Irish Eyes

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “They have traffic in Nashville, Mama,” I said. “And crime and drugs. It’s everywhere. I don’t think it’s something you can just run away from anymore. And what about your friends? And your family? We’re all right here in Atlanta. You want to leave all that?”

  “Maybe,” she said, her voice sad. “It’s not the Atlanta I know anymore. You see somebody on the street, they just look at you real mean like. People don’t howdy like they used to. Nothing’s like it used to be.”

  “I know,” I said, patting her knee. “I miss the old ways too. But it’s not just Atlanta, you know. It’s the whole South. Malls and McDonald’s and cable TV and Wal-Mart. You can’t tell Nashville from Atlanta from Jacksonville.”

  “We could move out to the country, not even live inside Nashville,” Edna said dreamily. “Maybe a little farm. I could have chickens. My mama used to keep chickens, so I know how to keep up with ‘em. I’d have me a real vegetable garden, put in some corn and beans and okra. Mac would love it, living on a farm.”

  What about me? I wanted to ask. But it was too late. Edna went off to bed, to dream of guinea hens and Silver Queen corn and Kentucky Wonder pole beans.

  For once, I didn’t dream of anything.

  In the morning, the newspaper had all the details. The dead cop’s name was Sean Ragan and he was twenty-four years old, just a baby, with pink cheeks and a flattop haircut and the “gee whiz” look you see in cops not long out of the academy.

  The paper said he’d been on the force two years. He’d gone to high school in Fayetteville and married his high school sweetheart, whose name was Alexis. Beside the APD photo of Sean Ragan in his dress uniform, they had a wedding picture of the two newlyweds toasting with champagne glasses in front of a towering white wedding cake.

  I had to bite my lips to keep from crying when I saw the wedding picture. I pushed the local section of the paper across the table to Edna, who’d already finished reading the frontpage account of the shooting.

  She looked down through the bifocals perched at the end of her nose.

  “I’m dead serious about what I said last night, about moving away from Atlanta,” she said, her voice low. “I can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I know that. But I’d like for you to give it some serious thought, Jules. And even if you decide not to go with Mac, I’m thinking I’m ready to move away from here. I mean it. I want out. This city’s changed. I’m afraid to unlock my door anymore. Will you think about it?”

  What could I do?

  “I’ll think about it,” I promised.

  “Will you call Mac, make up with him?”

  “Make up?” I said indignantly. “What have I got to make up for?”

  “What do you want to break up with him for?” Edna asked. “Do you love the man or not?”

  I scowled at her, but didn’t answer.

  I read back over the paper. The police chief had held another post-midnight press conference, decrying violence in the city, and offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to Sean Ragan’s killer. The story said Ragan’s partner, a twenty-eight-year-old officer named Antjuan Wayne, had been treated and released from Grady, after spraining his ankle pursuing the fleeing killer. The paper also noted that another cop, Detective Charles Deavers, was still in critical condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

  I flipped through the rest of the local section of the paper, reading the police blotter, which listed all the shootings, knifings, beatings, and hit-and-run accidents that had occurred in the previous two days.

  Maybe Edna was right. Things had gotten ugly in our old hometown. Suddenly, I couldn’t really remember why I had such a hankering to stay put.

  I turned to the last two pages of the paper—the obituaries, or the Irish sports section, as my father used to call it. When had I taken to reading the death listings with such morbid curiosity? I wondered. Did this fascination with the dead mean I was smack in the middle of middle age?

  Depressing thought. But then, the obituaries were depressing. There was a listing for Sean Ragan’s funeral. There was to be a service Tuesday at Sacred Heart Church downtown, with burial at a cemetery in Fayetteville.

  Mob scene, I thought. A young white police officer killed in the line of duty. The funeral would be a mob scene.

  The phone rang and I picked it up absentmindedly. “Yes?”

  A voice, muffled. “I’m looking for Callahan Garrity.”

  I put the paper down, gripping the phone tightly in my hand. “This is Callahan Garrity.”

  “Are you the lady that was in the Budget Bottle Shop when that police officer got shot?” the voice asked. The caller sounded like a young black man.

  “I was just outside,” I said, correcting him. “What’s this about?”

  “This is about somebody you been looking for. Somebody you been asking a lot of questions about.”

  “Deecie? Deecie Styles? I have been looking for her. Do you know where she is?”

  “I know right where she’s at,” the man said, chuckling a little.

  “Will she talk to me?”

  “She’s scared. She’s scared to talk to anybody. Folks saying she’s a thief. People are after her. Deecie didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  “I don’t believe she did anything wrong,” I said quickly. “I’d just like to talk to her. About what happened in the store that night. My friend got shot, nearly killed. I want to find out what she saw that night. What really happened.”

  “Why should she trust you? You a cop, ain’t you?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I used to be. But not anymore. Can I see her? I think I can help.”

  “Just a minute.” He put the phone down, and I could hear faint murmuring in the room.

  “They say there’s a reward. For whoever turns in the person who shot at that cop. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There’s a thirty-thousand-dollar reward for the person who gives information about the shooter. Does Deecie know who that is?”

  “Never mind that,” he said harshly. “What about the money? Is that for real?”

  “As far as I know, it is,” I said, trying to tread cautiously.

  “She have to go to court, get up on a stand and tell what she saw?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The posters say the information will be confidential. So I’m assuming she wouldn’t have to.”

  “You find out about that reward, Deecie might talk to you.”

  “When?” I said. “Would she talk to me today?”

  “I’ll call back,” the man said. “You tell me what I want to hear, Deecie will see you whenever I say.”

  26

  “This is Major Lloyd Mackey. Please leave a message, or if this is an emergency, call back and ask the operator to beep me.”

  I hesitated. It was Sunday, and Mackey should have been off duty. But one of his men had been gunned down, so I was certain he had been working the case nonstop since the night before. If I beeped him in the middle of his investigation, he’d be so angry he might not cooperate.

  In the end, I left a message saying it was urgent, and that I needed to hear from him today, and possibly had information about the shooting at the liquor store.

  Five minutes later he called back.

  “This is Mackey,” he said in a growl. “And this better not be bullshit, Garrity. I got a man lying up in the morgue over at Grady.”

  I bit my lip. “I know. And I’m truly sorry. I hope you catch the bastard who did this. But you’ve got another man lying up on the seventh floor, and the only thing keeping him alive is a bunch of tubes coming in and out of him. I want to find out who tried to kill Bucky Deavers.”

  “You think I don’t? Now what do you want? What’s this about information about Deavers?”

  I chose my words carefully. “I had an anonymous phone call this morning. Somebody who might know something about the robbery at the Budget Bottle Shop. The caller was asking whether the cash reward is
for real.”

  “Thirty thousand dollars? Yeah, it’s real. But we ain’t payin’ it out for some whispered phone call.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said impatiently. “The caller was asking whether the person who claims the reward will have to testify against the shooters, if it ever comes to trial.”

  “Depends on who the caller is and what he saw,” Mackey said. “Come on, Garrity, you know all this stuff already. Anyway, if the person calls back, you just tell ‘em to call the police department. This isn’t anything for you to get involved in.”

  “I intend to tell them just that,” I said. “But the person who called me doesn’t seem to trust the police. He wants to make sure his information will be kept confidential.”

  “Nobody trusts the cops,” Mackey said bitterly. “That’s why our guys keep getting blown away. You tell your caller if he’s got questions, call Major Lloyd Mackey. Tell him you talked to me, and I’m personally in charge of this case. Tell him you know me, and you trust me. Right?”

  “I know you,” I said. But I wondered about the trust issue. I kept thinking about what Bishop had told me, about the ATM holdup artist who wore an FBI Academy ring.

  “Major Mackey, can I ask you something?”

  “I’ve got work to do, Garrity,” he said. “Can’t it wait?”

  “Just one question,” I promised. “How many people on your force have been through the FBI Academy?”

  “The FBI Academy? How the hell should I know? Maybe six of my men, but that doesn’t count everybody in the department. And it doesn’t count people who joined Atlanta after they’d been sent by their previous department.”

  “How about you? Did you go?”

  “None of your business,” Mackey said. He hung up on me. I told myself Mackey was under unbelievable stress. That he was trying to do his job. That he was true blue. And I kept wondering. Could another cop have shot Bucky? Did it have something to do with the ATM robberies? Why Bucky? Was any of this connected to the killing of Sean Ragan?

  I pulled out a yellow legal pad and sat down at the table to make notes. First a list of facts, then a list of questions.

  Fact: On Wednesday, Bucky Deavers had been shot twice in the head with a .22 pistol. The gun had been left at the scene.

  Fact: The only witnesses, as far as I knew, were Deecie Styles and her child Faheem, both of whom had disappeared shortly after the shooting.

  Fact: There had been a shattered six-pack of Harp beer on the floor beside Bucky’s body. There wasn’t any Harp in the cooler in the store, and Bucky certainly hadn’t carried it in there with him.

  Fact: The shooter had exited the store before I entered, most probably through the rear door and out the alley.

  I took to doodling around on the page, sketching the interior of the Budget Bottle Shop from memory. The front door, the windows, the counter, and the door to the back room. I wished I’d had a chance to go behind the counter, to get a look at the panic button Deecie said she’d pushed as soon as the would-be robber entered the store, and to see where the video camera was actually located.

  While I was bent over my sketch, Edna came bustling into the kitchen. She was dressed in her good flowered blue dress, pearls, stockings, and a pair of navy heels. My God, she was wearing lipstick.

  I looked her up and down. “Is the queen in town?”

  “Funny.”

  “You look very nice,” I added. “Where are you headed?”

  “It’s Sunday morning. I’m going to Mass,” she said, adding quickly, “It wouldn’t hurt you to go with me, either.”

  “Mass? As in Catholic Mass?”

  She took her good coat out of the closet and shrugged herself into it. “You know I’ve been going to Mass lately.”

  “Twice recently,” I said. “If you include Christmas Eve.”

  She reached into her pocket and brought out a set of silver rosary beads, which she proceeded to shake in my face.

  “You laugh all you want, Julia Callahan Garrity. Your daddy and I never raised you to be a heathen. I might not have set the best example for you since he died, but I’m trying to mend my ways. And I suggest you look to mending yours.”

  I blinked. She was absolutely sincere. My backslidden mother was crawling back up the slippery slope of faith. Next thing you know she’d have us all sitting around the kitchen burning incense and singing “Faith of Our Fathers.” Or worse, maybe she’d find her old magnetic-mounted Jesus and reinstall him on the dashboard of her Chevy.

  “Why the sudden surge of religion?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

  She patted her blue-tinted hair. “I don’t mind sharing my faith at all. I’m going to Mass to pray for Bucky Deavers. And for the soul of that poor boy who was killed last night. And then I’m going to pray that you’ll see the light about this Nashville move. Sure you don’t want to come along with me?”

  I gestured toward my notepad. “Sorry. I’ve got work to do.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” She buttoned her coat. “I’ll pray double for you.”

  “Better make it triple,” I said.

  After Edna left, I made myself a pot of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. I cleaned up the kitchen and wandered aimlessly around the house for a while, straightening picture frames, running a dust rag over the windowsills in the living room. I turned on the television, watched an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show, the one where Andy explains Romeo and Juliet to Opie. I laughed myself silly for half an hour, then roamed the house some more, letting my mind float, deliberately avoiding the subject of what had happened at the Budget Bottle Shop.

  After a couple hours of contemplating my navel, I went back to the yellow legal pad, flipped the page, and started writing questions.

  How had the shooter entered the liquor store? Had the alley door been left unlocked? If there were security guards working other nights at the store, why not the night Bucky was shot? What other security guards besides Boylan usually worked at the store? Had the robber taken money from the cash register, or had it been, as Pete Viatkos claimed, Deecie Styles?

  I drew a large circle around that set of questions, then started another list at the bottom of the page.

  What businesses had been victims of ATM robberies? Were they all in the City of Atlanta, or had stores in other locations also been victimized? How much money had been taken? Was anybody else harmed? And what about Boylan and his boys? Was C. W. right? Was Boylan recruiting cops from the Shamrock Society to an armed-robbery ring? Could one of the Shamrocks have been involved in the hijacking of Bishop’s friend Fiske?

  I flipped the page and kept writing. The whole exercise was beginning to feel futile. There were too many jurisdictions around Atlanta, and I had no authority to ask the questions I wanted answered.

  The phone rang and I grabbed for it, annoyed at being disrupted. The annoyance vanished when the caller spoke.

  “Did you find out about the reward?”

  “It’s for real,” I said, forcing myself to speak slowly. “The police say they can’t be certain whether or not Deecie would have to testify. They say it would depend on what she saw.”

  “She saw it all,” the caller assured me. “But she ain’t going on no witness stand. She got a kid to think about.”

  “Faheem? Is he all right? I understand he’s been sick. If Deecie wants, I could get her help for Faheem. Take him to a doctor.”

  “Deecie takes care of Faheem all right. She don’t need you.”

  “But I need her,” I said, trying not to sound desperate.

  “Hold on,” the man said. And he put the phone down again.

  “You still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What kinda car you got?”

  “A pink Chevy van,” I said.

  “Sissy-ass car.”

  “It runs,” I said, getting defensive.

  “You know how to get to Shallowford Road and I-85?”

  “Yes.
”

  “You got a cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gimme the number.”

  I recited the number twice.

  “Get on Shallowford and keep going on past where it crosses 85. About three miles up, there’s a dry cleaner’s on the left side of the road, beside a Minute Mart. You be there, one hour, exactly. Wait there. Somebody will call, tell you what to do next, unless you trying something funny.”

  “I’m not trying something funny,” I assured him.

  I heard a voice in the background.

  “What?” the man said. “Hang on.”

  He was gone again, then he came back on the line. “Okay. You need to bring a box of Pampers, toddler size. And a gallon of whole milk, some bread, and some peanut butter. Oh, yeah. Stop by McDonald’s, get four Quarter-Pounders and two large Cokes. You got any wine?”

  “I’ve got wine,” I said cautiously. This was some shopping list he was giving me.

  “Bring some wine, too,” he said. “You ain’t there in an hour, you don’t talk to Deecie. And if you bring any cops …”

  “No cops,” I said firmly.

  27

  An hour didn’t give me much time to get where I was going. I picked up the diapers and groceries at a convenience store on Ponce. The drive-through line at McDonald’s was five cars long, so I pulled up to a parking space and ran inside to order.

  Of course, I got the slow-motion synchronized food servers of all times.

  “No fries,” I said, breathing hard. “Four Quarter-Pounders and two large Cokes to go.”

  The girl looked puzzled, tapping the hamburger and Coke icons on her cash register keyboard. She stopped and chewed on her thumb, staring down at the keyboard as though it was the first time she’d seen it.

  “I’ll give you a five-dollar tip if you get me my food in five minutes,” I said.