by Ken Bruen
He indicated the armchair, raised his eyebrows. I said,
“Sure, get comfortable.”
He did, even if comfort was not really in his catalog. He began,
“The girl/woman, Sara, is not an orphan. She was born to the remnants of a cult who worshipped the cobra, on the run from authorities in the U.S. and U.K. They settled in the south of France briefly, where Sara was born, then some of them fled to Guatemala with the girl. Needless to say, they were not exactly model citizens and rumors about dark acts were numerous, but they had one vital ace, money, lots of it, and some government ministers were not disinclined to participate in their doings, especially child abuse and any sordid activity involving sex and drugs. But eventually they got bold, went too far, and a death squad wiped out most of them. Sara blended into the train of refugees fleeing the country. She had quite the reputation for tricks of light, languages, and a predator’s skill of camouflage. But a bloodlust appetite would always surface and a number of bodies of young boys lined her passage.”
He took a sip of the coffee, went on.
“Ouch, bitter.”
Of course.
He said,
“She is incendiary. If she goes public, as well the crazy bitch might, the Church will be deeply compromised. I can see the headline: ‘Miracle Girl Goes on Murder Spree.’ We can’t let that happen.”
I said,
“I know where she’s going.”
He was astonished.
He lit up, asked,
“Good man. Get us something stronger to celebrate, you’ll be full rewarded from the Church, my man, and you’re gold.”
As I poured two stiff Jays, he looked like he might hug me, God forbid. He stood, we clinked our glasses, and he said,
“To the inscrutable Mr. Jack Taylor.”
I let him savor the moment, then I hit with the rider, said,
“Before I reveal her whereabouts, I need something from you, from the Church.”
His smile lost some luster, but he gamed on, said,
“Name your figure.”
I let the drama build, then,
“I need a week in one of your hideaways, the houses where you stash the wounded priests, the fallen, and, if you deny having such, all bets are off and you can, as they say in the best churches, go fuck yourself.”
He sat back down, considered, then chuckled, said,
“Haven, you can stay in the Haven, and it’s just down the road so to speak.”
I was a little surprised he caved so easy, then pushed,
“I need to be left alone there, with a course of Valium for the duration.”
He said,
“We can manage that. May I ask why? Not the Valium but the need to go there at all.”
There were many bullshit reasons I could offer but I decided to go with the truth, see how that tasted, said,
“I am shattered.” My mind a whirling cesspool of
Burning horses.
Murdered friends.
Mutilated falcons.
“And I am bone sick to the point of falling down. I need a week to be, if I don’t sound too much like an asshole, still.”
He mulled that over. I expected some sarcastic reply, got this:
“Burnout. I get it. I’ve been there. Few years back, when we first heard rumors of Sara, I followed a false trail that revealed horrors involving children and I lost it, my mind shut down, I was a walking basket case.”
“Did you go to the Haven?”
He gave a bitter laugh, said,
“Yeah, right. The Church is not big on compassion for its, let’s term them, dark ops team.”
You might think we’d have bonded over our shared trauma but, no, there was something slithery about him. But I did concede,
“You’re okay now, I guess?”
He gave me a calculating look, then,
“I read Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.”
I could get a copy in Dubray’s or Charlie Byrne’s. I said,
“It helped a lot, then?”
Another chuckle with a definite overriding of nastiness. He said,
“To quote a Galway philosopher, like fuck.”
I did warm somewhat to him. I showed him my arm, the tattoo of the dove, the figure 3.5, asked him if he had any idea what it meant.
He took my arm, peered intently, asked,
“You got a tattoo and you don’t know what it signifies. Jesus, you do need the Haven.”
I lamely offered,
“I was drunk.”
Now he gave a full deep amused laugh, said,
“If you get a tattoo every time you’re drunk, you’ll have more of them than David Beckham.”
My bonding, albeit small, was gone already. I snarled,
“You know or not?”
He let my hand go, wiped his glasses like Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws, said,
“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Saw the anger in my face, apologized.
“Sorry, I just love that movie. The dove is, I think, to represent the Holy Spirit, the 3.5 is from Proverbs. Trust in the Lord.”
Fuck.
I said,
“I can see why you love Jaws; you’re the spit of the main character.”
He was chuffed, beamed, asked,
“Really, Robert Shaw?”
I allowed him to savor, then answered,
“The great white.”
So it was arranged. I’d be picked up in five days by Father Pat, the former driver of Malachy when Malachy had been bishop-in-waiting. When he was demoted, he lost not only his dignity but Pat, who had turned out to be a smart little bollix despite initially acting like a religious prick.
I’d given Pat a taste for Jameson and he was now a daily devotee.
God knows, I’ve ruined many a priest, as indeed priests have ruined many a man.
I needed five days to attend funerals: the deaths from Saoirse Farm.
Ceola’s father had turned up and taken her home to Scotland to be buried under Ben Nevis. She’d like that. She might hear the melody of violins along the wind from Edinburgh.
No one claimed Dysart. He was to be consigned to that indignity I recalled from a bitter Irish past of
Magdalene laundries.
Tithes.
Rent men.
Evictions.
Pauper’s graves.
Not if I could fuckin’ help it.
And I didn’t even like him but a poor man’s burial, no.
Took some maneuvering but eventually I was able to get Joe Irwin—I can’t say my undertaker, lest I draw witchy drama on my own self. Plus, I had twenty large to splurge so burying Dysart with class wasn’t a stretch. I donated another wedge to the Simon Community.
I bought a new pair of 501s.
It is said
That an epiphany is most likely to occur
In a cemetery
Though
It helps
If you’re
The mourner
Rather than the deceased.
(the journal of Father Malachy Brennan, 1952–2019)
Tuesday, another biblical rain lashed the hell out of us. In Rahoon Cemetery, I and Father Pat were the sole mourners, participants at Dysart’s burial.
We were seriously drenched. This was ferocious rain like it had an attitude, a mission to drown us. Pat asked me if I’d like any special words.
I showed him my tattoo.
He was smart but not always, asked,
“You want me to say dove?”
I said with heavy patience,
“It’s Proverbs, look it up.”
He was still dithering, asked,
“Should I google it now?”
; One of the gravediggers, drenched beyond ever dryness, chipped in,
“C’mon, fuck sakes, have the theological debate later. Can we just bury this poor bastard?”
We did.
The gravediggers shuffled off, muttering. Father Pat, rain dripping off every inch of him, asked,
“Were you very close to the deceased?”
I said,
“Actually, I disliked the fucker intensely.”
By the gate, a man was standing forlornly, asked,
“Jacques Taylor, n’est pas?”
Though well covered in rainwear, he looked defeated. I said,
“Oui.” (No Irish person can answer in French without thinking wee and being faintly amused as well as feeling ridiculous.)
He said,
“Je suis très désolée.”
I had pretty much reached the end of my French fluency unless I tried, Voulet vous coucher avec moi, which would be insanely inappropriate.
The man said,
“C’est mon frère.”
Father Pat trailing behind me translated.
“That was his brother.”
I wanted to say a myriad of things, all angry in nature, like,
You turn up the fuck now?
Where’s your raincoat?
Speak fucking English.
Who cut your hair?
All reflecting the utter madness I was dancing along the rim of. He dispelled one of them.
By
Speaking English.
Said,
“Thank you for burying my brother.”
After Irish funerals, we invite the assembled to partake of refreshments, meaning free booze, but as we were composed of three people now, or five if you included the drenched gravediggers, I said,
“Come on. I’ll buy you a Pernod or something.”
Pat demurred, citing a Mass he had to say. I took it reasonably well, said,
“Don’t be a prick.”
I paid the gravediggers, added rain money, and the alpha of the two said,
“Gee, breaking the fucking bank here, are we?”
I added another fifty euros. He looked at it, said,
“Wow, now at last I can retire to the Bahamas.”
We went to Kennedy’s on the square. It’s usually a hopping pub but the ferocious rain had kept even the hard-core patrons home.
We got a table. I asked our cortege what they wanted. I glared at Pat, cautioned,
“Don’t even think of frigging mineral water or such shite.”
He didn’t, said,
“Hot Toddy.”
I ordered three large of those and pints as outriders. The French guy was named Henri. I said,
“Henri is a name despised in Ireland.”
He looked puzzled and not a little afraid. I explained,
“Henry, his handball kept us out of the World Cup.”
He was baffled, tried,
“But I know, um, nothing about football.”
I said,
“You’re French. It’s your fault.”
He looked to Pat who was already deep in his hot whiskey and liking it a lot.
Pat protested.
“You cannot be serious. Blame every French person for Henry?”
I gave him the look, let harsh leak over my tone, said,
“We take our football very serious and don’t even get me started on hurling.”
I offered a toast, said,
“To Dysart, a holy terror.”
Henri looked to Pat, who said,
“It’s related to holy show.”
As if this cleared anything up, Henri drank a hefty drop of the pint, smiled at the sheer quality of it. Kennedy’s does one of the best.
Henri told us of the years of estrangement between him and his brother, and impressed me by quoting Philip Larkin, with a French take on Larkin’s
Families, they fuck you up.
I considered that, said, as if I knew what I meant,
“The placement of the comma is vital to that sentence.”
He smiled, said,
“Voilà, Lynne Truss is available in French.”
Back in the days when I first met Father Pat, the days of Galway Girl, I had introduced/converted or maybe fucked the poor man’s life by getting him to drink Jameson. Whatever, he took to it like a veteran and it made him bold. He now asked Henri,
“Why’d he get thrown out of the priesthood?”
Henri was taken aback by the bluntness of this but managed,
“Drink.”
Succinct.
Pat was not convinced, pushed,
“There’s more than that to it. If they kicked out priests for drink, there’d be very few in the country.”
Henri was not offended. Drank his pint, then said,
“My brother was obsessed with this girl/woman Sara, believed she was the reincarnation of the Sara from Camargue. It made him careless, stupid even. After he encountered her in Guatemala, he believed she was evil incarnate and demanded the Church warn people about her.
“The Church does not take kindly to threats and especially if they come from within the family, as it were. He was warned to stay away from her.
He didn’t, confronted the girl, then, in a fit of rage . . .”
Pause.
“He threw a rosary at her and the cross scarred her just below her left jaw.”
He looked at me, asked,
“Where do you place the comma in the life of my brother?”
Henri left us after that. Pat was all for me and him continuing a pub crawl but even I, who’d drink with most anybody, didn’t have the stomach to listen to the drunk ramblings of a young priest.
I did ask him to check on Malachy and he stunned me by saying that Malachy was in hospital, gravely ill. Apparently he’d accidentally overdosed on medication.
I staggered away, tried very hard not to throw myself in the canal.
Before I got to my home I ran into Brigit Ni Iomaire, Ridge, same name as my dead Garda friend. That should have been warning enough not to stop.
But stop I did.
Brigit was supposed to have the sight, the ability to foretell the future. I’d known her a long time and had always given her a healthy sum of money. She seemed to like me okay.
Or
The cash.
Split the difference. I gave her a fistful of euros, she smiled sadly, said,
“Ta gra mor agam leat a mhic ( I have great love for you, son). Ach to bronach agam (I am sad), mar tha do bhas ag teacht (your death is coming).”
I thought,
Fuck me.
She held out a thin bracelet of green Connemara marble, wrapped it quickly around my wrist. I said caustically,
“And this will save me, I suppose?”
She sighed deeply, stared into my face, whispered,
“No.”
I took more of the found money, walked along Shop Street, and gave notes to anyone who asked me. Did this make me feel blessed?
No.
Next morning, I was woken early by the phone. My head hurt but then it nearly always did. I managed,
“Yeah?”
Heard a very cheerful voice go,
“Mr. Taylor, hope I didn’t wake you?”
I snarled,
“You did.”
A beat, then she continued, an American I guessed from not only the cheer but the accent.
“I’m Skylar Morgan of Morgan, Anderson and White and I have some rather good news for you.”
I doubted it, said,
“Does it include dialing down the fucking fake delight?”
An intake of breath, but she recovered.
“May I call you Jack?
I feel I know you.”
I said,
“You don’t know me.”
Another beat then she forged ahead.
“You are the recipient of a large bequest.”
I dropped the attitude, asked,
“How?”
She didn’t feel comfortable discussing it on the phone so I got her address and said I’d be right over. The office, rather offices, were near the Skef on Eyre Square. Very impressive conjoined buildings, all large windows, modern facade, implying cash and lots of.
I was dressed like a bum, which is pretty much how I felt. Any thoughts of how I looked to people were over. I did wear the new 501s but they didn’t appear to dazzle many. A secretary who could have moonlit as a model and probably did offered me coffee and a blow job.
Kidding.
A few minutes of the required waiting time to demonstrate your place in the pecking order, then I was ushered into a huge office, flowers, modern art covering the walls. Skylar was gorgeous but it seemed to be an office of gorgeousness in the middle of the city.
She made some polite small talk, then pulled out a file, put on a pair of thin gold glasses, made her even more lovely, said,
“So Jack, your late friend Keefer McDonald—and may I offer my condolences and that of my staff to you . . .”
Paused.
“Mr. McDonald has left you his farm and shares amounting to over one hundred thousand euros and his pickup truck.”
Fuck me.
I nearly passed out.
Skylar fretted,
“Mr. Taylor, are you all right? You look . . . not too well.”
I brushed that away, asked,
“Why?”
She sat back in her leather swivel chair, a fine smile creeping from her eyes, said,
“You saved his life, I believe.”
Before I could even answer, she added,
“He had no relatives but he was a shrewd man, bought shares over the years. He told me he learned shrewd financial caution from Mick Jagger!”
She obviously didn’t believe this, so I said,
“Jagger went to the London School of Economics.”
I signed papers, gave my bank details, told her to put the ranch up for sale. Took the keys to the pickup. Thanked her profusely, headed out.
I stood on the pavement, trying to take this in. All the furious events, fierce changes that were hurling at me from every brand of karma. A guy stopped. I knew him from my days working security. If I was not fit to guard anything, he was worse and he got promoted.