‘You haven’t got anyone into trouble,’ she said. ‘But your concern is sweet.’
As she looked away from me for a second, over my shoulder towards the coffee machine, her features distorted into black gaping chasms, and I had to excuse myself and go upstairs, where I sat in the empty office and took deep breaths for ten minutes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ronnie
I should have known that Eli would be a believer in favours. Not just the odd favour here and there, but the old-fashioned ideal of favours; the life-or-death ones you have to drag around with you for ever.
He had a look of purpose on his face when I saw him the next day.
‘If you want my help,’ he said, sitting upright and stern on the sofa across from mine in my mother’s living room, ‘then I have a proposition for you.’
I was Skyping Daisy, my employee back in London, and I waved at him as I tried to wrap up our conversation.
‘When are you gonna be back?’ she asked, not quite getting the hang of addressing the webcam and directing most of her questions to the thumbnail of herself in the bottom corner of her screen. ‘Like, we could really use you being here. Edie is not cool. There’s not much we can tell her without making it all sound like a…’
‘Clusterfuck?’
‘I was gonna go with spunk explosion, but yeah.’
Across the room, Eli’s lips twitched.
Daisy did have a way with words. She adjusted her bleached blonde hair, eyes down on the thumbnail again. She looked hot on webcam. She was built for that kind of striptease, diminutive and wide-eyed, though how much of the wide-eyedness was due to the Olympian amounts of coke she snorted was anybody’s guess.
It was such a waste having her work behind the bar, but her boyfriend wouldn’t hear of her doing anything untoward, and her boyfriend wasn’t someone to antagonize for shits and giggles.
‘Ronnie, seriously, tell me what to say. She’s interviewing all the staff like she’s looking for someone to take the hit and I don’t know what to say.’
‘What’s Noel said?’
‘Noel isn’t even here! Do we just tell her the truth or what?’
‘Christ, no, are you new? We absolutely don’t tell her the truth, the truth makes us sound shit.’ I looked at Eli, rubbing the stubble across my chin. ‘Love, I’ve got some stuff to do. Can we sort this out later?’
‘Oh yeah, sure. I’ll manage.’
Oh, just take your fucking T-shirt off, I thought. Daisy was smart, but it irked me sometimes how she’d come to address me and Noel as peers. Fair play, the girl had taken a bullet for us, but it didn’t make her fucking Jesus.
‘Cool. Later.’
I snapped the laptop shut and took a breath. I could have done without Eli hearing some of that, and he knew it. I wish I had the self-control to cultivate Eli’s quietness; quietness was power.
With deliberation, I got up, made us both a cup of tea and brought the mugs back through to the living room. My parents were out, having taken Eamonn on a food shop like it was a bonding experience. Eli didn’t appear to have moved, even blinked, but he thanked me for the tea.
‘What’s your proposition?’ I asked.
He pulled the mug towards him and warmed his hands around it. ‘You know when I left university and started up my first business, I was working with a partner.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘Small magazine, mostly political stuff.’ He smiled. ‘Back when I was a Marxist.’
‘Er, no.’ I almost laughed. ‘No, I had absolutely no idea.’
‘It was easier back then, what with there still being money in print publishing, but we did well. We were turning over a stupid amount of profit in five years. We had Sarah Mankowski writing for us at one point.’
He paused, as if I was meant to know this person and react accordingly.
I shrugged.
‘She went on to write Watching Them Burn,’ he said, in the tone of someone checking if I knew ketchup existed. ‘Booker nominee 2002. It was a bestseller. Nothing to do with us, of course, she turned novelist much later. But it’s been translated into twenty-eight languages. It’s the seminal existential novel of the last fifty years. Do you even read?’
‘For fun?’
A long hard stare, then a shake of the head. ‘Anyway, I started this thing up. Then we had a board of members who’d invested money after a while, like with any outfit. After four years there was a lawsuit and they voted me out.’ He ended on a shrug.
‘And you…?’
‘Well, you know I own magazines. That’s what I’ve been doing the last decade.’
I’d had no clue what Eli did. I doubted if any of my family knew; he was so secretive. His money had always spoken for itself.
‘What sort of magazines?’ I asked.
‘Teen magazines.’ Deadpan.
‘You what?’
‘It’s a huge market, Ronnie, and don’t even get me started on the digital revolution. All the money is online now. Do you guys even have a website for your club? A blog or something?’
‘Blog?’ I spat the word out with the same incredulity as if he’d said ‘anal rape’.
‘We’re digressing.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
He paused, testing the silence of the house. I noticed him notice a family photo up on the mantelpiece. A three-piece family photo of Mum, Dad and me. No Eamonn. I was surprised Mum hadn’t taken it down.
‘It’s quite simple.’ He sipped his tea. ‘The guy I worked with was called Trent Byrne. He was someone I met at university, from a very rich family. We weren’t friends but you know when you just… know someone can be useful to you? It was like that. But after the lawsuit, he disappeared.’
‘In a murdered way or… just disappeared?’
‘The latter.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Admittedly, I didn’t keep track. But from what I can gather no one has heard from him for over ten years.’ He frowned. ‘Until last year, maybe just over a year ago, when a few of us, including me, started getting postcards. Some of them said nothing. Some were… weird.’
‘Eli, I respect you.’ I linked my fingers around my knees and looked at my tea. ‘But I don’t have that much time here—’
‘I don’t see how you can have any objection when I helped transform your ex-lawyer into chemical waste just the other night. I’ve also agreed to come to Chicago to help you find some Japanese girl who is of no importance to me.’
‘No, it’s not that.’ I picked my words carefully, not wanting to sound ungrateful. ‘It’s just, I’m not sure what you think I can do.’
‘That’s not the point.’ There was disappointment in his glare. ‘I thought you, more than anyone, would understand that’s not the point at all.’
‘It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just…’
‘You’d rather not.’
He couldn’t have loaded the statement with more ice.
‘Look, that’s not what I mean. I’ve just got my brother out of prison and I have my kids back home, Eli, so I can’t go all Thelma and Louise with you if this is gonna take months. I’m sorry.’
For a moment, Eli looked dangerous. But the expression was fleeting, misplaced, the knee-jerk reaction of someone who simply was not used to hearing ‘no’.
He said, slowly, ‘I don’t trust anyone else.’
‘That can’t be my problem, come on.’
‘No. I don’t trust anyone else. You’re the only person I know who can get things done, without trouble. I don’t want any trouble.’
‘What are you planning to do if you find this guy, Trent?’
Silence.
I snorted. ‘You’re planning to kill him, aren’t you? This is a revenge thing?’
‘I don’t know where Trent is now… what he’s doing, what his situation is but… I haven’t ruled out that idea, no.’
‘I’m not mad on the idea of committing more murder th
an I planned. I’d quite like to leave this country via a plane rather than lethal injection.’
‘I’d be doing you a favour coming back to London with you. It’s important to you. Well, this is important to me.’
I hadn’t called my kids yet. I put myself in their places, for a second, and imagined what it might be like for them to be without a father. I’d never done jail time, not like Noel, who had at least racked up a couple of months for varying levels of assault, a few overnight stays while drunk and disorderly. I just wasn’t built for it.
‘I can’t shower with other men,’ I said out loud, without sharing my train of thought.
Eli frowned. ‘What?’
‘Um, sorry, I meant I can’t go to prison. Not for something like this, something that’s so… fucking unplanned. Do you have any fucking idea how hard it is to pull off renegade stunts like this nowadays with satellites and forensics and all that?’
‘If you want me to come back to London and for… Eamonn to maybe find some work.’ He added the last part slyly, as if it were an afterthought.
‘No.’
‘If you knew how many times I’ve done favours for your father. When Marie was going through chemo and he was too busy to drive her to and from the hospital and you were in England, I did that too.’
‘Don’t do this, Eli.’
‘Don’t do what?’ An impression of naivety.
‘Don’t you even fucking try and make this sound non-negotiable.’ I didn’t want to become angry with him, but it was hard to stop the warning tone from creeping in. ‘I’m grateful to you, OK, but this is my life. Are you saying all those times you were driving Mum to and from chemo you were just racking up points in your column? Nice. Fucking classy.’
‘No, I’m not saying that.’ Still calm. ‘I also helped you kill Carey.’
‘That’s completely fucking different, and you were psyched to help me kill Carey! Like you said, he was a lawyer so you were doing a public service either way. I’ve got nothing against… journalists.’
Eli looked about him for a spoon, took a pen out of his pocket and started stirring his tea with that instead. I forgot he always had to take his tea with a spoon in. It was an odd tick of his, always stirring.
‘“Killing is killing, whether done for glory, profit, or fun”,’ he said.
I shrugged.
‘You know who said that?’
‘Nope.’ I sighed and rolled my eyes to the ceiling. ‘Anne Frank?’
‘Richard Ramirez.’ He raised his eyebrows at me over the rim of his mug. ‘Say what you like about him, at least he wasn’t a hypocrite.’
‘Ha! You did not just compare me to a serial killer, you fuck!’ I started laughing. ‘Just because I said no. Why not just compare me to the Nazis too?’
Eli finished his tea and stood up, buttoning his coat, which he hadn’t bothered to take off.
I gestured at him. ‘Oh come on, let’s not make things bad between us.’
‘I’m not worried about that.’ He smiled at me infuriatingly, and smoothed his hair back. ‘I’ve done too much for you. I know you’ll change your mind.’
CHAPTER SIX
It was as if Eamonn knew that the worst thing he could do right now, fresh out of prison, was fuck up. It was an evolutionary reflex for him, inevitable like breathing, fucking and eating. Eamonn had to fuck up. Sometimes when the phone rang when we were younger, I knew it was going to be about Eamonn, fucking up in some new and creative fashion. Every time he appeared to reach a peak, what I thought must be the utmost zenith of fucking up, he fucked up harder.
‘Hey, Ronnie, it’s Joe. I heard you were in town?’
Joe was the owner of JB’s. It was Eamonn’s favourite bar, one of the only places from our childhood that was still standing, and that had remained largely unchanged for over a decade. I should have known it would be among the first places he’d go as soon as Mum and Dad left him to his own devices for an evening.
‘Oh, Christ.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘What’s he done?’
‘Sorry, I hate to talk to you for the first time in years when you’re in town and call out your kid brother… but I’m this close to calling the cops on him, Ron. I don’t wanna upset your dad. Come pick him up.’
For Joe, one of the most genial fellas I’d known here, ‘this close’ must mean very fucking close.
I’d been about to Skype with Ryan and Chantal. My laptop was open, about to sign in. I reached out and snapped the thing shut, again. Rachel was going to be pissed.
‘When you’re away you act like you don’t even have a family,’ she’d said, to my vehement rebuttal. ‘You don’t get holidays from being their dad, Ronnie. We’re not something you get to have half-terms from.’
I was vaguely aware of Dad loitering just outside the living-room doorway. He knew what was going on just as well as I did. Eamonn’s fuck-ups were like a sunrise to us, constant and rhythmic.
‘I’ll come get him,’ I said to Joe. ‘Fuck, I’ll have to take Dad’s car. Give me twenty minutes. Is he drunk?’
‘Eamonn never needed to be drinking, Ron. He’d start a fight in solitary confinement.’
‘He probably did,’ I said. ‘Righto.’
I ended the call and looked down at the laptop.
Dad came in and sat down.
‘I’m gonna go pick Eamonn up,’ I said.
Nothing had changed, not really. Not since we were teenagers. It was the same story, just with more stubble and expensive clothes and a larger reserve of resentment and bitterness to draw from.
‘We need to talk,’ Dad said.
‘I know.’ I sighed. ‘Later. I need the car.’
‘If he’s drunk and throws up in that, he’s paying for it.’
I spread my hands as I left the room. ‘With what?’
*
JB’s hadn’t changed much. Still had the old sign hanging above the door.
HAVE A SIGNIFICANT DAY.
Joe Bishop liked to take old vinyl and stick them all over the walls and ceiling. Some were signed. Before he’d owned a bar he’d had two pretty successful albums in two pretty successful bands. He’d smoked heroin and launched terrifying amounts of alcohol into his body with the best of them – Keith Richards, Tom Waits – and it showed in the lines around his eyes and blotches of red dotting his otherwise handsome features.
‘Ron! Good to see you, man!’ Joe swung a hand into my back.
Behind him, I could see Eamonn sat in the corner with a sulk on, bottom lip thrust out and arms folded. There was a decent hum of activity. Jimi Hendrix playing. It always felt good to be in here, like a front room.
‘I hope he didn’t cause you too much hassle,’ I said, shooting a harsh look in Eamonn’s direction.
‘Just a scuffle. Like a couple of old women. But it’s not cool, you know, I don’t want this place to get a reputation for being that kinda bar. You’re looking well. Kids must keep you young?’
‘Jokes. They take more years off your life than cigarettes, and don’t even get me started on Chantal almost being a teenager, talking about boys and make-up and all that shit. The fucking stress of it.’
‘Lock up your sons!’
‘I’ll just have to kill them all, Joe. There’s no other way. Every spotty wanker who so much as looks at her is going straight under the patio.’ I looked at Eamonn again. ‘Speaking of kids…’
‘I know what you think,’ Eamonn said, not to us, but at the wall. ‘But I didn’t even start it.’
Joe and I exchanged glances.
‘Punched a guy in the face, bit of rolling around on a table.’ Joe shrugged. ‘Other guy scrammed when I split them up. I didn’t hear what happened.’
‘Oh yeah.’ I nodded. ‘Totally blameless. I bet.’
Eamonn emitted a grunt of dissent, but said nothing else.
‘All right, get up,’ I said. ‘Sorry about this, Joe. Let’s have a catch-up soon, yeah?’
The two doors of the bar’s entrance
slammed open into the walls and four guys piled in. A boy who looked barely over twenty-one, sporting a bloody nose and holding a fucking baseball bat, pointed at Eamonn and shouted, ‘That’s him!’
‘For the love of fuck!’ I managed to exclaim before the rabble tore towards us.
With almost tragic predictability, Eamonn threw his own chair at them, narrowly missing me, and made a run for the relative safety of the bar. Coward. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring a weapon – why the fuck should it? – so after missing the first two of them I swung my arm successfully into the third guy’s neck.
It earned me a punch in the face.
‘Ow!’
I threw one guy to the floor, took another by the collar and headbutted him in the nose.
Bottles fell. Men shouting. Eamonn had been followed behind the bar, and then Joe shut everyone up by screaming, ‘Everybody put your fucking hands up! Now!’ and I realized, at about the same time as everyone else, that he was holding a shotgun.
I raised my hands. One blow went to my eye, but it was light. It wouldn’t swell.
‘You!’ Joe yelled, turning the gun on Eamonn and the two guys who had him pinned to the shelf of spirits. ‘And you! Out! Not you, Eamonn. You! You bunch of syphilitic fucking scrotums! Out of my bar!’
The remaining kids got to their feet and followed their ringleader sheepishly back towards the doors.
‘Leave that,’ Joe said, pumping the handgrip of his firearm when one of them went to retrieve the baseball bat.
I spotted Eamonn giving them a smug smile over Joe’s shoulder. I lowered my hands, stormed behind the bar and cuffed him around the head. I caught his stupid earring and he recoiled, clutching at it. I was sorry I hadn’t torn the thing clean out. An earring. At his age. How embarrassing. It made me angry every time I looked at it.
‘Fucking hell, gimme a break!’
‘Get in the car or I’ll kick you through those fucking doors so hard it’ll rupture the fucking space-time continuum!’ I turned to Joe, rubbing my eye. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Joe took off his leather jacket and started righting the chairs. The other customers, some of whom had left their seats in panic during the brief ruckus, were resuming their places, slowly raising the volume of chatter back to normal.
Road Kill Page 4