by Declan Burke
‘What’s doing?’
‘Herbie’ll fill you in.’ He stuck his hand out, and we shook again. ‘Good to meet you, Harry.’ The nothing-special eyes grey and cold as grave chippings. ‘Catch you later.’
He reversed out, got turned and was gone. I waited until I heard the front gates close, then wiped my hand on the seat of my trousers and tossed what was left of the cold coffee into a potted bush that needed watering. Six days since it had rained.
3
‘That’s his fourth,’ Herb groused as I came back into the living room. ‘First it was a Joe Campbell, last time it was a nice hardback on Spinoza, the feeling brain. The fuck am I, a library?’
‘Maybe you need to start imposing fines.’
‘Right, yeah.’ A bleak grin. ‘Maybe skim off the top, tell Ted it’s all Toto’s fault.’
Camped about six thousand miles due west, the McConnells would have been a shit-kicking rabble of inbred, rebel-yelling, crank-cooking sister lovers. They were the first to organise properly in Sligo, this something of a spin-off from the Peace Dividend up North, Ted being the kind of diehard ex-INLA who wouldn’t be fully happy until everything was the way it’d been before the Ulster Plantation, when every chief had his own fief and a surfeit of spears. They’d started with dope, moved on up to coke and E, were dabbling now in H. They had hardware and were happy to use it, generally for hoot-‘n’-holler drive-bys but at least once to lethal effect. Cold. Opening a van door in the middle of town, three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. One round through the forehead, two in the chest. The backsplash spattering the guy’s girlfriend, the kid she held in her arms.
The dogs in the street knew Toto’d been the shooter. The problem there being, dogs don’t do so well on a witness stand, tend to crumble under cross-examination.
Herb took a drag on the jay, held it down, popped a smoke-ring. Settled back in the Ezy-Chair. ‘What’d he want, anyway?’
‘Was asking about Finn, if I vouched for him.’
‘I hope you didn’t, the flaky fuck.’
Herb took a dim view of what he reckoned were Finn’s unnatural proclivities for skiing, surfing and charitable innovations. Herb being of the opinion that if Finn wanted to help those less well-off than himself, which was pretty much everyone bar the Hamiltons these days, he might consider donating a chunk of Hamilton Holdings’ before-tax profits instead of haranguing people to dig into their own pockets.
‘I told him,’ I said, ‘Finn always pays up front.’
‘You tell him who he was?’
‘That he’s Finn Hamilton, sure. The rest he knew.’
‘Dundrum?’
‘He knows I was in Dundrum, yeah. Asking if I knew Malky Gorevan.’
‘But you didn’t tell him about celling with Finn.’
‘No.’
Sins of omission. What the bishops like to call mental reservations.
‘Maybe that’s what he was asking about,’ Herb said.
‘Don’t sweat it. At the end there he was offering me more work, said it was there if I was available.’
‘He mentioned that?’
‘What’s the gig?’
‘A run to Galway tomorrow, there’s a shipment due in. Small enough, ten grand’s worth, but the good stuff. He was asking me to take it on, but, y’know.’
Herb didn’t get out much, in part because he was a low-level paranoiac, but mainly because he just didn’t like people. His credo was pretty simple: always assume everyone’s an idiot.
He’d been a snapper once, a good one, hooked up with an agency. We’d worked as a team for a few years, freelancing local news, stringing for the nationals. I did the words, Herb took the shots, and once in a while we’d work some off-the-books research consultancy, which was a fancy name for what amounted to prowling hotel car parks for proof of some wayward husband’s mid-life crisis.
Happy days.
Then Herb got his face stove in. Someone had told someone else that Herb had a photograph the someone else wanted.
I was the someone who’d done the telling. Inadvertently, as it happened.
Not that the who mattered. The bruisers were still walking around, free to stove at will. Herb stayed home, his complexion pasty, skin like old dough. The way it can get when most of both jaws and one cheekbone are underpinned by steel plate. Anyway, Herb ended up staying home a lot, huffing mucho weed. One day Toto McConnell, this back when Toto was still dealing himself, asks if Herb’ll rent him some space. Herb’s not interested in any sublets, but Toto’s talking about turning the upstairs, the attic, into a grow-house.
A couple of years later Herb’s salting away a couple of grand a month to top up his disability benefit, easy money. Two years after that, he moved out to Larkhill, went to Toto with his idea for a couple of cabs, nice cover for deals-on-wheels. A front to get him onto the Revenue’s books and keep them sweet, so no one got the urge to pick up the phone and ring the Criminal Assets Bureau, wondering how no-income, disability benefit Herb could afford a four-bed on its own grounds out in the burbs.
‘How come the short notice?’ I said.
‘His regular guy popped a kneecap last night.’
‘And now he’s under wraps.’
‘No, I mean he popped his own kneecap. Five-a-side up at the Sports Complex, went in for a sliding tackle and up she blew.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah. So what d’you think? Toto’s pretty keen to get it tomorrow, has the stuff promised for Saturday night. Says he’ll do twenty percent.’
‘Two grand?’
‘I get the impression, reading between the lines, Toto’s greasing some serious wheels.’
‘So we’re not talking smoke.’
‘Coke, yeah.’
‘Shit.’
‘Two grand, Harry. Five big to me for brokering, okay, but that’s still tidy money for a spin to Galway.’ He sat forward in the Ezy-Chair, offered across the spliff. When I declined he slotted it into the ashtray, stood up. ‘Just think about it, okay? No harm at all in seeing Toto right.’
He took a little side-wobble setting off, then stabilised and headed for the hall. Right on cue my phone rang, the caller ID flashing up Dee-Dee-Dee.
I sat the phone on the coffee-table, rolled a smoke and let it ring out. Herb came back in with Finn’s three baggies, tossing them on the table just as the message-minder buzzed, the screen lighting up to let me know I’d missed four calls from Dee.
‘Reminds me,’ he said. ‘Dee rang earlier. Said to call her.’
‘Cheers.’
‘Said something about Ben’s parent-teacher meeting tomorrow.’
‘I got her messages, yeah.’
He plucked the jay from the ashtray, subsided into the Ezy-Chair again. ‘How’s Ben doing these days?’ he said.
‘Grand. Not a bother on him.’
‘A good kid, that lad.’
Herb hadn’t seen Ben in years. To be fair, though, he’d been there for Dee while I was inside, letting her know she wasn’t on her own, a few quid available if she was ever badly stuck. Not that Dee took advantage, but sometimes just knowing there’s somewhere out there can make all the difference.
Another favour I owed him.
‘So what d’you think,’ he said, ‘about Toto’s gig?’
‘I’ll do it, yeah.’
‘Nice one, Harry.’
‘If Dee rings again, you haven’t seen me.’
‘Roger and Wilco.’
I stubbed the smoke, gathered up the three baggies. Herb aimed the remote control at the TV. ‘Hold up,’ he said, bringing up the menu, flicking down through the options to digital radio. ‘Let’s see what kind of mood this fuckwit’s in.’
He tuned to McCool FM in time for the last couple of verses of Townes van Zandt’s ‘St John the Gambler’.
‘Christ,’ Herb muttered.
From van Zandt to Joy Division, ‘She’s Lost Control’. Then straight into Big Star’s ‘Holocaust’.
Herb cr
acked first.
‘There’s any amount of Motown in there,’ he said, pointing the spliff at his CD rack. ‘I want you to bring it down to the docks, tie that part-time fucking philanthropist to his chair and tell him from me he’s getting no score until I hear Smokey.’
‘Will do.’
4
I took Going to a Go-Go, the three baggies, got in the cab. By the time I got to the bottom of Larkhill the fuel gauge was glowing orange, so I crossed town to the all-night petrol station on Pearse Road, where a taxi driver with the right contacts can get a free cup of something that smells like black coffee with every fill-up. The phone rang as I was coming up off Mailcoach Road, Dee-Dee-Dee.
I could have ignored it but she’d have just kept ringing.
‘Dee?’
‘Did you get my message?’
‘What message?’
‘The one I sent Herbie.’
I pulled in at the pumps, detached the hands-free and got out, phone clamped between shoulder and ear. ‘I haven’t seen Herb since Tuesday,’ I said, ramming the nozzle into the petrol tank. ‘What’s up?’
‘The parent-teacher meeting, Harry. I just want to be sure you remembered it.’
‘You’re breaking up, Dee. Can you say that again?’
‘I’ll fucking break you up. Did you hear that?’
‘Look, Dee, you know I sleep during the—’
‘We’ve a stock-take on tomorrow, Harry. I told you this. I can’t miss it.’
‘But it’s okay for me to not earn. So you can do your job.’
‘This once in a blue fucking moon, so you can do something with Ben? Yeah, I think that’s okay.’
The old argument. I let it lie.
‘I need you to do this one thing, Harry. And for Ben, not me. And maybe for yourself, too.’
Not saying it nasty. Sounding weary instead, with the little quiver she got in the back of her throat contemplating the sorry dregs of her third glass of whatever plonk was on special that week.
‘Any chance we could push it back to four o’clock?’ I said. ‘At least that way I could—’
‘Harry,’ she said, no quiver now, all arrow, ‘the meeting’s at two. Be here at one-thirty to pick up Ben or I swear to God, I’ll tell him.’
The old, old threat. Maybe she was already into glass four. The nozzle clicked, choked off the flow.
‘Do you hear me?’ she said.
‘Why don’t you just tell him, Dee?’ He’d hear about it sooner or later, how the man he thought was his dad had put a bullet in the man who was but never wanted to be his father. Better it came from Dee than some schoolyard taunt.
‘If I knew where he was,’ she said. ‘I swear, if he was home right now …’
‘What, he doesn’t have his phone with him?’
‘You try ringing him. Go on, ring him right now, see how far it gets you.’ I realised the rumble I’d thought was thunder was Dee drumming her fingers on the phone. ‘One-thirty, Harry. Be here.’
She hung up. Matters weren’t improved any by the news that a fifty-seven euro fill-up left me with little more than coppers in my pocket. Then I made the mistake of trying to cut through town rather than take the bypass. It was better out in the suburbs, and it was mostly suburbs, but the town was a heart-attack of concrete and chrome. Old streets, high and narrow, arteries so thick and gnarled the traffic trickled or didn’t move at all. The light a frozen glare shot with greens and reds, blinking pink neon, fluorescent blues. Boom-boom blasting from rolled-down windows, deep bass pulsing out muscles of sound. On a bad night it took fifteen minutes to crawl the two hundred yards from the Abbey to Lady Erin. The mob shuffling around outside the chippers wore hoodies over baggy denims, frayed hems dragging. Night of the Living McDead. The girls in cropped tops over bulging bellies, the low-slung jeans showcasing cheese-cutter thongs. In case anyone might think they weren’t wearing any underwear at all, maybe.
I skipped O’Connell Street heading west, turned north down Adelaide and then left at the new bridge onto Lynn’s Dock, a grapefruit moon hanging low over the quays. Finn playing the Northern Pikes, ‘Place That’s Insane’. Out along Ballast Quay and the docks proper, onto Deepwater Quay, black water on my right, warehouses and depots to the left, the Connacht Gold co-op lit up like a rocket launch. Beyond the co-op loomed the unlovely Port Authority building, and behind that a jungle of weeds and a rusty marsh. Once in a while there’d be talk of turning the marsh into a nature preserve, a bird sanctuary, but no one did anything about it. The birds came and went anyway.
I turned into the PA’s yard, slaloming between the potholes, tooling along in second gear, the yard lined with rusting containers, piles of scrap metal and trailers of mouldy timber. High weeds clumped in bricked-up doorways. The day had been hot and it was still warm, the acrid hum of hot tar thickening the air.
The PA building was nine stories of stark 1960s’ modernism, an appropriately ugly monument to hubris, built when the docks were buzzing and Lemass had all boats on a rising tide. Polish coal, Norwegian pine, Jamaican sugar, Australian wool. Oil tankers moored offshore. Russians jumped ship and never went to sea again. The first African, a Nigerian, was a celebrity. They called him Paddy Dubh and he never had to pay when he bought a pint of stout.
Then the ’70s slithered in. Crude oil went through the roof. The coal stopped coming, then the sugar. The channel silted up. Paddy had to buy his own stout. Things got so bad the Industrial Development Authority had to buy the PA building and then lease back two of the nine stories to the PA. Even that was a farce, the IDA loaning the PA the money to pay the lease.
Then the ’80s, a good decade to be a weed or a rat. Everyone forgot about the docks, or tried to.
Big Bob Hamilton came in like the cavalry. By then he’d pretty much dry-lined every last square inch of Thatcher’s London, and when they finally kicked out the Iron Lady, Bob took that as his cue. Came home in ’91, sniffed the wind. He sold high in London and bought low all over Sligo and the northwest. Joined the Rotary Club, the Tennis Club, Golf and Lions, damn near every club in town bar the Tuesday night Chess in the Trades. Turned up on the local board of the IDA about four months before he bought up sixteen acres of dockland that included the PA building and the rusty swamp and not a hell of a lot of anything else.
Finn telling me all this from the bottom bunk in Dundrum. Sounding dull and half-muffled but telling it straight. How the word had been that Big Bob was personally responsible for the new stationery factory over in Finisklin, a staff of three working flat-out to meet the demand for brown envelopes. Serious investment on its way, a port rejuvenation, Bob all set to make a killing. The investment never did arrive, although there was a killing of sorts alright, this in ’98, Finn just about to turn eighteen and right there to see his father’s brand new Beamer topple off the quay and into the water, Bob still at the wheel. The official verdict was death by misadventure, even if the inquest failed to establish a satisfactory explanation as to why all the Beamer’s windows might have been open down at the deepwater late one January evening.
It wasn’t long after that, he reckoned, that the arson started, Finn on the fast-track to his first crack-up.
I turned into the small car park at the front of the PA and saw a sleek maroon Saab gleaming under the single bare light over the door. Which was odd. McCool FM was a one-man show, and DJs playing Leonard Cohen don’t get groupies since John Peel passed on, bless his cotton socks. Which meant Finn had unexpected company or he was working middle-man, punting the baggies on.
Either way, not good.
The Saab’s driver already getting out.
The baggies were under the spare wheel in the boot, so I eased up to where the driver stood, then three-pointed, reversing back into the space beside Finn’s black Audi, leaving the boot tight against the PA’s wall. Got out and locked the cab, strolled around towards the PA’s door. The driver with a hand up, palm out, saying, ‘Far enough, big man.’
His accent wasn
’t quite harsh enough to be Derry, the hint of a lilt suggesting north Donegal. Built like an upside-down cello, wearing a white shirt with the collar button open, a thin black tie with a loose knot. Patent leather shoes, in the reflection of which he could have flossed his even white teeth. Through the Saab’s open door I could see, hung on a hangar, the top half of a dark suit silk-lined in red paisley. Italian, maybe. The eyes were eight-gauge, sawn-off.
I pulled up six inches shy of where I guessed his swing would land. ‘I’m expected,’ I said.
‘Not by me you’re not.’
‘True for you.’
The trouble there was, if one guy gets to thinking he can tell you what you can do, it’s only a matter of time before the rest start feeling the same. Then you’re on the skids. And I was already on the skids.
‘I’m going on up,’ I said.
‘Fine by me, big man. Just not yet.’
I craned my neck to glance up at the ninth floor, the window’s dull yellow glow. ‘He makes you wear a tie?’ I said.
That didn’t work him at all. ‘You know what I like?’ he said. ‘Cars, threads and quim. He pays me to drive a Saab, wear good suits.’
‘Two out of three ain’t bad.’
‘I make out.’ He up-jutted his chin. ‘Finn’s expecting you?’
‘That’s right.’
He glanced over my shoulder. ‘Something wrong with his Audi?’
‘Other than it’s not a Porsche?’
‘Too fucking right.’ He backed off a step, ushered me on through. ‘Jimmy,’ he said.
‘Rigby.’
He leaned in as I went past, sniffing, his nostrils flared. I glanced up at him going by and stared straight up those sawn-off barrels, black and cold, and nary a light to guide a weary pilgrim.
‘Stay useful, Rigby.’
‘I’ll try.’
