by Ken Bruen
Then, out of the blue, I was triggered. A blowsy Yank, all muzzy and hog-eyed, got in me cab just outside Davy Byrne’s Pub in Duke Street and asked to go to the Gresham Hotel in O’Connell Street Upper. He went quiet on me after first announcing he was ex of the NYPD. As if I gave a shite. For fuck’s sake, did he expect me to kiss his ring? So many sheets to the wind was he that he seemed to lose his voice as well as his senses. Then catching his breath, he began to rant about the weather, but that isn’t what set me off.
No—it was when he complained bitterly that us Irish drive as the Brits do, on the wrong side of the road. In America, he assured me, they would never put up with that shit. It was at that point I decided to no longer put up with his. Well, it wasn’t so much a decision as a reflex. Why, of all things that should have lit my candle, I cannot say, but light it it did.
I detoured to a section of town where, at that hour, there would likely be no foot traffic at all. Feigning illness, I pulled into an alley near dark as my heart. I got out of the cab, having already slid me sawed-off baseball bat up me trouser leg. When he came to look after me as I knelt on the cobbles pretending to retch up me lungs, I slammed the bat into his shins with such fury to snap at least one. I nearly orgasmed at the crackle of his shattering bone. He tumbled mightily, his head smacking a brick wall. Thud does not describe the sound of his skull against the stone. He was not dead, only damaged. I made sure to damage him well beyond dead. His face, what there was left of it, now red from blood and not from drink. I removed his watch, his jewelry, credit cards, the money from his wallet. I learned that from American TV.
“Was that a home run, fella?” I asked, tossing his pilfered wallet onto his body.
He was strangely silent.
There have been five more like him spread out over the last two years. I’ve made certain to alter the way in which I approach my victims, never again picking one up in me cab. They’re such suckers for the glad hand and blarney that there’s no challenge in it. They’re kittens to cream. Nor have I repeated the method I’ve used to murder them. I’ve stabbed one, poisoned another, beaten one to death with me fists, strangled one, and used a shotgun on the last. When the Gardaí seemed to be putting two and two together, not usually a skill they possess, I was forced to kill at random. Not a drop of red, white, or blue involved.
She was an Irish girl, pretty enough to interest the press. She was at Trinity studying some wanker named Kant. Had to swallow the laughter on hearing that. Dropped two rufies in her drink, diddled her every way to Sunday, and stabbed her with the same knife I used to do in the American. I cut her in just the same way as I did the Yank. I think of him as the Ugly American. Looked better when I was done with him than when I began.
I feel bad about her sometimes, like when I’m getting meself off. She’s the only one I rue. Might have been a future for me with her and Kant, but I had to confuse the Gardaí. Worked like a charm. They need a new calculator. I figure I’ll have to do the odd one every now and again. No more pretty girls, though. No philosophy students. Kants, the bunch of them. I’ll have to use that line. You think?
Shite, a fare out in front of Kavanagh’s Pub and I was having a tickle with you lot. Do me the favor of keeping your gobs shut until I rid meself of the fare. Then we can get back to our business.
“Where to, sir?”
“Just drive. I’ll tell ya when to stop.”
“American?”
“Yeah.”
Jaysus, I finally got a quiet one. No jokes nor brogues. And look at the face on him, Irish as a Galway swan and dour as a priest out of sacramental wine. I almost feel sorry for this one.
“Here on business or pleasure, you don’t mind my asking?”
“Business.”
“What kinda business you in?”
“Cop. I’m a cop.”
Fuck on a bike! An American cop, but nothing like the others. He didn’t even tell me where. Usually takes no more than a few seconds in me backseat before they show me their friggin’ shield and tell me how long till they’re vested in their bloody pensions. Then it’s to the war stories. As if I give a toss.
“Collins,” I said, reaching me right mitt across my body and over the seat.
“Jack,” he said, giving me hand a quick, uncomfortable shake.
Again, nothing like the others. All the others near crushed me hand, refusing to give it back until I pled for its release. Now as I see him in me rearview, I’d say he’s had a fair amount of drink, but he’s far from scuppered. He’s in turmoil, for sure, by the look on his face. Christ and His blessed mother, damned if I’m not concerned for the bastard.
“Is everything right by you, Jack?”
“Far from it, Collins.”
“Is there anything I can do to ease your troubles, sir?”
“Yeah, can you pull over here? I’m feeling sick.”
“It’s a rough part of the old town, Jack. Are you sure you can’t hold—”
“Pull over!”
Shite! Now he’s out of me cab and down a blind foukin’ alley. It’s been five minutes. Ah, let me go see how the poor bastard’s doing.
Thwack!
“Sorry, Collins.”
Thwack.
“It’s nothing personal, but some shanty prick beat my father to death with a baseball bat down an alley not too far from here.”
Thwack.
“I figured we owed you cocksuckers one.”
Thwack.
“Shit, Collins, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were smiling at me. Fuck you, asshole!”
Thwack.
Like I say, I hate Americans, arse-licking cops worst of all.
THE BEST PART
BY PETER SPIEGELMAN
For Jimmy Lowe, this was the best part—the two of them just out of the shower, wrapped in hotel terrycloth, smelling of expensive shampoo, heat clinging to their bodies like another skin, and his head in her lap. He wasn’t sober—he’d more or less given up on that—but for the moment the world wasn’t sliding away beneath him. He wasn’t rested either, but neither was he wired, or nodding out, or stupid drooling. What he was was balanced. It was all about the mix, Lowe told himself, and right now his recipe was near perfect: caffeine matched against the jet lag, pint of milk against the burning patch in his gut, reefer and John Jameson against the coke and those pills that Margot gave him. It teetered on a knife edge, and Lowe knew that it could get away fast—but not just now. Now, in the best part, he was riding an exquisite soap bubble—drifting, warm and light, through a damasked, luxury-suite landscape. He looked up and saw Margot’s hair in blue-black curls around her pale face. Her robe fell open and he saw her small, round breasts, still pink from the shower. He stretched his legs on the sofa. Sex had rubbed him raw and he settled himself gingerly and closed his eyes.
Besides the weightlessness and Margot’s slender thighs under his head, Lowe’s favorite part of the best part was the disconnection. Balanced this way, past and future held no dread and he could reflect on both with serene detachment. He reached up and dragged a lazy hand across Margot’s breasts. She batted him away and picked up a fashion magazine. Lowe smiled to himself. Floating in his bubble, even Margot didn’t scare him much. He could think about their time together calmly now, without the dizzying mash of lust and fear she’d filled him with almost from the start. Christ, was it only ten weeks since personnel had sent her?
It was January but she’d been bare-legged. Her calves were white and shiny, and the little tattoo on her ankle was penny-green. Lowe thought it was a bruise at first, but it turned out to be some kind of braided cross. She’d worn a black leather coat that day, and her black hair tumbled past the collar. Something about her 1980s do and her slanted eyes and the way she talked reminded Lowe of Sheena Easton—though he didn’t know if Sheena Easton’s eyes were blue like Margot’s, or if their accents were the same. They weren’t.
That was a hellish month in the back-office—a new computer system, the trading room
churning out twice the usual number of deals, and half his staff out with flu—but Margot had pulled her weight and then some. He remembered how quick she was reconciling payments, and how accurate. The other clerks didn’t like her much but there was no question she knew her shit. After a day or two they were following her lead, and so—in his way—was Lowe.
She was like a tune stuck in his head, and all of a sudden his morning train ran too slow and the workday went too fast. Overtime was a gift and he relished every second, down even to the lousy takeout meals—anything that got him alone with her, and got him close enough to smell whatever made her smell so good.
When he was close, he couldn’t stop looking. He was cautious at first—careful not to stare—but as time went by his eyes grew hungrier. If she noticed, or minded, Margot gave no sign, and after a while Lowe didn’t give a damn. He pored over her from follicles to fingernails, and memorized every inch. Once, late on a Thursday, he’d had to stop himself from touching. He left her in his office and walked the halls and wondered what his forty-eight-year-old brain was thinking. Looking was one thing, he told himself, but his palm on that white calf … By comparison, the talking seemed so harmless.
Drifting, Lowe smiled at the thought. How long before she’d known all about him—ten days, maybe? Two weeks? From his high school varsity letters and his dropping out of b-school, to his twenty years at the bank and his promotion, five years ago, to manager of the back-office—he’d told her everything. To which she’d nodded and looked into his eyes and said next to nothing about herself.
Not that Margot was the silent type. When it came to crude humor she held her own with the other clerks. She toned it down a little for him: some deferential teasing— subtle flattery, really; jokes about the size of the trades they were processing—how any one of them would make a nice lottery prize; and, inevitably, her favorite game—what if. What if you could go anywhere … do anything … start all over again? What if you knew then what you know now? What if you won the lottery?
Her daydreams were of travel—first class all the way. “And none of this nature shite, thank you—it’s cities only. Trees are fer parks, and animals fer zoos or eating.”
Lowe’s fantasies were more modest, but Margot coaxed him along.
“Would’ve gone easy on the pitching in middle school— saved my arm for later.
“Wouldn’t have majored in accounting.
“Would’ve traveled more—London maybe, or Paris.”
And then, on another Thursday, she’d coaxed him farther. Even as the words left his mouth, Lowe knew there was no going back.
“I wouldn’t have married so young, I guess … or maybe not at all.” His face burned and his eyes bored into the carpet. Margot didn’t answer, but when he looked up she was staring at him.
From his bubble, Lowe could see that sex was inevitable after that. Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t surprised when it happened, or that he didn’t nearly burst an artery when he saw that hard white body for the first time. A word had popped into his head then, something from high school English—what was it?
It was a Tuesday and there were accounts to balance and Lowe thought she’d be working late. He was surprised when she appeared in his doorway at 5:00, coat on her arm.
“I’m through those accounts and if there’s nothing else, I’m off,” she said. Disappointment hit him like a sandbag. Margot looked at him and at her watch. “You want a coffee before I go?” she asked. It blunted his upset a little and he nodded. But when they got to Water Street, Margot headed not for Starbucks but for a taxi. Lowe followed.
“There’s a place uptown you’ll like,” she said, and she said nothing else for the rest of the ride. The place was a sleek hotel in Murray Hill, where the desk clerks dressed better than Lowe. They nodded at Margot as she crossed the lobby. The room was large, and Margot kept the lamps off and opened the drapes and let the city light in. She pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her shoes and skirt.
“Look all you like now, Jimmy,” she whispered. “Fer as long as you like.” Alabaster. That was the word.
Her body was limber and smooth in a way that his wife’s had never been, even before the kids. Every time was better than the time before, and every time left him gasping and starving for more. The mattress was on the floor when they came up for air. Margot hit the minibar and brought back tumblers of John Jamesons. Lowe hadn’t been quite sober since.
Things moved quickly after that. Margot whispered in his ear—talk of what if and lottery tickets. She had it all worked out, and she had a friend in Europe—a Mr. Flynn—who knew useful things like how to launder money and how to get new passports. She made it sound so simple. One trade, identical to thousands of others in the system, except that it was fake. But there’d be nothing fake about the payment the system would wire out.
“Dead simple,” she’d said, and she was right.
Leaving his family was easier than he’d expected, too—at least at first. As images of Margot filled his head, his wife and daughters had faded to grainy silhouettes. Audrey was barely a shadow when he told her about his business trip. So was his boss when he put in for vacation. Dead simple.
Margot had booked the flights. They’d gone first class to Brussels. She told Lowe to lay off the booze and drink lots of water but he didn’t listen. His head was splitting when they arrived and things had been hazy ever since—a blur of swank hotel rooms and rainy cityscapes and never quite knowing the time. Zurich, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Frankfurt—and in each, a friend of the unseen Mr. Flynn, with papers to be signed. They all knew Margot, but it was Lowe’s signature they needed. Lowe had worried about the documents, and the nameless men, and Flynn—wherever he was—and he’d wondered about Margot’s hotel room in New York, and the other hotels, and who was paying. But the questions always stumbled from his head before he could ask them, and Margot was there to put a pen in his hand, and afterward a drink and her hard white body.
Somewhere—Amsterdam maybe—Lowe’s stomach had started to burn, and he found himself thinking of his family. It was incoherent stuff—vague worry about … he wasn’t sure what—but the thoughts left him empty and aching. Three times he’d mentioned them to Margot, and not again.
The first time, her lower lip had trembled. “I thought I made you happy,” she’d said softly. Then they fucked until the sheets were drenched.
The second time went less well. “I’m not yer feckin’ priest,” she’d snapped.
The third time was in Frankfurt and her voice made him jump. “Jaysus—enough with yer feckin’ regrets! It’s over and done but you poke at it like a bad tooth.” She shook her head. “Yer pretty feckin’ Irish for a New York Jew, Jimmy—you’ll fit right in in Dublin.” Ten days in the city now and he still didn’t know what she’d meant.
Not that he’d seen much of Dublin besides their hotel room. Waiting for Flynn and their passports, Margot grew steadily edgier. She was restless and paranoid—stir-crazy, but reluctant to leave the hotel. It was only because he had started to annoy her, Lowe knew, that she allowed him his walks each day, to the park and back. He wondered what she was worried about, and what would happen when they got the passports. Would Margot go with him to another city? Did he care? The thought of not having sex with her made Lowe sad, and the thought of traveling alone scared him, but in his bubble he didn’t dwell on these things long. Margot leafed through her magazine and perfume fell from the pages onto him. She shifted her hips and Lowe thought about the body beneath her robe and reached for her again. She was having none of it.
“Yer head’s too heavy,” she said, and slid off the sofa. She went to the window and looked down on the gray city and the gray Liffey. Lowe felt his tranquil bubble burst and his balance slip away. He opened his unwilling eyes.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Time fer yer walk.”
He nodded and a large liquid weight shifted in his skull. She was right, he thought, his head was too hea
vy, and overfull with booze and static—a pail of mud on a rickety perch. Lowe rubbed his eyes. He pulled on clothes and slipped two midget whiskey bottles into his raincoat pocket. He looked at Margot. She was still by the window with her head against the glass.
Though Margot had told him not to, he took the same route to the park each day. The buildings he passed were mostly low and old, which made the new ones look even taller and glossier. The streets were full of young people who looked like bankers and accountants and computer guys, and looked like they’d come from someplace else. It reminded Lowe of Wall Street that way. Maybe that’s what Margot meant about fitting in.
He took a wide, tree-lined avenue deep into Phoenix Park, to a bench by the pond he’d been staring at all week. The air was damp and burrowing cold, and he shivered when he sat. The park was mostly empty now—old people, dog walkers, a couple strolling down the path. The woman had thick red hair and an umbrella. The man was tall and pale and his hair was pitch black. Lowe had seen them in the park before and wondered if they worked nearby. He closed his eyes and listened to birds and distant cars and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel. He opened his eyes when the footsteps stopped.
It was the couple, looking down at him. They were handsome, Lowe thought, though there was something cold in the man’s lean face, and something angry in the woman’s eyes.
“May I?” the man asked. American.
“Help yourself,” Lowe said. The man sat; the woman remained standing and looked up and down the path. “You from the States?” Lowe asked.
The man nodded. “From New York, Jimmy—like you.”
Lowe wasn’t conscious of trying to get up, but suddenly the man’s hand was on his shoulder, pressing him back. Lowe’s mind raced, but without traction.
