Galway Girl

by Ken Bruen

Scott was beyond outrage, screamed,

  “You daft bollix, that’s not impertinence, this is!”

  Launched into a tirade of abuse.

  Got an extra six months.

  Plus a beating from a Guard when they took him down.

  All in all, he served fourteen months.

  Jail changed him utterly.

  Word was out that he was the son of a Guard, so daily humiliations, hidings, abuse were his lot. Eventually, he toughened up, did the gym and worked on perfecting a nasty streak, learned the power of a psycho rep.

  If asked by a new guy,

  “What did you do?”

  As in, why are you here?

  He said simply,

  “Guards.”

  *

  On the day of his release the warden gave him what he liked to think of as

  The motivational speech.

  A mix of self-help shite infused with smatterings of Dr. Phil, Reader’s Digest nuggets of wisdom, and his own distilled philosophy of “no one is truly lost.”

  Scott stood before him, a sphinx of unknowing, waited.

  The warden asked,

  “So, young Scott, have you plans?”

  Scott swallowed spittle, said deadpan,

  “Yes, sir, a major plan of action.”

  The warden grinned, said,

  “Splendid. Might I inquire further?”

  Scott stared at him for a long moment, then,

  “I am going to show the world my true worth.”

  The warden wavered, wondered if he was missing something, suggested,

  “Do tell.”

  Scott was tempted but he did need his release, so said,

  “Service to the community.”

  Ah.

  The warden gave him bus fare, an envelope containing enough to maybe pay for a burger, stood, said,

  “I wish you the best of luck, young man.”

  Scott said,

  “Luck has very little to do with it. It’s all about determination.”

  Again, the warden wondered if there was a subtext.

  Outside Scott breathed the air, said,

  “Determined? Oh, yes, to kill as many Guards as counts.”

  *

  For two years Scott worked, if such a term can be used, as an escort. A new flourishing biz for the new flourishing older lady.

  Or, indeed, gentleman.

  Scott had the looks and the careful cultivated air of an abandoned puppy.

  His plan was to acquire sufficient funds, a safe base to launch his enterprise, all the while stoking his homicidal obsession.

  The business he was engaged in eroded any traces of humanity that might still have lingered. If prison had fueled his rage, the escort trade added utter contempt to the mix.

  The most valuable lesson he learned was to charm in full sight.

  Scott rewrote the old truism on how to succeed.

  Like this:

  1. . . . . Steal freely

  2. . . . . Kill randomly

  3. . . . . Get with a Galway girl

  He stared at those lines,

  Smiled, said,

  “See? Sense of humor.”

  Then the brain wave:

  A Galway girl.

  Wait for it—

  “Who is a Guard!”

  He had studied all the serial killer books, novels, and decided to leave a cryptic note after each kill, give a touch of mystique, and get the media hot.

  Later, he’d abandon the notes he composed in Irish for the simple reason he got bored with it and, more important, he ran out of Irish; his education in his native tongue had been sporadic at best.

  4

  Aibhealai

  Is the Irish word

  For an exaggerator.

  It’s not much used as Irish people

  Never exaggerate.

  The shooting of Guard Nora McEntee caused a huge furor.

  The city was on high alert, media screaming for the culprit to be apprehended.

  He wasn’t.

  As the only witness, I was dragged to the station,

  Not

  . . . to help with inquiries

  But more to be bullied, intimidated, shouted at.

  Sheridan, the supposedly supercop, led the interview, demanded,

  “Taylor, why are you always on the scene of shootings?”

  I went with a vague truth, said,

  “I have no idea.”

  He leaned right into my face, and I said, very quietly,

  “Back the fuck off.”

  He was delighted, spun back, shouted to the Guards gathered,

  “Hear that? He’s threatening a Guard.”

  Owen Daglish, playing good Guard, said,

  “Cut him some slack.”

  Sheridan fumed, snarled,

  “Let’s throw him in a cell, let him stew.”

  I said,

  “Not a great time to be alienating the public.”

  Sheridan asked,

  “What does that mean?”

  The Garda commissioner was up to her arse in an alleged conspiracy to discredit a whistle-blower; the media were out for more dirt on the inner workings of the top brass.

  Wilson, the super, breezed in, ordered,

  “Cut him loose.”

  She looked at me, said,

  “Try not to get in the way of the investigation.”

  I gave her my sweetest look, which is a blend of guile and deranged ferocity, said,

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The press were outside and Kernan Andrews of the Galway Advertiser shouted,

  “In the middle of it again, Jack?”

  I said,

  “Buy me a pint and get an exclusive.”

  Kernan was too clued in for that old play.

  I headed up Shop Street, gave a homeless guy a few euros, he asked,

  “What will that do?”

  “Ease my conscience.”

  Outside Garavan’s, a young man, blond hair, dressed in black leather jacket, stared at me. He was not unlike a young David Soul and something in his attitude said he knew that. I asked,

  “Help you?”

  He gave a radiant smile, asked,

  “Do you know the words of ‘Galway Girl’?”

  *

  It was late when I got back to my apartment.

  Something off.

  All the mirrors had been smashed.

  One sheet of paper, black with red letters, read

  The walls of Jericho

  Did

  Not

  Come

  Tumbling down.

  I asked aloud what you would.

  I asked,

  “The fuck is this?”

  *

  I went to the cemetery, wrapped in my Garda all-weather coat, bitter, cold, vicious wind at my heels. There were so many graves to visit and I muttered,

  “I can’t, I just can’t.”

  But I could visit one.

  New headstone, a frenzy of soft toys and wilting flowers all around, the toys already soaked and beaten, here lay my daughter, whom I barely had time to know before she was killed. I stood there in wretched silence, unable to form words. I reached into my coat, took out the flask, chugged some Jay.

  Didn’t help but, then, nothing did.

  I sensed being watched and turned to my right. A priest was standing about three rows from me, raised his hand in greeting, then approached me.

  I have a terrible history with priests, full of lies, evasion, and downright betrayal.

  He was young, mid-thirties, but his face already had that shocked expression of each day revealing the worst of humanity.

  He held out his hand, said,

  “I’m Father Paul.”

  I let it hang for a moment before I took it, said,

  “Jack. Jack Taylor.”

  He looked at the grave, asked,

  “Would you like me to give a blessing?”

  My mood turned nasty, well, nastier. I asked,

&
nbsp; “How much will that cost?”

  5

  Shoot

  the

  Woman

  First.

  Wallace Stroby

  Jericho revisited her grand plan of chaos:

  Recruit two dumb men; fuck ’em over in every sense,

  Then kill two women.

  She said aloud,

  “The twos rule,”

  As she fingered the two G’s on a chain around her neck.

  Prison for Scott was punctuated by:

  Beatings,

  Assaults,

  Slow gym building,

  Until he was celled with a hacker.

  They jelled and Scott learned the basics of the hacker’s art.

  Freed, as he prepared his Guard blitzkrieg, he had the bright idea of getting a female Guard as a girlfriend. This in mind, he hacked the Garda personnel file.

  Nora McEntee caught his eye. He muttered,

  “You’ll do nicely.”

  Stalked her slowly, then approached her in the pub one night, asked,

  “May I buy you a drink?”

  She gave him the measured Irish woman scan, deadly in its scrutiny, and he was found wanting. She said,

  “No, don’t think so.”

  Her friends tittered.

  Tittered!

  At him?

  She was no fucking prize, he thought, and for a good-looking dude like him to throw her a crumb?

  The fuck was with that?

  *

  Two days later Scott killed his first Guard.

  Noel Flaherty, a close friend of his father, was, as Scott muttered,

  “A prize bollix.”

  He was, by sheer coincidence, an uncle of the late Garda Ridge.

  Scott had found his father’s Colt .45, the authentic Old West gig, a present from law enforcement in Arizona. He had attended a conference there and made friends with the top cops.

  This weapon was lovingly cleaned, oiled, and locked away again every week. Only once had Scott been allowed to hold it.

  His father had said,

  “If you man up, maybe someday you might be allowed to actually load it.”

  Right.

  A box of six bullets.

  So, six Guards.

  Why not?

  Noel Flaherty lived in one of the old fishing cottages in Claddagh, alone since his wife died. Scott easily broke in through a piss-poor lock on the back door.

  Cops were notoriously lax at home protection, thinking,

  “Who’d have the balls to burgle us?”

  Flaherty was watching a video of the Galway hurling team win the All Ireland, roaring and cheering as if he were at Croke Park.

  Scott stepped in front of the TV screen, said,

  “The match has been canceled.”

  *

  Scott was dressed in ski mask, black jeans, hoodie, his whole body alight. He slipped out the back door, left a note to give the dumb cops something to puzzle over.

  The actual note meant nothing to him but he thought it added a nice air of intent.

  Outside, he was coming from the back alley and not only was the damn mask itching but the fooker was hot. Sweat rolling downs his face, he whipped it off, gulping large bolts of oxygen.

  Realized the gun was still in his hand.

  Fuck.

  Careless.

  Then noticed a girl leaning against the far wall, smoking a cig, dressed like a Goth punk. He raised the gun, thought,

  “Shite, only five bullets left.”

  The girl pushed away from the wall, gave a malicious smile, said,

  “Gotcha.”

  On her second line of coke, Jericho said aloud,

  “First dumb fuck selected.”

  6

  How to succeed

  In Galway

  Without really trying:

  1. Play hurling.

  2. Feed the swans.

  3. Get with a Galway girl.

  I was coming out of McCambridge’s, having bought a six-pack of Lone Star, the longneck brand. Rachel, lovely girl who works there, asked me,

  “Is that a good beer?”

  What to say? I said,

  “Makes me long to go to Texas.”

  Which was kind of true.

  Outside, I paused, lit a Marlboro Red, hitting all the U.S. notes. A guy passing said,

  “Where’s your ash?”

  Threw me. WTF, did he mean on the cig?

  He indicated his forehead, which had a gray smudge. The penny dropped.

  Ash Wednesday.

  Where does the time go when you’re in fucking bits?

  I wanted to stay in U.S. mode, snarl the American term for sex.

  “Getting your ashes hauled.”

  Or maybe some literary quip on T. S. Eliot, but I couldn’t be bothered, said,

  “Forgot.”

  He eyed me, then,

  “Let’s hope the Lord doesn’t forget you.”

  Sweet Jesus.

  A Holy Roller.

  I snarled,

  “God forgot me somewhere in the middle of the Celtic Tiger.”

  *

  I went to Freeney’s, truly your old-style Galway pub, no frills, no hen parties, no newly rich on paper gobshite with the narrow suits, skinny ties, and those crocodile brown, long shoes that were, as O. J. Simpson had once termed his own footwear,

  “God-ugly suckers.”

  If you have to quote Simpson in any context you are fucked beyond any reckoning. Freeney’s even have fishing tackle on display in the window and hooch in earthen jars. I see that, I long for a childhood in bygone Ireland that I think really existed only in the pages of Walter Macken.

  How do you live when your child was murdered?

  You try to read the papers, the headlines engorged with the furious debate raging on . . . Repeal the Eighth Amendment.

  You had:

  Pro life,

  Pro choice,

  The Church,

  Fundamentalists,

  And bitterness fueled with ferocity that had opposing placards

  Like this:

  Baby killers

  Who owns women’s bodies?

  The world had somehow survived the first year of Trump,

  If barely.

  At the Winter Olympics, saw the incredible:

  A handshake between North and South Korea.

  Phew-oh.

  I initially tried to struggle through my grief by immersion in darkness, read the books of ferocity:

  Chris Carter

  Herbert Lieberman’s City of the Dead

  Joseph Koenig

  Derek Raymond’s Factory novels

  Drew the line at actually watching the Saw franchise but I was that close to out-and-out weirdness.

  A student wandered in looking lost, wearing a Donegal GAA jersey and a dazed expression. The bar guy, great ole Galway trouper named Mac, intercepted him, barked,

  “Park it elsewhere, son.”

  A relatively new trend in the city:

  Donegal Tuesdays.

  The students, dressed in the counties’ T-shirts and jerseys, drank like lunatics and generally terrorized the town. Oh, and despite the freezing February weather, they wore no coats.

  I was told,

  “It’s so uncool to wear coats!”

  Not to mention fucking idiotic.

  By all that is wonderful in insane Irish logic, this week of Donegal Tuesdays coincided with the Annual Novena in the cathedral.

  Church bells intoned three times daily and hawkers from every nonreligious pocket of the land set up stalls selling

  Padre Pio relics,

  Scapulars blessed by various popes,

  Medals to ward off all save misery,

  And enough bottles of holy water to stop a zombie apocalypse.

  Drunken students, cowed pilgrims, lashing rain . . . what’s not to love?

  *

  A young man stared at me from the counter, dressed in a fine suit, had the look of
a furtive apprentice accountant. I snapped,

  “The fook you looking at?”

  The bar guy gave me the look that said,

  “Chill.”

  The man slipped off the stool, sauntered over, gave me an appraisal not unlike an undertaker, as in,

  “How big need the coffin be?”

  He asked in a Brit accent,

  “You Jack Taylor?”

  I nodded.

  He sat, took a long draft of his pint of cider, said,

  “You were a friend of my dad’s.”

  Jeez, that covers a multitude and very little of it good. I stalled, tried,

  “And he is/was?”

  The name he gave shattered me.

  Years before, this name had been my best mate until . . .

  Until . . .

  I drowned him.

  The name he uttered:

  “Stapleton.”

  I don’t do friends well.

  It starts out okay but they soon tire of the drinking and my temper.

  Stapleton seemed the exception.

  As the Americans say, “He had my back.”

  Until I realized he was slowly but surely planting a knife there.

  *

  We’d ended up on Nemo’s Pier, the scene of so many of my worst moments.

  In the midst of a ferocious storm.

  Not quite as fierce as the storm in my heart.

  I threw him into the water, knowing he couldn’t swim, and despite the wind I thought I heard him scream.

  My own scream was,

  “Fuck you.”

  7

  The only difference between

  A grave

  And a rut

  Is the dimension.

  I was still reeling from the revelation of Stapleton’s son. Stapleton had been one of the best friends I’d ever had.

  But

  I ignored the old chestnut

  . . . keep your enemies closer.

  He was a force of malignant nature. His past included:

  Paramilitary time,

  British army,

  Sundry mercenary black ops.

  Or so it was rumored.

  In Galway, he’d reincarnated himself as an artist.

  If you want to pose as an artist,

  Wannabe poet,

  Author,

  Galway is your nirvana.

  All you have to do is declare yourself so,

  Carry a copy of Joyce/Beckett/Heaney—

  The more battered the copy, the more convincing—

  And, best of all, you never have to read the fuckin’ things, just go