by Ken Bruen
I threw open the door, said,
“I need a coffee, probably the hair of the dog.”
He ventured in slowly as I began to make the coffee. He dared,
“Um, I’m not sure we have time for that.”
I didn’t even look at him, said,
“Sit the fuck down, shut up, and don’t speak until I’m on the other side of two coffees, three cigs, and anything else I can keep in my gut.”
I poured two mugs of coffee, thought about it, then added a slug of Jay to both.
The mugs, wittily enough, proclaimed:
Mug 1
Mug 2
Cute.
The first cig nigh killed me and Pat tried,
“Is that a good idea?”
I laughed.
“Good idea? Jesus, I haven’t had one of those since 1957.”
He drank the coffee and I could see his color rise, the Jay almost instant in its effect.
He looked at his watch, said,
“He won’t be best pleased.”
I waited a beat, then,
“Fuck him.”
And he laughed.
I grabbed his mug, said,
“Lemme top that up.”
Added a fair dollop of Jay, handed him the mug, he took it willingly.
I let him get on the other side of that, then,
“What’s his big hurry?”
He was lit up, said,
“He is mighty pissed.”
. . . bit like yourself,
I thought.
He was all chat now, said,
“Jericho got bail.”
Fuck.
He added,
“Jess put up her home as bond.”
Not good.
I sent Pat away, muttering I had to get on this right away.
Pat crashed the car one street away.
Oops.
Sean Garret, the rapist
Who’d destroyed the young woman Alice’s life?
Alice, who wanted me to find her.
Figured, first I’d find Garret.
Google showed him to be
“One of our future leaders.”
Not if I found him.
Photos of him were extremely flattering.
Good looking in a slightly going-to-seed fashion, shaggy blond hair, almost surfer dude but with Armani suits.
His family owned one of the major construction companies and, at twenty-two, he was already a director, owned a Porsche, had a girlfriend who’d been on one of those Love Island shows.
Like all the new Irish who had Hollywood teeth and the awareness of a hedge fund.
The new generation, who didn’t have any talent but had burning ambitions:
To be seen
To be worshipped
To be envied.
Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, the new shrines.
For all the glitter, shininess, they exuded a deadly dullness.
*
I went to Charlie Byrne’s. It had been a time since I saw Vinny.
He was behind the counter, chatting to Noirin, a stalwart of the bookshop.
Vinny said,
“You’re looking well, Jack.”
We all took a moment to savor this nice, if blatant, lie.
Noirin said,
“We hear you’re keeping company with a famous actress.”
Jess.
And keeping company
Has a myriad of meanings, from the sublime to the banal.
I said,
“She’s the reason I’m here.”
Vinny gave that knowing smile, ventured,
“You’re going to bring her up to speed on crime fiction?”
Close.
I said,
“She’s up for the leading part in the BBC adaptation of Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.”
Noirin said,
“We do have a copy of that with all the original drawings, poems in her own hand, but it’s dear.”
I.e., expensive.
Vinny said,
“Oh, I’m sure we can help with that.”
It was indeed a beautiful volume, reason why Kindle could never hope to dominate the market.
Noirin wrapped it in the bookshop’s distinctive bag, said,
“You’ll be well in now.”
You’d think after my more than fractured relationship with Jess the last thing I’d do was buy her a gift.
She was indeed full of bluster and bullshit.
But
Somewhere in that entire complicated front I had glimpsed a frightened child.
I kind of admired her blunt embrace of life, to face all with a shot of gin and cheek. She was that rarity: an original and a ferocious pain in the arse.
I got home and instantly knew someone had been there.
I moved cautiously around and, in the bedroom, hanging from the light was a black noose.
Black as in jet-black rope.
On the bed was a sheet of black notepaper with red lettering that read,
“Hang loose.”
*
A body was hanging from the Spanish Arch.
A crowd gathered quickly and word spread that it was the actress from Dynasty.
One guy ventured,
“Christ, now that’s a bad review.”
The Guards arrived and it took hours to process the scene and finally take the body down.
The American who’d discovered the body later said to his wife,
“Remember our first night here?”
She did, said,
“Sure, hon, we went to see Playboy of the Western World.”
He nodded soberly, then,
“The dress the body was in, it was the same as Peg.”
She asked,
“You think they hung her after the performance?”
He loved his wife but, Jesus H, sometimes . . .
The Guards didn’t have to appeal for witnesses.
If anything, they had too many.
The square in front of the arch is party central in the summer.
Beside the square is one of the ugliest buildings in the city, a gray slab of
Concrete, known as The Kremlin.
The tenants were tormented every night by
Bongos
Girls screeching
Fights
And, inevitably,
A horrendous version of “The Fields of Athenry.”
You couldn’t give the bloody apartments away.
*
Picture this:
A long-framed shot, the camera ready to zoom in.
An American, on his first visit to Ireland, name of Danny Rourke, is standing on the steps of Jurys hotel, bottom of Quay Street.
It’s just past dawn and Danny, all the way from St. Paul, Minnesota, has sneaked out to smoke a cig. He hadn’t smoked for thirty years but, hey, it’s his vacation and it’s Galway.
Go party.
He lights the cig with a Zippo he bought from Brendan Holland, the newsagent on Eyre Square. It has a Claddagh ring on the side.
He loves that.
He stares at the Spanish Arch, about five hundred yards away, through a light mist.
Soft Irish rain.
Yes,
He mutters,
“Jumping Jehovah.”
A body is hanging from a rope, swinging in the breeze of the arch.
He had only recently retired from the St. Paul Fire Department and his training kicked in. He dropped the cig, ran toward the sight.
Maybe it was a prop from the Arts Festival; all sorts of weird shit were posed around the city.
He reached the figure and let out a soft
. . . fuck.
It was an elderly woman dressed in some sort of costume with a placard around her neck.
It read,
Play
Dead.
No, the Guards were not short of witnesses.
One guy had spoken to two girls in white overalls and Arts Festival T-shirts w
ho were bringing a mannequin to the top of the arch.
He and his buddy helped them with the ladders!
The young ladies were extremely grateful.
The ban Garda who was interviewing them as her sergeant supervised asked,
“Can you give me a description?”
Guy One said,
“Big ladders.”
The sergeant had to suppress a guffaw.
The ban Garda tried,
“The girls, what were they like?”
As one, the guys chorused in quasi-American,
“Smokin’.”
In disbelief, the Garda asked,
“They were smoking?”
The sergeant bit his lip to keep the smirk away as Guy Two said,
“Hot, like, you know, smokin’ hot.”
The ban Garda wanted to chuck her notebook in the water—and the guys, too.
One of the guys said as she turned away,
“Lemme write this in your notebook.”
A clue?
She handed over a loose page and the guy, laboring, gouged out numbers. Young people don’t actually, like, write.
They text.
Hence his apparent difficulty.
He handed the paper back.
She stared at it, near dizzy with hope, asked,
“You got their number?”
He fizzled with annoyance, said,
“That’s my number.”
She snapped the notebook shut, began to stride away.
Her sergeant said,
“You have the perfect blend of persistence and stupidity, you’ll go far.”
Then added,
“Now if you only played hurling.”
They spoke to a range of other witnesses and got little more.
As they headed toward Jurys for a tea break, one of the guys shouted,
“Call me.”
29
The funeral of an actress
Is drama.
The funeral of an actress /
Galway girl
Is melodrama.
Headline in the papers:
Actress
in
Suicide/Murder
Mystery
Fuck, the papers went wild with the death of Jess.
Speculation as to whether her über-loyal fans had helped her stage a grand exit,
Or if they’d killed her.
The obvious suspect was Jericho.
But
She’d a solid alibi.
The air of mystery/mystique in Jess’s death was fueled, too, by the now heavily publicized fact that she was—
Shock, horror, delight—
The bishop’s sister.
That he wasn’t yet bishop didn’t matter.
The lurid ingredients were there:
The bishop,
The actress,
A lesbian?
And
Siblings.
More than enough to sell a ton of papers.
And they sold.
Malachy sent me a short terse text:
This is your fault,
You bollix.
Now, if I showed that to the papers, I could have named my price.
The
Bishop
and
the
Bollix
(They could have added this headline.)
The American who’d first spotted the body became a minor celebrity
And enjoyed it.
Sure beat fighting fires.
The Galway Advertiser had this:
“Exclusive with Danny Rourke”
By Kernan Andrews.
Jimmy Norman on his hugely popular radio show had him as his guest.
Jimmy asked,
“So, Danny, your initial impression on seeing the body hanging underneath the arch?”
Danny had developed a deeper voice since his brush with fame, felt gravitas was necessary, and also made sure to wait a few beats before answering.
This implied:
Solemnity
Sorrow
Thoughtfulness
Or he was just a thick fuck.
He said,
“James”—always use the interviewer’s name, a lot—“I thought first it was like a prank.”
His tone rising at the end to suggest a question.
Jimmy didn’t know.
Which is why he was asking him, but he nodded carefully, which is always dicey on radio but Jimmy had been at this game a while.
Danny, getting into it, said,
“Me and the missus”—he spoke thus as he was told it impressed the ordinary listener—“we’d been to the Druid . . .”
Paused.
“Like, you know, the Druid, the theater?”
As if.
Jimmy sighed, said patiently,
“We are familiar with our world-famous theater.”
Sarcasm alas is lost on visiting Americans as they still believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we are well-wishing folk.
Rourke, taking this as encouragement, if not exactly as approval, warmed to his narrative.
Like this:
“So Deb and I . . .”
Pause.
“She’s my better half. We had been to see Playboy of the Western World.”
Jimmy interrupted fast lest Rourke explain that play.
“We know it.”
Rourke, thrown a wee bit, wondering did he detect a hint of impatience?
Faltered, then cautiously proceeded.
“Peg’s costume was remarked on many times by Deb and when I saw the, um,
Body, Jesus H, it was the same outfit.”
Caught himself, corrected this,
“Well, not the exact one, of course, but, buddy, it was a ringer.”
Jimmy looked up to see Keith Finnegan making the
Wrap it up!
Signal.
Said to Rourke,
“Thank you for coming in, and safe travel.”
Rourke stood, slightly flummoxed, asked,
“Can you validate parking?”
*
Michael Whelan had been a classmate of mine, back when corporal punishment was a daily reality.
Patrician Brothers were the outfit/teachers.
Semireligious in that, as they weren’t priests, they simmered with massive chips on their collective dandruffy cassocks.
I went on to become a failure in many fields while Michael came first in college in chemistry, no mean feat.
He was the envy of all the kids on our street as he owned a red rocket.
Not the Branson mode but a toy that you actually lit and it fired into the sky and our wistful imaginations.
He was the first person I ran into at the funeral of Jess.
Her blend of
Fame
Infamy
Notoriety
Suicide/murder
Ensured a mega-attendance
From the great, the glorious Galwegians.
Michael said,
“She has drawn a bigger crowd than St. Thérèse will.”
The remains of the saint were due to be processioned through the streets in a few days.
You outdraw a saint in Galway, you’re really something.
I said,
“She was really something.”
I think he thought I meant the saint.
*
Pat, the young priest who walked point for Malachy, came rushing over.
“Nice,”
I thought.
“He’s going to welcome me.”
If welcome is the apt term for a funeral.
He was red in the face, glared at Michael Whelan, then almost shouted at me,
“You’re barred.”
I gasped,
“From a funeral?”
He did look a little ashamed but not much, said,
“His preeminence says he’ll call the Guards.”
I have been barred from the best
Pubs
/>
Clubs
Weddings
Rotary club
Legion of Mary.
But this . . .
A new low in a life slowly but with indefinite purpose crawling toward the pit.
Worse, I had the book I bought for Jess in my Garda jacket.
In some mad romantic notion, I’d seen my own self gently toss the book in after the coffin.
I offered the book to Pat, asked,
“Will you hand this to Malachy, with my deepest sympathy?”
He stared with utter scorn at me, said,
“In words his preem might use . . .”
Pause . . .
“Shove it up your arse.”
So,
What to do with a book you can’t literally bury.
Give it to a nun.
Sister Maeve. Had been too long since I saw her.
The American term regifting was pretty much my intention and I have to say it’s a neat notion.
You take your unwanted gift / no longer a use for gift, etc. Pass it on.
A. You get rid of the bloody thing.
B. You get gratitude for it.
Pretty much
Win
Win
Or so I believed.
*
She was delighted to see me, gave me a megahug and, trust me, you get a hug from a nun it’s unlike any other hug,
Ever.
She looked, as always, in her late thirties and I knew her to be nunning toward mid-fifties.
I have used this term before as it kind of belongs in Lives of the Saints.
She had a beatific smile.
Made you feel better than you were or you’d ever be.
Being hugged by a nun is, oddly, both sacred and profane.
Ushered me into the small apartment she used as outrider for the Poor Clares.
I said,
“I brought you a gift, you know, to . . .”
(Lie, quick.)
“Celebrate the pope’s visit.”
The pope’s visit had the country in a tizzy.
Forty million it was to cost.
Mind you, various sources quoted forty million or at least thirty million, but either way a lot.
Papal merchandise was hot.
In Lidl you could buy lolli-popes.
So, in the U.S., would there be pope-cicles?
The pope’s face was on the front of the lollipop but if you sucked all the way it didn’t sustain; his image evaporated.
I know, there is a blasphemous joke in there somewhere but I’m not seeking it.
The pope would be in the country for twenty-four hours, culminating in Mass at Croke Park.
Now here’s where it gets weird:
Temporary morgues were being arranged as so many pilgrims were expected but—
Big but—
Due to security, snipers on rooftops (I shit thee not), no vehicles were allowed within a ten-mile radius.
