Cruel Mercy Read online

  “Good flight?” asks Alto.

  “No delays,” says McAvoy. “Humberside to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to here.”

  “Amsterdam, eh? Any time to enjoy yourself?”

  “I was only there two hours,” says McAvoy, not appearing to understand the reference.

  “When did you get in?” asks Alto, his tone breezy.

  “Into JFK a couple of hours ago. Taxi to the hotel, then I walked here.”

  “So there’s no point asking you what you think of our fair city?”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely,” says McAvoy, apparently apologizing for not being able to give a better-researched answer.

  “First time in New York?”

  “Near enough,” he says, pushing his hand through his hair and giving a twitchy little smile. “Flew through here years ago. Changed for a flight to Texas. Rugby team. I was still a student then.”

  “Texas, eh?” asks Alto, and tries to win McAvoy’s affection. “They say everything’s bigger there. Doubt they said that when they saw you.”

  McAvoy’s blush turns scarlet and Alto realizes he is dealing with a man whose shyness could well be a fatal affliction. He feels embarrassed by McAvoy’s discomfort and gestures toward the door so the bigger man has time to recover himself. Out on the street the cold hits Alto immediately and he winces in greeting to the uniformed cops leaning against the front wall, drinking coffee and speculating on the parentage of the firefighters with whom they are engaged in a bitter fight for parking space supremacy.

  “Sorry we couldn’t manage some better weather for you,” says Alto as he leads McAvoy down the sidewalk away from the precinct. “There’s a little place up here where we can grab a quiet corner and something that actually tastes better than the plate it’s served on. I can’t promise you the same in the detectives’ room.”

  McAvoy gives a nod of agreement. He walks comfortably enough on the snow. Doesn’t hunch inside his jacket the way most people do. His big strides seem to devour the sidewalk. Alto is no small man and is well used to the company of guys whose general size and shape would be best equated to kitchen appliances, but with McAvoy, he feels like he is walking beside a suddenly mobile building.

  “Cabdriver give you his life story?” asks Alto.

  “His name was Jack,” says McAvoy, looking across the street at an ugly housing project. “Been here since he was seven. Runs a limo firm but still drives cabs. Hasn’t been back to Hong Kong since he was nineteen but hopes to get there next year. Likes the Knicks. Has a cousin in London and wanted to know if it’s true that we all carry umbrellas.”

  Alto laughs. “Cabdrivers like that where you’re from?”

  “Depends whom you get,” says McAvoy, and Alto finds himself oddly pleased by McAvoy’s use of the word whom. “The stand-up comedians would have you believe that every taxi driver is a racist chatterbox with the social graces of a barnyard animal. I wouldn’t like to say. Cabs are expensive. I usually drive.”

  Alto notices that McAvoy has slowed his pace a little and seems mesmerized by the tall buildings across the street.

  “Not exactly pretty,” says Alto, nodding. “It gets more hipster the farther we go.”

  “It looks like Snakes and Ladders,” says McAvoy. He turns to Alto, his brow furrowing. “Do you have that here? The game with the ladders? And the snakes? All the fire escapes. We just need some huge dice.”

  Alto considers the building that McAvoy is looking at. He has never thought of it before but suddenly finds himself seeing it in the way his new acquaintance does. “We say Chutes and Ladders, but I’ll tell that to the guys,” he says, nodding appreciatively. “You must have an artistic soul.”

  “My boss would make a joke about being an arsehole,” says McAvoy.

  “Asshole, you mean?”

  “She wouldn’t say that. Wouldn’t sound right.”

  “She? You got a lady boss?”

  McAvoy nods. “She wouldn’t call herself a lady, either. Tougher than any of us. Best police officer you’ll ever meet.”

  “Can’t be easy when you don’t hate the boss,” says Alto, stepping around some garbage bags and feeling his feet slide on the hard snow. “Hating the boss is what gets a lot of cops through the day.”

  McAvoy considers this while mumbling a “Good evening” to two black youths in baggy sweatpants and puffer coats standing outside the liquor store and watching their curse words turn to clouds on the cold night air.

  “Nothing to hate,” he says. “And it helps that she saved my life.”

  “I Googled you,” says Alto tactfully. “You’ve seen some action, eh?”

  McAvoy turns his head away. He seems at last to be feeling the cold. He draws himself a little closer into his coat.

  “Where is it you’re taking me?” asks McAvoy, and his voice is a little colder, too.

  Alto points at the dark glass of an Irish bar. They are only a couple of blocks from the Seventh but already the buildings seem cleaner and the shops and restaurants more inviting. The cold weather has thinned out the normal nighttime crowd but there are still huddles of students, office workers, and intoxicated diners milling around. Alto pushes open the door and his glasses mist up as they approach the long copper-topped bar of Lucky Jack’s.

  “Nice,” says McAvoy, looking at the dozens of whiskey bottles and the gleaming silver beer taps. It’s dark and atmospheric and the lights dance pleasantly in the shapely bottles stacked up behind the bar.

  “You drink, I presume,” says Alto, saying hello to a large man with a green Mohawk who is drinking Guinness and reading the New York Post.

  “A bit,” says McAvoy. He’s studying the specials written in chalk on the blackboard by the toilets. “I’m intrigued by the hot buttered rum. And there’s a mucky hot chocolate that sounds good. Would you think the worst of me?”

  Alto wonders if the big man is joking. He works with men and women who drink beer and Bushmills. He gives a smile and turns to the young, handsome bartender, who gives himself away as Australian with his opening “G’day.”

  “A mucky hot chocolate for the big man and a Brooklyn for me,” he says brightly, and turns around to find McAvoy looking out the window at a bum wrapped in a sleeping bag in the doorway across the street. Alto barely noticed him. He was just a shape among the piles of hard snow and the uncollected garbage.

  “Thanks,” says McAvoy, taking the hot chocolate. Without another word, he goes to the door and walks out, crossing the street in six strides. Alto watches McAvoy deposit the drink beside the homeless man and gently place a hand on his shoulder. He talks to the man for no more than a minute, then makes his way back to the bar.

  “A lemonade for me,” says McAvoy, slipping out of his coat. His cheeks are burning.

  “And a lemonade,” says Alto to the bartender. He smiles. Gives a little shake of his head. “You looked like a massive Jesus, healing the sick,” he tells McAvoy.

  “A massive Jesus,” says McAvoy, and gives what seems to be his first proper smile in an age. “Don’t say that near my boss.”

  “You seem to love that woman,” Alto says with a laugh.

  “And don’t say that near my wife.”

  The two clink glasses and hunch forward on their stools, elbows on the bar.

  “Copper to copper,” says McAvoy, indicating the bar top.

  “You’re fucking weird,” says Alto, and grins, suddenly enjoying himself. “Seems a shame to spoil the mood.”

  McAvoy’s smile fades. He gives a little nod, as if preparing himself. “You’ve been told why I’m here,” he says.

  Alto takes a sip of his Brooklyn and pulls the papers out of his coat pocket. “You want to know whether we’ve caught the people who shot the Miracle Man,” says Alto, in a way that suggests the news is not going to be good.

  McAvoy puts his head to one side. Sucks
his cheek as if weighing up whether to lay down playing cards that he has no faith in.

  “No,” he says at last. “I want to help you find the other victims.”

  “There’s more?” asks Alto. “Just what we need.”

  “There’s one more, at least,” says McAvoy.

  “And what makes you think that?” asks Alto conversationally.

  McAvoy looks at the ice clinking in his glass and breathes out, as if from his toes.

  “Because he’s family. And he either pulled the trigger, or you just haven’t found his body yet.”

  TWO

  Feeling any better today, handsome? You’ve got a bit of color in your skin. We’ll have these curtains closed, what do you say? I was right to let the sun work its magic. I always say you should grab the sunshine in both hands and rub it all over your face when you get the chance. There’s more snow coming, so you enjoy Mr. Sun while he lasts. Beautiful blue sky, too—though there are black clouds rolling in. My brothers and me, we used to purse our lips and blow when the clouds came, trying to push the rains and the snows back out to sea. Let them have it back in Nantucket, that’s what Mother would say. They’ve got the clothes for it. Anyways, I’ll leave you to it. You need your rest. I’ll be back to clean you up but don’t be clock-watching now. I hope your friend comes in again. I know you enjoy his visits. You just keep it calm, though, y’hear? Your pulse rate went too high last time. You need things steady and safe. Get yourself back to strength. We’ve been betting on whether your eyes are blue or brown. I’ve said brown. Carys from Ward C swore blind you had blue. Said she heard it from the anesthetist’s lady friend. Blue and unresponsive, though you don’t want to hear that, I’m sure. I don’t want to cheat. I want you to open your eyes and show me those twinkly brown peepers while you smile and praise Jesus for the miracle that you are. God bless now. I’ll be along in a while . . .”

  Never fecking shuts up, this one. Well intentioned, but Christ, it’s like living with a presenter on children’s TV. Don’t know who she is. Just a noise. A sort of rainbow noise, like looking through a crystal. Not like Holy Joe. He’s beige. Parchment, maybe. Voice like crinkling paper. Typical fecking Bible thumper. Prayer after fecking prayer, psalm after bloody psalm. I’m the miracle, that’s what they say. A miracle. Bollocks. I can’t fecking move. Can’t open me bastard eyes. Can’t do a thing but listen and smell. Decent food, by the whiff of it. No flowers, but there’s something like Christmas trees and cinnamon wafting up what’s left of me nose. Shouldn’t have said that out loud, Doc. Don’t distress the patient. Poor bastard doesn’t know his own name but he knows he’s had his nose sliced off and a bullet put in the back of his head. Should be pushing up daisies. But he survived. Miracle Man. Modern Lazarus, though Lazarus didn’t spend the next two weeks in a hospital bed in a fecking coma, did he? But Lazarus didn’t come out swinging, and this one fecking will. He’s fecking strong, is this one. Doesn’t die easy. Doesn’t go down, even when his legs are telling him to fall. He’s a fighter. Doesn’t know his name, but he knows that much. Knows he doesn’t give up. Knows he can take a beating and come back stronger. Knows that somebody is going to pay for this. Somebody is going to fecking bleed. Just remember. Try and remember, son. Think now. There was snow. Snow like icing on a cake. Some greasy prick in sweatpants trying to make you squirm. Trees like sticks of charcoal. And then he ran and you watched him go; told him to run till his lungs burst. There were shouts, and then the shadow was falling forward and there was a bang and it was all fecking dark until Nurse Rainbow started telling you how lucky you were to be alive and that you needed to get your strength but she were praying for you, and so was this nice man who wanted to read to you from his Bible and said he was family . . . Remember. Get better. Start swinging. Make somebody fecking bleed.

  THREE

  McAvoy is aching. His whole body hurts. On the plane he felt as though somebody were staging an elaborate record attempt, or answering some difficult metaphysical conundrum about how many people of Celtic origin could be crammed into a standard-class discount flight from Manchester to JFK. He had never seen so many red-haired people and half wondered whether he had accidentally stumbled into a convention. It was the large lady with the Cork accent who put him right. It was always like this around Christmas, she said. The Irish loved the Americans, so they did. Vice versa, and all that. They were going to New York for the parade. They were going to see family. They were going to see aunts and uncles and distant cousins who had extended the offer of free accommodation during the festive period. They’d booked months ago for less than the price of a train ticket to London and they were planning to show the city how to enjoy itself. There were eighteen of them in all. McAvoy counted. As they took their seats around and about him, McAvoy had the distinct impression he was watching some sort of display team.

  It wasn’t a comfortable journey. Here, now, he wants to stretch out, like a cat in front of a fire, but he fears that if he does so his skeleton will make a noise like a machine gun and he knows enough about America to be concerned that such a commotion would lead to people leaping for cover and returning fire. He hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours and would be the first to admit that he is entering the exhausted and manic state that only the parents of young children can truly comprehend.

  He sits forward on the uncomfortable chair and tells his halfhearted hallucinations that he has no time for any nonsense. Instead he focuses on his new companion, studying the smaller man’s face for any clues to his thoughts. He finds himself unexpectedly optimistic. He expected the worst on his interminable cab ride from JFK. Some gruff New York cop who would treat him with disdain and tell him that he had no authority here and should get himself back to England before he got himself into trouble. In Ronald Alto, he seems to have found the complete opposite. He’s warm, welcoming, and unexpectedly pleasant company. McAvoy just hopes he hasn’t used up his annual quota of good fortune on this one small bit of luck. He fancies he will need a lot more in the days ahead.

  “Your wife’s brother?” asks Alto, raising his eyebrows. “There was no mention of that when I got the call.”

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” says McAvoy. “Maybe whoever called you had less trouble with deceit.”

  “It was my colonel who called me,” says Alto, and he appears to be making connections in his head. “Said he’d been asked for a favor. Said I was to share what we had with a detective from England who had some knowledge of our victims. Told me to use my judgment but not to let you get yourself in trouble or in the way. Same colonel who landed me with the Miracle Man case in the first place. Body wasn’t found here, so it shouldn’t have been mine, but the hicks upstate were out of their depth and the victims had been staying in the Comfort Inn ten minutes from the Seventh, so he threw it my way. I still haven’t said thanks.”

  “That’s where I’m staying,” says McAvoy, looking at the backs of his hands. “It made sense when I booked it.”

  Alto shrugs. “Colonel was a bit evasive, now that I think of it.”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure that I mentioned my own family connections,” says McAvoy, as if confessing to smashing an expensive vase in a friend’s house. “My boss knows. She called some associates who owe her a favor. They must have contacted your colonel.”

  “‘Less trouble with deceit’?” asks Alto, seeming to wonder whether or not he has been tricked or treated unfairly. After a moment, he shrugs. “If you tell the boss the truth in some precincts, you have to buy everybody else’s drinks for a month. I’m not going to get testy about it. And thanks for being honest. Shall we compare notes or would it be easier if you just told me what you know?”

  McAvoy shakes his head. “I know next to nothing. If you could tell me what you’ve got, I’ll see if I can contribute anything.”

  Alto finishes his Brooklyn and calls for a sparkling water. “One beer a day,” he says to McAvoy by way of explanation. “I
try and live right.”

  “Wife’s rules?” asks McAvoy.

  “Ex-wife’s,” says Alto. “Every pound I put on is a victory for her.”

  “Wish I had your resolve,” says McAvoy. “I have a sweet tooth. There are times when I’m around ninety percent cake.”

  “Your wife’s a good cook?”

  McAvoy screws up his eyes. He nods, momentarily unable to speak.

  Alto removes his glasses, cleans them, and puts them back on while McAvoy struggles with the ball of gristle in his throat.

  “You want another?” asks Alto, pointing at his lemonade.

  McAvoy shakes his head. He suddenly needs to feel like a policeman and not like a damn fool far from home on an investigation he has no right to be involved with and that, however it plays out, will break Roisin’s heart. His smile fades. He nods, as if preparing himself.

  “Let’s hear it,” he says, and his voice seems like it should belong to a smaller man.

  “Tuesday, November twenty-sixth,” says Alto, pulling his phone from his pocket and looking at notes. “Thirteen days ago, if my math is right. The flight from Dublin arrived at JFK at eight-twenty p.m. On board were Shay Helden and Brishen Ayres.”

  McAvoy nods in confirmation of the names. On the flight over, he familiarized himself with the backgrounds of both men, though in truth, he had long known the name of Brishen Ayres. In the traveling community, the man is something of a legend. Raised in a traditional gypsy family, Ayres showed talent as a boxer in his youth. Trained at first by relatives, he soon surpassed their standards and joined a legitimate boxing gym in Galway, where he came under the tutelage of a coach who had trained a dozen champions. In Ayres, the coach saw somebody with the talent to go all the way. It was not just his natural technique or his southpaw stance that set him apart; there was a killer instinct present in the youngster that put a primal fear into anybody who stepped between the ropes with him. By seventeen, he was a member of Ireland’s Olympic squad. He never made it to the Games. He was knocked down in a hit-and-run incident a month before the tournament. Both his legs were shattered and pelvis all but crushed. His career was over.