Dead Irish (7 page)

He then aimed it point-blank at his head from several angles, using both hands. Finally, holding the gun in his right hand against his right temple, he closed his eyes, held his breath and squeezed the trigger, breathing out after the empty click.

He leaned back in the chair, still holding the gun in his right hand. Hardy was left-handed. Eddie was right-handed. The bullet had entered the left side of his head. So unless he picked it up wrong-handed, or somehow . . . No, it was ludicrous. “No way,” he said, “absolutely no way.”

8

The town of Colma is tucked into a pocket behind Daly City and Brisbane, its corpses far outnumbering its citizens. It was normally shrouded in fog, which seemed appropriate, but this day, for Eddie’s funeral, it basked in sunlight, bright and warm.

The Mass had been scheduled for ten, so Hardy timed his arrival at the cemetery for quarter to eleven, but no one else had made it yet.

Another group of mourners was gathered in a knot across the sloping lawn. A brace of eucalyptus at the front gate provided a feeble shade and a distinctive scent. Not at all deathlike. The sky was purplish blue. A warm breeze ruffled the high leaves.

Another hearse and its party appeared down the road, and Hardy, sitting on the fender of his Suzuki, watched the line approach. He put his hands in his pockets and walked out to the street. McGuire’s pickup was visible midway down the line of cars.

It was a substantial group, which he had expected. Eddie Cochran, of course, had been well liked.

Hardy got into his car, waited, then pulled in behind McGuire. They went quite a ways back. Here the eucalyptus grew a bit thicker. Under the trees it was cool and pleasant. Picnic weather.

Father James Cavanaugh leaned down and glanced casually at his reflection in the car window. With his hair, still all black, flopping Kennedy-like over an unlined forehead and piercing gray-blue eyes, he was uncomfortably aware that he could be a walking advertisement for the glory of the priesthood. His body was trim, his movements graceful. The cleft in his chin was a constant temptation to vanity.

It was a glance, that’s all. He didn’t study himself, make any corrections to the look. He was, he knew, unworthy—of his gifts as well as his role, especially here, today.

And now here came Erin, Eddie’s mother. And again, the temptations, the haunting realization of his sinfulness. What a beauty she was.

And so strong. In spite of losing her eldest son, she seemed not to need his support, though as she stepped into his arms and he held her, he felt for a moment the pent-up grief as she sighed once deeply into the shoulder of his cassock.

Her hand lifted to his face. “Are you all right, James?”

He nodded. “How’s Big Ed?”

“He didn’t sleep much last night. I can’t say any of us did.”

Unbidden again, the thought came. What if we had married? What if, when they’d both been eighteen, he’d pushed just a little harder? He had never met anyone else with her joy in life, her sense of balance, her wisdom, her brain. And, as if that weren’t enough, even now, after four children, her body was rich, the perfect combination of curve and plane, of softness and tone. Her face was still smooth as a girl’s, the skin cream white. A touch of light coral lipstick highlighted the bow-shaped, sensuous mouth.

“You’re all right, though?” he asked gently.

She stared up at him, her eyes going dull. “I don’t think I’ll ever be all right again.”

She turned, planning to go join her husband.

But she couldn’t go to the grave just yet. She knew she should walk with Big Ed, be there for him, but the strength simply wasn’t there. Her husband was walking with Jodie, trying to comfort her. God, this was impossibly hard.

And Frannie, poor Frannie, so small in black, stumbling over roots, held up by her brother Moses. She looked over to see her own two sons, Mick and Steven, pallbearers, waiting patiently by the hearse. They were good boys. Of course, they weren’t Eddie. There wasn’t any more Eddie.

She looked up at the blue sky, struggling for control— biting her tongue inside her mouth, digging fingernails into her palms. She stared up at the sky, took a deep breath. A strong hand gripped her right arm just above the elbow.

“Ma’am?”

She was nearly as tall as the man. He hadn’t been at the funeral Mass. Perhaps he was, had been, a friend of Ed’s, though he was older. His face looked lived in—loaded with laugh lines. He wasn’t laughing now, though.

“Are you all right?” he said.

The hand on her arm didn’t bother her. She reached over and put her own hand over it. “Just tired,” she said, “very tired.”

Then she gently shook him off and started walking toward the gravesite, slowly. The man walked alongside.

“Did you know Eddie?” she asked.

“Pretty well. Both him and Frannie.” Then, “I’m very sorry.”

She nodded.

“I’m here because of Frannie, mostly. Her brother.”

She stopped now and looked at him again, their eyes level. “Were you at the wedding? Should I know you?”

He shook his head. “Weddings aren’t my thing. I, uh, got called out of town, couldn’t make it.”

“But now you’re . . . ?” Letting it hang. Her eyes wouldn’t let him go.

“Moses doesn’t believe . . .” He paused, started again. “I guess I don’t either, that it was a suicide.”

She looked toward the gravesite. The bearers hadn’t yet moved the coffin from the hearse. She found herself gripping Hardy by the arm, talking through clenched teeth. “There is no way in the world that my Eddie killed himself. None at all.”

Suddenly it was essential to tell someone what she knew in her heart. “Here’s Eddie . . . he’d bring in a stray cat or a bird that had fallen out of its nest in a storm. He was almost . . . I don’t know how to say it . . . but almost feminine in being sensitive that way. He hated football. Hated ice hockey. They were too brutal. His father and Mick used to tease him about it, but he was just a soft man. If you knew him at all, you know that.”

Hardy thought a moment, did not meet her eyes.

“It’s inconceivable he even owned a gun,” she said. “What use would he have for it?”

“The gun is definitely one of my questions.”

She stopped. She didn’t want to press, didn’t know why it was so important to make this point to this man. Eddie was gone. What difference could it make?

“I’m sorry,” she said, walking again toward the grave. “I’m afraid I’m not being myself, but he didn’t own the gun. I know that.”

“Do you know where it came from? Where he might have gotten it?”

“No.”

She stopped again and touched his arm, not knowing exactly what she wanted to say. But they had begun moving the coffin to the gravesite—the coffin that held Eddie’s body—and her emotion choked her so she couldn’t speak.

Steven didn’t realize the coffin would be so heavy. His brother hadn’t been that big a guy, but with the wood and the handles and all it was a lot of weight, and his arms started hurting as soon as they got it out of the car.

He wasn’t going to show it, though, give anybody the satisfaction. It was only about a hundred feet, he guessed, over to the gravesite. Beside him at the back of the coffin was his brother Mick, two-letter jock, to whom the weight of the coffin would be nothing. But to him, little wimpy brother Steve, just standing here holding the thing was a challenge.

“Who’s talking to Mom?” Mick whispered. Mick was a junior at USF, there on an ROTC scholarship. As far as Steven was concerned, they lived on different planets.

Steven just shrugged. He’d seen the guy with his mother and was sure he’d met him somewhere, maybe over at Eddie’s one time, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t know who he was. No big deal, it wasn’t his business. He wasn’t going to waste breath speculating to Mick about it.

Father Jim motioned from the gravesite, and they started moving. The priest was okay when he wasn’t acting holy, when he was just being a regular guy, having a drink at the house, or joyriding out along Highway One at the beach.

Yeah, the priest could be okay, he guessed. At least everybody else liked him. Grown-ups were a bunch of sheep that way anyway, herding up and following along. You want to be honest, the guy could be a little much, flipping between holy and funny, or getting that look at Mom, or when he was alone with him, trying to act like a kid, swearing and goofing. Who needed that shit? Be yourself, Steven wanted to tell him. If they don’t like you, fuck ’em.

Like now, there he was being official holy, standing next to Frannie, talking quietly to her. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Father Cavanaugh—Eddie had loved him and that was almost enough for Steven right there—but it was like the man wasn’t being himself. People should be themselves. . . . Yeah, but even Eddie had been like that lately. That’s the way adults got—always smiling and playing games. But Eddie, he saw things. He was hurting, bummed about his work, what he was going to do with his life. Why else did they think he’d come around to the house so much the last couple of weeks?

His mom now was going over to the hole in the ground, the dug-up earth covered with green tarp. What, did they think they could take your mind off the dirt, off Ed being buried under it, if they camouflaged it?

Finally his arms got to relax as they put the coffin on the stand that would lower it. The last half of the walk had been real tough. Maybe he should work out once in a while, he thought, except he didn’t want to wind up in ROTC like Mick.

His mom was standing now next to his dad. The other guy she’d been talking to was a little behind her, almost like a bodyguard. He’d seemed to be watching everything at once, but not being obvious about it.

Steven checked around. Eddie had taken him down to his work a couple of times—making sure Steven was included in his life—and introduced him to some of the people there. He was surprised to see Ed’s boss, Mr. Polk, big ears bookending the saddest face in the crowd, standing behind Frannie with a young woman who was so pretty Steven couldn’t look at her for long. Thick brown hair, olive skin, serious tits. He saw the guy who’d talked to his mother look at her, saw her look back at him with half a smile, which caused him to study his shoes. What was Ed’s boss doing with a killer like that? He’d never understand adults. Who wanted to, anyway?

Overhead, birds kept chirping in the trees. He focused on that, rather than on Father Jim’s words, which were bullshit. If Eddie had really killed himself, which Father Jim seemed to have reason to believe, then he was in hell.

Steven didn’t think Ed was in hell. He thought he was nowhere, the same place everybody was going—in fact, many of the living were already there. He looked up, trying not to think about where Ed might be. Eddie and he had been friends, even with the age thing, in spite of being brothers.

Then, all of a sudden, the guy behind his mother was pushing at the crowd, nearly jumping over the coffin. He got to Frannie just as she lost it and started to go down.

Frannie seemed to weigh nothing, less than nothing. Her mass of red hair, the green of the lawn under her, only threw into greater contrast the stark pallor of her face.

Moses was at Hardy’s side. He touched Frannie’s face, rubbing it gently, trying to bring some color around the mouth. “She breathing?”

Hardy nodded. “Just fainted.”

The priest came and knelt between them. He felt for a pulse in her neck, seemed satisfied, stood up. “She’ll be all right,” he announced to the mourners.

The color in Frannie’s face was returning. Her eyes opened, then closed, then opened and stayed open. Moses said something to her, got her up on his arm and followed Hardy through the crowd back to where the cars were parked.

Hardy heard a muffled sob into Moses’s shoulder, suddenly couldn’t deal with it anymore, put his hands in his pockets and moved out of vision, out of earshot, down the drive back toward the entrance gate. Finally, he stopped and cleared a space under a eucalyptus tree, then sat down, trying to face away from any tombstones, which in Colma is not an easy thing to do.

9

THE COCHRANS’ HOUSE was in a familiar neighborhood, near Hardy’s own, on 28th Avenue between Taraval and Ulloa. They shared the same fog most days, but Hardy lived north of the park—south of it was about as close to suburban as San Francisco got.

Big Ed greeted him at the door and introduced himself. He was dressed in a shiny black suit that looked as though it hadn’t seen much wear in the past ten years. The lapels were too thin, the black tie was too thin. The white shirt was brand-new.

Hardy had the feeling that he’d caught him out of uniform, like running into a cop dressed as a clown at a parish festival. Ed Cochran looked slightly uncomfortable, but not in the least diminished either by grief or attire.

The eyes, though puffed, were clear and piercing. The solid man’s face was startlingly controlled. His strong chin and flat fighter’s nose conveyed an impression of suppressed power, reinforced by the handshake, which made no effort to crush or intimidate. The meaty vise gripped, shook, let go, but the strength was there.

His hand gently touched Hardy’s back as he ushered him into the foyer. His wife, Erin, had used her hand the same way—to guide—at the cemetery. A family mannerism, perhaps. Ed’s touch was as light as Erin’s.

And here was the priest again, by the bar near the sliding doors that led out to the redwood deck. Good-looking man, another powerhouse, but in a more subtle way than Ed Cochran. Drink in hand, he turned just as Hardy and Ed arrived.

“Good, so you’ve come. I was hoping to meet you.”

“Dismas, this is Jim Cavanaugh,” Ed said. Cavanaugh’s grip was firm and dry.

“Dismas? The good thief?”

Hardy smiled. “So I’m told.”

“And you’re Catholic, then?”

“Was.”

The priest shrugged as though accustomed to the answer. “Was, is. It’s all a matter of tense, and there’s no time in heaven. Like the good thief, will you rejoin the fold at your final hour?”

Hardy scratched his chin. “Well, I’m not much like the original Dismas. I’ve never stolen so much as a candy bar. But you never can tell. Was he much good at darts?”

“Darts?”

“Darts. I’m a pretty fair hand at the chalk line.”

Cavanaugh grinned broadly, displaying perfect teeth. “I’m afraid the New Testament is a little vague on that point. Get you a drink? Let me guess, Irish whiskey?”

Hardy had been thinking of a beer, but the Irish was okay. Cavanaugh had a knack, he guessed, for making his ideas feel like the best ones. He took the drink, they clicked their glasses, then moved out onto the deck, into the sunshine.

“That was a good move at the grave, Dismas Hardy,” the priest said. “You saved Frannie from a nasty fall.”

Hardy shrugged. “Marine training, mixed in with a little Boy Scouts. You’re the famous Father Cavanaugh?”

Cavanaugh’s eyes clouded briefly. “I don’t know about famous.”

“Anybody who knew Eddie’s heard about you. You were like one of the family.”

The quick flush of pleasure, as quickly controlled. “I am family, Dismas. All but.” He sipped his drink. “I’ve known Erin and Big Ed since high school. Introduced them, in fact, baptized all the children, then married Ed and Frannie, and now with this . . .”

He stopped, sighed, looked out into nothing over Hardy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“The Lord giveth and taketh away, I suppose. That’s my counsel to the grieving, isn’t it?” He smiled crookedly. “But He levies some burdens I don’t understand, never will.”

“I don’t know if the Lord did this one,” Hardy said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if Ed killed himself . . .”

Cavanaugh fixed him with a hard gaze. “Eddie didn’t kill himself.”

Hardy waited.

“I just buried him in consecrated ground, Dismas. If I had any belief at all that he killed himself, I couldn’t have done that. Do you understand?”

“Do you understand what that means, Father? What you’re saying?”

The priest squinted in the sun.

“It means somebody killed him.”

Cavanaugh’s hand went up to his eyes. He didn’t seem to want to believe that either. “Well . . .” He knocked back the last of his drink. “I just . . . He couldn’t have killed himself. He didn’t do it. I am as certain of that as I am of you standing here.”

“Why? Do you have any—?”

“Call it a moral conviction, but there’s no doubt.”

“Your glass is empty.” It was Erin Cochran. Hardy noticed that she had put her arm through Cavanaugh’s. “And I am dry myself.”

Cavanaugh went to get her a refill.

“He seems like the perfect priest,” Hardy said.

Erin paused, as though savoring some secret, looking after him. “Jim?” she said. “Oh, he is. He is the perfect priest.”

Frannie sat up, covered with a comforter, and looked around the walls of the den. Moses had just gone to get Dismas—for some reason she had asked to see him, to thank him for catching her, she supposed. She couldn’t exactly remember. Her mind kept flitting from thing to thing. It was weird.

It was probably good that Moses and Mom—she called Erin “Mom”—had decided to lay her down in here. She still felt weak, light-headed. Maybe that was why she kept forgetting things, changing her mind. She felt her forehead, which was still clammy.

Leaning her head back against the pillow, she let her eyes rest on the wall opposite her. There were the family pictures, the whole history of the Cochrans from Dad and Mom’s wedding through her own to Eddie. She remembered the pride she’d felt, the sense of belonging to a real family for the first time in her life, when the picture of their engagement—the one that had been in the
Chronicle
—had found its place on that wall.

It had been the perfect Cochran way. No fanfare. Just one time she came by and was watching TV with Eddie, sneaking in a little petting when they were left alone, and the picture was suddenly there. She looked at herself, next to Ed, smiling so hard her cheeks must have hurt, though she didn’t remember that now. And then, next to it, the wedding picture. How could that be in the same life as this?

Then she thought of the baby picture that she’d envisioned as the next one. The baby. She crossed her hands over her stomach. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

There was a knock on the door. Before she could answer, it opened and Eddie’s sister Jodie looked in.

“Hi,” she said. “You okay?”

Hardy saw the women hugging, crying together, and thought he would wait a little longer before going in to see Frannie. A door farther down the hallway stood open, and he walked into that other room to wait.

It was a strange place, out of context with the rest of the house. Rock posters on the lower end of the taste spectrum covered most available wall space. Shades were pulled down over the two windows, and Hardy had the sense that they were left down most of the time. In one corner a television set was on, the volume turned all the way down, the picture snowy and untuned as though it hadn’t been touched for months.

It bothered him, and he walked over to turn it off.

“What are you doing here?”

It was the younger son, Steven, hands on the doorsill. “This is my room. What are you doing?”

“I was waiting for Frannie and your sister to finish crying, and I saw this TV on. I thought I’d turn it off.”

“I want it on.”

“Great, I’ll leave it on. Good show?”

Steven ignored that, seemed to be studying him. “I know you, don’t I?” Grudgingly, still hostile.

“Yeah, we met. Up at Frannie and Eddie’s one time.”

“That’s it.”

Steven seemed to file it away without interest. Hardy was categorized and put on a shelf in a certain place. After that, it seemed, he didn’t exist.

Steven went and plopped himself on his bed, feet crossed at the ankles, and ran his hand through his spiky hair a couple of times. “You want to get out of the way?”

Hardy pulled a chair from under the writing desk and sat on it backward. “I’m trying to find who killed your brother.”

No response. Steven just looked over at the droning white noise of the television. Hardy stood, strode over and slammed it off.

“Hey!”

“Hey, yourself. I don’t care if you want to rot here in your room, but I’m trying to do a little good for Frannie at least, and if you know something that can help me I’m damn well gonna find out. Is watching your blank TV supposed to impress me with how tough you are? You don’t feel anything about Eddie? About anything, right?”

Hardy watched the kid’s bluff fade. He wasn’t really angry, had just let his voice get louder. Now he sat down again, pulled closer to the bed. “You know, the option is you can help me if you want.”

“I just don’t believe Eddie’s gone.”

Hardy folded his hands, exhaled, looked down. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the tough part.”

“What do you mean you’re trying to find who killed Eddie? I thought he killed himself.”

“Why do you think that?”

The kid rolled his eyes up. Hardy reached down, grabbed Steven’s ankle and started squeezing. Hardy had a good grip. Steven tried to pull away but couldn’t do it.

Hardy forced a tight grip and spoke in a whisper. “Listen, you little shit, I do not need to take any high-school tough-guy attitude crap from you. Do you understand me?”

Hardy’s left forearm was burning from the pressure. Steven’s jaw was set. “Let go of my leg.”

“Do you understand me?”

Steven took another five or six seconds to save a little face, then nodded and mumbled, “Yeah.”

Hardy figured that was good enough. He let go. “Now, if you remember, I asked you why you thought Eddie killed himself. Did the police or somebody tell you that?”

Steven rubbed his ankle, but Hardy had gotten his attention. “I mean, he had a gun in his hand, didn’t he? There was a note.”

“It’s easy to put a gun in the hand of somebody who’s already dead. And the note could have been anything. What I want to know is why you think it—that he killed himself ?”

“ ’Cause he was smart, and who’s smart wants to live?”

It wasn’t mock macho. The kid meant it. It rocked Hardy a little. He hung his head a minute, took a breath. “Hey, is it that bad, Steven?”

The boy just shrugged, his thin arms crossed on his chest.

“Was he depressed? Eddie, I mean.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Hardy looked up at him. “Why do you think I’m doing this? You think I want to be here, going over all this with anybody who’ll talk to me? Would that be your idea of a good time?”

“I don’t have any idea of a good time,” the boy mumbled.

Hardy swallowed that. “Okay.”

Steven reached into the top drawer of the dresser next to his bed and pulled out a switchblade knife that he began to snap open and closed methodically. Modern American worry beads, Hardy thought. Hiding his surprise, he asked where it had come from.

“Uncle Jim brought it back from Mexico.”

“Uncle Jim?”

“Sure. You know. Father Cavanaugh. But don’t tell Mom, would you? She’d probably be nervous.”

After a minute Hardy was used to it—the skinny little kid moping on the bed, opening and closing a switchblade for solace.

“So you want to help?”

Steven closed the knife. Not exactly trust yet in the eyes, but at least a lack of active distrust. Probably the kid couldn’t help Hardy at all, but it wouldn’t hurt him—the way he felt about himself—if he felt he was doing something about his brother’s death.

“What could I do?” he asked.

“Keep yourself alert. Think about things over the past month or two, anything Ed or anybody who knew him might have said or done, what he might have been up to, anything.” He pulled out his wallet. “Here’s a card. Why don’t you keep it to yourself, same for me and the knife, right?”

Secrets together. As good a bond as many. “This is a neat card,” Steven said.

Hardy got up. “Be careful with that switchblade,” he said. Then, at the door, he turned. “Think hard, Steven. Something’s out there.” Maybe the wrong thing to say to a kid, but he wasn’t editing just now.

Jodie and Frannie, holding hands, were standing in front of the wall of the den now, looking at the pictures.

Hardy didn’t knock. “Your family keeps Kodak in business,” he said.

They turned, and Frannie introduced Jodie. Eighteen or so, she was just passing through gangly. Her freckled face was still blotched from the crying. Some baby fat rounded, but only slightly, the corners of her cheekbones. Her wide blue eyes, also reddened, had irises flecked with gold. Her nose wasn’t perfect, but Hardy liked it, a little too flat at the bridge and sticking out at the bottom like a baby’s thumb.

She was obviously Erin’s kid, but as with Steven and Ed, and even Mick for that matter, there wasn’t much sign of Big Ed’s genes.

“You wanted to see me?”

Frannie, confused momentarily, stared back at the wall of pictures, then again at Hardy. “I think . . .” She turned to Jodie and smiled. “My mind . . .”

“It’s okay,” Hardy said. “It can wait.”

“No, I know I asked Moses if I could see you, but I . . . this other stuff . . .”

“Sure.”

Jodie spoke up, her voice the echo of her mother’s, cultured, not so deep as to be husky, but adult. “I thought you were wonderful catching Frannie. Thank you.”

She turned to her sister-in-law. “You really went out. I don’t know how Mr. Hardy did it, but he was over to you—”

“That’s it,” Frannie said. “That reminds me.”

“What?”

“Why I wanted to see you. I just remembered.”

She let go of Jodie’s hand and sat on an ottoman. “I’ve never fainted before, so I didn’t know it was even coming. It’s just the last thing I remember was I saw Mr. Polk there. He’s . . . he was Ed’s boss, I mean the owner. He wasn’t really a boss, I don’t think. Ed was the real manager, but he made policy, you know.”

Hardy put up with the rambling. She had obviously thought of something, and would be getting to it.

“So when I saw him, I remembered again that you said I should tell you anything that might matter.”

“And Mr. Polk’s being there might matter?”

She shook out her red hair, then closed her eyes as though the thought had eluded her again. Jodie sat on the edge of the ottoman and put an arm over her shoulder. “It’s okay, Frannie.”