Purgatory (20 page)

Like this.

Red and yellow jelly

Floury spuds

Figs

And

Christmas cake.

Some guy had played
The Lass of Aughrim,
on, she tried to recall, a harpsichord? Like where the fuck would she get one of those babes. So?

So she hummed it.

The meal had taken place at

15 Usher’s Island

in a house described as
gaunt.

Well, fucking gaunt she could do. Ask her ex-husbands. She was
doing
Joyce as she was just a tad peeved at her man Oscar.

Because.

Taylor now knew what C33 meant and worse, who used it. Looked at the time: seven after seven in the evening. Said aloud,

“Presto.”

And poured a large Seven and Seven, because she could, and added,

“Because I’m nuts.”

She knew that beyond a shadow, had known for years and had no problem with that. In fact, if she was pissed about anything, it was that nuts was too simplistic. Bundy had told a shrink,

“I’m something new.”

As she was.

The books didn’t cover her and, God knows, she’d searched, out of a fine sense of interest. When you had a father who was seriously bat shit and
he,
a certifiable lunatic, was afraid of her, well, come on, you’ve got to be a wee bit curious. By one of those odd quirks, her old man had been confined in the hospital they held Robert Lowell in. It’s not the ideal start to a literary obsession but, hey, it’s far more interesting than your Ivy League gig. Lowell, heavily sedated, had seen something
off
in this child, she of the golden locks, enigmatic and fixed smile, whispered to her,

“Study Wilde.”

For years, she thought, maybe he’d meant, simply,

“Wild.”

As in free and unfettered. But then it was too late. Some mental osmosis had occurred and, as this concurred with her father’s suicide, the die was cast. She’d found her father swinging gently from the oak tree in the garden her mother had so industriously tended. At his feet was
The Collected Oscar Wilde
.

Her inheritance?

Certainly her compass.

Was the child freaked? Depends on how you term that.

She most certainly stood for a long time, staring up at him,
Daddy
leaking from her lips, over and over. Not in a hysterical fashion, as in frenzied howling, but more a detached “Look what the cat brung in.”

Kind of dawning, as opposed to “Look what the damn cat strung up!”

And began in her mind, over and over, like a demented sound track,

. . .
You are mad. What have I to do with her intrigues with you? Let her remain your mistress. You are well suited to each other. She, corrupt and shameful—you, false as a friend, treacherous as an enemy
. . .

When her mother finally appeared, grabbing the child, screaming,

“Oh, sweet Lord Alabama, what are you muttering, darling?” (her being a child of that there southern state),

Kelly, cold as ice, said,

“
An Ideal Husband
. . .”

Her mother looking at her in fear and confusion and Kelly scolded her,

“One does not mutter Wilde, Mother; one intones.”

Her father had worked for a large legal firm and was one of the senior partners. Her mother swore the partners drove her husband to suicide to take the rap on serious malpractice allegations. It became a refrain of hers.

“The guilty go free, la di dah.”

Followed by the stern command,

“Kelly, make sure someone pays, sometime.”

Well, she was trying, kind of.

Kelly took a long time to learn how to disguise who she was. First, she had to find out that it was not considered normal to carry books by Wilde instead of dolls. The fractured connection in her head told her,

“Dad keeps dancing with Wilde.”

First time she ran this by Mummy, the consternation,

“What on earth are you muttering?”

Made those early mistakes of trying to explain, as in,

“Daddy was dancing on the rope, he told me that Wilde mattered.”

So began the rounds of shrinks—good ones, too. Kelly began to adapt quickly to what these professionals regarded as, if not normal, at least tolerable behavior. Later, when she read the books, and the classical signs, like neighborhood pets disappearing, she knew,

“Leave the fucking pets be.”

True, some people disappeared.

Honing her act, Kelly morphed into the all-American girl—blond, athletic, bouncy, vacant, cloned. On the surface. Only at home did she let her own self out to play.

Caught, once, by Mummy.

Debbi, yes, with the “i,” was in the pool, Kelly on the edge, hair dryer poised and Mummy grabbing her. Kelly, ice even then, warning,

“Careful, Mummy, what if the dryer fell in the pool?”

That evening, they had the talk. Mummy with a dry martini, clasped Kelly with
The Duchess of Padua.
A pitcher of martinis was close at hand. Mummy said,

“I know who you are.”

She didn’t.

Kelly said,

“Do tell,
Mamma
.”

She went into a long spin of psychosis, personality disorder, malignant spasms, all the while refilling her glass.

Her mother, no stranger to therapy her own self, had learned the melody without ever knowing the lyrics. Proving that, if knowledge, a little, is a dangerous thing, then psychiatric data are deadly. She even, as a coup de grâce, delivered,

“I’ve come to the conclusion you have a narcissistic personality.”

Kelly was delighted, said,

“Oh, that is perfect. You, the ultimate in vanity, dare to even utter such . . .

Such . . .

She truly had to reach for a word, settled for

“Horseshit.”

Then without missing a beat, intoned,

. . . And if he does not drink it/

Why, then they will kill him.

Smiled beatifically at her mother, said,

“From
The Duchess of Padua
.”

Her mother stared at her drink in dawning horror, asked,

“Did . . . did you put something in my glass?”

Kelly, beatific smile, said,

“Of course . . .”

A beat.

“Ice.”

31

Let’s face it. If I wasn’t as talented as I am ambitious, I’d be a gross monstrosity.

—Madonna

Reardon was the original bad boy. But smart, way, way smart. His true cleverness lay in finding people of near genius and getting them to work for him. Kelly was studying psychology at Kent and met Reardon on the very day he’d been expelled. He was heading out, his thumb out, and she’d stopped in her flash new Corvette.

Why?

Because she liked to play and he had a built-in smirk. Like

“Gimme a ride, or not. Who gives a fuck?”

Her kind of thinking. He threw a battered duffel into the car, slid in, lit up a spliff, said,

“If you’re a cop, I’m way fucked.”

She studied him, asked,

“And you care?”

He slipped on a pair of ultraexpensive shades (she knew, as she’d stolen similar), then he looked at her, her pretty face reflected in the lens, said,

“Thing is, I got bounced from college today. Another bust would be . . .”

Blew out smoke,

“A bummer.”

Was how they began.

As she would discover over and over, Reardon

. . .
knew a guy

Who’d invented an early version of the easy-fit seal that kept refrigeration turning. Reardon knew enough to go fifty-fifty in a partnership, then peddled the seal to the army. And got, he said,

“The first easy billion.”

He was a year older than Kelly and, for his twenty-first, they got married in Venice—the one in Europe. Reardon was, of course, persuading the EEC how much it needed an early form of the iPad for translators. The night he clinched the deal, he asked her,

“How much for you to fuck off?”

And she’d laughed, actually came as close to loving him as was possible. They’d reached, if not a separate peace, then a perverse understanding. He knew she was mired in some darkness but felt no compulsion to investigate. At some deep level, he knew she
had his back,
and that was plenty. In the lethal deals he was involved in, and the plans he had for the future, a family ally was gold.

They neither dissolved nor advertised their marriage.

It was what it was.

I’d tried to find Kelly, but she’d gone to ground. I phoned Reardon, who said,

“You’re asking me?”

Well, yeah.

Said,

“Aren’t you her some kind of half-arsed husband?”

He laughed, said,

“All the more reason I’ve no clue to where she is.”

I said,

“And sounds like you could give a fuck.”

A pause.

“Taylor, best not to be a smart mouth to me. I mean, at best, I tolerate you. You have some vague uses but don’t think you have an
in
to a single fucking thing that goes on in my personal life.”

I said,

“Touchy.”

Long sigh from him. It’s been my life that, sooner or later, most I know get to sigh. Like some warped theme tune to my mad existence. He said,

“Taylor, you’ve got some cockeyed notion that C33, so named by Kelly, gives you a clue to the bizarre killings that happened. Take this on trust, caballero, even if by some wild stretch you could link Kelly to any of this crap, you do not, definitely do not, want to have her put you in her gun sights.”

I laughed, kind of, said,

“Gee, sounds like some kind of threat.”

Heard him mutter to someone, then,

“One thing Kelly and I still retain from our marriage . . .”

Bitterness leaking over me, I shot,

“Yeah? Like fucking people over?”

“We don’t threaten,”

Pause,

“We deliver.”

Rang off.

It’s always been my lot to be easily distracted, to be turned aside from the case before me. I believe it’s a blend of denial, cussedness, cowardice, and sheer uninterest. Plus, side trips along the roads of

Alcoholism

Xanax

Books

And, very rarely,

A woman.

I don’t know what I think I ought to know but fuck, I know my own act and it is a cocktail of sordid self-interest, self-doubt, and of course self-harm. That doesn’t make me bad so much as Irish. I fully intended focusing on Kelly, her connection to the C33 killings, but

Hurling.

The all-Ireland final

Between Galway and the maestros, Kilkenny. Christ, those cats are good. Galway hadn’t won the title in twenty-four years so we were, like,

Due?

The town was electric, wired even more than when the Volvo Ocean Race had its conclusion in our docks. The city was hopping, drinking, and anticipatory. Flags everywhere.

A draw.

A fucking draw.

Jesus, everyone hates that. You’ve to go through all the same crap again, like Tom Russell sang,

. . .
and go through all that shit again.

Precisely.

We had to wait three weeks with the pundits analyzing why the underdog (us) usually won on the rebound, as it were.

We didn’t.

Three fucking points and we were done for another year. Did we take it badly?

You fucking betcha.

Guy said to me,

“Great thing is, they are a young team, we’ve got time.”

What about me? Time? I can barely draw me breath.

My mobile shrilled. I snapped it up, rasped,

“Yeah?”

Heard a cultured voice.

“Hell of a way to answer your phone.”

The voice familiar but escaping me. I pushed,

“So?”

“This is Mr. Westbury, legal eagle.”