Cully pulled in behind a parked van and he shut off the engine. He left the keys in the ignition and placed his hands on the rim of the steering wheel, his fingers stretched out. A bus passed, almost empty. Cully seemed to be concentrating on something.
“Okay,” he said and tapped his fingers on the wheel. “What were we talking about again? Murph?”
“Yes we were.”
“All right. Murph’s in Marbella. That’s the deal.”
“Marbella?”
“Ever been?”
“No.”
“Good for you. It’s full of crims and blackguards, and their fat, tarty wives lying around on the beach, like bloody whales.”
“‘Blackguards? My grandmother used to use that word.”
“Really. Well write it down. Blags, blackguards. Thieves and suchlike.”
“That’s English.”
“That’s what we’re speaking, isn’t it.”
“You’re telling me Murph’s in Spain.”
“Right. It’s a good enough place to do some thinking, some penance for his sins, clean up his act, get advice.”
“It wasn’t the visit from Mr. Black-and-Decker then?”
For several moments Fanning thought he had gone too far.
“Where did you hear that kind of talk?” Cully asked quietly. “Murphy?”
“He said-”
“-there’s an example of what I’m talking about. Hasn’t a clue.”
“Well he said they used nail guns to kneecap those two fellas before Christmas, in Skerries.”
Cully shook his head and sighed.
“Let’s change the subject. You’re doing research. So you want background.”
“Right.”
“And you want it real, you say. Gritty. Okay, tonight’s your night. I set something up for you.”
“I’m not getting involved in stuff. I’m just observing.”
“That’s right. Here’s how it goes. Ever wondered how easy it is to get ahold of a gun here in Dublin?”
“Sometimes. A lot of it goes on, they say. ‘Rent a gun’?”
“You’re on the ball, I see. So you think anyone can just do it?”
“I have no idea,” said Fanning.
“You have to be in the know. Obviously. Have someone vouch for you. Like ‘Johnny told me to get in touch.’ Johnny being known to the bloke.”
“Johnny who?”
“That’s not funny. Johnny is the comeback if anything goes sideways. Insurance, in a way.”
“Johnny knows everything then. The go-to.”
“A phone call has been made, a certain person phoned and said there’d be a visitor who wanted something. This is where it gets done. Do you get it?”
“I think so.”
“The goods have been sent out to an address, with a person who will actually do the business, arm’s length, they say, don’t they?”
Fanning nodded.
“Make sense?”
“I suppose,” said Fanning. “Is it an organized thing, or just people doing their own thing?”
“Bit of both.”
“Does it go wrong?”
“I haven’t heard of it. People know people. So unless your client’s going to run away and hide in a hole in the ground for the rest of his life, there’s no point in dirtying the deal.”
“So you’re going to pick up a gun here.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The change in tone was slight enough that Fanning was immediately alert. Cully’s eyes lingered on Fanning before drifting back to the windscreen.
“Have you ever handled a gun before?” he asked.
“No. Props, I have. And a starter pistol once or twice.”
“It’s not the same. When you have a gun in your hand everything is different. Not just different, I mean you don’t forget it. You remember how it felt, the weight of it. Thinking what it can do.”
“Even if you never use it,” said Fanning after a pause.
“Even if you never use it,” said Cully. “If you have to actually use it, then you screwed up.”
“Even as a last resort?”
“Well you shouldn’t be in that situation, should you. Like I said to you, it’s not a film where fellas go about waving guns and shooting everything. Talk to a copper who never has to draw a pistol in his whole career — that’s a smart cop.”
“Have they told you that?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. One told me that.”
“Here in Dublin?”
Cully turned on the ignition and he read the gauges and the clock.
“At least Murphy should have told you to pick your questions. Did he tell you how not to get people’s backs up?”
Fanning said nothing. Again he wondered how this confidence had come to him, how he could calmly carry on here in the car with this man. One part of him knew he was sitting beside a man who inspired fear in the likes of Murphy, but some other part of his mind was given over to some kind of calm audacity.
Cully switched off the ignition.
“Okay then,” he said. “I’m going to make a quick call.”
Fanning noticed that he dialled from memory. He wasn’t waiting long.
“Yep,” he said. “We’re here.”
He listened for a few moments.
“The shop?” he said then. “What kind again?”
Fanning made a smoking gesture. Cully nodded.
“Okay,” he said and hung up.
“Some kind of French cigarettes?” he said to Fanning. “He’ll be in the shop and he’ll hear you asking for the smokes. If they have them, go ahead and buy them. If not, go back outside anyway. He’ll follow you. That’s it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The bloke, the goods,” said Cully and turned the ignition. “That’s how it’s done.”
“You said I was going to do it? Me?”
“What are we doing here? I don’t want the package, do I? It’s not me doing research, is it?”
“Who said anything about me doing stuff like this?”
Cully returned his stare calmy. Fanning caught himself then.
“It’s an exercise,” said Cully. “That’s all. So you know what you’re going to do in your story.”
“You’re not joking are you.”
“No I’m not. Look. I have stuff here for you will make it easier. A minute on, a minute off we call it.”
“I can’t go renting a gun, for Christ’s sake. End up in jail for ten years?”
Cully drew a plastic bag from under the seat.
“This is the real thing,” he said. “Film stuff, professional stuff. Moustache, the comb-in grey — look I even bought fake pimples.”
He dropped it in Fanning’s lap.
“Glasses in the glove compartment here,” he said. “Put on a scarf there from the back seat. Jean jacket there too.”
“What are you doing?” Fanning was able to say.
“Details,” said Cully briskly. “That’s all they are. People are stupid, what they remember. They don’t get height properly, or even a voice, but they end up holding on to stuff that’s useless. ‘He wears glasses.’ ‘He had bad skin.’ ‘He had a moustache.’ ‘He had a Chelsea scarf.’”
“You really think I’m going in there, and doing this?”
Cully turned his head to look at the dashboard, then back to Fanning. He spoke in a quiet voice.
“You’re not up to it.”
“Up to what? Up to insane?”
Cully shrugged.
“How are you going to get it right if you haven’t been there?”
“This has nothing to do with it.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes I’m sure.”
“I don’t know,” said Cully. “I don’t know about that. I see a bloke who’s always on the lookout, who notices things. A bloke with a notebook. Someone who has an eye for detail. I mean look at you, taking notes all the time.”
“Maybe I’ve gone about this all the wrong way,” said Fanning. “Have you as a consultant when I want to get it right on the set. But not to get me involved, actually committing crimes here.”
“Interesting,” Cully said. He took his hand off the gearstick and slowly rubbed his chin. “Very interesting.”
“You’re surprised?”
“Well I’d have thought, I’d have assumed like, that because you got started with Murphy and his, quote, research, that you’d be the fella for this. Not having a hairy, like. That you’d have a bit of bottle. Like you’d have a go at things.”
“This is a different thing, totally different.”
“Too real maybe?”
“That’s not it.”
“How can you make up stuff, believable stuff, if you’ve never stepped across that line?”
“Oh come on. There’s a whole ton of stuff wrapped up in that remark.”
“Like what? And why?”
“It’d take forever, no. Like what’s experience, or authentic. Appropriation of voice — tons of stuff. A mess. I don’t want to get into it.”
“Me neither. But isn’t that what makes a story good? Like people reading it, or watching it will know it’s the real thing?”
“There’s real, and there’s real stupid.”
Cully tapped on the gearshift slowly.
“I thought you were just trying to show me a few things,” Fanning continued. “A few examples. Places. Stories.”
“Oh I don’t do that,” said Cully. “Just facts. That’s it.”
“If I knew more about how you get to where you are, and what you do, that’d be really helpful.”
“There’s nothing worth talking about.”
“How can that be? You just take it for granted, that’s all. Not to me, though.”
“It’s the past. Who cares about the past, I say.”
“But you know the big people here. The families? I saw you at that thing, that fight, the dogs. They seem to know you. Murphy sure does. Loans you his car, yes sir, no sir.”
“Let me say something to you now,” said Cully.
Fanning focused on keeping his breath steady and quiet. He had already felt out the door release.
“This is no big deal,” Cully began. “This business here. Think about it. What could be easier? This bloke in the shop doesn’t know or care who you are. He’s got his guarantees, his insurance. And you won’t even be yourself for this. Slap on the stuff I brought, and go to the shop, follow him out and that’s it. He hands you some skin magazines in a plastic bag, and that’s that.”
Fanning watched an older couple come out of the shop and light up cigarettes, then they began a slow amble down the footpath toward the pub.
“If I don’t do it,” Fanning said, “then that’s it for the research? I have to find someone else I suppose, start all over again?”
Cully stopped tapping on the gearstick.
“Not necessarily,” he said.
“You mean I can say forget it, this thing here, and we just carry on?”
“Not that,” said Cully. “My advice to you would be to leave the entire matter and go find other things to do. Other stories or something.”
The quiet tone jarred with the message.
“You know something,” Fanning said. “I just realized earlier on. I never made any arrangement here, like what kind of fee you expect for this.”
Cully nodded.
“Right,” he said.
“Like what’s your role in this.”
“Role? Like my part?”
“No. I mean why you took over from Murph. We never talked about that.”
“We can get to that later.”
“I don’t know anything about you. A name? Cully, Cullen?”
Cigarette smoke billowed and hung in the damp air.
“Where else could we go?” Fanning said after a moment.
“Back the way we came,” said Cully and reached for the ignition.
“That’s it then?”
“That’s it.”
“Can’t we skip this thing and just go on whatever?”
“That’s not on,” said Cully. “Now if you’d rather walk home from here, just tell me.”
Cully backed the car into the forecourt of a small garage, and turned the BMW back toward Churchtown. Fanning couldn’t detect any anger in him at all.
“Better all around,” Cully murmured. “You do your thing. Nice setup you seem to have there. The whole family thing. Education, all that. Stick with that. That would be my inclination. A lot of people would like to have what you have. You’ve no bother coming up with ideas now.”
“This one I’m working on is pretty good. It’s worth sticking with.”
“It’s a free country, but people need to realize that people don’t like getting their toes stepped on.”
“Have I done that?”
Cully made a noncommittal gesture.
“Look,” he said. “Someone must have told you at some point in your life that it’s not good to piss off people?”
“Tell me who I’m pissing off.”
“There’s stories, and then there’s the real world. They don’t mix.”
“But fiction shows reality better than facts, so-called.”
“You really believe that?”
“As a matter of fact I do. It informs everything I do.”
“And others too,” said Cully. The quickness took Fanning aback a little. Deceptive, he’d have to add in his notes.
“I mean, everyone likes a good story,” Cully went on. “But if I’m hearing you right, this thing of yours be leaving a trail for other people.”
“Others, like…?”
“You’ve got it figured out, I’d say. Bloke like you, your talents?”
Every traffic light was red, it seemed. Cully was humming a tune very low while he waited. In the deserted bus shelter across from where they sat, the ad for gum rolled up to reveal one for Top Ten Talent, the lame new reality show.
His thoughts cleared.
“Pull in here.”
“Crap night for a walk. And a long walk too.”
“No. Turn around, I mean.”
“Come on. It’s a bit late for that one.”
“Really,” said Fanning. “I’m not joking. Really.”