?’

  ‘Angels With Dirty Faces,’ Rossi said. ‘Pat O’Brien plays a priest, Cagney’s this gangster. Bogart’s in there too. Anyway, at the end, going to the chair, Cagney pretends he’s yellow, starts screaming, all this. So the kids won’t think he’s such a hero type.’

  ‘And this is where you got religion.’ Ferret had another toke. ‘Stoned, right?’

  ‘On, I should mention, some serious fucking grass. Mostly the shit in here wouldn’t keep a nun in giggles.’ Ferret took the hint; Rossi accepted the proffered joint. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he said, ‘but I only got the movie out thinking it was, y’know, a blue someone’d smuggled in. I mean, angels with dirty faces, you’re expecting money shots, the works.’ He shook his head, disgusted. ‘I packed in the sex right there and then.’

  ‘I’m thinking, in here, that wasn’t as big a decision as it might have been.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Anyway, what O’Brien’s saying in the movie, to Cagney? That’s me from now on.’