Irish Eyes (13 page)

I turned around and looked at the cops. They were busily trying to act as though they hadn’t witnessed Mac’s little temper tantrum.

One of the radios in the middle of the table squawked. Parini reached gratefully for it, held it up to his ear, gestured at Washington.

“That’s it. Boss lady calls.”

They put their money on the table and left.

The other cops looked down at the table, embarrassed at being left alone with me.

“It’s okay,” I said, managing a weak smile. “I’m out of here, too.”

I made as graceful an exit as I could, went to the bar, and asked Bishop, one of the waiters, to call me a cab. He raised an eyebrow but did as I asked.

E
dna was in the kitchen playing solitaire when I came in the back door.

She looked pointedly at the clock. It was past midnight. “Who was that let you off at the curb?”

I should have known she’d been peeking out the window at me. The woman was a mastermind at surveillance. Keeping a secret from her is a hellish experience.

“It was a cab. I took a cab home from Manuel’s.”

She laid a row of cards on the table. “Did I tell you Mac called last night?”

“No, you didn’t mention it,” I said.

“Well, he did. And he said he had some big news for us. What kind of big news?”

I slammed my purse down on the table. “He’s moving to Nashville.” Then I got the Bushmills bottle, some ice, and a glass, and stalked off to bed.

It was the same dream I’d had the night before. The music was faint, and I was dancing, and each time I’d come close to the ghostly piper, the clouds would swirl around, obscuring his face.

The song the piper was playing was sad. I was dancing and crying at the same time, the teardrops falling on the clouds and sending up shafts of mist. If I tried hard, I could hear the words. Something about the flowers dying, and someone saying a prayer near a grave. At some point I realized the song was “Danny Boy.”

All night long I did the cloud dance and sang that song, the same lyrics over and over; familiar yet strange. And when I woke up in the morning, my pillow was soaked from all the unknowing tears.

“W
hat’s this about Mac moving to Nashville?” Edna demanded.

The phone had been ringing off the hook. A typical Friday at House Mouse headquarters. It was ten
A.M.,
the first lull we’d had all morning.

“He’s been offered a job there. Director of regional planning and zoning,” I said, spreading jelly on my biscuit.

“Why would Mac want to move to Nashville? He’s got a job here. A home, the dogs. You.” She gave me a sharp look. “You two haven’t been fussin’ again, have you?”

You’d think my own mother would be partisan. But no, Edna is ardently pro-Mac.

“He walked off and left me at Manuel’s Tavern last night,” I told her. “That’s why I had to catch a cab home.”

“Well, if Mac left you, it was probably because you provoked him.”

“Whatever.” I didn’t feel up to debating Edna. I’d already called the hospital. Bucky’s condition hadn’t changed. I’d talked to my sister Maureen, too, and that had gotten me in an even darker mood.

I had my yellow legal pad out, writing up my notes of the previous evening’s research. Something was way out of kilter with this shooting. That much I knew.

I reached for the phone, but Edna pushed it away from me.

“Before you go off on this wild-goose chase of yours, I want some answers to my questions,” Edna said. “Now. Tell me straight. What’s going on between you and Mac?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. “He wants me to sell my house, sell the business, and uproot both of us and move us off to some damn subdivision in Nashville, Tennessee. I told him, ‘I like my life in Atlanta, I like my home and my business, and I’m not moving.’”

Edna’s nostrils quivered. “Who said anything about me moving?”

“Mac. He knows I wouldn’t go off and leave you behind.”

“So,” she said, hands on her hips. “The two of you have been having a nice big fight over whether or not I’ll move to Nashville—but nobody bothered to consult me on the matter.”

I stared at her. “I knew you wouldn’t want to move.”

She stomped her foot. “What the hell makes you so sure you know anything, little missy? What makes you so sure I wouldn’t move to Nashville?”

My jaw dropped. “But … Maura’s here. And Maureen and Steve. And Kevin and his boys, and your friends and the girls and the bingo babes. I just assumed—”

“You know what happens when you assume?” she asked.

It’s one of my mother’s favorite mantras. “You make an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me,’” I recited.

“Right,” she said.

She pulled a chair up and sat down beside me. “Really, Jules,” she said, pushing a strand of hair out of my eye. “I don’t want you jeopardizing your relationship with Mac based on where I’ll live. I’m an old lady, but not so old I can’t fend for myself. Here or in Nashville. You know what I think?” she asked gently.

“You probably think I’m afraid of making a commitment to Mac,” I said, echoing one of her favorite lecture themes to me. “And I think you’ve been watching too much
Oprah.”

I reached for the phone again. This time she gave up without a fight.

“Secure Services.” Linda Nickells’s voice was crisply professional. Not a hint of a Southern accent, even though she’d been born and raised in Ocilla, Georgia. She is C. W. Hunsecker’s most valuable asset—personal and professional—and she never lets him forget it.

“What are you doing for lunch today?” I asked.

“Hmm. Tuna fish with low-fat mayo, carrot sticks, and for dessert, half a big old juicy apple.”

“Boring. Don’t tell me you’re dieting again.”

“Always,” she said. “Little Wash is going into kindergarten next year and I’m still in a size eight.”

“My heart bleeds,” I said. “How about you feed the tuna to the cat and we go to Sundown for lunch instead? My treat.”

The Sundown Grill on Cheshire Bridge Road is Nickells’s favorite restaurant. She loves any kind of Mexican food, but I happened to know she’d kill for one of their crabmeat quesadillas.

“You’re bad,” Linda said. “But how come you’re treating me so nice?”

“It’s Bucky,” I said.

“I am so, so sorry, girlfriend,” Linda said softly. “C. W. stopped by the hospital last night. They wouldn’t let him see him. What can I do?”

“Your husband was bragging on your skills with that computer of yours,” I said. “I know you guys do a lot of pre-employment checks and that kind of thing. I’ve got somebody I want to find who doesn’t want to be found. I think you can help me.”

“Who?” Linda asked. “Just a minute. Let me get a pencil.”

“Her name is Deecie Styles,” I said. “I’m not sure how it’s spelled. Better check Styles with a ‘y’ and an ‘i.’”

“Who is she?” Linda asked.

“She’s the only witness to the shooting,” I said. “She was
working in the liquor store when the bad guy shot Bucky. Saw the whole thing.”

“Where’d she go?” Linda asked.

“That’s what I need to find out,” I said. “She took off as soon as the police got to the scene. And if Washington is telling the truth, she took the videotape from the security camera as well as twelve hundred dollars from the safe. Just disappeared.”

“Washington?” Linda said. “Ellis Washington?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I know him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We dated a few times before I started going out with C. W.,” Linda said. “Nothing wrong with that.” “Did you part on friendly terms?”

“Sure,” Linda said. “I was friendly, but he was brokenhearted. Ellis is all right. A little bit stuffy, but his heart’s in the right place. He’s a stand-up kind of dude.”

“Maybe you could call him, wangle some information out of him,” I said. “He won’t tell me jack.”

“I don’t know,” Linda said reluctantly. “You know how C. W. feels about me getting mixed up in police business. We’re out of that racket, Callahan. You, too. Why do you want to mess in something like that?”

“I don’t want to,” I said. “But the chief of police is already floating rumors that Bucky was involved in some robbery crew, and that’s how he got shot. It’s bullshit. And in the meantime, the guy who put two bullets in Bucky’s head is wandering around free. You and C. W. were cops, Linda. C. W. still works security sometimes, doesn’t he?”

“Every once in a while,” Linda said.

“So it could have been your husband who got shot. It could have been you. It could have been me.”

“All right,” she said, sighing. “Give me whatever information you’ve got. I’ll see what I can do. But just don’t go expecting miracles. And don’t mention any of this to C. W.”

“My lips are sealed,” I said. “See you at the Sundown at one?”

“Make it twelve-thirty,” Linda said. “If you get there before I do, order me a frozen margarita. No salt.”

It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to order an iced tea while Linda sipped her pale yellow margarita. I needed to keep my wits about me.

“Well?” I said expectantly.

She reached down into her purse and brought out a sheaf of computer printouts.

“Deecie Styles. Styles with a ‘y,’” she said. “Her real name is DeSaundra Charmaine. D. C., get it? Last address was Memorial Oaks Apartments, unit six-J. I got the phone number for you. It’s listed to a Monique Bell. That must be the aunt you said she lived with. By the way, that baby of hers? Faheem? He’s sick, Callahan. He’s got sickle cell anemia.”

“How’d you find that out?” I asked.

“Easy. I figured if she had a baby, she probably had it at Grady, which means she’s in the Grady system. One of the Secure Services guys works part-time in medical records. He looked it up for me. And no, I’m not telling you his name. I’m not doing this again, Garrity. Sure enough, Faheem Styles turned one year old back in October. The mama’s supposed to be taking him for his clinic appointments, but the nurse I spoke to said she’s missed his last two appointments, including today’s.”

He was so little, I mused.

“How sick is he?” I asked. “Is it like diabetes, where you die if you don’t get your insulin?”

“Not as bad as diabetes,” Linda said. “See, with sickle cell, the blood cell is sickle-shaped, and they sort of get caught in the joints, and then you get swelling and lots of pain. It’s kind of like when your kitchen drain gets clogged with grease. It can’t move anywhere. And you get a lot of pain. So when somebody with sickle cell is in a crisis, that’s bad. They give ‘em pain medication and a lot of fluids. I got a niece, she’s fifteen, with sickle cell. The kid spends a lot of time in the hospital, but then other times, it’s like she’s perfectly normal. If this
baby, Faheem, is in a flare-up, and he doesn’t have his steroids, he could be really sick, poor little guy.”

“He was screaming his head off the night Bucky was shot,” I said. “I thought it was because he was so scared.”

“Scared and sick both, probably,” Linda said.

“So,” I said, taking a tortilla chip and dipping it in some salsa, “she’s got to get him to a doctor sooner or later—right? That’s good.”

“She can’t run too far with a sick baby,” Linda agreed. “Unless she leaves him with the aunt or another relative.”

I pushed the basket of chips toward Linda; she pushed it back toward me.

“What else have you got?”

“Got her DOB and SSI,” Linda said. “That could help us track her if she gets another job or applies for any kind of government benefits.”

“How did you get that?” I asked. “Did Washington give it to you?”

“I decided against calling him,” Linda said. “C. W.’s still kind of sensitive about the fact that we dated. Anyway, I don’t need Washington.”

She wiggled her fingertips at me. “It’s all online. Deecie was working for a liquor store, right? That means she had to have a work permit from the State Alcohol Control Board. And their database is online. While I was at it, I ran a couple other checks. But I didn’t come up with anything else. Deecie doesn’t have any credit cards, doesn’t own any property, doesn’t have a car.”

“She drives one though,” I said, leaning forward. “Or she did. An old white Buick LeSabre. It was parked in front of the liquor store the night of the shooting. But it was gone last night.”

“Police impound lot,” Linda said.

“No car. Sick kid, no job, no credit cards. I wonder where she went,” I said.

Linda shook her head and laughed.

“What?”

“You just described a way of life for most poor young black girls living in the inner city,” Linda said. “Come on, Garrity, you wanna find this little girl, you better lose that middle-class white mentality of yours.”

The waitress brought our food just then. Linda had the crab quesadilla; I had what I always have, Eddie’s Pork, which is a roast pork tenderloin served with sides of mashed potatoes and hot pepper-spiced collard greens. We ate and drank and gossiped until our plates were empty and our bellies hurt from laughing about old times.

“This was fun,” Linda said, scooting her chair back from the table.

“Yeah, we need to get together more often,” I agreed. “Seems like I hardly ever see you and C. W. anymore.”

“Well, what’s new with you and Mac?” Linda asked. “Any more talk of marriage?”

“No,” I said. “That subject is currently closed.”

“Oh,” she said. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Like that.”

B
aby and Sister were overjoyed to see me standing at the door to their neat little apartment. “Lookee here, Sister,” Baby called over her shoulder. “Callahan come all the way over here to visit.”

“I’ve come to give you a job, if you think you’re up to it,” I said, allowing myself to be seated in one of three flowered armchairs in the minuscule living room.

“Cleaning or detecting?” Sister asked.

“Detecting,” I said.

Baby clapped her hands gleefully. “All right,” she said. “What you need us to do?”

I filled them in on my need to talk to Deecie Styles. Told them about her little boy and that she was the only witness to Bucky’s shooting. I also explained that Deecie lived with her aunt, a woman named Monique Bell, how the little boy was sick, and Deecie was on the run from the law.