It took the big Irishman nearly thirty minutes to make it to the Padraic Pearse, named after the Irish Catholic leader executed by the British in the 1916 Easter uprising. It was a staunch Catholic pub; photos and relics of the Rebellion decorated the windows of the small establishment.
Dougal limped in, placed his coat and his bodhrán in a corner booth, and headed to the bar for the pint of Guinness already being poured from the tap.
Court Gentry found a darkened doorway and sat down on the stoop. He’d done more walking today than he’d done in months, and he was surprised to feel the ache in the muscles of his thighs and his calves and thought he sensed a faint sting where the bullet had torn into his right leg the previous December. He wished he had a Vicodin, but he knew he couldn’t be doped up and operational at the same time, so he just sat there and stared at the front door of the pub across the street. Tonight was reconnaissance only; he’d follow his target home and then assess where and when to act afterwards.
The Padraic Pearse it was called. A tiny saloon by the looks of it from the outside. Probably Slattery’s regular haunt, seeing how he’d made a beeline here past countless other opportunities to sit and drink. There were more bars per capita here in Dublin than in any city in the world. The Irish loved their pubs, and Court was not surprised to find himself spending a portion of his evening watching the front door of a tavern, waiting for his target to down a couple of brews.
Gentry rose stiffly to his feet. He wanted to move his muscles, he was cold as well as sore, and he needed a toilet or a back alley. He knew the most reasonable place for a young local such as himself to be caught taking a piss would be the narrow passage alongside the Padraic, so he crossed the empty street and headed into the dark. Once there, he sniffed his way to a wall beside some rubbish tins, undid his belt, and then quickly retightened it. A noise farther down the alley had caught his attention: two men exiting a back door, a shaft of light fifty feet down from him, and the sound of other men talking from inside the building. The men went to a back wall and pissed, then returned inside a minute later with no idea a stranger stood nearby in the dark.
It was clearly a back door to the Padraic Pearse that they’d passed through. So the pub was much larger than Court had originally thought. He did his business against the brick wall and then walked to the back door. On the other side he heard the cracking of a pool cue against a cue ball and gruff men’s voices, audible but unintelligible. Looking ahead, Gentry saw the back alley gave access to a side street, and he wondered if Slattery had already left the bar via this route. Perhaps he’d even made the tail on him, but Court had seen no hint of that at any point in the half-hour walk from the Temple Bar.
Shit. Gentry knew he either needed to knock off the surveillance tonight and try again tomorrow, or head into the pub and take a look to see if his man was still there. The danger of being compromised in a tavern this large would be minimal; it sounded as if there were dozens inside, and the Gray Man knew how to melt into his surroundings indoors as well as outdoors. He headed back to the front door, tucked his neck deep into his denim jacket to make himself an inch shorter, and then pushed open the front door of the Padraic Pearse.
Gentry entered the pub and immediately knew he’d made a grave mistake. It was incredibly small. The pool area he’d heard from the back was shut off with an access door against the back wall of the tavern with a large sign that read Members Only. The room Court had entered contained just a small bar, three tables, and a few snugs along the wall. He strolled to the bar and took a stool, did not turn his head left or right, just pulled out his wallet and stared straight ahead at the bottles behind the bar. He felt the eyes of the dozen or so patrons, but he did not yet