Dead Irish

by John Lescroart

  Until that fellow Hardy had come back. And thinking of that, he almost got mad again. Why had Jeffrey told Hardy he had known Ed Cochran? And how had he, Cruz, then been so stupid as to deny it? The day before, he’d told the other inspector, Giometti, that they’d been business acquaintances. Well, that’s probably what Hardy had come back for, about that inconsistency.

  Cruz would just say—now that he’d examined it—that he thought Hardy had been talking about a personal relationship between him and Cochran. That would take care of it. But in any event, he had to clear up the misunderstanding with Jeffrey.

  He turned his car left onto Market, lowered the visor against the setting sun. He should have taken care of it today, but with Jeffrey coming back, he’d been so happy, it had just slipped his mind. That wouldn’t do, he thought. That kind of carelessness.

  He would have to watch it. And, uncomfortable though it might be, he would have to talk to Jeffrey about it again. But this time it would be when he was relaxed. And he wouldn’t be angry—he’d simply explain it all very clearly so that all the nuances would be understood. Then, if Hardy or Giometti came around again, they’d be ready for him, and the questions could stop.

  That was all he wanted, really. That the questions stop.

  Hardy opened the door to Schroeder’s, an old-fashioned German restaurant downtown, and was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu. It had been a favorite haunt back in his postcop days as an assistant D.A., before the divorce with Jane.

  He realized he hadn’t been in the place since that time, maybe eight years before. He wasn’t at all surprised to find it hadn’t changed a bit. What was atypical, he knew, was how he felt—he actually wouldn’t mind casually running into someone. Almost anybody. And Schroeder’s had been that kind of place back then—off-duty cops, other D.A.s, reporters, attorneys who weren’t corporate and didn’t want to be. People hanging out, mingling, schmoozing over a few beers.

  Tonight, if it worked out, he might get back in touch with the city he lived in. Or not. He thought it sort of interesting that he considered it.

  Afterward, he wasn’t sure about the order of the two jolts. He had just gotten his Dortmunder and was looking around, enjoying the feel of things, when his ex-wife, Jane, stood up not forty feet from him across the room. That was the first one. Then came the sharp first tremor of the earthquake.

  Hardy stood up and made his way through tables, away from Jane, until he got to the hallway leading back to the restrooms.

  It was a good shaker, perhaps a five or six, and it continued rolling as he walked. The restaurant became quiet as everyone held their breath. The chandeliers swung heavily and several glasses fell from the back of the bar. Hardy stood, in theory secure under a beam, and waited.

  The tremor stopped, and after a round of nervous laughter, the room went back to being itself. Hardy watched Jane walk directly toward him.

  She looked, after eight years, impossibly the same. Now thirty-four, she could have passed for twenty-five. Her face was still as unlined, unmarked by the passage of years, as a baby’s. That made sense, Hardy thought. It’s what lack of a sense of guilt could do for you.

  She was still unaware of him, and he couldn’t help taking her in. Tall, slim, radiant dark hair casting highlights even in the dim room. Looking down slightly as she walked—graceful, serene. The face again, he kept coming back to the face, with its slightly Asian cast, though no one knew where that had come from. It was really only a heaviness in the eyelids, but with the wide cheekbones, the rosebud lips, there was a geisha air. She was elegantly dressed, as always. Gold earrings. A blouse in pink silk, pleated dark blue skirt, low heels.

  Now ten feet away, she finally looked up, and there it was, that million-dollar slow smile that had completely changed his life. She stopped, looked, let the smile build just slowly enough to work on him. And it did. He found himself smiling back.

  “Small world,” he said, his first words to her since he’d left their house.

  Of course she would kiss him, hug him. But not gushing. Slow and savoring. An old, old and very dear friend. “You look wonderful,” she said. “How have you been? How are you? What are you doing now?”

  He had to laugh. “I’m good, Jane. I’ve been fine.”

  She touched his arm, smiled into his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you.”

  She stopped, impulsively hugged him again.

  Some sense-memory made him remember why it had been so hard to consider someone, anyone else. His whole being just responded to her. It wasn’t a social thing. He just looked at her and smiled, his life full and complete, like a moonstruck teenager.

  But a half-dozen-plus years don’t, after all, go away without a trace. Whole new synapses had been created, and the warning janglings that he felt had become a part of his makeup were sounding like crazy.

  “Who are you here with?”

  She still held his arms, just above his elbows. “Just Daddy and some friends.”

  Daddy. Judge Andy Fowler. The doyen of the San Francisco bench—who’d gotten Dismas his first interview for D.A., who’d been, during the troubles, a surprising confidant.

  Then that sly look. “Why do you want to know?”

  He told himself to stop smiling, damn it, but standing here so close to her, looking into her amused eyes, even now catching a whiff of the perfume . . .

  “I thought maybe a drink would be nice.”

  She nodded. “I’d like that.” Then, “If you want.”

  He laughed, shrugged. “I don’t know if I want, to tell you the truth.”

  She kissed him again, quickly. “Let me go pee and dump Daddy.”

  “No one?” she asked. “Didn’t you wish you could love anybody?”

  She drank Absolut now, rocks. She had given up smoking. He told himself she couldn’t possibly care about his nonexistent love life.

  “I don’t know anymore if love’s a feeling or an attitude.”

  She laughed, throat extended, looking up. “Dismas,” she said when the laugh was all finished. She sipped her drink. “That is such a Dismas thing to say.”

  Why didn’t that annoy him?

  “Well, the point is, I never felt enough, you know, to make any decisions.”

  “Decisions?”

  “Not decisions, really. I guess commitments.” He swallowed the rest of his scotch and signaled the bartender for another round.

  Jane covered his hand with her own. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you.”

  “I know.”

  She squeezed the hand gently, not coming on. Not consciously coming on.

  “Anyway”—leaving his hand on the bar covered with hers—“there hasn’t been anyone. Where there was anything going on, I mean.” He didn’t like the way that made it sound—as though he’d been pining away for Jane. “But it’s been no big deal,” he said, “one way or the other.” There, that put it in perspective. “How about you?” he asked.

  To his surprise, she’d been married and divorced again.

  “It wasn’t very serious,” she said. “It was more a rebound thing.”

  “Being married wasn’t serious?”

  She sighed. “It seemed serious for a while. I guess I was just lonely, confused, you know. It wasn’t long after”—she hesitated, perhaps wondering what it would sound like—“us.”

  The new round came, and she moved her hand. Hardy watched it tap the bar once, then settle into her lap. He reached over and held it.

  Holding her hand in her lap.

  “I don’t care,” he said, not sure what he was referring to.

  “Dismas,” she began, squeezing his hand.

  He interrupted her. “Let’s go outside.”

  The night was still warm. The building felt almost hot as he pressed her up against it.

  No nonsense. None at all. Out the side door to the alley and around the back, near the employee entrance, between some parked cars, empty cardboard boxes scattered here and there. A b
uilding or two down there was a light, up high.

  Holding hands all the way out, then stopping when they had turned the corner. The kiss openmouthed, hungry. Backing away a step, pulling up the skirt, stepping out of the shoes. A quick look around, then the hose down and off and thrown somewhere, maybe into one of the boxes.

  And then the warm building, Hardy’s pants not even down, pressing it to her, into her, wet and ready, legs hitched up high on his hips, the kissing wonderful wordless pumping of it.

  “Oh, God, Daddy’s still here.”

  Hardy had her arm. They, neither of them, were about to invite the other back to their respective houses, and so they decided on a nightcap back inside.

  “What if he’d come out . . .”

  “Knowing Andy, he would’ve come back in here and had a drink and he’d never let on he saw us.”

  “What if he notices my stockings?”

  Hardy squeezed the arm. “You’re not wearing any.”

  A look that said “That’s what I mean,” when suddenly there was no avoiding him, getting up from his table as they came in.

  Hardy was still weak in the knees, wanting to talk to Jane about what it might mean, but knowing he’d have to put that off. Andy saw him, flashed a look at his daughter, then closed the space between them.

  “You said an old friend,” to Jane, with some hint of reproof, “not old family.”

  The eyes took Hardy in. “You look fine, son. Life treating you okay?”

  They got through the small talk, meeting his dinner companions, who were going home anyway, getting to the bar. If Hardy looked fine, Andy looked incredible. Still skinny as a stick, face unlined, hair thick and the color of stout. Dressed now in a camel’s-hair sport coat and tie.

  Andy wasn’t famed for a beat-around-the-bush approach. “So what’s with you two together?” was the first thing he asked at the bar.

  “Pure accident,” Jane answered.

  “Anybody believes in pure accidents in this life isn’t paying close enough attention.” He sipped a cognac. “Maybe meeting here was an accident, but sitting here with me two hours later has the ring of volition.”

  Hardy laughed. Andy had the same style from the bench. He took it right to Hardy. “So what are you doing with yourself? I keep expecting to see you in court one of these days. Get back to the trade.”

  Jane sat between them, included by position. Hardy talked a little, occasionally touching Jane’s back with the flat of his hand. She leaned back or over—into it.

  Hardy, ex–assistant D.A., shook his head. “I’m just not that cerebral. I think if I did anything I’d go back to being a cop.”

  Andy raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t rule out cerebral.”

  “Maybe we don’t know the same cops.”

  “If we’re talking cerebral, maybe we don’t know the same attorneys.”

  “Anyway,” Hardy continued, “I think my friend Glitsky might try to help me get back on the force, but I’m not really inclined to it. I don’t like having a boss.”

  “Me neither. Oh, for a spot on the federal bench!”

  But this was an old lament, and not too sincere. Federal judges were appointed for life and, barring outrageous impeachable conduct—a likelihood never ever to occur with Andy Fowler—the job was one of those on earth most resembling God’s. But Andy had been at Superior Court for twenty-five years, and Hardy knew he was happy there. Not that he wouldn’t take the job with no boss, but he wasn’t lobbying for it.

  After Hardy had gotten into what he was doing now, Andy stopped smiling.

  “I know a little about Arturo Cruz,” he offered. “He’s a dirty son of a bitch, isn’t he?” This was news to Hardy, who knew only that Cruz was a liar. “If I get the case, I’ll have to disqualify myself. Damn shame.”

  Hardy looked blank, and Andy explained. One of his foursome out at the Olympic Club represented some people in litigation against Cruz. A bait-and-switch case. Seems Cruz had suckered a group of his distributors into laying out big bucks to buy into his newspaper’s growth—trucks and coin machines and so on—and then when the paper got into the black, he cut them off, went in-house with the distribution.

  “And, of course, being good third-world brothers and sisters for the most part, it was all oral.”

  Jane touched her father’s arm. “Daddy.”

  “I’m not worked up,” he said, “and that wasn’t a racist remark. And if it was, even here in the bosom of my family, I retract it.”

  That’s why he might lie, Hardy was thinking, about knowing one of his distributor’s employees. “Could I meet this guy, your friend?” Missing the father-daughter exchange altogether.

  Andy nodded, finishing his drink. “Sure, got a pen?”

  He gave Hardy the number on a card, then kissed his daughter. “Well, we working stiffs have to get up in the morning.” He stood up, extended his hand again. “Dismas, I mean it—I’ve missed you. Come around sometime. Get arrested if you need an excuse.”

  He took them both in. “Damn shame,” he repeated, as though to himself, about as subtle as a dart in the eye.

  They watched him weave through the tables. Jane put her hand on Hardy’s thigh, let it rest there. “Now what?” She half turned to him on the barstool.

  His thoughts had suddenly turned to Cruz, back to Ed and Frannie. “I guess I’m going to call your dad’s friend.”

  “No, Dismas.” The eyes flickered briefly with amusement. “About us.”

  It was a flat question—no coy girl stuff. “Us?”

  “You and me. Us.”

  “It seems funny, doesn’t it?”

  “It didn’t seem funny a half hour ago.”

  She’d gotten him there, he had to admit. “No, it didn’t.” Then, “Do I have to answer right now?” He reached out his hand along the bar, and there was hers again, holding his. “Shit, Jane, we’re divorced.”

  Jane lifted his hand and kissed it. “Out there . . .”

  Hardy nodded. “But that was never the problem anyway.”

  “No, I remember.”

  No smile. Just stating a fact.

  “Maybe that was rare, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  They both went to their glasses. Jane’s hand rested on his, unfamiliar and frightening. He noticed the coral nail polish flawlessly applied, the cool trace of blue vein under the olive-tan skin. Jane’s hand right there. He put his glass down and reached over with his other hand, covering it.

  “How about, maybe next week or so, we go on a date?”

  That had been something between them when they’d been married. They’d gone on dates.

  “A real date?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you know—dinner, a movie, like that.”

  She thought a minute. “What night?”

  13

  AT THE RECTORY Jim Cavanaugh sat in his library, a book facedown on his lap. It was ten in the morning, and the unseasonable warm spell was continuing. That day he’d gotten up at five and walked the streets around St. Elizabeth’s for a half hour reading his breviary. After the six-thirty Mass, attended by twenty-three elderly women and his two altar boys, he had returned to the rectory and gone directly to the library. That had been nearly three hours ago.

  Rose peeked in to see him staring at the window. “Father?” He looked at her, grief all over his face. “Are you all right?”

  The question seemed to throw him. “I’m fine, Rose, thank you.”

  The old woman paused, not wanting to push him, but concerned. “Will you be having breakfast, then? I could just reheat the eggs. The micro works good on those. Or even make up some new ones.”

  Cavanaugh smiled at the housekeeper. “I forgot breakfast, didn’t I? My rhythms seem all off.”

  She supposed he meant to laugh at himself—that was how he was, secure enough to enjoy his own foibles. But he didn’t laugh. Maybe, as he’d said, his rhythms were off. Instead, he sighed and went back to staring at the window.

  She didn�
��t like to see him taking the death so hard. Not that Eddie hadn’t been a wonderful boy.

  No. She guessed he was—he’d been—a man, though sometimes it was hard to realize it when they grew up right in front of you like that.

  But that was the way life was, she thought. A vale of tears, as the prayer said. Eddie’s death was a tragedy, no doubt of that, but you didn’t let yourself sit and stare out windows. At least not for too long.

  She learned that when Dan had been killed in the war. That was life. It wasn’t fair. It was a tragedy, all right. But it was God’s will, not for her to understand. And she never would, not ever. She would just have faith and believe that she would see Dan again in heaven. And if she hadn’t pulled herself up by her bootstraps and forced herself back to life, she might not have ever recovered. That all seemed so long ago now. Strange to remember that she really thought she wouldn’t survive. Not that there wasn’t some pain, but it was a different kind now, certainly nothing to die over.

  So she could understand Father’s reaction. In many ways, Eddie was the son he could never have. And his death was another bond to Erin, lost, too. She wondered if that hurt him as much as anything.

  No, she thought. He was, after all, a priest. He probably didn’t let himself think like that, though a blind person could see the love he had for that woman. Well, she couldn’t blame him for that. Erin was a saint, and beautiful to boot.

  She sighed. “Father?”

  The priest faced her but didn’t even seem to see her. His eyes had that hollow look they sometimes got. It was her privilege to see him like that, when he wasn’t “on.” He was lost inside himself.

  She’d try to bring him back, but slowly, in the proper time. No sense bothering him anymore this morning.

  Quietly, she closed the door and walked back to the kitchen. For lunch, she thought, I’ll go out to the store and buy some corned beef and a fresh loaf of rye. He’ll be hungry come lunchtime. He’ll never turn down a corned beef on rye.