Wonderland: An Inspector Matt Minogue Mystery (The Matt Minogue Series Book 7)
Page 10
It was twenty minutes before Quinn spotted Tony Junior’s Alfa pulling in.
“Keep an eye out,” Quinn said. He waited for Canning to look over. “I mean really keep an eye out.”
Tony Junior had begun unloading boxes from the boot. He was heading laden to the door of the chipper when he saw Quinn coming down the footpath.
“Tony,” Quinn called out. “How’s it going?”
“Not so bad. Not so bad, Mr. Quinn.”
“Here, I’ll get the door for you.”
Tony looked over at the car, Canning watching them.
“You need a hand lifting them, Tony?”
“I’m grand, thanks.”
“Need to have a word with you.”
Tony Senior had come to the door now. Must be eighteen or twenty stone now, Quinn thought.
“There’s only me and the da,” Tony said. “Getting ready for the school crowd and all, you know?”
Quinn tried to smile.
“Just a couple of minutes, Tony. No big thing.”
Quinn got to the door before Tony Senior, and he pushed it open. Tony Senior said something to his son in Italian. Tony Junior put the boxes on the counter, and said something back to his da. Quinn stared back into Tony Senior’s glare.
“Show me that nice new car of yours, will you?”
Quinn nodded at Tony Senior as they left. Tony Junior used a remote. Quinn eyed Canning as he made his way across to the Alfa and he sat in. Tony Junior played with the controls in a half-hearted way. Then he took a paper hankie from the glove compartment and slowly ran it over the instrument panel.
Quinn watched him. A bit of a daw, he remembered. He’d had something wrong with him at school.
“Nice car, Tony.”
“Making a living, Mr. Quinn. You know.”
“Your da’s car, is it?”
“Yeah. Maybe you should talk to me da, Mr. Quinn.”
“About what, Tony?”
“Well, I don’t know, but like, whatever it is.”
Quinn studied the dark brown patches under Tony Junior’s eyes. Gone pale then, was Tony. It was one of the Egans ran the insurance here. Quinn wondered how much the Cafollas were paying.
“How’s your memory these days, Tony?”
“Well, I suppose it’s not bad really.”
“You do the evenings, right?”
Cafolla nodded. He began to run his hands along the steering wheel. Quinn looked back at the father standing there at the glass, the big arms folded.
“Well, most evenings,” Cafolla said. “Yes.”
“Tuesday night, around closing time?”
“The pub crowd, do you mean, Mr. Quinn?”
“That’s right. You know, call me Bobby, will you. So you remember a bit of a commotion then of the Tuesday? You remember?”
Tony Junior swallowed. The eyelids going on him, Quinn noted. You could nearly hear the poor iijit trying to calculate here.
“Just what happened, Tony. There’s no problem from my end. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Mr. Quinn.”
“Go on, then.”
“There was a fella came in. With a Chinese girl. Actually she spoke English.”
“A Chinese girl?”
“I think she was his girlfriend.”
“Him being . . .?”
“Well, he was one of the Malones, wasn’t he,” Tony Junior said. “We sort of know his family. They used to be fairly regular a few years ago. He has a brother.”
“Which one of them was it Tuesday.”
“The cop, the Guard, I mean.”
“And who else, aside from the girl?”
“I never seen the other fella before, or at least I don’t remember ever seeing him.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Who else was here?”
“The young fella works the grill. He’s a local lad, a student. But I do the counter and all in the evenings. You never know with people, especially that time of night. You know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean, Tony. Definitely, I do.”
Quinn watched Tony Junior’s eyes dart around, the faster rub on the Alfa symbol on the steering wheel.
“So,” he said. “What happened?”
Quinn nodded and smiled while Tony talked. He had a bit of a stutter on his s, he realized.
“Did he say any names, during the thing?”
“Well, I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was saying, Mr. Quinn. I mean, I was worrying things might get out of hand entirely.”
“Well, did he mention my name, say?”
Tony Junior nodded.
“Tell me what he said.”
“Well, like I said, I don’t remember exactly every word.”
“Do the best you can. Tony?”
“Well, he said, I don’t know if I got it right, he said something like ‘Bobby Quinn can take care of this. Something like that, I don’t know if I got the words exact there.’”
“And did he say what that meant?”
“Mr. Quinn, me da wants me in, it’s getting late for the dinnertime crowd—”
“—Tony. You need to listen to me. To what I’m asking you.”
Tony stopped rubbing. He looked over at the father scowling and tapping on the glass by the door to the chipper. The father held up his watch and pointed at it. Quinn gave him a hard look and held up three fingers.
“Did he get specific, Tony?”
“What?”
“Did he say what he meant, Tony?”
“No, I mean I don’t think so.”
“You’re a bit too quick there, Tony, for my liking.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Quinn?”
“This ‘no’ thing. I think you have a good enough memory, so I do.”
“True as God. I was just trying to think what to do.”
“Like what? Like call the Guards?”
“No, no. I didn’t. No, I wouldn’t do that, Mr. Quinn.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the fella there, he was a Guard, wasn’t he?”
Quinn looked at him. He was nervous enough. This was Tony Cafolla Junior’s logic, then, was it.
“This was after the Guard hit him, Mr. Quinn. When he said your name.”
“After.”
“That’s right. He was on the floor, picking himself up, that’s what he was doing. You know he wasn’t as mad as you’d think, so he wasn’t. I remember that.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, up he gets, and I see him, and he’s, well he’s almost smiling. Yes.”
That fits, Quinn decided. Doyle got his way by provoking people, annoying them.
“But he’d started talking about the brother then, right?”
“Right.”
“‘Your brother’s on his way out and you’re here buying cod and chips’?”
“That’s right. That’s what he said. I think.”
“And ‘you’re going to let your brother go down the effing drain’?”
“That’s right.”
“Just him, and the girl, along with Malone, then.”
“Right.”
“But the fella doing the grill back in the kitchen? Did you forget him, Tony?”
“Yes—I mean, no. It all started so fast that he didn’t know anything, Mr. Quinn. He only came out later when the fella left, when he heard him shouting. ‘What’s happening, Tony’ he says to me, and I says, ‘Nothing, go back in the kitchen, it’s just a fella with a few jars on him.’”
“No shouting during this dust-up?”
“No. It was weird, like it was a conversation. Like I was saying. That’s why it was such a surprise, like. The whole thing. And it was over in a minute.”
There was a pleading look on Tony Junior’s face now, Quinn saw. His lips were gone dry, and he had been clearing his throat a lot. Quinn looked back at the father, still staring at them.
“Do youse have cameras in the shop, Tony?”
“Is everything so quiet around here then?”
“Well, things are better all around, Mr. Quinn. We don’t have the problems we used to have a while back.”
Quinn looked for any irony but there was none. How could there be, he decided. Tony Junior probably believed everything he was told by his oul lad. His oul lad who paid his insurance but was hardly happy about it, that is.
Quinn nodded and he shifted in his seat.
“This is a very nice set of wheels here, Tony. Very nice.”
“Thanks, Mr. Quinn.”
“You’d be the happy man driving this around, I bet, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s a fact, oh I’m not complaining there.”
Quinn mustered a smile. He held out his hand.
“Thanks, Mr. Quinn. Thanks.”
A small enough notch above handicapped, Quinn thought. All to the good.
“For what, Tony?”
He watched the confusion spread over Tony Junior’s face.
“It’s me should be saying that to you, Tony. Thank you.”
He grasped the door handle. Sometime soon he could move out of the crap car the cops could laugh about and get into some half-decent car like this.
“Don’t be booting it, now, you hear me, Tony?”
“Okay, Mr. Quinn.”
“The Guards would love to get you. Oh yes they would, in a nice flash car like this. Mad jealous, they’d be.”
The smile of relief had changed Tony Junior’s face completely. The poor dope had that pretty-boy film-star look, all right. Any gold-digger would have to get by his oul fella though.
“Before I go now, Tony, tell me something. I nearly forgot. What was the fella’s name there, the fella caused the trouble?”
Tony Junior’s face told him all he needed to know. “Never seen him before, Mr. Quinn”: bloody sure he knew Doyle. Still he waited a few moments while Junior worked something through his mind.
“Ah it’s okay, Tony. Just wondering, that’s all.”
A Folley-Up
Minogue put the bags of groceries on the kitchen floor and picked up the phone. Malone sounded cagey.
“I just thought I’d tell you,” he said. “As a folley-up.”
“Fire away, so.”
“I’m going to pay Bobby Quinn a little visit—and I’m going on me own.”
Minogue watched something sliding slowly in one of the plastic bags. It moved under the Irish Times he had draped over the bag, the headlines swelling and receding, it seemed, the photos of the Albanians and the scene by Mount Street.
“Oh, this is your plan then, is it.”
“I just don’t want this getting by me.”
“You’ll get it all over you, is what I’m thinking, Tommy.”
“Look, I’m going ahead with it.”
The sliding stopped. Minogue leaned in to look: the courgette.
“You’re that sure there’s something to it, are you.”
Malone took his time answering.
“It’d be on me mind if I didn’t do something. I mean to say, someone’s supplying Terry in there, aren’t they. And if Doyle says Bobby Quinn has a hold on that?”
“But no one’s come out in the open to you about it.”
“I’m saying that this prick Doyle is the first hint. That’s why I want to follow up.”
“Does your mob know you’re going to meet him?”
“No.”
“You’re doing the Mission Impossible effort now, are you.”
“I seem to remember a certain person telling me to go with me gut, when we were chasing a killer. That all changes when you’re on the fast track to being a Eurocop?”
“Think how it’ll look, Minogue said. If you’re spotted with Quinn.”
“I’ve thought about it. It’s time to pay him a visit. That’s all.”
“And you’re going on your own.”
Malone said nothing.
Just Forget You Ever Heard About It
Canning put rubber bands around the twenties and he began packing them into the envelopes. At least he wasn’t still holding some of them up, looking for the security lines and saying how Euros would always be stupid-looking.
“I’m telling you,” he said to Quinn. “Doyle knows what he done. He knows.”
Quinn looked down the street. Even the newsagents here had shiny new fronts. A Jag there, a high-end Renault, a Volvo. Farther on was a silver Mercedes.
“What are you looking at?” Canning asked. “Is there law there?”
“No,” Quinn said.
“Did you hear me about Doyle?”
“I did.”
“He’s done a bunk. I bet you he’s in England now.”
Canning closed the envelope and slid it under the seat. He narrowed his eyes and elbowed Quinn.
“Or maybe something else, Bobby. You know?”
“Like what.”
“Like maybe the fellas who did that job out there yesterday, the two foreigners that got shot. Our friends from the North and all that? Know what I’m saying?”
“What friends are you talking about?”
“Ah come on, Bobby. Do you take me for a complete gobshite?”
Quinn watched a Garda car go by.
“I’m only saying. You know?”
Quinn looked across at him.
“What,” said Canning. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
Quinn shook his head once and looked away.
“Like, say he has pissed off some of that crowd, that’s all I’m saying. They’re around, Bobby, don’t try to cod me they’re not down here now. You’ve heard the stories yourself. There’s the fella disappeared, the Moloney fella, the tough guy they used, the Egans? Then those dealers who were done in last November?”
Quinn started the car. They had two more calls to do, and Coady’s later on. Kevin Stacey there wanted a chinwag about getting more to the dealers he was running out of Sligo or something. It was going too well, maybe. Then there was that story he’d heard about a lab starting up somewhere in Cavan—in Cavan, for God’s sakes. Tomorrow was Bray, Wonderland, for the big pick-up there.
The numbness, that floaty feeling where he didn’t know if he was going to be able to breathe for a few seconds, that must be the reaction, he decided. It was like he was wrapped in something that kept him separated from the world. How everything looked dull and empty and far-off. He’d seen worse, and he’d been prepared, sort of.
“We’re going to meet with this cop now,” he said to Canning.
“What about the take here, all the cash?”
“Stick it in your pocket.”
“You’re joking, Bobby.”
“I’m not joking. Just do it, will you.”
“What if Malone has a set-up and we get snookered? I mean it was him phoned you to set this up, this little get-together. Aren’t you in the least—”
“Don’t be worrying. It’ll work out.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Shut up, will you. Just sit in and learn from what you hear.”
Quinn turned down Parnell Street. He moved to the curb lane for the turn into the car park.
“Well, you know what you’re doing, I suppose,” Canning said. “I was only saying.”
Quinn let it go. He turned off the ramp onto Level 3. There was no space: they’d have to walk back down.
He parked next to a pillar and checked his watch.
“What, are you going to make him an offer or something?”
“Offer what?”
“His brother? You know, fix him up?”
“What’s with you this morning? Where did you get the idea that I deal with cops?”
“Don’t give me that, Bobby. I’m not a gobshite. You know—get Malone on board a bit, make the odd call, thanks very much, I’ll look after the brother for you . . .? I mean, what ever happened to that?”
“That was just pub tal
k.”
“No it wasn’t.”
He turned to Canning.
“Just forget you ever heard about that, will you.”
Canning gave him the eye. He heard him mutter as he stepped out of the car too. Well, why wouldn’t he feel left out. Everything had changed.
Hell to Pay
Malone put the ticket on the dashboard and he drove up the ramp into the gloom. Every spot was taken today, then, was it. He caught a shopper leaving on the fifth level.
“So Quinn’s kept a low profile since he got out,” Minogue said.
“He did four and a half of a seven,” Malone said. “Plenty of time to think.”
“Is there surveillance on him?”
“Not from us. I checked this morning.”
“He has his lorry-driving business.”
“‘Mighty Quinn,’ yeah.”
“But he’s not living the high life.”
“No. Lives in the same house, the Corpo, up in Finglas. The missus took him back in, name is Catherine. She has a job. They have only the one kid. Brittney.”
“Mighty convenient that he’d have lorries and drivers, I’d be thinking.”
“That’s how it looks, doesn’t it? The story is that it’s legit, but it’s a front. He runs lorries of, are you ready, bananas and fruit down the country, for the smaller shops.”
“Bananas only.”
“Jaysus, how would I know? He could have something running on the side. Fellas with their own transport, contracting. There’s a fierce lot of that goes on under the table in that business. Border stuff even.”
“There was the landfill thing too, I’d be guessing?”
Malone nodded.
“They’re only finding out now what got dumped out in Wicklow and Meath and that. It’s been going on for years. And a lot of them were covered up too, you know, the fellas leasing the land sent in JCBs and Caterpillars to run over the stuff.”
“Waste-trafficking,” Minogue murmured.
Malone glanced over at him.
“Is there no word for it?” Minogue asked.
“Maybe I’ll try that one at work one day.”
“Well, what about his cronies, then.”
“Well, Canning is one. Beans Canning. Nothing special. He was a robber too. A veteran, pretty well an old-timer by now. There’s no sign that he’s in the drug trade himself either. As a matter of fact, Canning is just a thick. People said to me they don’t know why Quinn would be tight still with a gobshite like Canning. My take on it is that Canning is only in the shop window for us to look at, sort of a cover. Like: this fella’s so thick that we couldn’t be up to any blags.”