The Death of an Irish Tinker (7 page)

But it was hard to tell by taste. Strychnine, like heroin, was bitter. Powdered acid was hot—or so the Monkey had heard—but Mex. brown was too. Archie had snorted enough of that to know for himself. He ran a little across his tongue: bitter and hot. He waited as long as he could, and there he was still on his feet. All he could feel was his jones.

So the Monkey asked Archie Carruthers, who was shaking so violently he could barely keep the spoon and lighter steady, to say nothing of filling the needle and raising it to his neck: Do we have a choice?

And the warming tin—when he got it propped on the tray—it was so dim he could barely see himself. No problem, said the Monkey. We’ve done this before by feel. Which was when they got a break. Under his fingers the vein felt blessedly knobby. The Monkey pinched it, plucked it up, then rolled it between his fingers to make it swell, to hit the thick part, to make a good connection.

Out in the corridor beyond the door, he heard the squeal of hinges and the clank of keys. The bloody guard was coming back to pick up the bloody tray!

Christ! He couldn’t be found with a needle sticking out of his neck. Or, as bad, nodding with the rush of the fix. He should clean up the spoon and strap and shit and wait until the guard was gone.

But the Monkey in Archie Carruthers would not be put off. He was now in control and decided to have just a bit, enough to get him through the tray and get the guard back down the hall. Then they’d shoot the whole bag. And feel like himself.

Jabbing down, he spiked the vein, tapped the plunger, and sent a jolt of strychnine and powdered battery acid slamming up into his brain. Roaring, spinning for the door with the needle sticking from his neck like a silver barb, Carruthers
clapped his palms against his temples, staggered, and fell. Dead before his body even hit the floor.

Or so speculated the pathologist who conducted the postmortem exam. “Strychnine was once used as a rat poison. It kills by incapacitating the medulla oblongata, which controls breathing and the other involuntary functions of the body, like heart and lungs. An intravenous jolt like that would create instant paralysis. Of course, the battery acid just eats up every vein and organ it touches. Scorches, burns.”

The pathologist shook her head. “If the point was to kill him, then the bolus of strychnine he shot would certainly have proved sufficient. The battery acid was…over the top.”

Which was the Toddler’s MO, McGarr knew. To send the message, which was fear.

Also, there was the matter of the man’s “connections.” Wondering why Desmond Bacon had never been lifted, much less hauled up on charges, McGarr had made his own discreet inquiry both on the street and within the Garda, only to learn that the man was “connected.”

“Connected to who?” he asked Tom Lyons, the guard on the Drug Squad who had accompanied them to Coolock.

Lyons shrugged. “Proof’s the problem. If I had it, I’d say more at the proper place and time.” By which he meant to the commissioner, McGarr gathered.

Connected. Enough to have been selling dope and murdering anybody who threatened him for over a decade now. Connected enough to have obtained Garda uniforms for the Hydes, who then fired a handgun in Wicklow Street and beat Maggie Nevins the night that Gavin O’Reilly was chucked under the wheels of a bus and Mickalou Maugham disappeared.

And now connected enough to have murdered Archie Carruthers in a secure holding cell in a prison that was known for its security. The guard was out, McGarr decided: Not only did he have a spotless record, but he had nearly
returned to the cell before Carruthers could inject the dose that killed him. He had struggled valiantly to revive him and was plainly distraught by the entire episode.

The kitchen was another matter. “We’re understaffed,” the prison cook said, waving a hand at the baker’s dozen workers under her supervision. “I don’t hire them yokes, and I can’t be watching all of them all of the time.”

Over a two-day period, McGarr questioned each of them at length, ran background checks, even asked for and obtained urine samples. None was a drug addict. One, however, had a son who had been treated for drug addiction. Another lived in Coolock not far from the Toddler’s holdings. But there was nothing to indicate that either woman had anything to do with Toddler or the needle that had killed Archie Carruthers.

“Why don’t we just lift him?” said Bresnahan, who had been elevated to the status of contributing to morning meetings.

McGarr canted his head dismissively, since it would be counterproductive without cast-iron evidence. The Toddler was careful and on his
guard
in every sense.

In the meantime he had another idea how to smoke him out.

“Rut’ie, how’s your art?”

“My
what
?”

“Art. You know, drawing and so forth.”

The big redhead blushed in an ingenuous manner that reminded McGarr that she was still very much a country girl of—what?—only twenty-three years of age. “Nonexistent. I can’t draw a straight line.”

“Not to worry.” McGarr thought of his wife, Noreen, who would know somebody they could commission for a few days. “What about your hair? Would you consent to becoming a blonde for a few days?”

“Who have more fun,” Ward put in.

Bresnahan’s handsome head swung to him, “Are you braggin’ again, Inspector? Or is it just another of your prurient clichés?”

Eyes were raised; glances exchanged. In recent weeks the rivalry between the two young staffers had become less one-sided.

“If I can help as a blonde, Chief, blonde it is.”

“Good lass.”

RUTH BRESNAHAN DID not know how anybody could possibly remember the thousands of details in a page from the Book of Kells, much less draw it exact.

Especially not an illiterate Itinerant girl and heroin addict, as she knew Biddy Nevins was. Or had been. Biddy’s mother had not heard from her for months and was afraid she had met with foul play. Like her “husband,” Mickalou Maugham. Could they ever have been formally married before a priest in a church?

Ban Gharda Bresnahan rather doubted it. She was on her knees at the top of Grafton Street, staring down at the footpath at one of the large flags on which an artist—hired by the squad—had drawn a page from the Book of Kells so early in the morning that nobody could have seen, not with the streets blocked off.

Now Ruth was supposed to color it in, but even that was beyond her, the difference in shades being so slight She had to keep glancing at the photocopy that she had concealed in the “Tinker’s muff,” where she had also concealed the 9 mm Glock—a light but powerful weapon—that Chief Superintendent McGarr had given her the loan of.

Tomorrow, she vowed, she’d make sure the artist completed all the hard bits of coloring and left her only the big patches to fill in, if there was to be a tomorrow. She only hoped the Toddler lived up to his reputation for vigilance and murderous vindictiveness. She was no nun, and there was only so much kneeling on the pavement she could tolerate, albeit on a padded rag that Chief Superintendent McGarr had thoughtfully supplied.

Pushing the brass-bright ringlets of dyed and permed hair out of her eyes, Ruth reached for a piece of amber-colored chalk and compared it with the crib sheet that was a photograph of the photocopy.

“The next shade darker,” said a voice in her ear. Hugh Ward placed a lidded paper cup on the footpath beside her.

“What’s that?” She pointed to the cup.

“Coffee. Blond. I thought you might prefer it that way this morning. Having fun? I bet there’s not a handful of artists in Dublin who make a living doing their stuff. And here you are, fresh out of a hair salon, making a go of it.” He tossed a coin into the tin she had brought with her for alms.

Bresnahan shook her head, her brow wrinkled in disbelief.

“Something wrong?”

“It’s a mystery to me how it’s said you’re so successful with women.”

“Not by me.”

Bresnahan piped a small note of pique. “Don’t give me that, Inspector. It’s said—and you take pride that it’s said—that you’re the quintessential swordsman.”

“By whom?”

“Ach, the squad over their tea, the lads down in Hogan’s. Sure, you must know it’s all over town. Which some women actually find tempting. Can you believe it? But of course, you do.”

“What? Me? Christ! I don’t, I never say boo. Something like that, getting around, would—” He left off, having said too much.

“Only be counterproductive?” Bresnahan laughed a bit. “Can I tell you now, so you know? I really admire you. The way you’ve stuck—you stick to your, er, guns. You know what you’re like? You’re like some throwback to a bigger, grander, more heroic age.”

Ward waited. He’d never heard her so glib. Was she setting him up, or could she actually mean it? Or was she coming on to him?

No. That wasn’t possible. She had no chance with him, even though, he now realized, she looked better than she ever had
as a Tinker wench busking on a footpath,
which revealed just how far she had to go to attract his attention.

Ward romanced only women who looked like women, who dressed like women, and who comported themselves like women in regard to
him.
And busting his…chops, albeit playfully, humorously, maybe even flirtatiously, was something he only permitted from women who
were
women.

Still, he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “And what age would that be?” Knowing he’d made a mistake even before it was out.

“Why, the age of the troglodyte, since you asked. You’d fit right in doin’ the Darwin number all over cavedom.”

Ward sighed. “Certainly not with you.”

“Of that you can be sure.” Bresnahan turned back to her drawing. Or rather her coloring, having scored one for modernity. Pity there’d been nobody close enough to hear.

She could imagine the sort of vain, stylish, self-absorbed, up-market tarts who would find his sort of modishly sullen, saturnine masculinity irresistible. Hugh Ward was simply too full of himself and his physical presence, from the way he trained and pampered his body to the care he took with his clothing and suits that fitted him like a manikin in a window.

That was it: He was like a walking, talking, shopfront dummy, albeit a frightfully handsome one. Reaching for a piece of chalk in the proper shade, she bent to her task.

Thus it went for most of the day. Ruth would color a little, and every so often a coin would clank into the tin. With food and drink provided by Ward.

Around two she was relieved for an hour by McGarr’s missus, Noreen, who, dressed like Ruth, was herself in Traveler mufti, filled in the dicey bits and made the whole presentation look more like the page from the book. Even the money in the tin increased. Tomorrow Noreen would come earlier, it was agreed.

“May God save you,” Ruth muttered every time a coin descended, “and the devil take the Toddler.”

Who entered the southeast corner of St. Stephen’s Green, diagonally opposite the Grafton Street gate, at half six, feeling more like himself than he had in a long time, in spite of the way he looked.

Dressed like an older American tourist in a bright, striped blazer, bow tie, straw hat, and sunglasses, he was also carrying what anybody would think were two dozen long-stem roses in a large white box wrapped with a blood-red bow. He even stopped often at the many gardens in the park, as he made his way slowly toward the Grafton Street gate. But he hardly glanced at the flowers.

Instead he concentrated on the gate itself, studying it from different perspectives in order to establish the best possible firing angle. It had been ten years since Vietnam, but it was as if he’d never skipped a beat. Quickly he discovered a small, dense copse of—could it be? It was—bamboo by the side of a duck pond that would conceal him once night fell and from which he could pin down the entire Grafton Street corner, should he need.

Think of the coincidence! Bamboo had been his friend in Southeast Asia, providing him cover and even food on one occasion when the NVA had overrun his fire base, no chopper could get in, and his only way back was on his feet. And belly. It had taken him nearly two weeks to crawl eighteen miles.

Now sitting on a bench a good seventy yards from the gate, the Toddler concentrated on the strollers and the others who were sitting on the benches. He was looking for “plants.”

Who moved? And who did not? Who was actually reading a paper? Did they turn the page? And in this day and age who of the women actually had a baby in the pram? Did she feed it a bottle or chuck it under the chin? There were women guards now; witness the tall blond “Tinker” bitch on the corner across from the gate, the one who was “playing” Biddy Nevins.

The Toddler checked his watch. It would be dark in an hour. “All out! All out!” the attendants would call, making sure everybody had left, even ringing bells that they carried in their hands. After all, Ireland was a quaint even backward and unsuspecting country, which had made everything so much easier for Desmond Bacon, alias the Toddler, lo these eleven years. But he hoped he’d be well away before they locked the gates.

And if not, former Sergeant Major Bacon—winner of a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, two Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry, to say nothing of numerous Marine Corps commendations—had a set of keys himself. They were in the box with the roses, along with a change of clothes, and the rifle. It was a Remington 700 with a Zeiss scope that had been used in World War I by the famous (or infamous) German sniper Corporal Unertl. Both items, which the Toddler had bought at a gun show in Houston some years before, were among the best ever made.

For ammo he had five 173-grain boat-tailed bullets that would achieve a 2,550-foot-per-second muzzle velocity and would strike any target in the same spot with every shot, shot after shot after shot. As backup, he carried five more in the stock, in case he ran into trouble. But that he doubted.

Sitting there in the full spring sun, watching the gate and the activity around the “Tinker” woman on the footpath across the street, the Toddler decided that he would never
again allow anybody, like the Bookends, to do his killing for him.

Look at the potential problem they represented, exactly double the trouble that Archie Carruthers might have brought him.

As shadows lengthened and night came on, Ruth Bresnahan had to struggle to remain in a posture that allowed the blond ringlets of hair to obscure her face. Other buskers, packing up their kits and instruments to go home, stopped to make conversation, mentioning how sorry they were to hear about Mickalou and how good it was to have her back.

Ruth only nodded, muttered thanks, and with one insistent woman even pretended to wipe away tears.

Now, as night fell, she glanced up at a window in one of the nearby office buildings that was the Murder Squad command post. McGarr, who was standing there in the darkness, held his hands to the windows and flashed his ten fingers twice: twenty minutes more. It was getting too dark for the drawing to be seen, but they also did not think the Toddler would make a move until it was night and there were fewer shoppers about.

Ruth had only reached for her chalks to begin packing up when a pair of shoes appeared in her line of sight. Black, shiny, large, official. The kind of sturdy walking shoes that she herself had worn a few years back when in uniform and on patrol.

Another pair now stepped to the other side of her. Still, Ruth did not glance up; they shouldn’t see her face.

“Did yi’ t’ink we’d forget?”

“Nah, don’t fault her. We’re guards. We’re supposed to be sht-yew-pid.”

It was the North Side, Joxer accent, like the one Maggie Nevins had described the “guards” who had beat her as having.

“Come along now.” The one on the right reached down for her arm. “You give out, and we’ll kill your babby.”

“We know where she is,” the other put in gleefully.

“With the granny. Why did she not move?”

“And there they call themselves
Travelers.
”

“Fookin’ shite. Yiz is layabouts, is all.”

“Welfare spongers.”

The Bookends, Bresnahan assumed; they pulled her to her feet.

“Wait—me muney.”

“Fook yehr muney.”

“Ye’ll not be needin’ it where ye’re headed.”

“Unless Mickalou needs a fix.” The one began chuckling, which was picked up by the other.

“Christ, no, he’s
been
fixed.”

“Permanent like.”

“But the tin, me chalks. People will see them and know something’s amiss. Promise me you’ll leave me babby be, and I’ll go along quiet like.” Bresnahan felt one arm release her and then the other.

Bending for the chalks, she pulled the Glock from the Tinker’s muff and, spinning, pointed it at the one brother’s head. “Move and I’ll blow your head off. Now the both of you sit down right where you are and place your hands on your head.”

The one Hyde brother glanced at the other, deciding against her, she could tell when the larger nodded slightly. “You wouldn’t shoot us.”

Bresnahan was hoping—Jesus, she was praying—that McGarr and the others would get there soon. She had never so much as struck, much less shot, another person.

He took a step toward her, his left hand coming up. “Remember the babby.”

“And the Toddler,” said the other. “He’s out there. Anything happen to us—”

And did. The bullet—was it?—thwacking into the big one’s chest sounded like a carpet struck with a bat. And the flesh, blood, and bone, issuing from his back in a plug,
nearly knocked his brother down. His face was covered. Blinded momentarily, he batted at the gore.

Bresnahan stared down at the one who was sprawled on the drawing on the footpath limp, lifeless, like some big, dead, beached thing. Then she looked at her Glock. Had she fired it?

Lowering his head, the remaining brother rushed her but took only two steps before he was driven back, right off his feet.

He came down in a sitting position, his hands wrapped around his stomach. When he opened them and raised his head to Bresnahan, she could see the problem. His entire midsection was a red, wet hole.

Suddenly he lost the top of his head. Cleanly. As though a cleaver had been taken to his scalp. Evenly at the hairline.

Then, from out of nowhere, a figure appeared and tackled Bresnahan. He knocked her to the footpath and rolled them up against the large concrete planter there at the corner.

It was Ward virtually on top of her. “Somebody’s out there with a high-power rifle,” he whispered in her ear. “The chief’s called for help, but we’ll stay here until the area’s cleared.”

Bresnahan was confused. She could scarcely put it together, and all the blood—“But who?”

“The bloody Toddler, who else? Cleaning the slate. First it was Archie Carruthers. Now the Bookends. He must have been put wise to what we were about here. And to get rid of them right in our face? That’s the Toddler style right enough.”

Sending yet another message, Bresnahan thought. People on the street would hear about it. And know. “Will he try to kill us?”

Ward shook his head. “Not now, not with us here. But if he’d fancied, you’d be dead already.”

And you not—was it?—on top of me. Yes, Ward was actually lying on top of her, whispering in her ear, and it felt…well, it was not unpleasant. Apart from his knees,
which were digging into hers. Bresnahan spread her legs a bit, and he slipped between them.

“Don’t move,” he said.

How? she wondered. Being
covered
as she was. And why? It was a thought that she tried to clear from her mind.

And could not.

When McGarr arrived at the Toddler’s residence in Coolock thirty-five minutes later, he found Desmond Bacon wearing a cardigan sweater and house slippers. “We’re having tea in the kitchen, Superintendent. Would you care for a wet?”