Gathering the Pieces
modified on 6/11/98
(from the novelization by Kirk Mitchell)
Gaerity nearly laughed when he rounded the corner and saw the statue.
The bloody irony of it.
There at the gates to the schoolyard--the Catholic school Liam McGivney's stepdaughter attended--stood Saint Sebastian. In eternal bronze. He was tied to a tree trunk, his eyes beseeching heaven, his body stitched with arrows. And for what had the Roman archers had a go at him? WHy he'd enlisted in the army under false pretenses, concealing within his manly bosom a tender Christian heart. Liam has done no differently to the IRA. He'd let his heart supersede the oath he'd taken. As legend had it, Sebastian hadn't died of those ghastly wounds. A Christian woman--Irene, wasn't it?--found him slumping unconscious against his bindings and nursed him back to health. Sebastian again declared his faith. Screw the imperial archers--the second time Emperor Diocletian had him clubbed to death.
And now, walking up to the gates, Gaerity fixed his amused eyes on Liam's Irene.
Kate O'Bradaigh-Dove.
At least that's what she probably thought her married name was.
She was offering clothing, an old waffle iron, and plastic-wrapped loaves from the tailgate of a station wagon. A Jeep Wrangler, a squiggle of rusted chrome advertised.
Gaerity memorized the license plate, noted the nice thick skidplate under the chassis.
The parents of the students were putting on some sort of flea market. On the Sabbath, yet. What was the Church coming to? Gaerity had read about the event in the newspaper. The Doves were certainly at the center of local life. Only Tuesday Gaerity had come across a wedding announcement and a photograph of the bride on the society page. He'd thought the photo overly flattering.
But no.
She was all the more fetching in the flesh. Violinist for the Boston Pops. An interesting possibility there.
Gaerity stood across the crowded sidewalk from the Wrangler, feighning interest in some junk piled atop a card table. He could hear Liam's stepdaughter, Lizzy, say to her mother, "Eighteen dollars and thirty-five cents, Mama. Enough to buy a new dress."
And Kate answered affectiontely but firmly, "It's not for new duds, bug. We're doing this to get computers for the school."
Yes, that was the kind of temperament that'd attract Liam McGivney. His own mother had prefaced every mark with a slap to his ear. And Old Man McGivney hadn't exactly been a role model. No, he'd been living proof of how British rule can warp the Irish spirit. A drunkard on the dole until the day both he and the missus burned together in a fire-bombing. At least they were pared the fate of Gaerity's own father, who went shitting his pants in the orner booth of a pub, and the fate of his mother ten years before that. She'd been cut down at a tea by a stray bullet. It'd been fired by a rattled Orangeman cop banging away at some rock-throwers.
Examining Kate's loaves, Gaerity smiled at her.
She smiled back, somewhat uneasily.
He moved on, glanced around for Liam. No sign of him. At work, no doubt.
"How much for the garden hose?" Gaerity asked a fat woman with jolly eyes.
"How 'bout a buck, sweetheart?"
"Here's two. One for Sebastian there. He looks like he could use a drop. For medicinal purposes, I'm sure."
She laughed, slapped her widespread knees with her palms. "Oh, you're a howl."
"Guilty as charged." Gaerity strolled on with the hose coiled over his left shoulder. He found an outdoor thermometer and a Krups coffeepot. All at bargan prices. Still no James Dove. Well, he told himself, I've accomplished everything I came for today.
He was almost to the last table in a long row of them when he noticed a homely boy sitting crosslegged in the rain-damp dirt. He was playing with a most amazing device.
"You hit the jackpot today, mister?" a woman asked, apparently just to let him know that the boy was hers.
The child was of no interest to Gaerity. it was the toy that facinated him. He went to his knees, never minding the patches of mud, and watched intently as the boy released a black marble down a ramp. it ran a circular lap, dropped through a hole, careened around two more laps, and tehn came to a brisk halt. A gravity roller coaster for marbles.
"How much for this thing?" Gaerity asked.
"That's Justin's," the woman said. "Its not for sale."
"Pity." Gaerity frowned. "I was hoping to get it for my nephew. He lives in Dublin. Can't find such a fine toy there." He winked at the boy. "Know where Dublin is?"
"New Jersey?"
"Yes, precisely. Poor little Kevin. It'd mean so much to the lad. He's been laid up for months now."
Suspicion came into the boy's eyes. In Gaerity's day, the good sisters would've had a field day with this one. "Why's he laid up?"
"Car accident. Lost a leg, he did."
"He shouldn't been drivin'."
Gaerity chuckled. "No, he shouldn't. But this toy would mean so very much to him."
The boy raised his voice. "He ain't gettin' it!" The he launched another marble on its way.
Gaerity glanced to the woman, looking gravely disappointed.
After a moment, she said, "Well, I guess I could find Justin another one."
"Mom!"
Gaerity took the wad of bills from a front trouser pocket. He peeled off a fiver and offered it to the boy.
"Ten."
"Very well."
The boy grabbed the two fives, and Gaerity took possession of the toy. Ingenious. He gave back the marbles. "I have no need of these."
The woman held up an audio cassette, beckoned with it like a bawd waiting at the top of the stairs. "Interest you in a U2 tape?"
"The spy plane, you mean?" Gaerity asked. "What's there to listen to?"
"No, the Irish band, silly. Come on, everybody knows U2. You're Irish, aren't you?"
"You'll have to forgive my ignorance. Been out of the mainstream for a while." Gaerity inspected the cassette cover, feeling very much like a visitor from outer space. Some Irish toughs backdropped by an eroded desert slope. "But I'll have a listen, if you recommend them so. Hear what the lads are doing these days. How much?"
"Twelve bucks."
She'd smelled a sucker. But Gaerity cheerfully paid up.
Just before rounding the corner again, he turned and glanced back, walking on his heels.
He could still see Kate O'Bradaigh's red hair. It was shining beneath Saint Sebastian's agony like a flame.
"Good night, Irene," he said.
Garage sales.
That's what the Americans called them. Marvelous custom, Gaerity thought as he pedaled into the warehouse district along the Inner Harbor. He had no sooner left Saint Sebastian's than he stumbled upon the solution to his transportation problem: a single-speed bicycle on a lawn cluttered with merchandise. It had sound tires and a wire basket, so a deal was promptly struck for fifteen dollars.
"You don't have a stout bag of some sort, do you?" Gaerity asked the proprietor of the garage sale, who hunted around for a minute before dumping some plastic egglike things out of a burlap sack.
"What're those?" Gaerity said.
"Silly Putty. I used to own a toy store in Roxbury. The niggers ran me out. Ain't you never heard of Silly Putty?"
The woman in the schoolyard had called him silly. And now here was Silly Putty. Words always seemed to come in bunches.
The man cracked open one of the eggs and showed him the substance inside. Looked like the more pinkish grades of plastique. He pulled it apart like taffy, then remolded it into a lump.
"How much?" Gaerity asked.
"Oh, I don't know... two bucks apiece?"
"Fine." Fascinating, all the odd and unexpectedly useful things in this country. Gaerity felt as if he'd suddenly come upon iron tools after having only stone ones at his disposal.
He now pedaled down an alleyway between two abandoned warehouses. It was so narrow that only a man afoot or a bicycle could pass through. No vehicles, which made Gaerity feel slightly more secure that the police woudn't steal up on him from this approach. He turned onto a long wharf and went past the Moroccan freighter that had brought him to Boston.
The low clouds that were hovering over the harbor were obscuring Logan International, but he could hear the jets winding up and taking off.
It had started to drizzle again. Good night to be holed up with a bottle and some interesting work to do.
He dismounted at the bottom of the gangway and gazed smiling up at the Dolphin Runner. She had an alarming-looking list to starbord, which only pleased Gaerity. It made the old girl appear less inhabitable than she actually was. He walked his bicycle up the ramp, the weathered boards creaking ominously underfoot, and onto the badly rusted quarterdeck. Here, many years before, the crew had stood in their crisp whites, welcoming the blue-haired matrons and their pot-bellied, cigar-champing husbands aboard. Gaerity could still feel the presence of these rather mundane ghosts, hear their ill-tempered calls for the steward echoing down the shadowy passageways.
He hid his bicycle behind a lifeboat, took his burlap sack full of treasures from the basket, and carried them through a hatch. Beyond it lay the main salon, red velvet hanging in tatters from the walls. Stagnant rainwater had pooled all along the starboard bulkhead. He passes along the tilting deck, in between the bolted-down gaming tables. Blackjack, roulette, craps. Everything necessary to ease the chief affliction of the well-to-do: boredom. Yet these were paltry forms of gambling compared to staking your life on a bomb.
Gaerity ascended a staircase to the bridge.
The chart table was covered with the tools he'd nicked fromteh cable TV repairman, plus some additional specialty items he'd managed to find at grage sales. Screwed to an overhead beam were the lids of Kerr jars, the glasses filled iwth a dozen different substances. The contrasting hues of red and yellow and green gave his workplace the ambience of a medieval apothecary, which he rather liked.
He sank into the captain's chair, sighed contentedly from the day's exertions, then emptied the sack onto the table. He'd propped up two of it's legs to compensate for the Dolphin Runner's list. Still, the Silly Putty egg rolledoff onto the deck and stopped against the old Sylvania television he'd found in the purser's cabin.
Out of kilter, he thought, scooping up the plastic egg. A good reminder of how badly out of kilter the world was.
Swiveling, Gaerity faced the controls console where he'd placed a pewter figurine of Justice. From a judge's garage sale--apparently even the wealthy indulged. He tipped the scales with the Silly Putty, sat back, and smiled.
Then his eyes rested on the photograph he'd clipped to the console. Two boys clinging to a shuggey shoe rope in that distand Belfast schoolyard.
"Oh, dear Liam," he said sadly, "hard to believe that it's come to this between us." Gaerity leaned forward as if listening to that boyishly grinning mouth speak. "What's that you ask? Why am I taking my time to kill you? I'll explain whith this fine whigmuleery. Say--do you slip now and again and use old words like whigmuleery? No?" Gaeirty took the marble toy from the table and set it before the photograph. "Liam, do you see all the loops, whilrls, and sudden drops built into this contraption? That's the way experience should be. Full of every possible sensation. Every possible thrill. Then, when it's all over and you're staring into your grave, you'll know that you've had your farthing's worth. So that's it then, boy-o--I want my farthing's worth with Liam McGivney."
Gaerity's wistful smile turned into a grimace as he picked up the cellular telephone one of the drunks at O'Dowell's Pub had loaned him. He dialed information. "In Boston, please," he said, "for the police department. Yes, the bomb squad. I need the address as well."
Boston Police Department had obviously learned from its Irish how to stage a funeral procession. A side street off the dingy old building that housed the bomb squad was crowded with official mourners waiting for the slow drive to the church. First in line were the motorcyclists, tall, straight-backed fellows in knee-high boots and helmets. After that came the department's black-and-whites, at least a hundred of them, drawn up three abreast. And then scores of cruisers from other agencies, including the military, which did much of the IED disarming in America.
And what was this now?
Gaerity shifted his binoculars --another garage sale acquisition--to the building entrance. Down the steps trooped six figures in dress blues and white gloves. Their polished shoes gleamed like raven wings. Leading them was their captain, Roarke, who was quick to press the banic button when confronted with a few simple anti-handling devices. Liam McGivney, of course, followed him, his face sad and careworn. This was by no means an unfamiliar ritual to McGivney, although it was the first time Gaerity had ever seen him take part in a procession without wearing a black hood. Maner was next. He handled the sniffer dog. Rita Durgin, a tough-looking lump of a woman, tossed a cigarette butt to pavement and crushed it under a low heel. A lithe young black fellow with sergeant's chevrons on his sleeves walked beside her. Gaerity had yet to find out anything about him. New to the squad, he believed. A Latin man in a civilian suit brought up the rear. Cortez, the technician.
"A fine-looking constabulary," Gaerity said, lowering the glasses as the squad piled into two cruisers. He reseted his elbows on the lip of the roof parapet behind which he crouched and smiled. "Sorry I can't go out to the cemetery with you, Liam. But I'd wear out the tires on my poor bicycle."
The two cruisers crept onto the street, and the rest of the procession fell in behind them, light bars flashing dimly under the bright noon sun.
"But I'll do this much, Liam."
Gaerity stood and raided a clenched fist in salute.
More to come...
back to the main page