Jimmy is about to respond to this when the bar girl re-appears. She lays the two drinks down and hands Jimmy the bill.
Thirty-eight euro. For fuck’s sake.
He takes out his wallet, hands over a fifty and waits for the change. He doesn’t look at the bar girl. When she’s gone, he lifts his glass and takes a sip from it.
Lynch does the same.
Then Jimmy says, ‘What about Ted Walker?’
‘No, Ted organised the whole thing, him and Niall. They were showing off, trying to impress Ben Schnitz. It was all a bit… it was a scene. If you catch my drift.’
Jimmy nods along. Then something occurs to him.
‘What about the other guy? The Italian? Gianni something. Bon… Bonacci?’
Lynch raises his eyebrows and stares into space for a while, thinking. ‘Yeah,’ he says eventually. ‘Right, the Italian guy. I forgot about him.’
‘Was he…?’
‘No, he was… come to think of it, he was with Susie, but not… he wasn’t with her, I mean, as such, no one thought that, because he was a weedy little guy, short, with glasses. But you know that was typical Susie as well, she was always picking up strays and oddballs. She was a tease. She’d play with them for a while and then send them packing, usually with an irreversible hard-on and a broken heart for their troubles.’
‘So he wasn’t with her, strictly speaking, and he wasn’t with the paragliding contingent?’
Lynch considers this. ‘No.’
‘Then what do you -’
‘I don’t know. He wasn’t even an executive. He was some kind of a UN inspector or something.’
‘Right.’
Lynch puts his glass down and stands up. ‘I’m going to the john,’ he mutters.
Jimmy watches him as he wanders off. None of this is clear. But at the same time, in a way, it’s crystal clear.
Because it’s the same thing he’s heard over and over again. Directly or indirectly.
This isn’t about Susie Monaghan.
Which means it’s about someone else.
And it seems obvious to Jimmy now – without any evidence at all – that that someone else is Gianni Bonacci.
Clark Rundle stands under the sidewalk canopy and watches the evening traffic drift by on Park. This is another of those times when he wishes he still smoked. The doorman is only a few feet behind him and probably has a pack of butts in his coat pocket, or inside somewhere, behind his little desk or in his cubbyhole. But what’s Rundle going to do here? Turn and ask the guy, maybe make a face, all pally and conspiratorial, wait for the pack to be produced… then someone comes along and he gets caught bumming a cigarette off of Jimmy Vaughan’s doorman?
Nice.
Besides, it’s more than a smoke he needs.
More than an afternoon with Nora. More than a week in the Bahamas.
He rubs his hands together in the cold.
It’s…
A moment later, Don Ribcoff’s limo pulls up at the kerb. The doorman appears from behind Rundle, has it covered. Ribcoff emerges from the back of the car looking solemn, anxious even.
‘Clark.’
‘Don.’
They spoke briefly on the phone a little earlier. Ribcoff explained about the call he got from Dave Conway in Dublin and Rundle explained about his sit-down with J.J.
A follow-up with the old man seemed inevitable.
But when Rundle got on to him Vaughan said he was busy, said he had some people around and could maybe squeeze out ten minutes if they showed up before seven thirty. Rundle felt like saying he was busy too, but that seeing as how they were looking at a potential catastrophe here – a total and utter meltdown, in fact – he for one didn’t have a problem cancelling his fucking dinner plans.
What he said was, OK, whatever, they’d see him at his place at seven twenty.
Rundle and Ribcoff go through the lobby now and take the private elevator up to Vaughan’s apartment. The interior of the elevator cab is something to behold, with its wood panelling, its brass insets, its chandelier and mirrors, its little red velvet bench. Rundle compares it to the stainless steel panels and tubular handrails of his own elevator cab in the Celestial. If that one is maybe a bit too spare and minimalist, a bit too late modern, Vaughan’s one is an outrageous throwback to the Gilded Age.
Ribcoff looks around and makes a low whistling sound.
‘You think this is bad,’ Rundle says, ‘wait till you see the actual apartment.’
They are greeted in the entry foyer by one of Vaughan’s staff and then ushered into the library. In this high-ceilinged, mahogany-panelled room the two men wait – and for the best part of their allotted ten minutes. When Vaughan eventually appears, wearing a tuxedo and smoking a cigar, he seems a little preoccupied. He makes no attempt at small talk, nor does he ask them to sit down or offer them anything to drink.
‘So?’
Rundle begins. He explains that J.J. bottled it and came back from Congo with nothing. The Buenke incident has been contained, he says, but they currently have no idea what Kimbela’s position is vis-à-vis them, vis-à-vis the Chinese, nothing. On top of which, he goes on, there appears to be some sort of a situation brewing over in Dublin.
Vaughan furrows his brow.
Ribcoff takes a step forward. ‘I got a call this afternoon,’ he says. ‘From Dave Conway. Remember him?’
Vaughan nods.
‘Well, he told me that Larry Bolger has been hitting the bottle, running his mouth off. Seems he spoke to some journalist.’
Vaughan’s reaction to this is somewhat muted.
After a long silence, Rundle says, ‘You’re not surprised by that, Jimmy?’
‘No, I’m not.’ The old man gives him a cryptic look and then takes a puff from his cigar. ‘The truth is, Larry Bolger has been running his mouth off to me. Leaving voice messages. It’s actually getting out of hand. It’s as close now to blackmail as makes no difference.’
Rundle’s heart sinks. ‘Jesus H. Christ.’
Ribcoff exhales audibly, but doesn’t say anything.
Vaughan paces back and forth across the room, taking occasional puffs from his cigar.
Rundle takes a step backwards and leans on the end of the red leather couch behind him. What he actually does need, thinking about it, is a week in the Bahamas with Nora.
And a carton of Lucky Strikes.
Which’d just be for openers.
‘Don,’ Vaughan says eventually. ‘We’ve got to do something about this.’
Ribcoff nods in acknowledgement.
Vaughan points his cigar at him. ‘Come to my office first thing in the morning. We can talk about it then.’ He pauses. ‘And Clark?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Seems to me that you need to take a trip.’
Rundle’s stomach does a little somersault.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You need to take a trip,’ Vaughan repeats. ‘To the Congo. Democratic Republic of. See our friend. Get some answers.’ He studies the glowing ash at the tip of his cigar. ‘Because it’s clear that your idiot of a brother wasn’t up to the job.’ He lets that hang in the air for a moment. ‘Though presumably you will be.’ He looks up, meets Rundle’s hard stare. ‘Won’t you?’
6
‘PRONTO.’
Holding up the notebook, Jimmy Gilroy braces himself.
‘Er… posso parlare con la Signora Bonacci, per favore?’
‘Non e a casa addesso.’
What?
‘Er -’
‘Chi parla?’
Shit.
Panic.
That didn’t take long.