Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [39]
Slapped the lock across the cubicle door and let Barry’s head drop against the toilet bowl. Fumbled for my Stanley and pulled the cunt’s drawers down. Wiped my nose with the back of my hand and sniffed hard, slumped down onto the floor with him. Got to work. Had to keep wiping my face because I couldn’t see through the water.
Outside I heard people singing country songs. Cunts didn’t cry at the funeral, but stick on Patsy Cline and they greeted like bairns.
“Crazy.” Of all the fuckin’ things to hear.
I leaned back against the toilet, mopped my face with my sleeve. The cunt had bled all over the shop, the tiles sticky. And there was me, sitting right in the middle of it, man. Britches all fuckin’ bloody and that, my shirt a mess. It stank of Barry’s last pish and blood and shite. I let my head fall back and I stared at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, red dots in front of my eyes.
Barry Phelan didn’t kill Big Yin; God did. And it didn’t matter which Barry Phelan did the London Road blag, didn’t matter that Big Yin wouldn’t give a fuck if I had the cunt’s balls or not.
I promised him, ken? You can’t go back on a promise to a dying man. Especially when you was all the poor bastard had.
And aye, there was no way I was getting out of here alive. If I’d had that gun I put Lee to the lino with, I’d have had a fighting chance. But right then, my arse wet through with Barry Phelan’s blood, I didn’t have the strength in me to do fuckall but sit there and listen to Patsy fuckin’ Cline and Tammy fuckin’ Wynette, tears rolling down my cheeks.
Took they cunts an hour to realize Barry was a no-show. Took another fifteen or so to check the bogs. And daft fuckin’ micks, took them a bucketload of mouth and one hard kick to bust down the door.
I heard a lad puke. Heard the hammer of a revolver thumbed back and oaths yelled, proper nasty Irish shite.
It’s not every day a lad admits he died with another man’s balls in his hand. But what else was I going to do, eh?
I was a Boyo to the end.
THE PISS-STAINED CZECH
BY OLEN STEINHAUER
This was back in ’94, in the middle of a planned three-month stay in Prague. I thought that by soaking up a little Bohemia and wading through Joyce’s Ulysses, I’d become a writer. But that was a joke, largely because I spent each night drinking with Toman, a six-foot shaved-bald Czech who passed his days in the gym. He liked buying drinks for a writer, and I liked having drinks bought for me.
“You come to Dublin on this weekend.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to work.”
“A writer’s work,” he said, puffing out his chest like a Cossack, “is to living. Only one night. Weekend. You come.”
“I’m broke, Toman.”
He slapped my back. “We stay with Toman’s friend, Sean. The plane—Toman will pay.”
“You have a friend in Dublin?”
“Toman, he has friend all over world!”
He liked referring to himself in the third person. Toman must to pee, or Toman must get to work. I never knew what his work was, but he had enough money to keep me in drinks, which was all that mattered.
We landed at Dublin International on January 22, a Saturday, then took a taxi to a posh southern neighborhood called Ballsbridge—a name that got a giggle out of me—where the bay winds blew down a narrow street of matching brick Victorian houses. It was very fucking cold. The door Toman knocked on was opened by a skinny Irishman with a beard that made me think of the drunks lingering in the corners of pubs in Ulysses—everything I knew about Dublin came from that book.
“Shite. Toman.”
“Toman and his American writer friend are here for until tomorrow. You have a floor?”
I was embarrassed, because we clearly weren’t expected. All I could do was introduce myself as Sean reluctantly led us inside.
“How is our Linda?” asked Toman.
“Gave her the boot. You know.” Sean took a green bottle of Becherovka, the Czech national liquor, from a cabinet. It was the last thing I expected to drink in Dublin. He handed me a shot. “Whaddaya write?”
“Trying