by Ken Bruen
She stands … reaches under the table with her left hand and pulls up a big black bag—something between a large purse and a briefcase.
George takes her extended right hand, trailing her through the packed pub to the door. His head is swimming … Jesus, didn’t even need pills for the bitch … must be a fucking wild ride.
The wet cold air is a fleeting respite, soothing him … sharpening his focus.
But the cab is too cozy. George mumbles his home address and slides into a void.
In that void: polluted with conversation … Mell and the cabby—engaged in meaningless small talk. He just hears bits of some unfair barbs from Mell: “Poor George—he so can’t handle his booze … full-on scuttered.”
George would object if he could find his voice.
He’s cold.
George blinks his eyes, looks around.
Jesus Christ! Fucking naked and spread-eagled on his back on his own bed.
His hands are cuffed to the bed posts … ankles, ditto.
Mell’s standing there at the foot of his bed, sneering in her slinky black dress.
“He has risen,” Mell nods at George’s still-hard cock.
“What the fuck is this?” George’s tongue is thick and he hardly understands himself. He thinks he might vomit.
“Fecking caffler,” Mell says, “you really have no idea what’s going on?”
Groggy, George mutters, “Uh, no …”
The woman crosses her arms, feet spread wide. “Brill. Let me help: You’re coming through a smallish dose of Rope—or Rohypnol … the original date-rape drug. If Valium was Superman, well, Rope is Superman’s bigger, meaner older brother. But you know that, don’tcha, George?” She raises her hand—sheathed in a white latex glove—and his baggie of Rope flops down. Mell scowls, looking hurt. “Meant this evil shit for me, eh, Georgie?”
With her other rubber-gloved hand, the woman suddenly grasps George’s erection and squeezes. George winces, willing himself soft. Surely in this circumstance, he’ll go soft … but he stays hard. Maybe gets harder.
Mell says, “Hmm. No baz. Not appealing.” She then adds, squeezing him again, “This wood of yours is the result of a Viagra knock-off. If you’re online, you’ve probably gotten Spam e-mail offers for it. You’ll stay hard at least another two hours, George … maybe three. You’ll stay real hard, regardless of anything—hardness that could be confused for excitement. But, I jump ahead.”
“What is this?” George sneers unconvincingly, hearing his dope-stoked drunkness in his slurred voice. “Fuck you doin’, Mell?” Drool slides from the corner of his mouth. “These fucking drugs … they could fucking kill me.”
The woman sits on the edge of the bed and shakes her head. “Stay easy. I’m a doctor. Know what I’m doing. And it was a half-dose of Rope. I wanted this talk with you.”
A doctor. Now George is in full panic mode … Stories he always thought were urban myths about organ thefts … Pick up some chick … take her to a hotel … and then you wake up with a kidney missing … Jesus fuck! He blubbers, “You want my fucking kidneys.”
A husky laugh. “If that was the game, you’d be in a tub of ice now with a hole in your back. Two, if I was really ruthless.” Mell leans in now, searching his eyes. George thinks about screaming and maybe she senses it—she drives a fist into his solar plexus and he doubles up … chafing skin off his wrists and ankles … his mouth open, gasping for air. Suddenly, there’s a rag in his mouth.
“You’re done talking, forever. I asked you if names are important. Well, they are important, George. Here’s a name for you: Nora MacKiernan. That name ring a bell?”
George shakes his head.
“Well, she remembered your name, George. You were dumb enough to use your real first name, just like you did with me. She remembered that Zippo of yours, with your initials. You doped her in that same bar I met you in. None of that made it nearly hard enough to find you. Four weeks, cruising the same five or six bars … and I found you back in the one where you drugged her.
“Nora MacKiernan was twenty-three, George. She was at that bar with irresponsible mates who were there to be laid and shamed her along after work. Nora was engaged. Would have wed next month. But you moved in. She was polite … Nora was always polite.”
The woman’s eyes are drifting now, going sad and a little hard. George is breathing faster.
“You hit Nora, my sister, with Ecstasy, slipped her Rope … I know because I ran the rape kit and stomach pump at the hospital. And you gave her genital herpes, George. Those are fucking incurable. Nora’s fiancé couldn’t take it … broke their engagement. Nora couldn’t take it, either … losing him … carrying your disease. Nora opted out. Wrists, razor … a warm bathtub. Suicide—very bad news in an old Catholic family.”
Lipsanos shakes his head.
“Names are important, George.” She rises now, sways across the room, and picks up her big black purse. She rummages. Mell turns, holding a hypodermic. She flicks it, squirts a little out—clear those air bubbles. She says: “My name is Ceara, and as even you have probably gathered, George, I wouldn’t be sharing my real name with you now if there was any prospect of you ever leaving this room.”
Mell—Ceara—perches again on the side of George’s bed. She slowly crosses her legs. “Question was, how to make you really pay. I thought about that. I went to the personals … Gáire.”
Ceara jabs George’s thigh with the needle.
His eyes go wide and his muscles tense.
“Hush,” Ceara says. “It’s fine, George. Just a cocktail … blood-thinners … anti-coagulants.” Her gloved hand on his penis again—still rock hard. “Shouldn’t interfere with this.”
The woman stands, slips off her latex gloves, and smoothes her short black dress over her thighs. She slips the needle and the gloves back in her big purse, then slings the bag over one shoulder.
“Gotta go, George. But, just so you know what’s in store: I’ve been corresponding on your behalf for several days with a sado-masochistic she-he, deep into domination. You’re into bondage. Some match, yeah? I’ve been stringing ‘shim’ along until I found you. Called him—her … whatever—a few minutes before you woke up. Quite soon, you and your righteous wood will be serving as bound top to his—her’s … whatever’s—enthusiastic bottom.”
George is still reeling … dopey … scared … slow on the uptake: Jesus, I have herpes?
And this girl, Nora … couldn’t remember her … but there had been a dozen since George found his Rope connection.
Ceara is framed in the doorway of his bedroom now. She tips her head to the side, shows him those dimples. “Last thing you should know, George.”
George’s eyes are wide, besieging.
“I told your soon-to-arrive last lover that you’re also a cutter. Ya know what Angelina Jolie once said? ‘You’re young, in love, and you’ve got a knife … shit happens.’ George, those blood-thinners will have you pumping like a world-class hemophiliac when your new friend cuts you. Once the initial slices are made, and the serious blood loss kicks in, well, it’s not the worst death … almost languorous. Probably why Nora chose to take herself out that way.”
Ceara blows George a kiss and backs out of his bedroom, humming “The Parting Glass.”
George, spread-eagled, hard—panicked—thrashes wildly against his bonds, wrists and ankles sloughing more skin.
A short while later, he hears the door of his apartment open.
George closes his eyes and whimpers against his gag. Sweet Jesus, Nora … I’m so fucking sorry.
On Grafton Street, behind the bright red façade of the Temple Bar, Dr. Mell Mulloy sips her Russian Quaalude. Rain thrashes the windows. Positively bucketing. She savors George’s final expression: brónach.
The herpes angle always sets their hearts hopping.
And poor imaginary Nora? Her pièce de résistance: Send the luckless bastards out on a mega guilt trip.
Finding the Rope on Ge
orge made it sweeter still—so so fine to find a fellow predator … yummy, happy accident.
Mell checks her watch: Time for one more. But nothing elaborate. The personal-ad gambit takes time … and time is always a dangerous commodity.
So something simple is in order: Pick up another mark … dope him. Entice the sucker to his car or an alley for an ostensible jaw-job and shoot the fucker.
Then it is probably best to move on.
The Garda Síochána will soon start putting two and three or thirteen together.
Mell sips her drink and tips her head back, shaking loose her hair, lifting it off the back of her damp neck. Mell plucks an ice cube from her drink and rubs it between her breasts, listening to Knopfler: “The Lily of the West.”
She winks at a strapping stranger across the pub.
He’s headed her way now.
She smiles, shifting her long legs and arching her neck.
Come the morning, she’ll make the crossing … start again, perhaps in Glasgow.
But now Mell smiles up at the stranger, says: “’Tis himself.”
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
RAY BANKS was born in the Kingdom of Fife, but currently lives in North East England with his wife and a quartet of despicable felines. He is the creator of Leith-born Manchester P.I. Callum Innes and his debut novel, The Big Blind, is out now. He can be contacted through his website: http://www.thesaturdayboy.co.uk
JAMES O’NEAL BORN is a career law-enforcement agent whose novels are published by Putnam, including Walking Money and Shock Wave.
KEN BRUEN is the author of many novels, including The Guards, winner of the 2004 Shamus Award. His books have been published in many languages around the world. He lives in Galway, Ireland.
REED FARREL COLEMAN was Brooklyn born and raised. His sixth novel, The James Deans, received rave reviews from the Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times. Ken Bruen has said that Coleman has the soul of an Irishman and, with this story, he hopes to prove it.
EOIN COLFER is a teacher from Wexford, Ireland. He spends most of his time writing about leprechauns and other magical creatures. He is best known for his fantasy series featuring criminal mastermind teenager Artemis Fowl. Eoin lived in Dublin for three years and visits whenever he needs inspiration.
JIM FUSILLI is the author of the award-winning Terry Orr series, which includes Hard, Hard City, winner of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel of 2004, as well as Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, and Tribeca Blues. He also writes for The Wall Street Journal and is a contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
PATRICK J. LAMBE lives in New Jersey, where he works as a telephone technician and writes crime stories. Third-generation Irish, English was his grandparent’s second language and he hopes to one day stride the streets of Dublin, a city that lives large in his imagination as his ancestrial homeland.
LAURA LIPPMAN is a Baltimore writer best known for her series about Baltimore-based P.I. Tess Monaghan. She has also written two stand-alone novels, Every Secret Thing and To the Power of Three. A Baltimore Sun reporter for twelve years, she has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Slate.com. Her work has won virtually all the major prizes given to U.S. crime writers, including the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Shamus, and Nero Wolfe.
CRAIG McDONALD was a contributor to the 2004 New York Times nonfiction bestseller Secrets of the Code. His short stories and articles have appeared in the Mississippi Review and the Australia-based Crime Factory. Another short story won the 2005 Philadelphia City Paper mystery fiction contest. He is also the author of Art in the Blood, a collection of interviews conducted with twenty top crime fiction writers.
PAT MULLAN was born in Ireland and has lived in England, Canada, and the U.S.A. Formerly a banker, he now lives in Connemara, in the west of Ireland. He is the author of two novels, The Circle of Sodom and Blood Red Square. His poetry and other work appears frequently in The Dublin Writers’ Workshop (www.dublinwriters.org). For more information, visit him at www.patmullan.com
GARY PHILLIPS’S work has been influenced by the likes of Ralph Ellison, Rod Serling, and Stan Lee. With Jervey Tervalon, he coedited the acclaimed anthology The Cocaine Chronicles for Akashic Books. His story in this anthology is a prequel in the life of protagonist Zelmont Raines who previously appeared in the crime novel, The Jook. And taking his cues from Zelmont, Phillips is busy hustling his next writing gig.
JOHN RICKARDS is the twenty-seven-year-old author of Winter’s End and The Touch of Ghosts. He writes full-time and lives in the UK. He drinks an obscene amount of Guinness.
PETER SPIEGELMAN is the Shamus Award–winning author of Black Maps and Death’s Little Helpers, both of which feature private investigator John March. He currently resides in Connecticut, where he is at work on another March novel.
JASON STARR is the author of seven noir crime novels, which are published in ten languages. His novel Tough Luck was an Anthony Award finalist and a Barry Award winner. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York City.
OLEN STEINHAUER has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar and the Dagger. His most recent novel is 36 Yalta Boulevard. He lives in Budapest.
DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI’S recent crime thriller The Wheelman features a mute Irish getaway driver named Lennon. As his last name indicates, he’s not exactly Irish, but his wife and kids are. And that’s good enough for him. His other books include Secret Dead Men and The Big Book O’ Beer. Visit him at www.duaneswierczynski.com.
CHARLIE STELLA is a former “knockaround guy” who spent eighteen years working the streets of New York while trying to break into the crime fiction business. He’s done everything from window cleaning (for ten years) on scaffolds high atop New York City skyscrapers to word processing to collecting for loansharks and running a bookmaking office. He’s not as cute as Rocky Balboa, but he has a beautiful wife and doggie.
SARAH WEINMAN is the crime fiction columnist for the Baltimore Sun and the editor of the literary blog “Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.” Her work has appeared in many venues, including the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Philadelphia City Paper. “Hen Night” was inspired by a trip to Dublin during the 2003 Bank Holiday weekend, after which she vowed never to go back to Temple Bar.
KEVIN WIGNALL studied Politics & International Relations at Lancaster and is a member of Chatham House, the institute for international affairs in London. His novels include People Die and For the Dogs, and he’s a regular contributor of short stories to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His story for this collection is, he tells us, semi-autobiographical, though he refuses to elaborate further.
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