For no small time Cheri had been good for—no, essential to—Biddy, who wouldn’t be where she was today without her, but in recent years her presence in the house had been…stifling at best. “Answer me this: Did I not buy and pay for the car myself?”
Cheri had never been a pretty woman. She was short, round, dumpy even with rounded shoulders and a pommel of flesh at the back of her neck that you could grasp, like a soft leather bag. With large, round eyes that always seemed to be brimming with wet and a mouth that curved down at the corners, she appeared to be what she had become in recent years: bulldoggish and severe. Her hair was cropped short “Only to replace my own.”
Biddy sighed. An argument was the last thing they needed. “But you’ll be going with them.”
Her liquid eyes swelled with resentment. “I’ll be…what?”
“Going with Ned, so you will. It’s how I want it.”
Biddy turned to her father for his agreement, which she knew she’d have, since the power in the family had switched to her all of five years earlier.
“I will not. I’ll be going with you wherever you go. It’s where I belong.”
Biddy shook her head. She’d be far better off alone, and certainly not with a carping, crippled old shrew. No matter her money. “Or to Reigate. Why don’t you go back to there?”—where Cheri still had a house and family nearby. “If you leave now, you’ll be safe there. I’ll get in touch, I promise.”
“No!” The flesh under Cheri’s chin wagged like wattles. “I go where you go. That’s what I said, what we agreed to years ago, and only what I’ll abide by now. In spite of my sorry condition.”
Which was martyr to their failed relationship, even more than her arthritis, which Biddy had always considered mostly a ruse. Cheri turned and began a laborious, puffing climb up the staircase to pack, Biddy guessed. But by that time Biddy would be gone, and Cheri would have to fend for herself. But she’d manage; she always did.
“Tag?”
“Me?” The beer bottle came out again. “I’ll be humped if any…bullyin’, pudgy scut who calls himself a Toddler will drive me from me digs.” He glanced around at the others, obviously for their approbation, but they were staring at Biddy. “And you.” Tag went on, touching the fist with the bottle against Ned’s arm, man to man. “Don’t tell me ye’re pissin’ off on yehr daughter’s orders?”
Ned ignored him, moving toward the door, and Biddy wondered if she could ever have loved Tag Barry. Or had it simply been narcissism, since they looked so much alike? Or some attempt to regain her youth. Every now and then Tag showed the same joy and zest for living that Mickalou had, once he got off the gear. But Tag had none of Mickalou’s kindness or his generosity and spirit.
“So”—Biddy turned to her mother and daughter—“you’re off.”
“Ah, no—Jaysis. This is shtew-pid and t’ick!” Oney complained in an argot that was part Dublin street slang and part the language of other young Travelers. For some reason unfathomable to Biddy, Oney had chosen mots and bowsies as friends when at school she had the daughters of the country’s elite.
She supposed that Oney had to make her own mistakes in life, as she had herself, but it was a thought that only ever made her worry more.
“Wha’ about the shadog, the one copper ye’re only after tellin’ me about, Granny? The one who took after the Toddler back then.”
“And failed, it’s plain.” Maggie reached for Oney’s hand. “Remember the name Archie Carruthers?” Maggie pulled Oney toward the door.
“The limo driver, the one who died in jail.”
“No, the one who was murdered in jail. Now, since you do be lovin’ the Travelin’ people, here’s your chance to live with them.”
Biddy pulled Oney to her for one last hug.
“Isn’t there any way we can stop him?” Oney asked in her ear.
“You let me manage that, darlin’. If there’s a way, I’ll find it, I promise.” Which Biddy meant. In the twelve years that had passed, she had changed radically, and she’d sooner go out with a bang than a whimper. She thought of the gun she had bought years ago and now kept above the door inside the landing to the cellar.
Biddy held her daughter away and looked into her hazel eyes. “May God bless and keep you. Remember, your mother loves you, and you’re to respect that love and love yourself. It’s the only way.”
Oney nodded, having heard the advice many times in the past.
Biddy then reached for Maggie. “Take care of yourself, Mammy.”
“It’s not me we’re worried about, luv. Wherever will you go?”
“I haven’t a clue,” though she had.
“England again?”
Biddy only shook her head. “I’ll be in touch through the Maughams,” who, after all, were Maggie’s family too and were a close-knit Traveling family. Biddy would only have to contact one of them for her message to be conveyed to Maggie via the “Traveler telegraph,” as their way of communicating among themselves was called. They might even speak Gammon to make a conversation most private.
Biddy turned to her father. “Have you money?”
“Sure, is there ever enough?” By which he meant they’d make do. Ned Nevins had turned over a new leaf as he had aged and was now a careful, conservative man with a craggy face and dark hair that he kept short in a brush cut, like a teenager. He was wearing a good but rumpled gray suit, one of several that Biddy had given him. On his feet were a pair of good brogues; on his wrist was a Rolex.
“Are yeh comin’, Tag?” he asked when Biddy had released him.
They watched the young man’s eyes sweep the handsome hall, then glance down at the bottle of beer that he wiggled and held up. Empty. But he had a dozen more longneck Budweisers—his drink of choice—in the fridge and boxes more in the cellar.
In his notecase Tag Barry could count maybe a thousand pounds that he’d skimmed from Biddy in the past month alone, whenever she sent him out on a message. Then there was the sex, which he’d been missing with her for a while now, only to have discovered that there were much younger and better rides in town for the taking with a few quid in your pocket. And now with Biddy gone and a “pad” like this? Why, he’d run through half the easy young women in Dublin.
All in all, it was as if he’d died and gone to desperado heaven. He’d ring up Belfast the moment she closed the door and bring down a few mates to share in the cracque. “Ah, no—thanks. Why don’t I just nail down the premises like? Make sure nothing’s carried away. By the Toddler. I get the chance—why, I might put an end to him as a problem.” With index finger pointed and thumb cocked, he pretended to shoot the chandelier.
It was the same gesture that the Toddler had used in the picture gallery, thought Biddy. But from Tag only pitiable drunken bravado. “If you stay, you should mind yourself.”
He stepped to the hallway mirror. “Whenever I’m lost, I’ll only have to look there.”
Cheri Cooke was now back on the stairs, dragging her traveling case down, step by step.
“Then we’re gone,” said Biddy to her family, pointing to the door. “You’re first. He’ll not want you, until he can’t find me. God bless!”
“Ah, Mammy, can’t we just stay?” Oney complained. But Maggie and Ned had her out the door and them after her.
Biddy turned and fled down the hall past Tag toward the back of the building. And the kitchen.
“What? No kiss, Bid?”
Kiss yourself, Biddy thought, now finally deciding that she was done with him. Stopping at the cellar door, which she opened, she reached up into the shadows by the transom and felt for the velvet-lined case that she had placed there as “insurance” against this day. She opened it to make certain it contained the thousand quid in fifty-pound notes and the torc that was worth much more. She placed it and the thousand quid in her purse.
Made of pure braided gold encrusted with diamonds and rubies, the torc was like something out of the Book of Kells, which was not the only reason that Bid
dy had bought it with nearly all her profits from her best year. It was her kind of “legs,” as Mickalou had spoken of their bank account. Pawned, the torc would carry her anywhere in the world. Poor Mick. No—silly Mick to think he could trust buffers in a bank.
Reaching up again, Biddy removed a second item that was wrapped in an oiled rag that she had been told would preserve the thing. Beside it were two boxes, one of which she also took down.
“Wha’ have we here, luv?” Tag asked. He was now standing beside her.
Biddy pulled off the rag, which she placed back on the shelf, then carried the large, shiny object out to the kitchen table.
“Make me fookin’ day—if it isn’t Smith and fookin’ Wesson. The two murderous Yanks. Where’d you get it, Bid?”
From an IRA gunman in Camden Town with the first paycheck Biddy had received all those years ago in England. It was what she wanted and needed. “Have you a target in mind?” the man had asked her. She had nodded. “I thought as much, so I filed off the serial numbers. Wear gloves. Then drop it. There’s no tag.”
Tag. His hand was now out. “Give us a look. That’s the biggest, ugliest gat I ever fookin’ seen.”
Which was the reason that Biddy had chosen it—an immense, silver Dan Wesson .44 V with an eight-inch barrel that weighed nearly four pounds loaded and that at first Biddy could barely lift with her arms extended, much less shoot. But she had learned to, once a week with a shooting club in Reigate until she could hit a target at thirty paces with most shots, which was all she wanted from the thing. It was too bloody hard on her hands, arms, ears, and nerves. But it was nothing if not intimidating.
“What’s the fookin’ caliber?”
“Forty-four Mag.”
“Janie, you could blow a hole in a Saracen with that thing.”
Tag took another step closer to her. “I wish to Jesus yeh’d shown it to me earlier. Can yeh give us the feel of it?” His hand was still out.
Biddy flipped open the cylinder and slipped in a cartridge, and then another and another, six in all, until the weapon was fully loaded. Locking the cylinder back in place, she turned the barrel of it on him and paused a moment, until their eyes met. “I hope to God your seeing this convinces you how serious this is.”
But plainly it didn’t; he only wanted to get it in his hands.
Which she would not allow. Fitting it down inside her bag, which was large, she wondered if she should take the rest of the bullets. No. She’d need it only if he got close, where one would do. After placing them back on the shelf, she closed the door.
“For the final time: I’d leave were I you.” And when you do, see that it’s not with the silver, was her second thought, which, if said, might only give him a resentment and cause. Closing the bag, she fitted the strap over her shoulder and looked up at him. “Remember, now: I warned you.”
“Biddy, you right bitch—wait!” Cheri was shouting from the stairs.
“But if I did, who’ll look after yehr lover?” Tag winked, then showed her his tongue. “Or was it the other way round?” He raised a fresh bottle to his mouth and drank.
And his laughter—punctuated by Cheri’s screams—followed Biddy out into the back garden to the gate in the wall.
CHAPTER 10
Whack!
THE TODDLER HAD watched them pile out of the house on Raglan Road. He could tell from the way they moved—quickly, looking this way and that—they had been warned.
First came the old one, the Tinker woman from the camping site in Tallaght all those years ago. She had aged, but she was one of a kind and would never be able to disguise herself, no matter how she tried. Here with a stylish costume, layers of trendy rags. But her face was still the same old dried prune, her eyes big, round, and fearful. In her ears were thick gold Tinker rings.
After her came her husband, the Toddler judged by his age, his porter-colored face, and rumpled suit. Then the Tinker bitch’s get: Beth Waters’s or Biddy Nevins’s daughter, who was—what?—sixteen or seventeen. That had to be her. Apart from the hair, which was longer, the girl looked just the way Mickalou Maugham had, right down to the loose-hipped way she walked. The Toddler wondered if she was on the gear yet, which was only a matter of time. Like father and mother, like daughter. He knew whole families that shot smack. She would have to try it only once.
Watching them climb into the Merc—not the stripped-down model but the big one with tinted windows and a V-12 under the hood—the Toddler reached for the cell phone on the console of his Land Rover. Punching in the main number of Garda Siochana headquarters in Phoenix Park, he waited until a prerecorded voice came on, advising him to toggle an extension or wait for an operator. He then added three more numbers, and the phone answered on the second ring.
“It’s your mother’s uncle Bill. I’m in a phone booth on a Callcard. Could you ring me back?”
“By all means, Uncle Bill. Good to hear your voice.”
“Do I give you the number?”
“No need, Bill b’y. Don’t I have it right here on me display?”
The Toddler rang off. Incoming calls to the police were automatically recorded; outgoing were not.
For the twelve years since the nearly disastrous night at the top of Grafton Street, the Toddler had handled all vital problems alone in ways that produced no witnesses like Biddy Nevins. But that did not mean he was unassisted. With wealth on the order that he now possessed, he had hired on retainer more than a few civil servants of one stripe or another who kept him informed, and warned and who—sometimes, as now—could act in his stead.
As the Mercedes pulled away, the cell phone bleated, and the Toddler held it to his ear. “I’ve got two favors to ask of you. The first is a car that I’d like followed discreetly.” He then described the car and its occupants and read off the number plate. “Turning left now onto the Pembroke Road. Can we handle that?”
“I think so, once we locate it.”
“Second, I have an address.” The Toddler glanced up at the house. “Number twelve Raglan Road. I want it raided and tossed.”
“On what grounds?”
“The usual.” Once inside, the man on the other end would salt the house with drugs that the Toddler had already provided him. Everybody in the house would be charged, including the owner, and the dwelling closed up until a court determined it was no longer a hazard to the community. Which took years.
The law was new and a boon to somebody like the Toddler, who no longer sold narcotics at street level but from time to time had to punish those who did. Or who dared challenge him. It was all so much easier and less risky than the last recourse, which was still his Remington 700.
“How soon can it be done?”
There was a pause. “Sure, if the place is a pesthouse, as you say, then right away, Bill. This very instant Sean! Dermot!” he barked. “Get in here on the double!”
“Good man, Paul,” said the Toddler. “I won’t forget.”
“And the best of health to you, Uncle Bill!”
Ringing off, the Toddler slipped the phone into its yoke and started the large, powerful van, which was new and which he had ordered with special features at much expense. Wheeling out from the curb, he turned at the corner and sped toward Raglan Lane.
An alley at the back of a house was how Biddy Nevins had escaped twelve years before. Would she try it twice? Why not? Talent in art did not necessarily mean brains; witness her hanging the photograph of the painted footpath flags shaped in a vortex to represent what? Her past? Or his? What could she have been thinking? The Toddler would have picked the thing off had he seen it in a newspaper.
Slowing nearly to a stop, he nosed the large vehicle into the narrow alley and began counting the number of houses to hers. Eight.
That was when he caught sight of—could it be?—the bitch herself. Yes, he couldn’t believe his luck. She was just stepping out into the laneway and reaching a key up to lock the back gate door again. She then turned and began walking straight at him. T
all, angular, but quick nonetheless. Wearing the very same metallic weave dress she’d had on at the gallery. From her shoulder swung a large purse.
It took the Toddler only a second to decide. Hit and run, it couldn’t be better! He’d grind her right into the wall, then stash the Rover in a building that he owned in Ringsend only a mile or two away. There he parked a large articulated lorry that he sometimes used for big deliveries. Empty now, it would accommodate the Rover easily. For years, if need be.
Down came his wide, flat foot, slamming the accelerator to the floor. Tires shrieking, the Rover juddered and swerved, then bolted down the alley.
Biddy hardly had the chance to look up, but she knew who it had to be, roaring down at her, all blazing bright metal and glass in the late-afternoon sun.
Snapping her head back, she saw that her own gate was too far to make. But maybe ten yards in front of her was the next back garden entrance, which, like all of them, was recessed a foot or so within the wall. Perhaps she could squeeze herself into the gap.
But her legs felt as if they were made of lead. Or—the thought flashed through her mind—her number was up. She was done, and it was the end of a life that had been brilliant in moments but filled mainly with fear and pain. So be it. At least now it would be over.
But she stumbled. In fact, she fell flat on her face, her bag spilling out in front of her. And the car, lurching down the laneway, kissed the wall about twenty feet from her, bounced off, and she could see the Toddler, throwing his weight against the wheel, trying to turn it back at her.
And did. The left front tire, skidding over her dress, pulled her into the path of the back tire that skinned the side of her face, her ear, the tip of her shoulder, before the car slammed into the wall again. The side mirror snapped off, and the sheet metal shrieked, as it slid down the rough rock wall.
The Toddler looked back. Had he missed her? Or just not hit her direct? She seemed to be moving still. He pumped the brakes once and then stood on them, and the Rover fishtailed to a stop.
The Death of an Irish Tinker Page 11
