The Devil I Know

by Claire Kilroy

  He put on his sunglasses and sat back to contemplate the sales queue with satisfaction, watching the world go buy. The punters had been living in cars for three days by then and were dazed, dehydrated and desperate. The taxi drivers, their wives, anxious young couples, their parents, nurses and guards, all lining up to join the jet set, pressing coins into our palms like medieval supplicants. The smart money – or the slightly less stupid money – hadn’t wasted time viewing the show apartments but had gone straight to the private salesroom to slap down deposits. When they came out the other side with their contracts, they headed across to get an idea of the asset they’d just acquired, calculating the resale value when they went to flip it at completion.

  Those still stuck in the queue sized up the people ahead of them, worrying that they had their eye on the same apartment, and so discussing their second choice, and their third. Plan B, Plan C and Plan D. They muttered to their partners, they muttered into their phones, they muttered to their gods, anxious not to be overheard. So preoccupied were they with their quarry that they didn’t register Hickey and I trained on them. They didn’t register that they were the quarry.

  Hickey leaned in. ‘Is he coming?’ I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. I was keeping my eyes peeled for M. Deauville too.

  ‘He says he hopes to be able to make it.’ Tocka tocka over the phone as he had checked airline schedules last night. A nervous tingle on my part at the prospect of coming face to face. ‘But he couldn’t promise. Depends on flights.’

  Hickey nodded. ‘Busy man.’

  I nodded back. ‘Busy man.’

  That’s when Ciara, head of the sales team, emerged from the salesroom with her clipboard. I checked my watch. The apartments had been on sale for an hour and twenty minutes. Hickey lowered his sunglasses to wink at me. ‘Here we are now.’ He pushed the glasses back up his nose.

  ‘Well?’ he asked when she drew up. ‘Are we in business?’

  ‘We are, Mr Hickey. Just to confirm that the first fifty-eight units are now sold. A number of investors made multiple purchases. A farmer from Tipperary bought ten.’

  Hickey brought his fist down hard on the bistro table: ‘Yes!’ His teaspoon bounced and landed on the gravel. Ciara stooped to pick it up. ‘Good girl. Right. Withdraw the next sixty-five units from sale.’

  I jolted upright in my chair. ‘What?​’ but Ciara had already Yes-Mr-Hickey-ed him and was marching back to the Sales Suite, bursting with self-importance. I turned to Hickey. ‘Run that past me?’

  He punched a number into his mobile phone and raised it to his ear before cocking an eyebrow my way. ‘We decided that if trade was brisk we’d release fifty-eight apartments today an call it Phase One, then hold back the next batch, add 30 per cent to the price, an call it Phase Two. We’ll launch Phase Two in six weeks. Then there’s Phase Three an Phase— Ah, howaya Mr McGee, D. Hickey here. Grand job, grand job.’

  I stared at him in his suit. He never looked right in a suit, same as I never looked right in jeans. A tuft of black bristles protruded from his ear, the match of the black bristles sprouting from his nose, as if something were growing inside him, forcing its way out. He was a few rungs behind on the evolutionary ladder, or perhaps a few rungs ahead on the evolutionary ladder, or on some as yet undocumented stretch of the ladder which had taken off on a tangent, so he was not a man but something hybrid, something wolfish, something that wore its pelt on the inside, because they were a new breed, weren’t they, these developers. And their development was escalating. Soon they would take over. They’d enslave us. Too late: they already had. A commotion had broken out in the sales queue. An agent had placed a sign in the window:

  Phase One

  Sold Out

  Ciara was struggling to force shut the door of the Sales Suite. People were clamouring for entry. Tired people, thwarted people, demoralised people, panicked people, people shouting that they’d been queuing for days.

  Ciara clicked her fingers over her head like a flamenco dancer and cried ‘Security!’ Two heavies from the former Eastern Bloc, who were built like the former Eastern Bloc, appeared and enquired if there was a problem. Fucking right there was a problem, said one man pointing at them, and a struggle ensued. The insurrection was efficiently quashed by the hired goons, as insurrections in the former Eastern Bloc tended to be.

  The man who had pointed his finger rolled onto his side clutching his knee. A small child wailed in fright. Hickey clapped his phone shut and stood up to claim his winnings. ‘Gracious,’ he said. ‘That’s the word I’m looking for. Isn’t that right, Tristram? Isn’t that what we’re selling here? Gracious living.’

  *

  M. Deauville didn’t materialise. Hickey stood between his big box balls at the close of business that evening and jingled the coins in his pockets. ‘Cristal?’ he offered, then winced in mock apology. He took off his sunglasses to admire them. Two grand, he remarked they’d cost him.

  He turned his back and headed off, holding up a valedictory hand in that way that used to drive me mad when I had less to be driven mad by (what made him so very positive that I was looking at him?) but then he paused, dropped his head, relented, and turned around. ‘Lookit,’ he said, as if making a major concession, ‘I’m having a barbeque next Saturday, okay? Me an the wife, up at the ranch. I might see you there. I know you’re a busy man.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, getting up to allow two men in overalls to remove my chair and load it into the back of a truck. The rest of the bistro set had already been packed. I stood there watching the place being locked up. Checked my phone: no calls. Busy man.

  I looked about for a chair but found none and in the end sat down on a kerbstone. It rocked in its moorings. Everything built by Hickey rocked in its moorings. There were no moorings.

  I loitered there until the warmth went out of the sun, waiting for M. Deauville to walk through the gates and find me, the abandoned birthday boy, surrounded by burst balloons and half-eaten cake, party hats and torn gift wrapping strewn at my feet.

  He didn’t come and he didn’t ring either but he was there in spirit. I see that now. I see it all now. Every aspect of the launch bore his hallmark. The Devil is in the detail.

  ‘And at what point did Dominic Dowdall enter the picture?’

  I’m sorry, who?

  ‘The Viking.’

  Oh, him. Yes. I should have mentioned. He pitched up on launch day to sniff around, sensing that juicy spoils were to be had. That’s what Vikings do. They raid juicy spoils. It was only a matter of time before he stuck his whore – I mean, his oar in. We’ll get to her – I mean, to that.

  He rocked up with his wife and their three blond children, all of whom had ridiculous names. I realise I stand in a glasshouse in this regard, but at least my ridiculous name is hereditary. ‘Leave that tree alone, Roman,’ he called as the boy struggled to wrench a young Japanese maple out of the ground, but there was no conviction in the Viking’s voice. Pull it if you wish, Roman, he was saying. Do what feels good. Do what feels right. Nobody is going to stop you, son, that’s a valuable lesson in life. The maple snapped. Roman looked at the slender antler of branches in his hand. ‘Put that down,’ his father told him, and the boy cast it aside and moved on to the next target. Hickey shook his head. ‘That little bollocks is going to get such a boot up the hole.’

  His wife held her husband’s hand and kept her counsel, smiling about herself vaguely. She was dressed for a skiing trip on a beach. Fur-lined boots on her muscular brown legs, denim shorts, a sheepskin gilet over a sun top. Hickey sized her up with interest. She had a gleaming mane of chestnut hair and a hard little nut of a face beneath it.

  If the Viking noticed Hickey and me sitting at the bistro table when he came through the gates, he didn’t betray it. We watched him regally making his rounds, his brown queen on his arm. He surveyed the Lambay building with a proprietorial tilt of the head before cocking a hind leg to squirt his scent on it. Tsss. Hickey was itching to belt over and count
er-spray – I could feel him chafing beside me.

  ‘You know he has a conviction for beating up his former partner, don’t you?’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Girlfriend partner, not business partner. He beat up a woman.’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’

  Even I knew that. We all knew that. Everyone on the hill knew that the Viking had been handed down a suspended sentence for breaking a former girlfriend’s jaw. Somehow, this hadn’t impacted on his social standing.

  He came upon us at the bistro table when his tour was complete. ‘I like what you’ve done here,’ he told Hickey. ‘I like the look you’ve achieved, yeah?’ His great bullish head was blocking out my sun. He was a handsome man, in a coarse sort of way.

  ‘Phase One sold out in forty-five minutes,’ Hickey stated.

  The Viking tossed his hair. ‘Sweet. A lot of new customers for my bar.’

  Hickey tossed his hair back. ‘They’ll be at my bar.’ He nodded at the trunk of the hotel. ‘Have you seen me hotel? It’s going to be eleven storeys high.’

  ‘Yeah, your hotel.’ The Viking stroked his smig. ‘I wouldn’t mind a word in your ear about that. I have, uh . . . a proposition. You must come see my operation some evening. You know, get the tour.’ He made eye contact with me to indicate that the invitation extended to us both. ‘Why don’t I give you a call?’

  ‘Yeah, why don’t you?’

  ‘Excellent.’ The Viking touched his temple in salute before rounding up his feral children and sauntering off. I won’t repeat what Hickey called him when his back was turned. I don’t approve of that kind of language.

  *

  Three days later, we were summoned.

  ‘Why are you after wearing a suit?’ Hickey berated me as we made our way to the Viking’s bar, ‘did you have to go and wear a bloody suit?’ He had never objected to my suits before. I always wear a suit, and have done ever since giving up the drink. Even on weekends. It is my Sober uniform. Every morning, I must get up and put it on.

  The Viking was parading himself outside his bar on his phone in his linen and we hated him. His bar was a block of jade glass like Hickey’s hotel, like McGee’s bank, like the Lambay building, like everything. He lowered the phone. ‘Guys, I’ll be with you in a tick. Have Svetlana bring you a drink.’

  He pointed to a blonde who was standing sentry inside the door. Svetlana stepped forward and held it open to welcome us into the Viking’s emporium. I noted Hickey noting this – the Viking’s hand command; the beautiful blonde leaping to his bidding. She was dressed in a fitted white shirt, black tie and black trousers. A long black apron was knotted around her waist. Hickey stared at her trim backside as she led us upstairs to the VIP area. He would have liked to have run a woman like that – five foot ten and slender as a runway model, her hair pinned up in a French twist. He would have liked instructing a woman like that to serve his friends.

  The VIP area was empty. Nobody was Very Important that night. Svetlana guided us to a raised platform and took our drinks order. We sat looking out the window at the Viking, still strutting up and down his patch of Harbour Road. Tsss: he cocked his hind leg to mark the lamppost. ‘I could burst that X,’ Hickey remarked quietly, resorting to that word again that I find so objectionable. I nodded my agreement all the same.

  He finally appeared in the VIP den. ‘Gentlemen, did Svetlana take care of you?’ It was not a hospitable enquiry but a power display: there would be consequences for Svetlana if she did not take care of his friends. ‘She did, thank you,’ I told him.

  Svetlana arrived with a tray and set down our drinks. A sparkling water for me, a Carlsberg for the Viking and a double brandy for Hickey. It was the most expensive drink he could think of. He should have asked for my advice. Svetlana’s nails were an inch long. Her palms were stained fake-tan orange, her lifelines and heart lines a tracery of tobacco brown. Your path in life will be a dirty one, a palmist would have told her. You will have a filthy, dirty little path.

  ‘Jaysus,’ said Hickey as he watched her arse depart, the belt of her apron tied in a smart bow at the small of her back. He swirled the contents of his brandy balloon and knocked back a mouthful: Ahhhhh. ‘This immigration business. It’s not all bad news.’

  ‘Svetlana? Yes. The Russian girls are beautiful. Doesn’t translate into the men though.’

  ‘No,’ Hickey agreed. ‘Now that you say it. I hadn’t looked at it that way.’

  They nodded thoughtfully, two men of the world. ‘The Russian men don’t find Irish women attractive,’ the Viking added, ‘but the Russian women find Irish men extremely attractive. Did you know that?’

  ‘Get away,’ said Hickey. ‘You’re bullshitting me.’

  ‘I am not. They find rich Irish men practically irresistible, in fact. They’re all Roman hands and Russian fingers when you get them in a corner. Don’t tell me you haven’t tried one yet.’

  I had never seen Hickey embarrassed before. He sniggered into his cognac glass. I glanced back at the bar to see what Svetlana was making of this. The girl stared fixedly out at the harbour lights.

  The Viking signalled for another round. Svetlana collected the old drinks and replaced them with fresh ones. I looked at her tray as she removed it. The Viking’s old pint was two-thirds intact. Hickey’s brandy glass was empty.

  The Viking nodded at me. ‘I heard this fella was dead,’ he said to Hickey.

  ‘That was another Tristram St Lawrence,’ Hickey told him.

  I stared at them as they exploded into laughter, failing to understand the joke. ‘I am dead,’ I said to shut them up, but it only made them laugh harder. The Viking raised his hand for attention when Hickey had emptied his glass. Svetlana approached, exchanged Hickey’s empty glass for another double, and a fresh pint for the Viking’s partially consumed one. A third sparkling water was set in front of me.

  Hickey didn’t notice that his new best friend was sending back barely touched pints. All he noticed was my sparkling water. ‘Are ya too good to drink with me?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is that it? Is that the problem?’

  I recognised the space he was in. No drinker trusts a sober man. ‘We’ve been over this,’ I told him quietly.

  The Viking looked from Hickey to me for an explanation. None was forthcoming. It was a private matter. Then my phone rang. Tocka tocka. Saved by the bell. I excused myself and left the table.

  Hickey was red in the face by the time I returned, maybe as much as half an hour later. The call to M. Deauville had dragged out. I had raised objection after objection. ‘Hickey and I . . .’ I tried to explain to him, ‘we have a past. He used to be my—’ but M. Deauville felt that it was a necessary step in my recovery that I return to the VIP den immediately to face down my fears, so in the end I complied, having first admitted to him that I was powerless over alcohol and then accepted the things that I could not change, i.e. everything.

  ‘Here he is,’ said Hickey. ‘Told you he wasn’t dead.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said the Viking. ‘We ordered you a fresh fizzy water.’ They cracked up at that.

  ‘It’s on the house,’ Hickey added and they laughed harder still. The Viking wiped a crocodile tear from the corner of his eye. He was sober. The other clown was a different story. Brandy didn’t suit him. I sniffed the new glass of water. My nose detected nothing suspicious but I pushed it away to be on the safe side. That’s when I spotted the nickel tray. It was the tray for delivering the bill, except there was no bill on this tray but instead a ridge of white powder to which the Viking was adding more. Hickey shoved a rolled fifty into his hairy nostril and hoovered the powder up.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ I began, but the Viking cut me off.

  ‘What have we here?’ he wanted to know, looking over Hickey’s shoulder. Hickey turned around and the Viking pointed at the back of his head. Svetlana duly approached. ‘Show us your lovely dress, hon,’ he instructed her. ‘That’s it. Give us a twirl.’ She had by then slipped into something m
ore uncomfortable. No more black and white. Just black, and not a whole lot of it. The Viking turned to Hickey. ‘Isn’t that a lovely dress?’

  ‘Gorgeous,’ said Hickey. ‘Knockout.’

  The Viking put a hand on the builder’s shoulder. ‘This is my good friend, Dessie,’ he explained to Svetlana. ‘My very good friend,’ he added meaningfully. ‘Why don’t you sit down and join us, babe?’

  Svelte Lana smiled at Hickey. ‘Hi Dessie,’ she said, and the way she pronounced his name lent it an almost sophisticated ring, as if there were an accent on the i. Desì. Hickey beamed up at her, his tusks of nasal hair frosted white. ‘Howaya love!’ She sat down and slid along the banquette until they were side by side. Her gold heels were five inches high and fastened around her ankles with little chains. The Viking threw me a knowing smirk. I couldn’t watch. And yet I did.

  Svetlana whispered something into Hickey’s ear. ‘Ya are not!’ he exclaimed and she nodded, then leaned forward to whisper into his ear again. She sat back to see his reaction, then covered her mouth and giggled. I missed the signal whereby it was settled that he had pulled. Svetlana stood up, took Hickey’s hairy hand in hers and tugged it. ‘Ah no,’ he objected, leaping to his feet fairly lively all the same. With the additional height of her stilettos, the girl’s hips were level with Hickey’s belly. Her breasts jutted out at his chin. He gazed into them and told her that she had beautiful eyes.

  I checked my watch. ‘That’s it. I’m done.’

  The Viking’s hand shot out to detain me. ‘Stay. I want a word.’ Svetlana was leading Hickey away by the hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me as we watched them depart, ‘she’s well looked after.’ I stared at him. He stroked his smig as he contemplated their mismatched silhouettes disappearing through a door marked Staff Only. ‘And he’ll be well looked after too,’ he added with the air of one who knew what lay in store for Hickey beyond that door. ‘Now,’ he said when Hickey was safely tucked into bed and it was just the adults, ‘let’s get down to business. I believe we have a mutual friend.’