Ken Bruen - The Devil

Pause.

‘Er, Jack, this is not like…er…the best moment.’

Discretion never being me strongest suit and me not being in the best of tempers, I snapped,

‘What? It’s not like you’re getting laid or something.’

Whoops.

He said,

‘Actually…’

Christ, his date with the freaking vegan lawyer. He was scoring ?

I could hear muttered whispering.

Pillow talk?

Like I’d know.

He asked,

‘Where are you?’

I nearly said, Iraq, why else would I call ?

Went with,

‘Me apartment.’

‘OK, I’ll be there in, say, twenty.’

Clicked off.

What? No pithy Zen aphorism?

I slunk down against the wall, the bookcase to my right, my eyes locked on the still-open door.

The black candles threw macabre shadows dancing along the ceiling.

The gun was resting on the floor, a Hail Mary from my hand.

If anyone other than Stewart came calling, he’d better have made peace with his maker. It would be a real bad time for the Mormons to be house calling.

I’d never noticed before, but pinned to the side of the bookcase was:

God is in the most secret corner of your life,

Where no one reaches,

Where a voice which comes and goes mysteriously tells you

What you do not want to hear.

Recall what you would prefer to forget

And

What you do not want to know.

He is that profound abyss of

Your unbelief.

He is in that

Which you feel you have lost,

That you fear

You will not find again,

And which you wish to possess,

Although

You would be ashamed

To admit it

To other people.

Fuck, maybe the Mormons had been after all.

I nipped at the Jay to keep me focus sharp, me rage on fire, thought of Serena May and the golden child she’d been. And almost as outrider to her, Lee Ann Womack’s ‘I Hope You Dance’.

My mind like a cobra, lashing all over the place.

Time moved on. My cocktail of booze and pharmaceuticals had zoned me out. Languidly, I reached to the bookcase. Always wanted to be languid as opposed to langers. Using the Dice Man method of random selection, I’d see what spoke to me.

Seamus Smyth, his second great novel, Red Dock .

What the nuns did to the poor Magdalen girls, the Christian Brothers did to the boys, in the so termed ‘Industrial Schools’. Translate as ‘Concentration Camps’.

With total Church approval.

The opening lines had me spitting iron.

Stewart appeared in the doorway and I came as close to shooting him as I don’t want to dwell upon.

He was wearing a T-shirt with the logo ‘Above the saddle, no rider. Below the saddle, no rider.’

Was he fucking kidding me?

He stared in, disbelief writ neon, muttered in very un-Stewart fashion,

‘Holy shite.’

I said languidly,

‘Don’t be shy, come in. It gets, if not better, a whole lot more interesting.’

He advanced cautiously, as if something was going to bite him.

Well, he was safe enough from the dog, I reckoned.

His eyes remained on my gun till he saw the coffee table, and it looked like he was going to throw up.

Guess Zen didn’t cover that.

I asked,

‘Any thoughts on where a sick bollix would stash the head?’

He managed to compose himself, asked,

‘What the fuck happened?’

In nigh most of the years I’d known him, through

dope-dealer,

convict,

businessman,

Zen pain in the arse,

that’s if anyone ever knew him,

he never swore.

Perhaps he felt no need, but now he was effing and blinding like the rest of the country. Like a priest counting the takings after Sunday Mass.

I laid out the whole gig, even the pictures that hadn’t developed.

He seemed mesmerized by the array of black candles.

When I’d finished, I asked,

‘Is there a Zen message to explain this?’

He said

‘Shit happens.’

We didn’t find the head.

I had a horrible feeling it would turn up in the most appalling manner. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia . Where was Warren Oates when you needed him?

I did find the crumpled napkin that Carl had written on. Smoothed it out and read:

Sarah Goode.

Sarah Osborn.

Tibuta.

Handed it to Stewart, said,

‘Zen this.’

He went to my laptop, began to Google furiously.

My eyes strayed to the bookcase, to Edward Wright’s superb novel, Damnation Falls . I thought,

‘Ed, buddy, you got that bang to rights.’

Stewart was making odd noises, maybe his mantra. Finally he sat back and said,

‘Jack, you’d better take a look at this.’

It showed that on March 1st 1692, those three people were arrested for witchcraft in Salem.

Stewart said,

‘The night we went to Ridge’s, Carl was smoking some kind of cheroots, but later, I saw him outside, smoking cigarettes.’

I said,

‘Fascinating as that is, what the fuck does it have to do with this?’

He gave me that patient look, said,

‘He smoked maybe five cigarettes, one after another, and then crumpled the packet and threw it on the ground. You know I hate litter and I went to pick it up.’

Jesus, would he ever get to the frigging point? I said,

‘Hooray, you get the Good Citizen of the Month award.’

He ignored that, said,

‘Green packet, American…Salem’s.’

‘I’ve no idea what this means.’

He shrugged, said,

‘Except that something seriously weird is happening here.’

‘Yah think?’

While he was Googling so well, I handed him the red card, said,

‘Track this, genius.’

Didn’t take long. He let out a breath, said,

‘It’s an invitation to a black Mass.’

I asked,

‘Any RSVP?’

He closed the laptop, sweat visible on his forehead.

I figured to cut him some slack. Told him he should be getting back to his lady and said,

‘Mary…how was it?’

‘It’s Aine, and it was great till you called.’

I apologized and thanked him for coming over.

He nodded, asked,

‘What will you do now?’

‘Blow out the candles.’

At the door, he cautioned,

‘This is very bad karma, Jack. You should walk – no, run away, right now.’

Running has never been me strong point. The limp didn’t help.

I bundled the carcass in a bin liner, dropped another Xanax, washed it down with a shot of Jay, put my gun in my Garda coat.

I had a concert to attend.

The Devil’s Minions were ending their set when I got to the Roisin Dubh.

The guy who’d acided me was the lead singer, and fucking bad he was.

I knew the barman, pushed a fifty note across to him, said,

‘Seamus, tell the lead singer there’s some hot babe in the alley panting for him.’

He asked,

‘This going to come back on me?’

I let go of the fifty and he took it.

The back of Roisin’s borders the canal. Dark and ominous at that hour.

I hadn’t long to wait.

The side door opened and he emerged, the sweat on his face gleaming in the dim streetlight, his gig or the promise of a blow job lighting him up.

I shot him in both knees, from behind, then caught him as he fell, picked him up and threw him in the canal.

I hefted the bin liner, threw it in too.