"Black Stuff" by Ken Bruen (from Bruen's anthology Dublin Noir, 2006)
We lost one of the truly greats this last Saturday with the passing of Irish crime writer Ken Bruen at the age of 74. Bruen, who held a doctorate in metaphysics, was a unique voice in the field -- wise, literate, compassionate, whose works were a skillful blend of tragedy, comedy, violence, horror, and humanity, told against a unflinching view of Irish society and economics. His most popular character, Jack Teylor, an ex-Guarda, manages to maintain his dignity despite a lifetime of horrific happenings. I first encountered Taylor and Bruen in the 2003 novel The Magdalene Martyrs, and was stunned by the quality of his work. Since then I have eagerly read as many of his novels and stories I could get my hands on, ending with last month's Galway's Edge, the 18th (and now last) novel in the Taylor series, which I inhaled just yesterday. Still, I needed more Bruen, and I came across "Black Stuff" late kast night.
It's a brief story, merely twelve pages long, more of a character sketch embedded in a heist caper. The protagonist, Phil, is Black Irish. Not the Black Irish term which was once used to describe Irish refugees of the Great Famine, but the more modern usage describing people of Irish descent with dark colored hair and dark coloring -- more specifically, Irish of African descent. When Phil, who had a white mother and a one-night-stand father, Dublin was essentially a small town before the wakening of the short-lived Celtic Tiger economy; Phil did not really realize he was Black until he was fourteen; previous to that, then other kids made fun of him because he was shit at hurling. His mother, whom he loved, spent her life "broke, impoverished, sullen, ill;" but she had instilled one survival tip: "Never, and I mean never, let them know how smart you are." (After she died, Phil had a mason carve on her gravestone
I
DIDN'T
LET
THEM
KNOW
Phil has led a ow-level life of crime, keeping himself to himself. He worked out and it shows. He has two ruined fingers from an early encounter with a criminal gang from the north. And he never lets them know how smart he is.
So, one day in a bar, this man enters, pretending somewhat effectively to be an American, calling himself Bowman. He strikes up a conversation with Phil and, over the next month, meets with him a number of times. Phil doesn't know what this man's game is but he plays along. Bowman finally reveals that he is planning to steal a famous painting and wants Phil's assistance; they would split the money they get from it fifty-fifty. The painting? Arrangement in Gray and Black, more commonly known as Whistler's Mother, now on a six-month loan to a Dublin museum. The theft will be timed when there is a window in the security -- "the patrol will be switched, the CCTV is to be revamped, there'll only be two guard on actual watch. Can you ____ believe it?"
The heist goes perfectly. Bowman and Phil are dressed as maintenance men to help them blend in. Especially in Phil's case: a "sign of the new Ireland, black guy riding am mop, no one blinked an eye. We'd become America." The guards are disarmed, the painting stolen, but as they were almost out of the building a soldier came out of nowhere with a gun. Bowman shot him in the gut, then shot him twice more, just because.
That's when things got hot and Bowman and Phil had to stay below the radar for a month. Finally, Bowman calls Phil to his apartment: he had received thirty thousand as a down payment on the painting. Phil finally got a good look at the portrait of Whistler's mother. 'The old lady did indeed look...old. She was nothing like my mother -- my mother had never sat down in her wretched life," Bowman, it turns out has a gun and is a member of an Irish branch of the Ku Klux Klan.
But Phil never let Bowman know how smart he was...
A great story.
