“What’s all this about, Jim?”
“
“This! Tonight.”
“It’s what matters,” he said as if that explained it.
“What matters?”
“What matters to us,” he said, wincing in pain as he tried to pull a hooded BCCC sweatshirt over his head.
I put the beer and the Luger down and helped him get the sweatshirt on.
“C’mon,” he said, grabbing the Luger and tucking it in his pants. “Let’s get back out to the party. We’ll need to talk about this another time. We can meet at Stan’s Diner or something.”
“Sounds like a plan. Stan’s for lunch tomorrow?”
“Make it a few days. I’m gonna be pretty sore.” He turned to go and then stopped to face me. “One thing, Professor Weiler … ”
“What’s that?”
“We don’t talk about what goes on here, not with anyone, not even with each other, okay?”
“Like in
Jim’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, like that. And we don’t use names, at least not while we’re here. ’Course they all know who you are.”
As we walked back to the bunker, my mind was zooming in another direction. I was still off balance, contemplating Jim’s wounds, remembering my own wounds-self-inflicted or otherwise. Words began forming in my head. I could see my list of seven first lines, could hear them in my own voice, repeating and repeating. There might be a second line in there somewhere, I thought, maybe even a third, maybe a paragraph. The rush of it was even more intense than it had been with the St. Pauli Girl. I swear I was hard. I felt like a writer again. I was Kipster come from the dead. Jim’s wasn’t the only resurrection of the evening.
Six
My bedroom was heavy with the St. Pauli Girl’s scent and it wasn’t lost on me that my entire universe once smelled this way, of blonds and possibility. Peeking over the edge of my laptop, I studied the St. Pauli Girl’s curves. Her shape, like her scent, was still raw: curing, not cured. She was a demon in bed and it seemed to me she slept as fiercely as she fucked. Her orgasms may not have moved the earth, but they sure as shit moved me. Now fast asleep, Renee was squeezing the feathers out of my pillows and plowing over quilted mountain ranges with a sweep of her bare leg. There was nothing brittle about the blond in my bed tonight. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder about where such ferocity had come from in such a young woman.
Funny thing about her was that she wasn’t quite so spectacular to look at without her clothes on. Don’t misunderstand, she was by far the hottest woman I’d been with since Amy. Amy was lush and moody and seductive. She had those gold-flecked green eyes that were just unfair, but Amy wasn’t head-turning. I think that’s what turned my head. When I was at the height of my fame and this week’s batch of blonds was taking numbers like at the supermarket deli counter, Amy couldn’t be bothered. The first time we met at Puffy’s in Tribeca, her clothes and hands were speckled and splattered with paint, and she was about as impressed by me as by a moth. Maybe less so. When Amy’s clothes came off, her imperfections blended into a kind of fleshy magic. Renee’s looks were nearly perfect and therefore less interesting. It was a puzzlement, a paradox. The exploration of paradox was why I thought I’d become a writer.
Once I lost my gift, I realized writing wasn’t about paradox at all, but about words. I had been in love with words my whole life and I didn’t think I could love anything more. When I got famous, I didn’t think there was anything I could love more than fame. Then I met Amy and I didn’t think I could love anything more than Amy. Cocaine proved me wrong and proved easier to love than words or fame or Amy.
When I was certain the St. Pauli Girl had settled down into a still sleep, I started typing:
From the moment McGuinn stepped off the bus and into the belly of a depot that was straight out of the B movies his aul wan favored, he knew he was well through the looking glass. Not even a man as accomplished at murder as himself could foresee the dangers awaiting him in this faceless, generic town on the fringes of the map of the States. He’d been to America before, many times, when he’d have to disappear for a while to let things settle down back home. But those other trips had been spent in Boston or New York, and in the bosom of the Republican underground. Here in this nowhere, he was wholly on his own, exposed without a coat against the chill, and felt as if everyone he passed walking from the bus depot was staring at him with accusation in their eyes.
While peace in the North was not quite at hand, it was on the horizon and McGuinn knew it. Someday soon, there would be handshakes and smiles between ancient enemies, promises of disarmament, and amnesty. Good news for everyone but the likes of himself, for there were sins not destined for forgiving and secrets never intended for telling. That was why he was in this godforsaken shite hole, because his own people would be as anxious to kill him as the Brits, maybe more so. Still, he hadn’t fully come to terms with it until he’d had a sit-down with Old Jack Byrnes.
“So, you’ll be bobbling off then, Terry McGuinn.”
“Can I not now enjoy the fruits of me labors, Old Jack?”
“If history’s taught us any lesson, boyo, it’s that the need for revolutionaries ends with the revolution.”
“Revolutionary! Is that what I am?”
“Were, lad, were. Yer tense is thoroughly past.”
“Haven’t I a say in me own life?”
“It hasn’t been yer own life from the moment ya took another man’s in the name of the cause.”
“Where did I sign on fer that, Jack?”
“Terry, after all these years, have ya no more sense than a can a piss? The peace will come and the hoors will sing songs of brotherhood and understanding, but the Brits and Prods would sooner sip shite-flavored tea than forgive ya fer what ya’ve done.”
“It’s not the Brits and Prods that worry me.”
“Ya speak the truth, lad. ‘Tis our own boyos you’ve most to fear.” Old Jack pointed from his own eyes to Terry’s and back again. “Ya’ve seen too much. Ya know too many things about the men behind the men who’ll share power in this land. Yer a potential embarrassment that can’t be afforded.”
“Surely, Jack, I’m owed.”
“Owed! Owed what and by whom? Yer a killer, son, one who’s outlived his brief, if ya take my meaning. Listen to me, Terrence; many are the casualties of war that will come after the peace. So be gone. When I go, look under the table.”
“What’s there to see?”
“A short reprieve from your date at the knacker’s yard. Now, give us a kiss, lad. We won’t be seeing each other again in this world.”
McGuinn held tightly to the man who had been a father and mentor to him, but who had also brought the curse down on him. With the embrace finally broken, he watched Old Jack limp off, disappearing into a veil of bodies and smoke. McGuinn looked under the table and found an envelope thick with American money. He tucked the envelope away and headed out the back of the boozer into the alley. He didn’t return to his flat that night and hadn’t looked back until now …
According to the man I met at St. Nicholas’ churchyard in the Deptford section of London that night all those years ago, he had good reason to see accusation in the eyes of passersby. He told me that he had started killing before the age of fourteen and that he had been killing ever since.
“That first one was easy,” he said, in his peculiar monotone, “a man twice me age with a fierce reputation for mayhem of his own. A few of the lads diverted his attention with a brawl and I stepped right close beside him and put two through his liver.”
