Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) (11 page)

'Well, I'm glad I called you for moral support.'

'Dan, if anyone needs moral support it's Davie. He was jilted at the altar, his heart's been broken, you should be out there cheering him on, not giving him a hard time.'

'But he sent me out of that hotel like I was . . . like I was a wee kid or something.' There was only static from the other end of the line. 'You can contradict that any time you like,' I said.

'Dan, give him a break. You know, you're a big boy, you're quite capable of looking after yourself.'

'Yes, I am. So I should just get in the car and drive off for a couple of days, give him a taste of his own medicine.'

'Don't do that, Dan. .Please.'

'Why not?'

'Because you're always doing rash things you regret later.'

'That's not true.'

'Okay — so you don't always regret them. It's lucky you have me around to pick up the pieces.'

'Well, you're not here.'

'A — I wasn't invited. And B — there aren't any pieces to pick up. You spooked him by sneaking up on him. Leave him be — he'll come round in his own time.'

'So what am I supposed to do? Just get my thong on and hang out on the beach?'

'Dan, please don't mention yourself and a thong in the same sentence. I'll have nightmares.'

I sighed. I told her I loved her. She told me she loved me. I told her I loved her more. She told me I probably did. I hung up. I phoned back to prove I'd only been joking, but she'd put the answer-machine on. I left her a long message of love and devotion, although the recording cut out halfway through. I talked to the static anyway. It felt good to get it out.

Maybe she was right. Davie was just highly strung. I should give him space and time and support. I should get drunk. Everything would look better with a little alcohol. Or a lot. We had some bottles of Bud in the room fridge. There was a cool-bag I'd picked up at the airport. I would get some music and chill out by the pool; I could dip in and out.of the water, and in and out of the sun; gradually my freckles would join up into a perfect tan. I would indeed become bronzed.

I had brought a Walkman, but my ears had thus far been too burned to listen to it, but now they were fine and ready to rock. And, like all Ulstermen on holiday, our unpacking had consisted of taking our bags and sticking them in a wardrobe, then rifling through them as need demanded. The Walkman and my collection of CDs were somewhere near the bottom of mine. Some people's musical taste can be described as catholic, but mine is whatever the opposite of that is. Protestant — or so narrow and lacking in imagination that you could call it Free Presbyterian. My choice starts in 1976 and ends somewhere around the early 1980s. Where that could mean Chicago and Cliff Richard in someone else's sad life, in mine it came down to Joe again. I would sit by the pool and listen to The Clash —
Combat Rock,
that would suit my mood just right.

Davie was as bad at unpacking as I was. His underpants and shirts were sticking out of his bag at mad angles; I had to shove at it to get at my own. There wasn't much room in the wardrobe, so I pulled his bag right out of the way. It was made of rather flimsy canvas material, so that when I dropped it and the edge of it landed on my bare foot I shouldn't have needed to shout, 'Aaaooow,
Jesus'
— but I did. He was carrying something hard and heavy, and I knew right away what it was. Cans of beer. It was just another extension of his selfishness. He was quite happily dipping into my supply in the fridge while keeping his own hidden away. Although not for long. I dipped into his bag to remove and consume the offending articles.

But it wasn't beer.

And before I'd unwrapped it from the towel I knew what it was and I just felt sick.

I laid the towel on the bed; then I went to the door and made sure it was locked. Then I unfolded the towel and looked down at the gun.

A
gun.

Christ.

We were on a fly-drive vacation in sunny Florida, and Davie had a gun in his bag.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. I picked up the gun, then put it down. I wiped at it with the towel to remove any fingerprints. It wasn't a huge Clint Eastwood sort of a gun, but it was big enough to install air conditioning in your head. I've been around guns; I don't always know their makes, but I know what they can do. I picked it up again and checked to see if it was loaded. It wasn't. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he'd just picked it up as a souvenir. Maybe it was a replica. What was he thinking of? How could he ever hope to get it back through airport security? And then I had another sick feeling and I went back to his bag and this time searched more carefully — and sure enough, hidden in a side zip compartment under his socks I found two boxes of ammunition.

I sat heavily down on the bed again.

My first instinct was to run out of the room and throw gun and bullets into the sea.

So was my second and third.

My fourth was: Pack up, get out — now.

My fifth said, There's bound to be a simple explanation.

Like —

Jesus, we were on a fly-drive holiday in Florida. What was he scared of, alligators?

I did what all grown men do in times of crisis. I phoned my wife, but the answer-machine was still on and I wasn't about to leave news about Davie's gun as a message. Mostly because she wouldn't believe me, she'd think I was just looking for sympathy. She'd lecture me about the boy who cried wolf and I'd say, 'But he got torn apart by wolves, don't you care?' and she'd say, 'Served him right.'

I looked down at the gun. I looked down at the ammo.

Davie had bought them after arriving in America: there was no way he could have smuggled them through security, either in Belfast or at Sanford. He'd gone out to a store somewhere in the vicinity of St Pete's Beach and bought a gun, just like that. You can do that in America. You can do it in parts of Belfast West as well, but that's another story.

And then I realised.

It was bloody obvious really.

Davie had just been jilted by his girl. He was an ex-cop, he'd been forced out for drink-driving. Ulster is littered with bitter ex-cops who've spent their best years protecting us from the bad guys, but who now can't get new jobs because of their former employment. Depression is rife — and so is suicide.

Christ, I'd come for a break, and now I was on suicide watch.

There wasn't a girl at all. He was just at the end of his tether, driving around aimlessly or drinking by himself in an upmarket hotel, thinking of all the things he could have had, the women he might have married, depressing himself even further.

I was really pissed off.

We hadn't been friends for the best part of twenty-five years — and now he had dragged me halfway across the world just so that I could be around to clean up the mess when he blew his stupid head off. It would put a real dampener on my holiday.

I opened one of the bottles of beer from the fridge. It was ice cold, just the way it should be, but somehow it didn't taste right. I was picturing Davie by himself in our hotel room drinking himself into a stupor then stumbling across to the bag —
Dead Man Staggering
— and pulling the gun out, loading it, putting it into his mouth, then pulling the trigger. Cue, brains on wall.

Poor Davie.

His mother at the funeral saying, 'But if you knew he had a gun, why didn't you do something about it?'

I drained the bottle. It still didn't taste right, but it wasn't for wasting. I got another and looked at the gun some more. What was I supposed to do? Confront him with it? Say, 'What the hell are you playing at?' Try to talk him out of it? But if he'd come this far to end it and gone to this much trouble, then he wasn't going to be dissuaded by me. Patricia says I couldn't argue my way out of a paper bag. What if I wrote him a letter? Pen mightier than the sword, and all that.

No.

Davie was never much of a reader. He'd scan the first couple of lines, then tear it up and tell me to mind my own business.

He wasn't down over Joe Strummer's death. He was down over his own.

Or what if he wasn't depressed at all? Maybe he had some life-threatening illness. A huge tumour on the brain, or a wasting disease. Maybe he wanted to go out now while he still had possession of all his faculties.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. There were too many. Certainly more than four. Only one person could answer all of my questions.

Patricia couldn't, I couldn't, even the man I turned to in times of trouble, my old friend Mouse, couldn't. Only Davie.

I wrapped the gun back up in the towel and squeezed it into his bag. I replaced the ammunition in the zip compartment. Then I lifted it and my own bag, removed the Walkman, two sets of underpants and a spare T-shirt and set them on my bed. Then I re-zipped my own bag and carried it and Davie's out into the hall. I walked down the corridor then waited until the Cuban was busy on a call, sitting down low behind the high reception desk so that he couldn't see me. I slipped past him and out into the car park. Davie had taken the car, so that was out. I continued on out to the footpath and walked about two hundred yards down the street, then crossed the road to a branch of the International House of Pancakes. Behind the restaurant there was a half-full dumpster. I checked I wasn't being watched, then hauled both bags into it. I turned and hurried back to the hotel; I put my underpants and T-shirt away, then collected my cool-bag and Walkman from the room, after which I went and sat out by the pool.

Two hours later I was half-cut and the proud owner of about fifty thousand more freckles when Davie came hurrying up, all wide-eyed and breathless.

'Dan — Dan . . . have you moved our bags?'

'What?'

'Have you moved our bags?'

'What're you talking about? Sit down. Have a beer.'

'Dan! Our bags are gone!'

'Gone?'

'Gone!'

'Relax. The cleaners just probably moved them.'

'They haven't. They've gone. We've had burglars. We've been burgled. Our bags are gone.'

'Davie, for godsake, they can't just have—'

'Well, get up off your arse and come and look!' He spun on his heel. I took another drink of my beer, then got up and followed.

He was right. The bags were gone. I made a big show of searching the room. I cursed a lot. We marched down to see the Cuban together.

'We've been burgled!'

'Our bags have gone!'

'What sort of an establishment are you running!'

All the usual stuff. The Cuban followed us back to the room, as if a third pair of eyes would somehow reveal the missing bags. He tutted and cursed. He said, 'Are you sure they're not in your car?'

'Of course they're not! We've been robbed.'

'And what the hell are you going to do about it?' I said.

He looked down at the door lock for signs of a forced entry. He sighed. 'I'm going to have to call the police.'

'I should think so,' I said, but I was watching Davie for some kind of reaction — however he was nodding in support.

The Cuban shook his head. 'Between you and me, guys, this isn't the first time. We're gonna have to take a long hard look at our staff.'

'That's all very well, but what are we supposed to do?' Davie said. 'They've stolen our pants. Everything.'

'You just follow me, sir. I'll call the police then you'll need to get a copy of their report, then you'll need to fax it to your insurance company. They'll handle it.'

'But what are you going to do
personally
?' Davie asked.

'On the pant front, and all the other stuff,' I added.

'Well, sir, like I say, you should be covered by insurance. You weren't keeping anything of value in the bags? We do post a warning telling you to use our safety-deposit boxes for valuables. We don't accept responsibility for valuables being stolen.'

It was debatable whether underpants qualified as valuable, but they were certainly important. That's why I'd stashed some. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, especially where there are girls involved. Davie would have to go commando until we got sorted out.

The Cuban huffed and puffed some more. After about an hour two police officers arrived and noted down the relevant details, but they weren't particularly interested. When they'd gone we walked to a beachwear store across the road and bought some emergency supplies of loud shirts and flip-flops. I said, 'So we've been burgled. Don't let it get you down.'

'Who's down?' Davie said. He managed a smile.

But he was down, further down than any man should be. I'd just saved his life, of that I was sure. Perhaps it would cause him to think again, to re-evaluate his decision. To take it as a sign from God that he wasn't meant to end it all. Perhaps it would merely cause him to hide the gun somewhere better next time. Because there probably would be a next time.

What Davie needed was a good man-to-man talk. But where was I going to find a man he could talk to? There was only me; empathy and sensitivity and understanding are not my strong points. Never have been.

Not unless there is drink involved.

Drunk I am a chameleon.

Some drunks get maudlin, but I generally take off like a rocket when I've had enough, so maybe getting us both drunk was the solution. Sober, men rarely talk about anything other than football and war. Women, on the other hand, dissect their sex lives at the drop of a hat. And often when there isn't even a hat to be found, when they're standing on an escalator with a complete stranger or ordering those difficult-to-find support stockings over the phone.

Davie had already booked us into the Holiday Inn restaurant. It was a circular effort at the top of one of the tallest hotels on the beach. There were stunning views out over the Gulf. They didn't blink twice when we strode in wearing our shorts and Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, even though it was gone ten at night. The place wasn't busy, and the steaks were expensive, but what price can you put on a man's life, or indeed a good steak? We had a waiter as camp as a thousand Scouts but we didn't even take the piss, that's how serious we were. Davie sat with his chin in his hand. I ordered us two bottles of Bud each, together with a couple of chasers.