He had the two tapes in a heavy yellow envelope. He didn’t know if he could get anybody to do voice-print comparisons on them, or what it would cost to do them himself, but he did know that if there was going to be a trial, they would be good evidence. In fact, they were the first pieces of hard evidence he had come upon.
But you never knew. He might get lucky with some technician, so he had decided to take them downtown. He’d stop by the Hall of Justice after his visit to the Chronicle. Glitsky himself might still be interested enough to do it on the sly.
He folded the piece of paper-the one with Ed’s and Erin’s wedding date-and put it in his wallet. He was tempted to call Cavanaugh, put the fear-if not of God-of man into him and see what he’d do.
But no. Build a case and blindside him. That was the way. Cavanaugh would have no idea that the noose was tightening. Especially after spending last night drinking with him (God, he was one confident man), he must think he was clear. He must also think his friend Hardy was a bit of a fool.
Well; he had always said he might be dumb but wasn’t a fool. Cavanaugh playing him for one made him unhappy. He was out of his chair and heading for the door when he stopped. He had three guns in his safe. But what, after all, was he planning to do with a gun? He was off to do a little research. He wasn’t planning to confront Cavanaugh. On the other hand…
He walked back toward the safe.
For a two-dollar fee anybody could go into the archives room of the San Francisco Chronicle and look up microfiche of newspapers from any date since the newspaper was founded in 1865.
Hardy was interested in the week of July 2, 1961. Driving downtown, his.38 Police Special now loaded and stowed in the glove box of his Seppuku, he spent a few minutes worrying about the what-ifs.
What if there was nothing in the newspaper? What if Glitsky wasn’t in? What if nobody at the Hall was willing to let him look up the past Incident Reports?
He turned on the radio. It was still broken, which wasn’t surprising since he’d done nothing to fix it. He wanted to listen to anything to get the other song out of his head. It was an old Conway Twitty tune called “This Time I Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me,” and it had been number one on the Hardy brain parade for two days now. Well, he thought, the hell with the radio. He went back to the what-ifs.
What if I get in a car wreck? What if a meteor plunges from deep in outer space and punches me half a mile into the ground? He had to laugh at himself.
In the Chronicle archives room he put the what-ifs out of his mind and now was glad he’d wasted no more time on them. He wouldn’t have to go see Glitsky about this, or wade through the hard copies of some faded and musty IRs. There it was, on page 8 of the first section for Monday, July 3, 1961.
It wasn’t a big article. Most other big-city newspapers might not even carry it, but it was one of the advantages of the Chronicle’s parochial view of what news was-they covered the city pretty well.
The article read:
CALL GIRL FOUND SLAIN IN NOB HILL APARTMENT
The body of a call girl who had been strangled was discovered late yesterday evening in her posh Taylor Street apartment after the woman failed to report back to the escort service for which she worked.
The victim, 22-year-old Traci Wagner, had been employed by the BabyDolls dating service for approximately six months.
Police are seeking for questioning a white male in his early to mid-twenties who picked up Miss Wagner in a dark, late-model car in the midafternoon. The suspect gave his name as John Crane, but this appears to have been fictitious. The investigation is continuing.
Hardy went to the desk with the spool of film and asked the clerk to copy the page for him. That cost him another five dollars, but it would be worth that to have for Glitsky.
John Crane, huh. Jim Cavanaugh. Funny about those initials, he thought. Same as Jesus Christ.
“You got squat.” Glitsky wasn’t feeling patient. “And I simply cannot take the risk.”
“You can’t listen to two tapes? Take you fifteen seconds.”
Abe leaned his chair back and put his head against the wall of the little cubicle. Hardy might be his friend, but he was getting on his nerves.
“Nope. I got four-no, now five-live ones out there and”-he consulted his watch-“I got about ten minutes before I mosey out to the Mo’ and talk some jive.”
Hardy sat down.
“Don’t get comfortable. I mean it.”
Hardy clucked at him. “Look, ten minutes you can hear this thing thirty times. I take off a little for rewinding.”
“It’s gonna take me ten minutes to find two recorders.”
Hardy looked outside of the cubicle into the main office, a wide-open expanse of green metal desks on linoleum. Guys were milling around, secretaries were talking on phones, occasionally typing. “I see at least four Walkmans from here,” he said.
Griffin had seen Hardy wandering through the office, trying to borrow a Walkman from a secretary. After he scored it, Griffin followed him up to Glitsky’s cubicle. “Still at it?” he asked Hardy. “Any luck?”
Glitsky knew that Carl was aware of the ninety-five or so suspects he’d suggested in the past day. He figured he’d imply some frustration with Diz, show that he was still a professional cop who realized the utter silliness of what his friend Hardy was doing. “Now it’s the priest at St. Elizabeth’s.” Griffin chuckled. “Well, you need any help, just call.” Smiling and helpful, he bowed out. Glitsky raised his blood red eyes at Hardy. “Prick,” he said.
Abe was still trying to be reasonable. “This is just plain old dog doo, Diz. I mean it. Nothing.”
Hardy shook his head. “He did it.”
“Look, even if it is his voice-and I’m not saying it is-so what?”
“So what? It means he was there and didn’t want us to know.”
“I’ve heard that song before. Wasn’t that why you thought Cruz killed him, when was it, yesterday?”
“He killed that hooker, too. He ran away from the seminary right after the Cochrans’ wedding. Was missing for almost a week. I tell you it fits-”
“Oh, Jesus, Diz, spare me.”
But Hardy pressed on. “We just saw the hooker’s still an unsolved case-twenty years later!”
“We got a thousand unsolved cases.”
“Listen. Cavanaugh got the gun from the gun drive. He knew about Frannie being pregnant, which means he saw Eddie after she told him, which was Monday, not Sunday. It all fits.”
Glitsky wagged his head back and forth. He looked again at his watch. “Well, I listened to the tapes.” He got up.
“You want to at least check the voice prints?”
Glitsky was putting on a jacket. “Nope,” he said. Hardy followed him out. “Abe, come on.”
Suddenly, his patience all gone, Glitsky wheeled around, his strained voice loud, very loud and pissed off, cutting through the office noise. “Where’s your fucking motive?”
The room went silent.
“Hey, easy, Abe.”
People were looking at them. Glitsky glared, first at Hardy, then back at the room in general.
Hardy, the voice of reason, said, “He’s always wanted Erin Cochran.”
Glitsky stared at his friend witheringly. “Do yourself a favor, Diz,” he said, showing Hardy his back, “don’t quit your day job.”
Chapter Thirty-three
AT FIRST it didn’t seem all that hard to figure out, but the only thing Steven came up with that made any sense didn’t make any sense. Father Jim had loved Eddie, probably more than anybody except maybe Mom. No way he could have killed him.
But how else did you figure it?
The day before, when Pop and Eddie had had that big fight about Hitler and doing the right thing, Steven remembered clearly enough-Eddie coming into his room afterward, really ticked off at Pop.
“He teaches you one thing, and then when it’s time to do something about it he says forget it.”
“So? What d
o you expect?” he’d said to Eddie.
And Eddie going, “I don’t know. Something.”
“What? From adults?”
“Hey, I’m an adult.”
“You’re a dork.”
“You’re the dork. What would you do?”
That was Eddie. Like his kid brother’s advice really counted. But he hadn’t had any advice to give. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe I’ll ask Father Jim.” Eddie seeing the face he made and saying, “What’s the matter with him now? It’s getting so you think something’s wrong with everybody.”
“He’s okay.”
“But you don’t really think so?”
“I’m getting that way with everybody, ’cause everybody’s that way.”
“Not Father Jim, Steven.”
“Doesn’t he make you sort of nervous? A little, even? You know, when he flips out, like?”
Eddie had laughed. “That’s not flipping out, it’s just letting go a little. It’s harmless. Even a priest can be too serious all the time.”
“Sometimes it just makes me a little nervous, is all.”
“That’s ’cause you’re not very mature.” But teasing, kidding. Then saying, “I’m gonna call him.”
So right there, in that bedroom, Eddie had called and talked to Father Jim, making an appointment to see him the next night. The night he’d been killed.
And Steven remembering that only now. And Eddie had kept the appointment-how else could Father know about Frannie being pregnant? Then Father went to where he kept the gun?
(He, Eddie and Father had gone shooting enough times below Candlestick. Like the switchblade, or the races down Highway I just flying along against the ocean, it was one of those secrets between Father Jim, Eddie and himself. Mick had never made the cut-he was too uptight. The secret things about Father Jim had been another of the bonds between Eddie and himself.)
It was still too far a stretch to imagine Father Jim thinking he was going to kill Eddie, or wanting to, but he could play with it for a minute, see where it led him… Eddie had gone to visit Father, thinking about this problem he was having with a guy from work. (Steven wished he paid more attention about the details of that, but it had just been another thing Eddie was doing.) Then Father might have said that meeting a guy alone at night, trying to mess with his business, might be dangerous. He’d go along as moral support, and also, just to be safe, he’d bring the gun.
He wouldn’t use it. They wouldn’t plan on using it. But what if the other guy shows up and he’s got a gun, too? Might as well be safe. It hurts nothing. Eddie might have thought the whole idea was dumb, but if Steven knew Father-and he thought he did- he’d make it seem like some kind of game and Eddie would go along with it.
Okay, so now he had Eddie and Father Jim together, with the gun, at the lot. And there it stopped for him. Maybe they’d been goofing around, shooting at things, and there’d been a mistake, an accident, and after that Father had gotten scared. Sure, that made sense. Father didn’t plan to kill him. Steven could see how he’d feel, being like one of the family and all. And having to explain to Mom and Pop about the gun. They might see it as his -Father’s-fault. And it wouldn’t have been. It could easily have been an accident…
And how about this? Father burying Eddie in the Catholic cemetery, absolutely-he used the world “morally”-certain that Eddie hadn’t killed himself.
For all of his carrying on, Father was first and foremost a priest -he would never have buried Eddie in sacred ground unless he knew for a fact he hadn’t committed suicide. And how could he know that if he hadn’t been there?
Steven leaned his head back against the pillow. In the front of the house he heard his mother vacuuming.
Mom. That was the whole problem now. Her thinking that Eddie had somehow rejected them all, didn’t love them enough. It was eating her up.
And suddenly there it was! The solution to everything. It was easy to explain, although it would be pretty hard to do. Except Father Jim and he were friends and maybe it was time to break out of the kid thing and take Eddie’s place a little, be a little more adult. He wasn’t as good at arguing as Eddie, but he was way better than Mick, and if he could only catch Father in the right mood, and alone, he might be able to get to him.
See? All Father had to do, he figured, was tell Mom. That’s all. Not Pop. Not Hardy or anybody else. Mom was closer to Father, was more likely to forgive him. And that would be that. And he -Steven-would be the one who’d pulled it all together. For Mom. So she could start being okay again, and maybe find some room to fit him into her feelings.
Convincing Father to tell Mom, that would be the hard part. But really all he had to do was make Father realize how it had affected Mom, how she would certainly continue to waste away. Like him, like Eddie had been, Father couldn’t stand it when Mom was unhappy. So all he had to do was make it clear to him that she was miserable, and why.
But first he had to make sure it had happened the way he’d figured it, and there was a way to do that. Just ask Father.
Hardy watched Glitsky disappear into the hallway. A guy sitting at a desk nearby, having heard Glitsky’s heated exchange with Hardy, nodded after the sergeant and said he thought a blow job would be out of the question, and Hardy went back to Abe’s cubicle to get his stuff and return the Walkman.
He still wanted verification on the voice prints. But, hey, he thought, I want to win the lottery, too. Still, the voice comparison looked do-able.
The room had gone back to its business. There was somebody there, he was sure, that he could hit on and get the thing done as a favor. Everybody by now knew he was a friend of Abe’s. Whether that was good or bad was a toss-up.
He stood, leaning against the particleboard that denned Abe’s space. Lieutenant Joe Frazelli opened his door far to Hardy’s right, scanned the room and called out a couple of names.
Two guys sitting at desks facing each other doing paperwork stopped and got up. “Yo,” one of them said.
Hardy thought the woman he’d gotten the Walkman from was promising. She sat about midway between Glitsky’s cubicle and the lieutenant’s office, where the door had just opened, so Hardy found himself walking parallel to the two guys, back toward Frazelli. He was just about to open his mouth to the woman when he heard the lieutenant say: “We got an apparent suicide over at St. Elizabeth’s Church. You know the place, out on Taraval? Carbon monoxide. You guys want to check it out? Get out of the office a while?”
Behind Hardy, another voice called out. “Hey, Joe, where was that?”
Frazelli looked right through Hardy at the voice behind him. “St. Elizabeth’s.”
Hardy saw Griffin saying something to another guy in his cubicle. When he turned back to Frazelli he saw Hardy standing there, staring at him. He spoke to the two officers who had been on their way to the lieutenant’s office. “You guys mind if me and Vince take it? It might tie with something we’re on.”
“Sure, it’s yours,” one of them said.
Hardy spoke up. “I’m gonna tag along.”
Griffin said, “It’s a free country.”
Steven woke up alert. The pills didn’t seem to be knocking him out as bad as they had. Or maybe it was that there was so much for him to think about. Probably that was it.
The vacuuming had stopped. He heard his mother messing around in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, emptying the dishwasher. It was something how quiet the house was with no TV or radio going, no records on, Mom not humming or singing while she worked. She’d stopped doing that, and she used to do it all the time.
In the quiet, the quiet deepened. Mom wasn’t moving at all, maybe just leaning against the counter, or sitting at the table. The telephone rang and he heard her say: “Oh, hi, Jim.” She paused. “What’s the matter?”
Steven reached for the extension phone by his bed and picked up the receiver in time to hear Father Jim saying: “… can’t believe this is happening again, right on top of…”
It sounded like he was crying.
“Mom,” Steven said, “I’m on the extension.”
“Hang up, Steven.”
“I want to talk to Father Jim.”
“He can’t talk now.”
Father said, “It’s okay. Hi, Steven.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“Steven, you hang up,” his mom repeated. “You can talk when we’re finished.”
“Okay, don’t forget,” he said.
What was the boy saying?
Cavanaugh shook his head, trying to clear it. The first two black-and-white squad cars were out by the garage with a distraught Father Dietrick and a confused Father Paul. It had seemed to Cavanaugh to be an eminently logical thing to do- excuse himself to call Erin, his best friend and confidante. He’d establish, with Erin, how badly Rose’s suicide had torn him up. Especially now, hard on the heels of Eddie. So that any suspicion that he might have killed Rose would have to get around Erin’s testimony. He had figured that between Father Dietrick swearing Rose had been depressed and Erin describing how he, Cavanaugh, had been deeply hurt but not altogether surprised by the suicide, he would have covered all the bases.
So he had called Erin. But then her son wanted to talk.
And now Steven was saying to him that he knew all about it, describing it so closely it made him dizzy, as though he were about to topple from some great height. Steven sounding so much like Eddie. It was frightening, almost as though Eddie had come back to haunt him. And all of it whispered, not wanting Erin to hear.
He looked out at the garage again. Six men in uniform-four cops and two priests. A paramedic’s van, or the coroner’s, pulled into the driveway, went past the kitchen and continued out over the asphalt.
Dead Irish Page 29
