The Yank: if I can see him, by Jases he can see me.
Connors' brain raced. He could not appear to be faltering. There was no phone nearby to get another detective to switch the surveillance. Connors walked up Kildare Street with a purposive swing to his gait, raging inwardly. His best hope was to get to St. Stephen's Green and wait for however long it took for the Yank to return to the Shelbourne. Connors felt the presence of the Yank behind the glass opposite as he passed up the street and wondered if they both shared some new knowledge now.
Connors reached the top of Kildare Street excited and angry. He dodged traffic and stepped into St. Stephen's Green. He found a seat just inside the railings which afforded him a view of the front of the hotel and, to his left and almost directly ahead of him, the tops of Dawson Street and Kildare Street as they led up to the park.
As the assistant reached into the window, the tanned man saw his follower looking up and down the street. He had looked up and pretended not to notice the antique shop. He had been seen and he knew it.
He listened to the assistant but watched the man recovering and heading up Kildare Street.
'It's from a set. It's Belleek china. Do many people in America know about Belleek?' the assistant inquired.
'Well, I'm from the west coast, ma'am, so I can't speak for collectors on the Atlantic side,' he replied.
'Ah, I detect an Irish influence though,' she said conspira-torially.
'How discerning of you, I'm sure. Yes, my mother is Irish.'
'Isn't that rich now,' the assistant said.
The irony was not lost upon him. He'd as soon throw the goddamned plate through the window.
'I'll take your card if I may, ma'am.'
'Oh, I see. Well, all right,' she said, visibly taken aback.
He retraced his steps back along Molesworth Street. He was surprised to find that his armpits were sweating. The tail might have an out somewhere. He decided to go up Dawson Street to St. Stephen's Green. As he walked by late shoppers and cars, he tried to control his unease.
Minogue's week was over. He'd not be called in on the weekend even with the sweep for the murderers of the Garda. Kilmartin would have him nixed off the list, because Minogue had some vague status as an invalid. It has its advantages, Minogue reflected. Someone had tried to run him over; he had found out that there were powerful old boy networks in the army and in Trinity. They wanted their reputations left glowing even if it meant sullying others. That Loftus was a bad egg, an organisation man. Minogue realised that Agnes McGuire entered his mind as an image, a face, unclouded by things she had said.
This was quite contrary to how Loftus and Walsh's father came to mind. Where she came across as singular, Minogue's distaste for the others made his recollections of them amorphous, webby.
Kilmartin probably didn't believe him about the attempt. There was nothing he could do about it really. No clues came from the car. Maybe it was some headbanger who was on the lookout for anyone to frighten. Minogue found that his resistance to certain thoughts had weakened. Dublin was a different place. There was a lot of heavy drug addiction that no one wanted to talk about, a lot of lunatics on the loose. It was the times. Maybe some deranged addict had finally unhinged when he had seen this Walsh boy, a well-fed student with his future ahead of him, a boy who didn't know that the likes of Coolock or Finglas existed. On balance, however, people with drug dependencies were usually more passive than violent. General rules didn't explain every incident. Could a boy like Walsh inspire such violence otherwise? Maybe whoever did him in panicked before they got to the boy's wallet. Maybe the realisation of what they had done broke through their frenzy and hatred.
Minogue had felt the violent impulse himself in recent years, the rush of contempt that came over him at times. The most he had done was jump out of his seat and switch off the television when the inanity overwhelmed him. A narcissistic rock star comparing himself to Bach, someone whining about their oppressors, oppressors they needed to nourish their own weakness. On 'The Late Late Show,' the accents did it. He had exploded once, unable to even laugh it off, when some ex-airhostess who had been appointed to promote tourism in the States started talking in her hoi polloi southside fakery.
'And now joining us on the show is Mrs Blah, wife of the auctioneer Michael Blah, all the way from New York, USA. My, Deirdre, what a gorgeous tan you've got…'
How could it be that people who were so insipid and grasping could inspire such disgust? His own anger, so vital and huge a hammer, stood looming over these fleas of contemporary Ireland.
The slats of the seat bit into Connors' thigh. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees. He watched scattered groups of pedestrians waiting for the lights at the top of Dawson Street. He looked over to Kildare Street and checked his watch. His gamble should pay off within fifteen minutes or not at all. He had three minutes left in his limit. He stood up and strolled toward one of the entrances to the Green.
Again he scanned the footpath. The traffic was moving fast, swirling around the Green. Connors wondered what would happen if one of the cars stopped suddenly. Everything would be haywire all over the city. The place wasn't built for cars. Connors turned at the sound of a horn. Someone had tried to run through the traffic to get to the Green. Probably a tourist, taking their lives in their hands. Connors saw it almost daily in the summers. Some poor old divil from Minnesota or someplace after a near miss, with that expression you'd see on a donkey chewing barbed wire and just beginning to realise it, trying to laugh it off. 'Oh Elmer nearly got run over in Dublin. Charming city.'
A near miss by the sound of it too, down the far side of Dawson Street. The pedestrian skipped through parked cars to the safety of the Green. Connors could not see the person very clearly. In the instant that the pedestrian ducked into the Green, Connors' brain eclipsed his eyesight and he began running down the path toward where the person had entered. He had made out that it was a man, a man in a hurry too, a man in a suit.
Connors ran across the grass, scattering seagulls. Coming around a hedge he almost collided with a woman pushing a pram. He stopped and looked around him. He could find no trace of the man who had entered the Green. Connors' rational sense began to catch up with him and nag him. The woman had stopped. She looked him up and down disparagingly. If he's in a suit, then it's no bother to speak your mind to him, she thought. Still, he was harmless-looking, not like the gurriers, the thugs who'd do the same and dare you to complain.
'You don't have to jog all over me and the child, mister. Watch where you're going, would you.'
'Sorry, missus. I'm looking for a friend of mine. I saw him come in, but I don't know what way he went. I have an important message for him.'
The young mother had Connors taped as a bogman who had nearly trampled on her child. Still, a nice look about him.
'Your pal seems to do his jogging here too then,' she said and indicated with her head.
Connors ran. He rounded the pond and headed up a hill to where he knew there was a statue of Yeats. Connors stopped near the statue. The statue, in the abstract style, made Connors feel he was on the moon. Various granite blocks had been laid down to provide steps and benches around the statue. He felt his legs twitching. He looked around at the trees which enclosed this area. There was nobody here.
Connors stepped slowly off the granite blocks and began walking under the trees. The grass had been worn away here, what little could grow in the shade. For a moment, Connors lost his bearings and imagine! himself far from the city. Only the constant hush of the traffic as it filtered into the Green reminded him. He had been diddled, but what excited Connors now was that this man must have had a reason for running. Connors could now justify his trailing the man. His next step was to report in and have that playwright fella picked up and questioned about the Yank he had met, then to go looking for him in earnest.
This is indeed what was to happen, but Connors' intentions did not effect these steps. Connors was surprised to find a man in a well-cut suit standing with his back to him next to a tree. The man turned and stared at Connors. The face was indeed tanned. A mixture of pity and irritation animated it. Connors thought it was odd to see a man so well dressed standing there in the trees. Maybe he'd stopped for a piss, not knowing where there was a proper jacks. The man's hand came up abruptly from his side.
'Hey!' Connors said.
The man's hand jerked and Connors was falling back before he heard the pbutt. As the back of Connors' head hit the clay, the sky's light became intolerable. He wondered how he could have been pushed from so far away. He remembered the lightness in his chest when he'd leap down into the hay. 'Up and awaaay' his brother would shout, 'Up and away.'
Kilmartin listened to Minogue's voice over the phone.
'Yes, I'm just leaving Trinity. The idea is to throw the bits up in the air again and look at it all from a different
