Dead Man's Time

last minute, stopping
equally violently.
    To make matters worse, the creep sitting beside him, sticking to him like a leech, was not cutting him any slack. They’d even bloody slept together. If
sleep
was the right word.
Since doing a late bunk from the hotel via the service lift and the kitchen deliveries entrance, Eamonn Pollock had spent the night, trying to sleep, in a narrow armchair in the creep’s
crappy, cheap hotel room in mid-town Manhattan, whilst the leech had snored his sodding head off.
    He noticed a Panerai watch dealership as the taxi pulled mercifully to a halt. He might treat himself to one after he had closed the deal on the Patek Philippe, he thought; a nice little prezzie
to celebrate. Then he would trot along to Tiffany and buy Luiza a little bauble.
    Distracted by his thoughts, he tugged his wallet from his jacket pocket, gave the driver a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change, then opened the door.
    Putting his call on hold, the driver said, tersely, tapping the meter, that the bill was twenty-three bucks.
    Pollock dug deeper into his wallet. It didn’t matter. All being well, in a short while he would be very much richer. He hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to deal with the
leech. But he was confident he would find a way. Hey, he’d spent the past thirty years shafting losers. He wasn’t about to change his ways now.
    They climbed out of the cab. ‘It would be best if you waited down here,’ Pollock said. ‘We’ll get a better price if I handle this alone.’ He waddled towards the
door.
    ‘In your dreams,’ the leech replied, lighting a cigarette.
    He took two long, deep puffs while Pollock rang the bell. Moments later there was a sharp buzz and a click. Pollock pushed the door open, and the leech followed him in, still holding his
cigarette.
    ‘You can’t smoke inside here,’ Pollock said.
    ‘You can’t smoke inside most places,’ he retorted, exhaling and tapping ash on the floor.
    The lift slowly clanked down towards them and they entered. With Eamonn Pollock’s portly shape, there was only just room for the two of them to squeeze in. ‘You’re not bloody
smoking in here!’
    ‘Why are you so fat, Pollock?’
    ‘Because every time I screw your wife she gives me a biscuit.’
    ‘Haha, that’s an old one. Tell me, really, why are you so fat?’
    Pollock stared him in the face, and shook his head. ‘Now, now, don’t get personal; we’ve business to do. Let’s not rock any boats, eh?’
    The leech took another long drag on the cigarette, then crushed the butt out on the floor as the lift jerked and clattered on upwards.

108
    The moment his secretary buzzed to say that Eamonn Pollock was on his way up, Julius Rosenblaum ushered Gavin Daly through the door at the rear of his office into the
monitoring room, then dashed back and fetched his cup of coffee for him.
    Daly found himself in what was little more than a wide broom closet, furnished with a single, busted swivel chair behind the two-way mirror. The cushioned seat was uncomfortable and felt wobbly,
Daly thought, easing himself onto it and propping his stick against the narrow shelf in front of him. He found it hard to believe that he could not be seen on this side of the mirror – his
view from the semi-darkness here into Rosenblaum’s office was crystal clear.
    He sipped his coffee and glanced down to familiarize himself with the volume knob on the complicated-looking control panel in front of him, which Rosenblaum had hurriedly pointed out. Further
along was a TV monitor, switched off, mounted on wall brackets, and winking lights on a recording unit. The rest of the space in here was taken up with a row of ancient metal filing cabinets, all
of them with boxes and concertina folders of documents stacked on top.
    The air was dry and dusty and there was a fusty smell of old paperwork. In contrast to Rosenblaum’s office, which had been near freezing from the air-con, this room was hot and airless. He
stifled a sneeze, then saw the main office door open, and the secretary appeared for a moment. He watched Julius Rosenblaum rise from his chair, then Eamonn Pollock entered, dressed in a crumpled
beige suit, a gaudy yellow shirt and vulgar brown loafers. The sight of the man made Daly’s blood run cold.
    For all his adult life, Gavin Daly had studied, with hatred, the faces of those men who had murdered his mother and taken his father away into the night. He’d trawled