Purgatory (12 page)

“I’ll make some herbal tea.”

She snarled,

“Christ sake, Stew, grow a pair and get me a cure.”

Fighting all his instincts, he made her a Seven and Seven, seeing as it was all the booze he had, owing to a reference to that drink on an episode of
Sons of Tucson
.

She took a healthy/unhealthy sip, growled,

“Mother of God.”

Appreciation or horror, he didn’t push. She sat back, said,

“So, what has all this
research
turned up?”

He forgot his pique, sat opposite her, gushed,

“Had to be a connection, right? And I found it.”

Waited.

Nothing.

Had to ask,

“Well, don’t you have a question?”

She said,

“You wouldn’t have a stray cigarette?”

And before he could lose it, added,

“Kidding. Come on, tell me. The thread?”

He wanted to sulk. He was after all, an Irish male, conceded,

“Westbury.”

Took her a minute, then she asked,

“The lawyer?”

She meant Gerald “Roy” Westbury, the hotshot famous for defending the foregone guilty. A media star. The camera loved him and he was pretty fond of the lens his own self. Stewart took a deep breath, said,

“I know, it sounds insane, but he’s the only one who knew all four. He was their legal counsel and who would better be able to get close to them, know their habits, routines, get right up close?”

Ridge laughed, not any relation to mirth or warmth but something from a time of darkness. She said,

“Well, that’s new, instead of defending them, he offs them. It’s, um . . . a killer closer.”

Stewart gathered up a batch of printouts, shoved them at Ridge, said,

“He was brought up in London, excelled at college, could have been King’s Inns but married an Irishwoman, moved over here, set up as the guy who defends the indefensible.”

Ridge’s face had regained its color, albeit a vodka hue—but like a slanted health blush. She was animated, said,

“Sounds like the guy should be running for president, not prime suspect.”

Stewart delivered his coup, said,

“His wife, yeah? He adored her. She was raped and murdered by persons unknown.”

Ridge grimaced, said,

“Jesus, hasn’t the poor bastard suffered enough? Now you want to put him in the frame.”

The wind went out of Stewart. He’d been so sure she would leap at his theory. He tried,

“You have always gone with my instincts before.”

She stood up, said,

“But they were reasoned, possible. This . . . this is just . . . bollix.”

The harshness hung between them like a truth that should have kept its head down. She headed for the door.

No hug.

Stewart said,

“I’m telling you, I have a gut feeling.”

She nodded, said,

“Me, too. It means I need to throw up.”

18

When you’re told, “I kid thee not”

You are about to be seriously fucked.

—Jack Taylor

Regrets, phew-oh, they are a recurrent killer. I’ve been tormented, tortured, and roasted to rosary degree by my own history. I was heading down to Feeney’s in Quay Street, still that rarity, an unchanged pub with real Irish barmen. Not a Polish guy attempting,
Jesus wept.
I admire the hell out of the Polish, but shoot me, a pint of Guinness, I want it crafted. A woman in her thirties sashaying along on those crazed Louboutins but, worse, in skinny jeans.

Christ.

Then as if out of the ether, the memory, grounding me to the spot, outside the Four Corners. I had a reasonably good friend, we’d once played hurling together, we shared more than a few pints and that easy camaraderie of long friendship.

Yet I’d recently heard he’d been found dead in his flat, alone and unwanted. He’d been dead eight months. His flat was bang in the center of the city. This to happen in New York, you’d think.

“Yeah, how the shit goes down in large cities.”

But Galway.

I realized,

“This is who I am, the guy who didn’t check on his mate.”

Not all the fucking poetry in the world was going to write that line.

A limo pulled up.

Swear to God, a goddamn limo. The window rolls down and Reardon, looking like a bewildered hippie, says,

“Get in.”

I didn’t.

He waited, then snapped,

“You deaf?”

I said,

“Actually yes, that’s why I have a fucking hearing aid, you pompous bollix.”

He laughed, said,

“Ah, Taylor, no wonder you amuse me.”

Said,

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to get in.”

Fuck on a bike or a limo. I said,

“I can’t be bought.”

“Two hundred?”

I got in.

He said,

“Can’t be bought, huh?”

I sighed,

“Not easily.”

He was wearing beat-up 501s, a white worn T that proclaimed,

Grateful Dead, SA, 1977.

I thought,

“Yeah, as if. The fucker wasn’t even born.”

A large oxygen cylinder was on the seat beside him. He said,

“A guy who thinks two hundred bucks is not being bought easy, now there’s a schmuck.”

He nodded at the canister, said,

“Best hangover cure in the biz.”

“Where’s the money?”

He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Money?”

“The two hundred.”

“You want it NOW?”

Yeah, I did.

He tapped the glass partition, got the cash from the driver, handed it to me. I didn’t say thanks, asked,

“What do you want?”

He intoned,

“I am not a man, I am a people.”

Fuck.

He explained,

“That was said by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Colombian politician, back in 1948, when my old man knew him.”

He gave a lopsided grin, a sight I’d believed belonged purely to caper novels, added,

“My old man claimed to have been in the crowd when Roa put a barrage into every part of Jorge’s body.”

Surprising me, he reached into a pouch, produced a perfect spliff, lit it, drew deep, then,

“The crowd beat Roa to death, tore him to pieces, said my old man.”

Offered me a toke. I declined, asked,

“Fascinating as this history ramble is, it’s of the slightest fucking interest to me, why?”

He loved it, slapped my knee.

Our neighborhood, you did that, you lost the hand. He said,

“Ah, dude, you’re just so freaking wild, rude as a rattler. I’m giving you a picture of my dear old dad so you can see where . . . I’m coming from.”

It was probably then I reckoned Reardon was truly mad, so out there he could pass for sane, and he had the wealth for sanity to be moot. He flicked the roach out the window, said,

“Let them smoke weed.”

Then he began to play with a heavy gold Claddagh ring on his right hand, finally took it off, said,

“My
daddy
left me this and a shitload of major stock, especially in Bogotá. When we buried him, back in Oakland, you know what I said at his grave?”

“Thanks, Dad?”

He gave me the look, to see how much I was shitting him.

A lot.

Said,

“Now, Daddy-o, you can think
inside the box
.”

Save for the serious money part, most of this was horseshit. I asked again,

“What did you want to see me for?”

The limo had stopped near Blackrock, the end of the Salthill Promenade. A storm was building across from the Aran Islands, waves beginning their brute intensity to lash the front. He said,

“I wanted to warn you off Kelly. She’s my trusted employee and all that good crap but she’s nuttier than a pack of festering Church of Latter-day Saints. Apologies to Romney, etc.”

For some reason I wanted to goad him, did, asked,

“Buying Galway, how’s that going for you?”

He smiled. With the dope, it teetered on the brink of warmth, said,

“To date, three new factories, pledges of a school, a truck full of cold cash to the Council, and, hey, I’m nearly there.”

I asked the obvious.

“Why?”

He opened the door, let the beginning wind swirl across our legs, said,

“Jesus, Jack, apart from the answer,
because I can
, I thought you’d have figured out what I’m going to do.”

I’d no idea, said so, and he sighed, said,

“Jesus H, you are a dumb fuck. I’m buying it so I can squander it.”

Squander a town?

He laughed full, said,

“Don’t you just fucking love it?”

19

Rock ’n’ Roll
: The Velvet Underground

Has a line in there about rock ’n’ roll saving her life. This may well be the ultimate Irish version of Irish irony, meaning the added sting of pure vindictiveness, posing as coincidence.

John Patrick Sheridan was thirteen years old. Ridge was thirty-nine. A bright fine Tuesday, John was rushing to school and crashed into Ridge, who was en route to collect her new car. He mumbled,

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Ma’am?

She hissed,

“Little bastard.”

And they should never really have met again, but their paths had crossed and one more time, they would, as it were . . . collide.

Neither would ever know the other, yet they would influence each other more than anything else in either of their lives. A brief footnote of interest to those of a macabre, not to say lunatic, bent is that John’s dad, back in the chemical day, had been a huge “Underground head.”

Some events are writ in water.

This chance encounter was danced lightly across the Claddagh basin, its recognizance already reaching out toward what was an unremarkable bridge just outside Oranmore. But such concepts are rooted in mumbo jumbo, signifying little but a deep longing for connection.

Meaning ultimately little but cheap coincidence and fanciful shite talk.

Stewart was sitting in my flat, looking demented. He had laid out his theory on Westbury, his unity certainty on the C33 victims. I’d listened as if I cared, as if I were interested. When he wound up, he asked,

“So, Jack, what do you think?”

I considered carefully, said,

“Cobblers.”

Before he could argue, I said,

“Too, Westbury is a friend of mine.”

Enraged him, spat,

“You have a lawyer friend?”

Now I was spitting iron, said,

“Oh, I get it. The drunk nonuniversity bollix can’t have . . .” I paused to raise sufficient venom, bitter bile “. . . an educated friend, that it?”

He was on his feet, our friendship spiraling away, leaking all the good points like worthless euros, as close to physical confrontation as we’d ever come. He said,

“Oh, don’t play the fucking working-class hero bullshite, Jack Taylor,
man of the people
.”

My mind clicked, Stewart’s martial arts, his skill in kickboxing, and figured a fast kick in the balls was the route. He asked,

“When you beat a stalker senseless a few years back . . .”

I stopped, asked,

“Yeah?”

The fierceness seemed to have drained away and his eyes were turned in. I wondered what was going on that I’d missed.

He continued,

“Did you feel any guilt after?”

“Sure.”

He seemed relieved.

Until

I added,

“Guilt I hadn’t killed the fucker when I had the chance.”

He shook his head, went,

“Always the hard arse.”

Times I’d been called this, called worse in truth and did, a bit, anyway, ask my own self if there was validity? I like that.

Validity.

Makes me sound American and a solid guest on Dr. Phil. Truth being, I warranted an appearance more on Jeremy Kyle, who was Jerry Springer light. Such a self-examination usually rode point with a few Jamesons under my conscience and the answer was mostly