Collusion Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands scoured his eyelids as the city’s early rumbles and screeches seeped through his single window. He hoisted himself upright and dropped his legs over the side of the cot.
    The scarring on Fegan’s left shoulder itched, a shiny pink sun surrounded by the slashes of amateur stitches. He rubbed them with his palm, the layers of hard, cracked skin scraping the irritation away. Aches of fatigue rippled through his shoulders and arms as he stretched.
    Last night, just before knocking off, Tommy Sheehy had given him a message from the Doyles. They wanted to see Fegan at the site this morning. The summons had been gnawing at his gut ever since. He knew about the Doyle twins, both round-faced, cheery men. They were forever slapping their workers’ backs, making jokes, sometimes slipping a little cash in their pockets, winking, saying, ‘Get yourself a drink, son, you’re a good grafter.’
    And the workers would smile, nod, say thank you, and never look the Doyle brothers in the eye. The boys on the site talked over sandwiches and flasks of coffee. Fegan didn’t join in the conversations much, everyone knew he was a quiet one, but he listened. They said Packie Doyle fed a man’s liver to his dog. They said Frankie Doyle made another man cut off his wife’s little finger in front of their children. Fegan knew enough of hard men to know the stories were most likely just that: stories. The truth would be much uglier.
    He knew a killer when he met one. Packie Doyle stank of it, Frankie more so. They wanted to see Fegan at nine. The radio alarm clicked on. He slapped it quiet. Car horns and shouts rose up from the street, echoing between the high buildings.
    Fegan got to his feet, crossed his one room, and raised the blind. He pulled the window up, ignoring its creaking protest. September warmth flowed around him. The air in this old building was always colder and wetter than outside.
    Just two months he’d been here, and he loved New York. Never mind the miserable room he shared with mice and cockroaches. This city had no memory. No one cared who he was, what he’d done. He could walk through the crowds, as clean as the next man, his guilt buried. Until last night. Until the Doyles sent for him.
    ‘You’re Gerry Fegan from Belfast,’ Packie Doyle said.
    ‘ The Gerry Fegan,’ Frankie Doyle said.
    You’ve got me wrong,’ he said.
    The Doyles each grinned the same grin back at him, Frankie from behind the big mahogany desk, Packie from his perch on the windowsill overlooking the alley behind the bar. Plastic sheeting covered every surface to protect it from plaster and sawdust.
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ Packie said.
    ‘We’ve got you wrong,’ Frankie said.
    ‘My name’s Paddy Feeney,’ Fegan said. ‘I’m from Donegal. I showed your foreman my passport.’
    The foreman had no qualms hiring an illegal immigrant for the renovations. Most of the boys were illegals from one place or another. He’d given Fegan a day to prove his carpentry skills. He didn’t look too hard at the passport.
    ‘If you’re not Gerry Fegan from Belfast,’ Frankie said, ‘you’ll not be bothered that someone’s looking for a man of that name.’
    Packie said, ‘Someone’s willing to pay good money for the whereabouts of a Gerry Fegan from Belfast. They even sent out a photo.’
    Frankie placed a computer printout on the desk. It showed a man in his mid-to-late twenties, sharp, hollow features. The picture was at least two decades old, a police mug shot.
    ‘It’s not me,’ Fegan said.
    ‘Looks like you,’ Frankie said.
    ‘A lot like you,’ Packie said.
    Fegan looked at the young man in the picture. It made him ache at his centre. ‘It’s not me,’ he said.
    ‘We did some asking around,’ Frankie said.
    ‘Called some boys in Belfast,’ Packie said.
    ‘They said Gerry Fegan’s a mad bastard.’
    ‘Said he was hard as they come.’
    ‘Dangerous.’
    ‘A killer.’
    Both men had round heads like light bulbs, and thick bodies.