Chasing River: A Novel

“What’s the story, lad?” Eamon stands in his doorway, his robe tied tight around his scrawny waist, his thinning white hair standing on end. One long, shrewd look at me—my teeth gritted to hide the pain, a cold sweat coating my face—and he ushers me inside as quickly as his eighty-six-year-old bones can manage. “Didn’t expect to see ya like this, River. Your brother, of course . . . but not you.” His slippers scratch across the dated linoleum floor. I’ve been to Dr. Eamon O’Hare’s semidetached house a handful of times in my twenty-four years. It has never changed. The same vinyl flowery tablecloth covers the kitchen table, the same braided rug—a worn shade of sky blue—protects feet from the cool living room floor. The lace curtains that I remember watching his wife—God rest her soul—stitch still hang over the windows, growing more gray and dusty as each year passes.

“What have you gotten yourself into?” He leads me into the dining room—a cramped room with no window, dwarfed by a sturdy wooden table and lit by a gaudy bell-shaped light from above.

“Aengus,” is all I say. I don’t need to explain any more. Eamon has known us since we were shitting diapers and sucking on our ma’s teat. He knew my father when he was shitting diapers and sucking on his ma’s teat. He’s been a friend of the Delaney family for decades, fixing one generation or another up when going to the hospital isn’t an option. He doesn’t ask too many questions and he doesn’t report anything.

“Let’s have us a look, then.”

With slow, pained movements, I peel off the forest-green football jersey. The few minutes of mass hysteria after the bombing allowed me the opportunity to swipe a hat and shirt from a street vendor just outside the walls of the Green. I used them to help cover my wounds and hide in plain sight.

The pub T-shirt I wear to work—the first thing I grabbed from the floor this morning, in a rush to follow Aengus—comes off next.

Eamon harrumphs.

“How bad is it?” Because it feels bloody awful and the shredded rag in my hand now doesn’t look promising.

“Looks superficial, but you never know with these things.”

“I was on the ground when it went off, if that helps any.”

“It must have. I’d say you were very lucky, from what I’ve seen before. These two here,” he taps two spots on my back, “are protruding slightly. I’ll need to remove them. This one, though, I could leave in—”

“No, get it out.” I don’t want any pieces left in my body. The image of my father’s friend Glenden pulling a chunk of metal out of his cheek at our kitchen sink, and the mess of dark lumps still waiting to work their way out, comes to mind. I was five, and the sight still haunts me to this day.

Eamon opens the china cabinet and pulls out his doctor’s bag, which I doubt gets much use anymore. He’s long since retired. Rifling through it with a low hum, he finally shakes his head. “Do you have anywhere to be today?”

“Just the pub.”

“Best you call in sick. I don’t see you being in any shape to work.” He sets a bottle of cheap whiskey on the table. “I’m out of the good stuff.”

No anesthetic. This is going to fucking hurt.

While Eamon heads to the kitchen, I pull out my phone to text Rowen.

I can’t cover the bar today. It’s because of Aengus . . .

I can’t really explain any of this over the phone, but that should be enough for my little brother to understand that this is serious. Still, he’s going to curse me. When he enrolled in summer classes, I promised that I’d cover the bar on Wednesdays and Thursdays for him.

Maybe he can get one of our part-time bartenders in.

I crack the lid on the bottle of whiskey and take a long swig, the liquor burning inside my stomach as I prepare myself mentally, relieved that I could come to Eamon. Walking into a hospital with shrapnel wounds on the day of a bombing wouldn’t have been wise.

Within a few minutes I hear the whistle of his kettle singing. He returns with a bowl of steaming water, fresh rags, and a handful of surgical instruments swirling in a tall glass container filled with what I assume is antiseptic. Thick-lensed glasses rest on his nose now, and he’s exchanged his morning robe for a coat that I’m sure was once pristinely white, but has seen its share of blood that no amount of bleach can completely erase.

“On your stomach,” he instructs, patting the lacquered surface with one hand, while his other fusses with a desk lamp.

I take another swig and then comply, stretching out on the cool wood. It feels soothing against my bare chest.

He hands me a short wooden stick, marred by little divots. “I can’t have my neighbors calling the gardai on me,” he warns.

Fuck. I comply, biting down on it.

Eamon snaps a glove over his wrist.

I exhale slowly, watching the tendrils of smoke curl their way out the window and vanish into the night sky. The pack I opened earlier today lies empty on the table and I haven’t taken a single puff, content to let the tobacco burn and the red embers glow and then fade into ash while I relish the calm before the coming storm.

Listening for the telltale jangle of keys at the door. Aengus didn’t even come home last night, which was probably the first smart move he’s made in all this, because I would have taken the agony from my day out on his jaw.

And he’d deserve it.

The front door to our house creaks open. Measured footfalls make their way down the hall, his boot scraping the worn wood floor on every fourth step.

“River . . . ya here?” Aengus’s deep voice cuts through the peace. Though we grew up in the same household, in the same city, people have said his accent is thicker, the way Rowen and I speak more refined.

I could answer but I don’t, don’t get up to greet him. I just sit in my rickety kitchen chair, shrouded in darkness, stewing in rage. And I wonder what kind of “warning” could be worth walking four kilometers with a volatile explosive tucked under your arm. I know my brother’s not suicidal, but that . . . only an idiot would do that.

I sense him standing at the kitchen threshold now, his eyes on my shirtless back, no doubt seeing the gauze patches covering the three shrapnel wounds. They weren’t too bad, after all. Tiny slivers that cut into my skin, thin enough that Eamon was able to stitch me up. That didn’t stop me from passing out from the pain as he dug into my flesh for that last one, though.

“Thought ya quit.” A beam of light hits my face as Aengus pulls two cans of Smithwick’s out of the fridge. He drops one in front of me, not saying a word about the five empty cans lined up at the table’s edge. Normally he’d cuff me for touching his beer.

That’s how I know he feels at least some remorse.

“I did.” I take a single haul off the smoke burning between my fingers, exhale slowly, and then mash the rest of it into the heap of other butts. “Funny what almost getting blown up does to a person.”

He drags out the chair across from me and sits down, straddling it. “Ya weren’t supposed to be there.”

I finally meet eyes with my brother for the first time since the Green yesterday morning. His face is rosy from drink and covered in strawberry scruff, the jeans and shirt that he traded his disguise for rumpled. He looks like he’s been hiding at the bottom of a barrel for the past thirty-six hours.

“You made the front page.” I toss the Times at him. The Herald and the Mirror share similar headlines. In fact, I’m guessing that the bombing in St. Stephen’s Green made every front page from Cork to Belfast.

His eyes only flicker toward it. “Been in to work yet?”

I shake my head. “Rowen’s covering.” The youngest of the Delaney boys, and the one I can always count on, had to miss classes both yesterday and today to cover for me. He was mighty pissed yesterday, but after he found me belly-down in bed last night, moaning in pain, he played it off like it was no big deal. Who needs a college degree when you can watch Greta—the tall blonde from Germany that we just hired—bend over tables to hand out pints to customers, he had joked.

That’s my younger brother. Day and night from the asshole sitting across from me.

“Did he mention anyone stopping by there?”

Aengus doesn’t really mean just “anyone.” “Not yet. But they will.” Gardai always come sniffing around our pub when there’s trouble. It just comes with the territory of being a Delaney.

Aengus nods slowly and then pulls a smoke from his own pack and lights up. The real estate agent who’s trying to sell our house warned us about smoking inside, but right now I don’t care. We already had to cancel one showing this morning because I wasn’t about to leave my bed.

A long, uncomfortable silence settles over us, and it almost unnerves me more than what happened. Normally we collide and combust—yelling, punching, swearing at each other. This is different. This means he’s gone too far and he knows it.

Finally he sighs, lifting his cap from his head to run his hand over his scalp. I’m still not used to seeing the copper-top mop gone. It was the trademark of the only Aengus I’ve ever known. You could see him from a city block away. I think that’s why he shaved it off the day he was convicted. It was too recognizable. Witnesses could easily identify him. “What the hell were you thinking, following me there? Ya knew something was going down.”

“What was I thinking?” I level him with a glare, fighting to keep my voice to a low hiss. Though our house may be detached, the night’s quiet and the windows are open. “You almost killed someone yesterday.”

“Fucking American,” he mutters under his breath, taking another drag. “What was she doin’ jumping past the tape anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you imagine the madness that would have stirred up? They’d have all of the gardai on this and you’d be back behind bars within a week, and for a hell of a lot longer than six years. And I’d probably be thrown in there with ya,” I add bitterly. “Da already had one heart attack. You want him to have another one?” Doctors say one more would likely kill him.

Aengus ignores the mention of our father and it makes me wonder if he’d care at all. They’ve been on the outs for years. “Did anyone see ya?”

“Besides the American girl who you almost blew up?” I shake my head. “I used the trees and then I scaled the wall.” Not an easy feat, especially with bits of plastic explosive embedded in my body.

He stabs at the newspaper headline. “What can she tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“The article says that she told police the man who fled the scene had an Irish accent. So ya talked to her.” He pushes. “What’d ya say?”

“I told her help was coming. That’s all.” It doesn’t sound like she told them anything else, but who the hell knows what the gardai didn’t tell reporters? Her name isn’t mentioned anywhere and I know they have that. “She was in shock. I doubt she remembers any of it.” I left her lying in the grass, her pretty light green eyes wild with confusion. I hated doing it, too. She’s the only reason I left the house today, to buy every newspaper I could find within a two-block radius.

I needed to know she was okay.

A part of me was hoping for more information, something to tell me who she is and why she’s in Ireland. How long she’s here for.

Where I could find her, if I just wanted to see her again. Then again, the bomb left me off-balance, struggling to get myself out of there in time. I don’t even know if I’d be able to identify her in a lineup now. All I really can remember is a pink cap, lean strong legs, and those beautiful green eyes.

Aengus’s heavy gaze levels me. “They’re already blaming us, without any proof.”

“Not us, Aengus. You, and rightfully so. You and Jimmy and whoever else he coerced into doing this.”

“Jimmy didn’t coerce me into doing anything,” Aengus snaps and I roll my eyes. I’ve never seen my big brother bend to anyone else, not even our father. But for Jimmy Conlon . . . he’d polish his bleeding shoes if the man held up a foot and a rag. As his right-hand man, Aengus is wrapped around Jimmy’s pinky finger.

And I can’t stand the bastard. He had the nerve to come into Delaney’s about three years ago, order a Guinness, and tell me that he was proud of my brother. How he had proved he was strong for “the cause.”

Jimmy isn’t fighting for “the cause.”

I thought I was going to crack my teeth that day, wrestling down the urge to label Jimmy for what he really is out loud—a lowlife racketeer, twisting what my family—my da, my granddad, and many generations before him—fought for. But I kept my mouth shut because you don’t go up against a guy like Jimmy—a convicted felon himself and a snake if I ever saw one—and come out without a bullet in the back of the head.

I suck back the rest of my beer, the alcohol helping to numb my pain. “You could have blown yourself up, Aengus.” The walk from our house in Crumlin to the Green is a good forty minutes.

He shakes his head decisively. “It was solid.”

I roll my eyes. If my parents were ever asked to put their three sons into boxes based on characteristics, I’d bet my life that Aengus would fit neatly into the one marked “loyal, volatile idiot.” He’s not smart enough to question what really matters, and Jimmy feeds off of that. He’s just using him for his dirty work.

“Just a warning, like I said.”

I crush the empty beer can in my hand, hiding my shudder at the thought of how much worse it could have been. “For who, this time?” If it’s not one gang, it’s another.

He weighs me with a heavy gaze, his beer stalling at his lips for a long moment. “The Gypsy.”

Of course. Adrian Beznick, a true Romanian drifter who started out as a petty thief twenty years ago and is now one of Dublin’s main crime bosses. The media gifted him with that name—politically correct or not—and that’s how he’s best known in all circles. I remember Aengus pointing him out to me once, strolling along the sidewalk, a man of small stature and graceful moves. He didn’t look like much at all. “Isn’t he in jail?”

“One cell block over from where I was. Doesn’t stop him from selling heroin to kids. Gardai know and they aren’t doin’ a fucking thing about it.”

I pull a smoke from Aengus’s pack and light it up. “What’s wrong? Cutting into Jimmy’s income?”

“Fuck off!” He swats at the empty cans, scattering them. “You know we don’t sell drugs.”

And yet they’re profiting from it. Extorting the city’s drug dealers—threatening their lives and promising their safety through cooperation, all in the name of the IRA. Sure, the official stance is that Jimmy and his rabble of do-gooders relieve these scum of their funds and stop future illicit activities.

But none of them have stopped dealing. They’re just required to pay a tithe to Jimmy’s guys while they do it.

I don’t know how long Aengus is going to deny what we all know Jimmy is involved in. What Aengus, by rights, is involved in. But I may as well be holding a candle in outer space if I’m trying to make Aengus see the light.

“Let me guess—Jimmy tried to take a cut off Beznick and Beznick’s having none of that.” When the IRA comes knocking on some everyday drug dealer’s door with one hand opened, the other clenched around a gun or a hacksaw, there’s usually no issue. The dealer hands money to them with a please and thank you. But Beznick’s organization probably isn’t so easily swayed. They make the papers nearly as often as the IRA nowadays.

He hesitates, which tells me I’m right. “Beznick put a hit out on Jimmy.”

“That’s serious. And Jimmy can’t get to him on the inside?” I find that hard to believe.

“Tried. Beznick has friends protecting him.” Aengus breaks eye contact to look out the window. The nasty hooked scar by his left brow glows silver from a neighbor’s stray garden light. Two centimeters over and he would have lost his eye. I remember visiting him in prison just after that happened, not even three months before he was released.

“So what does the Green have to do with Beznick?”

“Jimmy wants to remind Beznick who he’s saying no to. Remind him of the fear and respect he should have when he’s dealing with us.”

“And . . .”

That left eye twitches, a sign that I’m not going to like hearing the answer.

“I kept innocent blood off your hands yesterday, Aengus,” I remind him, my tone biting. “Why the Green?”

“Because it’s where Beznick’s sister takes his niece and nephew every day.” When he sees my face—the rage about to explode—he quickly adds, “Later in the day, of course!”

My chair topples over as I push to my feet, the back slamming into the linoleum floor. “You’re going after kids now? Family? Innocent civilians?”

Aengus is on his feet right away, never one to sit when anyone hovers over him. “Like I said . . . it was just a warning to grab his attention.”

Threatening the family of a crime boss. Yeah, I’d say that’s going to earn his attention. “Jesus, Aengus! Jimmy really thought that would persuade Beznick to lift the hit? How much do they go for these days, anyway?”

“Twenty.”

“Twenty thousand euro! The man will pay that much money to be rid of Jimmy—and you, surely—and Jimmy thinks trying to kill his family will make him back down? Is he completely daft?”

“We weren’t trying to kill them,” Aengus insists. “That’s why we took the right precautions and planned it out well. We taped off the area during the night. One of our guys opened the gates extra early, before people would ever expect the Green to be open. We made the pipe small. No glass or nails or anything. Just meant to scare.”

“Well, thank heavens for that or I might not be standing here now, would I?” I shake my head at him. “Why wouldn’t you just go after his fellas? Why not just wait outside one of their houses and put a bullet in them?”

“How many would we have to pick off before Beznick learns his lesson? How long would that take? Jimmy figured this was quicker, more impactful.”

Jimmy’s finally gone mad. “And if Beznick doesn’t call off the hit? Are you going to fill the next one with glass and nails and leave it on their doorstep for wee, little fingers to wrap around?” He shoves my hands away before I can grab hold of his shirt, standing to face me chest-to-chest. We’ve been the same height since I hit puberty and sprouted almost overnight. But years behind bars has made Aengus’s body stronger, harder.

His fighting dirtier.

I back away, knowing I’ll only end up on the ground with my stitches ripped open. I turn to face the window that looks out over the narrow garden behind us, on the stone wall dividing our property from the next. I can just make out the streaks of graffiti that someone—I’m guessing some punks in their teens—sprayed within the last few days. The little bastards must have hopped the fence and done it during the night. I haven’t had the time or energy to scrub it off yet, but it’ll have to go before the next showing.

Our granddad and nanny would be rolling in their graves if they knew that someone had defaced their lovely garden. But I’ve taken it in stride, because I remember Aengus and me doing that exact same thing, back when we did everything together, good or bad.

Things have changed.

Aengus has changed.

But so have I.

“Jimmy will make sure he gets the message, and he knows exactly who he’s messing with.” Silence hangs between us. Finally, Aengus asks, “Eamon do that for ya?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause. “So what now?”

“You idiot . . .” I mutter, hearing the meaning between his words. Can I be trusted not to say anything when the gardai come knocking on our door? Like I’d ever turn on my family. “Now I get up and go to work, just like every other day, and try to forget this.” I pause, a pinch of disappointment in my chest. Four months ago, when I picked Aengus up at the prison gates to bring him back to the house we three brothers own—left to us by our nanny—I was hopeful that after losing six years behind bars, freedom would straighten out his priorities.

“There’s an open house on Saturday. Make sure you’re not here.” The house is nothing fancy—a detached three-bedroom, one-bath home with dated décor, gardens in the front and rear, and a separate garage—but the mortgage had long since been paid off. It should fetch us at least 300,000 euro. Rowen and I will take our share and invest in some real estate together. Aengus will likely piss his away in a kip somewhere. “You’re living on borrowed time, and I don’t want to be around your poor choices. I don’t want Rowen around them. And don’t you fucking dare tell Jimmy that I was even at the Green that day.”

For once, he doesn’t argue with me.