The Going Rate Read Free

lie-low-and-wait option.
    There was a car up ahead, not moving. Green, older Jap car: a Corolla? Someone was standing behind its half-opened driver’s door, a man in a leather jacket. He had noticed Mulhall too. He did not seem in the least bit put-out to be seeing a man in a T-shirt on a cold spring morning, holding something the shape of a gun.
    Mulhall stopped, undecided. There was a faint smell of aftershave, or cologne or something expensive. In this laneway, here in this kip, on a lousy damp cold Dublin morning? Hallucinating, that’s what it must be surely.
    But it was too quiet here. It’d have to be back the other way, he decided, over the walls and off through the gardens. He picked a cement block wall a half-dozen houses away and headed for it at a jog.
    Then there was a door opening into the alley to his right, a figure emerging as he ran by. He did not slow, but he took the pistol out, and broke into a sprint instead, weaving from side to side. There were other footsteps running behind him now, almost matching his own. Turning to cast a quick glance over his shoulder he saw flashes, and he felt himself being punched over against a wall.
    He was able to squeeze the trigger once but then his arm fell as did everything else, sideways and buckling. He heard his own knees hit the cement, and the skin tearing as his momentum carried him scraping along the laneway.
    He came to a stop, and felt his chest rising and falling on the slimy, cold cement. This new sideways world was way too bright. He’d need to lie here a few moments only, until he could figure out if he had broken something. Slowly, he flexed his fingers. The pistol was gone somewhere.
    There were footsteps on the cement nearby, soft shoes at a walk.
    Mulhall wanted to shout, but the voice that came out was a whisper.
    â€œHey,” it said.
    He wasn’t sure if he had actually spoken the words.
    â€œWhy did you do that?”
    It was his own voice. His chin and his cheeks were scraping the cement.
    â€œWho are you?”
    Someone was breathing hard nearby.
    â€œMa?” Mulhall said then. “Jesus, Ma. I’m having a terrible dream.”
    There was a ticklish movement around his cheek, and something red flowed by his chin. A car started nearby but the noise soon died away. This is a concussion, he decided. He must have slipped or something.
    â€œGoing to wake up now,” he said, or thought.
    He was being rolled over. The sky was blinding him.
    He couldn’t focus his eyes. A shape moved dimly not far above him. He heard the strained breathing again, breathing out the nose. A black spot appeared between him and the shape above, wavering slightly, and Mulhall had a moment to conclude that it was the barrel of a gun.

Chapter 2
    G OOD F RIDAY CAME AND WENT , and in its wake the Easter. A freakishly warm holiday Monday drew Minogue into the garden, and there he worked fitfully at rehabilitating the rockery. It was a yearly ritual now. That was how he missed the phone call with the news that the Commissioner’s wife had died.
    He replayed the message twice to be sure he had the funeral details right. When Kathleen came home, he waited until she was settled before telling her the news. She was more upset than he had expected. After a while, he brought out two kitchen chairs, and then two tumblers of Jamesons to the patch of grass that was now home to a dozen or more large, marooned rocks.
    The sun made an unexpected appearance, taking the edge off the cool air, and turning the scruffy spring growth a bright green while it incited more noise from the birds gadding about unseen in the undergrowth.
    The whiskey was quickly downed.
    Kathleen and he sat together for the better part of a half-hour, adrift in the smells of torn earth, the stirring leaves and grass, and the birds’ unceasing bustle. Every now and then Kathleen recounted things that Rachel Tynan, artist and teacher, had done in the recent past.
    Minogue