Fanning felt for the pencil through the fabric of his jacket pocket.
“Is it the way he talks?”
“What about the way he talks?” Cully asked.
“Well he says things.”
“He says what things.”
“What he said when you told him you’d be dropping him off in town here.”
“He likes to bitch. Sometimes it’s a laugh. Not tonight. But I’m used to it.”
“No,” said Fanning. “About the job, the work you do. How it was finished and couldn’t you just go out for a few pints and that.”
“Yeah well he likes to take it a bit too easy sometimes,” Cully said. “Tough to keep an edge with that kind of attitude.”
“I mean something else he said. Something like ‘op’s over.’”
Cully watched the traffic lights and pushed the gearshift from side to side.
“Who knows what he’d say. It’s just talk.”
“Military-style talk.”
“Really.”
“It sure sounds like that to me,” said Fanning.
Cully stopped pushing the gearshift to and fro and looked over.
“And what would you know about that?”
“I’m just saying. I know what ‘fall out’ means too. Even if he was being sarcastic.”
“Well good for you,” said Cully. He spun the tires in first gear before easing off the pedal. He came around the north side of the square and found his way through the heavier traffic car by car, turning abruptly back onto Parnell Street.
“What about the gun?” Fanning said.
“The pistol you mean. I’ll take care of it.”
“Are you going tell them?”
“Tell them…?”
“That it’s a rip-off?”
“Maybe I will.”
“You don’t care.”
“Not much. No.”
Fanning gave up on his effort to draw Cully out for now. Cully took the turn down Gardiner Street. With the new three-level apartments drifting by to either side of the car, Fanning thought back to his days as a student. Coming up here for pints was considered daring. It was still Corporation flats, tenements, and vacant lots, with pubs full of people who started drinking at half-ten in the morning and were still there at closing time. Bohemian, he had thought, proletarian: real.
Through the wipers and the bleary glass he saw the Custom House just above the railway bridge and Beresford Place.
“Leave me off here at the Custom House,” he said to Cully.
“Don’t you want to see how to dump a hot car? It’s only a five-minute walk from the bridge.”
“So close to the city centre?”
“What did you think? We’re going to go to some cliff somewhere?”
“I don’t know.”
“How would we get back if we did that?”
“Well maybe West Ham will appear with another car.”
“That’s funny,” said Cully. “But not too funny. He’s in no shape to do that now. That’s what I’m saying to you. You can’t count on him a hundred percent.”
“I don’t want to be too late getting home.”
“The missus waiting up for you?”
“No. But she’s a worrier.”
“Can’t relax these days, can you. Trying to keep things going right? The breadwinner thing. Is that what they call it?”
Fanning wasn’t sure if it was a dig or not. He pretended to study the pattern on the shutters of a shop. Cully braked gently and curbed the car. He shut off the ignition and watched a couple walk by under an umbrella.
“Okay,” said Fanning.
Cully took something from a pocket inside his jacket. An envelope that had been folded twice. He unfolded it, held it level, and began rummaging for something else.
“Hold that a sec,” he said.
The envelope was light but there was something other than paper in it.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Cully took out a phone card from his jacket pocket.
“What do you think it is?”
Fanning felt suddenly vulnerable again. The city outside had been washed away by the rain running down the windows. Cully sighed as he leaned to his right and lifted the corner of the floor mat.
“I’m out of here,” said Fanning. “I don’t want anything to do with this,”
“Open the glove compartment there. There’s a lid of a plastic box, give it to me.”
Fanning pulled on the door release.
“Don’t,” snapped Cully. “You’ll blow it all over the place.”
“Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Bail out you mean. Reality too much for you?”
“It’s not that.”
“You have no clue, do you.”
Fanning watched Cully put the envelope on his knee just above where he had placed the plastic lid for the sandwich container. Cully continued to unfold the paper with one hand.
“It’s research I’m doing, not getting involved in crime.”
“You don’t say. Ever done this? Coke?”
“A few times. It was ages ago.”
He watched as Cully angled the paper up. Small grains of powder fell out. And then clumps. Cully tipped the paper back up, folded it, and put it back in its envelope.
“So what did you use then?”
“It was ages ago, I forget.”
“A straw? Smoke it? In your arm?”
“Not in my arm, Christ, no. I was drunk. I don’t remember.”
“You have an answer for everything.”
Cully had already began separating the powder into four separate clumps, and then into lines.
“I didn’t say I was proud of it,” said Fanning.
Cully tipped the phone card and handed the plastic lid to Fanning.
“Careful, okay? And close the door properly. It takes a minute. Can you spare the time?”
Fanning said nothing. The car rocked on its springs as Cully reached in to his trouser pocket. Some coins spilled between the door and the seat and he drew out a roll of bills. He peeled one off and dropped it into his lap, and replaced the roll. He rolled the banknote, tugged it tight at both ends, and then rolled it again.
“Okay,” said Cully. “Are you ready?”
“No thanks. I’ll stick with the self-preservation bit.”
Cully looked sideways at him. His face seemed to crawl with the shadows from the rain-strewn windows.
“There you go again,” he said. “Philosophy or whatever. Let me tell you something. Self-preservation takes brains. And for a bloke with a big brain, you’re doing pretty crap.”
A chill descended on Fanning. He fought to keep his arm from wavering.
“Yeah, well you should be nervous,” Cully went on. “I don’t think you realize it. You are lucky you went to that
