The Death of an Irish Tinker (6 page)

With the laminated ID still out, he made directly for the Monkey Man. “You must be Archie Carruthers.”

The young man’s eyes shied toward the Toddler, as though seeking permission to acknowledge his own name. Carruthers had narrow shoulders and a thin chest. On him the galways ring of dark and curly facial hair looked almost comic, truly like some monkey or leprechaun or pooka. But not like a real human being, which was fitting since he was not a person. He was an addict, a true Monkey Man.

“I asked you. Are you Archie Carruthers?” Out of the corner of an eye McGarr saw the Toddler nudge the solicitor, who stepped forward.

“What’s this about? I represent this man.”

“Since when?”

“Since this moment.”

“And do you represent the rest of these people?”

“I do. Aye.” The solicitor was a tall gray-haired man in a splendid tailored overcoat.

“Without even knowing their names. Tell me—what’s the name of that undoubted felon over there, the one with murder in his eyes?” McGarr pointed to one of the Bookends, who was glaring at him. “Or the young woman beside him. A renter, I hear. Fancy her yourself?”

McGarr waited, studying the man, trying to remember who he was. But there was no reply.

“Ah, then, you’re a rare, generous man for someone in your line of larceny. Fee free to unlimited, anonymous clients. Be honest, you take it out in trade.”

Still nothing, which was strange. McGarr had seen the solicitor before, but he could not give the fleshy but handsome face a name. The man’s color was high, his nose streaked with veins.

McGarr turned to the Monkey. “Archie Carruthers, you’re to come with me.” He took hold of the young man’s gaunt arm. Under the chauffeur’s jacket it felt like a thin branch.

“On what charge?” Finally the solicitor had found his voice.

“Oh, the very worst. Monkey business one, as premeditated as it comes.” McGarr turned back to the man, aware that the Toddler was hanging on every word said. “Square with me now, solicitor. Be uncharacteristically honest, and I won’t run you in. D’you fancy the odd glass of bubbly?”

The solicitor’s head went back, aware of the ruin of his nose. “Bubbly?”

“Champagne. From the look of you, I’d hazard you do. Veuve Cliquot—know the brand? They say it’s wonderful, the very best. Gets you up there. High. Makes you feel like a body in a tall tree, all chained and shackled. Had that effect on Mickalou Maugham. Sent him straight to heaven on the eleventh of November last.” Hand still on Carruthers’s arm, McGarr spun him around. “Or was it the tenth, Mr. Monkey Man?”

Again Carruthers’s eyes appealed to the Toddler.

Whom McGarr now took one long step toward, dragging Carruthers with him. “No, that’s wrong.” They were nearly nose to nose, the Toddler and he. “The murder of Gavin O’Reilly was the tenth. He was the man you put under the bus. Maugham was the eleventh. He couldn’t have lasted more than a day chained naked in that tree.

“Tell me something: Did you find the chains and shackles up there? Or had you thought of it earlier? You know, being just the sort of
gear
you’d need to send a message when the next offender presented himself.”

McGarr’s eyes remained locked into the Toddler’s—small, dark, clear, and unworried—for the longest time. Nobody else spoke; not even the solicitor intervened.

Finally McGarr said. “You a betting man, Mr. Bacon? I know you’re a chancer. Care to wager how long he’ll last?” McGarr pulled Carruthers toward him, then shot the Monkey at McKeon and Ward, who had just arrived.

“That your car?” McGarr meant the long black Mercedes that the Monkey had stolen from his aunt, Eithne Carruthers. It was the model that was used by heads of state, bank directors, and here North Side drug kingpins.

Still, the Toddler said nothing.

“Then you don’t mind if I impound it.”

“On what grounds?” It was the solicitor again.

“That it’s twice stolen. Once by him”—McGarr pointed at Carruthers, whom Ward was placing in the back seat of one of the patrol cars—“and then by him.” He swung the finger at the Toddler’s face, but the man did not flinch.

The solicitor’s brow furrowed, and he looked down at the footpath, as though sorry he’d got involved. McGarr now remembered who he was: Cornelius Duggan by name, who represented only the class of accomplished criminals who could afford him. Well-known politicians, corporate and bank directors, and here a drug mogul. But auto theft was clearly beneath him.

“I hope Mr. Bacon is paying you cash, or could it be something more immediately rewarding?”

Duggan only looked away.

As they drove away, McGarr kept his eyes on the Toddler to see if he would motion Duggan to tag along. But he kept his vigil there on the footpath outside his pub, in his village, in his domain.

Hands in trouser pockets, eyes watchful. The head moving twice to one side, once to the other. The Buddha Toddler. Who’d been in fray before, that much was plain.

“SO, TELL ME,” McGarr asked Archie Carruthers the moment they got him into the dayroom and the monkey hat off his head, “how long you been on the gear?” McGarr leaned back in the chair, put his feet up on the table, twined his fingers behind his head, casual like. They had time to kill.

But Carruthers did not answer. Instead he stared at McGarr with a look of haughty, modish disdain for a bald, old, bent-nose cop who had to work for a living and probably believed in all the verities of society that kept people in chains. All the stupid and timid toilers out there who were afraid to live on the edge.

But it was also a look that McGarr had been studying and breaking now for many a year, all the easier in this case since Carruthers’s look was of the most fragile variety. It was the look of modish
narcotic
disdain, and the monkey in him would crack first. His junkie pride would crumble in hours and put him on the floor, groveling.

“I won’t judge you,” McGarr went on. “I won’t even tell your aunt. Did I mention I have a niece who was on the gear? Clean now five year this May, please God.”

Carruthers flinched at the mention of the deity and turned his eyes with their pinprick pupils to the dusty glass wall on the other side of the table. Like a mirror in a fun house, it distorted things, and he obviously appreciated what he saw. The thin, bearded person sitting at the table looked different. Shorter, wider, hip, strong.

“She’s into the twelve steps and all,” McGarr went on. “Serious like. Carries this little book around with her, something like a missal. Reads it religiously. She gets a craving—you know, for the gear?—she pulls it out, reads it. Doesn’t matter where she is. Grafton Street, the
DART
. Soothes her, she says. Lets her know God’s with her wherever she might be. Gets her back on the proper path.

“No pubs for her. Ever. She stays out of them on principle. Hangs, she calls it, only with people like her, recovering people.” McGarr waited for a moment, watching Carruthers’s eyes swirl in mock discomfort. “Strongest thing they drink is coffee, and plenty of it, I’m here to say. Wouldn’t she like to get her hands on you? She’d set you straight.

“Look”—McGarr lowered his feet to the floor—“as long as we’re here, why don’t I go get some of the literature, she calls it? We’ll go through it together. Maybe I can do you a favor. You ever been to a rehab? Something tells me there’s one in your future. Or something
like
a rehab.” By which McGarr meant jail.

“Maybe I could call you a priest.”

Carruthers couldn’t help himself; he sighed and swirled his head.

“Or a minister.”

When he glanced at McGarr, it was with a look of pity. Sure he’d been to rehabs, the best. Talked to priests, cops, counselors, ministers, shrinks, and other assorted sky pilots and witch doctors. But the Monkey Man knew what was best for Archie Carruthers, and he’d won out every time. Got them right back on the needle the moment they hit the street. Victorious and wired.

But Carruthers’s sigh was enough for McGarr, who knew he was on the right track. He would not ask Carruthers a single question about Glencree and the death of Mickalou Maugham. Rather, he’d let the Monkey—the little fearful, crazed animal inside Carruthers who did not like God or any talk of Him—do the work for him. Or higher powers. The Monkey knew what his higher power was called:
HEROIN
.

And if the Monkey couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t cooperate, McGarr would just toss the both of them—Archie and the Monkey—out on the street, where the Toddler would do the work needed. And maybe put
himself
away, McGarr could only hope.

“Right enough,” he said at the door. “You just relax. I’ll go see if I can dig up the brochures, the
Big Book
and all. Can I tell you I like this work? Ever since my niece recovered through the charity and grace of God, I think it’s my”—he gripped his chest with his fingers—“duty to bring some measure of relief to…poor, little, murdering, stupid, dead fucks like you.”

He waited until Carruthers’s odd-looking head with its curly hair and chin whiskers swung to him.

“You mean, you don’t
know
you’re dead? You should. Ask yourself this: Where’s your mouthpiece, your solicitor? Or, rather, the Tod’s solicitor? Ah, the Tod, he’s such a stand-up guy. Takes care of his own, he does. You can bank on that.

“Make you a bet?” Now McGarr had Carruthers’s attention. “We won’t see Corny Duggan’s great coat and shiny tasseled shoes within a good mile of this place. Like you, the Tod is just waiting. In forty-eight hours, hey, you’re out of here for a reunion. D’yeh have any idea what
Tod
means in German? Course you don’t. Chemistry is more your thing.”

McGarr opened the door and stepped out. “If there’s anything you want—the definition even—give us a shout. We’ll
consider anything but what you’ll soon need.” And “be begging for” went unsaid.

It’s only two days. I can do it, Archie Carruthers told himself confidently. Hadn’t he only just popped three cc’s of coke to get him up, then leveled off with a bag of the T’s best smack, one of twenty he did in a day. Or would have.

And it was still with him. Enough that as he sat here in the shit being questioned for murder, only one thing was bothering him: that he might make it through the two days, only to find himself back before the Toddler jonesing.

Because the one thing Archie Carruthers knew was his habit. In fact, after his present world-class, nearly four-year run—no breaks—it was about all he knew. Or wanted to know. He ran through how it would go, to be prepared. To steel himself and be strong, the way he looked there in the glass.

Six hours, maybe less, it would come on him: the notion that things weren’t quite right and he wasn’t where he should be. He’d feel a bit jumpy, anxious, out of sorts, then suddenly, horribly, he’d realize that there was something far wrong with him altogether.

He’d begin to sweat. His nose would run; his eyes would start watering. He’d yawn, again and again, suddenly tired but wide-awake, trembling, his body aching as if he’d been caned or something. All over. Or sneezing uncontrollably. Once in Scotland, where he’d told his mother he’d gone hiking and spent every penny she gave him on dope, he had sneezed so long and hard he’d shattered capillaries in his eyeballs.

Then cramps. His muscles would knot up brutally, and he’d have to try to keep on his feet, rubbing himself, stumbling, falling. He’d upchuck until reverse peristalsis came on and/or he shit himself until he could shit no more. Then maybe a convulsion and hospital. Once at the Beaumont he’d been pronounced dead and given the last rites, and him
a bleeding Methodist. Or
from
bleeding Methodists. Coming to, he gave the priest a right Protestant start.

Carruthers smiled, thinking of it Still and all, the Monkey was a bit worried. With the run he’d been on—over fourteen hundred hooked-up days—anything was possible, thanks to the Toddler, whose gear for “friends” was free and primo. Carruthers had been good with numbers in his time. He could figure.

From behind the glass wall, which was a one-way mirror used by the staff of the squad to observe interrogations, McGarr, Ward, Bresnahan, Swords, and Sinclaire—each in turn—stood watch over Archie Carruthers for the next two days.

They made sure he was provided with food, hot drinks, a comfortable cot with warm blankets, even soft lighting when he complained about his eyes. When he vomited, a steward quickly cleaned up. When he became incontinent, a clean prison uniform was provided, and his street clothes were sent to a laundry.

The squad also made sure that the two television cameras at opposite corners of the ceiling continued to film the Monkey as his condition deteriorated. For the record, if ever needed.

Sitting behind the glass with them at all times was a nurse trained in the treatment of opiate withdrawal syndrome. They also had a physician on call. Before Carruthers’s nausea or now—as the Monkey Man approached his thirty-sixth hour and roared for “Char! Bring me some hot bloody
char
!” in an accent that revealed the years he had lived in England—they began placing notes on his tray.

“Chin up,” one said. “I’m trying to get you out.” It was signed, “T.” Another; “Duggan’s on the case.” Yet another; “When they let you out, see me straightaway.”

“The Tod didn’t write that!” Carruthers screamed at McGarr, clipping the tray with a hand and pitching his dinner onto the floor.

McGarr raised his hands in mock horror. “He didn’t? Well, maybe not, now that you mention it. It’s just a doodle I do. (Something wrong there.) You know, like friction. But I’ll wager you this—”

Carruthers was shaking uncontrollably, his eyes sunken, his face gray.

“—he’s thinking it this very moment. Came to me like telepathy, it did. He’s beside himself, doesn’t know what the Christ to do, till his Monkey Man is back behind the wheel of
his
Merc, driving him down the country. Someplace wild, romantic, and isolated, like a lake where the water’s deep. You know, beyond the Scalp.” It was a barren, rocky defile in Wicklow.

“Know what I’m going to do.” McGarr went on. “I, me, personally—I’m going to drive you right up to Coolock my very self, the moment you get out, and deposit you in front of his lordship the Toddler. Drug baron and forgiving, benignant deity that he is. But not to worry. I won’t tarry and stay for a pint. Won’t embarrass you in any way, shape, or form. I’ll take myself off, instanter. Who am I to stand between friendship?

“And won’t he be glad to see you sick and shaking or even fine, calm, and hale after having been given—correct me now, if I’m wrong, I’m certain you know more about this than me—naloxone, clonidine, or even methadone?”

Magic words. Carruthers raised his head, and his eyes cleared, even though he was shaking so totally he had to hug his body to keep himself from spilling out of the chair.

“Can I ask you a question? Under these circumstances it doesn’t much matter how you answer it. The entire statement, signature and all, would be tossed out of any decent court of law. Were you along for the ride the night Mickalou Maugham was put up in your aunt’s tree?”

Carruthers blinked.

“Who was with you? The Bookends?”

Again he blinked.

“What about Desmond Bacon?”

Carruthers shook his head.

“But Desmond Bacon, the Toddler, ordered the killing?”

He nodded.

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say, Desmond Bacon ordered the killing of Mickalou Maugham. Raise your head and speak directly to the camera.” McGarr pointed to one of the two video cameras that were hung in opposite corners of the room.

“Desmond Bacon ordered the killing of Mickalou Maugham and the Hyde brothers did it. Now—methadone.”

“Will you swear to that?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“None that I know of. We put you back out up in Coolock, you’ll be dead within hours. And you know it. Or you should.”

“Maybe I want to be dead.”

McGarr moved toward the door. “Your choice. But I think what you’ll choose is methadone, which will be served after your statement. Instanter—my promise.”

Two days later, while in restricted confinement, Archie Carruthers was served something else altogether. It was in a plastic bag under a warming tin on his dinner tray.

With the tin still raised in his hand, the Monkey was frozen by the sight, unable to do anything but stare down at the 3 cc syringe filled with what he knew was cocaine hydrochloride and a little glassine bag of Mexican brown that he’d do after, to mellow out. And it came with works: second syringe, butane lighter, spoon, and strap.

Carruthers tried to put it together—how the Toddler managed to smuggle it in, what that said about the
juice
he had even within the police. And finally the big, the
essential
question: Would the T send him more, regular like? Enough to last through whatever was coming?

It even occurred to the Monkey that it might be a hot shot, like the cop, McGarr, had kept saying about what the
Toddler wanted for Archie: to be dead. But it was only a passing thought. Why? Because unlike the Toddler, who didn’t use, the Monkey was expert in dope. Nobody shot gear like the Monkey, who would know if it was right or not.

To the Monkey’s way of thinking, the methadone that he was receiving by tablet was not a true drug. True drugs, real drugs, the only drugs that mattered were not swallowed; they were shot.

In one motion he swiveled himself and the tray away from the observation slot in the old iron door. And in less time than you could say, “
TOD’S TOT, THE TOTAL GEAR
,” the Monkey had whacked the load into the one vein in his left arm that still worked.

But not all at once. Instead he plunged the coke in and out of him, over and over, like the in and out of intercourse, manipulating the spike to repeat the intensity of the rush. Every time he pulled back the plunger, some of his blood was sucked out and mixed with the coke and was zapped back in him like a thunderbolt to the heart.

And his head! Man, it was as if it kept exploding. Lights, bells, gongs, whistles—the lot. Even the hair on every part of his body felt it, standing out from the skin like the quills of a porcupine! Or the pelt of a
blasted
monkey!

But he’d hardly begun, it seemed, when it was gone. It was always the way with a good thing. Not a drop left. Suddenly, precipitously the Monkey began to feel jumpy and anxious. Then nervous and jittery. Which was where the gear came in.

He had to act fast. Soon he’d be shaking and unable to cook the bag. Also, the only vein he had left without taking off his clothes was in his neck, so he’d have to aim. He could use the warming tin as a mirror, feel with the fingers of his other hand, and then plunge. The vein was big; he wouldn’t have to pop it dead on. Though he’d try.

But even in his condition, which was now jangly, the Monkey knew he should check the gear. Mexican brown
was mean shit. Also, if the cop was right about the Toddler, it could have anything in it—not just impurities but strychnine or powdered battery acid. A mix of the two was the hottest shot of all.