Feels Dave Conway maybe railroaded him into it.
The journalist’s name is Jimmy Gilroy, Dec Gilroy’s son, as it turns out. Of Marino Communications. Dave Conway says he’s perfect for the job – smart and fairly experienced, but not to the extent that he has an ego to fuel, or an agenda to push. The balance is just right and Bolger should have no problems getting him to do what he wants.
Still.
Can you trust these bastards? Because what he’s also reticent about is exposing his inner demons – not to mention his indolence, and indiscipline – to a complete stranger…
For all his notoriety, Bolger considers himself a very private person, even a shy one, and there’s nothing about this situation that he finds reassuring.
He looks into his coffee.
And then glances at the time on one of the displays.
9:47.
He looks over at the drinks cabinet.
What do the Italians call it? Caffè corretto. A corrected coffee.
Leave it to the wops.
A coffee with manners on it.
How civilised can you get?
After a moment’s hesitation he goes over to the cabinet. He opens it and takes out the bottle of Jameson. He unscrews the cap and pours a drop into his mug of coffee. Then a second drop, a slightly extended one, a glug really.
He tastes it. It’s nice. Though the coffee has gone a bit cold.
He knocks the whole thing back in one go.
Start again.
He pours another substantial measure of whiskey into the mug, puts the bottle away and closes the cabinet. He goes into the kitchen and turns on the kettle. There’s some coffee left in the cafetiere. He pours this into the mug. When the water in the kettle boils, he adds some of that into the mix.
He takes a sip.
Hhmm.
It is just as he’s coming away from his second visit to the drinks cabinet a few minutes later that the phone rings.
It’s reception.
‘Mr Bolger, there’s a Mr Gilroy here to see you.’
‘Right,’ Bolger says, passing the mug under his nose, as though it were a fine claret. ‘Send him up.’
The first thing that strikes Jimmy is how small Bolger is. He’s smaller than he looks on TV. He’s also a little heavier, but that could well be a more recent development.
Bolger extends a hand and they shake. Then he waves Jimmy in. ‘Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like something, tea, coffee?’
Jimmy enters a large, expensively furnished living room, lots of chintz, lace and mahogany. A deep-pile carpet. Some antiquey-looking stuff. No books. Above the fireplace there is a huge wall-mounted plasma TV screen.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he says, ‘I’ve already had enough coffee this morning to do me for a week.’
He sits at one end of a long sofa.
Bolger retrieves a mug from the dining table and carefully lowers himself onto a sofa directly opposite the one Jimmy is sitting in.
He crosses his legs and takes a sip from the mug.
‘So,’ he says. ‘Jimmy Gilroy. I knew your father.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, I met him a few times. I did one of those media courses. At Marino Communications. He was pretty good, I have to say.’
Jimmy nods. Most of the guys of Bolger’s vintage would have passed through Marino at one point or another and had at least some dealings with the old man – though they’d all have known Phil Sweeney much better.
Walking up here from Sandymount, Jimmy thought about turning back more than once. If he’d been struck earlier by how tawdry the Susie Monaghan story was, out on Ailesbury Road he couldn’t shake the idea that this story was potentially even worse, a spider’s web of cheap connections and called-in favours, of nods and winks, of underhand deals and impenetrable lies.
With various forms of collateral damage being par for the course.
The hurt he himself has ended up inflicting on Maria, for instance, is something that won’t easily be eradicated, and he’s seeing now that it won’t easily be contained either.
Because he’s looking at Bolger in the light of it.
And hates him already.
Nor will it be long before he starts hating himself too, spinning his own little web of compromises – can’t turn back, must play along, need the money.
‘He was very thorough,’ Bolger is saying. ‘Very intense. He had quite a clinical approach, as I remember.’
‘Well, he came from a clinical background,’ Jimmy says, knowing that that isn’t exactly what Bolger meant. ‘He trained as a psychiatrist.’
Can we please not talk about my old man?
Bolger laughs. ‘A psychiatrist? I’ll tell you what, we could have done with a few more of those back in my day.’ He laughs again. ‘Could do with a few now, am I right?’
Jimmy smiles in response. But is he… is he imagining it, or is there something slightly loose, almost intemperate, in the way Bolger is speaking, as if -
No -
Bolger takes another sip from his mug.
No, Jimmy thinks, it couldn’t be.
But as they continue chatting nothing happens to dispel this impression.
For a while Bolger discusses his ideas about how to shape the book – he has some grandiose notion of dividing it into three volumes – but as he’s doing this Jimmy gets it.
The smell of alcohol.
Whiskey fumes.
They aren’t exactly wafting across the room, but he’s in no doubt about what his nose is telling him. And it just corroborates what he’s seeing and hearing anyway.
If the whole thing wasn’t so alarming, so weird, it’d be hilarious.
Larry Bolger is pissed.
Well, maybe not pissed, but he’s tight. He’s sipping whiskey from a mug.
Jimmy shifts his position on the sofa.
What the hell is he supposed to do now? He can’t work with someone who’s drunk at ten o’clock in the morning, can he?
‘So, I don’t know,’ Bolger is saying, beginning to slur his words a little, ‘anything less than seven or eight hundred pages and it’s just not at the races as far as I’m concerned. Gravitas wise. You need bulk, a good heft to it. What do you think?’
‘Yeah, I agree.’ Jimmy swallows. ‘Hit nine and I think you might be pushing it. Definitely not a thousand. But yeah, seven or eight sounds good.’
Get me the fuck out of here.
Bolger drains the mug, leans his head right back. Then he places the mug on the arm of the sofa.
‘So,’ he says, after a long pause. ‘Jimmy Gilroy. Tell me who Jimmy Gilroy is.’ He flicks his hand back and forth between them. ‘Tell me why this is going to work.’
What Jimmy needs to do here is stay calm. He needs to extricate himself from the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Then he can go and talk to Phil Sweeney, clear things up. Not that that will leave Jimmy in any great position of strength. The Susie Monaghan book he can return to – he hasn’t talked to the editor who commissioned it yet – but as far as Maria is concerned…
‘Ever since the economy tanked,’ he says, feeling deflated all of a sudden, ‘I’ve been working freelance. Picking up bits and pieces here and there.’ At this stage no point in holding back. ‘It hasn’t been great.’
‘What have you worked on recently? Anything I might have seen?’
‘I doubt it. Unless you read trade magazines, stuff aimed at the pharmaceutical and automotive industries.’ He shrugs. ‘Though for the past few weeks I’ve been doing a bit of…’ He pauses. ‘Research.’
Bolger stares at him, waiting for more. ‘Well? Research into what? Jesus, it’s like trying to get blood from a stone here. You’d want to up your game a bit, son. If you want to work with me.’