Friday, April 3, 2015
The Orange Arms Pub and Grill
New Leiden, Portocielo
18:00
Teddy Larkin loved the old tunes.
Lilliburlero. The Sash My Father Wore. The Orange Lilly-O. All tin whistle and fiddle and drum. A few years back, Teddy had put in a new sound system at the Orange Arms. A few weeks after that, he’d played nothing but Robbie Burns for an entire evening. Rowdy cops started hollering, and the whole pub cheered when Teddy finally switched - to the Rolling Stones.
Teddy loved the old tunes, after all.
In the back room of the Orange Arms, the skirling of fiddles and tin whistles was a muted drone, blocked by a soundproofed wall and a heavy wooden door. The back room was Mack’s haunt. It was cozy: leather-padded walls, hardwood floors, a big fireplace to counter the full-blast air conditioning. No windows, but a half-dozen seascapes by Andrea Cuypers dotted the walls. Ten overstuffed armchairs surrounded a massive oak table. There was a private bar near the wall, and a private door to the kitchen for food.
A flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall of the back room. It played local news. The Troopers were gearing up to play the Puerto Rico national team; no one expected them to win, but no one was willing to speak the sad truth aloud. Obama was talking about removing Cuba from the federal list of state sponsors of terrorism. A bill was moving through the Territorial Assembly, with bipartisan support, to give Pope Enterprises the contract to start work on the proposed PC2 highway. Obama was talking about taking Cuba off the federal shit-list. The production of Hamlet by Don Lanza's Men, up in Plezier, was getting unexpectedly good reviews. Obama was talking...
Liam Mackenzie reached for the remote on the table in front of him, and turned the TV off. Portocielo. Even in an Ulster pub, it would never let you forget that you were in the Caribbean.
Without the TV noise, Mack could hear the dull roar of many overlapping voices. He heard the noise right through the padded walls: off-duty cops, knocking back pints in the main bar with their brothers in blue. Cops drank hard on Portocielo; the voices were loud. Now and then, Mack could hear a shrill whoop or a clamorous burst of laughter. Everything else was just blurred into background noise by the time it reached the back room.
Mack didn’t mind. Teddy’s barman was former SRT, and he kept a twelve-gauge pump in easy reach. The knowledge offered some peace of mind.
It had been a busy week for the Goon Squad. On Wednesday, Luis Diaz had whacked his last rival. That officially made Diaz king of the Familia Libra. Wednesday had been the first of the month: April Fools! It seemed appropriate, given the Familia’s record on avoiding internal power struggles.
Mack and his lads knew more than most about that sordid business: Diaz had won his crown with Comanda Paraiso guns that the Goon Squad had sold him. It was a calculated risk: Luis Diaz was volatile and he would never do favors for the cops, but those same facts meant that Diaz was guaranteed not to last. Someone would off him soon enough, and then there would be more killing. If the timing of Diaz’s death was right, then Monteflores would be too caught up in its own misery to vote in the mayoral election in November. Which suited Rafael Pinto and Gustavo Silva just fine.
Diaz’s brief reign would postpone the resurgence of the Familia’s civil war. Diaz would bite a bullet at the exact moment when unrest in Monteflores was most politically useful. Rafael Pinto paid well for those kinds of favors.
So it had been a long week. But the Goon Squad had all showed up to the Orange Arms. Mack leaned back in his armchair and looked around the table. The lieutenant’s grey-green eyes jumped from face to face. There’s Ronnie, rawboned and sad-eyed. There’s Celestia, all dark Spanish beauty, craziness trapped inside like a kiln fire. There’s Yin Kwan, the chink built like George Foreman, eyes lazy as a pothead’s.
Mack had a tumbler of Bushmills on the table in front of him. Mack hadn’t slept in two days. Mack chain-smoked hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes to stay awake. Mack thought: opium.
There’s Felipe, and there’s Alan next to him. Carilla and Costello. God’s joke: maybe Mack’s joke too. The man who thought he was a snake, and the snake who thought he was a man. Alan was white, unremarkable-looking, eyes as unreadable as stones. Felipe was tall, sallow. He’d decided to keep the Errol Flynn ‘stache. He still occasionally fidgeted.
Mack smoked like he had a grudge against the cigarette. Mack’s fingers were thick and blunt as sausages. Mack wore a tan gabardine three-piece suit with a white linen shirt and a blue silk tie. His tie clip and cuff links were gold. He looked like a buzz-cut grizzly bear dressed up for its son’s christening.
There’s Raijen: race ambiguous, size obvious, dogtags glinting under his open collar. There’s Christopher, the six-six skeleton, his eyes watchful, ready to meet Mack’s gaze.
There’s Rebecca, young and beautiful, hair and skin both golden. Mack remembered her naked, with a bag over her head. Mack loved her like a daughter.
There’s Harry, the Yid who looked like a corn-fed rugby forward. Mack wondered if Harry would order a drink. Mack wondered if Harry could keep himself from ordering a drink. Mack slugged back half his Bushmills and thought: opium.
The week was over. The city was back to normal. Soon, soon, Mack could drift away into dreamland.
But there was a last bit of business to be done first.
Mack took a final drag on his cigarette, and ground out the butt on a ceramic ashtray. Mack stood, and picked up a big nylon duffel bag that had been sitting beside his chair. Mack smiled.
“Lads, our Amazonian amigos are very pleased with the outcome of recent events in Monteflores.” Mack raised his eyebrows. “And they are inclined to manifest their appreciation.”
Mack turned the duffel bag upside down. The bag was open. An avalanche hit the table: dozens of vacuum-packed wads of bills. Each bundle was thicker than Mack’s palm. The bills were twenties, mostly old and discolored: a good sign. It meant that they were probably street money - therefore almost certainly unmarked.
There had to be a hundred bills neatly wrapped up in each vacuum-packed wad. There had to be thirty wads scattered across the table. That added up to sixty thousand dollars, give or take.
Mack always split the take equally. That broke down to six grand apiece. Six grand went a long way on Portocielo.
Not bad for a week’s work.
Mack smiled. His face creased: laugh lines fanned from the corners of his eyes. “Three packages each, lads.” The big cop raised his tumbler. “And here’s to peace in Monteflores.” Mack knocked back his Bushmills, and headed to the room’s private bar in search of the whiskey bottle. “How will you lot be spending it, then?”