“Now, we’ll have an agreement, we will, if you don’t mind. No talk of tomorrow.”
“Fine with me,” Jay said, letting himself almost relax. His eyes drank in Sherry’s soft smile across the table as she nodded in mutual assent.
“You really love this town, don’t you, Michael?” Sherry said, having to repeat herself over the din in the pub.
“I do indeed, especially since the world has changed so much here. Less than fifteen years ago, we were the same poor little country of fact and fable, stout of heart and empty of pocket until the dot-coms of the world found us. Now… well, look around you. These days we call ourselves the Celtic Tiger. Actually, we say the Celtic Tiger has arrived. Prosperity’s flowing in, and we’re all pinching ourselves and getting used to the idea of an Ireland that’s economically robust. Imagine that! We’ve actually got people immigrating to Ireland if you can believe it!”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” she said.
“Jay, you told me some of your people are Irish,” Michael said. “What do you think of us so far?”
Jay smiled at their host. “I haven’t had a lot of time to evaluate what I think, Michael, but…”
“But… if you weren’t so worried about John Harris, you’d like us a lot, and you’ll like us better if we let your client go, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Fair enough.” He raised his glass of stout. “Slainte!”
Jay and Sherry both echoed the word and the gesture as Jay watched Michael down half the pint in one easy motion.
“I was told you didn’t drink, Michael,” Jay said, watching Michael’s eyebrows flutter up in surprise before he could extricate his mouth from the glass.
“What? Who on earth told you such a scandalous lie?” he asked, smiling skeptically.
“The solicitor in London who recommended you. Geoffrey Wallace.”
“Oh, Wallace! That was the meeting in Edinburgh. I don’t drink much, Jay, but that was just a windup.”
“A joke?”
“Yes. The bloody Brit was going on about how all Irishmen were drunkards, which is scandalously wrong, and so I thought I’d disappoint him. Apparently it worked.”
“Michael!” someone called across the pub, and Michael Garrity raised his hand and waved heartily, then motioned whoever it was to come over.
“This is great,” Michael said, as the individual began weaving through tables to comply. “This fellow’s Byrne McHenry, and probably the best comedian in Ireland, and the best impressionist. He does a Ronald Reagan that would seriously confuse Nancy.”
McHenry arrived at the table and pumped Michael’s hand as he tossed a few insults at the barrister, who introduced him to Jay and Sherry in turn.
“So, are y’all from Texas?” McHenry said in a surprisingly good George Bush imitation.
“How have you been, Byrne?” Michael asked.
They talked on a personal basis for a few minutes before McHenry looked at his watch. “I’ve got a show in an hour, folks, out at Jury’s, so I’d better go. Nice to meet you.”
He was replaced at tableside by two other barristers coming over to greet Garrity, and a waitress bringing sandwiches and another round of stout.
Jay munched on his sandwich and nursed the second pint as he drifted away from the intense conversation Sherry and Michael were having over Celtic art. The details of the old pub’s interior and the stories of its customers were far more interesting, he thought. The woodwork had probably been in place since the mid-nineteenth century, since there were tell-tale characteristics in the way the cornices had been joined and the care with which the crown molding had been mitered.
The bar itself was not as elaborate or ornate as many he’d seen in the eastern U.S. or Britain, but it had a distinctive character about it, a pride of workmanship, that shone through what had to have been over a century and a half of continuous use.
Jay smiled at the memory of seeing an operating harness shop nearby when they entered. In the back, arrayed on a workbench, had been the same tools of the trade and raw leather that once kept the carriages of Dublin powered and the horses harnessed.
Jay realized he might have heard his name spoken above the din.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you still with us, Jay?” Michael asked, laughing.
Jay smiled and nodded as he slowly began pushing back from the table. “Just thinking, Michael, and worrying that we need to get back to the hotel.”
“Ah, you’ll miss the show,” Michael protested. “And the fireworks are truly spectacular. Every year they get more impressive, though the crowd’s a bit of a pain. Really, lad, the evening’s young.”
“But I’m not, anymore,” Jay said with a smile as he got to his feet, appreciative of the fact that Michael was following without further protest. “I have a lot to do, Michael, and I’m still time-zone challenged.”
“Oh! Of course. I should have thought of that. I apologize.” He scooped up the bill and motioned for the waitress as they headed for the door.
Michael dropped Jay and Sherry at the front door of the hotel forty-five minutes later and the two of them stood in amusement watching the rotund barrister careen off into the night.
“He’s a good fellow,” Jay said.
“You done good finding him, counselor,” Sherry confirmed. “What time did he say to meet him in the morning?”
“Half nine, which I think means nine-thirty, at the Four Courts.”
She laughed. “I appreciate, perhaps more than you know, the fact that you refused Michael’s offer to come pick us up in the morning.”
Jay stopped chuckling long enough to pause at the front desk to ask if anything had been left for him.
The clerk handed over a sealed manila envelope.
“What’s that, Jay?” Sherry asked.
“That,” he replied, scrutinizing the address label, “is Stuart Campbell’s dub of the videotape CIA operative Barry Reynolds is supposed to have made.”
“How do we play it?”
“I rented a VCR from the hotel earlier today and had them send it to my room. You… want to see this?” he asked as he punched the elevator call button.
She nodded.
“If you don’t mind being in my room, that is.”
The elevator opened and Sherry walked in and turned with the most provocative over-the-shoulder look she could manage, using a poor excuse for a German accent. “So, you sink we need a chaperone, Herr Reinhart?”
“Ah, no…I mean…”
“Weren’t your intentions honorable after all?” she teased.
“My intentions?”
“Sure. Said the fly to the spider, what, exactly, do you mean, ‘I’d like to have you for dinner’?”
An embarrassed grin suddenly took over Jay’s face, causing him to blush slightly in the time it had taken to catch on.
“Oh. OH! No, I mean…”
She smiled. “It’s okay, Jay, I’m just joking with you. I’m not trying to get frisky.”
He shook his head in confusion, the possibilities belatedly cascading into his head. “This wasn’t a ploy to get you in bed, Sherry.”
“Darn,” she said with a grin, stopping him cold.
“What?” he managed, again thrown off balance.
“Jay, hello? I’m really just joking around here, not that I… I mean, not that I wouldn’t be…” Suddenly Sherry began blushing, too.
“Okay,” he said, instantly angry with himself for being unable to think of anything smarter to say as the elevator doors opened on the third floor and they moved into the corridor.
“We’re quite a pair, huh?” she said with a laugh as they walked toward his door. “I doubt the Army Signal Corps could unsnarl the hurricane of mixed signals we just gave each other.”
“You’re right,” he chuckled, as he unlocked his door and held it open for her.
Instead she turned to him. “Okay. Let’s restart.” She reached out and took his hand and shook it. “Hi there, handsome legal man. I’m Sherry, and I’d like to go into your room and sit at a discreet distance from you and watch this very businesslike videotape, then leave for my own room before anything familiar or amorous gets started, without reference to whether it would… or not.”