I would learn later what they all were, that Sean had been prescribed daily injections of Toradol for pain, Librium to control mood swings, Ativan for agitation, Valium for anxiety, Depakote to counter acute mania, Thorazine for anxiety, Cogentin for agitation, Vistaril every six hours for anxiety, lorazepam every six hours also for anxiety. He was also taking additional doses of Valium, plus Vicodin, diphenoxylate, diphenhydramine and Colanadine, nystatin, Narcan, haloperidol, Promethazine, Benztropine, Unisom, Atarax, Compazine, Xanax, Desyrel, Tigan and phenobarbitol. It was surprising that he had any time left to indulge in heroin.
Behind me, the door opened.
The way doors behind me always open, and the way I am always surprised in dark comers and revealed in embarrassing situations.
It is my life and I should be used to it.
But you never get used to that first sick sensation when you realise that you have let yourself down again, and everyone else for that matter.
There was Sean, looking hazy eyed, and by his side, Dr Fruitcake.
I tried an old one, but I knew it would not work. 'I was just lookin' for the bogs,' I said, and gave a little stumble. I let go of the collection of prescriptions in my hand and watched them float to the ground. 'And for a rich man,' I slurred, 'your toilet paper's fuckin' crap.'
They didn't speak. Sean just looked behind him, then nodded and stepped back, and instead of a movie star there were his man mountain bodyguards coming into the study. Downstairs Frank Sinatra was doing it his way, and upstairs they were about to do it theirs.
They didn't beat me up, they just carried me through the party to the front door. The guy who'd kissed me at the docks had one hand on my kisscurl and another on my left ear. It wasn't very pleasant. The other security guard took a foot with either hand. As I was carried through the lounge, everybody had a good look, especially Alice.
Sean came down the stairs behind us. I saw Alice hurry across to him. The music didn't stop, but the talking did. 'He was going through our stuff,' Sean said, and even in the midst of being carried out like the garbage I thought how calculating it was to describe it as 'our stuff'. It would have been so much more truthful to say he had discovered me going through his illicit drugs mountain.
They had to wait half a minute, swinging me between them, while the first gate hummed open, and then the second. Then they threw me. I landed on my head. Gravel grated down my face.
From the gate Sean shouted: 'You can consider the contract cancelled.'
'Look at me,' I shouted back, pulling myself up onto grazed knees, 'I'm crying.'
'You write a fucking word of this, you're a dead man.'
'You don't scare me,' I yelled, and then added, 'although they do,' for the benefit of the two big bastards advancing towards me with their fists clenched.
I ran.
I put several hundred yards between me and his heavies before I chanced turning and giving them the fingers. But they had already gone back inside. The gates were closed and the road was pitch black.
It was a warm, pleasant evening and my knees were bleeding. I was shaken and thirsty and had been made to look like a low-life sleazeball in front of over a hundred people.
They had taken my notebook and my dignity, but they had failed to locate the half-pound of heroin in my shoe.
21
It was because I was drunk, of course. And because the opportunity presented itself. And for badness. There were so many drugs in his study he might never notice it was gone. All I knew was that it was difficult to walk with a shoe full of heroin. Every time it hit the ground a little powder puff shot up through the lace holes, like it was a steam train setting off.
I limped on. I was almost entirely sober. I needed to sit down with a beer and think this through, because my first inclination, once I accepted my stupidity in stealing the drugs, was to throw them away.
It would be right, but it would also be wrong.
Right in the context of heroin is bad and nasty, wrong in the context of me retaining a semblance of good health.
Because he would notice the heroin was gone.
And he would know who had taken it.
And because he clearly had connections in the nefarious world of drug-dealing, he would send somebody to get it back.
Mr Gunman, honestly, I thought it was talc.
I could not go back to the house and ring the bell and say, 'Sean, half a pound of your finest heroin fell into my shoe.'
I could not even ring the bell and run away, just leaving the shoe, because they would not understand. They would think it was a prank, or worse, an unexploded brogue bomb, and have the army there in seconds.
Why had I done it?
Over three pints in the hotel down below I could not answer that question. The only person I could implicate in drug dealing was myself, by virtue of what still sat uncomfortably in my shoe, so going to the police was pointless. I could get the stuff verified by an independent witness for the purposes of my book, and then dispose of it, which still left me open to getting shot. Or I could sell it to somebody, make enough money to cover the cancellation of the book contract and the vast amount of money that Sam Cameron owed me anyway, which would make me financially buoyant enough to hire a gunman to kill whichever gunman Sean hired to dispose of me.
Or was I overreacting? If Sean O'Toole was so drugaddled, he wouldn't even notice that the heroin was gone. Or if he did, he was so rich he could just write it off and order some more from Dr Fruitcake.
I took a taxi back to Jury's. The chances were that Sam would not discover that Sean was planning to withdraw his cooperation on the book for some considerable time, so I didn't yet have to worry about settling the account. Filming was over and Patricia was expecting me back home, but it would scarcely do our custody campaign much good to be discovered crossing the border with half a pound of heroin.
I bought some Johnson's Baby Powder in the hotel shop. The girl behind the counter looked at me curiously. I smiled at her and said, 'Don't you find that new underpants chafe your thighs desperately.'
She nodded.
I went up to my room and called Patricia about the situation. She was my rock. My Simon and Garfunkel. My Gibraltar, minus the SAS and dead IRA bombers. The answer machine responded and I thought it best not to leave an explanatory message. I told her I loved her and missed her and trusted she had not given Stevie away to the gypsies. I went into the bathroom and emptied the bottle of Johnson's Baby Powder down the toilet, and refilled it with the heroin.
I lay on the bed and tried to sleep but it would not come. I watched television into the early hours of the morning and only switched it off when The French Connection came on. I drifted off with dawn breaking and woke at nine with a sore head. I swallowed half a dozen paracetamol and opened a can of Diet Coke from the mini-bar. I watched the traffic below for a while. I was no nearer a decision. All I could do was press ahead with what I was doing and figure it all out later. Just write the book, write the best book I could. I had never intended it to be an affectionate portrait of the man, simply an honest one. Nothing had changed. I just knew more, and needed to know more still. The extent of Sean O'Toole's addictions was obvious, but how had they come about? Exactly where did Dr Fruitcake fit into the prescription? Equation. How had Sean managed to write, star in and direct an entire movie while under the influence of such a variety of drugs? All questions I would no longer be able to put directly to him.
I went downstairs and ordered an Ulster fry.
Of course, they didn't call it that. They called it a full Irish breakfast. I preferred to think of it as the twenty-six-counties-of-Ireland-we-haven't-got-yet fry, but I suspected it would always be too early in the morning for them to appreciate my wit or unionism.
I was luxuriating in the pleasure of mopping up the leakage from the fried egg with a slice of toast – Patricia won't let me do it at home because she thinks it's bad manners, whereas I think she talks a lot of shite – when I saw Alice appear in the
entrance to the dining room. She was looking about for somebody, and I could only presume that it was me. I was in a corner, and partially hidden by a family of Italians, so I stood up and waved. She saw me immediately and hurried over.
She was wearing a white denim jacket, white jeans and red-rimmed eyes. She pulled a chair out and sat down. Before she spoke she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. I finished the last of my fried egg and sat back. She took another puff of her cigarette and then stubbed it out on my plate. 'I've been thinking,' she said, 'about that kiss.'
'Oh,' I said.
'I haven't been able to get it out of my mind.'
I nodded. 'My kisses are good,' I said, 'but they're not that fucking good.'
She smiled. 'Maybe it was the time, the place, the fact that we were dying.'
'You've been up all night,' I said.
'I know. We've been fighting. You found his cache.'
'And he sent you to get it back.'
'Jesus, no. He doesn't know I'm here. You can pour it in the fucking Liffey for all I care.'
'So why are you here?'
'I don't know.'
'How long have you known about the drugs?'
She shrugged. 'I suspected. I've only known him a few months. I love him. He's a lovely man. He doesn't use them when he's working. He couldn't use them when he's working. It was the wrap party for godsake, he was just letting his hair down.'
'Alice, he could keep the National Health Service going for weeks on that lot. Don't delude yourself.'
She rubbed at an eye, she gave a little shake of her head. 'I know,' she said.
'Do you?'
'Do I what?'
'Indulge.'
'God, no. I don't even take Rennies when I've a sore head.'
'Rennies are for indigestion.'
'See how crap I am?' She smiled weakly.
'So why are you here?'
'I don't know. A shoulder to cry on.'
'My shoulders are thin and bony. You want to ask me not to write about it in my book.'
'I don't care what you write. I don't think he'll be alive to read it anyway. Not taking that lot and Michael O'Ryan on his tail.'
'You think they're connected?'
She started to say no, then paused. 'I don't know. I don't know anything, Dan. All I know is that I got lonely one night in my apartment and I went up to the house to surprise him and I found him unconscious. I thought he'd had a friggin' heart attack, but then I found the heroin, and then I found his little room and realised what had been going on. Knew why he kept disappearing into his study. Why he'd blow hot and cold. Why one moment he'd want to sleep all day and the next go out paragliding.'
'And you confronted him?'
'I confronted him, and he promised to sort himself out. And he will. He swore, once the film was over, once he had one last blow-out. He loves me and he's going to clean himself up. We went into his room this morning and gathered everything up, the pills, the coke, the uppers and downers and painkillers, the speed, the dope. We flushed it all down the bog.'
'The fish'll be singing tonight then. Salmon chanted evening.'
'I'm serious.'
'I know. But you don't give them up that easy. I've never taken heroin in my life, Alice, but I've seen the movies. Cold turkey and all that palaver.'
'He's locked in his bedroom now. He's doing it, Dan.'
'Tell me that in three days. Although it only took Gene Hackman about five minutes.'
'Gene . . .?'
'In French Connection II.'
She sighed. 'Life isn't a movie, Dan.'
'Mine is.' The waiter appeared at my elbow and lifted the plate. His upper lip quivered when he saw the cigarette embedded on it. He asked if we wanted coffee. I declined. Alice shook her head. She kept her eyes on the table. She was trying to stop herself from crying.
'What about Dr Fruitcake?' I asked.
She didn't look up. Her fingers played with the unused cutlery before her. 'I threw him out of the house. I never liked him. He's on a plane back to America.' She gave a sad little chuckle. 'He's the only doctor I know whose writing I can read. Still, I suppose it has to be decipherable. He wouldn't want Sean to get something that was bad for him.'
'So why are you here?'
'I don't know.'
'Do you want to go upstairs and lie down?'
'Yes.'
Sometimes it's as easy, and as terrible, as that.
22
Sean O'Toole was shivering and shaking and vomiting his way through cold turkey, and I was making love to his wife.
It's a crap world, and it's not often I come out on top. Even when I do, it rarely lasts more than a few minutes, as Alice discovered. But it wasn't the performance or the length of it that was important, it was the fact of it, that it had happened, that we were happy about it, relaxed and cuddly and snuggly and all the things neither of us could be with our chosen partners. Because Patricia and I were constantly at war and our interludes of love-making were few and far between. Because Sean O'Toole was a drug fiend whose heart could give out at any moment, and whose penis had given out long before his marriage.
'You mean you never . . .'
'We never consummated the marriage. No.'
'He should try Viagra.'
'Do you really think Sean needs another drug?'
'At least you know he's not being unfaithful.'
'No, I'm the one being unfaithful.'
It didn't seem the right time to tell her what I had witnessed in the summerhouse. Maybe Sean could only perform if there were several women present, or perhaps only under the influence of hard drugs.
I cupped her face in my hand and said, 'We're not being unfaithful.'
'Yes, we are.' I started to say something else, but she took my hand and brought it away from her face and rested it on her breast. 'Please,' she said, 'don't try to justify it. It was wrong, but sometimes you have to.'
'Sometimes you have to more than once, just to get it right.'
She smiled, and we made love again. I did better on the timing front, though not by much. When we had finished, and we were back into nestling, I said, 'I'm worried about the pain in my stomach.'
'You've a pain in your stomach?'
'No. And that's what worries me. When I do something wrong, I get guilt pains. Usually I'm in a constant state of pain. But not now. What does that tell me?'
'That you haven't done anything wrong. Or that you've finally got used to the pain.' She kissed me. 'Relax. Nobody but us will ever know.'
'You mean you're not going to leave Sean and set up home with me?'
'No.'
'We'd be the talk of the town.'
'No.'
'You're not going to trail all over the world after me like a sick puppy?'
'No.'
'Well, can I trail after you, then?'
'No.'
'Well, what then?'
'We stared death in the face, and we'll always have that, and now we'll always have this.'
'You mean like we'll always have Paris.'
'You can be Bogie.'
'That's a relief. Most times I end up being the darkie playing the piano.'
'The darkie?'
'It's just a turn of phrase.'
'It's just racism.'
'No, it's not. It's just a jokey expression because I can't remember his name, apart from Sam.'
'It was Dooley. Dooley Grey.'
'Really?'
'Really. It's my favourite film.'
'Whatever. I'd rather be a darkie than a Dooley. Do you remember the Dooleys? That really crap Irish band?' Alice shook her head. 'They were like a poor man's Nolan Sisters, who were crap as well. Either way, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call him a darkie. I'm harmless, and occasionally gormless. Sometimes I open my mouth and all this shite just comes out, especially when I'm nervous, and I'm quite nervous now even though we've just made love; in a way that was the easy bit because now I have to look you in the eye and figure out the whys a
nd wherefores of what we've just done.'
She kissed me.
An hour later she went in for a shower. I lay back and thought about nothing, which doesn't happen often. I listened to the water, and the sound of her singing 'As Time Goes By'. Bogie, eh?
And then the bathroom door opened and she said, 'Is it okay if I use some of your talc?'
I coughed and said: 'Sure.'
She left at lunchtime. We kissed in the doorway, but we really didn't say anything. We might never see each other again, unless it was in the libel courts.
I took a shower. She had doused herself liberally with my talc. I had no idea what the street value of heroin was, or how many streets you could buy with it, but it seemed reasonable to assume that she had gone through several thousand pounds' worth of it. Still, no matter. One thing I wasn't about to do was stand on a corner trying to sell it. I had seen Midnight Express and knew the consequences.
We had put the Do Not Disturb We're Screwing sign out. A minute after I changed it back there was a knock on the door and I shouted hold on a minute while I struggled into my trousers and pulled on a white T-shirt. I opened the door and was already in mid-apology for keeping the cleaners back when I realised that the short fat man with the gun was not the least bit interested in cleaning my room.
He said, 'Dan Starkey?' Belfast accent, not hard, not soft, somewhere in the middle.
I said, 'No, he's just popped out to the shop, I can take a message if that's any use.'
He wasn't falling for it. He walked me back into the room and closed the door. He was smartly dressed. He wore a cream suit. The muscles in his neck bulged against the collar of his black shirt and tie; there were cuff links, a Rolex, sharp Italian-looking shoes, a close, spiky haircut. His skin was tanned, his eyes were black and confident, his nose had once been broken, there was a diamond stud in one ear. You take in a lot of information when someone points a gun at you. He pushed me down onto the bed and then pulled out a chair and sat down.
'So,' he said, 'you're having carnal relations with his wife.'
'Whose wife?' I asked.
Shooting Sean Page 11