Dead Irish

by John Lescroart

  Well, just a few more hours’ sleep. Can’t hurt. It’s the summer, after all.

  But that jarred some memory. Leaving the house, striking out on his own, riding in the truck with those two guys heading for L.A., but in no real hurry. Mostly, they’d said, into partying, into cruising. That sounded okay.

  It began to come flooding back, and involuntarily he groaned. They’d accepted him right away, including him when they stopped for a few road beers before they’d left the city. The beers didn’t taste very good, but Steven wasn’t about to let on. This was part of being an adult, and he was tired of being treated like a kid, or, worse, a nothing. So he’d act like an adult, go along, be cool.

  He got a little more worried when the joints came out, but knew he was just being uptight. Lots of guys in school smoked dope all the time. It just hadn’t been his thing. But it wasn’t as though it was any big deal, or really wrong. It did make him cough, though, and the guys had laughed at him a little, but he could tell it was all in fun. They coughed, too, only not so much.

  After that, in this blurry haze, they’d stopped for something to eat—maybe in Gilroy?—some really fantastic burgers that they took to this “special spot” for a picnic. And then things got scary kind of, with the two guys starting to tickle him and other stuff. Then really rough.

  If he hadn’t been so dizzy and messed up, he probably could have outrun them, but when he pulled loose and tried that, his coordination was gone. And after they caught him, he thought he remembered other things, but the drowsiness was still there, and it was too hard to think about.

  And where was Mom, then, if the bed was made? Just in the other room probably. God, it’d be great to see Mom. He called out for her.

  That was a sound. Hardy, waiting for Munoz to return from his phone call, ran around the corner to Steven’s room.

  The boy lay still, unmoving. This was the hostility kid, he remembered—switchblade, fuzzed-out television and all. He shook his head. Talk about a bad week for the Cochrans.

  Had Ed’s death somehow precipitated this, driven him over the edge of his own despair? Or was there some more immediate link? Like, might Steven have known something he shouldn’t have?

  Hell, he’d find out when Steven came to if he had known his assailants. Or, more particularly, if Hardy knew them.

  Big Ed looked anything but big.

  Staring down at his bandaged youngest son, he was a shell of the man in the old but elegant suit Hardy had met at the funeral reception. Now a very worn green USF sweatshirt hung loosely over work pants and boots. Everything hung too loose. One bootlace wasn’t tied.

  He stared as long as he could, then squeezed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes.

  Munoz stood next to him. “Are you all right, sir?”

  Big Ed nodded. “Long night,” he said. “We thought, we thought . . .”

  “Sure. But he’s not. Not even close.”

  “He’s not close,” he repeated. And suddenly a shudder went through him and he was crying.

  Hardy went out to the reception area, where a small boy with the beginnings of a shiner and a large red knot on his forehead sat stoically as his mother explained to the receptionist how he’d stepped on the tines of a rake and the handle had popped up and hit him in the face.

  Hardy walked outside into the bright sun. He was hungry. The place on Gonzalez’s main street sold burritos the size of a suitcase for $2.49, and Hardy bought three, chewing on one while he carried the other two, wrapped, back to the clinic.

  Munoz and Ed, talking by the sheriff ’s car, took the food. Big Ed seemed a little better.

  “Sorry I didn’t recognize you in there,” he said to Hardy.

  “How’s the boy?”

  “Still sleeping. You have any idea who did this?”

  “I wish,” Hardy said. “You reported him missing. Did he run away, or what?”

  “What’s the other option?” Munoz asked.

  Hardy shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but he might have been kidnapped.”

  “That’s crazy,” Ed said. “We don’t have any money.”

  “It might have been to keep him quiet. Maybe he knew something.” The two men chewed their burritos. “About Ed, I mean.”

  That stopped Big Ed. “What do you mean? They say Eddie killed himself.” He swallowed hard.

  “I doubt it, I doubt it very much.”

  “Well, then, what . . .”

  Hardy could see it was almost too much for the man. His hand went up to his eyes again. He shook his head as though trying to clear it.

  The receptionist came to the door. “The boy’s awake,” she said.

  At least he wants to be home, Big Ed was thinking. That’s something. Being back home. He’d said it. Daddy, take me home. Daddy. Nobody’d called him that in ten years. It was always either Dad, Pop or Ed. Well, if Steven wanted Daddy now, Daddy was taking him home. There he and Erin might be able to figure out if and where they’d screwed up so he wouldn’t want to run away again.

  He looked around to the backseat where Steven lay, sleeping again, strapped down by the seat belts.

  “He okay?” Hardy asked.

  Ed nodded.

  Munoz and Hardy had thought it’d be better if Ed didn’t have to drive back alone with his son, so they arranged that the sheriff ’s one deputy would drive Hardy’s car back to the city later.

  Ed again glanced into the backseat. He couldn’t look enough at his son, couldn’t really believe yet—after the fears of last night sitting up with Erin, his daughter, Jodie, and Frannie—that Steven, along with Eddie, wasn’t dead and gone forever. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d been through, at least he was still with them, breathing. He must’ve sighed with relief, because Hardy looked over at him.

  This guy Hardy was driving well—slow and careful. No bumps on the kid. And it was a good thing he was driving—Ed was pretty sure he couldn’t have kept his mind on the road.

  They were up to San Mateo. The sun was behind the mountains already. Where had the hours gone to? In another half hour they’d be home.

  Maybe sometime today Erin had gotten some sleep. He hoped so. She hadn’t slept now in almost a week.

  Erin. His thoughts, as always, were never far from his wife. He didn’t know how they were ever going to get over this time, though something told him they would. Well, almost. They’d never be the same, of course. The wound—losing Eddie—was too deep to ever heal completely, but there would be something—some new challenge that would get things into a new perspective. At least, he hoped so.

  Why had his boy run away?

  “You have any proof somebody killed Eddie?” he asked suddenly.

  “Nope.” But then Hardy told him what Cavanaugh had said about Sam Polk—the drug thing.

  “That’s something,” Ed said. “I knew something was going on with Polk. Eddie and I kind of argued about it.”

  “That’s what Cavanaugh said—that Eddie wanted another opinion.”

  “When did you talk to Jim?”

  “Yesterday. Last night. He thought he might have something of a lead. I was going to check around a little today, but then this morning . . .” He ticked his head toward the backseat.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but thanks.”

  Hardy kept his eyes on the road. “I knew Ed and Frannie pretty well. Her brother’s my best friend.”

  Turning west up the 380 now as dusk deepened, passing the huge cemetery with its thousands of white squares, gridding the grassy fields, marking the graves of military dead.

  Ed reached behind the seat and rested a hand on his son’s leg, feeling the warmth of it through the blanket. Steven stirred and moaned softly, but didn’t open his eyes.

  “Almost there,” Hardy said.

  He’d made a dumb turn coming up this way, even though it was the most direct route. The cemetery was closing Ed up, and Hardy swore at himself—he should have remembered it. Maybe he could distract him a little, get his min
d off it. “Your friend Father Cavanaugh is some kind of character.”

  “Jim? Yeah. He’s a great guy.”

  “Only thing I can’t figure is why he’s not a cardinal or something—at least a bishop.”

  Ed smiled. “I know. He’s got that flair, don’t he?” He paused. “But if he were a bishop, he’d have to leave Erin, and I don’t think he’d like to do that.”

  That remark surprised Hardy. He must have shown it. “It’s no secret he’s in love with my wife,” Ed said, but then held up a hand. “No, no, not like that. He’s one of us. Erin’s his best friend. He’s hers. Except maybe for me.” He smiled again. “Except sometimes I’m not sure of that either.”

  “I think that’d make me nervous,” Hardy said.

  “Well, after thirty years, I figure Erin’s my gal. We’ve talked about it, but she says the physical thing just never was there with Jim.” He shook his head. “How do you figure that? She prefers a galumpf like me, she says. I figure it’s her one flaw, but believe me, I’ll take it.”

  Hardy glanced over at him. He said it in such a self-effacing way, you almost missed the serene confidence. This man knew, without a trace of doubt, that he knocked his wife out.

  “It’s good to know they don’t always go for the movie stars, not being one myself,” Hardy said, relieved they had finally gotten by the cemeteries, into Daly City and all the little boxes on the hillsides.

  “I don’t think they’d let Jim be a bishop anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  Ed shrugged. “He’s not political enough. Done a few unusual things. For a priest.”

  Such as coming to me for his confession, Hardy thought, but asked, “Like what?”

  “Oh, nothing serious. Just stuff.”

  Okay, they weren’t going to talk about it. But then . . . “It took him about twice as long as anyone to get out of the seminary. They kicked him out twice.”

  “Kicked him out?”

  Ed shrugged. “Well, it was the fifties, early sixties. The Church thought it had a lock on these guys. Any little thing, they’d say you didn’t have a true vocation and boot you. Not like now, where if you’ve got a history as a gunrunner to Nicaragua you still got a pretty good chance, they need priests so bad.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Jim?” Ed laughed, remembering. “I should know. I went with him. He got about two weekends off a year, and so this one time we got plastered and took in some strip shows—Erin was at school so the two of us were ripe for some high jinks. But the problem was, the next day he showed up back at the seminary hung over and confessed everything. Bad scene. They put him out for a semester to rethink his vocation.”

  “What was the other time?”

  “That was different. I don’t know I ever got the story right. Erin and I were on our honeymoon. It was maybe a month before his ordination. We’d already received the invitation. Anyway, Jim had decided he wasn’t worthy, or something like that. He wanted to be a priest, but didn’t feel he was holy enough. Can you imagine that? If Jim wasn’t holy enough, there was no hope for anybody else. I mean, where it counted.”

  Hardy looked across the front seat. By now it was nearly dark. The streetlights in the lower avenues had come on.

  “See, they tried to tell him everybody had those doubts. Priests weren’t supposed to be saints—they were humans like the rest of us. They weren’t about to let him drop out. He was the president of his class, was going to be the speaker at the ordination. They’d invested too much in him.”

  “So? What happened?”

  “So he stole the dean’s car, crashed out through the front gate and disappeared for three days.”

  “Cavanaugh did that?”

  “And then showed up looking like a bum, and without the car. He never talks about those three days, except to say it was his time in the desert. Whatever that meant. Anyway, he pissed everybody off pretty good. Now those same guys, his classmates, are becoming the bishops, and they all like Jim, probably, but think he’s a flake. Or at least a little bit of a flake. For sure too unstable to move up in the hierarchy.”

  “But he did finally get ordained?”

  “Yeah, two years later, he’d done his penance. But he wasn’t valedictorian.”

  They turned onto Taraval. In the backseat, Steven moaned gently.

  “Almost home, son,” Ed said. “Almost home.”

  Frannie looked much better, Erin much worse. Hardy sat drinking his second scotch, waiting for the opportune moment to make an exit. Everybody here was tired—hell, exhausted. Jodie was already asleep, her gangly frame draped over the love seat. Erin and Ed, sitting together like statues, holding hands, kept looking at each other as if wondering what was going to happen next. But there was a toughness Hardy noticed in Ed.

  Here was a man who’d lost a son only a week before. Just that morning, Hardy had seen him break down into tears. But here, now, sitting next to his wife, he was hanging in there for her, in spite of his own hurt. Hardy thought he might be the bravest man he’d ever met.

  “Thanks for the drink,” he said. “I think it’s time I called a cab.”

  Frannie walked with him outside. “How are you making out?” he asked her. “Can I ask you one more question?”

  “Sure.” Her red hair gleamed in the porch light. She looked like she’d finally eaten something. Her eyes were clear.

  “You said Eddie left right after dinner?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you have any idea what time that was?”

  He hated to ask, to see her eyes cloud over again, but he had to know.

  “It was still light out. Pretty early, I guess, sevenish. Why?”

  The cab pulled up. “Because it shouldn’t take two and a half hours to drive from your place out to China Basin.”

  “No, it’s only like fifteen minutes.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He admired the way when her shoulders started to sag she tightened up her jaw. He leaned down and pecked her on the cheek. “I’m checking this stuff out, Frannie. You keep hanging in there.”

  She put her arms up around him and held tight for a moment. The cabbie honked. She let go.

  When the cab got to the corner, Hardy looked back. Frannie was still standing out by the curb. Hanging in there, Hardy thought.

  “Nope.”

  “Abe, come on.”

  “You said yourself he’d never seen the guys before. How can there be a connection?”

  “It’s too big a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t think.”

  “But that plus the drug thing with Ed’s boss?”

  “Possible drug thing. What’s the matter with you, Hardy, you taking drugs yourself?”

  After another minute, Hardy hung up. What more did Glitsky need? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? And there was enough smoke here to cure meat.

  It was ten o’clock Saturday night. The deputy hadn’t yet arrived back from Gonzalez with his car.

  Not for the first time, Hardy wished he didn’t have a rule about keeping hard liquor in his house. He went into his bedroom, fed the fish, walked back to his office. He picked the six darts from the board by the fireplace and stood by his desk, just at the tape line he’d put down there, and threw methodically, trying to let his mind clear.

  Frannie was positive that Ed had left the house around seven. Cruz said that he had left work around eight-thirty and nobody had been either in the building or the lot at that time. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from Ed’s to Cruz’s.

  Hell of a lot of time to kill, and that was the minimum. He might not’ve gotten to Cruz’s until ten. Nobody knew.

  Damn Glitsky. There was something here, Hardy was sure of it. A little manpower and they could at least get a fix on the whereabouts of all the principals. Where, for example, had Cruz gone at eight-thirty? Maybe he’d just sat in the lot, waiting for a meeting. And Polk—what had Polk been doing Monday night? Maybe Ed’s m
eddling in his private business was going to cut into Nika’s lifestyle, and he couldn’t allow that.

  All right. He had the background. It was beginning to look as if he’d have to do some old-fashioned police work, and he didn’t relish the thought. That’s why they have police departments, he thought. Because the legwork is awesome. It’s why they have rookies, and he hadn’t been a rookie in nearly twenty years. But if Abe wouldn’t help . . .

  He reached again for the phone, intending to give it one more try, even if it was a Saturday night and Glitsky was at home relaxing with his wife. He turned off the answering machine in the office and plugged the phone into the jack.

  The doorbell.

  Oh, my God! Jane!

  He dropped the darts on his desk and sprinted around the corner, through his bedroom and kitchen, and down the hall. It wasn’t Jane.

  “Mr. Hardy?”

  Hardy nodded.

  “Your keys, sir, and the sheriff says thanks again.”

  Hardy remembered his manners. “You want a cup of coffee? How you getting back down?”

  He had stood up Jane. There was no way she was still waiting for him.

  “Highway Patrol will pick me up if I could borrow your phone? The sheriff—he got it okayed.”

  Hardy made a pot and the two men talked baseball for most of an hour while they waited for the Highway Patrol.

  After the deputy had gone, Hardy stood outside on his front lawn. The fog had come in, though it wasn’t heavy. It presaged a return to normal weather. Without a coat on, he walked up to the corner and saw the restaurant where he was to have met Jane. The lights were still on.

  He stood outside its front window looking in. Jane wasn’t there. Cold now, he jogged back to his house. Coming up the steps, he heard the telephone ringing, but it stopped when he was inside, running back to the office. Maybe if it was Jane he could meet her for a nightcap, explain what had happened. Maybe she’d even believe him.

  But there was no message on the answering machine, because he had unplugged it.