Dead Irish

by John Lescroart

  He hadn’t realized at first how bad it would be, having Jeffrey not believe him, even think he was capable of murdering somebody. But now, once he came forward, the police would find no evidence. They could have an investigation and find him innocent, and that would end all this horrible distrust between himself and Jeffrey.

  But when he had finished, Hardy was still frowning. “So how come you couldn’t tell us this last week?”

  He saw that his hands were back up on the desk, folded tightly together. He spread them, palms up. “I was afraid. I just . . . I know there’s no excuse. I don’t know.” He tried to smile, man-to-man. “It was a lapse, that’s all. I was nervous.”

  Hardy stretched, looked at his watch and slowly pushed himself up from the chair. “Can I use your phone?” he asked.

  Though it was still probably too early for Abe to be in the office, Hardy felt he ought to get the police involved right now. This warranted bringing in the troops. They might or might not corroborate Cruz’s story, but he had admitted being in the lot that night at the relevant time. That would be enough to get something official going. Then, whether he’d killed Ed would either come out or it wouldn’t. Either way, it was now a police matter.

  Hardy left a message for Abe and told Cruz that another officer would be coming by later in the day. He was, of course, welcome to have an attorney present at that time.

  Though Hardy knew it was patently ridiculous—that no real cop would simply walk out on a murder suspect leaving the later interrogation to another officer—he couldn’t think of a better way to continue with Cruz. He’d done what he’d set out to do, which was prove he’d lied. Finding out why was out of his province. If Cruz tried to run he’d only get in deeper, and the publisher was, after all, an established, wealthy and even well-known citizen. Hardy didn’t think he would run.

  At home, Hardy heard Abe’s message of the night before about Alphonse and felt satisfaction. Between Alphonse and Cruz there seemed no doubt they had the man who’d killed Eddie. At the very least they would have enough, once and for all, to call it a homicide.

  Of course, he’d wait for the official word before passing it along to Moses and Frannie or the Cochrans. And though it wasn’t going to help anybody’s immediate pain much to know that Eddie Cochran hadn’t killed himself, it would eventually be a consolation. The rejection factor would be gone. His death—the death itself—was a tragedy, sure, but the wound could heal over now. The two hundred thousand dollars for Frannie wouldn’t hurt, either.

  28

  STEVEN KNEW HIS mom was trying. Maybe she just couldn’t do it.

  She changed the bandages religiously, brought his ice cream and sandwiches, opened and closed the window and turned on and off the television or radio and probably would try to build him an airplane and take him for a flight if he asked her.

  It was all still Eddie.

  He didn’t blame her, couldn’t blame her. He felt the same thing, or guessed he did. Maybe it was different losing a son than losing a brother. But either way, it was a bad loss.

  All this reaction in him—probably even the running away—had to do with that, with losing Eddie. He’d had a couple of days to think about it and, bright kid that he was, had come up with this theory . . . There was this minimum amount of acceptance everybody needed to get along, no matter where they were. With Steven, it was this house. And up until last week it had been close but there was enough. He was at absolute zero—until you factored Eddie in. And even though he hadn’t been living at home for a while, Eddie had always been there in a way. His presence, his attitude, was felt. And Frannie, too, though not so much. Still, though, he gave Frannie (in those hours while the drugs were wearing down and he hadn’t yet called Mom) a plus three, more than anyone he lived with. And Eddie? Geez, Eddie was off the chart, maybe plus a hundred and six on a scale of one to ten. He couldn’t exactly figure it out, but he knew that to Eddie he had been about the funniest, smartest, most fun little (but not so little) brother in history.

  So with Eddie in the picture he belonged, weird though it sometimes felt here. He was accepted because Eddie dug him. Anyway, that’s what it all felt like now, after he’d figured it out a little. So when Eddie had died, he’d been left with a vacuum, and he hadn’t felt like he could continue to survive in that—not here at home. Not anymore.

  Now, since he’d been hurt, he honestly thought something had changed. Of course, it didn’t really count with everybody feeling sorry for him and trying to be nice. Most of all Mom. Mom, trying like hell.

  It probably wasn’t even conscious, but he knew he had become just a duty to her, like a paper drive or a cake sale, and Mom had always been somebody you could count on for that stuff.

  Here she was now, Steven keeping his eyes closed, breathing regular, pretending to be asleep. Hand on the forehead to check for a fever, then tuck the blankets around. He opened his eyes a crack, groggy.

  “How you feeling, honey?”

  “Fine.”

  “Really? Anything I can get you?”

  Slow shake of the head. She sits on the bed. He can feel her trying to say something else, but settles for reaching out a hand, rubbing it across his cheek. It feels oddly cold. He opens his eyes again.

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  Her brave smile—still thinking of Eddie. It’s so obvious. But he can’t really worry about that. A little fake smile. “You just get better,” she says. “Take it easy and get better.”

  She looks at her watch. Time for another dose? No, he doesn’t hurt that bad. Close the eyes again. He feels her get up from the bed.

  Alone again.

  How about talking, Mom? How about suggesting I sit up and do something with you? Not just how I’m feeling. Well, it wasn’t going to happen for a while. She wasn’t ready for it. And it wasn’t as though he thought he could take Eddie’s place. Nobody could do that. But maybe if she’d just recognize him as something other than a duty they could start to get somewhere.

  He didn’t want much, he thought. If only he could do something to make Mom see him, maybe value him a little bit. That’s all he needed, really. And it might fill in some of the hole left by Eddie. Probably not much, but maybe enough.

  But Mom seemed below zero herself, and that made him real nervous, maybe more nervous than anything else.

  Erin wore a green jogging suit and tennis shoes. The low white socks had a little pom-pom on the back just over each heel, and Hardy found himself staring at them as he followed her back into the house.

  He tried to keep staring at the pom-pom, because seeing Erin Cochran in a jogging suit—even when she was still so obviously distraught—made him realize that another result of the sense of new life he was experiencing was a general increase in his libido.

  “What’s funny?” she said.

  They had come out onto the deck into the bright sunlight and he’d been admiring something other than the pom-poms when she’d turned and caught him. He didn’t think he ought to discuss it with her.

  “The way my mind works,” he said, striving to be suitably enigmatic. He pulled one of the multicolored canvas chairs out for her, catching a slight whiff of Ivory soap.

  There was a wide red-and-green umbrella stuck through the center of the table. The sun was high, and he pulled his own chair in close to hers so they could share the shade.

  “And how does your mind work?” She touched his arm lightly, reminding him of the way both she and Big Ed had used a hand on his arm to guide him on the day of the funeral. She looked directly into his eyes.

  But no way was she flirting. She was one of those people to whom the world was a straightforward place. Obviously, she was happily married to Big Ed and, at the moment, grief-stricken. She couldn’t be bothered with whether or not eye contact could be misinterpreted. The hand on the arm, though, the wide serious brown eyes—it was disconcerting.

  “How does my mind work?” Hardy repeated. “Very slowly, I’m afraid.”

  “No
, I don’t think so.” She poured coffee into two plain brown mugs and shifted the sugar-and-cream tray closer. “I don’t think so.”

  “Rusty clock, guaranteed. Tick . . .” He paused, looked around, came back to her eyes. “Tick. Like that.”

  It was the first time Hardy had seen anything like humor in her eyes. She took her mug in both hands and leaned back in her chair.

  “Jim—Father Cavanaugh—came by last night. Evidently there’s a suspect?”

  “You didn’t see the paper?”

  She shook her head. “With Steven, now . . . ,” she began, then stopped.

  “How is he?”

  She lifted her shoulders, noncommittal. “Anyway, the suspect is the reason I called.”

  “Well, I think we have two, actually.”

  He explained a little about Cruz, then went back and covered Alphonse. She listened, but her eyes were out of focus somewhere over the middle of her backyard. When Hardy finished she didn’t react in any way.

  “Mrs. Cochran?” he said.

  She might have been talking to herself, trying to find reason in something absurd. “Two people,” she said. “Two people might have killed Eddie, wanted to kill Eddie. How could two different people want to kill my Eddie.” It wasn’t a question. Hardy looked down into his mug. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  “But you think it happened?”

  He shrugged. “It seems to be the only other option. You were certain he didn’t kill himself.”

  “I don’t know what’s worse.” She closed her eyes. “Now I don’t know why I called you,” she said, apologizing, trying and failing to smile. “I mean, I keep thinking something, like some”—she paused—“some information is going to make a difference. I keep thinking we’ll find out something and I won’t feel this way anymore. It’s stupid, really.”

  “No, it’s not stupid. It’s pretty natural.”

  She fixed him with a dark glare. “It’s stupid! Nothing’s going to bring Eddie back.” Shocked at herself, she leaned forward in her chair, quickly, putting her hand on Hardy’s arm again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  Hardy fought the urge to cover her hand with his own. She didn’t need any kind of comfort right now. Or maybe she needed it, but it wouldn’t take. Waste of time to try. Hardy was matter-of-fact. “It’s natural to be curious about the truth. Once you know what happened, you can put it somewhere. It’s not stupid.”

  She took a couple of deep breaths. “Jim said more or less the same thing.”

  “Jim’s right.”

  She found a little nugget in that. “Of course,” she said, her face softening. “Jim’s always right.” She continued the deep breathing. “So what does it mean, the suspects?”

  “It means you might have a better idea of what really happened. With luck, you’ll get some kind of a motive. Frannie stands to collect some insurance.”

  “That’s good. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s the reason I took this job in the first place. But, as you say, none of it is going to bring Eddie back. Nobody’s pretending it will. It’s just a place to move on from, that’s all.”

  “Where to?” she said all but to herself.

  The coffee had gotten cold. The shade had moved enough so that Hardy’s head was now in the sun. He shaded his eyes briefly with his left hand. “That’s everybody’s question.”

  She lowered her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m still all inside myself.”

  As they took in the coffee stuff, she started talking about Steven. Though he remained on the pain drugs and was sleeping a lot, he’d sat up for the first time the previous night, talking to Jim and Big Ed. He acted sulky to her, or toward her, she couldn’t tell which. “It’s like the more I try to do for him, the more he withdraws,” she said.

  Dismas carried the mugs and rinsed them before putting them upside down on the drain.

  She felt guilty, subjecting him and everybody else to this eating, horrible pain. It wasn’t his business. She was becoming a talking junkie, where as long as someone was there to talk to, it kept it at a bearable distance. It shamed her, feeling that way, talking intimately to near-strangers, but she couldn’t help herself.

  She heard a faint “Mom” from the back of the house. “Would you like to see him?” she asked. “It’s pretty lonely for him in there.”

  Steven had pushed himself up again, crookedly. She reached behind him to straighten the pillow.

  “Come on, Mom.”

  It was hopeless. He nearly cringed at her touch. She turned with a half-broken smile. “Do you remember Mr. Hardy?”

  He nodded. “You find the guy that killed Eddie?”

  “We think so.”

  It was too dark in the room for such a beautiful day. Erin pulled up the shade. “Would you like the window open?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Then to Dismas: “Father Jim said you were sure.”

  Dismas came up and sat at the foot of the bed. “We ought to be sure by tonight.” He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet, then extracted a blue card and held it out to Steven. “Last one got pretty bent up,” he said. “You want it?”

  To her surprise, he took it.

  “Thank you,” he said. Just like that, formally. Not “Thanks” or “Sure,” but “Thank you.” Then: “What’s keeping you from being sure?”

  Dismas kind of laughed and shrugged at the same time.

  “Can you tell me? I mean, all about it?”

  Dismas looked at her, and she nodded. It was good he was starting to come out of the pain, show some interest in living.

  But she wasn’t sure whether she could handle hearing it all gone over again. “Are you hungry, Steven? Would you like some lunch?”

  He paid no attention to her, all his concentration on Dismas.

  “You’re not too tired?” he asked Steven, catching her eye with a question. She nodded that it would be okay.

  “No. I do nothing ’cept sleep anyway.”

  “Well, I’ll go make a sandwich,” she said. Dismas was already talking before she was out of the room.

  Hardy sat at the Cliff House waiting for Pico to arrive for lunch. He was able to see clear to the Farallones. In front of him about a hundred sea lions cavorted on and around Seal Rock.

  The place, jammed on weekends, was not too bad here on a Tuesday afternoon. He got a table by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows without any wait; his waitress was friendly but not too, and didn’t even blink when he’d ordered his two Anchor Steams at once. He was halfway through the first.

  His instinct had been to go back to the Shamrock, maybe take on his regular shift again or at least crow a little to Moses. But driving toward the place from the Cochrans’, he decided not to jinx himself. One more day, or—more likely—a few hours, would be worth it to make sure the thing was nailed down.

  He couldn’t tell Moses he’d almost cracked the case, that almost surely Eddie had been murdered, that it was likely Fran would get some insurance, and oh, by the way, there was a chance that Moses owed him a quarter of the bar.

  So he’d called Pico and turned west on Lincoln toward the Cliff House instead of east to the Shamrock. He’d told Pico he wanted to celebrate, but perhaps he’d been premature even in that. Everything with Jane seemed to be going so well, the case had just about concluded. So what was wrong with him that he couldn’t be happy? Was he so much out of practice?

  He sipped at his beer, watching the waves break against the rocks below him, and tried to figure it out. The feeling—the old gut “something is really wrong” feeling—started while he was talking to Steven. He’d started in with that just to loosen things up over there, because Steven so obviously needed to feel involved. He knew the kid couldn’t really help him at this stage. There was nothing left to do.

  Out on the ocean a couple of tugs were pulling a ship toward the Golden Gate. Hardy watched it for a while, the
n looked beyond it, up the Marin coast, seemingly all the way to Oregon. It was still a postcard day—a cloudless sky, the blue-green benign sea.

  All right, so it seemed he’d finished the case, at least as far as he was concerned. He was spending all this time wondering why he wasn’t happy, when really, why should he be happy? It wasn’t like it had been a laugh riot. Maybe there would be some small sense of accomplishment down the line about the money he’d helped Frannie get or something like that, but he couldn’t escape the basic ugliness he’d been mucking around in.

  But it wasn’t just that. Talking to Steven, trying to get it all straight for the boy, it had gone a little crooked on him. Almost every move he’d made had followed from a basic set of assumptions he had developed in the first day or two of looking at it. What if all those assumptions, or even one of them, had been wrong?

  He shook his head. It was a police matter now. The proof would come out—possibly was coming out right now downtown—and then it would be over. It wasn’t his problem anymore.

  So what that someone had called in about the body from a phone booth three miles away from the Cruz lot? What did it matter if Alphonse killed Linda with a knife and Eddie was shot? And couldn’t Cruz really have lied out of pure fear, not necessarily to cover up a murder?

  Sure. Sure, and sure.

  But there was one other thing. It had occurred to him—like a remembered taste—while he was talking to Steven, some vague feeling that he had said something that he had overlooked before about Eddie’s murder, and it didn’t have shit-all to do with either Arturo Cruz or Alphonse Page.

  He stared at the ship as it continued its slow progress toward the Bridge, sipping Anchor Steam, damned if he could put his finger on what the hell it was.

  29

  DICK WILLIS OF THE Drug Enforcement Agency was sure it was one of those situations where the guy’s name had absolutely determined what he was going to be in life. Bargen had probably been called Plea since the first grade.