Carved wooden columns stood here and there, looking for a ceiling to hold up. One section was crammed with ornamental stone and cement work from the outsides of buildings- gargoyles with their tongues protruding, real and imaginary animals, some sharply detailed, others as hard to make out as the inscriptions on old gravestones, weathered by time and acid rain.
A year or two ago Elaine and I spent a weekend in Washington, and in the course of it we dragged ourselves through the Holocaust Museum. It was wrenching, of course- it's supposed to be- but what hit us the hardest was a room full of shoes. Just shoes, an endless heap of shoes. Neither of us could quite explain the room's ghastly impact, but I gather our response was not atypical.
I can't say the plastic milk crates overflowing with doorknobs elicited a similar emotional reaction. My gut didn't churn at the thought of what had happened to all the doors to which those knobs had once been fitted, or the long-vanished rooms behind those doors. But somehow the endless array of hardware, sifted and sorted with Teutonic thoroughness, did call to mind that room full of shoes.
"Where buildings go to die," Mick said.
"Just what I was thinking."
"It's a good old business. Who could guess what you can strip off an old building before you knock her down? You pull the plumbing, of course, and the boiler, and sell all that for scrap, but there are people who find a use for all the old hardware and ornamentation. If you were restoring an old brownstone, say, you'd want all the details authentic. You'd come here and go home with replacement crystals for the chandelier, or a better chandelier entirely. And door hinges, and a marble mantel for the fireplace. It's all here, whatever you might want and much you wouldn't."
"So I see."
"And did you know there are those that collect bits of ornamentation? Caldecott has one customer with a passion for gargoyles. There was one he bought too heavy to carry, and your man delivered it and saw his collection. Two small rooms in Christopher Street was all he had, and there's shelves all round stuffed with dozens of fucking gargoyles of all sizes, all of them making horrible faces, and one uglier than the next. From the description it must have been as cluttered as this place, but that's how it is when you're a collector. You must be forever getting more of whatever it is you fancy."
"Do you own this place, Mick?"
"I've an interest in it. You might say I'm a silent partner." He picked up a tarnished brass hinge, turned it in his hand, put it back where he'd found it. "'Tis a good business for a man. You sell for cash, and you've no purchase records because you don't purchase your stock, you salvage it. So you've cash coming in and cash going out, and that's a useful sort of business in this day and age."
"I imagine it is."
"And I'm a useful partner for the lads. I've connections in the construction and demolition trade, labor and management both, and that's a help in securing salvage rights to a building. Oh, it works out well for all concerned."
"And I don't suppose your name's on the paperwork."
"You know my thoughts on the subject. What you don't own can't be taken from you. I've a set of keys, and the use of the office when I want it, and a place to park a car where it can't be seen. They keep their van there, they use that bay for loading and unloading, but Brian McGinley takes the van home at the day's end. And that reminds me."
He dug the cell phone out of his pocket, then changed his mind and put it back. We walked the length of one aisle to an office in the back, where he sat at the gray metal desk and looked up a number and made a call. The phone had a rotary dial, and might have been salvage itself.
He said, "Mr. McGinley, please… I know it is, and I'd not call at this hour but out of necessity… I'm afraid you'll have to wake him. Just tell him it's the big fellow."
He covered the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes. "Ah, Brian," he said. "Good man. Do you know, I think you and Caldecott are closed for the week. No one's to come in until you hear from me… That's the idea. And my apologies to your wife from the lateness of the hour. Why don't you make it up to her and take her to Puerto Rico for a few days?… Well, Cancún then, if she likes it better… And you'll phone Caldecott? And anyone else that ought to be told? Good man."
He hung up. "'The big fellow,'" he said. "It's presumption, hanging that tag on myself. That's what they called Collins."
"And De Valera didn't like it."
"A sanctimonious bastard, wasn't he? Tell me something. Where the hell's Cancún?"
"The Yucatán Peninsula."
"That's Mexico, isn't it? Mrs. McGinley like is there, likes it better than phone calls in the middle of the night. 'I can't wake him, he's sleeping.' Well, if he wasn't sleeping, you wouldn't need to wake him, you silly cow." He sighed, leaned back in the oak desk chair. "How the hell do you know Dev didn't like it? You never went to the movie."
"Elaine rented it," I said, "and we watched it on the VCR. Jesus Christ."
"What?"
"That was last night we saw it. It doesn't seem possible. It feels more like a week."
"It's a fully day you had, isn't it?"
"So much death," I said.
"The two we buried at the farm, and that was what, four nights ago? Then Peter Rooney, but you only know of him from my telling you. And then your friend, the Buddhist. I drank to his memory, and the next minute they were making a charnel house of Grogan's, killing people left and right. Burke was killed, you know."
"I didn't know."
"I looked for him and found him on the floorboards behind the bar, covered with glass from the mirror and with a terrible hole in his chest. Dead at his post, like a captain going down with the ship. I'd say that's the end of that bar. Next time you see it some Korean'll have it, selling fruits and vegetables around the clock."
He fell silent, and after a long moment I said, "I knew her, Mick."
"I thought you did."
"You know who I meant?"
"Of course I do. Herself as was sitting nearby, that you didn't want to be hearing their conversation. I had a feeling right then."
"Did you?"
"I did. Do you know, moving to the next table probably saved our lives. It put us off to the side and gave us that extra fraction of time to hit the floor before the bullets reached us." He cocked his head, looked at something on the wall. "Unless it's all worked out in advance," he said, "and you die when your time comes and not before."
"I wonder."
"Ah, that's man's lot, isn't it? To wonder." He opened desk drawers until he found the one with the bottle of Jameson in it. He cracked the seal and drank from the bottle. He said, "Was she the one, then?"
"The one?"
"Your bit on the side."
"I guess that's as good a phrase as any. We stopped seeing each other awhile ago."
"Did you love her?"
"No."
"Ah."
"I cared for her, though."
"That's rare enough," he said, and took another drink. "I never loved anyone. Aside from my mother and my brothers, but that's a different matter, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Of women, I loved none and cared for few."
"I love Elaine," I said. "I don't think I've ever loved anyone else."
"You were married before."
"A long time ago."
"Did you love her?"
"There was a time when I thought I did."
"Ah. What was this one's name?"
"Lisa."
"She was a fine-looking woman."
My mind filled with a picture of her as I saw her last, her skull shattered. I blinked it away and saw her in her apartment, wearing jeans and a sweater, standing in front of a window with a view of the setting sun. That was better.
"Yes," I said. "She was."
"It was sudden, you know. I doubt she ever knew what hit her."
"But she's gone."
"That she is," he said.
He had the old leather satchel on top of the desk and was poking around in it. "Cash from the safe," he said. "Some papers. All the guns I could grab up. The police can get a court order and torch the safe, or they'll do it without a court order. What they can't use as evidence against me they'll shove in their pockets. So I didn't want to leave them too much."