“Help!”
“Help!”
Smoke.
Vomit.
No breath.
Smoke.
An ellipsis.
Breaking glass.
An arm around my neck.
Air.
Sweet, beautiful air.
“Christ, son. Are you all right?”
I breathed.
“My God, you’re lucky I was passing!” the voice said.
“Lucky,” I said.
29: DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE
I wasn’t here. I was at the Langham Hotel on Regent Street watching a man clutching his chest, falling, his right hand flapping like a dove in a magician’s act. I was eleven years old with my aunt Beryl. The man was yelling without sound and we sat there under the palms, taking in the wonder of it as if we were at the starblown circle of the Giant’s Ring. Everything frozen save for the man’s right hand which was scrabbling for a finger hold on the air which he thought would save him and pull him vertical once again.
It did not …
No.
My mistake.
Not his finger in the air.
Mine.
My finger connected to a pulse monitor. A drip in my arm. Nurses and morphine.
Two days of this and everyone, how shall I put it, a little bit aloof.
A doctor told me I had two minor first-degree burns and three cracked ribs. It could have been worse.
A British consular official came on the third day. He was called Nigel Higgs. He was a tall good-looking spud with a slight stammer. He seemed to be just out of his teens, although presumably he was much older, having gotten a plum like America.
“Nothing broken at least. You’re jolly lucky to be alive,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked.
I knew full well what had happened but I wanted to hear the official story.
“Well, I’m afraid you had a little too much to drink, old boy. You pranged your car. Total right-off … You could well have been killed. You certainly would have been burned alive had not a passing motorist pulled you out.”
“What motorist?”
“He was an EMT.”
“What’s that?”
“A fireman.”
He talked for a while and I listened.
“The Yanks are being awfully nice about the whole thing …The local police say that they’ll only charge you with a misdemeanour DUI.”
The upshot was that if I left the country immediately, everything could be swept under the rug. No one needed to spell it out for me. I got it, even if this fucking Nigel didn’t. However, if I kicked up a stink I’d be charged with dangerous driving, drunken driving and so on. They’d make sure they threw the book at me. They’d probably plant narcotics in the car. I’d be looking at jail …
Oh, yeah. That’s how it would play.
If I forgot the photographs and everything I’d seen and quietly left the country with my tail between my legs then all this would go away. I don’t know what the average bloke would do, but let me stress the fact that I am no fucking hero.
“Tell them I’ll take their offer but I want talk to a goon first. I want to talk to an FBI man. Off the record. That’s my condition.”
“FBI? What are you talking about? You were drunk driving. You’re being prosecuted by the Massachusetts State Police.”
“You heard me, Nigel. That’s my condition. I want to talk to the FBI, off the record. They’ll speak to me. They’ll know what this is about. They already know this whole thing is a crock of shite. Someone tried to get rid of me and someone royally fucked it up.”
He left in a state of confusion.
He didn’t come back. Special Agent Ian Howell did.
He was tall, tanned, pock-marked. Handsome. North of forty. Serious. He looked like he could happily listen to you yakity yak or he could coolly inject an overdose of morphine into your drip – whatever the situation demanded. He was wearing a brown wool suit with very wide lapels. He had a tape recorder running in one of his jacket pockets, that I wasn’t supposed to see.
He introduced himself.
I was sitting up now. I was a lot more comfortable. I was keeping down the solid food. I was ready for him.
“So, I hear you’re preparing to make a serious allegation against a local police department?” he said.
“I’m not making any allegation,” I said.
“You’re not filing a complaint?”
“No.”
“You’re not alleging theft or the violation of your person?”
“No.”
He took off his absurd aviator sunglasses. His eyes were light green. Squinty.
“What is it that you want, Duffy?”
“I only want one thing. But I’ll tell you what I don’t want first. I don’t want to know who was in the photographs with DeLorean. I don’t want to know what operation you or other agencies are planning with or without the cooperation of John DeLorean. I don’t want to know why you followed me to the Ten Cents Bank Safety Deposit or why you did what you did with me and the car. I just want to know one thing. Tell me that, and I’ll leave this green and not so fucking pleasant land and I won’t come back.”
“And what is that one thing, Mr Duffy?”
“I want to know who killed Bill O’Rourke.”
“What if we don’t know who killed Mr O’Rourke?”
“Then I want to know what you do know about him and his mission in Ireland.”
Howell grimaced.
He thought about it and stood.
“Wait here,” he said.
“Where am I going to go?”
He went out to make his phone call.
He came back two hours later with a document for me to sign on a roll of fax paper. It was a confession to the charge of DUI and dangerous driving.
“This stays sealed as long as you keep your mouth shut,” Howell said.
I didn’t like the look of it, but I signed.
“Good,” he said, with a smile that didn’t suit his face.
“Now your part of the bargain,” I said.
Howell sat on a chair and pulled it close to the bed.
