by Ken Bruen
“Human.”
The singer of this called himself
Rag ’n’ Bone Man.
The wonderful thing about these ballsy singers is they are so far from the current range of pretty boy whiners. Made you feel hope in a Trump universe.
Then, less than two weeks after the Manchester horror, came a concentrated three-pronged attack in London, but the consolation at least was the police shot and killed the three lunatics in just eight minutes.
My phone rang. Owen, my friend in the Guards, said,
“Jack, Clancy has been hit by a car.”
Superintendent Clancy, my nemesis.
I snapped,
“I didn’t do it.”
I could nearly see his guilty smile. He added,
“He is in hospital, in a coma.”
I asked,
“You think I should bring him grapes?”
Pause.
Then,
“I think you should bring a solid alibi.”
While I mulled this over, the phone rang again.
Tevis.
He said,
“Jack, my colleagues decided to do you a biggie, to show that Two for Justice has your best interests at play.”
Oh, fuck, not good.
I asked,
“Why would they do that?”
He snorted as if suppressing a giggle, said,
“To ensure you leave the investigation of the twins’ father alone.”
I said nothing.
He pushed.
“Don’t you want to know what they did?”
Not really.
I said,
“Sure.”
“We settled a score from your past, an irritation that has plagued you down the years, and to think you once were friends.”
Clancy?
I asked,
“Superintendent Clancy?”
Now he laughed, said,
“You’d think a Guard would be more careful on the road.”
And hung up.
Each
Angel
Is
Terrible.
This was the title of a quasi-memoir put out by Scott Harden. A crime writer living along the canal. He was in his fifties but looked older; an alleged stint in a South American jail had given him preternaturally totally white hair.
Tall and thin to the point of perhaps illness but his olive skin created a false sheen of health.
He liked to drink.
Jesus, don’t we all?
His tipple of choice, and sales permitting, was tequila. Due to the South American influence?
Who the fuck knows and, in truth, cares?
We weren’t friends but we’d crossed paths often enough to allow us to drink on occasion without sweating it. This time, we’d met on the prom. He was staring out at the ocean, a practice I’d enjoyed my own self. What did he see?
America?
Jail?
Failure?
He was dressed as always in battered brown leather jacket, dark jeans, off-white trainers. I thought,
“I could be looking at me fein” (myself).
He sensed me. I guess if you survive prison in a hellhole, your sense of preservation is acute. He greeted,
“’Tis yourself.”
I answered,
“Buy you a pint?”
Not of tequila, no.
We went to Sally Longs, quiet midafternoon. I ordered the black and he opted for two bottles of Bud, no glass, explained,
“I like to turn out for the U.S. as they are the only gang to buy my books.”
I asked,
“How’s that going for you?”
He considered, then,
“If I put girl in the title, had a troubled but feisty female narrator, well, I’d have a shot.”
We toasted with,
“Sláinte amach.”
And I asked,
“Will you go that route?”
He laughed, not from humor but something like weariness, said,
“It’s that or a misery memoir.”
I said,
“I’m reading Thomas Cook, Tragic Shores.”
He had the Bud bottle mid-lift, waited, asked,
“And?”
“Masterpiece.”
He said,
“I’m going for a smoke.”
Didn’t ask, just stated it. That is very appealing. I joined him. He produced a soft pack of Camels (they still sell those?) and I smiled, said,
“The U.S., right? Your loyalty?”
“Fuck, no. A guy gave them to me.”
He offered but I declined, said,
“I’m vaping.”
He gave that odd smile, said,
“Is it on meself or does that sound just the tiniest bit gay?”
He lit up, coughed, exclaimed,
“God, they’re stale.”
“When did the guy give them to you?”
He thought for a moment, then said,
“A year ago.”
I realized he had a way of speaking that you never were quite sure if he was taking the piss or it was some private gig that amused him alone.
He said,
“The guy? He told me he was a barrister.”
“Okay.”
“But turns out he meant barista.”
Starbucks had recently opened in the Eyre Square center and was thriving. A phone shrilled. He took out one of the very old mobiles,
No camera
No video
No GPS
No paper trail.
He answered, went,
“Uh,
Huh,
Yeah,
Okay.”
Finished the call. I said,
“You talk too much.”
He looked like he might give me a hearty pat on the shoulder or a wallop in the face, said,
“Gotta boogie.”
And took off.
I sat there and wondered if for writers a person wasn’t ever real,
Simply part of the plot. A guy at the bar asked me,
“Was that that writer bollix?”
Which in Ireland is as near a left-field recognition as you will get. But okay, it pissed me off, so I snarled,
“Have you read his books?”
Got the incredulous look and this,
“They’re stabbing books.”
Argue that.
More and more, odd events triggered events from my past. My father was a good, gentle man. How he ended up with my walking bitch of a mother is a mystery. He never once laid a finger on me. Which, nowadays, abuse seeming to be almost mandatory, is indeed remarkable.
But my dear mammie?
Phew-oh, cunt on wheels.
I came home from school, I was about eleven, a hot dinner and care was not the order of the day. She was waiting behind the door and floored me with a wallop to my head, stood over me with her weapon of choice, a thin nasty reed, with tiny embedded studs.
No wonder the clergy loved her. She was their poster girl of punishment, the embodiment of piety and pious posing.
She hissed, spittle leaking from the corners of her small, mean mouth.
“Did you steal the rich tea biscuits?”
We had biscuits?
I burbled,
“No, cross my heart and hope to die.”
She had systematically beaten me for a full four minutes.
I counted.
You think, four?
That’s not so bad.
It is.
Immersed in a dark past, I told myself,
“Get some air, pal.”
I did.
The sun was still beating down and hordes of Irish bewildered thronged Eyre Square. I sat at the top, near the John F. Kennedy memorial. God, we love them there Kennedys, even Teddy.
A woman, nicely dressed, with a solid bearing, holding the hand of a gorgeous little girl, dressed like Holly Hobbie. (Remember her? Little bonnet, cute booties, channeling Laura Ingalls Wilder.*)<
br />
The * is for “footnote”; if you want to go literary, have at least one footnote.
The woman approached, the little girl smiling hesitantly.
The woman.
Something in the way she moved.
She stood right in front of me, said,
“Gretchen, say hello to your father.”
*From Little House on the Prairie.
If you go far enough
into
the past
you will meet
yourself
coming back.
(Galway drinking song lyric)
17
I stared at the woman, asked,
“Kiki?”
Oh, my sweet shocking Lord.
My ex-wife.
Though if you measure in time quantity it barely scraped under the legal wire.
*
After the Guards, such is how I see my dismissal from said force, I went to London.
Went to bits.
Living on Ladbroke Grove (not at all like in the Van Morrison song), and in some barely remembered haze, met and married a German professor of metaphysics. In her defense, she was even more into booze than me. I think she thought I was some sort of Behan manqué.
Two weeks and she was howling for divorce.
I had a beard as my hands shook too much to shave.
*
A child?
Really?
I thought,
What the fuck.
The chronology I figured would be about right.
I think.
She asked,
“You do not remember me?”
In a tone that leaked a now recalled severity in her speech. Maybe it was a German thing to be so direct. I said,
“Guten Tag, Gedichte und Briefe zweisprachig.”
How I dredged that up, Christ knows.
But she liked it and, even better, so did the child.
Fuck, the insanity of the alkie mind-set. In my head I was already playing happy families. The child was staring at me with utter bewilderment. I asked in my dumb fashion,
“Does...
Does...
She
Speak
English?”
A fleeting irritated expression danced across Kiki’s face. Now I remembered her intolerance of my ill-thought-out processes. She snapped,
“Gretchen was raised in New York where I got sober. She speaks three languages.”
I nearly asked,
“Any of them civil?”
As Kiki spoke, the sleeve of her Barbour jacket rode up, showing a gold Rolex oyster on a nicely tanned arm. The Germans coming to Ireland have obviously heard of our soft rain as the first thing they pack is ye old royal Barbour.
Even the child sported a Rolex.
Fuck.
This retriggered the happy family shit, and mindful of Kiki’s Ph.D. in metaphysics I said,
“The meta racket paying better than you’d expect.”
Gretchen piped up,
“Mommy is a doctor for sick souls.”
This, in an American twang. I wondered if maybe it was Teutonic humor.
Kiki said,
“My second husband is a very successful man.”
Second.
What kind of floozy was she?
I asked,
“How long are you in town for?”
She patted the child’s head and I for a split second wished it were me.
Madness.
She said,
“We must leave tomorrow for Berlin.”
The must bearing all the gravitas of the German imperative.
Then, with a sad smile, she referenced the TV show we’d watched in our brief time, said,
“Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.”
As they turned to go, the child whispered in German to her.
I figured she wanted maybe a hug, asked,
“What did she say?”
“She asked why you are so old.”
“Upon
Some
Midnights
Clear”
(K. C. Constantine)
18
“They threw a dead dog into the hole after the consul’s body.”
Such are the end lines of Malcolm Lowry’s
Under the Volcano.
Lines I always found shocking on so many levels. In the movie version, Albert Finney produced the best on-screen depiction of an alcoholic ever.
Such were my meanderings after discovering I had a daughter and, gee, I had all of ten minutes with her.
My cup fucking overflowed.
*
Across town, Joffrey was walking home from school.
He felt independent.
Didn’t take any notice of the white van a few yards from him. As he approached, a fat man came quickly around the side, grabbed him, pushing a cloth over his mouth, a cloth that smelled of hospitals. In seconds he was limp.
Peter Boyne was sweating profusely, but joy mixed with adrenaline coursed through his body. He muttered,
“Oh, my beauty.”
He slid the side door open, threw the body inside, didn’t dare look around but moved quickly, got in the driver’s seat, and slowly pulled away. He hit the music deck. Queen blasted forth,
“We Will Rock You.”
“Too fucking right.”
He shouted.
Punched the air in victory.
As he disappeared in traffic, a lone schoolbag lay on the path, like a discarded wish.
In Irish folklore three kinds of silence are identified:
Silence through fear,
Silence through choice,
Silence of compassion.
“I only understood the third.”
(Tevis)
19
Lockdown.
In a whirl of grief, rage, frustration,
I barricaded myself in the apartment.
“Some are born to endless night.”
My mind was a cesspool of
Remorse
Recrimination
Revolt.
Any word beginning with R, especially revulsion. Blocked out the world. My phone turned off. Sipping on Jay, trying to measure out how drunk I intended to get. Watched
Fargo 3.
David Thewlis, in a performance to rival Billy Bob Thornton in series one. This was indeed the time of Noah Hawley, his novel Before the Fall winning a shitload of awards, his early books reissued, and Legion receiving rave reviews in its first season.
A line from his early novel The Punch spooling in my head:
“Different bullets, same gun.”
The Hound of Heaven was no longer simply snapping at my heels but in full sit on my chest, heavy as death. I read a long account of the failed attempt by Andrew O’Hagan to write the bio of Assange, then followed that with a book of the twelve marines who guarded Saddam in his last months before he was hanged.
Nearly laughed in an insane fashion that Saddam had a special liking for Mary J. Blige.
You mutter,
“Like dude, seriously?”
Reread the classic horror by Anne Siddons, The House Next Door.
Then I turned my phone on and hell reared up on its ferocious legs and howled.
I heard hysteria, writ large, the weeping and keening of tears. I was as aforementioned, not in the best set of patience, snarled,
“Cut the drama, I can’t hear you.”
Marion.
A moment as she composed herself, then,
“It’s Joffrey, they’ve taken him.”
WTF?
I took a second to focus, then did the ice gig, asked,
“Who? Who took him?”
“We don’t know. He’s been missing for three days.”
I managed to stay on the cool vibe, asked,
“Where are you?”
“I’m staying with Maeve. I flew home as soon as I heard. Oh, God, Jack, what will I do?”
Like I had a clue but the even tone was workin
g, so I said,
“Come over here. I will get right on it.”
“Oh, thank you, Jack, and I’m sorry the way I spoke to you last time.”
Me, too.
But
“Just get here. I’ll be making calls.”
What, I’d call the Guards?
Gave me time to shower, clean up the debris of my bender, did some lines of coke to fly right, wore a crisp new white shirt, the camouflage of the seasoned drinker. It near blinded me in its brightness and those fucking pins they put in them left my fingers shredded. The shakes, sure, but the coke was kicking its ass.
As I did the mop-up, I saw the cover of the DVD.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.
Yeah.
Shows how nuts I’d been for those lost days. It was brilliantly bonkers and had Dominic Cooper whom recently I’d watched as Preacher,
With Joe Gilgun
Giving a master class in demonic craziness, playing, wait for it,
Irish vampire who was also a dope fiend and boozer.
You don’t need to be way out there to appreciate these dark insane series but it doesn’t hurt.
Maybe I’d watch
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Finally, a way to watch Jane Austen without being bored shitless.
Then, oh Lord,
A sheet of paper with this in barely legible writing:
Kiki Taylor
Room 37
Meyrick Hotel
Ph. 577821
Two feelings colliding:
Horror at what I might have said if I did call her.
Kind of fucked-up delight that she still used my name.
How utterly lame was that?
I checked myself in the mirror, the white shirt did help but the eyes...
Seriously fucked. I couldn’t answer the door in shades.
Could I?
She’d think Bono’s dad was staying with me.
I rang Owen, my Guards contact. He was not pleased, growled,
“The fuck, Jack? You can’t ring me every time you have a problem.”
