by J. D. Robb
"I don't know a lot about religion, Catholic or otherwise, but one of the transmissions he sent was identified as a Catholic Requiem Mass, and the statues he leaves at the scene are of Mary, so that's my take." Absently Eve fingered the token in her pocket, pulled it out. "This means something to him."
"Luck," Farrell said. "Bad or good. We've a local artist who uses the shamrock as her signature on her paintings." Farrell frowned when she turned it over. "And a Christian symbol. The fish. Well, there I'd say you have a man who thinks Irish. Pray to God and hope for luck."
Eve slipped the token back in her pocket. "How much luck will you have pulling these twelve in on something for questioning?"
Farrell laughed shortly. "With this lot, if they're not brought in once a month or so they feel neglected. If you like, you can go have a bit of lunch, and we'll start a gathering."
"I'd appreciate it. You'll let me observe the interviews?"
"Observe, Lieutenant, but not participate in."
"Fair enough."
"I can't stretch that to include civilians," she said to Roarke. "You might find the afternoon more profitable by looking up some of your old friends and standing them to a pint."
"Understood. Thank you for your time."
She took the hand Roarke offered, held it a moment while she looked into his eyes. "I pinched your father once when I was a rookie. He took great exception to being arrested by a female—which was the mildest term he used for me. I was green, and he managed to split my lip before I restrained him."
Roarke's eyes went cool and blank. He drew his hand free. "I'm sorry for that."
"You weren't there as I recall," Farrell said mildly. "Rookies rarely forget their first mistakes, so I remember him quite well. I expected to see some of him in you. But I don't. Not a bit. Good day to you, Roarke."
"Good day to you, Inspector."
• • •
By the time Eve got back to the hotel, lunch had worn off and jet lag was fuzzing her mind. She found the suite empty, but there were a half dozen coded faxes waiting on the machine. She added more coffee to her overburdened system while she scanned them.
She yawned until her jaw cracked, then put through a call to Peabody's palm 'link.
"Peabody."
"Dallas. I just got in. Have the sweepers finished with the white van found abandoned downtown?"
"Yes, sir. Wrong trail. That van was used in a robbery in Jersey and dumped down on Canal. I'm still pursuing that lead, but it's going to take more time to eliminate vehicles. The cabdriver was a wash. He didn't even know his tags had been lifted."
"McNab make any progress on the jammer?"
Peabody snorted, then sobered. "He claims to be making some headway, though he phrases all of it in electro-ese and I can't make it out. He had a great time with some e-jockey of Roarke's. I think they're in love."
"Your snotty side's showing, Peabody."
"Not nearly as much as it could be. No transmissions have come through, so our boy's taking a break from mayhem. McNab is staying here at your home office tonight in case there's a send. I'm staying, too."
"You and McNab are staying in my office tonight?"
Her mouth moved perilously close to a pout. "If he's staying, I'm staying. Besides, the food's superior."
"Try not to kill each other."
"I'm showing admirable restraint in that particular area, sir."
"Right. Is Summerset behaving himself?"
"He went to some art class, then out for coffee and brandy with his lady friend. I had him shadowed. It was all very dignified according to the report. He got back about twenty minutes ago."
"See that he stays in."
"I've got it covered. Any progress there?"
"That's debatable. We have a list of potentials, which was shorted by half during interviews. I'm going to take a closer look at six," she said, rubbing her tired eyes. "One's in New York, and one's supposed to be in Boston. I'll run them when I get in tomorrow. We should be back by noon."
"We'll keep the home fires burning, Lieutenant."
"Find that damn van, Peabody." She disengaged the 'link and ordered herself not to wonder, or worry, about where Roarke could be.
• • •
He knew better than to go home. It was foolish and fruitless and irresistible. The shanties had changed little since he'd been a boy trying to crawl his way out of them. The buildings were cheaply constructed, with roofs sagging, windows broken. It was rare to see a flower bloom here, but a few hopeful souls had scratched out a stamp-sized garden at the doorstep of the six-flat building where he'd lived once.
But the flowers, however bright, couldn't overcome the odor of piss and vomit. And they couldn't lighten the air that lay thick with despair.
He didn't know why he went in, but he found himself standing inside the dim lobby with its sticky floors and peeling paint. And there were the stairs his father had once kicked him down because he hadn't made his quota lifting wallets.
Oh, but I had, Roarke thought now. What was a kick and tumble compared to the pounds he'd secreted away? The old man had been too drunk, and often too stupid, to have suspected his whipping boy of holding back any of the take.
Roarke had always held back. A pound here, a pound there could make a tidy sum for a determined boy willing to take his licks.
"He'd have given me his fist in my face in any case," he murmured and gazed up those battered stairs.
He could hear someone cursing, someone else weeping. You would always hear cursing and weeping in such places. The odor of boiled cabbage was strong and turned his stomach so he sought the thick air outside again.
He saw a teenage boy in tight black pants and a mop of fair hair watching him coolly from the curb. Across the street a couple of girls chalking the cracked sidewalk for hopscotch stopped to watch. He walked passed them, aware there were other eyes following him, peering out of windows and doorways.
A stranger in good shoes was both curiosity and insult.
The boy called out something vile in Gaelic. Roarke turned, met the boy's sneering eyes. "I'm going back in the alley," he said, using the same tongue, found it came more easily to his lips than he'd expected, "if you've a mind to try your luck on me. I'm in the mood to hurt someone. Might as well be you as another."
"Men have died in that alley. Might as well be you as another."
"Come on then." And Roarke smiled. "Some say I killed my father there when I was half your age, sticking a knife in his throat the way you'd slaughter a pig."
The boy shifted his weight, and his eyes changed. The sneering defiance turned to respect. "You'd be Roarke then."
"I would. Steer clear of me today and live to see your children."
"I'll get out," the boy shouted after him. "I'll get out the way you did, and one day I'll walk in fine shoes. Damned if I'll come back."
"That's what I thought," Roarke sighed and stepped into the stinking alley between the narrow buildings.
The recycler was broken. Had been broken as long as he could remember. Trash and garbage were strewn, as always, over the pitted asphalt. The wind whipped his coat, his hair, as he stood, staring down at the ground, at the place where his father had been found, dead.
He hadn't put the knife in him. Oh, he'd dreamed of killing the man; every time he'd taken a beating by those vicious hands he'd thought of pounding back. But he'd only been twelve or so when his father had met the knife, and he'd yet to kill a man.
He'd crawled out of this place, out of this pit. He'd survived, even triumphed. And now, perhaps for the first time, he realized he'd changed.
He'd never again be like the mirror image of himself who had challenged him from the curb. He was a man grown into what he had chosen to be. He enjoyed the life he'd built for itself now, not simply for its opposition to what had been.
He had love in his heart, the hot-blooded love for a woman that could never have rooted if the ground had remained stony.
After all these y
ears he discovered that coming back hadn't stirred the ghosts, but had put them to rest.
"Fuck you, bloody bastard," he murmured, but with outrageous relief. "You couldn't do me after all."
He turned away from what had been, set his direction on what was, and what would come. He walked, content now, through the rain that began to fall as soft as tears.
*** CHAPTER SIXTEEN ***
Eve had never been to a wake before, and it surprised her that, given Roarke's usual style of doing things, he'd chosen to hold it in the Penny Pig.
The pub was closed to outside traffic, but crowded just the same. It seemed Jennie had left behind a lot of friends, if no family.
An Irish wake, Eve was to discover, meant pretty much what an Irish pub meant. Music, conversation, and drinking great quantities of liquor and beer.
It made her think of a viewing she'd attended only the month before, one that had led to more death and violence. There the dead had been laid out in a clear side-viewing casket, and the room had been heavy with red draperies and flowers. The mood had been sorrow, the voices hushed.
Here, the dead were remembered in a different manner.
"A fine girl was Jennie." A man at the bar raised his glass, and his voice over the noise of the crowd. "Never watered the whiskey or stinted when pouring it. And her smile was as warm as what she served you."
"To Jennie then," it was agreed, and the toast was drunk.
Stories were told, often winding their way from some virtue of the dearly departed and into a joke on one of those present. Roarke was a favored target.
"There's a night I remember," Brian began, "years back it was, when our Jennie was just a lass—and a fine figure of one was she—that she was serving the beer and the porter. That was when Maloney owned the place—God rest his thieving soul—and I was tending bar for a pittance."
He paused, took a drink, then puffed into life one of the cigars Roarke had provided. "I had an eye for Jennie—and what right-minded young lad wouldn't—but she had none for me. 'Twas Roarke she was after. On that evening, we had a fair crowd in, and all the young bucks were hoping to get a wink from young Jennie. I gave her all me best love-starved looks."
He demonstrated with a hand over his heart and the heaviest of sighs so his audience hooted with laughter and cheered him on.
"But to me she paid no mind at all, for her attention was all for Roarke. And there himself sat, perhaps at the table where he's sitting where he is tonight. Though he wasn't dressed so fine as he is tonight, and I'd wager a punt to a penny that he didn't smell so fresh either. Though Jennie sashayed by him a dozen times or more, and leaned over, oh, leaned over close in a way that made my heart pound wishing I were exposed to such a fine and lovely view, and she would ask so sweetly could she fetch him another pint."
He sighed again, wet his throat, and went on with it. "But Roarke, he was blind to the signals she was sending, deaf to the invitation in that warm voice. There he sat with the girl of my dreams offering him glory, and he kept noting figures in a tattered little book, adding them up, calculating his profits. For a businessman he ever was. Then Jennie, for a determined girl was she when her mind was set, and it was set on Roarke, asked him please would he give her a hand for just a moment in the back room, for she couldn't reach what she needed on the high shelf. And him being so tall, and strong with it, could he fetch it down for her."
Brian rolled his eyes at that while one of the women leaned over the booth where Roarke sat with Eve and good-naturedly pinched his biceps. "Well, the boy wasn't a cad for all his wicked ways," Brian continued, "and he put his book away in his pocket and went off with her into the back. A frightful long time they were gone I'm after telling you, with my heart broken to bits behind Maloney's bar. When come out they did, with hair all mused and clothes askew, and a bright-eyed look about them, I knew Jenny was lost to me. For not a bloody thing did he carry back for her from the high shelf in the back room. All he did was sit again, give her a wicked, quick grin…and take out his book and count his profits.
"Sixteen years old we were, the three of us, and still dreaming about what our lives might be. Now Maloney's pub is mine, Roarke's profits too many to count, and Jennie, sweet Jennie, is with the angels."
There were a few tears at the end of it, and conversation began again in murmurs. Bringing his glass, Brian walked over, sat across from Roarke. "Do you remember that night?''
"I do. It's a good memory you brought back."
"Perhaps it was ill-mannered of me. I hope you didn't take offense to it, Eve."
"I'd need a heart of stone to do that." Maybe it was the air, or the music, or the voices, but they made her sentimental. "Did she know how you felt about her?"
"Then, no." Brian shook his head, and there was a warm gleam in his eye. "And later, we were too much friends for else. My heart always leaned toward her, but it was in a different way as time passed. It was the thought of her I loved."
He seemed to shake himself, then tapped a finger on Roarke's glass. "Well now, you're barely drinking. Have you lost your head for good Irish whiskey living among the Yanks?"
"My head was always better than yours, wherever I was living."
"You had a good one," Brian admitted. "But I remember a night. Oh, it was after you'd sold off a shipment of a fine French bordeaux you'd smuggled in from Calais—begging your pardon, Lieutenant darling. Are you remembering that, Roarke?"
Roarke's lips moved into a smirk, and his hand brushed its way down Eve's hair. "I smuggled more than one shipment of French wine in my career."
"Oh, no doubt, no doubt, but this night in particular, you kept a half dozen bottles out, and were in a light and sharing frame of mind. You pulled together a game—a friendly one for a change—and we sat and drank every drop. You and me and Jack Bodine and that bloody fool Mick Connelly who got himself killed in a knife fight in Liverpool a few years back. Let me tell you, Lieutenant darling, this man of yours got drunk as six sailors in port and still won all our money."
Roarke picked up his glass now and savored a sip. "I recall being a bit light in the pocket the next morning when I woke up."
"Well." Brian grinned hugely. "Get drunk with thieves and what does it get you? But it was good wine, Roarke. It was damn good wine. I'll have them play one of the old tunes. 'Black Velvet Band.' You'll sing?"
"No."
"Sing?" Eve sat up. "He sings?"
"No," Roarke said again, definitely, while Brian laughed.
"Prod him enough, and keep his glass full, and you'd get a tune out of him."
"He hardly even sings in the shower." She stared thoughtfully at Roarke. "You sing?"
Struggling between amusement and embarrassment, he shook his head and lifted his glass. "No," he said again. "And I don't plan to get drunk enough to prove myself a liar."
"Well, we'll work on that some." Brian winked and rose. "For now then I'm going to have them play a reel. Will you dance with me, Eve?"
"I might." She watched him walk off to liven up the music. "Getting drunk, singing in pubs, and tickling barmaids in the back room. Hmmm." She shot a long, speculative look at the man she married. "This is very interesting."
"You do the first, the others come easy."
"I might like to see you drunk." She put a hand on his cheek, glad to see the sadness had faded from his eyes. Wherever he had gone that afternoon was his secret, and she was satisfied that it had done him good.
He leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. "So I could tickle you in the back room? There's your reel," he added when the music brightened.
Eve glanced over, saw Brian coming back her way with neat, bouncing little steps. "I like him."
"So do I. I'd forgotten how much."
• • •
Sunshine and rain fell together and turned the light into a pearl. In the churchyard stood ancient stone crosses, pitted from age and wind. The dead rested close to each other, intimates of fate. The sound of the sea rose up from beyond rocky c
liffs in a constant muted roar that proved time continued, even here.
There wasn't a single airbike or tram to spoil the sky where clouds layered over the blue like folded gray blankets. And the grass that covered the hills that rose up toward that sky was the deep emerald of hopes and dreams.
It made Eve think of an old video, or a hologram program.
The priest wore long traditional robes and spoke in Gaelic. The burying of the dead was a ritual only the rich could afford. It was a rare sight, and a crowd gathered outside the gates, respectively silent as the casket was lowered into its fresh pit.
Roarke rested his cheek on the top of Eve's head, gathering comfort as the mourners made the sign of the cross. He was putting more than a friend into the ground, and knew it. He was putting part of himself, a part he'd already thought long buried.
"I need to speak with the priest a moment."
She lifted a hand to the one he'd laid on her shoulder. "I'll wait here."
As he moved off, Brian stepped up to her. "He's done well by Jennie. She'll rest here—have the shade of the ash in the summer." With his hands comfortably at his sides, he looked out over the churchyard. "And they still ring the bells in the belfry of a Sunday morning. Not a recording, but the bells themselves. It's a fine sound."
"He loved her."
"There's nothing quite so sweet as the first love of the young and the lonely. You remember your childhood sweetheart?''
"I didn't have one. But I understand it."
Brian laid a hand on her shoulder, gave it a quick squeeze. "He couldn't have done better than you, even if you did make the unfortunate mistake of becoming a cop. Are you a good one, Lieutenant darling?"
"Yeah." Something in the way he'd asked had her looking over, into his face. "It's what I'm best at."
He nodded, and his thoughts seemed to drift as he shifted his gaze. "Christ knows how much money Roarke's passing the priest in that envelope."
"Do you resent that? His money?"
"No indeed." And he laughed a little. "Not that I don't wish I had it as well. He earned it. Always was the next game, the next deal with our lad Roarke. All I wanted was the pub, and since I have my heart's desire, I suppose I'm rich as well."