Dead Irish (8 page)

“It’s just so hard to think.” She pouted, biting her lip.

“Mr. Polk,” Hardy said quietly.

“Oh, Mr. Polk, that’s right.”

“Why would it matter, him being at the funeral, Frannie? It seems perfectly natural to me. Had they been fighting or something?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. It wasn’t him being at the funeral.” She still couldn’t seem to find it. Hardy put his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the wall of pictures. Surrounding what looked like a college graduation picture of Eddie were plaques, diplomas, honors. He turned back to the young women. “Phi Beta Kappa?” he asked.

“Eddie was really smart,” Jodie said. “He just didn’t like showing off, but he was the smartest of us, except for maybe Steven, if he’d work at it.”

“I just met Steven again. We had a nice talk.”

“He’s okay,” Jodie said. “He just plays tough.”

Hardy shrugged. “We got along . . .”

“I remember.”

Hardy sat down on the end of the couch.

“It was Mr. Polk. I was just surprised to see him. Eddie said he hadn’t been at work all last week until Friday, and then he’d been all distracted.”

Hardy waited for her to continue.

“That’s all,” she said at last. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s nothing, but you said . . .”

“No, Frannie,” he said, “anything might be important.” He didn’t push her. He could find out more about that when he interviewed at Army.

“It’s probably nothing,” Frannie repeated.

“You thought it was worth telling me about. It’s like when you took tests in school and your teacher always told you to go with your first answer. It can’t hurt to say it.”

Frannie looked over again at the photo wall. Jodie, next to her, stood up and spoke with a strained brightness. “Maybe we should go outside for a while, you think?”

“In a minute, okay.”

The girl was gone, closing the door behind her. Hardy slid over on the couch, closer to Frannie. “You know,” he said, “the fainting might have had something to do with being pregnant.”

A nod. “I thought of that just before Jodie came in. You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

“I said I wouldn’t.”

“I know, but . . .”

“No buts. No is no.”

She smiled. “All right. Thank you.”

Her head started to turn to look at the pictures again. Hardy spoke up. “You feel up to going out yet? It does get close in here.”

She glanced toward the wall. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Hardy crossed over to her and lifted her gently by the shoulder. She leaned into him. “Let’s go,” she said, forcing a smile, “I can handle it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“In your state, that is a small wonder.”

Moses McGuire turned his baleful gaze onto Hardy, who was negotiating traffic on Lincoln Boulevard. He had rolled the canvas top back on his car. “You took my keys, didn’t you?”

Hardy’s eyes shifted. “I’ve often warned you of the perils of leaving things in your coat pockets. Myself, I keep my valuables in my pants.”

“I keep my valuables in my pants,” McGuire echoed. “I try to get my valuable out of my pants as often as possible.”

Hardy dug into his pocket, produced McGuire’s key ring, and tossed it onto his lap. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

McGuire tried to whistle, but it came out wrong—his mouth wasn’t at a hundred percent. “That’s good. You just make that up? And I’m not drunk.”

“You want to run that whistle by me again?”

“ ’Cause I miss a whistle doesn’t mean I’m drunk.”

“Say ‘miss a whistle’ three times.”

McGuire tried it once, then, “What are you, my mother?” He settled back in the seat. “Miss—a—fucking—whistle,” he said.

Hardy pulled the car up at a light and turned toward his friend. “So what don’t you get?”

McGuire took a minute to answer. Hardy reminded him. “You said you don’t get it. What?”

“True love,” he said finally.

“You mean Frannie and Ed?”

“Nope.” McGuire faded out for a minute, then came back. “I mean Ed’s parents. Tell me you didn’t notice her—Erin.”

“I noticed her, Mose.”

McGuire tried a whistle that came out better. “I don’t care how old she is, she’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

Hardy nodded. Even burying her son, Erin Cochran was something far beyond reasonably attractive.

“And with Big Ed for going on thirty years. How do you figure that, if not true love?”

“I didn’t really meet the guy. He was just at the door. Nice enough, broken up, trying to keep it under control.”

“But Erin and him?”

“Why not?”

“Hardy, the guy’s been a gardener at the Park for his whole life. Okay, he works for the city, probably a good gig, but where’s the romance? I mean, the guy’s gotta live in horse manure.”

“Who needs romance?”

“Wouldn’t you think Erin would?”

Hardy shrugged. “Interesting question. I don’t know.”

“Gotta be true love, and I don’t get it.”

Hardy pulled the car up a block before the Shamrock. The day was hot and still. McGuire had put his head back against the seat. He looked beat, breathing heavily, regularly. “You sleeping, McGuire?”

His friend grunted.

“You sure you want to open the bar?”

McGuire lifted his head. “That priest . . . he’s the kind of guy she ought to go for. Don’t laugh, it happens.” His eyes were bleary and red, the muscles in his face slack.

“You can’t buy true love, huh?”

“It’s a beautiful thing for a night or two.” McGuire leaned his head back again, sighed. He spoke with his eyes closed, slumped down, his head resting on the back of the car seat. “You think Frannie’s okay? She seem okay to you?”

“She’ll make it, Mose. She’s a tough one. You going to open or not?”

McGuire covered his eyes, noting where the car had stopped. “I don’t think I’m up to the fast-lane glamour of the bar business today, you know?”

Hardy nodded, turned the key, started his car up again. As he pulled into traffic heading toward McGuire’s apartment in the Haight-Ashbury, Moses said, “How do they do it, Diz?”

“What’s that?”

“Hold together. All that family stuff.”

“You and Frannie do it.”

“We had to do it.”

Hardy looked over at his friend, head back, mouth open, eyes shut. He looked strange in dark pants, a tan dress shirt, his tie loose. Normally Moses was a jeans-and-workshirt guy. Hardy noticed for the first time that his black hair was beginning to be shot with gray.

“Maybe they have to do it, too,” Hardy said, “for some reason.”

“Not like me and Frannie did.”

Hardy knew he was right. Moses had raised his younger sister from the time he was sixteen and she was four. When he’d gone to Vietnam, which was where Moses and Hardy had met, she had just been starting high school and Moses was paying to have her board at Dominican up in Marin County.

“And ’sides,” Moses slurred, “I’m talking sex. Not brothers and sisters. Ed and Erin. How do you keep that going thirty years?”

Hardy found a place to park in front of Moses’s building. He pulled into it. “Practice, I guess.”

10

LINDA POLK GOT UP from her desk and walked the twenty feet down the hallway to the women’s room. At Army Distributing, the women’s room was Linda’s exclusive domain—she was the only female employee, and guests were few and far between, especially lately. Alphonse coming in, hassling her about where her daddy was, had been the only person who’d been in the whole day. And he’d gone long before noon.

She flicked the light switch and walked in front of the mirror to look at herself. Not too bad. Rings under the eyes were covered pretty well. The blondish bleach job was holding up okay. She liked the purplish tint to the eyeshadow. Maybe a touch-up on the mascara, not that it really mattered here.

No, she’d pass on that. She didn’t come in here to fix herself up. She smiled. Yes, she did, she thought, only not that kind of fix.

She’d rolled the stuff at home, hidden it in the package of Virginia Slims and, taking it out, smiled again in anticipation. She’d really come a long way, baby.

It was the very best of the third world—C & C. Colombian and crack, although just a tiny bit of the latter. She lit the joint and inhaled deeply, holding it. Before she’d even let out the breath, the first jolt of the crack kicked in. She allowed herself one more. It was a good mix. The crack pumped you up to the sky, but the marijuana made coming down very nice.

Putting half the joint back into the cigarette box, she checked herself out one last time in the mirror and smiled prettily at herself. “Linda means pretty,” she said aloud, and giggled.

The mood was nearly wrecked immediately as she came out to the hallway. First, the heel on her shoe slipped on the tile and broke off. She would have fallen but for the wall.

“Fuck.”

Holding the wall with one hand, she was balancing herself to take off her shoes when an unknown face looked out from her office. “Can I help you?”

A man, and not bad-looking. Not too well dressed, but not a slob, either. She smiled crookedly, suddenly feeling dizzy with the rush of drugs. Damn, here she’d been alone all day and—it was just her luck—the minute she decided to let go just a little, someone shows up.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the man, standing there in the hallway with her shoes in her hand. Next she’d probably run her nylons.

The man shrugged. “No problem. I was hoping to find Mr. Polk? Is he in?”

She walked toward him, then brushed against him as she went around to her desk. She’d be better if she was sitting down. The man looked at the nameplate on her desk. “Are you his wife?”

She laughed at that, shallowly. “No, his daughter.”

Suddenly she stood up again, extended her hand. “Linda Polk, daughter of Samuel Polk and descendant of U.S. President James K. He was just after Lincoln, I think.”

The man had a firm, dry, no-nonsense shake. “I think maybe a little earlier,” he said.

“Whatever.” The glow was coming up roses. She could feel herself expanding, becoming nicer, easier to talk to, to like.

“Is your father in today?”

“No. He had a funeral this morning, then he and Nika—” She stopped. Nika. She didn’t want to get concentrating on Nika.

The man smiled. He had a wonderfully inviting smile. “I came from the funeral myself. I’m a friend of Ed Cochran’s. Or was.”

He extended a card that seemed to hover a long way away in his hand until she reached out and grabbed it. “My name’s Dismas Hardy, Linda. Do you expect your father back today?”

“I never expect him back.”

Whoops. She hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean, back the way he was.”

“Was when?”

“Back before Nika.”

“When was that, Linda?”

She liked the way he kept saying her name. He really was a nice-looking man, maybe a little old. Thirty-five? Good tan for a city guy. Maybe he did a lot of work outside.

“Pardon?” she said.

“When was before Nika?”

She waved a hand abstractedly. “Nika, that’s right. I guess late last summer, then they got married before Christmas, and that’s when everything seemed to start going wrong.”

“You mean with the business?”

“No, no, no. Not the business. That wasn’t ’til later. I mean with me and Daddy.”

Oh damn, she was going to cry again. That was the only bad thing about the pot—it got all the emotions stirred up. The trick was to quickly get on to something else. “The business,” she said, “wasn’t ’til the whole thing with
La Hora,
like in February.”

But the man, surprisingly, didn’t pick up on that. “What happened with you and your daddy?”

He acted like he really cared. He was sitting back comfortably in his chair, hands folded across his chest, more relaxed than she was. In fact, just looking at him made her feel better. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I get all emotional sometimes.”

He nodded.

“Because before Nika . . . Well, you know my mom died when I was ten—that’s ten years ago, can you believe it?—and Daddy and I were always, after that, like best friends. I mean, I came to work here when he was building up the business and we did everything together, and it was like we were a team. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have girlfriends. That was cool. I mean, I wasn’t—we weren’t weird, you know. But Nika was different.”

He leaned forward. “Different how?”

“Just so, I don’t know, overpowering. And I don’t get it. Have you ever seen her or my dad?”

“I guess they were at the funeral but I didn’t know who they were.”

“Well, come look at this.”

She led the way back into her father’s office, with its big desk. And there was the picture, bigger than it needed to be in its silver frame. “Here, there’s my dad with Nika. I don’t think she’s that pretty.”

For as long as she could stand it, she glared at her new stepmother, probably only five years older than she was, though of course Nika would never say. It was, she admitted, a good picture but not a good likeness. It made her look more beautiful. And she wasn’t beautiful, not in real life.

She could tell the man only saw the outside, couldn’t tell from the picture how ugly she was underneath. He said: “I wouldn’t call her pretty at all.”

He was standing very close, right beside her. He smelled like a clean man—some hints of aftershave, maybe a pipe. But no sweat or gasoline like most of the guys she saw.

“They don’t really belong together,” she said. She realized she was still without shoes. Turning, facing the man, she raised her chin for a minute, then hitched herself onto her father’s desk. “What’s your name again?”

“Dismas. Diz for short.”

“I’m a little diz for dizzy,” she said, giggling.

“Probably better to be sitting down, then.” Unexpectedly, he reached out and touched her face, a light touch that tingled all over her. “Are you all right? Would you like some water?”

Without waiting for an answer he was gone, back quickly with her coffee cup filled with water from the fountain. It was like he knew his way around already.

She was ready for him to put his arms around her and do anything he liked at all, but instead he went to the couch and sat on the end of it. She sipped at the cup.

“So when Nika and your dad got married, things changed?”

She looked down. “He was like a different person. Just didn’t have time for me or anybody, or even the business, anymore. All he wanted to do was spend time”—a shot at Nika’s face—“with her.”

“And you think that’s been the problem with the business? I thought Ed was trying to get it back on track?”

“Oh, Eddie. Eddie was great. I didn’t mean to say he wasn’t good. At the job, I mean. Fair, and, you know, a really nice guy. No hassles, you know?” She sipped again at the water. “I can’t believe what they say, that he killed himself.”

Hardy let that go for now. “But there have been problems with the business, and they happened when Ed was managing, right?”

“Well, yes but no. It would’ve happened with anybody. It was all stuff about
La Hora
and
El Dia.
”

“You said that before. What does that mean?”

“You know
El Dia,
don’t you?”

He shook his head.

“Well, it’s another paper, you know, like
La Hora,
that wanted us to distribute it.
La Hora
was our biggest client but then they dropped us, took it all back in-house.” She looked around her father’s office. “And by then it was too late to get
El Dia.
They’d set themselves up with other distributors. Old Cruz really screwed us.” She shook her head, swinging her legs in frustration.

“Is that why it’s so deserted around here?”

Now was her chance. “That, just the slow business, and Ed’s funeral being today. There’s nobody here at all except us. Nobody’s been in at all.” Flirty eye move, shrug the breasts out. “And it’s late. I don’t expect anybody to come the rest of the day. I could even lock up now and it wouldn’t matter.”

He stood up, and she slid off the desk with a little bounce. “Well, you’ve been very helpful, Linda. Thanks.”

Another handshake. Again cool, dry, firm. She held it an extra couple of seconds, looked into his gray eyes. “We could get a drink maybe. There’s a lot we can talk about. Or just stay here,” she repeated.

A little peck on the cheek. “Thanks. I’d like that,” he said, “but I’m working now and I’ve got another appointment. Maybe a rain check, okay?”

“Sure, that’s cool.”

Out now to her desk. “Wait just a second,” she said.

She jotted her name and number on her notepad and tore off the sheet. “In case you remember something you wanted to ask.”

Then he was gone. She watched him walk across the empty lot through waves of late-afternoon heat. When he got in his car he turned back to look at the door and she waved a hand at him, but he probably couldn’t see her through the reflection.

Anyway, he didn’t wave back.

She turned the knob, locking the door, padded back to her desk and, sitting down, reached into her purse for the pack of Virginia Slims.

Linda was right, Hardy was thinking. I wouldn’t call Nika pretty. It would be like calling the Grand Canyon pretty, or Michelangelo’s
David.
Of course, he remembered her from the funeral, the way she kept staring at him. At least now he had a name to go with it—Nika Polk.

Where had she come from, he wondered, and what was it about sad-looking, basset-eared Sam Polk that had snagged her?

He closed his eyes, trying to visualize her again. She was tall, taller than her husband, perhaps five-eight, jet-black hair over a classically hard Mediterranean face. A stunning face. Half-parted lips that she kept licking.

The only reason Hardy had caught Frannie when she’d started to faint was that Nika had been standing just behind her, and he had kept tearing his eyes away, forcing himself to look elsewhere. Frannie had been in his line of vision. It had been luck.

She had worn a simple woolen black cotton suit, severely cut, that nevertheless hadn’t diminished the thrust of her breasts above a waist Hardy thought he could encircle with both hands.

He shook his head. No, Linda, he thought, Nika ain’t that pretty at all.

He started up the engine. He wanted to go back and talk to Cruz, and besides, it would be cooler moving.

So Sam Polk had married Nika about six months ago. He looked to be around fifty-five. She was midtwenties, maybe a little more. Got to be money, Hardy thought, at least to some extent. And after they’d gotten married, Polk had started having troubles with his business. It wasn’t that far a leap to assume that those troubles had led to problems at home.

But what was he thinking? There had been no hint of any trouble between Sam and Nika. What had made him think that?

And then he remembered her eyes fixing on him at the cemetery. He’d seen eyes like that before—the flirting hadn’t been playful, it was dead serious. The eyes of Nika Polk weren’t those of a happily married woman.

Had she ever looked at Eddie Cochran that way?