Ken Bruen - Purgatory

“Yah stupid cow, this is Mr. Westbury’s daughter.”

Sharkey, beside her, pulling her back, then turning to the guy, kicked him in the balls, said,

“You are nicked, mate.”

Back at the station, debriefing done, Ridge was summoned to the superintendent’s office. She was coming off the surge of adrenaline, fear, euphoria, and the realization she could have been killed. Heady stuff as the posh papers would have it. Clancy’s office was packed with cops and a slew of booze lining the desk. A cheer went up as she entered. Clancy moved to her, took her arm, raised it, declared,

“Now this is a Guard!”

She was handed a mug full of Jameson and took a lethal swipe for her nerves. Her eyes watered. Clancy was beaming, his eyes bright with cunning and glee. He said,

“Not only have we brought down a major drug gang but the shotgun murders are solved.

And”

Long pause

“We get to nail the daughter of that fucking showboat Westbury. Girl, you have made us fucking golden.”

She wanted to go back at least two sentences, and go,

“What?”

. . The shotgun murders. But the gun was never found. Was he saying Westbury’s daughter killed Stewart?

. . It didn’t add.

No.

No way.

Kelly had tried to replicate the meal as laid out in Joyce’s “The Dead.”

Like this.

Red and yellow jelly

Floury spuds

Figs

And

Christmas cake.

Some guy had played The Lass of Aughrim, on, she tried to recall, a harpsichord? Like where the fuck would she get one of those babes. So?

So she hummed it.

The meal had taken place at

15 Usher’s Island

in a house described as gaunt.

Well, fucking gaunt she could do. Ask her ex-husbands. She was doing Joyce as she was just a tad peeved at her man Oscar.

Because.

Taylor now knew what C33 meant and worse, who used it. Looked at the time: seven after seven in the evening. Said aloud,

“Presto.”

And poured a large Seven and Seven, because she could, and added,

“Because I’m nuts.”

She knew that beyond a shadow, had known for years and had no problem with that. In fact, if she was pissed about anything, it was that nuts was too simplistic. Bundy had told a shrink,

“I’m something new.”

As she was.

The books didn’t cover her and, God knows, she’d searched, out of a fine sense of interest. When you had a father who was seriously bat shit and he, a certifiable lunatic, was afraid of her, well, come on, you’ve got to be a wee bit curious. By one of those odd quirks, her old man had been confined in the hospital they held Robert Lowell in. It’s not the ideal start to a literary obsession but, hey, it’s far more interesting than your Ivy League gig. Lowell, heavily sedated, had seen something off in this child, she of the golden locks, enigmatic and fixed smile, whispered to her,

“Study Wilde.”

For years, she thought, maybe he’d meant, simply,

“Wild.”

As in free and unfettered. But then it was too late. Some mental osmosis had occurred and, as this concurred with her father’s suicide, the die was cast. She’d found her father swinging gently from the oak tree in the garden her mother had so industriously tended. At his feet was The Collected Oscar Wilde .

Her inheritance?

Certainly her compass.

Was the child freaked? Depends on how you term that.

She most certainly stood for a long time, staring up at him, Daddy leaking from her lips, over and over. Not in a hysterical fashion, as in frenzied howling, but more a detached “Look what the cat brung in.”

Kind of dawning, as opposed to “Look what the damn cat strung up!”

And began in her mind, over and over, like a demented sound track,

. . You are mad. What have I to do with her intrigues with you? Let her remain your mistress. You are well suited to each other. She, corrupt and shameful-you, false as a friend, treacherous as an enemy . .

When her mother finally appeared, grabbing the child, screaming,

“Oh, sweet Lord Alabama, what are you muttering, darling?” (her being a child of that there southern state),

Kelly, cold as ice, said,

“ An Ideal Husband . .”

Her mother looking at her in fear and confusion and Kelly scolded her,

“One does not mutter Wilde, Mother; one intones.”

Her father had worked for a large legal firm and was one of the senior partners. Her mother swore the partners drove her husband to suicide to take the rap on serious malpractice allegations. It became a refrain of hers.

“The guilty go free, la di dah.”

Followed by the stern command,

“Kelly, make sure someone pays, sometime.”

Well, she was trying, kind of.

Kelly took a long time to learn how to disguise who she was. First, she had to find out that it was not considered normal to carry books by Wilde instead of dolls. The fractured connection in her head told her,

“Dad keeps dancing with Wilde.”

First time she ran this by Mummy, the consternation,

“What on earth are you muttering?”

Made those early mistakes of trying to explain, as in,

“Daddy was dancing on the rope, he told me that Wilde mattered.”

So began the rounds of shrinks-good ones, too. Kelly began to adapt quickly to what these professionals regarded as, if not normal, at least tolerable behavior. Later, when she read the books, and the classical signs, like neighborhood pets disappearing, she knew,

“Leave the fucking pets be.”

True, some people disappeared.

Honing her act, Kelly morphed into the all-American girl-blond, athletic, bouncy, vacant, cloned. On the surface. Only at home did she let her own self out to play.

Caught, once, by Mummy.

Debbi, yes, with the “i,” was in the pool, Kelly on the edge, hair dryer poised and Mummy grabbing her. Kelly, ice even then, warning,

“Careful, Mummy, what if the dryer fell in the pool?”

That evening, they had the talk. Mummy with a dry martini, clasped Kelly with The Duchess of Padua. A pitcher of martinis was close at hand. Mummy said,

“I know who you are.”

She didn’t.

Kelly said,

“Do tell, Mamma .”

She went into a long spin of psychosis, personality disorder, malignant spasms, all the while refilling her glass.

Her mother, no stranger to therapy her own self, had learned the melody without ever knowing the lyrics. Proving that, if knowledge, a little, is a dangerous thing, then psychiatric data are deadly. She even, as a coup de grâce, delivered,

“I’ve come to the conclusion you have a narcissistic personality.”

Kelly was delighted, said,

“Oh, that is perfect. You, the ultimate in vanity, dare to even utter such. .

Such. .

She truly had to reach for a word, settled for

“Horseshit.”

Then without missing a beat, intoned,

. . And if he does not drink it/

Why, then they will kill him.

Smiled beatifically at her mother, said,

“From The Duchess of Padua .”

Her mother stared at her drink in dawning horror, asked,

“Did. . did you put something in my glass?”

Kelly, beatific smile, said,

“Of course. .”

A beat.