Ben had already scrambled across into the passenger seat when I yanked the Audi’s door open, tossed the hold-all into the back seat.
‘What is it, dad?’
‘Police harassment, son,’ I said, locking the doors and reaching under the steering column.
It took about five seconds to get the Audi sparked. By the time I straightened up, the cop was advancing with her arms outstretched.
I revved the engine, which stopped her dead, then rolled the Audi back, punched it up into first.
She had her eyes closed, shoulders sagging and the very picture of relief, as we roared past her heading for the gate. Ben flipping her the bird, screaming, ‘Grand fucking theft auto, motherfuckers!’
It was on the tip of my tongue to chastise him for his language, his lack of respect, but then I was driving a stolen car with ten grand of dirty cash on board, this for a coke buy, my twelve-year-old boy along for the ride. And that was without getting into the whole deal about me being an ex-con for blowing a hole in his father.
I glanced in the rear-view to check if the cop had followed us out and for a split-second caught a glimpse of Gonzo’s shade in the back of the car, the skull-like leer an unspoken question asking how much worse off Ben could have been, really, if Gonz had made it all the way down to that gun he’d been diving for and put me away for keeps.
19
It’s the heartbreak of many a retired and visiting New York cop that the sun does not, in fact, go down on Galway Bay. What actually happens is that the sun declines to a point roughly west of the Cliffs of Moher before disappearing behind the bank of ominous cloud permanently massed above the Aran Islands. You could’ve fried an egg on the stones when we were leaving Sligo, if you’d had an egg. Galway, on the other hand, and as always, was shrouded in a pea-soup drizzle.
We hit Supermacs on Eyre Square. Ben was ravenous, but the aroma of frying meat put me in mind of burnt pork.
‘Gift,’ he said, swooping down on my plate.
It was the first time he’d looked lively since leaving Sligo. He’d slumped in the front seat the whole way, the Gameboy silent in his lap, answering any question with grunts and mumbles. Nodded off not long after passing Knock, when I’d asked if he wanted to divert and see if we couldn’t rustle him up a miracle, only waking when I shook his shoulder in the underground car park off Eyre Square.
Shock, I guessed. It’s one thing, when you’re a kid, to throw snowballs at cop cars, hope they’ll give you a chase. Another thing entirely to be party to a getaway, especially when your old man is the wheelman.
Now he was throwing what he thought were surreptitious glances at a trio of young girls two booths away. ‘Forget about it,’ I said. ‘They only talk Irish in Galway.’
A quick grin. ‘Monty was at the Gaeltacht last summer,’ he said. ‘Said they were all gael-goers.’
‘Oh yeah? What’s a gael-goer?’
‘Y’know.’
‘I’ve heard.’
The familiar pang squeezed my heart as I realised how quickly he was growing, how much I’d missed while I was inside. Even now I was still getting it wrong, buying him gifts more appropriate for an eight-year-old, starting conversations he’d outgrown by years. He was tall for his age and yet to fill out, the shoulders and chest thin and unformed. His complexion was pale and riddled with acne, the face gaunt and shadowed from sitting too close to flickering screens. He had long lashes over round brown eyes, his mother’s eyes, and he might even have looked effeminate if it weren’t for the strong chin, the abrupt nose.
‘So what about this girlfriend I’m hearing about?’ I said. ‘She a gael-goer too?’
A faint reddening joined up the acne dots one by one. ‘What girlfriend?’
‘There’s more than one?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s no girlfriend, dad.’
A doleful note in among all the defiance that made me ache for him. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘kidding aside, we need to talk.’
He made a point of sucking hard on the dregs of his Pepsi. ‘’Bout what?’
‘About school, what d’you think? Your mother and I-’
He rolled his eyes. I paused. We stared.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘no bullshit. So here’s the question. You want to turn out like me, some fuckwit drives a cab?’
He was genuinely flummoxed, albeit intrigued by the foul language. ‘What’s wrong with driving a taxi?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. But you work long hours for fuck-all money. Sometimes you have to deal with drunken assholes. And some of them can be dangerous.’
‘Mum says they should be more worried about you.’
‘Is that a fact? What else does she say?’
‘About you? Not much.’
‘Believe it or not, that’s actually a good sign. You’ll learn all this yourself the hard way.’
Ben scratched at a stain on the knee of his tracksuit. ‘Dad?’
‘What?’
‘Are you ever coming back to live with us again?’
‘That mostly depends on your mother. Although,’ I said, wincing as I heard it out loud, ‘if I don’t it’ll be my fault, not hers.’
‘Who cares whose fault it is?’
‘It’s complicated, Ben.’
‘It’s complicated,’ he mimicked. ‘Everything’s complicated when you’re old,’ he groused.
‘Older.’
‘Old.’
I grinned. ‘Look, we need to have this talk.’ He crossed his eyes. ‘So what do you want to do with your life?’
He shrugged. ‘I dunno.’
‘I mean, what do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘Oh.’ His chin came up. ‘Play football.’
‘You mean professionally.’
He nodded.
‘Nice one. But on the remote off-chance you don’t become a footballer, what would you like to be?’
‘Dunno.’
‘You’re good at art, right?’ He nodded. ‘I mean, you like it.’ He nodded again. ‘And computers, you’re good at them too. And you’re always on the Playstation or Gameboy.’
‘So?’ he said defensively.
‘So how would you like to design computer games when you grow up?’
His eyebrows met in a downy tangle. ‘Design games?’
‘Someone has to. They don’t just appear by magic. And people get paid good money to come up with new games. If you want, I can introduce you to this guy I know, he’s a whizz at computers. He’ll show you how to get started.’
He glanced up warily. ‘Yeah, okay.’
‘I’ll clear it with your mother first, but I don’t think she’ll have any objections.’
‘You think?’
‘Hey — if your mother has a problem with anything you do, it’s for your own good. Hear me?’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Okay.’
I rang Herb.
‘You get it?’
‘Not yet. Just heading over there now.’
‘How come?’
‘Mice and men, Herb. Listen, quick question.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Say you wanted to set someone up with a suite for designing computer games.’ The twitch to my left was Ben cocking an ear. ‘What’re we talking?’
‘All depends on what you need.’
‘Top of the range. No expense spared.’
‘What’re you building?’
‘Shoot-’em-ups. Football. The usual.’
‘Couple of grand’ll get you the beginner’s basics.’
‘Two grand, okay. Cheers.’
Ben looked up, the brown eyes wide and probing. ‘Is that two thousand euro?’
I nodded.
‘Fucking hell,’ he breathed.
‘Watch your language.’
‘You watch yours.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll make you a deal. We can swear all we want, so long as we do it in Irish.’
He groaned and threw me an up-from-under eye that would have put the Gorgon off her feed for a week. ‘You’re funny when you try to be funny, dad. Not funny ha-ha …’
‘Funny peculiar,’ we chimed. It was Dee’s line, but the pronunciation of dad was all his own. Slightly drawn out, as if he was being sardonic. Or maybe he just didn’t get to use the word enough to be entirely comfortable with it.