The Bloomsday Dead

6: THE RAT’S NEST (BELFAST-JUNE 16, 2:15 P. M.)

I exited the Europa Hotel, ran across Great Victoria Street, and juked into the Crown Bar. It was packed full of civil servants finishing their lunchtime pints, desperately trying to think of a reason for not going back to work. In the 1980s they might have called in a bomb scare, but you couldn’t have gotten away with that in Belfast nowadays.

I went to the bog, locked the cubicle door, retrieved my.38 and the bag of shells.

I checked the gun. Dry as bone. I’d have to write Ziploc a letter and let them know how useful their product was at keeping water away from firearms. I loaded the weapon and shoved it my pocket.

When I came out of the toilet, I saw one of Bridget’s goons sitting casually at the bar, smoking a cigarette.

Moran had obviously put a tail on me so I would be easier to find and kill when the midnight deadline came and went.

He would be the first order of business. I pulled the fire alarm next to the toilet and in the ensuing chaos sat next to him at the bar.

“I want to talk to you. Come with me to the snug,” I said.

He was a young guy, early twenties, easily intimidated.

“Listen, I don’t want to cause any-”

“The snug, over here.”

We walked over to one of the large enclosed booths while the barman assured everyone that the alarm had gone off by accident and told the customers to resume their seats. But still, it was pretty noisy and in a sec it wouldn’t be, so as soon I closed the snug door, I grabbed an empty Guinness bottle from the table and smashed it over the tail’s head. He slumped over and I laid him on the floor. With some care I removed the glass from his scalp and put him in the recovery position. He’d be right as rain in half an hour. I searched him for guns but all he had was a flick knife-what the hell was he going to do with that? I opened the snug door, walked quickly through the bar, slipped out the side entrance, turned right on Great Victoria, and headed south toward Bradbury Place and the Malt Shop.

The streets were packed. Shoppers, walkers, students, skateboarders, and a new phenomenon, Eastern Europeans begging with wooden bowls and makeshift signs that said “Please Help.” I gave them a few quid and hurried on. The first edition of the Belfast Telegraph had just been printed and about every fifty feet a newsboy was standing on a bunch of papers yelling “Telleyo, telleyo.”

The headline was “Hospital Cash Crisis.” I scanned the paper, nothing about Bridget or Siobhan, and I wondered if the peelers had asked for a news blackout. By the time of the third edition, some of the havoc I had wrought would be the lead story and cover photograph. But that was in a couple of hours. Not quite yet.

I binned the paper and started looking for the Malt Shop.

I was pretty familiar with this district, but there were new buildings up, old buildings gone. Nice restaurants, fancy cars. And despite my predictions, a plague of Starbucks. The big change was how differently people dressed from when I’d last been here in 1992. Back then half the men would have been in jackets and ties, the rest would have worn button shirts, and all the old-timers wouldn’t have been caught dead outside in anything less than a three-piece tweed suit and flat cap. Now everyone was dressed in casual wear: bright floppy T-shirts, shorts, sandals, cargo pants and the number of football shirts was staggering. Manchester United, Glasgow Rangers, and Glasgow Celtic being the most common. The women, too, were dressed down in baggy jeans and T-shirts and a lot of them were wearing Real Madrid football shirts, which at first I thought was some kind of solidarity thing with the bombing back in March but then I noticed that the shirts all had David Beckham’s number.

The final status symbol worn by a good chunk of the under-thirty population was a New York Yankees baseball cap. Cheap airfares, weak dollar, any mug could go to New York these days.

Still, it wasn’t all bad.

Two o’clock is quitting time for a lot of schools. And I’d like to find the man who isn’t moved by hordes of beautiful seventeen- and eighteen-year-old sixth-formers striding toward the train station in short skirts, patent leather shoes, white shirts, and ties.

I couldn’t go farther down the street because the cops had blocked off the road for a march and “historical pageant” by a small group of Independent Apprentice Boys who were reenacting a scene from the siege of Derry. The IAB were in full regalia, sweating in the humidity. Dark suits, black ties, black bowler hats, and orange-colored sashes. The scene was the famous one where the Protestant apprentice boys locked the gates of Derry to stop the Catholic armies from capturing the city-an actual historical event that had happened over three hundred years ago. I had never heard of the reenactment being performed in Belfast before. They’d probably gotten a cultural grant from the European Community. The “Boys” were actually forty- and fifty-year-old men with beer guts, bad mustaches, and hair so unkempt Vidal Sassoon would have broken down and wept. They were all obviously the worse for drink. The Catholic army this afternoon was an intoxicated man in a green sweater with a pikestaff.

“You’re not getting in,” one of the Boys was saying to him.

“Aye, no fucking way,” said the other.

“We’re shutting the gates,” a third managed between belches.

The man in the green sweater did not seem that put out. Right in front of me, another of the Apprentice Boys climbed on top of a parked car and began stamping on the roof. It had an Irish Republic license plate and the Boy was obviously under the impression that it, too, was a representative of King James’s Catholic army. A peeler went over and told him to get down. The peeler was old, fat, and bored. He tapped his service revolver once and the Boy, spooked, got off the roof.

“Right, that’s it, I think you’re all through,” an inspector shouted and waved for the other coppers to reopen the streets. They began lifting the yellow tape.

“Black bastards,” the other Boys yelled in protest. “Black bastard” not a comment on race but rather on the policemen’s very dark green uniform, which appeared black. Indeed, in Northern Ireland the small number of foreign immigrants gave the wannabe racist scant opportunities. There was a sizable Chinese community, although racists tended to ignore them for fear that each one was a potential Bruce Lee who would kick their shit in.

The Boys refused to get off the street and the peels had to send in the riot police. While I waited to get going, I asked one of the school-girls if she knew where the Malt Shop was-a pretty brunette who looked as if she had never been exposed to sunshine in her life.

“Aye,” she said, looking to make sure her friends weren’t too far away. “You’re going the right direction but it’s on the other side of the street, just past the Ulster Bank.”

“Thanks very much.”

“No problem, although I tell ya, I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” she said, her big brown eyes blinking slowly.

“Why’s that?”

“You a tourist? Are you from America?”

“No, well, sort of, I am from out of town,” I admitted.

“If you want a milk shake go to McDonald’s, that place is a bit dodgy,” the girl said.

“Is it now? Like what? Drugs?”

“I don’t know. If you go looking for drugs you find them anywhere. ’Course they still do good milk shakes like.”

“Well, thanks for the tip.”

“I could do with a milk shake myself,” she said with something close to a giggle.

“Love, if I was ten years younger, had slept, was untroubled by heavies, and not trying to solve a missing person’s case before midnight, I would be honored to buy you a milk shake, but as it is…” I said, shrugged apologetically, saw the street was finally cleared, and hurried in the direction of the Ulster Bank.

I was down on the Golden Mile now.

Belfast was mostly a nineteenth-century phenomenon, a side effect of a booming linen industry, docks, and shipyard. Its population had increased tenfold in less than a hundred years. Catholics flooding to certain sectors of the town, Protestants to others; and it has remained a segregated city. Prod and RC sections as clearly delineated as the black and white neighborhoods of Boston or Detroit. East Belfast: almost entirely Protestant. West Belfast, divided between a Protestant ghetto along the Shankill Road and a Catholic ghetto along the Falls Road. Impossible to wander into the wrong neighbor-hood by mistake. The Shankill Road bedecked with murals depicting various Protestant heroes, usually in the primary colors of red, white, and blue. The Falls Road had murals showing Catholic heroes, in green, white, and gold. The exception, however, was South Belfast. The area I was walking in right now. This part of the city was where the university district met the commercial heart. This was middle-and upper-class Belfast. Houses were more attractive, the streets were wider, trees didn’t get ripped to be turned into kindling around bonfire time and there were a lot of students, couples, and young people. Here there were no Protestant or Catholic bars. No murals, no flags, and little sectarianism.

But even so, you’d be kidding yourself if you thought the paramilitaries let these businesses thrive without interference. The Malt Shop would certainly be no exception.

“That must be it,” I said to myself as I caught a glimpse, three blocks ahead, of a miraculously unvandalized 1958 pink Cadillac that had been turned into an outside eating booth.

I jogged to the café with a feeling of urgency. Outside, three other cars that had been converted into tables. Another Caddy, a red Ford Thunderbird, and a distinctly anachronistic De Lorean. Despite the intermittent drizzle, all were packed.

I went in.

A large fifties-style diner, with a soda fountain, waiters on rollers skates, Buddy Holly on the jukebox, and other artifacts from the hazily misremembered days of the Eisenhower administration. The menu was standard diner fare with the occasional Ulster speciality such as deep-fried Mars bars served in a piece of soda bread. Completely bunged full of weans, enjoying malts and milk shakes.

A waitress in a nylon polka-dot dress and dreadlocks skated up to me.

“Help you?”

I took out the picture of Siobhan.

“I’m looking for this girl. She was seen with one of the regulars in here. Skinny ginger-haired kid. Ring any bells?”

The girl groaned. Clearly this wasn’t the first or even the second time someone had come by asking these questions. Bridget’s boys, the police, Bridget’s boys again, and the police again.

Well, they weren’t me.

“Listen, love, this is bloody serious, have you seen this girl?” I asked with an intimidating burr.

She shook her head.

“You’ll want to see the manager,” she said.

“Eventually,” I said. “I’ll show the photo around first.”

“You’re not allowed to bother the customers,” she said.

“Says who?”

There were at least three dozen people in the Malt Shop, not one over twenty-five. I showed them the photo, asked about the mysterious redheaded kid, but no one had seen a bloody thing. I tried my hand with the waiters and the dudes behind the counter, but again all I drew were blank expressions.

This in itself was a wee bit suspicious.

Nobody said, “Oh aye, she looks a bit familiar” or “A kid with red hair, aye, there’s a lot of kids with red hair” or “I think I might have seen her, did she have a wee dog?”

None of the usual stuff.

I mean, I know that Belfast people are very good at keeping their mouths shut, seeing nothing, and minding their own business. That’s why they had to replace jury trials with secret three-judge courts- no witnesses wanted to testify in front of twelve strangers and no juries wanted to convict terrorists who would come seeking revenge. And I know that Ireland has a well-established and long-standing culture of silence going back at least to the horror of informers during the 1798 Rebellion. But this was different. This was deeper. This was like everyone had been schooled. This was like the word had gone out.

And what had Bridget said? He had smelled of pot. And what the schoolgirl just told me? This place is druggie central. Aye, I could see that now. The paramilitaries ran this particular establishment with a grip of iron. There were probably a couple in here right at this very moment.

I sat down and ordered a malt.

The place began filling up with more schoolkids and students. A couple of cops came in, were given free malteds, and sat slurping them in the window seat. Useless wankers.

I found Dreadlocks again.

“Ok, love, go get the manager, I’ll talk to him now,” I said.

“He’s in a meeting.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Go get the manager,” I said very quietly.

“Ok,” she said.

The manager: twenty-one years old at the most, thin, greased black hair, earring, a zigzag line of stubble from his sideburns to his chin.

He sat down at my table.

“Are you another policeman?” he asked in a Dublin accent.

“What’s that on your face, you forget to shave?” I asked, to start the conversation on the wrong foot.

“It’s called style,” he said.

“Is that how they’re spelling shite these days? Seen this girl?” I asked, showing him the photograph.

“I’ve told you all before, I haven’t seen her.”

“Let me tell you something, fuckface. You might have fooled Bridget Callaghan’s boys because they’re from out of town, you might have fooled the peelers because they don’t want to know. But I know this place is a clearinghouse for pot, I also know you’re protected by the paramilitaries, and I also know you’ve seen this girl.”

He said nothing, stared at the floor.

“You’ve seen her and you’ve seen her with a ginger-bap kid and you are fucking going to tell me the name of that boy.”

The manager looked at me.

He bit his lip, scratched at his bad skin. I saw that I was right. He wasn’t going to win any poker hands anytime soon. He had seen her. And he did know the name of the boy. And what’s more, he wanted to tell me all about it. He hesitated, opened and closed his mouth. Dried the froth from his lips.

He’d changed his mind. He couldn’t afford to tell me. He didn’t know me from Adam.

“He’s a wee hood, drug dealer, and a girl’s life is at stake. You must know who he is,” I barked.

“I don’t know who he is, and I’ve never seen the girl,” he said, and his eyes flitted around the café to see if anyone was watching him.

I had to raise the stakes.

I took out the.38 and set it on the table.

“Listen to me, I’m not someone to be fucked with,” I said.

“You better put that gun away, there’s a couple of cops over at the window,” the manager said.

“I seen them. And if I have to, I’ll fucking kill them, too. I need to find this girl,” I said.

The color remaining in his face drained away. But he was caught between the devil he knew and a new one with a gun. He took a drink of water, made his call.

“Listen, I’m telling you, I never saw the girl, and I never seen that boy everybody’s talking about. You can ask anybody in here. They’ll all say the same.”

“I have asked everybody in here and they all have said the same, which is bloody suspicious. Who are you all afraid of?”

“Nobody.”

“Who runs this place?”

“I’m the manager.”

“No, who really runs it. Who are you paying off to?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the man that you pay protection money to every week, I’m talking about the man that makes you let him sell drugs on your fine premises here.”

He shook his head.

“Was he just dealing pot or was it stronger stuff too?” I asked.

“I don’t know. If kids are buying marijuana it’s nothing to do with me,” he said. I tapped the table. Well, at least that was one thing confirmed.

“Look, I’m very busy, I have to go,” the manager said, starting to get up.

“Sit the fuck down. Do you know who Bridget Callaghan is?”

He nodded, sat.

“Do you know what she’ll do to you if she finds out that you’re preventing her from getting her daughter back in one piece?”

He nodded again.

“I mean, this is Bridget Callaghan I’m talking about here,” I said.

He was sweating, shaking, scared, but even so he was more frightened of them than he was of me, even with the promise of Bridget’s wrath and a.38 sitting right here on the table.

I scoped the joint.

The place was stuffed to the brim with school boys and girls. The two cops. I really couldn’t shoot the fucker. I couldn’t actually put the gun to his head and order him to speak. The only thing to do would be to wait until he closed up shop and get the son of a bitch on the way home.

“What time you finish up here?”

“We’re open to midnight.”

“You stay till midnight?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied sensibly.

“Listen, is there any way we could talk in a back room or in private somewhere?” I attempted. Get him back there, show him the meaning of fear.

“Uh, no, I can’t do that, sorry,” he said.

“I’ll give you one more chance: the name of the boy or the name of the person you pay off to.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”

One of the cops walked past on his way to the bathroom. I put the gun in my jacket pocket.

“Are we done?” the manager asked.

If I’d more time I could work on him. But I didn’t. I stood.

“You haven’t heard the last of me,” I told him.

I turned on my heel and walked out of the Malt Shop onto Bradbury Place.

“Shit,” I said. Christ on a bike. I’d thought that I could succeed where the cops and Bridget had failed. Instead I’d bollocksed it up. Run into a brick wall.

I leaned against the window.

And I hadn’t exactly told Bridget the truth either.

I wasn’t connected. I wasn’t tuned in. I didn’t know people. Sure, I’d run with the teen rackets back in the early nineties, but that was a long time ago. I hadn’t kept track of any of those useless fucks.

I bummed a cigarette off a passing student and sat down in the Ford Thunderbird. What the hell was I going to do now? I took a couple of drags on the ciggy and threw it away. Nodded to myself. Aye, there was nothing else for it. I wasn’t connected, but I knew a man who was. I had only one card up my sleeve, but that card was a wild one-eyed jack.

Chopper Clonfert owed me a favor.

Back when we were both teenagers, Chopper and I had collaborated on a massive smuggling operation across the border between Northern and Southern Ireland. Petrol, butter, cows, booze moved north; condoms, birth control pills, banned videos, and sometimes the same cows moved south. It was a more innocent time, when the paramilitaries weren’t keen on drugs and the cops didn’t exactly rate cattle rustling as high on their list of priorities. But even so, it was still a risky operation. You had to move product through a number of territories, and for the sake of good business you needed a truce among all the separate gangs and factions.

One wet Saturday night, Chopper and I got lifted driving a lorry load of whisky. I was just a kid, so the Garda Síochána didn’t even cuff me, but they worked Chopper over and threw him in the back of a van. He could have done five years for smuggling, but lucky for him, I wandered to the back of the lorry, broke a bottle of hundred proof, threw in a lit cigarette, and ran like hell.

Classed as a fuckup by the Guards and with virtually no evidence, Chopper pled guilty to importing without a licence, got six months and was out in four. Of course, by that time I was in the army and then I went to America and I hadn’t seen him since. But I read things about him on the BBC. I had followed his career. Nowadays he no longer called himself Chopper.

Now he was a Northern Ireland assemblyman, a Belfast City councillor, and one of the rising stars of the Independent Republican Party. Indeed, he was tipped as a potential leader and was almost certain to become an MP at next year’s election.

Garrett Clonfert. Né Chopper.

The one villain in Belfast I knew was still in the game.

He had to be, because you don’t get to become an IRP councillor without having murdered your way through your rivals. Hard for an outsider to keep track of the fissiparous alphabet soup of Irish politics, and even I had trouble sometimes, but I did know that IRP was an offshoot of Republican Sinn Fein, who were themselves a radical offshoot of Provisional Sinn Fein, itself a breakaway of official Sinn Fein. IRP was by far the nastiest of the lot. It had renounced the IRA ceasefire of 1997 as a perfidious betrayal. Its military wing had planted a dozen bombs since 1998, pre-9/11 they had praised Osama bin Laden as an anticolonialist freedom fighter, and they were linked with ETA, the PLO, and the Italian Red Brigades. It didn’t fill me with glee to have to go begging for help from my old pal Chopper, but realistically he was my only hope.

A quick scan of the phone book. A ten-minute walk from the Malt Shop.

Councillor Clonfert’s offices were in a new glass-and-steel building off the Ormeau Road, near the BBC.

The entire ground floor was an IRP “advice center” for his constituents. There were a couple of hard men looking for work as well as some genuine local people there to complain about the drains, the trash collection, and the noisy neighbors. The place was painted a blushed shade of rehab-facility pink. There were posters of smiling children, of all races, holding hands. Embroidered along an entire wall was a Bayeux-style tapestry, also either done by children or mentally challenged adults, depicting scenes of daily life in Ireland. Scenes that were frozen in time about 1927. Sheep farmers, dairy farmers, fishermen. And above these scenes of mythical rural idyll was emblazoned the baffling IRP motto: “Peace, Power, Prosperity.”

I found a receptionist whose name tag said she was called Doreen. Older broad with a poisonous expression and a blond Partonesque wig.

“Doreen, I’d like to speak to Garrett, please. I’m an old friend of his. Name’s Michael Forsythe.”

“Councillor Clonfert is on a conference call with Brussels at the moment,” Doreen said with a hateful smile. “If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat, I’ll see-”

I interrupted.

“Doreen, I don’t mean to be rude but this is extremely urgent. Could you please tell him that Michael Forsythe wants to see him.”

Doreen looked across at the two heavies who were sitting on a sofa reading the Keira Knightley issue of Vanity Fair.

“Listen, Doreen, there’s no need to get your goons involved. I’m not a troublemaker. Please, just call up Garrett and I’ll guarantee you he’ll want to see me,” I said quietly.

Doreen picked up her telephone and turned away from me. She spoke very quietly.

“I’m so sorry, Councillor Clonfert, but there’s a gentleman here to see you, he’s says it’s very urgent. He says his name is Michael Forsythe, I can get Richard to see him off the… Oh, ok. Ok. I’ll send him right in.”

Doreen looked at me with a bit more respect.

“Mr. Forsythe, you take the door behind me and then it’s the first door on your left. I’ll buzz you in,” she said.

She pressed a button on her desk and the massive armored door behind her swung open. Garrett would have needed this level of additional security because you never knew who might try and kill him. Because I seemed to be an old friend, she’d hadn’t got the two ganches to pat me down.

That might be handy.

Outside Garrett’s office there was a poster of pastyfaced Irish weans standing on Blackpool Pier with the words “Vote Clonfert: A Bridge to the Future” underneath. Might have been nice if the photographer had used an actual bridge.

To catch him off guard, I tried to open Garrett’s door without knocking but the handle didn’t turn.

“Who is it?” he yelled from inside.

“Michael Forsythe,” I said.

“It is you. Wait a second, Michael, and I’ll buzz you in.”

The door buzzed. The handle turned.

He was sitting at a large oak desk in a massive office. Behind him, through an enormous window, I could see the BBC building and cloudy Belfast.

Leather chairs, a leather sofa. Computers and a stereo playing Radio 3. Art prints on the wall: a Gauguin full of naked Polynesian girls and the detail from Klimt’s Three Ages of Woman that cuts out the old broad. On one side of his desk a photograph of Councillor Clonfert getting lost in a three-way hug with Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Peter King at the unveiling of the Irish famine memorial in New York City. On the other side a photo of Garrett with an attractive younger woman and a little girl.

Garrett stood and offered me his hand. He had put on weight since last I’d seen him, but he looked good. Late thirties, sandy hair, smooth cheeks, and warm open eyes and smile. He was wearing an Italian tailored silk suit in a fetching shade of burgundy. It was flashy for Belfast, and a canary yellow silk tie didn’t help tone him down.

“Michael Forsythe, as I live and breathe,” he said.

“Chopper Clonfert,” I said.

We shook hands.

“Sit down, sit down. Cigar? They’re very good,” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“Michael Forsythe, Michael Forsythe. You’re a bit of a legend, aren’t you?”

“Nah, not really. You’re the star, Garrett. Councillor, assembly-man- I’m very impressed.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just doing my bit for the people. A life of service turned out to be my calling.”

“Very good of you, I’m sure.”

His eyes went glassy as he remembered the old days.

“Jesus, Michael Forsythe. I haven’t seen you since way back. Boy, oh boy, I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d joined the British army. I’m glad you got out and I didn’t have to kill you,” he said with a big laugh.

“Maybe I would have killed you.”

Garrett laughed again.

“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to brag, I know all about you, Michael. I heard about your exploits in America.”

“What ya hear?”

“You killed Darkey White over money. That’s the story on the street.”

“It’s close enough,” I said.

“What are you doing with yourself these days? Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick, but I’d been led to believe that you were living a secret identity, in the witness protection program,” Garrett said.

“Aye.”

“I heard you were in Australia.”

“No, I wasn’t… Listen, Garrett, I’d love to talk about old times and your rise to fame and fortune, but I came here because I need your help.”

Garrett’s smile disappeared from his face.

“You need my help?” he said suspiciously.

“Yeah.”

“Michael, um, these days I have to keep within the letter of the law, I’m running for parliament and-”

“Garrett, it’s nothing illegal. I’m working for Bridget Callaghan, her wee girl-”

“I know. Her wee girl ran away with some fella and she’s been doing her nut, sending her boys everywhere looking for her. I know all about it.”

“Aye. Well, her boys have drawn a blank and the cops have been fucking useless and now they’ve received a ransom demand.”

Garrett nodded slowly.

“Have they now? So she’s been kidnapped.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“I heard she ran off. Maybe she staged it to get her ma’s money.”

I was getting a little impatient with this.

“Garrett, regardless of how it happened, I’m trying to find her and I’d like you to help me.”

Garrett pushed his chair back on the rollers, creating a psychological and physical distance between us. You didn’t need to be a head shrinker to read those signs.

“You owe me a favor, Chopper,” I said.

He laughed.

“A favor? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“For the van full of nicked whisky. If I hadn’t torched it, blown it the fuck up, you would have done five years for that.”

Garrett shook his head.

“No way, Michael. I would have bought my way out of that one. I would have done what I done, no matter if you’d torched that van or not. Stop kidding yourself, mate. I don’t owe you a fucking thing.”

I closed my eyes. Seethed. This was the wrong thing to say to me on the day I’d had.

“Take that cigar now,” I said.

Garrett opened a box on the table, took out two cigars, cut the end off, lit them both, and passed one to me.

“Michael, let’s go get some lunch. I’m happy to see you, let’s talk about what you’re about and what you’ve been up to. It’s fascinating that you’re actually working for the woman who, I heard, had a million-fucking-dollar contract on ya. I mean, for Jesus’ sake.”

I puffed on the cigar. An expensive Cuban. Way above a councilman’s salary.

“Garrett, I don’t want to threaten you-” I began again.

Garrett laughed.

“You. Threaten me? Whose town do you think this is? Aye, I know who she is and I seen her goons about, but let me tell you, this isn’t the fucking Big Apple. Don’t even try to go down that road. Don’t embarrass yourself. Would you walk into Palermo and start mouthing off about Bridget Callaghan? Well, don’t walk in here and try the same thing.”

“Garrett, it wouldn’t just be her. You wouldn’t want the IRA after you, would ya?”

“The IRA, Michael, is on cease-fire. Come on, enough of this talk, you’re spoiling what could be a nice reunion between old pals.”

“Hear me out, Garrett, all I want to know is the name of the gangster who owns the Malt Shop on Bradbury Place. That’s all, just a fucking name. Fucking manager was too afeared to tell me, but I know you know. You’d have to know.”

Garrett nodded. He did know. He knew all the underbosses in his territory.

“Why is that name so important to you?” he asked.

“The Malt Shop is where Siobhan Callaghan met the boy she disappeared with. The boy was reeking of pot. A drug dealer. He has to be connected. He’d have to get permission to deal there and whoever gave him that permission will know who he is and where he lives.”

Garrett rubbed his chin, slowly shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Michael, I can’t help you, I don’t want to rock the boat. If they ever found that I had told someone who-”

“I’ve got a.38 in my pocket,” I interrupted.

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that, Michael. The intercom has been on the whole time you’ve been in here. I know you’re joking, but I wouldn’t want my boys rushing in and fucking shooting you by mistake. That would be an ugly thing to happen to the prospective MP for West Belfast. Even with the whole IRP behind me, it would hurt my campaign,” he said jovially.

I was angry now.

“‘Peace, Power, Prosperity,’ my arse.”

“Michael, all those things are important. We’re bringing people together. We are taking power from the old archetypes committed to a past full of hate. We’re building a new society here.”

“Chopper, don’t come the politician with me, don’t get ideas above your station. You are what you’ve always been, a small-time fucking hood. Ignorant hood, too,” I said.

He forced his laugh harder.

“Ignorant. How so? Oh, do enlighten me, rat exile from abroad,” he said, not at all nonplussed.

“I know where you come from, mate, even if your constituents have forgotten. I know you are in an ugly fucking business and if your boys rush in, well and good, let them do their worst, you’ll be dead before the door handle turns,” I said, pulling out the revolver and pointing it at his head.

“Put that away, you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Aye, well, better a breathing fool than a dead fucker.”

“You’d never get out of here alive.”

“Shoot my way out.”

“You wouldn’t dare kill me. Your life wouldn’t be worth tuppence.”

“Who owns the Malt Shop on Bradbury Place?”

“Michael, forget it, what do you care about some missing wee tart.”

A knock at the door.

“Is there a problem, Councillor Clonfert?” a voice asked.

Chopper looked at me quizzically. He was right. If I laid a finger on him, his boys would top me. There was no angle in killing him and Chopper was certainly brave enough to see me blink first.

We regarded each other for a half minute, and then for the second time in an hour I put the gun away, my bluff called, my threat useless.

“There’s no problem, Peter. Mr. Forsythe here was just leaving,” Chopper said.

Aye, the son of a bitch knew I wouldn’t kill him. He knew I couldn’t kill him. But everyone has a weakness. I got to my feet.

“Well, Garrett, you can keep your cigars, I suppose I’ll he heading on.”

Garrett stood too.

“Michael, it’s always interesting being with you. So over the top. So old school. You should have gone into the theater,” he said, and offered me his hand again. I shook it and winked at him.

“You’re a brave man, Chopper, should have know better than to threaten you.”

“Aye,” Garrett said, pleased with himself.

I hesitated, thought for a moment, nodded at the photograph of him with his wife and child.

“Although if I were you, I’d put a couple of bodyguards on that wee girl of yours and keep them there for at least ten years, that’s how long Bridget waited till she hit me. She’s patient.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me, Garrett,” I said, and began walking for the door.

“Bridget Callaghan wouldn’t dare come after my family,” he said, his face completely at odds with his words.

“Nah, not your family. Just your wee girl, she’s old school too, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, dead daughter for dead daughter.”

Garrett let me walk two more paces. He hit the intercom button on his desk, turning it off to give him privacy.

“Sit down,” he said in a whisper.

“I think I’ll stand.”

“What would you tell Bridget?”

“When her daughter turns up dead, I’ll tell her that you’re the one that stopped me from saving Siobhan and that you have a lovely wee girl yourself.”

This was the chink in his armor. He paled and sweat appeared on his forehead. He looked at me with the cold hate that comes from the mingling of shame and fear.

“Seamus Deasey. It’s his turf. If it’s a drug place, they’re paying off to him.”

“Where would I find him?”

“He’s in the fucking book.”

“I need to find him right now.”

“He might be in the Rat’s Nest.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a pub on Valencia Street.”

“Where?”

“Off the Falls Road.”

“Bad area?”

“Bad fucking area.”

“Ok. Take it easy, Garrett.” I threw the lit cigar onto his carpet, stamped it out.

“Aye, don’t hurry back, Forsythe, and remember, not everyone you’ll meet is as mellow and well adjusted as me.”

I left the office. Nodded to Doreen. Not the happiest of reunions. But at least I had a name. It was something to go on. Chopper hadn’t been lying. He was tough as old boots, but he couldn’t be tough for everyone. Shouldn’t have put up that Klimt of the ma and bairn, not that with the old family photo too. That was overdoing it. Wouldn’t have thought to get you from that direction, Chopper. Did you forget, it was you, mate, who told me long ago to hide your weakness, your vulnerabilities. You don’t display them for all the world to see.

Nah.

I exited the advice center.

Out into the street.

Checked for tails.

It was a brisk fifteen-minute walk to the Falls Road. I’d do it in ten.

The Falls Road.

You know why I don’t like it?

Because there is still evil in this town.

I can sense it.

In the pavement, in the fold of tenebrous color, in the eclipse of shapes.

I can sense it because I helped make it.

I feel its presence, its power.

From Saint Patrick to the Vikings, Ireland had five centuries of peace. Never before nor after. That time ripped apart literally in a Norse blood eagle of ribs and axecleaved hearts. And ever since we’ve had the creature with us. Our shadow, our watcher, our tormentor, our instigator. It sleeps. It dreams. But it’s still here. Coiled. Hungry. A stalking monster of revenge and memory. It moves and weaves. Slipping sideways, backwards, but always moving, driven by malcontent. Its greatest reign, the Troubles. And I suppose some might say that it’s not sleeping, it’s dying. It’s possible, but it’s too soon to tell. Certainly, on the surface, we are in the time of no more war. Terrorism doesn’t happen in Ireland nowadays. America, the Middle East, Russia, across the water, those are the hot spots. No radical Muslim sleeper agents here, and Ulster has an uneasy peace.

But the evil waits. Biding its time. It moves the clouds, it stirs the breeze.

Whispering with a voice so delicate that it will throw a switch on a circuit board. Click-and a breath of a wire shifts into a new and more significant alignment. A minuscule voltage disappears from a battery and jolts into a doughnut ring of industrial detonator. Viper quick, the Semtex expands a millionfold into a couple of bags of fertilizer or roughly two hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, home-made, stomach-churning, disemboweling explosive. A chain reaction and the fertilizer rips through a police station, or the floor of someone’s car, or into a bag of sharpened roofing nails.

Ulster had a thousand of these bombings in twenty years.

And the force behind them is still here. Unknown, undefinable. Waiting, watching, under the death murals of the Hunger Strikers, Mother Ireland, and the IRA. Tourists come and take photographs of these giant wall paintings, but I know that those are armed men on the street corners. Excons with walkie-talkie phones. Bookies’ runners wearing sneakers. Drug dealers in shell suits. Weans in the ubiquitous Yankees hats.

All along the Falls Road. This dingy terrace of redbricked houses. This heartland of the IRA.

Aye.

I turn down Valencia Street.

The Rat’s Nest.

A pokey corner pub, with grilles on the window and homemade speed bumps on the road outside to stop terrorists from the other side driving past and hurling petrol bombs.

I pause outside.

Take a breath.

Sniff the air.

Heavy thoughts, Michael.

Heavy and a little prescient.

But don’t worry, you needn’t fear the random Semtex bomb, the mobile phone ignition system, those roofing nails.

You just look out for bullets and the odd grenade.

You just look out.

I shake the cobwebs from my head, compose myself, and walk into the bar…

Seen one paramilitary pub, seen ’em all.

Low ceilings, blackedout windows, pool table, dartboard. All male, all hoods, waiting around for something to do. Imagine an old-fashioned western. The piano player stops and everybody turns around, the villain looks up from the card table, and the doc says it’s probably best that you leave. No piano player, no poker, no friendly doc but an identical vibe. I strode to the counter.

“Are you lost?” the barman asked.

“No. I’m looking for Seamus Deasey.”

The young barman said nothing.

A pause.

A cold, elongated silence. I knew Deasey was looking at me.

I turned.

Six men walking over from a booth next to the pool table. All of them in jeans, T-shirts, and shitkicking boots.

“I’m Deasey,” Seamus said. He was the shortest of the six. Shaved head, pug face, long arms, boxer’s nose. In fact, he looked like a middleweight who could have been good but just wasn’t tall enough. Two of his mates were bringing over their pool cues. I stepped away from the bar in case the keep cold-clocked me from behind with a hurling stick.

“What the fuck do you want?” Deasey asked.

I let him get four paces away and as fast as a cat on vetvisit day I pulled out the.38-caliber revolver, extended my arm completely, and pointed the gun at Deasey’s broken nose. This was the third time I’d threatened someone with a bullet in the brain since arriving in Belfast, but this time I decided I was not fucking backing down.

Deasey didn’t react but his mates produced assorted hand cannons, shiny pimp pistols, and other flashy pieces of shite that would kill me just as good as a proper gun.

“You know who I am?” I said.

Deasey smiled, unafraid.

“Should I?”

“I’m Michael Forsythe. You might have heard of me, I killed Darkey White in America.”

Deasey nodded.

“Aye, I heard of you. You’re the rat Bridget Callaghan’s been looking for.”

“Aye, well, times have changed. Bridget Callaghan needs my help to find her missing wean. She’s called me to look for Siobhan. The last place she was seen was the Malt Shop with a ginger-haired kid. It’s one of your places and that’s why I’ve come to see you.”

“Great fucking story. You’re a regular raconteur,” Deasey said and winked at his mates, who dutifully chuckled.

“I want to know the name of the kid that met her in the Malt Shop,” I said, and nodded the gun at him.

Some of his buds made a move but Deasey stopped them. He didn’t want them screwing up and getting him killed. But even so, he didn’t look in the least freaked by the revolver.

“I suppose you believe your own hype, Forsythe,” he said.

“I have hype? I didn’t even know I had hype.”

“They say you’re unfucking-killable,” Deasey said.

“Is that what they say?”

“Aye, they do. They say you need a fucking army to take the man who topped Darkey White. Well, I’ve got news for you, Forsythe. Take a gander about ye. This is a fucking army. Every person in this place works for me.”

I looked around the bar at the assorted ne’er-do-wells, killers, probationed terrorists, and murderers released under the Good Friday Agreement.

“I’m not here for trouble,” I said slowly.

Deasey laughed.

“Funny way of showing it.”

“I just need your help. I need the name of that kid,” I said.

“First of all, Forsythe, how in the name of fuck would I know the name of any kid that goes to the fucking Malt Shop on Bradbury Place. That’s not exactly my kind of joint.”

“Listen, Deasey, I don’t have the time. I know you didn’t want to tell the police, but if you don’t tell me I’ll bloody shoot you.”

“I don’t know who told you to come here, but you’ve put yourself in big-time shit.”

“The Malt Shop is your place. Chopper Clonfert told me that. The kid’s one of your dealers. Now, I know he wasn’t acting under your orders when he went after the girl. You would never have been allowed to kidnap Bridget Callaghan’s daughter in Belfast. The IRA do not want a war with her and the whole of the fucking Irish mob in America. But the kid was working for you and I wouldn’t want it to get back to Bridget that you were implicated.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“No, this fucking.38 pointed at your head is supposed to be a threat.”

“I had nothing to do with the disappearance of Bridget Callaghan’s wean. And I don’t fucking know anybody who has.”

“Deasey, just tell me the lad’s name and I’ll get out of here.”

“I’m telling you nothing, Forsythe,” he said, cool as mustard.

“Deasey, you must have been born stupid. When I tell Bridget you’re working with the kidnappers-”

Deasey interrupted as much to reassure his own men as me.

“You’re not listening, Forsythe. I don’t know anything about any fucking kidnapping. You said yourself no fucking hood in Belfast would kidnap Bridget Callaghan’s wean. And you’re right. There’s too much spread coming in from the States. There’s no percentage in it, see? It wouldn’t be good for business. You are barking up the wrong tree. Now get the fuck out of here and count your lucky stars you caught me in a good mood today.”

I sighed with impatience.

“Deasey, I’m not leaving until you tell me that kid’s name. Redheaded wee lad, dealer in your bar. You know who I’m talking about. I know you know. You better fucking tell me.”

“Or you’ll what?”

“I’ll fucking top you.”

“You’ll be dead before I hit the fucking floor,” Deasey observed.

“Aye. More than likely. We’ll both die because of some piece-of-shit pot dealer who helped lift Siobhan Callaghan,” I said.

One of the boys could take it no more and swung his pool cue at me. I shot him in the stomach. Someone else shot at me, missed, and almost killed the barman behind me. I rushed Deasey, shoved the.38 against his throat, and cocked the hammer.

“Tell your boys to be cool,” I screamed.

Silence, except for the gangster on the floor crawling about in agony.

“Cool it, lads, fucking cool it,” Deasey demanded.

I could feel his garlicky beer breath on my face. Nervous doglike pants.

Belly shot began weeping, retching. A.38-slug stomach wound from this range could easily kill someone.

“Aaah, help me, aaah,” he groaned, the smell of blood and guts permeating the room like frying onions.

“Better get him to the Royal,” I suggested.

“Do it,” Deasey said. “He’s dying.”

Two of the hoods picked up their fallen comrade and carried him outside.

“How did it come to this?” I asked.

Deasey was tense: shallows breaths, sweat, touch of the trembles.

“I didn’t have anything to do with taking that girl,” he said in a hoarse whisper, the fight gone from him now. The blood having brought home the very real danger that I posed.

“I know, Deasey, I’m not saying you did. But one of your boys did. Pot dealer in the Malt Shop. Skinny. All I want is his fucking name. You owe him fucking nothing anyway, and he’s implicated you in a piece of serious fucking shit.”

“Aye,” Deasey said.

“You know who I’m talking about, don’t ya?” I said, and dragged the revolver up along his face and rested it on his temple. It moved easily through his sweat.

“I know who you’re talking about,” Deasey admitted finally.

“That’s right. You’re going to give me his name and address, and he better be there when I call because if he gets tipped off between now and then-”

“Enough threats. Bridget Callaghan doesn’t scare me.”

“You shouldn’t be worried about her. You should be worried about me. You know how much damage your skull will do to my gun if I pull this trigger at point-blank range?”

“No.”

“None at all.”

It was a tough spot for Deasey. If he told me the name and address he would lose face in front of his men. But if he didn’t tell me, perhaps I was the sort of person who might just be mental enough to blow his fucking head off. I’d just shot one of his pals a minute ago. He might be next.

“I don’t know his address. I really don’t. I could find out but it would take some hours. If you give me a number I’ll call you up with-”

“Now, now, Deasey, up until now we’ve been honest with each other. I wanted to know the kid’s name, you didn’t want to tell me. Let’s keep it on the level.”

The revolver’s barrel was turning his skin blue.

“Barry, he lives on a boat on the Lagan path, called the Ginger Bap, that’s all I know. I don’t keep track of every fucking shithead pot dealer in my employ.”

“Barry?”

“Barry,” Deasey confirmed.

I turned to Deasey’s crew.

“Ok now, lads, Deasey and me are going to walk outside. The first character I see pop his noggin out gets it between the fucking eyes and the next bullet’s for Deasey himself. So I’d stay in here if I were you. Now everybody drop your guns and go behind the bar.”

No one moved.

“Do it,” Deasey said.

The gangsters put down their firearms and shuffled behind the tiny bar.

Still holding the gun to his temple, I walked Deasey to the door. To exit, I would have to turn my back on them. I turned, pushed open the doors. For a split second I was exposed. The hairs on my neck stood up. But no one was going to attempt to be a hero. We made it out into the street.

“Thanks for the information about Barry,” I said.

“Somehow I don’t think it’s going to do you any fucking good,” he said with a thin smile.

“We’ll see.”

I removed the gun from his temple and stepped away from him.

“I hope you’ve got life insurance, because after this little display your loved ones are going to need it. Not that a rat informer has any loved ones,” Deasey said.

“Turn round,” I said.

He turned.

I cracked the butt of the.38 into the back of his head and let him collapse on the sidewalk.

I legged it as fast as I could down the hill. Kept running down the Falls Road and didn’t stop until I was safe in the center of Belfast again.

“Where’s the Lagan path?” I asked a passerby.

He told me, I caught my breath, winced as the slash across my gut decided to become very painful, and headed east for my encounter with Barry and a possible rescue of Siobhan.

Walking.

Jogging.

Running…

I wasn’t worried about Deasey’s threat.

If he was big talk, then it was all just bullshit. And if he was going to try and do something, well, he could fucking take a number and join the queue. Me and the evil had it sussed. He was small fry. I was Michael Forsythe.

Let them add to the legend. Let them believe it. Let them tell it.

He survived twelve years on the run and at least three hits. He lost a foot, escaped from a Mexican prison, and destroyed the empire of Darkey White.

He isn’t someone to be fucked with. He’s a ghost, a bogeyman.

They say that when he was conceived the good fairy was on sabbatical. They say that when he was born vultures perched themselves on the houses of his enemies.