Pinned on Jack’s wall was a print of Fabritius’s Goldfinch. It’s a tiny thing.
Tiny bird
Tiny picture
Bare wall.
Most telling is that the tiny bird is chained. That this bird has for centuries represented
Christ on the Cross,
Alone,
Suspended.
The city of Galway was Jack’s very own cross.
Jack had been watching Denis Leary’s series Rescue Me in what they were now terming a viewing splurge. Meaning, you have one mega cluster-fuck of the boxed set back-to-back.
Get this,
Series One through Six in one slam dunk until,
Bleary-eyed,
Dizzy,
Souped
And the wild, crazy world of firefighters seems more real than the wet dreary days of a cold Galway November. Tommy (Denis Leary) could have been Jack,
alcoholic,
screwup,
addict,
violent,
Catholic,
smoker.
Halfway decent shell of a human being. Too, in one way or another, Jack had been putting out fires all his befuddled life.
Starting them, too.
And shards, snippets of the Brooklyn catalog banged around in Jack’s head. More real than any lame conversation he’d attempted in any given Galway pub.
“I’m doing you a solid.”
Yeah.
Save Jack hadn’t, nohow, done anyone “a solid” for a very long time. So, ridding the world of scum like de Burgo might be his very own
White Arrest.
October 28, 2013: Jack heard of the death of Lou Reed at shy;seventy-one on the very day he’d resolved to yet again try a spell of sobriety. He didn’t of course confuse sobriety with sanity. The nondrinking patches he’d endured simply seemed to spotlight his areas of madness in stark relief. Back in the day as a Guard, through subterfuge and bribery, he’d landed the security gig for a Reed concert in Dublin. It was a small venue and Lester Bangs’s description of Reed as a deformed, depraved midget seemed cruelly apt. It was the high or low of Reed’s heroin daze. Dressed in black leather jacket, skintight leather pants, black boots, and the obligatory black shades, he’d mumbled, stuttered, and pretty much failed to deliver a version of “Walk on the Wild Side.” He resembled a crushed tarantula devoid of any sting. Helping Reed limp to his dressing room, sweat washing away the white makeup, Jack had ventured.
“Good gig, Mr. Reed.”
A mumbled response.
Only later, while he was sinking a Jameson and creamy pint in Doheny amp; Nesbitt on Baggot Street, did the mutter crystallize.
It was,
“Ya cunt.”
Jack smiled, whispered,
“Wild side me arse.”
The classic murder victim, if you like,
in today’s terminology:
A single, middle-aged man, socially
marginalized with a serious alcohol dependency.
(Leif G.W. Persson, He Who Kills the Dragon. Your standard piss-head, basically, was how Detective Backstrom described the victim.)
Part II
Owen Daglish was a guard of the old school.
Rough,
Blunt,
Non-PC,
and one hell of a hurler.
My kind of cop. Unlike me, he hadn’t walloped anyone in authority.
Yet.
But it was there, simmering. His superiors knew it, so he was never going to climb the ranks. He didn’t arse-kiss, either, so he was doomed to uniform. He and I had some history and most of it was pretty decent. A big man, he was built on spuds, bacon, Guinness, and aggression. Why we got along.
I met him on Shop Street, his day off, and he said,
“Jack, we need to grab a pint.”
“Sure, how you fixed this evening?”
He glanced furtively around. Fragile as his job prospects were, it definitely wouldn’t help to be seen with me. He grabbed my arm, insisted,
“Now.”
Anyone else, he’d have lost the hand from the elbow. I asked,
“I’m presuming something discreet?”
He nodded.
Close to the docks is one of those rare to rarest places. A pub without bouncers and probably without a license. Under-the-radar business is its specialty. That plus serious drinking. No
Wine spritzers,
Bud Lite,
Karaoke.
We got the pints in, grabbed a shaky table in a shaky corner. No word until damage was done to the black. Owen, the creamy top of the Guinness giving him a white mustache, sighed, said,
“’Tis a bad business.”
No one, not even Jimmy Kimmel, can delay a story like the Irish. The preparation is all. Bad business could mean a multitude:
The government,
The economy,
Priests,
X Factor,
The weather.
I waited.
He said,
“A young girl found murdered a few days back, part-time student I think.”
My radar beeped.
“She was. . gutted. What’s the word?. . eviscerated.”
He looked as if he was going to throw up, rallied, shouted at the bar guy,
“Couple of Jamesons, make them large.”
He wiped his brow, said,
“I tell you, Jack, like yer ownself, I’ve seen some ugly shit. You learn to shut off, like the nine-yard stare. You’re watching but you’re not seeing. Jesus!”
I’m an Irish guy, we don’t do the tactile. Keep your friggin hands to yourself. Whoa, yeah, and your emotions, too. Keep those suckers, as they said in Seinfeld,
“in the vault.”
But I reached over, gently touched his shoulder.
“The last bit, Jack, fuck, the final touch. .”
It didn’t register. He downed the Jay, let that baby weave its wicked magic, shuddered, then,
“A six-inch nail was hammered between her eyes.”
I thought,
. . Nailed!
I spotted an East European guy across the bar. We had business in the past,
Heavy,
Risky
Business.
I indicated a meet with my right hand and he nodded. I said to Owen,
“I need a minute.”
In mid-narrative, he was jolted back to where we actually were, protested,
“But there is something else, Jack.”
There was always something else and never-ever-good.
“One second,”
I said.
In the small smoker’s shed at the back, he was waiting, sucking fiercely on one of the cheap Russian cigarettes currently flooding the city. He shook my hand, said,
“Jack, my friend, you need some merchandise?”
Over the years, that had mainly been muscle and dope.
I made the universal sign of my thumb, trigger hammer coming down. He booted the cigarette, took out his mobile, spat some foreign command in a harsh tone, grimaced, clicked off, asked,
“A Ruger, is OK?”
“Sure.”
“One box of shells?”
“Perfect.”
No money exchanged. That would be later, on delivery.
Got back to Owen. He was literally wringing his hands, went,
“Jesus, times like this, I wish I still smoked. You gave up, didn’t you, Jack?”
For an alarming moment I thought he meant it literally, like on life, but focused, shrugged, said,
“Nope, still smoking.”
He cracked a smile at that, said-quoted a line from Charley Varrick,
“Last of the Independents.”
Even Walter Matthau was dead, and recently the great Elmore Leonard. Deferring the final piece of Owen’s story, I told him how Leonard’s son called around to visit, saw his wife up on the roof clearing the eaves, asked his dad why she was up there. Elmore said,
“Because she can’t write books.”
Enough with the stalling, I pushed,
“You had something else, Owen?”
Owen said,
“The American kid you were friendly with?”
Jesus, how long was he going to stretch it? I grilled,