Wandering up the Main Street of Naas, a dowdy little would be mercantile town in the heartland of South Kildare.
On a nondescript building wall, a business plaque catches my eye.
It reads:
"Conal Boyce, Criminal Attorney."
Well, well, well.
A bit blatant.
I would have thought he'd have to make some effort to conceal the fact.
Alas poor Boyce.
I knew him Horatio.
(Horatio is Horatio Aloysius Semtex Six Counties O'Toole an IRA skang who is purported to be the only current reader of the Heelers Diaries website - Ed note)
(Why don't you just call him Ron Baines like you do with everyone else whose identity you wish to protect? - Ron Baines note)
(I'm not protecting their identities. I'm protecting myself from being sued by them. - Heelers note)
(Anyhoo - Anyhoo note)
I shared a stage with Conal Boyce once in a theatrical production of a play called Boeing Boeing.
Although to be fair he didn't really share.
That old gag.
In the play, I portrayed a womanising playboy.
Conal Boyce acted the role of my best friend.
He stole the show in a way a real best friend wouldn't.
Him and his louche effortless charm, shiny bald patch, Bohemian charisma, atheistic innuendos, shameless over acting, look at me, I'm funny, blah blah blah, etc etc.
Incredibly, I later gave him a free exhaust for his car as a bribe to clinch the deal for him to take part in my own production of a Woody Allen play called Death. a production by the way for which I still owe Woody Allen some royalties.
Hint.
They didn't come to much.
So I never paid Woody Allen but you may be sure the criminal attorney got his exhaust alright.
Yes, I was the producer.
Me.
Death was my production.
But once Conal Boyce had been cast in a main role, he more or less took over.
It was not what he did to his character in the play that annoyed me but the way that he did it.
Him and his flamboyant homosexualist subtexts.
A man with my insecurities should have known better than to cast such a person.
I ask you.
He put things in that play that neither me nor Woody Allen ever expected to be there. (By the way Woody Allen filmed his own version of Death years later as Shadows And Fog, his effort I must say in all modesty turning out not nearly as good as the Healy/Boyce b-st-rdisation.)
But I digress.
I squiint again at the plaque.
So Conal Boyce is a criminal attorney.
No secret.
It's all out in the open.
You've got to admire his chutzpah.
Kind of courageous really.
I glance around the street to get my bearings.
I am trying to figure out if the nondescript building is the same one that Judge Coughlan used to rent out to a drug gang that dealt their products there to children, teenagers and others under the guise of what they called a Headshop. Could it even be the same building that Judge Coughlan afterwards rented to the IRA to use for one of their money laundering front operations masquerading as a hairdresser's?
That would be a hell of a lineage.
Absolutely hilarious.
And now the tenant is Conal Boyce.
Someone should warn Judge Coughlan.
Arf arf.
Ha, ha, ha, hoo ho, hee, hee, haa haaah haaaa.
Oh come on.
That was a good one.
A cool breeze ruffles Main Street.
I shake my head, chuckling.
Conal Boyce is a criminal attorney.
Like it says on the sign.
Right there.
You gotta admire the frankness.
Whatever next.
I must say I would find the possibility of a trend somewhat refreshing.
My old pals Judge Martin Nolan, ex Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Police Chief Noirin O'Sullivan could have a field day under the new dispensation with those sorts of signs.
I hope it stays fine for all of them.
Presently I tear myself away from the contemplation of Conal Boyce's name plate.
Already it has a lot to answer for.
I saunter off up the street into the mists of time and fantasy.
A certain famous fleeting grin is playing on my handsome preraphaelite features.
Not for the first time in my life I am touched by the strange ineluctable paradoxes that gild the goonish underbellies of things.
Each man must be a legend to himself.
