The Mountain Shadow

‘You came up here, to tell us that you set up my ex-husband?’ Karla asked.

‘I came up here to warn your boyfriend,’ Concannon said, straightening up.

‘And you’re gonna take a warning home again, Concannon.’

‘There you go again,’ he said, happily exasperated. ‘You are the hardest man in this whole city of screechin’ heathens to befriend. I know executioners who are more fun than you. I’m tryin’ to tell you, I’m a changed man.’

‘I don’t see a change,’ I said. ‘You’re still breathing.’

‘There’s those wicked thoughts again.’

‘Listen,’ he said calmly, ‘I’ve done with all that. I’m a businessman now, and legitimately so. The fact that I bear you no grudge for our last encounter should testify to that.’

‘You just never learn, do you?’

‘But I did learn,’ he insisted. ‘That’s what I’m tryin’ to say. After that fight we had, I thought about everything. I mean, everything. I got hurt, you see. My shoulder hasn’t healed well, and it doesn’t work the way it should. My timing’s off, and I’ll never again fight the way I did. See, I never before let anyone get close enough to best me, and it shook me up. My Road to Damascus experience was in a warehouse in Bombay, and it was an Australian convict who knocked me off my horse. I’ve changed. I’m a businessman, now.’

‘What kind of business?’ Karla asked, relaxing her grip on my arm.

‘I’ve put all my money into a venture with Dennis.’

‘The Sleeping Baba?’

‘The same. One fine day, I got to thinkin’ about that proverb, you know, that if you sit quietly by a river for long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.’

I wanted Concannon to float by, on the Ganges.

‘And it occurred to me, in another Road to Damascus moment, that the river isn’t made of water, it’s made of stainless steel. It’s the undertaker’s table, you see? So, Dennis and me, we bought an undertaking business, and now we’re undertakers. Already, since we started, one of my enemies floated by on the preparation table. A fine drunken laugh I had that night, dressin’ him up nicely for the drop.’

‘Dennis went for this?’ I asked.

‘We’re a natural fit. I know what dead looks like, and he knows what dead feels like. I’ve never seen a man more tender with a body. He calls them sleepers, and he talks to them like they’re just asleep. It’s very kind. Very tender. But I keep a baseball bat handy, in case one of them ever talks back.’

Concannon stopped, clapped his hands together, then put the swollen knuckles into a knotted pyramid of prayer.

‘I know it’s hard to think that a menace to the living and the dead, like me, can give the whole thing up, but it’s the truth. I’ve changed, and the proof of it is that I’ve come up here, riskin’ your temper, to tell you two things. The first, I’ve already told you, which is all that I know about Ranjit, and that sweet girl.’

‘And the second thing?’ Karla asked for me.

‘The second thing is that the 307 Company have hired some out-of-town goondas to kill that Iranian, Abdullah, tonight. And since Abdullah’s hiding out up here, that puts you two in the firing line.’

‘When will they come?’ I asked.

Concannon checked his watch, and grinned the reply.

‘In about three hours,’ he said. ‘You’d have had longer, if you weren’t so bloody obstreperous, and I could’ve cleared me mind without interruption.’

For all I knew, Concannon was setting us up. I didn’t like it.

‘Why are you telling us this?’ Karla asked.

‘I’m tyin’ up loose ends, miss,’ Concannon smiled. ‘I never had nothin’ against your man. I tried to recruit the stubborn fool, and I wouldn’t have done that, if I hadn’t taken a shine to ’im. I treated him poorly, when it was Abdullah that I hated, because he turned on me, and threatened my life.’

‘Stop talking about Abdullah,’ I said.

‘But I don’t hate him any more,’ he persisted. ‘He did nothin’ wrong, even if he is an Iranian . . . person. It was me that did wrong, and I admit it freely. Anyway, the Iranian will likely meet his end, tonight. And now I found a place where I feel at home, and in one way or another, I know I’ll find peace, as other people kill my enemies and send them to me. I’ll be with my own kind, so to speak. I don’t know if you understand.’

‘We understand,’ Karla said, although I didn’t.

‘Do you believe me, when I say that I have no quarrel with either of you, and that I wish you no harm?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Concannon.’

‘They say he’s a writer,’ Concannon winked at Karla. ‘They must be teenie weenie little books that he writes.’

‘He’s the big book,’ Karla gave back. ‘I’m the big character. Thank you, Concannon, for the heads-up. What’s your first name, by the way?’

‘Fergus,’ I said before he did, and he laughed, jumping from the car with his arms wide.

‘You do like me! I knew it! Will you stab me, if I give you a hug?’

‘Yes. Don’t come back.’

He let his arms fall slowly, smiled at Karla, and walked a few steps backwards to his car.