He laughed, asked,
“You’ve been free from hangovers, am I right?”
“At what price, can you tell me that, you bollix?”
More snickering, then,
“It’s life, Jack. We’re all fucked.”
Maybe we’d been watching the same TV series.
“Jack, you need to rein it in. You’ll be suitably rewarded.”
“Not in heaven, I hope.”
“You’re a funny guy, Jack.”
“So assholes keep telling me.”
“I’ll drop by this evening. We can. . chat.”
When I didn’t answer, he said,
“One more thing, buddy.”
“Yeah?”
“That sense of humor. Keep it honed. You’re goanna fucking need it.”
He rang off. I cracked another Sam, idled on shooting the bastard the minute he walked in the door. No prelim, no chat.
Just blow his shit away.
Made the beer taste even better than it had, gave it an edge.
I was half in the bag when he eventually showed. He was still sporting the grunge look, like a reanimated Cobain.
A pair of combat pants that had designer stains or not. A T-shirt with the logo I’d kill for a hit.
Cute.
He said,
“Yo, bro.”
Jesus.
Flopped in the sofa, asked,
“I could go a brew, my man.”
Went to the fridge, lobbed a Sam, and he caught it expertly. Looked at the label, said,
“Class.”
My desire to wallop him had waned as I’d downed enough booze. Normally it fueled my murderous compulsion but not this time. I asked,
“This dope you’re feeding me, the name, is it, like, C. . for chemical?”
He drained the bottle, belched, said,
“C33?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t know?”
He seemed genuinely surprised. I said,
“Like I’d be fucking asking?”
He stood, danced to the fridge, grabbed a brew, flicked the top off, said,
“But, correct me if I’m wrong, you were in the bookstore together, right?”
I was lost, gestured with my shoulders. He said,
“Kelly. She got the Wilde book that day, I think. Shit, you paid for it, she said.”
I stood in front of him, said,
“For fuck’s sake, just tell me and quit the fucking riddles.”
Unfazed, he said,
“Kelly had a thing for Wilde, so, C33, the number of his cell in Reading Gaol.”
Part 2
29
He wanted to be a priest and, at the same time, he was prepared to beat people up and shoot them and kill them. That’s not about conflicting goals; that’s about The Three Faces of Eve.
Scepticism is the beginning of faith.
Philip Larkin in the last year of his life would start the morning with three glasses of cheap wine, bought in bulk from the supermarket, said, “You’ve got to have some fucking reason for getting up in the morning.”
Ridge was reeling between ferocious grief over Stewart and anger at Jack. Somehow, it had to be Jack’s fault, then at least it made some sort of bewildering sense. Jack was nearly always to blame. The whole C33 scenario of Jack’s made her boil. Jesus, if there was a conspiracy to be hatched, Jack would be right there, fueling it. She raged at the cosmic unfairness of it all.
Stewart, who lived so carefully. Barely drank, didn’t smoke, practiced Zen, worked out furiously, and he dies. Jack, with his mutilated fingers, near deafness, limp, crazed drinking, intermittent chain-smoking, cocaine binges, diet of every carb known to man, many beatings, flagrant breaking of the law, bad temper, he. .
He
Somehow
Limped on.
She wanted to kill him her own self. Stewart, who supported her difficulties with being openly gay, his nonjudgmental acceptance of her dead marriage, he was such a blessing. Jack, who fought her tooth and freaking nail over every damn thing, just smirked his way along.
And she was back dwelling on the C33 gig. Was Stewart’s murder connected to that? The Guards had his killing down as simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In conversation with one of the detectives, she’d been told,
“We’ll solve that murder if we get lucky.”
Meaning,
“We’re not putting a whole lot of time and effort there.”
The implication,
Stewart had been a dope dealer,
So. .
So fuck him.
And was told,
“Leave it alone, won’t do your career any good to root around in the dumb death of a dumb fuck.”
The tears on her face as she muttered,
“Get a grip, girl.”
This stern reprimand brought her father vividly to life. He’d been dead nigh ten years now.
Drink.
Cirrhosis of the liver, not helped by two packs of Major daily. He’d been such a Connemara man, he was almost the fake Irish ideal. Living in the Gaeltacht, he never spoke a word of English and rarely needed to as he refused to venture into what he termed
“Tír na Sasanach.”
Land of the English, and that included Galway! He made his living fishing from the legendary Galway hooker and, like the men of his area, poitín. Irish moonshine, brewed from generation to generation until
Ridge.
Yeah, she fucked it up.
And worse, in his eyes, joined the enemy, the bloody Garda Síochána. The Guards. Insult to simmering injury. As he lay dying, he’d lashed her with his worst weapon. He refused to speak his native tongue to her, addressed her in halting English, acting like she wouldn’t understand her native language. His last words to her, gasped out in an agonized, strangled voice,
“May God forgive thee. I can’t and won’t.”
And
Died.
Live with that. Perhaps the most enduring curse, the parental one. Of her sexual orientation, he’d rasped to her mother,
“What man would have a turncoat?”
She stood, tried to stem the flow of ferocious memories, all fierce and wounding. Ran her hand along the one shelf of books she’d collected. Jack had been educating her in crime fiction and, so far, she had seven of the James Lee Burke titles.
And, oh horror, she’d told Jack,
“I’m thinking of getting a Kindle.”
See him explode.
Like this,
“Yah dumb bitch, you’ve read what? Six books, total? And what, you’re going to have storage for thousands of books? Get fucking real, lady. You think I’ll come round your house, ask, ‘Hey, can I browse through your. . Kindle?’”
Stewart had given her Scott Peck’s People of the Lie and The Dummy’s Guide to Zen, which, when she opened the book, had nothing but blank pages. Even now, she could clearly see Stewart’s smile at his Zen joke.
The Kindle was on. . hold.
A call from the station, Sharkey, the super’s newest hatchet. Clancy, the boss, liked to take a cop who was a thug to begin and fine-hone him to effortless viciousness. Sharkey was proving to be the best of the bunch to date, a reptile who’d have shopped his own mother if Clancy asked. He had a quiet voice that held a whiplash of loaded threat. He liked to see the troops dance, dance to a tune they usually didn’t understand and didn’t dare contest. Sharkey had, it was said, a long-ago run-in with Jack and lost more than a few teeth. He made it his mission to destroy anyone he saw as Taylor-connected.
Meaning Ridge, big-time.
He near whispered,
“Not disturbing anything, I pray.”
The slither of his voice like a slow crawl of creepiness. Ridge, to her dismay, stammered, thought. . Fuck.