Ruger MK right between Fat Pink’s googly eyes.
He’d pick up a new set of wheels in Spain and be in Seville by tomorrow noon.
That was fair play to the boys in Coldbath Fields, and he wasn’t too far gone with the beatings and the crank to have forgotten what he’d learned in the yard. A real tutorial it was, day in and out.
The call made, he put the mobile back in his pocket, and rolled down the window, searching for a sniff of Dublin Bay. None, his nose as numb as stone.
“Eejits,” he said to the night air. “Eejits and wankers. Come to rip off Eamonn the barkeep, and look who’s here. The man who broke the Ravenscroft.”
He was still chattering when Fat Pink opened the door to the cottage on a grainy road two rights and a left off Kill Avenue, and there’s yer open field and the black tree branches groping for the indigo sky.
“You’re early,” Fat Pink said, filling the door frame, all but blocking out the light.
“I got the money.”
The rustle of wings, or his imagination, all too alive.
“Well?” said the trader, who’d left the Ruger in the glove box.
Fat Pink stepped aside.
The wobbly stairwell was his only choice, and he all but leapt from his head when Fat Pink killed the lights.
“What the-”
“Whisht now,” Fat Pink warned as he joined him on the creaking stairs. “Remember what we’re on about.”
“I can’t see,” the trader mumbled. He stopped at the landing, wondering where to go. As his eyes began to adjust, he saw a white knob and started for the door in front of him, but Fat Pink grabbed his shoulder and led him along the banister.
The floor creaked too. The house 200 years old if a day.
And in the room, gaslight.
Little Pink and another guy, bulldog snarl, neck as thick as a post, his melon flat on top.
“This him?” Pug asked.
Little Pink nodded.
The trader squinted and he saw an old table, longer than it was wide, and two chairs. The fireplace had been shuttered awhile ago, and the green shades on the windows were drawn.
Fat Pink nudged him in.
“How do we do this?” the trader said, his voice cracking. Darting bees xylophoned his ribs, the march of wind-up ants, barbed wire made of licorice and lace.
Pug took a sip from a half-pint, offered it to no one.
“We wait,” Little Pink replied. He pointed to a chair.
The trader walked in, and the trader sat down.
Fat Pink took the chair to his left. The flickering gaslight made his features quaver and dance.
Leaning against the slate mantle, Pug twisted his head until his neck cracked.
As if anticipating the question, Little Pink said, “Hours, minutes. You never can tell.” He took out his silver machine, set it on the table.
“That’s what you’re using? No microphones? You’ve got no facilities?”
Pug grunted and Fat Pink pushed down a laugh.
“It’s what we use.”
Dumb bastards, the trader thought. You get the ghost in a recording studio and you’re John Dorrences, you are.
He folded his hands on the table, and Fat Pink turned round to Pug, but neither man spoke.
Skeleton key in hand, Little Pink locked the door.
Five minutes later, felt like five hours, the trader sat tall when he heard the snap-squeal of an electric guitar going into its amp, and a quick punch on the strings to make sure it was in tune.
“Calm yerself,” Fat Pink said.
Little Pink nodded toward the machine.
And soon the sound of a Fender Stratocaster filled the room, and the ghost was running his blues scales, warming up, and soon he was toying with some old Muddy Waters lick, and the trader knew his man was working his way to something brilliant. And then the guitar let out a cry and a hole in the sky opened and here it came, lightning and molten gold and, God in heaven, it was glorious.
The trader shut his eyes in bliss.
And Fat Pink grabbed him by the left forearm and wrist, pressing the man’s hand flat on the table, and with one brutal swoop of a hatchet, Pug took off the trader’s thumb.
Blood spurted, and it ran in a river toward the machine.
The trader howled and the trader howled, and he was almost as loud as the guitar, the blizzard of blues notes, the screeching feedback, the beauty.
Pug took off his belt, wrapped it around the trader’s left arm, cutting the flow.
Standing, Fat Pink put his hands on his shoulders, pressed the trader deep and hard into the chair.
Little Pink, off the door and tapped the machine. Silence. Absolute silence, save a man’s agony cry.
“And you had to name it after him, didn’t ya?” Little Pink said, glaring at the trader, his eyes colder than cold.
Pug was digging in the trader’s pocket for the Audi’s keys.
“Desmond’s,” Little Pink went on. “That’s your idea of a joke?”
The trader’s thumb lay on the table, pointing with recrimination at its former host.
“I don’t-Jaysus, my hand. Look at my-”
Little Pink smacked him, and then Little Pink smacked him again.
“My name is Chick,” he said through grit teeth. “His name is Chick, and the man going to your car is named Chick. We’re from Limerick, and we don’t forget.”
“I don’t know…” Near shock, the trader blubbered and whimpered. “My thumb…”
“Our father was a good and decent man who didn’t deserve to die ’cause of the likes of you.”
Despite the searing pain, the trader was starting to get it. Ravenscroft, and some people won and some lost, but who the fuck is Chick?
Little Pink stepped back and he smiled, and when he smiled, Fat Pink smiled too.
It was Fat Pink-Larry Chick being his real name-who came across Trudi in Bristol, and it was Bernie Chick-him the one the trader dubbed Pug-who heard about the guitar player over in the States in Red Bank, New Jersey, who could play it like Rory done. Little Pink, who was Paul but went by the name Des to honor his father, put it together. The club off the Royal Canal was a gift, it was. The crystal meth situation too, meaning the trader didn’t think to see if Bernie was behind him when he finally stumbled back to his ratty flat.
“We’re going to take your teeth too,” Des Chick said.
“And the nose,” Larry nodded.
“And the nose,” Des agreed, “if Bernie comes back empty-handed.”
The trader could not believe he had been duped. Better than them all, and smarter, and yet he’d been duped.
Des said, “And then we’ll talk about regret.”
The trader looked at his thumb on the table, and he heard the one he called Pug trudging up the creaking stairs.
LOST IN DUBLINBY JASON STARR
Kathy had come to Dublin to forget about her fiance, Jim, or to at least reassess the relationship, but so far she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. She’d called him twice-once, minutes after her flight landed, under the pretense of wanting to find out how Sammy, their year-old Labrador, was doing, but it was really to
