A beautiful perfect day.
End of watch.
I took her hand and we stood outside my apartment, looking out across Galway Bay, my joy near boundless.
A motorbike roared behind me and I turned
Too slow.
The first bullet took Gretchen in the throat.
The second blasted through her tiny heart.
She
emitted
the
tiniest
soft
sigh.
And was gone.
34
They have a new barman
in Garavan’s, but I don’t talk to him at all.
In fact, most days, I stay home,
pretend to read,
the bottle at my hand
and the smashed, crushed chess pieces
at my feet. If you were to look in the window you’d
probably be struck by the utter stillness.
The absolute quiet.
You might even comment,
Jesus, a room of the dead,
but, then, you might say nothing.
Nothing at all.
35
Marvin Minkler was the old-school type of detective. He’d been in the army, served overseas, and then joined the Guards, progressing rapidly up the ranks by sheer smarts and that ancient concept of being good at his job.
Maybe best of all, he evaded office politics and was beholden to no one person. He’d been sent down from Dublin to investigate the highly suspicious deaths of
Tevis
Harley
Mrs. Renaud’s apparent suicide
Plus the horrific shooting of a nine-year-old girl on the Salthill Promenade — the death of my beloved Gretchen. He arranged to meet me in Crowes pub, not the police station. Like I said,
Old school.
I was seated at the back of the pub where Ollie Crowe ignored my smoking as did the customers. No one approached me. Word was out about the killing of my daughter and I was best described as armed and maniacal.
True that.
Ollie had set up a fresh shot of Jameson before me, then withdrew quietly. The front door of the pub opened and a bitter November wind made a fast attempt to freeze the lounge. The man who walked toward me could only be a cop — the walk, half strut, mostly caution.
Head of snow-white hair and not because white was the new option. Tall, in his vaguely maintained late forties. His face was of the sort you hear called craggy.
Basically, no one wants to come right out and say you’re an ugly cunt.
Wearing a gray suit that was so nondescript it meant money or poverty in that you noticed it without actually knowing why. He held out a large worn hand, offered,
“I’m Detective Minkler. Most call me Marv. I am sorry for your shocking loss.”
I was too weary to be insulting, said,
“Jack Taylor.”
He gave the hint of a smile, said,
“That much I do know.”
He didn’t ask,
“Is this a bad time?”
Every time now was a very bad time.
I kind of appreciated that.
He ordered a black coffee and asked Ollie to bring me another of what was in my glass. I said,
“I can buy my own booze.”
He nodded, fair enough, said,
“Saves me a few quid.”
Quid.
His coffee came and he sipped delicately, said,
“Jeez, I could kill for a cig.”
Realized his remark... kill, tried to rein it in, went,
“Fuck, that was tactless.”
I stared at him, asked with a hint of snarl,
“That supposed to show you’re a decent sort and like down with the broken sad fucker?”
He gave what could only be seen as a nasty grin and for a second, behind the outward affable manner, lurked a street cop with lots of hard edge.
I liked him a little more, said,
“You have some moves.”
He relaxed, reached over for my pack of soft box Reed’s, asked,
“May I?”
I said,
“Sure, need a light?”
He did.
He sat back, assessing me, then,
“Here’s the thing...”
Pause.
“Jack.
Two young men are murdered,
Then their father hangs himself.
You save a guy from drowning,
You steal a Garda-issue coat.
A pedophile grabs your girlfriend’s boy.
You rescue him.
Then the said kiddie bollix is found in pieces in a bog in Connemara.”
I must have looked startled, so he said,
“Ah, you didn’t know that, but to continue.
A filmmaker documenting your life and the very sad sack you saved are killed under very suspicious circumstances, and the widow of the dead father meets you, then she kills herself.”
He took a deep breath, leaned over, asked,
“May I?”
And took a healthy dose of my Jay.
Continued.
“Then, for fucksakes, your ex-wife asks you to mind your young daughter and she is gunned down right in front of you — the daughter, that is — and you have to wonder: what the fuck is going down here?”
I said nothing for a solid minute. I timed it, then said,
“You have one error in your account.”
“Only one?”
“I didn’t steal item 1834, the Garda coat.”
He nearly choked, spluttered the last remnants of his coffee, gasped out,
“That’s what you’re focusing on, seriously? How so fucked is that?”
I signaled to Ollie who was getting more than a little pissed about all the table service, not to even mention the smoking.
I said,
“You want to know what I’m focusing on, where my ruined mind is as we speak, as the death of
Gretchen
Occupies every nightmare moment of my being, do you really want to hear what is in my mind this very moment?”
Ollie brought the drinks, did not speak.
I lifted my glass, said,
“This is what I use as a mantra to blind my mind.”
Took a large swallow, lit up, then intoned in a dead fashion:
“The window in the wall is the Sacred Host, the window between two worlds, as a window belongs at once to both the room inside and the open air, so the Eucharist belongs to both time and eternity...”
Pause as I struggled for breath, then on:
“So just as natural light comes through a window so does supernatural light come through.”
There, I was done, madness articulated.
He looked ashen, this streetwise cop who thought he was calling some shots, and now wondered if he sat opposite a deranged individual, a man who was not only crushed and broken but had, as they say in crime novels,
Lost his marbles.
Long, tense, loaded silence, then he said,
“We arrested David Lee for shooting your girl. Seems he believed you had him near beaten to death over a dog. A dog for chrissakes?”
The Jay was weaving its lethal dark alchemy and I asked,
“Not a dog lover then?”
He reached in his jacket, took out one of those police-issue notebooks, and for a mad moment I regretted the loss of the career I might have had with the Guards. But it was but a fleeting dead angel, never meant to fly.
I asked,
“Ever listen to Iris DeMent, ‘No Time to Cry’?”
He looked up from his notes, snarled,
“I look like a bollix who has time to listen to tunes?”
He read from the notes:
“Michael Allen, psycho extraordinary. Seems he is the root of all your, how should I say...”