Black Irish

by Stephan Talty

  BLACK IRISH

  Black Irish is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Talty Creative, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53887-1

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  246897531

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Jimmy Ryan awoke into a feeling of space, blindfolded. He wasn’t in the car trunk anymore, at least, and for that he gave a rushed, silent thanks to God. He’d hated tight spaces ever since he could remember. When he was young, his sadistic fuck of an older brother would tackle him to the ground and clamp a hand over his mouth, coiling around him like a python, whispering in his ear, “You’re trapped in a pipe, Jimmy boy, and you’re going to die. You’re trapped in a pipe …”

  He breathed out to keep the panic down. He rolled his shoulders forward. His hands were tied behind him to the back of the chair he was sitting on. The coarse grain of the rope rubbed painfully against his wrists; it was thick, fraying. His ankles were so tight against the chair legs it felt like his veins were filled with iron filaments that bit into his skin when he moved.

  He heard traffic, faintly off to his left. He counted off the seconds. By the count of ten, three cars had passed. Had to be Seneca, busiest street in the County. But where on Seneca?

  He sniffed the air. The smell was familiar. A memory flickered and then died before he could grasp it. It was an old and bitter smell, something from his boyhood.

  He was losing feeling in his toes. He wriggled them furiously.

  The last thing he remembered, he’d been checking gas meters, heading to the back of 98 Seneca, the Radio Shack with an apartment out back. There’d been a dog there last time, a half-deranged pit bull whose whole body trembled whenever he came by, with rabies or hate or whatever the fuck. That morning he’d put his steel-toed Wolverine boots on special, to kick its teeth straight out its asshole. He’d been walking down the driveway, snow flurries drifting down from a gray sky …

  Something moved now. Off to his left.

  He listened, but the sound died away. The feeling of complete exposure ran over his skin like acid.

  He had to piss. Jesus Christ, he was going to piss his pants.

  He became aware of the sound of his own breathing. It came back to him a half second later, different somehow. His head lifted up. It was a big space he was in. A warehouse? He tried to think if there was one on Seneca, but the map of the County had fled from his mind. Or was he upstairs in a large attic? That made more sense. Lots of big houses on Seneca.

  He felt something approaching from his left, moving slowly.

  He tried to speak. “I … I …”

  It came close to him. He drew back and turned his head away, the chair creaking with the stress.

  The thing stood there, blocking out the sound of traffic, then moved on. Jimmy’s heart bloomed painfully in his chest, shooting darts of adrenaline all over his body. Slowly, he turned his head to the right, trying to follow the moving shape.

  He wanted to talk slow, to remain in control.

  “What … what … do … you … want?”

  His own voice floated off into the emptiness.

  No answer.

  The thing moved around in front of him. He could feel its physical mass. It was as if some ancient animal sense had woken along the nerves of his skin to compensate for the loss of sight.

  He couldn’t keep it up. He had to know. The words spilled out over chattering teeth. “Tell me what the fuck you want, you cocksucker, or I swear to God …”

  The thing moved again, slowly, to his left now. For a moment he thought, It’s not human, it’s something else, some fucking demon.

  A footstep. And the sound of breathing.

  It was human.

  Jimmy let out a shaky breath. Why had he been brought here, what had he done? He desperately tried to think of one good thing he’d done in his life, just one thing.

  “Listen for a minute. I have two boys waiting for me at home. Their names are Brendan and Sean.”

  The ssssnick of a knife being whipped out of its scabbard.

  “Listen to me!” he screamed. “They’ll be terrified right now—shit, and my wife, too—just let me call them and tell them I’m all right …”

  A blade pinched the skin over his jugular. He felt the blood bunch behind the point of the steel.

  He nodded, his eyes clenching shut and water leaking out under the right lid. The ragged breathing was closer.

  After a few seconds, the blade withdrew.

  He lowered his head. He was going to piss his pants and he didn’t give a fuck.

  Silence. Then a gurgling sound.

  Jimmy thought at first that a drainpipe had opened up, some runoff from rain. But it was January, the ground frozen hard as granite.

  It was the thing making the noise.

  He listened, quiet. They weren’t real words, or were they? Another language? It sounded like wet strangled sounds pushed into the air. Was it speaking through some kind of device, trying to disguise its voice?

  “What? I can’t tell what you’re—”

  It lurched forward, pushing air in front of it. Jimmy flinched back, jamming his chin down into his chest, but the blow never came.

  “Who are you?” His voice shook. He took a deep breath, then tried again.

  The thing was coming close. His eyes teared up.

  “Show me your face!” Jimmy shouted.

  He heard movement and the knife cut the rope behind him. He realized his hands had been tied separately to the back of the chair. Now his right hand was free and throbbing. He brought it around and felt for the blindfold. But the knife jabbed into the flesh and he dropped his hand with a curse.

  A grunt and the floor shook. The thing was kneeling in front
of him. He twitched back.

  “You faggot, don’t you …”

  For a second he thought of reaching out and clawing its eyes out. I can blind this son of a bitch. His nails bit against his palm as he felt their sharpness.

  But then, a wave of depression. It would gut him for sure. He was helpless.

  Suddenly, the blade pressed against his throat again, dimpling the flesh.

  “Okay, okay!” he shouted. The knife withdrew. Jimmy knew what it wanted.

  He took a deep breath and slowly reached out in front of him. When he touched something, he hissed and curled his lips. It was a face.

  Jimmy’s finger touched something on the forehead. He began to trace a shape.

  “What the—?” he said softly. He found the end of the scar, then traced it back.

  A hand grabbed his wrist roughly and he cried out. It began pulling his fingers down. The hand was rough-skinned and strong.

  “What are you …”

  He didn’t want to do that. Not that.

  A grunt.

  “I don’t care who you are. Don’t you understand?”

  His hand was wrenched downward and then released. Jimmy took a breath. His hand trembled as it brushed over a flaring nose. He felt the thing’s breath on the hairs of his hand. He paused.

  Jimmy cried out as it turned the knife. The long edge of the blade was against his skin.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  He let his fingertips move down. A top lip, the flesh slightly cooler here. Teeth.

  “You sick goddamn animal. I won’t do it. I won’t.”

  He jerked his hand back.

  Stabbing pain from his stomach. Spiking up and up. He roared, “Stop!” but the sound came back as babble.

  He reached out again and touched the thing’s forehead. The pain stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  Jimmy sat there, panting. Finally, his trembling hand moved downward.

  Moaning now, he let his fingers flutter down over its forehead to the eyes. They were open. His fingertip grazed over the right eyeball. It didn’t close.

  He touched the lips. Turning his head away, he let his fingers crawl forward over the teeth. And with a flash, the picture of a young face came to him. He snatched his hand back; his chin sank onto his chest.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered. “I knew it. I knew you’d come back.”

  The thing stood up and he felt it move behind him. With a jerk, his chair was tilted back and it began to drag him away.

  The chair lurched and smashed against something. A leg splintered. Then again. Jimmy gathered all his reserves of strength and with a groan pulled against the rope around his left hand until he thought he’d dislocated his shoulder. It was too tight. He couldn’t get loose.

  The chair smashed down again. We’re going down steps, Jimmy thought. We were in an attic, and now we’re going down steps to the street. It’s going to be all right. He’s going to let me go.

  Jimmy thought of his brother and wished he were here.

  The sounds of the chair on the stairs filtered away and the church nave grew quiet again. The stained-glass window on the west wall showing the martyrdom of Saint Stephen by stoning grew dimmer; a cloud passing. The distant clatter of ice sliding off a roof came through the thick stone walls but barely registered in the chill air.

  There was the muffled sound of a door slamming that seemed to emerge from beneath the cold flagstones. The sound carried across the empty pews and the baptismal font, long covered in dust, the silver circle around the drain rimmed with dirt.

  And then the screaming began.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DETECTIVE ABSALOM KEARNEY TOOK THE EXIT FOR THE SKYWAY AND THE Ford nosed upward, climbing with the gray asphalt. Lake Erie was frozen over far below and to her right; to her left, Buffalo’s industrial waterfront slept as quiet and still as an oil painting. The factory smokestacks rode past, even with her windshield, but not a smudge of smoke drifted up from them. The waterfront was dead, slumbering for the past three decades. When Absalom used to ride along this part of the highway with her father twenty years before, she’d sometimes hear the smokestacks keen as the storm winds hit them.

  She rolled down the window. The smokestacks were silent. The squall hadn’t peaked yet.

  The crest of the road was ahead, only slate-colored sky beyond. Three stories up, the Skyway was a ribbon of concrete spilled across the clouds. The wind shook the car with a guttering rattle. Abbie gripped the wheel harder.

  She felt the fear grow inside her again, blooming like a growing rose in a sped-up film. She took the Skyway every time she had to go to South Buffalo instead of driving down the 90, where the highway hugged the earth all the way to the exit at Seneca Street, by the junkyard that seemed to hold the same hundred wrecked cars she’d seen there as a child. Abbie told herself she took the road above the lake because she wanted to face the thing that terrified her. Which was what, exactly?

  White tendrils of snow skimmed ahead of her Ford Crown Vic, pushed by the wind. The front edge of the storm was blowing in, spinning a spiderweb of frozen lace on the asphalt. Her eyes followed them as the road rose. Endlessly intricate patterns, hypnotic to watch them form and break, form and break.

  There were no cars up ahead, not a single red brake light in the tall, rippling curtains of snow. The empty highway made her think that if she moved the wheel just two inches to the right she would put the car into the railing. A lull, the bang of ice, and then water. Lake Erie in January was a freezing tomb. Death in fifteen minutes. She’d looked it up, whether to calm herself or scare herself she had no idea.

  She could almost hear the snow crystals scour the asphalt. They made a rough, hissing sound that grated on your eardrums. It was like the shushing of a dogsled heading into blankness, disappearing into the advancing storm …

  Abbie leaned and turned up the radio, which the last detective had tuned to a country station and which she hadn’t bothered to change. She found the University of Buffalo station playing some obscure eighties synth music.

  When she told her partner Z about how odd she felt driving Buffalo highways, he’d asked her why. She’d brushed it off then, but now she knew. It’s the emptiness. The enormous emptiness. Or the loneliness, that was it, the feeling of being alone in a place that should be filled with other people, cars full of families headed to the supermarket, to the restaurant on the lake, to the hockey game. Buffalo had built miles of highways during the boom years, enough for a million people. The people that were going to come but didn’t. Why not? Where’d they disappear to? What happened to them?

  Now the gray roads splayed across the city, empty half the time. The local joke was the only way Buffalo would get a rush hour was if Toronto got hit by a nuclear bomb and panicked Canadians came pouring south. You could drive for twenty minutes at a time at three on a weekday afternoon and not see another car pass you. The highway system was a network of veins laid across a dead heart.

  But she couldn’t talk about those things, because eyes were already on her. She’d only been in Buffalo PD for a year. At thirty-one, she was already on her second police job. If she messed this up like she did Miami …

  The radio crackled. “Detective Kearney, this is Dispatch. McDonough wants to know your ETA.”

  A missing persons case in the County. Must be a family with some connection to the Department, because the missing guy had only been gone since Monday. Just two days. And the officer on scene had called in to check on Abbie’s progress, making the family think their missing son or daughter was a priority. Usually, they would just ask the family if Danny or Maura preferred crystal meth or alcohol.

  She kept her eyes on the yellow line as she reached to pick up the handset. The radio was mounted far enough away to give legroom for a bigger person—that is, one of the sprawling six-foot men that the Department seemed to breed, not the average-sized Abbie. Finally, she hooked the cord with a French-polished fingernail and brought the handset up.
>
  “Kearney to Dispatch,” she said in a husky voice. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Ten-four.”

  She descended down the back slope of the Skyway, the lake coming up on her right and then the raggedy little marina where her father had liked to fish in the spring. Next to it were the hulking grain elevators, massive concrete silos that, like all the old mills down along the waterfront, had been empty for decades. It used to be that ships filled with golden wheat from the West would come steaming into the harbor and unload their haul. The West grew it, and Buffalo milled it. Now the companies were bankrupt and kids with Irish pug noses and no concept of mortality fell to their deaths after breaking the silo locks and climbing up the inside on the rusty maintenance ladders. There wasn’t that much else to do in the County on a Saturday night.

  There’d been one just last week, a seventeen-year-old boy named Fenore who’d wanted to impress his porky girlfriend, who they found crying hysterically at the foot of the silo. Abbie had done one recovery and that was enough. The insides of the things smelled like rancid beer, and at the bottom, always the broken bodies.

  Abbie had begun to think of them as sarcophagi, twenty-story vertical tombs facing out to the lake like some kind of postindustrial pyramids, the bones of the young inside. The whole city was entombed by the artifacts of its glory days.

  She jumped off at Tifft Street, grinding the front wheels into a left turn, and shot off through the nature preserve.

  Coming to South Buffalo was coming home, she guessed. But a little half-Irish girl from outside the neighborhood could never have been at home here, even if she’d been adopted and raised by a legendary Irish cop, the great and terrible John Kearney. Certainly not a girl with an unknown father, who’d given her a shock of midnight-black hair, what they called Black Irish in the County. And if that wasn’t enough, Harvard grads like Abbie were regarded as nothing less than two-headed aliens.