Dead Irish (20 page)

24

EDDIE COCHRAN’S CAR was still at the police lot—when Frannie had called that morning from her first day back at work, they had told her it was being held now as part of another investigation.

She was stunned to hear that Linda Polk had been killed, but what did Eddie—what did their car—have to do with that? She asked if they were saying that Eddie had been murdered. No, they were not saying that. Not yet.

Still very weary of everything to do with Eddie’s being gone, shaking off some morning sickness, she hadn’t pursued it with them. She did take out Dismas Hardy’s card and left a message for him to call her when he got home.

Then she worked most of a whole day without taking a break or lunch or even thinking about it. The paperwork, after a week off, had piled up, which had taken most of the morning, what with everybody coming by and wanting to know if she was okay.

Well, no, she wasn’t okay. But it wouldn’t do to say it. She still hadn’t put it anyplace where she could accept it. She still expected to get home and then be making dinner and hear the door slam and Eddie’s cheerful voice doing the “Honey, I’m home” Ricky Ricardo impression he’d picked up the last month or so.

But she just nodded, trying to be polite with all the questions, saying she was fine.

It was odd. Until the seed had been planted today that Eddie might have been murdered, Frannie had slowly been letting herself get convinced that her husband had in fact killed himself. And each time that supposed reality struck home, it cut deeper. If Eddie killed himself, it meant he hadn’t loved her the way he’d said he did, the way she felt he had.

But you couldn’t argue with facts. If he probably had killed himself, and the police had investigated and said he had, then whatever she had thought they had together hadn’t been true. And what did that make the baby she was carrying?

She worked it around and around, coming back to it like a tongue to a hole in a tooth, forcing herself to feel the pain so that maybe she could get used to it. Eddie had rejected her. Eddie hadn’t loved her like she’d thought.

But then, this morning, as soon as she’d heard some official doubt, it was like a fresh wind clearing the rooms of her mind. If the police weren’t even sure, then she wasn’t a fool to believe it wasn’t true. She never should have stopped listening to her heart.

She remembered the time making love when she’d conceived. She knew it had been that Saturday morning when she had come back to the bedroom after her shower, to Eddie sleeping in. There was no faking his response to her. And afterward, lying there, touching her everywhere, nibbling. “I love your eyelids,” he said. “I love your elbow.” And laughing. “I love this little spot—what you call this?” right at the top of her leg in the back.

She had to believe he loved her. He did love her. And if he loved her, he didn’t kill himself.

That’s why the anger surprised her. Before, up until today, since Eddie had died, all she’d felt was this numb, horrible loss. Almost sleepwalking, trading consolation with Erin, not letting herself think too much.

But now, at ten to five, cleaning off the desk for another day tomorrow, she had to put her head down, the wave of anger came so strongly. “Oh, Eddie!” She almost said it out loud.

Because now the next reality hit. Before, while she was thinking he had committed suicide, it hadn’t mattered. But now, if somebody had killed him, she had a pretty good idea of why they had done it.

All of his pushing, all of his idealism, his visits to Cruz and Polk, trying to convince them to be something they weren’t, to be little perfect Eddies, play fair, do the right thing.

Oh, Eddie, she thought, shaking now, why couldn’t you just leave them alone and be like everybody else? I told you a hundred times it wouldn’t do any good. If you’d have listened to me you’d be alive now.

The shaking passed. Somebody walked by and asked if she was all right. Again.

She thought about the insurance money on the bus going home. It was the first time it had occurred to her, and like her anger earlier, it made her feel guilty.

Maybe this was the process, she thought. Little things moving in to take the place of the pain. She told herself this was probably natural, the beginning of the healing, but it didn’t help with the guilt.

She didn’t really care about the money. Then, for a sickening moment, she did. Well, not really, it was just if she did decide to have the baby, then she’d be able to stay at home with it for a while instead of having to keep working.

Something else was happening, and she tried to keep it out of the forefront of her thoughts. Like so many other things lately, though, it seemed out of her control.

It might be romantic nonsense, but that first day she’d found out she was pregnant, all she could think was that it was her and Eddie’s love, the mixture, that had made the baby. It was as though their love had become a separate thing outside of themselves, proving it, existing alone.

But then the last week, becoming more and more sure that Eddie hadn’t wanted the baby, hadn’t loved her like she’d thought, she’d come to doubt whether she wanted it at all.

She sat by the window in the bus, not caring, not even aware, that her face was streaked with tears.

She
did
want the baby. It was Eddie’s, all she had left of Eddie. She crossed her hands over her stomach.

Hardy had his elbows on Frannie’s kitchen table. He hadn’t been home yet. Frannie had called Lynne at the Shamrock while Hardy had been having one. She wanted to know about the other investigation, and Hardy didn’t want to get into it on the phone at the bar.

Frannie’s hair was shining again, and pulled back into a severe bun, it made her face look older, more in control. She wore a plain white blouse, a black wraparound skirt. The face was still pallid, without makeup, but a string of green malachite pearls set off her eyes.

Hardy was explaining. “I really didn’t want to say anything, get anybody’s hopes up, until we had something a little more definite.”

“But don’t you have something definite?”

“Well, yeah, but still maybe not definite enough. Did Eddie ever mention a guy named Alphonse Page?”

“Sure. He was one of the last ones they were keeping on at Army.”

“Why him?”

“I don’t know. It kind of bothered Eddie. Some kind of relationship with Mr. Polk, I think. You have to understand, Dismas, this situation at his work got funny about six months ago. I guess the company was just going under and Polk didn’t care anymore.”

“So why did it mean so much to Eddie?”

She sighed. “It was just a project, I think, at least at first. He hated to see the other men laid off when it might have been avoided. He didn’t like it that one customer kept the whole company alive, that kind of thing. So he tried to keep things happening, but Polk just didn’t want to put in the time anymore, and wouldn’t give Eddie any real authority.”

“Why didn’t he just quit?”

“I don’t know, really. Half was the challenge, I guess, but also he was starting school in the fall and figured he only had a few months so why start with somebody else?”

“So he thought he might as well do something worthwhile until he left?”

“Something like that, I think.” She paused. “We didn’t exactly agree on everything, you know. But then he realized something else was going on—with Polk I mean—and that’s when he got this idea to save everybody.”

Frannie got up and walked back into the kitchen. “Damn it,” she said, just loud enough for Hardy to hear. She opened the refrigerator, then closed it.

Hardy followed her in. “Do you know? Did he actually go and see Cruz?”

“Uh-huh. Then he was planning on meeting him again. . . .” She stopped and turned, her eyes wide now. “God, I think it was that night. How could I not have remembered that?”

“Monday, the night he was killed?”

She leaned back against the counter. “Well, no. I mean, it couldn’t be. He didn’t . . .” She was shaking, the white fabric of her blouse shimmering over her shoulders and breasts.

“He didn’t what?”

“He didn’t leave here to do that. I’m sure of that. He said he wanted to think about . . . about the baby, that he’d be right back.”

“Maybe he remembered his meeting with Cruz while he was out.”

She didn’t answer.

“But he’d seen him before? You know that for a fact?”

She nodded absently.

“Frannie, it’s important.”

She walked back to the table and sat again. “At least once, the week before, I think it was. He went to his house.”

There had been no point in trying to talk to Frannie about Eddie maybe blackmailing Cruz. But driving home, it began to make more and more sense. If he was starting school in the fall, what was he planning to live on? And with a baby on the way, there’d be that much more pressure. Frannie wouldn’t be able to work, at least for a few months. Extra money might come in very handy.

Maybe he only got the idea that night. He had the meeting planned anyway, and it just came to him. Then it backfired.

It was possible, if only Eddie had been the kind of guy to try that, and all indications still were that he hadn’t been.

But turning onto his street from Geary, he remembered Abe’s advice and repeated the name Alphonse Page to himself several times out loud.

He let himself into his dark house. Frannie’s earlier message was on his machine. So was a call from Jane . . . “Just to hear your voice.”

He went to his desk and took the 911 tape from his pocket. It was an educated male voice, made nasal either by some effort at concealment or from the recording. It said, “There is a body in the parking lot of the Cruz Publishing Company. Thank you.”

Very formal, and little else. The “Thank you” jarred slightly. Hardy listened to the clip five times, hoping to recognize something about the voice. It was not female. It was not accented.

It was early—not yet nine-thirty of a long and nonproductive day. Tomorrow he would get to see Cruz if he had to kidnap him, just to get to the bottom of his lies. He also wanted to check up on Steven, see how he was getting along. Maybe Glitsky would even collar Alphonse.

He was pretty sick of it. All he needed was Eddie’s death declared a homicide, and he thought Glitsky had enough evidence to do it now. But really, there was no new evidence directly relating to Eddie. There were just possible motives and random weirdnesses, like the phone call from the goddamn middle of the city.

Hardy picked up the telephone, dialed a number and listened for three rings. When Jane answered, he said he had to see her.

25

ODIS DE LA FONTAINE was more impressed with what the papers had called rape than with the murder, but he was most impressed with the money. And Alphonse—his own older first cousin Alphonse—did he ever have money!

Odis had never seen so much money in one place before. And Alphonse hadn’t even unpacked the sports bag yet. What Odis saw was the one loose pack of hundreds that Alphonse was now carrying flat in the front pocket of his black baggy pants.

Odis checked it out again as Alphonse got up to go to the toilet. There wasn’t a sign of bulge in the pocket. Alphonse had stopped on the way to the airport and bought a pair of sandals and a Hawaiian shirt that he wore hanging out over his pants.

He took the sports bag with him to the bathroom, but Odis would have done the same thing. That was just smart.

Alphonse wasn’t worried. Why should he be? He looked different enough, Odis thought, with the new threads and the short hair. The picture in the paper had his Afro and the beginnings of that goatee he’d started a year before, then shaved off. So it wasn’t likely anybody was going to recognize him in the dark airport bar.

That morning, after his mother had gone out to work, Odis had cut Alphonse’s hair, then gone shopping for both of them. “And don’t get us no Montgomery Ward shit either,” Alphonse had said, peeling off five of the hundreds. “Get us some real clothes.”

Odis, nineteen, had gone into Macy’s up at the Skyline Mall and picked himself up a warm-up jacket, a new pair of Adidas, a bunch of T-shirts. For Alphonse, he got some of the baggy pants, more T-shirts and a dress coat that cost nearly a bill. On the way out of the mall he passed a hat store and bought Bogart hats for the both of them. They hadn’t decided on Hawaii at the time.

He still had two unbroken Cs and maybe thirty more. Alphonse hadn’t even asked him about the change.

They’d left the house before Odis’s two sisters had come home from school, and definitely before Odis’s mother got back from work. She hadn’t been happy about Alphonse appearing on the run at their doorstep, but he was her sister’s only kid and she wasn’t about to turn him away. But she’d made it clear it was a one-night stopover, no more.

Taking Odis’s car, they’d shot some pool in San Bruno’til six o’clock, during which time they decided on Hawaii to chill out until things got more mellow around here. They got some steaks at a Sizzler, couple of glasses of wine, and then they’d stopped while Alphonse bought his shirt. They had parked the car in the long-term lot.

Now Odis, thinking about white pussy, waited for Alphonse to return. He hadn’t heard nearly enough about it. Alphonse had said it was just like any other pussy. He didn’t seem that much into talking about it.

He told Odis he hadn’t raped the girl—she was a friend of his—and when she died it had just been an accident, which sounded right the way he told it. Alphonse sometimes hung out with some bad brothers, but he wasn’t ever going to kill anybody on purpose. He was too nice a guy.

He looked out at the planes taxiing out in the night, wondering if the plane he’d be on in a couple of hours was one of them.

“Another round?”

Alphonse had ordered up some drink with an umbrella in it from the bar when they’d come in. Odis turned his head and looked at the waitress—mesh stockings right up to her ass over great legs, blond hair surrounding a model’s face, tits pushed out the front of the scoop-neck blouse.

He nodded.

“What’re you having?”

Odis cleared his throat. “ ’Nother one of these. No, two of ’em.” He smiled at her. “Going to Hawaii.”

She smiled back. “That’s nice. I wish I was. What is that, a mai tai?”

Odis didn’t know, but he nodded. “Yeah. Two of ’em.” That was nice, the girl talking to him like that. He watched her walk back to the bar. Nice wiggle. A small little ass like some white girls had, but a pretty, pretty face. She looked back at him from the bar, catching him looking at her. He smiled. She smiled back.

Wonder what she meant saying she wished she was going to Hawaii too? Maybe she was coming on to him a little. The thing that was on his mind kept getting bigger, and he turned his head to look at the runways again. Hey, what if he just asked her when she came back?

There she was, looking at him again, saying something to the bartender. And now coming back, definitely showing him something.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m going to have to ask you if I can see your ID.”

Odis just looked at her, thinking, What’s this? “Hey,” he said, grinning, “I’ve already had one, right?”

She shrugged. “The bartender doesn’t remember serving you. He doesn’t think you look twenty-one.”

“Tell him thanks, would you?”

“I will. But I need you to prove it.”

There was something going on between them. He was sure of it. Odis leaned back in his chair and tucked in his shirt, pulling it tight across his chest. Then he looked her up and down. She liked that—he could tell.

Okay, then. He reached into his pocket. “Look,” he said, “I don’t got no ID right now.” He took out his roll of bills. “But I got a lot of this, and my cousin, he got more.”

She nodded and smiled, getting it, looking right into his eyes. “Okay,” she said, walking back to the bar.

Damn, this is easy!

And here comes Alphonse, sitting down, smiling. “The plane’s on time,” he said. “ ’Bout an hour and a half.”

Odis looked back over at the bar, the girl now just waiting while the bartender was busy for a minute talking on the phone. She looked over to him and smiled, so everything was cool. Odis smiled back.

Alphonse noticed. “What you doin’?”

“Nothin’ yet. But you got me thinking about it.”

“What’s that?”

Odis jerked his head toward the bar. “What she got.”

“Well, you think when we get over there. We got no time for that here. I tole you it ain’t no different.”

Alphonse picked up his umbrella drink and sucked at the straw. He stared into the empty glass. “I could get used to these, you know? Maybe that’s all I’ll do over there is suck up piña coladas.”

“Piña coladas?”

Alphonse shook his head, patient. “That’s what we’re drinking here, Odis. Piña coladas.”

Odis was just about to tell him that he’d ordered some mai tais for the second round when this guy looked like the Refrigerator came up and hovered over their table.

“Excuse me,” he said, all business, a giant standing light on his feet, hands folded in front of him. “Can I ask you gentlemen to show some identification?”

That’s when Alphonse bolted.

Expecting him was one thing. Actually seeing him at the door was another.

It had been
her
door for so long she’d forgotten that it had once been both of theirs. Dismas coming home from work every day those—how many?—years. Up the stoop, then hearing the key in the dead bolt. In those days, even before the baby, Jane getting home before him, making some hors d’oeuvres or blender drinks before he got home, sometimes bringing her friends with her, sometimes Dismas getting home with his. Once in a while twenty people descending on the Hardy fun house.

But most nights, just Dismas, home from work, loving her.

And now here he was, again, on the stoop, with no keys of his own, ringing the doorbell. The door’s top half was a frosted window, and through it the silhouette was Dismas, her Dismas, who’d once wanted it all and then none of it.

She opened the door.

“Hi.” She was, for some reason, embarrassed, unable to say more. She wore dolphin shorts and a tank top and was barefoot, this buyer for Magnin’s. She backed up a step.

He walked in all right, then the weight of the place slowed him down. Through the living room he seemed to feel it more. Without talking, she headed for the bedroom. She was forgetting what he’d have to pass.

He got to the door that entered the hallway. By that time she’d come to the entrance to the bedroom. Dismas stopped in front of her little-used sewing room. He stood there a long time. The door to it was closed.

“Remember how we wouldn’t close the door the first few weeks?” he said. “How we wanted to hear every sound?”

He leaned back against the wall. She walked a few steps toward him. She heard the long breath.

“Maybe I should have come over to your place,” she said.

“You think I was wrong?” he asked, letting himself down to the floor. “Now, here, it seems so . . . immediate.”

She came a little closer. The only light in the hallway came from the kitchen, around an L-turn to the left by her bedroom. “I guess I got used to it,” she said. “The house, I mean. The room.” It didn’t sound right, but she had to say something. “I had to go on.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I know.”

Jane came and knelt next to him. She touched his hair. “If it’s any help, I understood. Even then.”

“Things just stopped mattering.”

“I know they did.”

“I mean, why do anything anyway? I thought everything made a difference. I’d make a better world.”

She pulled his face into her breast. “Shhh,” she whispered.

“I was just like Ed Cochran. And see where that gets us.”

She stroked him—his face, his hair—letting him get it out. At least he was with her, not running, his arms around her.

“I didn’t—” He stopped, pulling back slightly. “Leaving you,” he said, “that was wrong.”

“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” she agreed, “but I lived.”

“I never explained it, did I? Just up and left.”

“You think I’m dumb, Dismas? I got it.”

“I just couldn’t handle caring anymore. That much.”

“I said I got it. I had to.”

He motioned with his head. “What’s in there now?”

“It’s my sewing room.”

“You mind if I look at it?”

They got up. She opened the door and flicked on the light, watching Dismas trying to imagine it as it had been. Now it was a different place—the alphabet wallpaper gone, no trinkets or kid stuff or upholstered edges. It was a working room, pleasant and dull.

Dismas, hands in pockets, just stood in the doorway, nodding. “I should’ve seen this about five years ago,” he said. “I kept seeing it like it was.”

“You thought nothing would change?”

“The old interior landscape,” he said, “it never did.”

She turned off the light, taking his hand. “So what happened?” she asked. “Now, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

“You’re the same, but you’re so different,” Jane said.

“Who isn’t?”

“I don’t think I am.”

“Which one, the same or different?”

“Different,” she decided.

Dismas was sitting cross-legged on the bed. He drank some of his wine. “You must be different, too,” he said, “or I don’t think I could be here with you.”

She reached over and touched his leg at the knee, where the jeans were worn nearly white. He was barefoot. His print shirt had a collar and needed ironing and the top two buttons were undone.

“Well, either way, I’m glad you are.” She leaned over and kissed him.

“How am I different?” he asked. Then, as though to himself, “How am I the same, come to think of it?”

“Well, you’re still intense.”

“I am intense,” he agreed.

“But it’s like it’s more controlled now. Like you think about things more before you do them.”

He kept his eyes on her, gray sleepy eyes that didn’t seem tired. She chuckled deep in her throat. “See, you’re doing it now. Just looking, thinking about things.”

“I do think about things,” he said. “No, it’s not that so much.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s more the way I think. I guess I just don’t jump into things anymore.”

“But isn’t this investigation . . . ? Didn’t you just jump into that?”

“I make exceptions.”

She touched his chest at the V of his shirt. “And Pico and his shark. And you definitely jumped all over me at Schroeder’s.”

“I did? I thought that was you.”

“No, that was you.” She kissed him again. “Mostly. Which makes three jumps in a week. There could be a pattern emerging there.”

Dismas lay back on the bed, against the pillow, a hand back under his head. He held out his wineglass and Jane reached for the bottle on the floor and filled it.

“You know, it’s funny,” he said. “Running into those things again, that I jumped into. It’s not like I see them and decide. It’s almost automatic. Back then everything was passion. Being a cop, the law, you. I guess old Diz just lost himself with all that.”

Jane put the bottle back on the floor and stretched herself out beside him. “Is that why you quit them all?”

“They filled me up. They were what I was.” He closed his eyes and drank some wine. “Then when Michael died . . .”

“It’s okay, Diz.”

“I know, I know. But I realized all those . . . passions, they weren’t me. I was just a guy who did things pretty well—played cops, argued, made love maybe . . .”

“Definitely,” she said.

“. . . but none of it mattered. Or maybe mattered too much. I guess losing the kid made me realize that. There wasn’t any me—any Dismas—left there to handle it.”

“So you dropped out?”