The Going Rate (48 page)

“Wanted to stay anonymous there,” said McNamara. “So's anyone wouldn't think they could, you know, get a big whack of money out of him.”

“Is he famous?” Minogue asked.

He received no answer. He poked his way back to random pages. There was a drawing of a street that seemed to be running with rain, with street lamps reflecting off the puddles.

“He's a good drawer,” said Malone.

Minogue could now make out most of the words in a box that ran to the outer corner of the page. T falls for M's girl – she agrees M is psycho, wants out – M enters pub coked wants to get T.

“Plots,” he said. “Ideas.”

“That's not bad at all,” said McNamara. “That drawing. Real Dublin type of scene there. Very not bad.”

There were footsteps outside. McNamara stood up quickly, and strode to the door, where he intercepted a detective.

“Already?” Minogue heard him say. “Christ. Okay, go down and get them started, I suppose.”

Minogue let go of the pen as he finished reading something about a shipment from the docks. The notebook seemed to fall in on itself.

“Time to split there,” said McNamara. “You were never here, unless you hear me say you were, okay?”

“Thanks,” said Minogue.

“Tommy?” asked McNamara.

“I'm a ghost then,” said Malone. “See, I'm invisible. Him too.”

“You're a ghost who owes me a big one then,” McNamara said.

In the hall, Minogue peeled off the gloves with some difficulty. He pocketed them, and turned around in time to see the first of the Technical Bureau appear in the lobby.

“Done in for his notebook,” Malone said. “That'd be a first.”

“What did his wife say again, about down the quays, and the Polish man?”

“He said he couldn't tell her then and there, but if anything happened, to look in his notebooks.”

“Notebooks? Not, notebook, singular?”

Malone shrugged, and began a long, slow yawn that seemed to cause him pain.

Chapter 50

K
ILMARTIN WAS FIDGETY
, and he had a cowed, expectant look to him. The new clothes he had taken so much trouble to pick out just didn't work. The cut of the jacket, the pattern on the shirt, looked way too full of effort, and the shoes looked downright uncomfortable. He cleared his throat, and turned up toward the restaurant with Minogue.

“A stone cold killer they call them,” he said. “The FBI.”

Minogue had almost forgotten the course that Kilmartin had taken years ago in Virginia.

“They profile them, they dissect them – in a manner of speaking now – and they do a thousand interviews with them, but they're still a what you call it, a…”

“Enigma?”

“That's the word. Puzzle, we'll call it.”

“I heard they gave him four transfusions no less. Four. All those donations, just to keep him alive. And for what?”

The old Kilmartin was revving up, all right, Minogue noted.

“As for the other fella, well he wasn't as quick on his feet as he should have been, was he.”

With eyes almost clenched shut, Minogue had taken a fleeting glance at the other man lying awkwardly between a chair and the table. The dark mass above his scalp was blood and something else Minogue didn't want to know about.

Kilmartin seemed to be walking slower on purpose. They came to Wicklow Street. The Chang's restaurant was within sight now. The deal was that Kathleen would bring Maura Kilmartin earlier.

“A shame about that poor divil though,” Kilmartin said. “That Fanning fella that got mixed up with them. Never knew what hit him, I suppose.”

Minogue was a little tempted to ask Kilmartin if he felt a bit sorry for the Murphy character, the one awaiting positive identification from the car.

“And then to just dump him, and the car of course – on top of a car he dumped earlier on. What kind of a man can do that, I say to myself. What kind of a human being. … But why should I think that. God knows, we met enough of them over the years. Didn't we?”

Kilmartin had been talking non-stop since they had parked.

“And another thing,” Kilmartin went on. “There's no way around this: it dehumanizes people. The army, I'm talking about. Any army. Put a man in a uniform, give him a gun, let him think he's better than the people he's looking at, and that's what you're going to get – oh, and keep him ignorant, of course, so he's sure of himself and doesn't be thinking too hard about what he's ordered to do.”

Minogue did not want to dip his toes in that one.

“But who's responsible in the final analysis, I say.”

“For what?”

“What that fella did, or those fellas did. Out there in Iraq, I'm saying. By the way, don't take this the wrong way, but your listening skills are not up to scratch.”

Minogue gave him the eye.

“It's true,” said Kilmartin. “You know it. Sorry to say, but.”

Straight from the Self-Help section, Minogue wanted to retort. He began to make up titles for what Kilmartin had read, or consulted. Spousal Bliss Through Listening to Your Life Partner. Ears of Love. Tantric Listening.

“He should have turned in that other fella,” Kilmartin said. “When he found he was dealing over there. ‘West Ham' or whatever his name was.”

“Parker. Gary Parker.”

“No sense of right and wrong when you're in the army. And sure the world knows, you can't deal with a junkie. Not one inch can you trust one. But there he is, covering up for this fella over there in Iraq. That's not how to do things, is it.”

“Hardly.”

“The story I heard,” Kilmartin said, his voice dropping. “I heard a rumour they were, em, gay.”

“Em gay, or just gay?”

“There you go again. But did you hear that too?”

“I heard nothing.”

“I thought gay fellas were supposed to be, you know?”

“So did I.”

“I'm just saying that it's not the stereotype.”

Minogue said nothing.

“So here's this fella, a corporal, and he's trying to shield the other fella. And then see what happens for his trouble – your man goes off the deep end one night, and that family there in Iraq winds up dead. Isn't that it? Tell me that's an accident now.”

“Not in the record,” said Minogue, the urge to mischief returning. He thought of Kathleen's injunction, and the promise she had extracted from him, to try to avoid rows tonight.

“Ah stop it, would you? The army brass got them out of there so fast, whitewashed the proceedings. Like they do everywhere, the British. Oh yes. Some people may forget, but the Irish don't.”

“Don't forget what?”

“Are you going to tell me it's okay for some freelance hit men, trained and primed over in England, to be let loose here in Ireland?”

“Our gangsters hired them.”

“And what does that prove?”

Minogue looked up and down Wicklow Street. It was still one of his favourite steets of all in the city. The curve as it slid down toward Grafton Street beckoned him always, its trove of side streets like adventures of their own.

Kilmartin made a sour laugh then.

“Wonder who gave those other fellas the tip-off,” he said. “I say it was Egan himself. The kind of thing the bastard would do. Save him having to pay them.”

Minogue couldn't disagree. Malone had told him that the word was West Ham had gotten out of hand at an after-hours in Finglas, and blathered about what they did, and what they could do. He waited until Kilmartin took a pause.

“James. James?”

“What. What are you Jamesing me for?”

Minogue looked at his friend, took in the fierce eyebrow slant, the blinking.

“James. You're just blathering. It's too much. Okay?”

Kilmartin made to say something but held back. A look of desperation crossed his face for a moment, but was quickly gone.

“Easy for you,” he said, quietly. Minogue did not think so. Nor did he think he could ever tell his friend how much he had tried to dissuade Kathleen from doing this.

“Look,” said Kilmartin, nudging his arm. “It's like I told Herlighy. That old goat, sure he's gone deaf, I'm sure. ‘I want what I had,' I says to him when he asks me where I wanted to be when this was over. ‘Well you won't have that,' he says. ‘Nobody can have that.' Something about the same river twice?”

“Not as deaf as you think then, is he. Or as dumb.”

“Whisht, will you. Says he, things are not just going to happen – what's the word he used? To ensue. Big word. You have to write the script, practise your role and then produce the film, says he. Or the play – I was going to say ‘drama' but by Jesus, I don't want to use that word, do I.”

Minogue nodded. The thought of the Szechuan noodles had cheered him a little.

“It's just a dinner,” he said to Kilmartin.

“For you it is. For me, it's auditioning.”

“Just keep it light, that's the trick.”

“No mention of why she tried to kill herself then, I suppose.”

Minogue stared at him. Too far gone? Maybe he had misjudged Kilmartin entirely. Maybe the silent bitterness ran deeper and longer than even Kilmartin himself knew.

“Well you got that out of your system at least,” he said.

Kilmartin sighed and shuffled his coat.

“I don't know why I said that.”

“You're nervous. But I'm going to kick you under the table if I think that class of a comment is on its way out of your mouth again.”

Kilmartin examined the cement edges of the footpath. He let out a deep breath. He looked up then, his face easing a little.

“Did you say a kick, or a tap under the table?”

“A kick I said. I'll root you out of it, so I will.”

Kilmartin nodded as though to agree.

“And you're certain she doesn't know?” he asked.

“Not unless you told her.”

Almost against his wishes, a small smile of satisfaction crept over Kilmartin's features. He looked across at the restaurant window.

“I don't much like Chinese food,” he said.

“Ask them for potatoes and cabbage instead, why don't you.”

“I don't want any trouble from you. Kathleen I like, but you, you're work.”

“You behave yourself in there. You Mayo bullock.”

“Listen to you. A mucker from Clare. I'll have to show you how to use a knife and fork again, I suppose.”