Bust by Jason Starr, Ken Bruen

like to have lots of things in his past changed, and knowing the tinker’s name topped the list. Knowing the name made it, like, personal and shite. You didn’t ever want murder to be personal, you might start to take it serious, think it meant something. He felt the karma would come down the pike and hit him when he least expected it. He never shared this hibby jibby with anyone, but Todd was engraved in whatever passed for his heart forever. Wasn’t that curse enough?
    Oh, yeah, and he’d committed one murder in New York. He cracked some guy’s head open against a brick wall because the guy had that plummy Brit accent.
    Dillon had only gotten busted for one of his murders — a guy he’d cut for looking at his woman — and did five hard years in Portlaoise, where they kept the Republican prisoners. His first day, he’d found the Zen book on his bunk, left by the previous inmate. He’d picked it up from boredom and got gradually hooked. Hooked up quickly too with the Provo guys and got his arse covered though again, he wasn’t privy to any of their councils. They’d look out for him but didn’t feel any great need to stretch it.
    He continued to ransack the downstairs of the townhouse. It was fun turning things over, destroying shite. A rush like when he was in his teens and the Brits came at them with rubber bullets, those suckers bounced off you, you hurt like a pagan for a week. The first time they got an armored car on fire and got the soldiers to crawl out, crying for their mammies, with a sniper picking the fookers off, one by British one. Fook, it got him hard just remembering. Those Brit accents, sounding polite even as they roared. Dillon was convinced then that he was one of the real Boyos. In fact, there was hardly a kid in the city who hadn’t been bounced by a rubber bullet — it came with the territory.
    When everything on the ground floor looked good and wrecked, he went upstairs. He found the bedroom Max had told him about, which was filled with more ugly old shite that looked like rubbish his grandmother would buy. Everything was made of wood and they had some fierce gold-colored bed. Dillon imagined what the room was going to look like when he put mirrors on the ceiling, put down some reed mats, like home, get one of them waterbeds, and put a jacuzzi in the bathroom. He broke all the glass stuff from on top of the dresser and night table and dumped all the clothes out of the drawers. Then he found the old lady’s jewelry box and stuck all the diamond- and gold-looking stuff into a plastic bag he found.
    On the wall, there were some pictures of a fat old lady — he guessed this was Mrs. Fisher. There was also a picture of Max Fisher standing on a beach somewhere. He looked the same as he did at the pizzeria and in Modell’s, except he had a bit more hair. Dillon couldn’t wait till he got to do Max too. He knew the plan was to wait for him to die but, fook, Dillon wanted to get on with his life. He hated that old bollix, the way he was sitting there in his posh suit. He reminded Dillon of Fr. Malachy, his principal in school. Dillon never understood what the priest was saying but nothing about school made much sense to Dillon. The only reason he went was to keep the Social Services away. But Fr. Malachy was always calling him down to his office for whatever, or suspending him. Malachy thought he was God almighty because he was the principal and could do whatever he wanted. Now Max Fisher was trying to pull that same deal, trying to call all the shots, but this time Dillon named the jig — now he was the man in charge and Max Fisher was the little Irish schoolkid sitting on the other side of the desk. When Dillon had heard that Malachydied in real agony from cancer Dillon had muttered, hope he died roaring.
    Dillon heard voices and a noise — a key turning in a lock. He took out the .38 he’d gotten from the Boyos’ place down off the Bowery. When he’d showed up there, they’d rolled