them he could see Ireland’s weather in relation to weather systems across Europe. They were having a tough time of it with rain and sleet in northern Italy. Apparently the Austrians were getting some lightning bolts. Weatherwoman clicked again and satellite pictures slid by. A cold front was on the way from Central Europe.
Minogue thought again about staying. Kilmartin had made his mind up, settling in with a mountain of sandwiches in front of him. He’d turned serious now too, laying into the System. Minogue didn’t want to hear it again but he caught the odd phrase. What exactly were Guards supposed to do in these situations, Kilmartin wanted to know — duck?! Wear suits of armor? Put their hands in their pockets, and look the other way? Or whistle a shagging jig, maybe? What chance did we have when push came to shove? Et cetera.
The policemen huddled around Kilmartin examined their drinks, cast longer glances at the television. Kilmartin wasn’t going to give up. Where was the incentive to follow through if the system was stacked, he demanded. Had to hold our ground, didn’t we? Oh, by Christ wasn’t the public was being codded! Face facts crime in Dublin was out of hand. Larry Smith had been only one in a whole mob of gangsters. And the young offenders — oh don’t get him started on that one! A mess entirely. As if one of ’em stabbed you and robbed you it wouldn’t hurt as much or something! You could buy a gun in a pub in Clondalkin for seven hundred quid. Ah, what was the point of talking!
Hoey was heading off now. Malahide was a long enough commute. Minogue asked him how the new house was working out.
“I’m trying to get a lawn going,” Hoey said.
“What’s a lawn?” Malone asked.
“They have them down the country,” said Hoey. “Green things.”
Kilmartin had started into the joke about the taxi driver and the prostitute. Minogue swiveled the stool about and looked around the room. He spotted a woman in conversation with a superintendent in civvies. Lawlor, that’s who he was. Lahlah. It was “Bridges” Lawlor a few years ago. Minogue had seen him on television a lot this past while. People’s feelings toward the Guards was his thing, he half-remembered. The community policing thing, building bridges. That was it, building bridges in the poorer areas of Dublin so that the gangsters would be rooted out by their own communities.
The woman looked familiar. The big glasses on her put Minogue in mind of a frog. He tried to place her, believed he was coming close, but soon gave up trying. Lawlor seemed to be explaining something complicated. She didn’t often return his smiles. She nodded every now and then, but her eyes went often to the ruck around Kilmartin.
The weatherwoman and her maps disappeared in a flurry of stars. She was replaced by sliding words and the twirling logo of Radio Telifis Eireann. The shine on that, Minogue thought, we’re international now, we have everything. And why not. Taxpayers, a lot of them probably German taxpayers still, would be paying for Kilmartin’s junket to the States. He’d be visiting Quantico of all places, to get the lowdown on how the FBI profiled their serial bad guys. He wondered what they’d have made of the likes of Dublinman and all-around thug, drug dealer, vandal, robber, and scut Larry Smith.
Kilmartin was well into his joke now. The taxi driver had been informed by his passenger that she had no money for the fare. A face appeared on the screen, a telephone number below it. Kilmartin’s voice was louder but Minogue still caught most of the words from the announcer. Touring the west of Ireland in a rented blue Ford Escort.
“No sign of your man yet,” Malone said.
The snapshot looked like the regulation crop of a group scene. A wedding maybe. The large, even teeth, the tan, they could only mean American. Minogue wondered what exactly it was that made the face so easily typed. The beefy neck? Some stock expression of ease and entitlement. Well after all, he’d grown up and belonged to people who owned the planet more or less. Cheap petrol, big cars. Hamburgers, planes that went to space and back. Big smiles, genuine a lot of them; guns in every house. Prosperity. And Daithi Minogue, whose letters came less frequently now, and who hadn’t been back for a visit lived there. The pang sliced hard across Minogue’s chest and he felt suddenly almost desperate.
“That Yank, the tourist,” Malone repeated. “What’s his name again?”
“Shawnessy,” Minogue said.
“What do you mean Shawnessy? Shock-nessy. ” Minogue eyed Malone.
“That’s how they say it over there.”
“How do you know?”
“There was a fella on Miami Vice once. A crook, a lawyer. Shawnessy, they pronounced it.”
Malone looked up from his work balancing beer mats and frowned.
“Now do you believe me?” Minogue asked.
Malone’s house of beer mats collapsed. He shrugged and swore and grabbed his glass. Stress, Minogue thought as he yawned with a sudden aching weariness, another meaningless word. The screen filled with burning buses. A lanky teenager throwing a rock froze and shrank, and was yanked back in miniature to a corner of the screen. Was that Derry, Minogue wondered.
“Jesus Christ,” said Malone. “Is that going on tonight? It fucking well better not be.”
“It’s archival footage.”
“What?”
A British army Land Rover sped over a roadway littered with stones. A petrol bomb burst against its roof.
“History, Tommy It’s old stuff.”
Someone with a scarf wrapped around his lower face was caught and frozen in place as he hoisted a petrol bomb. He too was dispatched as a fading, still shot to the bottom of the screen. The making of a great athlete, Minogue believed, that kid. Probably in his thirties or even forties by now, with kids, a few pints in the local, a half- decent house paid for by Her Majesty, the trousers getting too tight on him. The pictures slid back to reveal a dimly lit studio, where four people sat around a table.
“Maybe the locals ate him,” Malone said. Minogue turned to him.
“The American, like.” Malone nodded toward Kilmartin.
“They did say the west of Ireland, didn’t they?”
“Our American cousins are here to enjoy history, Tommy. Not to live it.”
He looked back at the television. Spotlights revealed the panelists one by one. Minogue sighed. God, not that windbag from the university again. Worse, that hairy, know-it-all journalist what was his name, the one wrote about Ireland disappearing. As if.
Then Kilmartin’s fist crashed into his palm. One of tonight’s designated gobshites to edify, a detective with a long nose that he constantly rubbed with the same paper hankie, made a solemn nod. Kilmartin’s eyes were hooded now. He pulled back his thumb, pointed his finger at his head, dropped the thumb. He eyed the red-faced sergeant who began to nod slowly himself.
“Smih’ goh’ hih’,” said the sergeant.
The phrase was a take on another Dublin criminal family member’s reaction to the news of Larry Smith’s murder. Together with a mostly mangled Dublin accent, it had done the rounds of Garda stations for months now.
“Play hard, die hard,” said Kilmartin.
“Damned right, Jim,” said the sergeant. “That’s the way she goes. A-okay.”
“One hundred percent effective,” Kilmartin said, his voice gone soft now. “Yes sirree… The Larry Smith Solution.”
Minogue looked around the room. He’d missed the transition from hilarity to gravity. The woman with the glasses, frog-woman, hadn’t. She was watching Kilmartin intently. Lahlah’s smile had faded. His eyes shifted from the group to the barman leaning on the bar listening to Kilmartin.
Sure that his message had reached and clutched and held the minds of his colleagues, and surer still that they’d hold it forever, Chief Inspector James Kilmartin arched his back over the counter. He looked with a lazy defiance from face to face. Murmurs of approval ran through the group of policemen. Glasses went to mouths, a flick of the head from several. The red-faced sergeant put his fist on the counter and pulled an imaginary trigger. The brotherhood, thought Minogue, the clan.
“Job well done there, Jim,” said the red-faced sergeant. “No complaints here, let me tell you.”
