Irish Eyes (33 page)

“Why?” Edna repeated.

“Money,” I said. “It looks like some of those Shamrock Society guys were involved in an armed-robbery ring. They got jobs working security at these bars and restaurants so they could figure out how to stick up the owners when they went to make ATM deposits. Corky was involved. We don’t know for sure, but we think somebody else put him up to killing Deecie. She knew Corky because he worked at the liquor store with her sometimes. She probably thought the same thing we did, that he was a sweet old drunk. She was terrified of the cops, but not Corky. Good old Corky.”

“Fooled us all,” Edna said.

“Say, Ma,” I said, remembering something. “Was it Baby or Sister who told you about the run-in we had over there at Deecie’s apartment complex?”

“Neither one,” she said.

“Then how did you find out about it? I sure didn’t tell you.”

“You had a call,” Edna said. “While you were gone. I didn’t think anything about it at the time. It was a man. He asked for you. When I said you were out, he laughed. Asked me if I knew where you were. That’s when he told me what had happened. About your nearly getting yourself killed over there.”

“What man?” I asked. “He didn’t leave a name?”

She shook her head. “He hung up before I could ask him anything else.”

“Could it have been Corky?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe. It was just a man. I was so upset about your taking the girls over there, I didn’t give it a lot of thought.”

What if it had been Corky? I thought. So what if he’d been trying to warn me off. It didn’t change things. He was still a killer.

I’d found the key in my jeans pocket, and I kept turning it over and over.

“What’s that?” Edna wanted to know.

“Something Deecie gave me,” I said. “Probably the thing that got her killed.”

W
illiam wore a disposable blue paper hospital gown, Faheem had a pale yellow gown and a green plastic pacifier.

The room was quiet except for the creak of the rocking chair and the soft sucking noises made by Faheem, who was nestled against William’s chest.

“This man who killed Deecie. He dead?” William asked.

“Yes. He killed himself last night.”

“And you say Deecie knew the dude?”

“He worked as a security guard at the liquor store some nights. She probably thought he was a nice guy.”

William shook his head. “Man, what kind of a man would do something like that? Kill a girl? Cut her throat?”

“Fuckin’ evil man, that’s what kind,” Monique Bell said savagely. “White man like that, he think nothing about killing a little nigger girl. So what? One less nigger in this world, that’s good news.”

“Hush up,” William ordered. “I don’t want Faheem hearing that talk. Don’t be saying the f-word. And I don’t want you saying the n-word in front of this boy either.”

“He’s heard it before and he’ll hear it again,” Monique said, unabashed.

“Not from me,” William vowed.

“Sheeit,” Monique said, disgusted.

“You asked about Corky Hanlon,” I said. “I don’t know what to tell you. He wasn’t always like that. He was a sheriff’s deputy. He had a wife, kids. He went to church and he coached baseball. He took the neighborhood kids fishing. Somewhere, though, he changed. He started drinking more. He … went … bad.” It sounded lame, even to me.

“Bad is right,” Monique muttered. She picked up the remote control from the table beside Faheem’s crib and clicked on the television.

The noise filled the already cramped room, made the walls close in.

“Turn that mess off,” William ordered. “I’m tryin’ to get this boy settled down.”

Monique rolled her eyes, stood up, and gathered her cigarettes and lighter. “I’m goin’ outside for a smoke, if that’s all right with you,” she said, glaring at William.

When she was gone, Faheem seemed to relax, snuggling against William’s chest. His eyelids fluttered a little, then closed.

“Is he getting better?” I asked. “I mean, I assumed since they put him in a room, he’s feeling better.”

William nodded. “Lot better. The doctor said maybe he can go home tomorrow.”

“Home. Where?”

He winced. “They talking about foster care. Since Deecie’s dead, and his real daddy gone, the social worker say that’s the best thing.”

“What’s Monique have to say about that?”

“She raised h—Cain,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “But she’s got to work. And now she’s got to move, too. The apartment manager told her this morning as soon as the cops get done, she got to get out. He’s gonna put her stuff out on the curb, starting today.”

“They can’t do that,” I said. “It’s subsidized housing. They can’t just kick her out like that. Not without cause.”

“Tell that to Monique. She’s going out looking for a place after she leaves here.”

“How do you feel about putting Faheem in foster care?” I asked.

“At first, I was real mad,” William admitted. “I mean, Faheem, he thinks I’m his daddy. He calls me daddy. But your friend, that Linda Nickells? She come over here last night to talk to me. She’s a real nice lady. She called a lawyer she knows, and this lawyer says she’ll help me try to get Faheem back. My mama’s got an extra room at her house, and she says she can watch Faheem while I’m at work. Soon as I can show I’m working steady and got a place for us to stay, the lawyer lady says she’ll help me get the papers to adopt Faheem.”

“And that’s all right with Monique?”

“She don’t like it, but she knows she can’t keep Faheem. She’s mad right now. Mad at that dude that killed Deecie, mad at me, mad at you, ‘cause you didn’t stop him. But she’ll get over it.”

“What about you? Are you mad at me, too?”

He had a right to be. I’d convinced Deecie I could keep her safe, then let her down in the worst possible way.

He rocked a while. “No,” he said finally. “You couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it either. Deecie, she made up her own mind what to do when she left this hospital. She just thought she could take care of herself and Faheem without anybody else. But she couldn’t. That’s all.”

I’d stopped at a gift store near the hospital, brought along a present. It was a small, fluffy, yellow giraffe. I took it out of the gift bag, tiptoed over to the rocker, and laid it in William’s lap. Faheem’s eyelids fluttered open. His lips smiled around the pacifier. The chubby hands closed over the giraffe, then he nodded off to sleep again.

Monique was outside, leaning against the emergency room entrance, puffing on a cigarette.

“I hear they’re trying to kick you out of your apartment,” I said.

“Fuckers.”

“Do you want to move?” If I were Monique Bell, Memorial Oaks would be the last place on earth I would want to live.

She shrugged. “Bus stop is right there on the corner. Grocery store a block away. I got friends. Got me a good apartment in the corner. Where I’m gonna go if I leave there?”

“Let’s take a ride,” I said.

Memorial Oaks, the apartment complex Monique Bell lived in, was federally subsidized Section 8 housing. I didn’t know all the ins and outs of that program, but I was pretty sure the manager couldn’t kick Monique out without just cause.

We found him in the hallway outside Monique’s apartment. He was a huge blubber ball of a white man, with the kind of high fleshy hips usually seen on women, not men. He was supervising two teenagers who were dragging all the furniture out of the apartment. A strip of yellow crime scene tape lay discarded by the front door.

“Hey!” Monique yelped. “Get your hands off my shit.” She grabbed a kitchen chair away from one of the kids.

“Hi,” I said. “What’s happening here?”

“I don’t know you,” the manager said.

“Hey,” he called to the kids, “come on, get moving. I’m not paying you clowns to goof off.”

“I’m Callahan Garrity,” I said. “I’ve been retained by Miss Monique Bell to make sure her rights are protected.”

“She’s got no rights,” he said.

“Does she pay her rent?”

He looked at me. Annoyed, like you get at a mosquito. “What’s it to you? The cops said I could clear the place out, that’s what I’m doing.”

“Unless she’s several months in arrears in her rent, I don’t believe you can just kick her out. And even if you were allowed to kick her out, you’d have to give her written notice and time to respond to that notice.”

Bullshit, all of it total bullshit. But it sounded pretty good, even to me.

“If any of her belongings are damaged or stolen,” I said
loudly so the teens could hear me, “she could have legal recourse against you.”

His face took on a mottled purple shade. “That carpet in there is ruined,” he shouted. “Blood all over the place. Door busted in. That’s cause to throw Monique Bell on the street.”

“Her niece was the victim of a vicious crime,” I said, taking my cell phone out of my purse. “I think I’ll call a friend of mine at the newspaper. It’d make a good human-interest story, don’t you think? ‘Grieving Family Evicted After Niece’s Murder’? A photo of Monique standing forlornly by all her belongings. We’ll make sure to get the crib the baby slept in. That always gets people, when a baby is made homeless.”

I started punching numbers on the cell phone at random. “City desk? I’d like to speak to Elliott Diggs, please.” Diggs was the newspaper’s city police reporter.

“She’ll have to pay to have that door replaced,” the manager said, hedging. “And I’m not cleaning that carpet. That’s not normal maintenance.”

I put my hand over the phone. “What’s that? What were you saying?”

He turned and walked away. “I said she can stay, goddammit.”

I gave the teenagers twenty bucks to start dragging Monique’s stuff back inside. While Monique started giving them orders, I walked ahead and went inside, pausing at the threshold to get a fix on the half-empty living room.

The murderer had trashed the place. A stereo and television set were smashed against a wall, sofa cushions slashed open, bookshelves upended, drapes yanked from the windows.

In the kitchen, pots and pans and dishes were thrown on the floor, packages of food strewn about, glasses and dishes smashed to bits.

There were two small bedrooms. The larger of the two was littered with clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Dresser drawers had been pulled out, and the mattress had been pulled off the box spring. A path had been cleared in the room where the landlord had started removing the furniture.

The bedroom where Deecie died smelled like a butcher shop. Most of the furniture had already been removed, revealing worn gold shag carpet that carried a deep red stain. In the adjoining bathroom, I saw the heat vent where Mackey said the detectives had found the missing moneybag. I took the key out of my pocket, tried it in all the doors in the apartment. Not even close.

“Leave that mattress out on the curb,” I heard Monique screeching at one of the teenagers.

Time to go. I wasn’t going to miss Memorial Oaks.

I scrunched up against the hall wall to let the kids come by with a heavy chest of drawers. When I felt a tug at the hem of my jacket, I looked down.

The little girl gave me a shy smile. Her hair was done in neat little plaits, each one secured by a different-colored rubber band. She wore a purple sweater and pink pants and bright yellow sneakers.

“Hey, there,” I said. It was the little girl I’d seen the first time I’d come to Monique’s apartment.

She looked away, watching Monique follow the boys into her apartment.

“My name’s Callahan,” I told her. “You told me your name last time, but I can’t remember it.”

“It’s Tanya,” she said, digging the toe of her sneaker into the carpet. “My mama say Deecie dead. The amb’lance men came and took her away, and Mama say Deecie ain’t coming back here no more.”

“That’s right,” I said. I walked outside to check on my van, which I’d parked in a no-park slot at the curb. Tanya followed along behind me. It was still early. The ball players and drug dealers and kiddie prostitutes hadn’t yet begun to congregate outside. I sat down on the curb, and Tanya plopped down beside me.

“My mama say a bad man cut Deecie and made her bleed. She say if I don’t mind her, the bad man might get me, too.”

“No,” I said firmly. “That bad man went away and he’s never coming back here again.”

“Okay,” Tanya said, inserting her thumb in her mouth. She sucked it for a while, and picked at the shoelace of her sneaker.

“I got a secret from my mama,” Tanya said.

“Is it a good secret or a bad secret?”

She fidgeted. “Just a secret. Deecie told it to me.”

“Did she? Would you like to share it with me?”

“You got any candy?”

I thought about it. There was half a pack of breath mints in the ashtray in the van. I got up and got the breath mints, and handed them to Tanya. I felt a little like a child molester, the classic stranger giving candy to a kid.

“Ain’t you got no chocolate candy?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

“Not today,” I said.

“Oh.” She popped a mint in her mouth and made loud sucking noises.

“You wanna see where my secret’s at?” she asked.

“Sure.”

I stood up and she took my hand in hers. We walked through the breezeway connecting the apartment buildings, around the back of the block.

The area had been a parking lot once, but the asphalt was cracked and broken, and rusted garbage cans, piles of tires, and two or three abandoned cars were all that was parked there now.

Tanya walked up to a dilapidated white Toyota station wagon. The hood was gone and so was everything under it. The rear tires had been removed, making the car appear to be sitting on its haunches, like a dog awaiting a treat.

The little girl reached in her pocket and brought out a key. I held my breath. Tanya wrinkled her forehead in concentration as she worked the key back and forth, finally getting the door lock to pop. With both hands she managed to wrench the driver’s side door open. She gestured grandly at the grubby interior. “This is my clubhouse,” she said. “You wanna come in my clubhouse?”

“Sure,” I said. I walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. It smelled like mildew. The plastic seat coverings
were cracked and peeling, but somebody had tried to cover them with faded pink bath towels.