In the Galway Silence

by Ken Bruen

  He’d bring home fish and chips, in newspaper, smelling like heaven. My mother, the bitch, would cause unholy hell, roaring,

  “How dare you come into this house smelling like a brewery?”

  Fucking rich.

  She’d have been home, sipping sweet sherry like a banshee, three sheets to the quasi-religious wind. Most times, she’d snatch the fish supper, fling it in the bin. She’d turn on me, snarl,

  “What are you looking at?”

  Once, I’d answered,

  “Not much.”

  And meant it.

  She’d beaten me to an inch of my life and not for the first time.

  But the pub was reopened and still retained most of the character of the original, plus they drew the almost perfect pint, one that was a joy to behold, the cream top, the sheer blackness in all its pristine glory.

  I was sitting on a high stool, savoring my first pint, when a guy slipped onto the stool beside me. He greeted,

  “How ya, Jack?”

  I nodded, noncommittal. Chat was not on my menu.

  I had made a decision.

  To kill Michael Allen and real soon.

  The guy said,

  “Not sure if you remember me. We played hurling together?”

  I said,

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Weighing it with enough indifference to halt a Sunday Mass. Undeterred, he plowed on.

  “I’m Tommy, Tommy Foyle.”

  I was about to shut him down when he asked,

  “You ever were anointed, Jack?”

  WTF?

  I asked,

  “You mean like the last rites?”

  When I was a kid, if you heard,

  “Call for the priest,”

  You knew the poor fucker was a goner—not the priest, the patient.

  He said,

  “Yeah. I was on my last legs, and the priest came. I was never, like, real religious but when he put the holy oils on me I had such peace like you’d not believe.”

  I stated the obvious.

  “You recovered, I see.”

  He laughed, said,

  “I’m like a young lad now.”

  For a horrendous moment, I thought he said,

  “I’d like a young lad.”

  I said,

  “That’s great.”

  I half meant it.

  What the hell, I bought him a pint. He asked,

  “Do a chaser with it?”

  Yeah, he was better.

  Behind me I heard a man speaking Irish, a rare to rarest thing.

  He was saying,

  “Bhi fachtious orm” (I was afraid).

  I thought,

  Me, too.

  The other speaker said,

  “Och, no bac leat.”

  The literal translation is, “Ah, never mind him.”

  But you get grit behind the words, utter it with force, it’s,

  “Fuck him.”

  Needless to say, I prefer the latter usage.

  I left the pub, stood on Eyre Square for a while, watching the skateboarders, and, hands down, we have the worst, the very fucking worst, boarders on the planet. Maybe it’s just not an Irish thing and constant rain would deter the most ardent skater, but it was almost painful to see how downright awful they were.

  Almost.

  I shook myself. I had a rifle to steal.

  Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many

  mysteries but imcompetence isn’t one of them.

  (Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon)

  And in the

  Galway

  silence

  came Jericho.

  32

  A sixty-four-year-old accountant booked a room on the thirteenth floor of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. He somehow managed to bring over thirty weapons along.

  An open-air country and western festival was taking place below him.

  He shot fifty-six dead and injured over two hundred others before turning the gun on himself. He had planned to hit fuel canisters alongside other hotels and create a fireball of epic size.

  A woman in the UK used her dead husband’s ashes to have a ring made so she could literally wear him.

  Harvey Weinstein fled to Europe after numerous women accused him of all kinds of sexual harassment.

  Catalonia attempted to declare independence and the Spanish government reacted with violence to a peaceful demonstration.

  The above is just part of a daily litany of horror we were witness to in this year of our Lord 2017.

  Stephen King turned seventy and had half a dozen TV and film adaptions on release.

  James Lee Burke at eighty had a new Robicheaux novel published.

  My mind was too fucked with rage to read but if I ever got to higher ground I had a list of old / new favorites to savor:

  The Redemption of Charlie McCoy by C. D. Wilsher

  Caught Stealing, Charlie Huston

  A Lesson in Violence, Jordan Harper

  And an old favorite from way back in 1996,

  My Ride with Gus by Charles Carillo.

  Such idle musings floating in my head as I side-minded the fact of having to procure a rifle and got to my apartment. There was a black envelope pinned to my door.

  Black!

  Now that was not going to be glad tidings.

  Got inside, poured a large Jay, and carefully opened the envelope, a gold-embossed card with Gothic letters

  Like this:

  “Await

  the

  Dead

  of

  Jericho.”

  I tossed it aside, figuring I’d worry about it later.

  The radio was on with the terrific Marc Roberts. He played

  Don Stiffe,

  Followed by as near perfect a pop song as I’ve heard, titled

  “Perfect”

  By Ed Sheeran.

  I looked out at the bay as the song played softly behind me.

  Such longing for I don’t know what suffused every part of my being.

  Stir of echoes.

  Back in my fledgling days as an investigator, I really had no idea what I was doing.

  I achieved a limited amount of success due mainly to luck, most of it bad, and sheer chance. I became friends with a Ban Garda, Ni Iomaire. To her constant annoyance, I always used the English form of her name.

  Ridge.

  She was a strong gutsy lady. You needed all of that to be a woman in the Guards, not to mention gay. Would that she had lived to see a female Garda superintendent. For a few years, we had a kind of embittered friendship. She did the friend bit and I supplied the bitterness.

  In spades.

  The third spoke in our unlikely alliance was a former drug dealer turned Zen master who made a living as a property developer. He was much closer to Ridge than I was and they both tried to, if not stop, at least regulate my drinking.

  They failed.

  Stewart was the first to die.

  Shotgun blast to the face.

  That was the beginning of the ruin of my relationship with Ridge. She reckoned I was to blame for Stewart’s death and she might well have been correct but fuck if I was going to fess up. I had a list of deaths at my door as long as a Vatican rosary.

  Then Ridge got killed.

  Very nearly finished me off. I found myself at the end of Nimmo’s Pier, mulling what the American cops describe as

  “Eating my gun.”

  Ridge at one low point in her personal life and career decided that a straight marriage might if not improve at least enhance both.

  And what a beau she chose.

  Anthony Hyphen Hemple.

  I put the hyphen in there for badness.

  His actual name was

  Anthony Bradford-Hemple.

  He was the essence of Anglo-Irish, had inherited a seat in the House of Lords,

  And I think actually sat there on two occasions.

  Two!

  Count ’em.

  Needless to
say, I gave Ridge a ferocious time about all of this, calling her Lady Ridge. Fuck, she hated that and, in time, of course, hated me. He liked to play to the image:

  Old cords, very very battered Barbour wax jacket, unkempt hair, a cloth cap, and tweeds of everything else, even his undies I’d say.

  He loved the hunt.

  Vicious fuckers on horseback chasing a poor fox.

  His favorite tipple was the old G and T, Gordon’s by divine right.

  He’d said,

  “When one is going to hounds, one fortifies with port and brandy.”

  Despite the above, I didn’t mind him.

  How Irish is that?

  I tear him to shreds (much like his lot did the fox) then say I quite liked him.

  He was bemused by me, utterly.

  Called me

  “A surprisingly well-read peasant.”

  For a wedding present I’d given him the collected works of Siegfried Sassoon.

  Including,

  Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.

  The one time I’d been to his manor—and I mean that in the literal sense,

  Manor—

  Like those of so many of the former landlords, the old house was a crumbling ruin with more ruins than people. And cold.

  Perishing.

  The Anglo-Irish have a thing about heating, probably due to rising costs but they seem to believe one big motherfucking log and turf fire is sufficient.

  Anthony had inspected me at the door and I said,

  “No butler?”

  He ran with it as opposed to against me, quipped,

  “When we have the poor folk over, we give the staff the night off.”

  Ridge had the grace to cringe.

  I’d given her the full James Lee Burke set, signed first editions.

  It was a time when I’d been dipping her dainty foot in the world of mystery fiction. JLB was her favorite.

  Anthony took my all-weather Garda coat, sniffed at it, asked,

  “Isn’t this government issue?”

  I gave him the look, said,

  “Don’t tell your wife, she’s one of them.”

  He gave me a shocked look, thinking I meant the verboten lesbian.

  Whisper.

  I quickly added,

  “One of the Guards.”

  Relief flooded his face, spattered with rosacea. He offered,

  “Bushmills okay?”

  My turn to quip.

  “That’s the Protestant one, give us a Jay.”

  I’d made a small effort, put on a Rotary tie I’d stolen from a drunk, and Anthony, surprised, asked,

  “You’re a Rotarian?”

  Disbelief leaked all over his tone. I said,

  “’Twas that or the Masons.”

  He let that slide, raised his glass, toasted,

  “Tootle pip.”

  At least I think that was it, or in the neighborhood. He asked,

  “You shoot?”

  Like seriously?

  I said,

  “Only when the hurley isn’t enough.”

  He grimaced more than smiled, said,

  “Let me show you the gun cabinet.”

  And cabinet it was.

  Stocked with enough to quell a minor peasant revolt. He picked one out, said,

  “This is a beauty.”

  It was.

  Made by Winchester, with the old bolt action. You pull that back as the bullet slides into the breech, the bolt action making a satisfying sound like the comforting clunk of your favorite old Zippo.

  It smelled of oil and much usage.

  I liked it a lot.

  He said,

  “You can fit a scope but I think that is a tad unfair to the game.”

  There is no answer to this that even approaches civility so I made the indifferent,

  “Uh-huh.”

  I remember clearly holding the rifle and that freakish sense of power it falsely imparts. No wonder they talk of

  “Gun nuts.”

  Anthony was impressed, said,

  “Looks good on you, my man.”

  I reluctantly handed it back. He said,

  “We must spend a day shooting pheasant.”

  Later, I was outside, staring at the hill opposite the house. Ridge joined me, bummed a cig, asked,

  “Don’t tell Anthony.”

  As I lit her up, I asked,

  “He’d disapprove?”

  I should have paid more heed to her answer. She said,

  “He disapproves of me.”

  She pointed at the hill, said,

  “There’s a fairy mound on that.”

  I near sneered, went,

  “You believe in fairies?”

  Crushing her cig underfoot, she snarled,

  “I am a fucking fairy.”

  They were last seen westbound,

  armed and dangerous.

  “Salt and pepper faggots,” Larkin muttered.

  “I’ve said it all along. All Green Berets have the extra male chromosome.

  “Violence queers.”

  (Kent Anderson, Night Dogs)

  33

  I needed transport if I was going to burgle Anthony’s gaff.

  Gaff!

  Christ, I had been watching too much Brit TV. I knew he had the Masonic lodge on Wednesday, and the staff (diminished as they were due to the economy) had the night off.

  So it had to be a Wednesday.

  I could hardly take a cab or risk stealing a vehicle. I still had plenty of cash due to Emily’s legacy and the fee Pierre Renaud had given me. I went to a car rental and, fuck it, got a stuck-up gobshite in attendance who began,

  “How may we be of service to sir this fine morning?”

  Fuck, I was tired already. I said,

  “For openers, don’t call me sir.”

  That softened his cough.

  A bit.

  He pulled out a load of forms, said,

  “If s... you would be kind enough to fill out these.”

  A rake of them.

  I said,

  “I’m here for a damn car, not a job application.”

  He smirked, said,

  “Data protection.”

  Since the banks robbed us blind, data protection was the excuse of choice for laziness. But I did fill out the bloody things. Handed them over.

  He scrutinized them as if they were WikiLeaks, said,

  “No bank details?”

  I said, tersely,

  “I’m not looking for a loan, just a car.”

  The smirk again.

  He asked, with total incredulity,

  “You want to pay cash?”

  His face registered that I seemed a tad old for a drug dealer. He asked,

  “What size and model did sir...”

  Pause.

  “Have in mind?”

  All my battered life I wanted one time to drive a big fucking Jeep, let out all my macho bullshit in one dizzy flourish. I said,

  “Something big, like a Land Rover.”

  Cross my unholy heart but he actually tittered, did risk,

  “You know what they say about men and big cars?”

  God on a bike.

  I leaned over the counter, got right up in his shit, as they say in the hood, snarled,

  “You in the business of renting cars or just fucking with people?”

  Frightened him. He stammered,

  “No call for that,” and looked around for help. There was none.

  Just me.

  He said,

  “The Mazda is a standout in the crossover SUV class. The CX-5 is a joy to drive.”

  I cut him off, asked,

  “Is it stick shift?”

  I meant, had it gears that you manually handled so you actually knew you were doing the driving and not the automatic shite they peddled, ad nauseam, and don’t even get me started on hybrids / electric crap.

  He dismissed me with a shrug, said,

  “Perhaps sir would do better somew
here else.”

  The contempt dripped from every italicized word.

  For a moment, I considered pucking him on the upside of his arrogant head but went with,

  “You should think about working in a pharmacy. They seem to specialize in employing cunts who read you the riot act if you ask for Solpadeine.”

  I went down to the car park off the Claddagh and God smiled, or maybe the devil. Sitting right there was a battered Jeep, the license plates covered in dirt.

  Perfect.

  Took me all of five minutes to hot-wire and drive that muthah out of there.

  The back window was dirty, ideal for me perch; shoot from there.

  Locked and loaded.

  Now I just had to break into Anthony’s home and grab the rifle.

  Adrenaline was giving me a jolt of energy that made me feel alive in a dark and glorious way.

  Back at my apartment, I did a few lines of coke to smooth out the vibes of electricity, was watching Stephen King’s

  Storm of the Century,

  Little realizing how utterly serendipitous that would be very soon.

  A knock at the door. I opened to

  Michael Allen,

  Holding my daughter’s hand.

  He pushed the little girl toward me, snapped,

  “You get her today. My love and I are having a date day.”

  And the fucker winked at me.

  The girl looked frightened. I said,

  “Come on in love, I’ll get you a soft drink.”

  The tiniest of smiles.

  How that warmed my ice heart.

  Allen summoned me outside with a beckoning finger, said,

  “I need a freaking day free of the damn nose snot.”

  Lovely.

  He smirked.

  “Try to keep her out of the pubs.”

  And he was gone.

  I closed the door and faced my daughter with deep anxiety, tried,

  “Anything you want to do, ’tis done.”

  She looked at me quizzically, asked,

  “Are you, like, really my, like...”

  Pause

  “... Dad?”

  Her accent veered between American Valley girl and mid-Atlantic twang.

  I said,

  “Yes, I am your father.”

  Fuck, how weird that sounded.

  She had a small satchel, made of just beautiful soft leather, Gucci on the front.