The Third Person

‘I really wouldn’t do that,’ I suggested quietly, my hand moving casually to where my gun was resting.

Two of the unarmed men reached beneath their shirts and pulled out pistols, and held them pointing casually at the floor. The remaining two each produced knives. The first man tapped the ball end of his cue on the floor and sounded real pissed off when he spoke.

‘This fuck bothering you, Steph?’

I sipped my beer and pretended I didn’t exist.

Steph bent down slightly to get under my gaze and lift it back up to her. Then, she thumbed in the the direction of the man with the cue, glaring at me.

‘This here’s Joe Kennedy. And these are his boys.’

One of them grunted, right on time.

Steph said, ‘Maybe you can tell them why you want to see Jim.’

I was starting to be under the impression that Jim had better be worth it after all this trouble. Jim had better do fucking cartwheels. Play the piano and take requests.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m gonna reach into my pocket, okay?’

I held my hands – palms out – in a pacifying gesture.

‘There’s a piece of paper in my left-hand trouser pocket. I’m gonna reach in and get it out.’

Nobody told me not to, so I dug in, retrieving the paper I’d taken from Walter Hughes’ house.

‘It’s about this. Here – who wants it?’

Steph held out her hand and clicked her tanned, ringed fingers twice.

‘Give.’

I passed it over, and she pulled it taut between her witch’s hands, frowning as she read it.

‘I just want to speak to him about that,’ I said. ‘And where he got it from.’

Steph looked up at Joe Kennedy and his friends.

‘It’s all right, boys. You go back to your pool now.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

They wandered away, putting their weapons back into whichever tight and revolting spaces they’d pulled them from. Steph looked me over again, evaluating me. I smiled and took a sip of beer.

‘All right,’ she said, turning around. ‘Put that candy-ass beer down and follow me. Bob!’

The landlord was polishing a pint glass with a rusty-looking bar towel.

‘Yeah?’

‘You order us down a big old bottle of liquor in back. And three glasses, and that’s all.’

‘Right up.’

He didn’t move, but I did – following Steph through a flimsy door by the side of the bar and wondering exactly how alive I was going to be ten minutes from now.

It was actually a revelation: exactly how much there was, hidden beneath the surface of the city. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised: in cities, like the people that live in them, the most interesting things happen beneath the surface. O’Reilly’s itself was subterranean, but the door by the bar led to steps that took Steph, and me behind her, down to another level entirely, and by the time we’d finished I figured we must have been a good two storeys beneath the streets of the city. We trailed along a dim corridor and then turned the corner into an enormous room.

Which, I guessed, was probably the real O’Reilly’s.

Loud music was playing from a battered old stereo behind a bar at one end, hooked up to building-sized speakers. Not Irish fiddle music here, either – but harder, harsher sounds: the sort of music you might play in your head while you fuck someone up. There were probably forty or fifty lost souls, half of them dancing, the rest just shuffling and talking. A card game was going on at a table over by the far end. A few jagged flashes of pale blue light from the strips on the ceiling took photos of everybody’s silhouettes, and the air was so filled with sweet, hazy smoke that it was like the floor was made from marijuana and on fire.

‘Bar,’ Steph shouted over her shoulder. ‘Try to keep up, now.’

She threaded her way over to the right, where a tray with three glasses and a bottle of whisky was waiting, guarded by a young barman who nodded at Steph as she picked it up and bobbed away. I followed her to the far end, dodging the jagged silhouettes of slam-dancers, and we went round into what turned out to be a kind of snug, albeit a bare and badly furnished one. There were a few low, old tables (unmatching) and a scattering of weathered armchairs (also unmatching). There were six people occupying them, and they didn’t seem to match either: all just sitting, staring into space, as though they were really concentrating on drinking. To be fair, some of them looked like they might need to.

Steph headed over to a solitary man in the far corner. He looked old, although he was leaning over the table in front of him, staring into a thick tumbler of greasy booze, and so it was difficult to make out his face. From what I could see, his hair was blacky-grey and unwashed – two thirds of the way to being the wet, hard curls of tramp’s hair. The skin on the back of his hands was brown and knotted, but there was thin hair there, too, like swirls of copper wire. His shoulders were weak: stooped and trembling slightly. I got the impression that his drink was telling him a secret which was breaking his heart.

‘Jim.’