The Death of an Irish Lass (22 page)

Fogarty looked away and sighed.

M
C
GARR AND
Farrell didn’t stop at Kinvara with the others. They dropped Noreen and Hughie Ward off at O’Shaughnessy’s aunt’s house and drove on to Galway City and the hospital in which Phil Dineen was receiving care.

The hall of the third-floor wing was thick with gardai. It was just midnight and the shifts watching Dineen were changing.

Dineen’s wife, Bridie, was there as well. She rushed up to McGarr. “Peter—I knew you’d come. Can you tell me how much he’ll get?” She meant jail, of course. She took McGarr’s hand. She was a small woman whose mother had been Spanish-Irish from someplace out here in the West. Bridie’s sallow complexion and dark eyes, ringed and sleepless, made her look haggard. She wore her hair, as always, in jet black ringlets. Women with Latin blood, McGarr had noted in the past, seemed to age more quickly, especially when they’d had children. Bridie Dineen had six children and one on the way.

McGarr bent and kissed her cheek. “That depends upon what he’s done. And I know of nothing he’s done that we’re interested in, do you, Commissioner Farrell?”

The two policemen had talked about Dineen on the ride to the hospital: how Dineen could help them with the horse show lead they’d uncovered, how if he did they would refuse to prosecute him on other evidence of criminal activity they had against him. Dineen himself, McGarr imagined, understood his position with the Provos. For some reason, they had decided to get rid of him.

His wife said, “He caught a bit of the bomb in his left eye. But it was enough. They say he’ll lose it. He went through Korea and Suez and Cyprus and Lebanon without so much as a scratch, and now this. And by the people he was supposed to be fighting for, too. But I guess he was lucky.” And then, when she remembered, she added, “And you too, Peter. I almost forgot.” She squeezed his hand again.

McGarr assured her everything would work out for the best and went in to Dineen.

Unlike Jamie Cleary’s hospital room, Dineen’s was dark, except for a small bluish light over the door.

“Saying your prayers?” McGarr asked.

“That’s the only dependable guidance, they say.” Dineen’s head was swathed in bandages and both eyes were covered. He held out his hand.

McGarr shook it and introduced Farrell.

“All the big guns,” said Dineen. “My nose, which has become quite perceptive of late, tells me there must be a deal in the air. If so, my prayers have been answered. Or are these voices I’m hearing from the lower world?”

Farrell looked at McGarr and smiled. “We don’t have much time, Mr. Dineen. It’s the horse show plans we’re after.”

“You mean they’re going through with that foolishness?”

McGarr said, “So it seems.”

“Christ. Then I’m glad they’re through with me.”

Said Farrell, “We can promise you this. Protection and a pardon.”

Dineen hesitated.

McGarr said, “C’mon, Phil, we can’t do any better than that.”

Still Dineen said nothing. He fumbled on the nightstand, found his packet of cigarettes, and took out a smoke.

Farrell lit it.

McGarr took a chair by the bedside. “Don’t tell me you want money?”

Dineen shook his head. “It’s not that. I’ll get by.” He blew out the smoke. “It’s that I’ve never been a fink. I spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp without giving more than my name and rank. It’s hard to—” he drew again upon the cigarette, which glowed brightly in the darkness of the room. “—and then there’s my family. I don’t know if my kids would even begin to understand.” He waved his hand. “You know, how I really had nothing to do with this situation.”

McGarr said, “Well, when did the Provos ever even use you? Shit—it seems to me they kept you stuck way out here because they’re afraid of your kind of fighting. When did they ever go at things your way? Face up to it—you made a mistake. They’re just a pack of sneaks. Drop the bomb and run. They did it to us. They’re planning to do it at the horse show, am I right?”

Dineen nodded.

Farrell pulled up a chair.

McGarr said, “The other day when we talked, you said you’d joined them because you’d made a decision about how things should be in this country and you were doing something about it. Okay. I accepted that. But your position has changed. The decision to blow up scores of people and maybe a queen has already been made too. It’s just another affair that stinks. Now you know enough about these bastards that maybe the bunch of us working together can stop it from happening. But it’s up to you. You’ve got to decide if it’s right or wrong.

“Look—here’s what we’ll do: protection for your wife and kids. By that I mean we’ll move them, someplace out here where your wife’s mother is from. A new identity. A house.” McGarr glanced over at Farrell.

He tilted his head, but then nodded.

“Aw, Peter—” Dineen began to say.

“Wait—hear me out. And a job for you.”

Farrell reached over and touched McGarr’s sleeve.

But McGarr continued, “We’ve been thinking of expanding our surveillance of the Provos and other I.R.A. activity. We’ll consider this your first assignment.” That much was true. Farrell and McGarr had gotten the minister of justice to agree to the proposal already. “Now that’s a necessity. Who better to head that team but you, who know about them personally.” McGarr turned to Farrell, who liked the idea only somewhat better.

Farrell said, “We’d have to get that through the minister himself.”

“What rank and pay?” said Dineen. He added, “I’m only saying that for my kids.”

McGarr turned to Farrell, who stood and said, “Let me call the minister. If I can clear the idea with him, then we can talk terms.” He left the room.

Dineen thanked McGarr. “I was worried about what I’d do. Who the hell would think of hiring a one-eyed bandido with special disqualifications in this country, I was asking myself.”

“Only the Garda Soichana,” said McGarr. “What about Fleming?”

“A true believer. He was the one—”

McGarr knew what he was going to say. “Who killed May Quirk, who tried to kill us. What’s he like as a tactician? What can we expect from him at the horse show?”

“Anything. He’s unpredictable. And he’s managed to put together a large band of followers. They’re like he is—total commitment. He’s got a kind of zealot’s charisma. He’s bright, and he’s got money.”

“O’Connor’s?”

“Not just his. Fleming’s got other money. Funny money.”

“From a foreign government?” No wonder they hadn’t hesitated to blow up the packet of money McGarr had delivered to Dineen at the Salthill dance hall.

“I don’t want to be hard about this, Peter. But let’s see what your boss has to say. I’d prefer to have him legitimize my blabbing.”

Twenty minutes later Farrell returned and said he had a carte blanche to quash whatever Fleming had in mind for the horse show and to put him behind bars.

Dineen was given a superintendent’s pay with a written guarantee of a five-year tenure that was renew
able. The three men talked until dawn. Then an angry doctor ejected the two policemen. Dineen’s eye was infected and he needed rest.

For the first time in his career, McGarr had taken copious notes.

THE BRAZEN HEAD
was Dublin’s oldest public house. To get to the bar, one had to walk through the cobblestone courtyard of the inn. The ceiling was low and a tall man had to stoop.

Out of the corner of his eye McGarr was watching for that. He was seated at a table with his head turned from the door. He was wearing a soft hat with a wide brim.

Fergus Farrell was standing at the end of the bar. There he had a Walther PPK concealed under a newspaper.

Bernie McKeon was seated on a stool on the low dais playing a fiddle with other amateur musicians, who had been recruited from the Garda Soichana as well.

Hughie Ward, dressed in a porter-stained frock, was pulling pints behind the bar.

Out in the courtyard, Harry Greaves was slouched into the corner of a wall. He looked like he was sleeping it off.

Paul Sinclair and Liam O’Shaughnessy were sitting in the back of a van parked outside. It also contained a one-way window, a radio, and three uniformed Gardai.

A similar van stood in the alley behind the Brazen Head.

O’Connor was the first to arrive. He came down the staircase from the guest accommodations upstairs.

McGarr turned his head away from him.

Hughie Ward bent as though to arrange the rows of bottles under the bar.

O’Connor took a seat in the far corner of the room. He kept his back to the wall.

Five minutes later Fleming appeared in the doorway. He looked around.

Ward pulled two pints of black and frothy Guinness for him and cashed a twenty-dollar American travelers check.

Fleming spoke with a Midwestern American twang when talking to him. The bar was too dark for O’Connor to recognize Ward from the distance.

Fleming carried the drinks to a table and sat.

A half hour later, when their pints had dwindled and they obviously had begun to feel comfortable in the room, Ward placed two more pints on the table.

Fleming looked up, surprised. “We didn’t order these.”

“From the gentleman sitting near the door.” Ward withdrew from the table but did not go back to the bar.

O’Connor and Fleming looked around the room. All the other guests had left.

McGarr turned and faced the two young men from Clare. He had May Quirk’s Mauser in his right hand.

The music stopped.

Farrell and Ward had their weapons drawn as well.

McGarr gestured with the gun and O’Connor and Fleming stood with their hands raised. O’Connor’s head was touching the ceiling.

McGarr flicked the barrel of the gun again and they turned and faced the wall. McGarr stood and approached them. “I’d call it a strange setting for two revolutionaries in search of a new social order. But I suppose even Lenin quaffed the odd pint. He was a killer too, but I wonder if he ever stooped to murdering a childhood friend or a lover.”

O’Connor rested his forehead against the wall.

Fleming began to turn his head to McGarr.

“Keep your sly, foul eyes on the wall, Doctor.” McGarr removed a Baretta special from Fleming’s jacket, a large Colt pistol from under O’Connor’s sweater. “I know two pensioners on the Kishanny road who wouldn’t shed a tear if I were to plug two bastards like you.”

A day later the queen arrived. Her daughter and son-in-law performed creditably, but Harvey Smith won the puissance.