Eight Ball Boogie Part 6

I didn't even see it coming. One second Brady was perched on the edge of the desk, the next the world was all fist. The vast paw stopped maybe an eighth of an inch from my face, no shakes, solid as granite.

"Crack one more. Just one. I'm begging you."

I kept schtum. The fist disappeared. Brady sat back and sparked one up.

"Okay this is the way we're going to play it. I want to know "

By then I was on my feet, surging forward, pushing the table up and out, Brady disappearing beneath it. He came up fast, knuckles white, face flushed. Found me scared, braced and ready. He came on, dipped a shoulder, I bought it but he shimmied, feinted an uppercut and cracked a laugh.

"Alright, Rigby, sit down. Show's over."

I sat back in the chair. He righted the table one-handed.

"You don't roll over, Rigby. I'll respect that. So I want you on-side but what can we do? The information is still void, there's nowhere you can put it won't get you ten years."

"Why?"

"Can't say, Rigby. It's way too big. You're out of your league."

"Sheridan's going down?"

"Sheridan who?"

We stared and smoked, Brady smirking.

"Look Brady, Tony Sheridan's place turns into an abattoir, that's big news. Plus someone kitted her out like a suicide and threw in some c.o.ke. All the while Tony's away, presumably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g someone else. Put all that together, it's bigger than Russia. And you want me to sit on it? That's unethical and criminally f.u.c.king stupid, and I'm not criminally f.u.c.king stupid."

His eyes narrowed. I didn't blink.

"Okay, here's the news f.u.c.k Russia, this is off the scale, you can't imagine. But what I'm willing to do is play it tight and keep you in touch. When it all taps out, I'll hand the lot over, reports, forensics, the works."

"That's right, I forgot. I'm criminally f.u.c.king stupid."

He shrugged.

"I'm a cop, yeah, but you can trust me. After I nail this one I want to see investigations, tribunals, the works."

"You want it buried?"

He let that one slide.

"You'll get the lot, Rigby, pink frilly bows and satin f.u.c.king kisses. Scratch my back and I'll even help you put it together. Until then it's personal."

"Imelda Sheridan is personal?"

"Indirectly. Bear with me."

I weighed it up, factored Herbie into the equation. The fast money said run the piece, but the story said f.u.c.k the money and I always listened to the story. Besides, Brady was holding aces and was six-four to boot. I rolled a smoke.

"I scratch your back how?"

"Your side is I need the local dope, the inside. If you're any good, you'll hear it and keep me posted. If you're not, you won't get the gig when it's finished anyway. I want someone who'll st.i.tch this one tight. So, you hear anything I should know, you buzz me."

He stood up, scrawled a number on the back of a card, flipped it across the desk.

"One more thing, Rigby no one knows I've been here. The Gardai brace you, make like I'm Lord Lucan."

"Working a little freelance yourself, hey Brady?"

"Something like that, yeah." He blasted me the evil grin, full wattage. "Be seeing you, Rigby."

He left, shoulders brushing the doorframe. I heard him again 'I'm a cop, yeah, but you can trust me.' I laughed so hollow I heard it echo and went back to staring at the wall.

6.

Conway rang as I was about to start checking out the near wall, just for a change of pace. I rang Herbie and gave him Helen Conway's details.

"Looking for anything in particular?" he asked.

"Just the usual, much as you can get."

"Sound when'd you want it?"

"Yesterday."

"Alright. I'll buzz you later."

I choked down the last of the coffee, thought about cleaning the office, and it was such a good idea I kept on thinking it, feet up on the desk, twitching the blinds.

It was Christmas week and the town belonged to the farmers. They lumbered up and down the streets, sailors on sh.o.r.e leave, grim and determined. Parcels stacked in elastic arms, necks craning around the piles. Tinny hymns drifted out of shop doorways. High above the streets the coloured lights danced a hanged man's jig on the breeze.

I popped another pill. Three in one day was two too many but they were only twenty-five mill, summer breeze, and I need horse tranks to beat the festive funk. The light pills were another of the Doc's bright ideas, to wean me off the tranks in time for New Year, sound advice from a man whose veins had more holes than it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

I took a deep breath and slapped myself hard across the face, followed it up with a right cross that didn't quite connect. Closed my eyes, conjured up the face of a tow-headed thug, the hooded sleepy eyes, the chipped teeth, the guileless grin, the unruly mop of blonde hair. I factored in Christmas morning, a gleaming new bike and imagined the grin spreading across Ben's face to adopt his ears.

The weight evaporated from my chest. I breathed out again, locked up the office and drove the five miles out of town to The Bridge.

I talked to the barman in the Members Bar, no apostrophe, dropped a few openers about Helen Conway, but the barman stayed polite, eyes fixed on my breast pocket, where it didn't read Pringle. I sat in the bay window overlooking the eighteenth green, drinking coffee, chewing a plastic cheese-and-tomato toastie. The gale brewing up over the Atlantic was the colour of old gravy and the golfers leaned into the wind, three steps forward and two steps back.

Back in town I swung around by Clark's Toyshop to pick up Ben's bike. Added a couple of accessories, including a rubber bulb horn I knew he'd get a bang out of. It was almost three when I got back to the office. I stowed the bike behind the desk, checked the answering machine for the thrill of hearing my own voice and smoked for half-an-hour. Then I smoked some more and tried to make giraffes out of the cracks in the ceiling plaster. In the end I gave in, rang Conway to make an appointment.

"No can do," he rasped. "I'm out of the office from four on. Business that can't wait."

"Perfect. Make sure your mobile is off too. I don't want anyone contacting you."

Conway lived about two miles north of town, the house only three drainpipes short of a mansion. It was a square, stolid affair, in the way Edwardian Protestants built their homes to reflect their personalities, with thick ivy on the redbrick gables, a white soft-top Merc at the end of the gravelled drive and a bedroom for every night of the week. Off in the distance a stooped gardener was raking the last leaves off a vast lawn and raking fast enough to be finished in time to weed the daffodils. I parked my battered Volkswagen Golf beside the steps that swept up to the front porch and started climbing. Mulling over the new expletive I'd learned when I told Conway I'd be calling on his beautiful wife.

His beautiful daughter opened the door. She was wearing a white-and-blue striped sweater and the baffling expression all seventeen-year-old girls wear, the one that suggests they're simultaneously highly strung and bored to constipation. Her blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail and she had her mother's nose, down which she looked at me, and her father's manners.

"Yes?"

"Mrs Conway?"

She had her father's laugh, too.

"Mrs Conway is my mother. What do you want?"

"I've an appointment to see Mr Conway."

"And who might you be?"

"I might be Calvin Klein but then I might just be wearing his Y-fronts. Get your mother."

She chewed the inside of her lip, taken aback. I had to admit, she didn't look the kind of girl who had to ask a question twice, if she ever had to ask a question at all. Seventeen-year-old blondes with wide blue eyes and hips unworthy of the name have all the answers already, cursed with intuition. She called back down the hallway, over her shoulder.

"Mother, there's a gentleman at the door."

Her timing was off but the punch line was good. Then Helen Conway pulled the door open wide and her daughter ceased to exist. Devoid of makeup, the soft lines either side of her eyes put me in mind of quotation marks. The simple black dress would have been appropriate at a millionaire's wake. The thin string of pearls designed to enhance the gentle curves of her throat should have retired gracefully and long ago. Her hair was jet black, and if it was a dye-job her stylist was wasted, he should have been in Rome retouching the Sistine Chapel.

"Yes?"

Polite, frosty.

"How do you do?" I slipped her an ingratiating smile. "I have an appointment to see Mr Conway?"

"Mr Conway isn't at home right now. Can I help you?"

"I do hope you can. My name is Bob Delaney." I flourished a card that read Robert L. Delaney, Sales Representative, First Option Life a.s.surance.

"There must be some kind of mistake."

She handed the card back. I waved it away, still smiling.

"Not at all. I spoke with Mr Conway yesterday, on the phone. He was very interested in discussing the possibility of realigning your current life a.s.surance commitments owing to the significant cost reduction strategy we employ at First Option."

"Is that a fact?" She sounded faintly bemused. The delightful Miss Conway snorted, turned on her heel, pounded up the stairs. I heard the m.u.f.fled sound of a slammed door.

"Indeed it is."

I was getting a pain my face from all the smiling, and if you're not inside the door within sixty seconds of hitting the step, chances are you're not going to make it at all.

"Well, as I say, Mr Conway isn't at home at the "

"I don't mind waiting." I dropped her the shoulder, swerved into the hallway, smiled again. "I make it a habit to be early for my appointments."

"Well, if you're sure..."

She recovered quickly, ushered me down the hallway. I wanted to call a cab halfway along but we got there in the end. The kitchen was all shining chrome, polished pine and terracotta tiles, and the Rovers could have kicked around a five-a-side without unduly disturbing the chef, who had probably got lost on his way back from the mezzanine level.

"Nice," I said, nodding approval. "Airy."

"Can I get you something to drink, Mr ?"

"Delaney. But call me Bob, please. And I'd love a cup of coffee, if it isn't too much trouble."

"No trouble at all, Mr Delaney. Cappuccino? Espresso?"

"Just black, please."

The kitchen was bright. Patio doors reached from ceiling to floor, revealing no swimming pool in the back yard, which surprised me, but the sea was only a back-flip dismount away, grey and sullen and a wave-break from anger. Beyond, the Donegal mountains were snow-capped, the kind of view you can't buy for love or money, although the combination might get you a down payment. She poured something black and sludgy from the pot bubbling on the Aga.

"Sugar?"

"No thanks, I'm watching my figure."

She smiled, distant, a woman who'd heard all the lines so many times she'd forgotten her cue. She put the coffee down, nothing for herself, lit a cigarette without offering me one.

"If you'll excuse me for one moment, Mr Delaney..."

I rolled a twist while I waited for her to come back from ringing her husband, who was out of the office with his mobile turned off, per instructions, or else I was in deep schtuck, as was he. When she returned, she lit another cigarette and sat down, composed. I tried another of my asinine smiles, nodded in the direction of the patio doors.

"Let's hope the rain keeps off."

"Naturally." Her voice was dry frost, as befitted an Ice Queen, and I half-expected her words to drift across the tabletop and gas me. "You said you were speaking with Francis?"

I thought, Francis?

"That's right, yesterday afternoon."

"And he wants to change our insurance policy?"

"Most people do when they discover how favourably First Option compares with our compet.i.tors."

She wrinkled her nose, like she'd smelt something sickly-sweet. Most people turn rabid when you say you can save them money, foaming at the mouth to find out more. The Ice Queen hadn't even raised an eyebrow. I figured that Frank Conway had hit the jackpot when he'd married the beautiful Helen, felt the urge to check their marriage license against their delightful daughter's birth cert, just for the h.e.l.l of it.

"What time did you say your appointment was for, Mr Delaney?"