Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [18]
“Pull over!”
Shite! Now he’s out of me cab and down a blind foukin’ alley. It’s been five minutes. Ah, let me go see how the poor bastard’s doing.
Thwack!
“Sorry, Collins.”
Thwack.
“It’s nothing personal, but some shanty prick beat my father to death with a baseball bat down an alley not too far from here.”
Thwack.
“I figured we owed you cocksuckers one.”
Thwack.
“Shit, Collins, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were smiling at me. Fuck you, asshole!”
Thwack.
Like I say, I hate Americans, arse-licking cops worst of all.
THE BEST PART
BY PETER SPIEGELMAN
For Jimmy Lowe, this was the best part—the two of them just out of the shower, wrapped in hotel terrycloth, smelling of expensive shampoo, heat clinging to their bodies like another skin, and his head in her lap. He wasn’t sober—he’d more or less given up on that—but for the moment the world wasn’t sliding away beneath him. He wasn’t rested either, but neither was he wired, or nodding out, or stupid drooling. What he was was balanced. It was all about the mix, Lowe told himself, and right now his recipe was near perfect: caffeine matched against the jet lag, pint of milk against the burning patch in his gut, reefer and John Jameson against the coke and those pills that Margot gave him. It teetered on a knife edge, and Lowe knew that it could get away fast—but not just now. Now, in the best part, he was riding an exquisite soap bubble—drifting, warm and light, through a damasked, luxury-suite landscape. He looked up and saw Margot’s hair in blue-black curls around her pale face. Her robe fell open and he saw her small, round breasts, still pink from the shower. He stretched his legs on the sofa. Sex had rubbed him raw and he settled himself gingerly and closed his eyes.
Besides the weightlessness and Margot’s slender thighs under his head, Lowe’s favorite part of the best part was the disconnection. Balanced this way, past and future held no dread and he could reflect on both with serene detachment. He reached up and dragged a lazy hand across Margot’s breasts. She batted him away and picked up a fashion magazine. Lowe smiled to himself. Floating in his bubble, even Margot didn’t scare him much. He could think about their time together calmly now, without the dizzying mash of lust and fear she’d filled him with almost from the start. Christ, was it only ten weeks since personnel had sent her?
It was January but she’d been bare-legged. Her calves were white and shiny, and the little tattoo on her ankle was penny-green. Lowe thought it was a bruise at first, but it turned out to be some kind of braided cross. She’d worn a black leather coat that day, and her black hair tumbled past the collar. Something about her 1980s do and her slanted eyes and the way she talked reminded Lowe of Sheena Easton—though he didn’t know if Sheena Easton’s eyes were blue like Margot’s, or if their accents were the same. They weren’t.
That was a hellish month in the back-office—a new computer system, the trading room churning out twice the usual number of deals, and half his staff out with flu—but Margot had pulled her weight and then some. He remembered how quick she was reconciling payments, and how accurate. The other clerks didn’t like her much but there was no question she knew her shit. After a day or two they were following her lead, and so—in his way—was Lowe.
She was like a tune stuck in his head, and all of a sudden his morning train ran too slow and the workday went too fast. Overtime was a gift and he relished every second, down even to the lousy takeout meals—anything that got him alone with her, and got him close enough to smell whatever made her smell so good.
When he was close, he couldn’t stop looking. He was cautious at first—careful not to stare—but as time went by his eyes grew hungrier. If she noticed, or minded, Margot gave no sign, and after a while Lowe didn’t give a damn. He pored over her from follicles to fingernails, and memorized every inch. Once, late on a Thursday, he’d had to stop himself from touching. He left her in