Irish Eyes

by Mary Kay Andrews

  Tonight, though, my hair was a mass of frizz from the rain and humidity, my makeup was smeared, my black stockings riddled with runs, and my skirt spattered with Bucky’s blood.

  “Garrity.” It was McNabb’s version of a hug and a slap on the back. Mr. Congeniality, that was McNabb.

  I struggled to remember McNabb’s first name, but I came up empty. McNabb was the only name I knew him by.

  “McNabb. How’s it hanging?”

  “Not too bad,” McNabb said. “At least I don’t got two bullets in my head.”

  I winced, but knew McNabb didn’t mean anything by the remark.

  I opened the pack of Marlboros, fished one out for myself, and offered the pack to McNabb. He took two. Good old McNabb. He lit up, offered me his match, but I shook my head and put the cigarette in the pocket of my shirt. Can’t stand cigarettes, but they’re useful in breaking the ice.

  I thrust my hands into my jacket pocket. “Some bad shit tonight,” I said.

  He nodded. “Real bad. You worked with Deavers, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. We’re pretty tight.”

  He cocked his head and let twin plumes of smoke drift out of his nostrils. “Thought I heard you’d quit the force. Heard you’d moved out of town.”

  “No. I quit, but I got a P.I. license, and I’m running my own business.” He didn’t need to know it was a cleaning business.

  “How’d you come to be down here tonight?”

  It was a fair question, and I couldn’t expect to get information if I didn’t give it freely. “Deavers and I went to a St. Patrick’s Day party together. He was taking me home, but he wanted to stop at the liquor store first.”

  “You hear anything in there?” He nodded toward the swinging doors that led into the ER.

  “The docs are still working on him,” I said.

  “Gonna need a lot of work, from what I could see,” McNabb said, getting a pinched look.

  “He’s pretty tough,” I said. “I’m praying he makes it.”

  McNabb took another drag on the Marlboro. “If you’re his friend, you better be praying he kicks tonight. ‘Cause if he does live through the night, a gunshot wound like that, that’s a shitload of brain damage. If he lives, he’ll be a vegetable.”

  “God.” I couldn’t let McNabb see me cry. I swallowed hard and blinked back the tears.

  “I liked Deavers,” McNabb said. “He was a decent guy. Not a jerk like a lot of those detectives, think they’re God or something, ‘cause they got a gold shield. Hell, we marched in the parade together this morning. That’s why this doesn’t seem real. I saw him when they brought him in. He was still wearing his tie. I saw that, I felt sick, really sick.”

  “You marched together? Where was that?”

  McNabb looked at me like I was stupid.

  “The parade. You know, St. Patrick’s Day? We marched with the Shamrocks. Must have been two dozen guys. Not bad for an outfit that only got started up last year.”

  “You’re a Shamrock too?”

  “Sure,” McNabb said. “I joined last year. Spent a hundred bucks on the green jacket to wear in the parade. We had a breakfast this morning too. You know, green grits, green beer, like that.”

  “McNabb’s as Irish as pigs and potatoes. Deavers too. Hey, Garrity. You’re Irish, aren’t you? Only you’re not a cop no more, so I guess you wouldn’t be eligible to join.”

  I didn’t know Deavers was particularly Irish. I always just thought of him as an All-American boy. The part that was so surprising was that Deavers had joined this Shamrock outfit. Bucky was a dedicated nonconformist and non-joiner. He’d been the first grown man I knew to have his ear pierced. He was always proud of the fact that he didn’t vote because he didn’t believe in declaring a party affiliation. He used to bitch and moan about the fact that, as a member of the APD, he automatically had Police Benevolent Association dues deducted from his paycheck, even though he didn’t care to belong to the PBA.

  “So Bucky marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade today?”

  “We all did,” McNabb said. “Boylan made a big deal about how we needed to make a good showing. For recruitment purposes. We looked pretty sharp too. Kehoe tears it up on that bagpipe of his. You know the guy. He musta played ‘Amazing Grace’ half a dozen times, though. I think it’s the only song he knows. And the marching was kinda raggedy, on account of all the green beer we put away right before the parade. But the green jackets looked sharp. And you shoulda seen Captain Dugan in that sweet little kilt of hers. Swear to God! All of us were praying for a gust of wind.”

  “Captain Dugan? She’s in the Shamrocks?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah,” McNabb drawled. “That’s probably the only reason Deavers joined. If she had wanted him to join NOW, he woulda had a sex change and done it. Lisa Dugan says jump, Deavers, he says, ‘How high, hon?’”

  “Hey, McNabb!”

  We both turned around. The stout woman who’d been cleaning up the ambulance stood stooped in the doorway of it, looking pissed. “You wanna get your ass over here and help get this unit cleaned up? I’m not your mother, you know.”

  McNabb sighed, threw his cigarette butt into a rain puddle, and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. “Duty calls,” he said.

  Some time after two—it was way after the mayor left, and only shortly before the chief’s bodyguards persuaded her to leave, I went home, for lack of anything else to do.

  The house was quiet when I let myself in the back door. I locked up and headed for my bedroom, stopping at Edna’s door to listen in. Inside, I could hear Edna’s whistling snore and a second set of deep breaths. I knew without looking that we had company; my four-year-old niece Maura, who slept with Edna whenever she came for a spend-the-night.

  “Sleep tight,” I said, passing by to my own room.

  I was sure I wouldn’t sleep. I left my soiled clothes in a heap on the floor and I climbed in bed wearing only my panties and one of Mac’s old football jerseys. I pulled the quilt over my head and exhaled a long, deep breath. The sob took me by surprise. I curled up in a tight ball, a defense mechanism to keep my terror and grief at bay, but the insistent daggers jabbed away at me until I sat up in the bed and stuffed the corner of the quilt in my mouth to muffle the sobs that would surely wake all of Candler Park.

  At some point, I went into the kitchen and got the bottle of Bushmills and a glass and took it back to bed with me. I choked on the first sip of whiskey, but forced it down, hiccuping loudly. When the bottle was half gone, I drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

  Whiskey dreams. I was dressed in something floaty, gauzy, whirling over a cloudlike dance floor to the music of a bagpipe. I could hear the music, but I couldn’t see the piper, whose form and face were obscured by billowing puffs of clouds. I kept dancing closer, to see who the piper was, but every time I got near, the clouds shifted and the piper drifted away.

  It seemed as if I danced for a long time. Finally, the piper disappeared completely, and I lay down on the clouds and drifted off to sleep. But someone was touching me, pulling at me, calling my name.

  “Ca’han? Wake up, Ca’han. Want some pannycakes?”

  I opened my eyes. Maura was sitting on the bed, patting my face with sticky hands that smelled of maple syrup.

  She smiled and I could see that she’d lost another baby tooth since the last time I’d seen her a week ago.

  “Gramma says get your lazy bee-hind up!” Maura giggled, pulling at the covers.

  I washed my face and hands, pulled on some sweats, and followed my niece into the kitchen, where bacon was frying in a cast-iron skillet and Edna had the radio tuned to a black gospel station.

  “Coffee?” I asked hopefully.

  She poured some into one of my jadeite coffee mugs and put it before me. “I saw the paper. About Bucky. I’m so sorry, hon. Is that where you were so late last night?”

  “Yeah,” I said, stifling a yawn.

  “It’s in the paper,” she said, sliding the Atlanta Const
itution’s front section in front of me. “Says he’s in critical condition. And you were right there! It’s a wonder you didn’t get killed!”

  The Constitution’s front page was mostly devoted to a coup in some little Eastern European country. But at the bottom of the front page they had managed a five-inch box and a headline announcing POLICE DETECTIVE CRITICAL AFTER LIQUOR STORE SHOOTING. They’d run a fifteen-year-old mug shot that must have been Bucky’s graduation photo from the police academy. His hair brushed the collar of his white shirt in the photo, and you could just barely see the gleam of the diamond stud in his right ear. HOMICIDE DET. CHARLES BUCHANAN “BUCKY” DEAVERS.

  Edna was reading over my shoulder. “I never knew his middle name was Buchanan.”

  “Me neither,” I said, skimming over the story and feeling a twinge of irrational jealousy that the reporter knew something about Bucky that I didn’t.

  “There’s another story on the local page,” Edna said, turning back to the bacon. “Says the department’s internal affairs is investigating the shooting.”

  “Say what?” I pawed through the paper, discarding all the sale circulars and classified sections until I came to the metro section. “Why would internal affairs be investigating? Bucky’s the one that got shot. It was a holdup. The shooter was wearing a mask.”

  Edna stabbed at the sizzling bacon with a long-handled fork. “They don’t really say why it’s under investigation. Just that it is.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed Grady’s emergency room. I didn’t have to look up the number. My sister Maureen had worked at Grady for years before she’d adopted Maura, whose murdered mother had been married to my prodigal brother Brian.

  “Patient information, please,” I said. The patient information person put me on hold before I could say a word. “Hold, please.” I didn’t have much choice.

  I read the article about the shooting while I was on hold. Edna was right; it didn’t say much, just a statement from the chief that it was a new department policy involving any shooting of any Atlanta officer. The article also noted that the chief was “reviewing” the fact that her office hadn’t been notified that Bucky was working any part-time job, which was against department policy.

  “Christ,” I said angrily. Deavers was in the hospital, a bullet in his brain, and the chief was pissed that he hadn’t gotten a hall pass before taking on a second job.

  “Excuse me?” a voice on the other end of the line said.

  “Oh, uh, nothing. Could you tell me the condition of one of your patients? Charles Deavers? He was brought into the emergency room late last night.”

  She came back on the line a moment later. “I’m sorry, that information isn’t being released to the public.”

  I could have argued with her, but I knew it was useless. “Can you just tell me if he’s still alive?” I asked pleasantly.

  “His name is in the computer,” she said. “That’s all I know.”

  Edna slid a plate in front of me. “Any word?”

  “He’s apparently still alive,” I said, pushing the plate away. “Sorry. I just can’t.”

  She put the plate in front of Maura, who happily dived into the pancakes with both hands. Maura loves pancakes.

  I drank my coffee and reread the story in the paper. When I’d finished, I took the cup to the sink and rinsed it out.

  “Can you handle things this morning?” I asked Edna. “I’ve got to go check on Bucky. There’s nothing I can do, I know, but I can’t stand this feeling of helplessness.”

  Edna went over to the desk and picked up our daybook. She slid her bifocals down on the end of her nose and glanced over the day’s schedule.

  She pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “I promised the Easterbrookses you’d pick them up this morning, and take them over to Bettye Bond’s house. They haven’t worked in three weeks, and I hate to disappoint them. And after all, Bettye is their client.”

  “Can’t you go?” I asked.

  Edna nodded at Maura. “I would, but I don’t have her car seat. Please? It won’t take more than an hour. They’ve been up and dressed since six A.M. They called before you got up, just letting me know they were ready.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “But the two of them can’t clean Bettye Bond’s house by themselves.”

  “Neva Jean’s meeting them over there,” Edna said. “And Ruby’s coming too, after she gets done with her Thursday morning standing.”

  Baby and Sister were waiting at the curb in front of the senior-citizen high-rise when I pulled up beside them. They weren’t hard to spot. Baby was decked out in a tomato-red Atlanta Falcons sweatsuit and a Dirty Birds baseball cap sporting black feathers winging off the front bill. Sister was dressed in a shapeless cotton housedress worn over what looked like black tights. She wore a pair of brand-new black Converse sneakers, their laces flopping untied, and she had a large plastic shopping bag dangling from her right hand.

  “Woo-ooh,” Baby called out. “Look who come to pick us up in a fancy new truck.” She guided Sister by the elbow, gently inching her toward the door. I hopped out and ran around to open the back door of the van for them. “Hey, Miss Baby. Hey, Miss Sister.”

  Sister grabbed me and hugged me around the neck. She smelled like lily of the valley and mentholatum cough drops. Her filmy brown eyes twinkled behind the Coke-bottle glasses, and she ran her fingers through my untidy curls in a vain attempt to straighten them. “How come we got the boss lady pickin’ us up today? Edna got too fancy for herself?”

  “No. We had a big fight over who got to pick you up, and I won ‘cause I’m bigger and meaner,” I said.

  Sister grinned. “I know that’s a lie. You might be younger and stronger, but ain’t nobody meaner than Edna Mae Garrity.”

  When I had them safely buckled into the backseat of the van, I headed back toward Druid Hills and Bettye Bond’s house.

  The girls were, as Edna had predicted, raring to go. They’ve been working for us ever since we bought the House Mouse, and the two of them, well into their eighties, we guessed, had been cleaning houses in and around Atlanta so long they still remembered streetcars, nickel Cokes, and the bad old days of Jim Crow.

  Sister was the older of the two. She’d been legally blind for as long as I’d known her. Baby, the younger, was nearly stone-deaf. When they’d first come to work for us, Baby was still driving, counting on Sister to let her know if there was an ambulance or police car sneaking up on them, or if somebody was honking their horn if Baby lingered too long at a green light. We’d persuaded them to stop driving a couple years earlier, after Baby developed diabetes. Living in a church-run high-rise, and savers their whole lives, neither of them really needed to work, but the Easterbrooks sisters had worked their whole lives, and they weren’t about to stop just because they’d already outlived most of their old clients.

  Nowadays, we try to give them a job every week or two, and always send along somebody else to help out. Sister likes to polish silver, and Baby can still push a dust mop around, and the two of them are plainly everybody’s pets, and they know it.

  Sister dug around in the plastic grocery sack. “Know what I got right here? Something special for Miss Bettye’s party.”

  “What’s that?” Baby said. “You bring a sack lunch for us?”

  “It’s something special for the party,” Sister said loudly.

  “Hope it’s some Thunderbird wine,” Baby said, chortling and reaching for the bag. “Miss Bettye, she knows how to throw a wingding.”

  Sister slapped Baby’s hand away.

  “Thunderbird? Nasty wine for a fine lady’s party? You hear that, Callahan? Hear what Miss Baby Easterbrooks be thinkin’ about and it ain’t even noon? Call herself a Christian and she be wantin’ to drink liquor on the job?”

  “You never drank no liquor on the job? What you call that little bitty bottle I seen in the bottom of your pocketbook there, Miss Thing?” Baby retorted.

&
nbsp; “That’s my nerve medicine,” Sister said serenely.

  “You got a nerve callin’ it medicine, and that’s a fact,” Baby said, getting huffy. She leaned forward in her seat and tapped me on the shoulder. “Callahan, sugar, ask Miss Thing how come her nerve medicine looks and tastes just like King Cotton Peach Brandy?”

  “No, Callahan,” Sister said softly, whispering. “Ask Miss Baby Easterbrooks how come a girl got saved when she twelve years old knows so much about liquor and such like that. While you at it, why don’t you ask Miss High and Mighty what Mama saw that time she come home early from Wednesday night Junior Ambassadors meeting and caught Miss Baby in the parlor sittin’ in the pastor’s son’s lap, and I’m not talking like it was Santy Claus’s lap she was a-sittin’ on.”

  “What you say?” Baby hollered. “What she say, Callahan?”

  “Girls,” I said, stifling a laugh. “Come on, now. Be sweet. What’s in the bag, Miss Sister?”

  Sister brought out a large doughnut-shaped item wrapped tightly in foil and topped with a red satin bow.

  “This here is one of my coconut pound cakes. Miss Bettye, she’s a fool for pound cake. When me and Baby worked for her by ourselves, I used to bake her a pound cake every month. Got paid five dollars cash money for it, too. One time, Miss Bettye, she told me, she served that cake at bridge club, told them ladies she made it herself. That’s why she had me keep on makin’ ‘em, ‘cause them ladies loved that cake so good. When Edna called and said we was helpin’ Miss Bettye get ready for a big do, I got out my pan, and I said, ‘Sister, let’s bake a cake.’”

  “How nice,” I said. “Bettye Bond will be thrilled. You two are her favorites.”

  As promised, Bettye Bond made a big fuss over the Easterbrookses. “Thank God,” she said when Sister handed her the cake. “I could eat this whole thing all by myself, Sister. But I won’t, ‘cause I want to save it for my guests.”