The Bloomsday Dead Read online

  Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles. He studied politics at Oxford University and after a failed law career he moved to New York City in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, postman, door-to-door salesman, construction worker, barman, rugby coach, book-store clerk and librarian. Having lived in Colorado for many years with his wife and daughters, he and his family have moved to Melbourne, Australia.

  In addition to The Bloomsday Dead, Serpent’s Tail publishes the other two volumes in Adrian McKinty’s The Dead Trilogy – Dead I Well May Be and The Dead Yard, as well as Fifty Grand and Hidden River.

  The Bloomsday Dead

  ‘Those who know McKinty will automatically tighten their seatbelts. To newcomers I say: buckle up and get set for a bumpy ride through a very harsh landscape indeed. His antihero Michael Forsythe is as wary, cunning and ruthless as a sewer rat… His journey in some ways parallels that of James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom on one day in Dublin, but – trust me – it’s a lot more violent and a great deal more exciting’ Matthew Lewin, Guardian

  ‘A pacey, violent caper… As Forsythe hurtles around the city, McKinty vividly portrays its sleazy, still-menacing underbelly’ John Dugdale, Sunday Times

  ‘Thoroughly enjoyable… [McKinty] maintains the bloody action all the way from Lima to Larne with panache and economy. His hero, the “unf*** ing-killable” Michael Forsythe, is a wonderful creation’ Hugh Bonar, Irish Mail on Sunday

  ‘Packed with sharp dialogue and unremitting action’ Marcel Berlins, The Times

  ‘Compelling thrillers written in a hard-bitten, muscular style, the novels are given an unconventional twist by virtue of Forsythe’s unusually perceptive insights… a fascinating blend of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne and Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley… McKinty is a rare writer’ Sunday Business Post

  ‘A tangled and bloody odyssey through Dublin and Belfast… [a] wellpaced, edgy thriller’ Terence Killeen, Irish Times

  ‘A gut-punching gangster story… this illegitimate spawn of a book, with Tony Soprano morality and James Joyce literary weight, ends the Michael Forsythe trilogy’ Gerard Brennan, Belfast Newsletter

  Dead I Well May Be

  ‘A darkly thrilling tale of the New York streets with all the hard-boiled charm of Chandler and the down and dirty authenticity of closing time…Evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch’ Guardian

  ‘The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller – betrayal, money and murder – but seen through here with a panache and political awareness that gives Dead I Well May Be a keen edge over its rivals’ Big Issue

  ‘Adrian McKinty’s main skill is in cleverly managing to evoke someone rising through the ranks and wreaking bloody revenge while making it all seem like an event that could happen to any decent, hardworking Irish chap. A dark, lyrical and gripping voice that will go far’ The List

  ‘McKinty’s Michael Forsythe is a crook, a deviant, a lover, a fighter, and a thinker. His Irish-tough language of isolation and longing makes us love and trust him despite his oh-so-great and violent flaws. When you finish this book you just might wish you’d lived the life in its pages, and thought its thoughts, both horrible and sublime’ Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead

  ‘Adrian McKinty is a big new talent – for storytelling, for dialogue and for creating believable characters…Dead I Well May Be is a riveting story of revenge and marks the arrival of a distinctive fresh voice’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘A pacy, assured and thoroughly engaging debut…this is a hard-boiled crime story written by a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips’ Sunday Independent

  ‘Careens boisterously from Belfast to the Bronx…McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blurs the line between genre and mainstream. Top-drawer’ Kirkus Reviews

  ‘If Frank McCourt had gone into the leg-breaking business instead of school teaching, he might’ve written a book like Dead I Well May Be. Adrian McKinty’s novel is a rollicking, raw, and unsavoury delight – down and dirty but full of love for words. This is hard-boiled crime fiction with a poet’s touch’ Peter Blauner, author of The Last Good Day and The Intruder

  ‘McKinty has deftly created a literate, funny and cynical antihero who takes his revenge in bloody and violent twists but at the same time, methodically listens to Tolstoy on tape while on stakeouts. He rounds out the book with a number of incredible fever-dream sequences and then springs an ending that leaves readers shaking their head in satisfied amazement’ San Francisco Chronicle

  The Dead Yard

  ‘Adrian McKinty has once again harnessed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be’ The Irish Post

  ‘The Dead Yard is a much-anticipated sequel to Dead I Well May Be and every bit as good. McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seamless. He also writes with a wonderful (and wonderfully humorous) flair for language, raising his work above most crime-genre offerings and bumping right up against literature’ San Francisco Chronicle

  ‘McKinty’s literate, expertly crafted third crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation’s leading talents…McKinty possesses a talent for pace and plot structure that belies his years. Dennis Lehane fans will definitely be pleased’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘Expat Irishman Adrian McKinty has just put out his fourth terrific book…and he keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way. This is a writer going places. Hop aboard’ Rocky Mountain News

  Hidden River

  ‘McKinty is a cross between Mickey Spillane and Damon Runyon – the toughest, the best. Beware of McKinty’ Frank McCourt

  ‘A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds…Once you step into Hidden River, the powerful under-current of McKinty’s talent will swiftly drag you away. Let’s hope this author does not slow down anytime soon’ Irish Examiner

  ‘[A] terrific read…this is a strong, non-stop story, with attractive characters and fine writing’ Morning Star

  The Bloomsday Dead

  Adrian McKinty

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  SERPENT’S TAIL

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3a Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  www.serpentstail.com

  This eBook edition first published in 2010

  Copyright © Adrian McKinty 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN: 978-1-84765-157-0

  The only arms I allow myself to use: silence, exile and cunning.

  —James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

  Contents

  1: TELE
MACHUS (LIMA, PERU—JUNE 15, 6:00 A.M.)

  2: SIREN (NEW YORK—JUNE 15, 4:00 P. M . )

  3: OXEN OF THE SUN (DUBLIN—JUNE 16, 4:15 A.M.)

  4: CIRCE (DUBLIN—JUNE 16, 9:15 A.M.)

  5: PENELOPE (BELFAST—JUNE 16, 1:35 P. M . )

  6: THE RAT’S NEST (BELFAST—JUNE 16, 2:15 P. M . )

  7: THE WANDERING ROCKS (BELFAST—JUNE 16, 4:00 P. M . )

  8: SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS (BELFAST—JUNE 16, 6:00 P. M . )

  9: HADES (BELFAST—JUNE 16, 7:45 P. M . )

  10: THE LOTUS EATERS (BANGOR—JUNE 16, 9:15 P. M . )

  11: THE WRATH OF ODYSSEUS (THE KNOCKAGH—JUNE 16, 10:15 P.M.)

  12: ITHACA (ISLANDMAGEE—JUNE 16, MIDNIGHT)

  Other Adrian McKinty titles published by Serpent’s Tail

  Dead I Well May Be

  Hidden River

  The Dead Yard

  Other Serpent’s Tail titles of interest

  David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet

  Nineteen Seventy Four

  Nineteen Seventy Seven

  Nineteen Eighty

  Nineteen Eighty Three

  1: TELEMACHUS (LIMA, PERU—JUNE 15, 6:00 A.M.)

  State LY Plum P. Buck Mulligan.” Hector handed me this message on the cliffs at Miraflores.

  I set the binoculars on the wall, took the note, and put it in my pocket. Hector was watching my face to see if there was annoyance or even dread in my eyes, but I was giving nothing away.

  The sun was rising over the Andes, turning the Pacific a pinkish blue. The sky to the east was a long golden gray and in the west the Southern Cross and the moon had set into the sea.

  I thanked Hector with a nod and put my sunglasses on.

  Wild lilacs were growing among the cacti and a warm breeze was blowing through the poplars. There was, as yet, no traffic and normally it would be peaceful up here. Just the cliffs and the beach and the whole of the sleeping city behind me. Fog burning off the head-land and a few early-morning dog walkers demonstrating that Latin love for miniature poodles and Lhasas.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” I said in English.

  Hector shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  I smiled, watched the usual dazzling collection of seabirds rising on the thermals off the cliffs. Occasionally you’d see an albatross or a peregrine falcon and rarer still sometimes a lost condor or two.

  The smell of orange blossom and oleander.

  “Lima has a bad rap, but I like it,” I said in Spanish.

  Especially this time of day before the two-stroke motors and the diesel engines and the coal fires really got going. Hector nodded, pleased with the remark and happy that he’d found me before I retired to bed. He knew that after the night shift I liked to come here with a cup of coffee. Last week I came to watch the first transit of Venus in living memory but mostly it was either to do some amateur ornithology or, he suspected, to stare through the binocs at the pretty surfer girls catching the big rolling breakers at the meeting of the continent and the ocean.

  Today about a dozen early surfers, all of them in their teens, wearing full wet suits, booties, and gloves. Half of them female, a new feature of the scene in the city. None of them looked like Kit, the surfer girl I’d been forced to kill in Maine a long time ago, but they all reminded me of her—I mean, that’s the sort of thing you never get over.

  I sipped the coffee, frowned at the sound of a power drill. This particular morning, much to my annoyance, it was not quiet up here. There were a score of grips and roadies building the set for a free concert by the Indian Chiefs. They were working with un-Peruvian noise and diligence and it didn’t surprise me at all to see that their supervisor was an Australian.

  Hector blinked at me in that obvious way of his, to prod me into action.

  “Thanks for the note, Hector, you go on home,” I said.

  “Is everything ok, boss?” he asked.

  “No, but I’ll take care of it,” I responded.

  Hector nodded. He was still only a kid. I’d been training him for about three months and he didn’t look at all uncomfortable in the suit and tie that I’d bought for him. I’d taught Hector to be polite, calm, well mannered and now he could be employed as a bouncer anywhere in the world. I’m sure the customers at the Lima Miraflores Hilton had no idea that Hector lived in a house he had built himself in the pueblos jóvenes slums to the east of here, where the walls were corrugated metal sheets, where water came from a stand pipe and sewage ran in the street. Displaced from his shanty, Hector appeared elegant, poised, and aristocratic. The marriage of a conquistador bloodline with Inca royalty. And he was smart and he had compassion. He was an ideal lieutenant. He couldn’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two; he’d go far, probably have my job in five or six years.

  “It seems a bit early for this kind of nonsense,” he said with a resigned shake of the head. He was talking about the contents of the note.

  “It’s either very early or very late,” I agreed.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to deal with it, I don’t mind,” Hector said with another look of sympathy.

  He knew I’d had a rough night of it. A kid from Sweden had taken an overdose and I’d had to see him to the hospital, then I kicked some whores out of the lobby, and then we’d dealt with an elderly American couple who claimed they couldn’t breathe in the polluted air and wanted an oxygen machine. Later today the Japanese ambassador to Peru was coming for an informal breakfast talk on the possibility of extraditing disgraced Peruvian ex-president Fujimori from his bolt hole in Tokyo. The talks wouldn’t go anywhere but it was good for all parties to be seen looking for a solution. Good for the hotel especially. The ambassador had his own security people, but we didn’t need a disturbance wrecking the tranquility of the visit.

  “No, I’ll fix it, Hector, you can go on home,” I said.

  Hector nodded, walked back across the street to change into his jeans and T-shirt for the scooter ride to the slums. He’d been on the night shift, too, and was bound to be tired.

  The surfers were doing lazy cutbacks and the sun was inching over those high, dry mountains that someday I’d go and visit. A blind man had recently climbed Everest, so surely I, a man challenged merely with an artificial foot, could hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

  I took a big swig of the coffee and set down the cup.

  A few schoolgirls had come by to see if the roadies could give them backstage passes to the Chiefs; the roadies had none to give away but they chatted up the girls anyway.

  “Get your backs into it, you dago bastards,” the Australian foreman barked. Without the note drawing me away to business I might have gone over and smacked that bugger for spoiling my meditations.

  I looked at the message. It was easy enough to decipher.

  In stateroom LY (that is, the fiftieth floor, suite Y), a Plum (in other words, a drunk American) named Mr. P. Buck was creating a Mulligan (i.e., a disturbance). The codes had been established by the previous head of security at the Miraflores Hilton, an avid golfer. At some point I was going to drop the references to Mulligans, Eagles, Birdies, and the like. But I’d only been here for a few months and there were other, more pressing priorities.

  I sighed, crumpled the note in disgust, and threw it in the nearest garbage can.

  A drunk American, probably fighting with a prostitute.

  P. Buck—I wondered if R.E.M. were in town, the guitarist was called Peter Buck and had once been arrested and acquitted of being drunk and disorderly on a British Airways flight. I shook my head. If an American rock star had been staying at my hotel, I would have known about it before now. Still, Peter Buck was one of my heroes and I crossed the street with a heightened level of expectation.

  The hotel was new, tall, gleaming with glass and curved stainless steel—like something Frank Gehry might have come up with on a bad day.

  Tinco, the nervous Ecuadorean night manager, grabbed me at the double doors.

  “I heard,” I said before he could o
pen his mouth.

  “Stateroom LY, hurry, please, we have the Japanese ambassador arriving this morning,” he said, grasping his hands in front of him in a pleading gesture.

  “I know,” I said. “Don’t worry, relax, I’ll take care of it.”

  “One of the girls has complained,” he said, looking sadly at the floor.

  “Which girls? The hookers?”

  “The maid. She’s very young.”

  He wanted me to come up with a solution before I’d even assessed what the problem was.

  “Ok, I’ll send her away for a week and when she comes back you give her a raise and we’ll keep an eye on her to see if she keeps her mouth shut. Got it?”

  Tinco nodded. I yawned and headed for the bank of elevators.

  Usually I showered and went to bed now and slept until two or three in the afternoon, when the older, tradition-bound Peruvians were getting up from their siestas. And like I say, it had been a tedious, tiring night and I was looking forward to some shut-eye.

  Hopefully, this wouldn’t take too long.

  I pressed the P button and the lift sped me up to the penthouses on the fiftieth floor. It was a boast of the hotel that it was one of the tallest buildings in South America but even the express elevators seemed to take forever.