Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

It can only be Scotchy telling me to meet him at the airport. We’re flying down to Florida for a funeral. Darkey’s there already, which is why we’ve got this night together. Our only night together.

Her breathing becomes more shallow. Her eyelids flutter.

“What’s that noise?” she mumbles.

“Nothing, go back to sleep.”

She yawns.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Watching you.”

“Get the phone, Michael. It might be important.”

“It’s never important.”

“Get the phone,” she insists.

“It’s Scotchy, it’s nothing,” I tell her.

She shakes her head in disgust. Out of all the boys in Darkey’s crew, it’s Scotchy she hates the most. Something about that feral weasel-faced wee hood. He’s never made a pass at her, nothing like that, he wouldn’t dare cross Darkey, it’s more his unfathomable unpleasant mind and that sleekit, native cunning. You could tell that under all that bigmouthed bluster there was something darker going on. Put the wind up anybody.

The phone gets louder.

“Just get it. Could be Andy,” she says.

“Ok,” I say. I take her hand, kiss it, then stand. I slide off the mattress, open the bedroom door.

Suddenly she wakes fully, looks at me with those deep green eyes. I wait to see if she’s going to say anything but she doesn’t. I walk into the living room. The phone’s fallen under the sofa. I move a roach trap, grab it.

“No. Wait. Don’t get it,” she says urgently, almost in panic. “Don’t get it. Don’t get it. You’re right, let it go. Come here instead.”

But it’s too late. I’ve already picked up the handset and heard Scotchy’s nasal intake of breath before he speaks.

“Hello.”

“LaGuardia, one hour, Bruce,” Scotchy says. “Hurry up.”

“My name’s not Bruce,” I tell him for the thousandth time.

“One hour. Hurry up.”

I put the phone down. Bridget sighs. Yes, it’s too late…

Lima.

But there was no ocean. And the sky was the wrong color. Eggshell rather than deep blue.

What was going on?

Ask Hector, he’ll tell me.

“Hector. Hector.”

Uhhh.

Where was my cell phone? I tried to sit, but an awful scrabbling pain took my breath away. I was in a car. A street sign said “Holles Street Maternity Next Left.”

Holles Street, Dublin?

It all came back. Hector was toast. I’d shot him in the head. I’d thrown an assassin out the window and I’d killed his partner with an upside-down.22 shot in his throat.

A woman in a blue dress was staring at me.

“Are you all right, love?” she asked.

I got out of the car. Out, into the morning with no idea where I was going, or what in the name of God I was going to do next. Sunlight. Cirrus clouds. Nothing Irish about the day, but I knew it was definitely Dublin because the Liffey was a presence beyond the gray forms of the buildings. A smell off it that reminded me of gasoline. I couldn’t see it, but I could sense it was there, sluggish, like some dead thing on what was already a deadly morning. The lovely Liffey moving along effluent into the tidal basin, coating the pylons, bridges, and the wee blind alleys on the water’s edge. And there definitely was a stink from off it. If not petrol, diesel. Enough that I could tell. Dublin. Aye. That’s right.

There were stars in front of my eyes, as if my retina had become detached. I blinked for half a minute and the stars vanished.

I walked away from the car.

Only just in time.

Two men pulled up in a Ford Sierra, got out, and headed for the Mercedes.

Your average eejit might have thought, Ah, couple of car thieves.

But not me. Their suits were crumpled and dirty. Even from here they stank of fags and coffee. What man, who wore a suit, got this dirty this early?

Bloody cops or I’m a Chinaman.

“Morning,” one of them shouted across the street to me, with no love at all in the greeting and sleekit peeler eyes.

I nodded in reply and then thought better of it.

“Lavly day, innit?” I said in estuary English.

In about five minutes they’d have a warrant out for me. Why not have them thinking I was a Cockney?

Backpack was still in there, but my IDs and cash were in my jacket. Screw it. I hobbled down the street, and when I was out of sight I ran as best as I could with a duct-tape bandage, sore foot, artificial foot, jetlag, painkillers, possible detached retina, sleeping pill, and no idea where I was going.

I was wrong about the five minutes.

It couldn’t have been more than two.

“Hey, you,” the cops yelled. “Stop.”

I had about a couple of hundred yards on them. Even with my handicaps, if I couldn’t lose them in rush hour in a busy city like Dublin I deserved to be bloody caught.

I turned a corner and found that I was at Trinity College.

Excellent.

I ran in through the gates and chucked myself into a seething mass of students, visitors, and other extras in my little scene.

Total chaos.

Even more chaos than usual, which meant that a big party of tourists had just arrived, or that it was exam time, or graduation.

“What’s the craic?” I asked a forlorn girl who was looking everywhere for her friends.

“It’s the parade,” she said and pointed to a corner of the quad where a big disorganized line had formed and was filing out into the street. I saw then that it was part of the Bloom thing. The kids were all dressed in Edwardian gear, some were riding old-fashioned bicycles, and there was even a horse-drawn omnibus pulling drunken members of a rugby team.

As good a place as any.

I joined the procession just as the two peels arrived at the college gates. One of them still had his cigarette in his mouth. Jesus, didn’t they want to catch me? Let go your fag, you cheap Mick flatfoot.

They were both around twenty years older than me. Just about the right age to be thoroughly beaten down by the system, cynical and fed up. Maybe a couple of younger coppers would have stopped everyone from leaving Trinity, called in assistance, created a huge palaver. Not these characters. The parade wove its way past them without either lifting a finger. But even so, no point being a bloody fool about it. I snatched the flat cap off one kid’s head, threaded my way through the crowd, tripped another kid, and ripped the Edwardian jacket off his back as he fell down.

“Jesus,” he said, but whether that was followed by anything else, I don’t know because I had taken three steps to the side and four back. I pulled the Edwardian coat over my leather jacket, put on the flat cap.

I followed the kids out of Trinity and into the road.

Nice.

Now I was in a parade of a couple of hundred similarly dressed and high-spirited students heading for O’Connell Street. Like to see them find me now.

We marched merrily away from Trinity and turned north.

I wasn’t that familiar with Ulysses but it was an easy assumption that a lot of the weans were dressed as characters from the book. There were barbers, undertakers, bookies, priests, nuns, all of them in old-timey gear and most so cute you could forgive them for being young, exuberant, and irritating. And besides, they’d saved my hide.

Some of them were drinking and I got passed a can of Guinness, which I took gratefully.

“Cheers, mate,” I said.

“Sure, ’tis no problem,” a girl said. She had red cheeks and brown hair and was dressed as a tarty maid.

I took a large swig of the Guinness. Its effect was restorative.

“Are you for going to the party, young sir?” she asked in bad Edwardian. She was about nineteen or twenty and came from somewhere in County Kerry.

“Alas, fair lady, I have no time for such an enchanting offer,” I said. “I’m pressed by agents of the Castle.”