The Whore-Mother Read Online Free PDF

his thoughts well enough. They were like animals tasting the moving air, fearful always of treachery, dissent, doubt, and they dealt with them or with what they suspected with the paranoid ruthlessness of gnawing insecurity. Sidelong he watched the tent peak in Callaghan’s jacket and lifted the gun to his knees.
    The street was crowded. Some idle walker was about to die because men who killed with ease and without conscience wanted to examine the state of his mind. He put his hand through the hole in the canvas bag around the gun, released the safety, and curled his finger on the trigger. His back was tight in the corner of the back seat. There was no finesse in this sort of thing. The window was down. He had to press hard against the door behind him, use the gun as an extension of a pointing left arm, and squeeze for one quick burst. That, or sit under Callaghan’s gun till they got him to the edge of town. Then they would kill him. They would tell him they were sorry, but it was for “Ireland One Nation, and this is no time for treachery.” They were haunted by treachery.
    He wanted to live. The yearning to live burned in his chest like oncoming indigestion.
    â€œThe Boyne Water,” he said. His throat was rough and tight. The pub was three hundred yards ahead, on their left, and only a quick jump from the right turn that gave them a short run along Northumberland and back into the Falls. There were always lounging corner-boys on the corner of Agnes Street. There was nothing in his head.
    He could see The Boyne Water a hundred yards ahead. There were half a dozen young men leaning against the building on the corner. If it had to be them or him, it would be them.
    â€œGo,” he said, and Powers whipped the car out of its line of traffic and back again, ahead of three obstructing cars. In his corner-eyed vision, McManus saw a scruffy shambling figure step out of the front door of the pub. There was a clear line of fire to the wino and the men on the corner were covered by women walkers. He lifted the gun, put his burst into the blocked doorway where the drunk stood looking foolishly about him, his limp hands dangling chest high. The gun dropped to the floor, the car seemed to lift its front end off the ground, and McManus, facing across the seat, was heaved forward on his face as Powers took it into the right-hand turn, weaving and roaring in second through the traffic into the Falls. There wasn’t time for the sounds of the street to be rearranged by a scream. All McManus saw was the drunk lurching backwards into the doorway as if he had been pushed. That was all. There wasn’t time to see him fall. Killing was so easy.
    â€œOne bloody drunk,” Powers said.
    They got off the Falls Road into the little streets at a discreet speed and stopped at their front door. “Clean the gun,” Powers said, and took the car away to be dumped. Clean the gun. First things first. He was a wino, McManus assured himself. He looked like a wino, he said. I think he looked like a wino, he told himself, and cleaned the gun while Callaghan watched him curiously.
    â€œThe fuckin street was packed and you pick one bloody drunk,” Callaghan said, and spat into the range.
    Killing a wino in the street—if he was a wino—wasn’t a small thing, but then, neither was a shot in the back of the head. And he had after all picked the wino, if he was a wino. His line of fire was blocked to the men on the corner of Agnes Street by women and families walking. Killing them would have been better political provocation than a miserable wino, but his own life had to be lived after it was saved. He couldn’t shoot them. But the drunk wasn’t enough. They’d both made that clear. A kind of throw-away? A lame evasion? “One bloody drunk.” Powers was away reporting. He knew that. They sent men on operations to test a suspected failure of nerve or loyalty. If it was only nerve, they