The Wrong Kind of Blood (Ed Loy PI) Read online

  I must have been staring, because one of his cohorts nudged him, and he turned around and looked at me. I hadn’t seen his face for a long time: the pig eyes, the snub nose, the oversized mouth, the features all compressed together in a permanent jeer in the center of his large round face. He pointed a stubby finger at me, mouthed my name, took off his hat, swept it down and across his chest and bowed his head. Then he turned away and muttered something, and his lackeys yelled with ugly laughter.

  Change and decay in all around I see…

  But Podge Halligan would always be a prick. He was bigger than us, but it was all fat; he used to be the one Halligan everyone could beat up. Half the time his brothers wouldn’t even come after you in revenge. They beat him up all the time as well, figured that was what he deserved. So Podge hung around with kids three and four years younger than him, and beat them up. Soon he had his own little gang. They preyed on the very young and the very old. When Podge was fifteen, he and two twelve-year-old mates mugged a seventy-six-year-old man for his pension. Only the man was a WWII veteran, the twelve-year-olds ran away, and the old soldier broke Podge’s right arm and three of his ribs. After Leo broke his left arm for making a show of them, the other Halligans decided it was time to take Podge under their wing. He might be more hindrance than help, but at least they could control the embarrassment factor if they were keeping an eye on him.

  I got another double Jameson, from a tiny girl in crimson plaits this time, and drank it staring at Podge Halligan’s back. I went around the lounge and in through the side door that connected with the bar. My shoes clicked on the old tile floor. I walked up to Podge Halligan, chest out, fast enough for him to come off his stool and through his ring of thugs to greet me.

  “Ed Loy, lookin’ good, man,” he said, his reedy voice too high-pitched for his bulk.

  “Well, Podge. Looking good yourself. Working out and so on. You’re not a fat cunt anymore. Where does that leave you, just a cunt now, are you?”

  Podge was so taken aback he began to laugh.

  “Fuck’s sake, Ed. Nice to see you an’ all.”

  Podge stepped back, and his boys began to move between us. I held them off.

  “I’m here for Tommy,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Tommy Owens. You asked him to meet you here. I’ve come in his place.”

  Podge flexed his shoulders and rolled his massive neck.

  “You got here early, Ed. Suppose that’s on account of you not being a crippledy prick like Tommy. What does that make you, just a prick, are you?”

  Podge’s boys yelled with sycophantic laughter. Podge’s face glowed burgundy with stupid glee. I could feel the whiskey heat in my chest. My eyes were boiling. I stepped up to Podge again.

  “This is a warning, Podge. Don’t fuck with Tommy Owens. Got me? If you’re trying to set him up for something, it’s not gonna work, all right?”

  Podge was still beaming.

  “Set him up? For what? I know lads, to knock him down, like a skittle, wha’?”

  I grabbed Podge by the T-shirt, and heard the material rip.

  “Tommy doesn’t have the gun anymore. So forget about it, okay?”

  Podge stopped laughing. He turned around and said “Noel” to the barman, a burly fifty-year-old in a tight gray jumper. Noel vanished into the lounge and slid the gantry doors shut.

  The first punch came from a blue baseball cap on my right, but I had to take it, as it was the tall guy on my left with the nose ring I needed to stop first. I jabbed Nose Ring twice in the Adam’s apple with my elbow, and having let my jaw ride with two punches from Blue Cap, I stepped inside the third and smashed him in the face with my forehead. I grabbed him by the ears and head-butted him again. I heard a crack, and could feel the squish of cartilage and the hot spray of blood against my forehead and in my hair. I pushed him down and stepped away. Nose Ring was holding his throat, still gasping for air. There were three others, but Podge moved in front of them. He hit me once full in the stomach and I doubled up and dropped to my knees, winded, desperate for breath. I felt the whiskey rising, and before Podge could kick me in the face it was slopping out of my mouth onto the cold tiled floor. Beer followed it, and a bunch of other stuff followed that, until at last I was hacking up yellow-green bile.

  “Ah Jaysus. Mind me fucking Nikes, you messy cunt ya,” said Podge.

  “Get him into the car park, we’ll do him there,” said Blue Cap.

  “Leave him alone now, and stop behavin’ like a bunch of fuckin’ knackers,” said a crisp voice. I looked up at a wiry, dark-haired man with a small mustache in a black chalk-striped suit, a blue shirt with a white collar and a red tie with a jeweled tiepin.

  “Edward Loy, you’re an awful man. Don’t tell me, it was a bad bag of nuts. I’ve warned Noel about keeping them past their sell-by date,” said George Halligan.

  Noel appeared behind the bar as soon as George used his name. Podge Halligan leaned into George and whispered something in his ear. George shrugged, raised a hand in front of his brother’s chest, whispered some instructions to Podge, then waved his hand in the direction of the lads. George took a card from his pocket and wrote something on the back of it. I was on my feet now, tasting bile. Podge came up to me.

  “We’ll see ya, Ed, righ’?” he said, sliding his tongue over his thick lower lip, his expression caught between a glare and a leer. Podge took the card from George and padded out toward the car park, his boys following.

  “You should never write anything down in my line of work,” said George, replacing his pen in his breast pocket, “but the problem with Podge is, he lives in the permanent present tense, know what I mean? He forgets what you tell him as soon as he’s out the door. They should never have taught Podge to read, then he’d have to fucking remember. But everyone is promoted one level above his ideal competence, isn’t that right, Ed? Noel, Rémy with ice, bring this man a pint, he needs to settle himself. And shift some little loungeperson out to mop up that scutter.”

  George Halligan ran his hand up and down the lapel of my jacket, then looked at the label.

  “Nice piece of cloth. What is it? Boss? Ah yes, very reliable, the Germans, not unlike their cars; if you can’t afford a tailor, Boss is perfectly adequate. Could do with a tie though, Ed. I don’t like this open-necked shirt shenanigans, it’s just a fad. And now ties are a reasonable width again, there’s simply no excuse.”

  George Halligan led me to a small table inside the door. I sat down and leaned back against the wall, then quickly sat up straight again. My head was reeling.

  “Afraid you’ll spill?” said George. “It’s the worst, isn’t it? Ah, you’ll be grand. Now, first off, very sorry about your ma. And maybe it’s a bit early for you to be out on the razz, mind plays tricks on you when your old lady dies. That said, no need to go making a cunt of yourself in here, bar in Hennessy’s not your style, Ed, leave it to Podge and his little pals, lucky I came along at all, otherwise they would’ve fuckin’ had you.”

  Noel brought me a pint of Guinness and George Halligan an ice-filled balloon glass of brandy. The brandy fumes made me queasy. Sweat stung my eyes. I tipped the cold pint to my lips and let a third of it slide down my throat.

  “Kill or cure, Ed, kill or cure is the only fuckin’ way. Good man. Now, Podge tells me you’ve come over all protective of Tommy Owens. I understand, I’ve tried to help the same Tommy out myself. But you know as well as I do that the only time Tommy Owens is definitely not lying is when he’s asleep, and that the major difficulty in catching Tommy Owens in a lie is that he’s never even sure himself when he’s telling the truth.”

  “He’s not lying about the gun. A Glock 17, I saw it myself.”

  “But how do you know where he got it from? Podge says he knows nothing about it.”

  “Podge always tells the truth, does he?” I said. “I can imagine that all right.”

  George Halligan winced in mock pain.

  “You might have a point th
ere. Sadly, I am not my brother’s keeper. But he tends not to lie to me. At least, not intentionally. Anyway, in the event Podge was to be carrying out hits, which is certainly not a class of behavior I could condone, the last person in the world he’d think of using would be Tommy Owens.”

  “That’s why we figured he was setting him up. A body would be found, the cops would get the tip-off, and lo and behold, the gun that did the deed would be found on Tommy.”

  I swallowed some more of my pint. George leaned in close and dropped his voice.

  “Sounds a bit elaborate for Podge. And don’t forget, I brought Tommy in. Felt sorry for the fucker, what with his daughter and all. Despite his invalidity benefit being cut off because he’s not an invalid anymore, he’s just another lazy bollocks who doesn’t want to work for a living. Tommy’s under my protection, you could say.”

  “Do you still feel guilty about crippling him then?”

  George exhaled very suddenly. The playful light had suddenly drained out of his eyes, and he looked tired and irritated.

  “Listen,” he said, pointing his finger at my chest, “if I hadn’t done him, he’d be brown bread now.”

  “How’s that? For stealing your bike? That a capital crime back then?”

  “He didn’t steal my bike, he stole Leo’s bike. Leo was a cunt for knives at the time, sure he stabbed the Doran young one a few weeks later, remember? He was looking for Tommy and he’d’ve cut his heart out if he’d found him. So I got to him first. And it had to be brutal, otherwise Leo’d’ve steamed in regardless. How was I to know the bones wouldn’t knit back together properly?”

  George Halligan looked as ruffled as I imagine he ever got.

  “So you do feel guilty,” I said.

  “I always liked Tommy,” George said. “And he never really held it against me, the ankle thing. Which I appreciated. So I’ve tried to look out for him, when I could, you know?”

  George Halligan drained his brandy, raised his eyebrows in what he probably intended as a humble smile and ran index finger and thumb along his mustache. Compared to his brothers, George gave the most accurate impersonation of a human being, but it was an impersonation, nothing more. I looked at his shirt: pale blue with white collar and French cuffs. Only two kinds of men wore that shirt: CEOs and gangsters. I still had enough in common with Tommy Owens not to be sure which kind I disliked more.

  “How’s Peter Dawson?” I said.

  George’s eyes narrowed. He waited a beat too long, then said, “Who?”

  “Peter Dawson,” I said. “You know, Dawson Construction?”

  George nodded.

  “Of course. But I don’t really deal—”

  “You run site security for Dawson’s, don’t you?”

  “A company in which I have an interest, Immunicate. But as I say, I don’t really deal with the day-to-day.”

  Maybe not. But affecting not to know Peter Dawson’s name was pushing it.

  George set his head in a listening position, leaned forward and put his elbows on the table and his hands together, as if expecting more.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

  “I look forward to it,” George said, rising to his feet. “Buy you lunch next time. Do a little business, you and me. Eye on the future. I mean it, Ed.”

  I turned my back on him and walked toward the door, and for the first time noticed that there were other people in the room: a couple of old boys in caps seated at the bar, and a bunch of people sitting in a snug to the left of the exit. I held my hand up and grimaced, acknowledging the contribution I had made to their evening’s entertainment. A couple of young lads in sportswear made a whooping sound, somewhere between a jeer and a cheer. No one else even smiled. Several of their faces seemed familiar, but that had become such a feature of the past few days that I had almost stopped noticing it. As I left, George Halligan crossed to acknowledge them, and was greeted with low murmurs of fealty, like a feudal lord.

  Eight

  I PARKED ABOUT A HUNDRED YARDS BACK FROM THE turnoff for Linda’s house, in the speckled shade of a great sycamore. The sun was setting behind the hills to the west, washing the sky a grapefruit pink. I waited for half an hour or so, and then a black Mercedes convertible turned down the slip road. I counted to ten, started the engine and followed it, rolling in through the gates in its wake. I didn’t want Linda to know I was coming. I was tired of hearing her tell me lies. This time, I wanted to catch her off guard, so that at least she didn’t have time to make up a second set of lies to explain the first.

  When I got out of the car, the driver of the Mercedes—a trim, sporty blonde who looked thirty-five but was probably fifty—stood on the road, watching me. I pointed toward Linda’s door, and she immediately turned and went inside her house. I looked around. No sign of life in the pudgy neighbor’s house, and no car in his drive. And Linda wouldn’t recognize the Volvo. I went quickly around the side of the house. Security lights came on, but I was betting the Persian cat set them off so frequently Linda had stopped paying them much attention. I made it to the shed behind the beech tree and looked up at the side windows. What lights I could discern were low, and seemed to be coming from the rear. I worked my way round to where the house had been cantilevered above a long sloping garden to give an unhindered view of the bay, and ducked down behind an unwieldy clump of Saint-John’s-wort. Linda was standing by the white sofa in her living room, smoking a cigarette and staring out to sea. She was wearing a short black cardigan over a low-cut purple silk top, a tight black skirt that fell just above the knee, black stockings and black high heels. Her golden hair was piled high on her head, and her lips were the same bloodred shade as her fingernails. She looked like a quiet night in was the last thing on her mind.

  Tommy Owens had said Linda Dawson could drink us under the table, that it was a useful part of her act. I tried to square that, and the sight of her tonight, dressed for the fray, with the Linda I had seen thus far: drunk and tearful, a lost and lonely soul at the end of her tether. Then when she stood up and walked across the room to answer the telephone, the sway of her hips drained my mind of thought, and I had to look away to catch my breath. It was a stiflingly humid night. Across the bay, the city lay dark and mysterious beneath its shimmering lights, like a great cathedral lit only by candles.

  I went round to the front of the house and knocked on the door. Heels clacked on the hardwood floor, and Linda’s voice said, “Just a minute.”

  When she unlocked the door, her face betrayed no surprise at seeing me; if anything, she looked relieved.

  “Hey, Ed, look at you. How’d you get through the gates?”

  “I played follow-your-neighbor. She didn’t seem bothered about a strange man showing up uninvited on your doorstep.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What do you think I mean? You’re not exactly dressed for church there.”

  “What, that I’m some kind of Anytime Annie, strange men always welcome at my door?”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know what business it would be of yours if I were. I hired you to find my husband, not investigate my morals.”

  “A jealous lover might have an interest in seeing your husband disappear—permanently.”

  A flicker of what looked like fear crossed Linda’s face.

  “I don’t have any…there’s no one who fits that description.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Certain.”

  Linda wet her red lips with her tongue and smiled.

  “On the other hand, I seem to remember you mounting a fairly intensive investigation of my morals last night. How did that work out for you, Ed Loy? Did you get what you wanted?”

  The smile stayed on her lips, but there was a challenge in her eyes. I suddenly felt less like a detective than a jealous lover myself, in thrall to the pulse of my own stupid blood.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said. “Did you?”

  “I always ge
t what I want,” said Linda, baring her teeth. “Then I always discover it wasn’t what I wanted at all. That what I really wanted all along…was a drink.”

  She was standing inches from me. I could smell, I could almost taste, the makeup on her face, her grapefruit scent, the smoke on her breath.

  “What happened to your lip?” she said.

  “I bit it,” I said.

  She touched my cheek with her cold hand, then turned back into the house.

  I found her in the kitchen, where she was filling a jug with lime juice and rum, and dropping sprigs of mint into a bowl.

  “Mojitos,” said Linda. “Want one?”

  “Sure,” I said. “And while you’re mixing it, you can fill in some of the gaps in the story you told me.”

  “What gaps would those be?” Linda said.

  “How you met Tommy Owens in the High Tide just after Peter left. How he must have told you he gave Peter a bag of cash from George Halligan. How you know much more than you’re telling me about that, and about everything else. How if you really give a damn about finding your husband, you’ll tell me all you do know.”

  Linda was pounding the mint leaves together with sugar and water. She stopped, her head bowed, and appeared to be sobbing.