Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

The farmers must have finished their morning rounds and gone in for breakfast; Cal encounters no one except a bunch of Francie’s sheep, who freeze in mid-chew to fix him with indecipherable stares as he passes, and keep gazing after him for a disconcertingly long time. He still gets over Donie’s back wall quicker than anyone could reasonably expect of a guy his age and size, just in case the neighbors look out a window or Francie decides to investigate what’s paralyzed his sheep.

Donie’s garden is a decrepit patch of overgrown grass, with wind-scattered plastic patio furniture that looks like it came from a supermarket giveaway. Through the window, the kitchen looks empty. Cal jimmies the back door with a loyalty card from his favorite Chicago deli, pushes it open nice and slowly, and steps inside.

Nothing moves. The kitchen is old, beat-up and ferociously clean, with an exhausted shine coming off the oilcloth and the linoleum. A slow drip falls from the tap.

Cal moves quietly through the kitchen and down the hall. The house is dim and smells powerfully of flowery cleaner and damp. It has too much furniture, most of it dumpy varnished pine turning a tawdry orange with age, and too much wallpaper with too much pattern. On the living-room mantelpiece, a dull red light flickers in the chest of a fey-looking Jesus who points at it with one finger and simpers reproachfully at Cal.

Cal keeps to one side of the staircase and puts his weight down gradually, but the steps still creak under him. He stops and listens for movement. The only sound is a faint, dedicated snoring coming from one of the bedrooms.

Donie’s room has nothing in common with the rest of the house, except the pine furniture. Most of the surfaces are occupied by dirty clothes and video-game cases. One wall is taken up by a TV the size of a picture window; another one has a high-end sound system whose speakers bulge in every corner like roided-up biceps. The air is practically solid with the interleaved smells of sweat, cigarette smoke, beer farts and crusted sheets. At the heart of this accretion is Donie, spread-eagled facedown on the bed, wearing an undershirt and Minion-patterned briefs.

Cal crosses the room in three strides, gets a knee on the small of Donie’s back, grabs his fat neck and shoves his face into the pillow. He keeps him there till Donie’s bucking gets an extra edge of desperation, and then hauls his head up for one long gasp. Then he does it again, and then again.

Donie comes up the third time squealing for breath. Cal puts more weight on his spine, lets go of his neck and twists one arm high behind his back. Donie has the consistency of a wetsuit full of pudding.

“You dumb shit,” he says into Donie’s ear. “You fucked up.”

Donie wheezes and writhes, and finally manages to ratchet his head around and get a look at Cal. The first thing across his face is relief. This isn’t what Cal is aiming for. Fear is one of the few things that will spin Donie’s hamster wheel. If he’s more scared of someone else than he is of Cal, that’s a problem. Luckily, Cal is in the right mood for fixing it.

“Brendan Reddy,” he says. “Start talking.”

“Don’t know what you’re—”

Cal pulls open the drawer of the bedside table, shoves Donie’s fingers in and slams it shut. When Donie howls, Cal plunges his face into the pillow again.

He waits till he’s sure Donie’s done howling before he eases his grip so the little shit can turn his head. “You know what I want for Christmas?” he says, into Donie’s face. Donie pants and whines. “I want you mopes to quit being so fucking predictable . I’m fed up to the back teeth of ‘Uhhh, dunno what you’re talking about, never heard of the guy.’ You know exactly what I’m talking about. I know you know. You know I know you know. But still, Donie, still you gotta come out with that shit. Sometimes I feel like, I hear that shit one more time , I’m not gonna be able to control myself.”

He lets go of Donie, gets off the bed and upends a chair to dump a bunch of nasty tracksuits onto the floor. “Sorry to lay my personal troubles on you,” he says pleasantly, pulling the chair over to the bedside. “But every now and again it seems like things build up just a little bit higher than I can be expected to put up with.”

Donie heaves himself up to a sitting position, holding his fingers and blowing through his teeth. A glob of pale hairy belly pops out between his undershirt and his briefs. The eyebrow gash from his encounter with Mart’s hurling stick is only half healed. Donie is having a tough couple of weeks, beating-wise.

“Looking good, son,” Cal says.

“My fucking hand ,” Donie says, outraged.

“Shake it off. You’ve got some talking to do.”

“You fucking broke it.”

“Ouch,” Cal says, leaning in to inspect Donie’s fingers, which are purple and swelling, scored with deep red grooves. The middle one is bent at an interesting angle. “I bet if someone stamped on that, it’d hurt like all hell.”

“What the fuck do you want , man?”

“Jesus Christ, son, you miss the day they taught English in school? Brendan Reddy.”

Donie considers going back into know-nothing mode, assesses Cal and thinks better of it. He doesn’t look scared, exactly, but he looks a little more alive than usual, which for his kind is the same thing. “Who even are you, man? You in business? Or a cop? What?”

“Like we said before: I’m just a guy who needs a hobby. I’m not gonna pass this conversation on to anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. Unless you piss me off.”

Donie runs his tongue around the inside of his lip, where the pillow mashed it into his teeth, and examines Cal with those flat pale eyes. “You want me to convince you some more?” Cal asks. “We got at least an hour. I can be real convincing in an hour.”

“Why d’you wanta know about Brendan?”

“Lemme get you started,” Cal says. “Brendan was setting up as a meth cook for your buddies from Dublin. Take it from there.”

“Little prick thought he was outa Breaking Bad ,” Donie says. “‘All ye have is the shake-n-bake shite, I can make ye the pure stuff . . . ’ Fuckin’ tosser.” Cal watches his eyes in case he has a weapon stashed somewhere, but his focus is on his fingers. He examines them at various angles, experiments with flexing them and grimaces.

“You weren’t a fan, huh?”

“I told them all along. Useless little prick, thinks he’s the dog’s bollox. He’ll let you down.”

“They shoulda listened to you,” Cal agrees. “Woulda made all our lives a lot simpler.”

Donie goes for the littered bedside table. Cal shoves him backwards onto the bed. “Nope,” he says.

“I need a smoke, man.”

“You can wait. I don’t wanna breathe that shit; this room stinks bad enough already. You do anything useful for these Dublin boys, or they just keep you around for decoration?”

Donie picks himself up, carefully keeping his sore hand uninvolved. “They need me. You can’t run the game without local lads.”

“And I’m sure they appreciate you the way you deserve. You have anything to do with Brendan?”

“Hadta help the little prick clear out the aul’ house where he was setting up. Get him what he needed.” Donie bares his too-small teeth like he wants to bite. “Sending me out with a shopping list, like a fuckin’ servant.”

“Like what?”

“Sudafed. Batteries. Propane tanks. Generator. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.”

“Anhydrous?”

“Nah. Little prick said he’d do that himself, I’d only fuck it up.” Donie sniggers. “He was the one that fucked it up.”