“This is your way of telling me there’s some other reason how come Brenda was gone all the time?”
“You’re a bachelor. What do you know about holy wedlock?”
“Holy, I doubt it. But I hear there’s plenty of lock in wedlock.”
“I’m here to tell you, taking a bride is like saying I do to the tip of an iceberg.”
“Who’s talking about sex now—or lack thereof?”
“I’m talking about what there is to a woman like Brenda besides the poor luck of her being born a beauty.”
“That ain’t good luck?”
“If she was born a plain girl, Brenda might have been absorbed with the business of making herself beautiful. As she was already beautiful, you see, she was absorbed with something else.”
“Maybe I’m getting your drift now, Davy.”
“Over on the other side, there’s a tradition behind politics of the sort that don’t get discussed in polite places. Follow me there?”
“Your beautiful Brenda—involved in them garbage politics?”
“Aye, and she was one of the unsuspecting female types. So by this wicked tradition, she won a dirty job. In Brenda’s case, they taught her the craft of bomb making.”
“Christ, Davy, nobody ever knew …”
“That was the whole bloody idea, and you’re looking at the biggest fool to it.”
“You’re drifting away from me now.”
“It’s a sorry story, but a short one. Many years ago, I took a holiday over to the other side. And what do you know but the loveliest girl in all Kildare takes her shining to me, a fine big New York cop. One thing leads to another, and it’s my wedding day. God in heaven, she was beautiful then, Ray.”
“I can imagine.”
“Unfortunately, imagination’s no substitute for experience. Of which I had little. And here I’m not talking sex, understand. I’m speaking of knowing a facade when you see one is all.”
“I think I get it,” Ellis said, brightening. “What better cover for making IRA bombs than being a tin wife?”
“You see the point now perfectly. That being that so far as Brenda was concerned, our marriage was beside the point.”
“I’m sorry as all hell, Davy. Maybe if you’d had a kid …”
“I loved her enough for that. She could have been charmed seeing a character like me all sappy about his little kid.” Mogaill sighed heavily. “But, anyhow, our loving never took that way. If it did, we’d have only been mocking God.”
“Man, I never seen a worse Catholic guilt trip than the freaking ride you’re on!”
“And you, the most suspicious cop I know.”
“You fooled us all, Davy.”
“To this very day perhaps. I’d bet you still don’t know how solid the facade was built.”
“Maybe not. But I’d guess right about here’s where Arty Finn and Dennis Farrelly come in. Also maybe the way Brenda went. Let me guess again. It wasn’t in no innocent house fire.”
“There, I knew I was right to call you.”
“Probably. The inspector, he’s in a big rush all the time with the mayor and that crowd to come up to the Bronx and hear you out. And your boy Hockaday’s sort of long-distance nowadays … Say, that reminds me. What about Hock in all this?”
“Ask him, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll do that when I see him. Right now, you can tell me about how Brenda checked out.”
“Her own brother’s one of the grassers responsible for that.”
“So much for you harps sticking together.” Ellis thought for a moment. Then, with his voice and his bulldog face brimming over in knowing cynicism, he asked, “Just who would be Brenda’s brother?”
“Her maiden name was Finn.”
“As in Arty Finn,” Ellis said, nodding his head. “And the other one that did her in, that would be—”
“Oh, you’re on top of it now. It was Finn and his mate, Dennis Farrelly, who sacrificed my Brenda.”
“How do you mean sacrifice?”
“Come now, you can’t be as dull as all that, Lieutenant. Bones are thrown to cops the whole world’round in exchange for ignoring the meat. It’s the meat, after all, that keeps us cops employed.”
“You’re saying that for the greater good of some kind of Irish garbage politics, this Farrelly and your wife’s own freaking brother turned her over?”
“Aye, there she was on one of her trips away, the lovely and unsuspecting wife of a New York cop fabricating bombs for boyos of the cause up in Ulster. And all the while, Finn’s like a snake in the grass, planning to divert attention from some far more serious mischief by having his mate in the Dublin Garda earn the glory of a bone.”
“So what happened?”
“The Garda come’round for its snoop, and I reckon Brenda was panicky. Her means of concealing the explosive goods backfired—and her in the effort.”
“This they write off as a house fire?”
“No need for further panic. The good folks of Dublin enjoy believing the troubles belong strictly to the north these days. The Garda don’t like to be the ones to knock a myth by revealing the likes of a bomb factory in the middle of some ordinary row of Dublin houses.”
“Likewise maybe a little bomb workshop here in New York? Say in a neighborhood out in Queens, the kind with geranium pots on the stoop?”
“Many’s the time we had a bit of smoke in the house when Brenda got things bollixed up fiddling around with this and that down cellar. She was right clumsy for a terrorist. It’s why I reckon she died the way I said.”
“So all these years, you kept a little of Brenda’s handiwork around the house? And that’s what went off the other night, killing her brother?”
“Well, who would have suspected?”
“Not Arty Finn,” Ellis said. He pulled out his notebook again and read over a few pages, then asked, “Finn and Farrelly, they’re the serious mischief you’re talking about?”
“Not them alone. There’s a secret and deceitful army of longstanding behind them. Like the Mafia, or cancer.”
“This army have a name? Like for instance, H.O.S.?”
“Ah, now we’d be getting to the meat, Lieutenant. Which I must leave to my off-duty friend, Detective Hockaday.”
“Some friendship. I don’t know why, Davy, but I see how your buddy Hock is somehow connected up with all this freaking Irish intrigue you’re laying out in cute little bits and pieces. Also I figure you know there’s a certain percentage Hock might wind up coming back here sideways.”
The only sound from Mogaill was the drumming of his fingers on the answering machine tape. Ellis put away his notebook.
Finally, Mogaill said, “Here’s your glory now, Ray. You make it play like the furnace blew in my place, and my guest Arty Finn gets it while I manage to wander off in a daze for a while. Nobody’s likely to care about Farrelly any more than Finn, so you can write him off as a leaper easy enough.”
“What makes you think the newspapers will buy that load of bull?”
“The press buys anything and you know it, Ray. Look at them still defending the Warren Commission, for the love of God.”
“Say if I put out the line like you want. It gets you paid back, but what’ll you throw into the pot?”
“This,” Mogaill said, tapping the answering machine tape. “Like I told you, get it transcribed for the inspector. Tell him the caller to Father Tim’s answering machine is Dennis Farrelly. Which is information that comes to you from diligently working your snitches. Then be sure to get the message over to Hock. He’ll be needing it.”
“Davy, that is one piss-poor ante.”
Mogaill raised his gun to his head again.
Chapter 32
“Who’s that?”
Ruby said to me, the Scotch turning her voice husky, “What? Can’t you tell from here?”
“Well, maybe I’d better get up,” I said.
“Say, what’s all this about your being able to see without looking?�
� Ruby laughed at me as I rose from the couch unsteadily, the Scotch having its effect on me, too, as well as the day’s string of shocks.
I stopped at the bed and held on to a post, waiting for a moment’s dizziness to pass. I picked up my Yankees cap from the bed and put it on before heading to the door, where the pounding had renewed from the other side. I shouted a slurry, “I’m coming, I’m coming …” and twice stubbed a toe in the folds of the thick rug with the sweetheart roses spilled all over it.
When I opened the door, there stood a tall, stocky man with a well-cut thatch of gray hair. Because he was not wearing a suit, and because the accumulated drinking of the day was now hitting me like breakers at the beach in Far Rockaway, it took me a couple of seconds to realize this was Patrick Snoody. Tonight he was dressed casually, for Snoody anyway. He wore a cashmere V-neck sweater the color of his hair, a silk ascot, navy with tiny red polka dots, and charcoal mohair trousers, severely creased.
“Good evening, sir,” Snoody said, his fist raised and ready for more pounding. He dropped his arm, laughed softly through his nose at the sight of my cap, and asked, “What’s this, homesick for the old ball game are we?”
“Doesn’t anybody wear baseball caps over here? What do you want, Snoody?”
“Terribly sorry, I’m afraid there will be no formal dinner,” Snoody said, ignoring my first question. “Your uncle is a bit under the weather and plans to pass the night in his chamber.”
“How the hell come? He looked pretty good the last time I saw him. Now he’s sick?”
“Just a bit bound up, to tell the truth about the old gentleman.”
“Oh yeah, I remember. Knots in his pudding, that’s what he calls it.”
“Yes,” said Snoody, raising an eyebrow. He looked past me into the red room. I followed his gaze over to Ruby, who waved at him with her fingers. Snoody raised his other eyebrow, looked away and said to me, “He sends his apologies.”
“Which room is good old Uncle Liam’s?” I stepped into the doorway and poked my head past Snoody, scanning up and down the long hallway of the third floor. “One of these doors up here?”
“The old gentleman,” Snoody said sternly, “would appreciate being left undisturbed tonight.”
“You’re not going to tell me which one’s my Uncle Liam’s room, is that it? Goddamn your Irish bead-rattling ass, is that it?” I know what an argumentative drunk sounds like, and I liked the sound of myself. Also I very much enjoyed the color of red that was taking over Snoody’s face and neck. “I ask you one simple thing, Snoody—and you won’t tell me?”
“Sir, if you please! See here, I—!”
“Okay, forget it if it’s such a big goddamn deal. Where’s your room, Snoody? You and me, we’ll open a bottle of port and chat later like a couple of regular pals, about all sorts of things. Life, death, fear … the love of a good woman? Maybe about the old days in the monastery with all your monk pals … Father Timothy Kelly, say? How about it? Or if you’d rather, we can talk about Francie Boylan and his politics …”
Snoody’s skin tones now pretty much matched everything in the red room, and his arms were shaking hard enough to take leave of his shoulders. Naturally, I decided it was time to hit him with the big one. “Oh, now here’s an idea—you can tell me all about the H.O.S.”
Poor Snoody sucked in a lot of air, very suddenly, and as it came back up his nose sounded like a distant burglar alarm. He took a beat, holding the door jamb.
When he could move again, he turned on his heel, and said hastily, “Cook will prepare tea and a board for you both. I’ll have her bring it’round in about an hour. A very good night to you, sir.”
I watched him escape down the central staircase, knowing he felt my eyes on his clenched back. When he was out of sight, I closed the door and returned to Ruby, lying languidly on the couch, a bare leg dangling off the edge.
The fire needed encouragement. I picked up a poker and stoked up some nice bright flames.
“So look at me, slow-dancing with the sole heir to the Liam Hockaday estate,” Ruby said as the fire crackled. “I could get used to this place.”
“Better not.”
“Why? It sure beats that dump of yours back in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“It’s not my briar patch.”
“Oh, pooh!”
“No kidding, Ruby, I’m getting uncomfortable here.”
Ruby sat up and her eyes saddened. She said, “The way you say that, you’re scaring me, Hock. I thought you just said we’d stay so you could find yourself.”
“We don’t have to actually stay in this house to figure out its riddles, do we? I have to trust my instinct, and it tells me we should clear out. Tomorrow’s not too soon.”
“Your uncle’s—”
“I’ll try seeing him, tonight.”
“What I was going to say was, at least the riddle your uncle told you is solved. For what that’s worth.”
“The one about the blind man?”
“Yes. A man without eyes saw plums on a tree. He neither took plums nor left plums. How could this be?”
“I give up.”
“Wait, I wrote it all down.” Ruby jumped off the couch and went to a dresser drawer. She came back with a piece of paper. “Okay, pay real close attention to exactly what I say next. Ready?”
“Sure.”
“The man had one eye, so he’s without eyes. There were two plums hanging on the tree and he took one of them, therefore neither taking nor leaving plums.”
Maybe if I was sober this would have computed the first time. As it was, I had to ask Ruby to run it past me again.
“Come on, Hock, don’t you get it?”
“I’m a little drunk, I’m not a moron. Of course I get it. When did you figure it out?”
“Actually, I didn’t. Moira told me. She told me several interesting things this morning.”
“Oh yeah?”
“For instance, here’s another minor riddle solved: Moira and your uncle, they were lovers once upon a time.”
“What happened?”
“It was only when they were children, Hock, and all’innocent’ as Moira says. After that, it was not only pure it was one-sided. Poor old Moira, in love with your uncle and all she’s known her whole life is serving him. I mean that’s all she’s known of him. You understand?”
“No wonder she went Christian.”
“There’s more. Hock, she knew your father and mother.”
“Do you think she’d talk to me? We didn’t exactly hit it off.”
“I think you might win her over. It would take some doing, though. She holds back when she gets talking, and my instinct tells me the reason for that is named Patrick Snoody. But anyway, from what I told her about you, she seems to think you’re very much like your father, and I get the feeling she liked your dad quite a lot. Your mother, I’m not so sure.”
“What did she say about her?”
“I wrote that down, too.” Ruby looked at the other side of the paper she held. “Okay, here goes about Mairead Fitzgerald Hockaday: ‘A beauty she was. A beauty and a rebel, and the reason I dreamed up the poser about the one-eyed man.”
“A beauty …”
“Hock, is something wrong?”
I thought, Shame on me, for I cannot imagine my mother being beautiful.
I said, remember looking at my mother sleeping in the early morning when I’d get up for school at Holy Cross. She’d worked all night, pulling stick at one of the Irish joints in the neighborhood, and so she was much too tired to be up with me. I’d go up and say good-bye to her there in her bed, lying on her back with her hair stringing around her head and her closed eyes like they were ready for pennies. I’d kiss her on the cheek. I don’t think she ever knew, she was so damn tired. Her coat would be lying down at the end of the bed. I always liked the way it smelled—like a good time. It smelled of food and liquor and women’s perfume. But my mother never ate at restaurants, and she never drank, and she never owned perfume.
”
“And her brother-in-law, Liam, living here in this place, with all this money,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “I just don’t get it.”
“Liam sent money every week,” I said. “I remember that. My mother never complained about any lack of generosity.”
“Remember what your uncle said about that the other night?”
“No.”
“He was adament in saying he’d sent all your mother asked for. It’s not as if she didn’t know about better things. Look where she came from. The mighty Fitzgeralds of Bloor Street.”
“They should have seen her. We had one luxury in our house in Hell’s Kitchen. That was the radio, an Atwater-Kent. She loved to read, but she could only borrow books from the library, she never bought any. I never saw her wear a dress that didn’t come from the dead table at Holy Cross. She’d take me up to the park on holidays, and she’d always want to look at the flowers. I remember her saying that fine homes were full of flowers. We never had flowers at home, when she was alive. There were flowers at her funeral, though. Uncle Liam dropped roses into her grave.”
“How did she die, Hock?”
“The same way everybody else in the neighborhood died, worn down by work.”
“She died with a lot of secrets, but she can’t keep them anymore.”
“No.”
We had another short drink and watched the fire die. When the embers went to ash, there was knocking at the door again.
“Good, it must be Moira,” Ruby said. “I’m starved.”
Ruby slipped on a robe and went to the door. I heard Moira’s voice, and soon smelled hot food and coffee. I got up myself and started toward the door.
Moira in her apron—smiling nervously I thought—stood behind a small wheeled serving cart. On the cart were covered plates, a carafe of charged water, coffee in two capped glass pots and a bud vase with two yellow roses.
“This is so nice,” Ruby was saying to Moira. “It’s been quite a day, and we’re so hungry.”
“If you please, ma’am, I’ll be puttin’ out your supper on the table inside, over by the fireplace,” Moira said.
Drown All the Dogs Page 23