Green Hell Read Free Page A

involved, it sure as shootin isn’t Jesus.”
    I don’t have a conflict of interest—
    I have a conflict and interest.
    (Phyl Kennedy-Bruen)
    I’m caught staring at Jack’s face. He is brutally tan, as if the sun had a vendetta, personal, and lashed him. He smiles, tiny lines, white, creaking against the parched skin, like whiteness trying to run.
    He said,
    â€œI picked up a new habit.”
    No need to ask if it’s a good one. With Jack, all his habits are bad, very.
    Continued,
    â€œDuring that heat wave, I’d take half a bottle of Jay, sit on the rocks near Grattan Road, and just . . . yearn.”
    Back to the murder business, I asked,
    â€œHow come you know about those girls?”
    Paused.
    Gulp.
    â€œAnd the Guards . . . don’t?”
    He shrugged,
    â€œThe Guards know, they just don’t give a flyin fuck.”
    Later I Googled Father Doran and learned his areas of expertise were, as Jack would list them:
    The Supernatural
    Angels
    Saints
    Fairies
    and
    Elves.
    I thought,
    â€œFifty shades of demonic propaganda.”
    Persisting,
    â€œBut you know him . . . how?”
    He seemed distracted, looked around him, then snapped back, said,
    â€œA little nun told me.”
    Before I could recover from this ecclesiastical bombshell, Jack said,
    â€œThomas H. Cook wrote in his novel Sandrine’s Case , ‘The sad thing in life is that for most people, the cavalry never arrived.’”
    I managed to hold my tongue, not to be an academic asshole by saying,
    â€œI don’t read mystery novels.”
    I instead managed to still stay in facetious mode, remarking,
    â€œBut you’re the cavalry, Jack, that it?”
    Came out even more sarcastic than I intended. He let that bitter vibe hover, then,
    â€œMost ways, son, I’m more a scalp hunter.”

From Jack Taylor’s Journals
    Sister Maeve and I had a history, most of it convoluted, most of it bad. But a year ago, by pure luck and thuggery, I managed to return the stolen statue of Our Lady of Galway.
    Back in the 1970s there’d been the phenomenon of the moving statues. Our Lady, literally seen to move in various “blessed” parts of the country, led to an almost hysterical reaffirmation of faith in the country. Quashed later by the clerical scandals. But for a brief time, there had been “Holy Ground.” Our Lady of Galway had been moved by a gang of feckless teenagers.
    My success in this case put me briefly back in the Church’s graces.
    Sister Maeve came to me, told me of two girls who’d been savagely raped and beaten, tossed aside. We’d met in Crowe’s Bar in Bohermore. Sign of the fractured times in that a nun in a pub didn’t raise an eyebrow, mainly because she was dressed like Meg Ryan. She’d ordered a sparkling Galway water, to see, she said,
    â€œThe tiny bubbles shimmer.”
    Two of her former students came to her. Amid sobs, fear, shame, and utter despair, they’d told her of their ordeal. How de Burgo, acting as mentor to their studies, had lured them to a flat on the canal. After, he’d thrown them out on the street, warning,
    â€œSpeak of this and you’ll go in the canal.” Maeve had duly reported all to her Mother Superior, who said,
    â€œJezebels! Common harlots who enticed a good man.”
    De Burgo was one of the prime movers in having extensive renovations made to the convent. Maeve, pushing aside her now flat water, said, in a very un-nun-like fashion,
    â€œWho is going to besmirch the name of a man responsible for the central heating?”
    Comfort versus truth?
    No contest.
    I asked Maeve,
    â€œWhy have you come to me, Sister?”
    She considered her answer, then,
    â€œBecause you understand that justice is rarely delivered through ordinary channels.”
    Something radiantly different in a tiny, holy nun letting loose her very own
    Mongrel of War.
    Whatever else I thought, I didn’t