Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [0]
by
Declan Burke
First Kindle Original Edition, 2011
First published by Lilliput Press, 2003
© Declan Burke
1.
The doorbell rings at five in the morning, it’s bad news, someone’s dead or dying. Which was why Imelda got downstairs so quick, still in her nightdress, padding across the cold tiles of the porch. Flustered, thinking someone might be dying.
Which allowed the blademan to get in close, inside the elbows, driving the shank up hard under the chin. Blowing the artery, spattering the porch. Blood, glass, chrome – Christ, you could’ve hung it in a gallery.
These things happen, although not usually in shiny new towns on the Atlantic seaboard, and rarely to the middle-aged wife of an independent politician that’s keeping the government in clover. But they happen. It’s a crying shame, yeah, so have a cry, feel ashamed and get over it. The rest of the week is coming on hard and its brakes are shot to hell.
My job was to find out who and why, at twelve cent per word for the right facts in the right order. Enough facts, a decent hook, they might even add up to a front-page clipping for the dusty folder under my bed. Imelda Sheridan was dead, which was tough cookies on Imelda, but then every silver lining has its cloud.
Which was how it all started out, anyway.
It was early Monday, three days to Christmas, the morning not trying anything it couldn’t handle itself. I stuck a pillow behind my back, rolled a one-skin, lacing it light, just to take the edge off. Sand in my eyes, a jellyfish in my gut, skull humming like a taut rope. The room stinking of stale breath, bored sex, cold cigarettes.
I sparked the jay, watched Denise sleep. Hadn’t watched her sleep in a while, hadn’t had the chance, on a second bite of the cherry and still trying to remember if I liked the taste of cherries. Asleep, relaxed, she looked her age, sneaking up slow on the right side of thirty. Dark hairs at the corners of her mouth, a nose that might have been too big if her ears were any smaller. The lips full, salmon pale, the hair chestnut with auburn streaks, shoulder-length. When they were open, the eyes were round and brown. She thought she could have lost half a stone around the hips but I liked the curves, liked that there was more of her rather than less.
She smelled the dope and her eyes flickered, focusing slow. She knuckled one eye, yawning. Then, sounding resigned, she muttered: “Out.”
“No way, I saw chalk-dust.”
Buzzing on the jay, kidding her on.
“Out, Harry. Go home.”
“You know what time it is?”
“No, but I’d say it’s about half past fuck off.” She smiled me a tired one that was half regret and half something I’d never seen before. “C’mon, Harry. You know you have to go.”
“Alright. Jesus.”
I stubbed the jay, scrabbled for my tee shirt, shivering, sleet spattering the window.
“Want to join me in the shower?”
“No shower, Harry. There’s no hot water.”
“Fuck’s sakes, Dee.”
Officially, we were on a break. Officially, I was sleeping in the back room of my office over in the Old Quarter, the constant verbals costing a fortune in replacing Ben’s toys.
Off the record, Denise was trying to work out if anyone would take her on with another man’s kid in tow.
I pretended not to notice, the truth is a scab you don’t want to pick at too often. Last night we’d been in the same place at the same time with the same amount of booze on board. That was all and that’s never enough.
She sat up, draped a thin white cotton dressing gown around her shoulders. Said, her voice thin and tired: “Just get dressed and go, Harry. Please?”
Then left, showing me how.
I got dressed, went downstairs. She was still standing in the hall, looking at the phone like it was primed, ticking. Ben lying on the living room floor, cartoons blaring from the TV, wearing dinosaur slippers, Action Man goggles around his neck. I was rapping about building a snowman if the snow stuck, how we could put mum’s coat on it, Ben not paying attention, when she called me into the kitchen. She put the kettle on and didn’t turn around.