Callous

Leeds was wearing a Galway United shirt, combat pants, and Doc Martens.

Ready to rumble.

I asked,

“How in hell can you be here? Did you follow me?”

“Yes.”

A driver passed us at speed and Leeds leaned on the horn, shouted,

“Fuckhead.”

I said,

“You’re stalking me?

He looked at me, gave a huge grin, said,

“I’m protecting you. You know, like the Chinese say, you save a life then you are responsible for it.”

I shook my head. This country is insane. I said,

“Protect me from Nora?”

He grimaced, said,

“Oh, yeah.”

I had to know, asked,

“Where did you sleep last night?”

He indicated the back of the van, said,

“Got all I need there, even a Bunsen burner, you want me to stop, make coffee?”

Christ.

I asked,

“Protecting me from Nora? I mean, seriously?”

He caught up with the car that had overtaken us, drove alongside, brandished a heavy tire iron, and the car dropped behind. I mean, a skinhead shows you a jackhammer, would you front him?

I asked again,

“Nora?”

He gave a bitter laugh.

“She comes from a shitpile of money. I mean, at her age, a Porsche?”

I said nothing, so Leeds continued,

“Her brother crossed some drug dealer and they cut him to ribbons; pieces of the poor bastard all over the ground.”

I asked,

“Anyone arrested for it?”

He looked at me, said,

“Get real, priest.”

A song came on the radio that riveted me, tore at my heart for reasons I never even spoke. I asked Leeds,

“Who is that?”

He said,

“Corina K, a local girl. The title is ‘One Million Scars.’”

The song finished and I felt

Bereft?

We arrived back in Galway; I realized my old clothes were left in the castle.

Not the kind of sentence I ever imagined I would write.

Dio had one large flaw in his streamlined security.

A red Camaro, lovingly polished and restored. That baby had an engine like a diesel. Open that sucker up on the motorway and fuck ’em all.

It amused Keegan to see his feared boss rave on about what Keegan called

A muscle car.

But worryingly for his bodyguards, he drove at reckless speeds and lost them more times than was safe.

Friday, the last one in September, Dio was traveling at warp speed when he heard a clunk in the souped-up engine.

“Fuck,”

He said.

He got out and was tinkering under the hood when he felt a figure approach. He half turned when he was shot in the face with a double-barreled shotgun.

It took his face almost clean away.

The figure stood over him, then spat on the body.

A tour bus came ’round the corner at speed and the killer panicked, dropped the rifle, vanished into the trees. The driver of the coach pulled up behind Dio’s car, got out, and walked up to the body, and, without warning, shouted,

“Oh, fuck me!”

Indeed.

The tourists were swarming, amazed they saw what they read as a victim of the Irish conflict. One said to the very pissed driver,

“I thought the Troubles were over.”

The driver looked at him, snarled,

“In Ireland, our troubles are never over.”

When the Guards came, they found a fallen shotgun, dropped in a panic by the gunman.