Dead I Well May Be Read Online Free PDF Page B

might have investigated Mr. Berenson’s claim a little more carefully and maybe he wouldn’t have gotten killed by some character looking for a hidden stash a week or two later. But Fergal did so intervene and I went up. (The final burglar, incidentally, was one of Ramón’s lieutenants, and if you think this is a coincidence you don’t know Ramón, for even back then, clearly, he was making stealthy incursions into Darkey’s territory, testing its limits, finding its boundaries, plundering its goodies.)
    What’s the
craic
, Fergal boy? I asked him, using the Gaelic word for fun or happening, which is pronounced the same as “crack,” so you could see how it could lead to confusion in some circles.
    The
craic
, Michael, is all bad, he said sadly.
    Fergal shook his big head at me. Fergal was tall and brown-haired, with a disastrous russet beard covering cadaverous cheeks. He wore tweed jackets in an attempt to appear sophisticated. It was a look that he just might have carried off at, say, a Swiss tuberculosis clinic circa 1912, but it was hardly appropriate for a hot summer in New York eight decades later.
    I said it was a shame about young Andy, and Fergal nodded glumly and we went across to the Four Provinces. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood to speak tonight, which was good because when he did it only annoyed people.
    The Four P. is such a prominent place in all our lives that it deserves description. Alas, though, if you’ve seen one faux Irish theme bar you’ve seen them all. The original Four Provinces burned down in a mysterious fire a few years back and the reconceived version lost the snugs and the back bar and sawdust floor and instead took on an open-plan
Cheers
look with vintage Bushmills whiskey posters, Guinness mirrors, pictures of aged Galway men on bicycles, a “leprechaun in a jar” next to the dartboard, and above the bar, in a glass display case, a large stringed harp that undoubtedly was made in China. It was normally unobservant Andy who noticed that the shamrock carvings on the wood paneling had four leaves, which made them four-leafed clovers and not shamrocks at all—Saint Patrick having used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity. The best you could say about the place was that at least Pat and Mrs. Callaghan kept it clean.
    I nodded to Pat tending bar and followed Fergal up the stairs. Scotchy was there waiting for me, eating a bun, cream all over his nose. Andy was lying in the bed. He looked all right. Bridget was bathing his forehead with water like I suppose she’d seen Florence Nightingale do in some picture. She looked at me and I tried to make it seem as if it was just a casual look, which of course made everything much more suspicious.
    There’s cream all over your big nose, I said, under my breath, to Scotchy.
    He wiped it on his sleeve and looked at me, irritated.
    How is he? I asked Bridget kindly.
    A little better, she said, and her breast heaved after she stopped speaking. She was wearing a tight T-shirt that said on it a bit confusingly: Cheerleader Leader ’89. It was very distracting and I would have asked her what the T-shirt meant to cover the fact that I was staring at her breasts, but in the circumstances of Andy being at death’s door and all, it seemed inappropriate.
    Fucking finally arrived. Right, we’re going right now, Scotchy said.
    Here I should point out that every time you hear Scotchy speak you must remember that each time I put in the word
fuck
there are at least three or four that I’ve left out. You’ll have to take my word for it that it would begin to get very tedious hearing Scotchy the way he actually speaks; for instance, a sentence such as the one above in reality was much like:
    Fucking finally arrived, fuck. Fucksake. Right, we’re fucking going, right fucking now.
    Shouldn’t I pay my respects or something? I asked.
    Bugger can’t hear you, can he? Scotchy said, tense, and tight allaround the edges. He had that wee-man