The Death of an Irish Tradition (23 page)

Granted, the carpet was a red so bright that McGarr could scarcely look at it directly, and the designer of the lamps and tables had communicated but one thing—that a small fortune had been squandered on the materials—but McGarr imagined some concession had to be made to Murray’s abilities in commerce. Whatever way he had assembled his mini-empire—by payoffs, political favors, and ruthless undercutting of competitors, some said—and whatever way he expressed his new wealth, it was impressive, and McGarr had a soft spot in his heart for the people he had grown up with.

O’Shaughnessy, though, had scanned the room with unconcealed distaste. He had stared down at the material of the emerald-green couch before sitting down and hadn’t touched the tumbler of malt Murray had had sent out to them after McGarr had announced himself. “Colorful, isn’t it?” he had observed, and when McGarr had raised his glass, the Garda superintendent had only said, “Ice,” his expression as frigid.

“Peter!” Murray bellowed from the doorway to the offices. “And Liam. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He too had a glass in his hand, but also a fat cigar protruding from between his fingers, and his complexion was an alarming red, nearly purple. His eyes were bloodshot and he seemed to have a tic or a muscle spasm in one lid. It fluttered uncontrollably, and he had to put a hand up to stop it.

He proceeded to show them what he called the operation, much of which was visible from the top floor of the tall building. But it wasn’t all of his activity, he put in. There was the Blackrock complex, the Limerick concern, the Ballinasloe plant, and so forth. “And then there’s the horses too.”

“In a way,” McGarr cut in, “that’s why we’re here.”

Murray’s head quivered, and he blinked several times. His bulbous nose was veined and raw. There was a drop of mucous on it, which he wiped away with his hand. “Yes—well, why don’t we step into my office?”

It was all that McGarr had expected, a somewhat smaller version of the reception room but with one wall covered by framed photographs of his family, friends, his political associates, his business operations, horses and riders. Two were of Mairead Caughey looking…noble, a derby on her black, bunned hair, a mud net over her face, which was set in concentration. In a hard, determined way she was as striking as McGarr had ever seen her.

“She does something for a horse, wouldn’t you say?” McGarr asked.

“I would. I would that, but it’s what she does
with
a horse that I admire.”

“Almost as skilled as Grainne Bechel-Gore on Kestral, I’m told.”

Murray looked down at the top of his desk and seemed to sigh. He slumped into the tall, leather chair. “You’ve got a bad source there, Peter. She does much more, and you’ll see if you go to the jumping tomorrow.”

“That good, eh?” McGarr kept staring at the picture. There was something frightening—or was it intimidating?—about the way she appeared, as though she were wearing a modern-day equivalent of a medieval knight’s battle helmet. And the expression in her black eyes and on the clean lines of her face was sinister, threatening. A kind of brutal and hard but feminine centaur.

“On the proper mount.”

“And you have that?”

“Several. I only wish she could have torn herself away from that blasted piano to have competed overseas for me. Now, with the mother dead and all—” He looked away.

McGarr turned to him and walked past O’Shaughnessy, who had not accepted the proferred seat but stood at the glass wall, looking out at the city. “Don’t mind me saying this, Mick, but you look terrible.”

Murray’s eyes quavered. “Up all night. The Show and—”

“Your son, Sean.”

The eyes fixed McGarr’s. The man was sweating, although the office was air conditioned. “Is that what brought you?”

McGarr nodded and pretended to search his pockets for a smoke.

“Cigar?” Murray offered.

“Love one.”

O’Shaughnessy shifted his weight.

When McGarr had it lit, he sat. “Sean’s got problems, Mick.”

“I know.”

“How long have you known?”

Murray swiveled in the chair and looked out the window. “For longer than I’ve wanted to admit to myself, but now he’s gone off the deep end. I’d thought—what the hell is a little hemp? Smoked it myself, to no effect.” He raised the whisky glass.

“Maybe…maybe I made too many demands on him, pushed the business on him, the law, Trinity. I’m not one to believe that any cause is ever really lost, but I hear it’s like booze—you never really come back from it a hundred percent, there always seems to be something missing.

“Sean and me, we had it out, and…” Murray looked out the window, over the work yards and the Liffey and toward the city in the distance. “But I suspect you’re not here, talking to me like this, just because Sean has a drug problem.”

O’Shaughnessy moved again.

McGarr cocked his head. Surely he
would
have come to him, an old acquaintance, with precisely that information, had it been all that he knew of the son’s recent activities. “Are you still representing him?”

“I don’t think he’d want me to, now.”

“Mind you, Mick—I’m not interested in making an arrest, but there’s been a rash of break-ins in the Ballsbridge area.”

Murray turned to him, but he said nothing.

“Around the time of several—four to be exact—Sean’s car was ticketed in the vicinity.” McGarr waited. There was no reaction from Murray, but McGarr hadn’t expected any, him being a solicitor and a good one.

“In another case and recently, a young man was chased from a woman’s flat. She described a fellow very much like Sean. He got into a yellow roadster. The last three figures on the plate correspond to Sean’s.”

Still Murray remained as he was, the stream of cigar smoke rising up pale blue and sinuous.

McGarr waited.

The cigar moved toward Murray’s mouth. The end was gluey.

McGarr looked down at his own—all leaf tobacco, a maduro wrapper, a light, white ash that held—and drew in on it. Cuban filler, top leaf, a first-rate smoke, expensive. “Blodgett & Zinn?”

Murray nodded.

O’Shaughnessy moved once again.

“But that’s not why you’re here, the break-ins?”

McGarr was again surprised by the question. Wasn’t it enough? “Do you mean the cover-up, your getting Doyle and Scanlon to lie for you?”

Murray frowned. It wasn’t that either.

“And then, his car was tagged a black from the Caughey house at the time of the murder. He had the means to get in, he’s proved that since.”

“Motive?”

“He and the mother didn’t get on. Your son’s a jealous sort, Mick, and he rather fancies Mairead, I believe.” McGarr turned his head to the photos on the wall. “Not that I can blame him.”

“Circumstantial evidence. You couldn’t make it stick.”

“Wouldn’t have to. The drugs, the other break-ins, his violent temper. I hear he’s all banged-up right now. And then there’s the questioning—I understand he’s not one to put up much of a front.”

O’Shaughnessy was pacing in front of the window, hands in pockets, hat on head, head down.

Murray watched him for a while, hating the culchie bastard. Little did he know, less could he care, what it had taken to build all that Murray had out of nothing. And he was jealous—Murray could almost feel it. A civil servant, a leech.

“He’s my only son, my only child. I thank you for coming here like this, Peter, but I must tell you that I’ll fight it tooth and nail with everything I have, fair and foul.”

“I thought as much.”

“But between us—” he paused, his eyes suddenly filling with tears; he swallowed and looked away, “—I guess I’m as much to blame as Sean or Bridie. No—” He shook his head. “Not Bridie. She’s a good woman, the best. And Sean, he’s been like day and night since he’s been to that bloody college of his. It’s there, I’m sure, that he got in with them muckers and gobshites. I should have sent him to a Catholic university. I—” his voice broke. He reached for the drink.

It was an embarrassing moment, but McGarr had been with many people in such situations and was content to watch the smoke drift up from his cigar.

Not O’Shaughnessy, however. “Where were you at four-fifteen Friday afternoon, Mister Murray?”

Murray looked over at him and blinked away the tears. He turned to McGarr. “Is he included in this conversation, Peter?”

“It would seem so.”

“Do
you
want me to answer that question?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you not to answer it, Mick.” McGarr placed the cigar in his mouth, drawing in the rich, musky smoke that tasted of the dank earth in which it had been grown. Spicing it was the aroma of the cedar humidor. He tasted the drink. It pleased him as well.

Murray considered McGarr—always was a little gouger, that one, he thought. Small and tough and fast. He never got caught. Had he been a fool to think he could play along with him, like this? He had, but it was too late for that now. “I was in my office.”

“Here?”

“No, my law office.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Kildare Street.”

“Where in Kildare Street?”

Murray snapped his head to McGarr. “Why him and all these questions, goddammit? Kildare Street isn’t very bloody long, or doesn’t he know?” He turned back to O’Shaughnessy, muttering something else under his breath.

“Near the library or away from it?”

“Every bloody thing on the entire bloody block is near the bloody library, you fool.”

O’Shaughnessy remained unperturbed, staring out the window, hands now clasped behind his back, his tall and wide figure shadowing the room. “When was the last time you were in the library?”

“Is he serious? Years!” he nearly shouted. “Years and years ago!”

“You’d make a statement to that effect?”

Murray sighed, pushed himself back in the chair, and drew on the cigar. They’d gotten to him, they had. He must be slipping. Tired, he was, dead tired, but with Sean having as much as dropped the Show in his lap, and the other thing that was bothering him, he couldn’t have slept even if he’d tried. He smiled wanly. “Sure. Why not?”

“And sign it?”

“Je-sus.” He pushed himself forward, picked up a pen, and scrawled on a pad. “I,” he said, “M. E. Murray, T. D., have not been in the National Library in five years.

“Here you go. Have a happy day, my friend.” He held it out.

O’Shaughnessy did not move. “And Father Menahan—is he on your payroll?”

“Yes, from time to time, although I wouldn’t call it payroll. He come to company dinners, banquets, the like. The man is a brilliant speaker. He plays the piano like…like Rachmaninoff.”

“He came to your house last night. What for?”

“A personal matter, having to do with my son. I need advice, Superintendent. It’s not every day one discovers that his son is a dope addict.”

That was too quick, too defensive, and McGarr sat up, pushing the drink away from him. O’Shaughnessy went on.

“Are you aware of the real antecedents of Mairead Kehlen Caughey?”

“What?” Murray turned to McGarr. “What’s he talking about?”

McGarr only kept his eyes on the cigar, listening closely to Murray’s tone. He didn’t know the man well enough, but if asked he would have bet he was lying and had been for the last several minutes.

“Now then,” said O’Shaughnessy, his tone somewhat didactic, teacherly, implying that he had in fact caught the man lying, “this ‘operation’ here, all that I can see down there in the yard—is it going well?”

“You have eyes, man. Everybody’s busy enough, aren’t they?”

“I’ve been led to believe you’re nearly bankrupt, over your head in debt. The Ulster Bank called in a ninety-day note last Friday and you were unable to meet it.”

“Then you’ve been misled. I’ve never been overly fond of the Ulster Bank. They’ve just had a change in upper management and one of my—shall I say?—adversaries has come to the fore. He called in that note.”

There was a pause.

McGarr asked, “Did you cover it, Mick?”

The eyes, bloodshot and rheumy, shied. “It’s being done now. The horse sales at the Show ought to cover it easily.”

The Show again, McGarr thought. “Do you have many…adversaries, Mick?”

“Of course.” He heaved himself up from the chair. “Every man in public life does. You yourself—you’ve got that character on the
Times
on your arse, and I’ve got my—” he glanced toward the window, “—O’Shaughnessys and Maloneys,” the name of a competing building materials firm, “and—”

“Your Bechel-Gores,” said O’Shaughnessy.

“Yes, but the difference is, Superintendent, that Sir Roger Bloody Bechel-Gore is a
worthy
adversary.” He was sweating profusely now.

“Really, Peter, I’m up to my neck in work here, and can we—”

“Just a moment or two more, Mick. We could have asked you and Sean down to the Castle for this, rather than waiting until after the Show.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes.”

Murray was relieved. “I appreciate that.”

“I thought you would.” McGarr stood. “But tell me about your I. R. A. connections. Your Mercedes showroom—how many on the payroll there?”

“Ah, now Peter, if I can’t give a break to some fellows—”

“How many?”

Murray thought for a moment. “Four—but I’m a silent partner there.”

“Don’t cod me, Mick. You’re not a silent partner anywhere.

“How many here?”

“A good number.”

“Ten, twenty?”

“Twenty some, I’d say, though it could be more.”

“What about Jack B. Frayne of Armagh? Ever employ him?”

“Never heard of him until I read his name in this morning’s papers.”

McGarr offered his hand. “I hope, Mick, this is all I’ll have to be asking you for a while.”

“I don’t know why you have.”

McGarr waited until the eyes moved toward him and then he fixed them with his own. “Because I don’t believe your son has a violent nature—drugs or no drugs—and because the death of Margaret Kathleen
Keegan
Caughey, the raid on Keegan’s place in Drogheda, and the sniping incident at Bechel-Gore’s place in Galway are connected in some way that seems beyond Sean’s…purview, at least as I understand things at the moment.