Jig (23 page)

Celestine turned her face around to him just as the moon poked through cloud again. Staring at her, looking at the moonlight in her hair and the shadows under her cheekbones and the silvery flecks in her eyes, Cairney felt a little flicker of attraction that he pushed away almost as soon as it touched him. He moved back from Celestine. Your stepmother, for God's sake. Your father's wife. He wondered if she'd noticed, if his expression had betrayed anything. He was annoyed with himself. He didn't like unwanted feelings coming up out of nowhere and startling him. They suggested hidden places inside himself that he didn't know about, unmapped territory within his own psyche.

She went on talking about Harry's health. How his bronchial condition had recently worsened. How sometimes in the night she'd sit listening to his breathing, actually
waiting
in dread for the sound to stop. Cairney was hardly listening. Her words swept past him. He wanted to go back indoors. Get out of this moonlight, which was affecting him in uncomfortable ways. He shivered and looked towards the house. He thought of his father asleep in the upstairs bedroom.

‘I don't want anything to happen to him,' she said.

‘He's made of old shoe leather,' Cairney said. ‘As a kid, I used to think he was indestructible.'

‘That's the trouble, Patrick. He isn't.'

Cairney was silent. He put his hands into the pockets of his coat. A wind rose off Roscommon Lake. Cairney started to move in the direction of the house. Celestine followed.

‘You're tired,' she said.

‘A little.'

They walked back. Celestine paused on the steps of the house. Cairney, who had reached the door, looked back down at her.

She said, ‘I don't want to lose him, Patrick. But Tully says his lungs are badly congested. This last bronchial attack really hit him where it hurts.'

Cairney didn't say anything. He gazed at the expression of concern on Celestine's face. He wanted to reach out and comfort her. Instead, he ushered her inside the entrance room, where it was warm.

Celestine removed her fur jacket. ‘At least there's one consolation, Patrick. His doctor says he has shad been a heart like an ox. That's something.'

Cairney smiled. ‘What do you expect? It's a good Irish heart. They don't make them that way anymore.'

Celestine laughed. She pushed open the door that led to the sitting room. She hesitated in the doorway a moment, watching Cairney's face. Then she said, ‘Let's have a nightcap.'

The White House, Washington D.C
.

Thomas Dawson, President of the United States, former senator from Connecticut, ate only yoghurt and raisins for his evening meal. He had a phobia about putting on weight, and he monitored his caloric intake carefully, using a small calculator he carried with him everywhere. He stuck his plastic spoon inside his yoghurt carton and sat back in his chair, punching the buttons of his calculator.

When he was through he looked up at his brother Kevin, who was standing on the other side of the desk. Kevin was pale and nervous and his voice a little higher than usual on this particular evening. With damn good reason, the President thought.

Thomas Dawson stood up. He fixed Kevin with the Dawson Grin, which had been patented years before during the first Senate campaign. It was a bright expression suggesting honesty and easy confidence. It appealed to women and it didn't threaten men, and it was perhaps the most important expression any politician could be blessed with, attractive and unmenacing. It was the smile of a man from whom you would buy a used car and go home feeling good about it, and you'd never think to complain when it started to leak oil on the second day.

‘Kevin,' he said, using the tone of one brother to another, reassuring and almost conspiratorial.

Kevin Dawson shifted his feet. Whenever he visited his brother in the Oval Office, he felt the weight of history pressing down on him, and he was overawed like a schoolboy. Jesus, this was his own brother! They'd been brought up together, played together, shared a bedroom – and he could hardly talk to the man! Even now, when he'd come here to speak about his fears and look for a little support, words hadn't come easily. This meekness, which often took the form of a rather elaborate politeness, had long been the fatal flaw in his character. He was a man who found it easy to be overcome, whose arguments were always the first to be swept aside in any debate. Sometimes he wished he had the heart for confronting the world face on.

‘The Irish question's a delicate one for me,' Thomas Dawson said. ‘My general policy, at least in public, has been to ignore it. Leave it to the British. We pump in a few bucks to Belfast every now and then, and we do considerable trade with Dublin. But we don't play favourites. Don't take sides. Keep everybody happy. It's a balancing act and it's goddam tricky.'

Kevin Dawson watched his brother come around the large desk. He reflected on the fact that the politics of the presidency changed a man. Thomas Dawson had become sombre, more serious, and at the same time somewhat devious. Even the Dawson Grin seemed jaded, little more than a reflex.

‘Privately, it's another matter. You know that as well as anyone, Kevin. God, it's only been a hundred years since old Noel Dawson sailed from Killarney. How could I not feel some kind of attachment to the old country? How could I not take sides?' The President smiled sadly. ‘The trouble is, I'm not a private person any more. It's one of the first things you find out in this job. Every damn thing you do is public. Even my diet, Kevin. I had a publisher offer me a ridiculous sum of money for my goddam diet! Can you imagine that? Wanted to call it the White House Diet or some such thing.'

He spread his hands on the desk. Finely manicured nails glinted under the green lampshade. ‘Consider this, Kevin. There's a large Irish vote out there. Right now, I have it in my pocket the way no American president outside of Kennedy ever had it. I can count on it and that's a nice feeling in politics because usually the only thing you can take for granted is the electorate being fickle.' The President sat up on the edge of his desk and played with the empty yoghurt carton. ‘I'd be pretty damn stupid to screw around with this support. It would be suicidal to alienate it.'

Kevin Dawson bit the inside of his cheek. What was his brother trying to tell him? He remembered Thomas Dawson when he'd been plain old Tommy, eighteen years of age and a halfway decent quarterback at Princeton. Simple unadulterated Tommy, without a devious bone in his body. He failed to make the connection between the President and that young man who had loved nothing more than football, beer, and cheerleaders, in any order you liked. Now Thomas Dawson watched his weight, didn't drink beer, paid no attention to football, and – instead of dallying with cheerleaders – was married to a glacial woman called Eleanor, who was always travelling the country in her relentless and entirely manic crusade against the indiscriminate dumping of radioactive wastes. Mrs. Radioactivity, Kevin thought. Eleanor Dawson was an ice princess, a woman with all the sexual charm of cake frosting. Kevin could never imagine his brother in bed with her. With her high cheekbones and her fashionable demeanour and the calm way she handled herself with press and public, she was an absolutely perfect wife for a president.

Thomas Dawson examined his fingernails. ‘I've always turned a blind eye to your little gang of fundraisers, Kevin. I've always considered that side of you your own private business. Despite the potential embarrassment you represent, I've never told you what to do. Have I?'

Kevin Dawson shook his head.

‘I've let you run as you please,' the President said. He reached out and clapped his brother on the shoulder and all at once Kevin Dawson was sixteen years old again, confiding to his big brother that he'd gotten a girl into trouble and what the hell should he do about it. He felt small.

The President sat down behind his desk. He had a red-covered folder in front of him. He flipped it open. ‘Maybe I should have kept a firmer hand on you,' he said. He shrugged, stared at the several sheets of paper inside the folder. ‘And now you come here and tell me that some Irishman might be a menace to your life. Which wouldn't have been the case if you'd quit hanging around with those Irish fanatics.' The President was careful enough not to name them, even if he knew who they were. His was a life of sometimes pretending ignorance of things he knew. It was a way of thinking in which he became two distinct people, and then two more, splitting and multiplying his personalities like some primitive cell.

‘Yes,' Kevin Dawson said quietly. His face assumed an expression of regret. His cheeks sagged and his lips turned down and his eyes seemed to shrink into his head.

The President said, ‘The problem is, he's not just
some
Irishman, Kevin. The man who's got you steamed up is none other than Jig. Ring a bell?'

‘Jig?' Kevin's throat constricted. ‘
They sent Jig?
'

The President nodded his head. ‘I'm told he entered the United States within the last forty-eight hours, give or take a few. He's suspected to be in the New York City area. We're not sure.'

Kevin Dawson sat down, something he didn't usually do in this particular office. He felt something very cold settle on his heart. He stared at his brother, as if he were expecting the President to tell him that he'd been joking about Jig, but Thomas Dawson's expression didn't change and the seriousness in his eyes didn't go away. Kevin realised that a small nerve had begun to beat in his throat and his hands were suddenly trembling. In a million years he could never have imagined Jig's orbit touching his own. What the hell did
his
life have to do with that of the famous Irish assassin? They were worlds apart. But here was Thomas Dawson telling him otherwise. Kevin closed his eyes. ‘You're not
sure?
' he asked. ‘What the hell does that mean?'

The President was quiet for a long time. ‘I've been trying to explain something to you, Kevin. I've been trying to instruct you in the realities of my position.'

Realities, Kevin Dawson thought. The only reality that concerned him right then was the notion of Jig lurking out there in the shadows of his life. It had been bad enough to imagine a faceless Irishman, but now that this figure had been identified, it was much worse. For the first time since he'd become associated with the Fundraisers he felt a sense of fear. He tried to remember Jock Mulhaney's reassurances about how this Irishman would never find them in any case, but how could the big man's bluster console him now? Even Harry Cairney hadn't seemed very convinced that the group's anonymity was inviolate. Cairney had given the opposite impression, that the secrecy in which the group had always operated was goddam
fragile
. Kevin Dawson leaned forward in his chair, clenching his hands between his knees. ‘You must be doing
something
to catch this guy, Tom.'

Thomas Dawson closed the red-covered file. ‘You're not listening to me. You're not paying attention. Jig's become something of a folk hero in every Irish bar from Boston to Philadelphia and back again. They sing songs about him. They adulate him. He's the Irish Pimpernel, Kevin. And you know how the Irish love their heroes. The daring of the man. The mystery. He kills English politicians and disappears as if he doesn't exist! They just adore all that. He's been written up in
Newsweek
and
Time
. The guy's a goddam saviour as far as the Irish are concerned.'

Kevin Dawson watched his brother stroll round the office. It dawned on him now. ‘You're not going out of your way to catch him, is that it? You're going to give this killer a free rein. Are you telling me that?'

‘Not exactly.'

‘I'm lost, Tommy. Enlighten me.'

‘The votes,' Thomas Dawson said. ‘If I place myself firmly behind a massive effort to catch this man, how are the votes going to go? How are the Irish going to mark their ballots next time around? Are they going to pull their little levers for the man who approved of a massive manhunt to catch their hero?' He looked at his younger brother seriously. ‘I have a number of promises to keep while I occupy this office. And the only currency a president has is the vote of the people. In my case, Kevin, the Irish–American community constitutes a sizeable proportion of that vote. It's like having money in the bank. And I don't want to squander it. I don't want to take the risk of tossing it all away. Have you seen the opinion polls lately, Kevin? It seems like I'm having what the pros call an image problem. Some people out there perceive their President as a man who doesn't make decisions quickly enough. I don't like that.'

Kevin Dawson didn't speak. He heard the sound of a door closing at the back of his brain.

‘I'm not going to give them a martyr, Kevin. I'm not going to be the one to take their folk hero away from them.' Thomas Dawson looked up at the ceiling. When he spoke again his voice was low. ‘Besides, it's my understanding he's only looking for the men in your little group, Kevin. It's not as if he's a threat to the population at large, who don't even know the man's in the country. And I intend to keep it that way.'

Kevin Dawson shook his head. ‘I can't believe I'm hearing this.'

‘Try,' the President said. ‘Try a little harder.'

‘You'll sit here and do absolutely nothing about him?'

‘I didn't say that, Kevin. At this moment there's an English agent called Frank Pagan in New York City who's getting some assistance from the FBI.'

‘How much is “some”?' Kevin asked.

The President shrugged. ‘Just enough.'

Kevin Dawson tried to see inside his brother's head. There was a cynical balance sheet in that skull. The President was weighing four men, one of whom was his own brother, against his precious Irish–American vote. ‘Doesn't it matter to you that
my
life might be in danger? Jig kills people, for Christ's sake! It's his profession. And they aren't sending a professional assassin from Ireland for the good of his goddam health. If he doesn't recover the money …' He didn't finish this sentence.