Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [73]
“For one, Rigby, Provies and Branch aren’t the only ones with popguns, every half-wit with an ounce of dope has an Uzi tucked under his oxter. For two, I wasn’t there. If I had been, you’d be panned out beside your brother. What next?”
“This morning I run around to my mate, Herbie. He’s the bloke developed the shots of Helen Conway carrying on, and if I’d left it another hour he’d be on the slab with Gonzo. So I go to see Conway. You were looking for him and you did the shooting. I put two and two together.”
“And came up with three. Nice work, Shamus.”
I let it slide, seeing as how he was one hundred per cent right.
“So Conway gets excited and bolts from cover. Next thing I know he’s chumming down with the bloke that’s screwing his wife. She’s there too. I figure there’s more to it than wife swapping, but I don’t think too well on my feet. So I tell them to leave me alone. If they don’t, the negatives wind up on the front desk of every redtop in the country. Then I walk away. I haven’t seen Galway since last night, and that’s one of the very few things I’m happy about at this moment in time.”
I stubbed the cigarette, left out the phone-call from the pros and started to roll another twist. Brady mulled things over.
“You’re lying.”
“You have a gun, Brady. You’re mad as a rat. What would you do in my position?”
“I wouldn’t roll over for the first fucker who put the rush on.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Conway gave up his right to confidentiality when he tried to stitch me up.”
Brady remembered something.
“You think Conway was looking for something other than proof his wife was having it away. What was he looking for?”
“I don’t know. He was doing pretty well around town, developments coming up like mushrooms. Maybe he was looking to go legit, to get away from the pills, and that he was greedy.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“No. Anyway, when I found out who Conway’s wife was screwing, I reckoned Conway was trying to squeeze him on a re-zoning scam. The building trade will never do so well that the land can’t come cheaper.”
“You said Conway didn’t think she was playing away.”
“He didn’t. When I asked him who was lifting her skirt he said he didn’t know, which is bullshit. People think the worst even when they’ve no reason to think it, and the worst usually has a monogram on its pee-jays. So I reckoned Conway was setting me up with the basics, just to get me warmed up, and then he was going to come back with a name. The name would be the politico he wanted to squeeze. I’d start digging and if I turned up anything tasty Conway would use it to put the bounce on.”
“That’s a bit of a long shot.”
“Maybe, but he was right. I turned up something Conway could use to bounce himself to the moon. Thing is, it was the last thing Big Frank suspected.”
“Silly bastard.” Then: “Let me guess the politico.”
“You know?”
“Tony Sheridan.”
“Tony Sheridan, yeah.”
There was another silence. It went on so long that I thought Brady had absconded. I looked around but he was still there, the gun lying in his lap. He grinned, slow and evil.
“You’re one dangerous fucker, Rigby. Know that?”
“Oh yeah, sure. People tell me that all the time. When they’re sticking guns in my ear, mostly.”
“You know what we have here?”
“What I have is circumstantial evidence that Tony Sheridan is having an affair with the wife of a drug-trafficking auctioneer, who is now dead. It’s going to hit the headlines, no two ways about it, his wife was murdered too, but that’ll last until some Fianna Fail back-bencher gets caught mounting the prize ram in the farmyard. Tony’ll never sit in the Dail again but all the blokes’ll take one look at Helen Conway and clap him around his lap of honour, hope they’re still up to no good at his age. They’ll be queuing up to offer him directorships.”
“You’re forgetting Conway.”
“Trying to, anyway.” Then, coming on dumb schmuck: “What’s Conway got to do with Sheridan?”
“Try this. Say Conway wasn’t putting the bounce on Sheridan to re-zone some poxy site in a shit-hole town. Say maybe you’re right about Conway getting greedy