“Because I am fucking him, like biblically.”
Scott pulled back as if he’d been slapped. Stapes sank most of his pint.
Jericho stood up, ordered Scott,
“Outside, now.”
He slunk after her, torn between raging lust and outright hatred.
On the curb, Jericho produced a pack of Marlboro Red, shook two out, and then handed one to Scott with a slimline Zippo, said,
“Fire us up, love.”
He was shaking from temper, snarled,
“I quit.”
She laughed, asked,
“Smoking or our enterprise? Don’t forget, I have you on video.”
His shoulders sagged and he lit both cigs, offered one. She said,
“Put it in my mouth. You know you want to.”
But a flash of himself shooting Guards jumped into his vision. His battered psyche cooed,
“You’re better than this shite.”
He asked,
“You remember you told me how you and your best bud bonded at that festival and that due to peyote and U2 she called you Jericho?”
She was cautious, not sure if the balance of power was on thin ice, tried a slow,
“Yeah, so?”
He sneered triumphantly, said,
“The Joshua Tree was the album.”
Then, with a sneer, demanded,
“So why didn’t she call you Joshua?”
He wanted to add,
“Yah dumb cunt.”
But, you know, he thought,
Enough already.
Jericho nearly told him about the real reason Em called her Jericho but decided, fuck him.
He was wearing his now customary Barbour coat, one of those so worn that not a trace of wax remained. Much favored by the royals, it suggested that the wearer had good taste to begin with but years of shooting pheasant (or perhaps Guards?) had taken their cultural toll. No question of rewaxing it, as, like, that’s what the poor folk might do.
Jericho suddenly reached out, pulled at the cargo pocket of his right leg, and in an instant grabbed the revolver.
She said, in down-home Brooklynese,
“Yah packing heat, you dumb schmuck.”
She checked the cylinder, said,
“Running a little low there, Rich.”
She pushed the gun into her waistband, said,
“It’s been fun but thirsty work. I could murder a shot.”
She walked rapidly back into the pub, sat, Stapes looking a tad confused. Scott followed, sat in a cloud of unknowing. Stapes said,
“Gee, guys, this little triangle is falling apart. Maybe it’s time to call time.”
Jericho gave them both a long look, then said,
“Let’s get some shots in.”
Stood, walked to the counter, shot Sean/Pavlov in the face, turned to the guys, asked,
“Who’s next?”
Later, in bed with her lover, Jericho relayed the events, said,
“It was so hot. The two dudes were literally shitting their pants.”
Her lover, keen to get in on the action, asked,
“When do I get to play?”
Jericho smiled, said,
“Lemme just fuck with those two, then we can begin our serious game.”
17
“Get mad, get even, and get paid.
(What kind of loser stops At getting even?)”
Jericho accompanied Scott when they shot the fourth Guard, a new recruit on traffic duty.
Jericho left a note.
Said to Scott,
“That’s it for leaving notes, they’re like so lame.”
In the past decade there have been some horrific scandals that rocked the land:
The Magdalen laundries,
The Tuam babies,
The bankers.
But even these horrors were paling against the cervical cancer cover-up.
It blew open when a young woman who’d insisted she was not happy about her smear tests took a High Court action that revealed the HSE had known she was fatally ill for three years and hid it.
Fucking hid it.
When the woman discovered that she had only months to live, it emerged that the tests had been outsourced to a U.S. company and guess who had shares in said company?
The head of the HSE.
An arrogant bollix who, when confronted about possibly hundreds of other women who were fatally ill and had not been told, stonewalled and then announced he was soon to resign with a huge pension, but—
And here’s the but—
He would devote the remainder of his time to investigating how this could have happened.
Then he went on leave, piled-up days that he was due already.
The leader of the government insisted he had full confidence in him, then returned to urging the country to vote yes and legalize abortion.
You tried to digest this utter... disgrace... and wondered
Not why we drank but why we weren’t drinking lights out.
Amy Fadden, whose daughter was murdered and who tried to frame me for the killing of her daughter’s killer, was enjoying cocktails in the Radisson when I caught up with her.
The Radisson was a popular venue on Fridays when they had a special cocktail hour; ladies of a certain hue, i.e., money and fuck all else to do, attended regularly. The barman looked like an escapee from Chippendales,
Hired less for his skill than his ability to fill a near see-through shirt with finesse.
I spotted Amy in, dare I say, high spirits with a table of women who looked like money was not of any pressing concern. I approached the guy, asked for a pint.
He frowned, making his chiseled looks a shade empty, and said in that new mid-Atlantic drawl,
“Perhaps Sir might be more comfortable in a more traditional setting.”
I enjoyed that.
I asked,
“Are you familiar with the traditional puck?”
No.
He asked,
“Is it a cocktail?”
I said,
“It’s a fairly fast heavy wallop to the face.”
He poured the pint, said,
“Twelve euros.”
Like fuck.
I said,
“See Mrs. Fadden?”
“Indeed, a valued addition to our little soirees.”
I said,
“Stick it on her tab.”
I strolled over to the table where the ladies were deep in drink, the table a riot of color, every conceivable brand of cocktail, tiny umbrellas, fruit wedges.
Lurking from every glass, it looked like a Dalí piss-up.
Into the middle of this Technicolor mess I plonked my ugly black pint. It appeared like a shout.
One of the ladies, her eyes a tad the worse for wear, barked,
“Excuse me!”
I nodded at Amy, said,
“How’s it going, Amy?”
The others stared at her but she had nothing, so I said,
“Amy hired me to find who killed her daughter.”
That threw a somber note.
A lady to my left touched my arm, asked,
“And did you?”
I leaned over, took my pint, drank noisily, belched, said,
“Amy decided to frame me for it.”
Now there was utter silence.
All eyes on the bould Amy.
She rallied, said,
“It was all a terrible misunderstanding. Grief had me not knowing what was going on.”
There was a slight shift in orientation as two ladies moved a tiny distance from her. I said,
“But hey, all water under the bridge,