by Ken Bruen
I asked,
“Where does he hang?”
He shook his head, ordered,
“No, no way, stay out of this.”
I tried,
“If only to offer my condolences.”
He stood up, said,
“Condolences, like fuck. You can walk back, see it as penance.”
I sat there, looking at an empty glass, as empty as my soul.
It was a long walk back to town but the power of the wind, the unaccustomed pints after my hospital sojourn, helped me walk, if not briskly, at least determinedly.
In town, on a whim, I went to the Protestant church, St. Nicholas, seven hundred years old. A man inside the door, guiding visitors, welcomed me. Said his name was Andrew. He had warmth that I no longer felt in my own churches.
Best of all, the candles were not the electronic ones littering my usual churches. Real candles, with a long taper to light them. It was reassuring in the old way. There was no slot for money; that seriously impressed me.
A German couple stopped, asked me,
“Do you know the Crane Bar?”
I did.
A TV series was currently filming there. I gave them directions and they said,
“We love Galway.”
What do you say to that? I said,
“And Galway loves you.”
We can now repeat
That all of them are illusions and insusceptible of proof.
Some of them are so improbable,
So incompatible with everything we have discovered about the reality of the world, that we may compare them—if we pay proper regard to the psychological differences—to delusions.
(Freud)
The nurses were staging a one-day strike, the government was deep in panic as to what would happen if the U.K. crashed out of the EU with no deal in place. Talk of return to a hard border in the North sent shivers through the land; already, two bombs had been exploded in Derry.
Trump was pictured in the White House surrounded by hundreds of McDonald’s Big Macs, fries, milkshakes, for his guests.
A priest refused Communion to a politician who, he said,
“Supported abortion.”
Another step in the Church’s insane determination to alienate all of the people all of the time.
I was in my apartment, reading Declan Coyle’s The Green Platform. I literally had weights on my feet, doing exercises to strengthen the wasted muscles: The weights on my mind had no known exercise to help there.
There was a timid knock on my door.
All sorts of calls had come in the past and none of them ever could be described as timid; knocks usually announced chaos and strife.
I opened the door cautiously. A woman in her fifties stood there, holding a large parcel. She was dressed in what used to be called a sensible coat.
Meaning no frills, simply utilitarian.
She had a face about one feature short of prettiness but energy there suggested a decent nature, which in my troubled life implied she was not going to knife me in the doorway.
Yet.
She had an unlined face, such as you observe only in nuns.
She asked,
“Jack Taylor?”
I nodded: She put out her small hand, said,
“I’m Saoirse, a friend of Sister Maeve.”
Phew-oh.
I said,
“Come in.”
She sat near the window, the large package near her feet. I asked,
“Tea, coffee, whiskey?”
She gave a lovely smile, tinged with melancholia, said,
“No, thank you.”
I asked,
“Are you a nun?”
I seemed to be up to my arse in nuns. She said,
“Heavens, no. Maeve and I have . . .”
Paused, corrected,
“Had been friends since school.”
Then silence until she shook herself, said,
“Dear me, you must be wondering why I’m here—it’s just so odd to meet you after all Maeve told me.”
Oops.
I tried,
“I was not always at my best in her company.”
Alarm on her face, she protested,
“Oh no, Good Lord, she loved you.”
Wallop my heart. I was astonished, went,
“What?”
She gave me a look that showed some steel beneath the gentle face, asked,
“Nuns can’t love?”
I was lost, said,
“I’m going to have a drink. You want something?”
She relented, asked,
“Perhaps a small sherry?”
I laughed, said,
“Seriously, I look like a guy who keeps sherry?”
I couldn’t quite keep the contempt from my tone, and added,
“Sherry is what you drink in Lent, for bloody penance.”
She bowed her head, as if I’d punched her. I attempted,
“Um, didn’t mean that to sound so harsh.”
She gave a tiny smile, said,
“Maeve said you were angry at the world.”
I bit down, lest I do more verbal carnage, poured two Jays, left her glass beside her, knocked back my own. She indicated the package at her feet, said,
“That is for you.”
When I made no move, she continued,
“Your Garda jacket was at Maeve’s. She asked me to put it in the dry cleaners. Said it was the only real link you had to your past, but she . . .”
Pause.
“Died, before she could collect it so I felt I should honor her wish.”
I still didn’t move, I was so taken aback.
She stood, adjusted her coat, said,
“Well, I’ll be going. Thank you for seeing me.”
She let herself out the door and was gone.
I have done a lot of shitty things in my life, reached all sorts of lows, but, right then, right there, I felt I had hit a whole new level of bollix.
Sister Consuela/Connie was in a rage, said,
“I’m so angry I could freaking spit.”
Her second in command, a woman from New York named Brid, had just told her that the expected revenue from new recruits hadn’t materialized.
Their hastily erected tent, close to the site of the miracle, had cost them more cold cash than anticipated. Brid said,
“These Irish muthus, these sons of bitches, they have so much work from other interested parties that they can charge what they like.”
And indeed, every half-baked religious band/con men/charities/refugee campaigners were vying for tent space close to the memorial.
Miracles were a surefire chance to make a fast buck but the window was small. Public interest would fade, the media would lose interest, and the golden calf of lucre would be lost.
Connie asked,
“Did you find the children?”
They were key.
Who held the children held the ace.
Brid said,
“I know where they are but, again, ‘it costs’ for the info.”
Connie was scheming like a banshee; she’d survived two marriages to two assholes, served a year in hard-core prison for fraud, and knew how to fight.
Mostly, she knew how to fight dirty.
Ireland was pretty much the last chance for the Sisters of Solace to acquire a presence. Connie allowed herself a rare cigarette, Virginia Slims, blew furious clouds of smoke, asked,
“What is needed to differentiate this miracle from all the other gigs?”
Lourdes
Knock
Medjugorje
Fatima
It was telling that Connie saw all these shrines as gigs.
Brid said,
“Well, they usually have poor children, seeing the Madonna, promising reward for penance, and, publicized properly, they create a whole industry.”
Connie, not the most patient of nuns, snapped,
“I know all that, but what, what has never happened with them all?”
Brid didn’t know, was wishing Connie wouldn’t blow smoke in her direction.
Connie said,
“Graham Greene said,
Why after all should
We expect God
To punish the innocent
With mere living.”
Brid didn’t know much about Graham Greene and had no idea what the quote meant so she said nothing.
Connie was excited as the notion crystallized in her mind, said,
“For the visionaries to die.”
Brid had been with Connie long enough to know she had a deep, well-hidden insanity, a madness that knew very little of morality, but she was appalled as she risked,
“You mean hurt the children?”
Connie’s face lit up. She said,
“Exactly. Kill the little bastards.”
Meanwhile, Benjamin J. Cullen had selected a new target. He didn’t have a system of choice, relying on someone crossing his path who invoked his ire.
Such was Thomas Rooney, an American grad student at National University of Ireland, Galway. This was a cosy racket to lure naive Americans to study in the West of Ireland. Hopscotch of
Joyce.
Beckett.
Yeats.
And the usual suspects.
Were put on a reading list for the gullible Yanks, then doled out in haphazard lectures by Real Irish Writers.* The yearlong course cost upwards of 15,000 bucks. Plus of course the grad students would be given the opportunity to drink in real Irish pubs with the above writers and talk shite.
Rooney’s path crossed Benjamin’s in Garavan’s, where Rooney was lecturing a young woman on the merits of Beckett versus Joyce.
Benjamin had actually interrupted Rooney mid-lecture, said mildly,
“I think you need to reread Krapp’s Last Tape before you attempt to discourse on his merits.”
Rooney had looked at him with derision, dismissed him with,
“What would you know? You’re too old to even grasp the meaning of Godot.”
Benjamin felt the age insult was way out of line. It didn’t take more than two days for the insult to mutate to hate.
Rooney had a ground-floor apartment along the canal, had been out for a scatter of pints with a Joyce scholar who had insisted,
“All you need to understand about Joyce is contained in the line shite and onions.”
Rooney had no idea what that meant but felt it might be the kind of conversational showstopper he could drop among his fellow students.
Took him a few minutes to fumble his key into the lock, finally managed it, staggered into the hallway, and was hit hard on the back of the head.
He came to, tied to his one kitchen chair and his clothes drenched in liquid, a liquid that smelled strongly of . . .
Of what?
Gas?
Diesel?
A man was standing by the door, holding something in his hand, something small; the guy looked vaguely familiar. Rooney stared at him in terror. The man said,
“See this?”
Held up a long single match, continued,
“This is not a safety match so basically it should light against, say, this doorjamb.”
He struck the match against the wood, it didn’t catch, he said,
“Oops.”
He asked,
“What do you say, best of three?”
Not only is this stranger not worthy of love but confess, he has more claim to my hostility, even my hatred.
If it will do him any good, he has no hesitation in injuring me.
If he can merely get a little pleasure out of it, he thinks nothing of jeering at me, insulting me, slandering me, showing his power over me, the more secure he feels himself.
(Freud, on human evil)
During my last case, mourning the death of my child, I’d been truly certifiably insane. One especially dark evening, I’d bundled up all my prized books, wrapped them in a cotton bag, gone down to the beach, and burned them all.
Did clean up the debris.
I’m all for keeping our beaches clean.
Since Keefer and, of course, the falcon, I’d been slowly rebuilding my library.
A few trips to Charlie Byrne’s, lively chat with Vinny and Noirin, and my bookshelf was beginning to look less sparse.
But haphazard.
My sanity was still very much in the neighborhood of unstable.
I think the selection of books I had well reflected not so much my dilettante taste as my fragile sense of identity.
Like this:
American Rhapsody by Joe Eszterhas.
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh.
Kill by Anthony Good.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel.
You’d be hard pressed to find a greater range that included utter madness to sublime writing, plus of course two of them contained shades of darkness that I understood absolutely.
I rarely read dystopian fiction, feeling the world was spinning enough out of control without needing a postapocalyptic narrative, but one book, The Last by Hanna Jameson, was so utterly special I read it twice.
Mid book musings, a knock at the door. I half expected Keefer but, no, a thin man, dressed in a dark suit, hatchet face, either an ill assassin or a poor undertaker. He asked,
“Jack Taylor?”
A tone of command.
Do first impressions really matter? I don’t know but I disliked this guy instantly. I asked,
“What do you want?”
He assessed me, saw nothing that impressed him, asked,
“May I come in? I won’t take up much time and I will pay for your valuable time.”
He let a drop of disdain drip from valuable.
Mildly interested, I let him in; he surveyed the apartment in all its bare essentials, stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back, like a school principal, said,
“I’m Monsignor Rael.”
When I made no reply to this, he continued,
“I understand you have been of some small service to Mother Church in the past and we would like to engage your specialist talent once more.”
I said,
“My service was more an accident than design.”
He smiled, not a pretty sight. He had good teeth but the action gave him an even more skeletal appearance. He said,
“I admire modesty, which shows me you are indeed the man for our small mission.”
I took a guess, said,
“If it’s about the miracle, either you want the kids or you want them to shut the fuck up.”
He was surprised and then moved his hands to give me a brief applause, said,
“I was informed that you are shrewder than you let on.”
He reached in his jacket, took out a thick envelope, laid it on the table, said,
“This should cover any expenses you incur.”
I asked,
“If, and it’s a big if, I find the children, what am I supposed to do, give you a bell?”
He laid a business card beside the envelope, said,
“Yes, call that number and we’ll take good care of them.”
I looked right into his face, asked,
“Hand over children to the Church. Isn’t that the shite you guys have been covering up for decades?”
He shook his head, spoke slowly, as if to be fully understood,
“The Church does not wish a miracle at this
time.”
It was too arrogant to even anger me. I said,
“Best be on your way, pal.”
Didn’t faze him. He reached for the door, said,
“I’ll expect your call.”
I said,
“It is truly staggering. You lot have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from all the bad press.”
A final smile as he said,
“Trust me, Taylor, we have learned more than you could imagine: We have learned who to buy.”
After he’d gone, I realized he left the envelope. I asked myself,
“Does he think I’m bought?”
For the first in a long time, I smiled, muttered,
“What you’ve bought is so far from what you think you paid for.”
I heard about the arson on the news. Jimmy Norman, in his weekly video show/podcast, wondered aloud if this fire was connected to the previous fire in the warehouse. I now had three problems.
The guy who left me the long match. Was he the arsonist, and why was he contacting me?
The woman who’d come to me for help with her abusive husband. She was now dead and the husband had a solid alibi.
The children of the miracle. Where were they and how would I find them?
Keefer was in town and I was treating him to a pint in Garavan’s. He looked more than ever like a Hells Angel. The barman eyed him suspiciously. I said,
“It’s okay. He’s with me.”
The barman said,
“Why is that not in the least bit reassuring?”
I raised my pint, toasted,
“Sláinte.”
To Keefer.
Who answered,
“Paint it black.”
Indeed.
He told me that Maeve, our falcon, was flying strong and proud and I realized how much I missed the sheer joy of seeing her soar. I said,
“I have three problems.”
He finished his pint, said,
“Spill.”
I did.
He asked,
“How the fuck did you get your own self in the middle of this clusterfuck?”
I had wondered that same dilemma my whole career. He said,
“No biggie. We divide and find solutions.”
I had the envelope from the monsignor, took out the fat wad of money, split it in half, handed one to Keefer. He was bemused, asked,
“You’re putting me on payroll?”