Chapter Twenty-One #5
Tommy spins Eugene around and backhands him right across the face. Eugene staggers, but Tommy’s grip keeps him on his feet.
“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” Tommy says, into Eugene’s face. His breath comes in growls. “Answer me. That’s what Lavin done, he forgot who he was dealing with. I’m the master here.”
Cal shoves between them. “Hey,” he says, loud and sharp, full cop voice. “Break it up. You’re done.” He twists Tommy’s hand off Eugene’s arm. The other men are on their feet, ready.
Tommy almost goes for him, his fist is pulling back, but he has just enough left to stop himself. He says, deep and lethal, his face close to Cal’s, “Don’t fucking cross me, boy.”
“Or what?” Cal asks. He has a hand lifted, warning the other guys to stay where they are. “What are you gonna do?”
Tommy keeps staring at him, but his face has gone blank, just the thoughts running hard behind his eyes.
Cal leaves him time to scan through every option, and discard it.
No going to the police with some story about harassment.
No more siccing his dog-pack on anyone, and no more calling in favors from his big-shot buddies.
No more screwing around with tractors, or hunting accidents, or whatever else he might have considered.
All the artillery Tommy’s accumulated so methodically, over a lifetime, is useless now.
With what Eugene just said, Cal and the guys have enough to take to the Guards, and too much for even Tommy to bury.
Unless he can crash a helicopter on top of all five of them and Eugene too, he’s run out of road.
“You heard him,” Eugene says. His voice is shaking, but he’s on his feet and standing straight. “You heard that. And he went out last night, late. He took the garden spade. He was gone ages.”
His cheek is starting to swell, and there’s a trickle of blood where Tommy’s signet ring caught him. “I’ll testify to that anywhere you want,” he says. “The Guards, or court. Wherever.”
“Don’t talk like a fuckin’ fool,” Tommy says. The red has faded out of his face, but his eyes haven’t moved from Cal’s. “No one’s testifying to anything. If these shams were going to the Guards, they’d be there, not here.”
He steps back and spreads his hands to the other men, beckoning like he’s calling for a fight. “Come on, ye’ve wasted enough of my time. Let’s be having you: how much do ye want?”
Francie clears his throat and spits on the rug.
“That factory’s got all the land it’s getting,” Cal says. “If I get wind of one compulsory purchase order, that’s when we go to the cops.”
Tommy wasn’t expecting this. He stares for another second; then he laughs. “Are you laying down the law to me, boy?”
Cal says, “I’m telling you how this is gonna work.”
“What’s it to you? Your land’s safe enough.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “So’s everyone else’s.”
Tommy laughs again. It’s a rough, raw sound, with too little control. “You haven’t a clue how any of this works. Not a bull’s notion. Off you go, boy, back to your carpentry. Back to America. Off you fuck, and don’t be annoying me.”
“No compulsory purchase orders,” Cal says. “No more hassling people. No more bullshit. You’re done.”
“What are you talking to me for? I don’t own the fuckin’ factory. I don’t run the fuckin’ council.”
“That’s right,” Cal says. “So you’re gonna have to talk to the people who do.”
Tommy aims a finger at him like he’s scored a point. “See that, that shows you know nothing. You’re years too late, boy. Have you any idea how big this is? Once a project this size is up and moving, you can’t just slap the brakes on.”
“You’ll think of something,” Cal says. “Make it good.”
Bobby says, “You said you were master here.”
Tommy’s eyes move to Bobby. “You ungrateful little scut,” he says heavily. “You were only delighted to hand over your land. Nearly bit my hand off.”
“If I’da known what you were at,” Bobby says, “I’da told you to shove your money up your hole. You made me into a fuckin’ traitor. You won’t do that on anyone else.”
The room is silent. In its warmth, the smell of earth and tractor grease has risen. Beyond the window, the fields are dark.
Tommy says, “How do I know ye won’t fuck me over? Wait till my deal’s gone down the tubes, then off ye go to the Guards.”
“We’re not fuckin’ scumbags,” P.J. says.
“He’s a cop. Ye brought a cop into this.”
Francie snorts. “You’ve brought in enough Guards when it suits you,” he says. “The difference is, we didn’t buy ours.”
“You’re gonna have to take our word for it, Tommy,” Cal says. “I know you’re not happy about that, but sometimes life’s a bitch.”
“And you can take my word on this as well, boy,” Senan says. “One foot outa line, and we’ll have you. And mind your step, ’cause I’m only dying for the fuckin’ chance.”
Tommy looks them over, one by one. His lip is lifted with disgust.
“You give me the sick,” he says. “The lot of ye.”
“Your own kid, man,” Cal says. “Who the hell pulls that shit on his own kid?”
Tommy is straightening his cardigan, rumpled from the tussle with Eugene, but he glances up at that.
“You’ve a small mind,” he says. “Like the resta these. Small thoughts; small goals. You think you’re great now, boyo, ’cause ye all get to keep your small things a while longer, but that’s just luck.
Let me tell you something: the next man that comes along thinking big, he’ll splatter ye like ants. ”
“That’s what you thought a month ago,” Cal reminds him.
“Get them outa here,” Tommy says to Eugene. “Make sure they’re gone. Then clean that rug before your mammy sees it.”
“You fucking clean it,” Eugene says. His cheek is still bleeding. To Cal: “Come on.”
No one looks back at Tommy as they leave the room. Off in the depths of the house, the TV quacks on, where Clodagh Moynihan sits oblivious from habit or from sheer force of will.
Eugene opens the front door for them. The security lights blaze on as they cross the threshold; darkness has come down while they were inside. After the heavy warmth of the house, the air is icy and sweet.
On the doorstep, Cal turns back. “You gonna be safe here?” he asks Eugene.
Eugene looks at him with a mixture of exhaustion and distaste. “What would you do about it if I wasn’t?”
Cal supposes Rachel must have seen some value in Eugene, although then again she did seem to favor hopeless causes. “I’d figure something out, son,” he says. “I’m good at that.”
“Yeah, thanks but no thanks. The last thing I need is you figuring things out for me.” Eugene blots his cheek with his sleeve, and stares at the bloodstain like he doesn’t understand it.
“I’ll stay over at someone’s tonight. And I’m heading up to Dublin tomorrow, anyway.
I never wanted to move back to this shithole to begin with. ”
“Good call,” Cal says. “If we need you, I’ll find you.”
He’s turning to leave, but Eugene doesn’t shut the door.
“You want to know the part,” he says, “like, the part that really blows my mind? When he came in that night, I told you he was climbing the walls. He wasn’t.
The whole time, he was totally fucking normal.
She was out there in the river, and he was cool as a cucumber.
Like nothing important was happening. Isn’t that the best part? ”
His hand on the doorframe is shaking. In the cold white light of the yard the other four men wait for Cal, watching, their breath smoking on the air. “Good luck out there,” Cal says.
Senan says, outside the gates, “I need a fuckin’ drink.”
The pub is quiet. Small groups of men are sitting in corners, silent, spaced well apart; the TV is turned down low. Apparently Cal and the guys have been un-barred: when Barty turns from wiping the counter and sees them coming in, all he does is put down his cloth and start setting up their pints.
Men glance across and nod to them, as they settle in the alcove, but no one comes over. Cal knows what to say to the loved ones of the dead—Sorry for your trouble—but there’s no one who was close enough to Mart to warrant those words.
Barty brings the pints and a round of whiskeys on the side, as a gesture of condolence or reconciliation or something along those lines.
The whiskey hits Cal hard, loosening his muscles with an abruptness that almost leaves him limp.
He realizes he hasn’t eaten since breakfast, which feels like days ago.
“I’ll get onto his cousin,” Senan says. “Myles, over to Gorteen. He’ll be the one to make the arrangements. For the funeral and all.”
“And I’ll make the arrangements for throwing Dickie O’Shea out on his arse,” Francie says, “if he has the brass neck to turn up.”
Senan is watching Bobby, who’s tucked into the corner of the alcove with his head down over his pint. “Bring your Róisín along,” he says. And when Bobby looks up, startled: “It’s not what I’d call a romantic day out, but she might as well have a look at what she’s getting herself into.”
“Ah, no,” Bobby says hastily. “Sure, I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“It’ll have to be done sooner or later. And with everyone’s mind on other things, no one’ll go giving her the third degree. I’ll have Angela keep them off her.”
“I might,” Bobby says dubiously. And with more conviction, as the idea takes hold: “I might do that, all right. Herself and Angela’d get on.”
They drink. Cal finds himself checking the details of the pub, methodically, like they might have shifted in ways that hold importance.
One of the faded newspaper clippings framed on the walls has a new crack in its glass, probably from the other night’s ruckus; a trickle of damp from all the rain has bubbled the painted-over wallpaper in a high corner.
Senan’s holy-water Mary is still stuck at a rakish angle in the fishing net.
“You’ll give me a hand keeping his farm going,” P.J. says to Cal.
“Yeah,” Cal says. “Some of the ewes have scald; we’re gonna need the footbath.”
“I’ll send over a couple of my lads,” Senan says.
“He told me he left the farm to Ruairi,” Cal says.
He’d forgotten all about that. Just a few weeks ago Mart was considering, with no particular urgency, where to leave his land.
Cal wonders whether Ruairi was a placeholder set up long ago, or whether somewhere in those few weeks, Mart understood that he couldn’t afford to wait.
“Right,” Senan says, after a moment. “Fair play to him. I’ll send Ruairi over, so. He might as well get the feel of the place.” He clears his throat and takes a swig of his pint.
“And he wanted you to take Kojak,” Cal says to P.J. “So’s he’ll have sheep to work.”
P.J. nods. “That’s a fine dog,” he says. “You wouldn’t get better anywhere.”
“We oughta have the wake here,” Bobby says, struck by an idea.
“The fuck are you on about?” Senan demands, staring at him in disbelief.
“I’m only saying. His favorite place, like. What’s wrong with that?”
“And have the coffin on the bar, is it?”
“I’ve seen worse on that bar,” Francie says darkly. “D’you remember the time—”
“You’ll give the tourists a fuckin’ heart attack. They walk in here looking for Aran jumpers and leprechauns, and there’s a fuckin’ corpse staring them out of it—”
“How many tourists do we get in November?” Cal points out. He has no opinion on the wake, but this argument—vehement, elaborate, low-stakes, the kind of bickering that’s been currency in Seán óg’s ever since he got here—feels like a good thing.
“All it takes is one, and it’ll be all over Instagram. Making a holy show of us.”
P.J. has stopped drinking so he can think better. “Father Eamonn wouldn’t say the rosary in here,” he says firmly, having considered the issue long enough to reach a conclusion.
“That’s an upside, not a downside,” Senan tells him. “All the same—”
The argument lasts them through the rest of their pints. No one says a word about Tommy. When their glasses are empty, they head for home, in the windless dark that smells like coming frost.