“You owe me big time.”
No denying that.
The coffee came. She took a sip, said,
“Mmmmm, authentic.”
I reached for my cigs, and she said,
“Light two.”
“You’re smoking now?”
“I like to revisit all my vices.”
She took one drag, stubbed it out, said,
“The guy you hit, I know him.”
“Oh.”
“A little pressure and he could be persuaded to drop the charges.”
“I doubt if he will.”
She tilted her head, said,
“You really don’t understand how things work, do you,Jack?”
“Probably not.”
She tapped a fingernail against her cup. Light enamel on the nail caught the reflection from the window. She asked,
“You know what a cluster fuck is, Jack?”
As before, the ease with which she swore took me blindside. I had to wait a moment before I answered.
“I could take a guess.”
“I thought you might. In case you’re not sure, it’s what you get when you piss off a group of powerful people. You seem to have a knack of doing that. Tourism is a vital part of our city’s income, and if you dredge up past shame, you throw a shadow over the whole deal.”
I drank some of the coffee. She was right, it was great. I asked,
“How did you know I was in jail?”
“The grapevine. I thought you’d need help.”
“Let me see if I have it right. If I drop certain investigations... the Magdalen, yours... I’ll be all right.”
She gave her radiant smile.
“Exactly.”
I stood, said,
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances.
You can’t lose what you lacked at conception. It’s time to demythologise
an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars.”
James Ellroy, American Tabloid
As I left the cafe, the owner said,
“Ciao.”
I didn’t answer him. It wasn’t my day for fostering European unity. As I walked up Eyre Street, coming to Roches, I didn’t meet a soul I knew. Not that there weren’t people. The paths were crowded. Galway had become a city. As a child, if I walked down the town, I knew every single person. Not only that, I knew all belonging to them.
Part of me welcomed the new anonymity, but I felt something had been lost. Not so much familiarity, more a comforting intimacy. Finally a man said,
“Jack?”
A guy I’d gone to school with. Jeez, how long ago was that? I guessed,
“Sean?”
It must have been correct, as he shook my hand, said,
“The last time I saw you, you were going to be a guard.”
I was tempted to say,
“And you had hair... teeth.”
But he was friendly, and that was vital right then. I asked,
“How have you been?”
He considered, then,
“I was in hospital.”
“Oh.”
“It’s full of non-nationals.”
“What have they got?”
“Mainly medical cards.”
I smiled at the casual racism. He wasn’t sure which side of a liberal fence I was on, so he ventured,
“Beds are scarce. You leave it, you lose it.”
“And now... how are you?”
“Middling.”
This is a classic Irish answer. It shows they’re not complaining, yet leaves the door open for any sympathy that might be on offer. He studied me, asked,
“What happened to the suit?”
I checked the tear, which seemed to have grown, said,
“A difference of opinion.”
He gave the mandatory expression of pain, said,
“They took out my stomach last year.”
“They” could be... muggers, passers-by, doctors.
I nodded as if it made any sense. He said,
“You know what’s the hardest thing?”
God knows, various answers came, but I decided not to run with them. Instead,
“I don’t.”
“Chips and chocolate. I was a hoor for them.”
“They’re a loss.”
“Fierce. I could murder a plate of chips and vinegar, then the king size bar of milk chocolate.”
He looked totally desolate, then,
“Course I have my prayers.”
“You do?”
“I’d be lost without them.”
He looked toward the Square, said,
“There’s my bus.”
“You take care.”
“I will, Jack. Eat a bag of chips for me.”
As I watched him walk away, I felt a yearning for a simpler era. Not that I’d ever keep it simple. No matter how plain sailing it might have got, I’d manage to complicate it. Alcoholics patented the concept of snatching defeat from any glimmer of victory. Lit a cig, and a passing woman said,
“Them yokes will kill you.”
“They’ll have to stand in line.”
“What I would call a supernatural and mystical experience has in its very essence
some note of a direct spiritual contact of two liberties, a kind of flash or spark
which ignites an intuition... plus something much more which I can only
describe as personal in which God is known not as an object or as ‘Him up there’
but as the biblical expression, I am... this is not the kind of intuition
that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and
depends on the liberty of the person.”
When I got to the hotel, Mrs Dailey came out from reception, said,
“You’ve been in the wars.”
“I have.”
“Give me that jacket, I’ll put a stitch in.”
“There’s no need.”
“And what, you’re going to walk around like a vagrant?”
It was easier to concede. I took the jacket off, handed it over. She examined the cloth, tut-tutted, said,
“They get away with murder.”
I left her muttering. Upstairs, I went straight to my stash, got two heavy duty pills, took them fast. I wanted a shower so bad I could scream. First, I rummaged round, found the ban garda’s number, dialled. A few minutes, then,
“Hello?”
“Ridge, it’s Jack Taylor.”
“Oh, I didn’t expect you to call.”
“Me either. You said you wanted to help.”
“I do.”
“OK. Ru n background on Mrs Kirsten Boyle. Lives in Taylor’s Hill. Her husband died recently.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who she is.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
Click.
Jeez, she was a tough girl to like. I lay back on the bed, thought,
“I’ll grab that shower in a minute.”
Slept until late evening. My dreams were vivid. Saw my father with his head hung in shame. Saw the love of my life, Ann Henderson, walking away and heard Danny Flynn say,
“I’m safe.”
Like I said... vivid.
“I just wish, though, that the human race was not quite
so often trapped by its own versatility.”
John Arden, Introduction to Cogs Tyrannic
It took me two days to find Dill Cassell. His usual haunt, Sweeney’s, remained closed. I trawled through Galway’s late night pubs, hearing a word here, a hint there. He was not some-body people were comfortable talking about.