Purgatory (13 page)

“Not hard enough.”

Stewart asked,

“How about this? If I find a bit more evidence on Westbury, something else connecting him to the victims, will you reconsider?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” my mind on the Euro Qualifiers, Ireland against Croatia. The country needed this championship so badly. Stewart followed soccer but in that academic way that annoys the shit out of a true believer. He
analyzed
games, played like you would snooker, never the shot before him but the ones to come, and sure enough, had said,

“It’s Spain I worry about, then Italy.”

I said,

“They’d love you in Croatia.”

“Why?”

“You have us already beaten.”

The ferocious vibe between us had stepped down a notch. It was there, simmering but blunted. He grabbed his jacket, said,

“Always good to chat with you, Jack.”

Did I have to have the last word?

Yeah, said,

“A friend in need is God’s version of
The Apprentice
.”

20

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.

—Occam’s razor

The serial number on the bike that C33 found all those years ago?

PT290.

It would be years later when, by a series of odd coincidences, C33 was listening to the tapes of Bob Keppel with Ted Bundy, hours before they fried Bundy. Bundy had been confessing for hours, hoping to buy another reprieve. Down to the wire
,
he confessed to the death of a little girl. He padded out his confession with saying he’d abandoned her ten-speed yellow bike in Seattle, right after he’d brutally killed her. The bike was never found.

C33 had that moment of transcendence when the letter on the bike matched.

No one could ever say C33 hadn’t researched the
condition/malady
that drove the Galway set of
reprisals.
Gacy, Dahmer, DKK, Green River Killer, all had been researched and discarded. C33 was

. . . something else,

. . . something more.

Believe.

A Dexter with an Irish lilt. In C33’s wallet, behind the American driving licence, was a Gothic-script wedge of John Burroughs.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

C33 had honed the art of reprisal in the States, an equal killer land of opportunity. Get a car and a sound track of Hank Williams and you were good to go; it was rich pickings.

But

. . .
There is an unknown land full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream, a land where all things

Are perfect

And
. . .
poisonous.

And so Ireland, with a race of people termed, by Louis MacNeice, full of low cunning.

Where better to ply one’s trade and breathe the air that nourished and ultimately betrayed its greatest writer?

Sweet vicious irony.

* * *

Reardon had summoned me to a formal meeting, meaning, he’d stressed, I wear a tie.

Fuck that.

His new official headquarters were at the Docks, in what had been earmarked for luxury apartments until the economy spat on that. Reardon’s people bought it for a song and change, had converted it to state-of-the-art silicon tech efficiency. Modeled on the gig of Microsoft, Google, lots of young nerds, breaking off from their consoles to whirl Frisbees, chug decaffeinated frappés, do lots of high fives.

This would be nausea all of itself but some of these kids were Irish.

Jesus.

Rob Cox, a leading American technology writer, said,

. . . Under the hoodies and the moral language lurk rapacious business people, robber barons with the same profit motive that drives all businesses and a ruthlessness that rivals history’s greatest industrial bullies.

I was in Reardon’s office, pennants of the Yankees, so the guy couldn’t be all rotten, a pair of crass crossed hurleys to show he was
of the people
, a hoops basket that said,

Yo, I’m down homes.

He was dressed in cargo shorts, a T that yelled

Ashes to Ashes

And flip-flops.

Me, in my strangulation tie, sports jacket, Farah creased pants, like some latter-day consigliere to these precocious kids. Reardon was slurping on a slush, I kid thee fucking not at all, and very loudly.

Teeth clenched, I asked,

“The fuck am I wearing a tie and generally coming off like a horse’s arse?”

He flipped the drink container at the basket and to my delight, missed, said,

“Cos, dude, like, you’re, you know, old.”

Crossed my mind to finally say,

“Fuck it.”

Stride out of there, dignity walking point.

But in truth, I don’t really do dignity. Not in any way anyone ever noticed. Something about Reardon rubbed a primeval urge, a desire to wipe that smug smirk in the plush carpets of his state-of-the-art office. He’d reiterated over and over his wish to use me, to employ me in some capacity, so I could swallow some humiliation, asked,

“You want to get to the point or just waffle your hippie bullshite?”

Got him.

In the face, for one brief moment, I saw the empty man, the ego that can never be stroked, the fallow ground that is forever barren and that power sheens but briefly. He rallied.

“We’re developing an app that will wipe the floor with

iPads

iPhones

i . . . what the fuck ever. But there is a leak. Someone in this here office, my man, is leaking to either Google or Amazon.”

I laughed, said,

“I love it. You want me to catch a techie, a nerd? I wouldn’t even know how to talk to them, let alone know if they were stealing the family silver.”

He stood up, stretched, looked out at his crew with what could only be pride and loathing, said,

“It’s Skylar or Stan, my two best people. You, my errant private eye, are going to take them for drinks, show them some of unknown Galway, and, in your wily way, tell which of the . . .”

He paused, a look of affection, certainly as close to love as a megalomaniac might ever get, then,

“Cunts

. . . is betraying me.”

Then he turned to me, his face a frozen mask, said,

“And you’ll do this, not only because I’ll pay you to the point of orgasmic ridicule but, if you don’t, I’ll burn Stewart.”

I was lost, groped for an answer. He smiled, brittle spite leaking from the corners of his mouth, said,

“People of interest

You

The dyke Guard

Stewie

I have shadowed from day one. How I get to own cities and the likes of you can barely rent.”

I was so angry I could spit, asked,

“What did Stewart do?”

He was now twisting a rubber band, doing that irritating thing as if he had gum in his hands, extending and letting it blow. I wanted to kill him with the freaking band. He said,

“Ask him. I mean, you guys, tight, right? No secrets, am I right, dawg?”

I looked out at the office, asked,

“These kids, I bring them out, show them the sights, and they’ll just fess up?”

He shrugged.

“Those two are my token Americans, naive is their genetic code, they’re in a foreign country, you’re like a
legend, a Waylon Jennings,
not that they ever the fuck heard of him, but you get my drift. Get ’em wasted, they’ll want to impress you.”

I moved to go, stopped, asked,

“Saying it plays like you figure, one of those kids gives it up, what will you do?”

He seemed to be actually considering his answer, then,

“I’ll fucking butcher him.”

On the way out, the girl, looking like an escapee from
The Brady Bunch
, said to me,

“Mr. Taylor, I’m Skylar, I’m so buzzed.”

A guy appeared alongside, looking like he was maybe twelve. I guessed Stan. He joined the chorus, blew,

“We’ll have us a blast, way cool.”

I thought,

“Fucking shoot me now.”

21

“The comic spirit is a necessity of life, as a purge to all human vanity.”

—Oscar Wilde

Stewart had gotten an appointment with Westbury. Dressed to legal impress: the Armani suit, muted tie, Italian shoes. It sure impressed the receptionist, who asked,

“And where have you been, ducks?”

That she was close to seventy seemed not to have dented her spirit. The office managed to combine the old school aura of dusty desks without the desks and a bright bay window that gave a miraculous view of Lough Corrib.

As Stewart waited, she asked,

“Like a whiskey and soda while you’re waiting?”

He half-thought she might be serious and was sure she’d done two of said number her own self. The magazines on the table continued the dual theme. There were

Galway Now

Loaded

Horse & Hound.

All species covered there. Stewart was working on his story, if indeed story he decided he’d go with. Maybe just flush with,

“Why have four of your clients been targeted by a lunatic vigilante?”

And get turfed out on his arse. The old dear was still staring at him, asked,

“Know how long I’ve been working here?”

Like he gave a shit?

Said,

“No.”

“Have a guess, go on, go on.”

Sounding like Pauline McLynn in
Father Ted.
He demurred with,

“Really, I have no idea.”

His tone suggesting he had zero to zilch interest. She sniffed, said,

“You’re gorgeous but, God, you’re boring.”

A beat,

“You lovely people, you don’t have to work at personality, just sit and be admired, you ungrateful . . . pricks.”

Stewart had done as much research on Westbury as he could and, after Google, Wikipedia, both U.K. and Irish entries, had amassed a picture of a blend of Brit Atticus Finch and the total headbanger of a counsel in
Breaking Bad.
The receptionist, whose name he saw was Ms. Davis, said,

“You can go in now. Roy is expecting you.”

Roy!

Roy’s office was a Hollywood lawyer’s space as envisaged by Kenneth Anger. Chaos fueled by adrenaline. Westbury was a barrel of a man, in his fifties, all the years compressed into a tight ball of ferocious energy. Wearing a striped shirt, loud tie, and—get this—braces, like Gekko had never gone to prison. Bald, brute head, and a face that was not lived in but downright occupied. By very bad events.

He emerged from behind a desk laden with documents, hand extended, greeted,

“Mr. Sandler”

“It’s Stewart.”

Westbury’s grip was one of those duels but Stewart from years of martial arts could hand-fuck all day. Westbury said,

“Ms. Davis said you were Sandler.”

Feeling like Jack, he said,

“She was wrong.”

Let it hang there, their play. Westbury cleared a mess of files off a chair, said,

“Grab a pew, lad. Anything to drink?”

Stewart said,

“I’m not a lad and Mrs. Davis already gave me a whiskey and soda.”

Got him.

Then he laughed, said,

“Touché, a sense of humor never goes astray. What can I do for you?”

Stewart debated for all of a minute, then,

“I beat a man half to death, might need representation if the Guards trace the beating.”

Be a perpetrator, like the dead four, and if Westbury was taking out his own clients, in some perverted guise of bent justice, then bring it on. Westbury, displaying why he got the big bucks, countered instantly with

“Alleged. Allegedly beat.”

Stewart nodded, liked it a lot.

Westbury handed over a sheet of paper, said,

“Fill out the personal stuff, keep it vague, paper trails have a tendency to bite you in the arse.”

He then quoted his fees and truly shocked Stewart.