The Going Rate

by John Brady

  Chapter 23

  FANNING FELT LIKE HIS BRAIN was actually tingling. Not a single one of the hundreds of people milling about here on Parnell Street knew that the man beside him was carrying a gun. It was eerie, stupendous. It reminded him of being stoned, when he had felt privy to matchless thoughts and insights, with every detail around him sharply known to him alone. This should be terrifying, he thought again. Maybe later on he’d be able to figure out why it was not.

  Murph had left the restaurant first. Fanning had watched him during the so-called meeting there, Murph trying to hide his agitation but betraying himself again and again with his eyes blinking like mad, and the flame of his lighter trembling when he had tried lighting a cigarette. He was only briefly ashamed to have enjoyed Murph’s distress. Murph’s twitchy earnestness rushing to shake hands with Cully on parting had kindled a contempt in Fanning that had repelled as much as it had satisfied him.

  A quick glance across the traffic told Fanning that Cully’s sidekick was still tagging along on the far side of the street. “West Ham” – it was too much, really. When Cully had introduced him back at the restaurant, there had been no sign that he regarded that name as anything unusual or funny. But from this West Ham character, Fanning had heard not a word. He had merely sat at the next table, never once making eye contact, but spinning a scratched mobile phone between his thumb and forefinger.

  Cully himself didn’t project anything that Fanning could pin down either. He showed no apparent interest in the goings-on around him on the street, or the crowds through which he and Fanning now made their way.

  Cully stopped and looked down Parnell Street.

  “You’re not familiar with this area here?” Fanning asked.

  Cully made no reply. Fanning looked back to the corner.

  “Your friend there is keeping up with us anyway.”

  “My friend?”

  “Over there. You didn’t know?”

  “West Ham? Is he really?”

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Well I don’t know. Should I? Murph wasn’t his usual self back there.”

  Cully looked up at the sky.

  “‘The rain in Spain…,’” he said. He glanced over at Fanning then. “Is actually non-existent most of the time. Drought. You believe this global warming thing?”

  “I do, I suppose. Yes. Why?”

  “You can get the sun in Spain. That’s vitamin D, did you know that?”

  Fanning was sure now that Cully was filling in time waiting for something.

  “I heard that, yes.”

  “You need it, especially in this country. Do you take a tan?”

  He looked over at Fanning.

  “No, you’d burn. Been to sunny Spain, have you?”

  Fanning shook his head.

  “You could always go to those salons though, I suppose.”

  “Tanning salons? Tanning beds?”

  “Right, right.”

  Cully found a step up by a shop door. Balancing there on one foot, he looked over the crowd.

  “I think,” said Fanning, waiting for Cully to step down again. “I think we should decide what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on? Okay. You’re doing your research, is what’s going on.”

  “I mean why am I walking around with you, and him.”

  “You heard Murph. Explaining why…?”

  “I hear what he said, yes. But that told me nothing.”

  “Really. Well Murph wanted out. The shape he’s in. Pretty obvious.”

  “That wasn’t clear to me, actually.”

  “Even though he said so?”

  Fanning stood his ground.

  “Murph doesn’t even know you.”

  “Sure he does,” said Cully. “He just forgot, that’s all.”

  “He didn’t know who you were there at that thing yesterday. The dogs.”

  Cully shrugged.

  “Guys who have a habit, their memories aren’t the best. Sad but true.”

  “How do you know he was an addict?”

  “‘Was?’” said Cully. “‘Is,’ you mean. You knew too, come on. Look, we were talking about tanning, so look.”

  He pointed toward the second-floor windows above a Chinese restaurant.

  “See that one up there, the sign? See it? Tell you what. Stand here awhile any day. Afternoons are better. Count the number of people coming and going there, and keep track of who has the tan. You can’t miss it, that orange look. You know?”

  “I know. What about it?”

  “Well, let’s just say it’s not about the tan. Can you put that in the script?”

  “Look, I’ve got to think about this.”

  “Think about what,” Cully said, returning to his survey of the street.

  “This business about Murph, and where I am now.”

  “That’s easy. Murph stepped out of the picture. And good riddance, you should say.”

  “He didn’t bow out voluntarily.”

  “I did you a favour. He’d get himself into trouble. Drag you in too.”

  “I don’t remember being asked about any of this, consulted…?”

  “You’ll see, don’t worry. I’ll show you stuff, believe me.”

  Fanning bit back what he’d planned to say. He looked at the passing faces, so many of them here clearly not Irish. Across the street, West Ham was resting against a lamp post, his mobile pressed to his ear.

  “Murph knows Dublin,” Fanning said to Cully then. “That’s what I hired him for. Obviously.”

  Cully made a non-committal nod.

  “So I need to find someone else from Dublin, I suppose,” Fanning added.

  “I know Dublin,” said Cully.

  “You sure don’t sound like it.”

  “What do I sound like then?”

  “Irish sometimes. Then English. Some of this, some of that.”

  Cully’s jaw set in a way that Fanning read as irony, or some private joke.

  “Your mate’s not Irish, for sure.”

  “Too true. I could accuse him of being a lot of things, but not Irish. Let’s say he’s honorary Irish.”

  “Whatever that might mean.”

  “Oh don’t think I’m slagging it off,” said Cully, with a haste that surprised Fanning. “It means a lot to say that. Means a lot to him too, believe me.”

  “‘West Ham,’” said Fanning. “I mean what’s that about, anyway.”

  “Likes football, doesn’t he.”

  Cully held up his hand. Fanning followed his gaze across to West Ham, who seemed to have awakened. He too had raised his hand, and now he nodded his head several times, his mobile pressed hard against his ear.

  Cully looked at his watch, and then to Fanning.

  “What were we talking about?”

  “I was saying how I wasn’t consulted on this, what you want to call it.”

  To Fanning, Cully finally seemed to get the idea.

  “Okay. Yes. You want talk or something, I suppose.”

  West Ham crossed through the traffic now, and gained the footpath behind them. Cully seemed to take his arrival as a signal to hurry up.

  “How long have you lived in London?” Fanning asked.

  “London? Why do you say that?”

  “Your accent,” said Fanning.

  “That much?” Cully said, with little interest.

  “It’s noticeable, to say the least.”

  “Well okay. That’s your job, isn’t it. Noticing, and stuff.”

  West Ham had caught up to them.

  “London’s all right,” said Cully. “Most of it.”

  “How long were you there?”

  Cully pretended he hadn’t heard him.

  “Lot of very strange people there this past while,” he said. “Nasty types. Here too, I’m sure.”

  Fanning’s frustration rose again, and it met with the steady current of excitement that had been running in him. He felt jumpily
alert to everything on the street. His mind raced with questions that he knew would have to wait.

  “Here we are,” said Cully.

  He slowed and then he stopped.

  “A pub?” Fanning asked. “Now?”

  “You have your phone? Keep it handy now.”

  West Ham was pretending to examine a billboard for holiday flights.

  “Wait here,” said Cully. “Back in a minute.”

  Fanning stepped over to West Ham.

  “You’re mates with him?” he asked him.

  West Ham looked up and down the street. Fanning’s mind scrambled for features and details he could commit to his notebook: didn’t need to shave every day, sort of runny eyes – allergies? Lip hanging makes him look not smart. Twenty, twenty-one or -two? Did he have the West Ham team pyjamas too?

  “Saw you at the thing yesterday,” Fanning said.

  “Look,” West Ham said. He didn’t look at Fanning. “You’re his idea. Me, I don’t want to talk to you. And I don’t want you talking to me neither. So stay out of my way. And push off.”

  Fanning waited for eye contact. Then he noticed West Ham’s stare coming back at him from the reflections on the plate glass of the pub window. Not much point to this, was there. He ambled the ten or so steps to the head of the lane, and he leaned against the brickwork there. He studied the dense razor-wire and wondered what it would do to someone’s hands. The graffiti was layers deep on the walls. A minute passed. He considered just jotting down notes. So what if Cully or West Ham saw him. This was not his part of town, but still he eyed the people flowing down the street, half-hoping he’d recognize faces. He began to try guessing at nationalities. You couldn’t go by skin colour of course. He had no clue what language two slight men were speaking when they passed, but he’d leave it at Slavic something or other. Polish, probably – or statistically likely.

  West Ham hadn’t moved. He was looking up and down the street with a slow, lazy stare. Someone, or something, was being set up, Fanning decided. Maybe him. Just as he had decided to walk away, he saw West Ham turn. Then a man came out the door of the pub in a hurry, attached to another man: Cully.

  Cully had bunched some of the man’s jacket in his fist, and he pushed and then pulled and turned the man left down the lane. West Ham was already on the move. He stopped at the door to the pub, and stood there.

  Cully was keeping one hand in his pocket. The man he was holding and dragging stumbled, and he shouted as his arms waved for balance. Fanning felt his own hand closing on his phone. He made another step toward the edge of the footpath. Nobody walking by seemed to care what was going on.

  Two girls stopped in the street to avoid Fanning. He apologized and then slowly traced his steps back toward the laneway. He heard someone shouting what sounded like “police.” Cully let go of the man’s jacket and kicked him hard in the small of his back sending him sprawling and rolling out of sight of the street.

  West Ham shot Fanning an angry glance just as the door of the pub was pushed open. Whoever had come out started to shout, but West Ham had his hand on the man’s chest in an instant. He put his forearm on the man’s neck and pushed him hard against the wall. He stared at the man he had pinned, and punched him hard in the belly. The man’s feet actually came off the ground, Fanning saw.

  West Ham let him go and he doubled up, and began to back away. West Ham shepherded him to the laneway and flicked his head toward Cully and the other man.

  Fanning looked up and down the street. The traffic passed, the pedestrians walked. Nothing changed. He heard someone shouting his name, and he looked down the lane again. It was Cully.

  “What are you waiting for?” Cully shouted.

  “No,” Fanning said. “No, I’m out of this.”

  Then West Ham was in front of him. A different man entirely, Fanning thought, taking the sight of his flattened nostrils and a sharp intensity in his eyes, nothing of the sloucher who had hung around in the margins.

  “Don’t piss about,” West Ham said. “Go!”

  Fear slammed into Fanning.

  “I don’t want this,” he said. “This is wrong.”

  “Give it to me then. Your bleeding phone.”

  With that, West Ham grabbed his arm and pulled it up. Fanning didn’t resist. One of the men was speaking now.

  “Your pockets,” Cully said to him. “Empty your pockets.”

  “Policia?” said the man. “Policia?”

  “Yeah we’re Policia. Now empty your pockets.”

  “How do you work this stupid thing?” West Ham asked.

  The man that West Ham punched was straightening up. He eyed West Ham and then Fanning himself.

  “How?” West Ham said louder.

  “The menu, the main menu. Scroll down a bit.”

  “Do you know what pockets are?” Cully said, his voice rising. “Pockets, yes. Empty, now. Yes. Now, you’re deaf as well as stupid?”

  Fanning saw the man’s hand go to his coat pocket. He stayed in a crouch and glanced back to the other.

  “Video?” West Ham said. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, I did it, yeah.”

  He held up Fanning’s phone.

  “There we go,” said West Ham. “Smile, thicko. You’re going to be a star.”

  The other man with Cully was protesting now.

  “Papieri, policia? Papieri?”

  “No papieri. Empty your pockets.”

  “No speak English good.”

  West Ham turned, the phone held out.

  “Now it’s working. You take it.”

  The man glanced at Fanning and then he launched himself at West Ham.

  “Got a knife,” Cully called out.

  West Ham let go of the phone, and Fanning followed its fall, watching it hop sideways and come to rest. His phone, he thought, wrecked: a man with a knife not twenty feet from him, another who had a gun.

  The man with the knife hesitated, his free hand over his stomach still. He shouted a name, Andrey.

  Cully’s man had stopped talking, and was now staring at him.

  “No Policia,” the man with the knife shouted. “No.”

  “Do him,” Cully said to West Ham. “Do him, now.”

  West Ham stepped forward, and his hand came from his back with a pistol. The man with the knife shouted, and spread his hands.

  “Put down the knife,” Cully said. “Put it down. Down?”

  Fanning felt the brickwork against his back. He couldn’t remember getting to the side of the laneway. His phone was still flipped open, and there were no broken pieces around it that he could see. He looked back toward the street. Where were the Guards, here in the middle of Dublin? The man with the knife seemed to be pleading.

  “Down!” yelled Cully. “Put it down.”

  Still, Fanning did not dare look over. He heard something clatter on the cement. The two men were almost shouting now. Cully told them to shut up.

  He risked a glance over, saw West Ham stoop to pick up a knife. The two men had backed closer, and Cully had stepped away from them.

  “No,” Fanning said. “Don’t, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Shut up you,” said West Ham, and shoved the pistol into the back of his jeans.

  “You can’t do this,” Fanning said. “You can’t.”

  West Ham’s impassive face twisted suddenly into a grimace as he ran at the knife man.

  He brushed aside a feeble arm and gave him a hard kick, and then kicked again as he went over. He said nothing as he kicked, and he darted in and out from the flailing man, dancing almost, and landing kicks. The man tried to cover his head, but West Ham landed a kick under the man’s chin. The man yelped and turned on his side, and Fanning saw spots of blood on his lips. West Ham jumped in again, and a flurry of kicks followed. The man curled up, squirmed, and tried to roll away.

  West Ham paused, his wheezy breath coming fast. Then he darted in with a kick to the side of his head. Something small had fallen on the pavement and Fanning saw pink and white. Now
West Ham was whispering something into the man’s ear, and he dragged him upright, grabbing his arm and turning it behind his back. Without warning West Ham shouted, jerked the arm hard with a grunt.

  Fanning himself yelled now, jammed his eyes shut and pushed his palms hard onto his ears. Still he heard the bone break. He opened his eyes for a moment, saw the man’s contorted face as he tried to shout something. The man went suddenly limp. West Ham let him go and he fell heavily to the cement.

  West Ham strolled toward Cully. The other man had backed to the wall. His face had gone white; his jaw moved but he said nothing. He watched Cully go through the unconscious man’s pockets, scattering bills and ripping open a packet of cigarettes. Cully lifted out a set of brass knuckles from a pocket and turned to West Ham and made a sly smile. Then he picked up the wallet and pulled out cards.

  “Andrey,” he said. “Andrey sombody I can’t pronounce.”

  West Ham stood staring at the other man.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I no,” said the other man. “I no know nothing, nothing. Family. A poor man. Nothing.”

  “You don’t look too poor to me. Who are you with? You and him. Who’s your boss?”

  “No boss, no. Roma, many bad people, no like Roma.”

  Cully held up a small bag of pills.

  “Who gave you these?”

  “Nothing, is not.”

  “Ecstasy? X?”

  “No, nothing. A man. He give to me. He say ‘sell, I give you money.’”

  “What man? Who?”

  “I don’t know man.”

  “Irish? Ireland?”

  He would not look back at West Ham’s stare. But suddenly his eyes left the ground and darted toward the alleyway.

  “Oi oi,” said Cully.

  A middleaged man with a shopping bag was now standing there, frowning, his mobile half-open in his hand.

  “Is that man hurt?” he called out.

  Cully stepped forward, picking up Fanning’s phone as he did. He stuffed it in his pocket and lifted up the man’s wallet again.

  “Drug Squad,” he said. “Garda Drug Squad. You need to stay back now, there’s a squad car on the way. Thank you.”