THE LOVE OF MISSING WOMEN
chapter two of a work in progress
Mellon walked through the Shelbourne lobby, which was thronged by tourists, mainly Chinese from Shanghai, and Americans. The well-dressed orientals appeared slightly bemused by everything, and grinned a lot. He found the Americans domineering. The men looked like retired admirals, while their women might have been a bespectacled klatsch from a book-club in Palm Springs. He was always a little embarrassed when he ran into his countrymen abroad, and ashamed that he felt this way. But he didn’t like the distasteful proprietary air they emitted, as if everything and everyone they encountered were part of a Planetary Theme Park designed only for them.
Outside he drifted into the flow of lunchtime crowds. He hadn’t managed to feel quite at home in this city yet. The people were friendly enough. They went out of their way to provide directions, which often turned out to be disastrously confusing, and they offered advice about the merits of this restaurant or that pub - but he still felt locked out from the secrets of Dublin, from its private ways. He also had the occasional problem with accent and figures of speech. His ear wasn’t attuned.
He considered an idle stroll up Grafton Street to Temple Bar. But he favored side streets and smaller crowds, and the city shrunk to a point where he felt the possibility of intimacy. He didn’t turn right into Grafton Street, but walked instead in the direction of the Gaiety Theatre, passing the glassy edifice of the Stephen’s Green Center where a great swell of shoppers came and went. He paused outside a joke shop, staring at a gallery of theatrical masks and novelty items, imitation dog-shit and fake flies trapped inside plastic ice-cubes.
He crossed the street to Sinnott’s pub: he knew he’d end up here. He stepped inside and went down the stairs, where he was hit by the dark ectoplasm of cigarette smoke. The big basement room was noisy with lunchtime trade. He crossed the floor, looking for a sign of Tierney, but the Inspector’s usual table was occupied by a group of strangers. Still scanning, Mellon shoved his way through the scrum. Finally he saw the man, tall and beefy and big-jawed, at the far end of the room, and he walked toward him.
Tierney said, “It’s the Eye again. You can’t stay away, eh?” He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, and he raised it at Mellon, who was always impressed by Tierney’s air of easy authority. The immensity of the jaw helped, Mellon supposed; it was daunting.
“I was in the vicinity,” Mellon said.
“And when are you not? Mine’s a Powers. But you know that already.” Tierney winked at the man who stood just behind him, Sergeant Hoare. “Joseph is having a glass of Smithwick’s, aren’t you, Joseph?”
“Will it be going on Mr Donovan’s tab?” Hoare asked.
“Usually does.” Tierney, six feet four, thick gray hair brushed in an unruly manner, leaned toward Mellon. “The Eye has been granted that most enviable of perks in the corporate world, Joseph - the bottomless expense account.”
“I don’t know about bottomless,” Mellon said. The Eye: Tierney had referred to him this way from the beginning.
“Let’s just say it’s shockingly generous,” Tierney remarked.
Mellon went to the bar and ordered a round; he was accustomed to paying for drinks when he met Tierney. Some he charged to Tom Donovan, others he bought out of his own pocket. He didn’t like the idea of milking Tom needlessly.
He carried the glasses to Tierney and Hoare. Joseph Hoare had a round white face, reminiscent of a blanched potato. Some muscular peculiarity made his left eye blink independently of the right, which gave him a conspiratorial look.
“So what brings you here this time?” the Inspector asked. “Not that we’re unhappy to see you.”
Mellon’s eyes watered a little from cigarette smoke. Smoking was a habit he’d never picked up. He coughed, raised a hand to his mouth.
Tierney said, “I’m not a betting man, but I’d say the odds are that Greg only seeks us out during our lunchtime sojourn when he has a question to ask. It’s never just a social call, is it?” He smiled at Mellon. He had pale yellow teeth. His smile was friendly.
Mellon gazed at a grease stain on the Inspector’s raincoat, an old gabardine number with epaulettes. It was the kind of coat war correspondents always wore in old movies. “I was going through the files again - ”
“Ah, indeed, the blessed files,” Tierney said. He closed his blue eyes briefly. His mouth tightened. Mellon wondered if he was in pain. The stab of an ulcer, the jolt of a headache. Then he emerged from whatever it was that had assaulted him, and he sipped his drink calmly. “Your commitment to duty is notable, Greg. Do you not admire him, Joseph?”
“I hold him in high esteem,” Sergeant Hoare said.
“It’s the American work ethic,” Mellon said.
“Bred in the bone,” Tierney said. “We Irish Catholics still have something of a siesta mentality. Would you agree with that, Joseph?”
“Oh definitely I would,” Hoare answered.
“Shall we talk here or go some place quieter?” Mellon asked.
“Greg, you know Sinnott’s is a ritual for us. A change of venue makes us uneasy.”
“Fish out of water,” Hoare said.
An Irish double-act, Mellon thought; a bit of a four-footed shuffle. He wondered how many years Tierney and Hoare had been working together, rehearsing their duet.
“What’s on that well-organized mind of yours anyhow, Greg?” Tierney asked.
Mellon said, “Nothing monumental.”
“I get the distinct impression that the minutiae of life interests you more than the big picture. As it should be, of course. The man who’s always looking up at grand statues and buildings is the man more likely to step into shite.”
“That’s the truth,” Hoare said.
Mellon sometimes wondered if Tierney and Hoare, in their private moments, referred him to him disparagingly as The Yank; if they saw him as an American slicker easily gulled by their polite cooperation. They opened their files, gave him their notes, their impressions. They discussed the case with him. He didn’t get any sense they were holding information back from him.
“Before you pop a question, Greg,” Tierney said, “I have news to impart. It concerns Frank Wigener.” There was a grave little modulation in the Inspector’s voice. “Poor soul passed away last night.”
“Passed away? How?”
“They tell me cardiac arrest,” Tierney said.
“And only forty-seven,” Hoare said.
“In the dead of night,” Tierney said. “Sleeping. It’s a way I’d go, if I had a choice.”
The news disturbed Mellon; he barely knew Wigener, and he had only a vague reason - hardly a reason at all - for asking the man any more questions. At best Wigener was a footnote in the text of Lindsey’s disappearance. Just the same, the idea of the man dying threw a shadow across Mellon’s mind, because now the cast of witnesses was diminished by one. And who could say with any certainty that there might not have been one telling item of information Wigener possessed, and hadn’t imparted because he’d failed to see the significance of it himself. A figure trailing Lindsey into the sandwich shop, say, a phantom Wigener had suppressed in his memory -
Ah, screw it, Mellon thought. It’s empty speculation. That’s all.
The man was dead and that was that.
Tierney dangled his empty glass in front of Mellon. “Another drop of Powers would finish the lunchtime nicely, I think.”
Greg Mellon took the Inspector’s empty glass, and glanced at Hoare. “Joseph?”
The Sergeant refused a refill. “I’m curtailing myself,” he said. “I promised the wife.”
Tierney smiled. “And since when has a matrimonial promise meant more than a crack in the pavement to you, Joseph?”
Hoare protested. “Jesus, she has me sworn to a diet.”
“And you allowed her?” Mellon asked, looking for a way inside the Tierney-Hoare conversational loop, which often consisted of good-natured ribbing; but he knew he’d always be an outsider.
contents©2006 Campbell Armstrong
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