Dublin Noir by Ken Bruen Page A

the thirty grand he owes. I’ll hang him an extra few minutes for a few more on top of the thirty, teach the deadbeat a lesson. Or I’ll take my cut and be very happy with that, fifteen dimes. That’s the only time this slob is focused, though, when he’s on the make for new money to bet with. Otherwise, he’s a very jealous fat slob cock-sucker.”
    Dugan held up his beer to toast the couple across the room. “I don’t get her angle, though,” he whispered. “Tell you the truth, why she’s with him, I don’t get that at all. She’s up there herself and all, maybe fifty, fifty-five or so, but she can do better than him. She has to know his story. He’s on the edge of the cliff with more than one office taking bets.”
    Dugan returned his attention to the twins. “Ryan no longer has the patience to wait this prick out. And I need the scratch now so I can bring it to Dublin and keep the boyos off my back. There’s five hundred in it for you two, to make an example of this scam artist. His number has come and gone, far as I’m concerned.”
    The brothers nodded.
    “I heard you,” Dugan said. He was smiling at the woman across the room again. “How do I want you to handle this? I’ll follow herself down when she goes to the powder room. I’ll keep her down there longer than usual. I’ll hold her fuckin’ head in the toilet, I gotta. He’ll eventually go down to see what’s the problem. You’ll follow him. The card room is straight ahead once you’re in the hall with the ladies’ room. Take him in there, deadbolt the door behind you, gag him, and break his face. Leave him tied so he can’t move until somebody from the place finds him after hours.”
    The brothers nodded in unison.
    “And make it ugly,” Dugan said.
    Six days later, Dugan woke up in a damp basement on the north side of Dublin. A hard-looking slender woman in her late forties put fire to a cigarette across the room. She wore a stained kitchen apron and boots. A stocky man puffing on a pipe sat at a table off to the right. His face was unfamiliar to Dugan.
    “He’s coming around,” the woman said.
    Dugan strained to see her. He’d been drugged upstairs in the bar the night before after passing off money from Marty Ryan to three IRA soldiers. They kept him drinking from a Jameson bottle spiked with poteen. Dugan had nearly poisoned himself from drinking.
    The woman was sharpening a boning knife at a table near the stairway. Dugan struggled to see clearly. It hurt to hold his head up for long.
    He remembered drinking in the men’s room with the soldiers. He remembered them slapping his back and telling him jokes. He remembered laughing out loud and passing the bottle.
    Now he couldn’t remember much of anything else.
    He had come to Ireland with the twins because Marty Ryan had told him it was important they travel together. Dugan remembered sitting next to them on the flight over. He remembered joking with them. He remembered going through customs together and taking the cab from the airport.
    They had separated once they were in the bar, Dugan going off to the men’s room with the soldiers while the twins drank at a table. Dugan couldn’t remember when they had left or where they had gone. He couldn’t remember leaving the men’s room.
    He knew he was on Gardiner Street because the cab had dropped them off in front of the bar. Dugan remembered thinking the old neighborhood always looked the same and that he was glad to be done with it.
    A door slammed shut somewhere upstairs. “That’ll be him,” the woman said.
    Dugan was feeling cramped in the shoulders. He tried to move from the chair and realized his hands were tied behind his back.
    “What’s this?” he muttered.
    A door opened at the top of the stairs. The woman gave a nod at the stocky man.
    Dugan thought he recognized the woman. “Mary?” he said.
    She didn’t flinch.
    Dugan looked to his left and saw a blue plastic tarpaulin covering something on the floor. He