Dead Irish (15 page)

“That’s what Cavanaugh said—that Eddie wanted another opinion.”

“When did you talk to Jim?”

“Yesterday. Last night. He thought he might have something of a lead. I was going to check around a little today, but then this morning . . .” He ticked his head toward the backseat.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but thanks.”

Hardy kept his eyes on the road. “I knew Ed and Frannie pretty well. Her brother’s my best friend.”

Turning west up the 380 now as dusk deepened, passing the huge cemetery with its thousands of white squares, gridding the grassy fields, marking the graves of military dead.

Ed reached behind the seat and rested a hand on his son’s leg, feeling the warmth of it through the blanket. Steven stirred and moaned softly, but didn’t open his eyes.

“Almost there,” Hardy said.

He’d made a dumb turn coming up this way, even though it was the most direct route. The cemetery was closing Ed up, and Hardy swore at himself—he should have remembered it. Maybe he could distract him a little, get his mind off it. “Your friend Father Cavanaugh is some kind of character.”

“Jim? Yeah. He’s a great guy.”

“Only thing I can’t figure is why he’s not a cardinal or something—at least a bishop.”

Ed smiled. “I know. He’s got that flair, don’t he?” He paused. “But if he were a bishop, he’d have to leave Erin, and I don’t think he’d like to do that.”

That remark surprised Hardy. He must have shown it. “It’s no secret he’s in love with my wife,” Ed said, but then held up a hand. “No, no, not like that. He’s one of us. Erin’s his best friend. He’s hers. Except maybe for me.” He smiled again. “Except sometimes I’m not sure of that either.”

“I think that’d make me nervous,” Hardy said.

“Well, after thirty years, I figure Erin’s my gal. We’ve talked about it, but she says the physical thing just never was there with Jim.” He shook his head. “How do you figure that? She prefers a galumpf like me, she says. I figure it’s her one flaw, but believe me, I’ll take it.”

Hardy glanced over at him. He said it in such a self-effacing way, you almost missed the serene confidence. This man knew, without a trace of doubt, that he knocked his wife out.

“It’s good to know they don’t always go for the movie stars, not being one myself,” Hardy said, relieved they had finally gotten by the cemeteries, into Daly City and all the little boxes on the hillsides.

“I don’t think they’d let Jim be a bishop anyway.”

“Why not?”

Ed shrugged. “He’s not political enough. Done a few unusual things. For a priest.”

Such as coming to me for his confession, Hardy thought, but asked, “Like what?”

“Oh, nothing serious. Just stuff.”

Okay, they weren’t going to talk about it. But then . . . “It took him about twice as long as anyone to get out of the seminary. They kicked him out twice.”

“Kicked him out?”

Ed shrugged. “Well, it was the fifties, early sixties. The Church thought it had a lock on these guys. Any little thing, they’d say you didn’t have a true vocation and boot you. Not like now, where if you’ve got a history as a gunrunner to Nicaragua you still got a pretty good chance, they need priests so bad.”

“So what did he do?”

“Jim?” Ed laughed, remembering. “I should know. I went with him. He got about two weekends off a year, and so this one time we got plastered and took in some strip shows—Erin was at school so the two of us were ripe for some high jinks. But the problem was, the next day he showed up back at the seminary hung over and confessed everything. Bad scene. They put him out for a semester to rethink his vocation.”

“What was the other time?”

“That was different. I don’t know I ever got the story right. Erin and I were on our honeymoon. It was maybe a month before his ordination. We’d already received the invitation. Anyway, Jim had decided he wasn’t worthy, or something like that. He wanted to be a priest, but didn’t feel he was holy enough. Can you imagine that? If Jim wasn’t holy enough, there was no hope for anybody else. I mean, where it counted.”

Hardy looked across the front seat. By now it was nearly dark. The streetlights in the lower avenues had come on.

“See, they tried to tell him everybody had those doubts. Priests weren’t supposed to be saints—they were humans like the rest of us. They weren’t about to let him drop out. He was the president of his class, was going to be the speaker at the ordination. They’d invested too much in him.”

“So? What happened?”

“So he stole the dean’s car, crashed out through the front gate and disappeared for three days.”

“Cavanaugh did that?”

“And then showed up looking like a bum, and without the car. He never talks about those three days, except to say it was his time in the desert. Whatever that meant. Anyway, he pissed everybody off pretty good. Now those same guys, his classmates, are becoming the bishops, and they all like Jim, probably, but think he’s a flake. Or at least a little bit of a flake. For sure too unstable to move up in the hierarchy.”

“But he did finally get ordained?”

“Yeah, two years later, he’d done his penance. But he wasn’t valedictorian.”

They turned onto Taraval. In the backseat, Steven moaned gently.

“Almost home, son,” Ed said. “Almost home.”

Frannie looked much better, Erin much worse. Hardy sat drinking his second scotch, waiting for the opportune moment to make an exit. Everybody here was tired—hell, exhausted. Jodie was already asleep, her gangly frame draped over the love seat. Erin and Ed, sitting together like statues, holding hands, kept looking at each other as if wondering what was going to happen next. But there was a toughness Hardy noticed in Ed.

Here was a man who’d lost a son only a week before. Just that morning, Hardy had seen him break down into tears. But here, now, sitting next to his wife, he was hanging in there for her, in spite of his own hurt. Hardy thought he might be the bravest man he’d ever met.

“Thanks for the drink,” he said. “I think it’s time I called a cab.”

Frannie walked with him outside. “How are you making out?” he asked her. “Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure.” Her red hair gleamed in the porch light. She looked like she’d finally eaten something. Her eyes were clear.

“You said Eddie left right after dinner?”

She nodded.

“Do you have any idea what time that was?”

He hated to ask, to see her eyes cloud over again, but he had to know.

“It was still light out. Pretty early, I guess, sevenish. Why?”

The cab pulled up. “Because it shouldn’t take two and a half hours to drive from your place out to China Basin.”

“No, it’s only like fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He admired the way when her shoulders started to sag she tightened up her jaw. He leaned down and pecked her on the cheek. “I’m checking this stuff out, Frannie. You keep hanging in there.”

She put her arms up around him and held tight for a moment. The cabbie honked. She let go.

When the cab got to the corner, Hardy looked back. Frannie was still standing out by the curb. Hanging in there, Hardy thought.

“Nope.”

“Abe, come on.”

“You said yourself he’d never seen the guys before. How can there be a connection?”

“It’s too big a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think.”

“But that plus the drug thing with Ed’s boss?”

“
Possible
drug thing. What’s the matter with you, Hardy, you taking drugs yourself?”

After another minute, Hardy hung up. What more did Glitsky need? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? And there was enough smoke here to cure meat.

It was ten o’clock Saturday night. The deputy hadn’t yet arrived back from Gonzalez with his car.

Not for the first time, Hardy wished he didn’t have a rule about keeping hard liquor in his house. He went into his bedroom, fed the fish, walked back to his office. He picked the six darts from the board by the fireplace and stood by his desk, just at the tape line he’d put down there, and threw methodically, trying to let his mind clear.

Frannie was positive that Ed had left the house around seven. Cruz said that he had left work around eight-thirty and nobody had been either in the building or the lot at that time. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from Ed’s to Cruz’s.

Hell of a lot of time to kill, and that was the minimum. He might not’ve gotten to Cruz’s until ten. Nobody knew.

Damn Glitsky. There was something here, Hardy was sure of it. A little manpower and they could at least get a fix on the whereabouts of all the principals. Where, for example, had Cruz gone at eight-thirty? Maybe he’d just sat in the lot, waiting for a meeting. And Polk—what had Polk been doing Monday night? Maybe Ed’s meddling in his private business was going to cut into Nika’s lifestyle, and he couldn’t allow that.

All right. He had the background. It was beginning to look as if he’d have to do some old-fashioned police work, and he didn’t relish the thought. That’s why they have police departments, he thought. Because the legwork is awesome. It’s why they have rookies, and he hadn’t been a rookie in nearly twenty years. But if Abe wouldn’t help . . .

He reached again for the phone, intending to give it one more try, even if it was a Saturday night and Glitsky was at home relaxing with his wife. He turned off the answering machine in the office and plugged the phone into the jack.

The doorbell.

Oh, my God! Jane!

He dropped the darts on his desk and sprinted around the corner, through his bedroom and kitchen, and down the hall. It wasn’t Jane.

“Mr. Hardy?”

Hardy nodded.

“Your keys, sir, and the sheriff says thanks again.”

Hardy remembered his manners. “You want a cup of coffee? How you getting back down?”

He had stood up Jane. There was no way she was still waiting for him.

“Highway Patrol will pick me up if I could borrow your phone? The sheriff—he got it okayed.”

Hardy made a pot and the two men talked baseball for most of an hour while they waited for the Highway Patrol.

After the deputy had gone, Hardy stood outside on his front lawn. The fog had come in, though it wasn’t heavy. It presaged a return to normal weather. Without a coat on, he walked up to the corner and saw the restaurant where he was to have met Jane. The lights were still on.

He stood outside its front window looking in. Jane wasn’t there. Cold now, he jogged back to his house. Coming up the steps, he heard the telephone ringing, but it stopped when he was inside, running back to the office. Maybe if it was Jane he could meet her for a nightcap, explain what had happened. Maybe she’d even believe him.

But there was no message on the answering machine, because he had unplugged it.

Somebody’s trying to tell me something, he thought, picking up his darts again. He hit every number from twenty down to the bull’s-eye in thirty-four throws.

17

HE AND JEFFREY had to get it straight.

It had eaten at Cruz all day, from the early-morning jog along the Marina to brunch at Green’s. It had kept him from his Saturday nap, had even driven him from his house to the office in the middle of the afternoon. Now, after the late dinner and two bottles of wine, in the afterglow he saw no way to avoid it any longer.

Jeffrey lay flat on his back half covered with a pink sheet. He appeared to be asleep, but Cruz didn’t think he was. He was very much like the cats he loved so much. He just relaxed completely, with his pilot on slow burn. At the gentle touch, Cruz running a finger from armpit to nipple, he opened his fantastic eyes, visible as blue even in the half-light.

“Hi,” Jeffrey whispered. “I’m right here.”

This was the boy’s element. The trick, to Cruz, was to be happy with him here and to quit trying to turn him into something he wasn’t. He’d thought about it all day. Jeffrey wasn’t made for intrigue or business—he was made for pleasure, for relaxation.

“You are here, aren’t you?”

“Always.”

Cruz sighed. God, he loved him. “Can we talk a little?” Funny how he wasn’t really the boss here at home, and it didn’t bother him at all.

“Sure.” He sat up, pulling the blanket around his waist.

“I think we have to get clear between us that Ed Cochran never came here.”

Jeffrey cocked his head. “But he did, Arturo.”

“I know, I know he did. But our story, yours and mine, should be the same if anyone else asks about it.”

Jeffrey opened his eyes all the way. “But why shouldn’t we tell the truth? We talked to him. What’s wrong with that?”

“In itself, nothing. But there are people who might try to make it something.”

“But why?”

“Because, Jeffrey, he was killed in my parking lot.”

“But he wasn’t killed. He killed himself. You said he did.”

“Of course,” Cruz said, speaking slowly now. “I know that. That’s what I meant. But his death is connected to me by that very fact. And I think it would be smarter not to draw any further attention to it.”

Jeffrey reached out a long hand and drew his fingernail across Cruz’s jaw. “ ’Turo, you didn’t kill him, did you?”

Cruz folded his hands in his lap and forced himself not to lose his temper. Jeffrey tended to keep missing the essential point. “No, Jeffrey. I didn’t kill him.”

“But you did see him? That night, no? When you came home so late.”

“We agreed I came home before nine o’clock, didn’t we? We’ve already told the police that.”

“Arturo.” Jeffrey shook his head from side to side. “Yes. And I love you. For the world, you came home when? Around nine, right? But between us . . .” He let it hang.

“The police think it was a suicide.”

“You called the police?”

“I just happened to notice it at the office this afternoon. The daily police reports for the paper, you know.”

“That’s why you went to the office.”

Cruz hated that bitchy, petulant tone. But then the real hurt showed. “You could have let me know,” Jeffrey said, reaching out and touching his face. “You don’t tell me enough. We are together,” he said, “we share.”

“We do share,” Cruz said. “I want to share.”

Jeffrey got up and walked naked over to the window. “And you want me to say we never met Ed here?”

“Probably no one will ask. I just want to make sure.”

Jeffrey turned back toward him. “I think being honest is the best thing, Arturo. If you start telling lies, they tie you all up. You can even forget what the real truth is.”

“Jeffrey, I agree with you. I’m finding that out now. The only thing is, I already told the police I didn’t know Ed. If we just—on this one thing—agree, we won’t lie about anything else.”

Jeffrey sat again on the bed. “You promise?”

“Promise.”

How could he expect Jeffrey to understand? He sat on the brocaded couch downstairs, facing the fireplace. The vodka, which had once been iced, was nearly untouched and had now gone warm. Through the gossamer drapes, light from the street filtered into the living room, enough to make out the familiar outlines—the chandelier over the twelve-foot marble table, the twin sculpted marble pillars that bracketed the fireplace, the polar bear rug at his feet, the trio of original Gormans on the far wall bought long before his tiles had become available in every boutique in the West.

In the quiet house, Cruz took stock of what he’d acquired. It still felt like it was worth it. In fact, it wasn’t complete yet. The room was beginning to feel a little small, the house just slightly worn. He was ready to move up again.

Keep that in mind, he said. Comfort is stagnation. Keep wanting more, that was the key. Keep that sharp edge. If you weren’t expanding you would contract.

A car labored up the steep hill, and a minute later Cruz heard the soft plop as the Sunday paper hit his driveway. Morning already, the darkest hour before dawn, before the black began turning to gray.

No, it would be impossible for Jeffrey to understand. Jeffrey hadn’t come up the way he had. Cruz didn’t even have to try to remember: it was always with him. When he’d been Jeffrey’s age . . .

He was starting to think like an old man, sound like his father had sounded when he talked about the
bracero
life. “I used to be up by three, ’Turo, to work the fields before the sun got too hot.” Well, Cruz had done his own laboring, only in different fields.

No, Jeffrey could never understand what it was like to be Mexican, poor and gay. And Cruz was never going back to poor.

Even now, in San Francisco where the heteros joked about their minority status, in the Latino community to be gay was to be a leper. Macho still ruled—Cruz knew it would never change during his lifetime.

Every week or two he would come across a story about one of the Mission gangs or another beating, mutilating or killing some poor
maricón.
Long ago he had decided not to run those stories. People didn’t want to read them; they weren’t news—what happened to those
pervertidos
was not important, at least not among
la gente,
not among his advertisers and readers.

Cruz had learned well. No one could ever know about him. His parents had died never suspecting. At least his mother never stopped pushing girls at him, especially after
La Hora
had started to become successful.

So he’d simply done without sex, except for the vacations that had brought him back home disgusted with himself. He had done without—until he’d met Jeffrey.

And even with Jeffrey, even with love for him pumping so hard through his veins that he didn’t feel he could control himself, he had been cautious. First hiring him, getting to know him at the office—a joy just to watch him move. Then a late meeting or two, until the declaration.

And after that—bliss.

But still the need for secrecy, which Jeffrey didn’t really understand but respected. Gayness to Jeffrey had never had to be that big an issue; he was the type of boy who’d always known what he was and who was happiest in a relationship. They lived quietly, at home, a publisher and his employee, private lives discreetly handled.

The house creaked somewhere upstairs. Was he up? Cruz listened, but the place reverted to silence.

Even Ed Cochran’s visit—the most surprising thing that Cruz could remember in his business life—hadn’t started out badly. If both Jeffrey and Cochran hadn’t been so naive, so idealistic, it might’ve been okay.

He slugged at the tepid vodka, his face contorting into a grimace, remembering that Thursday night. It hadn’t yet gotten dark. They were finishing an early dinner when the doorbell rang, and Jeffrey had jumped up to answer it. Seeing the nice-looking kid in a coat and tie, with a briefcase, Jeffrey had said, sure, they had a couple of minutes.

Cruz had wanted to scream, “No, Jeffrey, we don’t! Not here!” But Ed Cochran was already inside the house, shaking hands, and there was nothing to do but be polite and bluff it.

And they’d sat right here, in this room, as Cochran had explained that he hadn’t been sent by his boss or anything. He’d just done some figuring on his own and had devised a way to keep Army—Sam Polk’s company—in the distribution chain for another year, after which time they could be phased out and Cruz could have his in-house operation at no loss of profit.

See, he’d explained, it was more or less a loan situation that would enable Army to keep drawing income and stay in business while Polk set up some other networks to cover for the loss of
La Hora.
Cochran had had all the details right there on paper. He was sure that Cruz didn’t mean to wipe out all the families who worked at Army—especially when there was an alternative. And it was just a matter of a slight compromise on his part.

Cruz couldn’t believe it. Here was some dumb kid asking him to forgo his entire reorganization to accommodate some businessman who’d gotten caught in the squeeze.

“But it won’t have any negative effect on your business,” he’d said after Cruz had said no.

“It will affect cash flow for a year, minimum.”

Why had he even argued with him? It was strictly a business decision, having nothing to do with the personal fortunes of another company’s employees.

“But you could survive that, couldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be worth a little sacrifice for the grief you’d save other people?”

Was this kid for real? No one, not even Cruz, could predict what his business would need to survive. What might
El Dia
do if he gave them a hole to crawl through?

Cruz had been about to toss Ed, but then Jeffrey had butted in: “He might be right, Arturo. It could perhaps be done.”

“It can’t!” It had been an outburst—atypical behavior for him. Normally, it would have rolled off him. But, he recalled, he had felt Jeffrey might be coming on to Cochran.

Well, in any case, he should have kept his cool, not started bickering with Jeffrey—and in front of Cochran, where, if the boy wasn’t blind, he would see that they were arguing not like employer and employee, but like lovers.

Even if it could be done he wasn’t going to do it. He had no investment in Army Distributing or any of the others. What happened to them was their own problem, and if they hadn’t planned contingencies for the loss of
La Hora
’s business, it just showed poor management and validated his decision to stop dealing with them in the first place.

Thank God he had realized what was happening in time. He’d smiled, pulled back into himself, and asked Jeffrey to go get a bottle of wine. When he was gone, he’d turned to Ed Cochran.

“I will meet with you after hours at my offices. I do not discuss business at home. And Jeffrey, though welcome to his opinions, does not help me make policy. Is that very clear?”

Cochran had nodded. “I appreciate it.”

“There will most probably be nothing to appreciate.”

Cochran gave him a warm smile. “Well, at least I’ll have tried.”

“Yes, you’ll have done that.”

And, before Jeffrey had come back, they’d agreed on Monday night at nine-thirty. Just the two of them. To talk.