The Death of an Irish Tinker

by Bartholomew Gill

  “May God save you,” Ruth muttered every time a coin descended, “and the devil take the Toddler.”

  Who entered the southeast corner of St. Stephen’s Green, diagonally opposite the Grafton Street gate, at half six, feeling more like himself than he had in a long time, in spite of the way he looked.

  Dressed like an older American tourist in a bright, striped blazer, bow tie, straw hat, and sunglasses, he was also carrying what anybody would think were two dozen long-stem roses in a large white box wrapped with a blood-red bow. He even stopped often at the many gardens in the park, as he made his way slowly toward the Grafton Street gate. But he hardly glanced at the flowers.

  Instead he concentrated on the gate itself, studying it from different perspectives in order to establish the best possible firing angle. It had been ten years since Vietnam, but it was as if he’d never skipped a beat. Quickly he discovered a small, dense copse of—could it be? It was—bamboo by the side of a duck pond that would conceal him once night fell and from which he could pin down the entire Grafton Street corner, should he need.

  Think of the coincidence! Bamboo had been his friend in Southeast Asia, providing him cover and even food on one occasion when the NVA had overrun his fire base, no chopper could get in, and his only way back was on his feet. And belly. It had taken him nearly two weeks to crawl eighteen miles.

  Now sitting on a bench a good seventy yards from the gate, the Toddler concentrated on the strollers and the others who were sitting on the benches. He was looking for “plants.”

  Who moved? And who did not? Who was actually reading a paper? Did they turn the page? And in this day and age who of the women actually had a baby in the pram? Did she feed it a bottle or chuck it under the chin? There were women guards now; witness the tall blond “Tinker” bitch on the corner across from the gate, the one who was “playing” Biddy Nevins.

  The Toddler checked his watch. It would be dark in an hour. “All out! All out!” the attendants would call, making sure everybody had left, even ringing bells that they carried in their hands. After all, Ireland was a quaint even backward and unsuspecting country, which had made everything so much easier for Desmond Bacon, alias the Toddler, lo these eleven years. But he hoped he’d be well away before they locked the gates.

  And if not, former Sergeant Major Bacon—winner of a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, two Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry, to say nothing of numerous Marine Corps commendations—had a set of keys himself. They were in the box with the roses, along with a change of clothes, and the rifle. It was a Remington 700 with a Zeiss scope that had been used in World War I by the famous (or infamous) German sniper Corporal Unertl. Both items, which the Toddler had bought at a gun show in Houston some years before, were among the best ever made.

  For ammo he had five 173-grain boat-tailed bullets that would achieve a 2,550-foot-per-second muzzle velocity and would strike any target in the same spot with every shot, shot after shot after shot. As backup, he carried five more in the stock, in case he ran into trouble. But that he doubted.

  Sitting there in the full spring sun, watching the gate and the activity around the “Tinker” woman on the footpath across the street, the Toddler decided that he would never again allow anybody, like the Bookends, to do his killing for him.

  Look at the potential problem they represented, exactly double the trouble that Archie Carruthers might have brought him.

  As shadows lengthened and night came on, Ruth Bresnahan had to struggle to remain in a posture that allowed the blond ringlets of hair to obscure her face. Other buskers, packing up their kits and instruments to go home, stopped to make conversation, mentioning how sorry they were to hear about Mickalou and how good it was to have her back.

  Ruth only nodded, muttered thanks, and with one insistent woman even pretended to wipe away tears.

  Now, as night fell, she glanced up at a window in one of the nearby office buildings that was the Murder Squad command post. McGarr, who was standing there in the darkness, held his hands to the windows and flashed his ten fingers twice: twenty minutes more. It was getting too dark for the drawing to be seen, but they also did not think the Toddler would make a move until it was night and there were fewer shoppers about.

  Ruth had only reached for her chalks to begin packing up when a pair of shoes appeared in her line of sight. Black, shiny, large, official. The kind of sturdy walking shoes that she herself had worn a few years back when in uniform and on patrol.

  Another pair now stepped to the other side of her. Still, Ruth did not glance up; they shouldn’t see her face.

  “Did yi’ t’ink we’d forget?”

  “Nah, don’t fault her. We’re guards. We’re supposed to be sht-yew-pid.”

  It was the North Side, Joxer accent, like the one Maggie Nevins had described the “guards” who had beat her as having.

  “Come along now.” The one on the right reached down for her arm. “You give out, and we’ll kill your babby.”

  “We know where she is,” the other put in gleefully.

  “With the granny. Why did she not move?”

  “And there they call themselves Travelers.”

  “Fookin’ shite. Yiz is layabouts, is all.”

  “Welfare spongers.”

  The Bookends, Bresnahan assumed; they pulled her to her feet.

  “Wait—me muney.”

  “Fook yehr muney.”

  “Ye’ll not be needin’ it where ye’re headed.”

  “Unless Mickalou needs a fix.” The one began chuckling, which was picked up by the other.

  “Christ, no, he’s been fixed.”

  “Permanent like.”

  “But the tin, me chalks. People will see them and know something’s amiss. Promise me you’ll leave me babby be, and I’ll go along quiet like.” Bresnahan felt one arm release her and then the other.

  Bending for the chalks, she pulled the Glock from the Tinker’s muff and, spinning, pointed it at the one brother’s head. “Move and I’ll blow your head off. Now the both of you sit down right where you are and place your hands on your head.”

  The one Hyde brother glanced at the other, deciding against her, she could tell when the larger nodded slightly. “You wouldn’t shoot us.”

  Bresnahan was hoping—Jesus, she was praying—that McGarr and the others would get there soon. She had never so much as struck, much less shot, another person.

  He took a step toward her, his left hand coming up. “Remember the babby.”

  “And the Toddler,” said the other. “He’s out there. Anything happen to us—”

  And did. The bullet—was it?—thwacking into the big one’s chest sounded like a carpet struck with a bat. And the flesh, blood, and bone, issuing from his back in a plug, nearly knocked his brother down. His face was covered. Blinded momentarily, he batted at the gore.

  Bresnahan stared down at the one who was sprawled on the drawing on the footpath limp, lifeless, like some big, dead, beached thing. Then she looked at her Glock. Had she fired it?

  Lowering his head, the remaining brother rushed her but took only two steps before he was driven back, right off his feet.

  He came down in a sitting position, his hands wrapped around his stomach. When he opened them and raised his head to Bresnahan, she could see the problem. His entire midsection was a red, wet hole.

  Suddenly he lost the top of his head. Cleanly. As though a cleaver had been taken to his scalp. Evenly at the hairline.

  Then, from out of nowhere, a figure appeared and tackled Bresnahan. He knocked her to the footpath and rolled them up against the large concrete planter there at the corner.

  It was Ward virtually on top of her. “Somebody’s out there with a high-power rifle,” he whispered in her ear. “The chief’s called for help, but we’ll stay here until the area’s cleared.”

  Bresnahan was confused. She could scarcely put it together, and all the blood—“But who?”

  “The bloody Toddler, who else? Cleaning the sla
te. First it was Archie Carruthers. Now the Bookends. He must have been put wise to what we were about here. And to get rid of them right in our face? That’s the Toddler style right enough.”

  Sending yet another message, Bresnahan thought. People on the street would hear about it. And know. “Will he try to kill us?”

  Ward shook his head. “Not now, not with us here. But if he’d fancied, you’d be dead already.”

  And you not—was it?—on top of me. Yes, Ward was actually lying on top of her, whispering in her ear, and it felt…well, it was not unpleasant. Apart from his knees, which were digging into hers. Bresnahan spread her legs a bit, and he slipped between them.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  How? she wondered. Being covered as she was. And why? It was a thought that she tried to clear from her mind.

  And could not.

  When McGarr arrived at the Toddler’s residence in Coolock thirty-five minutes later, he found Desmond Bacon wearing a cardigan sweater and house slippers. “We’re having tea in the kitchen, Superintendent. Would you care for a wet?”

  McGarr followed the round but heavily muscled young man as he swayed, flat-footed, side to side down the hallway. The house was a typical, attached, older county council cottage with scuffed lino on the floor. The sitting room, which they passed by, was furnished with overstuffed chairs with doilies on the arms. A budgie was singing merrily in a cage.

  Apart from what looked like picture gallery—quality drawings, photographs, and paintings that could be seen on most walls and lining the stairway to the second floor, the house was not what one might expect of a major—no, the major—drug dealer in the country. And accomplished murderer.

  The kitchen-cum-scullery was barely large enough for a table and—now—four people. A large framed photograph of Pope John haranguing a crowd hung over a big antique television. The screen was covered by a sheet of yellowing plastic.

  “And who have we here, Desmond?” asked the granny, who was an elderly woman barely able to raise her neck because of the hump on her back. Her hair was snow white, her eyeglasses were some designer frame with sequined wings on the temples, and the ring on her finger was large and looked like a diamond.

  There were playing cards on the table, the third hand having been dealt to Cornelius Duggan, the Toddler’s solicitor, who looked uncomfortable. He was staring down at the table and had not so much as glanced McGarr’s way.

  “This is Chief Superintendent Peter McGarr, luv.”

  “From the guards? Is it a social call ye’re payin’, Superintendent. Or something…official?”

  “A cup?” Bacon pointed to a teapot on the stove.

  McGarr shook his head. “Ah, no. I’d like nothing better, but I can’t stay. Nor can you. If you’ll get your jacket, we’ll be off. It’s a bit chilly tonight.”

  “Off where?” asked the granny.

  “Just down to the lab.”

  “What lab? Why?”

  “A Garda lab. I’d like to perform a little test on your grandson.” McGarr raised a palm. “Mind you, nothing invasive.”

  “What class of test?”

  McGarr glanced down at Duggan, wondering what had happened to his tongue.

  “Ballistics. I’d like to know if Desmond here has fired a weapon in the last few hours.”

  Depositing a primer residue of antimony, barium, and lead on the hands of a shooter. Even washing could not remove all of it. But the test had to be performed within six hours of the event to have any value in a court of law.

  “A weapon? If you mean a gun, why, he has surely, sir. Corny and Des spent the afternoon plinking clay pigeons at the Donabate Field Club. Did you not, Corny?”

  Duggan flapped a hand to mean yes.

  “And since then?”

  “Why, we’ve been playing bridge, as you can see. Can I let you in on a little secret, Superintendent? I’ve won a few bob, so I have.” She tapped the pile of pound notes in front of her. “Most of it from Corny here, who don’t have a head for cards at all. At all.”

  Duggan nodded, his hands gripped tightly before him. McGarr studied him: a handsome middle-aged man with a full head of steel gray hair corrugated in precise finger waves. Duggan’s face was flushed, his eyes were bloodshot, as though he’d been drinking.

  Three columns of numbers had been noted on the pad. A biro was stuck in the spiral binder.

  “You know, I’ll take that cup after all. Where’s the rush? Have you been here all day?” he asked the old woman.

  “Where else would I go, cripple that I am?”

  “Down the shops, say. Who perms your hair?” McGarr glanced at the careful arrangement of blue-white hair that looked like a confection.

  “My grandson here is a one-off. He has whatever I need sent in. Does the cookin’, pays the bills.” She gazed fondly at the Toddler, who was standing at the stove pouring McGarr some tea. “The very best lad in all Coolock bar none. Broke the form when they made him.”

  One would hope, thought McGarr.

  “I’m ninety-one now, don’t yeh know? And me pins isn’t what they should be.”

  “But your mind—how’s that?”

  Her old gray eyes rose to McGarr’s. “How’s your own, son? And I mean no offense.”

  “None taken. So, you and Solicitor Duggan and your grandson here have been playing cards—how long?”

  “Hours. Since the tea.”

  “Which was when?”

  “Early. Half five. I get tired so.” She squinted at the clock over the sink. “It’s past my bedtime already.”

  “He go out at all?”

  “Who?”

  “Your grandson.”

  “Not since coming back from the shooting.”

  “Did Solicitor Duggan take tea with you?”

  “Et everything on his plate.”

  McGarr glanced at Duggan, whose nose was now running, and then over to the sink. It was empty. The rack on the drainboard was filled with dry dishes.

  “Dessie, of course. And a slap-up job. Won’t he make some lucky girl a right husband one of these days?”

  The Toddler set a cup in front of McGarr and then sat on the remaining chair. He smiled, or he tried to. It was more like the baring of teeth. In his round, fleshy face the Toddler’s eyes were small, dark, hard, and watchful. Shaved close, the skin of his face was blue. The patch of baldness on his head had the shape of a bishop’s miter.

  “And what did you eat, Solicitor Duggan?”

  The bloodshot eyes rolled past McGarr in what seemed like panic. “Ah…chips. That’s it—bread and chips. And tea.” He raised his cup, which fluttered in his hand. Now his face was an alarming purplish shade, and he bore little semblance to the man that McGarr had spoken with only two weeks earlier.

  “Would there be any left?”

  “Chips? Of course,” said the old woman, still acting as interlocutor. “Are yeh hungry?”

  The kitchen was so small that the Toddler, sitting in his chair, could reach over and open the oven door to reveal a heap of chips on a cookie sheeet. “The gas is on.” He patted them. “Still hot.”

  “Did you not have any yourself, Mr. Bacon?” It looked as if nobody had.

  “Diet.” Without taking his eyes from McGarr’s, the Toddler patted his stomach. “I look at a chip, I put on weight. Do you have that problem yourself, Superintendent?” His accent was strange—not identifiably Irish or American or British—and he sounded rather like a man on the evening news.

  McGarr stood. “Solicitor Duggan, you’ll give a deposition stating that you spent the afternoon and evening with your client here?”

  Duggan did not look up at him.

  “I say, Solicitor Duggan—”

  Slowly Duggan’s ruined eyes rose to him.

  “I’ll need a statement from you.”

  “As to what?”

  “That you went skeet shooting”—which would be easy to check—“and came back here and played—just what is it you’re playing here w
ith all those numbers?” McGarr picked up the sheet.

  “Bridge,” the granny put in too quickly.

  “For money?”

  “Would that I could spend it. But Dessie never lets me spend a farthing. But sure, it’ll all be his soon enough.”

  McGarr pushed the score sheet into Duggan’s line of sight. “Can you recap the winning for me? How does it go? Do you have to bid to win?”

  “Or lose, and then you pay everybody.” She cackled a bit. “There’s also the honey pot for the best cumulative score. Yeh tot up everybody’s winnings, divide by three, and that’s what the losers have to pay the woman with the best score.”

  “I’m new at it,” Duggan managed. “I never played but this once.”

  “Bridge? Or gambling on bridge.”

  Both, it was plain by the ciphers under his name.

  McGarr dropped the sheet on the table. “Gamble much, Mr. Bacon?”

  Again their eyes met. “Only on games of skill, not chance.”

  “Like the shooting?”

  The Toddler canted his head to the side; it appeared all the more oval in shape because of the miter pattern of his baldness. “I’ve been known to put a few bob on the barrel of a gun. You must be a fair shot yourself, Superintendent.”

  “Certainly not up to your caliber. Have you heard about the Hyde brothers?”

  Bacon’s smile did not fade.

  “Dermot and Donal,” the old woman said, nodding. “Sturdy lads—they’re always so polite.”

  “To a fault, now that they’re dead.”

  She gasped, and Duggan turned to the Toddler, obviously not understanding until that moment what he had got into.

  “When did they die?” Still, it was the granny.

  Now the Toddler’s eyes seemed almost merry.

  “This evening. Early. While you were playing bridge, I suppose. Or could it be while your grandson was shooting?”

  She shook her head and tsked. “It’s tragic, really. A disaster.”

  “Any reaction, Mr. Bacon?”