The Bloomsday Dead (7 page)

I legged it.

I ran straight for the dense bank of fog farther down the street. I got about ten paces before he rugby tackled me to the ground. Jesus. For a big guy he sure could move. He was holding me around the legs. I stuck my thumb in his right eye socket and gouged and he let go of me and screamed. He lashed out with the tire iron but I slid out of the way as it came crashing down on the pavement with a nasty discordant clanging noise. I got to my feet but the strapping around my prosthesis had come undone. It would take a minute to fix it. A minute, a thousand years, no difference in this situation.

I leaped on his back and put my arm around his throat and squeezed. He somehow managed to stand up with me on top of him and then he staggered and fell deliberately backward in an attempt to crush me underneath him. I let go of his throat and pushed him away. He grabbed me by my leather jacket, threw me violently to the street, lost his balance, fell down, and bounced to his feet again like Gene Kelly on crack.

Something flashed and I saw that now he had a knife in his left hand and the tire iron in the other.

“Bloody attack me, would you? I’ll kill you for that, you bastard,” he said.

“Jesus, me attack you? You were going to brain me,” I said, breathing hard.

“I wasn’t going near you,” he said, gasping.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I wasn’t going near you.”

“What are you saying? You weren’t going to attack me?” I asked.

“Hell, no, what are you talking about?”

“Are you saying this is all a misunderstanding? I thought you were about to beat me to death,” I said incredulously.

“What the fook would I do that for?” the cabbie asked.

“I thought you were a hit man,” I said, my voice becoming a little less disbelieving.

“A hit man, Jesus Christ, have you some imagination. I wanted to check me tires.”

“Oh, shit,” I said and groaned. That was my problem all over—I knew how to go from zero to a hundred, but I didn’t know how to dial it down.

“Shit is right, I’ll be taking you to the Garda, me bucko. I think you broke my nose. Sue you, I will, and I’ll press charges.”

“Jesus, I’m really sorry, mate, I read the situation all wrong. Usually I get it right but this time—”

“Save it for the judge. Don’t know what your problem is. You better wait in the Beemer, we have some haggling to do if you don’t want me to call the peelers,” the big man said, getting his breath back and turning away from me. That was all I needed to hear. I readied myself.

He began walking back to the car.

I ran at him and drop-kicked him in the back. He went down hard with a crash. The tire iron slipped out of his hand and he rolled around fast and lashed out with the knife. I was so close it caught me in the stomach, tearing my leather jacket and T-shirt and gouging a four-inch slash below my belly button.

I held my hand over the wound, blood pouring out between my fingers, and reeled for a quarter of a second, gathered my wits, grabbed the tire iron, and smashed it into his head so fast he didn’t have time to get a protective arm up. I thumped him on the temple and behind the ear. And again. And again.

I kicked the knife out of his hand.

Blood was everywhere, his skull was cracked, synaptic fluid oozing out onto his face.

“Why?” he said and gave me a look of such confusion that I thought, is it possible that I’m wrong?

I sank to one knee.

“What did you say?”

He looked at me with desperation.

“Why?” he whispered almost inaudibly.

I leaned next to him. Doubt took over. I cradled his head. His eyes were blinking fast, his body shaking. I had made a terrible mistake.

“You called your car a Beemer, and it’s a Merc. How could you forget the make of your own car? I thought you’d hijacked it.”

“Christ,” he said.

I set down his head and got to my feet.

“Help, can anybody help?” I managed to shout, but there was no one around. I knelt down again.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Padraig.

His face was a mess, his skull smashed in. If he didn’t get assistance he’d be in serious trouble. Blood on the brain, coma, death.

I had really cocked up this time.

His hand reached up and he pulled me close.

He was barely there, about to pass out, almost choking from the blood in his mouth.

“You fuck . . . Forsythe . . .” he said weakly.

One second. Two. Three.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Fucking kill you . . . Forsythe,” he mumbled, his voice trailing away.

His eyes closed and he fell into the black pit of unconsciousness.

I stood, nodded.

Well, well, well.

He was an assassin. No other way he could have known my name. Son of a bitch. I had been right.

Finish the bastard off? Nah. Wasn’t worth it.

But, oh Jesus, Bridget. What were you playing at? It didn’t make any sense. Didn’t she realize I’d get the first flight out now?

Blackness at the edges of my eyes.

I fell down onto the street.

I examined my belly. Losing blood. The gash wasn’t deep, but I didn’t like the look of it.

Blinked.

Stumbled.

Got up again.

The fog was lifting but I couldn’t see any houses or pedestrians or passing cars. I went to the Mercedes and got in. He’d left the key. I started the car and drove it about half a mile, anywhere, just to get away.

Pulled it into an alley. Passed out. Woke.

Blood flowing through my fingertips. Oozing, not pouring. Looked in the car for anything to do first aid. Nothing.

Opened the door. A swaying pavement, houses.

A sign said we were on Holles Street, which was near Marrion Square. Miles from Connolly. The cabbie’d had no intention of taking me to the train station. He was heading for the docks the whole time.

His job was supposed to be to lift me or kill me. But it was still puzzling. He had no gun. Why not? And why only one of him? And if it was a purely random shakedown how in the name of Jehovah did he know my name?

I grabbed my backpack, opened it, swallowed a couple of Percocet, got out of the car, popped the trunk.

Washer fluid, oil, spare tire, rags, assorted tools, big roll of duct tape. Do the job. I took off my T-shirt, ripped a rag in half, poured on the washer fluid, cleaned the wound.

Jesus.

Ride that pain.

I dried my belly with another rag, used a third as a bandage, and wrapped it on with four good turns of duct tape. Do for now.

In a minute. In a minute.

I got back in the car, closed my eyes, and the blackness came and I was gone again.

She’s asleep on the pillow next to me. Eyes closed, mouth open.

The fan’s on, but I can still hear the phone ringing in the other room.

It can only be Scotchy, so I’m letting it go.

A smell of honeysuckle. The faint murmur of the city. Sunflowers poking up through the bottom of the fire escape.

Her body is so still and white and beautiful it could be carved from Botticino marble.

It can only be Scotchy telling me to meet him at the airport. We’re flying down to Florida for a funeral. Darkey’s there already, which is why we’ve got this night together. Our only night together.

Her breathing becomes more shallow. Her eyelids flutter.

“What’s that noise?” she mumbles.

“Nothing, go back to sleep.”

She yawns.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Watching you.”

“Get the phone, Michael. It might be important.”

“It’s never important.”

“Get the phone,” she insists.

“It’s Scotchy, it’s nothing,” I tell her.

She shakes her head in disgust. Out of all the boys in Darkey’s crew, it’s Scotchy she hates the most. Something about that feral weasel-faced wee hood. He’s never made a pass at her, nothing like that, he wouldn’t dare cross Darkey, it’s more his unfathomable unpleasant mind and that sleekit, native cunning. You could tell that under all that bigmouthed bluster there was something darker going on. Put the wind up anybody.

The phone gets louder.

“Just get it. Could be Andy,” she says.

“Ok,” I say. I take her hand, kiss it, then stand. I slide off the mattress, open the bedroom door.

Suddenly she wakes fully, looks at me with those deep green eyes. I wait to see if she’s going to say anything but she doesn’t. I walk into the living room. The phone’s fallen under the sofa. I move a roach trap, grab it.

“No. Wait. Don’t get it,” she says urgently, almost in panic. “Don’t get it. Don’t get it. You’re right, let it go. Come here instead.”

But it’s too late. I’ve already picked up the handset and heard Scotchy’s nasal intake of breath before he speaks.

“Hello.”

“LaGuardia, one hour, Bruce,” Scotchy says. “Hurry up.”

“My name’s not Bruce,” I tell him for the thousandth time.

“One hour. Hurry up.”

I put the phone down. Bridget sighs. Yes, it’s too late. . . .

Lima.

But there was no ocean. And the sky was the wrong color. Eggshell rather than deep blue.

What was going on?

Ask Hector, he’ll tell me.

“Hector. Hector.”

Uhhh.

Where was my cell phone? I tried to sit, but an awful scrabbling pain took my breath away. I was in a car. A street sign said “Holles Street Maternity Next Left.”

Holles Street, Dublin?

It all came back. Hector was toast. I’d shot him in the head. I’d thrown an assassin out the window and I’d killed his partner with an upside-down .22 shot in his throat.

A woman in a blue dress was staring at me.

“Are you all right, love?” she asked.

I got out of the car. Out, into the morning with no idea where I was going, or what in the name of God I was going to do next. Sunlight. Cirrus clouds. Nothing Irish about the day, but I knew it was definitely Dublin because the Liffey was a presence beyond the gray forms of the buildings. A smell off it that reminded me of gasoline. I couldn’t see it, but I could sense it was there, sluggish, like some dead thing on what was already a deadly morning. The lovely Liffey moving along effluent into the tidal basin, coating the pylons, bridges, and the wee blind alleys on the water’s edge. And there definitely was a stink from off it. If not petrol, diesel. Enough that I could tell. Dublin. Aye. That’s right.

There were stars in front of my eyes, as if my retina had become detached. I blinked for half a minute and the stars vanished.

I walked away from the car.

Only just in time.

Two men pulled up in a Ford Sierra, got out, and headed for the Mercedes.

Your average eejit might have thought, Ah, couple of car thieves.

But not me. Their suits were crumpled and dirty. Even from here they stank of fags and coffee. What man, who wore a suit, got this dirty this early?

Bloody cops or I’m a Chinaman.

“Morning,” one of them shouted across the street to me, with no love at all in the greeting and sleekit peeler eyes.

I nodded in reply and then thought better of it.

“Lavly day, innit?” I said in estuary English.

In about five minutes they’d have a warrant out for me. Why not have them thinking I was a Cockney?

Backpack was still in there, but my IDs and cash were in my jacket. Screw it. I hobbled down the street, and when I was out of sight I ran as best as I could with a duct-tape bandage, sore foot, artificial foot, jetlag, painkillers, possible detached retina, sleeping pill, and no idea where I was going.

I was wrong about the five minutes.

It couldn’t have been more than two.

“Hey, you,” the cops yelled. “Stop.”

I had about a couple of hundred yards on them. Even with my handicaps, if I couldn’t lose them in rush hour in a busy city like Dublin I deserved to be bloody caught.

I turned a corner and found that I was at Trinity College.

Excellent.

I ran in through the gates and chucked myself into a seething mass of students, visitors, and other extras in my little scene.

Total chaos.

Even more chaos than usual, which meant that a big party of tourists had just arrived, or that it was exam time, or graduation.

“It’s the parade,” she said and pointed to a corner of the quad where a big disorganized line had formed and was filing out into the street. I saw then that it was part of the Bloom thing. The kids were all dressed in Edwardian gear, some were riding old-fashioned bicycles, and there was even a horse-drawn omnibus pulling drunken members of a rugby team.

As good a place as any.

I joined the procession just as the two peels arrived at the college gates. One of them still had his cigarette in his mouth. Jesus, didn’t they want to catch me? Let go your fag, you cheap Mick flatfoot.

They were both around twenty years older than me. Just about the right age to be thoroughly beaten down by the system, cynical and fed up. Maybe a couple of younger coppers would have stopped everyone from leaving Trinity, called in assistance, created a huge palaver. Not these characters. The parade wove its way past them without either lifting a finger. But even so, no point being a bloody fool about it. I snatched the flat cap off one kid’s head, threaded my way through the crowd, tripped another kid, and ripped the Edwardian jacket off his back as he fell down.

“Jesus,” he said, but whether that was followed by anything else, I don’t know because I had taken three steps to the side and four back. I pulled the Edwardian coat over my leather jacket, put on the flat cap.

I followed the kids out of Trinity and into the road.

Nice.

Now I was in a parade of a couple of hundred similarly dressed and high-spirited students heading for O’Connell Street. Like to see them find me now.

We marched merrily away from Trinity and turned north.

Some of them were drinking and I got passed a can of Guinness, which I took gratefully.

“Cheers, mate,” I said.

“Sure, ’tis no problem,” a girl said. She had red cheeks and brown hair and was dressed as a tarty maid.

I took a large swig of the Guinness. Its effect was restorative.

“Are you for going to the party, young sir?” she asked in bad Edwardian. She was about nineteen or twenty and came from somewhere in County Kerry.

“Alas, fair lady, I have no time for such an enchanting offer,” I said. “I’m pressed by agents of the Castle.”

“Maybe another time,” she said and clinked her can of alcohol-free beer into mine. And maybe I would another time, but now I had to get out of town. It had been a staggeringly difficult twenty-four hours and what I needed more than anything was a place to gather my wits and lie low.

I knew no one in Dublin and I figured that all the old safe houses and chop joints I used to hang out in were probably gone. But seeing the Kerry girl dressed like that had given me an idea.

Back in my day, running with the teen rackets in 1990 Belfast, Chopper Clonfert used to take us lads to a whorehouse near the Four Courts on one of the north quays of the Liffey. It primarily catered to lawyers and civil servants but Chopper worked big time for the rackets and he was the Belfast rep. So the girls, without too much feeling of resentment, would let us have a freebie. If it was still there (and this was nearly fifteen years ago), it might be a good place to bolt to for a while. I couldn’t use Chopper’s name to get in (Chopper had long since turned legit) but I could just pose as an ordinary client. With my long coat, flat cap, and haggard demeanor, I did look a bit like a crappy Dublin family-services lawyer or something.

Aye, the beginnings of a plan.

Go there, get my bearings, clean up. Maybe see to this wound. Anyway, I needed to be gone from the madding crowd and it was probably not a good idea to walk around too much longer in a blood-stained T-shirt.

Also I wanted to call Bridget from a quiet spot. I needed to know what the score was. Hopefully, her tone of voice would tell me. Had the cabbie been hers? Had he been anybody’s? Had I hallucinated or misremembered him saying my name? Bridget wouldn’t have all the answers but she’d have some of them.

And with that solved, it would make the next step clearer. Had to get out of Dublin. But whether I had to get out of Ireland, too, was the big question.

The cops didn’t worry me; if the cabbie lived he wouldn’t talk and if he died there’d be another gangland murder along tomorrow to occupy their limited attention span. In my eyes the Garda Síochána was only a notch or two above the Irish Army and, as an exmember of the British Army, I had nothing but contempt for that body. Any squaddie worth his salt would join the Irish Guards in London; any peeler up to scuds would get into one of the big metropolitan police forces across the water. Irish coppers and soldiers were second-rate.

But complacency is also one of the byways on the road to ruin. I would have to put my contempt on the back burner and play it bloody safe.

“Are you a lecturer?” the girl finally plucked up the courage to ask.

“No, no, not really,” I told her.

“Are you a mature student?”

“Yeah, you could say that, I’m always learning,” I replied.

“Well, I think that’s great, it’s wonderful to go back to university at your age, education is very important.”

“Shit, how old do you think I am?”

“Forty?” she suggested.

Well, Jesus, let’s see how you look after a knife fight, love.

“Ach, I’m barely in my thirties,” I said. “Just been partying all night, that’s all.”

“What are you studying?” she asked, but before I could make something up, we’d arrived at the O’Connell Street Bridge and a scene of complete bedlam. This parade was clearly not part of the official Bloomsday festivities and the cops were totally unprepared. Traffic was still trying to come off the quays and up the street and the parade wanted to head north onto O’Connell Street.

Buses, cars, trucks, bicyclists, and pedestrians had formed an ugly confused mess right in the center of the city. Some of the students were getting restless. They began shouting at the peels and chanting. Baffled tourists were getting separated from their tour groups, taxi drivers were yelling, the cops were flailing about uselessly waiting for instruction. It was all fine by me. The more disorder the better.

“Honey, I must be off,” I told the girl.

She held my sleeve.

“Are you not going on to Jury’s?”

“I can’t, sorry,” I said. “I have to go, really, it’s like I said, I’m on the run from Johnny law.”

She reached into her tart handbag looking for something. She tipped it upside down and out dropped a big hippy Volkswagen key chain. I picked it up and gave it to her. By this time she had found what she was searching for—a piece of card with a Dublin telephone number on it.