The Dead Yard Read Online Free PDF Page B

light. Tall, stooped, birdlike. About fifty. An old pro. The dangerous type. Sipping the

urine-colored Schlitz. Not nervous. Calm. Smoking Embassy No. 1 cigarettes, which I don’t think

you can get in this country, so that solved the nationality question. He caught me with my eye on

him and I looked past him to the barman who said:
    "There in a minute, mate," in the high-pitched tones of County Cork.
    I gazed about to see if I could ID the feds but it was difficult to scrutinize faces. Too

dark, too smoky, too many ill-lit spots. Loud, too, for such a small crowd. Keeping their voices

up to talk over a jukebox playing Black 47, House of Pain, and U2.
    I bit my lip. I’d check the crowd again in ten minutes to see who hadn’t touched their beer,

that would be a clue as to who was on a job or not.
    Ten minutes.
    Also my last chance to run for it. McCaghan was supposed to show up around six. ’Course, if I

scarpered it would mean reneging on my agreement with Samantha. Undoubtedly she would see that I

got shat on from a great height. They’d find me, eventually, and I’d be returned to Mexico to do

serious time.
    "What ya having?" the kid from Cork finally asked and he was so young, genuine, and nice I

couldn’t help but dislike him.
    "What doesn’t taste like piss in here?" I wondered.
    "You’re from the north?" he asked. Except in that Cork accent it was like "Yeer fraa ta

naar?"
    "Belfast," I said.
    "Yeah, I recognized it," he replied. "I wouldn’t try the Guinness if I were you. Get you a Sam

Adams, so I will."
    "Ok," I said.
    The kid went off.
    The assassin looked at me, nodded.
    "You’re from Belfast?" he asked, his eyes narrowing to murderous slits.
    "Aye," I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.
    "Me too," he mumbled.
    "Is that so?"
    "Aye, it is," he said. "Where ya from?"
    "My ma was from Carrickfergus. I lived with my nan in—"
    "Carrickfergus, like in the song?" he asked, suddenly interested.
    "Like in the song," I agreed.
    "Thought that was a Proddy town," he muttered, shaking his head.
    "Not all of it is Protestant. Whereabouts you from?" I asked.
    He put his glass of beer on the counter, lifted his finger slowly, and tapped it on his nose.

In other words, mind your own bloody business. Which would have been fine if I had initiated the

conversation, but he had, and now the big shite was making me look bad. Swallow it, I

thought.
    I adopted a
génération perdue
insouciance, which I think was rather lost on the hit

man so I relented and grinned at him as my drink came.
    "Slainte,"
I said.
    "Cheers," he said and turned away from me to scope the bar.
    Looking for Gerry McCaghan and his bodyguards. Not here yet, still only six minutes to six.

When they did show and he had a good angle, I knew the assassin was going to open his coat and

gun them with that big muscle job he had under there. Or at least he was going to try to. For

what he didn’t know was that the man who had met him at Logan Airport two hours earlier was a

stool pigeon working for the
federales
and had in fact supplied him with a weapon with

its firing pin filed down, not enough to raise suspicion, but just enough to render it completely

useless. Rules of evidence and lawyers being what they are, the FBI had to catch the assassin in

the act and as soon as he brought out that gun with intent to murder, the peelers were going to

order him to drop it and tell him that he was under arrest.
    Samantha claimed it was all pretty simple. The gun didn’t work, the assassin would be nabbed

immediately, the place was crawling with FBI. It would pan out perfectly.
    As perfect as Waco. As perfect as Ruby Ridge. I fidgeted with my shirt and trousers. Jeremy

had bought them for me at Portela Airport in Lisbon while I changed in the first-class lounge.

The white shirt was fine but the trousers were too loose. I had the belt on the last hole and

even then I feared that they would fall down at a