Dublin Noir

“The Gardai wouldn’t arrest you,” said Sean, wiping Harp from his wet beard. “They’d bust your head, strip ya starkers, and toss ya in the Liffey, ne’er to be heard from again.” He shook his head. “I’m pissed.”

We watched him get up and stumble to the toilet.

Toman leaned close with the atrocious breath that would often portend a shift into Czech seriousness. “Olen, you want to be writer?”

I was drunk enough to answer with soulfulness. I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Toman, my friend, a writer is the only thing I want to be.”

“True?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then come,” he said as he stood up.

On his feet Toman was steady, but I wasn’t. “Where we going?”

“Toman helps you become writer.”

“Dandy,” I muttered.

He led me to the bathroom, and through the alcohol I became hazily worried, but for the wrong reason.

“Not all writers are queer, Toman.”

He didn’t answer as he pushed through the door. It was empty save for Sean, who was trying to focus his wobbly stream into a urinal. He noticed us. “Aye, I’m oltach.”

That was another thing I didn’t understand. Later I learned it meant drunk in Gaelic.

Toman looked back at me and whispered, “Watch, writer.” Then he grabbed Sean from behind, a thick arm over his trachea muting his yelps. He dragged the Irishman back into a stall. A spastic fountain of urine shot from him, but the only sounds were his kicking heels dragging across the tiles, then the crack of bone inside the stall.

It was very fast, and by the time Toman had placed Sean on the toilet, shut the door, and started using paper towels to wipe the wet spots on his pants, I was still unsure what had just happened.

My body figured it out before my head did, and I threw myself into the next stall and regurgitated my ten pints.

“You was watching?” I heard him say behind me. “You watch, writer?”

I don’t know exactly how, but soon we were out in the biting cold, Toman helping me walk and explaining that Sean’s clients were from Belfast, laundering IRA proceeds by buying up most of Prague’s old town.

“We kick out Russians, no? And now these Irish criminals, they think Toman will not to kick out them?”

We were in front of Sean’s apartment, me trying to twist out of the Czech’s grip. “You’re a fucking murderer.”

“And you are writer!” He helped me up the front steps as he jangled the keys he’d taken from Sean’s body. “Toman help you find story. No?”

We were inside by this time, but I was still so goddamned cold.

“This is world, Writer. And now you see it. No more like you live in university.”

It seems strange to me now, but I wasn’t afraid of Toman. I was only repulsed and angry that he had pulled me into his putrid underworld.

“Fuck you, Toman.”

“Fuck me?” he said, mimicking Taxi Driver with a big grin. “You do not see. Toman, he help his writer friend.”

I dropped into a chair and didn’t look at him. I spoke slowly so he’d understand. “All I see is that Toman is a psychopath who thinks killing someone is a good fucking ha ha to show his friends.”

“But Toman-”

“I hate you.”

He opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He started to button up his coat again. His voice was as wobbly as a dying man’s stream of piss. “Toman, he work hard for his friends.”

Then he left.

Over Sean’s Becherovka, I considered going to the police- the Gardai. That seemed reasonable. But after that, could I return to Prague? Toman didn’t do this for just a ha ha-he was working for his Czechs, who wouldn’t take kindly to my intervention.

Hell, I didn’t even want to return to Bohemia now, and I didn’t want to stay in Dublin. I knew what I’d do: I wouldn’t talk to anyone. I’d just count my stuff in Prague-some clothes, a laptop with a terrible, pompous novel on it, and the paperback of that unreadable Ulysses-as losses and just fly home to Texas.

Then there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

“Garda. Open up.”

I was faced with a big man. He wasn’t dressed like a cop, but he had a badge. “Garda Jack Taylor,” he told me, just in case I couldn’t read. “Your name?”

I told him.

“Yank?”

I nodded.

“And what might you be doing in Sean MacDougal’s flat?”

I started to answer something not far from a lie, then stepped back. Life’s full of decisions that you end up going back on. “Want to come in?”

I told him the story straight through, but he was only half-listening, preoccupied with scanning the room for evidence of some kind. He walked around to a cabinet and brought a shot glass back with him. When I finished, he said, “So you’re a writer, eh?”

I nodded.

“Good on you.” He poured some Becherovka into the glass, said, “Slainte,” and threw it back. “Don’t get much better than McBain.”

I admitted I’d never read the man, but quickly added that I was a Joyce fan.

That didn’t impress him-no one in Dublin gave a damn about their most famous son. He pulled out a pack of reds and popped one in his mouth, eyeing me as if my reading preference had proven I was a faggot. “Mister Steinhauer, I’ll be straight with you. What we’ve got are three witnesses placing you at Bellamy’s with the deceased. They saw you follow him into the toilet. They saw you leave quickly.”

“Yes, I told you this.”

“But there’s no mention of a big Hungarian.”

“Czech.”

“Yeah, right.”

He poured a second shot as I registered what he’d said. “That’s impossible-Toman’s over six feet!”

Taylor threw back the Becherovka and licked his teeth. “Maybe, Mister Steinhauer, you imagined him.”

I’d once written a bad story about a man whose friend commits rape, then later learns there was no friend, and he was the rapist. It was a common literary conceit, but in real life? “Give me a break. He bought my plane ticket. He introduced me to Sean MacDougal. Sean wouldn’t’ve let me stay here otherwise.”

Taylor took the bottle again. “Dead men needn’t invite you in.”

This cop seemed content just to sit here and drink Sean’s Becherovka, and I was developing a migraine trying to get my head around this. “Let me see that badge again.”

Unconcerned, he handed it over. It was real, all right-as far as I could tell-but then I noticed something. “You don’t work here. You’re with the Galway force.”

“I’m helping out the boys in Dublin.” Taylor pursed his lips. “I’m a fucking saint.”

I took the bottle from him and refilled my own glass. “Then where’s your partner?”

“Eh?”

“Police don’t visit a suspect alone. Not even in fucking Dublin.”

Taylor looked at me a moment, with a grin that reminded me of Toman. He reached out for the bottle. I handed it to him. “Aye, Mister Steinhauer, one thing you should be quite clear on is this Sean MacDougal was a shite of the highest order. No one in Dublin or even the Republic of Ireland will mourn this bastard’s leave-