Caught Stealing, Charlie Huston
A Lesson in Violence, Jordan Harper
And an old favorite from way back in 1996,
My Ride with Gus by Charles Carillo.
Such idle musings floating in my head as I side-minded the fact of having to procure a rifle and got to my apartment. There was a black envelope pinned to my door.
Black!
Now that was not going to be glad tidings.
Got inside, poured a large Jay, and carefully opened the envelope, a gold-embossed card with Gothic letters
Like this:
“Await
the
Dead
of
Jericho.”
I tossed it aside, figuring I’d worry about it later.
The radio was on with the terrific Marc Roberts. He played
Don Stiffe,
Followed by as near perfect a pop song as I’ve heard, titled
“Perfect”
By Ed Sheeran.
I looked out at the bay as the song played softly behind me.
Such longing for I don’t know what suffused every part of my being.
Stir of echoes.
Back in my fledgling days as an investigator, I really had no idea what I was doing.
I achieved a limited amount of success due mainly to luck, most of it bad, and sheer chance. I became friends with a Ban Garda, Ni Iomaire. To her constant annoyance, I always used the English form of her name.
Ridge.
She was a strong gutsy lady. You needed all of that to be a woman in the Guards, not to mention gay. Would that she had lived to see a female Garda superintendent. For a few years, we had a kind of embittered friendship. She did the friend bit and I supplied the bitterness.
In spades.
The third spoke in our unlikely alliance was a former drug dealer turned Zen master who made a living as a property developer. He was much closer to Ridge than I was and they both tried to, if not stop, at least regulate my drinking.
They failed.
Stewart was the first to die.
Shotgun blast to the face.
That was the beginning of the ruin of my relationship with Ridge. She reckoned I was to blame for Stewart’s death and she might well have been correct but fuck if I was going to fess up. I had a list of deaths at my door as long as a Vatican rosary.
Then Ridge got killed.
Very nearly finished me off. I found myself at the end of Nimmo’s Pier, mulling what the American cops describe as
“Eating my gun.”
Ridge at one low point in her personal life and career decided that a straight marriage might if not improve at least enhance both.
And what a beau she chose.
Anthony Hyphen Hemple.
I put the hyphen in there for badness.
His actual name was
Anthony Bradford-Hemple.
He was the essence of Anglo-Irish, had inherited a seat in the House of Lords,
And I think actually sat there on two occasions.
Two!
Count ’em.
Needless to say, I gave Ridge a ferocious time about all of this, calling her Lady Ridge. Fuck, she hated that and, in time, of course, hated me. He liked to play to the image:
Old cords, very very battered Barbour wax jacket, unkempt hair, a cloth cap, and tweeds of everything else, even his undies I’d say.
He loved the hunt.
Vicious fuckers on horseback chasing a poor fox.
His favorite tipple was the old G and T, Gordon’s by divine right.
He’d said,
“When one is going to hounds, one fortifies with port and brandy.”
Despite the above, I didn’t mind him.
How Irish is that?
I tear him to shreds (much like his lot did the fox) then say I quite liked him.
He was bemused by me, utterly.
Called me
“A surprisingly well-read peasant.”
For a wedding present I’d given him the collected works of Siegfried Sassoon.
Including,
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.
The one time I’d been to his manor — and I mean that in the literal sense,
Manor—
Like those of so many of the former landlords, the old house was a crumbling ruin with more ruins than people. And cold.
Perishing.
The Anglo-Irish have a thing about heating, probably due to rising costs but they seem to believe one big motherfucking log and turf fire is sufficient.
Anthony had inspected me at the door and I said,
“No butler?”
He ran with it as opposed to against me, quipped,
“When we have the poor folk over, we give the staff the night off.”
Ridge had the grace to cringe.
I’d given her the full James Lee Burke set, signed first editions.
It was a time when I’d been dipping her dainty foot in the world of mystery fiction. JLB was her favorite.
Anthony took my all-weather Garda coat, sniffed at it, asked,
“Isn’t this government issue?”
I gave him the look, said,
“Don’t tell your wife, she’s one of them.”
He gave me a shocked look, thinking I meant the verboten lesbian.
Whisper.
I quickly added,
“One of the Guards.”
Relief flooded his face, spattered with rosacea. He offered,
“Bushmills okay?”
My turn to quip.
“That’s the Protestant one, give us a Jay.”
I’d made a small effort, put on a Rotary tie I’d stolen from a drunk, and Anthony, surprised, asked,
“You’re a Rotarian?”
Disbelief leaked all over his tone. I said,
“’Twas that or the Masons.”
He let that slide, raised his glass, toasted,
“Tootle pip.”
At least I think that was it, or in the neighborhood. He asked,
“You shoot?”
Like seriously?
I said,
“Only when the hurley isn’t enough.”
He grimaced more than smiled, said,
“Let me show you the gun cabinet.”
And cabinet it was.
Stocked with enough to quell a minor peasant revolt. He picked one out, said,
“This is a beauty.”
It was.
Made by Winchester, with the old bolt action. You pull that back as the bullet slides into the breech, the bolt action making a satisfying sound like the comforting clunk of your favorite old Zippo.
It smelled of oil and much usage.
I liked it a lot.
He said,
“You can fit a scope but I think that is a tad unfair to the game.”
There is no answer to this that even approaches civility so I made the indifferent,
“Uh-huh.”
I remember clearly holding the rifle and that freakish sense of power it falsely imparts. No wonder they talk of
“Gun nuts.”
Anthony was impressed, said,
“Looks good on you, my man.”
I reluctantly handed it back. He said,
“We must spend a day shooting pheasant.”
Later, I was outside, staring at the hill opposite the house. Ridge joined me, bummed a cig, asked,
“Don’t tell Anthony.”
As I lit her up, I asked,
“He’d disapprove?”
I should have paid more heed to her answer. She said,
“He disapproves of me.”
She pointed at the hill, said,
“There’s a fairy mound on that.”
I near sneered, went,
“You believe in fairies?”
Crushing her cig underfoot, she snarled,
“I am a fucking fairy.”
They were last seen westbound,