“Give it three, four days, they’ll bite.”
“What makes you so sure?”
I thought about all we’d discussed, tried to figure it out, said,
“They are working towards a very definite timetable and everything needs to be in place for the mad bastards.”
He gave that some thought, then,
“Why are you so certain they’ll target me?”
Easy answer if not exactly true,
“You got a headstone in the mail, as did Ridge and I, we have both been… shall we say… contacted.”
He sounded just that little bit wary-not a trait he displayed much-asked,
“You’ll have my back, right?”
“Count on it, buddy.”
He lingered, reluctant to ring off, said,
“Three to four days, you think.”
“Absolutely.”
For the first time in my chaos-ridden life, I’d called it right on the money.
I was staring out at the lone Galway Hooker, at easy anchor in the bay, like a Galway snapshot of a particular era. No, not a working girl, the beautiful boat built in Galway. It gave me a vague comfort that is inexplicable. I’d taken a moment to go down to the docks and just stare at it, knowing this might well be the last visual peace I’d have. Then turned to the city and the business of bait.
As we waited for Stewart to establish his routine, I went to the city center each day, never knowing how some chance encounter might yield information. I nearly looked for Caz, had to switch channels, focus on the job at hand. Had an encounter all right, just not one of any normalcy.
I was limping along Shop Street, trying to avoid all the buskers; you give to one, you’d better give to all. A man stopped me. I vaguely remembered him from way back, when I had a career and he had notions. Not either of us, not no more. Life had walloped the slate clean. Dave. I don’t know how I dragged up his name but he’d been a player in the property game. Rode it till the bust and went belly-up himself. I always kind of liked him as, beneath his past posing, I’d detected a deep hurt from childhood. The industrial schools that only Seamus Smyth has ever really captured on paper. Concentration camps for young boys, militarized by the church. Dave tended to talk in sound bites, lest you ever nail him down. He launched,
“Jack, the cunt bank refused my plea for an extension of my mortgage.”
You’d infer from this that I saw him regularly, was intimate with his life. Such are the Irish, tell you all or fuck all. I hadn’t laid an eye on him for over ten years. He’d weathered that decade bad, if appearances were any indication. Shabby clothes, furtive eyes, a face of broken veins, and that purple complexion of the desperate drinker.
He continued,
“I’m going to lose my house, and what am I going to tell my daughters? The youngest is only eleven.”
I wanted to scream,
“The banks will lend you millions but crush you if you owe a paltry sum.”
But asked,
“How much to buy you some time?”
His eyes nearly rolled in his head. If not salvation, at least a lifeline. He considered, then gave a figure. Not the amount he wanted to give but he knew me well enough not to act the bollix. I could just about manage that, from Father Gabriel’s blood money, said,
“Meet me in the Quays tomorrow, at twelve noon. I’ll have it in cash for you.”
He was stunned, said,
“You’re a good man, Jack.”
My dad was a good man.
I wasn’t.
And you’ve got to think,
“The fuck was with that?”
Trying to buy redemption with one measly act of generosity?
I don’t know, maybe.
The next day, I delivered the money as promised. After, did I feel better?
Did I fuck.
I was torn apart from fresh dreams of Laura and the sheer loss of her. A shrink telling me one time, when I was in the home for the bewildered, the confused, the looney bin:
“Jack, it’s not that you’re afraid to be happy but you’re terrified of making someone else unhappy.”
I stopped at Wolfe Tone Bridge, the city swirling around me, my heart in scorched ribbons, tears trying to make inroads on my beaten face. Then got a grip, sort of, muttered,
“A pint and chaser mightn’t help but, sure as rain, might bring oblivion.”
I turned towards O’Neachtain’s, not a pub I much used as it was so busy but now I needed the sound of people. The sheer volume of a thousand stories that had no bearing on my life, just to drown in the variations.
Buttoned my all-weather coat, my act in gear, if not really in place.
The sad line of slow suicides.
– Jack Taylor, watching a batch of huddled drinkers
There weren’t a whole lot of things, then, to make you smile but I was flicking through the Irish Daily Mail, came across a cartoon by the gifted Graeme Keyes. Showed a full shot of the Sanctuary at Knock. The Irish answer to Lourdes.
A bewildered pilgrim, with rosary beads around her neck, staring at a signpost which read
To Knock
To Mass
To Mass Hysteria.
And in the corner, an excited pilgrim gasping,
“The sun actually danced.”
Facing him is a less exalted pilgrim who sighs,
“Wow, the sun actually appeared.”
Classic.
Summed up the whole nation. I was waiting for Stewart. He’d arranged to come to my apartment and I’d mocked him,
“Bring your own herbal tea.”
He did, arriving at noon as the Angelus bell rang. I was probably one of the three remaining people in the country who still said the prayer.
Stewart brought: herbal tea, box of McCambridge’s cookies, and an attitude.
None of which I welcomed.
I pointed at the kettle, said,
“Knock yourself out.”
No disrespect to the aforementioned shrine. He made the tea, placed the cookies on a plate, I kid thee fucking not. A plate?
Said, with gusto,
“Join me.”
Right.
I got a bottle of Blue Moon from the fridge, joined him at the table, and dared him to comment. His eyes were fixated on the gun. He asked,
“Is that a Mossberg?”
I was impressed, said so, added,
