“That mugshot must have been taken awhile back, chief.”
“January.”
“This last January? What happened since? No offense, like, but.”
Minogue looked around the office. There were showband photos on the wall over his desk. He wondered if these were collector’s items by now. Was it that long ago? The Hucklebuck, Kathleen and he went to the club on Harcourt Street. What were those photos of birds? A bunch of boxes, cages — pigeons, of course a pigeon racer.
Malone tilted his head, studied the photos of the showbands.
“What?” asked Paddy Mac.
“Just wondering who they were,” Malone said. He turned to Paddy Mac.
“No sign of the Works or any of them,” said Malone. Paddy Mac put his hands on his hips. He studied Malone for several moments.
“Why would there be?”
“The next generation maybe?”
“They’re nothing to me. Dossers, fakers, shapers. Along with the rest of them. Junkies ”
“Do you think?”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you? Your mob, I mean.”
The sharp tang of cardboard that had stung in Minogue’s nose had given way to an oily smell. He hadn’t seen an ashtray.
“Wait a minute, but,” said Malone. “Wasn’t Elvis the world’s biggest junkie?”
“When they killed him, yeah.”
“Who killed him? He ate his way into the bloody coffin.”
Paddy Mac gave Minogue a bleak look.
“You and me’d know better, I’d like to think. What do you say to that shite?”
“Well, I haven’t really kept up,” said Minogue.
“What’s to keep up with?”
“GOD? I don’t know really.”
“GOD? Holy, crucified Jases. That bunch a — ”
Malone shuffled, looked around the room. Paddy Mac glared at him.
“- and don’t start in on Elvis again. They broke him, so they did. Did you see the Hawaii comeback? That’s when I knew it was over. That’s when I knew what the sixties had been all about.”
Minogue exchanged a look with Malone. The weariness, the aches were like jet lag and a hangover combined. His eyes were beginning to signal the return of a headache.
“So,” said Paddy Mac. “You want to look around. What are we looking for?”
“Anything,” said Minogue.
“A murder weapon maybe?”
“Well, yes. Stuff that might have been robbed from a car. Rags, gloves.”
“There were Guards all over the kip there the other day outside here. You think that someone came in here for dirty work? Airport staff?”
Minogue held up his hands, wiggled them.
“What, we’re under suspicion?”
“Can we wander around?” Minogue asked.
Paddy Mac waited a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Suit yourselves. I mean, yous’re the law. Wander all you like — but there’s locked areas now.”
Minogue studied the map pinned to a corkboard.
“Have you a plan of the place you’d give me, now?”
Paddy Mac tugged at his belt.
“Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll go around with yous. Stretch me legs.”
He gave Malone the eye. Malone put up his hands.
“As long as hair-oil here doesn’t start on musical theory ”
CHAPTER 26
Paddy Mac used his radio antenna to point. Minogue watched him wave it about, jab with the antenna. A conductor of sorts, he thought.
“Air freight inspections start there,” said Paddy Mac. “That’s for outbound with all the papers ready. The customs broker’s spot’s there, see? There’s the entry to the Customs Hall. Incoming, inspections.”
Minogue turned the corner and looked down at the open door at the far end of the warehouse. Paddy Mac wheeled and faced Minogue.
“This Yank,” he said “What was he up to out here anyway?”
“Well, there you have me.”
A forklift shot by the doorway and scooted out of sight behind stacks of crates. Pallets of tightly wrapped sacks rose to the ceiling behind them. The creases and the dull shine of the plastic wrap put Minogue in mind of shrouds. Pupae. He paused to yawn, and then followed Paddy Mac through a double door into what looked like another warehouse. He studied the heavy wire mesh on the cages they passed.
“Now,” said Paddy Mac. “Here’s a sight. Are you ready for this, are you?”
“What?”
“Over there, in that cage. Look at that gear, will you.”
Minogue stepped through the doorway. He tried to count the boxes. Many of them were sheathed in aluminium. Others were made of black panels edged with metal bands and reinforced corners. Paddy Mac twisted and tugged the lock out of the holder and followed Minogue.
“That’s the better part of a half a payload there,” he said. “I saw it coming in. I asked what’s his name what it was worth.”
“Who?”
“Ah, your man — what’s his name. He came out one day before they took the spot. The manager, with the pigtail.”
“The ponytail,” said Malone.
“Yeah… Daly that’s him. ‘Two hundred grand,’ says he. So I says, why not rent it all there, like.”
Minogue recognized none of the brand names on the boxes.
“‘It’s all customized,’ says he,” Paddy Mac went on. “Like I didn’t know. What it is, is to cover ’em up. To drown ’em out.”
“Do you think,” said Minogue.
“What, do you think they can actually play their instruments?”
“Why would he be out here doing the loading and unloading? Is that common?”
“Well Jases, I don’t know,” said Paddy Mac. “He doesn’t want slipups…?”
Minogue strained to read part of a sticker. Mockb — . Moscow, of course.
“Shiny lights, smoke,” Paddy Mac said. “Earrings, hats. Making a racket. Throw in a few big words, pretend they’re philosophers. That’s not your hungry kid driving an oul car up to Memphis, just him and his guitar, is it?”
Gih-tar, Minogue registered. Paddy Mac was in deep.
“Well what are they using in Germany then,” asked Malone, “if their gear is all packed here?”
“Germany? For some video gig there on the Berlin Wall or whatever the hell they were on about?”
Minogue craned his neck to see over a box the size of a sofa.
“Ah, they’d be just standing there for that. Throwing shapes, that’s about it.”
Minogue turned to him.
“How do you mean?”
“Ah the video shite,” said Paddy Mac, grimacing. “Hate to break it to yous now, but they dub everything. Didn’t you know that? It’s not the real thing at all, at all. Shapers, man That’s all.”
“Go way,” said Minogue.
“I’m telling you. It’s not singing or anything. It’s playacting.”
“So this is their gear then, their real equipment?”
Paddy Mac snorted and waved his arm. The disdain came to Minogue as the genial, indulgent sarcasm that had baffled him for years after he had first arrived in Dublin.
“I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know what’s in them. That’s for someone to inspect in the States. ”
“Not here?”
“Right. Customs here don’t touch these ones. They’ll get the treatment over beyond when that stuff lands, yes sir. They don’t be messing around over there, let me tell you. The electronics and sniffers and what have you. No messing there, man — Christ, they’ll be all over the stuff for you know what. The dope. ”
Paddy Mac plucked a pouch from a hook on the mesh by the doorway. He rummaged and scanned a half-page document. Minogue studied the sharp, even lines on his sideburns.
“Goes out to the States day after tomorrow,” Paddy Mac declared. He looked up at Minogue.
“It’s common enough, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Really.”
“Sure it is. You have stuff brought out days ahead of time. It needs wrapping, tying up. Pallets and that? Organize the heights and widths for the plane doors. You don’t want to pull a load of stuff out on the tarmac, hoist it up to the bay, and find it’s three inches too big, do you? Jase, no. You have to shuffle stuff. Balance, weight, height. It’s a science, I’m not joking you.”