The Emerald Lie (11 page)

“Did you ever consider the big thing?”

Ah, fuck, where was the declaration of adoration in this? I said,

“Not a day goes by.”

She was intrigued, pushed,

“And?”

“Who’d mind the pup?”

She took out her e-cig, blew vapor, and I said,

“I was watching
The Border
Season Two, and a drug lord described those things as gay cigarettes.”

She laughed at that and it was good to hear that spontaneous sound. Then, surfing that, she near gushed,

“Jack, I was going to wait until after dinner but I have to tell you now.”

Finally.

“Jack, I have fallen in love with someone.”

I tried to look, I don’t know,

Expectant?

Happy?

Humble?

She almost whispered,

“It’s Doc.”

“What?”

She beamed, radiant.

“Oh, I knew you’d be delighted.”

I muttered,

“Delighted?”

She reached for my hand, her face a riot of joy, said,

“It’s so perfect. When I move in with him, we’ll be like …”

Reached for the horrible fucking word.

“Neighbors.”

I snatched back my hand, as if bitten, said,

“Neighbors?”

She was beginning to catch on, asked,

“Aren’t you happy for me?”

I tried to bite down, not go ballistic, settled for,

“Isn’t he …”

With utter sarcasm, leaned on,

“
LIKE,

… a tad fucking old for you?”

Our server arrived, happy to announce,

“Your table is ready, folks.”

Almost in chorus we went,

“Fuck off.”

I disappeared.

Utterly

Completely

Disastrously.

Post Emily, and I mean hours after, I got in touch with the only nun I knew.

Sister Maeve. She’d asked me for assistance in a very nasty, vicious case years before. It went like most of my work.

Apeshit, down the doomed toilet.

People got badly hurt but, somehow, Maeve got the result she was seeking and gave most of the credit to God and maybe ten percent to me. Enough to have her grateful. Few more valuable assets than a thankful nun. Ask the Vatican.

She agreed to mind the pup for a time; how long I didn’t know. Maeve had the completely unlined face habitual to her calling. And such peaceful eyes as if she had seen the total plan. She said,

“I will be happy to have the company of this little fellah for a while.”

Best of all, the pup liked her.

Back at the apartment, I was grabbing what hidden cash I had, decided to leave the gun. I was feeling so dark, it would be too much of a lure. I wore my Garda coat as stormy weather of a personal type was very much on the cards. I looked around
the place; even my bookcase gave no comfort. I was just about to leave when a knock at the door. Opened it to Doc.

Who looked?

Apprehensive?

I spat,

“What?”

“May I come in?”

“No, I’m just leaving.”

He tried to see over my shoulder, asked,

“Where’s the pup?”

“The fuck do you care, asshole?”

He seemed crushed, tried,

“Is this about Em?”

“Em! When do you get to call her that?”

He tried another tack, said,

“Look, I know it’s a surprise and we should have said something before this but, cross my heart, it took us as much by surprise.”

I brushed past him, said,

“Have a nice life.”

He shouted,

“Shouldn’t you be happy for her?”

Jesus, nearly a clean getaway. I stopped, said, real quiet,

“I’d have thought you might be more comfortable with someone your own age.”

He put his hand on me. I looked at his hand and he withdrew, said,

“Okay, I get it. You’re protective, but in time you’ll come around and, you know, I was hoping you might do me the honor of being my best man.”

Aw, sweet Lord. I stared at him for one long moment then spun on my heel and left. I was halfway along Shop Street when a guy stepped in front of me, said,

“Cheer up, fellah, it’s nearly Christmas.”

I said,

“So much to look forward to, I’m dizzy with choice.”

Odd times in my blasted life, I would meet a thin weather-beaten man who,

Rumor had it,

Was a mid-list crime author (i.e., didn’t sell)

And had served time in jail in South America.

We had a slightly civil acquaintanceship and had shared the rare pint and even rarer to rarest conversation.

He was to be the last person I spoke to in Galway before my great escape.

He was wearing a pea jacket with the collar turned up, and an air of violence barely suppressed emanated from his whole being, but the strangest thing was

… That vibe seemed to be turned in on himself.

I said,

“How are you doing?”

The question amused him, as we stood on a deserted street after a raging storm. He said,

“I’m doing what little I can to stay on the dry side of things.”

Me neither.

I asked,

“And how is that working for you?”

He leveled his gaze on me. Ferocity without malice, said,

“It manages to pose as normalcy.”

I thought,

“Fuck, enough shite talk.”

And moved on.

He called after me,

“Jack, you can run but the road is always a dead end.”

Way too freaking deep.

I looked back and he was gone. I thought, not for the first time, that he was mostly fiction, a rumor pretending to be relevant.

I missed Stewart in so many ways. He had been, in just about every form, the one true friend I ever had. A former dope dealer who served five harsh years in prison. On release he reinvented himself as a Zen entrepreneur. No, not selling Zen but immersing himself in business with Zen as his fallback.

He had been by my side in so many horrendous cases and though we fought like tinkers, a deep and wild friendship endured. Sergeant Ridge was part of our unholy trinity and she and Stewart had become as tight as fleas.

He never gave up on me despite my constant ripping and ragging on him. Ridge believed my total lack of care and downright negligence had resulted in Stewart being cut in half with a shotgun blast.

She said,

“The very sight of you makes me want to vomit.”

I tried,

“Don’t hold back.”

And she came as close to walloping me as is feasible.

Fleeing Galway now, I wondered if Stewart would have tried to prevent me.

My heart scalded in my chest as I felt his utter loss sweep over me.

Park looked around his aunt’s home. Somewhere in his still clouded mind he knew he should be grateful for her help. She got him out on bail, secured a lawyer, let him stay in her house. But there were restrictions. She’d said,

“Best if you don’t go out.”

What kind of sentence was that?

It wasn’t just flouting grammar. Worse, it was as if she didn’t even care. He said aloud,

“They have to care and they will … care.”

The policewoman,

Ridge?

She danced before his eyes like words he couldn’t articulate. And he knew all words needed to be articulated, otherwise they atrophied. She’d mocked him, mocked grammar, and, with malice aforethought, deliberately mangled and mutilated the most basic rules of common speech.

She’d sneered,

“You’ll get your due.”

… Due to

… means caused by,

With a second meaning of

… “owing to,

because of.”

He said,

“She will die because of her manner due to an irate man.”

And he smiled.

Thought,

“I am definitely on the mend.”

The rules were their own reward, but the bonus and beauty were that they seemed to reach out and eradicate the errors. His mind went then on a tortured circuit of reference and distraction, settling on the wonderful wordsmith

Violet Asquith.

Now there was a lady who not only grasped the alchemy of language but implemented it to describe and dissect.

As in her famous description of Churchill:

“He rose like a trout to the fly of any phrase.”

There was a pack of cigarettes on the kitchen table. He wondered if he smoked. Gave it a shot, coughed, and decided he didn’t. He was staring at the coffee machine, a sleek state-of-the-art contraption and, of course, no instructions unless you read Japanese. The front door opened and Sarah came in, bearing parcels. She jumped when she saw him. He thought,

“Was I to be confined to my room?”

Followed by the not altogether thought,

“She is afraid of me.”

Fear was good, it was cleansing. She said,

“I took the liberty of getting you some clothes.”

Then, seeing him before the coffee machine, asked if he’d like some. He said he would and she busied herself at that, making
inane small talk that he didn’t understand, like weather and the price of everything. Placing a mug before him, she asked if he was hungry.

He stared at her, said,

“The word
preposition
means ‘something that is placed before.’ It is its function to show where one thing is in position to another.”

She gave a weak smile.

“How little importance they place on the rules,”

He thought.

He asked,

“May I borrow the car?”

Startling her. She fumbled with the coffee things, then said,

“I’m not sure that is a good idea.”

He looked at her in genuine astonishment, asked,

“Did I ask what you thought?”

Her expression now confirmed she was indeed very afraid. He stood up, said,

“Good coffee, now keys please.”

Sarah watched him as he drove off in her relatively new BMW. She wasn’t sure which worried her more, him or her car. Crossed her mind to call the Guards but that would be counterproductive. She’d learned that in a class she’d taken on self-assertion. The class didn’t cover the …

“Possible serial killer staying in your home”

Scenario.

She called the lawyer instead and was put on hold for ten minutes. Finally the lawyer came on, sounding definitely testy. Went,

“This better be important.”

She sighed. The rate she was paying this prick, he could at least be civil. She decided to try some of the assertive shtick, snapped,

“I’m not one of those frivolous people who run to the law at every minor event.”

Sounded kind of, like, lame?

Now he sighed, said,

“Whatever.”

She told him about Park and the car.

He asked,

“How did he seem?”

Seem?

She near screamed,

“Seem? He seemed crazy is what he seemed.”

The soothing tones that cost the big bucks came into play as he purred,

“Now, now, we don’t want to be throwing around those kinds of words, do we?”

A question?

She took a deep breath, didn’t help, said,

“He was rambling on about punctuation.”

She thought she heard a chuckle.

It’s not easy to simply lose a month. But I had experience. One way or another, I’d been losing bits of myself all my life. In increments, as they say. I began my binge in Garavan’s on Shop Street in Galway and ended up in a dive on Kilburn High Road. Took the scenic route.

I was as usual on the opposite side of the current thinking. I was the guy who went to the graveyard on a sunny day while the world headed for the beach. Everybody and his nephew were searching for
themselves.
My mission, and
I had chosen to accept it, was to lose all.

I can vaguely recall taking a room in Whelan’s Hotel in Dublin and cutting that short when I realized it had live music
nightly.
That is every single night. Music is a bad distraction when you are studiously avoiding guilt. I was drowning in clichés.
If you are going to do just one thing, do it the best you can.

Right.

Dublin confused me. It was, on the surface, friendly, but only apparently. You were always a
culchie.
Not of the city. I didn’t help my case by sneering at their hurling team on a fairly regular basis. Was I looking for a fight? At every turn.

One memorable evening, and I use the description loosely, I sat in Neary’s on Chatham Street. Like all Dublin pubs, south of the river, it tended to boast some literary connection. I think it was Patrick Kavanagh that occasion and I had mocked,

“Apart from ‘On Raglan Road,’ what else is he remembered for?”

The lady in my company that evening knew nowt of Kavanagh or, indeed, “On Raglan Road.” I was at my most vicious, said,

“No doubt you are in mourning since
Desperate Housewives
finished.”

She’d given me a long look, said,

“You have a limp, a hearing aid, mutilated fingers, and you are insulting me?”

I think I laughed, went,

“Sorry, Sheila.”

“It’s Maura.”

Indeed.

That was Dublin.

London was cold and bitter, in every sense. Most of it I recall as dark pubs and darker people. Desperation is its own beacon and I seemed to attract the worst and the worthless. Insane conversations with the walking insane. A night in Notting Hill, in what used to be, I think, Finches, telling some arsehole,