“We had good crack.” I used the old Belfast expression.
“It was good crack, right enough.”
“You’re Irish, Mr. Shanahan?” Stitch asked cautiously.
“By ancestry, but I was born not a mile away from this room, but unlike some I can mention I actually went to Ulster to do my bit for the cause. Of course, I know that slashing tires in the New Jersey Meadowlands advances the struggle gloriously, but it’s not quite the same as pulling a trigger in Belfast.”
That got to Patrick, as I had meant it to. “What the fuck do you know?” His mouth was half full of potato chips that sprayed out across his beer glass as he bellowed at me. “I was in Belfast three years ago, and I fought when I was there! I did my bit! I got beaten up by the fucking Brits! You want to see the fucking scar?” He jerked up his left sleeve where a barely discernible white scratch showed against his Erin Go Bragh tattoo.
“Oh, that’s terrible!” I mocked him. “What happened, Patrick? Oh no! Don’t tell me you mugged another Salvation Army girl?”
“Fuck you!” He scooped up a handful of chips that he crammed into his mouth as if to show that he had nothing more to say to me. A cigarette was burning in a full ashtray beside him.
Tommy the Turd raised a pacifying hand. “I can vouch for Mr. McPhee’s story. Mr. Stitch was with Mr. McPhee on that day and he will testify that they suffered a clear case of unprovoked British brutality; clear, unprovoked, and blatant.”
“So what happened, diddums?” I asked Patrick.
Patrick glared at me while he tried to decide whether or not to indulge my curiosity, but immodesty got the better of him. “I had a meeting arranged, right? Me and Mr. Stitch were personally invited to meet with some soldiers of the Provisionals. Fellows like Seamus here, the real heroes of Ireland! They wanted a chance to thank us for our support. They’re good-fellows, they are, good fellows. So we were told to go to this abandoned house in Ballymurphy, and we went there in broad daylight, broad daylight! Just me and the Congressman’s aide, and you’ll never believe what happened! Never!”
“Clear, unprovoked, blatant brutality,” Tommy the Turd interjected solemnly.
Seamus winked at me while Robert Stitch, who seemed a good deal less proud of the war story than Patrick, stared at the table. “So tell me what happened,” I invited Patrick.
“There must have been a security lapse,” Patrick said, “because we hadn’t been waiting more than five minutes, not five minutes, and the IRA soldiers hadn’t even had time to arrive, when a British patrol came to the house. They knew we were there all right! They shut off the back entrance and attacked through the front. Attacked! Isn’t that the right word, Mr. Stitch?”
“They rushed the house,” Stitch said gravely.
“They didn’t ask who we were,” Patrick said indignantly, “they just attacked!”
“Blatant, unprovoked, clear brutality,” Tommy the Turd assured me. Stitch visibly winced.
Patrick shook his head modestly. “We fought back, of course. We were just defending ourselves, nothing more, but I tell you, those Brit bastards won’t forget meeting Padraig Aloysius McPhee of Boston, no sir! But there were too many of them, just too many.”
“Naked, unprovoked, blatant brutality,” Tommy the Turd told me, while Seamus held his breath in an attempt not to laugh.
“So tell me what happened next?” I asked. I had adopted a wide-eyed expression, full of astonished concern. “Did they take the two of you to the Royal Victoria Hospital?”
“We refused to accept any of the enemy’s medical help,” my brother-in-law said proudly. Stitch was examining the table-top even more closely.
“But surely the enemy arrested you!” I exclaimed. “I mean, sweet suffering Christ, Patrick, but hadn’t you just beaten the living shit out of a whole Brit patrol? So where did the surviving soldiers take you? The Castlereagh Police Station? The Silver City? Falls Road Police Station?”
“They realized their mistake,” Patrick said with immense dignity.
“You mean they apologized?”
“They discovered we were Americans,” he said, “and were forced to let us go.”
“Oh, it’s a rare tale,” I said, sounding deeply impressed.
“Shocking,” Seamus somehow managed not to laugh as he spoke, “nothing short of focking shocking.”
“Clear, naked, blatant brutality,” Tommy the Turd said. He was a dazzlingly handsome youth, stern-faced, machine-tanned and immaculately groomed. His father had recently bought Tommy an expensive blonde wife, which had started speculation that the Congressman was being equipped and coached for a run at the Presidency. “And unprovoked!” he added.
“So you can stuff your mockery, shitface,” Patrick said to me with a triumphant leer.
“I apologize, Patrick, I really do. I had no idea you’d fought so bravely. Now tell me why you rented out my house?”
“Is this relevant?” Robert Stitch intervened.
“Shut up,” I told him, then walked to the back of Patrick’s chair. “A five-year lease, Patrick? Five hundred a month? That’s thirty thousand bucks. You want to write me a check?”
“We’ll talk about it later, Paulie.”
“We’re talking about it now, you fuck. So how much money have you got on you?”
“Not now, Paulie!” He tried to stand up, but I put my hands on his shoulders and held him down.
“How long has the bitch been there, Patrick? Three years? That’s eighteen thousand bucks you’ve taken already! Have you got it handy?”
“Please, Paulie!” He heaved up, but I slapped him hard across the side of his head and he gave a gasp and sat down fast.
I reached into his inside jacket pocket and found his billfold that held a stack of twenty-dollar bills, maybe two or three thousand dollars’ worth. “I’ll take it as a down payment, Padraig, but I’ll be back for the rest. And in the meantime just tell Miss Sarah Sing Tennyson that you made a mistake and that she’s to get the hell out of my home. Do you understand me, Padraig?”
“You can’t take that money!” Patrick said nervously. “That’s not mine.”
“But nor is the rent you take off Miss Tennyson, Padraig.” I shoved the stack of bills into my pocket.
“But that was for the cause!” Patrick insisted.
“And so’s this,” I said, and I bent down and whispered in his ear. “I’m back home for good now, Patrick, and if I find another bruise on Maureen I’ll cut your balls off and feed them to the crows, so help me God.” I could see the sweat beading on his great shovel of a face. I straightened up and belted him across the right side of his skull again, this time so hard that he squealed with pain and almost fell off his chair. I grinned at Tommy the Turd who was looking terrified. “Naked, unprovoked, blatant brutality, Congressman. It’s the way of the Irish. Hey, Seamus, come and have a drink at the bar. We’ll plan some fishing trips, eh? Maybe catch a few blues and stripers.”
“Sounds grand, Paulie.”
I walked to the door. Robert Stitch was frozen, fearing an explosion of violence. Patrick was shaking like a leaf while Tommy the Turd looked as if he’d just pissed into his Brooks Brothers pants. Only Seamus and his lawyer were grinning. “Keep Seamus out of the hands of the Brits,” I told Chuck Sterndale.
“I’ll surely do my best, Mr. Shanahan. But some of that money you just took off Mr. McPhee would help me do it.”
“Mr. Padraig McPhee owes me thousands more, councillor, and it’s all yours, OK?” I looked at Patrick. “I’m having another drink with Charlie Monaghan now,” I told him, “and after that I’m catching a bus for the Cape. So if you want to make something out of what just happened, then you’ll know where to find me. See you in a minute, Seamus.”