Ken Bruen - Dublin Noir

Dugan held up his beer to toast the couple across the room. “I don’t get her angle, though,” he whispered. “Tell you the truth, why she’s with him, I don’t get that at all. She’s up there herself and all, maybe fifty, fifty-five or so, but she can do better than him. She has to know his story. He’s on the edge of the cliff with more than one office taking bets.”

Dugan returned his attention to the twins. “Ryan no longer has the patience to wait this prick out. And I need the scratch now so I can bring it to Dublin and keep the boyos off my back. There’s five hundred in it for you two, to make an example of this scam artist. His number has come and gone, far as I’m concerned.”

The brothers nodded.

“I heard you,” Dugan said. He was smiling at the woman across the room again. “How do I want you to handle this? I’ll follow herself down when she goes to the powder room. I’ll keep her down there longer than usual. I’ll hold her fuckin’ head in the toilet, I gotta. He’ll eventually go down to see what’s the problem. You’ll follow him. The card room is straight ahead once you’re in the hall with the ladies’ room. Take him in there, deadbolt the door behind you, gag him, and break his face. Leave him tied so he can’t move until somebody from the place finds him after hours.”

The brothers nodded in unison.

“And make it ugly,” Dugan said.

Six days later, Dugan woke up in a damp basement on the north side of Dublin. A hard-looking slender woman in her late forties put fire to a cigarette across the room. She wore a stained kitchen apron and boots. A stocky man puffing on a pipe sat at a table off to the right. His face was unfamiliar to Dugan.

“He’s coming around,” the woman said.

Dugan strained to see her. He’d been drugged upstairs in the bar the night before after passing off money from Marty Ryan to three IRA soldiers. They kept him drinking from a Jameson bottle spiked with poteen. Dugan had nearly poisoned himself from drinking.

The woman was sharpening a boning knife at a table near the stairway. Dugan struggled to see clearly. It hurt to hold his head up for long.

He remembered drinking in the men’s room with the soldiers. He remembered them slapping his back and telling him jokes. He remembered laughing out loud and passing the bottle.

Now he couldn’t remember much of anything else.

He had come to Ireland with the twins because Marty Ryan had told him it was important they travel together. Dugan remembered sitting next to them on the flight over. He remembered joking with them. He remembered going through customs together and taking the cab from the airport.

They had separated once they were in the bar, Dugan going off to the men’s room with the soldiers while the twins drank at a table. Dugan couldn’t remember when they had left or where they had gone. He couldn’t remember leaving the men’s room.

He knew he was on Gardiner Street because the cab had dropped them off in front of the bar. Dugan remembered thinking the old neighborhood always looked the same and that he was glad to be done with it.

A door slammed shut somewhere upstairs. “That’ll be him,” the woman said.

Dugan was feeling cramped in the shoulders. He tried to move from the chair and realized his hands were tied behind his back.

“What’s this?” he muttered.

A door opened at the top of the stairs. The woman gave a nod at the stocky man.

Dugan thought he recognized the woman. “Mary?” he said.

She didn’t flinch.

Dugan looked to his left and saw a blue plastic tarpaulin covering something on the floor. He belched and could taste vomit. He gagged from the taste.

There were heavy footsteps on the stairs. Dugan looked up toward the sound. The woman pulled a string cord and a bright light filled the room. Dugan turned his head from the light.

He heard whispers. He tried to open his eyes and felt himself slipping back into unconsciousness.

He was back on the flight with the twins. They were joking about being with the girl, Catherine, the night after Dugan had told them about her. They had stopped by to chat her up and learned her cousin had left early. She had cab fare to get home, but they gave her a lift instead.

“She went without question,” one of the twins had told Dugan. “Like we were sent from heaven saving her six bucks.”

“We spent the night taking turns,” the other twin had bragged. “First me, then Sean, then me again. This way, that way. She finally cried when she was fecked raw around sun-up. We did save her the cab fare, though. And you were right, until she cried, she purred like a feckin’ kitty cat.”

Dugan remembered telling them, “I told you so.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Dugan heard a deep voice say. He opened his eyes and saw a hulking shadow at the foot of the stairs.

The huge man had a thick red beard and looked familiar. He leaned over the woman and kissed her forehead.

“Rusty?” Dugan said. “What’s going on? Why am I tied?”

“You’re to answer for Catherine,” the woman said.

Dugan was confused. “Catherine?”

“My niece.”

“Mary?” Dugan said. “Mary Collins.”

The woman took a drag from her cigarette.

“I’d’ve liked to be here earlier,” the big man said.

“The soldier boyos took care of it,” the woman said. “They were happy to help.”

Dugan saw she was still holding the long sleek boning knife. “What’s the knife for, Mary?”

“You,” the big man replied.

“But it’s easier when the bones are popped from their joints first,” the woman said. “Why I waited for Rusty here. He caught a late flight.”

Dugan turned to the big man. “Rusty, what the hell is this? What’s going on?”

“The other two had something to offer, the boyos took mercy and shot them in the head,” the woman said. “Cutting them up afterwards isn’t a problem. It’s only when you’re keeping them alive so they can feel it does it make a difference. That’s when it helps, the bones are popped or pulled from their joints first.”

The big man grabbed one end of the blue tarpaulin and whipped it off of two dead bodies. Dugan saw it was the twins laying across one another. He saw a hole in the back of one head before he saw the one with the mustache had been shot through the eyes. Dugan gagged twice before he was sick on himself.

The woman was standing now, holding the boning knife in one hand. She held a pint of Guinness in the other. She sipped from the pint before handing it off to the big man.

“Oh, God have mercy!” Dugan whimpered. “God have mercy.”

“Those two talked about what they did to my niece after they had too much to drink,” the woman said. “The wankers went back to the bar and told it to the wife of the man they beat for you and Marty Ryan, thought they could double-team her, too, from the shite you’d said about her. They tried to feck with her head, told her they’d beat her husband again unless she did what they wanted. They weren’t very bright, the twins. It all got back to Rusty here. From the woman herself. Nancy, is it?”

Dugan was shaking his head.

“The boyos here saw the knife and gave you up in a flat second,” she added. “Everything you told them, how we sent her off because she was tainted, you fucking shite. You didn’t have a clue, but you felt like talking, eh?”

“It’s what I was told,” Dugan said. “I swear it, Mary. I was told she’d been raped by felons from Mountjoy and lost her mind from it.”

“She was,” the woman said. “And she was affected, but we sent her away so she’d never have to hear the name of the place again. Never have to see it.”

“I’m sorry,” Dugan cried. “I’m sorry, Mary.”