The Bloomsday Dead (6 page)

Anyway, I don’t know Dublin, so it wasn’t until I saw that the cabbie was driving over a Liffey River bridge that I began to get suspicious.

Dublin Airport is in the north of the city.

Connolly Station, as far as I remembered, is also in the north of the city. Certainly north of the Liffey. Driving from the airport to Connolly should not for any reason involve crossing the river.

I reexamined the driver. Scars on his hands. Big guy, bruiser, you would have thought. Slow, but you wouldn’t want to mess with him. Knock your block off, he would.

No, I didn’t like him at all.

And now that I checked out the cab, I began to notice a few odd things as well.

There was no meter, but that wasn’t so unusual, a lot of minicabs in Dublin didn’t have meters, same with gypsy cabs in New York. But there was no glass partition between the driver and me. No credit card machine, no identity card hanging from his mirror, and he had no sticker allowing him into airport parking.

In fact, there was nothing in the cab that looked like a cab at all.

Aye, but then again who exactly had the driver been on the phone with that he was so fucking anxious to hang up on when I came back? And further on that point, why send me away in the first place unless it was to make a call? Of course he could take dollars. Everybody took dollars, especially when it was off the books.

I tried to peer through the window to figure out where we were. The last of the night had been more or less banished but it was hard to see now through the morning mist. Vague buildings went past, but there were no landmarks, not that I could have recognized the landmarks anyway. Maybe St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity College, but anything else would have left me none the wiser.

“Do you have a cigarette?” I asked the driver, for something to say.

“I do not. I have given up. Since my birthday. Over a month now.”

“Good for you, it’s a filthy habit,” I agreed.

“Aye, well, for me the encouragement was the pubs, you know,” the driver said.

“What?”

“The pubs, you know, the ban,” he said.

“They banned smoking in Irish pubs? Hadn’t heard.”

“Every pub in the south. No smoking anywhere; I was opposed, but it’s a good thing, I see that now, helped me quit. Social thing, out with your mates. I notice the difference when I go up to Belfast, Jesus, the smoke would knock you out.”

“You go up to Belfast often?” I asked in a completely neutral voice.

“Aye, now and again. Business, you know?”

“What sort of business, what’s your line?”

“Oh, nothing you would be interested in. The taxi business, that’s it. Stuff to do with that. You know how it is.”

I did not know how it was. The taxi business, in Belfast? The more he talked the more I didn’t like this little scenario.

“Are we near the station?” I asked.

“Not too far now, I’ll have you there for the first Enterprise train. Think that goes off at six o’clock. You’ll have time to get your breakfast and get a paper and a seat. You should reserve your seat, though, it’s very popular. Faster, too, just a couple of hours and you’ll be in Central Station in Belfast. It’s great. Really quick now that the Provos have stopped bombing the line,” the driver said rapidly.

“What’s your name if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.

“Padraig Lugh. But it’s funny, you know, nobody ever calls me Paddy or Pad or anything like that, everybody always calls me Padraig.”

“Do you want them to call you Paddy?”

“No, I do not. I like Padraig.”

“How do you spell that last name?” I asked, wondering if it was fake.

“L-u-g-h. He’s the old Irish sun god, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

“And what’s your name?” he asked.

“Name’s Michael,” I said slowly, not liking his curiosity.

“Pleased to meet you, Michael,” Padraig said and put his hand behind his head for me to shake.

I shook it. It was cold, clammy, trembling.

Jesus, was Padraig a player? It couldn’t be coincidence if he was. Maybe they were waiting for me. Maybe the customs guy had tipped them off and told his mates that he would hold me just long enough for them to get there. Maybe Paddy had been on the phone to them. Sent me back in to get euros just to confirm my ID.

Or maybe he was just an ordinary driver with a touch of palsy, taking me on the magical mystery tour to bump up his fare.

I let go of his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Padraig. Listen, I was wondering, I couldn’t help noticing that we’d crossed over the Liffey.”

“Aye, we did, too,” Padraig agreed with a sigh.

“Isn’t Connolly Station on the other side of the river?”

“Do you know the city well at all now?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Well, I’ll tell you, it’s actually quicker for me to scoot over the bridge and skip along the south side and skip back than it would be for me to try to get through all the construction around the Abbey and the station and the Customs House, you know.”

“Oh sure, I wasn’t impugning your abilities as a driver. Not at all. I was only asking,” I said a little apologetically.

“It’s all right. Listen, I take taxis when I’m abroad and I’m always wondering if the bloody driver is ripping me off,” Padraig said with a laugh and turned around to reassure me. He seemed hurt and I felt embarrassed now.

No. Padraig wasn’t an assassin or a goon or a player. He was just a cabbie taking me on the quickest route to the station.

Well, that’s what happens when you’ve spent twelve years on the run. You’ve got a Ph.D. in suspicion. It helps you stay alive but it doesn’t do much for interpersonal contacts.

I frowned.

Aye.

And wasn’t that the heart of everything.

The reason I was here. Not for Bridget. For me. Since 1992 I hadn’t had a relationship that lasted more than six months. It wasn’t the fact that I had to lie to every woman I met. It was more the nagging distrust that would creep in between her and me. A slow imploding destruction. They could always tell I had secrets. I was suspicious of everything they did. It put the mustard in the chocolate cake. Lies, lies, and more lies. You couldn’t build anything on that. And I’d never been tempted to tell anyone the truth. That I was a wanted man. That I had killed a mob boss and the FBI had cut me a deal to keep me out of jail. That I’d killed six more people in Maine and Massachusetts, two of them women. How could you tell someone that? Especially someone you loved? You’d be putting her in danger. Jeopardizing her life. You could never share, you must always dissemble. Aye, and it would continue to be that way. The way things had to be. Living in shadows, always on guard, always a skeptic.

Like being in the Masons without the social contacts or the aprons.

“So you can’t smoke in any bars at all? What about clubs?” I asked, for something to say.

“Clubs, I don’t know, I am not a member of any clubs, to tell you the truth now.”

“They’re probably exempt,” I said.

“Aye, well, it’s a pity you’re leaving for Belfast; if the weather stays nice there’s going to be quite the shindig in Dub today.”

“Yeah, I heard about that, Bloomsday, right, something to do with James Joyce?”

“Aye, you’re right. I haven’t read the book meself. I’m not a big reader. And I’m not likely to be now. I just got satellite, you know. Four hundred channels, powerful stuff. Who would want to read with all that carry-on. And bejesus, have you seen the length of that book? But a lot of famous people are coming to town. I heard Gwyneth Paltrow was staying at the Gresham.”

“Gwyneth Paltrow?”

“That’s what I heard, she’s big into literature like, and I think she’s Irish way back, so she is.”

“Who else is going to be here?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Liam Neeson, I think, people like that. You know, famous people.”

“Who’s the most famous person you ever had in your taxi?” I asked, trying to see if he really was a taxi driver.

“I have had all of U2.”

“Nice guys?” I asked.

“Great. Great guys. Really great. Wonderful lads. . . . Hate that Bono, though. Can’t stand him. Lecturing all of us to give money to Africa, while he, an Irish artist for all love, has never paid a fucking red cent in tax in his life and, I might add, whose personal fortune could clear the debts of about twenty of the poorest countries in the world. Fucker.”

“Stiffed you on a tip, huh?” I guessed.

“No, not really, could have been better, though; anyway, this was back when I had my own cab, you know, when I was doing it for a living. Back in the 1980s. Had all the boys in here at one time or another,” the driver said and in the mirror I caught a wistful look on his face.

Back when he had his own cab? Back when he did this for a living? So what exactly was he doing now?

He wasn’t a taxi driver anymore. Now my antennae were really up, and I wasn’t too surprised when he said:

“Shite, do you feel that? Oh, do you feel that? Ah, Jayzus.”

“Feel what?”

“The bump, boom, boom, boomp.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

He turned with a leery smile of broken yellow choppers. Slight nervous twitch to the eye.

“Aye, it looks like we got a flat on the left front. You probably can’t feel it back there. Would you mind if I just got out and checked? Station is only five minutes away, but I don’t want to fuck the wheels.”

I tensed.

The car slowed.

“Just be two secs to take a look at it,” he said.

The car stopped.

“Don’t mind if I go out?” he asked.

“Sure, go, you can check the tire,” I said.

He opened the door, left it open.

I looked out the window and I knew it was a play. We were definitely somewhere near the docks or the water in the east of the city, south of the Liffey. A warehouse district. I couldn’t tell exactly where, because I didn’t know and also because the fog had reduced the visibility to about forty or fifty feet. But no houses, anyway, no cars. The perfect place for a hit.

I readied myself. What was he going to do? Get out of the car, pull out a piece, and shoot me through the window? If it wasn’t his car, sure, why not? Maybe he’d hijacked it last night. And what was I going to do? I didn’t know yet. Have to figure it out very soon.

I watched him carefully. He bent down to check the tire. His hands were hanging by his sides. He knelt down again. Here it comes, I thought. I put my fingers on the far door handle, ready to slide out backward, get up, and sprint off into the fog as best I could.

Aye, that would be the move. Turn the handle, push the door, roll, and run.

It would depend upon how good a shot he’d be and what his shooter was.

Padraig stood, smiled at me.

“Shite, there’s something wedged between the tire and the rim, you couldn’t just give us a wee hand there, could you?” he said.

“I can’t, sorry, I have a business meeting, don’t want to get my hands all dirty,” I said with an apologetic look.

“No, no, you won’t have to touch anything. I’ll just need you to hold the torch while I try and see what’s wedged in there. I’ll get it from the boot.”

I didn’t see how I could say no to that. Gingerly, I opened the door, edged out of the car, keeping the vehicle between him and me. He popped the trunk and removed a flashlight. Turned it on.

“Come on round, I’ll need you to hold this for me,” he said. “I’ll knock a couple of bucks off the fare.”

“I thought you didn’t take dollars,” I said.

“Euros, I’ll knock a couple of euros off,” he corrected himself with a laugh.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You just hold the light. I can’t see under the rim. I’ll bang whatever’s there out with this,” he said, holding up a tire iron and giving me another wonderful welcoming Irish smile.

So you want me to bend down and hold the flashlight, meanwhile you stand beside me with a fucking tire iron and thump it repeatedly into my skull. I don’t think so, mate.

“Something stuck in the wheel rim, eh?” I asked.

“Aye.”

“Let’s get the light on it,” I said. “Oh, I see it, there it is,” and as he bent down to take a look I smacked the flashlight onto the top of his head and rammed it backward into his nose. Blood squirted, cartilage broke.

“That enough goddamn light for you?” I said.

I went to kick him but the blows to the head had hardly dented that thick skull. He swung the tire iron at me. It crashed into the Mercedes, scraping a big chunk out of the door.