by Ken Bruen
I was standing at the top of Eyre Square, a vast mass of people grabbing every spare area of grass. I’d never seen so much white skin, skin gasping for vitamin D. Gone were the days when you might have said,
“’Twas black with people.”
The PC police would be all over your white arse.
A man was standing beside me, said,
“Did you see Britain’s Got Talent?”
I knew him from somewhere and the feeling was that it had not been good.
I answered,
“No.”
He continued with great excitement,
“Father Ray Kelly, sixty-four years old, he fucking blew them away with ‘Everybody Hurts.’”
Father Ray was officiating at a wedding four years ago and he did a storming version of “Hallelujah.” It went viral and everybody knows him.
I tried to hold back on the bitterness leaking over my reply,
“Save me.”
He was not to be stopped, said,
“They’re already saying he’ll be the next Susan Boyle.”
This was so open to a nasty line that I skipped it.
He rolled a cig: papers, pouch tobacco, the works. He did it with fluid expertise, then lit it with a large match, from the kitchen issue box.
He said,
“A fellah like that priest could do more for the Church than bringing the pope over, which will cost us forty million.”
Then he gave me a curious look, said,
“You might want to buy me a drink.”
I gave the look right back, said,
“I don’t think so.”
He gave a sly malicious laugh, said,
“I’m Amy Fadden’s husband.”
He tapped a foot annoyingly as he waited for me to catch up.
Amy Fadden’s daughter was killed by the mayor’s son; I was briefly arrested on suspicion.
I said,
“I’m very sorry for your loss, even sorrier that I didn’t find any justice for your family, but with all due respect I have nothing more we can discuss.”
He sneered,
“With due respect.”
There was something evil in his nature, and I wanted little more than to get the hell away—that, or kick him in the balls.
“Take care,”
I said, shortly.
He let me get about five steps away then near whispered,
“Amy killed him.”
*
I followed him to Crowe’s bar, the pride of Bohermore.
Ollie lined up the pints and, smart as he is, he knew this was not a drink of celebration. We took a table near the garden and watched the rain lash down, killing the heat wave. The pints settled.
I ventured,
“Lemme guess, you and your wife are not on the best of terms.”
He drained half the pint, left a foam mustache,
Then he sat back, said,
“Aren’t you the clever dick?”
I waited as he sank the remains of the pint, said,
“Another, and a small Paddy.”
Paddy.
That’s whiskey.
Not an Irishman of challenged stature, though the two have been linked on occasion.
I did.
Ollie put them on the table, muttered,
“Thanks would be nice.”
And got a mocking laugh.
“So,”
I said.
“What’s the story?”
He stifled a yawn, not covering his mouth, said,
“Amy hired you, knew you’d be in confrontation with the mayor’s bastard son, and you did just that but, most important, in front of witnesses. Then she killed the young bollix without batting an eye but you—who could have known?—had a fucking alibi.”
Pause.
“With a priest, no less.”
I interjected,
“A nun.”
He was aghast, asked,
“How d’you know a nun?”
I said, with all the sanctity I could muster,
“She is helping me return to the church of my youth.”
This seemed to be more appalling for him to swallow than the murder of children.
I asked,
“What do you think I’m going to do about it? That’s why you’re here, some sort of nasty payback on your wife.”
He smiled like the devil himself was proud of him, said,
“The bitch, she kicked me out of our home, that I worked for, and had the bank stop me using our joint credit card.”
I was on my way, more out of anger than curiosity. I asked,
“I know your wife, she works for the Post Office, but you, your own self, what do you do?”
“I’m between jobs just now.”
I pushed,
“Before, before the between?”
His face took on that angry riled how dare you expression of the fundamentally righteous. He said,
“I don’t have to answer that.”
I gave him my knife smile, said,
“You just did.”
*
Leaving him, I went to feed the swans.
Sat on the bench across from the long walk where a young man had lain dead for eight months in his apartment in the city that cared.
We had a new cinema that cost eight million. We needed a new cinema? When two hundred people lay on trolleys in the hospital for days due to a bed shortage?
Our gay Indian government leader launched the Yes campaign, the referendum to legalize abortion.
I thought about Amy Fadden.
She’d hired me to find out who killed her daughter, and then planned to frame me for the ensuing murder of her daughter’s killer.
What should I do? Which door to choose?
Revenge
Acceptance
Confrontation
Tell the Guards?
Or do what I did best:
Fuck all.
I could simply let it go.
M
A
Y
B
E.
17
York knows the truth
Doesn’t matter in here.
Inside, the lies you tell
Become
The person you become.
On the outside, sun and reality shrink
People back to their actual size.
In here,
People grow into their
Shadows.
Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted
Jericho
Selected O’Connell’s bar on Eyre Square for the first meeting of the trinity,
When she’d introduce Stapes to Scott.
Neither Scott nor Stapes knew Jericho had a lover stashed. When she’d finished with the dim duo, she’d give full attention to the one who mattered, whose heart was as black as Jericho’s own.
She entered O’Connell’s.
Why there of all the pubs in the city?
You’d think with her chaos fixation, her general anarchy, she’d go for a dive, some shady gig near the docks or, at the very least, some yuppie shit hole as an ironic gesture.
No.
O’Connell’s over the past few years had become the in place for
Real estate wankers,
Budding entrepreneurs,
Billionaires on paper and by rumor (usually spread by themselves).
O’Connell’s had once been an old-fashioned, very Galway pub.
Mrs. O’Connell died and financial insanity began.
Valued at eleven million in the heady, utterly mad days of the Tiger.
Get this:
She had left it to
St. Vincent de Paul.
To charity.
Many felt a cats’ shelter would have made some kind of misguided sense.
But a charity?
Uh-oh.
And this was before the charities became as crooked publicly as the banks.
So many,
Many
Legal
battles.
Jericho had no doubt that Scott, the cop killer, and Stapes, the burglar, would jell.
Why?
Because she would make it so.
She arrived first, dressed in semi-Goth, death white makeup, the kohl, biker jacket, torn jeans, and Docs.
She brought with it an air of cool that said,
“Hey, I’m out there but, like, you know, hot.”
It worked.
The bar guy wasn’t drooling but close and dared in this Me Too era to risk,
“Get cha, babe?”
Jericho gave him a smile and it was a winner, psycho or no. She’d that kind of smile that told you,
“You, you’re a winner.”
She ordered vodka rocks, slimline tonic.
They both enjoyed the slimline touch.
Scott entered next looking morose and as if he’d strayed into the wrong bar. Every bar was really the wrong one. He was just a miserable git.
Dressed in grunge but not as any statement unless
“I don’t give a fuck”
Says anything at all.
He ordered a pint.
No smiles on either side of the divide.
Jericho gave him a brief nod, the one that implies,
“You have not brightened my day.”
Then
Came
Mr. Bon Jovi, his own shining self.
He had his hair gelled, not overly so but sufficient that gel-less guys thought,
“Mm, maybe?”
He had a long soft leather jacket that he’d stolen and it looked either that or very expensive or, indeed, both.
He was the kind of guy who always knew the barman’s name.
How?
Fuck knows.
Black jeans that clung to his body like a brief love and those trainers never seen much anymore.
Made by Camper.
They had a brief day in the shoe sun when Snow Patrol were hot and got free shoes from said company.
Those were the days of early stardom, when even Ireland was on uppers.
But then the Taylor Swift virus hit.
One of the guys got engaged to one of the Friends stars.
One of the women, I think.
And the lead singer did duets with everybody going the road but especially Ms. Swift. She then moved on from him to destroy all cred that Tom Hiddleston was
Enjoying after The Night Manager.
I am of course ashamed to be a mini version of the National Inquirer with all this utterly useless data but time in the dentist’s office has that effect.
Scott instantly hated Stapes and it got a shade worse when Stapes greeted, effusively,
“Hiya, Sean,”
To Pavlov, the bar guy,
Who was glad of any courtesy from the Irish.
Jericho leaped to hug Stapes, and Scott thought,
“I really
Really
Hate this
Bollix.”
As Jericho continued to engulf Stapes in a hug that verged on the dreaded twerk in reverse, if such a thing is even feasible,
Scott fumed, muttered,
“Get a friggin’ room.”
Jericho disengaged slowly, went,
“Phew-oh, that was intense.”
Stapes put out his hand, greeted,
“You must be the infamous Scott.”
Scott tried to rein in his bile but he was fucked if he’d shake hands. He said,
“You’re the incompetent burglar.”
Lame, right?
Sean/Pavlov, acting on a false sense of civility, brought a creamy pint, put it in Stapes’s hand, said,
“On the house.”
You see how insincerity gets a bad press when it can do all kinds of significant shite. Just ask the pope.
“My man,”
Said Stapes.
Jericho suggested they all sit and get the party cooking.
She began,
“Now we all know each other, let’s plan our first event.”
Scott, still sulking, sneered,
“Why are we trusting this loser, this failed housebreaker? We know nothing about him.”
Jericho leaned over, right in Scott’s face, almost like a caress, sensually whispered,
“Because I am fucking him, like biblically.”
Scott pulled back as if he’d been slapped. Stapes sank most of his pint.
Jericho stood up, ordered Scott,
“Outside, now.”
He slunk after her, torn between raging lust and outright hatred.
On the curb, Jericho produced a pack of Marlboro Red, shook two out, and then handed one to Scott with a slimline Zippo, said,
“Fire us up, love.”
He was shaking from temper, snarled,
“I quit.”
She laughed, asked,
“Smoking or our enterprise? Don’t forget, I have you on video.”
His shoulders sagged and he lit both cigs, offered one. She said,
“Put it in my mouth. You know you want to.”
But a flash of himself shooting Guards jumped into his vision. His battered psyche cooed,
“You’re better than this shite.”
He asked,
“You remember you told me how you and your best bud bonded at that festival and that due to peyote and U2 she called you Jericho?”
She was cautious, not sure if the balance of power was on thin ice, tried a slow,
“Yeah, so?”
He sneered triumphantly, said,
“The Joshua Tree was the album.”
Then, with a sneer, demanded,
“So why didn’t she call you Joshua?”
He wanted to add,
“Yah dumb cunt.”
But, you know, he thought,
Enough already.
Jericho nearly told him about the real reason Em called her Jericho but decided, fuck him.
He was wearing his now customary Barbour coat, one of those so worn that not a trace of wax remained. Much favored by the royals, it suggested that the wearer had good taste to begin with but years of shooting pheasant (or perhaps Guards?) had taken their cultural toll. No question of rewaxing it, as, like, that’s what the poor folk might do.
Jericho suddenly reached out, pulled at the cargo pocket of his right leg, and in an instant grabbed the revolver.
She said, in down-home Brooklynese,
“Yah packing heat, you dumb schmuck.”
She checked the cylinder, said,
“Running a little low there, Rich.”
She pushed the gun into her waistband, said,
“It’s been fun but thirsty work. I could murder a shot.”
She walked rapidly back into the pub, sat, Stapes looking a tad confused. Scott followed, sat in a cloud of unknowing. Stapes said,
“Gee, guys, this little triangle is falling apart. Maybe it’s time to call time.”
Jericho gave them both a long look, then said,
“Let’s get some shots in.”
Stood, walked to the counter, shot Sean/Pavlov in the face, turned to the guys, asked,
“Who’s next?”
*
Later, in bed with her lover, Jericho relayed the events, said,
“It was so hot. The two dudes were literally shitting their pants.”
Her lover, keen to get in on the action, asked,
“When do I get to play?”
Jericho smiled, said,
“Lemme just fuck with those two, then we can begin our serious game.”
18
“Get mad, get even, and get paid.
(What kind of loser stops
At getting even?)”
Aidan Truhen
Jericho accompanied Scott when they shot the fourth Guard, a new recruit on traffic duty.
Jericho left a note.
Said to Scott,
“That’s it for leaving notes, they’re like so lame.”
*
In the past
decade there have been some horrific scandals that rocked the land:
The Magdalen laundries,
The Tuam babies,
The bankers.
But even these horrors were paling against the cervical cancer cover-up.
It blew open when a young woman who’d insisted she was not happy about her smear tests took a High Court action that revealed the HSE had known she was fatally ill for three years and hid it.
Fucking hid it.
When the woman discovered that she had only months to live, it emerged that the tests had been outsourced to a U.S. company and guess who had shares in said company?
The head of the HSE.
An arrogant bollix who, when confronted about possibly hundreds of other women who were fatally ill and had not been told, stonewalled and then announced he was soon to resign with a huge pension, but—
And here’s the but—
He would devote the remainder of his time to investigating how this could have happened.
Then he went on leave, piled-up days that he was due already.
The leader of the government insisted he had full confidence in him, then returned to urging the country to vote yes and legalize abortion.
You tried to digest this utter . . . disgrace . . . and wondered
Not why we drank but why we weren’t drinking lights out.
*
Amy Fadden, whose daughter was murdered and who tried to frame me for the killing of her daughter’s killer, was enjoying cocktails in the Radisson when I caught up with her.
The Radisson was a popular venue on Fridays when they had a special cocktail hour; ladies of a certain hue, i.e., money and fuck all else to do, attended regularly. The barman looked like an escapee from Chippendales,
Hired less for his skill than his ability to fill a near see-through shirt with finesse.
I spotted Amy in, dare I say, high spirits with a table of women who looked like money was not of any pressing concern. I approached the guy, asked for a pint.
He frowned, making his chiseled looks a shade empty, and said in that new mid-Atlantic drawl,
“Perhaps Sir might be more comfortable in a more traditional setting.”
I enjoyed that.
I asked,
“Are you familiar with the traditional puck?”
No.
He asked,
“Is it a cocktail?”
I said,
“It’s a fairly fast heavy wallop to the face.”
He poured the pint, said,
“Twelve euros.”