Dublin Noir by Ken Bruen

asked for it there, her brown spot. Turned and pointed.”
    The twins smiled at one another.
    “She was tainted goods, why they shipped her here,” Dugan went on. “Whatever those cons did to her, she’s taken a shine to being a pin cushion. Auntie Mary back home can’t keep watch while she’s running her bar on the north side. Catherine come over under the eye of the ape bouncer here, Rusty. Have you met him yet? He’s not here tonight, but he’ll pick her up after closing. Big fucker. Him you don’t wanna mess with. Not even the two a’you.”
    Dugan yawned before he continued, “He’s some kind of relative, Rusty is. Her cousin, I think. He’s a cunt hair less daft than the girl, but he can lift trees out the fuckin’ ground, he gets angry enough. Snapped an Italian’s arm off the end of the bar one night for giving the same missy some shit and grabbing her ass.”
    Dugan was watching the girl now.
    “Shame it is, too,” he said, “an ass like that going to waste.”
    He wiped one side of his mouth on his shoulder. The waitress Dugan was talking about stopped at their table to pick up an empty bottle.
    “Thanks, hon,” Dugan said. “You’re looking very pretty tonight.”
    The waitress smiled at all three men and moved on.
    Dugan was about to go on when a well-dressed couple distracted him across the room. He stopped to watch a fat, middle-aged man with an attractive, well-dressed older woman. They were seated at a table and immediately attended to by another waitress.
    “There he is,” Dugan told the twins. “Don’t look. He’s directly behind the two of you. First table off the stairway.”
    The twins looked down at the table.
    “I’d like to take the fat fuck and throw him down the stairs,” Dugan said. “Take his wife downstairs to the kitchen and fuck her in the ass on the chopping board, make him watch.”
    “How do you want us to handle it?” the older brother asked. His accent was thick.
    Dugan suddenly smiled in the direction of the couple. He spoke without moving his lips. “She’s a flirt, the cunt he’s with. Nancy, her name is. Likes to cock tease. Likes to do the halfway thing. I’ve had her down in the card room more than a couple times. She seems to think it’s okay I jam three fingers up her twat, she gives me a blowjob afterward. That isn’t cheating to her. Never let me fuck her, though. Not yet. She’ll suck your dick till you’re dry, but she won’t let you between her legs with it. I guess that’s keeping the marriage vows sacred enough. Who’m I to argue?”
    He waved at the woman.
    “The cigar nights they have in this place,” he continued. “Our man brings her along for sport. She flirts with every guy in the joint while he’s getting tanked. Then she takes a few too many trips to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. Likes to reaffirm herself, I think.”
    The twins were eyeing her husband.
    “I’m here, I find my way downstairs with her myself,” Dugan said. “I don’t know that he knows or not, what she’s doing down there all that time, but he doesn’t show it up here. Up here, most the time, he watches her like a hawk. Unless, of course, he’s on the hustle, which he is a lot more often lately, he can’t pay his bets.”
    Dugan took a long, deep breath. He seemed to forget where he was in the story. The eldest twin leaned forward, motioning toward the man Dugan had been talking about.
    Dugan pointed a finger between both twins and picked up where he had left off. “Then, when he’s trying to squeeze somebody for some bullshit investment in his government contract bullshit, his attention is focused on whoever the mark is. Usually, another well-dressed guy can’t hold his liquor. Like the sucker owns the Irish joint on First Avenue, Donahue’s. A nice guy, Alex. He took it up the ass for thirty grand from this fat fuck. I heard, I told the guy, gimme half the note. I’ll hang that fat slob out a window until he scams somebody else for