Meant it. She replied with,
“Mr. Taylor, I’ve become familiar with your methods and I don’t much approve, but this… I knew you were involved and you turned it around, did our Church a true service. God bless you, Jack.”
And rang off.
I was still trying to digest this when my mobile shrilled.
Stewart.
“Jack, starting today, I’m going to be at my head shop every day at three. I’ve let my routine out along the grapevine so people know where they can find me. If you’re right and they’re trying to make a move on me, well, here is a routine they’ll find.”
I said,
“Give it three, four days, they’ll bite.”
“What makes you so sure?”
I thought about all we’d discussed, tried to figure it out, said,
“They are working towards a very definite timetable and everything needs to be in place for the mad bastards.”
He gave that some thought, then,
“Why are you so certain they’ll target me?”
Easy answer if not exactly true,
“You got a headstone in the mail, as did Ridge and I, we have both been… shall we say… contacted.”
He sounded just that little bit wary-not a trait he displayed much-asked,
“You’ll have my back, right?”
“Count on it, buddy.”
He lingered, reluctant to ring off, said,
“Three to four days, you think.”
“Absolutely.”
For the first time in my chaos-ridden life, I’d called it right on the money.
I was staring out at the lone Galway Hooker, at easy anchor in the bay, like a Galway snapshot of a particular era. No, not a working girl, the beautiful boat built in Galway. It gave me a vague comfort that is inexplicable. I’d taken a moment to go down to the docks and just stare at it, knowing this might well be the last visual peace I’d have. Then turned to the city and the business of bait.
As we waited for Stewart to establish his routine, I went to the city center each day, never knowing how some chance encounter might yield information. I nearly looked for Caz, had to switch channels, focus on the job at hand. Had an encounter all right, just not one of any normalcy.
I was limping along Shop Street, trying to avoid all the buskers; you give to one, you’d better give to all. A man stopped me. I vaguely remembered him from way back, when I had a career and he had notions. Not either of us, not no more. Life had walloped the slate clean. Dave. I don’t know how I dragged up his name but he’d been a player in the property game. Rode it till the bust and went belly-up himself. I always kind of liked him as, beneath his past posing, I’d detected a deep hurt from childhood. The industrial schools that only Seamus Smyth has ever really captured on paper. Concentration camps for young boys, militarized by the church. Dave tended to talk in sound bites, lest you ever nail him down. He launched,
“Jack, the cunt bank refused my plea for an extension of my mortgage.”
You’d infer from this that I saw him regularly, was intimate with his life. Such are the Irish, tell you all or fuck all. I hadn’t laid an eye on him for over ten years. He’d weathered that decade bad, if appearances were any indication. Shabby clothes, furtive eyes, a face of broken veins, and that purple complexion of the desperate drinker.
He continued,
“I’m going to lose my house, and what am I going to tell my daughters? The youngest is only eleven.”
I wanted to scream,
“The banks will lend you millions but crush you if you owe a paltry sum.”
But asked,
“How much to buy you some time?”
His eyes nearly rolled in his head. If not salvation, at least a lifeline. He considered, then gave a figure. Not the amount he wanted to give but he knew me well enough not to act the bollix. I could just about manage that, from Father Gabriel’s blood money, said,
“Meet me in the Quays tomorrow, at twelve noon. I’ll have it in cash for you.”
He was stunned, said,
“You’re a good man, Jack.”
My dad was a good man.
I wasn’t.
And you’ve got to think,
“The fuck was with that?”
Trying to buy redemption with one measly act of generosity?
I don’t know, maybe.
The next day, I delivered the money as promised. After, did I feel better?
Did I fuck.
I was torn apart from fresh dreams of Laura and the sheer loss of her. A shrink telling me one time, when I was in the home for the bewildered, the confused, the looney bin:
“Jack, it’s not that you’re afraid to be happy but you’re terrified of making someone else unhappy.”
I stopped at Wolfe Tone Bridge, the city swirling around me, my heart in scorched ribbons, tears trying to make inroads on my beaten face. Then got a grip, sort of, muttered,
“A pint and chaser mightn’t help but, sure as rain, might bring oblivion.”