Ken Bruen - Dublin Noir

And then she had brought Rory back to this room, this place of unlimited room service and the sumptuous breakfasts and the “Have-whatever-you-like-from-the-minibar” proviso. She had even let him have the cashews.

“You think I’m rich,” she said.

“I thought you looked like someone who could use some company,” Rory said, stretching and then rising from the bed.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-four.”

He was she, she was Barry. How had this happened? She was much too young to be an older woman. And nowhere near rich enough.

“What do you do?”

“Like I said, I don’t worry about work too much.” He gave her his lovely grin, with his lovely white, very straight teeth. American teeth, like hers, she realized now.

“Was I… work?”

“Well, as my dad said, do what you love and you’ll love what you do.”

“But you’d prefer to do men, wouldn’t you? Men for fun, women for money.”

“I told you, I’m no cocksucker,” he said, and landed a quick, stinging backhand on her cheek. The slap was professional, expert, the slap of a man who had ended more than one argument this way. Bliss, who had never been struck in her life-except on the ass, with a hairbrush, by an early boyfriend who found that exceptionally entertaining-rubbed her cheek, stunned. She was even more stunned to watch Rory proceed to the minibar and squat before it, inspecting its restocked shelves.

“Crap wine,” he said. “And I am sick to hell of Guinness and Jameson.”

The first crack of the minibar door against his head was too soft; all it did was make him bellow. But it was hard enough to disorient him, giving Bliss the only advantage she needed. She straddled his back and slammed the door repeatedly on his head and neck. Decapitation occurred to her as a vague if ambitious goal. She barely noticed his hands reaching back, scratching and flailing, attempting to dislodge her, but her legs were like steel, strong and flexible from years of pilates and yoga. She decided to settle for motionlessness and silence, slamming the door on Rory’s head until he was finally, blessedly still.

But still was not good enough. She wrested a corkscrew from its resting place-fifteen euros-and went to work. Impossible. Just as she was about to despair, she glanced at a happy gleam beneath the bedspread, a steak knife that had fallen to the floor after one of their room-service feasts and somehow gone undetected. Ha, even the maids at the oh-so-snooty Merrion weren’t so damn perfect.

She kept going, intent on finishing what she had started, even as the hotel was coming to life around her-the telephone ringing, footsteps pounding down the corridors. She should probably put on the robe, the lovely white fluffy robe. She was rather… speckled.

But the staff came through the door before she could get to her feet.

“How old are you, then?” the police officer-they called them Gardaí here-asked Bliss.

“How old do I look?”

He did not seem to find her question odd. “You look like the merest slip of a girl, but our investigation requires more specific data.”

He was being so kind and solicitous, had been nothing but kind all along, although Bliss sensed that the fading mark on her cheek had not done much to reconcile the investigators to the scene they had discovered in the hotel room. They tried to be gallant, professing dismay that she had been hit and insulted. But their shock and horror had shown through their professional armor. They clearly thought this was a bit much for a woman who insisted she had been doing nothing more than defending herself.

“Really? You’re not just saying that?”

“I’d be surprised if you could buy a drink legally in most places.”

Satisfied, she gave her real age, although it took a moment of calculation to get it right. Was she thirty or thirty-one, possibly thirty-two? She had added two years back in the early days, when she was starting out, then started subtracting three as of late.

“I’m thirty-one.”

“That’s young.”

“I thought so.”

It might have been a death spasm or a reflex, but the man’s hand flew up and his long, clean fingernails raked across Reed’s face. He hardly reacted. So he had a scar to match the others now. His father had done worse to him by the time he was ten. This might be a tad more serious, as he could feel the blood trickle into his right eye. Reed leaned away so he wouldn’t feel the man’s last, moist breath. The knife was still firmly buried in the man’s solar plexus. The long K-bar survival knife with a half-serrated edge had cut through his skin and into his heart like, well, like a sharp knife slicing through skin and heart. No wonder the U.S. Marines issued these things. Fucking Americans, they did everything too big. A seven-inch blade on a knife! That was three inches too many. The man coughed like he had been smoking Camels most his life-they were in Dublin, so it might have been true, but Reed had picked this fella because he looked like a tourist. That had been the first goal: always a visitor.

In this case, Reed had seen the man come from a pub off Swift’s Row and simply fell in behind him. He was careful never to be seen with a victim. The first thing that tipped him to the man’s lack of roots in Dublin was that he had on a yellow shirt under a blue windbreaker. No Dub worth his balls would be caught in such an obnoxious outfit. These Dubliners loved their black. Black shirts, black jackets, God help him but he had noticed even the kids favored black on their way to school. Must’ve made the weather look brighter by comparison. Not like home in the west.

Looking into the man’s pale-blue eyes he pulled out the big K-bar, feeling the rough edge catch on some gristle and maybe the last rib. It sounded like his old man sawing on the Christmas turkey when he was a kid. More blood, but similar.

He examined his right hand with the latex surgical glove. It was uniformly red from the fingers to the wrist. The handle of the knife had a string of flesh or tendon hanging from it. Reed watched the man slide down the wall into a sitting position, then slump into his final posture. He didn’t check for a pulse. If this bloke could survive that hacking, he deserved to live. Didn’t matter anyway. An attack like this, even if someone survived it, still accomplished his mission.

He wiped his forehead with his left hand and realized he needed to stop the bleeding with a rag. He glanced around the alley. There was nothing obvious. He had stumbled into the cleanest alley in Dublin. Easing out toward the street he found a wad of newspaper and wiped his forehead. He ripped a section off for a makeshift bandage. Holding it to his face, he started on his way.

He headed out onto the empty street. Most the streets were empty now-a-days. People didn’t feel safe in Dublin after dark. He had seen to that. As he came to Wellington Quay near the Millennium Bridge, he casually flipped the knife over the small seawall and into the water. The glove was tied around the handle and the neat little package made hardly a splash as it sank to the bottom of the channel. This was getting expensive. A new knife every time and the fucking K-bar cost nearly thirty-five euros. So far, with housing and food he’d spent a fortune on this endeavor. All for a righteous cause. That’s how he looked at it. That’s how he had to look at it.

He crossed the road after a few streets, making sure no one had seen him. His old man had always taken the long way home, but he was usually ducking a bookie or one of the other carpenters he’d borrowed money from and didn’t intend to pay back. The long walks with his old fella had taught Reed patience and given him some endurance that had lasted all these years even though he was almost forty.