Welcome to Dublin, sir.”
“Get tae fuck.”
It was an hour from Edinburgh to Dublin, all cramped up in the belly of a Ryanair with attendants who didn’t bother to show us the escape doors. One of ’em had the pure blarney shite running free from his puss. I could tell he was a poof, likes. Graham Norton type, y’ken?
Then the cunt of a cab driver, same old shite. A leprechaun with fuckin’ eyebrows on his cheeks. He skinned us out of most of my funny money and dropped us off on O’Connell Street. Best Western, the Dublin Royal. I wondered how royal a three-star could be, got my answer when I saw my room: not fuckin’ very. I dumped the Head bag and switched on the telly. Couple of channels, they wasn’t even speaking fuckin’ English. I lit a Bensons and cracked open the bottle of duty free. Jack Daniel’s. Took a swallie and put the bottle on the bedside cabinet. Looked out of the window, felt sick. Call this culture? Princes Street, that’s culture. This is a motorway with a couple of fuckin’ statues of nobodies.
This country, man. I’d been here before, but that was thirty years ago. Hiding behind a wall in Belfast, trying not to shite my uniform. I had a gun then, mind. Thanks to yer man Bin Laden, the best I could manage this time was a Stanley the Big Yin give us when I was sixteen.
Big Yin. His name was Connolly, like the other Big Yin. And if the comedian had carried on drinking and being funny instead of marrying that blond piece, he’d have looked like our Big Yin too. Must admit, I fancied a wee shot at her when she was in that leotard in Superman 3, likes, but when I found out she was a head-shrinker, Wee Shug wilted.
Big Yin was the reason I was here. Him and a mick called Barry Phelan. A bunch of old scores to be settled and me buff apart from the Stanley.
It didn’t matter. A solid blade was all a Boyo needed.
Walking with Big Yin, him finding his feet slow. We was going down the chipper on Broughton Road. He had a winter coat on and his breath came out in short blasts of smoke. Ice on the pavement and I had to guide him over it.
“You got a name for us, Shuggie?” he said.
“Aye. Barry Phelan.”
“Away, I thought he was dried up.”
“That’s what I heard, Mr. Connolly. A man with a gun in his mouth doesn’t lie.”
“Good lad.”
I got the name from Lee Cafferty, a bristling big-fuck suedehead who’d been the leader of a gang of sawn-offs. This bunch of pricks had turned over a card game behind one of Big Yin’s massage-and-handjob places down London Road. And for a hard cunt, Cafferty was quick to piss his tartan boxers. Mind you, when you thumb back the hammer of a revolver, it’s like St. Peter slammed the book shut. Sorry, auld son, Big Cat says y’ain’t coming up.
“What d’you want done?” I said to Big Yin.
He coughed, shook his head. After he cleared his throat, he said: “I want the cunt deid is what I want, Shugs. Bastard thinks he can jump the pond and do over one of my places?” Big Yin pulled a face. His cheeks went hollow and in the glow of the streetlamp I could see right through the skin. “I want his balls. You do that for us, son. You go over there and you bring us back his fuckin’ balls while they’re still bleeding.”
“Okay.”
We went into the chipper. Big Yin got a poke of chips drowned in vinegar. About the only thing he could taste. He told the plooky lass behind the counter to keep the change and I escorted him out. The wind coming strong up the hill, I had to hold onto Big Yin’s arm as we went back to his house. He struggled with the chips, dropped a couple. I got him back home, took off his coat, and got him settled in his chair.
“You want a nightcap, Mr. Connolly?” I said.
“I widnae say no, Shugs.”
Poured him a double-dram of Glenlivet and sat the glass on the table next to him. He turned on the telly and caught the beginning of a Minder repeat. When I left, I could hear him humming the theme tune.
That night, I sat in the dark because my eyes hurt. I tanned a bottle of brandy, listened to Johnny Cash, and held the Stanley Big Yin had given us. I didn’t need light to know what was on there. My finger traced it out: “Shuggie BTTE”
Boyo To The End.
Aye, that’d be right. I slipped the Stanley into my pocket, went to pack my bag.
“You’re kidding us, you’re fuckin’ kidding us.”
“Honest, Shuggie. I widnae kid yez around on this, man.”
“You couldn’t have telt us before I got on the fuckin’ plane? Jesus Christ, man.”
“I didnae get a chance, Shugs. I only found out this morning. You got a black tie?”
“Fuck yersel’,” I said, and slammed the receiver back on the cradle. Missed, slammed it again. I could still hear Keith whining at the other end. Smacked the phone so hard, the speaker part came off in my hand. Left it at that and saw a young mick punk waiting to use the phone. Said, “Fuck you staring at?”
“You what?” he said.
I walked over to him. “How do I get to Mount Jerome?”
“You get him drunk enough, he’ll do anything.” The punk rolled his shoulders, reckoned hisself a piece of work with the nose ring and that stud in his eyebrow.
“Fuck’s that, eh? Irish sense of humor?” I grabbed the fucker by the arm, hauled him into the phone box. Pressed him up against the glass. “How’s about a Scottish joke, then? This smart cunt’s got no nose. How does he smell?”
“Wait a second—”
“He fuckin’ doesn’t.” I pulled the nose ring out, took the nostril with it. He tried to clap his hand over the ragged wound, but I held him fast.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “I’m just kidding around, man.”
“Stuff it up your arse. Tell us where the fuckin’ cemetery is or I’ll pan yer cunt in.”
“You get the bus from up the road,” he said. When he talked, he spat.
“Which one?”
“Sixteen. Get off at Harold’s Cross.”
I pushed him to the floor of the box. Pulled my hood up and wandered across the road to the bus shelter. Lit a Bensons, watched the white part get spotted with rain. The punk found his feet and took off. Run, Forrest, run.
Barry Phelan. Some radge bastard had already done the job for me, and His name was God. A stroke knocked Phelan into the Beaumont and a heart attack finished him off in the wee small hours. A shock for all concerned. Mostly me. And if I could take the Big Cat to task, I fuckin’ would. Just like Him to cheat a trying man, ken what I mean?
My man Keith was supposed to keep his ear to the ground. He was supposed to tell us where Phelan was when I got here. I’ll sort him out before I go. Useless fucker. Wouldn’t be surprised he got hisself hooked up with the wrong crowd, ken? It was getting that way. People didn’t have respect for tradition no more.
The Bensons tasted rank. I chucked it into a puddle as I saw the bus coming.
What’s the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish funeral?
One less drunk.
Aye, I’m a funny cunt. And I needed something to lighten my mood when I got to Mount Jerome. The place was a sea of gray, man. Tombstones, creepy bastard crypts and whatsit … mausoleums? An Irish funeral in the middle of a cloudburst. Talk about fuckin’ maudlin. I walked through the stones, making sure I trod on as many of they dead cunts’ heads as I could, sidled up against a tomb, and watched all they bastards in their drookit Sunday best watching God’s lad go through the motions.
Ashes to ashes. Funk to funky.
The mourners, they was mostly family. I could tell because they was ugly bastards. Skinny, suits hanging off them like they was three sizes too big. The women, small and stodgy, hidden away behind tatty black veils. Professional fuckin’ widows, ken? And it pished down throughout. I spat at the ground, put my hand in my pocket, and wrapped my fingers around the Stanley.
Barry Phelan’s balls, they was under that screwed-down lid. Unless I shot over there, jumped on the coffin, and pried it open with my bare hands, Phelan’s balls were going to be worm food along with the rest of him. That wasn’t any big deal. Bollocks was bollocks. There was bound to be another lad round here who I could pass off as the real deal. And I saw him as soon as the coffin went under.
He came to me, hand outstretched. A tall lad with a gut and white hair. “Tommy Phelan.”
I shook. His hand like a wet fish supper in my grip. I read somewhere that a man’s scrotum and nose kept growing as he got older. If that was the case, then this Tommy Phelan must’ve had knackers the size of watermelons, I’m telling you, because that nose made him look part toucan. “Hugh Sutton,” I said. “Mates call us Shug.”
“You’re Scottish,” he said.
And you’re a fuckin’ genius. “Aye, fae Edinburgh, likes,” I said, getting coarse with the cunt. He wanted Scottish, he’d get Scottish. “I heard Barry kicked it, likes, so I thought I’d mosey over and check it out.”
“You knew him?”
“I ken Lee Cafferty.”
“Lee’s a good man.”
Lee’s a dead man. I shot him in the crown, left him sticking to the lino like a fly in shite. “He certainly is.”
“You’ll be coming to the wake,” said Tommy. A statement.
“No can do. Got to be back in Edinburgh.”
“Sure, you can stay for a wee while. I’d be offended if you didn’t.”
“Ach, if you put it like that,” I said, “I’d be glad to.”
An Irish wake, like a Scottish wedding, Hogmanay and Burns Night all rolled into one. A cold spread on a long table up against one wall that’d hardly been touched. Empty bottles that had. We was upstairs in this place called The Lantern. Phelan sitting across from us, a half-tanned bottle of Bushmills and a pint of Guinness next to it. Talk about fuckin’ stereotypes, man, the auld lad was half in his cups and two sheets to the wind about an hour after we got there. He had a Players between his fingers. I didn’t ken they still made ’em.
“What do you think of Dublin?” he asked me. But like most soused micks, he didn’t wait for an answer. His face screwed up and he leaned forward, rattling the table. The black stuff didn’t move. “It’s not Ireland,” he said. “It’s England’s version of Ireland. You know you can’t smoke in pubs over here now? Legislated. We’re losing our culture bit by bit.”
“Aye.” Thinking, Smoking’s part of your culture, pal?
“Sure, you know all about that, don’t you? I been to Edinburgh, I seen what they did to that place. Shops on Princes Street all full of See-You-Jimmy wigs, am I right? Fuckin’ English screwing you out of your heritage. Tourist tat. Am I right?”
“Aye, you’re right.”
“Dublin’s the same. Temple Bar, I was down there the other week, it’s full of coffee shops. Theme pubs. Feckin’ yanks coming over here claiming they have ancestors from the feckin’ bogs. You know what I say? I say feisigh do thóin féin, that’s what I say.”
“Gesundheit,” I said.
A young lad came over to the table. He was stringy, had a mean look about him. He put a bottle of clear liquid on the table and Phelan’s eyes lit up like a cheap fruit machine. “Now that’s more like it. You’ll join me, so.”
“I’m all right, Mr. Phelan.”
“My brother died, the name’s Tommy, and you’ll join me. Won’t he, Barry?”
“Course he will,” said the stringy lad. He took a seat. I knew he was a wanker, because he turned the chair and straddled it.
“My nephew’s just come back from your neck of the woods,” said Tommy. He poured three deep shots from the bottle. “Barry, this is Shug. He’s an Edinburgh lad.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. But his eyes said different. His index finger ran down the side of the shot glass. Brown flecks under the nail. “It’s done, Tommy.”
“There’s a good lad. You take care of it yourself?”
Barry looked across at me, like he was trying to work out if it was safe. Then: “The auld bastard was dead when I got there.” He cracked a grin like a graveyard. “Fucker was sitting in front of the telly, Tommy. Sitting in his own shite.”
I smiled. My mouth was open. Some fuck had put vinegar on the roof and it hurt to breathe. I reached for the shot glass. “What’s this, vodka?”
Tommy’s face flickered. “Poitín, Shuggie. Sláinte.”
“Sláinte,” said Barry.
“Whatever,” I said, and necked it. It burned my throat. That, or something else.
A rat always knows when he’s in with weasels. That’s the way the song goes.
I drank with them, tried to hold it down. Kept wanting to twitch right out of there. Barry didn’t drink so much, and neither did I, but Tommy got wasted. His eyes glazed over, his chin got loose. It looked like he was melting. “Your da would be proud of you, Barry-son. He’d be proud.”
“I know, Uncle Tommy.”
Barry Phelan, son of Barry Phelan. The fuckin’ Irish, they keep it simple, eh? They have to, the amount they pour down their necks. I got a measure of Barry right away. This cunt clocked on who I was, likes. That’s why he told me what happened to Big Yin. Laughing at me. It tore at my gut, made me want to chew his fuckin’ nose off.
Shug Sutton. The last of the Boyos. The rest all up and fucked off with other firms. Shuggie stayed put. More fool me, eh?
I waited until Barry got to his feet and announced that he had to take a pish. Waited another three seconds and did the same thing. Tommy out of it. I walked into the toilets and Barry had his back to me, pishing in one of the cubicles. Too insecure to use the urinal, hung like a fuckin’ hamster, eh?
“I don’t hear pissing, Shugs,” said Barry, shaking his wee man. Took more than three shakes, the wanker. “Which means you’re thinking about doing something rash, am I right?”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t find the breath.
Barry turned in the cubicle. He smiled. His bottom set of teeth was all skew-whiff, likes. “Yer man’s dead, Shugs. He was dead before I got there. So you go back out there and you raise a glass to the new crew, all right? Because if you don’t, I’ll have the whole family rip you a new arse to match yer fuckin’ face.”
I thought about that for about five seconds. And the cunt Phelan made to push past me. I stood still.
“You fuckin’ simple, Shugs? It’s over, pal,” he said.
Right enough. It was over.
I clamped a hand over his mouth, grabbed his balls with the other, and pushed him back into his cubicle. His breath was hot on my palm. I cracked his skull against the wall until he went limp. Lost myself for a second, then came back with blood on my hands and saltwater hanging from my mouth. My lungs hurt. I couldn’t breathe proper.
Slapped the lock across the cubicle door and let Barry’s head drop against the toilet bowl. Fumbled for my Stanley and pulled the cunt’s drawers down. Wiped my nose with the back of my hand and sniffed hard, slumped down onto the floor with him. Got to work. Had to keep wiping my face because I couldn’t see through the water.
Outside I heard people singing country songs. Cunts didn’t cry at the funeral, but stick on Patsy Cline and they greeted like bairns.
“Crazy.” Of all the fuckin’ things to hear.
I leaned back against the toilet, mopped my face with my sleeve. The cunt had bled all over the shop, the tiles sticky. And there was me, sitting right in the middle of it, man. Britches all fuckin’ bloody and that, my shirt a mess. It stank of Barry’s last pish and blood and shite. I let my head fall back and I stared at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, red dots in front of my eyes.
Barry Phelan didn’t kill Big Yin; God did. And it didn’t matter which Barry Phelan did the London Road blag, didn’t matter that Big Yin wouldn’t give a fuck if I had the cunt’s balls or not.
I promised him, ken? You can’t go back on a promise to a dying man. Especially when you was all the poor bastard had.
And aye, there was no way I was getting out of here alive. If I’d had that gun I put Lee to the lino with, I’d have had a fighting chance. But right then, my arse wet through with Barry Phelan’s blood, I didn’t have the strength in me to do fuckall but sit there and listen to Patsy fuckin’ Cline and Tammy fuckin’ Wynette, tears rolling down my cheeks.
Took they cunts an hour to realize Barry was a no-show. Took another fifteen or so to check the bogs. And daft fuckin’ micks, took them a bucketload of mouth and one hard kick to bust down the door.
I heard a lad puke. Heard the hammer of a revolver thumbed back and oaths yelled, proper nasty Irish shite.
It’s not every day a lad admits he died with another man’s balls in his hand. But what else was I going to do, eh?
I was a Boyo to the end.
THE PISS-STAINED CZECH
BY OLEN
STEINHAUER
This was back in ’94, in the middle of a planned three-month stay in Prague. I thought that by soaking up a little Bohemia and wading through Joyce’s Ulysses, I’d become a writer. But that was a joke, largely because I spent each night drinking with Toman, a six-foot shaved-bald Czech who passed his days in the gym. He liked buying drinks for a writer, and I liked having drinks bought for me.
“You come to Dublin on this weekend.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to work.”
“A writer’s work,” he said, puffing out his chest like a Cossack, “is to living. Only one night. Weekend. You come.”
“I’m broke, Toman.”
He slapped my back. “We stay with Toman’s friend, Sean. The plane—Toman will pay.”
“You have a friend in Dublin?”
“Toman, he has friend all over world!”
He liked referring to himself in the third person. Toman must to pee, or Toman must get to work. I never knew what his work was, but he had enough money to keep me in drinks, which was all that mattered.
We landed at Dublin International on January 22, a Saturday, then took a taxi to a posh southern neighborhood called Ballsbridge—a name that got a giggle out of me—where the bay winds blew down a narrow street of matching brick Victorian houses. It was very fucking cold. The door Toman knocked on was opened by a skinny Irishman with a beard that made me think of the drunks lingering in the corners of pubs in Ulysses—everything I knew about Dublin came from that book.
“Shite. Toman.”
“Toman and his American writer friend are here for until tomorrow. You have a floor?”
I was embarrassed, because we clearly weren’t expected. All I could do was introduce myself as Sean reluctantly led us inside.
“How is our Linda?” asked Toman.
“Gave her the boot. You know.” Sean took a green bottle of Becherovka, the Czech national liquor, from a cabinet. It was the last thing I expected to drink in Dublin. He handed me a shot. “Whaddaya write?”
“Trying to write like Joyce.”
He raised an eyebrow, his expression not unlike scorn.
So I said, “How do you know Toman?”
Sean lipped his glass, then poured it down and wiped his mouth. “Real estate investments. In Prague. Toman, he helps me out. He’s the go-between.”
“Toman helps,” said Toman, “so my good friend Sean can buy all of Prague for his friends.”
“What friends?” I asked.
But the Irishman didn’t hear me. “A pint, lads?”
A pint, it turned out, meant ten pints in three pubs—the Paddy Cullens hidden in the embassy area; Crowes a few doors down; and by 11:00 I was dizzy in Bellamy’s, where at this hour all the surfaces were sticky and rugby boys were singing to each other and businessmen at the bar swapped jokes over Guinness. Toman and Sean drained their Harps and roared over jokes about Linda-who’d-gotten-the-boot (“Och, ochón,” said Sean, “she had an ass onner!”) and others whose names I couldn’t keep track of. They liked my Zagreb drinking stories from five years before, where after finishing most of a bottle, we’d pour vodka on the dorm floor and set it alight or spark a match at the mouth of a bottle and watch it shoot, rocket-like, down the corridor.
Toman preferred the ones about running into Zagreb police at 3 a.m. This was still during the Communist times, but my Croat friends would drunkenly yell at the militiamen, calling them idiots and just daring them to arrest us. “I don’t know why we didn’t end up behind bars.”
“Because they know it is true,” said Toman. “Police, they are idiots.”
“The Gardaí wouldn’t arrest you,” said Sean, wiping Harp from his wet beard. “They’d bust your head, strip ya starkers, and toss ya in the Liffey, ne’er to be heard from again.” He shook his head. “I’m pissed.”
We watched him get up and stumble to the toilet.
Toman leaned close with the atrocious breath that would often portend a shift into Czech seriousness. “Olen, you want to be writer?”
I was drunk enough to answer with soulfulness. I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Toman, my friend, a writer is the only thing I want to be.”
“True?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then come,” he said as he stood up.
On his feet Toman was steady, but I wasn’t. “Where we going?”
“Toman helps you become writer.”
“Dandy,” I muttered.
He led me to the bathroom, and through the alcohol I became hazily worried, but for the wrong reason.
“Not all writers are queer, Toman.”
He didn’t answer as he pushed through the door. It was empty save for Sean, who was trying to focus his wobbly stream into a urinal. He noticed us. “Aye, I’m óltach.”
That was another thing I didn’t understand. Later I learned it meant drunk in Gaelic.
Toman looked back at me and whispered, “Watch, writer.” Then he grabbed Sean from behind, a thick arm over his trachea muting his yelps. He dragged the Irishman back into a stall. A spastic fountain of urine shot from him, but the only sounds were his kicking heels dragging across the tiles, then the crack of bone inside the stall.
It was very fast, and by the time Toman had placed Sean on the toilet, shut the door, and started using paper towels to wipe the wet spots on his pants, I was still unsure what had just happened.
My body figured it out before my head did, and I threw myself into the next stall and regurgitated my ten pints.
“You was watching?” I heard him say behind me. “You watch, writer?”
I don’t know exactly how, but soon we were out in the biting cold, Toman helping me walk and explaining that Sean’s clients were from Belfast, laundering IRA proceeds by buying up most of Prague’s old town.
“We kick out Russians, no? And now these Irish criminals, they think Toman will not to kick out them?”
We were in front of Sean’s apartment, me trying to twist out of the Czech’s grip. “You’re a fucking murderer.”
“And you are writer!” He helped me up the front steps as he jangled the keys he’d taken from Sean’s body. “Toman help you find story. No?”
We were inside by this time, but I was still so goddamned cold.
“This is world, Writer. And now you see it. No more like you live in university.”
It seems strange to me now, but I wasn’t afraid of Toman. I was only repulsed and angry that he had pulled me into his putrid underworld.
“Fuck you, Toman.”
“Fuck me?” he said, mimicking Taxi Driver with a big grin. “You do not see. Toman, he help his writer friend.”
I dropped into a chair and didn’t look at him. I spoke slowly so he’d understand. “All I see is that Toman is a psychopath who thinks killing someone is a good fucking ha ha to show his friends.”
“But Toman—”
“I hate you.”
He opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He started to button up his coat again. His voice was as wobbly as a dying man’s stream of piss. “Toman, he work hard for his friends.”
Then he left.
Over Sean’s Becherovka, I considered going to the police— the Gardaí. That seemed reasonable. But after that, could I return to Prague? Toman didn’t do this for just a ha ha—he was working for his Czechs, who wouldn’t take kindly to my intervention.
Hell, I didn’t even want to return to Bohemia now, and I didn’t want to stay in Dublin. I knew what I’d do: I wouldn’t talk to anyone. I’d just count my stuff in Prague—some clothes, a laptop with a terrible, pompous novel on it, and the paperback of that unreadable Ulysses—as losses and just fly home to Texas.
Then there was a knock on the door.
“Yes?”
“Garda. Open up.”
I was faced with a big man. He wasn’t dressed like a cop, but he had a badge. “Garda Jack Taylor,” he told me, just in case I couldn’t read. “Your name?”
I told him.
“Yank?”
I nodded.
“And what might you be doing in Sean MacDougal’s flat?”
I started to answer something not far from a lie, then stepped back. Life’s full of decisions that you end up going back on. “Want to come in?”
I told him the story straight through, but he was only half-listening, preoccupied with scanning the room for evidence of some kind. He walked around to a cabinet and brought a shot glass back with him. When I finished, he said, “So you’re a writer, eh?”
I nodded.
“Good on you.” He poured some Becherovka into the glass, said, “Sláinte,” and threw it back. “Don’t get much better than McBain.”
I admitted I’d never read the man, but quickly added that I was a Joyce fan.
That didn’t impress him—no one in Dublin gave a damn about their most famous son. He pulled out a pack of reds and popped one in his mouth, eyeing me as if my reading preference had proven I was a faggot. “Mister Steinhauer, I’ll be straight with you. What we’ve got are three witnesses placing you at Bellamy’s with the deceased. They saw you follow him into the toilet. They saw you leave quickly.”
“Yes, I told you this.”
“But there’s no mention of a big Hungarian.”
“Czech.”
“Yeah, right.”
He poured a second shot as I registered what he’d said. “That’s impossible—Toman’s over six feet!”
Taylor threw back the Becherovka and licked his teeth. “Maybe, Mister Steinhauer, you imagined him.”
I’d once written a bad story about a man whose friend commits rape, then later learns there was no friend, and he was the rapist. It was a common literary conceit, but in real life? “Give me a break. He bought my plane ticket. He introduced me to Sean MacDougal. Sean wouldn’t’ve let me stay here otherwise.”
Taylor took the bottle again. “Dead men needn’t invite you in.”
This cop seemed content just to sit here and drink Sean’s Becherovka, and I was developing a migraine trying to get my head around this. “Let me see that badge again.”
Unconcerned, he handed it over. It was real, all right—as far as I could tell—but then I noticed something. “You don’t work here. You’re with the Galway force.”
“I’m helping out the boys in Dublin.” Taylor pursed his lips. “I’m a fucking saint.”
I took the bottle from him and refilled my own glass. “Then where’s your partner?”
“Eh?”
“Police don’t visit a suspect alone. Not even in fucking Dublin.”
Taylor looked at me a moment, with a grin that reminded me of Toman. He reached out for the bottle. I handed it to him. “Aye, Mister Steinhauer, one thing you should be quite clear on is this Sean MacDougal was a shite of the highest order. No one in Dublin or even the Republic of Ireland will mourn this bastard’s leave-taking.”
I boarded the 2 p.m. to Prague bleary-eyed. After Garda Jack Taylor left I’d continued with the Becherovka, but instead of putting me to sleep it only made me sick. And my 5 a.m. shower only made me feel dirtier.
Toman hadn’t returned to the flat, and I didn’t see him in the departures lounge. I didn’t know what that meant. But after most everyone had settled into their seats, he appeared at the front of the plane, red-faced, as if he’d been running. He smiled hugely as he settled next to me.
“Almost, I was late.”
I looked out the window. He smelled bad.
“I stay at friend’s last night.”
“Did your friend survive the night?”
“Ha! A writer’s sense for the humor.”
“Your other friend sends his best wishes,” I told him. “He says thank you.”
“What friend is this?”
I finally looked at him; his red cheeks glimmered with sweat. “That Garda, Jack Taylor.”
“What I tell you?” he said, then patted my knee. “Toman, he is friend for whole world.”
“You stink, Toman.”
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. “I must to clean off this piss.”
Four days since I called in sick. I think.
I ’ve been awake for three of them straight. I think.
My fellow Gardaí would piss themselves if they could see me, no doubt. Then they’d have me committed.
But they don’t know. They haven’t seen. They’re all out getting drunk, or off fucking their wives, or fucking their mistresses and lying about it to their wives, or passed out in front of their TVs in their nice safe homes while I’m
fucking
dead.
And I don’t know if even I believe it.
It started with Michael. A mental case, low-grade nut. We have quite a few. A handful of pedophiles, stalkers, minor assaults. Care in the community jobs, not criminal enough to be locked up for good, criminal enough to be in and out of the cells on a regular basis. Since jail seems to do fuckall by way of curing them—worse, many come out of it even more damaged than they went in—my own policy is not to arrest. Talk, threaten, watch, but don’t arrest if possible. Jail only makes them more of a risk to everyone in the long run.
Some of these guys are homeless, but not Michael. It’s a shithole of a flat, though, overlooking the railway tracks not far from where they cross the Tolka, north of Dublin’s city center. Building that smells of boiled vegetables and cat piss. Walls the color of boiled vegetables and cat piss.
“That woman hasn’t been poisoning your kitten, Michael. She doesn’t even know who you are. She wouldn’t know how to poison a kitten even if she wanted to.”
“Could swear I’ve seen her—”
“No, you haven’t. She hasn’t done a thing. Trust me on this, okay? Jesus, they train me for this sort of thing, and believe me, if she was guilty I’d know and I’d have dealt with her. You’ve got to stop yelling at the woman and threatening her, Michael.”
Sullen look. A child being unfairly chided. A flash of malice. I wish I could make him shut up. I wish I had some way to frighten him into behaving. Then, suddenly, there it is.
So I do it. I drop the threat. Let the genie out of the bottle.
“And you listen good to me, Michael. You leave that woman alone from now on, or else I’ll send your name, address, and photo to Iron Kurt’s Gay Nazi website.”
Let me explain. I have a friend, Curt, who’s funny, erudite, can hold his drink remarkably well, and happens to be gay. One night in Fallon’s, the conversation turns to gay rights and marriage, a subject which he understandably feels strongly about. He speaks his piece, and someone else makes some comment about him being a “facist homo” or something. Funny in its stupidity. And so the remark resurfaces and transforms, blossoming into something so much more.
It helps that there’s been trouble with a couple of neo-Nazi crackpots in the city on TV recently, even with the NSRUS pulling out of Ireland. Nazis make the best bad guys. Ask Indiana Jones. And I see a twitch of fear or homophobia in Michael’s eyes.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “And you know what’ll happen then …”
Of course, his mind fills in the blank with its own worst fears. He promises to be good.
And over the next few weeks, he is. And I trot out the same threat to other lunatics I have to deal with. And they don’t see me as a punisher. Iron Kurt is the punisher. I’m just the messenger. So they don’t even resent me for it.
My fellow Gardaí find the whole thing fucking funny. Some of them start using Kurt themselves. And Dublin sleeps safer at night. Kurt’s out there, watching over them. A specter in the fog blowing in off the harbor, creeping upriver. A paper tiger keeping evil at bay.
One afternoon, I see William, one of our deranged, sitting in the doorway of a boarded-up shop with an Iron Cross badge pinned proudly to his battered old blue Leinster rugby top. Next to him is a scratched metal strongbox.
“Hey, William.”
“It’s … you’re gonna beat me.”
“Leave it alone, William. What’s in the box?”
“They’re mine, see.”
“Fine. But show me what you’ve got.”
“It’s private. Mine.”
“Last time we had this conversation, you had a petrol bomb on you. I just want to make sure you don’t have another one. Anything else, you can keep.”
He thinks, pops open the box. Inside, an untidy pile of black fur.
“Why are you carrying a bunch of dead rats around?” I ask.
“They pay me. It’s my deal. Not yours.”
“I’ve got no ambitions of being a rat-catcher. Who pays?”
“The big red building down Castleforbes Road. Food warehouse. To set traps. Ten cents a rat.”
“And you get them from somewhere else, and they pay for them.”
“Yeah. It’s a good job.”
“Good for you. What’s with the Iron Cross?” I point at his chest.
“It’s protection, is what. Keith saw Iron Kurt.”
I try not to smile. “Yeah?”
“And he said, you wear stuff like this and you’ll be okay.”
“Unless you’ve been posted on his website.”
“Well, yeah.”
“While we’re on the subject, you’re keeping away from that playground, right?”
He nods vigorously. “Yeah. Never meant to do anything.”
“Did Keith say what Iron Kurt looked like?”
“Yeah. A big guy, tall, built like a brick shithouse. Bald. With a beard. Tattoos all over.”
The real Curt is 5'5'' and built for comfort, not speed. Again, I stifle a smile. “Yeah, that sounds right. You’d better stay out of trouble, huh?”
Not long after, I see Keith himself. The shopping trolley that holds his worldly possessions has a bunch of plastic German soldiers on string looped all the way around it like fairy lights. Now that I’m looking for it, I start to notice similar items on most of the other nutcases in my patch.
A belt buckle like an Iron Cross around the neck. A pencil-drawn swastika. An SS-style shoulder patch. In one house in Clontarf, a guy named Terry has a toy soldier shrine in a foil-lined cardboard box.
Votive offerings. Symbols of fear, not worship, not support. Warding off Kurt and his unholy wrath.
I shouldn’t be surprised. They all gather together in Duff Alley off East Wall Road to drink Tenants Super until someone passes out or pisses themselves. And they talk, and share stories. Chinese whispers. Some believe them, some don’t. But they all listen.
They say Kurt’s the son of an SS officer. They say he’s raped and killed more than two hundred men. They say his website has more than a thousand followers, all over the world, who take perverse delight in making each victim last as long as possible. They say—and when I tell Curt this he practically wets himself laughing—that he has a fourteen-inch dick and that most of his victims die from blood poisoning caused by massive anal tearing.
Iron Kurt.
My creation. My Frankenstein. My cartoon monster.
And then Keith disappears. One day, gone. No one knows where. No one’s seen him. They find his trolley round the corner from a soup kitchen on North Quay, but he never comes back for it. Shit happens, these people move on.
William stops picking up pay for his rats and vanishes from the hostel he’s been staying at. Someone tells me he’d been beaten up and his badge taken a couple of days before.
I stop seeing Terry. When I go to his house, his toy soldier shrine is still there, but he’s gone. The neighbor says the last they saw of him, he was going to get a pint of milk. A couple of the others disappear too.
Duff Alley gets very empty, and the conversation there becomes very muted. They get drunk, huddle together, and after dark they whisper that Iron Kurt has come for them. And now I’m
shit
scared.
Another trip to the piss-stained steps outside Michael’s flat. He’s almost the only one left, and I need to know what he knows. To find out if he can reassure me. Keith left for Cork. William found a winning lottery ticket in the street and moved to the Caribbean. Some other Gardaí told the Duff Alley crazies to get out, so they’re meeting somewhere else now.
When I knock on the door, I hear a wet thudding noise from inside. When I try the handle, it’s unlocked. When I should turn and run away, I push it open and walk in.
The sickly sweet smell of blood on the air. The acrid spike of human waste. The cloying taste of someone else’s sweat. Michael lies in a crimson-splashed, naked tangle in the middle of his living room floor. The carpet around him soaked black with blood. Legs splayed at an unnatural angle, and pink-yellow ribbons of intestines running from the split and tattered gash that yawns between them.
He twitches, and I realize he’s still alive.
“Michael? Can you hear me?”
Whimper. Twitch. One eye creaks open and fixes me with a stare of utter agony and shock.
“Who did this? What the fuck’s going on?”
“It … Kurt … didn’t …”
“Kurt? You’re sure? Christ.”
“Said … name … site … to punish … I didn’t …”
I should be calling an ambulance. I should be calling my colleagues. “Where is he now?”
Michael’s eye looks down. Pleading. Betrayed. “You said … wouldn’t … website … I … good …”
He thinks I did it. “I didn’t tell him,” I say. “Jesus, Michael, I wouldn’t even know how. I swear to you.”
“He … told …” Michael smacks his lips. Dry mouth. Lost too much fluid already. Bleeding out. Dying.
“What did he tell you?”
“No … he asked … who … gave my name …” Smack. Smack. “I … told him … you …”
As Michael’s head drops to the carpet, something thumps out in the stairwell and my heart jumps into my mouth. Again I think about running, but I don’t. Again I think about calling the station, but to tell them what? That some kind of phantom is stalking lunatics on my beat?
I step outside, check the stairs with shaky steps and trembling hands. And there’s nothing there.
When I come back down to Michael’s flat, the body is gone. So is the blood that soaked the carpet a moment ago. Is the smell gone as well? I can’t tell. But there’s no sign that Michael was ever here. And was he—could I be imagining it? Could all this be in my head, a product of my own fear?
Fuck. Fuck.
When I search the flat, I can’t see any of the protective trinkets the others had. He was an unbeliever.
I’m not. Not now.
When I walk away from Michael’s, I see the tall figure of a bald man watching me from the trees on the far side of the park across the street. He’s massive, and bare-chested. The dark outlines of tattoos that litter his skin flicker and swirl like flames. He points at me, long and hard, then slides back into the undergrowth.
So now it’s been four days since then, since I called in sick. Since I barricaded myself into my flat, to wait for the end. In the yellow glare of the forty-watt bulb, in the air that reeks of stale sweat and fear, I’m protected by a butcher’s knife and an Iron Cross. A spray-paint swastika on every wall. A replica of one of those Nazi imperial eagles they’d carry everywhere in those films. Terry’s foil-lined box with his tableau of half a dozen toy German WWII soldiers.
Maybe they’ll help me. I certainly won’t step beyond their protective radius.
Because Kurt is coming to kill me. His creator. To close the circle. I’m the last one he’s looking for here. And he won’t let me go. I know it.
Soon I’ll hear his footsteps on the stairs. Slow, heavy, deliberate.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
THE DEATH OF JEFFERS
BY KEVIN
WIGNALL
Heg the Peg was the end of it. Marty had known from the start which creek he was up; this was just the confirmation on the whereabouts of the paddle. If it had won, he’d have been in the clear, or as near as made any difference.
True to its name, though, the first race had finished five minutes ago and Heg the Peg was still running. So much for Bob and his cast-iron tips, straight from the stable, the whole crowd of them laying money on it like it was the only horse in the race. If there was any cast-iron, it was in Heg the Peg’s saddle.
So now Marty had two choices. First was finding some other way of raising two thousand euros by the end of the month—and frankly, that was looking about as likely as the stewards disqualifying every other horse in the last race.
Second was borrowing the money off Hennessey and paying back the interest for the rest of his life.
Three choices—he could tell McKeon to sing for the money, leave Dublin, leave Ireland, and find a monastery in Bhutan that was recruiting. Four choices—his next fare could be some crazy American on his first trip to Dublin, wanting to hire him for the whole week, money no object. You never knew with the airport.
The door opened and Marty turned off the radio.
“Wynn’s Hotel, please.” English, in a suit, overnight bag; no big tip here. The fare leaned over and handed him a piece of paper with an address on it. “Could you stop here on the way? I’ll give you a good tip.”
Marty glanced at the address. It wasn’t far out of the way.
“No problem. First time in Dublin?”
“Yes it is.”
Marty pulled away. He could probably take the guy around the houses and he wouldn’t be any the wiser. He found himself going the direct route, though; that was why he ended up in positions like this in the first place—he was too honest for his own good.
He looked in the rearview. The fare looked like a civil servant, or someone who worked in life insurance, nondescript, late thirties, the kind of guy who was born to make up the numbers and get lost in the crowd. But he’d still offer him the same old patter.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to sample some of the good stuff while you’re here?”
“Sorry?”
“Guinness.”
“Oh.” The fare smiled like it was something he wasn’t used to. “Actually, I don’t drink. Very rarely, anyway.”
Marty nodded and said, “So what brings you here then?”
“Business.” He smiled again, though he wasn’t getting any better at it. “But I’ve been wanting to come to Ireland for a long time. I’m of Irish stock.”
Jesus, who wasn’t? The day he picked up a fare at that airport who didn’t claim to have Irish blood, that was the day he’d win the lottery. Still, he put on his best “that’s amazing” smile and said, “Really? What’s your name?”
“Jeffers. Patrick Jeffers.”
Well sure, anyone could call their kid Patrick, but he wasn’t so sure about the Jeffers bit. Didn’t sound particularly Irish to him.
“Don’t know any Jeffers. Must be a name from out west.”
“I think it is.” End of conversation.
Jeffers kept him waiting no more than two minutes. He went into the house empty-handed and came out with a briefcase. Now that was suspicious, no other way of looking at it, particularly some guy who’d never been to Dublin.
By the time he got him to the Wynn’s, though, there was no doubt it was his first time here—he’d been looking out of the window like a tourist for the last ten minutes.
“That’ll be twenty-two euros.”
“Keep the change,” said Jeffers, handing him thirty.
“That’s kind of you, Mr. Jeffers. Enjoy your stay in Dublin.”
One thousand nine hundred and ninety-two to go.
Bryan was a charmer, all right, and there was no doubt about what he thought he’d be getting when they went out later. First day on the job, all the girls had told Kate not to fall for any of his talk, and here she was, second day behind the reception desk, going out with him tonight.
She was smiling at him now as he leaned across the desk. And he thought she was smiling at the silver words coming from his mouth, but it was how much he looked like Danny that was really tickling her. If it weren’t for Bryan’s blue eyes, the two of them could meet and think they were long-lost brothers.
Of course, Bryan would be the good brother. They all thought she was some naïve young slip of a thing, but twenty-four hours had been enough to tell her that Bryan was decent to the core. He was one for the girls, sure, but a good family lad at heart, working his way through college, a bright future ahead of him.
Danny, on the other hand, he was sexy and dangerous and the biggest mistake she’d made in her eighteen years. He’d come to a nasty end sooner or later and probably take a good few with him. The important thing was knowing that Danny wouldn’t stick around, and that she wouldn’t want him to.
Suddenly, Bryan pushed himself up and stepped away, making himself busy, and she saw one of the guests heading toward the desk, a businessman, boring-looking. She put on her best smile.
“Yes sir, what can I do for you?”
“I checked in a short while ago?”
He sounded like he was asking a question, and she felt like telling him straight, Mister, if you don’t remember, I sure as hell don’t. He certainly didn’t look familiar.
“That’s right. Is your room satisfactory, Mr… . ?”
“Jeffers.”
“Mr. Jeffries, that’s it.”
“It’s fine. But it’s Mr. Jeffers. Actually, it’s an Irish name.”
“It is so. From up north, I think, Donegal, that way.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.” He smiled, wonky somehow, like he’d had botox and was still getting used to his face again. “How do I get to Trinity College?”
“Ah, you have to work really hard at school.” His smile stayed fixed—no sense of humor. “Just a little joke there. It’s right around the corner. Bryan here will point the way.”
Bryan had been straightening leaflets but snapped to attention now and ushered the Englishman out onto the street. He was cute, Bryan, a tight little backside on him, and he was going to get exactly what he wanted tonight, and the dates would be close enough that he’d never think to question whether the kid was his. How could he? In all probability, it was even going to look like him.
Jeffers had listened attentively as Bryan gave him directions for the short walk across to Trinity, but he seemed in no mood to move anywhere once he’d finished. So Bryan stood in silence with him, the two of them surveying the street like they were looking out over their ranch at sunset.
Then, absentmindedly, Jeffers said, “Have you heard of the name? Jeffers?”
“I haven’t. Sorry.” Jeffers nodded but still looked straight ahead, feet planted firmly, so Bryan tried to fill the pause by saying, “I’m a student at Trinity myself. History.”
Jeffers turned and looked at him as if he’d revealed something vital. He stared at him for a few seconds, a look intense enough to be unnerving, and Bryan couldn’t help but see that Jeffers seemed troubled. Finally, he said, “Let me tell you something: Don’t ever fall into the trap of believing you don’t have choices. You always have a choice, in everything.”
He seemed to consider that for a moment, then nodded to himself and handed Bryan five euros before walking off along the street with Bryan’s thanks lost in the noise behind him. Bryan stood there looking at the five euros, wondering what might have induced such a bizarre fit of profundity.
He was close to laughing it off as he walked back into the hotel, ready to get another smile out of Kate by telling her, and then for some reason it made him think of Lucy and it was no longer funny. You always have a choice, in everything. Lucy—if ever a girl could have turned him into a poet.
It was strange, though—two minutes with an English businessman who didn’t know how to smile, and suddenly he felt that if he didn’t get in touch with Lucy right now, see her this very evening, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. What was that all about?
Kate was smiling at him as he walked toward the desk. She was a pretty girl, and Danny had said she was easy, but he wasn’t sure he wanted it anymore, not with her, not with any of these other girls.
“I’ve just got to make a call.” She smiled back at him, coquettishly, he thought, but girl, it wouldn’t be tonight.
“Mr. Parker, you do not have to write essays on Joyce, and when we’re discussing him, I will not mark you down for opting out of the conversation, but if you insist on writing essays and speaking your mind, please be so kind as to read something other than Dubliners.”
The others laughed but Parker was smiling, too. She only teased him because she knew he could take it and because he was probably smarter than all the rest put together.
“You know, Dr. Burns, I have skim-read Ulysses.”
“Would that be the jogging tour of Dublin, Mr. Parker?” That earned another laugh, but the hour was upon them and they were already putting their things together. Parker was first out the door. Clare was the last, waiting till everyone had left before shyly handing in an essay.
She started to read through it once she was on her own again, but was only a page or two in—impressive, if lacking a little in flair—when there was a knock at the door and it opened a fraction.
“Come in.”
The man who stepped into the room was about thirty-five, six foot, the average kind of build that couldn’t easily be read under a suit. Facially, he looked innocuous, which immediately put her on guard.
“Dr. Elizabeth Burns?” She nodded, smiling, and he closed the door behind him.
“Call me Liz, Mr… . ?”
She’d gestured at the seat across from her desk, and as he sat down and placed his briefcase in front of him, he said, “Patrick Jeffers. The office sent me.”
The office. It was about twenty years since she’d heard anyone call it that.
“And what office would that be?”
He didn’t answer, just smiled awkwardly and relaxed into his seat.
He seemed to relax then, confident and in control as he said, “I’ve got a lot of admiration for people like you.” She offered him a quizzical expression. No one had ever contacted her like this, so whoever he was, she wanted to draw him out a little more. “People in 14. And no, I don’t expect you to admit it, but being buried deep the way you were for, what was it, four years, that really takes something.”
Her expression unnerved him a little, and with no wonder, for she was wearing a look of utter astonishment. “Mr. Jeffers, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. People in 14 what?”
He nodded knowingly, uncomfortable, as if he’d spoken out of turn and made himself look unprofessional, which he had. At the same time, she was unnerved herself, wondering what this Jeffers was doing here, wondering why she’d had no word that he was coming. He knew she’d been in 14, so somebody must have sent him.
“You don’t sound Irish.” He tilted his head questioningly. “Jeffers is an Irish name, but you don’t sound Irish. Irish grandparents, perhaps?”
“Yes, I think so.” He hesitated before saying, “So you’ve heard of the name? I think you’re the first person since I arrived who recognizes it.”
“There’s actually a folk song, somewhere down in the southwest, though the exact location escapes me at the moment, about the death of a Jeffers.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Of course, there’s also the American poet, Robinson Jeffers.”
“Yes.”
She could tell he didn’t like being sidetracked. He was here on business and wanted to get on with it. “What do you want here, Mr. Jeffers? Why has your office sent you?”
“Yes, I’m really just here to deliver a message.” He bent down and picked up his briefcase, but started to cover himself, saying, “Just some paperwork you need to read and sign.”
Amateur! He was opening the briefcase on his lap and she had absolutely no doubt what kind of message he was about to produce from it. There were all kinds of thoughts running through her head, questions of whether she’d been double-crossed, and if so, by whom, questions of who he was working for and whether she’d have to move on, but there was something more immediate, an instinctive reflex that would never leave her.
She picked the phone up off the desk and threw it hard. It cracked him on the head with a clatter, and then a further clatter as the briefcase and the gun inside it fell onto the floor. He was dazed for only a second, but she was around the desk before he came up for air and she was pulling the telephone cord tight around his neck.
“Who sent you?”
His arms flailed, trying to strike her a body blow but unable to find her where she stood directly behind him.
“Who sent you?”
He took another approach, trying to pull her hands off, then trying to get his fingers under the cord, desperately tearing at his neck, drawing blood with his fingernails. He wouldn’t talk; he was at least that professional. She yanked up the tension an extra notch, and the flailing of the arms gave way to a more convulsive movement through his entire body. She had to use all her strength to keep him in the seat, but she couldn’t resist leaning down, whispering breathlessly into his ear.
“You know that song about Jeffers? It’s a celebration. See, Jeffers was a diamond trader, and he was English.”
She couldn’t get the phone working again, even after she’d disentangled it from his body. She took her cell phone and dialed. When Lambert picked up, she said, “Someone came after me. I’ll need removals.”
“Someone from the north?”
“No, he claimed to be one of us.”
“Name?”
“Patrick Jeffers. Passport backs that up.” She looked at the passport she’d retrieved from his jacket. He certainly had the right look.
“Jeffers? There has to be a mistake. Let me just check something.” She could hear Lambert tapping away on his computer keyboard. He was as much an old-timer as she was and always hit the keys like they belonged on a manual typewriter. “Liz, Patrick Jeffers is on his first assignment, but he’s in Damascus; he’s a Middle East specialist.”
She looked at the throttled body, slumped in the chair like a drunk, and now that she thought of it, he hadn’t seemed to recognize the name of Robinson Jeffers, and surely he would have, as surely as she knew who Robbie Burns was.
“Well, I hope he’s doing better than the Jeffers in front of me now.”
Lambert laughed. She liked Lambert; he had a good sense of humor. People didn’t need to look much in this game, but a sense of humor was an absolute must.