“Yeah,” George says, “that’s good.” He puts out his hand. “I’m George.”
She squeezes his hand and sits back, breasts shifting under her dress. She tips her head to the side, dark hair slanting. “My name is the last thing on your mind. Let’s be honest, huh, George? Names truly important?”
He feels some sense of firm footing returning. Cocky, he says, “Called out at the right moment? Yeah … means more than
Oh baby
.”
Those dimples again. She sips her drink, points. “Gutsy, George. Joking about sex this early. Okay: You can call me Mell. Mell Mulloy.”
He puts out his hand again, squeezes hers and doesn’t let go—his thumb stroking the inside of her palm.
She says, “
George
. Hmm. Like the monkey, huh?”
“Say what?”
“The monkey … my favorite book as a kid, ya know?
Curious George?
The little chimp … man with the yellow hat?”
“Gotcha.” George bites his lip … sips his drink.
Jesus:
Best steer clear of books with this woman … literature—not his territory. The last one went on and on about “Joyce” … guaranteeing he’d never read
that
bitch.
But the woman pushes: “Are ya, you know, curious … George?”
George’s kidneys are burning. Should have hit the head before he sent the drink to her. He bounces his left leg. Tries to come up with some response to her question. He fingers the engraved Zippo in the pocket of his sports jacket, says, “You smoke?”
“Not anymore.”
“Mind if I do?”
“Do it, George—secondhand smoke keeps me half-ass in the game.”
George lies: “Gotta get it in before the ban, yeah? I’m out … gotta get myself a new pack.”
He beelines for the men’s room. He shoulders up between pissed, pissing punters and lets go, his left kidney burning … even aching.
The pain subsiding, he washes up and hits the cigarette machine. He buys a pack of Regals that he’ll maybe get through in three or four weeks. He drops it in his pocket with the baggie of half-a-dozen tablets of Rohypnol—the “R2” that he figures to slip in Mell’s drink when she has to hit the head.
But before that, he’ll slip her the Ecstasy in his left pocket.
Yeah.
The E and the “Rope”—a profoundly powerful one-two … no woman could sustain against it.
Mell has a fresh drink waiting for George when he returns to their table.
George slides into his chair—freshly stricken: that face, those tits, those long legs … thinking about those legs wrapped around his ass … about Mell’s mouth, her sultry lips, groaning—and her not
remembering
—sucking.
“Drink up, George,” Mell says. “They’re gonna be playing our song in a minute.”
Compliantly, George downs his double Jameson and accepts her hand.
They find an empty space on the dance floor and begin moving together, his crotch tight to hers—a slow dance to Mark Knopfler: “On Raglan Road.”
George is dizzy.
And increasingly hard.
Mell clearly knows it too—stroking him through his sans-a-belt pants.
Punchy, his pants now a tent, George follows Mell back to their table. He doesn’t really sit so much as he falls into his chair.
George is sweating—even a little nauseous.
Strike that:
really
nauseous … sweating like a pig. He had loaded nachos about 4 p.m. He thinks of the sour cream slathered on the chips, then thinks,
Jesus, it’s food poisoning!
But Mell has slipped off her right fuck-me stiletto, distracting George from his sour stomach. She’s massaging his crotch with her stockinged foot. She says: “Don’tcha think it’s time we go to your place? You do have a place, George?”
She stands … reaches under the table with her left hand and pulls up a big black bag—something between a large purse and a briefcase.
George takes her extended right hand, trailing her through the packed pub to the door. His head is swimming …
Jesus, didn’t even need pills for the bitch … must be a fucking wild ride.
The wet cold air is a fleeting respite, soothing him … sharpening his focus.
But the cab is too cozy. George mumbles his home address and slides into a void.
In that void: polluted with conversation … Mell and the cabby—engaged in meaningless small talk. He just hears bits of some unfair barbs from Mell: “Poor George—he so can’t handle his booze … full-on scuttered.”
George would object if he could find his voice.
He’s cold.
George blinks his eyes, looks around.
Jesus Christ!
Fucking naked and spread-eagled on his back on his own bed.
His hands are cuffed to the bed posts … ankles, ditto.
Mell’s standing there at the foot of his bed, sneering in her slinky black dress.
“He has risen,” Mell nods at George’s still-hard cock.
“What the fuck is this?” George’s tongue is thick and he hardly understands himself. He thinks he might vomit.
“Fecking caffler,” Mell says, “you really have no idea what’s going on?”
Groggy, George mutters, “Uh,
no
…”
The woman crosses her arms, feet spread wide. “Brill. Let me help: You’re coming through a smallish dose of Rope—or Rohypnol … the original date-rape drug. If Valium was Superman, well, Rope is Superman’s bigger, meaner older brother. But you know that, don’tcha, George?” She raises her hand—sheathed in a white latex glove—and his baggie of Rope flops down. Mell scowls, looking hurt. “Meant this evil shit for me, eh, Georgie?”
With her other rubber-gloved hand, the woman suddenly grasps George’s erection and squeezes. George winces, willing himself soft. Surely in this circumstance, he’ll go soft … but he stays hard. Maybe gets harder.
Mell says, “Hmm. No baz. Not appealing.” She then adds, squeezing him again, “This wood of yours is the result of a Viagra knock-off. If you’re online, you’ve probably gotten Spam e-mail offers for it. You’ll stay hard at least another two hours, George … maybe three. You’ll stay real hard, regardless of anything—hardness that could be confused for excitement. But, I jump ahead.”
“What is this?” George sneers unconvincingly, hearing his dope-stoked drunkness in his slurred voice. “Fuck you doin’, Mell?” Drool slides from the corner of his mouth. “These fucking drugs … they could fucking kill me.”
The woman sits on the edge of the bed and shakes her head. “Stay easy. I’m a doctor. Know what I’m doing. And it was a half-dose of Rope. I wanted this talk with you.”
A doctor.
Now George is in full panic mode … Stories he always thought were urban myths about organ thefts … Pick up some chick … take her to a hotel … and then you wake up with a kidney missing …
Jesus fuck!
He blubbers, “You want my fucking kidneys.”
A husky laugh. “If that was the game, you’d be in a tub of ice now with a hole in your back. Two, if I was really ruthless.” Mell leans in now, searching his eyes. George thinks about screaming and maybe she senses it—she drives a fist into his solar plexus and he doubles up … chafing skin off his wrists and ankles … his mouth open, gasping for air. Suddenly, there’s a rag in his mouth.
“You’re done talking, forever. I asked you if names are important. Well, they are important, George. Here’s a name for you:
Nora MacKiernan
. That name ring a bell?”
George shakes his head.
“Well, she remembered your name, George. You were dumb enough to use your real first name, just like you did with me. She remembered that Zippo of yours, with your initials. You doped her in that same bar I met you in. None of that made it nearly hard enough to find you. Four weeks, cruising the same five or six bars … and I found you back in the one where you drugged her.
“Nora MacKiernan was twenty-three, George. She was at that bar with irresponsible mates who were there to be laid and shamed her along after work. Nora was engaged. Would have wed next month. But you moved in. She was polite … Nora was always polite.”
The woman’s eyes are drifting now, going sad and a little hard. George is breathing faster.
“You hit Nora,
my sister,
with Ecstasy, slipped her Rope … I know because I ran the rape kit and stomach pump at the hospital. And you gave her genital herpes, George. Those are fucking incurable. Nora’s fiancé couldn’t take it … broke their engagement. Nora couldn’t take it, either … losing him … carrying your disease. Nora opted out. Wrists, razor … a warm bathtub. Suicide—very bad news in an old Catholic family.”
Lipsanos shakes his head.
“Names are important, George.” She rises now, sways across the room, and picks up her big black purse. She rummages. Mell turns, holding a hypodermic. She flicks it, squirts a little out—clear those air bubbles. She says: “My name is Ceara, and as even you have probably gathered, George, I wouldn’t be sharing my real name with you now if there was any prospect of you ever leaving this room.”
Mell—
Ceara
—perches again on the side of George’s bed. She slowly crosses her legs. “Question was, how to make you really pay. I thought about that. I went to the personals …
Gáire
.”
Ceara jabs George’s thigh with the needle.
His eyes go wide and his muscles tense.
“Hush,” Ceara says. “It’s fine, George. Just a cocktail … blood-thinners … anti-coagulants.” Her gloved hand on his penis again—still rock hard. “Shouldn’t interfere with this.”
The woman stands, slips off her latex gloves, and smoothes her short black dress over her thighs. She slips the needle and the gloves back in her big purse, then slings the bag over one shoulder.
“Gotta go, George. But, just so you know what’s in store: I’ve been corresponding on your behalf for several days with a sado-masochistic she-he, deep into domination. You’re into bondage. Some match, yeah? I’ve been stringing ‘shim’ along until I found you. Called him—her …
whatever
—a few minutes before you woke up. Quite soon, you and your righteous wood will be serving as bound
top
to his—her’s …
whatever’s
—enthusiastic
bottom
.”
George is still reeling … dopey … scared … slow on the uptake:
Jesus, I have herpes?
And this girl,
Nora
… couldn’t remember her … but there had been a dozen since George found his Rope connection.
Ceara is framed in the doorway of his bedroom now. She tips her head to the side, shows him those dimples. “Last thing you should know, George.”
George’s eyes are wide, besieging.
“I told your soon-to-arrive last lover that you’re also a
cutter
. Ya know what Angelina Jolie once said? ‘You’re young, in love, and you’ve got a knife … shit happens.’ George, those blood-thinners will have you pumping like a world-class hemophiliac when your new friend cuts you. Once the initial slices are made, and the serious blood loss kicks in, well, it’s not the worst death … almost languorous. Probably why Nora chose to take herself out that way.”
Ceara blows George a kiss and backs out of his bedroom, humming “The Parting Glass.”
George, spread-eagled, hard—panicked—thrashes wildly against his bonds, wrists and ankles sloughing more skin.
A short while later, he hears the door of his apartment open.
George closes his eyes and whimpers against his gag.
Sweet Jesus, Nora … I’m so fucking sorry.
On Grafton Street, behind the bright red façade of the Temple Bar, Dr. Mell Mulloy sips her Russian Quaalude. Rain thrashes the windows. Positively bucketing. She savors George’s final expression:
brónach
.
The herpes angle always sets their hearts hopping.
And poor imaginary
Nora
? Her
pièce de résistance:
Send the luckless bastards out on a mega guilt trip.
Finding the Rope on George made it sweeter still—so
so
fine to find a fellow predator … yummy, happy accident.
Mell checks her watch: Time for one more. But nothing elaborate. The personal-ad gambit takes time … and time is always a dangerous commodity.
So something simple is in order: Pick up another mark … dope him. Entice the sucker to his car or an alley for an ostensible jaw-job and shoot the fucker.
Then it is probably best to move on.
The Garda Síochána will soon start putting two and three or thirteen together.
Mell sips her drink and tips her head back, shaking loose her hair, lifting it off the back of her damp neck. Mell plucks an ice cube from her drink and rubs it between her breasts, listening to Knopfler: “The Lily of the West.”
She winks at a strapping stranger across the pub.
He’s headed her way now.
She smiles, shifting her long legs and arching her neck.
Come the morning, she’ll make the crossing … start again, perhaps in Glasgow.
But now Mell smiles up at the stranger, says: “’Tis himself.”
RAY
BANKS
was born in the Kingdom of Fife, but currently lives in North East England with his wife and a quartet of despicable felines. He is the creator of Leith-born Manchester P.I. Callum Innes and his debut novel,
The Big Blind,
is out now. He can be contacted through his website:
http://www.thesaturdayboy.co.uk
JAMES
O’
NEAL
BORN
is a career law-enforcement agent whose novels are published by Putnam, including
Walking Money
and
Shock Wave.
KEN
BRUEN
is the author of many novels, including
The Guards,
winner of the 2004 Shamus Award. His books have been published in many languages around the world. He lives in Galway, Ireland.
REED
FARREL
COLEMAN
was Brooklyn born and raised. His sixth novel,
The James Deans,
received rave reviews from the
Washington Post
and
Chicago Sun-Times
. Ken Bruen has said that Coleman has the soul of an Irishman and, with this story, he hopes to prove it.
EOIN
COLFER
is a teacher from Wexford, Ireland. He spends most of his time writing about leprechauns and other magical creatures. He is best known for his fantasy series featuring criminal mastermind teenager Artemis Fowl. Eoin lived in Dublin for three years and visits whenever he needs inspiration.