City of Hope (29 page)

“Have you found this woman's husband?” I asked, knowing full well the honest answer.

“Well . . . ,” he said, “not exactly.”

I sensed somebody behind me, turned and saw Maureen—her eyebrows raised, her eyes full of pitiful hope.

“But if you can give me some more time,” he said, trying his very best to sound sober. The effort caused him to stagger and almost fall in the door.

“Jesus—come on then,” I said.

I fed him, and after Bridie had scolded him roundly and instructed me to remove him wholesale from her kitchen, I assured Maureen that I would gladly give the old scoundrel more money to keep his eyes open for her husband.

“Perhaps he will find him,” I said, “you never know.” Miracles might happen—but Maureen had already told me that her miracle had happened when I had found her and taken her and her family under my wing. She wasn't due another miracle, she had said—so she was adamant that we send the old vagrant packing.

“False hope is worse than no hope,” she said.

Maureen had already written and heard back from the cousins in California with whom she had been to stay, and they had not heard from Patrick, either. She gave them her details nonetheless and, if he did call, they said they would surely pass the message on.

Matt and the men had registered Patrick Sweeney, along with a description of him, in every cop station around Central Manhattan and in Yonkers, in case he had the foresight to come back to their old home. They did not tell Maureen, but his details were also in every hospital and city morgue.

“Dead bodies turn up quicker than live ones,” a cop friend of Matt's had told me. Matt had brought the cop up to the house when Maureen was out. “People can hide,” he said, “but corpses—they don't have a choice. They gonna wash up, whether they want to or not.” If Patrick had been murdered, buried in concrete or dismembered by some brutal gang, he told us, he might never be found, “But suicides are never dead more than twenty-four hours before we get our hands on them,” the cop said, “under trains, off bridges—the bodies are warm when we get to them, most of the time. No, if he's missing, and he weren't a criminal, aye, well . . .”

He didn't want to say it in front of me, but then shrugged and went ahead anyway.

“Sometimes people just don't want to be found—do you know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what he meant, and it was the same assumption that Sheila had made. That Maureen's husband was living a new life somewhere else. I hoped, especially for the children's sake, that it wasn't true, and the least I could do was defend her against cruel taunts. Why did Sheila always have to take things a step too far?

“Stop it!” I shouted. “Maureen, would you tell Jake to run across the road and tell Matt to send that roofer over for a bit of breakfast before he starts. Bridie, have we some of that cured bacon left from last night?”

“Surely.”

“Well, then, you might put it in the pan for him—I'll go and get some eggs, and for God's sake, Sheila, go upstairs and put some proper clothes on.”

Bridie was always happy when I scolded Sheila. It made a change from her doing it. Not, indeed, that Sheila made any attempt to move from her chair.

I took a man's coat that was hanging on a hook by the back door and stepped out onto the wooden back porch. I was stopped in my tracks as surely as if I had hit a wall.

Dingus was down in our garden talking to Nancy. She was sitting on the swing with baby Tom in her arms, and he was standing behind her, pushing gently. He looked up at me and grinned. He had been waiting. Everything inside me loosened. I didn't know what to do. I could not turn my back on him, neither could I just stand here looking. I could move neither forward nor back. I was paralyzed.

I tried to call out.

“Bridie?”

I said it in such a whisper it was as if to myself. I could not shout for her properly. I dared not make a move, in case Dingus followed it with one of his own. Bridie knew about the incident with the gangster by now—everyone did. After that afternoon, Charles' bravery in seeing him off had been the talk of our household for weeks. The horrible reality of it, and my initial silence about my encounter with him, was dwarfed by the men's bravery. They had solved everything with their chest-beating threats, and made sure everyone knew about it. It never occurred to them that Dingus would come back; not after they had “seen him off,” although I had never quite let go of the idea that he was not finished with me—I had injured him, and a dog like that does not forget a beating, especially not at the hands of a woman. The men had seen a sniveling, frightened wreck who had been bullying a lady. They had not seen the crazed look in his eye. The hatred.

If Dingus was here now, he meant business. He was either unhinged enough not to be afraid of the men anymore or smart enough to know that they were all down at the shop. Either way, he had succeeded in terrifying me. It was me he wanted to punish, yet he was flirting with Nancy. This was some game he was playing, and I had no choice but to play along. He had me trapped in the cold sneer of his gaze as surely as if there was a steel wire connecting me to him. The women in the kitchen directly behind me might as well have been on the other side of the world, for all that I could reach them.

“Matt's not there, Ellie.” It was Jake. I breathed out with relief, but did not turn around. “There was a man over there looking for him too, to see him about the roof. I sent him down to the shop.”

I held Dingus's eye and said, really quietly and calmly, “Go inside, Jake, and send your mother and Bridie out to me now.”

“Who's that guy?”

“Immediately, Jake.”

He paused—teenage insubordination or his male instincts smelling danger made him dither.

“Now, Jake!”

A few seconds later I felt Maureen and Bridie at my back.

“It's him,” I said.

The two women knew whom I meant from my stance alone.

“The man that was in the kitchen this morning . . . ?” Maureen said.

“. . . was not the roofer,” I replied. “Where's Sheila?”

“I sent her down to the basement to collect some laundry,” Bridie said. “Will I get her? If there's a gang of us, we might be able to overpower him?”

He was smarter than that. Twice I'd got the better of him—but he had the better of me now, and his face said that he knew it.

Nancy waved over at us, smiling, delighted with her new beau. Sweet, dear, stupid Nancy, although it was her very innocence that was keeping her safe at that moment. Dingus was playing with me through her. If she were to run or I was to confront him, I could only imagine what his next move might be. He would not have come here unarmed. Not after the last time.

“No,” I said, “leave Sheila and stay where you are.”

I smiled over at Nancy and lifted my hand in a shallow greeting. Dingus kept his eye on me as he pushed her higher in the swing, and as she came back down he whispered something pretty in her ear that made her hunch her shoulders coyly and blush. We all just stood there looking and let him play this teasing game of torture with us—Nancy his unwitting partner. His hands stayed close to the top of her back, flicking against her shoulder, and his fingers lingered around the sinew of her slim neck as he gently pushed. It was important for us not to move, not to say anything as long as he was within reach of Nancy and Tom. How far would he need to move away from them for us three women to run down and drag them to safety? None of us said it, but we were all thinking the same thing.

I couldn't take it anymore and chanced taking one step forward. As I did so, Dingus grabbed the rope of the swing and pulled Nancy in to him. I stopped and raised my hands, letting him see I knew what I had done and wasn't moving any farther. Nancy looked up at him and smiled, as if she was hoping for a kiss. I felt sick. The big baby was heavy against her chest, asleep from all the rocking motion.

He leaned down to her and, as he did, I saw something flash in his palm. A knife! He was going to slash her anyway as we were watching!

I flew down the steps toward them, but before I reached the bottom there was a sharp clap near my ear. I tripped over the last step and looked up, just in time to see Dingus fall to his knees. Then, in one heavy, reckless motion, his face hit the ground in front of him, twisting his neck to one side with an audible crack. Nancy stood up from the swing and her chest heaved with shock as she gathered her breath to scream.

In that second of silence Maureen came thundering down the steps behind me, pushing me aside as she leaped toward Nancy and grabbed Tom, just before his mother's arms loosened and she started to wail. Bridie, who was immediately behind her, pulled Nancy firmly into her chest to ground her hysterics. I walked over to them in a daze, unclear what had happened, but holding on to the idea that I still needed to take the knife from Dingus' hand. I stood over him for a moment and put my foot to his leg. His body was lifeless. I leaned down and found his hand splayed out to one side. It was wrapped around the blade of the knife, and the blood seeping through the closed fingers was already congealing into black worms. My eyes were drawn to his face. He was dead.

I shivered as the memory of finding John's body visited me. This was the same thing—the shock, the sudden vacuum; here one minute, gone the next.

His mouth half open as if waiting for a kiss. “John, John
—
wake up, John.”

Yet the menace was gone, the slick appearance, the sleazy threat of Dingus's expression, the evil intent—all snatched away in an instant. Dingus had gone from being a terrible threat to a lifeless, life-sized doll dressed as a gangster; a mere and meaningless corpse.

As I stood up I noticed a black pillow of blood spreading in a pool underneath his chest, creeping around the soles of my boots.

I quickly stepped to one side. What had happened here?

“Is he dead?”

I turned and saw Sheila, standing at the door of the basement, just under the porch steps, still in her silk robe. Her right hand hung loosely by her side, and hanging from the crook of her forefinger was the jeweled handle of a small lady's pistol.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
THREE

My heart started to bang in my chest. Panic! A man was dead. What to do? What should I do? Would we call the police? My first instinct was “No.” We had shot a man: how would we explain it all to them? Dingus' previous visits, his threats to me, my stabbing him, Charles and the men seeing him off—it was too complicated, and they might not believe us. In any case, I knew that some New York cops were in cahoots with the gangsters. Supposing we got one of those? No. Dingus would be missed only by his criminal friends—and after all, the way he carried on, anyone might have shot him. My mind was racing. We had to act fast, now: what to do, what to do?

Bridie told Maureen to take Nancy and the baby inside. Nancy was heaving and Tom started to cry, a crisp, loud wail that would draw attention.

As they were leaving, Bridie knelt down by the body of the dead gangster and began saying the Last Rites in an automatic, hurried murmur:
“O Lord Jesus Christ, most merciful, Lord of the Earth, we ask that you receive this child into your arms . . . As thou hast told us with infinite compassion . . .”

My blood was fizzing with fear. As she was praying, Sheila came over and stood by my side. She handed me a lit cigarette.

“Calm down, Ellie, you're pure shaking.”

I drew deeply on the cigarette and filled myself with its white, calming smoke. Sheila was right. I needed to calm down. The garden was not overlooked—there was no sense in panicking.

It felt wrong to be standing there smoking over the body while Bridie was performing a religious ritual. We took a few steps backward.

“I've never seen a dead body before,” Sheila said.

I found I couldn't answer her. I was still too shocked to speak. Had anyone heard the gunshot? The neighbors? Were they at work or at home today? What day was it?

“I've been to funerals, of course,” Sheila went on, “but never actually seen the body. I've always avoided them, to be honest. The very idea of it made me feel a bit sick. A corpse—all laid out in a chapel surrounded by flowers, like some kind of ornament? No, thank you.”

My mind paused from its racing. That was how I had felt about John.

“Actually, I don't know what the fuss was about really. It's not nearly as bad as I thought. Anyway, don't expect this chap will get much of a send-off. What are we going to do with him?”

How could Sheila be so flippant? She had killed a man. Shot him! Still I couldn't speak.

Bridie was praying away, doing her duty. God!—how much longer would she take? What
were
we going to do? Sheila flicked her cigarette butt across the garden toward the vegetable patch, and my voice came back.

“A man is dead, Sheila, show some respect.”

“Ellie, he was a murdering maniac. He had a knife.”

“Nonetheless,” I said. I was not about to congratulate my friend for committing a murder. She had surely, probably, maybe, saved two lives in the process—but I was confused. Murder was always wrong. John had killed for his country, but he had almost been killed himself. So now he was dead anyway—what difference did it make? Was this man's life worth less than my husband's? Was his murder at Sheila's hands more justified than the sudden heart attack that John had suffered?

“You're glad I shot him, admit it.”

I could tell from Sheila's tone that she was hurt. She had shot Dingus because she had sensed his menace, and seen the knife. In her impulsive way, she had simply grabbed the gun from her purse, pointed it at his heart and fired. Perhaps she had been trained to use the gun, or perhaps it was a lucky shot—either way, I did not want to dwell on it. Nor did I want to think about the fact that I had been standing on the steps like a fool, engaging in Dingus' dangerous manipulation, and that if Sheila had not acted as she did, it would be Nancy lying in a bloody heap on the ground, and possibly me beside her. Yet much as Sheila wanted my approval, I couldn't give it to her.