He eats a bowl of cereal. After that he takes a shower. He gets dressed. He puts on more coffee. Then it’s down to work. He has to concentrate. His impulse is to give in here, to let it all overwhelm him – exhaustion, revulsion, confusion – but unless he can clarify certain points, and gather some evidence, he will remain the deranged person he was on the phone a short while ago to Maria.
So.
First. A body found in the Wicklow hills. He locates the story from a few weeks ago. There are reports in four different newspapers on the same day.
Couple out walking their dog.
Remains of a body found in a ditch.
There was some speculation, apparently, about who it might be, but no names were mentioned and no official identification was made. He keeps searching.
These are the only references to the story that he comes across.
He does another search, with a specific date range, and finds the missing person story from three years ago. Thirty-one-year-old Joe Macken, a security guard. He went missing. That’s it. No detail about where he worked. No known criminal associations. He had a wife and baby. A further search using his name turns up very little, just two or three other references in more general stories about people who have disappeared.
Is it him? Have they identified him yet? Presumably when they find a body they cross reference it with their database of missing persons.
DNA, dental records, finger prints, stuff like that.
And what if it is him?
Conway said this guy had seen something or had felt that something wasn’t right at the place where he worked, the Leinster Helicopters maintenance hangar in Kildare. But what specifically? And now that he’s dead – which is presumably why – how is anyone ever going to find out?
On to phase two.
Jimmy picks up his phone again.
He calls the Missing Persons Bureau. He calls Leinster Helicopters. He calls a guy he used to work with who is now a crime correspondent for a local radio station. He calls a few other people. He leaves messages. He even gets a couple of callbacks.
But what comes from all of this is… nothing.
The crime correspondent tells Jimmy in the strictest confidence that although it hasn’t officially been confirmed yet the body that was found in the Wicklow hills a few weeks back is probably that of missing Dolanstown drugs kingpin Derek Flood. The woman he talks to at Leinster Helicopters barely remembers Joe Macken and when she checks with a colleague it turns out that Macken worked for an agency in any case. A further inquiry reveals that about a year after he disappeared Macken’s wife remarried and emigrated to Australia.
It’s as if everything has evaporated.
As for the CCTV footage in the London hotel where Bolger died, what is that, conceivably, going to reveal? And how is Jimmy Gilroy, unemployed journalist, supposed to get his hands on it in the first place?
He looks up from his desk and out across the room.
Let’s hear it everybody for the deranged person.
‘Housekeeping.’
Tom Szymanski turns to face the door, groans.
‘Yeah,’ he says, half shouting it, ‘five minutes.’
He stands up from the bed, flicks the TV off and throws the remote onto the pillow.
There’s less work these last few mornings for housekeeping to do. What is it? He looks around the room. He doesn’t know. This is Friday. The last time he had a hooker up here was Sunday or Monday. The last time he got properly shitfaced, with all the concomitant fallout, beer bottles, ashtrays, pizza boxes, take-out cartons, was… night before last? Or night before that again?
He’s not sure.
Last night he did nothing.
Watched TV, smoked a little weed, looked out the window.
It’s not that he’s getting bored or anything, because if you’re a vet, an experienced one, you don’t really get bored. You don’t have the luxury. There’s no longer any unoccupied territory in your brain where that can happen.
But you have to keep busy all the same – either working, or overloading your senses – because you are fighting something, and if it isn’t boredom, maybe it’s antiboredom. Like antimatter.
Or whatever that shit is.
Dark matter.
Dark boredom.
Fuck.
Can he stop this, please?
Outside, Szymanski walks around for a while – up and down Fifth Ave, between Thirty-fourth and Forty-second. It’s a nice day and there’s something easy about New York. It’s frenetic and ceaseless, but if you don’t bother the place, it won’t bother you.
He stops in at a diner for some breakfast.
He takes a booth by the window and sits down. Beside him, there’s a newspaper. He picks it up. It’s a New York Post. Today’s. Someone must have left it behind.
He lays it out on the table in front of him.
Waitress comes. He orders coffee and -
It’s really all about the coffee.
Coffee and pancakes.
‘You want some OJ with that today?’
No, I want it tomorrow, you stu-
Easy.
He nods. Goes back to the Post. He doesn’t buy newspapers. Doesn’t believe in them. All the shit you’re expected to eat.
Sports coverage maybe, but even that.
He reads a thing about City Councilman Tony Rapello (D-Bronx), who wants to introduce legislation forcing bar and nightclub owners to install a minimum number of security cameras. He reads about a newborn baby that was found abandoned at a subway station in Queens, left in a bag next to a fucking MetroCard machine.
Jesus.
Then, as his pancakes are arriving, he sees it.
Run, Johnny, run.
That motherfucker.
John Rundle is rumoured to be setting up an exploratory committee for a possible presidential run next year…
Szymanski nearly chokes on his coffee.
Accompanying the article there’s a photo of Senator ‘Johnny’ Rundle, complete with prominent hand brace, standing next to some bearded guy outside an unidentified office building. Although Rundle isn’t quoted directly in the article, an aide says that the senator will be attending a reception in the city on Wednesday, at the Blackwood Hotel, and that an announcement may be made then.
The article goes on to explain that the senator sustained a serious injury while on a recent trade delegation to Paris. He was coming to the aid of a motorcyclist, who had collided with a barricade, when his hand was crushed underneath the hapless Parisian’s chopper.
Szymanski laughs at this.
Again.
And this time out loud.
Which gets some looks.
He starts his pancakes, and re-reads the article.
What was it Lutz said the day of the incident? That the senator’s brother owned the mine at Buenke? That they were a ‘big’ family? And that consequently Ashes had picked the wrong day to go crazy?
Szymanski leans forward and studies the photo again.
It’s well known that politicians lie all the time, but it’s not every day you get to catch one out in as blatant and incontrovertible a lie as this.
He pushes his plate aside and drains his coffee.
What day is this? Friday?
He air-signs check to the waitress.
Maybe he’ll hang around the city until Wednesday, see what happens.
See what kind of a day that is.
Walking along Wicklow Street on his way to meet Maria Monaghan, Jimmy’s phone rings.
He pulls it out and checks the incoming number.
‘Phil?’
‘Jimmy.’ Phil Sweeney’s voice is quiet, muted. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m in shock. I’m sure you are, too.’
‘Yeah, I actually can’t believe it. I knew he had financial difficulties, but Jesus, he was always so -’