I knew we were in trouble as soon as we walked in. It
was early afternoon and the diner was full. We had checked it for five
days in a row around three o’clock and it was usually quiet and quiet
empty. Quiet! (as the Brits would say). Our target was Jimmy Laffey,
which rhymes with happy but he wasn’t. Neither were we. He had to go.
He was an informer from Belfast who had escaped so far. In Belfast
graffiti appeared at the time he was appearing himself as a supergrass -
‘I knew Jimmy Laffey – thank fuck he didn’t know me’. It had to
be public, but not too public. This was too public.
Anyway we should have checked it again before we went
in.
Anyway we didn’t.
Anyway.
Anyway – fuck it.
If I had gone in first I would have abandoned it but
Sean walked in and didn’t pause for a moment. Sometimes he can be a
bit too focused.
***
We were brought up in Belfast, fused from a potent
mixture of gunfire, paramilitary funerals, robberies and hunger strike
deaths.
I didn’t suffer any direct injuries apart from being
affected by the incipient chaos all around which didn’t bother me.
This changed. After rioting finished one day myself and Michelle, the
girl next door, decided to walk to the shops over the debris littered
street. She was 14 and I was 12. I saw a Saracen stopped at the top of
the street and I saw a small white billow of smoke come from one of the
firing slits. A rubber bullet hit Michelle in the face and blew her
brain tissue and shattered skull fragments onto the lintel of a doorway
behind us. A corrupted Belfast Passover. Her mother had been standing at
their front door talking to my mother when she saw Michelle being lifted
off her feet and slamming into the terrace wall. She ran across the
street screaming; another great day for the British Empire. Tissue and
blood ran down from where Michelle impacted the concrete. I tried to
clean Michelle’s blood from the wall but I couldn’t. Her beautiful
face was destroyed. So was my soul. It was soldered into a dark bullet
that nothing could deflect. At the funeral I couldn’t cry.
Sean started making petrol bombs when he was a teenager
and spent nights throwing them from the roofs of tower blocks at
Saracens and Squaddies. He admired the arc that the flame and bottle
made and he admired the petrol reflecting the light from the moon. He
was a bit of a romantic really.
He had an amazing throw. The rest of us were puny
imitations of shot putters. After a few hours of throwing the petrol
bombs, the soldiers and police were positioned at what they thought was
a safe distance. This was well within Sean’s range however and he
stepped up to the edge and threw bombs in quick succession. Every one
hit the target. Sometimes he showed off and would turn his back and
throw petrol bombs over his shoulder. He would look in our eyes as he
threw them. We acted as backup and just stood behind and handed them to
him. Every one he threw he kissed first. Girls wanted to kiss him; and
so did we.
I was his apprentice and still am.
He was the first teenage sniper (under 16 league) in
West Belfast and he lay on the sun warmed balconies and fired bullets
through the bodies of British Soldiers. He also hated cats and sometimes
when no patrols appeared he shot them from window ledges and car bonnets
where they lay in the sun. He could send them flying 50 feet through the
air if conditions were perfect.
****
In the EverReady diner there was an old couple
celebrating their birthday with their extended family. Usually they
lived in a nursing home but for today they were out on parole. I found
this out later from the newspaper. This diner was the location of their
first encounter across the counter fifty years earlier. He was a teacher
in a local school wearing a medium expensive suit and she was the
waitress. Now he carried a mask and a portable bottle of oxygen. She
served him burgers then and he was being served burgers now but he
looked like he needed to have them puréed. Judging by their facial
expressions they were either sorry they had met at all or were just
nonplussed by the attention they were receiving on the day. There were
about sixty people all told but soon there would be less.
At the far table sat Jimmy Laffey. Sean was looking
around trying to spot him but I saw him first and nodded towards the
back. Sean went to pull his gun even though he didn’t have a clear
sight through the burger family. They didn’t notice but I did and so
did Jimmy Laffey. He drew a gun from under the table. He must have had
it on his knees. I had to admire him. He was ten years out of sight but
was still alert. Many others would have assumed they had made it to a
safe place if they had lasted ten years. Most cancer survivors think
five years is great so he could be forgiven for being complacent. But he
wasn’t. He immediately ducked behind the table and started moving
backwards on the floor towards the emergency exit.
Sean was aiming but all he could see were birthday hats
and wrinkles and some startled looks as the family began to notice
another event transpiring around them. They began to shout and duck and
I noticed no one went to shield the anniversary couple. Before Sean or I
could fire Jimmy Laffey fired. He didn’t care who he hit as long as he
created a diversion.
He hit a few customers and they fell. Everyone ducked
then so we had a better shot at him. The manager of the fast grill stood
his ground though– he must have thought it was the Alamo and didn’t
duck down until Sean shot him probably out of frustration rather than
anything else. Once Sean started it was hard to stop him (see above). He
fired in high arcs above the heads of the customer’s in the general
direction of Jimmy. Windows, menus and hillbillies went flying. One was
even wearing a pair of dungarees. He deserved to die for that alone, the
feic.
I tried to aim at Jimmy even though it was blood city
already. I spotted from the clock that only two minutes had elapsed
since we rushed in. It reminded me of the bank job we did a few years
ago when Johnny McGowan tripped on the way in and shot the heads, spinal
columns and necks off three money surfs behind the counter. We barely
escaped. I shot Jimmy myself on that occasion for being so clumsy. His
fall was as inelegant as his entrance into the bank. He fell like a bag
of spuds as they say in Mayo. That’s where he was from. We took him
with us and buried him. I threw in his AK with him.
Jimmy Laffey had reached the back door but couldn’t
get out. You couldn’t open it except with a bazooka. That’s because
we had parked our get away car right up against the exit. We had
scrapped a load of paint off the left hand side of the car – a Ford
Escort, getting it into position. It would have been better to let him
run out and get him in the back parking lot.
Jimmy had no choice. He had to go out the front door
now. He had to fight his way through the crowds of geriatrics and blood
and us. It was slippery out there. He was shielded from our direct fire
by a pillar that we should have taken into account earlier.
Sean said to me – we have to get out of here soon –
there will be cops everywhere. Sean scanned the crowd of partygoers. No
one could escape because we were blocking the front door. He took aim in
a direction away from the target. I was puzzled until I saw who he was
aiming at. The second shot hit the oxygen tank and it exploded It was
like a flame thrower. It hurled the old man in one direction ie heaven
and shrapnel and flames in every direction.
Sean jumped up and ran towards the back of the diner. He
was running in a crouch on the back of customers. No one complained. He
had more experience of urban guerrilla warfare, smoke, concussion,
crouching etc. than Jimmy Laffey so he was not disorientated. He reached
Jimmy’s hiding place. Jimmy tried to fire but Sean hit him in the head
and neck and he slumped over. Sean checked his jacket – he was wearing
Kevlar. We should have spotted that from the surveillance. He pulled his
ID from his jacket. Jimmy’s blood was flowing from his ear onto the
lino of the diner.
Sean delivered the coup de grace.
Let’s go - I shouted.
I phoned Chopper
-OK we’re done move the car. Chop chop.
We heard some scraping. We had another car nearby so
would dump this one a few blocks away. Sean pushed out through the back
door.
The wife of the old couple looked up at me from the
floor. She was staring at me.
Sorry about that missus I said.
I ran out the front door into the light.
Copyright 2007 by
James McGowan
James M McGowan
is Irish living in New York. He is from the same town as Ken
Bruen so one of them had to leave because the place is only big
enough for one crime writer. Previosuly published in Plots with Guns,
Thug Magazine, Hardluck Stories, Noir Originals and Flashing in the
Gutters. Influences include Public Enemy, Phil Lynnott (Thin Lizzie),
Johnny Lydon (Pistols), Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Mister Blue,
Cormac McCarthy, Heno Magee (Irish author of Hatchet). Contact details:
james.m.mcgowan@gmail.com .
