by John Brady
He stopped poking at his eye, looked down at his finger, and then at Minogue.
“Thanks,” said Minogue.
Malone stopped tugging and pushing the gear stick across neutral.
“What’s on your mind there?” he asked Minogue.
“I’m thinking how I’d get something out of the country in a hurry.”
Minogue shrugged.
“I don’t know. ”
Malone held out his hands over the wheel.
“Gimme. What’s this? You’re saying he gets to the airport, he’s in a corner because he’s got — but there is no Carra thing, for Jases’ sake. You even say that. What’s her name there down in Mayo, you even phone’d her again just before we left. Mairead O’Reilly. Legends, man, all stories, bullshit. Yeah?”
“I said there’s no ‘The Carra Stone,’ Tommy.”
“Yeah, yeah? Yeah…? Well try English, will you, boss. ”
“The indefinite article.”
“The what?”
“There may be a Carra stone.”
He tapped on the dashboard and pointed to a sign before Malone could start in on more.
“Park it over there, Tommy. Air Freight Storage. See if a walk’ll wake me up.”
The Customs and Excise officer was a trim, black-haired Dubliner by the name of Paddy Mac. Mac-what, was not volunteered and Minogue didn’t ask. Dyed or not, the pompadour hair and the thick sideburns impressed the inspector. A man who could so steadfastly cling to the fashions of his early teens was a man well chosen to keep track of things. Paddy Mac looked up at him.
“That mugshot must have been taken awhile back, chief.”
“January.”
“This last January? What happened since? No offense, like, but.”
Minogue looked around the office. There were showband photos on the wall over his desk. He wondered if these were collector’s items by now. Was it that long ago? The Hucklebuck, Kathleen and he went to the club on Harcourt Street. What were those photos of birds? A bunch of boxes, cages — pigeons, of course a pigeon racer.
Malone tilted his head, studied the photos of the showbands.
“What?” asked Paddy Mac.
“Just wondering who they were,” Malone said. He turned to Paddy Mac.
“No sign of the Works or any of them,” said Malone. Paddy Mac put his hands on his hips. He studied Malone for several moments.
“Why would there be?”
“The next generation maybe?”
“They’re nothing to me. Dossers, fakers, shapers. Along with the rest of them. Junkies ”
“Do you think?”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you? Your mob, I mean.”
The sharp tang of cardboard that had stung in Minogue’s nose had given way to an oily smell. He hadn’t seen an ashtray.
“Wait a minute, but,” said Malone. “Wasn’t Elvis the world’s biggest junkie?”
“When they killed him, yeah.”
“Who killed him? He ate his way into the bloody coffin.”
Paddy Mac gave Minogue a bleak look.
“You and me’d know better, I’d like to think. What do you say to that shite?”
“Well, I haven’t really kept up,” said Minogue.
“What’s to keep up with?”
“GOD? I don’t know really.”
“GOD? Holy, crucified Jases. That bunch a — ”
Malone shuffled, looked around the room. Paddy Mac glared at him.
“- and don’t start in on Elvis again. They broke him, so they did. Did you see the Hawaii comeback? That’s when I knew it was over. That’s when I knew what the sixties had been all about.”
Minogue exchanged a look with Malone. The weariness, the aches were like jet lag and a hangover combined. His eyes were beginning to signal the return of a headache.
“So,” said Paddy Mac. “You want to look around. What are we looking for?”
“Anything,” said Minogue.
“A murder weapon maybe?”
“Well, yes. Stuff that might have been robbed from a car. Rags, gloves.”
“There were Guards all over the kip there the other day outside here. You think that someone came in here for dirty work? Airport staff?”
Minogue held up his hands, wiggled them.
“What, we’re under suspicion?”
“Can we wander around?” Minogue asked.
Paddy Mac waited a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Suit yourselves. I mean, yous’re the law. Wander all you like — but there’s locked areas now.”
Minogue studied the map pinned to a corkboard.
“Have you a plan of the place you’d give me, now?”
Paddy Mac tugged at his belt.
“Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll go around with yous. Stretch me legs.”
He gave Malone the eye. Malone put up his hands.
“As long as hair-oil here doesn’t start on musical theory ”
CHAPTER 26
Paddy Mac used his radio antenna to point. Minogue watched him wave it about, jab with the antenna. A conductor of sorts, he thought.
“Air freight inspections start there,” said Paddy Mac. “That’s for outbound with all the papers ready. The customs broker’s spot’s there, see? There’s the entry to the Customs Hall. Incoming, inspections.”
Minogue turned the corner and looked down at the open door at the far end of the warehouse. Paddy Mac wheeled and faced Minogue.
“This Yank,” he said “What was he up to out here anyway?”
“Well, there you have me.”
A forklift shot by the doorway and scooted out of sight behind stacks of crates. Pallets of tightly wrapped sacks rose to the ceiling behind them. The creases and the dull shine of the plastic wrap put Minogue in mind of shrouds. Pupae. He paused to yawn, and then followed Paddy Mac through a double door into what looked like another warehouse. He studied the heavy wire mesh on the cages they passed.
“Now,” said Paddy Mac. “Here’s a sight. Are you ready for this, are you?”
“What?”
“Over there, in that cage. Look at that gear, will you.”
Minogue stepped through the doorway. He tried to count the boxes. Many of them were sheathed in aluminium. Others were made of black panels edged with metal bands and reinforced corners. Paddy Mac twisted and tugged the lock out of the holder and followed Minogue.
“That’s the better part of a half a payload there,” he said. “I saw it coming in. I asked what’s his name what it was worth.”
“Who?”
“Ah, your man — what’s his name. He came out one day before they took the spot. The manager, with the pigtail.”
“The ponytail,” said Malone.
“Yeah… Daly that’s him. ‘Two hundred grand,’ says he. So I says, why not rent it all there, like.”
Minogue recognized none of the brand names on the boxes.
“‘It’s all customized,’ says he,” Paddy Mac went on. “Like I didn’t know. What it is, is to cover ’em up. To drown ’em out.”
“Do you think,” said Minogue.
“What, do you think they can actually play their instruments?”
“Why would he be out here doing the loading and unloading? Is that common?”
“Well Jases, I don’t know,” said Paddy Mac. “He doesn’t want slipups…?”
Minogue strained to read part of a sticker. Mockb — . Moscow, of course.
“Shiny lights, smoke,” Paddy Mac said. “Earrings, hats. Making a racket. Throw in a few big words, pretend they’re philosophers. That’s not your hungry kid driving an oul car up to Memphis, just him and his guitar, is it?”
Gih-tar, Minogue registered. Paddy Mac was in deep.
“Well what are they using in Germany then,” asked Malone, “if their gear is all packed here?”
“Germany? For some video gig there on the Berlin Wall or whatever the hell they were on about?”
Minogue craned his neck to see ov
er a box the size of a sofa.
“Ah, they’d be just standing there for that. Throwing shapes, that’s about it.”
Minogue turned to him.
“How do you mean?”
“Ah the video shite,” said Paddy Mac, grimacing. “Hate to break it to yous now, but they dub everything. Didn’t you know that? It’s not the real thing at all, at all. Shapers, man That’s all.”
“Go way,” said Minogue.
“I’m telling you. It’s not singing or anything. It’s playacting.”
“So this is their gear then, their real equipment?”
Paddy Mac snorted and waved his arm. The disdain came to Minogue as the genial, indulgent sarcasm that had baffled him for years after he had first arrived in Dublin.
“I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know what’s in them. That’s for someone to inspect in the States. ”
“Not here?”
“Right. Customs here don’t touch these ones. They’ll get the treatment over beyond when that stuff lands, yes sir. They don’t be messing around over there, let me tell you. The electronics and sniffers and what have you. No messing there, man — Christ, they’ll be all over the stuff for you know what. The dope. ”
Paddy Mac plucked a pouch from a hook on the mesh by the doorway. He rummaged and scanned a half-page document. Minogue studied the sharp, even lines on his sideburns.
“Goes out to the States day after tomorrow,” Paddy Mac declared. He looked up at Minogue.
“It’s common enough, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Really.”
“Sure it is. You have stuff brought out days ahead of time. It needs wrapping, tying up. Pallets and that? Organize the heights and widths for the plane doors. You don’t want to pull a load of stuff out on the tarmac, hoist it up to the bay, and find it’s three inches too big, do you? Jase, no. You have to shuffle stuff. Balance, weight, height. It’s a science, I’m not joking you.”
Minogue shoved against one of the boxes with his thigh. It didn’t budge.
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Paddy Mac. “Weighs a ton. And it all has to be set and balanced, packed right.”
Malone tugged at the catches on a box.
“Hold your horses,” said Paddy Mac. “You can’t be opening that”
Malone glanced at Minogue
“It’s restricted here,” he said. “I’m only showing you around.”
“Restricted how?”
“Well, first of all, we’re responsible for stuff here. There’s insurance, liability. But the big thing is we close it off so’s no one comes in and tampers with outgoing freight. Security’s the main thing. Then there’s headers, obviously.”
“Bombs, you mean?” Malone asked. Paddy Mac looked him up and down.
“Well, yeah If you put it like that. Or there’s people dropping little items in along with legit stuff going out. Contraband Drugs — but that’s all seat traffic for years, if it’s not passenger baggage, like. If they’re really stupid. ”
“So, not everything’s inspected,” said Minogue.
“On the way out? Who’s asking?”
“Just a Guard,” said Minogue.
“Like an inspector just-a-Guard?”
“Just-a-Guard.”
“Shouldn’t you be going through the APF mob for these questions? What happened to security, confidentiality?”
“Well stop us if we’re putting our feet in it.”
Paddy Mac tugged at his lip. He looked from Minogue to Malone and back.
“Okay,” he said “Okay. Only some stuff is inspected. But do you know what goes through here? Bet you don’t. Microchips. Computers. Software by the ton. Not a lot of people know that. People think it’s still butter and pigs and boatloads of Guinness. Not anymore, let me tell you. Exports, man. High tech. ”
Minogue looked at the boxes again.
“Drugs?”
“What? Drugs? You keep asking me that. Wouldn’t yous know that?”
“Haven’t a clue, to be honest,” said Minogue. Paddy Mac took a step back.
“Wait a minute. Are we just having a conversation here? Or are we talking about this band and drugs, like?”
“Just a chat,” said Minogue.
“In that case, then we’d better introduce some common sense then,” said Paddy Mac. “Who’d be such a gobshite as to stuff drugs in here? Even a week’s dope for one of them? Come on. Nobody’s that thick — not even them. Sure they’re millionaires, man. They’d have no trouble getting what they’d want on tour. Drugs. Free teenagers.”
He gave Malone a wry look.
“Like the King?” Malone asked.
Paddy Mac put his knuckles on his hips. The dust and the acrid smell from fresh plastic was beginning to cloud Minogue’s thoughts.
“Here, look. You can bet your bottom dollar the Yanks would be all over any stuff coming in freight for a rock band. They don’t sit around over there you know. Customs, DEA, FBI. Do you know anything about them?”
Minogue stopped rubbing his eyes. He examined the reinforcing bands on one of the boxes again.
“No. Who gets in here? Into this cage, I mean.”
“Staff,” said Paddy Mac quickly. “It’d depend on the shift. Stuff d be moved in and out, signed in by whoever’s on shift.”
“Other people, I mean ”
“Nobody. We sign for stuff, we bring it in here ”
“So say there’s stuff brought here — ”
“- drivers, freight forwarders, taxis sometimes, couriers, you’re talking about, Chief. We get the paperwork, we see the bill of lading. We sort it out. We stick it on the right plane.”
“Do you get break-ins?” Malone asked. “Stuff go missing?”
“A: no. B: it’s happened.”
“Recently?”
Paddy Mac studied some distant part of the ceiling for several moments.
“The last break-in was two and a half years ago,” he said. “Yobs, total iijits. We had pilfering and that but two fellas were nailed for that. That was early last year.”
He turned and pointed at two boxes by hanging lights.
“See them?”
“Yes and no,” Minogue said. “What are they?”
“They’re cameras. The union finally gave them the go-ahead last year. It was a do or die thing. The computer crowd as well as the big pharmaceutical companies here put the boot in and said they couldn’t do business here if there was no watertight freight handling. Security and that.”
Minogue surveyed the boxes again.
“Are all those boxes that heavy stuff?” he asked.
“What would you say now,” said Paddy Mac. Minogue read the scorn plainly now. “The boys’d need their gear, wouldn’t they? ‘Customized,’ oh yeah. Everything has to be just perfect. For the boys.”
The sneer was for Malone, Minogue believed.
Malone looked at his watch. He held his hands out.
“I think I’m getting the shakes,” he said. “Do you know that? I keep on thinking this last while I’m going to wake up. Is that how it — ”
Minogue had his hand on the phone already. He pressed to receive even before the ring had finished. Eilis’s voice brought him relief.
“What’s with the warrant, a stor?”
“Not a word, I’m afraid ”
“But didn’t we have a judge lined up?”
“We do,” she said. “Fergal and John Murtagh took it to Enright’s chambers, what is it, now?”
“Over an hour ago, Eilis. What does Enright want, someone bigger than sergeant to sign it over?”
Eilis said that she didn’t know. Minogue leaned against the window of the Opel. A breeze stirred a crisps bag and sent it scudding across the pavement. There had been steady traffic in and out of the terminal. He had given up counting the planes. Paddy Mac’s shift was over in ten minutes. He thanked Eilis and closed the phone.
“Nothing on the getaway car even?” Malone asked.
“
No. It’s the search warrant we’re chasing now still.”
“Ah shite,” said Malone and closed his eyes again.
Minogue studied his colleague’s face for several moments. The patches around the eyes, already almost closed to slits, were new to him. Malone opened his eyes, and rolled down the window. He hawked long, and then spat once.
Minogue checked the battery strength.
Malone let his eyes close and settled back in the seat.
“Waiting,” he sighed and yawned. “Sitting in a car, waiting. That’s half the job.”
Minogue felt the belt pinch his shoulders again. He shifted in his seat. He knew he’d be checking the gun, for the tenth time since they’d driven out to the airport. Completely neurotic, of course, but still he’d check: he had never loaded in a magazine.
He reached in and pushed up the strap. The Velcro gave a little.
“Are you going to load it or not?” Malone murmured. Minogue looked over. Malone hadn’t opened his eyes.
“I should just take a bleeding walk and leave you to it,” Malone said.
Minogue thumbed the Velcro down and tugged on the grip. Tight.
“Well?”
“Well what?” asked Minogue.
“Where’s the clip?”
Minogue studied the scrawny shrubs wavering in the breeze. A small turboprop rose over the terminal.
“You need things called bullets to make it work. You know?”
“Tings,” said Minogue.
“Come on,” said Malone. “Show it to me, in anyhow.”
“What?”
“The clip. So’s I know you have one at least. Or did you throw it out the shagging window on the way out here?”
“No. I have it.”
“Prove it. How do I know? Show it to me.”
“I just didn’t want to blow my arm off, Tommy.”
“What, you want someone else to do it for you? Gimme.”
“I haven’t had one of these for years. Anything could happen.”
“Anything will happen! If you don’t show me the — ”
“I’m an inspector, Tommy.”
“Oh yeah, now you pull the regimental shite? Now all of a sudden you decide it’s — ”
Minogue lifted out the phone and waved it at Malone. Eilis sounded pleased.