Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

Wary always, Logan would be, of a thin butcher.

Reid was allowed a seat at the table beside him. He sat on the seat’s edge, and he had the look, close up, of a man lately a stranger to peace. Logan took his hand, gently, and held it.

‘You’re not well, butcher?’

‘I ain’t so hot at all, Mr Hartnett.’

‘Ah my poor man.’

The butcher raised his eyes as though the mystery of his misfortune might be read up there on the Aliados’s smoke-cured ceiling.

‘I’ve a… situation, sir.’

‘I know that, Ger.’

‘What’s goin’ on, Mr H, is…’

‘I know, Ger.’

He held the butcher’s hand yet and he stroked it most tenderly. Eye-locked the poor fucker.

‘It’s your wife, Ger. It’s Eileen. She’s been getting familiar with Deccie Cantillon, hasn’t she?’

Reid scrunched his face against the threat of tears. That his situation was known made the humiliation complete.

‘With your own cuz, Ger?’

Reid burped hard on deep, ragged sobs. Logan placed a forearm along the butcher’s spindly shoulders. Noted the way the shoulders jerked and fell with the sobs, and he enjoyed the feeling of that.

‘S’what I’m dealin’ with now, sir!’

‘Oh my poor child of the Sweet Baba… Oh Deccie Deccie Deccie… Deccie’s… below in the fish market, isn’t he?… Ah… You can never trust a fishmonger, Gerard. That is what I’d always say. That would be my advice to you. It’s the way they’d be looking down all day at those dead glistening little eyes. How’re they going to come out of that right?’

‘I only know of it the last week, Mr Hartnett… I haven’t slept.’

‘Only know of it myself the past fortnight, Gerard.’

A dart of animal pain went through the man. Logan smiled as his forearm felt the shock of the words jolting the butcher’s slight frame.

‘Oh I have dark fuckin’ thoughts, Mr Hartnett!’

‘I’d well imagine, Ger. Sure he’s lappin’ her out an’ all, I’d say.’

The butcher now openly wept.

‘Would you say, Mr Hartnett?’

‘He’s like a little cat at a saucer of milk, I’d say.’

The butcher stood and bunched his wee, gnarled fists but Logan pulled him gently into the seat again.

‘Oh I have dark fuckin’ thoughts, sir! Dark!’

Logan placed a finger to his lips and softly blew. Brought his lips then to the butcher’s ear.

‘Gerard? You’re going to stow those thoughts for me. Hear? I’m going to look after this for you, Ger.’

‘Are you, Mr H?’

‘Yes, Gerard. I’ll look after the fishmonger. And you can look after the adulterous cunt you married.’

His pale skin caught the low light of the Aliados – the skeleton of him was palpable, there greyly beneath the skin, the bone machine that was Logan Hartnett – and he smiled his reassurance; it had weight to it in Bohane.

‘But we need be very careful, Ger. You hear what I’m saying to you?’

‘I do.’

‘Think on. If anything unpleasant were to befall a particular cuz, who’d those fat polis fucks come lookin’ for?’

‘You mean everyone knows, Mr Hartnett?’

‘The dogs on the streets, Gerard.’

‘Ah Mr Hartnett…’

The butcher’s head dipped, and tears raced down his cheeks, and they fell towards the zinc top of the table, but Logan one by one caught them as they fell.

‘So where’d the polis be sticking the old beak, eh?’

‘I hear what you’re sayin’ to me, Mr Hartnett.’

‘It’ll be taken care of, Gerard. You can trust me on that. Now go back to your work and put this out of your mind like a good man, d’you hear?’

‘It’s hard, Mr Hartnett.’

‘I know it’s hard, Gerard. Or I can imagine so.’

‘Thanks, Mr H.’

The butcher rose to go.

‘Of course, Ger, you know that I’ll be back to you in due course?’

‘I know that.’

‘Favour done’s a favour answered, Gerard.’

‘Yes, Mr Hartnett, sir.’

In such a way in the city was a man’s fate decided. Logan Hartnett yawned, stretched, and stirred a half-spoonful of demerara into his joe. The Aliados eased through its slow, afternoon moments. The Fancy boys talked lazily of bloodshed, and tush, and new lines in kecks. They combed each other’s hair and tried out new partings. Logan brooded a while, and went into his own smoky depths, and then he signalled again with a raising of his eyebrows. No surprise at all the next man to shuffle from a high stool. It was Dominick Gleeson, aka Big Dom, editor of the city’s only newspaper, the Bohane Vindicator . Of course, it was in no small part thanks to Logan Hartnett that the Vindicator remained the city’s only paper. Its masthead slogan: ‘Truth or Vengeance’, as inked above a motif of two quarrelling ravens.

The Dom was a busy-faced lardarse who walked a soft-shoe shuffle, and as he came padding across to the Long Fella’s table, already he was muttering sadly, as if the machinations of life in the city had become too much for him. Dom fed on an all-meat diet and he had the high colour of it. He carried with him a small glass of moscato wine and the following morning’s proposed editorial comment. He laid the copy before Logan, took a seat, removed grandly a silken handkerchief from inside his three-quarter-length autumn coat, and mopped his bone-dry brow.

‘Oh my angina,’ he sorrowfully wheezed.

Impatiently, the copy was brushed aside.

‘Summarise for me, Dominick.’

The fat newsman leaned forward and allowed on his features a moist, hammy scowl.

‘I’m after comin’ out bullin’ against the plan for a Beauvista tram, Mr H.’

He sipped at his moscato and winked broadly. Tiptoed his fingers across the tabletop and onto the saucer of pumpkin seeds – Logan swiped the fingers away, and Dom winced, blew on them, and adopted a look of brutalised innocence. Logan couldn’t but grin.

‘Your rationale, Dom?’

‘I’m sayin’ the las’ place that need a tram is Nob Hill, sir.’

Beauvista was always referred to thus in the Vindicator’s common-touch argot.

‘I’m sayin’ the Bohane Authority would be far better off spendin’ the bucks on improving the El train and serving the dacent ordinary people…’

With chubby fingertips Big Dom mimicked a tiny violin.

‘… of the Northside Rises.’

‘Good man, Dom. We want the Rises kept well buttered.’

‘Of course, we just got to be seen to be sayin’, like. There ain’t no fear the Authority will pay the slightest bit o’ notice, Logan. The Beauvista tram?’

He fisted a soft palm happily.

‘She’s a lock, sir.’

‘Happy news, Dominick. We won’t have to lug our old bones up that bastard of a hill.’

The newsman was also established, naturally, in a Nob Hill manse, and he shuddered his relief.

‘Lungs are like broken stout bottles in me on account of it, Logan.’

‘Oh you suffer, Dominick.’

‘Don’t be talkin’ to me, sir. The latest is I’m after gettin’ a class of a shake in the mitt, are you watchin’?’

Dominick held up his left mitt and quivered it dramatically.

‘Could it be an excess of self-abuse, Dom?’

The newsman’s eyes popped in outrage.

‘If I threw ya tuppence, would ya lower the tone?’

Big Dom sat back then, and he sighed as he let his piggy little eyes swivel about the cafe. In the sigh, there was his blunt opinion of things: that this place would be the end of him yet.

‘What I wanted to ask you, Mr H…’

‘Yes, Dom?’

‘Is regardin’ the Cusack situation.’

‘Oh? Is there a Cusack situation, Dominick?’

The Dom chuckled.

‘What we’re wondering, Logan, is there any hope at all that, ah… that… things might hold off for a stretch yet?’