The Emerald Lie

I got in touch with a semiretired villain I’d known back when my friend Stewart had been alive. The loss of Stewart weighed heavy, like all the others. Sweeny, the ex-crook, spent most of his time in Spain but had returned. He said,

“Too many Irish drug dealers setting up shop there.”

We met in Roldan’s, a quiet pub near what had once been thriving docks, now was just a wasteland like the country itself. Sweeny was brown as oak and had more lines than an Ordnance Survey map. His voice was raspy from too many cigarettes but it worked for him, gave him a gravitas that was an asset in his former line of work. He greeted me warmly, if raspily. He said,

“Look like you’ve been in the wars, Jack.”

“I was caught without a hurley.”

He liked that. His weapon used to be a solid iron bar. He was drinking wine and had ordered a pint and chaser for me. Knew my form. He nodded at the wine, said,

“Got a taste for it on the Costa.”

Drank a sip, then,

“Boring as fuck out there. Us Irish, we don’t do sun real well. I got me an iPad and, after a few glasses of this shit, I’d start buying stuff on Amazon. I wanted to see The Bridge and guess I was a bit befuddled as I ended up with

... get this,

The Bridge, Danish original

The Tunnel... Australian

The Bridge, the Yanks setting it on the Rio Grande.

So I’m watching all three on consecutive nights and I get to see the icy blond chick in three different nationalities.”

I smiled, asked,

“How’d that work out for you?”

He sighed, said,

“Fuck it. I gave up, went back to Father Ted, the devil you know, eh? But you didn’t ask to meet me to discuss the merits of European crime drama versus the Yanks.”

“No, I wanted to get some armory.”

We decided on something light, in terms not of stopping power but of weight. He took off for about half an hour and I listened to the jukebox.

I kid thee not, an actual jukebox with no fucking Rihanna. Blessings. A tune playing:

“If I Didn’t Have a Dime.”

Oh, Lord.

The days of the dance halls and show bands. When the only booze you brought into the hall was the booze in your belly and priests patrolled outside to ensure there was no impropriety as their colleagues abused the children of the country and destroyed most of a generation.

Next tune up was one of the first pop songs that ever registered with me:

“From the Underworld”

By the Herd.

Right, who the fuck is the Herd?

The lead singer left the band. Peter Frampton, who became a global heartthrob. Cover of Rolling Stone and all points north. Where was he now?

Hanging with David Cassidy?

Sweeny was back, with the ubiquitous McDonald’s bag. In my time, weapons are always delivered thus. Some kind of postmodern statement? Or simply the nearest shit to hand? Sweeny grimaced, asked,

“You wanted fries with that?”

I asked the freight and rough it was. But these days of government levies on everything, from water to pretax scams, it was par for end-times. I asked,

“Take a check?”

Another bright scheme from our leaders.

Yeah, abolish checks. Anything that would make life even more fucking miserable than it was. The juke played

“Dust in the Storm”

Marc Roberts.

Sweeny said,

“That McDonald’s? You want to tell me what’s going down there?”

Meaning, why are you tooling up?

I would have liked to have his muscle as a backup but the price of doing biz with villains was a debt that kept on giving. I said,

“It may be nothing, just a little insurance.”

He didn’t buy that but, what the hell, like he could give a fuck? He veered, asked,

“You been hearing about this Grammarian fellah?”

I nodded, then,

“Seems to have the public wind.”

He began to gather his stuff, preparing to leave, said,

“Fucking amateur though.”

“You think?”

He was on his feet, the light in the bar darkening his Costa tan, said,

“’Course. He left witnesses.”

The Glock was a nine-mm, one of the new models with a seventeen-shot capability. Now I just needed seventeen people to shoot. I went to see the accountant whose daughter had been killed. I had the gun in my Garda jacket. Always see your money guys with weight. They piss you off, you have a solid argument.

Made me wait half an hour. I read an old Reader’s Digest while I waited and increased my word power. Learned that an intransitive verb acts by itself, like a PI in fact.

But without the baggage.

E.g.,

I sleep

I fall

I shoot

Or, if you’re Irish,

“Jesus wept.”

Finally I got ushered into his impressive office. He didn’t seem pleased to see me, opened,

“Look like you have been in the wars.”

I explained my visit to his daughter’s former employer and the resultant hiding I received. He asked,

“You sure it was connected?”

Was he kidding?

I asked,

“You’re kidding, right?”

He was definitely even more unimpressed. Said,

“Your line of work, I would think that beatings are all in a day’s fun.”

The fuck was this? The guy hired me and now he’s going all defensive and good citizen? I said,

“You hired me.”

He sighed and,

“Yes, but not to draw attention to yourself. When we take this player off the board, you think we want to leave a trail?”

Jesus wept.

I asked,

“You taking me off the case?”

He stood up so that I might admire the cut of his Armani suit, said,

“We’d been somewhat wrong-footed by some past successes of yours and it seemed that you might, in your stumbling fashion, find out actual evidence but, alas, you have become the very drunken collateral we heard you were.”

I said,

“That is atrocious English.”

He looked down at his desk, said,

“Good-bye, Mr. Taylor.”

I moved to the door, reaching for some exit line if not of dignity, at least of significance, tried,

“For an accountant of some repute, you figured one factor wrong.”

He gave me a look of borderline pity, asked,

“Oh, what might that be?”

“Pigheadedness.”

Outside, the rain came lashing down and I held my face up to it, hoping... what? Any cleansing available to me had been shut off at source so long ago and now, of course, the government was making us pay for any drop of water. I went to Garavan’s, ordered,

“A pint, a Jay, and no conversation.”

They came in exactly that order.

As I reached for my wallet, my hand touched the butt of the Glock and I derived that scant comfort it gave. I stayed for over an hour and when I readied to leave, the bar guy shouted,

“Nice chatting to you, Jack.”

Friday morning, Emily picked me up at my apartment. She was driving a red Kia, which, if it was a statement, said,

“I’m dafter than you thought.”

I got in and she pointed out a Starbucks container on the dash, said,

“Wasn’t sure how you like it so I had them pile in everything.”

Which might well have been true. I asked,

“When did Starbucks open in Galway?”

She gave me the look that urged,

“Get with the bloody game.”

Said,

“They have an outlet in the college.”

“So they figure the ordinary folk don’t drink coffee?”

“No, they know that students will drink any old shit.”

I tried,

“You know they don’t pay any tax, Starbucks?”

She shrugged. Not easy when you’re maneuvering around the Headford road, said,

“Neither do you.”

I could have asked how she knew so much about my affairs but it opened up an area that was best left alone. I asked,

“Does your mum know we’re coming?”

She scoffed, mimicked,

“Mum... She’s a cunt.”

Killing the whole thread of that. I found the radio dial, and got Galway Bay FM, The Big Breakfast Show. He was playing the White Stripes. Listened to that for a bit then. We were coming up to Shop Street and my eyes spotted Whelans Pharmacy. I said,

“The owner of that pharmacy, Michael, sat beside me in school.”

She scoffed,

“And you? What, just decided to be a failure as your school friend made a career?”

Jesus.

So much for sharing.

I went another tack, tried,

“When you were... away... where exactly were you?”

She mused over that, then,

“I was amassing money.”

“For what?”

She waved her hand vaguely, said,

“Money isn’t always protection but it sure makes a basis for attack.”

Riddle me that.

We’d arrived at her mother’s house. Before, when I had visited, it had been a shroud of darkness, everything dying. Now it was renewal in neon. Brightly painted and, even I noticed, new curtains. It looked... welcoming?

Emily warned,

“Follow my lead, you hear?”

Jesus.

I asked,

“Like good cop bad cop?”

She gave me the look, sneered,

“Like in, you say fuck all.”

I could do that.

The door was opened by a woman who looked healthy and alive, no trace of the wretched drunk I had encountered last time. She gave a small smile and began to open her arms but Emily brushed her aside, saying,

“A hug? Really?”

Guess not.

I stood there, saying, you guessed it, fuck all. Her mother said,

“Would you like to come in, Mr....?”

“Jack, Jack Taylor.”

No memory of our previous time or the gallon of whiskey I had fed her. Inside, the house was a testament of OCD. Spotless and solitary. She offered,

“Some tea, coffee? I’m afraid we don’t have any... beverages.”

Emily laughed, an unpleasant sound, said,

“Being as you drank it all and more.”

We stood in the grim aftermath of that for a minute until Emily broke the tableau, said,

“You dragged us all the way out here. What’s the big deal?”

Her mother looked beseechingly at me and I moved to go outside but Emily shot me a look. Her mother said,

“I wanted to make amends to you.”

Emily laughed out loud, spat,

“How will you do that? Restore my virginity that Daddy took?”

Phew.

Fuck it. I got the hell out of there. I could hear shouting behind me and started to walk down the road. An articulated lorry came hugely along and more in desperation than seriousness I put out my thumb and

... he stopped.

With my bad leg took me a time to climb up there. Settled in the massive cab and said,

“Thanks a lot.”

The Polish driver said,

“Random acts of kindness.”

Alas, his good deed was fouled by a tape of Black Sabbath. You have not known damnation until you hurl along the motorway, Sabbath roaring in your ears, and a driver eating a thick bagel laden with dripping mayo and tomatoes.

It did save chat so there’s that. He dropped me off at Eyre Square. A wag I knew from Garavan’s watched me climb down, asked,

“New job, Taylor?”

I said,

“With the water charges, we all have to improvise.”

I sat on a bench until a guy approached and sold me a sheet of Xanax. Not exactly the stuff they dealt on The Wire but it does the job. He took the money, said,

“You ever need anything else, here’s my number.”

Might be my imagination but he looked a little like Ozzy Osbourne.