Irish Eyes

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “This is gonna be the part where we get to the public indecency, I bet,” I told Edna.

  She looked at her watch. “I hope so. It’s almost two o’clock. My stories are fixin’ to come on TV pretty soon.”

  “I had to pee real bad,” Neva Jean explained. “But there was a long line outside the ladies’ room. And even though I explained real nice about how I was in a hurry and I didn’t wanna miss Rhubarb Jones’s judging, none of them bitches would let me cut in line. And by now, my eyeballs are floating in green beer. So I hollered over to Swannelle, come help me.”

  “And did he?” Edna asked.

  Neva Jean sighed. “There wasn’t nobody in line for the men’s room. He pointed that out right away. So he says, ‘Hon, you go on in there and go. Nobody cares.’ But the lock was broke. So he goes, ‘Hon, I’ll stand out here and guard the door, and you go on in there and get out of that nail keg.’

  “So I did,” Neva Jean said. “But I was having a heck of a time gettin, out of it. Me bein’ so full-figured and all. Finally I got it off, and I’m standing in that men’s room, trying to figure out what to do about the urinal, and then I hear a lot of yellin’ and hollerin’ outside the door. And Swannelle, he’s yellin’, ‘Come on, Neva Jean, Rhubarb’s here and we’re gonna miss the judging.’ And the next thing the door opens, and some big old guy is staring at me—me standing there in my green panties and not much else.”

  “I thought Swannelle was guarding the door,” Edna said.

  “He was, but this guy was bigger then he was, and I guess he really had to go. He got me by the hand and pushed me right out of that bathroom, me in my panties and green hair.”

  “Into the bar?” Edna asked.

  “I told you this was where the public indecency part came in,” I said.

  “It coulda been worse,” Neva Jean said, “but hardly anybody was paying attention to me by then, because Rhubarb Jones was there, and he was beginning to judge the contest. Only my pot o’ gold was in the men’s room. And Swannelle was so set on winning that contest …”

  Edna looked at her watch again and sighed. “I’m missing As the World Churns.”

  “Cut to the chase, Neva Jean,” I urged.

  She took another long swig of Mountain Dew. “Anyway, I banged on the door, asked the guy real nice to give me back my nail keg, and he wouldn’t answer, so I pulled the door open, and he threw the nail keg at me, and I got mad, and tried to bonk him over the head with it, but he ducked and I missed, and I kinda broke the toilet in two with the nail keg.”

  “Must have been a pretty big nail keg, bust a toilet,” Edna said.

  “She’s pretty full-figured, Ma,” I said.

  “I screamed for Swannelle, but he didn’t hear me ‘cause of all the ruckus, and because he had his face pushed into that Marilyn Monroe’s green titties, and that made me mad, so I kinda threw the nail keg at him—just to get his attention, mind you, and it missed, and I hit this lamp and knocked over some glasses behind the bar, and the next thing I know, cops were streaming into the place, and they grabbed me and threw me in the car and told me I was under arrest for public indecency.” “And destruction of property,” I added.

  11

  Neva Jean swore she was too frazzled from spending a night in the slammer to even consider helping Baby and Sister to clean Bettye Bond’s house. Edna gave me that look. It’s a real time-saver, that look of hers. Without it, we might spend forty-five minutes to an hour bickering over a particularly sticky issue. But when Edna gives me the look, I go.

  So I went. And it was a good thing. When I got there, Bettye Bond was cutting the crusts off a plate of cheese sandwiches and Baby and Sister were ensconced in easy chairs in the den, sipping Cokes and watching As the World Churns.

  “The poor dears are just worn out from all that silver polishing,” Bettye said apologetically. “I was just fixing them a little something.”

  I let the girls have their tea party while I attacked the house. I started with the bathroom on the top floor, and by five-thirty I’d worked all the way down to the ground floor, mopping, scrubbing, dusting, and polishing as I went.

  Bettye stood in the foyer and sniffed appreciatively. “Heaven,” she said. “Callahan, there’s just no better smell than a clean house. I think I love this fragrance better than any perfume in all of Paris.”

  I modestly agreed. The late-afternoon sun was filtering in the big Palladian window in the foyer and the newly cleaned glass sparkled like diamonds. The mahogany handrail of the staircase gleamed under a light coat of lemon wax, and the deep red Oriental rug under our feet had been shaken and vacuumed and replaced on the oak floor, which I’d just finished damp mopping.

  Bettye paid me and tipped the girls so royally they gasped at the wad of bills she pressed into their hands. Really, it was too bad I had to take her money. Women like Bettye Bond are becoming increasingly rare around Atlanta. She’s the kind of customer I love, the kind who really understands and appreciates the fine art of domesticity. Bettye had inherited beautiful silver, crystal, and furniture from her mother-in-law and her own mother, and she took good care of her things.

  Later, say around May, I knew the girls and I would be back for a two-day spring cleaning. Bettye would work right along beside us, and we would get the handsome old house ready for summer, taking down the heavy damask draperies in the downstairs rooms, rolling up the Orientals and storing them in lavender-scented trunks in the attic. We would clear the tabletops of Bettye’s collections of majolica, porcelain snuffboxes, and silver-framed family photographs. In their place we would hang simple linen drapes, arrange sisal rugs, and scatter sunbleached seashells.

  “Ooh-wee,” Sister exclaimed once she was strapped into the backseat of the van. “You see how much Miss Bettye done give me?”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Fifty dollars, cash money,” Sister said.

  “What’s that?” Baby screeched. “You sayin’ she done paid you as much as me and all you done all day is set in that chair and complain about your so-called nerves?”

  “At least I was polishing silver while I was a-settin’,” Baby retorted. “I didn’t see you do a lick of work, and that’s a fact.”

  “Pull over right there, Callahan, darlin’, would you?” Sister asked. We were stopped at a light in Midtown.

  “What for?” I asked. The girls’ high-rise was still several blocks away.

  “Just wanna do a little grocery shoppin’ before we go home, since I got all this cash money,” Sister said.

  I looked, but all I saw in the direction she was pointing was a liquor store.

  “See that,” Baby said, shaking her finger in Sister’s face. “All she think about is that likker, likker, likker.”

  Sister shook a finger right back at her. “Likker don’t got nothin’ to do with it. I need to go in that store there and get my Lotto ticket. That’s my lucky store. You just jealous ‘cause you know I hit the lotto last week and won me eighty-eight dollars.”

  It had gotten dark and the only person in sight was a homeless man who was slumped against the wall outside the store. And I didn’t care if I never saw the inside of another liquor store. I clicked the power lock button. “Sorry, girls,” I said. “No time tonight. But you call Edna tomorrow, and she’ll take you to the Kroger and you can buy all the Lotto tickets you want.”

  Once I had the girls safely off-loaded at the senior citizen high-rise, I headed for my own house.

  I called the hospital from my cell phone. This time the patient information person couldn’t have been nicer. “Mr. Deavers is in serious condition,” she said.

  The house was empty except for the smell of chocolate chip cookies. Edna always baked when Maura was over. There was a Tupperware container of Toll House cookies on the counter and a note on the kitchen table. “Gone to bingo. Leftovers in fridge.”

  Leftovers, hah. I poured myself a tall glass of milk and took the cookie jar into the den. I found the remote control and
began surfing channels in between dunking the cookies in the milk and enjoying my favorite subversive activity.

  I watched one of those entertainment news shows for a while. They were full of speculation about who would win in the upcoming Academy Awards. Since I hadn’t seen a single nominated movie I got bored after a while and started surfing again.

  One of the talking heads on Channel 2 was droning on about a property-tax rollback in DeKalb County. On Channel 11, they were droning about some bill the General Assembly was trying to pass. Channel 5 was just droning, period. It struck me how similar all the talking heads were. It’s some kind of law in Atlanta television; all the anchor teams are black/white combinations: older, fatherly white guy paired with younger, attractive, but professional black chick. Every single news channel in Atlanta had identical, interchangeable anchor teams. Some of the teams had, in fact, switched team members more than once.

  Maybe I was dozing when I heard Bucky’s name mentioned. I sat up, nearly spilled my milk.

  It was Channel 2’s investigative reporter, a serious-faced Geraldo Rivera clone.

  “Channel 2’s news has learned exclusively that Atlanta Police now believes that the police detective wounded in an apparent liquor store holdup last night may have had some involvement in the robbery itself.”

  “What?” I screamed, sending the Tupperware and cookies

  “In a startling new development in the case, sources close to the police told Channel Two tonight that investigators with the APD’s internal affairs division have new information that seems to implicate homicide detective Charles ‘Bucky’ Deavers in a crime spree that may have involved at least half a dozen robberies at automated teller machines in and around the city,” the reporter said.

  “Channel Two will keep viewers posted on the case as new leads develop,” the reporter said.

  The phone started ringing as soon as I switched channels.

  It was Hunsecker. “You see what Dave Kaycrest was saying on Channel Two just now?”

  “I saw it, but I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s bullshit, C.W. Bucky never robbed anybody. Who the hell is behind this? Do you hear anything?”

  Silence. “You don’t want to know what I’m hearing,” C.W. said.

  “Tell me,” I demanded. “I want to know what kind of shit the cops are trying to hang on him.”

  He sighed. “You’re not gonna like it. Hell, I don’t like it. Bucky worked under me. I trained the guy. It hurts me as much as it hurts you.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “What I’m hearing, it’s just bits and pieces. See, they been having these robberies at ATM machines. But not your typical kind, where the bad guys stake out a machine and stick up the first person walks up to get some money out. This is different. All the robberies have been of businesspeople going to the machines to make their night deposit. Big money. Cash, like six, seven thousand. These guys, that’s all they hit. They wait till the manager of a bar or a restaurant or a store goes to the ATM to make the deposit, bang—they jump out, wearing masks, pointing guns, they take the money away. No shooting, no alarms, nothing. What I hear, there have been eight or nine robberies like that. All around the city.”

  “Bank robberies? How come this is the first we’re hearing about it?”

  “It ain’t technically a bank robbery,” C.W. pointed out. “That’s the beauty of it. See, the bad guys hit before the money ever gets inside the bank. No bank robbery, no FBI. That’s why the cops been keeping it so quiet. Three or four of these hits happen, it’s interesting. This many hits, of this much money—the cops start wondering how come the bad guys are so smart.”

  “How does Bucky tie into any of this?” I asked. “He was shot at a liquor store. And I was right outside, waiting in the car. Even if he was up to something fishy, why would he do it with me around? Why him?”

  “I don’t know,” C.W. said. “Maybe because he was working that security job at the liquor store. That guy who owns the store, the Greek. I forget his name. He got hit three or four months ago, trying to make a deposit at an ATM in Little Five Points.”

  “This is all wrong, C.W.,” I insisted. “I’m telling you, Bucky wouldn’t anymore pull a robbery than I would. He was a cop, C.W. One of the good guys. There’s something else behind this.”

  “Like what?” C.W. asked.

  “I don’t know. Listen, there’s something I forgot to tell you, something they haven’t mentioned in the news. There was a witness in the store that night.”

  “Who?”

  “The clerk. A young girl named Deecie. Deecie Styles. She was working the counter when the shooter ran into the store. She saw the guy.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is she’s gone. She ran off right after the cops got there. She’s got a baby. A little boy, not even a year old. One minute she was there, the next minute, in all the confusion, the store swarming with cops, she’d vanished. And C. W., that’s not all. There was a surveillance camera mounted above the cash register. She took the videotape with her. And about twelve hundred dollars in cash, from the store’s safe.”

  “I’ll be damned,” C.W. said. “I got some good sources, but nobody said a word to me about a girl.”

  “You know Ellis Washington?”

  “I know him,” C.W. said. “Worked with him for a couple years before I quit. He’s a good man.”

  “He’s the one who told me Deecie Styles was missing,” I said. “Mackey was furious when he found out Washington told me about it. He made me promise to keep my mouth shut about her.”

  “Some chance of that,” Hunsecker said.

  “Washington made it sound like the girl planned the whole thing,” I said. “But I don’t buy it. I was there, C.W. She was completely unhinged. And she had a baby with her. None of this makes any sense to me.”

  C.W. laughed. “What’s wrong with you, Garrity? You were a cop once. Since when does robbery or homicide make sense? It never makes sense. All this talk about master criminals, evil genius. That’s a bunch of crap and you know it. Most of these bad guys, they’re just lazy, stupid fuck-ups. Shit happens, that’s all. This time, the shit happened to somebody we care about.”

  “Bucky wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t lazy and he wasn’t a fuckup,” I said. “And he wasn’t a criminal, either. This afternoon, you said something. You said the white cops had something going, some kind of scam with security jobs. You still think that’s true?”

  “Maybe,” he said cautiously. “So what if it is?”

  “What if Bucky somehow got mixed up in the scam? What if he knew something he wasn’t supposed to know? And that’s what got him shot?”

  C.W. snorted. “You got an overactive imagination, Garrity. It’s a scam, that’s all. These assholes got a little gig that’s against department policy. But it ain’t nothing that big. Ain’t nothing could get Bucky shot. It’s just business as usual.”

  “I don’t think so,” I insisted. “That girl, Deecie. She didn’t run because she’d stolen the money. She ran because she was scared. Scared of what she’d seen.”

  “A safe full of twenties is what the girl saw,” Hunsecker said. “What you call your crime of opportunity.”

  “No. There’s something else. That girl saw something she shouldn’t have.”

  “What if she did? You gonna track her down and ask her about it? That’s why we got a police department, Garrity. You take my advice, you mind your own damn business. Stay out of it, you hear?”

  “I hear,” I said. But my mind was already racing.

  “C.W.,” I said, “you being in the security business, do you do pre-employment screening for your clients?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Drug testing, credit history, lie detector tests, all like that. That’s Linda’s specialty. You oughtta see her on the computer. You give her a modem and a data base, there ain’t nothin’ she can’t find. Why do you ask? You fixin’ to start doin’ urine testing on all those ladies working for your cl
eaning business?”

  “I might,” I said.

  12

  I sat and brooded about Bucky for a long time. Finally, I got out a yellow legal pad and started to doodle, a habit I have when I’m trying to bring order to a world of chaos.

  The facts were few—but brutal. Bucky had been shot twice in the head. A cheap .22 had been found at the crime scene. The only real witness to the shooting was a hysterical teenager named Deecie Styles. Her account of the shooting had been brief—a lone, masked gunman who said nothing and took no notice of the terrified clerk. And now Deecie Styles had vanished.

  What else did I have? Questions. A long list of questions and doubts and damn few answers. Looking down at my notes, I was forced to admit maybe the police brass were justified for having their own doubts about Bucky.

  What really had happened at the Budget Bottle Shop last night? Only twenty-four hours had passed, but the details didn’t seem to hang together. I tried to make a sketch of the store layout, but the only thing I drew was a blank. Every time I tried to summon up a vision of the store, it came out in fragments, the green linoleum floor, the smashed beer bottles, the Plexiglas-enclosed cashier cage, the glimpse of winking red and blue lights outside in the parking lot.

  I had to go back. I had to see the store again and make it real.

  I was in the bedroom getting dressed when I heard the back door open.

  I stiffened, looking around for some kind of weapon. My 9-mm Smith & Wesson was in the pantry, of course, locked away in a box on a high shelf where Maura’s prying fingers couldn’t reach it.

  “Callahan? You home?” I relaxed. It was all right. The intruder was Mac. Only Mac.

  “Be out in a minute,” I called, pulling a heavy cable-knit sweater over my head.

  I met him in the living room, put my arms around his waist, tilted my head back, and took a good long look.