“You don’t care that you can get them dirt cheap from Cyprus?”
“No.”
It wasn’t scorn Minogue heard in Leyne’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure.
“It’s in the genes, is it? Since the Famine?”
“There’s no way to know.”
Leyne cleared his throat. Freeman looked at him and then at Minogue.
“What would anyone know about that anymore,” Leyne murmured. “There’s only microchips or television or something. Video games. Stores — shops. Who cares. There’s no past anymore. History’s over, isn’t that it?”
“My great-grandmother was the only one left,” said Minogue. “Out of nine. A Quaker family in Galway took her in.”
Leyne made to say something but he stopped. Minogue watched the back gates of the Dail swing open to admit a car. Too many damned Mercedes in Boomtown Dublin now this last while. He returned Leyne’s gaze.
“The man she married had buried seven brothers and sisters,” he said.
“Enough left to take on the landlords though? And then the Black and Tans.”
“I suppose. I’ve a brother keeps score, over the centuries.”
Leyne sighed.
“British Queens, my da used to grow,” he said. “Duke of Yorks. The Kerr’s Pinks. Idaho Reds. Sir Walter Raleigh and the glorious spud. Rotting in the fields. People dying in ditches. But I’m no scholar. No. I’m too busy working for a living. I pay people to study something, and then I pay them again to explain it to me. I must be mad.”
Two Garda motorcycles blocked the traffic at the lights by Baggot Street. The Mercedes surged ahead. One circuit of Stephen’s Green and they’d pull up at the Shelbourne. Minogue looked at the Opel ahead. What was there in Geraldine Shaughnessy’s manner, her appearance, that he’d recognized but couldn’t detail as he’d watched her standing in the airport car park by the tape? A teacher maybe, a nun?
“Microchips or not I hear Dublin’s falling apart,” said Leyne. “How bad is it?”
Minogue recognized a newspaper seller at the foot of Harcourt Street. The man, a boy when Minogue first knew him, with a loose eye and sloping drag-foot gait, squinted at the cars. Behind him on a bus shelter was an ad for GOD. It was the original one, the close-up black and white of a shaved head with a tattoo on her neck and a ring in her eyebrow. The mocking, hollow eyes staring at him from any point he looked. Would Leyne be satisfied to know that the suicide rate was now ahead of England’s?
“Cup of good coffee’s nearly a pound,” he said. “Bistros. New television channels.”
“That’s all you can tell me?” asked Leyne. “Not the part about Dublin being full of drug addicts? Or that there are Irish farmers paid not to grow things?”
The trees in their full spread and the glimpses of the pond between the shrubs lifted Minogue.
“Not what DeValera and the 1916 crowd had in mind, I tell you.”
I tell ya, Minogue repeated within. The American and the Irish had him off balance yet. But more than the accent, he had heard something familiar in Leyne’s talk. Steeling himself for a news conference, no doubt: the inevitable intrusion of police and gawkers and cranks. Revisiting old scars too, maybe. A past marriage, a return bout in a private struggle against the old country he had turned into a villain so he could escape it. Better not tell him the Irish weren’t emigrant laboring men anymore.
Minogue stole a glance at Leyne This short multimillionaire had gone far. He’d parlayed a crop that had kept his ancestors alive — and then decimated them — into convenience food, and he’d made a big pile of money at it. And no, it wasn’t bitterness he’d been hearing in Leyne’s asides. It was something else, and he had heard it before. It was that zest and disenchantment which came out too often as scorn, and maybe that lasting ache was a watermark in Minogue’s fellow citizens no matter where they ended up. Always returning, always leaving, he wondered. Everything counts, and nothing matters?
The car pulled over to the entrance of the Shelbourne. Minogue counted three squad cars, a half-dozen uniforms, and as many in plain clothes stepping out onto the roadway. He spotted the hard chaws further back, eyes everywhere, one talking into his lapel, another with his jacket unbuttoned, the pistol jammed up under his arm. He looked at the faces of people held back on the footpath.
“Christ,” Leyne said.
“It’s going to be okay,” Freeman soothed. “You’ve taken your six o’clock — ”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leyne snapped. He turned to Minogue.
“We’re going to have to hang tough, right? You know what I’m saying?”
Minogue took in the wet eyes, the raspy breathing. He saw veins under the skin along Leyne’s neck now.
“You have your own people to answer to, I know,” Leyne said. “All I ask is, don’t make it harder for Geraldine or me.”
He nodded at the small crowd on the pavement.
“I don’t know what these journalists are like here but I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on one of them if he was on fire.”
Leyne’s piercing eyes darted around the scene for several moments more.
“It’ll come out sooner or later,” he whispered. “Every family has its things.”
Hayes opened Leyne’s door. The food tycoon grabbed Minogue’s arm.
“My son was murdered,” he said. “The money’s no good. I can’t get him back. I can’t go back to fix things. Do you know what I’m saying?”
Minogue nodded. Leyne stared into his eyes again.
“You’re thinking, ‘Some goddamned Yank,’ right?”
Minogue watched Freeman adjusting his collar.
“I’m an Irishman. I wandered off, I suppose. But I’m an Irishman. Okay?”
Minogue nodded.
“I’m a pain in the arse all my life. And I look like hell, don’t I?”
“You’ll be okay. Just go easy on yourself. Don’t react to stupid questions.”
“I don’t mean appearing on TV here,” said Leyne. “Hell, that’s nothing. What I mean is the father bit. The parent thing. You’re the old school there, are you? No divorce or that, Mass on Sunday, all that…?”
“No.”
Leyne grabbed his arm again, squeezed.
“Listen,” Leyne said. “ Do I look like a man who’s interested in bullshit? In my condition? Let’s talk man-to- man here. I never stopped being Irish. An Irishman, do you get it? The main thing here is, whatever you do, remember I’m behind you. All the way. You hear me?”
CHAPTER 7
Leyne leaned in, pushed a nest of the microphones back. Minogue wondered what it was about Leyne’s face that now reminded him of a fish. Another journalist placed a recorder on the table. Minogue stopped counting, there must be a dozen Guards around the room. Tynan sat in next to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “They want to start right away?”
“I suppose. What do I tell the parents that I don’t give to a press conference?”
Tynan raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t be dragging your feet,” he said.
Minogue eyed Gemma O’Loughlin chewing on a pen at the back of the room.
“I’m giving the bare minimum, John.”
Tynan put on his Easter Island face, looked out at the small crowd. Mrs. Shaughnessy was now sitting next to Leyne. He leaned toward her and said something. He put his hand on her arm. She seemed not to notice the hand.
King read the release. He didn’t use the word appeal. That was left for him, Minogue realized. The lights dazzled him. He almost missed his cue but a television camera swiveled and settled on him. He heard himself begin,
