The Ghosts of Galway, page 8
He took a deep breath, said,
“Seriously Jack, this is not a good time, all hell is breaking loose.”
Time to fake him out.
I said,
“Me heart is broken with the shootings.”
He was taken aback, asked,
“You know, then?”
I gave a bitter laugh, said,
“Superintendent Clancy and I may seem at odds”—to put it fucking mildly—“but we go back a ways.”
He bought it, said,
“I know you were once close to Sergeant Ridge and I am truly sorry for your loss.”
WTF?
I remember mimicking,
“Sergeant Ridge?”
He said,
“Yes, died at the scene, and the young recruit Murphy died en route to hospital.”
* * *
The double funeral was held on a bitter cold Thursday. Crowds lined the street.
I have only vague recollections of the whole awful event. Trying to offer my condolences to Superintendent Clancy, who snapped,
“You don’t belong here.”
I indicated Ridge’s coffin, asked,
“Does she?”
Yeah, I know.
Beyond lame.
At the graveside, Father Malachy intoned,
“Man is full of misery.”
And I shouted,
“Aw, don’t say that.”
I got into a minor scuffle with the priest and, phew-oh, they threw me out of the cemetery.
Got to be a first, barred from the graveyard.
Guess it would be cremation then.
My mobile shrilled and in my utter madness I half thought it might be Ridge. It was Emily, who went,
“Wassup?”
Jesus.
I said,
“I’m kind of fucked here, Em.”
“Where are you?”
“At Rahoon Cemetery.”
She laughed, said,
“Don’t let ’em bury you.”
I met her in what used to be the River Inn. That there is not a river within a spit of that pub is neither here nor there. Like so many other pubs, it was now under new management and called
The Sliding Rock.
No, me neither.
There is a sliding rock in Shantalla. A Galway landmark to generations of children but now more in use with the ubiquitous drinking schools.
I was working on a full pint when Emily showed.
Who was she today?
Dressed in black leather, her hair in black synch, I asked,
“A Johnny Cash vibe?”
Got the look and,
“Seriously?”
I said,
“I give up. It’s not like I could really give a fuck.”
She sat, signaled to the guy behind the counter, said,
“Christie Hyde.”
The barman came over and oddly enough? Was actually Irish. He was not accustomed to being summoned. He snapped,
“Yeah?”
Like I said, Irish.
Despite what the Brits had believed, we were not born to serve. Emily didn’t look at him, said,
“Margarita.”
He nearly smiled at me. Translation:
“You poor bastard.”
He said to her,
“Think you’re in the wrong establishment.”
Waited a long beat.
Then added,
“Love.”
Fuck me but women hate that sneered endearment.
She turned the full wattage of those sometimes green through blue eyes, asked,
“You got tequila?”
He was into it, running the bitch, he thought. Said,
“Hello? ’Course we got it.”
She said in a very Texan accent,
“Then y’all put that in a tall glass and my dad here will add the bitterness.”
Phew.
He nodded, turned to go, and she said,
“Yo, Paddy, don’t ever call me love.”
He headed back to the bar, trying to walk like he hadn’t had his arse handed to him.
When the drinks came, she toasted me with
“Good result, eh?”
What?
I stared at her, hoping I wasn’t horrendously correct in what was uncoiling in my fevered mind. I asked softly,
“What do you mean?”
Seemed two bullied lifetimes before she answered.
“The bitch is dead.”
I had my drink mid-lift, stopped.
Asked in real low tone, menace dripping from every slow enunciation.
“Who is the bitch?”
She usually was so on the ball, saw peril before it even finished its coil, but was now on a tequila dance that was blind to nuance, said in jolly voice,
“Sergeant smartass Ridge, fixed her good. She bought the farm and all its equipment.”
I snatched her wrist, as rough as I could, snarled,
“You reckless cunt, what did you do?”
First time in all our multifaceted dealings that I ever saw fear in her eyes. She near whispered,
“I just made a call, told her of a situation that required Garda help.”
Pause.
“I also called Woody, hinted the cops might be en route.”
I took a deep drawn-out breath, asked,
“Who the fuck is Woody?”
She was regaining some control, the usual cockiness reasserting itself, said,
“Christ, you never listen, I have told you, the Ghosts of Galway?”
I sat back, trying to absorb the sheer insanity of it all, managed one question.
“This Woody, he a shooter?”
Smile on her face, said,
“He is now.”
I had so many avenues to respond to this revelation and all,
All,
Of them
Involved violence.
She took my silence as some twisted form of, if not approval, then assent. She said,
“I will admit she was hot in the bed.”
Holy fuck!
How is it possible to be simultaneously shocked, stunned, outraged, and absolutely homicidal? Too, I have rarely been lost for words. I have done silence but only because I was too pissed to talk, but a situation where I actually couldn’t find a response in my muddled mind? I stared at her and she gave me that radiant smile, said,
“Keep your enemies close, right Jack-o?”
Did I lean over the table and punch her in the mouth?
I stood up, said quietly,
“Get a lawyer.”
Confused her. She asked,
“You going to shop me, lover?”
I said,
“To draw up your last will and testament.”
“It is possible to
Dig up past misdeeds
So they become
A blight,
A veritable plague.”
(Alcoholics Anonymous)
Nun, but the brave and the rash.
I went to see a nun, weird as that is.
Me!
With a nun as a friend.
Years ago, I had helped out the Church and a nun, Sister Maeve, believed I did miraculous work.
I didn’t but take it where you can. We developed a curious friendship and she was always available for pup-sitting. Too, the pup loved her. You want to see the measure of a person, see how they behave with a dog. It is as good a litmus test as you could find.
Maeve worked as a conduit between the convent and the public. I really wanted an opportunity to use conduit in a sentence and now I was doing it.
I told the pup,
“Let’s go see your nun.”
Much tail wagging and bouncing off the walls. The death of Ridge, and Emily being the perp, it was more than my mind could bear. A knock at the door. I dunno but for some reason I grabbed my nine millimeter from under the bookcase. I had acquired it from a Russian bouncer.
Swear to God, the pup recoiled from that, as if instinctively he knew guns were bad news.
Lock and load.
Opened the door.
A young man who looked vaguely familiar. He said,
“Mr. Taylor, remember me?”
“No.”
He was disappointed, said,
“I’m a friend of Em, Emily, Emerald.”
The gun was in the waistband of my jeans. I said,
“Don’t mean shit to me fellah.”
He held out a book
… The fucking ubiquitous Red Book
He said,
“Emily feels this will make up for the …”
Stalled.
Reached
for
the
Least
Offensive
Description.
Got
“Incident.”
The gun was up. I shouted right in his face.
“Getting my friend killed is not a freaking incident.”
The pup was out, alarmed, and took a lunge at Hayden’s pant leg. Hayden yelled,
“Who let the dog out?”
I was of two minds:
Shoot him
Or
Burp him.
I said,
“Come in and watch your tone.”
He sat near the bookcase, asked,
“You don’t do Kindle?”
Fuck’s sake.
I said,
“How do you know the crazy bitch?”
I could not bring myself to utter her name.
He asked, in that new American lilt that young Irish males have adopted,
“Like, you mean Em?”
I said,
“Use that modifier again and I will shoot you.”
He seemed remarkably unfazed by my threats, asked,
“What’s a modifier?”
I sighed, sounding not unlike my dead mother, who could have sighed for Ireland and, in many ways, did.
I said,
“What’s the deal with you and … her … are you in a relationship or just her messenger boy?”
Didn’t much care for the term, his near constant smile was bruised. He tried,
“She is like a sister to me. We go way back.”
(Way back these days usually means about a year.)
“And we share, like, a bond. We got each other’s back.”
Sounding as if he was from lower Manhattan.
He continued.
“I was caught up in the Ghosts of Galway bullshit and Em, she showed me it was just all crap and, like, you know, showed me the light.”
“So why are you here again?”
He gave me a smile of such dazzling whiteness that I nearly warmed to him.
Nearly.
The pup seemed to have eased too in his response to him and actually lay at his feet. Hayden said,
“Oh, right.”
And then said nothing.
With all the smartphones and technology, young people seemed to lack the ability to pursue a thought. If it wasn’t text, it didn’t count. I said, with a trace of granite in the words,
“Focus, for fuck’s sake.”
He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, asked,
“What’s with all the hostility, dude?”
Dude.
I moved right in his face, said,
“Emily? The message. And if you call me dude again I’ll rearrange your face.”
He said,
“Em wants you to know that like, you know, no hard feelings and you can have The Red Book. You don’t even have to grovel for it.”
I stared at him.
I nearly said,
“You’re like a conduit.”
He continued.
“Fat fuck you used to work for?”
I nodded.
“He will pay serious green for it, even though it is, like, bogus.”
“Bogus?”
“Yeah, definitively. Em got some scholar to, like, check it out and at best it is Book of Kells lite.”
Then he reached in his jacket and the pup went on alert. I said,
“Better be a book.”
Got the radiant smile and
“You crack me up, dude.”
Put a very small battered red volume on the table. Stood up, said,
“My work here is done so, like, sayonara.”
He stopped at the door, said,
“Em got one thing slightly wrong, though.”
“Yeah?”
He looked like he might touch my shoulder but wisely didn’t, said,
“You’re not seriously old, like she said.”
“Jack, you remember how much affection I had for you
Once.
Multiply that by infinity
And that is how much I now
Loathe
You.”
(Sergeant Bean NI Iomaire [Ridge] Last words to Jack.)
“Anybody could be smart. It took a special somebody
To be clever.”
(Karin Slaughter, Pretty Girls)
Jeremy Cooper had been
Quizzed
Interrogated
Bullied
Screamed at
Pushed
By Clancy and his crew of hard arse detectives.
A Guard gets killed, throw the rule book out the window. Allowed one phone call.
Yeah, right.
Clancy got right in Jeremy’s face, asked,
“Why did the call about a shooting name your house?”
Cooper had no idea, said,
“I’ve no idea.”
Clancy head butted him.
The other Guards actually gasped. Jeremy’s chair shot backward, spilling him against the wall with a mighty bang. Clancy said,
“Oops.”
He looked at the assembled Guards, barked,
“The fuck are you standing ’round for? Find me the bollix who killed Ridge.”
Protestants are still fairly thin on the Galway ground. It is believed if you get in legal shit, get a Protestant, a Protestant lawyer. Maybe it’s some echo of colonial times or a harking to the whole landowner shite but the best lawyer in town was Robert Preston.
A Prod.
One of the few remaining Ghosts who hadn’t dispersed called him and, in jig time, he was at the station.
Trailing Brit fire and legal brimstone.
He stormed up to Clancy, snarled,
“My client looks as if he has been beaten.”
Clancy had many previous dealings with Preston, none of them civil. He rasped,
“Suspect fell.”
Preston took his client by the arm, said,
“We’ll have you out of here in no time.”
Cooper was dazed from his fall, said,
“That big bastard attacked me.”
Preston smiled. Of such allegations were careers solidified. He said,
“That big bastard is heading for traffic duty.”
Clancy strode off, muttering darkly.
As no charges were made, Cooper was free to go, one of the Guards whispering to him,
“We never forgot killers of our own.”
Preston was all over him, threatened,
“Would you like to repeat that for my recorder?”
The Guard pushed past Preston, said,
“Check under your car every day, wanker.”
Outside, Preston said,
“We need to have those bruises documented.”
Jeremy stared at him, as if just registering him, said,
“This is a cluster fuck.”
No argument from Preston.
Jeremy continued.
“You know what you need with a cluster fuck?”
He gave a peculiar emphasis to the f-word as if he actually tasted it, said,
“Jack Taylor.”
I was still in shock from the loss of Ridge.
That we had never reconciled just added another nasty layer of guilt and remorse to a mind already in grief overload. I was in my armchair, the pup in my lap, doing his tiny best to console me. They know when you are deeply hurt. I was sipping slowly from the newest awful concoction:
Jameson with … breath it quiet …
Ginger ale.
I know. Heresy.
But I was in that zone where nothing really matters a fuck.
Even besmirching Jameson. The phone rang and the pup’s ears lit up. He hoped it might break my funk. And, more importantly, get him a walk. I answered with a weary
“Yeah?”
Like I gave a good fuck.
Heard
“Mr. Taylor? Mr. Jack Taylor?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Robert Preston of Preston Lynch and Associates?”
I said,
“That don’t mean shit to me pal.”
Nervous laugh, then,
“I have been forewarned you have a somewhat terse form of communication.”
“Terse this. Get to the fucking point.”
Another chuckle.
I hate fucking chuckles.
He said,
“I can tell you’re a card.”
What?
I sighed loud and annoyingly.
He said,
“Sorry, defect of my profession, to prevaricate. Thing is, I have a client who may wish to avail your, um … specialized talent.”
Being in the shitty mood I was, I snapped,
“Will cost them.”
Intake of breath, then recovery.
“Of course, no one eats for free.”
I said,
“Don’t be an asshole.”
A beat,
Then,
“By Jove, Mr. Taylor, I do believe I like the cut of your jib.”
What? Jib?
I said,
“Talk fucking right.”
Laughter.
He asked,
“Might we meet in my modest office on Eglantine Street, noon tomorrow?”
I said,
“Like you legal types do, it will cost you for my time, whether I take the case or not.”
“I would expect no less. Au revoir.”
Did I detect just the tiniest note of sarcasm?
The Red Book?
Meant Jack shit to me. I flipped through it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a patch on The Book of Kells. I put it in my bookcase, not entirely sure what I should do with it.
Sell it?
Most likely.
That evening, I was back from the pup’s walk. He was knackered. We’d done the walk from the Claddagh along Grattan Road, up to Blackrock, kicked the wall there as is the custom, then back along the beach of Salthill.
What the Brits would call bracing.
The pup trotting alongside me, glancing anxiously at me, intuiting that something was badly off. He was right. I walked with a cold fury tightening my heart and strangling my soul.
