The Color of Blood

Nine

TOMMY OWENS, IN AN OLIVE GREEN SNORKEL COAT AND a black fleece hat, with the Reilly brothers’ gun in his hand, looking like I hadn’t seen him in a long long while: grinning, head bobbing with adrenaline, or speed, probably both, all of a swagger, ready for the fray.

I walked over to Tommy and took the gun. It was the compact Sig, the P225, barely more than seven inches in length, grey-blue and slick with my blood. As I trained it on the Reillys, it weighed surprisingly light in my hand.

“Besides,” continued Tommy, “as a gun, it makes a good set of brass knucks.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Check the magazine,” he said.

The Sig was chambered for 9mm Parabellum, the magazine was eight-shot, and it was empty. The Reillys had come to throw a scare into me, not kill me. Now I was going to find out why.

Tommy looked at my face.

“You’re gonna need stitches for that, Ed,” he said.

“What are you doing here, Tommy?”

“I’ll tell you after. Sketch, sketch.”

I looked around. A few punters were watching from the pub door. It was only a matter of time before we’d have bouncers on the scene, and then cops. I took a clean handkerchief from my jacket and pressed it to my face to stanch the blood flow.

“I want to talk to the Reillys.”

“Talk to Darren, he’s a slimy little cunt, but he’s the brains. Such as they are. Anyway, Wayne’s fucked, isn’t he?”

Tommy took the knife from me and advanced on the Reillys as he said this, separating them with a few flashes of the blade. Darren Reilly looked dazed from the crack his head had taken, still winded from the blow to the chest; Wayne crouched against a car, his good hand cradling his wounded one, clutching both to his bloodied face, as if afraid it might fall off if he released them.

“Stay down, all right?” Tommy said to Wayne.

“You won’t have Loy with you next time,” Wayne Reilly honked through his fingers. Tommy aimed a kick at him, and Wayne cowered beneath the car. Tommy reached inside Darren Reilly’s grey hoodie, grabbed him by the hair and dragged him squealing toward me.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, looking toward the pub door, where more people had begun to gather. “Car?” he said to me.

I pointed toward the old Volvo, and Tommy led Darren Reilly toward it. Tommy’s limp was still there-his ankle had been stomped to shreds back when we were kids-but his energy had changed; now it resembled the kind of go he’d had when we were in our teens, and every trip to shoplift or rob an orchard or a bike or hot-wire a car had been led by Tommy Owens, with me his willing accomplice. I’d thought disappointment and failure had sucked that kind of verve out of him long since, but here he was, bundling Darren Reilly into the backseat of a car and taking his phone away from him and tying a scarf around his eyes: alive and kicking.

“Down at the corner of Pearse Drive and Pearse Rise, Ed,” Tommy whispered in my ear. “There’s a place there that’s just the job.”

The place was a lockup garage on the outskirts of the Woodpark Estate; two metal up-and-over doors were chained and padlocked; graffiti said FUCK THE POLICE and HONEYPARK RULES and MARIA AND CHRISTY 4 EVER.

Tommy produced a bunch of maybe a hundred keys and passed it to me.

“Right-hand door should be good, Ed. One of them fits, can’t remember which. I’ll mind young Darren here.”

After trying a dozen or so keys, I found one to open the door. There was a space directly inside. I got back in the car and drove it in. Tommy got out and shut the door and flicked a switch and fluorescent lights came on. My face had started bleeding again, but slower this time; I refolded the handkerchief and used it as a pressure pad. There were three other cars in the garage, all covered with tarpaulins; the rear of the concrete building had aluminum doors that matched those we’d entered through. There was an office partition with fiberglass windows and dusty, empty shelves; the desk and chair within were tattered and filthy. I looked at Tommy for an explanation.

“Garage owner in town. Used to do a little work for him, fitting up hot cars. He has lockups all over, moves the motors between them, so if one is raided, there’s no connection made with the others. I made copies of the keys when I was doing a job for him. Checked this one the other day, it had a free space. Always come in handy.”

I nodded. Had Tommy gone back into the hot car business? Had he ever left? Catching Tommy in a lie was as difficult as it had ever been, particularly since he often wasn’t sure himself, trusting in the one true faith of Make It Up As You Go Along.

Tommy got Darren Reilly out of the car. The journey had restored his spirits. He lifted the tarpaulin and inspected the navy hood of a Mercedes saloon with no license plates.

“This is what I’m talking about, Tommy.”

“No way, Darren,” Tommy said.

“Nothing you can do about it, when fuckin’ Wayne gets after yiz-”

“Fuckin’ Wayne is gonna need a doctor for his face before he does anything else,” Tommy said. “And even if he does get after us, he doesn’t know where we are, does he?”

“I meant, after, when you’re out and about. When you’re on your own man.”

“I wouldn’t be thinkin’ about after if I was you, Darren. Who says there’s gonna be an after?”

Darren laughed, a clattering football rattle of a laugh.

“What are you, hard men all of a sudden? Sure your man Loy there’s in with the cops so he is.”

“He may be, but I’m not.”

Tommy suddenly hit Darren Reilly a backhander across the ear. Reilly squealed, but I could see Tommy wince; the blow had hurt his hand, and he was trying not to show it; I winced myself at the sight of Tommy hitting anyone: violence had never been part of his rogue’s repertoire.

“Tommy,” I said, as sharp as I could make it. Tommy looked up guiltily and almost blushed, and I had to turn to hide my face; I thought I might burst out laughing. I walked to the doors at the far end of the lockup. Tommy followed me, trailing one eye back toward Reilly, who was rubbing his ear and swearing.

“What the fuck is going on here, Tommy? In a lockup, slapping people around? What are we, going to torture the guy?”

“He owes me money.”

“He owes you money how? Low-rent drug dealer skangin’ round the Woodpark Estate and he owes you money, and you unemployed and looking for work on the level, now how could that be?”

Tommy’s lower lip protruded from his reddened face, his brow all furrowed in a schoolboy frown. That was how it went with Tommy and me: first I had to be his older brother, then his father, then his headmaster. And having to be anybody’s headmaster was a bolt upright three A.M. nightmare at the best of times, and it never seemed to be the best of times anymore. My face smarted, and the blood was still flowing; I nudged Tommy in the ribs to start him talking.

“Those porno DVDs,” he said. “I got them from the Reillys.”

“Not Brock Taylor.”

“No. So anyway, I paid in advance.”

“Why did you tell me you got them from Brock Taylor?”

“’Cause I thought it would shut you up goin’ on about what a fuck-up I was if I was in with Brock. Anyway, a fiver each I gave the Reillys, reckoned I’d make ten, come out a grand ahead.”

“And Brock Taylor?”

“What about Brock Taylor? He has nothing to do with anything, I told you, I just…thought of him.”

“How did you ‘just’ happen to show up tonight? Right place, right time? You following me, or the Reillys there, or what?”

Tommy looked away, exhaled loudly through his nostrils, shook his head.

“Just coincidence, Ed. Thought I’d go up the Woodpark Inn for a pint. Came out, spotted you in the-”

“Come on, Tommy. At least the Brock Taylor lie had a certain amount of class.”

“I swear on my daughter’s life.”

“I don’t believe you. Tommy-”

“I was following the Reillys.”

“Thank you. Why?”

“I owe them money. Borrowed it for, just, you know. The usual.”

“And?”

“And I can’t afford to pay it back, and the interest is fuckin’ mounting, so I was trying to get something on them I could use.”

“What kind of thing? Use how? Catch them dealing coke, or loan-sharking, then threaten to give witness evidence to the Guards? Not your style. I don’t believe a word that’s coming out of your mouth, Tommy, not one fucking word.”

“I was hanging round the Woodpark, waitin’ there for them. The Reillys are in and out all night so they are. I didn’t know they were going to attack you, didn’t even know you were there.”

But I had stopped listening. My face was aching, and blood had seeped into my right eye, tearing it up. I spat on the handkerchief and wiped it clean. At least the flow of blood had subsided. I was cold and tired; I needed a drink and a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep and a case that didn’t involve first cousins fucking each other. Instead, here I was in a lockup with a torn face and my best friend the compulsive liar and a little scumbag called Darren Reilly, who had threatened me and pistol-whipped me and who was now leering through the window of a stolen Mercedes at himself, or at the image of his idealized self behind the wheel. I thought I’d better give Tommy some time to make up whatever it was he was going to say next. I walked up fast behind Reilly and grabbed him by the collar and tapped his face firmly against the car window a few, maybe half a dozen times and dragged him to the front of the lockup and pushed him at one of the aluminum doors. He saved himself any further damage by bracing his hands against the support struts on the door. There was blood on his face, and he was whimpering.

“All right, all right,” he said. “Fuck sake. What do you want?”

“Who told you to warn me off?”

Darren Reilly didn’t answer immediately, so I pulled him off-balance and stamped on his foot, near the ankle, hard. He screamed and fell to the ground and lay there moaning.

“Who told you to warn me off?” I said again.

“Sean Moon,” he said. “Jesus fuck!”

“Sean Moon? Don’t make a clown of me here, Darren.”

“I swear. Paid us an’ all. Like when we were minding the young ones.”

“What young ones?”

“The Howard kids.”

“Sean Moon paid you to mind Emily Howard and Jonathan O’Connor?”

“Sure. Brady organized it with him. We just done what we were told. Take the money and run.”

Reilly wiped some blood from his face and put a tentative hand to his nose. It didn’t look broken to me. Maybe I was losing my touch.

“So David Brady was in charge of it all then?”

“Moon isn’t the gobshite you think he is. Bit of a fucking brain, could’ve gone to Uni an’ all. Two of them working together, looked like to me. They organized the whole blackmail thing with your one’s oul’ fella, Howard.”

“They organized it?”

“Yeah. I think your one was in on it though. I didn’t care one way or the other. They paid us well, is all I know. Even if they wouldn’t let us watch the riding.”

“And who blackmailed Brady into making the porn in the first place?”

“Sorry? Lost me there man,” Darren Reilly said. He worked his foot around in a circle. “At least it’s not broken. I wouldn’t give much for your chances once Wayne gets his nose sorted out, he’s a tendency to bear a grudge, so he does.”

“David Brady was blackmailed into making the porn by someone whose daughter he had sex with when she was underage. Do you know who that was?”

“The dirty fucker. No, I don’t know.”

“I do,” a voice said.

When I turned around to look at Tommy, his head was bowed and he was shaking. He lifted his head and swung an unsteady finger at me, and I was taken aback to see tears in his eyes. He said something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I went closer, and he spoke into my ear.

“My daughter, Ed,” he said. “Naomi.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. I took the note that had been passed to Jerry Dalton in Seafield Rugby Club out of my pocket and looked at it. Jerry, please see David Brady gets this. That was why the handwriting had looked familiar. Because it was Tommy’s surprisingly elegant hand, not quite copperplate but not far off. The first time I’d had a note from him, aged about nine, it read: You are dead at breaktime. Best joined-up writing in the class. We fought in a ring of shouting boys, huddled against the granite wall at the far end of the schoolyard, and I was winning when Tommy switched positions and sidestepped, and I slapped a right hook into the rough granite and my knuckles exploded in crimson. Smarter than he looked, often smarter than me. Underestimate Tommy Owens at your peril.

Tommy subsided onto the tarp-covered hood of another German saloon at the far end of the garage, a BMW by the shape. I left Darren Reilly and walked across to Tommy.

“Tell me,” I said.

“She stayed over, that time you were on that bar fraud thing in Wicklow. We’d been getting on well, you know, even if her mother has done her best to turn her against me. Not to mention letting her run wild, the mouth on her, fucking this, fucking that, thirteen years old. And makeup, and hair bleached blond, wearing this pink velour tracksuit with ‘Juicy’on her arse, and a black thong sticking up over it, and a tattoo at the base of her spine, you know, a fucking tramp stamp, two bolts of lightning it looked like, pointing down toward her hole, I mean fuck sake, is Paula on drugs letting her get that done? But I said nothing. I mean, she’s doing well at school, she’s a good laugh, and she’s always stuck up for me with Paula. Even when there wasn’t a lot to stick up for.”

I turned to check on Darren Reilly, who looked away quickly; he had come closer to us since Tommy started talking.

“Let’s dump head-the-ball here before you tell me any more, Tommy,” I said.

Tommy tied the scarf around Darren Reilly’s eyes and I opened the door and sat into the Volvo and reversed out. The lights went off, and Tommy and Reilly emerged onto the street, and as Tommy reached up to pull the door down, I saw Reilly tugging at his blindfold, and the scarf fell down around his face, and once he clocked where he was, he pushed the blindfold back over his eyes and tightened it again. Tommy snapped the padlock shut on the aluminum door, as if he hadn’t noticed what Reilly had done. He pushed Reilly in the backseat and I drove back to the Woodpark Inn and Tommy pushed Reilly out of the car and Reilly walked away into the car park swearing several varieties of revenge on us both. Tommy got back in the car beside me, and I drove up onto the dual carriageway and joined the northbound flow of traffic for the city.

“Anyway,” Tommy said, “we’re sittin’ there watchin’ Buffy or something on the telly and there’s a knock at the door, shave-and-a-haircut, ten-bob, like that, y’know, and Naomi’s on her feet in a twinkling, ‘that’s for me, Da,’ and out the door. Some young fella she was expecting, I can hear them in the hall. I’m saying nothing, don’t want to blow it. Anyway, she’s in such a rush to see your man she’s left her phone there on the arm of the couch, one of the camera ones, you know, and there’s all giggling and hissing coming from outside the door, and I just have a quick look at the phone, see who’s ringing her, what’s what. Bit nosy, but…whatever. I’m still her da, amn’t I? Thought I’d say I was thinking of getting one myself if she came back in. And I’m scrolling through the photos. Her friends in school uniforms, spotty young fellas, Paula, my ma, even one of me in there. And then there’s one of Naomi and the Howard young one, and they’re both sucking this lad’s prick. Fuck sake, I nearly threw up, I’m not coddin’ you. And back I go, and there’s more, all riding each other, doing everything, and filming each other doing it, fucking disgusting now, and I can see your man is David Brady. In one of them, he’s winking at the camera while Naomi…ah fuck. Fuck.”

Tommy stopped talking, and I could hear his breath coming deep and slow as he tried to compose himself. The mist had blown up again; the world had shrunk to four streams of traffic, flowing relentlessly to and from the city. I lit two cigarettes and passed one to Tommy; he took it, and the car filled with smoke.

“I heard the front door slam, and she comes back in, all smiles, beautiful, you know, still my little girl. And I thought, just leave it, talk to Paula, don’t…don’t fuck things up here. I mean, I thought that, but how could I not say anything? Thirteen years old, and that fucker smirking like a cunt…anyway, I just blurt it all out, and she goes mental of course, calls me a snooper and a pervert and a scumbag and all this, so she’s storming out, and I say, does Paula know about it? That stopped her in her tracks. ’Cause okay, the tattoo and the clothes and all, but Paula isn’t gonna be impressed by those pictures, not one little bit.”

Tommy’s ex-wife had dyed red hair and coarse good looks and her voracious appetite for men was matched by her utter disdain for them; Paula slept with men before the first date, thus ruling out the likelihood of there ever being one, and endlessly reconfirming her low opinion of the sex. She had made several contemptuous passes at me recently, after hours in a bar full of people with no homes they wanted to go home to; I had evaded her, but with a woman like Paula, in a bar like that, you felt it was only a matter of time. But when she caught a bloke who had moved in with her for a few months putting the moves on Naomi, she stabbed him in the hand with a screwdriver. “I was aiming for his balls,” she told Tommy. The guy went to stay with his brother in Copenhagen, which is probably far enough away, although I would have gone farther.

“So what happened, Tommy?”

“She told me she was on E, up at Seafield Rugby Club, and she got off with Brady, and then he talked her into the whole idea of a threesome. Seems to be a thing now, girls snogging each other and all, even when they’re not lezzers. Fucking disgusting so it is. She was trying to keep a brave face on it, what a great time she had, how I’m out of touch, but I went through the photographs with her, and by the end she was in bits, she was. I felt bad, like I was bullying her, but it was for her own good. It was like, someone else seeing them-me seeing them-the whole thing of it came through to her at last…the shame of it, know I mean?”

We were stopped at a red light in Donnybrook; across the street, loud music and flashing lights came from a rugby club Halloween party; drunken teenage girls dressed in short skirts and skimpy tops tottered along on high heels, arm in arm, primped and groomed and sheened like footballers’ wives, or drag queens, or third-world hookers; two girls sat on the curb, one getting sick, the other holding her friend’s hair out of the vomit’s path. Sugar and spice.

“So I had to think about what to do. I didn’t want to tell Paula, for the same reason I didn’t want to go to the Guards: because that would only land Naomi in the shit. I mean, she probably looked eighteen, she was on E, she was in a club with a full bar…it wasn’t as if Brady had snatched her in an alley. On the other hand, couldn’t let the smirking cunt get away with it. In the shots, he was holding a camcorder, filming it all himself, he was. That’s where I got the idea.”

“Give him a taste of his own medicine.”

“Something like that.”

“With a view to…what, exactly, Tommy? I mean, given that you find it all so disgusting, why would you want more porn to be made?”

“As an insurance policy. Against Brady. He could sell it to anyone, put it out on the Internet, my daughter. Fuck knows what Brady does with the films he makes.”

“Did with them. He’s not going to be making any more.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that, Ed.”

“I believe you.”

“It was in my head…I probably wasn’t thinking straight, I was in a fucking rage. In my head to make a show of Brady, to humiliate him-”

“Why didn’t you make him perform then?”

“What?”

There it was, the stalling for time “what?,” the catch me out I’m lying “what?”

“The only proof Brady was involved in making the porn films is the shot of his bracelet in the mirror, which must have been accidental. So what insurance was involved in having him behind the camera? No, Tommy, you were in on it, weren’t you?”

“In on what, Ed?”

“Don’t do this, Tommy, don’t be lying to me now. In on the blackmail attempt on Shane Howard. Just tell me, was it your idea or Brady’s?”

Tommy rolled down his window and threw his cigarette butt out onto a Leeson Street thick with refugees from a fancy dress ball: skeletons and witches and vampires weaving in a band along the pavement, dodging the less elegant drunks and Halloween revelers. A thunderous fusillade of fireworks cascaded across the sky. Tommy rolled his window back up.

“It was Brady’s,” he said.

My heart sank in my chest.

“What was the connection with Sean Moon?”

“I don’t know. Brady just seemed to know him.”

“And the Reillys were in on it too?”

“No.”

“Yes. Who brought them in? I know they supplied David Brady with drugs. But maybe they were connected with you too, Tommy. Maybe you brought them in because you did owe them money. Or maybe you suddenly owed them because the blackmail deal was off. I was on the case, and you didn’t want to go through with it anymore. And then David Brady was dead, and you couldn’t go through with it. But the Reillys weren’t happy, they thought they were stepping up a gear. Blackmailing someone like Shane Howard with porno pictures of his daughter, that’s not a one-off payment, that could be a fucking salary. A job for life, buy a lot of Mercs that way.”

“No.”

I pulled the car up against the railed park on the south side of Fitzwilliam Square. My cheek was still burning, but when I put my hand to it, it came away dry; if it had stopped bleeding, it could knit together without stitches.

“Come on, Tommy. Don’t you think I didn’t see through that pantomime you were acting out tonight? How you just happened to take Darren Reilly to a lockup full of stolen cars you had worked on; how he looked at them like he’d had advance warning; how you tied his blindfold loosely enough on the way out and turned your back to lock the door, so he could have a quick look around to see where it was. Surprised you didn’t slip him a key while you were at it.”

“Ed, it wasn’t that way-”

“The second he was inside, he was gawping at a Merc, and he said, ‘This is what I’m talking about, Tommy.’ And you hitting him on the ear, you think that took me in? The truth, Tommy.”

“Darren Reilly…all right, I said I’d show him the cars, but…he’d know it wouldn’t be wise to go breaking into them. Because he’d know who owns them.”

“And who would that be?”

“Brock Taylor. I swear, I know I lied before, but I’m telling the truth now, Brock owns them, all over the city, it’s big business, hot cars, do them up, reconditioning, new plates, all this. I used to…years ago…the one in Woodpark was the first. Near where your da’s garage used to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What’s my da got to do with it?”

“When I worked for your da. Well, Brock used to work there too. That’s where he started, robbing cars. You remember-”

“I don’t remember, and I don’t care, Tommy. My father’s dead and gone, he has nothing to do with any of this.”

Tommy was ready to come back at me, but he thought better of it; he shook his head and grimaced.

“All right, all right. I’m sorry, Ed, I know I fucked up here, big-time.”

“What did you think was going on with Emily Howard? I mean, after the grief with your daughter, did you not stop to think about what the other women were going through?”

Tommy, shamefaced, made his best attempt at a shrug.

“I suppose I thought they were over eighteen. I wasn’t around for any of the filming.”

“You were just going to get your cut of the ransom money and pay the Reillys off.”

Tommy nodded.

“And then what? Hardcore pornography, blackmail, murder and then what? Live happily ever after?”

Tommy bit his lip. He looked as if he was about to cry.

“It was for my daughter, for Naomi. I’d nothing to do with the murder, Ed, you know I could never-”

“Don’t hide behind your daughter, Tommy. Naomi didn’t borrow money from thugs. Naomi didn’t force other women to have sex on camera. Get out of the car.”

“Ed?”

“You know where we are?”

Tommy looked around.

“Town somewhere. Near Baggot Street?”

“Fitzwilliam Square. You know who lives across the road?”

I pointed at one of the redbrick four-story Georgian houses across the street, their sash windows reducing in size as the floors reached the roof.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“No, I told you.”

“Your old friend Brock Taylor lives there. They had his house in the Irish Times property supplement, he’s a prominent resident of the square, apparently. Maybe he’ll be able to solve your problems. I can’t do it anymore, Tommy. By rights I should turn you in to the cops. You’re a liability I can’t afford. Give me your key. I want you out of the house. Out of my sight.”

“Please, Ed,” Tommy said. “The Reillys would have killed me-”

I pushed a fifty into his hand for cab fare and leant across him and opened his door, and when he didn’t move, I pushed him out. He threw his key in the window and limped across the street, and came briefly to a stop in front of Brock Taylor’s house, triggering a security light. For a moment he twisted and turned on the spot, like a moth drawn to the beam of a lamp. Then he shook himself loose, shook an angry two fingers my way, scuttled down a lane and vanished into the shadows.