I’m suddenly no longer curious, and Tommy throws up on the covered floor, sending rivulets running along the polythene.

‘Bloody bastards,’ says the doctor guy. ‘This is a sterile environment.’

And that was how I met Zebulon Kronski.

More later.

Once upon a time, I could have driven the Lexus to Newark airport and abandoned it in the long-term. Now with Homeland Security they’d be shoving mirrors under it in a New York minute, so I pick the local bus station instead and park the SUV by the dumpsters. I should get ten days’ grace before the blues are called. With any luck some kid will jack the vehicle, dump the body and screw up the chain of events for anyone trying to follow it.

I walk half a dozen blocks from the station, then pay for a cab with one of Barrett’s fifties. Guilt free.

Screw him, he tried to stick me.

I can’t say this aloud, even mutter it, because I have never killed anyone outside a combat zone and I am shaken to my core.

You don’t think that was a combat zone? What would you call it then?

In the taxi, I give myself brain ache trying to wrap my head around the morning’s events. Zeb has a good phrase for this kind of situation. A poor hand of poker or bad luck with a woman could set him off.

A total donkey’s cock, this is, Dan. Donkey’s fucking cock.

I don’t know what that phrase means exactly, but somehow it catches the mood.

My friend has something that Irish Mike Madden wants. Something so important that Macey Barrett was cleared to stick any witnesses without even calling it in. If Zeb were alive, there’d be no need to toss his place; he’d give the something up. No doubt about it, zero pain tolerance. I once took him to emergency for a heart attack that turned out to be a trapped nerve. A trapped bloody nerve. Shit, I got a dozen of those a week in the army.