I got up, began walking, turned left, followed the quay, and my heart sank. It became immediately apparent that everything I remembered about these streets had utterly changed. Where there had been seedy pawnshops, tobacconists, and greasy diners, now there were Internet cafés, Gap stores, and of course Starbucks, where they make you bloody queue twice. Never get away with that in Belfast, I hoped.
I walked down a side street that looked familiar, went halfway along it, stopped, came back to the quay. Tried another left, a second left, a third, tried a right, but now I was utterly baffled and well lost in the alleys and back streets. All of them gentrified, painted, scrubbed, new windows, window treatments. The Dubs had even started putting up blue plaques like you saw in London. “Handel slept here,” “Wilde lived here,” that kind of malarkey. And no ragamuffin children or beggars. I suppose now if you wanted to know what the Dublin alleys looked like when this was my stamping ground you’d have to go to a seedy hutong in Beijing or a back street in Bombay.
But then, suddenly, with Beijing on my mind, I spotted two Chinese guys carrying a pole of pink dangling ducks. I followed them. Down one street, up another. They stopped outside a restaurant, fumbled for a set of keys, and went in.
Ahh. I stepped back. Was this the same place?
Yeah. Bloody hell.
Completely different now, of course. Before, a concrete bunker with grilles over the window and a heavy iron door. Now, tinted plate glass, plush tables, a lilac paint job, and a big new sign. Still, something about it rang a bell. And if this was the restaurant the brothel was the house immediately to the left. A three-story Georgian affair, with the blinds pulled down.
No blue plaque announcing “Brendan Behan bonked here,” but you never knew, it might still be the same establishment. Someone had sandblasted the brick front, removed the old wooden window frames, and put in air-conditioning vents. Back in the day the front door had been a low-key brown, as befitted a whorehouse. Now it was a bright blue with a gold knocker and letter box.
I went up the steps, knocked.
Waited.
Probably a firm of insurance agents in here now.
I knocked again.
The door was opened by a beautiful hard-faced blonde with vampiric eyes. Skin the color of driven snow and slightly Asiatic features. She was wearing a tight silk see-through black sweater, black miniskirt, and knee-length leather boots. Certainly not an Irish girl, and if she was in the insurance business it could only have been for Satan, fiddling the actuarial tables on potential soul sellers.
“Yes?” she said in an imperious Russian accent.
“I’m here for a little R and R, is this the right place?”
“Perhaps. Would you like to come in?” she said.
“Aye, I would at that.”
“Please, follow me.”
I went in.
There exists a school of thought which holds that madams in brothels, bordellos, and whorehouses are endowed with wisdom, taste, and a singular ability for understanding human nature. I have no idea where this notion sprang from, but in my experience madams are about as wise and sensible as the average giggly thirdgrade teacher. And as for taste, not in the brothels I’ve been in. The proprietor of the Four Courts whorehouse was no exception. Her tastes ran to cliché and old-world decadence. The blinds were drawn and the fake Tiffany lamps were exuding a dull-yellow depressing glow that made you wonder if they were trying to conceal the merchandise. Incense burning in a corner smelled of dead cat, and once you’d adjusted to the dim surroundings, you saw that the elegant blue door on the outside was in contrast to the bright reds, golds, chandeliers, paintings of eagles, and classical figurines in a look that seemed to be a cross between antebellum New Orleans and the Reich chancellory.
“My name is Lara,” the Russian girl lied.
“Aye, and I’m Doctor Zhivago. Listen, I need to speak to the woman of the house, if you don’t mind; I’ve got a couple of questions,” I said.
“We cater to all tastes.”
“Aye, I’m sure you do, but all I need is a quiet room, where I can have a shower and gather my thoughts, no fuss; I’ll pay top dollar, and if someone would be so good as to bring me a cup of tea, I would love it.”
“It is three hundred euros for one girl, for one half hour, it might be extra for, uh, your particular, uh, needs,” she said, looking at me as if I were the biggest pervert who had walked in in months, God alone knew what I wanted to do with the girl and the tea.
“Yeah, I don’t need a girl. I just need a quiet room. Tell the boss.”
The Russian motioned for me to sit down on a leather chair. An Albanian cleaning woman started vacuuming the rugs. Lara went off and came back with an older conservatively dressed Irish woman in a black wig and ivory glasses. She sat down opposite.
I offered the three hundred euros. She refused to accept it.
“Ye can’t stay here, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is a respectable house, whatever you’ve done, this isn’t a place for fugitives,” she said, blowing my whole madam-smart-as-a-third-grade-teacher theory out of the water.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“No, of course not, that’s why you’re dripping blood on me leather seat and you’re wearing someone else’s coat.”
“Ok, there’s no need to be hasty. But you’re right, I need a place to lie low until I can figure how I can get out of town. I won’t be any trouble.”
“You won’t be any trouble cos you won’t be here. Get the fuck out, before I get the help to throw you out,” she said. “And we wouldn’t want your pretty face more beat up than it already is.”
“I’m working for Bridget Callaghan,” I said—the only card I had, and not mentioning, of course, that there was more than a possibility that lovely Bridget was trying to bloody kill me.
“Are you now?” she said, batting not an eye. “And who might that be?”
“The head of the fucking Irish mob in New York City, as if you didn’t know,” I said with menace.
She shook her head slightly. Took a small intake of breath.
“Ok, ok. Keep your voice down for one thing; this is a respectable house, so it is. And so what? Even if you do work for her, what’s that to me? You sitting there on the run from the Guards, frightening me girls.”
“I’ll tell you what it is to you, love. It’s bloody this. If Bridget hears that you wouldn’t help me, that you said there was no room at the inn when I was in a tight spot, you better fucking have fire insurance.”
She was going to say something, stopped herself, smiled, nodded. This was a hooker with a heart of brass. She knew what was what. She gave me a final once-over to see if she believed me. Apparently she did.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Michael Forsythe.”
Her eyebrows raised a fraction, but she recovered quickly and asked me another question: “You worked for Bridget Callaghan a long time?”
“We go back a long, long way.”
“And would you be able to prove that if it was necessary?”
“I would. Listen, love, I just got into town. I’ve already had a fucking lot to deal with, I just need a hour to get my bloody head straight.”
The madam sighed and got to her feet.
“It’s more or less an empty house at the moment,” she said to herself.
“You’ll let me have a room?”
“Ok, ok, we’ll see what we can do. I suppose you’re here to help with the missing wee girl?”
“You heard about that?”
“Oh aye, it’s big news in certain quarters.”
“Is it?” I asked, for information.
“It is indeed now.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Well, my first thought was that the lassie—Siobhan, is it?—must have run off, because no one in Ireland would dare to have lifted Bridget Callaghan’s wean. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not so sure now, that pop musi
c nowadays, it’s all about drugs, one of those heroin fiends could have taken her off the street to his drug den. Let me tell you. I certainly don’t allow drug users in my establishment. Anything could happen.”
“Very wise.”
“You say your name is Michael Forsythe?” she asked a little slyly.
“That’s right. That mean anything to you?”
“No, no, not at all. Yeah, shame about the wee girl. But it happened in Belfast and, sure, Belfast is crazy like. I don’t know what’s going on up there. The lines aren’t set yet, not like down here. Dublin’s a lot more civilized, you know what’s what. Anyway, enough of the chitchat, get you a room. What do you want in your tea?”
“I’ll take milk and sugar,” I said.
The woman made a movement to a man I’d only just noticed lurking in deep shadow by the grandfather clock. He shimmered out of the foyer.
“Follow me.”
I had trouble getting up, so she helped me to my feet and led me down the corridor and into a side room. She unlocked the door and we entered.
Another decor change from the way I remembered these rooms. Cheap and cheerful in my day, now fussy Victorian: a four-poster bed hung with silky drapes, pictures of ballerinas and puppies lost in string, chintzy mirrors, clocks, sinister-looking china dolls. I couldn’t have imagined a worse room in which to try to get an erection and fuck a stranger. But maybe the girls were so bloody great it didn’t matter what the interior decoration was like.
“You can take a shower and I’ll have someone go out and buy you a change of clothes. Thirty-two trouser and a large for a shirt, is it? Aye, looks like it. Well now, ok. And do you need a girl on the house?”
“No.”
“Fine, I’ll bring you clothes and let you get on with things. You can freshen up and get your shite together, but you can’t stay long. You certainly can’t stay over. If the Guards are looking for you, for anything serious, I don’t need it coming near my house.”
“I understand, I’ll be out of here within the hour. Oh, and if you could bring me a needle and a strong piece of thread, that would help too.”
She nodded, left the room. I lay down on the bed and began pulling off my clothes. I checked the straps around my artificial foot; sometimes you got chafing on the stump, but everything looked ok. I put it back on. A knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Lara, with your tea,” she said.
I opened the door extremely cautiously, in case of trouble, but it was nothing more invidious than the gray-eyed hooker with a teapot on a tray. Behind her, in the corridor, a man wearing a pig nose was naked, on all fours, being led by another Russian girl dressed domina-trix-fashion in leathers and spiked boots. Probably the chief justice of Ireland, the chief constable of Dublin, someone like that.
“Will that be all now, sir?” Lara said, having rehearsed the phrase to sound like an Irish girl.
“If someone could get me a T-shirt, it would be great. This one’s ruined.”
“Very well,” she said and closed the door behind her.
I drank some tea and ate a couple of the chocolate biscuits that came with it. They’d also provided that needle and thread. I started running the shower to get the hot water warmed up.
I picked the phone up from the bedside table. I found Bridget’s number at the Europa.
Well, this was it. Your last chance, my dear. She’d have to be pretty bloody convincing. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice . . .
I dialed the Europa Hotel, got through to her room.
“Who’s this?” a man asked.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
“Moran.”
“I want to speak to Bridget, this is Michael Forsythe,” I said.
“Hold on,” the man said with cold anger.
“Michael, are you in Belfast?” Bridget asked urgently.
“Am I hell. I’m not in the grave, anyway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Despite your best efforts I am still walking the same planet Earth as you,” I said.
“Michael, I don’t have time for this, come to the point,” Bridget muttered impatiently.
“Honestly, this is getting very tiresome,” I said.
“Tiresome for me, too. What are you talking about?” Bridget yelled.
“Your boy tried to kill me, as if you didn’t know,” I said.
“What boy?”
“Your boy, the cab driver. Surprise, surprise, he knew my name and he tried to fucking kill me.”
Bridget considered the information. Her breathing became shorter and she sounded irritated.
“Michael, I don’t know what is going on. If someone tried to kill you, it was nothing to do with me.”
“Bridget, I know you’re playing. Do you think I am that stupid?” I said, a half-rhetorical, half-real query.
“Michael, believe me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t send anyone to kill you. Why would I do that when I could have killed you in Peru?”
Fair point.
“You didn’t send someone to the airport to meet me?”
“No.”
I leaned back in the leather chair, tapped the phone against my forehead. Just exactly how good was she? Was she good enough to send two hit teams at me in two days, fail in both the hits, and still convince me that she wasn’t trying to knock me off?
“Bridget, I know it was you, I—” I tried to say but Bridget cut me off.
“Listen to me, you worthless shit. You killed my fiancé and I’m giving you a chance to fucking balance the ledger. My daughter’s gone missing. Do you understand? I don’t know what the fuck you’ve been doing in Dublin, I don’t care. I need your help. The most precious thing in the world to me is Siobhan. Not you or what you’ve been up to, you son of a bitch. I don’t have the time to talk to you anymore. I’ll be in the Europa, you’ll either come or you won’t, it’s up to you. You are not my concern right now. Ok? I have a million things to do, so I have to go. Hell with you, Michael, useless as fucking usual.”
She hung up.
I listened to the dial tone and then the recorded operator told me to put the phone down. Jesus. Where did that leave me? It was back to the original question. Was she good enough to hit me and still make me come to her in Belfast?
I groaned, put my head in my hands.
She was.
What was happening to me? What kind of an idiot had I become? Was my judgment going? Either that or a possibility that was worse. Maybe I really didn’t buy it, maybe I didn’t believe her at all. I didn’t believe her but I wanted to go to Belfast anyway. I was being drawn to her even though I knew it would bring death. I wanted to see her this one last time whatever the cost.
Was that what was going on?
I shrugged. Nah. It wasn’t as complicated as that. I simply believed her. She was telling the truth. What was happening to me had nothing to do with her. It was a coincidence. I had more than one enemy in the world, after all, and maybe I had several in Ireland. And by now, my presence was known about and advertised.
I removed the duct tape, took my trousers off, and climbed into the shower.
Quick shower. Quick dry.
I wrapped the towel around me and sat on the end of the bed. I ripped off a piece of pillowcase, dipped the needle in the hot tea, and double threaded it. I grabbed the flesh on either side of my knife wound. Easy does it. I pushed the needle through the epidermis, threaded it over the wound, drove it through the skin on the other side of the cut. I repeated the procedure five times in a crisscross pattern and gently pulled the stitches tight. When the wound was together, I tied off the thread, wiped away the blood, applied a bit of pillowcase as a bandage, and rewrapped the duct tape around the whole thing.
I spent a while recovering from the waves of pain and then I started dressing.
There was a knock outside. Ah, Lara with the T-shirt. I pulled on my trousers and opened the door.
&nb
sp; Not Lara. A six-foot-four bald guy with a goatee, a black suit, narrow slits for eyes, and a six-shot .38 revolver in his meaty paw.
“What the fuck is all this?” I asked. “The lady of the house and I have an arrangement.”
“Are you Michael Forsythe?” he asked in a Belfast accent.
If I hadn’t learned in the last ten years, certainly the last two days had taught me the inefficacy of answering to that name.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Oh, you don’t need to know who I am. Put your hands on your head and make like a fucking statue. One move and there’s a bullet in that bandage in your gut.”
I put my hands over my head. The man rummaged through my things and found my passport. That wouldn’t help him. I was called Brian O’Nolan on that. Still, he looked at the picture and at me and compared it with a mental picture.
“I think it is you,” he said rhetorically. “The foot too, bit of a give-away.”
“You want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.
“No, I want you to put these on,” he said and threw me a pair of handcuffs. I let them drop on the floor.
“And if I don’t?”
“Just put on the cuffs,” he said.
“Bridget sent you?”
He didn’t offer any information, but perhaps that was a tell in a very slight shake of the head.
“I won’t put the cuffs on unless you tell me what’s going to happen after I do.”
“You’ll be going on a journey, see some old pals. Now put the cuffs on. You’ll be fucking sorry if you don’t, it’s all the same to me.”
“Did the madam tell you I was here?”
“Yeah, she did, now get those things on,” he yelled.
“At least let me get dressed first.”
He thought about it for a second.
“Ok. No funny stuff or I’ll top ya.”
I put on my clothes, taxing his patience with my Stanley boots. I picked up the handcuffs. Standard cop jobs. I placed one over my wrist and casually tilted my arm so he couldn’t see exactly what I was doing, and closed the cuff about halfway. I tugged the metal between my finger and thumb to show him that it was locked. The man seemed satisfied. Of course it wasn’t locked at all. I put the second loop over my other wrist and closed it, this time all the way. I held my hands in front of me with the big gap on the right side, underneath my wrist where he couldn’t see it. If he had any brains he’d kick me in the balls, kneel on me, put the gun in my face, and make sure the handcuffs were really bloody tight.
The Bloomsday Dead Page 8