Merrick

I was trying to compose a list of all time great buddy/road movies. For Merrick.

He’d be back.

Right?

Jaysus, if a friendship can’t survive a simple gun threat, is it really a bond?

Merrick loved poetry and my only knowledge was

…………….the poetry of cordite.

Definite in it’s relentless rhythm.

I had

Scarecrow, Hackman and Pacino……….didn’t they fall the fook out a time or two?

Freebie and The Bean, Caan and Arkin, and by Christ, they spent most of the movie

wailing the be-jaysus out of each other.

Butch and Sundance of course and they sure picked pieces of each other’s verbal hide.

48 Hours………..mmph…….I think it goes on the list, they certainly had enough

testosterone to merit.

Thunderbolt and Lightning, Jeff Bridges and Clint. A classic of friction.

A rapid knocking on my door halted my list, I figured it was a stoner asking why Lizzie

weren’t loud roaring, Whiskey In The Jar.

Figured wrong.

It was Shona.

A very distraught one, shouting

‘Why don’t you pick up your goddamn phone?’

Fook this, I asked

‘Am, what happened to hello?’

She brushed past me, turned to glare, said

‘Merrick’s been shot.’

I nearly said

‘I didn’t do it.’

In light of the last time I’d seen him, and my gun in his face, I bit down, hard. Asked

‘What?’

Her hands on her hips, the female in total exasperation at the male of the species, she said

‘His wife called me, they couldn’t get you,

She glanced at the bottle of Bourbon, the sound system, added

‘Because, guess what? Ryan is partying down. You bastard, your buddy is shot and

you’re having some fun time?’

She said a whole load of other shite, the way women do, they catch you on one fook up,

by Jesus, the whole kit and caboodle is comi.ng to show.

I did the smart thing, looked contrite like I could else? And when she wound down, got

the details, sketch as they were. Merrick was at Cedar Sinai, undergoing emergency

surgery.

And that was all she really knew.

She said

“I brought my car.’

Hello?

She had a car?

A Lincoln Convertible no less. You’d think…………The Lincoln lawyer, if you knew

your mystery.