Dead Irish

by John Lescroart

  9

  THE COCHRANS’ HOUSE was in a familiar neighborhood, near Hardy’s own, on 28th Avenue between Taraval and Ulloa. They shared the same fog most days, but Hardy lived north of the park—south of it was about as close to suburban as San Francisco got.

  Big Ed greeted him at the door and introduced himself. He was dressed in a shiny black suit that looked as though it hadn’t seen much wear in the past ten years. The lapels were too thin, the black tie was too thin. The white shirt was brand-new.

  Hardy had the feeling that he’d caught him out of uniform, like running into a cop dressed as a clown at a parish festival. Ed Cochran looked slightly uncomfortable, but not in the least diminished either by grief or attire.

  The eyes, though puffed, were clear and piercing. The solid man’s face was startlingly controlled. His strong chin and flat fighter’s nose conveyed an impression of suppressed power, reinforced by the handshake, which made no effort to crush or intimidate. The meaty vise gripped, shook, let go, but the strength was there.

  His hand gently touched Hardy’s back as he ushered him into the foyer. His wife, Erin, had used her hand the same way—to guide—at the cemetery. A family mannerism, perhaps. Ed’s touch was as light as Erin’s.

  And here was the priest again, by the bar near the sliding doors that led out to the redwood deck. Good-looking man, another powerhouse, but in a more subtle way than Ed Cochran. Drink in hand, he turned just as Hardy and Ed arrived.

  “Good, so you’ve come. I was hoping to meet you.”

  “Dismas, this is Jim Cavanaugh,” Ed said. Cavanaugh’s grip was firm and dry.

  “Dismas? The good thief?”

  Hardy smiled. “So I’m told.”

  “And you’re Catholic, then?”

  “Was.”

  The priest shrugged as though accustomed to the answer. “Was, is. It’s all a matter of tense, and there’s no time in heaven. Like the good thief, will you rejoin the fold at your final hour?”

  Hardy scratched his chin. “Well, I’m not much like the original Dismas. I’ve never stolen so much as a candy bar. But you never can tell. Was he much good at darts?”

  “Darts?”

  “Darts. I’m a pretty fair hand at the chalk line.”

  Cavanaugh grinned broadly, displaying perfect teeth. “I’m afraid the New Testament is a little vague on that point. Get you a drink? Let me guess, Irish whiskey?”

  Hardy had been thinking of a beer, but the Irish was okay. Cavanaugh had a knack, he guessed, for making his ideas feel like the best ones. He took the drink, they clicked their glasses, then moved out onto the deck, into the sunshine.

  “That was a good move at the grave, Dismas Hardy,” the priest said. “You saved Frannie from a nasty fall.”

  Hardy shrugged. “Marine training, mixed in with a little Boy Scouts. You’re the famous Father Cavanaugh?”

  Cavanaugh’s eyes clouded briefly. “I don’t know about famous.”

  “Anybody who knew Eddie’s heard about you. You were like one of the family.”

  The quick flush of pleasure, as quickly controlled. “I am family, Dismas. All but.” He sipped his drink. “I’ve known Erin and Big Ed since high school. Introduced them, in fact, baptized all the children, then married Ed and Frannie, and now with this . . .”

  He stopped, sighed, looked out into nothing over Hardy’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The Lord giveth and taketh away, I suppose. That’s my counsel to the grieving, isn’t it?” He smiled crookedly. “But He levies some burdens I don’t understand, never will.”

  “I don’t know if the Lord did this one,” Hardy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if Ed killed himself . . .”

  Cavanaugh fixed him with a hard gaze. “Eddie didn’t kill himself.”

  Hardy waited.

  “I just buried him in consecrated ground, Dismas. If I had any belief at all that he killed himself, I couldn’t have done that. Do you understand?”

  “Do you understand what that means, Father? What you’re saying?”

  The priest squinted in the sun.

  “It means somebody killed him.”

  Cavanaugh’s hand went up to his eyes. He didn’t seem to want to believe that either. “Well . . .” He knocked back the last of his drink. “I just . . . He couldn’t have killed himself. He didn’t do it. I am as certain of that as I am of you standing here.”

  “Why? Do you have any—?”

  “Call it a moral conviction, but there’s no doubt.”

  “Your glass is empty.” It was Erin Cochran. Hardy noticed that she had put her arm through Cavanaugh’s. “And I am dry myself.”

  Cavanaugh went to get her a refill.

  “He seems like the perfect priest,” Hardy said.

  Erin paused, as though savoring some secret, looking after him. “Jim?” she said. “Oh, he is. He is the perfect priest.”

  Frannie sat up, covered with a comforter, and looked around the walls of the den. Moses had just gone to get Dismas—for some reason she had asked to see him, to thank him for catching her, she supposed. She couldn’t exactly remember. Her mind kept flitting from thing to thing. It was weird.

  It was probably good that Moses and Mom—she called Erin “Mom”—had decided to lay her down in here. She still felt weak, light-headed. Maybe that was why she kept forgetting things, changing her mind. She felt her forehead, which was still clammy.

  Leaning her head back against the pillow, she let her eyes rest on the wall opposite her. There were the family pictures, the whole history of the Cochrans from Dad and Mom’s wedding through her own to Eddie. She remembered the pride she’d felt, the sense of belonging to a real family for the first time in her life, when the picture of their engagement—the one that had been in the Chronicle—had found its place on that wall.

  It had been the perfect Cochran way. No fanfare. Just one time she came by and was watching TV with Eddie, sneaking in a little petting when they were left alone, and the picture was suddenly there. She looked at herself, next to Ed, smiling so hard her cheeks must have hurt, though she didn’t remember that now. And then, next to it, the wedding picture. How could that be in the same life as this?

  Then she thought of the baby picture that she’d envisioned as the next one. The baby. She crossed her hands over her stomach. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  There was a knock on the door. Before she could answer, it opened and Eddie’s sister Jodie looked in.

  “Hi,” she said. “You okay?”

  Hardy saw the women hugging, crying together, and thought he would wait a little longer before going in to see Frannie. A door farther down the hallway stood open, and he walked into that other room to wait.

  It was a strange place, out of context with the rest of the house. Rock posters on the lower end of the taste spectrum covered most available wall space. Shades were pulled down over the two windows, and Hardy had the sense that they were left down most of the time. In one corner a television set was on, the volume turned all the way down, the picture snowy and untuned as though it hadn’t been touched for months.

  It bothered him, and he walked over to turn it off.

  “What are you doing here?”

  It was the younger son, Steven, hands on the doorsill. “This is my room. What are you doing?”

  “I was waiting for Frannie and your sister to finish crying, and I saw this TV on. I thought I’d turn it off.”

  “I want it on.”

  “Great, I’ll leave it on. Good show?”

  Steven ignored that, seemed to be studying him. “I know you, don’t I?” Grudgingly, still hostile.

  “Yeah, we met. Up at Frannie and Eddie’s one time.”

  “That’s it.”

  Steven seemed to file it away without interest. Hardy was categorized and put on a shelf in a certain place. After that, it seemed, he didn’t exist.

  Steven went and plopped himself on his bed
, feet crossed at the ankles, and ran his hand through his spiky hair a couple of times. “You want to get out of the way?”

  Hardy pulled a chair from under the writing desk and sat on it backward. “I’m trying to find who killed your brother.”

  No response. Steven just looked over at the droning white noise of the television. Hardy stood, strode over and slammed it off.

  “Hey!”

  “Hey, yourself. I don’t care if you want to rot here in your room, but I’m trying to do a little good for Frannie at least, and if you know something that can help me I’m damn well gonna find out. Is watching your blank TV supposed to impress me with how tough you are? You don’t feel anything about Eddie? About anything, right?”

  Hardy watched the kid’s bluff fade. He wasn’t really angry, had just let his voice get louder. Now he sat down again, pulled closer to the bed. “You know, the option is you can help me if you want.”

  “I just don’t believe Eddie’s gone.”

  Hardy folded his hands, exhaled, looked down. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the tough part.”

  “What do you mean you’re trying to find who killed Eddie? I thought he killed himself.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  The kid rolled his eyes up. Hardy reached down, grabbed Steven’s ankle and started squeezing. Hardy had a good grip. Steven tried to pull away but couldn’t do it.

  Hardy forced a tight grip and spoke in a whisper. “Listen, you little shit, I do not need to take any high-school tough-guy attitude crap from you. Do you understand me?”

  Hardy’s left forearm was burning from the pressure. Steven’s jaw was set. “Let go of my leg.”

  “Do you understand me?”

  Steven took another five or six seconds to save a little face, then nodded and mumbled, “Yeah.”

  Hardy figured that was good enough. He let go. “Now, if you remember, I asked you why you thought Eddie killed himself. Did the police or somebody tell you that?”

  Steven rubbed his ankle, but Hardy had gotten his attention. “I mean, he had a gun in his hand, didn’t he? There was a note.”

  “It’s easy to put a gun in the hand of somebody who’s already dead. And the note could have been anything. What I want to know is why you think it—that he killed himself ?”

  “ ’Cause he was smart, and who’s smart wants to live?”

  It wasn’t mock macho. The kid meant it. It rocked Hardy a little. He hung his head a minute, took a breath. “Hey, is it that bad, Steven?”

  The boy just shrugged, his thin arms crossed on his chest.

  “Was he depressed? Eddie, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Hardy looked up at him. “Why do you think I’m doing this? You think I want to be here, going over all this with anybody who’ll talk to me? Would that be your idea of a good time?”

  “I don’t have any idea of a good time,” the boy mumbled.

  Hardy swallowed that. “Okay.”

  Steven reached into the top drawer of the dresser next to his bed and pulled out a switchblade knife that he began to snap open and closed methodically. Modern American worry beads, Hardy thought. Hiding his surprise, he asked where it had come from.

  “Uncle Jim brought it back from Mexico.”

  “Uncle Jim?”

  “Sure. You know. Father Cavanaugh. But don’t tell Mom, would you? She’d probably be nervous.”

  After a minute Hardy was used to it—the skinny little kid moping on the bed, opening and closing a switchblade for solace.

  “So you want to help?”

  Steven closed the knife. Not exactly trust yet in the eyes, but at least a lack of active distrust. Probably the kid couldn’t help Hardy at all, but it wouldn’t hurt him—the way he felt about himself—if he felt he was doing something about his brother’s death.

  “What could I do?” he asked.

  “Keep yourself alert. Think about things over the past month or two, anything Ed or anybody who knew him might have said or done, what he might have been up to, anything.” He pulled out his wallet. “Here’s a card. Why don’t you keep it to yourself, same for me and the knife, right?”

  Secrets together. As good a bond as many. “This is a neat card,” Steven said.

  Hardy got up. “Be careful with that switchblade,” he said. Then, at the door, he turned. “Think hard, Steven. Something’s out there.” Maybe the wrong thing to say to a kid, but he wasn’t editing just now.

  Jodie and Frannie, holding hands, were standing in front of the wall of the den now, looking at the pictures.

  Hardy didn’t knock. “Your family keeps Kodak in business,” he said.

  They turned, and Frannie introduced Jodie. Eighteen or so, she was just passing through gangly. Her freckled face was still blotched from the crying. Some baby fat rounded, but only slightly, the corners of her cheekbones. Her wide blue eyes, also reddened, had irises flecked with gold. Her nose wasn’t perfect, but Hardy liked it, a little too flat at the bridge and sticking out at the bottom like a baby’s thumb.

  She was obviously Erin’s kid, but as with Steven and Ed, and even Mick for that matter, there wasn’t much sign of Big Ed’s genes.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Frannie, confused momentarily, stared back at the wall of pictures, then again at Hardy. “I think . . .” She turned to Jodie and smiled. “My mind . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Hardy said. “It can wait.”

  “No, I know I asked Moses if I could see you, but I . . . this other stuff . . .”

  “Sure.”

  Jodie spoke up, her voice the echo of her mother’s, cultured, not so deep as to be husky, but adult. “I thought you were wonderful catching Frannie. Thank you.”

  She turned to her sister-in-law. “You really went out. I don’t know how Mr. Hardy did it, but he was over to you—”

  “That’s it,” Frannie said. “That reminds me.”

  “What?”

  “Why I wanted to see you. I just remembered.”

  She let go of Jodie’s hand and sat on an ottoman. “I’ve never fainted before, so I didn’t know it was even coming. It’s just the last thing I remember was I saw Mr. Polk there. He’s . . . he was Ed’s boss, I mean the owner. He wasn’t really a boss, I don’t think. Ed was the real manager, but he made policy, you know.”

  Hardy put up with the rambling. She had obviously thought of something, and would be getting to it.

  “So when I saw him, I remembered again that you said I should tell you anything that might matter.”

  “And Mr. Polk’s being there might matter?”

  She shook out her red hair, then closed her eyes as though the thought had eluded her again. Jodie sat on the edge of the ottoman and put an arm over her shoulder. “It’s okay, Frannie.”

  “It’s just so hard to think.” She pouted, biting her lip.

  “Mr. Polk,” Hardy said quietly.

  “Oh, Mr. Polk, that’s right.”

  “Why would it matter, him being at the funeral, Frannie? It seems perfectly natural to me. Had they been fighting or something?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. It wasn’t him being at the funeral.” She still couldn’t seem to find it. Hardy put his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the wall of pictures. Surrounding what looked like a college graduation picture of Eddie were plaques, diplomas, honors. He turned back to the young women. “Phi Beta Kappa?” he asked.

  “Eddie was really smart,” Jodie said. “He just didn’t like showing off, but he was the smartest of us, except for maybe Steven, if he’d work at it.”

  “I just met Steven again. We had a nice talk.”

  “He’s okay,” Jodie said. “He just plays tough.”

  Hardy shrugged. “We got along . . .”

  “I remember.”

  Hardy sat down on the end of the couch.

  “It was Mr. Polk. I was just surprised to see him. Eddie said he hadn’t been at work all last week until Friday, and the
n he’d been all distracted.”

  Hardy waited for her to continue.

  “That’s all,” she said at last. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s nothing, but you said . . .”

  “No, Frannie,” he said, “anything might be important.” He didn’t push her. He could find out more about that when he interviewed at Army.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Frannie repeated.

  “You thought it was worth telling me about. It’s like when you took tests in school and your teacher always told you to go with your first answer. It can’t hurt to say it.”

  Frannie looked over again at the photo wall. Jodie, next to her, stood up and spoke with a strained brightness. “Maybe we should go outside for a while, you think?”

  “In a minute, okay.”

  The girl was gone, closing the door behind her. Hardy slid over on the couch, closer to Frannie. “You know,” he said, “the fainting might have had something to do with being pregnant.”

  A nod. “I thought of that just before Jodie came in. You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

  “I said I wouldn’t.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “No buts. No is no.”

  She smiled. “All right. Thank you.”

  Her head started to turn to look at the pictures again. Hardy spoke up. “You feel up to going out yet? It does get close in here.”

  She glanced toward the wall. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Hardy crossed over to her and lifted her gently by the shoulder. She leaned into him. “Let’s go,” she said, forcing a smile, “I can handle it.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “In your state, that is a small wonder.”

  Moses McGuire turned his baleful gaze onto Hardy, who was negotiating traffic on Lincoln Boulevard. He had rolled the canvas top back on his car. “You took my keys, didn’t you?”

  Hardy’s eyes shifted. “I’ve often warned you of the perils of leaving things in your coat pockets. Myself, I keep my valuables in my pants.”

  “I keep my valuables in my pants,” McGuire echoed. “I try to get my valuable out of my pants as often as possible.”