The Wrong Kind of Blood (23 page)

I stopped for breath, ready to hang up. Aileen Williamson was too quick for me.

“You haven’t lodged the check yet,” she said.

“Not yet, no.”

“I’ve canceled it. Good-bye, Mr. Loy.”

And she hung up on me too. It was the latest craze, people hanging up on me. Three of them this morning, and it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. Dead bodies piling high, but God forbid anyone should help me find out why. Well, it didn’t matter anymore if I didn’t have a client. I had a stake in this that went beyond the job. It was time to stop waiting for this case to solve itself. It was time to stir things up.

I dialed another number.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

George Halligan had a crisp Dublin voice with a dangerous edge, matured in whiskey and smoke and casual brutality.

“It’s Ed Loy,” I said. “Isn’t it time you bought me that lunch?”

Strictly speaking, it was accurate to say Podge and George Halligan were neighbors, but the six properties that went to make up the exclusive development called “Redlands” where the brothers lived had gardens the size of football fields, with mature broadleaf trees dotted throughout, so not only were the chances slim of hearing the couple next door have a row, the chances of seeing them at all were pretty remote. The land was a chunk the golf club had sold off ten years earlier, when the commercial rates they had been avoiding finally caught up with them. Building starts had been at a low ebb back then, so there wasn’t much fuss about the development.

We were seated at a black glass table on a black marble deck shaded by lime trees. A South American girl, dressed in pretty much the same servant’s livery as the Filipina in Aileen Williamson’s house, served champagne and orange juice. An eastern European blonde who looked like Grace Kelly’s hard-faced sister and whom George introduced as one of his “wives” appeared briefly, and giggled dutifully at the assorted lewd propositions George made to her. George counted off fifteen hundred Euro from a platinum billfold and she clipped off on steel-heeled stilettos, trailing all manner of intoxicating odors in her wake. A couple more women in bikinis, who looked like models and might well have been “wives” also, were sunbathing by a marine blue swimming pool. There would be scallop and clam salad for lunch, followed by lobster. I could see an enclosure with a couple of horses down the way, and a tennis court over by the pool. It looked like it might be fun to live in George’s world. The major drawback was, George’d be living right there alongside you.

“Orange juice with it? Do you know what you call that, Ed? Mimosa. Sounds better than Bucks Fizz, doesn’t it, mimosa? Bit of class. Cristal this is, none of your sparkling rubbish. No juice for me. Wine we’re having with lunch now is French, from the Loire Valley, a Château… Château… ah, Château whatever-the-fuck. I like wine and all, spend a lot of dinars on it these days, but, in my not very humble opinion, it’s impossible to talk about wine without sounding like a cunt.”

George Halligan was wearing a cream single-breasted suit, pale blue shirt with a white collar, red silk tie with a diamond tiepin and gold cuff links. His one concession to the heat was to drape the jacket over the back of his chair; his red suspenders had a pale blue trim. He looked at my black suit and white shirt and shook his head.

“You look like some drunk cunt on his way home after a dress dance. Have you no other clothes?”

“The airline lost my luggage.”

“We’ll have to see about a new wardrobe for you. Dress sense. Lacking in this town. Fucking lamentable. Changing, yes, but too fuckin’ slowly, still look like a shower of culchies up for the day. Anyway, down to business: Ed, I hope you’re serious about this, because I need a serious man here; I’m surrounded by yes-men, gobshites and savages.”

“What exactly would you want me to do for you, George?” I said.

“I’d want you to be the public face, the legitimate face, of the Dawson — excuse me, the Halligan, eh, empire. Because things are evolving. Maybe in the past, I acquired a pub or a bookie’s as a way of giving certain moneys a bit of a rinse. But now, pretty much everything is profitable in its own right. I’m pulling in more aboveboard than otherwise. So it’s time to phase otherwise out.”

“And how does Podge feel about that? I mean, he is Mr. Otherwise, isn’t he?”

“Ah. Podge is a bit of a nostalgist all right. He likes the old ways. But change is ruthless, know what I mean, Ed? It doesn’t take account of individual preference: it runs roughshod over us all. Podge will have to, eh, make an accommodation with it.”

“I don’t know that I’d be keen on making an accommodation with Podge.”

“Leave Podge to me, Ed. Leave Podge to me. Now, drinks. Where’s the girl from Ipanema? Jaysus, you’ve hardly touched yours, what’s the story, are you playing games here, Ed, letting me get langers while you sit there beady-eyed, takin’ notes? I don’t like that.”

George’s tiny eyes narrowed, and the expansive fug of boozy bonhomie vanished in an instant. Veins stood out on his temples; the sinews in his neck corded and pulsed with sudden tension.

“Bit early in the day, George. Anyway, I’ve already been picked up once for drunk driving,” I said.

“Fuck
that,
” George said, wielding his rasp of a voice like a scythe. “Sure we can always have you driven home. You’re well in with the Seafield Guards there anyway.”

The Brazilian servant arrived and refilled George’s glass with champagne. George stared at me until I emptied mine, then he nodded for it to be refilled.

“Letting a man drink alone, your
host,
no less, the height of bad manners,” George said in a tone of mock outrage.

“Leave the bottle, and the juice,” he said to the Brazilian girl, touching her lightly on the forearm, his eyes fixed on mine. The girl flinched, and pulled her arm away as if it had been scalded.

“My apologies,” I said.

“Accepted,” he said solemnly, then cracked a grin that dispelled little of the menace he had suddenly invoked. It was an impressive reminder that the difference between him and his brothers was merely one of style. George Halligan snipped the end off a large Cohiba, ran it under his nose and sniffed. It made a scrabbling sound as it chafed against his mustache, like a small animal trapped behind drywall. I thought of ramming the cigar up his nose. It would pass the time, but it wouldn’t help to crack the case.

“So would I be involved with your burgeoning property empire, George?”

“That’s exactly what I had in mind for you, Ed. Right now we’ve apartments, a few pubs, some commercial units, a small office block — but what we’re getting into now is development land: parcel it up, hold on to it for long enough, get it zoned the right way, and then release it back onto the market at the right time. That’s easy money — the legal way.”

“And my role would be…?”

“I’d want you to piece together consortiums —
consortia
— of investors. All those nice lads you were at school with, the dentists and the barristers. Respectable citizens with plenty of money who want to make more. Not that I haven’t done well without those cunts in the past. But the only way I’m going to do well in the future is with them on board.”

George lit his cigar, exhaled a large gust of smoke and winked at me. I was suddenly sick and tired of George Halligan, of his delusions of business respectability, his air of casual menace, his fantasy lifestyle copied from a Robert Palmer video.

“Is the golf club development first on the list then?” I said. “The one you and Peter Dawson were trying to get rezoned? What’s the status of that, now that Peter Dawson’s dead?”

The beam froze on George Halligan’s face; his coal black eyes bored into mine.

“Down to business straightaway. Good sign, Ed, shows willing. Predicament attached to this kind of conversation however; can’t go disclosing highly sensitive business details to nonemployees.”

“Can’t really think about accepting a job unless I know some of the details, George. Maybe you should have your solicitor present. Set your mind at rest.”

George considered this.

“Maybe. Nah. Trust the important thing. And you’d be well aware, the consequences of a breach of trust. Wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Good man,” George said. “Trust we must.”

George stirred the orange juice with a long silver bar spoon and held up his glass. I drained mine, and he took it and filled it with champagne and juice.

“A toast to the future, Ed,” he said.

“The future,” I agreed.

We both drank. George was drinking champagne without the juice. His head was stronger than mine, or maybe it was the heat: already I was feeling a little hazy.

“So there must be a council meeting coming up soon?” I said.

“Friday.”

“And you’re confident it’s going to go your way?”

“How’s that?”

“You’re confident you’ll get the golf club rezoned for high-density development?”

“Business is all about confidence, Ed. You know that.”

“And were you Peter Dawson’s business partner in Courtney Estates? I mean, you weren’t giving him money to bribe councillors just for the crack, were you?”

“Why would I give money to Peter Dawson? Don’t you think he could have afforded to bribe his own councillors? They’re not short of money, the Dawsons, case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Someone was into Peter Dawson for a lot of money, bleeding him dry. If he was going to put this deal together, he needed cash to persuade the necessary councillors to come on board. Cash he didn’t have access to day-to day.”

George looked at me, his eyebrows raised. I felt hot, and my throat was dry. I drank some more mimosa. I was thirsty, but I needed to stop drinking. What did that mean? I couldn’t think straight.

“I mean, this is the kind of stuff I’m going to have to know, George, if I’m going to run things for you. Need-to-know stuff. On a need-to-know basis.”

There was fur in my mouth, and panic sweat on my brow and in my hair, and a catch in my throat like I had swallowed sand. I drained my glass. The bubbles felt like sulfur in my chest. George leapt up, bottle of Cristal in his hand. I shook my head.

“No thanks.”

“Are you all right there, Ed? You look a little flushed.”

“I’m fine. Maybe just some orange juice. I feel a little weird.”

“No bother. I’m beginning to think you just don’t have the head for booze. Sure the last time I saw you on it you were scuttering your guts up, weren’t you?”

George Halligan stirred the jug of orange juice again and poured me a glass.

“Now, knock that back, do you the world of good. Vitamin C, the business.”

Something was happening to my eyes; it felt like cold cream had been daubed on them. I reached for the glass, but couldn’t quite seem to connect with it; George guided it into my hand. I brought it to my mouth and bent my head down to meet it. I tried to lift glass and mouth together, but my coordination was shot; the juice spilled down my cheek and onto my jacket. I was moving in slow motion; the air boiled in my ears like a river in full spate. George tipped the rest of the juice into my mouth and then tossed the glass away; it detonated on the marble tiles like a small explosion.

My head felt like it was made of lead; I lifted it slowly, in case it tore itself from my neck. Engulfed in cigar smoke and sunlight, George Halligan’s face had contracted into a series of furrows and clefts; with no lips or eyes, it looked like a grinning fist. He leaned into me. I could smell cigar smoke sour on his breath, and I felt the pit of my stomach churn. George Halligan laughed, then slapped me once, very hard, across the face, knocking me from the chair.

He said something, but all I caught were the words “orange juice”; I could sense the rhythm, though, vindictive but exuberant, like a boxer in triumph. I could hear him laughing, a grinding sound, like a small engine that wouldn’t catch. I thought I could see people approaching; they looked too burly to be George’s wives. The marble deck was cool on my cheek, the other cheek from the one George Halligan slapped. Turn the other cheek, I thought. I would have said it if I could have spoken. I think I laughed, though. The last laugh. Not the last thought, though. There was a taste of cheap perfume in my mouth. The last thought was, Whatever he slipped me, they must have cut it with talc.

I woke to the sound of male voices raised in laughter. The laughter broke apart in a flurry of obscenities, and subsided to a low rumble. I could smell creosote, and paraffin, and the stale musk of tobacco smoke laced with the sweet tang of burning hashish. I was lying on some kind of sofa or daybed, and my hands and feet weren’t tied. I opened my eyes, or at least, my right eye; there was something wrong with my left. Above me there was a vaulted wooden roof. Weathered garden implements hung from hooks on the raw timber walls: rakes, scythes, shears. The voices were coming from the other end of the room. I looked to my right: there was a workbench with toolboxes and cartons of nails and screws and drill bits and so on stacked above and beneath it. A long-handled sledgehammer and a disused green motor mower leaned against a door by the bench; the door’s bolts had been painted shut with several coats of creosote and resin. I hoped there was another door, then cursed the stupidity of the thought, then welcomed it: at least it meant whatever I’d been drugged with had worn off. I lifted my head off the sofa to see further into the room and a searing pain shot through my sinuses. My nose was running, and when I wiped it, a smear of fresh blood came away on the back of my hand; crusts of dried blood clung to my nose and chin. I was having trouble opening my left eye, and a soft opening from my left temple to below my left ear smarted on contact. My tongue traced torn flesh and shattered root remnants still embedded in the gum on the lower left side of my mouth: the gap felt like two teeth at least were gone. My hair had felt dry when I came to; now it was soaked; I ran my fingers through it, but it was sweat, not blood. The rest of me felt bruised but not broken; I figured I could move when I needed to.

I attempted to move my head again, but this time keeping it on the sofa; twisting it to my right and bringing it around in a slow arc, I got a fish-eye view of the room: long and narrow, an old garden shed, with machinery, paints and brushes. The floor was stone; there were what looked like cupboards or cubicles on the right-hand wall. At the other end, swathed in a fug of smoke, three men were playing cards around a white garden table. I watched them for a while, training my right eye to focus, trying to ignore the throb of pain in my head, until I was satisfied I recognized them: Blue Cap, Nose Ring and Dessie Delaney. At least my head was still attached to my neck. I lay back and looked at the rafters. The light was soft through long, narrow windows above head height: early evening, maybe, of the same day, I hoped.