Free Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty

that a bodhran was an Irish side drum, not a bongo drum.
    Darkey paid and left a miserly tip, and we were all about to leave when suddenly a joke occurred to him. Normally, his jokes were of the practical kind, such as telling Scotchy to kick my chair from under me, but occasionally he came up with a good one. Darkey wasn’t an unintelligent man, and often I think he tried to appear heartier and dumber than he actually was.
    Ok, lads, joke. Everybody sit.
    We sat. Darkey began:
    Old monastery in the west of Ireland. Galway. Two parrots in a cage, and all day long they pray and recite the rosary and twirl the rosary beads in their little claws. Visiting priest is amazed, sees the birds and tells the abbot that they have precisely the opposite situation at the nearby convent, where they rescued two female parrots from a brothel after the police closed it down. Unfortunately for the nuns the parrots say all day long, “Fuck me, please, I’m a filthy whore.” The abbot suggests that they move the parrots from the convent and put them in with the good-living parrots in the monastery. The priest thinks that this is an excellent idea. The foul-mouthed birds will learn by example. Anyway, the two monastery parrots are in their cage one day when the two female parrots are brought in beside them. Both female parrots immediately say, “Fuck me, I’m a filthy whore,” whereupon one male parrot looks at the other and says, “Seamus, you can put the beads away now, our prayers have been answered.”
    We all laughed. Sunshine louder than most, and that, believe me, was a scary thing to behold. Again, Goebbels came to mind.
    They dropped me at 123rd. Darkey got out of the car and shook my hand.
    I can count on you, can’t I, Michael? he said, his heavy-lidded eyes boring into me.
    Without blinking I said, Of course. (I almost added “Sir.”)
    Sunshine was also out of the car. I was bleary from drink, cigarette smoke, too much food, and exhaustion, but Sunshine wanted to tell me well done too.
    I preempted him.
    You know, Sunshine, Shovel didn’t do a damn thing. Not one thing, I said.
    Sunshine nodded. I couldn’t be sure that he could see what I meant, but I didn’t want to go into it now. Maybe Sunshine knew all along, maybe it didn’t matter.
    I walked up the steps to the apartment building. I checked that Rachel’s phone number was in my pocket. It was. I could smell dawn in the air. What a long, weird, awful night. I opened the jemmied door. The hall was full of steam from a broken radiator. Typical and insane that the steam heat would even be on in summer. Of course, in winter … I spat and ignored it and went upstairs. I hoped that I wouldn’t be so hopped up and overtired that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
    I was to be disappointed.

3: THE NICE PART OF THE BRONX
     
    S
      sshhhhh, ssshhhh
, listen. Blot out everything else. The dark whispering. Can you hear it? Can you hear? Singing truths like apples. In a language that is universal and easy to understand. It’s singing for you. Big man, player, dealer in bruises. Its breath condenses on the mirror and its trace is visible. Curling from the sewers and the gutters and the storm drains, and speaking with the voice of graveyard stone.
    I
can
hear it. I can feel its breath. Rank and awful. It makes things up: lies, half-lies, stories. It’s hushed but the building’s alert and attends and passes them on. Up the skunk trees, up the brick, through the window.
    You’re a thief, you’re a bully. You hurt people. You’re nothing, a shadow. You’re a fool. A nasty wee piece of work.
    Accusations. From the world out there. Go away. Please. Please.
    But the world out there. It isn’t quiet. It never is.…
    My eyes fill, flutter. I wake.
    It is impossible to sleep. I generate white noise from a fan which on level three does its best to erase the sirens, the crying, the yelling, the music, the nightmares, and—melodramatic but nevertheless true—the