Green Hell (10 page)

The punk, far from repentant, would smirk, even once flashing a thumbs-up.

Until . . .

Six months before, the punk, drunk, got behind the wheel of his brand-new Audi. Present from Daddy for his twenty-first. A figure in the backseat shoved a single long shaft of steel into the base of his skull, right to the dumb fuck's brain. Tom had a solid alibi.

He ordered a second drink, offered me one.

My birthday!

So I said,

“Yeah, thank you.”

We clinked glasses, I said,

“You doing OK?”

He held his drink up to the light, as if it might reveal some truth. Then he smiled, said,

“The past six months, I've been fucking great.”

Amen.

Sean, a voracious reader, watched Tom leave, then put a book on the counter. It was upside down but I could read the author's name,

Sara Gran.

Sean freshened my pint, said.

“I read an author during Christmas and you know, the critics crap him off because they say . . .”

Pause

“. . . Get this. He uses too many cultural references, pop music, crime writers in his books. Now, see, you know what I think of them? I might hazard . . . not complimentary?”

Big grin, then,

“Yeah, bollix to them. Because for me, it grounds the story in stuff I know, that I can relate to. One fuck said he was for people who don't read. How fucking insulting is that to readers?”

The pint was good. I sank a quarter, said,

“Thing is, Sean, critics are God's excuse for why shite happens.”

Sean was shouted at by a small elderly woman who demanded,

“A big dry sherry.”

As he turned to go, he said,

“Hey, guess whose birthday is today.”

I tried for a humble grin, asked,

“Who?”

“Schumacher.”

Michael Schumacher was in a medically induced coma.

I reflected bitterly that in one form or another, I had been inducing a coma over my whole bedraggled life.

Back at my apartment I found Johnny Duhan had sent me a copy of his album

Winter.

The very first track might have been written by my own heart,

“Charity of Pain.”

I muttered,

“God bless your genius soul, Johnny.”

Marc Roberts and Jimmy Norman, over the past week, had been giving extensive airplay to “The Beacon.”

Serendipity?

I dunno, but later in the week, my favorite band, the Saw Doctors, were due in the Roisin Dubh.

Music, music everywhere and not a hand to hold.

Och, ochon (woe is rife).

“You can run with the big dogs

or sit on the porch and bark.”

(Wallace Arnold)

January 5: Horrendous gales and storms continued to lash the country.

In Salthill, the sea roared over the promenade to submerge the Toft car park.

It was surreal to see the cars floating in more than six feet of water. Homes, hospitals were without power. That evening, I risked a walk to see the damage. Headed for the cathedral. A vague notion that I might light some candles for all my dead . . . a long list.

The church was closed. Priests lining up for sales, no doubt. I was about to turn into Nun's Island when something caught my eye. A figure, outlined against the heavy church door, was kicking something repeatedly.

A desperate penitent?

I have never been troubled with minding my own business. I headed over, realizing it was a guy in his twenties kicking the be-Jaysus out of a tiny pup.

I shouted,

“Hey, shithead, you want to stop doing that.”

He turned, well turned-out in a North Face heavy parka, matching combat pants, and thick Gore-Tex boots. His face was tanned, well nourished. Who the fuck has a tan in Galway in January?

He seemed delighted to see me.

You believe it?

Flashed brilliant white teeth that testified to seriously expensive dentistry. This kid came from money. He reached into his jacket, produced a large knife; it glinted off the heavy brass door handles. He said in that quasi surfer dude accent the youngsters (the stupid ones) have adopted,

“You want a piece of me?”

He actually ran it as
wanna.
Whatever movie was running in his head, it had a definite x-cert. The pup, whimpering, tried to huddle more into the wall under the holy water font. The poor thing looked like a refugee from Bowie's album
Space Oddity,
or maybe more
Diamond Dogs
.

I said,

“Why don't you come down here and we'll see what we can do with the knife?”

He literally leaped the five steps and I sidestepped, putting all of a right fist into his gut. I kicked him in the head as he crumpled. Then I caught him by the scruff of the neck, pulled him back up to the holy water font, pushed his head in it, said,

“Count your blessings.”

I counted to ten, pulled him out, reached in his jacket, found a fat wallet. Took that. I leaned down, gathered up the tiny bundle of terrorized pup, moved him into the warmth of my jacket. The guy was groaning, his eyes coming back into focus, and, swear to God, somehow he managed a malevolent smile, muttered,

“Your ass is grass, dude.”

With the heel of my Dr. Martens, I destroyed that fabulous dental art. I turned to go and, in fair imitation of his accent, said,

“Doggone!”

I called the pup . . . what else . . .

“Ziggy.”

Over the next few days I spent a small fortune on vet treatment. I'd been feeding him, sparingly, from the finger of a rubber glove, blend of

Sugar

Warm milk

Jameson.

He was the quietest pup the vet ever encountered.

I said,

“He has a lot to be quiet about.”

He fitted in the palm of my hand, melting brown eyes and snow-white paws. He was, the vet said,

“A cross between a terrier and a pug.”

“A mongrel?”

I said.

The vet nodded.

“Like myself,”

I ventured.

He didn't disagree.

The psycho's wallet yielded a driver's licence in the name of Declan Smyth. Credit cards (gold) and other data revealed him to be nineteen, a student of engineering at NUIG.

A member of Galway's foremost lap dancing club. (We had a lap dancing club?).

Where?

There was a nice tidy package of coke, some “E” tabs, and close to six hundred in notes. Paid for the vet.

Google threw up that Dec lived at home in Taylor's Hill with his father, a pediatrician of note; and his mother, a runner-up in the Rose of Tralee. The family had no pets.

Keith Finnegan was reading the news. I heard this:

“A young student from a prominent family was savagely beaten in a mugging outside Galway Cathedral as he attempted to attend midnight Mass.”

Unless they were now offering Black Masses, the Guards had failed to notice the locked doors.

To ensure Ziggy's warmth and sense of belonging, I placed him in a Galway United sweatshirt beside my pillow at night.

I woke in the morning to find him snuggled sound asleep on my chest.

He was adapting.

It was like a scene from an

Armageddon movie. Large boulders

were thrown over the wall onto the

car park by the sea.

(Comment on the storm by

Joe Garrity,

manager of Sea World

in County Clare)

A card from Arizona read:

Jack-o,

I went to the Poisoned Pen Bookshop.

Met a hot guy named Patrick Milliken and

Heard Jim Sallis read. That dude rocks.

Back soon.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Your greenish Em

Ziggy was improving rapidly, already knew where the treats were. Chewed on every available table, chair, bed leg. It was a given he would be lying next to my pillow. That was oddly endearing.

I kept up a nigh daily posting of nails to de Burgo. Oiled and cleaned the Ruger daily. Visualizing putting two rounds in the fucker's balls.

The storms continued to lash holy hell out of the west coast. I so wanted to bring the pup to run on the Salthill beach but the ferocity of the Atlantic on Galway Bay would be too much.

He'd already had a lash of Galway ferocity.

The Guards were now saying they had an eyewitness to the mugging of the young man at Galway Cathedral.

Were they blowing smoke? I sure hoped to fuck they were.

Noon that Thursday, I opened the door to . . . Em. The pup peeping from behind my legs. She was dressed . . . Parisian chic? Pale leather coat, black polo, and—surely not—leather pants over black boots. Her hair was now in that elfin cute brown style like the poster of
Amélie,
the French movie. She greeted me,

“Bon soir mon fils et le petit chien.”

She had a rugged worn gladstone bag which she handed to me, said,

“Snap to it, Jeeves.”

Despite the nonsense, I was glad to see her. Nearly . . . nearly hugged her.

She breezed in and, with one fluid gesture, scooped up the pup, said,

“Vas bon, mon chéri.”

Plunked herself on the couch, the pup already snug in her arms, said,

“So, let's make with the beverages, Jacques.”

I built some fine hot toddies, even lit a cig, and as I handed it to her, a loud thump rattled the door. I muttered,

“. . . the fuck?”

Opened it to Ridge and a new face to me, in a crisp new uniform. He looked about twelve but a mean little twelve. Viciousness already marking his eyes. She ordered,

“Jack Taylor, I need to interview you in relation to a very serious assault.”

I swept my arms wide, said,

“Do come in.”

She stopped on seeing Em, the recruit nearly colliding with her back. She said,

“The ubiquitous Em?”

Ridge always had a tell. I had tried. I had tried to clue her on it, comparing it to a royal flush. But she brushed it off as

“Drink shite talk.”

Eyeing the dog, she opened with,

“Mr. Taylor, we have a witness who describes a man resembling you as being the assailant in a vicious mugging.”

Em, slowly lighting a slim cigarette with a gold lighter, asked,

“The time and date, sergeant?”

Ridge glared at her, looked at the travel bag, played the queen, asked,

“Been traveling?”

“I was in Korea but that was some time ago, the bag is dirty laundry. Feel free to root about in it. I sense that's your forte.”

Ridge, red color climbing up her cheeks, reined in, gave the time and day.

The recruit, whose name I learned was Costello, glared at me. I said,

“Not sure if . . .”

I glanced at the pup,

“You have a dog in this fight, son?”

The “son,” rattled, looked to Ridge, who ignored him. Em said,

“Jack and I were . . . what's the buzz term? . . .
en flagrant
the evening in question.”

Ridge went for her king, already faltering, tried,

“The witness mentioned something
about . . .”

Paused,

“A pup being part of the struggle. What is this pup's name?”

Em, highly amused, dropped the remainder of the cig in the empty toddy glass, handed the glass to Costello, said,

“Be a dear, sweetie . . .”

Then, back to Ridge.

“Not sure you were entirely paying attention earlier, sergeant, but I did mention my recent sojourn in Korea.”

Ridge looked fit to explode, snapped,

“Is there a point to this little . . . detour?”

Em gave her most beatific smile, said,

“Alas, I did, to my shame, pick up on one of their culinary customs . . .”

She stroked the pup's ears.

“I never name something I may later eat.”

Quote from the
Sunday Times
:

Samantha Ellis believes that heroines such as

Scarlett O'Hara and Sylvia Plath's

Esther Greenwood are appealing precisely

because they behave so badly.

“I'd had so many good girl heroines,” writes Ellis.

“Plath gave me a heroine who was anything but. . . .

As Esther gets suicidal, she also gets
mean
.

She releases her inner bad girl, she picks up sailors, reads scandal sheets, howls at her father's grave.”

After Ridge left, I let out a long breath, said,

“Em, you know she will check the airlines.”

Em pulled out her iPhone, five minutes of elegant, furious texting, and she smiled, said,

“'Tis done and best if t'were done well.”

I asked,

“Seriously, who the fuck are you?”

She was nuzzling her face against the pup's ears, said,

“The girl who just saved your ass from arrest. A thank-you about now might be good so feel free to jump in . . .”

Instead, I made her a kick-heart coffee, even lit her cig, asked,

“Were you in Arizona?”

She savored the coffee, said,

“I'd like it a bit more Sara Gran, you know, New Orleans, hint of chicory . . . yes, I went to rehab there.”

Jesus wept!

“For which of your many personalities?”

“Jack, I have a near genius for math, tech stuff, but they say I'm a high-functioning sociopath.”

She laughed, no humor touching her eyes, added,

“As in
Cowboy Junkies
, I am your skewed Misguided Angel and I need you to help to off the monster that is de Burgo.”

“You have always managed to evade, like so much else, your motive, your hard-on for him.”

Her phone buzzed . . . she read a text, put the pup gently aside, gathered her things, said,

“I'm Gone Girl.”

Pecked me on the cheek, said,

“Catch you up for dinner, my treat tomorrow evening, and, oh . . . de Burgo . . .

he's my dad.”

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