Irish Eyes

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “How about a nice broccoli sandwich?” I asked.

  “Yuck!” Maura said.

  “Yogurt?”

  She held her nose.

  “A McDonald’s Happy Meal?”

  Maura got my purse and car keys. “Okay,” I said in my strictest tone of voice. “But it has to be the low-fat Happy Meal. And we’re not super-sizing those fries, little missy.”

  After lunch, we romped around on the McDonaldland playscape for a while, and a couple little kids looked at me funny when I tried to go down the slide, but all in all, we had a delightful Saturday morning.

  Maura fell asleep in her car seat on the way home.

  Steve was waiting at the front door. “Where’ve you been?” he asked. “Maureen called twice. You didn’t say you were going to take Maura out.”

  “I took her out,” I said over my shoulder, carrying Maura in and placing her on the sofa in the den. “We had lunch. Spinach and tofu and apple slices.”

  “Right,” he said suspiciously. He bent over and pried Maura’s fingers apart, holding up the plastic toy that had come with the Happy Meal.

  “Where’d she get this?” he asked.

  “Must have been that stranger in the park who was offering her candy,” I said, picking up my cleaning caddy and heading for the car.

  “Steve?” I said, stopping at the front door.

  “What now?”

  “You’re welcome!”

  Shift change would be at three P.M., I knew. I went home and poured myself into Maureen’s uniform, which made me look like a Girl Scout on steroids.

  I was pinning the I.D. badge on the collar of the shirt when I took a close look at the photo. Maureen and I bear only a slight family resemblance to each other. Her hair is dark like mine, but poker straight. She’s thinner, of course, and has a pointy chin. And she wears wire-rimmed glasses. That, at least, I could take care of by dashing into the drugstore on the way to the hospital. As for the rest of the resemblance, if anybody stopped me, I planned to just say I’d had a permanent and put on a little weight since the photo had been taken.

  My pulse quickened a little when I entered the side entrance at Grady, but people were so busy, nobody even stopped and gave me a second glance. I found the elevator to the seventh floor with little trouble, but finding Bucky wasn’t so easy.

  Twice I’d passed his glass cubicle before I doubled back a third time, looked at the name on the door, and tiptoed inside the room. What was left of Bucky Deavers seemed only a pale, dried-up husk. His head was enveloped in white gauze only a shade lighter than skin the color of parchment. A tangle of tubes ran from his nose and mouth and arm. I wanted to touch him, to reassure myself that this waxen figure was my friend, but I couldn’t. Instead, I stared down at the monitors attached to the tubes. But there was nothing they could tell me that I would understand. I stood at the foot of the bed and wept, for the second time in two days. I even wiped my nose on the sleeve of my uniform. Maureen’s uniform.

  “Bucky?” It came out a whisper. But there was no reply, and I didn’t expect one. I inched toward the side of the bed, put my fingertips on the back of his hand, jumped a little at the warmth there. Clinically, he was alive. All the monitors seemed to say so, anyway. Gradually, my fingers curled around his, and I gave his hand a little squeeze.

  “This sucks,” I said chokily.

  “Nurse?” The voice was so loud, I jumped, then turned.

  An older man, bald, with a blue Braves baseball cap that he kept twisting in his hands, stood in the doorway. “Nurse, my wife isn’t breathing so good. Could you come see about her?”

  I blinked. “Your wife isn’t breathing?”

  “Somebody needs to see about her,” he said. “I’ve been pushing the call button, but nobody will come.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s see if we can get somebody. What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Naomi. Naomi Butler,” he said. “Could you hurry? Please?”

  My sneakers made squeaking noises on the waxed linoleum floor as I hurried toward the nurses’ station I had crept past ten minutes before.

  “Stay right here, Mr. Butler,” I called over my shoulder. The elevator doors were just opposite the nurses’ station, where a black nurse was reading a chart. I pushed the “down” button and prayed the car would come fast. Finally, the bell dinged and the doors slid open. I stepped inside, immediately pushed the “door open” button. Then I hollered. “Somebody needs to see about Mrs. Butler! “The black nurse looked up to see who was causing all the commotion.

  “Go check on Mrs. Butler,” I yelled again. “Stat!” I let the elevator doors close.

  When the doors opened again, I hurried out of the hospital, my knees shaking. This had been a mistake. A big mistake.

  22

  Bucky’s apartment was on North Highland Avenue, across the street from Manuel’s Tavern. He always claimed it was a coincidence, but he also freely admitted he was basically on the Manuel’s food plan, eating dinners there most nights he wasn’t working.

  The apartment building was a prewar number, sturdy gray brick, and the second- and third-floor apartments had balconies overlooking Highland, which was nice if you liked watching traffic.

  The key was where he always left it for us when we cleaned the apartment for him, on the ledge above the door.

  I didn’t bother with caution. People move in and out of the apartments all the time, most of them young professionals or well-heeled college students. Bucky had lived there for four years and I’d never known him to mention a neighbor by name.

  I unlocked the door and stepped inside, and relocked the door.

  For a long minute, I stood there, just smelling and remembering.

  The apartment smelled like sweat and boiled hot dogs and something else, a faint perfume. The wooden floors were coated with a fine sheen of dust. Bucky hadn’t spent much time here in quite a while, from the looks of things.

  It was really only two rooms, plus a kitchenette and a bath. The living room was furnished in standard-issue single-guy stuff—a black leather couch, stereo speakers the size of my van, and a large-screen TV. There was a coffee table with a stack of unopened mail atop it.

  I walked into the bedroom. A lumpy-looking double bed had a dark gray spread pulled sloppily up over the pillows. The nightstand held a clock radio, a couple of paperback books, and a bottle of Di-Gel. The drawer contained a package of foil-wrapped condoms, a pack of Dentyne, and some old pay stubs. I opened a drawer in the dresser. Not much here. A few ratty T-shirts, some grayed-out socks, and a pair of pajamas still in the plastic wrapper they’d come in.

  I picked up the pajamas. The wrapping had yellowed. They’d been in that drawer a long time. A present from a mother or aunt? Bucky’s mother had died some years ago, maybe seven or eight years since. He’d never talked a lot about his father, so I assumed his parents had been divorced.

  Halfheartedly, I opened the other drawers too. Mostly I found the kind of stuff that’s too crappy to pack and too good to just throw away. I had a dresser full of the same kind of stuff at home: shorts I could no longer fit into, T-shirts with faded printing, raggedy jeans I meant to cut off someday.

  He’d used the top drawer as a kind of filing cabinet. Old bills, circulars, canceled checks, and a few letters. I grabbed everything and sat down on his bed to take a closer look.

  I flipped through the canceled checks. Nothing startling or out of the ordinary. He seemed to use the Quik-Mart across the street as a banking center, regularly cashing checks for fifty dollars or seventy-five dollars there. He paid his rent and his utilities, made car payments, spent money the way most adults do these days. I saw checks made out to the gym, Rich’s department store, Visa, and American Express.

  The rest of the mail was no more illuminating. There were memos from the city personnel department explaining changes in the city’s benefits package, form letters from a timeshare sales outfit in Panama City, Florida, and, finally, a blank envelope contain
ing half a dozen snapshots with a yellow stick-on note attached to the top picture. “Deavers—Thought you’d get a kick out of these. Hell of a time!—J.”

  Most of the photos were group shots. Guys standing around at a party, waving beers in the air. One was of Bucky and Lisa Dugan, standing beneath a huge neon marquee at the Caesar’s Palace. In the photo, Bucky was pointing up at the marquee, which proclaimed that comedian David Brenner and the Lettermen were performing live that night. Another shot was of Bucky, painfully sunburned, lolling beside a swimming pool, Lisa at his side in a black bikini.

  So they’d taken a trip to Las Vegas. I took a closer look at the other people in the group shots, recognized some faces I knew, including John Boylan. Had the Vegas trip been a Shamrock outing?

  I found myself staring again at the pictures by the pool. Lisa Dugan looked so cool and carefree in her little bikini, staring adoringly up at Bucky. Here was a Bucky I didn’t know, with friends I didn’t like, a girlfriend I’d just met, on a trip I hadn’t been invited on. My mind flashed to the more recent version of Bucky, the waxen figure on a hospital bed.

  My anger built as I shuffled back through the photos. In every one, somebody held aloft a beer bottle or a highball glass. The Irish assholes, partying hearty on the road. How many gambling junkets had there been? I wondered.

  Absurd. Bucky had never been much of a gambler, claiming he had no talent at bluffing or counting cards. But I kept wondering. Why was he working so many part-time jobs? Lisa claimed they’d been saving up for a house. So why hadn’t he given up this apartment, which he obviously hadn’t used in months?

  I shoved the photos back in the envelope and slipped them into my jacket pocket. I prowled around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, getting increasingly depressed and restless.

  No answers here. But where?

  Deecie Styles would know.

  The phone was on the wall in the tiny galley kitchen, the phone book on the kitchen counter. I flipped through it and found a number for Doubletree Farms.

  “This is Doubletree Farms,” a recorded voice said. “Our regular office hours are Monday through Friday, eight A.M. to five P.M.”

  “Shit.” I hung up the phone without listening to the rest of the message. For lack of anything better to do, I opened the refrigerator door. The inventory was slim: some bottled water, a jar of pickles, half a loaf of bread that looked to have fossilized over the months.

  I looked at the phone again. It was still hooked up. Bucky hadn’t lived here for months, yet he’d kept the phone service. Did that say something about his relationship with Lisa Dugan? Or was it just typical fear-of-commitment stuff?

  There was an answering machine on the counter, next to where I’d found the phone book. No lights were flashing, but I punched the “message” button anyway. Nothing.

  Every question I had seemed to come back with more questions, no answers.

  I locked the front door, started to put the key back where it had always been, then changed my mind and put it in my pocket and left.

  23

  A soggy banner flapped against the gray stone side wall of Manuel’s Tavern. It had the Budweiser logo and said “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”

  I went inside and sat at one of the booths near the bar. It was close to five o’clock and I was vaguely hungry and definitely clueless.

  One of the bartenders, Bishop is his name, came over with a menu. “Hey, Callahan,” he said. “What’s shakin’?” I looked up, surprised. It was what Bucky always used to say, whenever I called or dropped by the cop shop to see him. “What’s shakin’?” he’d always ask.

  “What?” Bishop asked. “Why’re you looking at me that way?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Bishop stood there, his pen poised above his order pad. “You eating or just drinking today?”

  “Some of both,” I said. “Jack and water and a J.J. Special. Mustard, pickle, no lettuce.”

  He nodded, writing it down. When he bent over like that, I could see the bald spot on the top of his head. “How’s law school?” I asked.

  Bishop’s married, has a wife and three kids, and had just started his first year of law school at Georgia State University. Some nights when I went in, I’d see him at the end of the bar, his nose stuck in a thick textbook.

  “If I get through contracts, it’ll be a freakin’ miracle,” he said. “You want a salad with that?”

  “Nah. Nothing healthy. Just the bourbon and the beef.”

  He brought my drink and set it down on the table, then slid into the other side of the booth.

  “How’s Bucky?” he asked.

  I took a long swallow of bourbon.

  “Not good.”

  He nodded, didn’t know what else to say. Neither did I.

  “Boylan brought a poster by. We put it up on the front door,” Bishop said. “The one about the reward for information leading to the arrest of the guy who did it. It’s posted in the bathrooms, too. You think they’ll catch the guy?”

  “No real leads. Not any that I know about, anyway.” I looked at him thoughtfully. “All the cops hang out here. What are you hearing about all this?”

  “The usual. Guys are worked up about it. Bucky had a lot of friends. A lot of ‘em are pissed off about what they said on the news, you know, that Bucky might have been involved in something that got him killed. Some kind of bandit operation.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said, swirling the ice around in my glass. “Does it sound like anybody else does?”

  Bishop looked around the room, then down at his lap. “Whiskey talk. That’s all.”

  “What kind of whiskey talk?” I wanted to know.

  He looked uncomfortable. “Christ, I don’t know. It’s nothing.”

  “Come on, Bishop, talk to me. I’m not wearing a mike, you know.”

  He shook his head. “These are cops we’re talking about. If you think I’m screwing with these guys, you’re crazy.”

  “Someplace else then,” I said eagerly. “What time do you get off tonight?”

  “Not till eleven,” he said, getting up and flicking the tabletop with his bar towel. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll meet you. Anyplace you say. Okay? What about Krispy Kreme?”

  “Shit, no,” Bishop said, alarmed. “There’s as many cops there as there are at City Hall East. More, probably.”

  “Someplace else then. Name it.”

  “Leave me alone, Garrity. I’m not getting involved in this thing.”

  “Bishop.” I grabbed his hand. “I saw Bucky today. He’s dying. He looks like a corpse already. Somebody did that to him. Put two bullets in his brain. I want that person. So I don’t give a damn how scared you are. I’m scared, too. Just tell me what you know. You hear me, Bishop?”

  He yanked his hand free of mine.

  “Shitfuck,” he said. You pick up terrible language hanging around bars. He’d have to clean that up once he passed the bar exam. Hah.

  “I gotta stop at the store on the way home. Meet me there. The new Kroger on North Decatur. Eleven-fifteen. After that, I’m done,” Bishop warned.

  When my food came, I looked down at it and realized I’d had a hamburger for lunch. And I wasn’t really hungry.

  I picked at the French fries and watched the news. The place started to fill up around six o’clock. Couples stood at the bar, hip to hip, two or three men’s softball teams came in, making noise as they assembled enough tables to seat two dozen people. A bunch of women filed in, laughing and carrying prettily wrapped pink and blue gifts for what looked like an office baby shower.

  And I sat in my booth by myself. Saturday night and what was I doing? Sitting in a bar, drinking and brooding. I wondered where Mac was. Maybe he’d gone back to Nashville, to start serious house-hunting. Or maybe he was out with the gang from the office tonight. I wondered if he’d given notice yet.

  Stop it, I told myself. If you’re
isolated, it was your own choice. You had a job in an office, plenty of girlfriends to pal around with. You chose to quit the force, chose to open your own business, chose to make it clear to Mac that you wouldn’t be bullied into leaving everything you’ve earned and built in Atlanta. And anyway, you’ve always despised baby showers.

  “Uh, Miss Garrity?” A man’s voice.

  I looked up.

  A tall trim man with a silver crew-cut stood beside me, a beer in his hand. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t say why.

  “Hey, there,” I said, trying to make it sound like I knew exactly who he was.

  “Could I sit down?” he asked.

  “Please do,” I said, gesturing at the seat opposite me.

  “I saw you at the press conference at the emergency room. The night Deavers was shot,” he said, sensing my confusion. “I’m Ignatius Rakoczy. You might have heard me asking the chief a question or two.”

  I smiled. “Oh, yes. That was great. I couldn’t believe anybody had the balls to ask such an impertinent question. And with the television cameras rolling.”

  He blushed a little. A cop who blushed. I’d never seen such a thing. “My wife was watching the news at home. She almost fainted when she heard me ask it, and then give my name and everything. She was sure I’d get fired.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not yet. But they know the police union is watching, so I don’t think they’ll mess with me.”

  “You sounded pretty steamed about the overtime issue.”

  “I am,” Rakoczy said. His voice was deep, with the slightest hint of an accent. Not Southern, European maybe?

  “Public safety officers got a three percent raise last year,” Rakoczy said. “It was a joke. The mayor keeps saying there’s no money in the budget. You know how many executive assistants and press-relations fellas the mayor has? There’s plenty of money for those fellas. None of them makes less than forty thousand dollars a year. And none of them has ever put their life on the line for the citizens of this city. There’s plenty of cops don’t make that kind of money. And at the same time, the city’s trying to force officers with any seniority into taking early retirement. If you’re over forty-five, forget it. They don’t like all the medical claims. They say it’s a matter of fitness. Don’t you believe it. It’s age discrimination, pure and simple.”