Jig (17 page)

‘Two days,' Jig said.

‘I can't do anything in less,' Tumulty said.

Jig watched Tumulty move towards the door.

Tumulty said, ‘I still think you took an unnecessary risk.'

Jig replied, ‘At least I know what my enemy looks like, Joe. Which is more than Frank Pagan knows about me.'

Jig saw the door shut. Tumulty had taken the flashlight with him and the attic was once again completely dark. Jig sat with his back to the wall. Frank Pagan, he thought. A tall straight-backed man with a strong jaw and a face that might have been handsome if it hadn't looked like it was cast in cement. Frank Pagan. Here in America. Well, well.

Jig listened to the song rising up from the kitchen.

When I was young and restless, my mind was ill at ease

Through dreaming of America and gold beyond the seas …

He closed his eyes. What difference did it make to him if the Englishman was here in the United States? Since Frank Pagan hadn't identified him, it meant that the Englishman was operating in the dark. Which in turn meant that Finn, no matter what might have happened to him in Ireland, no matter how any information had leaked to Pagan, hadn't revealed Jig's identity. It was the one thing that Finn, whom Jig had come to perceive as being somehow immune to harm and danger, an indestructible embodiment of the Cause, would never do. He'd cut out his tongue before he revealed any of the secrets he kept. Anyway, the old man knew how to look after himself.

Jig got up and wandered around the attic, trying to keep warm. He dismissed Frank Pagan from his mind and instead turned his thoughts to the business of passing the next couple of days. He was impatient to do what he'd come to America for, but he was at the mercy of Joseph Tumulty, and he didn't like the feeling of having to rely on anyone but himself.

He stopped moving.

The maudlin song continued to float up towards him and, even though he disliked the sensation, he felt a prickling of homesickness, a faint longing for the things he'd left behind.

In the back of the cab that headed in the direction of the Parker Meridien, Zuboric said, ‘I think the fucker knows.'

‘Of course he knows. But what would you do, Artie? Beat information out of him? Take him down into a dungeon and kick the shit out of him until he talks?' Pagan asked.

‘Yeah.' Zuboric spread his hands, gazed at his fingernails. ‘It's your ball game, Frank. You want to play it softly, that's your business. You want to be Mr. Nice, fine by me.'

Pagan thought: Mr. Nice. He could have threatened Tumulty directly. He could have menaced him with a variety of pressures, including physical violence. But what would that have achieved? If Tumulty was IRA, then he'd embrace martyrdom happily. Broken ribs and bruises would be like badges of merit to Father Joe. No, it was better to leave threats hanging in the air, unspoken, veiled, and let Tumulty's imagination go to work on them. He was still a little unhappy with Zuboric's blunderbuss attitude and the way the whole interview had been conducted, but he decided not to criticise directly for the moment. He didn't want to alienate Zuboric, and with him the whole FBI, unless it was completely unavoidable.

Zuboric said, ‘I'll keep my man in place. Maybe get a tap on the guy's phone. Maybe.'

‘Which he'll expect,' Pagan remarked. He watched the streets. Times Square. He'd photographed Roxanne here, right outside a HoJo's. She wanted her picture taken there, because the place looked wonderfully sleazy. He had overworked the camera that summer. Roxanne outside the CBS building. Roxanne eating a huge pretzel at the Statue of Liberty. That's what this place suggested to Pagan. A series of old snapshots. Pictures of another life lived by another man. He remembered suddenly a detail of Roxanne: the way her lips felt when they touched his own. The taste of her. The warmth.

It was details like this that killed him. He felt empty. Restless.

He leaned forward and told the cab driver to pull over.

Zuboric said, ‘Where you going, Frank?'

Pagan stepped out on to the sidewalk. ‘I need a little exorcism,' he said.

Arthur Zuboric frowned in puzzlement. ‘Whatever,' he said.

9

Roscommon, New York

Former United States Senator Harry Cairney rose very slowly from his bed and looked from the window at Roscommon Lake, which was sullen and utterly still in the windless morning. Cairney found himself longing for spring, true spring, which sometimes at nights he smelled on the cold air. When each spring came he wondered if it might be his last. Morbid speculations.

He pressed his forehead against the windowpane and saw Celestine riding her black mare, Jasmine, along the shore. Celestine's yellow hair floated out behind her, and her body rose and fell with the rhythms of the animal. Cairney watched this fluent amalgam of woman and horse until Celestine had galloped out of sight. Then a black four-wheel-drive vehicle appeared between the trees. The jeep had the words
DUTCHESS SECURITY
painted on it. Cairney had hired them immediately after the emergency meeting with Kevin Dawson and the others a few days ago. Now the black vehicle was always out there, occupied by two men who carried automatic pistols and rifles.

Celestine hadn't questioned him about the presence of the security men. If she thought about them at all, she presumably attributed them to an old man's groundless fears for his home and property. He watched a pall of exhaust hang in the wintry air, then he turned from the window.

The light in the bedroom was poor. Misshapen clouds, leaden and dreadful, filled the sky. Sighing, Cairney reflected on the fact that he'd recently fallen into the habit of reminiscing, ransacking his memory and speaking his recollections aloud, even though he knew he was sometimes repeating himself. He'd say
I remember the time when Lyndon decided he didn't want the presidency. I remember he told me he didn't give a rat's fuck for the job any more, even though he'd lusted after it all his life, and now here he was with his ambition realised except it was goddam empty
, and Celestine would nod her head sweetly and smile, as if she'd never heard Harry's stories before. Softening of the brain, Cairney thought. A shiver of senility. Old age and death terrified him. He thought nothing could be lonelier than death.

The door of the bedroom opened. Celestine, in blue jeans and a heavy plaid jacket, stepped inside. Her pale skin had been buffed by the cold air. Her cheeks were faintly red and her eyes bright, and she looked to Cairney like something that winter, at its most artful, had created especially for him. Young. So goddam young. He touched her face with his palm. All his morose thoughts dissolved. Celestine was life and vitality – a light that pierced his gloom.

She spread her hands in front of the fire. ‘Why are you out of bed, Harry?'

Cairney coughed loudly, then popped a Kleenex from the box on the bedside table and raised it to the tip of his nose. ‘God, I hate lying in bed, Cel,' he complained.

‘How the devil are you going to get well if you don't rest?'

Scolding him. Smiling as she did so. Cairney sometimes felt like a small boy caught raiding the cookie jar. He liked the feeling. ‘Nag, nag,' he said. His voice sounded strange to him. Thick, coming from a distance. He wondered about the condition of his lungs. It had to be a swamp in there.

‘For your own good, old man,' Celestine said. She sat on the bed and removed the riding boots from her long legs. She tossed her hair back. Cairney watched her. He had loved his first wife, Kathleen, but not with this kind of intensity. He absorbed every little detail of Celestine, as if he were afraid of her somehow slipping away from him. He made orbits around her sun, like some satellite planet. With Kathleen, the relationship had evolved through the years into one of comfortable friendship, lacking passion but filled just the same with mutual understanding. With Kathleen, Cairney had always been in control. He had no control at all when it came to Celestine. He'd relinquished it cheerfully.

‘Lie down,' she said, and she patted the bed.

Cairney did as he was told. He made a great show of moaning about her commands. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked at him, tracing a line down his cheek with her fingernail.

‘Are we going to work at getting better, Harry?' she asked.

‘Yes,' he answered.

‘Doctor's orders, Harry. Listen to your physician.'

‘Tully's a broken-down old Irish sawbones.'

‘Stop being irascible. It doesn't become you.'

Cairney smiled. The nearness of his wife was like a cocoon, a place to shelter. ‘Well, he is.'

‘He's highly experienced –'

‘That's a euphemism for over the hill.'

‘Harry, Harry, Harry.' Celestine tapped a fingernail on his lip. ‘I think you like playing the role of an old codger, don't you?'

‘An old codger is what I am, sweetheart.'

Celestine pressed her face against Harry Cairney's cheek. ‘You're not so bad, Harry. You're not so bad.' She rolled away from him, staring up at the ceiling.

He glanced at her. She was wearing what he thought of as her secretive expression. It was the look she always had when she was about to surprise him with a birthday present or something unexpected at Christmas. He always saw through it because Celestine, no matter how damn hard she tried, didn't have the knack for guile.

‘Out with it,' he said.

‘Out with what?'

‘Whatever it is that's making you look so smug.'

‘Smug? Me?'

‘Yeah. You.'

She sat up, clutching her knees and smiling.

‘I don't know if you're well enough for surprises, Harry. Tully said you needed peace and rest.'

‘Jesus Christ,' Cairney grumbled. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is that makes you look like a cat that's swallowed the bloody canary whole?'

‘Patrick called early this morning.'

‘Patrick? My Patrick?'

‘The very same.'

Cairney reached for another Kleenex and sneezed into it, causing a tiny pain in the centre of his chest. ‘Why didn't you wake me, for God's sake?'

‘Tully said you needed your sleep.'

Cairney dismissed Tully with a gesture of his hand. ‘I haven't spoken with Patrick since God knows when.'

Celestine ran her fingers through her hair. ‘You'll get the chance soon enough, Harry.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He called from Albany. From the airport. He's on his way to Roscommon, even as we sit here.'

Cairney laid a hand against his chest. ‘Patrick!' he said. ‘Why the hell didn't he let me know he was coming?'

‘Don't get excited, Harry.'

‘He could've called. I'd have made arrangements to have him picked up, Cel.'

Celestine massaged Cairney's shoulders. ‘He said he was going to rent a car in Albany and drive here.'

Cairney sat up, swinging his feet to the floor.

‘Lie down, Harry.'

‘And have my son come here and see me like an invalid?'

‘Which is what you are.'

Cairney wandered to the fireplace. Patrick. His only child. The boy who left Boston University to go to Dublin and study archaeology. When he wasn't off digging in some ridiculous desert, he was deep inside books and old documents and God knows what. He was thirty years old, and Harry Cairney thought it was time his son stopped being the eternal student and did something useful with his life. He wasn't going to say so to Patrick because all the arguments were old and had been used up years ago and Patrick was an independent soul who'd go his own way anyhow. What Cairney couldn't understand was the boy's infatuation with ancient things. He loved his son fiercely. Differences of opinion didn't inhibit that feeling. Just the same, he wished Patrick would come back to America permanently and take up something less … esoteric than digging in the graves of long-dead men. But Patrick had never expressed the desire to leave Dublin nor any interest in anything other than useless archaeology. Now he was coming home to a sick father and security men crawling over the estate. Terrific.

Celestine stood behind him, blowing warm breath on the back of his neck. ‘Shouldn't we be killing the fatted calf or something?' she asked.

Cairney turned to her with a smile. ‘You'll like him. I know you will.'

‘I hope he likes me,' Celestine said. She was quiet a moment. ‘I'll make you a deal. I'll let you get dressed and come downstairs on the condition you don't do anything strenuous and you limit your intake to one glass of brandy. A small one.'

Cairney coughed again. ‘You drive a hard bargain, woman.'

Celestine said, ‘I want a husband who's healthy, Harry.'

‘Okay,' Cairney said. ‘It's a deal.'

Celestine removed her plaid jacket and tossed it over a chair. ‘I'm going to take a shower and dress in something suitable for my stepson.' She paused, laughed quietly. ‘He's only five years younger than me, Harry! How can I possibly be somebody's stepmother?'

She moved towards the bathroom, pausing in the doorway.

‘You really ought to tell your guard-dogs out there that we're expecting company, Harry. You wouldn't want them shooting at your own son, would you?'

Cairney nodded. He watched his wife discard her shirt, saw how it slipped from her body as she stepped inside the bathroom. The door shut and then there was the rattle of water falling inside the shower stall and after a moment the sound of Celestine singing.

Patrick Cairney parked his rented Dodge Colt at the side of the road and stepped out, leaving the engine running. He'd come off the Taconic Parkway near Rhinebeck where a minor road branched in the direction of Roscommon. Out here, miles from any major city, the air smelled good and he took it into his lungs deeply. The landscape was covered with crusted snow. He stared across the frozen fields and the stark clumps of woodland. It was the landscape of his childhood and he knew it thoroughly, all the tracks, the hiding places, the best trees to climb. When he considered his boyhood now, the recollection was touched by a strange little sense of emptiness, as if his only memories were forlorn ones – which wasn't entirely true. Harry had provided a few good things to look back on – a camping trip one summer to the deep woods of Maine, or the time one humid August when they'd gone together up into the Adirondacks and fished Sacandaga Lake. Even there, though, Harry had never strayed too far from civilisation and the nearest phone booth because he always wanted to keep in touch, which to Senator Cairney meant placing one call every day to his Washington office.