“The point is you’re okay.”
“That’s the good news,” he said, and waited for me to ask what the bad news was. But I’d heard too much bad news lately to seek it out.
When I didn’t ask he told me.
“Prostate cancer,” he said, “and there’s good news there, too, because I’ve got a low Gleason score. Gleason, all I could think of was The Honeymooners. A low Gleason means it’s slow-growing. I can treat it and risk impotence and incontinence, or I can live with it and, according to the doctor, almost certainly die of something else before the prostate cancer can get me. ‘If you keep on drinking like you do,’ he said, and I swear he was smiling while he said it, ‘your liver’s likely to give out long before your prostate can kill you.’ Guess what I had as soon as I got out of his office.”
“A glass of Stoli.”
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“As a matter of fact it was Absolut, but you’ve got the right idea.
Doctor’s orders, the way I look at it. Let me tell you something, put this in perspective, before you start feeling sorry for me. It’s a complete fucking miracle I’ve lived this long. When I was born the obstetrician told my parents I would probably die within the week. Then I wasn’t supposed to survive childhood. ‘Give him all the love you can now,’ the pediatrician told them, ‘because you’re not going to have him long. The Lord’s likely to want him back.’ That was great for me, because they took me home and spoiled me rotten. And the Lord evidently took a good long look at me and decided he didn’t want me all that much.”
“Well, you can’t really blame him, can you?”
“I don’t blame anybody,” he said, “for anything. I’ve had a good life, and I figure everything past the first week of it’s been a bonus. I listen to music whenever I want, and I drink as much as I want, and I get all the pussy I want, and when little Jodie gets sick of me I’ll find somebody else, because there’s always one there to be found. So don’t feel sorry for me.”
I told him I wouldn’t dream of it.
When I got down to Grogan’s, Mick said I’d just missed him by a few minutes. “We were busy earlier,” he said. “Busy enough for me to join Con behind the wood. I don’t mind it. It’s honest work, pouring an honest drink.”
Most of what he did wouldn’t fit most people’s definition of honest work. A few years back, when the loosely allied Irish mob the press called the Westies was in full force, Mick Ballou led a faction of it, and led it with brutal efficiency. He was a career criminal and he had become my best friend, and Joe Durkin wasn’t the only man who found this puzzling. I didn’t really understand it myself.
“It’s thinned out some,” he said, “though it’s always busier than it used to be. The afternoons are still slow. That’s the nicest time in a bar, I’d say, when your only customers are men who want to sit quietly with a drink. Or late at night, when there’s no one there at all but two old friends talking the night away.”
“We’ve had our share of nights like that.” All the Flowers Are Dying
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“And never a one but I was glad of it. We’ve not had a late night in a while, but that’s not what brings you here this evening, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
I told him about it. He’d met Monica, although I had to refresh his memory. We’d brought her there once after the three of us saw a Brian Friel play at the Irish Arts Centre, and he’d joined us at our table, and Monica had teased him about having poetry readings, which she assured him would be good for business at Grogan’s. Yeats would be perfect, she’d said, and he’d topped her by nodding judiciously and reciting “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” with a flair and cadence that would not have been out of place on the stage of the Abbey.
“She had a lovely sense of humor,” he recalled. “And she liked my poem.”
“She did.”
“Killing’s terrible enough when it’s done for a reason. Oh, it’s an awful thing. And yet there’s joy in it, you know.”
“I know.”
“But the joy can never be the reason. If I let that happen what would I be? By God, I’m bad enough as I am.”
We went into his office and he opened the big old Mosler safe and sorted through an array of handguns. I picked out a pair of nine-millimeter pistols for TJ and myself and a .38-special revolver for Elaine. It had less stopping power than the nines, but it struck me as simpler for her to operate; there was no safety catch to mess with, it was less likely to jam, and all she had to do was keep squeezing the trigger until she ran out of bullets.
Back at our table, with the guns and two boxes of shells in an old gym bag at my feet, he said I was welcome to the weapons, but that he hoped I’d have no need for them.
“The police’ll pick him up tomorrow,” I said, “and I’ll bring them back as good as new.”
“Would you need a hand, do you think?”
“I’ll let you know if I do, but I don’t think so, Mick. All I’m going to do is keep her where he can’t get at her. And we’re not going to leave her alone. If I’m not there, TJ’ll be.”
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“I’d stand a shift anytime. Just let me know.”
“Thank you.”
He took another look at the drawing. “The dirty man,” he said, and it sounded far worse than a curse. “By God, he looks familiar.”
