Headstone (17 page)

of water sucking the embers of what might have

been. I’d laid the gun on the countertop and

avoided looking at it lest I put the barrel in my

mouth.

I thought of
A Moveable Feast,
of all the wood that

had surrounded us then and how I never touched

one single piece of it for luck. Blinded by love and

joy, I believed I’d little need of luck and that Paris

would simply continue in Galway and that Laura

would hold my hand forever. One glorious

moment, as we were standing by the Eiffel Tower,

I’d been looking up at the steel girders when Laura

kissed the nape of my neck; a fleeting kiss, almost

imperceptible, and my whole body was alight with

awe that such a single gesture could have me

believe I was bulletproof and that the future would

be writ as it was then. A light rain had begun to

fall and Laura turned her face up to it, said,

“Thank you, Lord.”

I said,

“Wait till you see the rain in Galway. It’s incessant

but soft, like your eyes.”

She’d never feel the Galway rain and I’d never

feel her gentle eyes light on my face.

Och ocon………………Oh misery is me.

I moved back to the sofa, the gun resting in my arm

again, turned on Marc Roberts’s new album, the

track “Dust” killing me slowly. My mobile rang,

thank Christ.

A Dhia, ta bron orm.

(God, I am so sad.)

—Old Irish prayer

Stewart.

He launched,

“Father Malachy has regained consciousness.”

Father!

I never . . . never heard him call him thus.

I said,

“Good, how is he?”

Stewart seemed momentarily lost for words;

Malachy had that effect, then,

“I think the nurses might be about to blacken his

eyes, too.”

I might actually help them. I asked,

“When can I go see the oul bastard?”

“Ridge has the day off on Thursday and asks if she

can pick you up then, go with you?”

I laughed, not out of humor, but Ridge? Said,

“Safety in numbers. You think we need that for

him?”

Without hesitation, he said,

“Actually we were both thinking of protecting him

from you.”

Nice.

I needled,

“You think I’d assault a priest?”

“Why not? You’ve assaulted everyone else.”

The little sanctimonious prick. I hissed,

“Thanks Stewart, your Zen spirit has made a

contented man very old.”

Silence, then,

“Jack, you OK? You sound a little . . . off.”

I thought of Kosta, said,

“I’m all right, as right as a rumor.”

Clicked off .

I crashed early, meaning I managed to get to my

bed, took the Mossberg with me, and, as long as I

didn’t shoot meself during the night, I was doing

OK.

Next morning, thank Christ, I couldn’t remember

my dreams but they’d been rough. When you wake

with your hair drenched in sweat and panic riding

roughshod all over your torso, you weren’t

dreaming you won the freaking lotto.

Got a scalding shower done, a lethal strong coffee

in me and the Xanax. Spent an hour practicing the

moves with the gun. I was clumsy, couldn’t get into

a rhythm but stayed with it; it would come. By

fuck, I’d make it. Got my all-weather coat. The

right inside pocket was a shoplifter’s dream, large

and unobtrusive. The Mossberg slid in like sin. I

got a yellow pad, wrote down all I knew about

Headstone. Took me a time, writing with your left

hand for the first time is a bitch.

Done, I sat back, drained the coffee, and stared at

the pad, willing it to speak to me. There was a

pattern, a design; I just hadn’t got it yet. I brushed

my teeth, the smell of burnt paper still lingering in

the air, hovering above the sink, like some specter

of paradise lost, a lost plea of transcendence.

Shrugged on my coat, the gun in place, and headed

out to face the day. Whatever it brought, I was at

least locked and loaded. As I opened the door, I

glanced one last time at the sink and my dead

dream, muttered,

“Smoke, that’s all.”

I came out of my apartment building, made a sign

of the cross at the cathedral, moved across the

Salmon Weir Bridge, and didn’t look to see if the

salmon were jumping. The water had been

poisoned two years now and the only things

jumping were me nerves.

Of course, I ran into a wise guy, some fuck I

vaguely knew, who immediately stared at my

fingers, said,

“Not paying your debts, eh?”

It did flit across my mind to have him jump where

the salmon didn’t. I said,

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

Smirk in place, he said,

“Common as muck these days, everybody’s in debt

and having to give up parts of their life they never

expected.”

I said,

“I gave them your name, said you’d cover my tab.”

Whatever he shouted after me, it contained not only

invective but a sense of alarm.

Good.

Books.

I needed to ground myself and nothing, not even the

Jay, quite does it like books. I don’t always have

the focus to read them but I sure do need them

around. Especially as a woman was not in the

cards, not no more. I headed for my second home.

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop has grown and become

almost as important as the swans of Galway in the

very pulse of the city. I hadn’t been since my most

r ecent
accident
and felt almost content to be

heading there. I passed the newest head shop,

doing, it seemed, a brisk trade. Not a high away

was the Oxfam shop, emanating a mellow vibe.

And then Charlie’s. Sylvia Beach would have been

proud of those guys.

Vinny was behind the counter, chatting animatedly

to a customer. He had that Clinton touch of making

each person feel like the most important one. His

trademark long black hair was trimmed. He no

longer resembled John Travolta in
Pulp Fiction,

whose character was named . . . Vincent.

Go figure.

He handed a stack of books to the customer, said,

“Sure, pay the rest when you can.”

Why the town loves the shop.

He saw me, asked,

“Jack, it’s my smoke break, time to join me?”

Oh, yeah.

He has the laid-back gig down to a fine art, without

working, and yet, if the situation requires it, he can

focus like a hunting Galway heron. He lit up his

Marlboro Light, offered the pack, and I said,

“Thanks.”

Forgetting, I tried to use my right hand with the

Zippo and, without a word, Vinny leant over, fired

me up. I folded my right hand in a feeble fist and

asked,

“Want to know?”

He reflected, then,

“On reflection, no.”

Not that he didn’t care. It was the very caring that

doused his curiosity. He said,

“A friend of yours was in the other day, the Ban

Garda?”

I was stunned, asked,

“In an official capacity?”

He laughed, said,

“Jack, we’re a bookshop, not a speakeasy.”

Added,

“Least not yet.”

He finished his cig, extinguished it carefully in the

provided

bin, said,

“She bought a stretch of James Lee Burke.”

Wonders never cease. I muttered,

“Ridge buying books.”

He corrected, gently,

“Ban Ni Iomaire Jack.”

One of the girls stuck her head out the door,

shouted,

“Vin . . . phone.”

I smiled, said,

“Bet you have them primed to do that after five

minutes.”

He laughed fully and he has one of those great

ones, makes you feel good to simply hear it. He

asked,

“How’d you know?”

I said,

“It’s what I’d do.”

Now he did glance at his watch, left to him by his

late beloved dad. He asked,

“You living in Nun’s Island?”

Surprised me and I said in a tone heavier than I

meant,

“Keeping track of the customers, that it?”

It was unwarranted and I instantly regretted it. His

eyes changed, the usual merriment faded, he said,

“No, it’s called keeping track of friends.”

In a piss-poor attempt at reconciliation, I handed

over a list, said,

“Any chance you got any of these?”

Ten authors on there:

Jim Nisbet

Tom Piccirilli

Craig McDonald

Megan Abbott

Adrian McKinty

and

Others.

You want to truly off end authors, list them under

Others
.

He scanned it, said,

“
Fifty Grand
was terrific, the others, apart from

Print the Legend,

I’ll need some time on.”

I took out my wallet. Vinny gave me the look, said,

“I didn’t get them yet.”

Money just doesn’t buy you out of a cluster fuck;

ask Tiger Woods.

One last lame salvo. I said,

“We’ll have that pint soon.”

He nodded, went back into the shop.

I stood there, mortified. Maybe Vinny’s watch, my

stupid mishandling of one of my oldest and closest

friends, resurrected a painful memory.

My father, Lord rest him, had all his life, over his

bed, a portrait of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

After he died, I’d been spending some time with a

guy I regarded as a friend. By some odd

coincidence, his father was terminally ill. In what I

believed to be one of the few decent acts of my

befuddled life, I gave the picture to my friend. Not

easily, as anything to do with my dad was beyond

sacred to me.

The man lingered on for two more years, painful

ones, and during that time, my erstwhile friend,

like so many others, had become, if not my enemy,

certainly somebody who avoided me. No surprise

there; business as usual, really. My existence of

alienation even then was in full flow.

Few weeks after the man’s funeral, I received a

parcel. It contained the portrait and a terse note:

Jack

I’m returning this as my father has no

further use of it. Not that it did him a

whole load of good. We are never going

to be friends, Jack, and you know, I

doubt we ever were.

There was more, it didn’t get better.

But that’s what I recall and I remember being

gutted by the gesture. To return a holy picture

seemed to be an act of desecration. I gave the thing

to charity. What had been holy above my father’s

bed had mutated to utter malice.

I didn’t understand the act then, I don’t understand

it now. For a man like me, always rapid to anger,

to flare-ups, I don’t think I for one single moment

felt even a twinge of anger, I felt only sadness.

Outside Charlie’s now, I stubbed my cigarette

under my boot, fuck the bin, and turned up the

collar of my Garda coat and went, as the very last

line of Padraig Pearse’s poem goes, went my way

………………………………………Sorrowfully.

An easier exercise is

to look for evidence

rather than jump to

conclusions.

—
Detective’s Handbook

I managed a day without much booze, cut way back

on the pills, and so when the morning of Ridge’s

arrival came, I was, if not clear-eyed, at least

mobile. You take what you get. As I waited and

sipped at a strong coffee, I practiced over and over

with the Mossberg. I was getting there. It began to

feel like an extension of my arm. That I thought this

was some sort of achievement is a fucking sad

depiction of how narrow my world had become. I

blamed it on the loss of a love almost reached.

Guy like me, who the hell is going to give the

dancer’s choice? I felt her loss like the departure

of an aspiration you’d yearned for but never

seriously considered.

To try and exorcise this demon of woe, I kept

glancing at the notes I’d made on Headstone.

Something. Just nagging at the edge of my mind.

Nope, couldn’t get it.

Yet.

Ridge arrived promptly as said. She was dressed

in a navy tracksuit with white stripes and looked

good, very. She handed over a package, said,

“This was at your door.”

No fucking around, I opened it fast, I was sick to

death of bad mail. It contained a glove; flesh-

colored material, with a soft gel-like substance

filling two fingers. I tried it on and the gel seemed

to almost solidify, yet was flexible. I held up my

hand to Ridge, said, trying not to let the sheer