“He’s dead?”
“We found a body. Don’t worry, not his. But Mogaill’s missing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You think I do? Where were you Saturday, Hock?”
“Where was I? What is this—?”
“Just tell me.”
“Saturday I spent time with Mogaill. Up in Inwood, at this bar called Nugent’s.”
“Ever hear of a guy called Finn? Arty Finn?”
“He’s a fixture at Nugent’s. Which is a very Irish place in a very Irish neighborhood, so sometimes there’s a collection for the Noraid, if you’re familiar. Finn’s the collector.”
“So I hear. He’s also the body we found.”
“In Mogaill’s house?”
“What’s left of it. Mogaill and Finn have some big problem together?”
“I don’t exactly know. Davy didn’t much like him, that I can say. He had a word with Finn at the bar, then Finn took off.”
“You talked to Finn yourself, Hock?”
“No.”
“Did you see him later that night, or Sunday?”
“No.”
“What about Mogaill? You see him Sunday?”
“No, Sunday was my flight.”
“Okay, then Saturday at Nugent’s. What were you and Davy talking about starting in the afternoon and winding up in the soft hours?”
“Politics, women, Ireland …”
I stopped because Neglio was now sounding too much like Eamonn Keegan for my liking. Too insinuating. Also because I remembered how the two of them had talked by telephone on the subject of Father Tim’s suicide, while Ruby and I were cooling our heels in a holding room like we were a couple of perps. I do not take it well when the bosses talk about me behind my back.
They have their reasons, but I know I have mine for clamming up on them when this happens. Nothing personal. I decided that Inspector Neglio did not have to know right that minute about the troubling talks I had had with the missing captain and the dead priest. The talks on the subject of my father, and the cryptic poem written on the back of his photograph.
I asked, “How do you know how long I was at Nugent’s?”
“I tend to do a little independent checking around whenever there’s funny business involving my cops.”
“This is funny?”
“Oh yeah, Hock. Funny like the smell of stale cabbage. Capice?”
“Meaning your pal the mayor’s not laughing?”
“Let’s just say Hizzoner doesn’t appreciate the gag like you and me. He only sees how suddenly he’s got a captain of central homicide missing after his house is blasted off the block. And how there’s some dead paddy extortionist by the name of Arty Finn laying in said demolished house. And how it turns out all this unpleasantness happens right after the paddy captain noses around a Hell’s Kitchen church where some retired mick of a padre shows up out of nowhere and fires a bullet into his brain right in the confessional. And how the last guy to see either one of these two is another Irishman, which is you. And what do you do? You hop a plane out of JFK. For guess where?”
“I get the picture.”
“Do you? Let’s don’t forget one more thing: you and Ruby, you’re in Ireland a couple hours, and what do you know—you hook up with some IRA goon who gets splattered all over Main Street Dublin.”
“So on account of this, you don’t take my word, you do your independent checking around?”
“No offense.”
“None taken,” I told Neglio, thinking past the insinuations, which were only natural the way he laid out the facts. Facts! But there was something he said back there that was important, something he had mentioned in the earlier call, too. I asked, “Mogaill was personally investigating Father Tim’s suicide? You’re sure of that?”
“Unusual, isn’t it? Lieutenant Ellis thinks so. I got to agree. Davy’s right there on the scene after the padre gives himself the business in Hell’s Kitchen. Then he goes way up to Riverdale and talks to one Father Owen Curley, who lives at the old priests’ home where your Father Timothy Kelly lived.”
“He went there?”
“Searched his room, too.”
“Anything else unusual?”
“What do you say to Mogaill leaving the retirement home and driving over to a diner on Broadway and Two-hundred-fortieth Street where he goes very goony on some teenage waitress who reminds him of his dead wife?”
“I’d say you’ve been doing one hell of a lot of independent checking.”
“That’s on account of I got an unusual amount of volunteer help.”
“Volunteer—?”
“The newspapers and the TV and radio boys, they’re on this thing like white socks on rednecks. The goddamn reporters, they think they’ve got a nice big ugly story about a rogue cop. The mayor and the commissioner, they don’t like this kind of bad news.”
“I suppose not.”
“And I don’t like it how I have to put out the word at every precinct shift muster to pick up your rabbi on suspicion. Which is what I have done. This kind of suspicion is not healthy for me.”
“No …”
“But you and I, Hock, we know there’s more to the story here, don’t we? Lots more about all this with Mogaill and your priest friend, right?”
Can you ever really know about your friends?
I said nothing. The line was still for a few seconds.
“Hock, you still there—?”
“I’m here.”
“Yeah, and I got a feeling you’re sticking around awhile, too. Don’t bother with postcards, but let’s you and me stay in touch.”
“Whatever you say.”
“That’s what I say. Also, if it was me with a pretty lady, I’d take her somewhere else besides a place so many of my people would just as soon forget.”
I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Neglio asked.
“Smelling stale cabbage was the pretty lady’s idea.”
Our room was something that could have been right for a New Orleans bordello. Yet another surprise in Uncle Liam’s surprising house.
Red flocked paper covered the walls. The window looking out over Ladbroke Street had box curtains with a pattern that made them look like they were in flames. There was a small fireplace and mantelpiece lacquered in maroon, with a couch in front of it full of embroidered pillows. A pair of lamps on the dresser wore pink shades with tassels. The rug looked like a truckload of sweetheart roses had recently had an accident all over it.
Ruby lay peacefully asleep beneath scarlet covers in a bed that came with a canopy of the same blazing color. I wished I could rest as easily.
Our luggage sat open on a settee at the foot of the bed. Ruby’s crumpled blouse lay across the other things in her bag, which looked as if she had jumbled through them, probably in search of something to sleep in. My own bag was still neat, but slightly rearranged. I remember packing my father’s photograph at the bottom of the bag. Now there it was at the top of the heap, staring at me.
Had Ruby moved it there?
There was a flowered ceramic basin on the dresser, along with a china pitcher full of warm water, pink and maroon towels and perfumed soap. I washed my face, then shucked off my clothes and slipped into bed with Ruby.
She folded herself into me. Her skin and breath and warmth were a comfort, her voice was husky with sleep. She kept her eyes closed. “Did you reach your inspector?” she asked, draping an arm over my chest.
“Yes.”
“What about Mogaill?”
“Let’s talk about it later, all of it.”
“It’s that complicated?”
“It’s deep. Very deep. Deeper than I ever imagined.”
Ruby touched my face, found my eyelids and pulled them closed. “Sleep, baby,” she said.
And to sleep I went. And to dreams …
There is my father, as usual. In the handsome photograph held by its frame, back in New York. He is brave and young and unifor
med.
As in all previous dreams, Aidan Hockaday’s head and shoulders never leave that frame. It is the frame that has the legs and the soldier’s boots, it is the frame that marches through the battlefields of my dreams.
But that is New York. In this first dream of my father, in an Irish bed, there is a sudden blur, and a changed vision of him.
Aidan Hockaday steps out from my bag at the foot of the bed, free of his frame. He stands beside me.
“How are you getting on, boy?” he asks. He is as young as his picture, younger than me. But his voice is much older than mine.
“I’m getting things mixed up,” I tell him. “Stories, dreams, events.”
“What’s this? A visit from the færies during the night?”
“I don’t know. It seems so real.”
“Likely it is real, you were visited.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We all know little bits and pieces of things in our lives, boy. But we need the færies—the good and the mischievous—to fit them all together. This is what’s happening to you. And oh, but it’s a wonderful gift you’re receiving.”
“It is?”
“My, yes. Everybody dreams, and that is good enough for most. A night’s dream may be better than the world by day, but no truer. It’s the færies who invite you to the place beyond your dreams. If that’s where you care enough to go. Do you care, boy?”
“Yes.”
“As well I thought. It’s why the færies come to you. What greater gift for a detective who needs to know the true story of his own life? With such a gift, Neil, you’ve the power of being a shanachie one day yourself, a keeper of the truth. You really do want to know, don’t you now, boy?”
“The Truth, yes.”
… Sometime later, I was aware that day had passed to evening. The red room was now black and cold. I was sweating.
Someone was shaking me. It was not Ruby.
Chapter 16
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir.”
This came in a stern woman’s whisper. Muzzy from sleep, I realized I had heard these words repeated several times. And each time, the woman had poked my shoulder as she said them.
“What—?”
“I say, beggin’ your pardon. I don’t fancy this no more than you. No sir, I never like bein’ in the disgustin’ sight of sin. I say that, too.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes and mouth. I looked over at Ruby, still slumbering peacefully on her side of the bed. There was some dim light shafting into the room from the doorway. This silhouetted the large woman who was still jabbing me.
Waving an arm at her in the dark, I said, “Would you like to lose that finger, lady?”
She shrunk back a step, whispering coarsely, “Evil, snarlin’ fornicator!” Light shone across half her beefy face, and on the gold crucifix hanging from her neck. I recognized, of course, Uncle Liam’s God-fearing cook, Moira Catherine Bernadette Booley herself.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. “What do you want from me?”
“I come to fetch you for master.”
“Liam?”
“Aye, you’re to come along now.”
“Wait outside in the hall,” I said. “Unless you want to witness the disgusting sight of my naked, sinful body.”
Moira clapped a hand to her mouth in horror. She held up the other hand as a shield and hissed, “Gawd’ll smite thee for your mockin’ me, and for all your smutty crimes as well!” Then she waddled away from me, backward through the thin light.
I got up and pulled on my clothes. I ran a comb through my hair in the dark and wondered what on earth could be so urgently on Uncle Liam’s mind that would have him sending Lady Christer to roust me. Not that Snoody, the embittered nose laugher, would have made the rousting any more agreeable. Ruby stirred in bed. I decided to let her sleep.
Moira was stamping a foot and otherwise seething with impatient disapproval out in the hallway. She greeted me there with a curt command: “Follow me down t’the hole where he’s waitin’.” Then she proceeded down the staircase and I trailed behind her backside, which moved along like a pair of drunken sailors. She finally delivered me to the smaller and darker of the two sitting rooms on the first floor.
We took a few steps inside the musty-smelling room. There was only the beginning of a blaze in the fireplace and a small lamp on a nearby table that gave light to the room. Newspapers and magazines cascaded over the edges of the table. There was an old cathedral radio there, playing American music that had me asking myself why I did not have sense enough to fly back home where I belonged; especially as Lady Christer said to Uncle Liam, “As you asked, I brung you the transgressin’ nephew.”
“Thank you, Moira, and God bless you,” Liam said, back to us in his wheelchair parked close to the hearth. “Go on back to your kitchen now if you please.” Moira shot me a nasty parting glance and bustled off. Liam turned his chair, and said, “Now come here by me, Neil.”
I crossed a room that had been neither cleaned nor open to air and sun in a very long time. A bay of windows might have given a pleasant view, but it was blocked by heavy brocade draperies; I wondered if a colony of bats lived in the soiled pleats. There were tall wooden cases swollen with books scattered against the walls, with unsmiling oil portraits of Irish gents in stiff collars and side whiskers hung from brittling strings in between, and furniture that appeared not so much arranged for daily use as warehoused over the years. It was a decrepit parlor, a crypt of dust and shadows and the sour smell of mice. Yet there sat Uncle Liam, looking young and strong enough in the soft firelight to leap out of his chair at me.
He nodded toward the table and said, “Turn up the dial on the wireless.” I did as he asked. He looked up at the dark ceiling, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Ah, the wireless …”
The Stan Getz Quartet was a few bars into “Sipping at Bell’s.” Liam said, “I remember how you love the jazz, Neil. Truth to tell, I prefer it myself. Just listen to that tenor saxophone. Isn’t it sweeter to life than the pipes and the fiddle and the concertina box and all that unfathomable antiquity of the Irish stuff? Sit down, and listen with me.”
I took a seat on a faded maroon horsehair couch opposite my uncle’s chair. I figured Liam meant me this seat, as there was a decanter and glasses on a table between us. Liam kept in rhythm to the music with the palms of his hands, tapping lightly against the arms of his chair.
I poured us a finger each of thick brown whiskey, and asked, “You wanted me down here to talk music?”
“A good start it is,” Liam said. He picked up his glass and sipped, and looked me up and down, measuring me against whatever was on his mind.
“Maybe we should just cut to the chase.”
“Americans!” Liam said, snorting tolerantly. “You’re so bloody impatient with the idea of proper conversation. What a curious trait that is. Such a fine young country, yet everybody’s in a great rush to get to the bitter end of an otherwise lovely chat. As if you’re a nation of old men and old women, all afraid time’s going to claim you before you get your say.”
“Time is vicious if you take it for granted.”
“A point of view subscribed to only by the ambitious, or the ironical.”
“Speaking of irony, imagine us two Americans here enjoying your man Boylan’s highly informing conversation—until he got himself murdered. Also imagine what I think seeing you in a house like this. You really had to go slumming when you came to see us poor relations in Hell’s Kitchen, didn’t you, Uncle?”
“I thought there might be certain questions on your mind.”
“You thought right.”
“I explained about poor Francie Boylan and his unpleasant politics.”
“Not quite,”
“As for you and your mother, Mairead,” Liam said, ignoring the gibe, “did you never know that I made it clear how my brother’s widow and little son were welcome to come live with me in this comfort you see?”
“I’m lea
rning fast how many things I still don’t know.”
“Aye, as bonny says, you’ve come here to fill up hollow places.”
“Will you help me?”
“Sure, and why do you think we two are sitting here together having our quiet drink?”
“Because you sent Moira to drag me out of my sleep?”
Liam laughed gently, then shifted in his chair and took another nip of whiskey. He asked, “Have you got a fag?”
“I already told you, no.”
“You could sneak a packet in, you could.”
“When you help me, maybe.”
“It’s good to know you’ve not put yourself above bribery. This shows me you’re the decent sort of policeman.”
“You were about to tell me why we’re having this heart-to-heart.”
“So I was. Tell me, Neil, when’s the last time we seen one another?”
“When we buried my mother.”
“Quite right. I remember you in the blue uniform, before your becoming a detective. Can you recall the rest of it?”
“It wasn’t much of a send-off, there’s not so much to remember. Father Tim was there with his blessing, and you dropped roses into the grave …” And I asked myself, What was the song my Uncle Liam sang?
“And your friend Mogaill,” Liam said, interrupting the thought.
“Yes … there was Davy.”
We fell silent for about a minute. Then Liam suddenly said, “I know about Father Tim, please God.”
“You know—?”
“Aye, and about Davy Mogaill.”
Did he mean that he knew what had happened to Father Tim and Davy Mogaill during these last two days, or was his knowledge deeper? I was about to ask Liam to explain himself when Moira came pounding into the room from the hallway, flush faced and out of breath. “He’s a-comin’ up the back way now!”
Calmly, Liam told her, “Thank you, Moira. Be a blessed dear now, run upstairs and help bonny with whatever she needs to look beautiful for your good supper.”
“She can bloody well fix her feathers without me!” Moira complained.
“It’s good to hear you curse, Moira. It shows you’re in good health. Be about it upstairs now.”
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