[2017] What Happened in Vienna, Jack?

by Daniel Kemp

  “I could get Fianna to do it if you have a forwarding address, Jack.” His benign business-like expression changed into a devilish smile.

  “It's a big city, Shaun, with plenty of distractions to take your mind off Fianna. I would start at the Tat & Tail club. Their card is in the envelope with a name you could meet.”

  “Another contact of yours?”

  “No! Simply a friendly girl you might want to get to know. Just thinking of your welfare and how you can amuse yourself.”

  “How long will I have to find amusement, Jack? How long do you propose I stay in New York?”

  “Can't answer that one precisely. Events are moving quickly in the current affair. After this finishes then there are other considerations that require our attention, but for the moment all's in hand with regard to your comforts. At my instigation Richard Stockford has opened a bank account for you, along with finding you an apartment. Don't go getting too excited though. I don't suppose it's a penthouse suite, but it will adequately serve your purpose whilst you're here. We certainly can't afford hotel bills on a nightly basis. I don't suppose there's much in the bank. Enough to tide you over for essentials, I should think. No point raising suspicions by turning you into some sort of playboy,” he grinned widely.

  “Leeba Stockford will be adding to it on a regular basis for as long as you work for her.” The grin turned into a smile.

  “She's the founding partner at Stockford & Crawford. They are what's called a boutique law firm, operating exclusively here in New York and specialising in corporate affairs such as the merger that's underway with her big brother's pharmaceutical company and the German KGA company. You're to be their research analyst, Shaun. After your spell in the criminal records office back at dear old Scotland Yard, it should be right up your street and it provides you with great cover. Fancy something stronger than coffee to drink?” Not waiting for my answer, he summoned Salvatore again.

  “Whatever happened to only having my wits and intuition to rely on, Jack? It seems as though I now have a branch of the mafia and riches to call on.”

  “You have exciting times ahead, Shaun. As good a reason for a piss-up as I've ever heard.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Green Or Yellow?

  There was a letter pushed under the door of my in room at the hotel. It contained much, but explained little.

  Dear Shaun, I'm sorry it ended this way. That was not my decision. However, I couldn't be doing this face to face, it would upset me too much. I've told you many lies, but that was not my idea either. Now is the time to clear up some of them, if you allow me and if I can.

  When I first met you I thought you were up your own backside in a big way. I slowly changed my mind about that. I realise we've only known each other for less than three days but I can say without question you are the nicest man I've ever come across. I truly wish that if I had a brother and that brother was you then, perhaps, things may have worked out differently for me. I reckon you could have kept me safe, but I'm too far into this mess to ever be that and now I have no way out that I can see.

  I was recruited into British intelligence when I was a prostitute in Newry, but I told you the truth about not meeting Jack Price until recently. One night my favours were paid for by a rugged looking middle-aged Irishman who spoke with such eloquence that I could almost forget he was a trick. It was not only the sex he was after though. He told me that Donegal Fitzpatrick was in trouble with the local Garda for supplying guns to a group of Irish dissidents, as he called them, in Sligo. I could help him he said, by finding out some information on that group for him to pass on to the police without Donegal having the need to know. It would get him off the hook, he said. Perhaps I believed him the more because he was old enough to be the father I'd never had.

  Donegal was screwing me so it wasn't hard to go with him on his deliveries and meet who he met. I got the names of most in that group and in time, some more. In no more than six months the Brits were screwing me in my mind. I was owned by them and had no other place to go. But that wasn't the whole of the story. I never found that out until very recently. The man who slashed my friend's face, and was then beaten up, was heavily connected within the Republican Army. As Donegal expanded his prostitution ring so he met people with differing political agendas. Many were from the Ulster Volunteers. The IRA pulled his strings and when they pulled hard enough he supplied them those Ulstermen's names! But the IRA's alliance with Donegal didn't last long.

  They shot him as a traitor when the young Irishman I met that night in Newry fingered him. He ran me for a while until Scarface turned up one day when I was working in a bar in Belfast. It was he who told me where Finnegan was and it was he who taped the knife under a pew in St Mary's that I used to kill him. Said, and I believed him, it was the British government's way of saying thank you for the work I'd done against the Republicans.

  I'm not looking for your sympathy, nor for the understanding of me. All I'm trying to do is warn you against accepting Jack Price for what he appears to be on the surface. There's so much hidden out of sight that I fear for you. You are too honest for your own good and you're too ready to be taken in by anyone who shows an interest in you. In that respect we are equals. My case is beyond salvation. I've sinned too many times, but you are just starting out with time on your side to turn around and go home. I know you won't take my advice. I know I would not if our roles were reversed.

  To most people that I've met, killing becomes easier the more you do it. With you I'm not so sure that's the case. The lack of emotion that you had after shooting that man Acre was not natural, Shaun. You may think that to be a strength of yours, it's not. Jack Price sees that as your major weakness. I'm in America as your older sister Fianna and although there won't be anyone looking for you to back up my story, please remember the tale about Athlone. Lies get you into trouble if you forget the reasons why you're telling them. If you forget Athlone you'll put my life in danger and then I can't protect you. There aren't many friends in the business you've chosen, don't lose the only one you might have.

  You'll probably think that I'm a sentimental fool in asking this of you, but it will mean a lot to me if you kept this ring of mine. I have no family nor likely to have any. Stay save and distance yourself from Jack Price as much as you're able. He plays dangerous games with other people's lives.

  Before you came along I could put up with being me, knowing where my life had to go, but now I'm having regrets and as you once told me, there's no point in wishing for something you can't have. Remember me well as I will fondly remember you. I believe in God. I must, as this life is a living hell.

  Bridget x x

  PS. If I wasn't queer I could well fancy you myself. Go find your Patty Ann and tell her to treat you well, or she'll have a fiery Irish colleen to look out for.

  Her key was at the reception desk and her room had been completely emptied of her belongings. Every tangible trace of her had disappeared apart from that jade ring and her letter.

  * * *

  We were on the plane when the subject of regrets weighed heavy on Fianna's mind. “This ring never came from the priest, Shaun. I won it in a game of cards. I'd come to the game with the five hundred quid needed to sit at the table and was up that night about a grand. It doesn't matter where that money came from. I'll let you imagine what I had to do to get it, but it wasn't all hardship. I'd met a few women by then who wanted me and were willing to pay for what I could provide. Anyway, I held a pair of aces and the last man still punching held a pair of kings. He'd laid down the best part of fifteen hundred pounds, only having the ring left to see my hand. The pot on the table was worth a fortune, more money than I'd ever seen. The man in charge of the game said I should accept it as the same worth as my wager and I wasn't about to argue with half the IRA Army Council who were sitting around that table, so I did.

  I should have known that jade being lucky was a lie as it wasn't for that Englishman that night. I thought it would change wi
th the change of ownership and in some respects that's been the truth. I've known luck, but it doesn't last forever. The wheel spins around and around. Sometimes you're on the top and other times you're at the bottom. The secret is in knowing when to jump off, no matter how high you are.”

  “That sounds so full of remorse, Fianna. Why?” I asked, trying to entice more from her.

  “I once read a series of magazine articles, written by a women riddled with cancer who wanted to tell the world of her chemotherapy treatment. It contained detailed memories of her life that she regretted and would change if she was given a second chance. It was sad and beyond sad. There's no salvation to be found in regrets, Shaun, now is there!”

  “I don't know. A trouble shared and all that. It might help if you were able to talk about it.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine. A friend in need is a pain in the arse and I was never a pain to a friend unless I needed to be.”

  At the time that negative statement sounded threatening, but having read her letter that threat disappeared.

  I folded her letter and placed it in my pocket. As far as I was concerned I was living an exciting life with nobody to answer to. However, parts of that letter challenged that assumption. Should I ignore the tenderness and sincerity she expressed in it simply to follow my self-absorbed interest in the intrigue that was offered by Jack? Should I consciously pay no regard to advice given by someone who put my needs before their own? I had lived alone for some time now, but even when my parents were alive I gave scant regard to their requirements or wants from life. I thought only of me. I was a loner who held no perception of the idea that a stranger could give her heart so readily, so quickly without expecting something in return. Her letter had shaken the foundations of my life.

  The two conditions of being alone and experiencing loneliness are completely separate. You can be lonely in the middle of a crowd of people that not only do you know, but normally interact with easily. That can be as a result of a simple or complicated unconnected event, or, a mood swing. Stark, miserable loneliness, where there are no friends or relatives that you can speak to or socialise with, can be agonisingly painful, where all self-esteem vanishes to be replaced by depression and anxiety. Being alone and not only expecting that, but also welcoming the condition as your destiny, requires a special disposition where an amount of selfishness, in not wanting to share your life, plays a significant part. Few possess this ability and even fewer welcome it. Up until this point in my life I had been one of those few.

  Fianna, as I preferred to remember her, had been no more than a companion on my journey through the labyrinth of Jack's mind, yet she had touched something in me that I'd never experienced. As I stood with the memories of her swirling through my head I felt both the state of being physically alone and the misery of loneliness at the same time. Memories of people, with recollection of events, fade or change as time moves on. They become misty and indistinct. I decided that by keeping her ring I would be able to keep her presence clearer, but I had not counted on sharing in her personal regrets. Mine was the regret of not knowing her better and the belief that I never would. I checked out of the hotel and trusted in my widening circle of acquaintances for the next steps on my journey, but to use an Americanism; I almost never made first base!

  At The Cut Shop

  “A Salvatore Guigamo has sent me. You should be expecting me. He told me to ask for his daughter but never told me her name. I'm here to have my hair colouring changed to black,” I announced on my arrival.

  The receptionist never had a chance to reply. The girl standing behind her responded quicker. “It's not my lucky day, is it!”

  Salvatore's youngest daughter was my junior by some years, but the fact that we were both breathing was about the only thing we had in common. She was obese, and bad-mannered. Her size could easily have been ignored as she had the most angelic face imaginable; small and pert with large, sharp, sea-blue eyes, a tiny upturned nose and hair the colour of the deepest, blackest night one could ever have imagined. It was her temper, rudeness and attitude that set her apart from any description of beauty. Those characteristics would have precluded all but the most insane from approaching her for anything other than a haircut. And then it took only the bravest of the brave!

  Back in England I was used to the name of unisex to describe hairdressers where both men and women went for a trim or perm. Her salon was called The Hedonistic Cut Shop; perhaps that should have given a clue into what I was in for.

  “Were you born stupid or did you achieve that status on the boat that brought you to New York, Irish? You have the very worst skin colouring for black hair and I will just not do it!” was how she answered my request, walking determinedly around the reception desk towards me.

  “Go cover it in river mud and let it set,” was what she added, stopping two paces in front of me.

  Thinking I'd made a mistake in the timing of the visit and not wishing to antagonise her, or her father, I thought it best to make an appointment for a later date. But it wasn't my lucky day either.

  “Where the freaking hell are you going, you son of a bitch?” she shouted at my turned back.

  “Go plant your ass in my chair.” She pointed to the empty one in a line of twelve.

  “I can do you a sick green or a yellow submarine colour. Whichever one you choose you'll still look a freak. Your one consolation is you're not infested by freckles like some of you red-haired weirdos. You choose, but you ain't leaving here black.” She turned her attention towards the other stylists, who had stopped working to watch the spectacle of her berating of me.

  “What are you lot looking at?” It was their turn for a lashing of abuse. “Get back to work or you're sacked!”

  I plucked up enough courage to speak.

  “Are you always this respectful to your customers, or am I special to you in some way that I've not yet noticed?”

  “I'm doing you a favour and being nice. You should see me when I'm a bad-mouthed cow,” she added without a glimmer of a smile.

  “Green or yellow? What's it to be?”

  I sat in silent discomfort for some considerable time with my neck being heaved from side to side as she painted clumps of my hair then wrapped them in foil whilst mumbling under her breath as she did so. As she finished that process I tried to gain favour by paying her a compliment. It was useless.

  “Your hair is very nice. I never got your name, by the way.”

  “Nice! My hair's not nice, that's a stupid thing to say. It's either stylish or not. Everything about me oozes style, can't you see that?”

  “Well, it's very stylish then. As, of course, are you,” I lied, as the chair was turned and my head was forced under a tap. I wasn't ready for the outcome when I emerged as a dripping wet blond. As I was spun back and faced the mirror again, nameless had wrenched off her hair.

  “It's a frigging wig, you Irish Mick! Do you really think anyone who works as hard as I do to please my father would have such perfect natural hair, cos if you do then you're worse than stupid. There's never enough time to do it and then supervise this lot.”

  Underneath her long, tumbling black wig was a head of short, chocolate-coloured cropped hair. So short any serviceman would have been thankful for surviving the barber's razor. My compliment had only managed to provoke her into more insults.

  “My dad doesn't normally make friends with screwballs. Why the exception with you? You sure you ain't his bastard son and he has to be kind? Oh no, I know what you are. You're a leprechaun who arrived with his restaurant's salad delivery this morning? Whatever way you got here, Irish, you're still a fool.”

  The prolonged noise from the hairdryer luckily drowned out any more conversation until, seemingly finished with both the hair colouring and her assessment of me, she removed my gown before delivering her final blast.

  “I've heard a lot said about thick Micks from the Emerald Isle of Ireland and now having met one who must have spent all his youth standing in the rain, all
I can say is that I never want to go there or meet any more. It's a pleasure to say goodbye, Mick.”

  I stood, towering over her by several inches, then picked her up by her braced elbows and dumped her in the chair that I had just risen from. She wriggled fiercely, trying to break free from my grip. I wouldn't let her, as I pinned her bare shoulders back roughly against the plastic of the chair. I had her attention and that of everyone else in the shop.

  “In time my hair will grow, but I'll be able to keep the colour by simply colouring it again. A simple practice that even an Irishman can do. You, on the other hand, are just a sour-mouthed bitch who will never change no matter how many different wigs you wear. You're in desperate need of much more than a wig to hide what you are. Your father seemed a reasonable man, you have a long way to go to be like him. I can only hope that one day he'll get over the disappointment and shame he must have for fathering you. By the way, I'd change the name on the outside window if I were you to Chucklehead. It would suit an idiot like you far better.”

  At that I left the salon, glancing at what I imagined as smiles of approval in the wall-mounted mirrors on my way out, but there was no smile or sarcastic grin from Nameless. I guessed she wouldn't have known the meaning of the word chucklehead and I wasn't about to stay and explain.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Banks and Boutiques

  Having already experienced so many surprises, I chose the bank that Richard had selected for my newly acquired wealth as my next port of call, hoping for the best. Back home I was never used to having more than a couple of hundred pound or so in the bank at any one time. My expectations never exceeded the equivalent. My luck was in! His generosity exceeded my wildest dreams. Whilst I was there I rented a safe deposit box, placing all the written instructions I had from Jack, along with my passport and the jade ring of Fianna's hoping that the luck she had experienced would spill over onto me.