Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,106

me she’s an artist and she’s dating Corrigan’s brother, even though she’s married, he went to Ireland to scatter Corrigan’s ashes and came right back, they fell in love, she’s getting her life together, she used to be an addict, and she still likes to drink. She says she’ll put some money in my prison account and maybe I can get myself some cigarettes.

“What else can I get for you?” she says.

“My babies.”

“I’ll try,” she says. “I’ll see where they are. I’ll see if I can get them to visit. Anything else, Tillie?”

“Jazz,” I say.

“Jazz?” she goes.

“Bring Jazzlyn back too.”

And she goes white at the gills.

“Jazzlyn’s dead,” she said, like I’m some fucking idiot.

She’s got a look in her eyes like she just been kicked. She’s staring at me and her lip is quivering. And then the goddamn bell goes off. It’s visiting time over and we’re saying good-bye to each other behind the glass, and I turn to her and say, “Why did ya come here?”

She looks down at the ground and then she smiles up at me, lip still quivering, but she shakes her head, and there are little teardrops in the corner of her eyes.

She slips a couple of books across the table and I’m like, Wow, Rumi, how the fuck did she know?

She says she’ll come again, and I beg her again to bring the babies. She says she’ll ask around, they’re with social services or something. Then she waves bye-bye, scrubbing her eyes dry as she walks away. I’m thinking, What the fuck?

I was walking up the stairs again, still wondering how she knew about Rumi, and then I remembered. I started laughing to myself, but I was glad I didn’t say anything to her about Ciaran and his little pork sword—what’s the point? He was a good guy, Keyring. Anyone who’s a brother of Corrie’s is a brother of mine.

—

Nothing’s righteous. Corrigan knew the deal. He never gave me no shit. His brother was a bit of an asshole. That’s just a plain fact. But lots of people are assholes and he paid me well for the one time and I blinded him with Rumi. Corrigan’s brother had some serious scratch in his pockets—he was a bartender or something. I looked down and I remember thinking, There’s my dark tit in Corrigan’s brother’s hand.

—

I never saw Corrigan naked, but I imagine he was swell even if his brother was a Tweety Bird.

—

First time we saw Corrigan, we just flat-out knew he was undercover. They got Irishes undercover. Most of the cops’re Irish—guys going a little to fat, with bad teeth but still a sense of making the world funny.

One day Corrigan’s van was filthy and Angie wrote with her finger in the dirt: DON’T YOU WISH YOUR WIFE WAS THIS FILTHY? That had us crying we laughed so hard. Corrie didn’t notice it. Then Angie wrote a smiley face and TURN ME OVER on the other side. He was scooting around the Bronx with that crazy shit written on his van and he never even saw it. He was in a world of his own, Corrie. Angie went up to him at the end of the week and showed him the words. He got all blushy like the Irish guys do and he began stammering.

“But I don’t understand—I haven’t got a wife,” he said to Angie.

We never laughed so much since Christ left Cincinnati.

—

Every day we were hanging out with him, pleading with him to arrest us. And he was going: “Girls, girls, girls, please.” The more we got to hugging on him the more he’d go, “Girls, girls, come on, now, girls.”

Once, Angie’s daddy broke us up and grabbed Corrie by the scruff of the neck and told him where he should go. He put a knife up under Corrie’s neck. Corrie just stared at him. His eyes were big but it was like he didn’t have no fear. We were like: “Yo, man, just leave.” Angie’s daddy flicked the knife and Corrie walked away with blood coming down his black shirt.

A couple of days later he was down again, bringing us coffees. He had a little bandage on his neck. We were like: “Yo, Corrie, you should get-the-fuck, you’ll get tossed.” He shrugged, said he’d be all right. Down came Angie’s daddy and Jazzlyn’s daddy and Suchie’s daddy, all at once, like the Three Wise Men. I saw Corrie’s face go white. I never seen him go that white before. He was