The Bloomsday Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

and a local boy was the hero.
    I told them I was registered under the United States Witness Protection Program and now I had to fly the coop on the first flight out. They weren’t down with that at all. But they also didn’t want to mess with the FBI.
    A signed statement, a videotaped statement, a fake contact address later, and I was all set to go.
    It was too late to get a reservation now, but I didn’t need to beg the airlines. I had a perfectly good ticket on the flight to New York. Bridget’s ticket. And from New York I could go anywhere in the world.
    It wasn’t exactly the safest thing to do, but it was convenient.
    The downside was obvious. Almost certainly she’d find out about the Lima fuckup and she’d quickly organize someone to meet my plane at JFK. They’d have my photo and maybe a threatening look or two but it wouldn’t matter a tuppeny shite because in New York I’d have the good old federales rendezvous with me and I’d disappear once again into the black hole of the WPP. Aye, and this time I’d go the full De Niro. Gain twenty pounds, dye my hair, move to bloody China.
    I checked in, boarded the plane, found my seat, relaxed. The movie they were playing was O Brother, Where Art Thou? which I’d already seen, so, there was nothing else for it but to tilt my chair back as far as it would go and try to get in an hour or two of kip. But even in first class that was practically impossible. You don’t come down from a gun battle just like that. I read Peruvian Golfer until it was chow time. A pretty stewardess gave me a dozen options and I picked the eggs and she brought me scrambled ones that tasted almost like eggs. We started chatting and one thing led to another and she gave me her phone number in the Bronx and if it had been Manhattan I might have kept it.
    We flew over Panama, the western edge of Cuba, the land of Johnny Reb, and touched down at JFK a few minutes early. As soon as the wheels squealed I called up Dan Connolly in the FBI. He wasn’t at his desk, so I dialed his cell phone and left a message.
    “Dan, it’s Michael F., I’m in the shit again. I know it’s a chore but I’m going to need someone to meet me at International Arrivals of the British Airways terminal in JFK. I just touched down. I’ll wait as long as it takes. You can reach me on the cell.”
    I hung up, found my U.S. passport, went through immigration, and forgot totally about the coca leaves in my shoulder bag. I panicked that customs was going to pull me over, but it didn’t, and I walked into the arrivals hall. Waited.
    Tens of thousands of people. New York City just out through the doors. But there was no way I was leaving the airport without my escort from the feds.
    Bridget, if she was smart, would have a couple of guys on me right now. Not that they could do anything in here. She had wasted her chance again. And she nearly had me going there with that cock-and-bull story about the kid. For the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was impossible that Bridget could have an eleven-year-old child. I would have heard, somebody would have told me. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I’d seen her in court when I’d been accusing Darkey’s confederates. She wasn’t in the dock, but I’d spotted her in the public gallery in that black suit of hers, giving me the evil eye. No way she’d just given birth. And besides, Darkey didn’t want kids. He told me and Sunshine that he’d adopt a hardworking Asian boy when he was in his sixties. It was a joke, but I didn’t see Bridget defying him by not taking her birth-control pills.
    No way.
    I was hungry and bored. I sauntered over to Hudson News and bought the Times, Daily News, and Post, joined the line of carbohy-drate lovers at Au Bon Pain. I ordered a big coffee, cheese Danish, sat down, and enjoyed reading the press in English for a change.
    Did the Tuesday crossword and scoped the crowd to see if I could spy out Bridget’s men. But the place was far