“So, what else did you do?”
“This and that.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means what I said. Here, let me give you a little tip on etiquette here. Save your questions, save them for later. Just er, observe. Is that the correct term?”
Fanning couldn’t tell how much was sarcasm now. Cully shifted to third but misjudged the clutch, and the car staggered.
“Shitbox,” he said with little feeling. “Give me Jap any day.”
“Nondescript,” said Fanning. “Is that a clue?”
“Non — de…?”
“Ordinary.”
“That sounds about right,” said Cully. “Nothing wrong with being ordinary, is there. I mean it’s okay to stand out, don’t get me wrong, but for a good cause, see? Princess Di, Bono — that sort of thing.”
“Princess Di? You actually believe that, what you just said?”
“No.”
Cully made the light at Milltown Road. Fanning took out his notebook.
“Notebook?” Cully asked. “Like a reporter?”
“It’s too easy to forget stuff.”
Cully nodded as if in appreciation of the idea.
“Keep it on you all the time, do you?”
“Pretty well.”
“Just one?”
“One at a time.”
“I should do that,” said Cully. “Don’t trust all the online stuff, I have to say. But does your stuff, your job, have a lot of detail? Appointments, all that?”
“Maybe not as much as yours,” said Fanning.
“Nice,” said Cully. “Nice way of asking.”
The excitement in Fanning’s chest had settled. He had expected Cully’s evasions. He wasn’t an iijit.
He began to jot down some notes, scribbling intentionally:
— no bling
— takes care (driving, appearance, etc.)
— not defensive.
He couldn’t imagine Cully sitting around a pub with a bunch of thugs. What could he have instead of Tony Soprano’s restaurant and bakery routine?
“What does a fella do for entertainment?” he asked Cully.
Cully turned to him with a half-amused expression. In the oncoming lights Fanning caught sight of a line of shiny skin that ran under Cully’s eyebrow.
“Not too shy about your questions tonight, are you.”
Fanning took this as praise.
“Part of the job,” he said to Cully. “If you want to tell me things, you will. If you don’t, well you won’t.”
“It’s a free country and all that, right?”
“So they say.”
“It’s free if you’ve got money,” said Cully. “I mean look at this place. Rathgar. One mill, two mill, for a house here? But not too free when you’re not on the winning side.”
“You mean poor?”
“You use that word, do you? I’ve only been hearing dictionary words myself, like, well — you probably know them better. Underprivileged?”
“Marginalized.”
“That’s one. First time I heard it I thought margarine. Is that what poor people have to eat? What’s so bad about that?”
Fanning scribbled the word “margarine” in his notebook.
“Are you going to use that? I don’t want to look stupid.”
“No. It’s just a remark, for atmosphere. Ambiance.”
“See, you left me right there, with words like that. That’s something I could never do, I could never remember all those words.”
“Was it hard-going for you at school, when you were a kid?”
“That’s a weird question. Did you ask Murph questions like that too?”
“Sure, I did.”
“And what did he come up with?”
“Not much, to be honest.”
“What a surprise there. Anything he did tell you was fantasy. Whatever he thought he could get away with. You know?”
“Possibly.”
“Oh, I guarantee it. Yes, I do.”
Cully geared down for a light in the middle of Rathgar. He looked around at the parked cars, the pubs, and the restaurants.
“Lambo,” he murmured, “over there. Lamborghini, a Diablo. AMG Mercedes a few down, see by that gate? Uh-oh a yellow Porsche. The killer one. Let me see if I can spot one ordinary car around here.”
“You know a lot about cars?”
“I like them, is all.”
“Are those ones easy to boost?”
Cully made a long blink and he looked over.
“‘To boost?’“
“To rob. To steal.”
“Well, listen to you,” said Cully. “Cheeky.”
“Well? Are they hard to steal?”
“How would I know that?”
Cully drove through the green light onto Terenure Road.
“Where are we going?” Fanning asked. “You said on the phone that you’d be stopping off at a few places.”
“Do you know Kimmage at all?”
“Not much. Do you?”
This time, Fanning sensed annoyance in Cully’s glance. Several seconds passed. It was long enough for Fanning’s glow of pride at surprising Cully to subside.
“Cashel Road,” said Cully then. “A road off that. I have to meet a man. Give him a message, collect something.”
“Is it anything like the message you gave those two this afternoon?”
“Those two drug dealers? The pair from Siberia?”
“Siberia?”
“Well how do I know?”
“Eastern Europe?”
“Something like that I suppose.”
“Were you paid to do what you did?”
“I do what I have to do,” he said.
To Fanning, it was as though Cully had expected the question sooner.
He seemed to know the area well enough, steering the BMW with ease by the bends and the parked cars.
“This is Murph’s playground here,” he said in an almost cheerful voice then. “Kimmage. Did you know that?”
