Dead Irish

by John Lescroart

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Griffin turned back to look at the body. “Happens to everybody. You get used to it.”

  No, he thought, that wasn’t true. You don’t ever get used to it. What you do is get so you don’t react the same way. Your stomach still wants to come up at you, you still get that dizzy, light-headed yawing feel that you’re going to go out, but if you want to stay working as a homicide cop, what you do is move that feeling into another plane.

  You observe small things better, maybe, which keeps you from seeing the big picture that will make you sick. Or you deny altogether and make light of the gore—something the TV cops do so well. Or you just look at it, say yeah, and concentrate on your job, then go drink it off later. Griffin knew all that. Still, he put his hand on his new partner’s shoulder and repeated, “You get used to it.”

  The body lay on its side, covered now with the tarp. Giometti knelt down next to it.

  “You don’t want to look again, though,” Griffin said.

  “I better, I think.”

  “He ain’t changed. Come on, get up. Check the Polaroids, you want to get used to it.”

  Giometti took a breath, thinking about it, then straightened up without lifting the tarp. “Why’d he want to do that?”

  “What?” Griffin asked.

  “Kill himself like that, out here. Nowhere.”

  They were in a good-sized parking lot between two office buildings in China Basin. In the middle of the lot a car registered to Edward Cochran, the presumed deceased, sat waiting for the tow truck to take it down to the city lot. Griffin and Giometti had looked it over, finding nothing unusual in or about it except for its distance from the body.

  “Why do you think he killed himself?” Griffin wasn’t senior here for nothing. The boy needed some lessons.

  Giometti shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? The note . . . ?”

  “The note?” Griffin snorted. He didn’t know what it was, but calling it a suicide note was really stretching. A torn piece of paper in the front seat of the car, saying “I’m sorry, I’ve got to . . .” That was it. But he wasn’t in the mood to chew out his partner, the kid, so he spoke calmly, quietly. “Nothing’s obvious, Vince. That’s our job, okay? Take what looks obvious and find out the truth behind it. The best murders in the world look like something else. If they didn’t, nobody’d need us.”

  Giometti sighed. He looked at his watch. “Carl, it’s eleven-thirty. The guy’s got a gun by his hand. There was a note. I think there’s a few things we can assume here.”

  “Yeah, we can assume you want to go curl up with your wife and go goo at your new kid.” A pair of headlights turned into the lot, then another one. Photographers probably. If that was the case, it was time to go, but he wanted to make his point first.

  “Get the gun, Vince, would you?”

  Giometti walked the few steps over to their car. Other car doors were opening and closing. Griffin looked over but couldn’t see anything outside the perimeter of light.

  He opened the Ziploc bag and stuck a pencil into the gun’s barrel, lifting it to his nose. “Okay. It’s been fired,” he said.

  “We knew that.”

  “We didn’t know it. We found it next to the stiff and we assumed it. And we won’t know for sure ’til the lab gets it. But”—Griffin sniffed it again—“it smells like it’s been fired.”

  Giometti rolled his eyes. “Are we detecting now?” he asked, looking over at the sound of footsteps. “Hey, Abe.”

  Glitsky nodded to the boy. “That the weapon?” he asked Griffin.

  “No, it’s a fucking garter snake. What are you doing here?”

  “I got a potential ID.”

  “Yeah, us too.”

  Glitsky turned. “Diz?” he said.

  Another man stepped out of the shadows. He and Glitsky walked over to the tarp. They both went down to a knee and Abe pulled up a corner of it. The guy put his hand to his eyes. Something seemed to go out of his shoulders.

  Glitsky said something, got a nod, patted the man’s back as he stood up. He walked heavily back to Griffin and Giometti. “We got a positive,” he said. “Mind if I look at the gun a minute?”

  Griffin handed it over by the pencil.

  “It’s been fired,” Giometti said.

  Glitsky, missing the joke, glanced at him blankly, then sighted down the barrel, backward, into the chambers. “Yeah, twice,” he said.

  Hardy and Glitsky sat in the Plymouth in the parking lot. The heater made a lot of noise, but didn’t do much for the temperature or the fog on the windows. The only thing left to be done in the lot was towing Ed Cochran’s car, and the tow guy was here now seeing to it.

  Glitsky rolled his window down and watched without much enthusiasm. It was better than looking at his friend. These guys had worked together, partied some, got along, but most of it was on the flip side. When part of the work got to somebody, it made Glitsky nervous.

  He glanced across at his ex-partner. Hardy was leaning against his door, arm up along the window jamb, bent at the elbow, his hand rubbing at his temples. His eyes were closed.

  The tow guy came over and asked Glitsky if there would be anything else.

  They sat in the car, hearing the sound of the tow truck dissipate into the still night. Then there was only the heater, which wasn’t doing any good anyway. Glitsky turned the engine off.

  Hardy let out a long breath, opening his eyes. “Just can’t hide, can you?” he asked. “It comes back and gets you.”

  Sometimes Hardy would say things like that. If you stuck with him, Glitsky knew, he’d get around to saying it in English. But this time Hardy said fuck it, it was nothing.

  Glitsky rolled up his window.

  “You want a lift home?”

  Hardy motioned with his head. “I got my car, Abe.”

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe you want company.”

  Hardy stared into the fogged-up windshield. “After Michael . . .” He stopped. He rubbed a hand over an eye. Glitsky looked away again, giving him the space. Michael had been Hardy’s son who’d died in his infancy. “Anyway, I told myself I wouldn’t feel this shit anymore.” He shook his head as though clearing it. “Who’d want to kill Eddie?” he asked.

  Glitsky just nodded. That was always the question. And it was easier talking about cases than trying to find some reason for the deaths of people you cared about. So Glitsky followed that line. “You see him recently, this guy Eddie? He say anything?”

  “Anything like what? I saw him a couple of weeks ago, up at his place. He said a lot of things.”

  “I mean, anything to indicate troubles? Somebody pissed off at him? Maybe depressed himself ?”

  Hardy looked away from the dashboard. “What are you talking about, depressed?”

  Glitsky shrugged into his coat. “Guy’s dead alone in a parking lot with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand. Possible he did it himself.”

  Hardy took it in, said, “No, it isn’t.”

  “Okay, just a thought. It’ll occur to Griffin.”

  “What? Is he two weeks on the force?” He rolled the window down and looked across the lot. “Nobody comes out to a place like this to kill themselves. People take people here and kill them. Or meet here and kill them.”

  There was no moon. The fog hung still. A streetlight behind them caught the lot in its muted, garish, yellowing pool. Hardy was right, Glitsky thought. This was an execution spot.

  “Besides,” Hardy continued, “Eddie wouldn’t kill himself. He wasn’t, as they say, the type.”

  He rolled the window back up.

  “All right,” Glitsky said, “you knew him.”

  “Put it out of your mind, Abe. It flat-out didn’t happen.”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  But Hardy was staring into the middle distance again, unhearing. He abruptly jerked open the car door. “I better get going.” He turned to Abe. “I’ll probably be in touch.”

  H
ardy came up to the doors where he worked and pushed his way through. Moses, who hadn’t been home, was at the bar. Six closers—four at the rail and two at one table—were passing the time until last call. Willie Nelson was singing “Stardust” on the jukebox. No one was throwing darts. Hardy stood a minute, taking it in. Home, as much as anything could be.

  “Hey, Diz.” Moses automatically started a Guinness for him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Sent Lynne home early. Felt like tending some bar.”

  Hardy pulled up a stool in front of the spigots. Reaching over, he stopped the flow of the stout. The glass had gotten about two-thirds full.

  “What am I supposed to do with that now?” Moses asked, his weathered face creased with laugh lines that Hardy knew wouldn’t get much use in the next weeks. “You losing weight again? You stop drinking Guinness, my business goes to hell.”

  Hardy couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He cleared his throat, took off his hat and put it on the bar. “You hear anything from Frannie tonight?”

  Moses started to answer. “You know, it’s funny. She called here maybe—” Stopping short. “What happened?”

  Hardy held up a hand. “She’s okay.”

  Moses let out a breath. Frannie was about ninety percent of everything he cared about. “What, then?”

  Hardy met his eyes. Okay, just say it, he told himself. But Moses asked. “Eddie okay? She called to see if he was here.”

  “We gotta go up there, Mose. Eddie’s dead.”

  Moses didn’t move. He squinted for a beat. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Dead?”

  Hardy turned on his stool. He slapped the bar. “Okay, guys, let’s suck ’em up,” he said. “We’re closing early.” He got up, went behind the bar and sat Moses down on the stool back there. He was hearing the beginnings of the usual drunks’ stupid moanings about how they needed last call and it wasn’t fair. He lifted the shillelagh, an end-knotted, two-foot length of dense Kentucky ash, from its hook under the counter and ducked back out front of the bar.

  He tapped the bar a couple of times, hard, making sure he had their attention. “Don’t even suck ’em, then. We’re closed and you’re all outside. Now.”

  Everybody moved. Hardy had wielded the stick before, and most of them had seen it. He glanced at Moses. “Let’s go, buddy,” he said quietly. “Let’s go tell Frannie.”

  3

  ALL TWELVE TRUCKS were parked in their spots behind the squat building that was the office of Army Distributing.

  At a backboard against the building, a tall black man named Alphonse Page shot hoops. He was a rangy semi-youth, with a hairnet wrapped around his head, his shirt off, revealing a hairless and flat chest, and high-topped generic tennis shoes. His fatigue pants were doubled up at the cuffs, showing six or seven inches of shiny Thoroughbred leg between his white socks and his knees.

  The backboard was set flush against the building, making layups all but impossible, although if you swished the basket just right you could get a reasonable bounce back into the key and maybe follow up with an inside hook.

  A fading orange Datsun 510 pulled into the lot, around the trucks, then behind the building back by the wrapping shed. Alphonse stopped shooting and began dribbling, all his weight on his right foot, bouncing the ball slowly, about once a second, and waited for Linda Polk to appear from around the building, which she did in under a minute.

  He fell in next to her, dribbling, as she crossed the court.

  “Nobody much around,” he said.

  “Daddy’s not in?” A note of desperation, of hope long since abandoned.

  “Shi . . .”

  “But where’s Eddie?”

  “No-show. He ain’t here by six, everybody went home.”

  She seemed to take in the information like someone who was almost certain they had a terminal disease finding out for sure. She stopped walking. The sun, atypically strong this early morning, was behind them, glaring off the building. “You mean nobody’s here? Nobody at all?”

  Alphonse, the basketball held easily against his hip with one hand, pointed his other hand in toward himself. “Hey, what am I?” he said.

  “No offense.”

  Alphonse offered her his white teeth. Except for some acne, his long, smooth face was not unattractive. His skin was very black, his nose was thin. His lips were sensually thick. There was a light sheen of sweat from the workout, and his longish hair, which Linda thought his worst feature, was held in by the net.

  “No offense,” Alphonse repeated.

  Linda sighed. “So what happened to the papers?”

  Alphonse began dribbling again, walking next to her. The papers weren’t his problem. “Ain’t too many anyway.”

  They rounded the building. In front of the warehouse, Linda could see the morning newspapers, still wrapped from their publishers. Without La Hora, they made a pitifully poor pile in front of the corrugated iron door.

  Linda drew up again and sighed. “So I guess that’s really it,” she said. She threw her head back, looking to the sky for help, and finding none, she moaned, “I wish Daddy’d come in.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m waiting for.”

  “And Eddie didn’t come in at all? Did he call?”

  Alphonse smiled again. “I don’t do the phones, sugar.”

  They had come to the glass front doors. Linda got out her keys and let them in. Alphonse followed her across the small entryway into her office, which was in front of her father’s. She went behind the desk and sat down.

  Alphonse dribbled on the linoleum floor. The sound of the ball bouncing, flat and harsh, was interrupted by the telephone ringing.

  “Maybe that’s Daddy,” Linda said.

  She answered with a hopeful “Army Distributing” and then said “Yes” a couple of times. When she hung up, the terminal illness had progressed.

  “That was the police,” she said, and Alphonse felt an emptiness suddenly appear in his stomach. “They want to come by here and ask some questions.”

  Alphonse plumped heavily, quickly, onto the arm of the leatherette sofa. “What about?”

  “They said Eddie . . .” She stopped.

  “What about Eddie?”

  “They said he’s, like, dead.” She fumbled at the desk for a couple of seconds, then reached into her purse for a cigarette. “I’d better call Daddy,” she said, mostly to herself.

  The cigarette was misshapen and half burned down. Alphonse nodded knowingly to himself as she lit the end and inhaled deeply, holding it in. He got up, crossed to the desk, and held out his hand.

  “Cops be comin’. They better not smell that.”

  Linda still held her breath in, handing him the joint. She let out a long slow stream of smoke. “So we’ll open the windows.”

  “You callin’ your daddy?”

  “I’d better,” she said.

  “Yeah, you better,” Alphonse said. “I gotta talk to him, too.”

  The police had already arrived at Frannie’s—one black-and-white and another supposedly unmarked Plymouth parked closely behind it. The light over the doorway was on. Hardy and Moses could see shadows moving in the corner window. Hardy had decided he wouldn’t go in. He left Moses and drove on home.

  He let himself into his house, pushing hard, swearing, against the stuck front door. The house had been cold. The only light came from the muted glow of the aquarium in his bedroom.

  He must have stared at the fish awhile, sitting on his bed, his Greek sailor’s hat pulled down and his coat collar up. He didn’t remember.

  All he knew was that now it was morning. Bright sunlight streaming through his bedroom window was falling across his face. The coat was bunched under and around him, the hat flattened under his neck.

  Hardy rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. It came back to him in a flood—the vision of Eddie on his side three feet from some nondescript China Basin building, a black pool under him.

  This wasn’t
supposed to happen. This wasn’t Vietnam anymore. Eddie wasn’t into anything heavy. He was a regular guy, a kid, and this kind of stuff didn’t happen to regular guys.

  Before, sure. Hardy had lived for a while in life-and-death reality, where things happened all the time. Vietnam, partnering with Glitsky on their beat, even his short time with the D.A.’s office. But he’d passed on all that. A long time ago.

  Now his life didn’t need any adrenaline kick-start. You cared too much and it came back and got you. Now you had your job—not your yuppie “career” that ate up your time and your insides—but someplace you went and did reasonable work and got paid and came home and forgot about. You had a couple of buddies—Moses and Pico did just fine. You drank a little and sometimes a little more, but it was mostly top-shelf goods or stout and you kept it under control.

  Everything else—ambition, love, commitment (whatever that meant)—was kid stuff. Kids like Eddie, maybe, who essentially didn’t get it the way Hardy thought he now finally got it. Hardy had been through it. The kid stuff elements weren’t real. They were crutches, blinders, to keep you from seeing. Hardy’d proved that by getting away from all of them and surviving. He got along. Okay, maybe he skimmed over the surface, but at least he avoided deep shoals, hidden reefs, monsters lurking in the depths.

  Sure, Diz, he thought, that’s why you went to Cabo,’cause everything was so peachy, ’cause fulfillment was the very essence of your existence.

  “Goddamn it.” Hardy laid his arm up over his eyes, shielding the sun. “Goddamn it, Eddie.”

  The problem was, why was he feeling now like he had to do something, anything at all, to make some sense out of this? He shouldn’t have let Eddie, or Eddie and Frannie, get inside of him. He hadn’t seen it coming, so hadn’t been prepared for it. He’d thought he’d kept them outside enough—acquaintances, not friends.

  Eddie was gone, and nothing was going to change that.