Dead Irish (23 page)

He shook his head. It was a police matter now. The proof would come out—possibly was coming out right now downtown—and then it would be over. It wasn’t his problem anymore.

So what that someone had called in about the body from a phone booth three miles away from the Cruz lot? What did it matter if Alphonse killed Linda with a knife and Eddie was shot? And couldn’t Cruz really have lied out of pure fear, not necessarily to cover up a murder?

Sure. Sure, and sure.

But there was one other thing. It had occurred to him—like a remembered taste—while he was talking to Steven, some vague feeling that he had said something that he had overlooked before about Eddie’s murder, and it didn’t have shit-all to do with either Arturo Cruz or Alphonse Page.

He stared at the ship as it continued its slow progress toward the Bridge, sipping Anchor Steam, damned if he could put his finger on what the hell it was.

29

DICK WILLIS OF THE Drug Enforcement Agency was sure it was one of those situations where the guy’s name had absolutely determined what he was going to be in life. Bargen had probably been called Plea since the first grade.

Willis, sitting across from him in his cubicle in the D.A.’s office, looked at the nameplate on his cluttered desk, the one that said “P. Bargen,” and wondered if in fact that might be his real name. He didn’t know him as anything else.

Plea leaned back, balancing his wooden chair on its hind legs. His feet were on the corner of his desk, crossed, and he appeared to be sleeping soundly, arms crossed behind his head. His tie was undone, his few hairs uncombed. Still, he wasn’t a slob. His body was trim, his pants still had a crease in them and the shirt was ironed. He was paying attention.

They were listening to Abe Glitsky talk. Willis didn’t intend to stay long. It was the end of the day, and he’d dropped by mostly as a courtesy. At the most, what they were talking about here with the Alphonse deal was about a hundred thousand dollars, and asking him, a major-league drug buster, to put out much effort on that kind of money was like asking a homicide cop to work a weekend to get a purse snatcher.

But he knew Abe and he knew Plea. They’d both delivered in the past, and they might stumble on something if they muddled around in it long enough, see if they could pull together anything that might lead to a bigger score. After all, small amounts of drugs tended to come from bigger shipments, and maybe they could work backward.

But Abe was talking all kinds of nonsense that Willis couldn’t connect to a goddamn thing, and finally he had to hold up his hand and interrupt. “Maybe I came in the middle here, but aren’t we talking about this Polk thing? Alphonse Page? We got a confession, right?”

Plea opened his eyes and came forward in one motion, very smooth. “That’s covered, yeah,” he said.

“So what’s all this parking-lot bullshit?”

“Well, there was a guy killed there a week ago,” Plea said, then added, with a look at Glitsky, “or killed himself.”

“Uh-uh,” Abe said, “nope.”

Willis held up his hand again. “Guys, guys. We go back a ways, right? Right. So look, we’re talking drugs or not? What’s the connection here?”

“The connection is maybe the drop was going to be there.”

Willis stared at Glitsky, wondering if he’d heard right. This was a veteran? He sucked at his front teeth. “Drop? Drop? Did you say drop?” He frowned at Plea. “He said drop, didn’t he?”

Plea concurred.

Willis went back to Abe. “Abe, my man, there ain’t no drop. This isn’t like a shipment of brown coming in stuffed in Aztec jewelry. We’re talking maybe a couple of bags, some condoms full. You forgetting what coke looks like, I got about fifteen tons down in evidence. For that, you need a drop. For this, you meet some guy on a street corner and if you’re casing it and you blink, you miss it, it’s over so fast.”

Willis scratched his head, sucking at his teeth again. These guys were in the business, even. It killed him. “Drop. Jesus.”

Plea rolled his eyes, tried to sound patient. “Dick, you dick . . .” Willis hated when he said that. “The dissertation was nice, but this guy Polk, it was his first buy. Maybe he was being careful, maybe he was nervous, you know.”

Glitsky put in his two cents. “Alphonse said there was gonna be a
drop.
That’s the word he used.”

“Alphonse is never, ever gonna win the Nobel Prize. In anything.”

“But he says Polk told him the stuff was out in the Bay. They were delivering it by boat. Polk never told Alphonse where, though now he figures they were coming up the canal and dropping it in Cruz’s lot.”

“What a wizard.” This wasn’t going anywhere, so Willis cooled himself down. “Look, spare me the lot noise. Do you guys want to plead down if he’ll talk about his buyer? That’s the extent of my interest.”

The city employees had some other agenda going, but Willis wasn’t going to get bogged down in it. “Unless you got something on Polk himself ?”

Glitsky stood up, walked over to the doorsill and leaned against it looking out. Plea sighed. “Polk is a wash. Best we can tell, Polk died by accident in his hot tub.” When Willis made a face, Plea shrugged. “M.E. down the Peninsula confirms it. So there you go. Anyway, nobody knew anything about his source. His wife—we saw her today—killer, by the way . . .” He stopped. “I mean it, Dick. Be worth your while to interview her.”

Abe turned around, scowling. “Bargen,” he said.

“Yeah, all right. Anyway, completely oblivious. Can’t believe her husband had anything to do with drugs. He was a businessman, that’s all. Straight as they come. Never did drugs himself.”

“How old is she?” Willis asked.

“Christ!” Glitsky said. He walked a few steps out into the corridor. Plea again rolled his eyes, held his hands inverted out over his chest and blew out soundlessly. “Lungs to here, a face to die for.” He raised his voice. “She wasn’t what I call distraught, except maybe over the thought that she wouldn’t get the money Alphonse stole.”

“She won’t if it’s drug money.”

“She will if it’s stolen in this jurisdiction. It was Polk’s, and Alphonse admitted taking it from the safe.” Abe came back to the door, leaning against it. “She knew from nothing,” he said.

“And Alphonse didn’t know? About Polk’s source, I mean?”

Plea and Abe looked at one another. “No chance.”

Willis rubbed his palms against his pants and stood up. “So it’s his buy or nothing?”

“Looks like,” Plea said. “Maybe three, four hundred grand.”

These guys couldn’t see it. “Peanuts,” Willis said, but added quickly, upbeat, “but it might lead someplace.” No sense pissing them off. “Can I talk to him?”

“Sure.”

“Well, set it up for tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can do.” Willis shook hands with both of them. “Thanks for the tip, guys. You never know.” He was out the door about ten seconds when he poked his head back in. “The Polk woman? What was her first name?”

“Nika,” Plea said. “I’ll send you the report.”

“Do it,” Willis said.

At least he didn’t wink.

“DEA,” Abe said. “Don’t Expect Anything.”

Plea shrugged. “They got bigger fish to fry.”

Abe plunked himself heavily on the corner of Plea’s desk. “I don’t care what perspective you have, half a million dollars isn’t peanuts.”

“Relativity, Abe. Relativity. It’s the federal government, where a fucking hammer costs a hundred and forty dollars. You know their efficiency rate? They gotta cover for every G.S. One through Twelve lifer who wouldn’t do more than an hour’s work in a day for any reason on God’s earth. So they gotta make maybe ten mil on a bust before they justify the overhead.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bargen.”

Plea noted the scar tightening through Abe’s lips. “Come on, Abe, what’s the problem? We got a righteous bust on the Linda Polk murder. We keep getting one a day, we end the year only about two hundred behind.”

Glitsky twisted his face in what he thought was a smile. “What about Cruz? The Cochran thing?”

Plea shook his head. “That’s a suicide/equivocal, not a homicide.”

“The fuck it’s not.”

Plea held up a hand. “Hey. You prove it, I’ll charge it, but I’d never even seen the file before twenty minutes ago. I don’t make this stuff up. You guys tell me what to run with, remember?” He opened the file with a casual hand, perused it a second, closed it back up. “Nothing here gets me out of the blocks, Abe. If it’s somewhere else, get it for me, would you? Otherwise . . .”

“Cruz was there. He admits it.”

Plea nodded. “And because of that, because you’re a good cop and you asked nice, we looked into it, didn’t we? In spite of no official finding of homicide. Didn’t we?”

Abe didn’t answer.

Plea stared at the sergeant. Maybe he was working too hard. He felt sorry for him. “We got corroboration on the dinner from the waiter. Cruz himself passed a polygraph. His little boyfriend—I took the kid apart, Abe—and once he got over being scared, all he did was provide an even better alibi. He followed Cruz all night, for chrissakes. Thought the guy was running around on him. Couldn’t have cared less about Cochran, just didn’t want Cruz to get all mad at him because he’d been followed.” Bargen paused, scratching his scalp. “Plus, there is no shred of physical evidence. No way we charge him.”

“The perfect crime, huh?”

“Maybe, but I’d say he didn’t do it.”

“He had a motive. . . .”

“So did Alphonse, and he didn’t do it either, unless you don’t believe at least four of your fellow officers who were playing basketball with him, all of whom I’m sure want to protect a sweet and upstanding citizen like Alphonse.” Plea sighed. “And while we’re on it, the last guy with a motive didn’t do it either.”

Glitsky looked a question and Plea said, “Polk. His wife had a party that night. Twenty, thirty people. Polk was there the whole time.”

“I hadn’t even thought about him.”

Plea nodded. “I know. You were too busy with ready-made suspects. Me, I took it fresh, and Polk popped up like a plum.”

“But no, huh?”

“No.”

Glitsky went and sat in Willis’s chair. “What’s your hard-on for this thing?” Plea asked.

“I don’t know. Once in a while my sense of justice gets offended, I guess.”

“You ought to have this job. There’s no justice, there’s just grinding ’em through. Plea ’em down and move ’em along.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why this one?”

He gave it a beat or two. “This one, Plea, is a murder. I’m a homicide cop.”

“That simple, huh?”

Glitsky seemed to be asking himself the same question. His lips tightened again, loosened, tightened. “Yep,” he said, standing up, “that simple.”

The kids were asleep. He lay with his shoes off on the living-room couch, his head in his wife’s lap as she massaged his temples. The television was on in the corner but was muted. It gave the only light in the room.

“I got my ass reamed. Frazelli, not so gently, suggested I just stay off it. It’s Griffin’s case.”

“But I thought you’d—”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not anymore. That was when Frazelli thought there was new evidence.”

“But why pull back now?”

“Because now, my love, I have suggested not one, not two, but three possible suspects to the same killing within a twelve-hour period. It doesn’t do much for my credibility. Especially since two of them definitely didn’t do it, and there’s no evidence at all with the third.”

“Are you sure it was a murder?” She moved from his temples to the forehead, smoothing the crinkled brow back with the palm of her hand.

“Feels so good,” he said. He’d been awake since whatever time this morning. “I don’t know, maybe it’s Hardy.”

“Is he sure?”

“He’s dead positive now. I just got to wonder. Here’s a guy was good, you know, good. Just a beat cop, but he had a feel for it. Hell, you knew him.

“Then he goes into law and suddenly burns out. Anyway, he lays low for maybe what, six, eight years, and now he swings back in action. You got to ask yourself what for? He doesn’t think he’s jerking himself off, I’ll tell you that.”

“But maybe he’s just wrong. Maybe he wants to believe it so bad, he’s making it true for himself.”

“Maybe,” Abe said. “All I know is, I’m off it. I’m still interested, but I’m off it.”

“And you told him that?”

He closed his eyes under her soothing hands. “Yeah. I told him he comes to me with a signed confession, I’ll be delighted. Then I’ll go shove it up—sorry, all worked up.”

“Just forget Griffin tonight, forget all that stuff. They’re not out to get you ’cause you’re black.”

“I’m only half black.”

“Okay, they’re still not out to get you.”

He looked up into her face. “That’s what you think. I’m not allowed the luxury of being wrong.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Paranoid.”

“Don’t mean they’re not after me.”

She smiled and continued with the massage, her white hands seeming to shine in the dim room against the dark skin of her husband.

30

THE FIRST MESSAGE on his machine said: “Dismas. Jim Cavanaugh. Just calling to find out how it all turned out, see if you’d like to have a drink. Give me a call when you can. 661-5081. Thank you.”

The second was from Jane. “I’m just thinking about you. Maybe Thursday instead of Friday? Maybe tonight?”

The last was from Moses, who wanted to know how he was getting along and when and if he was coming back to work.

Hardy threw darts while he listened to the messages. His aim was off. Not that he ever missed the general pie he was half going for, but occasionally he’d miss his number two out of three. It didn’t bother him. He was only throwing to be doing something. If he kept hard liquor in his house, he’d be drinking. Too wired to sleep, he threw darts.

After a while he went around to his desk, two of his three tungsten darts embedded in the 1 to the left of 20, the last one stuck in the 5 to its right. He’d missed 20 for two whole rounds, something he hadn’t done in five years.

He rewound his machine. Since he didn’t have hard liquor at home, he’d go and have some in a bar. It wasn’t all that late, and Cavanaugh had offered. He didn’t want to go to the Shamrock and have to answer questions from Moses about his progress. He got to the number, switched off the machine, wrote it down and dialed.

A woman’s voice answered. “St. Elizabeth’s.”

“Hello, is Father Cavanaugh in?”

“Just a moment, I’ll get him. Can I tell him who’s calling?”

When Hardy told her, she paused, then said, “Did Father tell you? Oh, I’d better let him tell you.”

Cavanaugh, now at the phone: “Dismas. Good of you to call.”

“Okay, I’m curious. What were you going to tell me?”

“When?”

“Your housekeeper just now asked me if you’d told me something, then said you’d better tell me.”

The priest paused, chuckled tolerantly. “I don’t know, tell the truth. I’ll have to ask her. How’s your case coming?”

“That’s kind of why I hoped you had something for me. There isn’t any case anymore. It’s gone south.”

There was a longish pause. “What do you mean?”

“You mentioned a drink, and I could use one. Can I meet you somewhere? Tell you all about it then.”

“You want to come over here?” Cavanaugh asked.

“Anywhere’s fine.”

“No, forget here. We might keep someone up.”

“You name it.”

Cavanaugh took a minute, then named a fern bar on Irving about midway between them. Hardy knew the place. He could get there in ten minutes.

These drugs were funny. One minute it’d be as though you were dead—no dreams, no memory of sleep even. And then, bingo, you were wide awake. Then you had somewhere between a half hour and an hour before the pain got you again.

The foot was the worst. It felt as though it was continually being crushed in a car door. Steven had done that the summer before with his thumb. He couldn’t believe the next day how bad it had felt. It had affected his whole body, with a headache and throwing up and everything. He’d lost the nail.

But that was nothing next to now when the painkiller wore off. He had tried toughing it out this afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to sleep anymore. There were too many things to think about—Eddie and the investigation.

But it hadn’t worked. The foot had been the worst, but he was already beginning to feel his collarbone, and his head was throbbing. He hadn’t been able to keep the tears back when Mom had come in. It was just from the pain, the water forming in his eyes and falling out over his cheeks.

The bad thing about the painkiller was you woke up so thirsty every time, which made you drink a lot of water, which then meant you had to pee like crazy, and since you couldn’t move, that meant Mom had to come in with the bedpan.

You think crying’s embarrassing, try a bedpan.

But this night it was Pop. He took care of it with a minimum of hassle, then poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table by the bed and sat down right up next to him, hip to hip. He reached out his rough hand and touched Steven’s forehead where it wasn’t bandaged, very businesslike. He nodded to himself.

“So how’s my boy?”

“Okay.” That was always the answer. Now Pop would say “Good” and go out to the garage and do something.

But instead he said, “Really? Really okay?” Steven blinked a couple of times, and his dad continued, “ ’Cause that’d make you the only one.”

“Well, you know,” Steven said.

“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

There was a small light on by the door and another out in the hallway, but Steven could tell it was pretty late. Everybody else was probably asleep. His dad loomed up in front of him, blocking out most of everything else. No wonder they called him Big Ed.

Steven had no idea how to answer. “I don’t know. Not great, I guess.”

“Me neither. Just general?”

Steven tried to shrug, but wound up making a face. Shrugging with a broken collarbone wasn’t recommended. “You know. Eddie, I guess, mostly. Mom, a little.”

Big Ed lifted a leg onto the bed and shifted to face him more. “You know,” he said, “I can’t say a damn thing.” He put his hand out, resting it heavily on Steven’s chest, and just sat there.

“What do you want to say?”

“I really don’t even know that.”

Well, that was okay, but it got uncomfortable. Steven, to say something, asked for another sip of water.

“How’s the pain?” Big Ed asked. “You need some more pills?”

“No, okay?”

“You’re the boss.”

The room got blurred up slightly. He leaned his head back against the pillow. “What’s in those things? The pills, I mean.”

Ed picked up the little brown plastic bottle. He said: “It’s called Percodan. ‘Extremely addictive. Use only under the direction of a physician.’ Well, we’re doing that.”

Steven said: “I don’t think I’m addicted. I really don’t want it, except for the pain. It makes me too tired.”

Ed put the bottle back down. “Well, that’s what it’s for.” He shifted again on the bed, as though he were thinking about getting up. But this was one of the longest conversations Steven had ever had with him, and he wanted to keep him there without being too nerdy about it.

“You know, drugs aren’t that cool,” he said, then blurted ahead. “I smoked some weed with the guys that beat me up.”

His dad simply nodded, taking it in. “How’d you like it?”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’ll get mad later. Right now I’m still just glad you’re alive. You mind if I have some of your water?” He poured half a glass and downed it in a gulp. “The pitcher’s almost empty,” he said.

He got up, blocking the light from the door as he passed through it, and left Steven alone. He heard a clock ticking somewhere, then some water running in the bathroom down the hall. He looked around the dark room at the rock-and-roll posters. Suddenly he didn’t like them very much. They seemed kind of phony and stupid. They were one of the few things he and Eddie hadn’t agreed on, but Steven had always felt that he had to have something that set him apart at home so they’d know he was alive.

His father returned with the pitcher filled up and sat back down where he’d been, on the side of the bed. Steven’s foot was beginning to throb slightly.

“You want to do me a favor?” his dad asked.

“Sure.”

“You want to try those things, try ’em at home.”

“I don’t think I—”

But Big Ed interrupted. “Look, there’s going to be lots of things like marijuana. Beer, for example. Or maybe cigarettes or cigars or something, although God forbid you get into that. Sex . . .”

Steven almost jumped at the word.

“Sex, no, don’t bring that home.”

Was Pop, grinning at him like they were friends, saying this stuff out loud to him? It blew him away. “But the other stuff—you want to experiment, even with some other guys, you bring ’em around and go out to the garage and check it out. But do it here, okay? So we can be sure you’re all right.”

“You’d let me smoke weed?”

“I wouldn’t be too thrilled about it. I wouldn’t want it to become a habit, but it probably wouldn’t kill you. It didn’t last weekend, did it?”

“Almost.”

Steven hung his chin down to the cast, but Big Ed lifted his head with a finger. “You’re gonna do things we don’t like. Hell, I’m sure we do things you hate. But we’re living together here, and everybody cuts everybody else a little slack so we can get along. The main thing is we’re a family, we stick together. Sound like a deal?” He punched him lightly under the chin.

That hurt a little, jerking the collarbone around, but obviously Big Ed hadn’t meant it and Steven would take a lot more physical pain than that if his dad would talk to him like this once in a while.

“But what about Mom?” Steven asked.

“What about her?”

“What if she doesn’t, uh, want to let me do stuff? Or even want me around?”

Ed slumped. His face clouded over. “Of course your mother wants you around.”

Steven tried a response, but it didn’t work. Big Ed sighed deeply. “Your mother is having a hard time, Steven. We’re all having a hard time.”

“You don’t think I wish Eddie were still here?”

“No, I know you do. It’s not that. It’s just your mother . . . She’s . . .”

“She wishes it would have been me instead of Eddie.”

Ed shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. Not on any level. She loves you, too, just like she loved Eddie.”

There wasn’t any use arguing over that one.

“She’s just having a hard time accepting it. Her world’s all turned around, and maybe she doesn’t know where to put things so well for a while. Haven’t you ever felt like that?”

He nodded.

“So, what I was saying about giving people some slack, maybe you’ve gotta be the first one. Try and understand what she’s going through if you can.”

“I know what she’s going through. I miss Eddie too. So bad.”

Big Ed took a deep breath. He swallowed, then jerked his head around toward the hallway. Still looking away, he spoke hoarsely. “We’re all taking it differently, I suppose.”

Steven’s foot was really hurting now. He kept forgetting how bad it was, and hoping every time that it would let up the next time the pills wore off, but that wasn’t happening yet.

He let a long time go by, or what seemed a long time, with his dad staring off somewhere breathing hard every couple of seconds. Then he said, “Pop.”

Big Ed slowly came back around.

“I think I need one of those pills pretty soon. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Yeah there is, Pop. There really is.”

His dad reached for the medicine bottle, opened it and shook out two pills. “Well, let’s start fresh, then. We’ve got a hell of a family left here, okay?”

He popped the pills and drank a little of the water.

“Maybe Frannie’s kid will make up for Eddie a little. Mom might like that.”

Big Ed jerked again as though he’d been stung. “Frannie’s kid? What do you mean, Frannie’s kid?”

It frightened him, Ed almost yelling like that. “You know, the kid Frannie’s gonna have. Her and Eddie’s kid.”

“Frannie’s pregnant?”

He strained to remember. Who had told him that? Damn. The pills were working gangbusters already. His eyelids were lead. Was it Jodie? He was sure it wasn’t Mom. No, it wasn’t her. Maybe Frannie while she’d been staying here?

He couldn’t put his finger on the exact time he found out. “I don’t know,” he said lamely, “maybe I just dreamed it. I don’t remember.” But he knew he hadn’t been dreaming at all. He couldn’t recall even a scene from one dream.

Big Ed seemed to calm down. He put his palm flat against Steven’s forehead again. “It’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll find out about that tomorrow.”

He felt his dad’s bulk get up from the bed. Big Ed’s hand went through his hair, surprisingly gentle, and he felt a kiss on his forehead.

Maybe Pop did love him. And if he could only do something so Mom might think he was okay, they could all live together, maybe someday be happy again.

But it was getting harder, almost impossible, to keep thinking. He was sure Frannie was pregnant, but if Jodie and Mom and Frannie hadn’t told him, who had? The only other people he’d talked to had been Father Jim last night and that guy Hardy today. And how would either of them know? Frannie would definitely have told Mom first, wouldn’t she?

The light faded, then was out completely. He forced his lids apart, and there was Eddie standing in front of one of his posters, just looking down at him, smiling. He went to reach out to him, but then he was asleep.

Hardy, slouched over the table, was looking into the priest’s face perhaps a foot from his. Something was there, still unsaid after a lot of talking, and the idea kept popping up between them like an insistent panhandler checking out the pickings at the late-night tables in near-empty bars.

Cavanaugh looked down through his Irish, Hardy thinking he might be trying to stare right through the table with his X-ray eyes. They’d been talking and drinking, starting with light stuff and getting heavier as things wore on, for the better part of three hours. Cavanaugh kept going in and out of focus.

“Maybe anybody can do anything,” Hardy said, “you give ’em enough juice.”

“Anybody—anything,” Cavanaugh repeated.

“Not a priest, but—”

“Ha. The things I know priests have done, you wouldn’t believe.”

“I probably would. High school there were some guys like springs, they were so wound up. I’d hate to see what would happen if they let go.”

Hardy and Cavanaugh, slowing down, just a couple of guys, finishing their drinks, closing a place. Half hearing each other, half listening to Billy Joel doing “Piano Man,” that old bar-closer.

“You know what an incredible pain in the ass it is being a priest sometimes? That old turn the other cheek? Both my cheeks are callused turning them back and forth.”

“Yeah, but you do it anyway. You keep doing it. What I’m talking about is guys who snap. Zinc buildup or whatever.”

“Sex, you mean?”

Hardy nodded.

“Sex is easy. I mean, at least it’s tangible, or understandable. You either get the physical release somehow or you, as we say, offer it up. But either way, it’s out there and you can deal with it.”