‘I only know of it the last week, Mr Hartnett … I haven’t slept.’
‘Only know of it myself the past fortnight, Gerard.’
A dart of animal pain went through the man. Logan smiled as his forearm felt the shock of the words jolting the butcher’s slight frame.
‘Oh I have dark fuckin’ thoughts, Mr Hartnett!’
‘I’d well imagine, Ger. Sure he’s lappin’ her out an’ all, I’d say.’
The butcher now openly wept.
‘Would you say, Mr Hartnett?’
‘He’s like a little cat at a saucer of milk, I’d say.’
The butcher stood and bunched his wee, gnarled fists but Logan pulled him gently into the seat again.
‘Oh I have dark fuckin’ thoughts, sir! Dark!’
Logan placed a finger to his lips and softly blew. Brought his lips then to the butcher’s ear.
‘Gerard? You’re going to stow those thoughts for me. Hear? I’m going to look after this for you, Ger.’
‘Are you, Mr H?’
‘Yes, Gerard. I’ll look after the fishmonger. And you can look after the adulterous cunt you married.’
His pale skin caught the low light of the Aliados – the skeleton of him was palpable, there greyly beneath the skin, the bone machine that was Logan Hartnett – and he smiled his reassurance; it had weight to it in Bohane.
‘But we need be very careful, Ger. You hear what I’m saying to you?’
‘I do.’
‘Think on. If anything unpleasant were to befall a particular cuz, who’d those fat polis fucks come lookin’ for?’
‘You mean everyone knows, Mr Hartnett?’
‘The dogs on the streets, Gerard.’
‘Ah Mr Hartnett …’
The butcher’s head dipped, and tears raced down his cheeks, and they fell towards the zinc top of the table, but Logan one by one caught them as they fell.
‘So where’d the polis be sticking the old beak, eh?’
‘I hear what you’re sayin’ to me, Mr Hartnett.’
‘It’ll be taken care of, Gerard. You can trust me on that. Now go back to your work and put this out of your mind like a good man, d’you hear?’
‘It’s hard, Mr Hartnett.’
‘I know it’s hard, Gerard. Or I can imagine so.’
‘Thanks, Mr H.’
The butcher rose to go.
‘Of course, Ger, you know that I’ll be back to you in due course?’
‘I know that.’
‘Favour done’s a favour answered, Gerard.’
‘Yes, Mr Hartnett, sir.’
In such a way in the city was a man’s fate decided. Logan Hartnett yawned, stretched, and stirred a half-spoonful of demerara into his joe. The Aliados eased through its slow, afternoon moments. The Fancy boys talked lazily of bloodshed, and tush, and new lines in kecks. They combed each other’s hair and tried out new partings. Logan brooded a while, and went into his own smoky depths, and then he signalled again with a raising of his eyebrows. No surprise at all the next man to shuffle from a high stool. It was Dominick Gleeson, aka Big Dom, editor of the city’s only newspaper, the
Bohane Vindicator
. Of course, it was in no small part thanks to Logan Hartnett that the
Vindicator
remained the city’s only paper. Its masthead slogan: ‘Truth or Vengeance’, as inked above a motif of two quarrelling ravens.
The Dom was a busy-faced lardarse who walked a soft-shoe shuffle, and as he came padding across to the Long Fella’s table, already he was muttering sadly, as if the machinations of life in the city had become too much for him. Dom fed on an all-meat diet and he had the high colour of it. He carried with him a small glass of moscato wine and the following morning’s proposed editorial comment. He laid the copy before Logan, took a seat, removed grandly a silken handkerchief from inside his three-quarter-length autumn coat, and mopped his bone-dry brow.
‘Oh my angina,’ he sorrowfully wheezed.
Impatiently, the copy was brushed aside.
‘Summarise for me, Dominick.’
The fat newsman leaned forward and allowed on his features a moist, hammy scowl.
‘I’m after comin’ out bullin’ against the plan for a Beauvista tram, Mr H.’
He sipped at his moscato and winked broadly. Tiptoed his fingers across the tabletop and onto the saucer of pumpkin seeds – Logan swiped the fingers away, and Dom winced, blew on them, and adopted a look of brutalised innocence. Logan couldn’t but grin.
‘Your rationale, Dom?’
‘I’m sayin’ the las’ place that need a tram is Nob Hill, sir.’
Beauvista was always referred to thus in the
Vindicator’s
common-touch argot.
‘I’m sayin’ the Bohane Authority would be far better off spendin’ the bucks on improving the El train and serving the dacent ordinary people …’
With chubby fingertips Big Dom mimicked a tiny violin.
‘ … of the Northside Rises.’
‘Good man, Dom. We want the Rises kept well buttered.’
‘Of course, we just got to be seen to be sayin’, like. There ain’t no fear the Authority will pay the slightest bit o’ notice, Logan. The Beauvista tram?’
He fisted a soft palm happily.
‘She’s a lock, sir.’
‘Happy news, Dominick. We won’t have to lug our old bones up that bastard of a hill.’
The newsman was also established, naturally, in a Nob Hill manse, and he shuddered his relief.
‘Lungs are like broken stout bottles in me on account of it, Logan.’
‘Oh you suffer, Dominick.’
‘Don’t be talkin’ to me, sir. The latest is I’m after gettin’ a class of a shake in the mitt, are you watchin’?’
Dominick held up his left mitt and quivered it dramatically.
‘Could it be an excess of self-abuse, Dom?’
The newsman’s eyes popped in outrage.
‘If I threw ya tuppence, would ya lower the tone?’
Big Dom sat back then, and he sighed as he let his piggy little eyes swivel about the cafe. In the sigh, there was his blunt opinion of things: that this place would be the end of him yet.
‘What I wanted to ask you, Mr H …’
‘Yes, Dom?’
‘Is regardin’ the Cusack situation.’
‘Oh? Is there a Cusack situation, Dominick?’
The Dom chuckled.
‘What we’re wondering, Logan, is there any hope at all that, ah … that …
things
might hold off for a stretch yet?’
‘Who the
we
, Dom?’
Gleeson glared indignantly.
‘I’m speakin’ on behalf o’ the Bohane people, Mr Hartnett!’
Logan leaned forward for a low-voiced confide:
‘I ain’t the one sending martyrs of young fellas across the footbridge, Dominick. I ain’t the one rousing the flatblocks.’
The Dom showed his palms. He moaned, softly, and he let his eyes roll up in his head until all that could be seen was the whites – this to signify the delicate politics the city required, and the weariness such work exacted from an honest soul.
‘I know they’re wall-bangers to a man, H, an’ feckin’ uppity with it. But all we’re sayin’ …’
‘The
we
again, Dom?’
‘Okay, Mr Hartnett. Truth be told, I’m carryin’ representations from the Authority.’
‘Ah, I see now.’
‘Bohane Authority is at a critical stage in negotiations with the NB, Mr Hartnett.’
NB, in Bohane cant: the Nation Beyond.
‘So I believe.’
‘NB tight enough with the aul’ tit this year, H.’
‘I understand it’s the way.’
‘So the last thing we need is one half o’ the town tryin’ to ate the other half. This place got a bad enough name as things stand, Logan.’
‘You’re saying that the Authority wishes for the Calm to persist, Dom, until such a time as the NB tit has been successfully massaged?’
‘That’s very nicely put, Mr Hartnett.’
Logan knit his elegant fingers beneath his chin.
‘I’m reasonable, Dom. I wouldn’t be fouling the air still if I wasn’t. Our only problem is we got a loolah up on the Rises and he has a horn on him for a massive fucking ruck. And I can’t be seen to back off.’
‘I’m knowin’ this all too well, Logan.’
‘And! I’ve got a fucking maniac outside on Big Nothin’ and he’s working his own plan.’
‘You’re talkin’ about the Gant Broderick.’
‘I am indeed, Dominick. So here’s what I’d say to you. If ye want the Calm to stretch for a while, I’ll play my part but on a particular condition.’
‘Name it, sir.’
‘Get me a bead on the Gant.’
The fat newsman soul-wrestled for the cheap seats.
‘Ah, Logan … The Gant’s a man with a quare stretch o’ history to his name outside on Nothin’ …’
‘You’ve contacts out there, Dom.’
‘I have, but …’
‘I’m sending my boys out. And your very best contact is to meet with them. And they better be given the Gant’s precise whereabouts, Dom. Whatever fucking rock he’s hiding under, we need to know it.’
Dom trembled his jowls.
‘Mr Hartnett? Peoples got long memories in Bohane. If the Gant got hurted …’
‘I want a bead drawn on the big unit, Dom. Do you hear me clearly?’
‘Cathedral bells, Mr Hartnett.’
‘Good. Have we any other business?’
They smiled, and they shook, and the newsman took his leave. Logan reached for his jacket, removed from its breast pocket a red handkerchief, and wiped his hands. He ate seeds, then, and he drank joe, and he examined the reach of his manipulation. He smiled for the young gents of the Fancy. They watched him with the usual regard, awe, puzzlement.
The day they could snag a read on him would be the day he would lose them.
6
Big Nothin’ Rendezvous
Was the day following a pair of hombres by the name of Wolfie Stanners and Fucker Burke took to the High Boreen. The Boreen is the main passage across the Big Nothin’ wastes – a double-width cindertrack passable in most weathers. Smaller tracks lead from it into the hills and onto the bog and down briary laneways peopled by haggard souls in cottages that sag with damp, and loss, and sadness. The rain fell hard as the boys grimly walked, and rain was no surprise to the place. A low bank of cloud had moved in from the Atlantic and broke up when it hit the foothills of the Nothin’ massif. The bog was livened and opened its maw hungrily for the rain. The boys squelched along and eyed with disgust the effect of the mud on their high-top boots. The rain ran in fresh silver freely down the gullies of the hills and fed the patient lakes and the poppy fields also were sated. Even in the midst of the rain, sunlight flashed from behind the cloudbank – it peeped out for a few seconds at a time, skittish as a young thing, and showed the colours of the rain. The yellow of the high-summer broom had faded in memory of that summer. There was a thick silence from the direction of the pikey reservation – ‘the rez’, as it is known in the Bohane cant – a most sinister silence, and the boys were watchful of the pikey lands, easterly. Never know what could come flyin’ at you from that direction.
‘I’m tryin’ to get this straight in me noggin,’ said Fucker.
‘Here we go,’ said Wolfie.
‘The fuck how we gonna find the big unit, Wolf?’
‘We’re gonna have a bead drawn, Fucker.’
‘Hey but Wolf? We don’t know fuckin’ Nothin’ from fuckin’ no place, y’heed me?’
‘Shut up, Fucker.’
These boys were the roaming lieutenants of the Hartnett Fancy. The mood was not good.
‘But seriously, Wolfie? I mean there’s a whole heap o’ Big fuckin’ Nothin’ out here, y’sketchin’?’
Indeed, it was a rude expanse. The reeds that fringed the wee lakes swayed but barely in a light breeze. Big Nothin’ is a place of thorn and stone and sudden devouring swamp-holes. It has an infinity of small wet fields. The fields are broken up by rough and ill-formed drystone walls that tend to give out altogether about two-thirds of the way across a field. A lazy job, the walls. It wasn’t Presbyterians put up those walls.
‘What we know about the big unit?’ said Fucker.
‘The Gant Broderick,’ said Wolfie. ‘Halfways pikey, halfways whiteman. Been gone outta the creation since back in the day. Was the dude used to have the runnins before the Long Fella. Use’ t’do a line with the Long Fella’s missus an’ all, y’check?’
Fucker’s jaw lolloped.
‘Say she was a proper lash in her day, like?’
‘She ain’t too bad now, Fuck.’
‘Ain’t, like.’
‘Wouldn’t kick her outta bed for atein’ anchovies, like.’
‘No way, Wolf. The way the eye be class o’ turned in on her, like? Bit tasty.’
On a stone wall Wolfie and Fucker paused to rest a while. They smoked, and they savoured a spectacle. In the near distance, a scraggle of country lads cantered around a small field. Polis trials were coming up, and to get a start in the Bohane polis, a lad is expected to be able to lep over a sixbar farm gate of the type made by the sand-pikeys who live on the dunes oceanside of the city. The lads jogged in a staggered line around the irregular perimeter of the field and in sequence one of them would break off from the stagger, take a sprint for the field’s gate and have a lep at it. Knees, elbows and chins were taking punishment down there. The Bohane polis was spud-ater to a man.
‘Smart-lookin’ crop,’ said Wolfie Stanners.
‘World-beaters,’ said Fucker Burke.
Wolfie and Fucker were by their nature city boys. They were not built for the wilds. If he had his way, Fucker would have been sat on a bollard of the Bohane front, with a pipeload of herb on the draw and a dangerous glare trained on the river traffic. If he had his way, Wolfie would have been patrolling the Trace and S’town in the Fancy’s cause – with
concrete
under his feet – and bustin’ the heads of Norrie scuts.
‘Got the fuckin’ spooks up in me, Wolf.’
‘Well, that’s Big fuckin’ Nothin’ for ya, ain’t it, Fucker?’
The boys bitterly climbed to their feet and hit again along the High Boreen. Went deeper into the Nothin’ wastes. They came to a particular turn and took it and it led to a ridge path that skirted a granite knoll. Made a harlequin spectacle out on the bog plain, these boys.
Fucker wore:
Silver high-top boots, drainpipe strides in a natty-boy mottle, a low-slung dirk belt and a three-quarter jacket of saffron-dyed sheepskin. He was tall and straggly as an invasive weed. He was astonishingly sentimental, and as violent again. His belligerent green eyes were strange flowers indeed. He was seventeen years of age and he read magical significance into occurrences of the number nine. He had ambition deep inside but could hardly even name it. His true love: an unpredictable Alsatian bitch name of Angelina.