“What?”
“You are removing Tevis from our game.”
When the king is attacked by an enemy piece
We say he is in check.
The king can never stay on
or move to a square
Where he could be captured by an enemy piece.
26
I did a background on Tevis. Didn’t take long.
He was thirty-nine years old, born in Dublin, worked in IT, single. Mostly, I wanted his address.
Got that.
He lived in new apartments off College Road so I dressed like I meant business: the Garda coat, Doc Martens, black 501s, black T-shirt. I rang his doorbell. Answered with a towel in his hand and another covering his body, said,
“I was in the shower. Come in, brew some coffee, or do you want a drink?”
The apartment was completely white, even the furniture — so white you didn’t want to soil it. He said,
“Sit down, chill, and I’ll be ready in a moment.”
I sat near a bookcase. The titles were all tech manuals, not one novel. He came back into the room, dressed in sweats, bare feet, like a guy who hadn’t a care in the world, asked,
“What’s up, dude?”
I said,
“Your psycho buddy came to visit.”
That stopped him for a bit, then,
“And you’re alive to tell the tale.”
Well, there was a cue right off. I said,
“Odd you should say that as he wants me to kill somebody.”
He didn’t seem fazed, asked,
“Anyone I know?”
Something off about his tone. I said,
“You.”
He laughed.
Not the response you’d expect. He said,
“That is priceless.”
I asked,
“What do you mean?”
He gave a bitter smile, said,
“He made me the same offer.”
Took me a moment, then,
“He wants you to...”
Deep breath.
“Kill me?”
He said,
“Guy likes to mind-fuck.”
One way of putting it.
I asked,
“Are you planning to try?”
He laughed, asked,
“Are you?”
I said,
“I saved your life, what do you think?”
He moved to a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich, said,
“Been saving this for a special occasion. This seems to be it.”
Poured healthy measures, handed me one, said,
“To our continued good health.”
I said,
“Indeed.”
He knocked his right back. I paid mine a little more respect. He said,
“Something I want to share with you.”
“Go for it.”
He took a deep breath, said,
“You might recall I told you my partner was killed in a gay bashing?”
I remembered, nodded. He continued,
“We’d been drinking in Jurys bar, bottom of Quay Street.”
I thought,
Who the fuck drinks there?
He said,
“You’re thinking who the hell drinks there.”
No answer required, so he went on,
“We’d downed a fair few when I noticed a bunch of guys giving us dirty looks, like the looks you get from queer bashers.”
He looked at me, said,
“Trust me, you know the hostility vibe.”
I said,
“Hostility I’m very familiar with, gay or otherwise.”
He considered that, said,
“The guys left before us but I knew they’d be waiting. They smelled blood.”
He spat, said,
“The fuckers.”
Then asked,
“Know what I did?”
I told the truth.
“Ran?”
He nearly smiled, said,
“When we came out, John didn’t realize the danger and I didn’t tell him. I told him I was going to grab something from the shop.”
Now he paused.
He looked at his feet, as if there was some salvation there. There wasn’t. He continued.
“John looked baffled, especially as there are few shops down there and even more confused when I began to walk very quickly.”
Another long pause, then,
“Away.”
He was now reliving it and not for the first time, said,
“I glanced back only once and they were already on him, like a pack of wolves.”
A heavy silence hung over us, and finally he could bear it no longer, asked,
“What do you think about that?”
I thought of a lot of things and none of them would do him any good, so I tried,
“We all have shite we wish we could change.”
As lame as it gets.
I finished my drink, said,
“Okay, what about our current situation? Maybe we should pool our scant talents and go after him.”
He gave a shrill sound, said,
“No fucking way.”
“What then?”
He poured another drink, sank it, said,
“I’m going to do what I apparently do best.”
I waited and came the predictable,
“Run.”
Our dreams drench us in sense, and
sense steeps us again in dreams.
Part 4
Dark to Darkest Days Unfolding
27
Trump fired his sixth top guy in so many weeks. The lunatic in North Korea daily upped his threat to fire nuclear missiles at the island of Guam. An ISIS cell led by a seventeen-year-old committed another atrocity, in Barcelona, eighteen killed, hundreds injured.
The Irish women’s rugby team was beaten by France in the World Cup series, and Galway’s hurling team geared up for the All-Ireland final; tickets were like gold dust.
Pat Hickey, the erstwhile head of the Irish Olympic Council, enmeshed in a ticket scandal, briefly jailed in Brazil, was now back in Ireland and declaring his aim to be reelected. You had to kind of whistle at the sheer nerve of the guy. Pictures of him in the papers told you everything you needed to understand about smugness and utter entitlement.
Our new leader, Leo Varadkar, fronted up to the UK about borders in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. The Tories screamed,
“How dare he?”
The country said,
“Way to go, Leo.”
Well, the Church, which was keeping quiet on just about every topic, reckoned a low profile might be wise, especially as one of the pope’s top cardinals in Australia was arrested on child molestation allegations. His face on TV had a lot in common with the one worn by Hickey.
A book of short stories on my table had the title
How to Be a Goth in the Country.
How to resist that?
Netflix had a terrific new series, Ozark.
I revisited
Witnesses
The Divide
Nobel
The kind of TV that had little exposure but was true gold.
Tevis was true to his word and simply disappeared, which left me versus Michael Allen. My previous case I had with malice afterthought immersed in utter darkness, embraced revenge with total focus. If, as they say, for revenge dig two graves, then I nigh Olympic dug.
Resolved after to be done with violence, so far I hadn’t as much as raised a mutilated finger in aggression.
Would it last?
Fuck knew.
When / if Michael Allen came for me, I’d react on the day and, bizarre as it seems, I didn’t lose a whole lot of sleep over the prospect.