The Going Rate (39 page)

Cully tipped the phone card and handed the plastic lid to Fanning.

“Careful, okay? And close the door properly. It takes a minute. Can you spare the time?”

Fanning said nothing. The car rocked on its springs as Cully reached in to his trouser pocket. Some coins spilled between the door and the seat and he drew out a roll of bills. He peeled one off and dropped it into his lap, and replaced the roll. He rolled the banknote, tugged it tight at both ends, and then rolled it again.

“Okay,” said Cully. “Are you ready?”

“No thanks. I'll stick with the self-preservation bit.”

Cully looked sideways at him. His face seemed to crawl with the shadows from the rain-strewn windows.

“There you go again,” he said. “Philosophy or whatever. Let me tell you something. Self-preservation takes brains. And for a bloke with a big brain, you're doing pretty crap.”

A chill descended on Fanning. He fought to keep his arm from wavering.

“Yeah, well you should be nervous,” Cully went on. “I don't think you realize it. You are lucky you went to that fight with Murphy. That's what I'm saying. It was luck, not brains.”

Cully went back to tightening the rolled-up bill.

“Murphy was doing you no favours. He was playing you.”

Fanning didn't care now if his anger showed.

“No he wasn't.”

“Sure he was. You just didn't know it.”

“Look, whatever it is about you and Murph–”

Cully made a sudden, short laugh.

“Me and Murph? What are you talking about?”

“All I'm hearing is ‘you haven't a clue,' or ‘this is reality,' or… ‘you don't get it.' Like you guys are geniuses, and I'm a moron.”

“That's you thinking,” said Cully, suddenly serious.

“And for another thing, I didn't expect favours anyways. I pay Murph– I employ him!”

“Really? Well then. Tell me why you were paying a bloke who has fifty ways to skin you out of your money?”

“But that's just you saying that, isn't it.”

Alarm alternated with pride in Fanning's mind in the quiet that followed. Light flickered off Cully's eyes as he glanced down at the lid.

“I know what you're saying,” said Cully thoughtfully. He looked over the lines of powder. “But…”

“I know: ‘But you don't get it.' I know.”

“Shut up a minute and listen to me.”

Said in the same calm tone, Cully's words had no sting to them now.

“Murph, your bosom pal there,” Cully went on. “Now he's nothing but trouble, isn't he.”

“You must have said that a dozen times the past day or two.”

“That's how long it's taking to persuade you then, isn't it. Struts about, cock of the walk. But what's he got? Nuffink.”

“Nuffink. That's more like it.”

“Thought that'd get your attention. Look, he owes all over. Can't even cover his habit, can he.

The only way he got in was his uncle, kind of adopted him I heard. You don't know this. His uncle was big, even inside. Inside, like…?”

“Jail?”

“Prison, you can call it. Right. Fifteen years they gave him — not here, over in England. Just another Paddy on the game there. He was greedy, to be honest. And lazy. Thought he knew everything. Didn't do his homework on silent alarms.”

“What is his name, the uncle?”

“I'm not telling you, am I. But what I am saying is, everybody knows everybody. Here, there. People aren't stupid, are they. But his uncle isn't around anymore. He got the big C there last year, in the lungs. So last year, he goes to meet his maker. R.I.P.”

“I think I read something about it, wasn't he–”

“–it doesn't matter, I said.”

Cully placed the fat end of the rolled-up bill in his nostril.

“I'd like to hear Murph's version of this sometime.”

“Oi,” said Cully. “Can't you see I'm busy here?”

Chapter 39

F
ANNING TRIED TO SEE THROUGH
the teeming windows. With his index finger over the other nostril, Cully snorted one line, and then a second. He sat back and shook his head, and he began to slowly squeeze his nostrils between his thumb and his forefinger.

“Once in a blue moon,” he said then. “I only accept donations.”

He drew in his breath, closed his eyes and let it out again. His eyes popped open.

“Go ahead,” he said,” it's proper order, it is, yes.”

He held out the rolled-up note.

“Now we're talking,” he said. “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

Before he knew it, Fanning was taking the lid from Cully.

“Just a sampler,” Cully said.

Fanning's arm rested on the door again, his hand already anticipating the feel of the door release. Cully licked his lips and smiled. Fanning realized it was the first time he'd ever seen him smile.

“See,” he said. “Puts you back in the game.”

“You're used to it.”

Cully's eyes opened wide and then almost shut.

“Oh, I get it. I get it now. You're sure you're going to be a junkie now. Poof! One go and you're doomed, right?”

“I don't want to get into it.”

“Of course you don't. You're Mister Respectable. You're going to do what you're told. Follow the rules and all that. No wonder you want to make up stuff about criminals and all that.”

When Cully held out the lid, Fanning's hands moved reflexively. Cully said something about holding it this way. The anger roiled in him. The end of the roll felt like a roach. Raising it with his left hand, he poked his nose with it, twice. Then it was pushing against his nostril, inside. His hands worked on. The lid was close enough to his nose for a strong scent from the plastic. He couldn't remember having decided anything.

He let his head back. He felt the urge to sneeze, but it passed quickly. It was followed immediately by a dull burn that reminded him of a head cold. The warmth spread under his eyes.

“Nothing,” he said to Cully. “It did nothing.”

Cully hawked, rolled down the window and spat out. He rolled the window back up slowly, as though listening for something. Fanning's heart began to speed up.

“All I hear is ‘you don't know this' and ‘you're clued out.'”

“You said that already.”

“You were actually listening to me? You know how hard writing is?”

“Pencil and paper. It can't be that hard.”

“It's damned hard. It's the hardest thing. Nobody knows that.”

“Nobody…?”

“And I'm sick to death of people who…”

Fanning stopped. He glanced at Cully and saw that he seemed to be concentrating on something.

“I'm talking a lot, aren't I.”

Cully nodded. Whatever he was interested in seemed to be in front of the speedometer.

“You do understand that, right? What I said about writing, being a writer?”

“What did you say about it?”

“I'm saying it's tougher than anything. It takes it out of you like you wouldn't believe. No-one gets it. No-one.”

Cully looked over.

“Yeah they do.”

“No they don't,” Fanning said. “No way. No how.”

“Shut up,” said Cully.

“Oh, it's a one-way street, is it? You say whatever you want – nothing most of the time, for Christ's sake and I get told to shut up?”

“You're yelling,” said Cully. “And I don't like it. The yelling. So I'm telling you again, shut it.”

“‘Shut it.' Who says ‘shut it' here in Dublin, in Ireland? You're English, you're Irish. You're this, you're that. But you tell me nothing. What the hell use is that?”

Cully was staring at him.

“You're losing it,” he said. “Calm down.”

“How often do you do this, snorting–”

“None of your business. And shut up.”

“You're undercover,” Fanning said. “That's it. Now I get it. You're trying to entrap me. That's what's going on.”

“Listen to yourself,” said Cully. “Do you know how paranoid you sound?”

“Admit it, come on.”

Cully shook his head. He began feeling around in his pocket for something.

“See,” said Fanning. “Don't think I'm blind, right? Or stupid. Treating me like some kind of child, like an iijit. You don't know me – nobody knows me, what I do. What I can do.”

“Really.”

“There you go again!”

“What?”

“Discounting, that's what.”

“Discount?”

“Fobbing me off. Like…”

“Who?”

“A guy called Breen.”

“I don't know any Breen.”

Fanning realized that he was beginning to sweat. Things were getting stranger, like when he'd had the flu or a fever. He felt almost painfully alert to everything now. He could feel the blood going around in his body. He could hear the sound of Cully rubbing his eyelids.

He stared at the islands of light in the deserted street ahead. Flashes of images came to him, a satellite image zooming down to nighttime Dublin, hovering over the black Liffey waters nearby, over the flat where his wife and child were turning over in their sleep.

“You're off your trolley,” Cully said. “Look at you, listen to you.”

Fanning felt his chest was rising up through his throat. He had to go, had to. He imagined himself sprinting away along the wet pavements all the way to Hope or some place and then back.

Cully was turning a lighter over in his hand. He lifted a joint to his lips then and lighted it. The end of the paper sparked as he drew hard once, paused, and drew again.

“You smoke dope too?”

Cully ignored him, taking two more long pulls. Then he held his breath and passed the joint over.

“This will calm you down, Superman.”

“I am calm.”

Cully coughed but kept scanning the mirrors.

“So what's next?” Fanning asked.

“What's next?”

“Yeah, what's next?”

“We're ditching this car is what.”

“But what then?”

“So far as I know you're going home to your missus,” Cully murmured. “And I'm off about my business.”

“That's it?”

“Was that you a minute ago, saying you had to go home right now?”

“I know. But I've got my second wind.”

He passed the joint back to Cully and watched the eddies of smoke that he released every few moments rising and then sliding toward the window.

“How long does it last?”

“What last?”

“The coke.”

Fanning reached out, his sleeve held by his fingers, to wipe condensation from the windscreen. The rain had stopped, for now, at least.

“You get your fifteen minutes of being God,” said Cully. “That enough for you?”

Fanning saw a moving shadow down the street. Somebody walking.

“And you crash afterwards. Right?”

“Not right away.”

The person walking was a man. He was carrying a packsack on his shoulder. Fanning looked over at Cully. There was something disappointing in seeing Cully trying to get the last toke, taking short stabs at it.

The man walking sidestepped the brimming puddles, but then he missed one. Fanning sniggered.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking.”

“Better that than yelling your head off,” said Cully, rolling down the window and blowing out a volley of smoke.

The man stopped and drew out a map. He angled it, held it up, turned to the light to read it. Fanning knew by Cully's stillness that Cully too was watching him.

The man lowered the map and turned to face the end of the street. Then he turned back and resumed walking.