The Bloomsday Dead (5 page)

“It wasn’t relevant, Michael, it still isn’t,” Dan insisted.

“It’s relevant. While I was waiting for you, I called up the police in Belfast. Bridget did indeed file a missing persons report three days ago.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It could still be a setup. The kid could be in the room with her right now,” Dan said.

“I know.”

“Michael, come on, we’ll go to Midtown, get you in a nice hotel, maybe the Plaza. Take it easy for a few days and then we’ll send you somewhere new.”

“Dan, that’s precisely it. I’m tired of this. Tired of running. Tired of moving to new cities. I want to check this out, if there’s any possibility that this could be real I want to investigate.”

“Big mistake,” Dan said, shaking his head.

“I don’t think so.”

Dan sighed. “Let me remind you who we’re talking about here,” he said. “After you helped put the rest of Darkey’s crew behind bars, Bridget was off the scene for a while. She wasn’t a natural successor to Darkey White. There were at least two other candidates Duffy could have put in charge of Upper Manhattan and Riverdale. He wasn’t a sentimentalist. He didn’t owe her a goddamn thing. Bridget made her own way to the top. Murdered her way up. She started with next to nothing. Not even Darkey’s name, remember. She got a few loyal men, she took out the opposition without a second—”

I didn’t want to hear this right now.

“I read the papers,” I interrupted.

“James Hanratty, shot on the way back from his sister’s wedding. Pat Kavanagh, shot in front of his wife and two kids. Miles Nagobaleen, pushed in front of a subway train. This isn’t the girl you used to know, Michael. She’s ruthless. When Duffy died someone ordered the murder of Duffy’s brother the very same night, so he was out of the picture too. We suspect she’s ordered at least three hits in the last year, not counting the ones on you. I mean, come on, Michael. Why do you think the Boston mob stays out of New York? They’re scared of her. And they’re right to be.”

“She’s a killer,” I said, trying to sound blasé.

“No, Michael, more than that. She’s the general behind the killers.”

“She’s also a mother,” I said.

Dan took a sip of my beer, put the bottle back on the table, shook his head. His eyes were sad, he knew he wasn’t going to convince me.

“We can’t look after you outside United States jurisdiction,” he said.

“Dan, I’m not that bad at looking after myself, as you well know.”

“Michael, if you go to Ireland, there’s nothing I can do to protect you.”

“I realize that.”

“If we lose you, it’ll be a black eye for the whole program, a huge setback. It’ll discourage other potential informants. It won’t be good for anyone.”

“Least of all me.”

“Least of all you, exactly.”

Dan looked at me for a long time. He leaned back with a big exaggerated sigh.

“But you’re set on going, aren’t you?” he said finally.

I tapped the passport on the table.

“Don’t worry, Dan, they won’t harm me now I’m an American citizen,” I said.

Dan shook his head, for him this was not an occasion for levity.

“There’s nothing I can say?” he said sadly.

“No.”

Dan motioned for one of the agents to come over. He told him something I couldn’t catch and the agent sloped off.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“I’m going to get some paperwork faxed over. I’ll want you to sign a release ending your relationship with the WPP. If you’re killed by Bridget Callaghan or one of her employees, or meet with any kind of accident while you’re there, I want us off the hook. I’ll want us to be able to say that you did this strictly against my advice and that you were no longer a member of the WPP.”

I nodded. He was right. There was no point kicking up a stink about it. He ordered two more Sam Adams, getting one for himself this time. We clinked the bottles together.

“Ok, so tell me everything you know about the daughter,” I asked.

“Christ, I’m Irish, I know how to spell Siobhan.”

“Ok, we believe it’s Darkey’s kid. I think she must be about eleven or twelve. She went to private school in Manhattan. A good student. Pretty girl, takes after her mother, not Darkey, thank God. Only child, but she has a lot of cousins. . . . And, uhh, well, I’m afraid that’s about all I know.”

“You think Bridget is the type of person to use her daughter in a ploy to get me?”

“I don’t, frankly, but nothing would surprise me.”

“How often does Bridget go to Belfast?”

“I have no idea. I do have other cases, you know. I heard something about a home in Donegal, wherever that is.”

“It’s in the west. But that would make sense. Ok. That’s fine.”

We talked for a couple of minutes and Dan stood up. One of the goons was coming back with a bunch of forms.

“Here come those faxes. Let me get you dinner at the executive club. Airline food is getting worse and worse,” Dan said “Aer Lingus never hit the culinary high notes to start with,” I said. Dan smiled and put his arm around me and we left for what I’m sure Dan thought was something of a last supper.

There was a festive air to the check-in crowd and it made me wonder if there was some holiday or event taking place that I didn’t know about. A wealthy-looking, trim, educated crowd, so it wasn’t some drinking binge or the hurling final. It wasn’t the Olympics, but I did know that the Tour de France sometimes went out of country. Perhaps that was it. The Tour de France was having an Irish leg this year.

“Don’t you do movies anymore, love?” I asked the stewardess.

“Sorry?”

“Like I know Aer Lingus is a bit backward but most of the other airlines have films, and computer games and stuff like that. Giving someone a brick-size book for a six-hour flight is pretty lame,” I said.

“No, that’s just a complimentary copy, we have a dozen films for you to watch, sir,” she said, raised her eyebrows, and walked off to deal with a less obtuse passenger.

The woman next to me had heard the conversation. She obviously had enough dough to be flying first but she looked like a retired English teacher from central casting. Aran sweater, granny glasses, sensible shoes. I supposed she was about sixty.

“I take it, young man, that you’re not flying to Dublin for the festivities,” she said in a patrician accent.

“No, I’m just going home. What festivities?”

“You don’t know what day it is tomorrow?”

“Aye, it’s Wednesday.”

“No, no, no, it’s Bloomsday. June 16, 2004. It’s the hundredth Bloomsday,” she said, doing little to disguise her contempt for my ignorance.

“Flower festival, is it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Bloomsday is some sort of flower festival?”

“How could I? Only just got it.”

“Previously,” she said with a touch of exasperation.

“No, I haven’t. I heard it was a dirty book,” I said and took a swig of my champagne. The woman’s thin lips thinned even more.

“It is most certainly not. It is the greatest work of literature of the last or perhaps of any other century.”

“And tomorrow is when the book was published, is it?” I asked for the entertainment value.

“Tomorrow, June 16, is when Leopold Bloom spent the day walking around Dublin in the book.”

“Leopold Bloom. Something to do with Mel Brooks, right? Hope there’s going to be singing.”

The woman shook her head impatiently.

“It’s really when Joyce met Nora Barnacle. There will be a big parade and lots of festivities,” the woman said, and bored with my ignorance, turned away.

I swallowed a gag about Nora Barnacle and the Little Mermaid and examined the book. Joyce looked chic in eye patch and bow tie. I put it in the seat pocket in front of me. Not really my cup of tea and I only hoped that the festivities wouldn’t impede a successful navigation through Dublin to Connolly Station and the train to Belfast. Still, if this was as big a deal as the old lady was saying, the traffic would be coming south, not north, and I’d have no bother getting to my home city.

And, who knew, maybe Bridget would be waiting there with open arms. Maybe I’d ask around my old haunts and we’d find darling Siobhan together. Maybe all would be forgiven and tonight I could sleep easily for the first time in a dozen years.

I smiled. Sure. Shut-eye, though, was going to be essential whatever happened. I swallowed an Ambien, finished another glass of champagne, turned off the light, and closed the window shade.

The pill took about fifteen minutes to kick in.

The sky darkened, the stars came out, the 777 raced east to greet the dawn.

I pulled the blanket around me and drifted into a chemical sleep.

The dog stopped barking.

“I’d loike ye ta come wit me, sur,” the customs agent said. I hadn’t heard that hardcore North Dublin accent in a long time and I could barely understand the man. The words were there but it was like hearing Anglo-Saxon or being aurally dyslexic. It took me a while to process what he’d said.

“Of course,” I said after a long pause.

I accompanied him into an antechamber.

“Look, I know why the dog is going crazy, I’ve got these coca leaves in my pack, the dog probably thinks they’re cocaine.”

“Iz zat so, sur?”

“Aye it is.”

“Yaar fra America?”

“No, originally I’m from Belfast. I work in America now. Well, Peru. It’s complicated. . . . Until yesterday I was the head of security at the Miraflores Hilton in Lima. We used to take the leaves for the night shift.”

The customs agent found the bag of coca leaves and sniffed them. He was an older gentleman, fifties or sixties, a shock of white hair, dead capillary nose, ruddy cheeks, chubby body squeezed into a faded white shirt. The sort of desperate character who would like nothing more than to fuck someone over at four in the morning. It looked bad. If the authorities were feeling ungenerous I knew that this could be seen as an attempt to smuggle coke into Ireland. I could be looking at jail time.

“What ya doin in Oirland?”

“I’ve come to help an old girlfriend of mine. Her daughter has gone missing and she’s really cracking up and I’ve come to support her and maybe help find the girl.”

“What’s hur neem?”

“Bridget Callaghan.”

He didn’t mean to show a reaction but he did. His eyes widened slightly. He knew who she was.

“What’s yur neem?”

“Michael Forsythe.”

“Ok. Did ye breeng anyting else illegal?”

“No,” I said and turned out my pockets. The customs agent went through my stuff anyway. He noted the fifteen thousand dollars of Bridget’s money and a couple of grand of my own there too. He stared at me for a moment and his eyes drifted back to the cash.

It gave me an idea. I toyed with it, dismissed it, floated it again.

But this was the situation. If they arrested me, it would take me a couple of days to hit bail, and the wee lassie could be dead, or in the Hare Krishnas, or a member of a biker gang, or taking drugs in some dingy flat, long before I could be of any assistance. Once again I’d be bloody straight into Bridget’s bad books. Michael the traitor, Michael the fuckup. And to overegg that custard Bridget or anyone else then would have an excellent opportunity of killing me while I waited on remand in an Irish jail.

That was option 1.

But there was always option 2.

What about it then? Just looking at him, I knew he wasn’t going to let me go with a stiff talking to. I was too old and he was too old for that. Aye, it would have to be the other way.

His greedy eyes on the money.

Bringing in a few harmless leaves was no big deal but attempting to bribe a government official could get me seriously fucked. If he took it badly, he’d report me and they’d throw the book at me. I could be facing years, not months; also, there was no way he could ignore it. He might be irked. Beyond irked. Seriously pissed off. “Some Yank scumbag comes in here attempting to bribe me with his wad of cash. I’ll bloody do you, mate.”

Yeah, but . . .

I was a friend of Bridget Callaghan and he’d heard of her. Maybe even was a little afraid of her. Jesus, it was a lot to weigh in my mind.

“Why don’t ya teek a seat and I’ll inform ye of yer rights,” the man said and I could more or less follow him completely now.

I sat down. Now or never.

I gave the agent the final once-over. An old whiskey-breathed sad sack, who clearly hated work, me, himself. He might just respond to the right level of incentive program.

“I’m really sorry this had to happen; I use the coca leaves for purely medicinal purposes, they’re not illegal in Peru, I forgot they were in my bag. Of course, it’s no excuse. Is there any way I can pay an on-the-spot fine and get out of here? Bridget Callaghan is expecting me.”

The man regarded me closely. He looked at the fifteen thousand dollars in bills sitting on the table. He closed his eyes.

He was thinking about it.

Good.

“De ye have a contact for Miss Callaghan?” he asked.

“I do,” I said and gave him Bridget’s phone number in the Belfast Europa.

“Jus a moment,” he said, took away my passport, and left the room.

He hadn’t given me his name. He hadn’t told me where he was going. I sat down on the chair. Waited.

Twenty minutes later he came back.

“You’re who ye say ye are. I have a great deal of respect for Miss Callaghan. The fine’ll be about two thousand dollars, that’s the equivalent to the euros,” he said, and involuntarily licked his lips in anticipation.

“I’d like my passport back,” I said.

He gave me the passport and took the coca leaves and threw them in a garbage can behind him. I counted out two thousand dollars, gave them to him.

I wondered if he had indeed called Bridget at the Europa. It would have woken her up, but more than that, it would have alerted her that I was back in the country. I’d have to be on my toes.

Then again, he didn’t seem the type to call. He was just killing twenty minutes out there, making me sweat while he thought it over. He could really do what he liked. It was four in the bloody morning. There were no other customs inspectors on.

I was pleased with myself. A good guess on my part. Two thousand was about the right price for this unimaginative, pathetic, small-time shitehawke.

“Thanks very much,” I said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

I repacked my bag, patted the dog, left the customs office, and walked through the Green Channel.

My trials, however, weren’t over just yet.

A man from the department of agriculture.

“Did you visit any zoos in America?”

“No.”

“Farms?”

“No.”

“Agricultural research stations?”

“No.”

An assassin entering the country was one thing, but the prospect of diseased feed or potato blight or another mad cow epidemic sent the Irish around the bend.

“Have you ever had occasion to eat squirrel, flying squirrel, capybara, or other rodents?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes and answered all the stupid questions.

Another half hour of officialdom and when I was done finally I went to the bathroom, washed my face, walked out of the airport and into my first Irish day in a very long time.

“Connolly Station,” I said.

“The station it is,” the driver said, and after that encounter with the customs agent I could understand the accent completely now. It just took you a minute or two to get back in the game. Ireland has about three or four major regional accents. Some of them very hard to follow. In Northern Ireland I can put a man within twenty miles of his hometown and in the south fifty. Or at least I could before my long years of exile.

The driver looked at me in the mirror, switched off the engine, turned around.

“That’ll be twenty euros, is that all right?” he said.

“Sure . . . but I’ve only got dollars, ok?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t take dollars.”

I swore inwardly. Another Irish subtlety I’d forgotten. Don’t give details when you don’t have to.

“Come on, mate, just get going,” I said.

“I don’t take dollars, you’ll have to get change,” the taxi man insisted.

“You don’t take dollars at all, never?”

“No, I could lose me license.”

“Come on, do me a favor. I’ll give you fifty bucks if you just get cracking,” I said.

“You’re going to have to get change, pal, euros, or else you’ll be walking where ya want to go,” the driver said, getting somewhat hot under the collar. I looked at him in the mirror. He was about my age, wearing a Manchester United beanie hat and a thick sweater with reindeer on it. Big build, fat, frothy lips, the skin tone of a granite statue. A Dublin accent, but a hint of the north in it too.

I was about to give the bastard a piece of my mind but then stopped, unclenched my fists, and found a place of inner tranquility.

“Ok, mate, I’ll get the bloody euros,” I said through the window and smiled reassuringly at him. He didn’t smile back. He seemed nervous. He wiped tiny beads of sweat off his forehead. Interesting, but I didn’t have the time to probe the inner psychology of a cabbie, I was freezing out here. I sprinted back to the overhang outside the terminal. I asked a pair of cops where I could change money.

“Inside couple of bureaus de change, Eire Bank’s got a better rate than National,” one said.

“And a prettier girl,” his partner added.

I found the two bureaus de change and headed for the National Bank. Old habit: whatever a peeler says, play safe and do the opposite.

I gave the girl three thousand dollars. She gave me back two thousand four hundred and ninety euros.

“Happy Bloomsday,” she said.

“Thanks, happy Bloom to you, too, love.”

I walked back out to the taxis. The driver was on his cell phone. He hung up hurriedly when he saw me, gave me a big fake smile.

“Ok, mate, where to? Connolly?” the driver asked.

“I haven’t been here in a while, is it Connolly Station where you get the trains to Belfast?”

“It is too now, and is that where you want to go?”

“No, I was just asking that to make small talk. Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, once again betraying my irritation.

“Connolly Station it is,” the driver said, and I knew he was going to take the most expensive route that he bloody could.

Streets.

Trees.

Cars.

Dublin is a city I don’t know well. Drop me a few blocks from O’Connell Street and I’m banjaxed. I can get you to Trinity and St. Pat’s and a brothel opposite the Four Courts but that’s about it. It’s not my town at all. When I lived in Belfast I’d be down about twice a year for a rugby match. Don’t think I’ve ever stayed overnight. Lot of beggars about back then, now it’s yuppies with cell phones and PDAs.