‘I got two phasers and a fart ray. What do you care? You’re getting your steroids. Maybe you should take a couple of them yourself, beef up that pointing finger.’

I can’t help it. It’s a curse.

‘Five minutes,’ says Faber gruffly, then hangs up.

I squeeze the steering wheel until the leather groans, then laugh a long, jagged laugh that chops at my throat like an axe hacking on a steak. When the fit passes, I buzz down the window and spit into the night.

You okay now? asks Ghost Zeb.

Yep. Fine. Peachy.

Just over seven minutes later, what I had to do has been done and I’m pulling around back of The Brass Ring thinking that the parking lot seems a little placid without canaries and praying I didn’t get any blood on my clothes.

One of Faber’s guys, Wilbur, is on the ramp cracking his knuckles, and I’m having a little chuckle over his shit-kicker name when I remember how eager Wilbur was to shoot Goran in the face. I’m thinking that Wilbur got teased a little too often in the schoolyard and is taking revenge on the world.

Wilbur throws me a nod that speaks volumes. Not good hey, McEvoy, let’s go grab a Cobb salad volumes, more see what I did to Goran? Well you’re next kind of volumes. I’ve had so many security guys giving me the hard face over the past few days that it’s getting kind of comical. I wonder, is that how the world sees me?

Bald and comical, says Ghost Zeb. That’s it exactly.

Screw you, Zebulon Kronski. Stay fucked, why don’t you?

Hey, come on. I’m kidding. Can’t a guy kid?

Keep a civil tongue in your head. No more bald cracks after all the money I paid you.

Understood.

It better be.

Wilbur comes down the ramp and is half trotting beside the Hilux before the vehicle comes to a full stop. I step on the gas a little just to piss him off, then reverse to the ramp.

‘What the fuck you doing?’ he huffs when I step down from the cab.

‘Sorry, Wilbur man. Overshot. Big truck, you know.’

Wilbur rests a ham hand on the wing mirror. ‘Where’s the stuff?’

That deserves an eye-roll. ‘Where’s the stuff? You see the two enormous white barrels in the back. What do you think?’

Wilbur pats something. Either his heart or a shoulder holster.

‘I wouldn’t play smart with me, Irish. I really wouldn’t.’

It’s too much. I can’t take it. So I punch that leaning-over bastard just as hard as I can in the kidney. Something splits inside him and my injured knuckle sings like a saw-fiddle.

Wilbur goes down gasping, wishing it was five seconds ago and he had kept his mouth shut.