Ken Bruen - Dublin Noir

“We kick out Russians, no? And now these Irish criminals, they think Toman will not to kick out them?”

We were in front of Sean’s apartment, me trying to twist out of the Czech’s grip. “You’re a fucking murderer.”

“And you are writer!” He helped me up the front steps as he jangled the keys he’d taken from Sean’s body. “Toman help you find story. No?”

We were inside by this time, but I was still so goddamned cold.

“This is world, Writer. And now you see it. No more like you live in university.”

It seems strange to me now, but I wasn’t afraid of Toman. I was only repulsed and angry that he had pulled me into his putrid underworld.

“Fuck you, Toman.”

“Fuck me?” he said, mimicking Taxi Driver with a big grin. “You do not see. Toman, he help his writer friend.”

I dropped into a chair and didn’t look at him. I spoke slowly so he’d understand. “All I see is that Toman is a psychopath who thinks killing someone is a good fucking ha ha to show his friends.”

“But Toman-”

“I hate you.”

He opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He started to button up his coat again. His voice was as wobbly as a dying man’s stream of piss. “Toman, he work hard for his friends.”

Then he left.

Over Sean’s Becherovka, I considered going to the police- the Gardaí. That seemed reasonable. But after that, could I return to Prague? Toman didn’t do this for just a ha ha -he was working for his Czechs, who wouldn’t take kindly to my intervention.

Hell, I didn’t even want to return to Bohemia now, and I didn’t want to stay in Dublin. I knew what I’d do: I wouldn’t talk to anyone. I’d just count my stuff in Prague-some clothes, a laptop with a terrible, pompous novel on it, and the paperback of that unreadable Ulysses -as losses and just fly home to Texas.

Then there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

“Garda. Open up.”

I was faced with a big man. He wasn’t dressed like a cop, but he had a badge. “Garda Jack Taylor,” he told me, just in case I couldn’t read. “Your name?”

I told him.

“Yank?”

I nodded.

“And what might you be doing in Sean MacDougal’s flat?”

I started to answer something not far from a lie, then stepped back. Life’s full of decisions that you end up going back on. “Want to come in?”

I told him the story straight through, but he was only half-listening, preoccupied with scanning the room for evidence of some kind. He walked around to a cabinet and brought a shot glass back with him. When I finished, he said, “So you’re a writer, eh?”

I nodded.

“Good on you.” He poured some Becherovka into the glass, said, “ Sláinte, ” and threw it back. “Don’t get much better than McBain.”

I admitted I’d never read the man, but quickly added that I was a Joyce fan.

That didn’t impress him-no one in Dublin gave a damn about their most famous son. He pulled out a pack of reds and popped one in his mouth, eyeing me as if my reading preference had proven I was a faggot. “Mister Steinhauer, I’ll be straight with you. What we’ve got are three witnesses placing you at Bellamy’s with the deceased. They saw you follow him into the toilet. They saw you leave quickly.”

“Yes, I told you this.”

“But there’s no mention of a big Hungarian.”

“Czech.”

“Yeah, right.”

He poured a second shot as I registered what he’d said. “That’s impossible-Toman’s over six feet!”

Taylor threw back the Becherovka and licked his teeth. “Maybe, Mister Steinhauer, you imagined him.”

I’d once written a bad story about a man whose friend commits rape, then later learns there was no friend, and he was the rapist. It was a common literary conceit, but in real life? “Give me a break. He bought my plane ticket. He introduced me to Sean MacDougal. Sean wouldn’t’ve let me stay here otherwise.”

Taylor took the bottle again. “Dead men needn’t invite you in.”

This cop seemed content just to sit here and drink Sean’s Becherovka, and I was developing a migraine trying to get my head around this. “Let me see that badge again.”

Unconcerned, he handed it over. It was real, all right-as far as I could tell-but then I noticed something. “You don’t work here. You’re with the Galway force.”

“I’m helping out the boys in Dublin.” Taylor pursed his lips. “I’m a fucking saint.”

I took the bottle from him and refilled my own glass. “Then where’s your partner?”

“Eh?”

“Police don’t visit a suspect alone. Not even in fucking Dublin.”

Taylor looked at me a moment, with a grin that reminded me of Toman. He reached out for the bottle. I handed it to him. “Aye, Mister Steinhauer, one thing you should be quite clear on is this Sean MacDougal was a shite of the highest order. No one in Dublin or even the Republic of Ireland will mourn this bastard’s leave-taking.”

I boarded the 2 p.m. to Prague bleary-eyed. After Garda Jack Taylor left I’d continued with the Becherovka, but instead of putting me to sleep it only made me sick. And my 5 a.m. shower only made me feel dirtier.

Toman hadn’t returned to the flat, and I didn’t see him in the departures lounge. I didn’t know what that meant. But after most everyone had settled into their seats, he appeared at the front of the plane, red-faced, as if he’d been running. He smiled hugely as he settled next to me.

“Almost, I was late.”

I looked out the window. He smelled bad.

“I stay at friend’s last night.”

“Did your friend survive the night?”

“Ha! A writer’s sense for the humor.”

“Your other friend sends his best wishes,” I told him. “He says thank you.”

“What friend is this?”

I finally looked at him; his red cheeks glimmered with sweat. “That Garda, Jack Taylor.”

“What I tell you?” he said, then patted my knee. “Toman, he is friend for whole world.”

“You stink, Toman.”

He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. “I must to clean off this piss.”

Four days since I called in sick. I think.

I ’ve been awake for three of them straight. I think.

My fellow Gardaí would piss themselves if they could see me, no doubt. Then they’d have me committed.

But they don’t know. They haven’t seen. They’re all out getting drunk, or off fucking their wives, or fucking their mistresses and lying about it to their wives, or passed out in front of their TVs in their nice safe homes while I’m

fucking

dead.

And I don’t know if even I believe it.

It started with Michael. A mental case, low-grade nut. We have quite a few. A handful of pedophiles, stalkers, minor assaults. Care in the community jobs, not criminal enough to be locked up for good, criminal enough to be in and out of the cells on a regular basis. Since jail seems to do fuckall by way of curing them-worse, many come out of it even more damaged than they went in-my own policy is not to arrest. Talk, threaten, watch, but don’t arrest if possible. Jail only makes them more of a risk to everyone in the long run.

Some of these guys are homeless, but not Michael. It’s a shithole of a flat, though, overlooking the railway tracks not far from where they cross the Tolka, north of Dublin’s city center. Building that smells of boiled vegetables and cat piss. Walls the color of boiled vegetables and cat piss.

“That woman hasn’t been poisoning your kitten, Michael. She doesn’t even know who you are. She wouldn’t know how to poison a kitten even if she wanted to.”

“Could swear I’ve seen her-”