The Third Person

CHAPTER NINE

It was closing in on ten o’clock by the time I finally made my way downstairs into O’Reilly’s. A chalkboard on the street outside informed me that I’d missed the end of Happy Hour by a clear forty-five minutes, which seemed a pity, given the circumstances. The place turned out to be one of those bars that sits snugly in (or slightly beneath) the city centre, like some kind of benign cancer which – although you might not want to look at it too closely – you know isn’t doing any harm. The city centre’s like that, though. If you leave enough of a gap untenanted for long enough, a bar forms to fill the space. I figure that’s why cars are always getting beeped for not keeping up with the flow: the drivers behind are all afraid that a bar will form in the road between bumpers and they’ll be forced to find an alternative route.

The taxi had to drop me off by a cashpoint. As I was withdrawing the money, some drunken, red-faced lad in a designer shirt came up and shouted something very loudly into my ear as he stumbled past, flexing his arms above his head. It sounded like a cheer, but I considered shooting him on general principle anyway. Nobody would have missed him: there were a thousand others just like him: all milling around, looking for trouble. And a thousand scantily-clad, barely vertical girls looking to watch the fighting, and then fuck the winner afterwards. The city centre’s like that. Come in on a weekend, they should tell people, and watch the yuppies regress.

The taxi-driver told me that the bar was just around the corner, and he was right, but I still walked past it twice before I noticed it. O’Reilly’s, at face value, was a dingy staircase sandwiched between a bakery and a travel agents. Not promising. I stood and looked at it for a second, while a trio of wide, middle-aged ladies tottered past, and then pushed open the glass door and started down.

The staircase was a descent into something like the green neon corner of Hell itself, with the sound of pool balls clacking and faux-Irish music reeling up with the cigarette smoke. The place was so down-at-heel that it didn’t even bother to have a bouncer. It had literally got to the point where smashing the furniture and faces around wasn’t good or bad, just different. Nobody cared anymore.

As I pushed the door at the bottom open, I saw that there was hardly anybody here anyway. There was a group of builder-looking blokes playing pool on a stained table; a tanned, older woman, smoking like she meant it, eyeing me up on my way to the bar; a Frankenstein’s monster of a tramp, shirt hanging open to reveal white woolly hair over a reddened pigeon chest; and a few others, here and there, all watching me as I produced my wallet. The barman was short and older.

‘You missed Happy Hour,’ he told me as he pulled the beer I ordered.

I looked around. Everybody had settled back into their depressed, isolated states, like dogs in the pound do when nobody’s looking to buy.

‘So I see.’

Another burst of froth as he hung back on the tap.

‘Happy Hour’s six to nine.’

‘Well, I missed my taxi.’

‘Yeah,’ he grunted. ‘Oh yeah.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed, passing him a five pound note and not really understanding.

‘Two-fifty.’

Bizarrely, he gave me three pound coins as change. Behind me, on the jukebox, the Irish music grew more raucous, and the tramp started slamming the pinball machine into musical life. The woman at the other end of the bar stubbed out her cigarette as though slowly squashing a wasp, and then exhaled with grey satisfaction. She seemed to be on the verge of approaching me, so I beckoned the bartender back over.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said. ‘A guy called Jim Thornton.’

The woman was on her way over, as bone-thin and dry as a skeleton wrapped in prune-skin. Enormous, gaudy, plastic earrings brushed at her shoulders.

‘What do you want with Jim?’ she said.

‘He’s looking for Jim,’ the barman said helpfully.

She glared at him.

‘I heard that!’ she said. ‘I want to know what he wants with Jim.’

He walked off. ‘Shit, woman.’

‘I just want to talk to the guy,’ I said. ‘Is he here? Or do you know where I might find him?’

She appraised me. If she’d still had her cigarette, she would probably have blown some smoke at me.

Finally, she said, ‘Well what you want to talk to him about?’

I sipped my beer and tried a different tack.

‘Between me and him. Business.’

‘Business, huh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What kind of business have you got with the man?’

I realised that the sound of pool-playing had stopped. The builders were watching us, and the woman’s voice was carrying a bit too far. I turned back to her.

‘Look – you know him or not?’

‘Maybe.’ She was having none of it. ‘Maybe I’m just real protective of him. Fed up at reporters coming round bothering the man. Hasn’t he lost enough? You tell me. I’d say he has.’

Reporters?

I took another sip of my beer and tried to remain calm. Having a gun in your jacket pocket should do a lot to allay fear and, truth be told, it was helping a bit. I wasn’t actually scared of the men – who were now gathering like a storm cloud around the near end of the pool table – but I was scared of this whole thing going wrong, the way that everything else seemed to have done today.

‘I’m not a reporter,’ I told her. ‘I don’t know anything about the guy.’

‘You some kind of fan boy, or something?’

‘I told you. I don’t know the guy from Adam. I don’t know who he is, or what he’s been through. I just know I need to talk to him about something.’

She leaned her head to the opposite side.

‘If you tell me why, then maybe I can help. Or else maybe my friends over at the pool table can.’

Five of the men were approaching. One of them – the leader – was holding his cue. The other four, at least, seemed unarmed.

I sipped my beer again, thinking: nonchalance.

Think it to display it.

‘I really wouldn’t do that,’ I suggested quietly, my hand moving casually to where my gun was resting.

Two of the unarmed men reached beneath their shirts and pulled out pistols, and held them pointing casually at the floor. The remaining two each produced knives. The first man tapped the ball end of his cue on the floor and sounded real pissed off when he spoke.

‘This fuck bothering you, Steph?’

I sipped my beer and pretended I didn’t exist.

Steph bent down slightly to get under my gaze and lift it back up to her. Then, she thumbed in the the direction of the man with the cue, glaring at me.

‘This here’s Joe Kennedy. And these are his boys.’

One of them grunted, right on time.

Steph said, ‘Maybe you can tell them why you want to see Jim.’

I was starting to be under the impression that Jim had better be worth it after all this trouble. Jim had better do fucking cartwheels. Play the piano and take requests.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m gonna reach into my pocket, okay?’

I held my hands – palms out – in a pacifying gesture.

‘There’s a piece of paper in my left-hand trouser pocket. I’m gonna reach in and get it out.’

Nobody told me not to, so I dug in, retrieving the paper I’d taken from Walter Hughes’ house.

‘It’s about this. Here – who wants it?’

Steph held out her hand and clicked her tanned, ringed fingers twice.

‘Give.’

I passed it over, and she pulled it taut between her witch’s hands, frowning as she read it.

‘I just want to speak to him about that,’ I said. ‘And where he got it from.’

Steph looked up at Joe Kennedy and his friends.

‘It’s all right, boys. You go back to your pool now.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

They wandered away, putting their weapons back into whichever tight and revolting spaces they’d pulled them from. Steph looked me over again, evaluating me. I smiled and took a sip of beer.

‘All right,’ she said, turning around. ‘Put that candy-ass beer down and follow me. Bob!’

The landlord was polishing a pint glass with a rusty-looking bar towel.

‘Yeah?’

‘You order us down a big old bottle of liquor in back. And three glasses, and that’s all.’

‘Right up.’

He didn’t move, but I did – following Steph through a flimsy door by the side of the bar and wondering exactly how alive I was going to be ten minutes from now.

It was actually a revelation: exactly how much there was, hidden beneath the surface of the city. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised: in cities, like the people that live in them, the most interesting things happen beneath the surface. O’Reilly’s itself was subterranean, but the door by the bar led to steps that took Steph, and me behind her, down to another level entirely, and by the time we’d finished I figured we must have been a good two storeys beneath the streets of the city. We trailed along a dim corridor and then turned the corner into an enormous room.

Which, I guessed, was probably the real O’Reilly’s.

Loud music was playing from a battered old stereo behind a bar at one end, hooked up to building-sized speakers. Not Irish fiddle music here, either – but harder, harsher sounds: the sort of music you might play in your head while you fuck someone up. There were probably forty or fifty lost souls, half of them dancing, the rest just shuffling and talking. A card game was going on at a table over by the far end. A few jagged flashes of pale blue light from the strips on the ceiling took photos of everybody’s silhouettes, and the air was so filled with sweet, hazy smoke that it was like the floor was made from marijuana and on fire.

‘Bar,’ Steph shouted over her shoulder. ‘Try to keep up, now.’

She threaded her way over to the right, where a tray with three glasses and a bottle of whisky was waiting, guarded by a young barman who nodded at Steph as she picked it up and bobbed away. I followed her to the far end, dodging the jagged silhouettes of slam-dancers, and we went round into what turned out to be a kind of snug, albeit a bare and badly furnished one. There were a few low, old tables (unmatching) and a scattering of weathered armchairs (also unmatching). There were six people occupying them, and they didn’t seem to match either: all just sitting, staring into space, as though they were really concentrating on drinking. To be fair, some of them looked like they might need to.

Steph headed over to a solitary man in the far corner. He looked old, although he was leaning over the table in front of him, staring into a thick tumbler of greasy booze, and so it was difficult to make out his face. From what I could see, his hair was blacky-grey and unwashed – two thirds of the way to being the wet, hard curls of tramp’s hair. The skin on the back of his hands was brown and knotted, but there was thin hair there, too, like swirls of copper wire. His shoulders were weak: stooped and trembling slightly. I got the impression that his drink was telling him a secret which was breaking his heart.

‘Jim.’

His reactions were so slow that Steph was putting the tray down on the table before he’d even managed to look up. Pink, glossy eyes told me that Jim Thornton was pissed as a wretch. The face around them was sad and drawn, telling tall tales of missed sleep, exposure and bad times. His skin was the colour of nicotine.

A stretched voice:

‘Hey Steph.’

‘Hey.’

She sat down opposite him and motioned for me to do the same.

Jim Thornton ended up staring somewhere in between us.

‘How a, how are…’ – his head nodded forwards a little with each attempt at speech – ‘how are dyo ouing?’

I stared at this paralytic monster in horror, but Steph didn’t miss a beat. She was already pouring us all a slug from the bottle she’d brought over.

‘I’m doing just fine, Jim. Just fine. And I have someone to see you.’

Thornton – who I think was as fundamentally shit-faced as I’d ever seen a man – turned to look at me, and missed. He had a slack smile, though, which gave me the impression he figured he’d scored a bullseye. It gave me the opportunity to notice another weird thing about the man: his teeth were absolutely perfect.

‘Hai.’

Steph passed me a half full tumbler of whisky. ‘He says hi.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ I said and then took a mouthful of booze, realising it would probably take sixty or more to level this particular playing field.

Thornton swung his head round to Steph, frowning.

‘Whizz this ga? Ta.’

He took the glass that Steph was offering him and attempted to put it down on the table.

‘He’s a man who wants to speak to you about some things.’

Clunk. The glass made an awkward touch-down, with a jolt of whisky escaping onto the table.

‘Sat right?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She looked at me after she’d finally poured herself a drink, and then passed me the piece of paper that I’d stolen from Hughes. ‘Why don’t you tell Jim what you want to talk to him about? Go on. Show him what you brought.’

I took the paper from her and passed it to Thornton. His hand was trembling as he picked it from me, and then he held it up for inspection.

‘Look at the one in the middle,’ I said.

Steph glared at me, and then looked back at him and said, ‘You know what that is, Jim?’

He shook his head violently.

‘Naw. Naw.’

Bullshit, I thought.

‘You sent it to a man named Walter Hughes.’ I leaned forward. His hands were now trembling even worse than before, and he was still shaking his head, as though trying to deny something fundamental. Like gravity.

‘You send them to him, and he pays you for them.’

‘Naw.’

Thornton closed his eyes.

‘Where do you get them from? Who sends these to you?’

‘Naw!’

It was a centimetre from being a shout, and he stood up. Upright, his body looked thinner and more whittled away than ever: like somebody who’d been in a coma.

‘Okay, Jim.’

Steph had stood up with him. She placed a calming hand on his shoulder.

‘It’s okay. Don’t worry.’

‘Naw.’ He was whispering it again and again, and was starting to cry. His face barely seemed to have the strength to contort into tears. ‘Naw.’

‘It’s okay. Shhh.’

Steph kneaded his bony shoulder once and then took the piece of paper away from him.

‘Shhh. Don’t you worry now.’

His hands now free, they went automatically to his face.

‘Sit down, Jim.’ Her palm pressed him back into his seat. It was a barely controlled descent, and he just about managed it. ‘You enjoy your drink and forget all about this fella.’

She glared at me again.

‘Come with me.’

I took my glass and followed her over to a table in the far corner, where Jim Thornton wouldn’t be able to hear us.

‘Sit.’

She placed the paper in front of me.

‘You saw that, right?’

‘Saw what? Saw how he reacted?’

She nodded.

‘Yeah, I saw.’

Steph lit a cigarette and leaned back in her armchair.

‘That was for your benefit,’ she said. ‘You little shit. Not his. I wanted you to see what this thing can do to him, and why you need to leave him alone. You’ve seen the state of him. Doesn’t he look like he’s been through enough to you?’

I thought about it.

‘Yeah. He does.’

‘Well then.’ Steph looked exasperated, like she’d proved something obvious which I was still trying to deny. Ash fell on the table as she leaned forwards and jabbed a finger at me.

‘You and me – we’re gonna talk. And afterwards, you’re gonna leave well enough alone. Okay? Jim spends a lot of his time here, but not all his time. I don’t want you bothering the old man out on the street and breaking his heart. That’s one thing’s been broken ten times too many.’

‘Okay – we’ll talk, then. I need to find the man who wrote this.’

Steph glanced down at the paper with disgust.

‘You want that man, huh?’

‘Yes. You know where I can find him?’

She shook her head.

‘Well, does Jim know?’

‘Does Jim look like he knows much of anything?’ She shook her head again, pulling a face. ‘If he does, you ain’t looking right. Jim doesn’t know anything about this.’

She pointed vaguely at the paper. ‘These things.’

‘So what can you tell me about them?’

‘They’ve been coming regularly for a year or more, now.’ She shrugged. ‘We don’t let him see them no more. Damn near breaks my heart on top of his to see the look on his face when he does. I sorted out the arrangement with that fella Hughes. Every week, I package these things up, the day they arrive. And every week, near as anything, I send them out. The money changes accounts – and it’s good money – and Jim never needs to know about it.’

‘But they come here addressed to him?’

She nodded.

‘They come to him here, sure. Regular as clockwork, give or take a few days. We rent an apartment for Jim a block away, and we give him all the booze he can drink. Feed him, too. Keeps the man happy.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He seems real happy.’

Steph shrugged again. ‘He can be an empty shell out on the street. Or he can be an empty shell in here. Least here, we fill him with something, even if it ain’t much.’

I looked her over more carefully: took in the tan, the hard eyes, the heavily aerobicised body. The way she looked, she should almost have been some executive’s bone-thin, middle-aged housewife: too many free hours whiled away on the exercise bike or down the salon, or gossiping about abortions in the hairdressers; too long spent sunning herself in Costa del somewhere, sipping cocktails and being too loud with her brash husband. Almost. But she looked tougher than that: like a muscle that had been built in a series of grubby streetfights rather than the air-conditioned comfort of a ladies-only gym. The same kind of woman, just a class size down. Sucking on her cigarettes as though someone might try to steal the smoke.

It occurred to me that Hughes probably paid more than enough to keep Thornton waist-deep in liquor, even with his habit as tall as it was.

‘Doesn’t do you any harm, either, I bet.’ I looked around. ‘How long have you had this little extension?’

‘About a year now,’ she said. Glared at me. ‘And no. It doesn’t do us any harm. Your point being what?’

It occurred to me that that particular conversation would be a dead end.

‘My point being the man who sends these things to you,’ I said. ‘I need to find him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because something bad has happened to somebody I love.’ The truth slipped out, but it felt okay. ‘And I think this man might be able to help me find her.’

‘Well, that is sweet.’

‘It’s true.’

Steph studied me for a moment, supporting her cigarette elbow with her free hand while smoke listed leisurely into the misty air above us. Eventually, she moved it to her mouth and took a drag.

‘Okay,’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘Let me tell you what I know.’