Purgatory (15 page)

In a word, yes.

We were outside Charlie Byrne’s, a display of noir crime novels in the window, including

El Niño

Absolute Zero

The Twelve

The Cold Cold Ground

Vinny was just heading in, laden with books, shouted,

“Yo, Jack, a hand, eh?”

Kelly glanced at my mutilated fingers, nodded, and I went to help Vinny. He looked at Kelly, raised his left eyebrow. I said,

“She’s American.”

And he maneuvered the door, got the box in, said,

“Course she is, Jack. She’s with you.”

Go figure!

Kelly bought
The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
. It was in beautiful condition, leather binding, gilt-edged pages.

The price?

Vinny said,

“Five euros.”

Kelly went,

“You’re kidding. It’s worth ten times that.”

He gave that Vinny smile, the one that says,

“You love books, we love you.”

I found a copy of John Lahr’s
New Yorker
profiles. We’d just gotten outside, her mobile shrilled and sounded like,

Home of the Brave
.

I could hear a raised voice. She grimaced, then passed the phone to me, said,

“Your master’s voice.”

Reardon, snarling,

“I expected a report this morning.”

I said,

“Here’s a report. Fuck you.”

Clicked off. Then asked her,

“Oh, sorry, were you finished?”

She sighed,

“You certainly are.”

Then she offered the Wilde book, said,

“For you.”

“No thanks. Such learning would only foul the genetic pool.”

She asked,

“You know what happens to people who refuse gifts?”

“No.”

Her departing smile,

“Ah . . . the not knowing . . . that’s the beauty of it. Dinner this evening, my treat.”

I watched her walk away, that assured strut, a woman who owned her space and, if you wanted to invade, you’d better bring your very best game.

Later, I watched the semifinal, Italy versus Germany, Balotelli, like a gift from the God of Football, until my doorbell went.

Reardon.

A riled Reardon, with a hulking guy behind him. He said,

“That’s Leo, my protection.”

I said,

“Leo gets to protect the space
outside
my flat.”

Leo growled and Reardon didn’t like it much better but agreed, came in, glanced at the screen, said,

“Fucking wops need niggers to win a game.”

I said,

“Yo, shithead, you want to do redneck crap, do it outside, with your gorilla.”

He laughed, said.

“Leo doesn’t like you.”

I went to the fridge, cracked open a couple of cold ones, handed him one, said,

“Leo’s likes are way down on my current concern list.”

Reardon was dressed in the Galway hurling jersey, combat shorts, and I think they call his footwear espadrilles? They looked comfortable and, best, worn. He flopped down on my second-best chair, said,

“So, Taylor, spill.”

Meaning, the goods on Skylar.

I clinked his bottle, said,

“Sláinte.”

Never meant it less. If you could lightly wish

“Roast in hell”

It would have been closer.

I asked,

“So what have you got on Stewart?”

Reardon was scanning the apartment, missing nothing, said,

“Enough to send his supercilious ass to the slammer.”

I sipped from the beer, continued,

“So, the deal is, I drop the dime on your employee, you let Stewart slide?”

Reardon looked at me, said,

“Jesus H. How many times you want me to say it?
Yes
.”

I was working my way up to divulging Skylar’s name when he muttered,

“Fucking Skylar. I thought that kid would have more savvy. If it was Stan, I’d get it. He’s just a doper geek.”

What?

I said,

“Skylar! You know. How the fuck do you know?”

He flipped the empty bottle high. It hovered dangerously for a moment, then expertly landed in the wastebasket, with a heavy thud. He said,

“Gotcha.”

Smiled, then,

“Oh, Kelly told me.”

Jesus, these fucking people. I near shouted,

“Why would she tell you?”

He laughed, got to his feet in one fluid click, said,

“We used to be married.”

She’d told me she’d never been married.

Relishing my stunned dumb expression, he said,

“Lesson one, pal, wherever you think you’ve been, us rich guys, we’ve already had that and—guess what?—discarded it.”

Len Waters was from a very good home; best background, in fact. Family lived in Taylor’s Hill, father a surgeon, mother a hypocrite, best schools, almost university, trust fund, reasonably good looking, twenty years of age, and a psychopath.

He was a run-of-the-mill nut job, possessing none of the attributed charm these fucks could exercise. His kick was to barge in on old women, beat them to a pulp—and do any other vile act his cesspool mind could conjure. Maybe owing to chance, he hadn’t yet murdered anyone, at least anyone that somebody missed.

Now in custody, he was facing three charges. Westbury was his lawyer and in jig time had the skel out on bail. Stewart had followed all this diligently, convinced that Waters was the perfect victim for C33 and, if Westbury was one and the same, Stewart would be there to witness. After Waters had been released amid a flurry of indignation, near riot, and press reportage, Stewart arranged an appointment with Westbury, claiming it was urgent and managing to get Westbury to meet him in a pub. This is not so difficult if you agree that pub hours, too, are on their clock.

They get drinks, get paid, who’s hurting?

Westbury arrived in McSwiggan’s, dressed in victory and Armani, his face flushed from trumping the legal system again. Stewart had grabbed a table at the back, offered,

“Champagne?”

Westbury was tempted, then,

“No, maybe a little early for celebration, so large gin and tonic.”

No ice. A serious drinker.

Stewart had a large glass of lime and water, could pass for the real thing. He touched Westbury’s glass, said,

“Congrats. You’re good.”

Westbury, who’d obviously had a few at the office, slight beads of perspiration on his brow, scoffed,

“Good? I’m the freaking best, sonny.”

Okay.

Ego checked.

Stewart said,

“I wanted to check on my own status, but also buy you a drink to show my appreciation of you taking an interest when you are . . .”

Paused

“So brilliantly busy.”

Almost overdid it.

Westbury paused, reassessed Stewart, then, mollified, said,

“There is a simple secret to even the darkest allegation.”

Stewart was fascinated by Westbury’s bulletproof confidence, wondered if it had to do with the fact, if he was indeed the C33 vigilante, that the outcome of any case was irrelevant, as he administered the final justice and got paid, too. Win-win.

He echoed,

“Secret?”

Westbury was waving to various high-profile types who passed, basking in his current success, said,

“Money.”

Stewart couldn’t be bothered arguing the toss. He thought this might be true to a degree but wouldn’t want to be in the dock hoping cash was the key. Westbury said,

“I made some discreet inquiries of the Guards and, currently, you are not a person of interest.”

Stewart acknowledged his debt, said,

“I’d still like to retain you lest something arise in the future.”

Westbury’s mobile shrilled, he answered, made some
mmm
noises, then stood, said,

“Duty calls.”

They shook hands. Westbury said,

“Stay in touch.”

And turned as he was leaving, added,

“Stay in funds.”

24

The black afflicton of the brain.

—
Brecht

Kelly climbed out of my bed, looked back, said,

“What you lack in heat you make up for in desperation.”

Add that to a fragmented ego, see how it plays. I propped myself up on one elbow, like Matthew McConaughey seems to do in every movie, but I did skip the squeezing of my eyes. She was doing that thing women think is cute:

. . . wearing the guy’s shirt

. . . and drives guys mental

And it was also my prized multi-washed cotton work shirt.

I said,

“So, you were married to Reardon.”

She pulled her bag over, took out a pack of Virginia Slims, lit one with a solid gold Zippo, that clunk sounding as it always did, like some weary hope. She blew out a cloud of smoke, said,

“You’ve been holding that for a time, measuring the max impact.”

She was caught between annoyance and amusement, continued,

“He comes from . . .”

She paused,

Asked,

“You know the term
fuck-you money
?”

Sure.

“Well, his family is so far up that fuck-you trail they don’t even bother to brag about it, they just do it: annihilate and move on. I come from jack shit and, to get in that charmed circle, I’d have fucked his whole clan.”

This riled me in ways I couldn’t even articulate. I spat,

“So did you? Lay the whole crew?”

She dropped the cig in my coffee cup and, no, I wasn’t finished, said,

“Pretty much.”

She was heading for the shower. I asked,

“You must have done pretty fine from the divorce.”

She looked at me in genuine puzzlement.

“Who got divorced?”

She switched on the TV, the final of the Volvo Ocean Race at the Galway Docks. Eighty thousand people turned up at two in the morning to welcome them. New Zealand was first over the line but the French won on overall time. It was to be the beginning of nine days of party-on in Galway and a huge financial coup for the city.

She flicked it off, said,

“Reardon’s got a boat.”

Jesus, quelle surprise.

Like I gave a good fuck. I asked,

“In the race?”

She laughed, began to make coffee, said,

“Yeah, right, like the dude’s got the time to sail round the world. It’s berthed in Saint-Tropez, or is it Saint-Malo?”

I asked, edge leaking over my tone,

“Remind me again why you’re with me?”

She glanced up, asked,

“You don’t know?”

Dare to hope.

Said,

“I make you laugh?”

She sighed as she surveyed my range of coffee, said,

“Slumming, see how a loser lives.”

There was no smile on her lips.

And certainly

No warmth in her tone.

I’d recently come across the first of Arne Dahl’s novels to be translated into English,
The Blinded Man
, a passage in there that captured a look that passed between Kelly and me as she handed me a mug of coffee.

Did those few minutes in the kitchen draw them closer together? Or had a final chasm opened up between them? It was impossible to say but something decisive had taken place; they had looked into each other’s naked loneliness.

So many times, a piece, quote, passage from a book reflected exactly the current of my life.

But never did my life reflect a single piece of uplifting writing in all my reading years. My life didn’t imitate fiction; it mocked it.

More and more, I was reading into darkness, the resonance of my days simply ratifying what I read. This knowledge was less a revelation than an affirmation.

A memorial was unveiled in Celia Griffin Park to honor the victims of the Famine ships, and those ships, rescue ships, that had tried so hard to deliver our people to the United States. Celia Griffin was six years old during the Famine and died of hunger on the streets of Galway. An autopsy revealed she had not a scrap of food in her stomach.