Unsuccessful in finding what I needed, I decided to see O’Dowd again.
“What is it, Mr. Hockaday?” he asked sternly as I was shown into his office a second time, now by a plump and friendly secretary.
“I’m looking for information that’s nowhere in your indexes,” I said.
“What, exactly?”
“Is there a campus group called the Dublin Men’s Society of Letters?”
“Never heard of it, I’m afraid.”
“What about years ago—in the thirties, say.”
“Before my time, I’m afraid.”
“Yes—but in the student yearbook for 1934, the Dublin Men’s Society of Letters was listed as one of my father’s credits. So it existed, at least in the past.”
“Then it should be cross-referenced in the indexes.”
“But it’s not.”
O’Dowd shrugged, and said, “Well, what’s past is passed.”
I told him, “That’s where you’re dead wrong—I’m afraid.”
Chapter 25
“Broadway and Two-hundred-fortieth, there’s a diner. Come alone.”
“You’re just the guy I been wanting to talk to. But give me a break, it’s the freaking Bronx. I got to go up there, my whole night’s about shot.”
“Don’t bother yourself about being a hero then. I’ll be merely another perp on the loose. But you should know there’s something I’m holding that a certain inspector downtown might like to get his hands on—a certain inspector who can always do right by an old lad pushing retirement such as yourself. But never you mind. I can see your time’s much too valuable. I can always just go direct and save you the fuss and trouble.”
“Leave us not be busting my chops. What’s the deal?”
“Payback.”
“Yeah? What’s in it for me?”
“Glory, my friend.”
“That I already got up the wazoo, on account of I live the fine pure life of a New York cop.”
“Like I say, I can go direct.”
“Don’t let’s be shirty. I’m only trying to figure what you mean by payback. Now, if it’s money—”
“There’s Brink’s for that, Lieutenant—not you. Sending money by cop is like sending lettuce by rabbit.”
“I could take that personal.”
“That’s right, you could.”
“Don’t mind my asking, but what in hell do you need me for? And don’t give me no more of that glory crapola.”
“I always trust a suspicious nature.”
He put down the telephone and lay back in bed. There was plenty of time for a nap.
All his life, he had found it difficult to fall asleep. He would toss and turn for hours, even on days he had gone light on the black station house coffee; even when he had his wife beside him, especially then. But ever since Sunday night and Arty Finn’s explosive departure from this life, sleep came to Davy Mogaill with the mere shutting of his eyes. As it did now. As he thought, So this now is freedom, my only freedom …
Davy Mogaill dreamed of a girl with hair the color of October leaves in the Galty mountains. He had a vision of the day he was married in County Kildare. Himself dressed stiffly in his father’s cut-down formal suit, standing up on his young trembly legs near the priest, waiting for the woman he loved to join him at the altar set up in her family homestead; Brenda in her bride’s lace and posies, led down the aisle not by her father, a locally famous martyr to the republican cause, but by her scowling brother.
And later, after all the blessings and the wedding jigs and the drinking, his new brother-in-law and the priest and a few of the fiercest boyos from the village surrounding him and slapping his back in boozy congratulations. With his bride looking on so proudly at the men in her life.
Then Brenda’s brother at his ear, whispering the family curse as if it were a lullaby, “Understand, you married us all this day, Davy—until death us do part.” And his pretty bride’s green eyes dancing, and all the men nodding, and their lips frozen in wintry smiles …
He awoke with the old aching thought, For the love of Brenda, how many debts have I paid that I never owed?
Mogaill sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He looked out the window and saw the last foggy light of day give way to an evening of wet, purple haze that promised a coming rain. Lights yellowed the neighboring windows. Traffic noises dimmed. A street full of American families would soon be eating dinner, staring at television and ignoring one another.
Mogaill’s stomach roared. He was suddenly hungry.
In the house where he was staying, dinner was served early and he had missed it, not that he cared. Company could be a burden to a man who had lived alone as long as Mogaill had. Downstairs now, the others would be organizing themselves according to dull habits. The usual small stakes poker game would be starting up, the usual blowhards would be carrying on about politics, the usual dyspeptics would be dozing and farting in old tattered chairs. He would miss all this, too, and just as well for the sake of his bouncing blood pressure.
He stood, stretching himself and feeling immensely fatigued despite nearly thirty minutes’ heavy sleep, his second such nap of the day. He picked up the shoulder holster slung over a bedside chair and strapped it on, patting the smooth brown leather that encased his .38 police special. Then he slipped on his suitcoat.
Before he left the room, he paused to put back two quick shots of Scotch. Also he checked his pocket again. It was there, all right.
Now he was down the stairs, past the debaters and the poker players and the wind breakers. Then out the door and down the stoop.
Halfway to the corner, where he would eventually flag a taxi, he turned. Someone was calling his name.
“Captain Mogaill! A word—please!”
Mogaill waited, not patiently, until the man trotting up the street with his black coattails flying drew even to him. He waited a few seconds more for him to catch enough breath to speak.
“All right now, what is it?” Mogaill said, glancing at his wrist-watch. “I’ve places to go, people to see.”
“House meeting’s tonight,” said the man in black, holding his side and panting. “I was just coming up to talk to you about … the agenda, you know. But out you’d gone from your room.”
Mogaill groaned.
“Now, I told the others … I said I’d have your word for them.”
“On how long I’ll be staying about?”
“That’s it, yes.”
“Weary of me already?”
“Oh, well … it’s not me, you understand. But there’s some are scared, that’d be more like it. The others, they’ve heard talk that—”
Mogaill interrupted, chopping the air with a hand. “Magpies! You should have dryers on your heads all of you.”
The man in black wrung his hands and rolled his eyes upward, then said, “For the love of God, tell me what I can say. We’ve got to know something.”
Davy Mogaill, the fugitive head of homicide in a homicidal town, said, “Say a little prayer for me. Very soon, I expect, I’ll be leaving you all to your little worries in this sweet cesspool of a life.”
Ellis slid into the booth, brushing his brown cop suit. It was splattered with rain that started falling in sheets exactly as he stepped from his car. He said, “So, I’m here and we got Noah’s flood coming down. You satisfied?”
Mogaill looked up from his food and smiled at the lieutenant. He pushed aside a nearly empty plate. “I recommend the shepherd’s pie,” he said.
“Mick food gives me the bloat.”
“Since when are you worrying about your figure, Ray? All this time I’ve known you, you always look the same—like a bagful of doorknobs.”
“Ain’t this just beauty-ful?” Ellis picked up a paper napkin and mopped rain off his bald head. “You get me up here to this nameless dump—for what? So you and me can rank each other out like we’re back in high school with the pimples again?”
The girl who was Brenda’s
ghost stepped to the booth with her waitress pad. Ellis told her, “Just bring me a Heineken, doll.” When she went away, he said to Mogaill, “I seen now why you hang around here. Jesus H. Christ on a stick, is that kid your dead wife’s Doppelgänger or what?”
Mogaill, watching the girl walk away, let go of a long sigh with “Brenda” in the middle of it. Then he turned back to Ellis, and asked, “You come here alone like I said, did you, Ray?”
“Naw, Davy. Everybody’s curious about the New York police captain who ran away, so I invited along that putz Geraldo Rivera and a film crew. They’re waiting on you outside.”
“Inquiring minds want to know, hey?”
“This one’s asking himself, Maybe it’s the missing Captain Mogaill with the gummy footprints somewheres in a couple of my cases? Want to help me out on that?”
“See? I knew you were suspicious.”
“You got no paddle, Davy, and the creek you’re up is full of shit. So let’s don’t tire my ass too much.”
“Suspicious, and ever eloquent. But disturbingly impatient.”
“C’mon, it’s time to give out, you hump. Otherwise I could forget we been such good friends over the years.”
The waitress delivered Ellis’s beer and poured it into a glass. Mogaill put a ten on the table and said she should keep the change. The girl bit her lip, and said, “Gee, mister, I don’t know.”
“Go ahead, you only live once,” Mogaill told her.
“Such a morbid joke to be telling an innocent sweet-looking kid,” Ellis said to Mogaill.
The sweet-looking kid’s face flushed with blood and she left the booth in a hurry. But she was not too horrified to grab the ten.
“That mouth of yours,” Mogaill said. “You might scare the lass into calling up the sex crimes squad.”
“You don’t square with me in about two seconds, I’ll call myself.”
Mogaill ignored the threat. He asked, “Remember what you said on the radio when Father Kelly shot himself?”
“What the—?”
“You said, and I quote, ‘This sure ain’t about who done it, that’s as obvious as boils on a fat guy’s neck … The padre, he decided to check out, big time … Leaving us the question, what the hell for?’ That’s the kind of probing suspicion I appreciate, Ray. It’s altogether too rare in police work.”
“There’s a couple more choice suspicions I got where you figure into things these days.”
“Such as?”
“Like in the first place, what’s your nice house in Queens doing with a bomb in it anyhow? And how come this IRA character Arty Finn gets smoked when he drops by? Then how come you pull this disappearing act afterward? You’re a very wanted person. On suspicion, you know?”
“Aye, so I see by the newspapers.”
“Also I might as well ask you, what’s the deal with the Dublin cop by the name of Dennis Farrelly we find naked and dead over in Hell’s Kitchen? And did you hear about the nice splashy homicide your pal Hockaday’s got himself involved in the first hour he hits the Olde Sod?”
“What makes you think I know about Farrelly?”
“A little birdie told me once you freaking harps stick together.”
“Nae, not always, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, that’s it. My butt’s had it.”
Ellis shifted in his seat, cracking his back. Then he drained the beer from his glass in four loud swallows. At the same time, Mogaill slipped his left hand into a side pocket of his suitcoat; with his right, he reached inside to his holster.
“It’s been real swell seeing you again, Davy, and thanks for the beer,” Ellis said, wiping foam off bulldog lips with the back of a hand. “But since I am getting bubkes here, you give me no choice but going according to the book. Which means I’m taking you in on suspicion of murder, Captain. You want to come nice and easy?”
“I don’t think so.” Mogaill pulled out his .38 and jammed the barrel of it into his right ear. He steadied his arm by resting his elbow on the table. With a pained smile, he said, “If I really must be going, I’d prefer to take myself out.”
“Sweet hanging Jesus!” Ellis said in a ragged whisper, hoping heads would not turn. “Let’s talk some more, Davy. C’mon, I got all night …”
Mogaill cocked back the firing hammer and said nothing.
“C’mon, Davy, you want to put down the piece? What’s your point here?”
Mogaill pulled an audiocassette tape from his side pocket and dropped it on the table.
“What’s that?” Ellis asked.
“The point. And as you might say, it ain’t bubkes.”
Ellis picked up the cassette. Mogaill kept the cocked revolver against his head.
“It’s what you want to get down to Neglio. Is that it, Davy?”
“Tell him it’s from the priest’s answering machine. Tell him he should transcribe it and get it off to Hockaday, word-for-word and real quick.”
“All right, you got it. Now put down the piece, Davy. Jesus, you’re making me tense.”
Mogaill did not move.
“Think of that nice waitress who’s the spitting image of your wife, Davy. You want to keep coming in here to look at her for old times’ sake, don’t you? Keep making me tense like you’re doing and my pants will start smelling funny, and then Miss Sweet Thing’s maybe going to eighty-six you out of this place.”
“You remember my Brenda do you?”
“Sure, like it was yesterday.”
“Beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Gorgeous. God, we was all so sorry when she went in that house fire over in Ireland.”
“I think about her a lot.”
“Naturally. Look, Captain, how about dropping the—?”
“Can’t you see I’m bloody despondent, Lieutenant? Kindly don’t be bothering me about this gun.”
“Okay, okay.”
“In fact, the last time I saw Hockaday I was thinking about her.”
“Brenda?”
“The subject of women came up. I remember exactly what I said to Hock: ‘The allurement women hold out for us men, my friend, is the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors. Women are enormously dangerous, thus they are enormously fascinating.’”
“Nice, a regular poem almost. But it sure don’t make women out to be all sugar and spice.”
“You’re really quite perceptive, Lieutenant.”
Chapter 26
Now was a good time to drop in on Oliver Gunston.
I asked a lot of people in the streets a lot of questions, and gradually made my way across the River Liffey footbridge from Trinity College, up O’Connell Street and then through some crooked lanes over to the mall in Grafton Street, and finally to the offices of the Irish Guardian at the end of a side lane. I had reached a sleek modern building with a lot of glass and chrome that looked like a chopped-down version of one of those corporate silos on Sixth Avenue back in New York. No traveling New Yorker gets homesick when he beholds this kind of building somewhere else.
There was an old fellow with a gunbelt in the lobby, napping at a desk with a sign on it that read INFORMATION. He was dressed in a mothy gray uniform, a matching leather billed hat with a vaguely official shield on it and the kind of rubbery shoes a postal carrier wears. The hat was a size too big. Instead of poking his chest to wake him, I said, “I want to see Oliver Gunston.”
He grunted. Puffy eyelids scrimmed with brittle veins flickered like a toad’s, dry lips smacked, dentures clicked. He eyed my Yankees cap doubtfully, and said in a thick voice, “Come again?”
“Gunston. Where do I find him?”
“You’ll not be seein’ nobody ‘til you doff that thing to me,” he said, drawing himself to scrawny attention behind his desk. If he meant my cap, I decided it would stay where it was. He said, “Look, you, I’m the man in charge while we’re down here.”
He did not much care for my silence, which he correctly took to mean I was unimpressed. He snarled, “You’re one of them Ame
ricans, I see.”
“Yeah, one of them.”
Who knows why anybody hires rent-a-cops to hang around lobbies bothering the public? When they are not stealing from the store themselves, they are giving access to all the wrong people. Ask the hotel managers in New York who are always surprised when smoothies wearing three-piece suits and packing acetylene blowtorches in their Gucci attachés somehow wind up helping themselves to the house safe. Ask the bad guys, and they will say the world was smarter and a lot more secure when watchful secretaries and alert elevator operators were keeping the lid on.
I took out my NYPD tin, flashed it, and said, “Ring up Oliver Gunston like a good fellow. Okay, Fosdick? The name’s Hockaday, like it says here on a real badge.”
“Fosdick ain’t the name.”
“But you’re fearless just the same, isn’t that right?”
“I do my job.”
“That’s good.” I waved my tin again. “Now call.”
Fosdick, of course, was impressed by a badge that could do me no real good in Dublin. He telephoned the news room and a few minutes later I was up three floors of the Irish Guardian Building. An amused young man in rolled-up shirtsleeves, old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses and a green eyeshade straight out of The Front Page met me as I stepped off the elevator.
“Well, well—you’d surely be the American our troll down in the lobby was all on about,” he said, extending his hand. I assumed he meant old Fosdick. “I’m Gunston.”
I shook his hand, and said, “Hockaday. Nice eyeshade.”
“Thank you. Nice Yankees cap.”
I liked the man immediately, and I am almost always right when I make a quick judgment like that. He was practically a full generation younger than me, and of course he lived here in Dublin, but somehow I felt that Oliver Gunston and I were two of a kind; that we had shared experiences, or outlooks. Or maybe it was only that I once wanted to be a journalist myself … or something.
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