Carefully.
I put on the obligatory black jacket, white shirt, tie (loosely, to suggest mellow or couldn’t give a fuck), black jeans, Docs. The Docs had steel toe caps because who knows? Checked in the mirror, saw a battered undertaker’s assistant, the guy you keep in the background.
Took a deep breath, a Xanax, and good to go.
We were meeting in the Bijou, a quasi-French place run by Vietnamese. Such was the mix of Galway today.
In the foyer of the restaurant, Kiki was waiting. She was looking gorgeous. Fuck it.
She said,
“My man is parking the car, we’ll go ahead to the table.”
My man!
Stung.
I asked,
“Where is Gretchen?”
Waited a beat, added,
“My daughter?”
She smiled briefly, asked,
“You are going to behave, right, Jack?”
I smiled, said,
“Of course.”
We were at the table. I’d ordered a large Jay, Kiki an orange juice, when her face lit up. She said,
“Here he comes.”
I turned,
Michael Allen was striding toward us.
I was utterly dumbfounded.
The bollix was smiling, hand outstretched, said,
“I feel I know you already, Jack.”
Pause.
“May I call you Jack?”
He leaned over, gave Kiki a lingering kiss, said,
“You minx, you never said your ex” — leaned on that — “was one fine-looking dude. Should I be a wee bit jealous?”
His accent was now that polished mid-Atlantic shite that has spread like a disease. Kiki was behaving downright coquettish.
We sat, or rather they did, and I sort of collapsed into my chair. The waiter arrived, said,
“Good evening, folks. I’m Fanon and I’m going to be your server so anything you need, just holler. Now, how about drinks?”
They each ordered juice. I said,
“Double Jameson.”
Allen said,
“We don’t drink.”
Kiki babbled on about the ambience until the drinks came, then Allen raised his juice, proposed,
“A toast to fine company.”
And fucking winked at me.
They ordered some vegan shite. I had a sirloin, adding,
“Lots of heavy gravy.”
Kiki excused herself to go, and it mortifies me to remember, to
“The little girls’ room.”
Soon as she left Allen reached over, grabbed my glass, sank the lot, belched, said,
“Christ, I needed that.”
I asked,
“Won’t you reek of booze?”
He looked at me as if I was completely clueless.
“Dude,”
he said.
“The chick is in love, all she smells is them there roses.”
So many words there to warrant a puck in the mouth.
...dude, chick...
I seethed.
He said, dude to dude,
“Tell you, bro, I got to sneak out late evenings, after some serious fucking, grab me some carbs, like double cheeseburger, side of chili fries.”
Then he looked right at me, asked,
“Tell me, Jack, that blow job she does, you teach her that?”
I was reaching for him when Kiki returned, all aglow, asked,
“You guys getting to know each other?”
I said,
“You bet.”
Somehow the horrendous meal ended and I reached for the bill. Allen grabbed it, said,
“Your money’s no good with this family. Am I right, sweetheart?”
She preened as he pinched her bum.
Outside, Kiki was getting into a cab and Allen hung back, whispered,
“Any idea you have of, how should I say, spilling the beans, I’ll shoot the cunt of a daughter in the face.”
Then he was in the cab, already fondling Kiki.
There is only one good plot. When two men
want to sleep with the same woman.
31
I was lost, riddled with fear, anxiety, paranoia.
Edward Lear’s biographer described him as
A man who wandered hopefully
Without hope
In a desperate refusal to despair.
What in God’s name was I doing reading Lear?
Shows the fragmented state of my being, that in a mad moment I thought,
Gretchen might enjoy Edward Lear.
I mean, fuck it. I had barely spoken two words to my daughter and here I was thinking what I might read to her. Utter insanity. At least I recognized it.
Michael Allen had my family literally as hostages and I felt powerless to act.
Pathetic.
After the wholesale violence of my previous case, I had sworn to avoid violence but now it not only beckoned but had become obligatory.
Like Chandler suggested, when you’re stuck, I needed
A man to come through the window with a gun.
What I got was Tevis.
He came back.
Was waiting outside my apartment, looking tanned and healthy. I asked,
“Couldn’t stay away?”
He sighed, said,
“He found me.”
I didn’t need to ask who.
I did ask,
“So why are you still alive?”
He hesitated, then,
“I saw him first.”
Wasn’t entirely sure that was the whole story. He said,
“I was in Cork.”
I echoed,
“Cork? Who hides out in Cork?”
He smiled, said,
“Exactly.”
His whole demeanor was off. I asked,
“Your tan, in Cork?”
He said,
“See, thing is, Jack, not sure I fully trust you now.”
I was more curious than angry, asked,
“So why are you in my place?”
He thought about that, then,
“Harley asked me to contact you.”
The name struck a vague chord but evaded me. I asked,
“Who is Harley?”
“The filmmaker. He had Allen on film actually killing the pedophile.”
“Had? The fuck use is had?”
Tevis took a deep breath as if patience was necessary, said,
“He felt that if we joined forces we could finally rid all of us of Allen.”
I shook my head, said,
“Tell him to bring his story to the Guards.”
Got the look. He said,
“We’re fucked if you don’t help us.”
I thought about that, then,
“Tell you what. I’ll meet you guys tomorrow, see what Harley says.”
If I only knew, they wouldn’t be there.
In less than twelve hours they would both be dead.
I tried to ring Kiki. She had given me her mobile number. The call was answered
By
Michael Allen.
Fuck.
I asked, with more than a spread of rage,
“The fuck are you doing answering her phone?”
He made a sound I thought existed only in novels of soft porn.
“Tut-tut. Language, fella.”
I tried to rein in the anger, asked,
“Can you put her on the phone?”
Long pause, then,
“Anything you wish to say to her, say to me, we share...”
Beat.
“Everything.”
I wanted to hurl the phone across the room, asked,
“Just how far do you think you can goad me?”
I heard a slight snigger, then,
“I need to ask you a biggie, my man.”
“What?”