Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [21]
It was the couple, looking down at him. They were handsome, Lowe thought, though there was something cold in the man’s lean face, and something angry in the woman’s eyes.
“May I?” the man asked. American.
“Help yourself,” Lowe said. The man sat; the woman remained standing and looked up and down the path. “You from the States?” Lowe asked.
The man nodded. “From New York, Jimmy—like you.”
Lowe wasn’t conscious of trying to get up, but suddenly the man’s hand was on his shoulder, pressing him back. Lowe’s mind raced, but without traction.
“Relax, Jimmy,” the man said.
Lowe’s mouth went dry and the rest of him was bathed in sudden sweat. “Flynn?” he asked finally. The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out five photos and laid them on the bench.
“She brought them to Dublin, Jimmy, same as you,” he said, pointing at the photos as he spoke. “And Dublin’s the last stop.” He said some names but Lowe had trouble hearing him. A roar filled his ears as he looked at the pictures of the five dead men, and suddenly he couldn’t see. He must’ve been leaving again because the man had him by the arm and the woman looked worried.
“Five, in five years,” the man said. “You make it half-a-dozen.”
Lowe slumped on the bench. “Flynn?” he said again. It was an old man’s voice.
The woman shook her head in disgust. “There’s no Flynn but herself—Kathryn Margot Flynn.”
Lowe gripped the little bottles in his pocket and looked at the ground. “You’re cops?”
“She is,” the man said, nodding at the redhead. “I’m private, working for your employers. The good news is they just want their money back. You make that happen, and keep your mouth shut, and they won’t prosecute.”
Lowe clawed at his gut. “What’s the bad news?”
The redhead looked down. “I am,” she said. “I don’t care fer yer girl leaving bodies all over my city, but I got no proof of anything. That’s where you come in.”
Lowe slumped on the bench. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He looked at his hands and saw the little whiskey bottles in them. He cracked the metal cap on one and the man took his arm.
“Let’s wait on that, Jimmy,” he said, but Lowe shook him off and drank one bottle and then another. The woman spoke, but Lowe couldn’t make out the words. His head was down and his eyes were closed. He was waiting for his balance and another bubble to ride, but in his heart he knew it was no good. The best part was over.
THE GHOST OF
RORY GALLAGHER
BY JIM FUSILLI
He’d left London in disgrace. A banking scandal, one of the worst. More than a half-billion pounds sterling in losses, bolloxed up every trade he made for months, going deeper and deeper. The end of days for the 230-year-old Ravenscroft Bank. Hundreds sacked. Pensions gone. Dreams shattered. Suicides, at least five of them, including Desmond Chick, for thirty-eight years the janitor at the Con Colbert Street branch in Limerick, a widower, raised three sons himself, working dusk till dawn. Sent away without so much as a plaque for comfort, he cried himself to death, they say, too old to start anew and as heartsick as if he’d lost his Minnie all over again.
The trader, meanwhile, was sentenced to four and a half years. Got out in three. Good behavior, though the arrogant shite never owned up to what he’d done. Eleven hundred days in Coldbath Fields and every one spent planning to cash in like Nick Leeson did—a book, Ewan McGregor on the silver screen, lectures—his reward for breaking the Barings Bank in ’95. Now you can play poker online with Leeson, punters thinking, Here’s yer guy, he’ll ride a bad patch straight to hell.
None of that for this trader, save a photo that went on the wires: scowling, bruised, itching, hollow eyes darting this way and that, maybe two stone lost to labor. No publishers, no producers; banking scandals old news now, a story