The Murk Beneath

by L. D. Cunningham

  I felt like replying that like mother like son was apt also. I didn’t want to stick the needle in, so I left it. I took my mother’s hand.

  “I’ve changed,” I said.

  I wanted to tell her about Grace, but didn’t. I wanted to explain that I was on a new path, that it was paved with gold and not briers. There was something biblical in it that she would have understood.

  “I want to believe that, Michael.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  “Halloran’s just a bitter old man,” I said. “If it comes to it, I’ll put him straight.”

  Mam sighed. Maybe she’d heard my father’s bluster one time too many. I meant it, though. If this Halloran guy was going to besmirch my father’s name, I’d see he paid for it. An image of my gun flashed into my mind, but I banished it.

  “Trust me, Mam. Things are going to be different from here on.”

  She smiled warmly and the tears that formed in her eyes were not really sad ones. They glistened with hope, I believed.

  “I know, son. I believe you.”

  I had an opportunity to ask about Starman. I’d ducked it for long enough.

  “Does the word or the name Starman mean anything to you?”

  “You mean like in the David Bowie song?”

  She didn’t know. I blew her off.

  “That’s the one. It was driving me mad trying to remember who sang it. Anyway, enough of the past. Let’s look to the future.”

  Mam held the glass of vodka in her hand and for a moment I thought she would knock it back in a single gulp. Instead, she rose from the table, went to the sink and poured it down the plughole. I’d done something similar some time back with a bottle of Jameson. However, there was something more symbolic about what my mother did.

  She opened up the bag with my milk, porridge and muesli.

  “There’s always tomorrow for that,” she said. “Get the cast iron frying pan for me. Let’s cook some of that black pudding instead.”

  10

  Boxing and Bagging

  The Gentleman wanted to see me in person. That worried me. I’d given him some useful information from my three days of surveilling O’Brien. But I’d held vital pieces of information back.

  I walked to Glen Ryan Road. Who this Glen Ryan guy was is anyone’s guess, though he must have been a someone if there was also a pub named after him in Gurranabraher. Maybe he was a movie star with a name like that.

  The warehouse unit looked small from the outside – too small to house a regular gym, I thought. A grey corrugated frontage had a large sliding door that allowed space for a van to drive through. The door was slightly open so I walked through.

  Jordan was standing with O'Keeffe in what I could only describe as an animal pen. A six-sided cage with chain-linked fencing and padding on the corner posts. Behind the cage was something I was more familiar with: the squared circle – a boxing ring. That Jordan was out in the open, relatively, and standing next to O'Keeffe told me that Savage had nothing on them. O'Keeffe had walked into the Bridewell with Jordan fearing the worst, but walked out of there with the certainty that not only was O'Keeffe in the clear, but that the CAB wasn’t on Savage’s coattails.

  I walked closer and could see boxing gloves hanging around Jordan’s neck. O'Keeffe was wearing what seemed like smaller boxing gloves with the fingers cut off. They could have been mistaken for weightlifting gloves, but the padding on the knuckles said otherwise. I could see the black eye that Savage must have given him and it looked darker now. Jordan wore a grey singlet and baggy blue shorts and had already worked up quite a sweat judging by the patches on his singlet.

  “Come on in, Michael,” Jordan said.

  I didn’t like the enclosed space. Not with Granite Hands and The Gentleman to keep me company. With no little trepidation, I walked through the gate into the cage.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Jordan looked around and I followed his gaze. The boxing ring, the cage, a number of different-sized punch bags hanging from the ceiling, things that looked like punch bags with handles lying on the floor – like little children, dead children. There was also the usual stuff I’d seen in a gym: dumbbells, barbells, exercise bikes and the like. Everything unblemished, smelling like a new car. It was a compact space and I could imagine it bustling with fighters exercising and sparring.

  “This is the future of gyms. The future of gyms. MMA training is the future for serious gym-goers. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I didn’t know what MMA was, didn’t want to appear not to.

  “Can’t disagree with you there, Jim,” I said.

  “You see, the key word in the acronym is mixed. People have a tendency to see results quite fast in the early days of their gym membership. Quite fast. But then they plateau and lose spirit. The problem is they don’t mix up their training. Their bodies adapt and they think: hey, this is easy, I must be really fit.”

  He took a step towards O'Keeffe.

  “But then the lack of improvement. In cold business terms, a dispirited client is not going to be a repeat client. You understand what I mean by dispirited, right?”

  I did. With knobs on. I just nodded. Jordan had run his eyes up and down my body. My pallor, my gait spoke volumes. It was obvious that word of my beat down by Savage had reached his ear.

  “White collar boxing is on the rise. Executive types, all pent up with stress from having it shoved up their arse from whoever they report to – and doesn’t everyone report to someone bar the Man Upstairs?” Jordan pointed to the ceiling. “Guys and gals fighting their line managers, desk mates duking it out. It’s like that film I saw recently – The Purge. For one night only, you can unleash mayhem, go to work the next day like nothing ever happened.”

  Jordan went to the edge of the cage, picked up a bottle of water, took a sip. He offered it to both myself and O'Keeffe, but we refused. I understood the sip to mean that Jordan was far from finished conveying his grand vision.

  “I see a gap in the leisure market,” said Jordan. “White collar MMA. These executive types like their punishment. You can trust me on that.”

  I wondered if he meant the services of a dominatrix. Or maybe he’d ordered some punishment beatings on these executives he spoke of. I wasn’t going to probe. He took another sip. I was getting fidgety. O'Keeffe stood tall, unwavering. Like a secret service agent.

  “But that’s not the best part.” I dreaded how many parts there were. “I’m going to make it affordable – free for some, in fact – for some of the more disadvantaged kids to train here. Get them off the streets. Off the streets. Teach them discipline. Show them another way.” Jordan sighed. “It worked out for me. So far anyway. But I’ve seen more than my fair share fly high and then fall to ground.”

  Jordan seemed genuinely proud. Like it was possible to redeem oneself by building a cage and then filling it with the rabble that lived around Cork City’s Northside. It was like a Guard’s dream. Only Jordan would let them out. Maybe even make them contributors instead of offenders.

  “O'Keeffe here,” Jordan said, taking the gloves from around his neck, “is a prime example. He won’t mind me saying that I found him down a rat hole of his own digging.” O'Keeffe didn’t flinch, wouldn’t have no matter what Jordan said. “He’s what you might call a proponent of the fine arts of combat. Quite the artist he is. Quite the artist. I challenge you to tell me he’s any less talented than a Jackson Pollack or a John Lennon.”

  I wouldn’t have challenged Jordan on anything.

  Jordan tightened the Velcro around his wrists to secure the gloves. O'Keeffe held up his hands in a tight guard and Jordan began to dance around in front of him. Jordan landed a combination of body shots to O'Keeffe’s mid section. Rat-a-tat-tat they went and I could almost feel Savage whaling on me again. The combination matched the pattern of Savage’s blows and I could not consider that to be just a coincidence. O'Keeffe did not even flinch – granite hands, granite abs. O'Keeffe parried a right cross a
imed for his head and Jordan danced back a few steps.

  I was impressed with the speed of Jordan’s fists for a guy his age, how light he was on his feet. He seemed to have lost little of the speed and agility he must have had in his early twenties when he had progressed as far as the Irish amateur boxing championships semi-final.

  What happened next surprised me, though. O'Keeffe lunged, almost superman-like, for Jordan’s legs, wrapping his arms around them and taking Jordan to the mat. I stood like the statue I had been in Churchfield, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  Within about two seconds O'Keeffe had crawled onto Jordan and trapped his neck and an arm with an embrace of his own arms. I still couldn’t move. The pair were between me and the cage door. I felt that tingling in my groin again.

  Then I could see Jordan tapping his free hand against O'Keeffe’s thigh. Was that some kind of ridiculous attempt at a fight back? And then the bulging tension I had felt deflated with a laugh from Jordan. O'Keeffe had released him and was immediately helping him back to his feet.

  Jordan held up O'Keeffe’s arm.

  “And the winner … the winner is Billy Bad News O'Keeffe by way of a head and arm choke.”

  Jordan rubbed his shoulder, then the back of his neck. He turned to me.

  “I’ll bet you thought my hands were fast until you saw the speed of O'Keeffe’s double leg takedown.” Jordan’s face was purple, his breath laboured. “And his BJJ is up to a brown belt now. A brown belt.”

  Enough with the acronyms.

  Jordan obviously saw my puzzlement.

  “Brazillian jiu-jitsu,” he clarified, a quizzical look on his face, as if a hard case like myself was bound to know.

  I’d assumed jiu-jitsu, which I had heard of, was some kind of kicking and punching martial art. Like kung fu. Like Bruce Lee. But wasn’t I the Bruce Lee of Cork? Shouldn’t I have known about this stuff, the takedown, the choke? Then I realized I did. I’d taken down Chambers, mounted him, choked him out. Not as quickly or as skillfully as O’Keeffe, though – he’d pounced like a tiger before morphing into a bear; I’d had all the artistry of a rhinoceros.

  Had Chambers tapped like Jordan had? A sign of submission to a superior force? No. I’d felt nothing, seen nothing. He could have tapped, so to speak, with his eyes, shown a pitiable suffering. But there had been nothing in them, no submission I could see. And would I have released my hands anyway? I knew I had gone too far beyond myself to stop.

  O'Keeffe grabbed a towel from atop the cage and tossed it to Jordan. O'Keeffe seemed bone dry, without the need of a towel. Jordan dried his arms and legs, then rubbed his hair.

  “You know why things didn’t work out before, Michael?”

  Because I was a disaster zone, a magnet for trouble.

  “It’s not your body. Not your body. Though, that’s been out of shape for a while. It’s your mind. That’s as plain as the nose on my face, as I often say.”

  He threw the towel back to O'Keeffe.

  “You like my daughter, don’t you, Michael.”

  I didn’t want to draw suspicion. I gave a standard answer, a platitude.

  “She’s a decent woman. A credit to you, Jim.”

  Jordan squeezed one eye almost shut, widened the other. “She’s more than decent. Out of the league of most men, I’d say. Would you agree with that, Michael?”

  I did and I wasn’t afraid to say so. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Jordan’s expression changed, became serious, like he was staring down an opponent in the centre of the ring.

  “I’m not a fool, Michael. Not a fool. I see the signs, the looks, the way she talks about you. Are you going to deny I’m wrong?”

  I knew what he was talking about. I could own up right there and then, or I could drag it out to its inevitable conclusion. I went with the latter despite the futility.

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to deny, Jim.”

  Jordan peeled the gloves from his hands, flexed his knuckles.

  “You know, when I started out I didn’t wear gloves. Bare knuckle it was. Kicks, bites and gouges – all fair game. Fair game. Like dogs. I was inside a ring of men fighting all sorts – itinerants, alcoholics, members of other gangs.”

  He paused to examine his knuckles as if he were surveying the damage caused by one of those bare-knuckle brawls.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you again, Michael, and I think you should reconsider your strategy. Are you involved with my daughter?”

  I can’t say I was stunned. Jordan didn’t get where he was – having survived gang wars, attempted hits, the CAB – without being a cute hoor. Could I ever have expected it to evade his notice?

  I took a few seconds to gather my thoughts, plan my words. Because the wrong word could be fatal. Retired or not from the thuggery business, when it came to his precious daughter Jordan would not maintain perspective.

  “We’ve talked a few times. Shared a dinner and a drink. Nothing more.”

  Jordan walked over to me. Again with the tingling in my groin.

  “Michael, Michael. Would you say you were in her league?”

  I looked down at my shoes. “I … I … ”

  “I, I, I,” Jordan mocked. “Look at me like a man. You are one, aren’t you? A man?”

  I looked up. Jordan’s face was stony.

  “Yes.”

  Jordan brought a hand in front of his chest, made a fist, tensed it. His face became a grimace. “Then fucking act like one. I mean, look at you. You’re a mess. A mess.”

  Jordan began to pace around me. When he was behind me I waited for a choke hold that never came. It would have been ironic to go out the same way Chambers had.

  When Jordan returned to face me, he said: “You’re a good man, Michael. A good man. But you’re damaged goods. Let me tell you a story about a horse.”

  When he mentioned story, I just knew there would never be an end to my suffering.

  “A fine horse it was, probably the best I’ve ever owned. Unbeatable on the flat anywhere up to a mile and two furlongs. Unbeatable.”

  Jordan’s expression changed to one of sadness.

  “Then against my trainer’s advice, we entered her in the Oaks in Cork. A mile and four furlongs.”

  O'Keeffe had stood diligently by. Jordan stretched his arm back to him.

  “Tell him, Bill. I can’t bring myself to say it.”

  “Horse fractured his leg a hundred yards from home. Got it stuck in a hollow or something.”

  “Thanks, Bill. The vets put him down on the spot, put some kind of tarpaulin around the scene to spare the crowd from seeing the procedure. To see … Gracey Aphrodite … die in her prime.”

  It looked like Jordan’s eyes were welling up. I’d heard the story before. During the room service dinner with Grace. When we’d begun to open up to each other.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You were obviously close to that horse.”

  Anger took over Jordan’s face. “I couldn’t have cared less about that horse. Grace never forgave me. Never forgave me.”

  Jordan composed himself. Attempted to control his breathing. Like a boxer between rounds.

  “You can see the parallel, can’t you, Michael. The lame horse being put down, my daughter’s sorrow?”

  I could only sigh and then nod. I understood fully. As much as Jordan had shielded her from his world of mayhem, I would have dragged her into the murk of my own life. There couldn’t be a future for myself and Grace.

  “Then that’s settled. But like I said, Michael, you are a good man. And you deserve a second chance. Like I’ve had.”

  Jordan tossed me his gloves.

  “Do your worst on O'Keeffe. Don’t worry – he won’t fight back.”

  I put the gloves on, fastened them. I’d only boxed a couple of times, fancied myself at it, truth be known. I wondered how I would have fared had Dominic not come to Savage’s aid.

  O'Keeffe once again put up a tight guard. The little gloves on his hands didn�
��t offer the protection traditional boxing gloves would. I feinted a left hook to the body, instead landing a right jab to O'Keeffe’s shoulder. A little off target, but a hit none-the-less. My confidence grew. I’d go for the kill, I resolved, show Jordan there was man enough in me still. I feinted the same right jab, but instead went for a left hook to the head. O'Keeffe arced back and I missed his jaw by inches. The momentum of my attempted punch put me off balance and I spun around almost three-sixty.

  Jordan laughed. “Exercise control, Michael. You can’t expect to load up on every punch.”

  I gathered myself, but my breathing was already laboured. I tried to dance on my toes, but it felt like my feet were rooted. I was a fat bastard, of that there was no doubt. For your average street goon, the weight might have been imposing, the impression of additional force behind one of my favoured sucker punches persuasive. But for O'Keeffe, with all of his agility and speed, my lumbering mass could only have looked pathetic to him. Easy.

  I tried a combo. The old one-two. A light left jab was parried and I put my hips into a right cross. O'Keeffe moved his head to the side like something from The Matrix. Like I had boarded a plane in a different time zone and he was waiting patiently, newspaper in hand, for my flight to land.

  Again Jordan laughed. “Nice try, Michael. Bit predictable, though, don’t you think?”

  Predictable? It was as good as I had. As much as I’d learned in training. Anything else I’d learned to do with my fists had been done on the job. Those rabbit punches I had doled out to many’s the corner boy; the repeated hooks to Chambers’s face.

  By this point I could feel the sweat dribbling down my back. I could barely breathe. I held up my hands to Jordan.

  “You’ve made your point, Jim,” I said. “I’m a lame horse. And I assume you are dispensing with my services too. Couldn’t blame you if you did.”

  Jordan nodded to O'Keeffe. O'Keeffe walked out of the cage and headed towards the changing area. I took off the gloves and threw them to Jordan.

  “I’m going to say this a third time, Michael. And I don’t like to repeat myself, so listen carefully. You are a good man. The kind that’ll take a beating and come back for more. I can always do with men like that. Besides, no one walks away from me till I say so.”