The Emerald Lie by Ken Bruen Read Free Book Online Page B

around the Headford road, said,
    “Neither do you.”
    I could have asked how she knew so much about my affairs but it opened up an area that was best left alone. I asked,
    “Does your mum know we’re coming?”
    She scoffed, mimicked,
    “Mum … She’s a cunt.”
    Killing the whole thread of that. I found the radio dial, and got Galway Bay FM,
The Big Breakfast Show.
He was playing the White Stripes. Listened to that for a bit then. We were coming up to Shop Street and my eyes spotted Whelans Pharmacy. I said,
    “The owner of that pharmacy, Michael, sat beside me in school.”
    She scoffed,
    “And you? What, just decided to be a failure as your school friend made a career?”
    Jesus.
    So much for sharing.
    I went another tack, tried,
    “When you were …
away
… where exactly were you?”
    She mused over that, then,
    “I was amassing money.”
    “For what?”
    She waved her hand vaguely, said,
    “Money isn’t always protection but it sure makes a basis for attack.”
    Riddle me that.
    We’d arrived at her mother’s house. Before, when I had visited, it had been a shroud of darkness, everything dying. Now it was renewal in neon. Brightly painted and, even I noticed, new curtains. It looked … welcoming?
    Emily warned,
    “Follow my lead, you hear?”
    Jesus.
    I asked,
    “Like good cop bad cop?”
    She gave me the look, sneered,
    “Like in, you say fuck all.”
    I could do that.
    The door was opened by a woman who looked healthy and alive, no trace of the wretched drunk I had encountered last time. She gave a small smile and began to open her arms but Emily brushed her aside, saying,
    “A hug? Really?”
    Guess not.
    I stood there, saying, you guessed it, fuck all. Her mother said,
    “Would you like to come in, Mr….?”
    “Jack, Jack Taylor.”
    No memory of our previous time or the gallon of whiskey I had fed her. Inside, the house was a testament of OCD. Spotless and solitary. She offered,
    “Some tea, coffee? I’m afraid we don’t have any … beverages.”
    Emily laughed, an unpleasant sound, said,
    “Being as you drank it all and more.”
    We stood in the grim aftermath of that for a minute until Emily broke the tableau, said,
    “You dragged us all the way out here. What’s the big deal?”
    Her mother looked beseechingly at me and I moved to go outside but Emily shot me a look. Her mother said,
    “I wanted to make amends to you.”
    Emily laughed out loud, spat,
    “How will you do that? Restore my virginity that Daddy took?”
    Phew.
    Fuck it. I got the hell out of there. I could hear shouting behind me and started to walk down the road. An articulated lorry came hugely along and more in desperation than seriousness I put out my thumb and
    … he stopped.
    With my bad leg took me a time to climb up there. Settled in the massive cab and said,
    “Thanks a lot.”
    The Polish driver said,
    “Random acts of kindness.”
    Alas, his good deed was fouled by a tape of Black Sabbath. You have not known damnation until you hurl along the motorway, Sabbath roaring in your ears, and a driver eating a thick bagel laden with dripping mayo and tomatoes.
    It did save chat so there’s that. He dropped me off at Eyre Square. A wag I knew from Garavan’s watched me climb down, asked,
    “New job, Taylor?”
    I said,
    “With the water charges, we all have to improvise.”
    I sat on a bench until a guy approached and sold me a sheet of Xanax. Not exactly the stuff they dealt on
The Wire
but it does the job. He took the money, said,
    “You ever need anything else, here’s my number.”
    Might be my imagination but he looked a little like Ozzy Osbourne.
     

    “Never judge a dog’s pedigree by the kind of books he does not chew.” (Irish logic)
     

    The Grammarian
    Oliver Parker Wilson. Now that’s a name. To conjure with. In Galway in the late ’50s, there had been two Protestant families. Two! Count ’em. The Hunters, who manufactured prams, and the Wilsons, who were in exports and simply rich. As