“A gang,” Corcoran repeated.

“Or is it a club?

“No, it’s a gang. We don’t mind saying it. Do we, boys?”

“Yo, Jimmy,” was the only response.

Corcoran busied himself with a metal tin then extracteded a wad of Copenhagen and shoved it into his mouth, further altering the eerie, almost deformed shape of his equine face. “Tell me – what do you think of the Kitchen?” he asked Pellam.

In all his months here no one – of the thirty or so people he’d interviewed – had ever asked Pellam his opinion of the neighborhood. He thought for a moment and said, “It’s the only ’hood I’ve ever seen that’s getting better, safer, cleaner, and the old-timers here don’t want any goddamn part of that.”

Corcoran nodded with approval, smiling. “That’s fucking good.” The table got another spanking and he poured two more shots. “Have some more poteen.” He looked out the window and his bony face grew wistful. “That’s good, man. The Kitchen ain’t what it used to be, that’s for certain. My father, he come over the water, was in the forties. ‘Coming over the water,’ that’s what they called it. Had a hell of a time getting work. The docks was the place to work then. Now it’s just a fucking tourist thing but back then the big ships’d come in, cargo and passengers. Only to get a job you had to pay the bosses. I mean, payoff. Big. My pa, he couldn’t get it up to get a job in the union. So he worked day labor. He was always talking about the Troubles, about Belfast and Londonderry. Into all that stuff, the politics, you know. That don’t interest me. Your pa, was he a Sinn Feiner, Republican? Or was he a Loyalist?”

“I have no idea.”

“How do you feel about independence?”

“I’m all for it. I stay away from nine-to-five jobs.”

Corcoran laughed. “I went to Kilmainhan jail one time. You know where that is?”

“Where hanged the rebels of the Easter Rebellion.”

“It was, you know, weird being there. Walking on the same stones they walked on. I cried. I don’t mind admitting it neither.” Corcoran smiled wanly, shook his head. He sipped his liquor then scooted back slightly in the chair.

It was pure instinct that saved Pellam’s wrists.

Corcoran leapt to his feet, grabbed a chair and brought it down on the tabletop in a hissing arc, just as Pellam shoved himself back into the wall.

“You fucker!” he screamed. “Cock-sucking fucker!” He slammed the chair into the table again. The legs met the oak tabletop and cracked with a noise loud as twin gunshots. Fragments of glass and a mist of smoky whisky showered through the air.

“You come here to my home, to spy on me…” His words were lost in a stew of rage. “You want my fucking secrets, you fucking tinker…”

Pellam crossed his arms. Didn’t move. Gazed calmly back into Corcoran’s eyes.

“Aw, Jimmy, come on,” a voice from the corner called. It was the man Pellam had noticed when he walked in, the smallest of the crew. Monkey Man.

“Jimmy…”

“It’s the liquor talking,” the man offered.

“Look, mister, maybe you better-” another started to say.

But Corcoran didn’t even notice them. “You come into my fucking home, into my neighborhood and ask questions about me. I heard what you was doing. I know. I know everything. You think I don’t? What kind of stupid asshole are you? It’s fuckers like you that’ve ruined this place. You took the Kitchen away. We was here first, all you fuckers come with your cameras and look at us like fucking insects.”

Pellam stood up, dusted glass off his shirt.

Corcoran broke the remaining legs on the chair with another fierce blow. He leaned forward and screamed, “What gives you the right!”

“He didn’t mean nothing, Jimmy,” Monkey Man said calmly. “I’m sure he didn’t. He’s just asking a few questions’s all he’s doing.”

“What gives him the right?” Corcoran shrieked. He tossed another chair across the room. The bartender found more glasses that desperately needed polishing.

“Have a drink, Jimmy,” someone said. “Just be cool.”

“Don’t any of you cock-sucking tinkers say a fucking word!” The gun appeared in Corcoran’s hand like a black snake striking.

The table fell silent. No one moved. It was as if their bodies were somehow wired to the trigger.

“Hey, Jimmy, come on,” Monkey Man whispered. “Sit yourself down now. Let’s not do nothing stupid.”

Corcoran found a glass on the floor, walked to the bar and snagged a new bottle. He slammed it down in front of Pellam, poured it to the brim with Bushmills. Enraged, he snarled, “He’s going to take a drink with me and he’s going to apologize. If he does that I’ll let him go.”

Pellam lifted his hands, smiled pleasantly. To the bartender. “Okay. But make it a soda.”

Just like in Shane. Alan Ladd orders a soda pop for Joey. Pellam had loved that movie. He’d seen it twenty times. In school his friends wanted to be Mickey Mantle; Pellam dreamed of being the director, George Stevens.

“Soda?” Corcoran whispered.

“Pepsi. No, make it a Diet Pepsi.”

The bartender stepped toward his refrigerator. Corcoran spun, lifting the gun toward the terrified man. “Don’t you fucking dare. This faggot’s drinking whisky and he’s-”

All a blur, leather spun through the air and suddenly Corcoran was on the ground, face down, his right arm extended straight up, wrist and pistol twisted in Pellam’s hands.

Damn, not bad. Pellam hadn’t been sure he could remember the move. But it came back to him just fine. From his stuntman days, when he was doing battle gags on the set of some Indochina flick fifteen years ago. He’d learned a few martial arts tricks from the fight choreographer.

Pellam lifted the gun from the Irishman’s grip and pointed it toward each of the six frozen thugs. He didn’t let go of Corcoran’s wrist.

No one moved.

“Fucker,” Corcoran wheezed. Pellam twisted harder. “Oh, shit. You’re dead, man, you’re…”

A little harder.

“All right, fucker. All right!”

Pellam released the wrist and pressed the muzzle of the gun against Corcoran’s forehead.

Pellam said, “What a mouth you got on you. King of the Kitchen, huh? You know everything? Then you know I was gonna offer you five hundred bucks to find out who torched that building on Thirty-sixth Street. That’s what I was doing here. And what do I get? A pissing contest with a teenager who needs a bath.” He pointed the gun at Monkey Man, who raised his hands. Pellam asked him, “Would you please get me that Pepsi now?”

The man hesitated then walked to the bar. The bartender had materialized again and his corporeal form looked on the verge of death. He stared at red-faced Corcoran, who raged, “Get him the fucking drink, you asshole.”

In a quavering voice the bartender said, “I, uhm… The thing is, We don’t have…”

“A Coke’ll be fine,” Pellam said, pointing the Smith & Wesson at the fat man at the table. “Just toss that piece on the floor, would you?”

“Do it,” Corcoran grumbled.

The gun hit the floor. Pellam kicked it into the corner.

The bartender asked in a trembling voice, “Was that Diet you wanted, sir?”

“Whatever.”

“Yessir.” The bartender opened the can, nearly dropped it. With steady hands Monkey Man poured the soda into a glass and carried it to Pellam.

“Thank you.” He drank it down and set the empty glass on the table, backed toward the door, wiped his face with a napkin the man had provided as well.

Corcoran rose to his feet and, turning his back to Pellam, returned to the table. The lanky Irishman sat down again, snagged a Bud and began talking a mile a minute, cheerful as could be. He banged the beer bottle to punctuate for emphasis, lecturing colorfully about the Easter Rebellion and the Black ’n’ Tans and the hunger strike of ’81 – as if, in his mind, Pellam was already gone.

Pellam unloaded the gun, tossed the bullets into the ice tray under the bar and the gun into the corner with the other one, then stepped outside into a truly blistering heat.