Ken Bruen - Purgatory

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” my mind on the Euro Qualifiers, Ireland against Croatia. The country needed this championship so badly. Stewart followed soccer but in that academic way that annoys the shit out of a true believer. He analyzed games, played like you would snooker, never the shot before him but the ones to come, and sure enough, had said,

“It’s Spain I worry about, then Italy.”

I said,

“They’d love you in Croatia.”

“Why?”

“You have us already beaten.”

The ferocious vibe between us had stepped down a notch. It was there, simmering but blunted. He grabbed his jacket, said,

“Always good to chat with you, Jack.”

Did I have to have the last word?

Yeah, said,

“A friend in need is God’s version of The Apprentice .”

The serial number on the bike that C33 found all those years ago?

PT290.

It would be years later when, by a series of odd coincidences, C33 was listening to the tapes of Bob Keppel with Ted Bundy, hours before they fried Bundy. Bundy had been confessing for hours, hoping to buy another reprieve. Down to the wire, he confessed to the death of a little girl. He padded out his confession with saying he’d abandoned her ten-speed yellow bike in Seattle, right after he’d brutally killed her. The bike was never found.

C33 had that moment of transcendence when the letter on the bike matched.

No one could ever say C33 hadn’t researched the condition/malady that drove the Galway set of reprisals. Gacy, Dahmer, DKK, Green River Killer, all had been researched and discarded. C33 was

. . something else,

. . something more.

Believe.

A Dexter with an Irish lilt. In C33’s wallet, behind the American driving licence, was a Gothic-script wedge of John Burroughs.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

C33 had honed the art of reprisal in the States, an equal killer land of opportunity. Get a car and a sound track of Hank Williams and you were good to go; it was rich pickings.

But

. . There is an unknown land full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream, a land where all things

Are perfect

And . . poisonous.

And so Ireland, with a race of people termed, by Louis MacNeice, full of low cunning.

Where better to ply one’s trade and breathe the air that nourished and ultimately betrayed its greatest writer?

Sweet vicious irony.

* * *

Reardon had summoned me to a formal meeting, meaning, he’d stressed, I wear a tie.

Fuck that.

His new official headquarters were at the Docks, in what had been earmarked for luxury apartments until the economy spat on that. Reardon’s people bought it for a song and change, had converted it to state-of-the-art silicon tech efficiency. Modeled on the gig of Microsoft, Google, lots of young nerds, breaking off from their consoles to whirl Frisbees, chug decaffeinated frappés, do lots of high fives.

This would be nausea all of itself but some of these kids were Irish.

Jesus.

Rob Cox, a leading American technology writer, said,

. . Under the hoodies and the moral language lurk rapacious business people, robber barons with the same profit motive that drives all businesses and a ruthlessness that rivals history’s greatest industrial bullies.

I was in Reardon’s office, pennants of the Yankees, so the guy couldn’t be all rotten, a pair of crass crossed hurleys to show he was of the people , a hoops basket that said,

Yo, I’m down homes.

He was dressed in cargo shorts, a T that yelled

Ashes to Ashes

And flip-flops.

Me, in my strangulation tie, sports jacket, Farah creased pants, like some latter-day consigliere to these precocious kids. Reardon was slurping on a slush, I kid thee fucking not at all, and very loudly.

Teeth clenched, I asked,

“The fuck am I wearing a tie and generally coming off like a horse’s arse?”

He flipped the drink container at the basket and to my delight, missed, said,

“Cos, dude, like, you’re, you know, old.”

Crossed my mind to finally say,

“Fuck it.”

Stride out of there, dignity walking point.

But in truth, I don’t really do dignity. Not in any way anyone ever noticed. Something about Reardon rubbed a primeval urge, a desire to wipe that smug smirk in the plush carpets of his state-of-the-art office. He’d reiterated over and over his wish to use me, to employ me in some capacity, so I could swallow some humiliation, asked,

“You want to get to the point or just waffle your hippie bullshite?”

Got him.

In the face, for one brief moment, I saw the empty man, the ego that can never be stroked, the fallow ground that is forever barren and that power sheens but briefly. He rallied.

“We’re developing an app that will wipe the floor with

iPads

iPhones

i. . what the fuck ever. But there is a leak. Someone in this here office, my man, is leaking to either Google or Amazon.”

I laughed, said,

“I love it. You want me to catch a techie, a nerd? I wouldn’t even know how to talk to them, let alone know if they were stealing the family silver.”

He stood up, stretched, looked out at his crew with what could only be pride and loathing, said,

“It’s Skylar or Stan, my two best people. You, my errant private eye, are going to take them for drinks, show them some of unknown Galway, and, in your wily way, tell which of the. .”

He paused, a look of affection, certainly as close to love as a megalomaniac might ever get, then,

“Cunts

. . is betraying me.”

Then he turned to me, his face a frozen mask, said,

“And you’ll do this, not only because I’ll pay you to the point of orgasmic ridicule but, if you don’t, I’ll burn Stewart.”

I was lost, groped for an answer. He smiled, brittle spite leaking from the corners of his mouth, said,

“People of interest

You

The dyke Guard

Stewie

I have shadowed from day one. How I get to own cities and the likes of you can barely rent.”

I was so angry I could spit, asked,

“What did Stewart do?”

He was now twisting a rubber band, doing that irritating thing as if he had gum in his hands, extending and letting it blow. I wanted to kill him with the freaking band. He said,

“Ask him. I mean, you guys, tight, right? No secrets, am I right, dawg?”

I looked out at the office, asked,

“These kids, I bring them out, show them the sights, and they’ll just fess up?”

He shrugged.

“Those two are my token Americans, naive is their genetic code, they’re in a foreign country, you’re like a legend, a Waylon Jennings, not that they ever the fuck heard of him, but you get my drift. Get ’em wasted, they’ll want to impress you.”

I moved to go, stopped, asked,

“Saying it plays like you figure, one of those kids gives it up, what will you do?”

He seemed to be actually considering his answer, then,

“I’ll fucking butcher him.”

On the way out, the girl, looking like an escapee from The Brady Bunch , said to me,

“Mr. Taylor, I’m Skylar, I’m so buzzed.”

A guy appeared alongside, looking like he was maybe twelve. I guessed Stan. He joined the chorus, blew,

“We’ll have us a blast, way cool.”

I thought,

“Fucking shoot me now.”

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