A Galway Epiphany Read online

  A GALWAY

  EPIPHANY

  Also by Ken Bruen

  Once Were Cops

  Sanctuary

  Cross

  Priest

  The Dramatist

  The Magdalen Martyrs

  The Killing of the Tinkers

  Funeral: Tales of Irish Morbidities

  Shades of Grace

  Martyrs

  Sherry and Other Stories

  Time of Serena-May / Upon the Third Cross

  Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice

  Rilke on Black

  The Hackman Blues

  A White Arrest

  Taming the Alien

  The Guards

  London Boulevard

  Blitz

  The McDead

  Vixen

  Dispatching Baudelaire

  The Dead Room

  American Skin

  Bust (with Jason Starr)

  Calibre

  A Fifth of Bruen

  Slide (with Jason Starr)

  Ammunition

  The Max (with Jason Starr)

  All the Old Songs and Nothing to Lose

  Headstone

  Purgatory

  Green Hell

  The Emerald Lie

  The Ghosts of Galway

  In the Galway Silence

  Galway Girl

  KEN

  BRUEN

  A GALWAY

  EPIPHANY

  A JACK TAYLOR NOVEL

  The Mysterious Press

  New York

  Copyright © 2020 by Ken Bruen

  Jacket design by Becca Fox Design

  Jacket artwork from photographs © Roy Bishop/Arcangel

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011, or [email protected].

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: November 2020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-5703-4

  eISBN 978-0-8021-5705-8

  The Mysterious Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  For

  Paul and Martell Kennedy

  and their family

  Laura, John, Amy

  All very special Kennedys

  A GALWAY

  EPIPHANY

  According to An Leabhar Beannacht (The Blessed Book), found in an old church in the 1950s and attributed to a monk in the mid-eighteenth century, there are

  Seven

  Epiphanies.

  The monk, supposedly one Canace (old form of Kenneth), believed these epiphanies were blends of blessed curses and cursed blessings.

  Kenny, as he is irreverently known by skeptics, demonstrated he was definitely Irish; he’d have to be with the skewed logic of the above statement.

  For the form presented in the new edition published in 2000 by Academic Press, the epiphanies are modernized to a certain extent, and it is claimed the original was written in Latin.

  The Catholic Church has banned them as being, and I quote,

  “The writings of a satanic mind posing as ecclesial.”

  This could apply to a lot of the papal bulletins of late.

  Whatever the case and, indeed, whatever the truth of the affair, they can, in a certain light (drunk as a skunk), seem to be instructional if not downright fucking depressing.

  The first one I ever read was thus:

  Revenge

  Is

  the

  Only

  Justice.

  By a series of wild coincidences, an English friend, here on a rare visit, saw this on the wall of my apartment and said dryly,

  “Francis Bacon said almost the same thing.”

  Which goes to show there is precious little original under the Latin sun. Or Bacon read the Epiphanies.

  I kind of like the notion of Bacon poring over the Epiphanies.

  Explains a lot about his wild frenzied portrait.

  What the Irish in December 2018

  Might consider miracles:

  1. Three days without rain.

  2. Trump to resign.

  3. A hospital bed.

  The

  eighth

  of

  December.

  It was a cold bright evening.

  The Irish Famine Memorial to the children who died on the famine boats stood starkly against the backdrop of the ocean.

  Two young people approached, aged sixteen and nine.

  They’d been living, or rather barely existing, in the refugee center hastily erected on the outskirts of the Claddagh.

  They’d heard bits and scraps of the young girl Celia Griffin, who died of starvation during the Irish famine.

  They could understand the hunger and had seen enough of death in their travails.

  The girl, a serious child, had liberated a small candle from the center’s supplies and now they knelt and lit the candle for the famine child.

  She whispered to the boy,

  “Here’s a trick I learned in Guatemala.”

  She drew a small metal object from beneath her thin shirt, said,

  “El espejismo azul” (in Guatemala it was known as the blue manifestation/illusion).

  As they looked up, an intense blue light shimmered above the monument, seemed to expand with lightning white streaks interwoven.

  A passing American woman in her late fifties saw the moment, gasped, grabbed her iPhone, began to film.

  She clearly heard the children exclaim,

  “La Madonna.”

  The woman, though not herself Catholic, involuntarily muttered,

  “Holy Mother of God!”

  The clip was posted to YouTube and within twenty-four hours had gone viral.

  The eighth of December, coincidentally, is the feast day of the Immaculate Conception and is fondly referred to as “Our Lady’s birthday.”

  An epiphany of belief

  Requires only

  That every other area of assistance

  Has been exhausted.

  The Epiphany of Fire

  The security guard was old.

  He’d applied for the job after he’d retired from the post office.

  He never expected to actually get the job but . . . the wages!

  The wages were shit to shinola, so he got the job.

  His job was to guard an abandoned warehouse on the Newcastle Road.

  His brief?

  “Keep the homeless out.”

  H
e did have a conscience, but, hey, if the government didn’t give a fuck, why should he? He had a chair, a radio, and a one-bar heater, plus a walkie-talkie without batteries. He’d asked the office for them and was told,

  “Who are you expecting to call?”

  So, no batteries.

  His shift was from eight to eight, and he found those evenings were long.

  To break up the monotony he’d walk the building, all two stories of it, twice; he walked it slowly, sweeping his torch across the bare floors, humming quietly to himself.

  He saw some rats but rats didn’t spook him. You live as long as he had, vermin were a fact of life and simply avoided.

  He got into a routine.

  Tea and a sandwich at ten.

  Listen to the news at twelve.

  Walk the building at three and five.

  Snooze freely.

  He’d brought some books with him but found he couldn’t concentrate.

  After a week of this, he filled his flask with Jameson, told himself,

  1. Keeps me warm.

  2. Gives me a little lift.

  The second week was a lot more fun, wandering the floors, a little pissed; he felt good.

  Thursday night, he was startled to hear movement on the floor above.

  Muttered,

  “Mighty big rat.”

  (He wasn’t completely wrong.)

  He’d just got comfortable, the heater on, thermal blanket wrapped snugly round him, the Jameson whispering happy thoughts.

  “Fuck,”

  He said.

  He shucked the blanket off, got his torch, headed up.

  On the second floor he saw the floor was wet.

  “A leak?”

  Then he was shocked by a wave of cold liquid thrown over him, turned, muttering,

  “What the hell?”

  He was soaked, saw a man in a dark track suit holding liter water bottles.

  Then the smell. He lifted his arm, smelled the liquid, his heart pounding, and said,

  “Petrol.”

  The man, in shadow, let the bottles drop, took out a single long match, said,

  “This is not a safety match.”

  The old guard, frightened beyond belief, tried,

  “What?”

  The man, in a quiet reasonable tone, explained,

  “It means you can strike it off a piece of wood.”

  Paused.

  Flicked the match against a beam,

  Continued (with a hint of amusement),

  “It should light instantly.”

  But it didn’t.

  The man shrugged, said,

  “Nothing’s reliable, eh?”

  Then asked,

  “What’s your name?”

  The man, scared shitless, managed,

  “Sean.”

  The man nodded as if this was of some import, asked,

  “Would you describe yourself as lucky?”

  Sean, despite his fear, snarled,

  “Yeah, right, lucky, that’s me, my fucking cup overflowed.”

  The man actually tut-tutted, reprimanded,

  “Now no need for that language. Let’s keep a civil tone.”

  He raised the match, asked,

  “What do you say, Sean, want to go again?”

  Where questions of

  Religion

  Are concerned,

  People are guilty

  Of every possible

  Sort of dishonesty

  And

  Intellectual misdemeanor.

  (Freud)

  Father Malachy, in waiting to assume the title bishop of Galway, was summoned to the archdiocese.

  He got there to find all ranks of clergy from the county assembled.

  The good, the bad, and the disgruntled.

  There was only one item on the agenda.

  The Miracle.

  The archbishop, a frail eighty-year-old, called for silence as the milieu had availed its gathering of the decanters of port.

  Back in the day, every spirit with a good label had been provided but frugality was now to be seen, if not actually practiced.

  Indeed, one parish priest from a tiny parish remarked,

  “Even the Holy Spirit is in short supply.”

  Malachy looked at him, considered him a small fish so didn’t bother answering him. Malachy needed to be with the power brokers as questions had been raised recently as to his suitability for bishop.

  Malachy had snarled to his wingman Pat

  “Suitability? As if there was ever a suitable bishop.”

  Pat, young, ambitious, nervous, nodded noncommittally.

  If Malachy was on the skids, he would need a new patron.

  The archbishop spoke.

  “Rome is concerned about this recent event”—nobody was mentioning the actual “m” word—“and with that foremost in mind, they have very kindly sent us their top investigator.”

  He moved aside to allow a priest to join him, said,

  “This is Monsignor Rael.”

  A slight ripple ran through the crowd. Tales of this guy were legion and none, none of them augured well.

  Heads rolled when Rael arrived.

  He was tall, thin, with sallow skin, pockmarked, which for some odd reason summoned up visions of the Mafia.

  His eyes were the coldest gray you’d see outside of Galway granite.

  He stared at the assembled clergy, said,

  “The malignancy of miracles.”

  The chill of the term hovered over the crowd.

  Pat had thought a miracle was a good thing.

  Wasn’t it?

  He added,

  “David Hume.”

  Paused.

  Then with a supercilious tone continued,

  “No doubt you are all familiar with his work. He said,

  I’ll believe anything if

  You show me the evidence.”

  Rael leaned forward, shouted,

  “But

  The difficulty with miracles is

  Deciding between the likelihood

  That they have occurred

  And the veracity

  Of the report of them.”

  He scanned the room, settled on the nervous shuffling Pat, commanded,

  “You, yes you, what do I mean by that final part.”

  Pat looked around for help but all eyes were averted. Rael pushed,

  “Speak up, man.”

  Pat, in utter candor, blurted,

  “I haven’t a frigging clue.”

  The crowd loved it.

  Rael?

  Not so much.

  He said,

  “And that is the future of the Church, God help us all.”

  Dismissing Pat with a withering look, he said,

  “The children, it dies or flies with them.”

  He let the ominous tone of that linger, then said,

  “If this were genuine”—his face suggesting the utter implausibility of such—“the Church could gain a massive boost. We might even have another . . .

  Lourdes.

  Fatima.

  Or even

  Medjugorje.”

  He paused on the third one, the gold mine it had provided in terms of faith, converts, and, best of all, merchandise, like a rock concert that kept on giving, a spiritual Woodstock.

  But

  They knew the alternative.

  “If it’s a stunt, we need to stop it now.”

  Many wondered how you stopped a YouTube sensation.

  As if reading their very thoughts, Rael added,

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  Malachy f
elt that was as solid a threat as he’d ever heard.

  If he’d had another drink in him, he might have voiced,

  “Suffer the children.”

  Because one thing was certain: suffer those little bastards would, one way or another.

  Rael dispersed them with various instructions as to finding the children, stifling the media, exploring any advantage available, and reporting back to him. He would be in residence at a house on the bishop’s grounds.

  Malachy groaned. This meant the blackguard would be literally on his case.

  Pat watched as the various clergy went their separate subdued ways. He was keen to learn all the ecclesial terminology, asked Malachy,

  “Was that like a synod?”

  Malachy, back smoking since the miracle, snapped,

  “No, that’s what we call a clusterfuck.”

  Mine is the most peaceable disposition

  My wishes are a humble dwelling with a thatched roof

  Good bed, good food, milk of the freshest, flowers at my windows

  Some fine tall pines before my door

  And if the good Lord wants me completely happy

  He will grant me the joy

  Of seeing some six or seven of my enemies

  Hanging from those trees.

  (Heine, Heinrich, Gedanken und Einfäille)

  Living in the country.

  And even had the obligatory wax jacket.

  Of all the side roads I’d taken, and diverse and maniac they were, the countryside never, never featured.

  The only remnant of my past life was a gold miraculous medal, had belonged to my dead daughter.

  But I can’t dwell on that now, phew-oh.

  I’m a city rat.

  Born and bred to alleys, backstreets, murky pubs, shady people, coasting slightly above actual poverty and squalor, but always more than comfortable in the noise and rush of a city.

  Truth to tell, it was only part time but, still, a major shake-up of my existence. My previous case could be summarized as the summer of the dead girls.

  Galway dead girls.

  And a falcon.

  In the midst of horrendous violence and killings, I had saved a badly injured falcon, which led me to a falconer named Keefer.

  He was formerly a roadie for the Rolling Stones, had a farm outside town, and was as eccentric/crazy a character as I’d ever met.

  We bonded over revenge, a kind of frontier vengeance.

  After the smoke had cleared and bodies were buried, I found I’d developed a taste for country air and flying the falcon. It made me feel something I’d not felt for years: alive.