The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  Louella shoved aside the mound of beef jerky Jed kept in the back seat for emergencies and shoehorned herself beside Ursula and Jed. Slim would have to drive as it was always best to give him the room his mass required. Louella still bristled over having to buy him two airline seats. She yelped as the car sped off.

  Under the brim of Jed's cowboy hat, there were currently no pleasantries going on. Jed had heard that you couldn't bullshit a bullshitter, and although he was no bullshitter, he didn't appreciate Ursula's duplicity towards him. The first he suspected of his wife and sister-in-law's crime was the week before, when he happened upon Ursula's pink laptop in the conservatory. He had brushed aside the cookie crumbs on the keyboard, and seen the browser window open to the YouAskEmWeAnswerEm website. 'Statue of Limitations' Ursula had typed, and beside the mouse was her notepad with the butterflies of the tropical world on each page. Ursula had written in her rounded, very Irish handwriting MISDEMENOR OR FELONY?? Class A?? Two days later, she had barged in from a trip to the supermarket for blizzard supplies and told them they had to leave immediately. It was an anniversary surprise she claimed, but not only was their anniversary two months away, the 35th anniversary gift was meant to be jade not travel (Jed had looked it up), so Jed tended not to believe her. Unless, of course, they were traveling to Indonesia to mine some jade. Jed had checked his credit card statement online later, and knew her 'anniversary surprise' had cost him $5000.

  He didn't know if they'd be going someplace where cigarettes were cheaper, how long the trip might last, if gambling was legal there or why it required formal wear. Ursula had insisted he and Slim bring tuxedos. Jed even had a red cummerbund in his suitcase. One part of him didn't care, as he knew from Ursula's insistence on passports they were off to somewhere abroad, and he had domestic online gaming worries he wanted to distance himself from. And although it was annoying not knowing where they were going, Jed was more worried about the why. Ursula and Louella had never been particularly thick as thieves; Ursula didn't like Louella cheating at their weekly cribbage games. But maybe the 'thieves' part was true. Or...worse?

  As they rounded a corner and sped past the AIRPORT 237 MILES sign, and though Ursula had gotten a manicure the day before, Jed kept checking his wife's fingernails that gripped into the leather of the seat beside him for signs of blood. What had she and Louella done?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “COULD YE HELP US OUT there, muckers?”

  Paddy and Fionnuala jumped at the filthy hand that materialized under their noses from the dark. A drunk wet tramp had shuffled up to them for coins for drink, the other still clutching the dregs left in a bottle of generic whiskey.

  “Naw!” Fionnuala roared into his battered face. “We kyanny help werselves, sure! Away with ye!” As he toppled off, Fionnuala fixed a pony tail with an air of superiority: “What was ye on the verge of telling me?”

  “It's gone.” Paddy shrugged his drunken shoulders. “But I told ye last year that Ursula doesn't be responsible for all the evils of the world.”

  It was as if Fionnuala hadn't heard him. Rant over, she sighed against the cascabel (the knob at the back of the cannon). “Ach, Paddy, I haven't a clue what we're meant to do. Them flimmin hooligans with no sense of respect for their elders! I've realized, but, that I'm relieved ye stopped me from flinging that rock at the pub window. Could ye imagine if the Filth came and hauled me in?”

  The cuffs of the Filth around her wrists would mirror the lack of escape she felt in her heart.

  Fionnuala continued: “Should we not ask Dymphna's fancy man for a sub of some money to get us through the week? Or his mother? She be's minted. Shall we not go pay Dymphna a visit at the fish and chip van? It be's parked outside the Seabound Cockleshells this time of night.”

  “Does the hunger be gnawing a hole in yer stomach?”

  Paddy knew only the lure of free curry chips and a fish finger or two—and a possible loan—would make Fionnuala gladly visit the shame that was her daughter. Dymphna, 20, was living in the Protestant Waterside with her fiancé, an engagement that had dragged on as their litter of half-Orange bastards grew.

  Fionnuala's love for her children was conditional, and very conditional at that. Paddy had seen her many times lounging on the couch with a notepad and pencil, compiling a list of who she loved most. Dymphna always came last, except for those three years after they had realized the eldest daughter, Moira, was a lesbian and had written an exposé about the family. But Lotto Balls of Shame hadn't sold many copies, and the traitor lesbo perv was away in Malta, and absence had apparently made the heart grow fonder, and, even with the group in the pub causing her such anger, Fionnuala had told him once that she suspected in her heart of hearts lesbianism really didn't exist, and so Dymphna had moved back to the bottom of the list.

  “I am a bit peckish, aye,” Fionnuala admitted.

  Paddy's pay-as-you-go cellphone rang. As if she had known they were discussing her, it was Dymphna on the other end.

  “Daddy! Pass the phone to Mammy! Quick!” Dymphna said.

  “She wants to speak to you,” Paddy said. Fionnuala took the phone as if he were handing her an infection.

  “Mammy, Mammy!” Fionnuala heard through the wailing of the two infants in the background. She ground her teeth in annoyance.

  “I kyanny hear ye with them wanes of yers screaming bloody murder.”

  “One moment there.”

  The children suddenly went silent, and Fionnuala didn't want to know how that happened. Dymphna came back to the phone: “Could ye tell me the name of the only black man on the Titanic?”

  Fionnuala stared in disbelief at the phone, shook it a few times, then pressed angry lips to the little slit people were supposed to talk through.

  “Are ye taking the mick outta me, wee girl?” she warned.

  “Naw, Mammy! I've not the time to explain now...ye're the only person what knows more about the Titanic than anyone else, but. Tell me now, just!”

  “I swear to the heavenly Father, if you be's...” but even while she chided her daughter, Fionnuala's synapses flipped through the useless information stored in her cranium. Two caverns in her brain were devoted to Titanic trivia: one for the 1995 movie, one for 1912 reality. No, not caverns. Magical grottos that sparkled and glowed in a brain under siege from the depression and negativity of her real world.

  “Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche.” She said it proudly.

  “And now name me the seventh course on the dinner menu the night the boat sank.”

  “First, second or third class are ye on about?”

  “First.”

  “Roast squid with wilted cress and salon of beef with château potatoes, whatever the bloody hell them be's. And creamed carrots with boiled rice.”

  “Ta. Cheerio.”

  As her mother stared at the phone that had suddenly gone dead in her hand, Dymphna quickly redialed the number of the radio station scribbled on her hand from inside the chip van where she was sat. Surrounded by frozen fish fingers, congealing patties of beef and rancid potato peels, filthy dishrags and greasy bottles of sauces, the sweat lashing down the back of her from the heat of the grill, the front of her shivering from the rain spitting in from the order hatch, she had hit rock bottom.

  Dymphna was working there to tend favor with her future mother-in-law, Zoë Riddell, who had bought the van at an auction months before. Dymphna hoped Zoë would allow her to marry her son, Rory, even though she was Catholic and had already given birth to her two grandchildren. Dymphna was grateful Beeyonsay had finally been wrenched out of her by the doctor's tongs a few weeks earlier; the more pregnant she had become, the less space she had had in the van. Now Beeyonsay slumbered in a stroller next to the spitting oil of the chip vat beside her older brother Keanu, the secret 'special treat' she had given them both having worked. Not even the rain hammering on the roof inches above Dymphna's red curls could wake them.

  “Ach, hurry up, would ye, ye eejits,” she muttered at the ring
tone of the phone, then yelped at an almighty thump next to the service hatch. Shards of glass sprinkled through her hoop earrings and across the counter. Keanu and Beeyonsay erupted into shrieks. Dymphna raced up and poked her head out into the rain. Two children were laughing and running away backwards, flipping her off as they went. As if the bottle smashed against the van wasn't enough!

  “Hey, missus!” one called out. “Are ye carting around anoller Orange mongrel bastard in yer stomach?”

  “Clear off outta here before I clatter seven shades of shite outta ye!” Dymphna growled.

  But they were already gone. Wiping away the broken bottle bits with the hand not clutching the still-ringing phone, Dymphna wondered, Will themmuns never tire of their horrid wee games? Three quarters of the town regarded Keanu and Beeyonsay more as creatures than infants due to their Catholic mother and Protestant father. And Dymphna herself was no stranger to rocks hurled in her direction as well when she went down the town for a manicure or a pop magazine or what have you.

  “Hello?! Hello??” she squealed into the phone.

  “Right ye are, love. Ye're caller number ten! Have ye got the answers?”

  “I have, aye!” Dymphna said breathlessly, feeling her heart pound, the blood percolating in her temples, the slight damp in her knickers. She looked down at the napkin she had written her mother's answers on and read them out in a reedy, careful voice. As if her life depended on it. There was silence at the other end. And then—

  “Brace yerself...Spot on! Congrats! Right girl ye are! Ye've won the special centennial Titanic commemorative cruise for four!”

  “YYIIIPPEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” Dymphna screamed, tears of joy running down the acne due to spitting grease on her once flawless face. “Ach, ye've not a clue what this means to me! Me mammy's gonny love me—er, the trip, I meant to say.”

  “So ye're gonny take yer mammy on the cruise?”

  “Aye. Ye see, Titanic be's her number one fave film of all time. She can quote from it and all, ye understand.”

  “And who else will ye be taking?”

  “Is that me voice I hear on the radio behind me?”

  “Aye, we be's broadcasting this live.”

  “Och, of course. I hear callers winning things all the time. I never thought, but, that one day it would be me! I'll be taking along me daddy as well, of course. Perhaps me wee sister Siofra. She be's one of me favorites. Could ye tell me, but, if wee infants counts as people or does they be more like articles of luggage?”

  After a few more pleasantries, the DJ put Dymphna on hold and, while the radio played Celine Dion's “My Heart Will Go On,” he came back on the line and took her details. The moment she hung up, she called her father. “Daddy! Daddy! Put Mammy back on!”

  Paddy did.

  “What is it now, wee girl?” Fionnuala sighed into the phone.

  “I've won us a special 100-year Titanic cruise!”

  “Och, what are ye on about? Anyone'd be dead before the end of a hundred year cruise, sure.”

  “Naw, I mean...” And she explained what had happened.

  Five minutes later, Fionnuala galloped down the steps of the City Walls, the joy screaming out of her lips. It was as if a free trip somehow made the bills disappear. Paddy was close behind. She rushed to the lesbian pub energized, a woman renewed. She reached down and grabbed a rock nestling under fake Fabergé egg remains.

  “Take that, youse! Take that, youse filthy creatures!”

  She took careful aim and launched the rock at the window. This one gave a satisfying crack. Fionnuala clapped her hands with glee.

  “We're clearing outta this hellhole!”

  Even as they raced from the approaching police, Paddy couldn't help but smile. His old Fionnuala was back.

  “C'mere, Paddy, where are we meant to buy passports from?” Fionnuala panted as they ran from the sirens. “Me cousin Una told me she bagged some cheap the other month at the Mountains of Mourne Gate market. The stall next to the one what sells knockoff football scarves. And what two wanes should we take with us on wer cruise? I'm thinking wer Lorcan and Eoin. Them lads be's in desperate need of a holiday, so they do, and them lads has always been such lovely wee boys, not a trouble have themmuns given their dear aul mammy...”

  CHAPTER FIVE—SOUTHAMPTON PORT, UK

  URSULA REALIZED SHE had been indulging in too many of Louella's potato pancakes when she slipped the evening gown over her head and found herself trapped in it. Her lips and nostrils gasped for air against the bodice. One hand, more a useless paw caught half-way down the fabric of the arm, flapped blindly around the restroom stall, trying to locate something horizontal for balance. It found the paper toilet seat dispenser and clung on. The pantyhosed toes of one foot scrabbled against the curvature of the toilet bowl for support. Her head appeared to have grown as well, as she couldn't shove it through the neckline. The string of pearls strangled her inside the swathes of red silk, and her whimpers were drowned by the flushing and reflushing of the automatic toilet.

  Dear Lord, give me strength! was her frenzied thought, the other hand clawing up her back, trying to locate the dangly bit of the zipper to tug it further so the fabric could inch down the newly pudgy rolls of her body. She cursed Louella's home cooking, and she cursed the others for already having changed in the restrooms of Heathrow airport three hours earlier. She had had to keep guard over their carts of luggage and, when her time came, the restrooms were closed for cleaning.

  That meant riding on the train from London to the port of Southampton in her leisure suit, wrinkled and grungy from three quarters of a day's intercontinental travel, while Jed, Slim and Louella sat beside her, the men smart in their tuxedos and splashes of Aqua-Velvet, Louella resplendent in sparkly emerald and a spritz of Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds. But Ursula did notice it was those three receiving odd looks from the other passengers.

  Why, she wondered as she grew dizzy and panic gripped her and little moans and grunts escaped her, had they even bothered with formal wear to board the ship? Only because that's how she and Louella had imagined it: the thrill and sophistication of a grand entrance up the gangway of the ocean liner they hoped was their vehicle to avoid imprisonment.

  She and Louella had revealed the “anniversary surprise” to the boys at last on the train as the English countryside trundled by: they were booked on a 12-day cruise, Operas of the Earth, with stops in ports of Germany, Portugal, Spain, France and Italy. Each night they would go ashore and watch an opera. Ursula reeled off some of the names: Aida, La Bohème, Carmen, La Traviata, Madame Butterfly, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Die Zauberflöte, though she wasn't sure of the pronunciation of the last two. Jed and Slim had looked stricken, and for a moment it seemed their eyes were searching for emergency breaks that could be pulled. But when Louella mentioned the recreational facilities on board, casually slipping in the casino, plus the $500 on board spending credit, between the splash pool and the golf simulator, they had nudged each other and their eyes had glistened with glee.

  Louella'a advice to Ursula after they had both been hauled in for questioning about the missing $100,000 from almost six years ago was simple: the best way to avoid the police for such an old crime was to get out of the country until they passed that—statue-thing, whatever it was, the thing that they couldn't arrest Nazi war criminals for anymore. Now they were only persons of interest and hadn't been officially charged, so it was their only chance of freedom. Ursula was a bit confused about British law, and American law was even more alien to her. But, Louella reasoned, they may as well have fun while they were on the lam, as Louella had termed it, and as they both enjoyed opera—

  Ursula finally cranked down the zipper a few teeth and freed precious millimeters of space. She wriggled a few inches of silk over her mounds. And yelped at a curt knock on the stall door.

  “Ma'am?”

  Ursula froze, neckhole digging diagonally into her face, one eye still sightless, hemline prisoner at her hips, panties exposed. The vo
ice was pure efficiency, not a trace of compassion. And British. Perhaps due to the collective consciousness of many Irish worldwide, even with a dose of Xanax, the synapses crackled across the surface of Ursula's cerebrum like mini-fireworks from the sound of the accent.

  “Ma'am!”

  Ursula crouched against the toilet seat dispenser, hoping the woman would just go away.

  “Police here!”

  Her heart jumped. Had Detective Scarrey made some international phone calls and located her?! She gulped whimpers of fear down past the pearls that dug into her neck. They should have never, ever flown into Britain. Wasn't it known as the land of CCTV footage? A nation under surveillance? How stupid had she and Louella been? They could have booked the flight to Belfast and boarded the cruise there, the first port of call; in Northern Ireland, she had read somewhere, there were fewer cameras per capita, whatever that meant. But, no. The thought of stepping foot in her homeland had caused her stomach to churn; with her family hating her after the lottery win, in Northern Ireland Ursula felt under surveillance of another kind. She realized now how silly that was.

  “We know you're in there! We can see your feet! Answer us!”

  We? There were more of them perched outside? Ready to clamp on the handcuffs and haul her off to some miserable room with peeling paint and a lone light bulb...?

  The toilet flushed.

  “...I'm in here,” Ursula managed through the swathes of silk pressed against her lips and the roar of water down the bowl.

  “We're simply checking you're in no harm. A woman heard the noises you were making in there and informed us. I must ask if everything's okay.”

  Ursula grit her teeth, panic dissolving into annoyance. No, everything was not okay. The British police were no-nonsense toerags desperate to fill quotas, promotion-obsessed, and the woman who had reported her, whoever the daft simpleton was, was a nosy parker, sticking her nose in where it didn't belong. And she had a ship to catch.