“Oh, Mr. H—!”
“Must I always butter your cat’s paws, Moira?” he asked wearily. “Or might you save me some remaining breath of my life by minding that you’ve got a good thing going in this house.”
Moira went clumping upward to the red room, muttering “Gawd bless us’n save us!”
Liam said to me, quietly, “Quick now, Snoody’ll soon be with us. I’m told you’re a fine detective, would that be fair to say?”
“I like to think so.”
“Right then, I’m telling you now the main reason I pulled you down here all to myself, Neil: I want to put a riddle to you.”
“A what—?”
“When you solve it, you’ll start seeing answers to questions that have burnt you hollow.” Liam’s face turned anxious. He looked past me to the empty hallway. “Well then—you do want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“A man without eyes saw plums on a tree. He neither took plums nor left plums. How could this be?”
Chapter 17
“Peep o’day, comrade.”
“You—!”
“Aye, and glad to be your guest. But look at you now—you’re lying spread-eagled in this here bed, and not greeting me with the least sort of proper smile.”
“How’d you get’n here?”
“Do you think the likes of you are the only ones knowing about how to persuade a lock when you don’t own the key?”
“Stinkin’ bastard—!”
“Such talk. But what can I expect, waking you so early? What about a cup of tea now? How’d that be to chip away the temper, make things between us nice and civil like.”
“Get that fookin’ cannon off me face.”
“You’re calling this old Mauser of mine a cannon? Let’s see how it’s wee enough to fit neat in a man’s mouth, just like it done in the priest’s. Come now, comrade—open up.”
“I ain’t—!”
“I said, open up! Aye … that’s got it now. And my, but look how it makes the face run red and the eyes big and bright blue as robin’s eggs. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I believe this cannon so-called is tickling your tonsils. I said, tell me! What’s that you’re garbling? Might you be trying to say you can’t speak with a wee gun in your gullet? All right then, let’s give it a rest.”
“Holy Mother, have mercy—!”
“The sniveling’s unappealing, but I prefer it over the swearing.”
“I’m beggin’ you, don’t take me out.”
“Don’t kill you? When you and the boyos were out for the same to me? Would you call that fair play now?”
“He only come to warn you.”
“Do you think I don’t know you and your bloody Irish games? Don’t glink me, man.”
“I ain’t glinkin’.”
“Then what about Father Kelly?”
“I don’t know nothin’ but what I read’n the New York papers.”
“Liar. It was you rang up the priest on the telephone.”
“Nae, I never—”
“Your lying’s an offense to me and every part-honest man of our guild. I think now’s the time for putting you in mind of the poor priest’s final seconds. Open up … I said, open up! That’s the boy. Now, listen close as I’m pulling back the hammer with my thumb, comrade …
“Hear the sound of clicking steel revolving in the magazine. ‘Tis a horrible sound, is that not true? And dread the bigger sound to come—the one you well know from all the murdering you done to others in your filthy life. The nasty wet sound of your own brains blowing out of your skull …
“Click, click, click! Can you hear my index finger rubbing the trigger now? Rubbing it, squeezing it … click, click, click! Are you wondering when the big sound’s coming now? Pay attention to this vicious moment, comrade! It’ll expand and become your well-deserved eternity in hell …
“Oh! For pity’s sake! Mind your toilet, man!”
“I’m sorry—”
“Well, you should be. Here you go making a mess right in the middle of our proceedings. I wasn’t near ready to free your gullet of this here Mauser. What’ll we do now?”
“Please, the loo—”
“All right, come on then. Up with you, slow like. That’s it. You and me, let’s walk along nice as pie. Don’t be making any sudden or nervous motions since I’m pressing the Mauser up against your ear now and I’m irritated that I’m one hand short, what with having to cover up my nose on account of your uproaring bowels. Can I trust you now?”
“Yes …”
“Good. Here we go to get clean again. You’ll not be wanting to leave this world soiled the way you are. What do you say to my thoughtfulness?”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Right, now—strip off the mess, and here’s the sink, and the soap and water. Take your time, fix yourself decent.”
“I need clean things now.”
“Not to worry, comrade. Any clothes you wear to hell will only burn away, so we’ll not be bothering Old Nick about earthly raiment. Come on, naked as a babe I’m taking you to the roof.”
“Please, don’t shoot me—!”
“As you like it, then. Let’s have a look about your squirrelly den for some other means of sending you off.”
“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, no—!”
“Ah! I have it. Look here at this fine big butcher’s knife lying in your kitchen. Why, it’s the perfect thing! We’ll take it along. Now, let’s be to the roof.”
“Jaysus—!”
“Enough with your holy jibber, man! Walk along, come on. You’re Hearts of Steel, is that not so? Say it for me now as we’re moving up the stairs. I said, say it! And proudly put it!”
“Hearts of Steel!”
“Aye, that’s it. It’s words to die by, all right.”
“Please—!”
“Sorry, comrade, you get no mercy from me. Nor even from God, I expect. What you done in your time is so bad it’d raise tears out of Satan. What you done to the padre, and what you done to my Brenda!”
“Nae, that wasn’t me who—!”
“Shut up, maggot! You’re going to be cut in half now. And when they find you up here, I can tell you this: they might figure I done it, but they’re not likely to be interested in proving it. Have you never heard, justice is the sanction of established injustice?”
“I tell you, I wasn’t the one! I never called up your Father Kelly, and I never did it to your Brenda!”
“And I told you, you’re lying. Glink’s my game, comrade. And I been playing it against you and the boyos all these years now, as you see. You’re going to die, man—and me, I’m going to howl with delight, like we was only sitting across a glink board over on the other side, and it’s me trapping your spoof or pulling off a double barness,”
“Mercy! I beg you—!”
“Where’s that heart of steel now, comrade?”
“I renounce that—all of it!”
“Nae, you baked your bread for life. Mercy’s not in your gift. But pity is. What would you say to that?”
“Your pity then, please …”
“I’ll consider it. Right now, let’s have you back off me a few steps. That’s it, back just aways so’s I can take a run at you with this here knife. Are you ready now?”
“Pity—!”
“Move back if you must, I’m coming now! That’s right, keep moving, moving. Don’t be looking back of you. But imagine the glory of walking off one of them dear green bluffs in the west country, clean into the drink. A poetic way for a steel-hearted lad to go, wouldn’t you say…?
“Well, there you go now … Fare thee well to one more of you unlovely H.O.S. sons of bitches.”
Chapter 18
Supper was taken in the smaller of the two dining rooms. The larger one, on the first floor, was probably big enough to support a crowd of dancers if not for an oblong table running down the middle. Ours on the third floor was more intimate, with a capacity for a banquet of merely twenty or so.
I could
easily picture a boy growing up in a nice big lace curtain Irish home like this instead of a Hell’s Kitchen tenement. Unfortunately, the boy in the picture was not me.
I liked the room very much. The walls were covered in deep green felt and fitted with brass sconces, like library walls of private men’s clubs I have seen in New York. There was an ivory-colored marble fireplace with a pair of carved oak flower baskets on the mantel, a single chandelier hanging low over the walnut table, and a mahogany liquor cart with bottles of Burgundy, port, Scotch, and champagne in a bucket of ice.
There was a dumbwaiter built into a corner, and I could not help but picture that boy growing up here spending many a happy day riding it up and down to the tune of Moira’s curses. Also there were two more paintings among Uncle Liam’s collection of Italian art, which in answer to Ruby’s question he identified as Girolamo Ferrabosco’s circa 1640 Portrait of an Elegant Man and Francesco Furini’s circa 1630 St. Sebastian. While he was telling us this, Ruby gave me a look that might have said, I don’t want to hear about it.
Snoody was with us. Like black on coal, in fact. He had not left sight of Liam and me since returning from an errand down in the village diamond and interrupting our circumspect parlor chat. I had had no chance to play my uncle’s riddle back to Ruby, nor to discuss with her the strange discomfort I felt about everything and everybody in my uncle’s house.
Liam and I—and Ruby, in a billowy red silk blouse, matching pants and heels that put her at my own height—were left for only a few minutes to start on the champagne. This was while Snoody made like a butler, filling wine goblets and removing plates of food from the dumbwaiter. He set all this out on lace mats along one end of the table. From her kitchen down below, Moira was sending up generous loads of smoked ham, curried new potatoes, cheese-covered vegetables and warm soda bread.
“Ready now,” Snoody announced when he was done arranging a board for four. He motioned for us to take our places at the table.
I noticed a tired anger in Liam’s face as he looked up at Snoody, and realized this had been Snoody’s exact expression whenever he looked at Uncle. The two of them were like an old and unhappily married couple, exhausted from the triumph of habit over hate.
Ruby was staring at Liam now, too, and I wondered if she picked up on the same thing. My bet was that she had.
Liam allowed me to wheel him across the carpeted floor to the head of the table. Ruby and I sat down to his right. Snoody stood, lighting candles. He asked Liam, “Would you like me to say prayer over this evening’s meal?”
“Thank you, no, I’ve got a charming one of my own I’ve been saving for the occasion,” Liam said, sounding more mischievous than reverent. “Sit down, Patrick, and get yourself in the properly humble mood.”
Snoody scowled, and sat. We all bowed heads.
And Liam prayed:
“Dear God, tonight as we partake of thy kindest bounty, know that we’ll be eating and drinking to the glorious, pious and immortal memories of Thy own Sainted Patrick and our great good brother Brian Boru—who assisted, each in his respective way, in redeeming us Irish folk from toffee-snouted Englishmen and their ilk. We ask a blessing, if you please, on the Holy Father of Rome—and a shit for the Bishop of Canterbury. And to those at this table unwilling to drink to this, may he have a dark night, a lee shore, a rank storm and a leaky vessel to carry him over the River Styx. May the dog Cerberus make a meal of his rump, and Pluto a snuffbox of his skull, and may the Devil jump down his throat with a red hot harrow, and with every pin tear out a gut and blow him with a clean carcass to hell. Amen.”
Ruby and I laughed.
But Snoody said dryly, “Such fine holy sentiment for our guests.” He snapped open a linen napkin and spread it across his lap. Just in case Liam did not understand his irritation, Snoody said, “There’s good reason tonight to sup with a spoon of sorrow. Yet you offer up more curse than prayer. It’s only a shame Moira isn’t here to have heard it.”
“Meaning we must all be solemn by way of showing respect for the memory of poor Francis Boylan?” Liam asked him.
“I do mean that,” Snoody said.
“Oh, Patrick—my old sow’s teats! You and I been right here together, in this very room and others, the many times that Francie himself has recited this entertaining prayer—and laughed himself silly long afterward. It’s partly why I gave it, in his honor, see.” Liam turned from Snoody toward me, smiled brightly, and added, “Then partly it’s a prayer in keeping with certain other ones gone, or missing.”
“Would you be speaking of Father Tim Kelly and Davy Mogaill?” I asked, it suddenly occurring to me that a partisan prayer honoring two men violently killed and another missing was maybe not so funny. Snoody gobbled down a lot of wine and twisted in his seat. Liam’s smile turned dead as mutton. I was pleased to see that my abrupt question had stunned some deep, unspoken rhythm to Uncle Liam’s house of riddles. Hearing no answer, I put the question another way, “What joke would Davy and Father Tim have got from your prayer, Uncle? The same that Francie Boylan got?”
“Don’t go being so bloody tiresome as Snoody here, always wanting to muck about in solemnity like he was still stiff in his neck with the collar. Let’s try remembering I’m an old man who needs his cheerful moods.” Snoody’s nose laughed derisively. Liam turned from me to Ruby, and asked, “Now speaking of Her Nibs, as Patrick was before his great wheezy snout sprung yet another leak, how’d you get on with Moira when she and her vinegar tongue came to call you awake?”
“She quoted the Bible loudly, and at length, after which I told her that so far as I knew there was not a word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence,” Ruby answered him. “She took great offense.”
“Well said!” Liam told her.
He was now smiling again, and may well have thought Ruby an easy ally in his determinedly airy table chat. Uncle Liam was, after all, of an age of men who believe women to be dependably soft creatures. But Ruby’s generation of women has built a different idea of themselves. When the moment requires, the softest thing about Ruby Flagg is her teeth.
“Thank you,” Ruby said. Then she nodded at Snoody, to include him in what she said next to Liam. “Do you want to know what I think about dear simple Moira, gentlemen?”
“Yes …” the two of them said at once, making it sound more like “no.”
“It’s never entered your male brains that if two women should happen to come together and talk under your roof, one of us might easily see how the other’s capable of hiding something from the likes of you behind all her Bible noise? Something about what goes on in this house? Which is to say, gentlemen, the cook’s made asses of you.”
Liam and Snoody looked as if they had been bitten.
Ruby, in fine representation of her sisterhood, swept me up in a hard glance at this table full of men she had to deal with. Then she asked me, sweetly, “And just what do you think, Detective Hockaday?”
“That we’re beginning to cut to the chase,” I said. “Thank you, partner.”
“See here now—!” Snoody started to say.
Liam cut him off. “Never mind, Patrick. New Yorkers are al ways in a hurry, and you’ll never convince a one of them he’s anywhere but on his own turf.”
“Or she,” Ruby said.
“Quite,” Liam said, recovering his smile. “Besides, they’ve been through a bit now, haven’t they?”
“That’s a mild way of putting it,” I said.
“Yes … well, what may I tell you quickly now so that we might get on with Moira’s good meal?” Liam asked us.
“Let’s start with the legs,” I said. “What happened to them?”
“A year ago tomorrow it was, I was shot in the hip in a hunting accident, down in a forest south of the Wicklows,” Liam said. “Bloody nuisance, the bullet’s still in me and it’s seized up most of my pelvic nerves … well, except for the ones acting up when my piles itch.”
“Can an old man’s bum sores actually be the sor
t of clue you detectives find helpful during an investigation?” Snoody asked.
Ruby took this one. She shot back at Snoody, “What makes you think he’s asking questions in a professional capacity?”
Snoody refused to address her. “Tell us, young Hockaday,” he said to me, a sneer trilling through his nostrils, “just who is the policeman here.”
“That thing your nose does, you should see a doctor.”
“I … What—?”
“Anyhow, to answer your question, I’m the cop. But I’m not thinking about my occupation anywhere near as much as you seem to be for some reason, Snoody. If it helps keep your shorts dry, I’m way outside my jurisdiction.”
“In fact, he’s come home here to show off his darling, and he’s welcome to stay at home as long as he wants,” Ruby said. “Isn’t that right, Uncle Liam?”
“Right as rain over Waterford,” he answered brightly. A charming man of Liam’s generation still had much to learn about estimating a woman like Ruby.
“Then why is this the first time Hock’s stepped foot in this house, where he’s so welcome as you say?” Ruby asked. “Why didn’t he and his mother come here to live with you in this big place?”
“I always sent along support,” Liam said, defensively. “Money went regular every month for my brother Aidan’s widow, and Neil, too.”
“Not nearly as much as you could afford, so we can see.”
“But as much as Mairead would ever take from me!” Liam, redfaced and short of breath, pounded the table with a fist.
“Have a caution, won’t you?” Snoody said to me. “You’ll do no good for yourselves interrogating the man into sickness.”
“That’s very true,” I said. Ruby had done a good job playing bad cop to my good, picking open some family sores in the process. I needed to absorb what I had heard with the help of a full night’s sleep. Any further questions to Liam tonight would land easy. Snoody was another matter.
“About your letter,” I said to him. “You had my uncle on his deathbed. What’s the idea?”
Snoody hissed something. Then he and Liam passed poison frowns back and forth between them. After which, Liam collected himself by coming to Snoody’s defense.
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