One interesting part is where and how the warning was delivered. Mart could have just given him a few quick pointers in private, over the gate some afternoon; instead, he saved it up for the poteen party. Either he wanted Cal to hear the message from a bunch of people at once, to drive it home, or he wanted to make sure everyone else knew Cal had been warned. Cal has come away with the strong impression that it was the second one, and that this was for his protection.
He’s unsure what circumstances might make this necessary. Cal is accustomed to being in the dark at the start of an investigation, which means it’s taken him a while to realize that this is an entirely different thing. He has no idea, not just what the people around him know and what they believe, but also what they might think of it, what they want, why they want it, or how they might go about achieving it. Their decades of familiarity, which seemed like a comfort at the beginning of last night, weave themselves into an impenetrable thicket; its layers obscure every action and every motivation till they’re near indecipherable to an outsider. He understands that this effect is, at least in part, deliberate and practiced. The guys like him blindfolded. It’s not personal; keeping him that way is, to them, an elementary and natural precaution.
Cal is aware that he seems like the kind of placid, amenable guy who would heed that warning. That appearance has come in handy plenty of times. He’d love to let it keep being useful here: let the townland relax into the belief that he’s gone back to minding his own business and painting his house. The trouble is, he has no options that allow for that. Back on the job, he could have stayed accommodatingly away from Brendan’s associates and focused on the behind-the-scenes stuff for a while: hooked up with the techie guys to dump Brendan’s phone and track his locations and go through his emails, got the bank to check whether and where his bank card had been used, run all those associates through the system, talked to Narcotics about the Dublin drug boys. He could have bounced possibilities off his partner, O’Leary, a little cop-bellied cynic with a deceptive air of laziness and a keen sense of the ridiculous, and got O’Leary to do some legwork for him.
Here, all that artillery and all those allies have been stripped away. There is no behind the scenes to take cover in. He’s in this empty-handed and alone, out in the wide open.
Cal’s original plan for today was to track down Donie McGrath, but that’s changed. For one thing, Donie is likely to be a huge pain in the ass to interview, and Cal’s head can’t take it. More importantly, he doesn’t have a good enough handle on what’s going on. Even if people were warning him away from Brendan, all they know so far is that he’s trying to find out where a runaway kid ran to, in order to reassure his worried mama or just out of pure nosiness. But Cal knows they’ll be keeping an eye on him. If he talks to Donie, or anyone else who has connections to the Dublin drug boys, they’ll know what he’s thinking. Cal isn’t inclined to take that step until he’s good and ready.
He does have one thing on his list that won’t show any more of his hand and that needs a weekend. In town, he hands in his clothes to the laundromat and heads for the gift shop.
Caroline Horan is still Facebook friends with Brendan, which makes Cal figure the breakup wasn’t too shitty. Her profile shot shows her and two other girls on a beach with their arms around each other, laughing and windblown. Caroline has disorganized brown curls and a round, freckled face with an engaging smile. She also has “Studies at Athlone Institute of Technology” on her profile, meaning that if she’s still working at the gift shop, she’s likely to be pulling weekend shifts.
Sure enough, when he pushes open the gift-shop door with a tinkle of bells, there she is, reorganizing a stand of nameplates with leprechauns on them. She’s shorter than Cal expected, with a neat, rounded figure. Her curls are smoothed into a ponytail and she’s wearing a little bit of makeup, just enough to look groomed but still wholesome.
“Afternoon,” Cal says, looking around, a little bewildered by the amount of stuff. The place is small and chockablock with green things, things made of wool, and things made of marble. Most of them have either shamrocks or twirly Celtic symbols on them. In the background some guy is singing a cheesy ballad that even Cal can tell has nothing in common with the music in Seán Óg’s.
“Hiya,” Caroline says, turning to smile. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Well, I’m looking to buy a present for my niece in Chicago,” Cal says. “She’s gonna be turning six. Maybe you could give me a few recommendations?”
“No problem,” Caroline says cheerfully. She heads behind the counter, picking things off racks and shelves on her way: a gauzy green fairy doll, a shamrock T-shirt, a silver necklace in a little green box, a fuzzy black-faced toy sheep. “If she likes fairies, she’d love this. Or if she’s more sporty, maybe a top and a baseball cap?”
Cal leans on the countertop, keeping a respectful distance, and nods along, taking stock of Caroline. She hasn’t scraped off her accent for college, the way Eugene has; it’s almost as strong as Trey’s. Cal, who after nearly thirty years in Chicago still sounds like a North Carolina boy, approves of that. He likes her readiness of response and the efficiency of her movements, too. Brendan went for confident and competent. And if this girl wanted him, then he was no dummy, either.
“Or you can’t go wrong with a claddagh necklace. It’s the traditional Irish symbol for love, friendship and loyalty.”
“This is pretty cute,” Cal says, picking up the sheep. Alyssa used to love small soft creatures. Her room had them on every surface, neat clusters arranged with care to look like they were having conversations or playing games. He would pick up a couple of them and make them talk to each other, while Alyssa giggled her head off. There was a raccoon who would sneak up on the others and tickle them and then bounce away.
“They’re as local as you can get,” Caroline tells him. “A lady in Carrickmore hand-felts them with wool from her brother’s sheep.”
Cal glances up at her with his brows twitching together. “I got a feeling you live round my way,” he says. “Did I see you helping Noreen out in Ardnakelty store, one time?”
Caroline smiles. “You probably did, yeah. It’s hard to say no to Noreen.”
“Tell me about it,” Cal says, grinning and putting out a hand. “Cal Hooper. The American that’s bought the O’Shea place.”
His name gets no reaction from Caroline, for whatever that’s worth. Her handshake is older than she is, a professional’s. “Caroline Horan.”
“OK,” Cal says, “lemme see if Noreen’s taught me anything. If you’re Caroline, then you’re the one that broke her wrist falling off Noreen’s ladder trying to snitch some cake sprinkles. I get that right?”
Caroline laughs. “God, I was six. I’ll never live that down. And I didn’t even get the sprinkles.”
“Don’t worry,” Cal says, grinning back. “That’s as bad as it gets. Only other things I know are you used to date Brendan Reddy, the guy who’s not available to do my wiring because he took off somewhere, and you’re in college. What’re you studying?”
Brendan’s name does make Caroline blink. “Hotel management,” she says, easily enough, turning away to get more sheep off the shelf. “You can go anywhere with that, you know?”
“Planning on traveling?”
She smiles over her shoulder. “Oh God, yeah. The more the better. And this way I can get paid for it.”
Cal reckons Brendan’s big mistake, or one of them anyway, was doing whatever he did to make Caroline dump him. This girl has the spark of a woman who’s going places. She would have taken the pair of them as far as Brendan could dream of, and then some.