The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

Dennis McFadden Lafferty’s Ghost

From Fiction

In the bed of another woman was by no means unfamiliar ground for your man, but this time there was a twist. This time, he could reasonably argue, it was in the interest of the missus, not merely his own (not that herself would be much persuaded). This time, in the service of their marriage, he’d proved beyond a doubt that their counselor could not be trusted, the same counselor she’d demanded that he accompany her to see if he harbored any hope at all of keeping her roof above his head. He’d demonstrated conclusively that all the rubbish their counselor had been spouting about trust, communication, sharing, that indeed her Ten Golden Rules for a Great Marriage, were nothing but a load of fluff and dander. By Lafferty’s way of reasoning, any marriage counselor worth her salt must be honest, trustworthy, and above reproach, attributes he defined to include being above the temptations of the flesh, particularly when the flesh in question is hanging from the bones of one of her very own clients. And so he’d put her to the test. And so she’d failed utterly, the proof beside him here in her bed. Of course, how to frame the proof for Peggy, the missus, without jeopardizing his roof or his life and limb was the challenge with which he was now faced, even in the warm throes of postcoital bliss, those of himself and the counselor in question, Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP.

“I suppose I’ll regret this,” she said, though something in her tone suggested to Lafferty amusement more than regret.

Lafferty said, “I get that a lot,” and sure enough, she laughed. A handsome lady she was, a lady who, unlike most of them Lafferty had known, seemed to become less exposed and vulnerable the more naked she became. She was plenty naked now. She’d a polished smile like that of a shark, and eyebrows painted like breaking waves. The short part like a scar at the front of her slippery black hair showed a root or two of indeterminate color.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “That’s my job.”

“And I’ve noticed, Mrs. Flanagan, you’re bloody good at your job.”

“Please. Katie.”

“Katie? I’d have thought Katherine.”

“Katherine, Kathy, Kate, Katie-bar-the-door. Take your pick. I love the variety.”

“I think Katherine the Great, given the grandeur of your position.”

“And which position did you find most grand?”

Lafferty considered. “The one hanging by your heels from the trapeze, I think.”

“Sure, the blood rushing to your head enhances the sensuality.”

“Keep romance alive. Is that not one of your ten golden rules?”

“It is. And now you’ve had your lesson, you and Peggy can find your own trapeze, and I’ll claim another victory in the war against the disintegration of the traditional marriage as we know it.”

Lafferty ran a finger down her ribs like a keyboard. “What’s this?” He’d encountered a scar scarcely visible to the naked eye, a gouge on her side in the shape of a crescent.

“That,” she said. “That’s my emergency smile. I take it with me wherever I go.”

“How did it happen?”

“This skinny fella was asking me too many questions one day, and I had to bump him off.”

A moment of musing on Lafferty’s part. “And how did that result in a scar?”

“Who said it did?” She smiled, eyes simmering.

“I see. We’ll just settle for emergency smile. A scar by any other name. Curiosity is overrated at any rate.”

“There’s a good lad,” she said, rewarding your man with a squeeze and a snuggle, though he found the bones of her a bit sharper now than they had been before. Lafferty allowed his God-given tendency to retreat in the face of confrontation, of any class of unpleasantness, to shut his gob for him, though a bit of the curiosity lingered still. The mysterious Katherine Flanagan, whatever else she was, was evidently good at her job all right, her propensity for the odd lapse in judgment notwithstanding. For that he had to allow her a bit of leeway, he supposed, given the nature of his own charms, compounded by the dimple in the middle of his own chin. Her success was apparent in the opulence of the place, the breadth and depth of the bed, the silkiness of the sheets, the shine of mahogany everywhere, the grand sweep of crimson drapery covering the wall of windows overlooking the village of Kilduff down below. The office in the front of the house was furnished in teak and brass and warm, soothing hues. And the bathroom, when he’d gone there earlier, had been like nothing he’d ever encountered before. He’d been almost reluctant, in fact, to defile the place by doing his business there.

It was back to the bathroom his daydreams took him when the woman slipped into a dreamy quiet and he thought he heard a wee snore. For didn’t he have to pee again. And he thought about Peggy, his own wife and her niggardly ways, particularly with the hot water, which she seemed to think required the burning of banknotes to heat. And he imagined luxuriating in steamy water and bubbles in the sunken tub of the blue-tiled room just beyond the polished doorknob there across the poshness of carpet. Decadent and delicious to be sure, the perfect complement to a day such as this.

As Katie dozed he slipped away for his pee, the bed so fine and firm there was never a squeak to betray him, the carpet soaking up his footsteps like a sandy beach. And doesn’t your man himself succumb to temptations of the flesh, though of a different class altogether, soon finding himself in the tub, up to his chin in hot water. Snug as a fist in a mitten. The flow of the warm water burbling in his ear, the piquant scent of the bubbles tickling his nose, he allowed himself to surrender to the comfort, having earned it, having performed so admirably in the service of his wife and their marriage, and on the other hand, so splendidly in the service of Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP, a widow with needs and wants of her own. Whose other hand, after a while, he heard on the knob of the door, whose footstep on the blue of the tiles, in perfect harmony with his dream of a balmy beach in the south of Spain, a dark-skinned girl in a white kimono, and a pitcher of green margaritas. Warm washcloth soothing his eyes, he showed her the dimple in his chin, which he lifted for a smile. “Come join me, love, the water’s grand.”

But Katie only shuffled her feet.

“Plenty of room in here for a pair,” he said, his invitation enhanced and made all the more sincere by the stirring of his nether part, the blood flowing again, the buoyancy of the lovely hot water lifting him up, the thoughts of her nearby accessibility making him randy as a pup.

But Katie made no reply.

Removing the cloth, Lafferty opened his eyes. To lay them on two of the ugliest men he’d ever seen, standing there gaping down at him as though he were a two-headed donkey in the circus. Though it wasn’t the pure ugliness that first caught his eye, to be sure; it was the gun in the fist of the first one, the cluster of yellow daffodils in that of the other.

No stranger to tight spots, Lafferty had indeed found himself naked in tight spots before, although tight spots such as those had generally been occasioned by a jealous lover, never before by two calm and ugly men. And seldom before had weaponry been involved, except for the once near Ballyjamesduff, the weapon in question having been a sailing cookie jar (the jealous lover in question having been of the female persuasion), a far cry indeed from a nine-millimeter pistol.

They brought him to the lounge, where he stood naked, dripping into the carpet. The nakedness was the worst of it and no place to hide, his heart wanting to jump from his throat. The man with the daffodils was the older and fatter of the pair, with lips and ears as thick as your thumb, his jacket brown and stained and two sizes too tight. “Where’s the woman?” said he.

“What woman?” Lafferty said.

“What woman says he,” said the fat man.

“The woman whose name is on the fucking sign out in front of the fucking house,” the other man said. He was skinny and pink and jumpy, twitching the gun as he spoke. The black eyes of him never rested on any one object too long, and his checkered jacket was yellow and baggy and blue.

“Did you look in the bed?” Lafferty said.

“Did we look in the bed says he,” said the fat man.

“Of course we looked in the fucking bed,” said the skinny man.

Lafferty said, “She was there when I slipped in for my tub.”

“She was there when he slipped in for his tub says he,” said the fat man.

“Listen,” said Lafferty, “could you quit repeating everything I say?”

“Could I quit repeating everything he says says he,” said the fat man.

“Well, it is bloody fucking annoying,” the skinny man said.

“That’s your problem,” said the fat man. “No appreciation of irony whatsoever. Everything’s black and white to you.”

“We got a job to do, and last I looked irony wasn’t in the job description.”

“That’s your problem, right there,” said the fat man, the tips of his ears turning red. “No appreciation of irony whatsoever.”

“Can I put on my clothes?” Lafferty said.

“Fuck no,” said the skinny man.

“The nakeder you are,” the fat man explained, “the less likely are you to run. And the less likely you are to run, the less likely your man here will have to put a bullet in you.”

Lafferty’s knees gave a lurch, his stomach a roll. “Can I sit?”

“Can he sit says he,” said the fat man.

They regarded the sofa beside them, deep and plush and beige, five oversized sections arranged in the shape of an L. “That’s one L of a sofa,” Lafferty said.

It took a moment or two till the skinny man sniggered. Didn’t the fat one chortle as well. “One L of a sofa,” exclaims he, and they both gave in to the laughter. “One L of a sofa!” said the skinny man. They laughed for a minute or more, Lafferty standing bewildered behind his smile. The fat man wiped his eye. “Good one.”

“I like this fucking guy,” said the skinny man, jabbing his pistol toward Lafferty.

“Sit,” said the fat man, waving his daffodils toward the sofa.

“What are the flowers for?” Lafferty said.

“Ladies love the flowers, sure they do,” the fat man said. “And we deliver.”

“Special delivery,” said the skinny man.

“Here,” said the fat man, “you can hold ’em over your oul hoo-ha there.”

Thankful for little kindnesses, Lafferty took the flowers, holding them over his oul hoo-ha. He sat on the sofa, the fabric prickling his naked arse. The two men made no move to do likewise, hovering above him, feet planted apart. Only now, the shock of it sinking in, was Lafferty beginning to wonder where the hell Katherine Flanagan had got to, how indeed she’d managed to get away at all. Had she spotted them coming up the road and made off through the back? Was she hiding somewhere in the house? And of course the deeper mystery, why two desperate specimens such as these had come calling in the first place. When the fat man put his hands on his hips, Lafferty saw the holster peeping out from under his stained brown jacket, the wee wink of a pistol. Across the room, the curtain was parted on the wide front window, and outside the gloaming was going deeper, the rusty leaves of the rowan tree in front giving a shiver to a white panel truck passing down the road toward Kilduff.

Lafferty, with little to lose, pushed at his luck. “Can you put down the gun?”

“I can, of course,” the skinny man said, “but I won’t. Mrs. Dunleavy didn’t raise a fool.”

“Good job,” said the fat man. “Why don’t you give him your bloody address too?”

“And why would I do that?”

“You just give him your bloody name.”

“He wouldn’t have known it was my fucking name if you hadn’t just fucking said so.”

“And who was your bloody Mrs. Dunleavy then? Your bloody nanny?”

The skinny man shrugged. “For fuck’s sake, let’s just get on with it.”

They looked down again at Lafferty sitting on the sofa, daffodils over his oul hoo-ha. “One L of a sofa,” the fat man said. “Good one.” He wasn’t smiling. “One more time then. Where’s the woman?”

One more time then Lafferty told them. All he knew was she was in her bed when he went in for his tub. “What are you doing here in the first fucking place?” the skinny man wanted to know. “How do you bloody well know her at all?” asked the fat man. “How much do you know about her fucking business?” the skinny man said, and the fat man said, “How bloody long have you been dipping your toe in her tub?” Lafferty talked till his mouth was dry. His missus, he told them, contemplating throwing him out of her house for no good reason at all, had bullied him into marriage counseling in the person of Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP, a newcomer to the area, chosen because the missus, noticing the spanking new sign by the road every day on her way to work — a nurse over at St. Christopher’s she was — judged it to be of the finest professional quality. And hadn’t Lafferty merely chanced upon Katherine Flanagan at Connor’s News Agent, just across the street from his turf accountant Mickey G’s, and hadn’t one thing led to another. In his desire to come clean, to make a clean breast of it, to throw himself on the mercy of the court as it were, didn’t the words come gushing out of Lafferty in a rush. How he attributed his extraordinary compatibility with members of the opposite gender not to the dimple in his chin, nor to the playful unruliness of his light brown hair — though those qualities certainly couldn’t hurt — but rather to his innate ability to detect the tiniest, most subtle signal, such as when Katherine Flanagan, immersed in a session with himself and Mrs. Lafferty, had slowly drawn her eyes away from his and laid her bright red fingernail on the tip of her lip. So not at all surprised was he then, when following their chance encounter he merely wondered if she might be willing to show him what he was doing wrong in his marriage, and she proceeded to do so, in a manner quite eager.

“Let me get this straight,” the fat man said. “You’re shagging your bloody marriage counselor.”

Lafferty shrugged. “Not habitually.”

The skinny man jabbed his pistol toward Lafferty. “I like this fucking guy.”

The fat man’s thick lips curled into a reasonable facsimile of a grin. “Me too. But then again, some of my best friends are stone-cold liars.”

“What do you mean by that?” the skinny man said.

“What’s your name?” said the fat man.

“Lafferty. Terrance Lafferty.”

“You sound like a Dub,” the skinny man said. “Any relative to Denis Lafferty from Summerhill?”

Lafferty seized the moment. He lied. “He’s my brother.”

“Small world,” said the skinny man.

“Small indeed,” said the fat.

“Do you know him well?” Lafferty said.

“Do we know him well says he,” said the fat man.

The skinny one’s black eyes finally settled, latching on to Lafferty’s. “Well enough to know he’s one of the grandest fucking liars ever to breathe Dublin air.”

“A trait known to run in the family,” the fat man said. “Tell us where the woman is. Tell us now. My manners are wearing thin.”

“Did you look under the bed?” Lafferty said, his mouth as dry as a camel’s arse.

“Did we look under the bed says he,” said the fat man. The skinny man didn’t answer. The fat man looked at him. “Did we look under the bloody bed?”

“Did you look under the bed?”

“How am I to look under the bed with my bloody knees? You didn’t look under the bed?”

“For fuck’s sake,” said the skinny man, sulking toward the bedroom door.

The fat man never budged, the tips of his ears turning red. Hovering over your man, staring down at him, he drew his pistol out from beneath his stained brown jacket two sizes too tight. Lafferty, his stomach in full riot, puckered up his arse, fearful of soiling the sofa. The flowers over his oul hoo-ha wilted and trembled from the heat and shaking of his hand, and his heart clambering in his chest like a hamster in a heated cage. He wished he was anyplace else. He felt the color fleeing his face like rats from a sinking ship. He wished he’d never been there.

Never there. Wasn’t that the reason he was here in the first place. The first words out of Peggy’s mouth at the first session the first time he ever laid his eyes on Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP: “He’s never been there for me. Even when he’s there, he isn’t really there.”

Through the wide window behind his wife that afternoon, Lafferty saw the broad sweep of fields dotted with sheep grazing among the hedgerows and stone fences leading down to the village tucked in the hillside. He saw the steeple of the church in the mist, the blue façade of the Commodore Hotel, and in his mind he calculated just where the Pig and Whistle would be, down the street, beyond the green. How he wished he was there with his fistful of jar. Of course it wasn’t the first time he’d heard the words out of Peggy, not at all, but he’d realized, seated in upholstered splendor in the office out front, gazing down at Kilduff, that he’d grown immune to them. Hearing them again, Lafferty disagreed, and disagreed emphatically. He never thought of himself as never there. Wasn’t he someplace all of the time?

The time they’d been evicted from their Dublin flat, hadn’t he been at the Curragh, trying to win back the price of the rent. The time of the miscarriage, lamentable, tragic to be sure, but hadn’t he been at the Pig and Whistle celebrating his impending paternity, and him with no earthly way of knowing. Any number of other times she’d complained he was never there, hadn’t the cause of it been that she’d told him to get the hell out of her sight. Though Peggy’s ears were deaf to his persuasions — her brown eyes indeed feigning pain and disbelief as they stared at him across the broad and pricey teak tabletop — Lafferty thought he detected a glimmer of understanding in the eyes of Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP.

Didn’t it run in the family after all. Lafferty’s oul man had never been there either.

And at the end of the day, didn’t absence make the heart grow fonder. Hadn’t Lafferty himself witnessed as a youth the grand reunions, his oul man and his oul wain on any number of occasions, him waltzing her across the narrow kitchen floor between the table and the stove, and her with her head back to let out the laugh. Hadn’t he seen with his own eyes the pair of them, arm in arm, making their way up Drumcondra Road in a zigzag stagger, half blind with the song and the drink and the joy.

Didn’t never being there have its sweet side as well.

No sooner did the skinny man walk into the bedroom till a ruckus of noises broke out. The fat man over Lafferty bounced back a step, raising the gun toward the door of the bedroom. Lafferty, shrinking on the sofa, hunkered over his daffodils. There was a shout, a thump or two or three, the sound of a scuffle, another shout and a gasp and a curse, the fat man starting for the bedroom door just before the explosion, the bang of the gun.

Then the silence holding nothing.

“Eamon!” called the fat man. “Eamon!”

More of the quiet. The ears of the fat man the color of raw beef.

Katie-bar-the-door. Standing there suddenly, the gun in her hands in front of her face, looking down the length of her arms over the pistol pointing straight at the fat man, like a right proper soldier, if not for the hot-pink housecoat hanging down, gaping open. “Drop it!”

The fat man in the same proper stance, feet wide, staring down both his arms over the pistol pointing at Katie, the sleeves of his brown jacket up to his elbows. “You drop it!”

Lafferty, slippery with sweat, caught a sweet scent of daffodil.

That was how they stood, squirming closer, squinting down their barrels. It seemed a long time passing. Lafferty off to the side, out of the line of fire, out of the line of vision, out of the picture altogether, might as well have never been there. A chill caught the sweat, and his back ached at how he was hunkered over and he sat up a bit, fearful of making himself too big. But nobody noticed.

“Drop it!” Katie said.

“You drop it!” said the fat man.

Katie creeping closer, her housecoat peeping open another inch, Lafferty staring at the glimpse of her nakedness, the shadows of the woman’s body, the navel, the hair down below it, astounded at how it left him cold, at how utterly irrelevant was the clothing and the nakedness and the flesh at the end of the day. Invisible, didn’t he keep growing bigger. The daffodils spread out flat and dead over his oul hoo-ha, the one part of him getting smaller.

“Drop it!” said Katie. “Drop it now!”

“You drop it! Now!”

It occurred to your man he could rise slow and easy and creep away, leaving them to their own devices, to settle it however they might, leaving them pointing their pistols at one another ad infinitum, or at least till tomorrow morning when Katie’s first clients arrived to find the pair still standing there pointing their pistols yelling drop it. The skinny man he supposed was dead or mortally wounded, and he wondered where this warrior woman called Katherine the Great had come from, though he wanted nothing at all to do with it, whatever it was that it was. He wanted only to never be there. What he wanted, the only thing, was to be someplace else altogether where he could shake himself like a dog climbing out of the water and make it all fly away. He wasn’t quite ready yet to stand up naked and tiptoe off, not yet, but the idea having planted itself in his mind was rooting around, searching for purchase, and was this close to finding it when the guns went off, bang, bang, one after the other within the span of the blink of an eye. The sound like a wind that boxed his ears, blowing his hair back, causing the sweat on his back to chill and dry in the instant.

Lafferty looked up blinking. Katie and the fat man were gone.

The scent of gunpowder bitter in his nose, the wind of the blast had sucked away all sound, leaving nothing but pure silence in which Lafferty sat for a while. When finally he heard a gurgle and a distant chirp of bird, he stood. Wobbly he was, his muscles like pudding. He dropped the flowers to the table. Katie and the fat man both lay on their backs, the fat man just off the L of the sofa, Katie’s head in the doorway of the bedroom. The fat man, his stained brown jacket up past his elbows and squeezing the tips of his shoulders, was lying with his arms and legs flung out, looking at the ceiling with wide-open eyes, a patch of blood in the middle of the untidy white mound of shirt on his belly. Lafferty like a ghost in the quiet. Katie was lying the same, staring up at the top of the doorway, hot-pink housecoat spread open across the carpet, her naked body splayed, the scar, her emergency smile, smiling out from her bottom rib, the hole between her breasts still oozing. In the bedroom lay the skinny man humped up on his stomach, the eye on the side of his face wide open as well, staring under the bed.

Does nobody ever die with their eyes closed anymore?

In the bathroom, he put on his clothes. Without an ounce of consideration, with no premeditation at all, as though it were instinct, he took a small bath towel from the polished brass rail and wiped down the tub and the faucet, then all about the toilet. Taking the towel with him to the bedroom, he wiped off the doorknobs, the nightstand, the headboard, the shade of the lamp he’d admired. Then, in the lounge, the coffee table where he’d braced himself standing up. The back of the chair he’d grasped passing by. Any place he might have touched. Then he folded the bath towel, hanging it back proper on its polished brass rail.

Outside it was nearly dark, air clean and sweet. Lafferty shook his face into it, washing off the scent of the gunpowder, the smell of the blood, the odor of fear. Making it all fly away. He made his way down the road toward Kilduff, scarcely aware of his legs as they marched, nor his arms as they swung, exchanging nods with the odd sheep at the side of the road. Into Kilduff he walked, past the green where the Kilduff Cross stood, its once intricate Celtic design having been washed away by decades of Kilduff rain. It had been erected in loving memory of someone, but the inscription had long since vanished, and no one remembered the identity of the dearly departed, a sad anonymity. Lafferty strolled into the dark and friendly confines of the Pig and Whistle.

There sat Pat Gallagher in the heat of battle, the complexion of him like that of a boiled lobster, arguing with Francie Byrnes, a bald and bitter barber, and a clutch of others. Pint in hand, arse on stool, Lafferty entered the fray. His opinion was as strong as the next man’s when it came to how realistic the mechanical contraption that portrayed the great shark in the film Jaws had been, and when the argument escalated to the question of whether or not Elvis had ever been in the employ of the CIA, and then on to the British conspiracy responsible for the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, Lafferty was able to hold his own there as well. They argued well into the night.

He was there next morning with Peggy in the kitchen, her roof yet over his head, a fine splash of sun coming in through the green of the curtain. Wasn’t he there. Her hands were shaking. He made her tea, rattling the spoon in the cup. Listened to her tall tale. She bit into her muffin, and he watched the buttery crumb on the edge of her lip in a mesmerizing state of flux as the words flowed out of her. She was still excited, still in shock, still incredulous over the goings-on at St. Christopher’s.

We sat there, in the same room with her, Terrance, you and me.

Sure, the IACP never heard of the woman. It was all a bloody hoax.

Nobody knows who she is. They’re saying all kinds of things. They’re saying she was a supergrass and the IRA clipped her. They’re saying she was IRA and it was MI-5 took her out. They’re saying she was Colombian cartel and it was a Mexican hit squad done her in.

There’s no record of her at all. Nothing, nowhere.

Can you imagine if we’d been there? Can you just imagine?