by Jan Burke
That was the rich guy’s little joke, and oh, how she had laughed when she first saw it. She never wore pink dresses, but she adored pink underwear. It gave her a kind of secret pleasure, knowing she wasn’t wearing anything drab and white, or too sexy like black or red. Pink was innocent, but a little naughty, too. The fellows she went with always went wild for it — the rich fellow more than any of them. He told her the carpet in the car would be just like her underpants, a little hidden delight that most people wouldn’t see until they got close.
She didn’t miss the rich guy. She didn’t mind leaving Gus. She figured not much good had come to her in Las Piernas, but she surely wished they had her car. She glanced at her purse, thought about the little something in it that she had stolen from the boss’s office one night when Gus had been meeting with him out on the farm. That had both thrilled and scared her, but a girl had to look out for herself. Maybe someday it would come in handy, and she could get a new car out of it.
She watched Lew’s long brown fingers on the steering wheel of the Bel Air, holding sure and steady as he drove down El Camino Real toward San Diego. She tucked her toes under Lew’s thigh. When he looked over at her, she said, “Mind if I keep them warm?”
He shook his head. She saw him swallow hard and she smiled. “Where are we going?”
“Mexico.”
“I don’t speak Mexican.”
“I speak Spanish. We’ll be all right.”
“You speak two languages? Brother, you don’t say much in either one of them.”
“A buen entendedor, pocas palabras,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“To she who understands well, few words are needed,” he said, and ran a strong hand along her nylon stockings from her heel to the back of her knee, causing her skirt to cascade softly back to her hips, exposing the place where her stockings attached to her garters, and beneath, a glimpse of pink.
4
ERIC YEAGER SHIVERED AND TUCKED HIS LARGE HANDS INTO THE POCKETS of his peacoat. He waited in darkness behind a rusted iron gate and looked out toward the sea, although the fog was now so thick he couldn’t see the ocean, a hundred yards away. He could hear it, though. A storm was coming. If he hadn’t heard that on his car radio, he would have known it by the sound of the breakers. He stretched a little, his muscles sore from a hard night’s work. There was a painful wound on his forearm that stopped him mid-stretch. He felt a brief flare of anger as he recalled receiving it, then smiled to himself. The wound had, after all, been more than avenged.
He was a young man, strong, and if not precisely handsome, attractive enough to draw women to his side without much effort. He was not foolish enough to doubt that his uncle’s millions were part of that magnetism. Everyone in Las Piernas knew that Mitch Yeager and his wife were childless, and doted on Eric and Ian, their nephews, who had lost both parents before they were ten.
He wondered what everyone in Las Piernas would think of Uncle Mitch’s latest act of charity. Word wasn’t out about the adoption yet, but once it was, would women be so anxious to date Eric and Ian, knowing Uncle Mitch now had a young son?
Uncle Mitch had assured them that he would always take care of them, but Eric was uneasy. Ian, younger and bolder than Eric, had shrugged this off. “We’re worse off without Uncle Mitch than we are with him. He didn’t have to do shit for us, and look how many nice things he does for us all the time. We owe him some loyalty — think about Aunt Estelle.”
Eric didn’t have much respect for his aunt, who never stood up to anybody, but he knew that she loved babies and had always been sad about not having one of her own. Maybe, as Ian claimed, Uncle Mitch had decided to take this kid under his roof for her sake.
Eric doubted it.
He knew what Ian would say to that, too. Ian sometimes called him “’Fraidy,” as in “’Fraidy Cat.” Eric had beat the crap out of him more than once for that, but nobody ever taught Ian anything with a fist. Eric secretly admired him for it, but still wished he would wise up about Uncle Mitch. They couldn’t count on him forever. Especially not with this new kid in the picture.
“Uncle Mitch’s plans are always good ones,” Ian had said. “You know that.” He smiled and cuffed Eric on the shoulder. “You aren’t jealous of an itty-bitty baby, are you?”
“Just worried about the future, little brother,” Eric said. Every now and then he had to rub in the fact that he was older.
“You know what’s wrong with you? You need some action. When you aren’t doing anything else, you worry.”
Eric admitted this was true. Tonight, he hadn’t found time to worry at all, until now, when he was sitting here waiting for Ian.
Eric reached into his coat and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a silver monogrammed lighter. Neither the initials nor the lighter were his. He flicked the flint wheel of the lighter and it sparked a flame on the first try. Pleased at this, he closed the lighter with another motion of his wrist and repeated the actions several times before he lit a Pall Mall, something Uncle Mitch would have hated to see him do. Uncle Mitch hated cigarette smoking. A pipe or an occasional cigar would have met with his approval. This, Eric thought, was the kind of crazy shit he had to put up with.
Now, when he was supposed to remain concealed, Uncle Mitch would have especially disliked seeing him smoke or playing with the lighter. He would have knocked the crap out of Eric for stealing the lighter in the first place.
Uncle Mitch didn’t like the fact that Eric and Ian liked to read James Bond books. Didn’t seem to understand that those were the only books they wanted to read at all. Uncle Mitch was trying to move up in the world, and didn’t want them to read paperback novels. So what. Eric had a copy of From Russia with Love waiting for him at home.
Every now and again, Eric had to do something that Uncle Mitch wouldn’t like.
He reached into his pocket again and felt comforted by the small objects he touched.
Let Uncle Mitch have his baby. Eric would make sure that he and Ian would be all right.
The concrete beneath his feet was as damp as if it had already rained. He looked around him. These old bootleggers’ tunnels weren’t built for comfort. This one led back to a mansion up on the bluff. The boats would pull ashore on moonless nights, and the rumrunners would bring the booze up from the shore into these tunnels, and then into the cellars of the rich people’s houses. If the prohibition agents asked questions, why, the rich people just said they used the tunnels to store their little boats or to get down to the beach to sun-bathe. Nothing the government could do about that.
Eric liked to think he would have made a good bootlegger. His dad, Adam Yeager, had been a rumrunner. Eric barely remembered him, but Uncle Mitch had made sure to tell the boys all about him as they were growing up. Whatever else you might want to say about Uncle Mitch, you had to admit he loved Eric’s dad.
His dad had been one wild son of a bitch, but smart, too. The family had lost a lot of money during the Depression. Adam’s bootlegging kept them out of poverty. That’s what Uncle Mitch always said.
The fog had rolled in sooner than expected, and as the minutes went by, Eric began to wonder if Ian would be able to make it ashore without trouble. Maybe Uncle Mitch didn’t always make such great plans after all. In fact, Eric was certain of that.
Eric tended to improvise more than Ian did. Sometimes things happened on the spot, and you had to be able to react, kind of like James Bond might.
Tonight he had been forced to make some decisions, and they were good ones. He hoped Ian had been able to figure out what to do. It was taking him too long to get back here.
If anything had happened to Ian…
He heard someone moving across the sand, coming closer. He hesitated, then took another drag.
“Put out that damned cigarette,” a voice said from the whiteness beyond. Gradually, Eric could make out the figure in the wet suit. Ian was okay. Everything was going to be okay.
“Try and make me,
little brother,” he answered, and laughed.
5
MITCH YEAGER HUNG UP THE PHONE AND EXHALED HARSHLY. HE listened, wondering if the call had awakened Estelle and the baby, but upstairs, all was quiet.
He had expected to feel different somehow. So much waiting and planning had gone into this night. Not everything had been done according to his instructions, of course. And there were a few more matters to attend to. His pleasure would have to wait a bit longer.
He could be patient.
The thought made him smile.
Loose ends. That was it. He would feel better once he settled everything to his satisfaction.
At least he knew Eric and Ian were home now. He would have to find some way to reward them. Eric, he thought, needed more assurance. He loved his nephews, but neither of them was all that bright. Took after their late mother in the brains department.
Mitch heard the baby cry, but Estelle rushed in to take care of him, and soon he quieted. Mitch wondered if the boy would be smart. Couldn’t really tell yet, of course. If he was, Mitch would teach him to run Yeager Enterprises. Wouldn’t that be something? Yes, that would be perfect.
He moved to his desk and picked up a small, framed photograph — a black-and-white image of Mitch and his brother. Adam, about twenty, his arm around Mitch’s skinny shoulders. Mitch was fifteen or so. Adam smiling, his eyes full of mischief.
He missed him every day. Every single day.
6
VIEWED FROM THE BACK, THE MAN WHO HAD SPENT THE LAST FEW HOURS keeping a vigil in the hospital room might have been mistaken for a boxer. He was an athletic man in his late twenties: his sturdiness could not be hidden beneath his suit, nor his height disguised by the odd way in which he leaned against the window, both large hands against the glass, one splayed open, the other clenched in a fist; his forehead was bent against the same cold, smooth surface. It was raining, but he seemed unaware of the drops colliding against the other side of the pane, or of his own reflection, the reflection of a man revisiting some too familiar misery.
His hands, their knuckles crosshatched with scars, might have fooled the unobservant into thinking that he made his way in the world with his fists. But a closer look at the right hand, the open one, would reveal black ink stains marring otherwise clean, long fingers.
“O’Connor?”
It was no more than a puzzled whisper, but the younger man’s reverie was instantly broken, and he moved to the bedside of the man who had called his name.
“I’m here, Corrigan,” he said quickly.
“Should have known,” Corrigan murmured, turning his right eye — the one that wasn’t bandaged — toward his visitor. Speaking slowly through stitched and swollen lips, he said, “Can’t the devil wait ’til I’m dead before he sends his minions?”
“It’s worse than that, Jack Corrigan. The bastard made me come here alone, on account of him and the boys below being too busy laying in fuel for the times to come. Claims they’ve never had to build a fire as hot as the one they’ll need for the likes of you.”
“I say we make him wait. I’m going to nobody’s cold hell.”
“Agreed,” O’Connor said. He watched as Corrigan tried to take stock of his surroundings. “You’re in St. Mary’s.”
“What time is it?”
“Nine o’clock. Sunday night.”
“Sunday night…” Corrigan repeated, bewildered.
“You’ve needed the rest. And need more. Don’t worry, just sleep. I’ll be here.”
Corrigan seemed unable to resist the suggestion, and began to fall asleep again, but then as if suddenly recalling something troubling, he looked up at O’Connor and said, “The car…”
O’Connor frowned. Jack hadn’t driven a car in more than twenty years — not since the accident that had permanently injured his ankle and caused so many other troubles. O’Connor decided that Corrigan was still in a fog, confused as any man might be after so severe a beating. “Don’t let that trouble you now, Jack,” he said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Corrigan seemed unsure of this, but lost his struggle to stay awake.
O’Connor felt a sensation of relief run through him from his shoulders to his shoes, and he now looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. Up to that moment, he had been aware only of his battered and bandaged friend, of his own helplessness and anger, of long-ago memories of the only other time he had seen Jack in a hospital bed. But now Corrigan had awakened and spoken and even joked a bit. There was still plenty to worry over, but O’Connor relaxed enough to acknowledge to himself that he was tired.
O’Connor got the call at five this morning, not long after Jack had been found at the edge of a marsh, soaked to the skin in brackish water. Someone at the hospital had found O’Connor’s business card and phone number in Corrigan’s water-logged wallet. O’Connor had insisted Jack carry the card, thinking of the nights when Jack might spend his cab fare on booze. In case of emergency, please notify… he had written on the back of it and added his home number. He had been called more than once. Nothing else the hospital staff had found in the wallet had been readable, but because O’Connor had lived in three different apartments in the last five years, he had used pencil to write his phone number on the card. Pencil didn’t run.
Forty dollars had survived the soaking, so O’Connor was fairly sure the reason for the beating hadn’t been robbery. God knew what had happened to Jack or why, but O’Connor figured that it was likely the answer would have something to do with a woman. That could wait.
A uniformed officer had stopped by to take as much of a report as he could, which wasn’t much of one. O’Connor had asked him to get in touch with Dan Norton, a friend of Jack’s who worked as a homicide detective with the Las Piernas police. He hadn’t had much hope that the officer would do that, so he was surprised when Norton had come by for a few minutes, at about ten that morning. He was one of half a dozen friends who had visited while Jack was still out cold. O’Connor knew Norton would make sure the case got whatever attention could be spared to it.
O’Connor looked around the room. There was a second patient’s bed, empty but neatly made, and after a brief study, he adjusted it almost to a sitting position. He pulled his tie free of his collar, tucked it into his pocket, took off his suit coat and draped it neatly over the back of a chair, removed his shoes and placed them beneath, then climbed onto the bed.
He lay on his side, facing Corrigan, trying to mentally list his enemies. It was a long damned list.
A young nurse came in and shook her head when she saw him, but said nothing.
She took Corrigan’s pulse, made a note on a chart, and said, “His color is better. That’s a good sign.”
“He woke up,” O’Connor said.
“When?” she asked, surprised.
“Just now. Talked to me a bit, then fell back to sleep.”
“You should have come to get me,” she scolded.
“It was me he wanted to talk to,” he said.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation, then caught the look of amusement on his face. “You’re going to get us in trouble, Mr. O’Connor. Visiting hours were over long ago. If one of the nuns comes in here—”
“One of them has come by already,” he said, smiling.
“Look, why don’t you just go home and let us—”
The smile disappeared. “Forget it. Until I know who did this to him, I’m not leaving.”
“I know, I know. You’re going to defend him single-handedly if his attackers make another attempt on his life.”
“Do you think I’m not up to the job?” he asked, throwing his long legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up straight.
“Apparently you don’t think this hospital is.”
“Although the reputation of the Sisters of Mercy is undoubtedly a fierce one,” he said, “and while I’m sure many a man has died of cruel injuries sustained from wimples and rosary beads, playing bodyguard is not really in their l
ine of work, now is it?”
“Is it in yours?”
“If need be.”
They were reporters, the other nurses said, this man and the patient. She had not imagined that the work was so rough. This one had charmed his way past the end of visiting hours with his smile and that faint echo of Ireland in his speech.
Corrigan moaned and O’Connor was up on his stocking feet and next to the bed in an instant. Together they watched and waited, but there was no other sound from him, save that of his steady breathing.
The nurse studied O’Connor. His hair was dark and thick, a little ruffled. A thin scar cut one of his black brows in half, and his nose had been broken at least once. His blue-gray eyes were bloodshot; there were dark circles beneath them, circles that were not merely the result of this one night of vigilance.
“You need to get some sleep, Mr. O’Connor.”
He shook his head, went back to watching Corrigan.
After a moment, she said, “Next time he wakes up, you’ll let me know?”
He looked up again. “Right away,” he said, crossing his heart in a school-boy’s gesture.
“I wonder what you were like as a child?” she said, glancing at his unmended socks and rumpled hair.
“Ah, my dear,” he said, not meeting her eyes, “no, you don’t. No, you don’t.”
He did not want to sleep, and he did not worry that he would. He washed his face with cold water, then lay back down on the bed, watching Corrigan. He spent a number of minutes in the same useless way he had spent earlier hours — speculating on who had done this to Corrigan, and why. Jack had been closemouthed about what he would be doing this evening. Thinking back on it, O’Connor realized that Corrigan had made stronger than usual protests about O’Connor keeping tabs on him.
“Why on earth didn’t I know you were up to something then and there?” he murmured to himself. “It’s not as if I just met you, is it?”
7
O’CONNOR GOT HIS FIRST PAYING JOB WHEN HE WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD, in 1936. That was the year he began selling the Express on the corner of Broadway and Las Piernas Boulevard. At that time, the morning paper in Las Piernas was the News, the evening, the Express. Although the papers were owned by the same publisher — Mr. Winston Wrigley — and worked out of the same building, the two staffs were fiercely competitive, paperboys included. The star reporter of the News was a woman named Helen Swan; on the Express, young Jack Corrigan was making a name for himself.