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Original Fiction

No More Mr Nice Guy - Chapter 2 Hitting the Wall
By Bowser
Dec 6, 2003, 10:06

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Chapter 2. Hitting the Wall

As ‘luck’ would have it though our cases hit the calendar on the same day. Forde and O’Ryan standing on the same set of court steps on the same day. I had remained in the courtroom to watch the Forde v Murphy proceedings immediately after mine. What a piece of sheer adulterated ‘luck’! Hah! As he emerged he didn’t see me at first. He was standing there with two women and a small child. The older woman I vaguely recognised but couldn’t quite place her – a floating voter or one of the opposition I wasn’t sure. Also a younger incredibly beautiful woman – beautiful that is apart from her somewhat dark skin – a half-breed obviously. There’s too many of them around Castlebar these days – bad enough this Forde guy taking our property without him bringing an entourage of Africans with him. He was holding the hand of the young child who was skipping up and down on the cracks of the court house steps oblivious to everything. Time to break up this party I thought. So I approached the black bastard with my hand outstretched not giving him any chance to escape.

‘No hard feelings,’ I said grabbing his hand, pumping it up and down and taking some mild enjoyment in the surprise on his ugly black face as he wrinkled his nose at me.

‘Eh? No!’ the stupid gob mouthed at me.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have the keys to your uncle’s house.’ It was true; I did have them. In fact I actually had them in my pocket as we shook hands. I had given a copy to Murphy when I installed him as a security man and tender of the cannabis crop in the field out the back of the disputed house. Who would have thought that old Forde’s black bastard of a nephew would turn up in Turlough though? He had put the kaibosh on everything I had worked to build up in Castlebar.

Somehow the rumour that Murphy had taken the house from his neighbour who had won the house at cards had gotten around after old McHale had died. In fact Forde’s uncle, old Sean McHale, had given me the keys the day I had visited him in hospital just before he died. I was to fetch him some bits and pieces and arrange for a fill of oil for the old man so he wouldn’t return to a cold house. He never returned and I had kept the keys. I did attend his funeral and no close relatives turned up. I was nearly as close a relative as he had and that was a pretty roundabout, long-distance relative. Until his black nephew Forde son of his sister turned up. His sister had married a black man in New York and everything was dandy and fine until young Forde’s wife and son were killed in the Twin Towers and he decided to go looking for his roots in Mayo. F**k that for a game of soldiers, I had thought when I heard the convoluted way that he had come to Castlebar. What was wrong with the Ring of Kerry and the Blarney Stone with their Shop-Till-U-drop Woollen Mills?

‘If you come out to the house I will get you the keys’ I said to Forde. Before he could hesitate I opened the door of the old Mercedes car parked at the edge of the court steps on the Mall outside - just where I had asked it to be left for me.

Now I had the black nigger bastard in my car! I stepped on the accelerator and swung around in a U-turn on the Mall just as the Judge walked out the Court House Door. I saluted him. I drove up Spencer Street taking the first roundabout a bit too sharply. Forde’s large frame bounced slightly off the door. I got some more quiet satisfaction from that. He grabbed the dashboard and looked across at me. I glanced at his big black hands and the blood began to boil in my veins. I could almost hear the blood pumping through my ears as I thought again about the damage this bastard had done to my career. I slowed down. I managed to get the blood pressure down by biting my tongue a few times – and finally I was able to chat casually as if we were long lost friends. It’s a trick you learn in Mayo politics I guess.

‘How did your case go?’ I asked benignly as if I hadn’t been there – as if he hadn’t looked down the court in amazement when he saw me sitting in the public gallery area. Forde didn’t reply.

At the house I pretended to pull the key from beneath the doormat, palming it into my hand and turning it in the lock. I let him into what was now legally his house. Darkness – no lights. I showed him where the fuse box was and poured him a glass of Paddy from a bottle left out on the sideboard. Murphy always had a bottle of Paddy in a convenient location. For all I knew he had left it there the day he had gone chasing after Forde in our little ‘hemp’ plot. Almost mature cannabis plants – the complete harvest went up in smoke following Forde’s little discovery – Murphy missed him with his shotgun and he escaped.

‘Water?’ I asked sticking Forde’s glass under the tap before he could say yeah or nay. He accepted the glass as if it were a kind of peace offering. Many years of dealing with aggressive electoral-register types on cold winter evenings when Ireland are playing in a crucial World Cup or European Cup qualifier had left me with a good line in soft-soaping. I wasn’t interested in soft-soaping Forde though. I had other plans for him.

‘Slainte’ he said to my surprise, holding up his glass. I gulped my whiskey down in couple of slugs, not tasting it. He downed his too – quite quickly for an American I thought, they’re usually not used to Irish whiskey. He just took a slightly quizzical look at the glass after he had finished. It was just barely perceptible but for a second there I thought he was going to ask me if really was a glass of Paddy that he had just swallowed. Apparently rohypnol is pretty much tasteless so any off-taste must have been from the tap water.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘Sorry about your uncle and the mix-up over the house. Sorry too for the mix up in Shannon Airport when you took my bag by mistake.’

‘What?’ Forde said looking surprised. I could say anything I liked, now that he was about to head for the land of nod. A land where he would have no memory of what had happened to him afterwards. I waffled on about the difficulties of bringing in drugs from New York especially after September the 11th. The difficulties in picking mules that don’t know they are mules. Then in a soft pleasant tone I said:

‘You bloddy black negro bastard.’ I smiled benignly continuing softly again ‘Do you know what you did here?’

‘What?" Forde said again slightly duller in tone this time but not even the hint of aggression in his voice or manner.

‘What you did - All my hard work ruined’ I replied, ‘ruined by you you freakin black mick.’ I said in my sweetest possible voice.

He keeled over. Forde was on the canvas! Round two to O’Ryan!

‘Murphy’ I yelled at the top of my voice leaning towards the back door. ‘Murphy Where the F are YA?" I yelled this time. The door eventually opened and in came Murphy, shotgun in hand as per usual for him.

Shotgun his friends call him. He had also made bail the day before me – after some very creative statements from his character witnesses it must be said!

‘Grab his legs’ I said and we hauled the 6-foot plus nigger out to my old Merc, strapping him into the passenger seat with the safety belt. He had fallen over but his eyes were still open. He wouldn’t be resisting us though according to the guy that had given me the rohypnol. Apparently this is normal – a kind of zombification living dead kinda thing and all that – Haiti-like.

Unfortunately in making the acquaintance of this amateur chemist I had to endure a graphic account of how this unsavoury character had taken advantage of a girl whose drink he had spiked in a bar in town and walked her out of the pub as if nothing was wrong. Rohypnol was the best he said – better than GAH or ketesol. The only thing close is alcohol itself he had laughed but it’s more expensive and they may get rowdy!’ ‘Bastard’ I had thought as I took the bottle from him.

‘You follow on behind in the other car,’ I said to Murphy gesturing down towards the Round Tower and the village. He headed for my Beemer, which I had left at the house a few weeks back. I buckled up, double checking the catch on the safety belt and tugging it sharply from the anchor point above. I liked BMWs but for this job the Mercedes was your only man I reckoned. This was an old Merc and a very sound car. Maybe not with all the mod cons of the new BMW but it gave a you a good solid feeling of reliability. I gunned the engine. A screech of rubber and we were off. Accelerating up to 55mph in just over 10 seconds we set off down the hill from old Sean McHale’s house towards Turlough. The T-junction approached. Turn left to go down to the bridge over the Castlebar River or turn right to go up the hill before sweeping down to the village of Turlough? But I chose straight on – this car being driven straight by sweet, sweet, revenge!

Hitting a wall at 55mph can do a lot of damage to a car, even such a solid one as this old Merc. Thank God for driver side airbags though. Thank God it deployed. Wooosh! And what a RUSH! My life in politics flashed before my eyes in a split instant. That first election, chairman of a committee, my appointment as a minister, all those expenses claimed over the years. The terror of hitting a wall at 55 mph - I imagined this is what parachuting or bungy jumping would be like as you wait for the chute to open or the slight initial tension on the rubber that tells you that you are not going to hit the canyon floor!

Of course those older Mercs only have one airbag on the driver side and poor Forde was in the passenger seat. We stopped suddenly, Very suddenly. The wall withstood the shock and the front section of the Merc buckled just like it was designed to do, absorbing the impact. But the late Mr Forde, the poor black bastard, had been fired out through the shattered windscreen like a circus clown from a canon. He had ripped right through his old and slightly ‘frayed’ safety belt and was now draped across the bonnet with his ankles still on the dashboard. One down! Who’s next?

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