Dead Irish

by John T Lescroart

  “I just don’t believe Eddie’s gone.”

  Hardy folded his hands, exhaled, looked down. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the tough part.”

  “What do you mean you’re trying to find who killed Eddie? I thought he killed himself.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  The kid rolled his eyes up. Hardy reached down, grabbed Steven’s ankle and started squeezing. Hardy had a good grip. Steven tried to pull away but couldn’t do it.

  Hardy forced a tight grip and spoke in a whisper. “Listen, you little shit, I do not need to take any high-school tough-guy attitude crap from you. Do you understand me?”

  Hardy’s left forearm was burning from the pressure. Steven’s jaw was set. “Let go of my leg.”

  “Do you understand me?”

  Steven took another five or six seconds to save a little face, then nodded and mumbled, “Yeah.”

  Hardy figured that was good enough. He let go. “Now, if you remember, I asked you why you thought Eddie killed himself. Did the police or somebody tell you that?”

  Steven rubbed his ankle, but Hardy had gotten his attention. “I mean, he had a gun in his hand, didn’t he? There was a note.”

  “It’s easy to put a gun in the hand of somebody who’s already dead. And the note could have been anything. What I want to know is why you think it-that he killed himself?”

  “ ’Cause he was smart, and who’s smart wants to live?”

  It wasn’t mock macho. The kid meant it. It rocked Hardy a little. He hung his head a minute, took a breath. “Hey, is it that bad, Steven?”

  The boy just shrugged, his thin arms crossed on his chest.

  “Was he depressed? Eddie, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Hardy looked up at him. “Why do you think I’m doing this? You think I want to be here, going over all this with anybody who’ll talk to me? Would that be your idea of a good time?”

  “I don’t have any idea of a good time,” the boy mumbled.

  Hardy swallowed that. “Okay.”

  Steven reached into the top drawer of the dresser next to his bed and pulled out a switchblade knife that he began to snap open and closed methodically. Modern American worry beads, Hardy thought. Hiding his surprise, he asked where it had come from.

  “Uncle Jim brought it back from Mexico.”

  “Uncle Jim?”

  “Sure. You know. Father Cavanaugh. But don’t tell Mom, would you? She’d probably be nervous.”

  After a minute Hardy was used to it-the skinny little kid moping on the bed, opening and closing a switchblade for solace.

  “So you want to help?”

  Steven closed the knife. Not exactly trust yet in the eyes, but at least a lack of active distrust. Probably the kid couldn’t help Hardy at all, but it wouldn’t hurt him-the way he felt about himself-if he felt he was doing something about his brother’s death.

  “What could I do?” he asked.

  “Keep yourself alert. Think about things over the past month or two, anything Ed or anybody who knew him might have said or done, what he might have been up to, anything.” He pulled out his wallet. “Here’s a card. Why don’t you keep it to yourself, same for me and the knife, right?”

  Secrets together. As good a bond as many. “This is a neat card,” Steven said.

  Hardy got up. “Be careful with that switchblade,” he said. Then, at the door, he turned. “Think hard, Steven. Something’s out there.” Maybe the wrong thing to say to a kid, but he wasn’t editing just now.

  Jodie and Frannie, holding hands, were standing in front of the wall of the den now, looking at the pictures.

  Hardy didn’t knock. “Your family keeps Kodak in business,” he said.

  They turned, and Frannie introduced Jodie. Eighteen or so, she was just passing through gangly. Her freckled face was still blotched from the crying. Some baby fat rounded, but only slightly, the corners of her cheekbones. Her wide blue eyes, also reddened, had irises flecked with gold. Her nose wasn’t perfect, but Hardy liked it, a little too flat at the bridge and sticking out at the bottom like a baby’s thumb.

  She was obviously Erin ’s kid, but as with Steven and Ed, and even Mick for that matter, there wasn’t much sign of Big Ed’s genes.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Frannie, confused momentarily, stared back at the wall of pictures, then again at Hardy. “I think…” She turned to Jodie and smiled. “My mind…”

  “It’s okay,” Hardy said. “It can wait.”

  “No, I know I asked Moses if I could see you, but I… this other stuff…”

  “Sure.”

  Jodie spoke up, her voice the echo of her mother’s, cultured, not so deep as to be husky, but adult. “I thought you were wonderful catching Frannie. Thank you.”

  She turned to her sister-in-law. “You really went out. I don’t know how Mr. Hardy did it, but he was over to you-”

  “That’s it,” Frannie said. “That reminds me.”

  “What?”

  “Why I wanted to see you. I just remembered.”

  She let go of Jodie’s hand and sat on an ottoman. “I’ve never fainted before, so I didn’t know it was even coming. It’s just the last thing I remember was I saw Mr. Polk there. He’s… he was Ed’s boss, I mean the owner. He wasn’t really a boss, I don’t think. Ed was the real manager, but he made policy, you know.”

  Hardy put up with the rambling. She had obviously thought of something, and would be getting to it.

  “So when I saw him, I remembered again that you said I should tell you anything that might matter.”

  “And Mr. Polk’s being there might matter?”

  She shook out her red hair, then closed her eyes as though the thought had eluded her again. Jodie sat on the edge of the ottoman and put an arm over her shoulder. “It’s okay, Frannie.”

  “It’s just so hard to think.” She pouted, biting her lip.

  “Mr. Polk,” Hardy said quietly.

  “Oh, Mr. Polk, that’s right.”

  “Why would it matter him being at the funeral, Frannie? It seems perfectly natural to me. Had they been fighting or something?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. It wasn’t him being at the funeral.” She still couldn’t seem to find it. Hardy put his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the wall of pictures. Surrounding what looked like a college graduation picture of Eddie were plaques, diplomas, honors. He turned back to the young women. “Phi Beta Kappa?” he asked.

  “Eddie was really smart,” Jodie said. “He just didn’t like showing off, but he was the smartest of us, except for maybe Steven, if he’d work at it.”

  “I just met Steven again. We had a nice talk.”

  “He’s okay,” Jodie said. “He just plays tough.”

  Hardy shrugged. “We got along…”

  “I remember.”

  Hardy sat down on the end of the couch.

  “It was Mr. Polk. I was just surprised to see him. Eddie said he hadn’t been at work all last week until Friday, and then he’d been all distracted.”

  Hardy waited for her to continue.

  “That’s all,” she said at last. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s nothing, but you said…”

  “No, Frannie,” he said, “anything might be important.” He didn’t push her. He could find out more about that when he interviewed at Army.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Frannie repeated.

  “You thought it was worth telling me about. It’s like when you took tests in school and your teacher always told you to go with your first answer. It can’t hurt to say it.”

  Frannie looked over again at the photo wall. Jodie, next to her, stood up and spoke with a strained brightness. “Maybe we should go outside for a while, you think?”

  “In a minute, okay.”

  The girl was gone, closing the door behind her. Hardy slid over on the couch, closer to Frannie. “You know,” he said, “the fainting might have had something to do with be
ing pregnant.”

  A nod. “I thought of that just before Jodie came in. You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

  “I said I wouldn’t.”

  “I know, but…”

  “No buts. No is no.”

  She smiled. “All right. Thank you.”

  Her head started to turn to look at the pictures again. Hardy spoke up. “You feel up to going out yet? It does get close in here.”

  She glanced toward the wall. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Hardy crossed over to her and lifted her gently by the shoulder. She leaned into him. “Let’s go,” she said, forcing a smile, “I can handle it.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “In your state, that is small wonder.”

  Moses McGuire turned his baleful gaze onto Hardy, who was negotiating traffic on Lincoln Boulevard. He had rolled the canvas top back on his car. “You took my keys, didn’t you?”

  Hardy’s eyes shifted. “I’ve often warned you of the perils of leaving things in your coat pockets. Myself, I keep my valuables in my pants.”

  “I keep my valuables in my pants,” McGuire echoed. “I try to get my valuable out of my pants as often as possible.”

  Hardy dug into his pocket, produced McGuire’s key ring, and tossed it onto his lap. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

  McGuire tried to whistle, but it came out wrong-his mouth wasn’t at a hundred percent. “That’s good. You just make that up? And I’m not drunk.”

  “You want to run that whistle by me again?”

  “Cause I miss a whistle doesn’t mean I’m drunk.”

  “Say ‘miss a whistle’ three times.”

  McGuire tried it once, then, “What are you, my mother?” He settled back in the seat. “Miss-a-fucking-whistle,” he said.

  Hardy pulled the car up at a light and turned toward his friend. “So what don’t you get?”

  McGuire took a minute to answer. Hardy reminded him. “You said you don’t get it. What?”

  “True love,” he said finally.

  “You mean Frannie and Ed?”

  “Nope.” McGuire faded out for a minute, then came back. “I mean Ed’s parents. Tell me you didn’t notice her, Erin?”

  “I noticed her, Mose.”

  McGuire tried a whistle that came out better. “I don’t care how old she is, she’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Hardy nodded. Even burying her son, Erin Cochran was something far beyond reasonably attractive.

  “And with Big Ed for going on thirty years. How do you figure that, if not true love?”

  “I didn’t really meet the guy. He was just at the door. Nice enough, broken up, trying to keep it under control.”

  “But Erin and him?”

  “Why not?”

  “Hardy, the guy’s been a gardener at the Park for his whole life. Okay, he works for the city, probably a good gig, but where’s the romance? I mean, the guy’s gotta live in horse manure.”

  “Who needs romance?”

  “Wouldn’t you think Erin would?”

  Hardy shrugged. “Interesting question. I don’t know.”

  “Gotta be true love, and I don’t get it.”

  Hardy pulled the car up a block before the Shamrock. The day was hot and still. McGuire had put his head back against the seat. He looked beat, breathing heavily, regularly. “You sleeping, McGuire?”

  His friend grunted.

  “You sure you want to open the bar?”

  McGuire lifted his head. “That priest… he’s the kind of guy she ought to go for. Don’t laugh, it happens.” His eyes were bleary and red, the muscles in his face slack.

  “You can’t buy true love, huh?”

  “It’s a beautiful thing for a night or two.” McGuire leaned his head back again, sighed. He spoke with his eyes closed, slumped down, his head resting on the back of the car seat. “You think Frannie’s okay? She seem okay to you?”

  “She’ll make it, Mose. She’s a tough one. You going to open or not?”

  McGuire covered his eyes, noting where the car had stopped. “I don’t think I’m up to the fast-lane glamor of the bar business today, you know?”

  Hardy nodded, turned the key, started his car up again. As he pulled into traffic heading toward McGuire’s apartment in the Haight-Ashbury, Moses said, “How do they do it, Diz?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hold together. All that family stuff.”

  “You and Frannie do it.”

  “We had to do it.”

  Hardy looked over at his friend, head back, mouth open, eyes shut. He looked strange in dark pants, a tan dress shirt, his tie loose. Normally Moses was a jeans-and-workshirt guy. Hardy noticed for the first time that his black hair was beginning to be shot with gray.

  “Maybe they have to do it, too,” Hardy said, “for some reason.”

  “Not like me and Frannie did.”

  Hardy knew he was right. Moses had raised his younger sister from the time he was sixteen and she was four. When he’d gone to Vietnam, which was where Moses and Hardy had met, she had just been starting high school and Moses was paying to have her board at Dominican up in Marin County.

  “And ’sides,” Moses slurred, “I’m talking sex. Not brothers and sisters. Ed and Erin. How do you keep that going thirty years?”

  Hardy found a place to park in front of Moses’s building. He pulled into it. “Practice, I guess.”

  Chapter Ten

  LINDA POLK got up from her desk and walked the twenty feet down the hallway to the women’s room. At Army Distributing, the women’s room was Linda’s exclusive domain-she was the only female employee, and guests were few and far between, especially lately. Alphonse coming in, hassling her about where her daddy was, had been the only person who’d been in the whole day. And he’d gone long before noon.

  She flicked the light switch and walked in front of the mirror to look at herself. Not too bad. Rings under the eyes were covered pretty well. The blondish bleach job was holding up okay. She liked the purplish tint to the eyeshadow. Maybe a touch-up on the mascara, not that it really mattered here.

  No, she’d pass on that. She didn’t come in here to fix herself up. She smiled. Yes, she did, she thought, only not that kind of fix.

  She’d rolled the stuff at home, hidden it in the package of Virginia Slims, and taking it out, smiled again in anticipation. She’d really come a long way, baby.

  It was the very best of the third world-C & C. Colombian and crack, although just a tiny bit of the latter. She lit the joint and inhaled deeply, holding it. Before she’d even let out the breath, the first jolt of the crack kicked in. She allowed herself one more. It was a good mix. The crack pumped you up to the sky, but the marijuana made coming down very nice.

  Putting half the joint back into the cigarette box, she checked herself out one last time in the mirror and smiled prettily at herself. “Linda means pretty,” she said aloud, and giggled.

  The mood was nearly wrecked immediately as she came out to the hallway. First, the heel on her shoe slipped on the tile and broke off. She would have fallen but for the wall.

  “Fuck.”

  Holding the wall with one hand, she was balancing herself to take off her shoes when an unknown face looked out from her office. “Can I help you?”

  A man, and not bad-looking. Not too well dressed, but not a slob, either. She smiled crookedly, suddenly feeling dizzy with the rush of drugs. Damn, here she’d been alone all day and-it was just her luck-the minute she decided to let go just a little, someone shows up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the man, standing there in the hallway with her shoes in her hand. Next she’d probably run her nylons.

  The man shrugged. “No problem. I was hoping to find Mr. Polk? Is he in?”

  She walked toward him, then brushed against him as she went around to her desk. She’d be better if she was sitting down. The man looked at the nameplate on her desk. “Are you his wife?”
r />   She laughed at that, shallowly. “No, his daughter.”

  Suddenly she stood up again, extended her hand. “Linda Polk, daughter of Samuel Polk and descendant of U.S. President James K. He was just after Lincoln, I think.”

  The man had a firm, dry, no-nonsense shake. “I think maybe a little earlier,” he said.

  “Whatever.” The glow was coming up roses. She could feel herself expanding, becoming nicer, easier to talk to, to like.

  “Is your father in today?”

  “No. He had a funeral this morning, then he and Nika-” She stopped. Nika. She didn’t want to get concentrating on Nika.

  The man smiled. He had a wonderfully inviting smile. “I came from the funeral myself. I’m a friend of Ed Cochran’s. Or was.”

  He extended a card that seemed to hover a long way away in his hand until she reached out and grabbed it. “My name’s Dismas Hardy, Linda. Do you expect your father back today?”

  “I never expect him back.”

  Whoops. She hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean, back the way he was.”

  “Was when?”

  “Back before Nika.”

  “When was that, Linda?”

  She liked the way he kept saying her name. He really was a nice-looking man, maybe a little old. Thirty-five? Good tan for a city guy. Maybe he did a lot of work outside.

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “When was before Nika?”

  She waved a hand abstractedly. “Nika, that’s right. I guess late last summer, then they got married before Christmas, and that’s when everything seemed to start going wrong.”

  “You mean with the business?”

  “No, no, no. Not the business. That wasn’t ’til later. I mean with me and Daddy.”

  Oh damn, she was going to cry again. That was the only bad thing about the pot-it got all the emotions stirred up. The trick was to quick get onto something else. “The business,” she said, “wasn’t ’til the whole thing with La Hora, like in February.”

  But the man, surprisingly, didn’t pick up on that. “What happened with you and your daddy?”

  He acted like he really cared. He was sitting back comfortably in his chair, hands folded across his chest, more relaxed than she was. In fact, just looking at him made her feel better. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I get all emotional sometimes.”