Unquiet Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

curves of it. "Sometimes he gets a little froggy about things and has to be persuaded not to monkey with the details."
    "What am I picking up?"
    Una stared at him blankly. "My. Merchandise."
    It had been rather stupid of him to ask. "Right. And he'll be there now?"
    "Since yesterday." Now that he had all the necessary details, she looked bored. "Don't bring it back here. Meet me upstairs in the Kings Head." Una raised one eyebrow. "Try not to draw any attention to yourself when you do come in."
    "Right-o." Riley turned to slink out. At the door he called over his shoulder, "And you'll have some then?"
    "Yeah, I'll have some for you. Just a taste, mind. It doesn't come cheap. You want more, you're going to be doing a lot of work on my behalf, you understand?"
    "Right you are," Riley agreed. His thoughts buzzed already just with the promise of a sip of that glorious nectar—or powder or tab. Whatever. He would have some.
    "Mind you get the merch, Riley. I'm depending on you."
    Such words from her. "Is bheannnacht an obair," he intoned, remembering his mam's old saw about the blessedness of dutiful work.
    "Don't fuck it up."
    The buzz of expectation was enough to carry him through the puddles along Headford Road. The single magpie still cackled by the rivulet, flicking its tail at him as if admonishing Riley for some misdeed. He felt the weight of the gun in his coat pocket, but the buoyancy of the expected payoff counterbalanced it. It flooded his brain with reckless good humour. "How d'ye do?" Riley called to the magpie. "Where's your old man? Flown off with a younger bird? Ah, the shame of it!"
    He laughed to himself as he strode along. The rain started up again as he crossed the square where the gulls and the crows were still squabbling over the food scraps and the Hotel Meyrick looked like a squat sweaty fat man in the rain. Queen Street loomed grim as the rain sheeted down and Riley hunched his shoulders against the assault.
    Why he never got a bicycle as Father Malachy always suggested Riley couldn't say. Unsteady as his own legs were from time to time, he trusted them more than wheels and it had nothing to do with Nate McCarthy getting flattened by that CityLink bus on his bicycle. Surely not.
    As he strolled down the docks, his brain clicked along nicely—a little snort of speed, no more, just to keep him sharp—but Riley knew that anticipation was the better part of the buzz. The grey waters looked mighty cold. There was a profusion of boats, none of them looking likely. All white! Why were boats always white? Where were the legendary hookers with their sleek black hulls and rusty sails? No more around it seemed. A rich man's folly now. Everything that once sustained the poor had become an idle toy of the wealthy. Go tiger.
    At last he spotted it: yet another white low-slung yacht with script announcing its fancy title. Jaunty! My aunt Fanny , Riley thought, both of them . He looked around the craft. There'd never really been reason to think about it before, but there weren't doorbells on boats after all. "Hullo!" Repeated calls provoked nothing and no signs of life stirred within.
    Riley's foot tapped, jittery. He hated to wait and the little snort hadn't helped in that regard. The weight of the pistol in his pocket added an awkward heft to his jacket and he found his hand sneaking into the pocket to stroke its smooth surface. Riley considered taking the gun out to try shooting it at something innocuous, just to see what it felt like, but the Frenchie guy could come back at any minute and it might look a bit untrusting.
    He tried to fix his thoughts on the mandrake anthrax. In Riley's mind it had grown in proportions, like a black bird whose wide wings would envelope him and answer all the questions he'd never articulated, the gaping hole that he had stuffed with drugs and pints of the black nectar. It might be the one thing that would make him finally know .
    What he'd know, he couldn't say, but Riley