Green Hell (7 page)
Because nothing was taken, it never occurred to me that
Something . . .
might have been added.
Miscellaneous notes, quotes,
chapter headings, descriptions Boru had
intended to flesh out
his Taylor book
Manic Street Preacher Richard Edwards was crucified by many Hounds of Heavenâ
clinical and manic depression
anorexia
alcoholism
self-mutilation
He walked out of his hotel room in 1995 and was never seen again.
And yet you want to believe that in the place you've come to, where God has allowed you to prosper and for a few generations at least be safe, you honor your religion by doing this. By making something stunningly beautiful:
The Story of the Jews
with Simon Schama.
Jack's physical appearance was a testament to the myriad of
beatings
muggings
hammerings
he'd received by
hurly
hammer
baseball bat(s)
shotgun (sawed-off)
He had a distinctive limp and a hearing aid, and two fingers of his right hand had been removed by rusty pliers.
His eyes had the nine-yard stare of long-term convicts doing hard time. Hard time was the mantra of his bedraggled, violent existence.
The years of Jameson, Guinness, and coffin-nail cigarettes had lent to his voice a hoarse, creaky rasp.
The difference between a person who says
“Bring it on”
as opposed to
“Bring it”
is the difference between a person who comes at you verbally
as opposed to
with a hatchet.
It's very simple.
It's intent.
James A. Emanuel's more than a poet,
more than an ex-pat: a man.
(Stanley Trybulski on the passing of a great poet, as written on Stanley's blog,
Mean Streets
)
Slick lizard rhythms
cigar smoke
straight gin
sky laced with double moons.
Pinned on Jack's wall was a print of Fabritius's
Goldfinch
. It's a tiny thing.
Tiny bird
Tiny picture
Bare wall.
Most telling is that the tiny bird is chained. That this bird has for centuries represented
Christ on the Cross,
Alone,
Suspended.
The city of Galway was Jack's very own cross.
Jack had been watching Denis Leary's series
Rescue Me
in what they were now terming a viewing splurge. Meaning, you have one mega cluster-fuck of the boxed set back-to-back.
Get this,
Series One through Six in one slam dunk until,
Bleary-eyed,
Dizzy,
Souped
And the wild, crazy world of firefighters seems more real than the wet dreary days of a cold Galway November. Tommy (Denis Leary) could have been Jack,
alcoholic,
screwup,
addict,
violent,
Catholic,
smoker.
Halfway decent shell of a human being. Too, in one way or another, Jack had been putting out fires all his befuddled life.
Starting them, too.
And shards, snippets of the Brooklyn catalog banged around in Jack's head. More real than any lame conversation he'd attempted in any given Galway pub.
“I'm doing you a solid.”
Yeah.
Save Jack hadn't, nohow, done anyone “a solid” for a very long time. So, ridding the world of scum like de Burgo might be his very own
White Arrest.
October 28, 2013: Jack heard of the death of Lou Reed at Âseventy-one on the very day he'd resolved to yet again try a spell of sobriety. He didn't of course confuse sobriety with sanity. The nondrinking patches he'd endured simply seemed to spotlight his areas of madness in stark relief. Back in the day as a Guard, through subterfuge and bribery, he'd landed the security gig for a Reed concert in Dublin. It was a small venue and Lester Bangs's description of Reed as a deformed, depraved midget seemed cruelly apt. It was the high or low of Reed's heroin daze. Dressed in black leather jacket, skintight leather pants, black boots, and the obligatory black shades, he'd mumbled, stuttered, and pretty much failed to deliver a version of “Walk on the Wild Side.” He resembled a crushed tarantula devoid of any sting. Helping Reed limp to his dressing room, sweat washing away the white makeup, Jack had ventured.
“Good gig, Mr. Reed.”
A mumbled response.
Only later, while he was sinking a Jameson and creamy pint in Doheny & Nesbitt on Baggot Street, did the mutter crystallize.
It was,
“Ya cunt.”
Jack smiled, whispered,
“Wild side me arse.”
The classic murder victim, if you like,
in today's terminology:
A single, middle-aged man, socially
marginalized with a serious alcohol dependency.
(Leif G.W. Persson,
He Who Kills the Dragon.
Your standard piss-head, basically, was how Detective Backstrom described the victim.)
Part II
Jack's Back
Owen Daglish was a guard of the old school.
Rough,
Blunt,
Non-PC,
and one hell of a hurler.
My kind of cop. Unlike me, he hadn't walloped anyone in authority.
Yet.
But it was there, simmering. His superiors knew it, so he was never going to climb the ranks. He didn't arse-kiss, either, so he was doomed to uniform. He and I had some history and most of it was pretty decent. A big man, he was built on spuds, bacon, Guinness, and aggression. Why we got along.
I met him on Shop Street, his day off, and he said,
“Jack, we need to grab a pint.”
“Sure, how you fixed this evening?”
He glanced furtively around. Fragile as his job prospects were, it definitely wouldn't help to be seen with me. He grabbed my arm, insisted,
“Now.”
Anyone else, he'd have lost the hand from the elbow. I asked,
“I'm presuming something discreet?”
He nodded.
Close to the docks is one of those rare to rarest places. A pub without bouncers and probably without a license. Under-the-radar business is its specialty. That plus serious drinking. No
Wine spritzers,
Bud Lite,
Karaoke.
We got the pints in, grabbed a shaky table in a shaky corner. No word until damage was done to the black. Owen, the creamy top of the Guinness giving him a white mustache, sighed, said,
“'Tis a bad business.”
No one, not even Jimmy Kimmel, can delay a story like the Irish. The preparation is all.
Bad business
could mean a multitude:
The government,
The economy,
Priests,
X Factor,
The weather.
I waited.
He said,
“A young girl found murdered a few days back, part-time student I think.”
My radar beeped.
“She was . . . gutted. What's the word? . . . eviscerated.”
He looked as if he was going to throw up, rallied, shouted at the bar guy,
“Couple of Jamesons, make them large.”
He wiped his brow, said,
“I tell you, Jack, like yer ownself, I've seen some ugly shit. You learn to shut off, like the nine-yard stare. You're watching but you're not seeing. Jesus!”
I'm an Irish guy, we don't do the tactile. Keep your friggin hands to yourself. Whoa, yeah, and your emotions, too. Keep those suckers, as they said in
Seinfeld
,
“in the vault.”
But I reached over, gently touched his shoulder.
“The last bit, Jack, fuck, the final touch . . .”
It didn't register. He downed the Jay, let that baby weave its wicked magic, shuddered, then,
“A six-inch nail was hammered between her eyes.”
I thought,
. . . Nailed!
I spotted an East European guy across the bar. We had business in the past,
Heavy,
Risky
Business.
I indicated a meet with my right hand and he nodded. I said to Owen,
“I need a minute.”
In mid-narrative, he was jolted back to where we actually were, protested,
“But there is something else, Jack.”
There was always
something else
and neverâeverâgood.
“One second,”
I said.
In the small smoker's shed at the back, he was waiting, sucking fiercely on one of the cheap Russian cigarettes currently flooding the city. He shook my hand, said,
“Jack, my friend, you need some merchandise?”
Over the years, that had mainly been muscle and dope.
I made the universal sign of my thumb, trigger hammer coming down. He booted the cigarette, took out his mobile, spat some foreign command in a harsh tone, grimaced, clicked off, asked,
“A Ruger, is OK?”
“Sure.”
“One box of shells?”
“Perfect.”
No money exchanged. That would be later, on delivery.
Got back to Owen. He was literally wringing his hands, went,
“Jesus, times like this, I wish I still smoked. You gave up, didn't you, Jack?”
For an alarming moment I thought he meant it literally, like on life, but focused, shrugged, said,
“Nope, still smoking.”
He cracked a smile at that, saidâquoted a line from
Charley Varrick
,
“Last of the Independents.”
Even Walter Matthau was dead, and recently the great Elmore Leonard. Deferring the final piece of Owen's story, I told him how Leonard's son called around to visit, saw his wife up on the roof clearing the eaves, asked his dad why she was up there. Elmore said,
“Because she can't write books.”
Enough with the stalling, I pushed,
“You had something else, Owen?”
Owen said,
“The American kid you were friendly with?”
Jesus, how long was he going to stretch it? I grilled,
“Yeah?”
“They've arrested him for the girl's murder. As the Brits say, âthey've got him bang to rights.'”
I really believed I had lost the capacity to be shocked. The life I'd lived, I could no longer really tell the difference between a shock and a surprise. Like Owen's Brits . . . I was flabbergasted, asked,
“How, I mean . . . ?”
He caught my confusion, cut past it, said bluntly,
“Bloodied underwear was found under his mattress. Sick little fuck.”
I finished my Jameson, hoping to blast the bile in my mouth, the acid in my gut, said,
“He didn't do it.”
For a moment it seemed as if Owen would punch me on the shoulder, swerved, settled for,
“Come on, Jack, you liked the kid but, let's face it, you obviously had no idea who he was or what he was capable of.”
I stared straight at Owen's eyes. Whatever he saw there, he flinched. I said,
“You know history, buddy. I've looked into the faces of
Rapists,
Psychos,
Stone killers,
Priests
and
Bankers.
Trust me, I know when someone is feral.”
Owen's eyes got that shadow tint. He wanted another drink, his blood sang for it, he just didn't want it with me. It's always a revelation, a short, intense chat can bury a friendship cold. He knew too we'd come to a standoff but tried to wrap, said,
“I know that, Jack, but there's something else out there now, something new.”
I shrugged,
“Evil is never new, simply a different shade.”
He put out his hand, we shook, almost meaning it. I headed back to town, went into a hardware store. Bought a pack of six-inch nails. The guy in the store had remarked,
“Some mild weather, huh?”
Indeed.
December 1 and no rain, no real cold weather. We weren't complaining. He asked,
“You know Mike Diviny?”
I didn't. Said,
“Sure.”
“He caught forty mackerel in the docks this morning.”
He pronounced them in that distinctive, flat-vowel Galway tone,
Mac â ker â el.
One of the reasons I still had a gra for the town. Farther down Shop Street a group of carol singers were seriously massacring “Jingle Bells.” A woman with a collection box shoved it in my face, and not politely. I asked,
“Who are you collecting for?”
Figuring I'd gladly help the Philippines Typhoon Fund. She said,
“Girls' basketball team.”
I had to take a breath, rein in my disbelief, then,
“You got to be kidding me.”
She was up for it, challenged,
“And what do you suggest they do with their leisure time?”
“Would fishing be out of the question?”
The Ruger was delivered that evening. I paid over the odds; helps the discretion. I was sitting at the table, cleaning the gun as Jimmy Norman's show played on Galway Bay FM. A song rooted me to the chair,
“Mary”
by Patty Griffin.
My memory kicked in, sometimes supplying arcane and, in truth, useless information. She'd been married briefly to Robert Plant. The lyrics of the song touched me in all the broken places. Heaving the gun amid a mess of bullets, I stood, poured a liberal Jay, toasted Patty, said,
“Your voice is the perfect bridge between Emmylou Harris and Nancy Griffiths.”
I tried to get my head around the notion of Boru being a killer. Wouldn't fly. I'd spent enough time with the kid to get his measure. Then a thought hit. I grabbed my mobile, got Owen, said,
“I'm sorry to be bothering you so soon.”
“That's OK, Jack. I enjoyed the pints, we should do it more often.”
That hovered for a moment but we knew it was never going to happen. I asked,
“The murdered girl, you said she was a part-time student?”
“Yeah.”
“Literature, by any chance?”
“Yes. In fact I heard the professor told the investigating officers that Kennedy had been stalking the girl. A college security guard even remembered moving him along.”
Fuck, this wasn't good.
He said,
“Leave it alone, Jack. It's cut-and-dried.”
I had one last question,
“Who is in charge of the case?”
“A hotshot named Raylan. A man going places, they say.”
I didn't know him, said,
“I don't know him.”
“You might know his assistant?”
“Yeah?”
“A certain Sergeant Ridge.”
Over many turbulent years I have returned to my variety of apartments/flats to find
Ransacking,
Burglary,
Fires,
but never a . . .
Goth.
Sitting on my sofa, apparently at ease, was a young woman in full Goth regalia. The white makeup, black mascara, spiked black hair, and, of course, all-black gear. I said what you'd expect me to say,
“What the fuck?”
She'd helped herself to the Jameson, raised it, said,
“Slainte.”
Her utter composure suggested she was one cool lady or on heavy medication. I stayed by the door, asked,
“You want to tell me what's going on?”
“I'm Emerald, like the isle, I suppose, but mostly I prefer Em, less formal.”
I said,
“Before I sling you out, you want to tell me why you're here, stealing my booze?”
She stood up, I tensed. A moment, then she said,
“Relax, if I was going to hurt you, would I have sat waiting?”
“Been known to go down exactly like that.”
For this I got a brilliant smile, sheer fucking radiance. It warmed something deep in my core that had been dead a long time. Whatever else, I felt she wasn't a threat, leastways not a physical one. She was small but moved with that grace given only to dancers and felines. She said,
“See, you're lightening up already. OK if I call you Jack?”
Before I could answer, she continued,
“Need to alert you, hombre, that I have a form of accent Tourette's. Means I flip from down-home through posh to ni-gg-ah . . .”
She stretched out the final word provocatively. Almost but not quite wetting her lips. She was a piece of work. I tried again,
“Before I knock your multiethnic arse out, you want to give me a hint as to what this is?”
She mimed a gunslinger stance, said,
“It's all about the love, Pilgrim . . . well, no . . . revenge, actually, and that gig is cold, dude.”
Jesus!
I went and poured myself a drink, a large one, didn't offer her. She had more than enough of whatever it was drove her batmobile. Was she finished?
Was she fucked.
More.
“So, Jacques, it's all about the endgame and I'm your wingman.
“You wanna know who're we're taking D
O
W
N?”
She pronounced it thus, dropping in register to the last syllable.
I said,
“Maybe before the new year, you'll actually tell me?”
She threw open her arms in a grand salute, exclaimed,
“El Jefe, the professor, Señor de Burgo, his own badass self.”
Got my attention.
As she headed for the door, she stopped, listened, said,
“That wind they've been threatening is finally gathering force.”
As to whether this was a metaphor or a weather forecast, who knew? She gave another blast of the wattage smile, said,
“We'll go biblical on the prof's ass, right?”
She looked up at the sky, said,
“Goth in the wind.”
The death of Nelson Mandela met with a profound sadness not seen since the death of John F. Kennedy. Alas, the cash vultures were already swooping. Mandela's famous handprint being sold for upwards of twenty thousand euros. It made you want to seriously vomit.
The week before, the incredibly affable, apparently full-blessed Paul Walker, only forty, star of the hugely successful movie franchise
Fast & Furious
, was killed instantly when the Porsche he was a passenger in was wrapped around a tree.
Some weeks it seemed only funerals marked the successive days.
December 12: the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The Health Department, in one week, finally admitted liability in three separate cases of babies being neglected by the very medics charged with their care. All three of the little mites, as a result, had:
Massive brain damage,
Cerebral palsy,
Total paralysis.
And a very basic lack of oxygen for a few vital moments had occurred. The HSE took twelve years to admit liability in Case 1, and seven and five years in the other two cases.
The families were utterly exhausted and destroyed but they fought all those years for the most basic human right.
An apology.
The minister for health, fat-jowled and combative, muttered platitudes like,
Regret
and
Investigation.
Dare one curseâ
Don't hold your breath.
All the major charities were exposed as paying their top executives “top-ups” in the hundreds of thousands and they even sneered,