The Emerald Lie (6 page)

Hanging with David Cassidy?

Sweeny was back, with the ubiquitous McDonald’s bag. In my time, weapons are always delivered thus. Some kind of postmodern statement? Or simply the nearest shit to hand? Sweeny grimaced, asked,

“You wanted fries with that?”

I asked the freight and rough it was. But these days of government levies on everything, from water to pretax scams, it was par for end-times. I asked,

“Take a check?”

Another bright scheme from our leaders.

Yeah, abolish checks. Anything that would make life even more fucking miserable than it was. The juke played

“Dust in the Storm”

Marc Roberts.

Sweeny said,

“That McDonald’s? You want to tell me what’s going down there?”

Meaning, why are you tooling up?

I would have liked to have his muscle as a backup but the price of doing biz with villains was a debt that kept on giving. I said,

“It may be nothing, just a little insurance.”

He didn’t buy that but, what the hell, like he could give a fuck? He veered, asked,

“You been hearing about this Grammarian fellah?”

I nodded, then,

“Seems to have the public wind.”

He began to gather his stuff, preparing to leave, said,

“Fucking amateur though.”

“You think?”

He was on his feet, the light in the bar darkening his Costa tan, said,

“’Course. He left witnesses.”

The Glock was a nine-mm, one of the new models with a seventeen-shot capability. Now I just needed seventeen people to shoot. I went to see the accountant whose daughter had been killed. I had the gun in my Garda jacket. Always see your money guys with weight. They piss you off, you have a solid argument.

Made me wait half an hour. I read an old
Reader’s Digest
while I waited and increased my word power. Learned that an intransitive verb acts by itself, like a PI in fact.

But without the baggage.

E.g.,

I sleep

I fall

I shoot

Or, if you’re Irish,

“Jesus wept.”

Finally I got ushered into his impressive office. He didn’t seem pleased to see me, opened,

“Look like you have been in the wars.”

I explained my visit to his daughter’s former employer and the resultant hiding I received. He asked,

“You sure it was connected?”

Was he kidding?

I asked,

“You’re kidding, right?”

He was definitely even more unimpressed. Said,

“Your line of work, I would think that beatings are all in a day’s fun.”

The fuck was this? The guy hired me and now he’s going all defensive and good citizen? I said,

“You hired me.”

He sighed and,

“Yes, but not to draw attention to yourself. When we take this player off the board, you think we want to leave a trail?”

Jesus wept.

I asked,

“You taking me off the case?”

He stood up so that I might admire the cut of his Armani suit, said,

“We’d been somewhat wrong-footed by some past successes of yours and it seemed that you might, in your stumbling fashion, find out actual evidence but, alas, you have become the very drunken collateral we heard you were.”

I said,

“That is atrocious English.”

He looked down at his desk, said,

“Good-bye, Mr. Taylor.”

I moved to the door, reaching for some exit line if not of dignity, at least of significance, tried,

“For an accountant of some repute, you figured one factor wrong.”

He gave me a look of borderline pity, asked,

“Oh, what might that be?”

“Pigheadedness.”

Outside, the rain came lashing down and I held my face up to it, hoping … what? Any cleansing available to me had been shut off at source so long ago and now, of course, the government was making us pay for any drop of water. I went to Garavan’s, ordered,

“A pint, a Jay, and no conversation.”

They came in exactly that order.

As I reached for my wallet, my hand touched the butt of the Glock and I derived that scant comfort it gave. I stayed for over an hour and when I readied to leave, the bar guy shouted,

“Nice chatting to you, Jack.”

Friday morning, Emily picked me up at my apartment. She was driving a red Kia, which, if it was a statement, said,

“I’m dafter than you thought.”

I got in and she pointed out a Starbucks container on the dash, said,

“Wasn’t sure how you like it so I had them pile in everything.”

Which might well have been true. I asked,

“When did Starbucks open in Galway?”

She gave me the look that urged,

“Get with the bloody game.”

Said,

“They have an outlet in the college.”

“So they figure the ordinary folk don’t drink coffee?”

“No, they know that students will drink any old shit.”

I tried,

“You know they don’t pay any tax, Starbucks?”

She shrugged. Not easy when you’re maneuvering around the Headford road, said,

“Neither do you.”

I could have asked how she knew so much about my affairs but it opened up an area that was best left alone. I asked,

“Does your mum know we’re coming?”

She scoffed, mimicked,

“Mum … She’s a cunt.”

Killing the whole thread of that. I found the radio dial, and got Galway Bay FM,
The Big Breakfast Show.
He was playing the White Stripes. Listened to that for a bit then. We were coming up to Shop Street and my eyes spotted Whelans Pharmacy. I said,

“The owner of that pharmacy, Michael, sat beside me in school.”

She scoffed,

“And you? What, just decided to be a failure as your school friend made a career?”

Jesus.

So much for sharing.

I went another tack, tried,

“When you were …
away
… where exactly were you?”

She mused over that, then,

“I was amassing money.”

“For what?”

She waved her hand vaguely, said,

“Money isn’t always protection but it sure makes a basis for attack.”

Riddle me that.

We’d arrived at her mother’s house. Before, when I had visited, it had been a shroud of darkness, everything dying. Now it was renewal in neon. Brightly painted and, even I noticed, new curtains. It looked … welcoming?

Emily warned,

“Follow my lead, you hear?”

Jesus.

I asked,

“Like good cop bad cop?”

She gave me the look, sneered,

“Like in, you say fuck all.”

I could do that.

The door was opened by a woman who looked healthy and alive, no trace of the wretched drunk I had encountered last time. She gave a small smile and began to open her arms but Emily brushed her aside, saying,

“A hug? Really?”

Guess not.

I stood there, saying, you guessed it, fuck all. Her mother said,

“Would you like to come in, Mr….?”

“Jack, Jack Taylor.”

No memory of our previous time or the gallon of whiskey I had fed her. Inside, the house was a testament of OCD. Spotless and solitary. She offered,

“Some tea, coffee? I’m afraid we don’t have any … beverages.”

Emily laughed, an unpleasant sound, said,

“Being as you drank it all and more.”

We stood in the grim aftermath of that for a minute until Emily broke the tableau, said,

“You dragged us all the way out here. What’s the big deal?”

Her mother looked beseechingly at me and I moved to go outside but Emily shot me a look. Her mother said,

“I wanted to make amends to you.”

Emily laughed out loud, spat,

“How will you do that? Restore my virginity that Daddy took?”

Phew.

Fuck it. I got the hell out of there. I could hear shouting behind me and started to walk down the road. An articulated lorry came hugely along and more in desperation than seriousness I put out my thumb and

… he stopped.

With my bad leg took me a time to climb up there. Settled in the massive cab and said,

“Thanks a lot.”

The Polish driver said,

“Random acts of kindness.”

Alas, his good deed was fouled by a tape of Black Sabbath. You have not known damnation until you hurl along the motorway, Sabbath roaring in your ears, and a driver eating a thick bagel laden with dripping mayo and tomatoes.

It did save chat so there’s that. He dropped me off at Eyre Square. A wag I knew from Garavan’s watched me climb down, asked,

“New job, Taylor?”

I said,

“With the water charges, we all have to improvise.”

I sat on a bench until a guy approached and sold me a sheet of Xanax. Not exactly the stuff they dealt on
The Wire
but it does the job. He took the money, said,

“You ever need anything else, here’s my number.”

Might be my imagination but he looked a little like Ozzy Osbourne.

The Grammarian

Oliver Parker Wilson. Now that’s a name. To conjure with. In Galway in the late ’50s, there had been two Protestant families. Two! Count ’em. The Hunters, who manufactured prams, and the Wilsons, who were in exports and simply rich. As Protestant they were, of course, apart and almost like suspicious royalty. Money and Protestant, rarities in a poor town. The Hunters were almost popular in that there was no ill feeling toward them and they did bring employment. The Wilsons were just aloof.

Oliver was the only son and sent to Eton. Where he was schooled in barbarism and grammar. Never fully recovered. He took a first at Cambridge and his first breakdown. He believed words were communicating some special meaning only to him. He was uncomfortable, not with being mad, just with people knowing it, so he began to disguise it with an icy politeness. Then softened that with an ironic wit.

Mostly, he felt an overwhelming anger and did what you do with that—he joined the army. Did well until he shot an NCO and, with family influence, was invalided out. And what to do with the lunatic? Trained as a teacher, always a fine route for madness. During a class for O-level English, grammar began to speak to him again, its rules and structures singing a dark song of transcendence. A pupil mangling intransitive verbs drove him
to rage he could barely contain. Found that drowning the pupil brought an ease he’d never known.

And

The knowledge that secrecy was his ally. Cover your tracks. Oddly, he had a small circle of friends, ex-army, and fucked up in other ways. They saw his obsession with language as a hoot.

Indeed.

They called him Park. He began to see himself as Park, an eccentric fellow who was essentially harmless as long as you didn’t disrespect English. And well he may have continued in this low-level field of carnage, not calling attention to himself but dealing with barbarians discreetly.

Until

A colleague at work exclaimed,

“Texting may well replace common usage.”

The sacrilege.

And without due consideration, he had flown at the man. Lost his job and was lucky to escape jail. So, head home. Whoever said you can’t go home again didn’t come from money. You have money, you can go home any fucking time you like.

He did.

Just in time to bury his elderly parents and take over the large house at the back of the golf links. The city had moved on in his absence: had been rich then back to poor again. But being English was no longer a cachet or a problem. So many nationalities now that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was embroiled in
rows as to what ethnic group should lead the damn thing. One thing sure: it wasn’t going to be anybody Irish.

Park was now aging, but insanity has its perks. A life without regret keeps you young. He had all his hair, his teeth, and a nervous system attuned to chaos that kept him slender. He dressed in the Anglo fashion of tweeds and Barbour. He would have kept dogs save they instinctively ran a mile from him.

Otherwise, he was pretty much the country gent temporarily in the city. Best of all, he played golf. You want to be accepted by the shakers, play golf. You don’t even have to be very good. Long as you aren’t caught cheating. He had once played with Superintendent Clancy, thus having a solid connection to law enforcement.

Clancy liked to think he was mixing with the aristocracy. If he could just get to meet Bill Clinton, hell, he could run for president.

Park, in his time in mental hospitals, had received shock treatment and found it … get this … refreshing. Wiped the slate clean and, as he came out of it, he could start all over again, hating the abuse of language. Through trial and mostly error, he had managed to set up his own do-it-yourself electric current treatment. Had more than a few close calls but now he could hook up the cables, put the rubber wedge between his teeth, set the timer, and shock the living shit out of his system.

It accounted for the long falloff between kills. Take out a few language abusers, then shock city and he was almost a model
citizen for a few months. Back to the golf links and he was as good a citizen as you could hope to meet, long as you minded your language.

Park

Post

   ECT

   Passage.

When the power surged through Park, his whole body shook, the rubber retainer dropped from his mouth, and as the power automatically shut off, he slipped to the floor, convulsing slightly. A few more shudders, then he was still, drool leaking from his mouth.

His mind …

Careering down a completely blank space, a wind howling in his ears, then a pause as roads of utter whiteness began to form. Cascades of letters began to rain down and he opened his mouth as if he could swallow them. The scene metamorphosed to a wood, his father, and a group of men with shotguns and rifles, repeatedly firing and bringing down pheasant, more than they could ever use. A taste of cordite in his mouth, then his father attempting to force the gun into his small hands, shouting at him, “Be a man, kill them.”

No need for Psychology 1 to figure the impact that would have on a sensitive boy. More shooting, carnage, and a mound of brightly torn bodies as the pheasant were piled up. The boy hugging himself, incanting