“Let them smoke weed.”

Then he began to play with a heavy gold Claddagh ring on his right hand, finally took it off, said,

“My daddy left me this and a shitload of major stock, especially in Bogotá. When we buried him, back in Oakland, you know what I said at his grave?”

“Thanks, Dad?”

He gave me the look, to see how much I was shitting him.

A lot.

Said,

“Now, Daddy-o, you can think inside the box.”

Save for the serious money part, most of this was horseshit. I asked again,

“What did you want to see me for?”

The limo had stopped near Blackrock, the end of the Salthill Promenade. A storm was building across from the Aran Islands, waves beginning their brute intensity to lash the front. He said,

“I wanted to warn you off Kelly. She’s my trusted employee and all that good crap but she’s nuttier than a pack of festering Church of Latter-day Saints. Apologies to Romney, etc.”

For some reason I wanted to goad him, did, asked,

“Buying Galway, how’s that going for you?”

He smiled. With the dope, it teetered on the brink of warmth, said,

“To date, three new factories, pledges of a school, a truck full of cold cash to the Council, and, hey, I’m nearly there.”

I asked the obvious.

“Why?”

He opened the door, let the beginning wind swirl across our legs, said,

“Jesus, Jack, apart from the answer, because I can, I thought you’d have figured out what I’m going to do.”

I’d no idea, said so, and he sighed, said,

“Jesus H, you are a dumb fuck. I’m buying it so I can squander it.”

Squander a town?

He laughed full, said,

“Don’t you just fucking love it?”

19

Rock ’n’ Roll:

The Velvet Underground

Has a line in there about rock ’n’ roll saving her life. This may well be the ultimate Irish version of Irish irony, meaning the added sting of pure vindictiveness, posing as coincidence.

John Patrick Sheridan was thirteen years old. Ridge was thirty-nine. A bright fine Tuesday, John was rushing to school and crashed into Ridge, who was en route to collect her new car. He mumbled,

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Ma’am?

She hissed,

“Little bastard.”

And they should never really have met again, but their paths had crossed and one more time, they would, as it were. . collide.

Neither would ever know the other, yet they would influence each other more than anything else in either of their lives. A brief footnote of interest to those of a macabre, not to say lunatic, bent is that John’s dad, back in the chemical day, had been a huge “Underground head.”

Some events are writ in water.

This chance encounter was danced lightly across the Claddagh basin, its recognizance already reaching out toward what was an unremarkable bridge just outside Oranmore. But such concepts are rooted in mumbo jumbo, signifying little but a deep longing for connection.

Meaning ultimately little but cheap coincidence and fanciful shite talk.

Stewart was sitting in my flat, looking demented. He had laid out his theory on Westbury, his unity certainty on the C33 victims. I’d listened as if I cared, as if I were interested. When he wound up, he asked,

“So, Jack, what do you think?”

I considered carefully, said,

“Cobblers.”

Before he could argue, I said,

“Too, Westbury is a friend of mine.”

Enraged him, spat,

“You have a lawyer friend?”

Now I was spitting iron, said,

“Oh, I get it. The drunk nonuniversity bollix can’t have. .” I paused to raise sufficient venom, bitter bile “. . an educated friend, that it?”

He was on his feet, our friendship spiraling away, leaking all the good points like worthless euros, as close to physical confrontation as we’d ever come. He said,

“Oh, don’t play the fucking working-class hero bullshite, Jack Taylor, man of the people.”

My mind clicked, Stewart’s martial arts, his skill in kickboxing, and figured a fast kick in the balls was the route. He asked,

“When you beat a stalker senseless a few years back. .”

I stopped, asked,

“Yeah?”

The fierceness seemed to have drained away and his eyes were turned in. I wondered what was going on that I’d missed.

He continued,

“Did you feel any guilt after?”

“Sure.”

He seemed relieved.

Until

I added,

“Guilt I hadn’t killed the fucker when I had the chance.”

He shook his head, went,

“Always the hard arse.”

Times I’d been called this, called worse in truth and did, a bit, anyway, ask my own self if there was validity? I like that.

Validity.

Makes me sound American and a solid guest on Dr. Phil. Truth being, I warranted an appearance more on Jeremy Kyle, who was Jerry Springer light. Such a self-examination usually rode point with a few Jamesons under my conscience and the answer was mostly

“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?