Of all the cops’ wives I’d grown up around I liked Kate best. She was Billy’s wife, trim for her age with a wide, kind face. Her eyes assessed me gently. “When are you coming for Sunday dinner, love? It’s been too long.”
“Soon. Honest.” Her invitation was a standing one. Sometimes in the winter, or when I needed reassurance there were still good people in the world, I took her up on it.
“Still no beau?” asked Bridie Molloy.
“You should come to the parish dances. There’s a couple of fine new lads been coming,” put in Mary Kennedy.
“Is that your angel cake back there looking ready to float away?” I replied.
Mary giggled delight. Giving my hands a quick squeeze Kate let me make my escape.
I drifted through a throng of mostly older cops and their wives, stopping here and there to chat, in the process of which I collected more hugs and handshakes than I wanted. Being back in the circle of people who’d watched me grow up always pulled me in two directions. I felt smothered and overvalued; fretted over by well-meaning people who were sure I’d be happier married and looked after. Yet I somehow felt strengthened by their very predictability. It was especially welcome tonight as I tried to shrug off my growing worry Al knew I was watching him.
“So that donkey’s arse Fuller tried to pin a murder on you, eh?” teased a middle-aged cop my Dad had gotten out of a jam once.
“And the good lieutenant’s been riding him like a donkey ever since,” grinned another.
Laughing along with them I moved on, finally reaching Seamus. There was barely time for me to give him his present and him to unwrap it before other people pressed in to offer good wishes. With a peck on the cheek and a promise to stop back later I bumped along.
I was hungry. A table draped with somebody’s good lace cloth held a ham that Kate and Bridie had baked in the parish oven. Surrounding it were mustard and bread and the angelfood cake which was Seamus’ favorite. I fixed a sandwich, bypassing a well-provisioned drinks table for a Guinness from Finn. At the foot of the bar I discovered an out-of-sight spot behind a small table stacked with empty crates that Finn had shoved there to make room for the party. Add an empty keg and I had privacy to sit and eat and talk myself out of the growing unease getting close to Al had planted in me.
Okay, so his car had slowed directly beside me as it left the dead-end street that afternoon. Surely he hadn’t recognized me standing at that wall in my men’s garb. It was just evidence of the same alertness to his surroundings he’d shown heading into a house where unless I missed my guess he’d killed a man – alertness that kept men like him and Woody Beale alive. I was worried for nothing. Probably. Otherwise he’d have put a bullet in my brain. Instead, I’d heard him move on. When I’d counted to twenty and looked he was disappearing down Findlay.
Taking a swallow of Guinness I nudged my thoughts toward what had happened next. Since I couldn’t follow Al, and the thug he’d met was moving toward a wood-slatted pickup, I’d followed him instead, glad I was driving Calvin’s jalopy. After a few blocks the thug in the pickup stopped at a house in a scrappy neighborhood. When he honked, two roughly dressed men came out. The three of them drove downtown and on, until after a bit I realized they were following one of Peter’s delivery routes.
“Hiding from Bridie’s matchmaking, are you?” asked Finn’s voice. He was standing at my end of the bar biting into a sandwich. Only a few crumbs remained of mine.
“You’re a smart man, Finbar.”
He winked. “If she starts talking about her nephew, run like it’s the devil himself.” He ambled up the bar to wait on a customer.
More time had passed than I realized. The crowd had thinned. Dusting crumbs from my hands I went to have a better chat with Seamus. A couple of well-wishers were just in the process of moving along and no one else was waiting. Seamus sat with the cap from me perched on his head and a handsome green sweater Kate had knitted draped over his shoulders. When he saw me he smiled and pulled over a chair.
“Come and sit. It’s not near as mad as it was when you first stopped by. Don’t have to shout now. This’s an awful fine cap for a head as ugly as mine. You shouldn’t have.”
“You deserve half a dozen,” I said patting his arm.
“Could only wear one at a time though. Anyway, thanks again.”
I raised the pint in my hand and we clicked glasses. Seamus was tall and gaunt. Forty-five years and more on American soil, yet the sound of Sligo still clung to him. His frame and the hollows of his long face called to mind the potato famine two generations before him. He had no family, and since my dad’s death a special link had grown between the two of us.
“All the ladies giving you sufficient advice on how to mend your ways?” he asked with a chuckle.
I grinned. Seamus didn’t judge, and he didn’t butt in. He was easy to be with. We yakked comfortably until a couple of flatfoots came over to razz him and I took my leave.
A few of the younger lads began to put in appearances. To my annoyance Mick Connelly wasn’t among them. It would suit me fine if our paths never crossed again, except I needed information and he was the only way I could think of to get it. Even then it would take some doing – not to mention gagging down my pride
Drifting to the edge of a group discussing the Pope’s encyclical against Nazis and Communists I turned my thoughts back to the pickup I’d followed that afternoon. When it stopped at a beer joint deep in a factory area the New Deal had brought back to life, I went past and pretended engine trouble, raising the hood to watch. No one got out of the pickup. No one got in. After ten minutes I got into Calvin’s jalopy preparing to leave.
The pickup beat me to it.
Lest I attract notice, I sat while they disappeared. I was reaching for the ignition when the truck nosed out of an alley across from where the men had been sitting. It moved slowly at first then picked up speed. Something about that rhythm kept me sitting. A few minutes later it came out of the alley again. The fellows in the pickup were either lost or I’d bet my bottom dollar they were looking over one of the buildings flanking the alley.
Billy interrupted my thoughts by grabbing me and reeling me around the floor while he lilted “The Merry Blacksmith”, having a fine old time on a single pint, which normally lasted him a whole evening. A few people started adding their lilt to his. I glimpsed Finn’s wife and Mavis Casey, who’d gotten around a few pints of cider. They’d linked arms and were doing some high steps. The art had been lost in my generation but it broke out among the older crowd at occasions like this.
My face was damp and I was getting my breath back when I looked up and saw Mick Connelly watching across the room. None of his buttons were undone, so he was working an extra shift again. That meant I didn’t have time to waste. I lifted my hair to cool the nape of my neck and sauntered toward him. He watched with nothing readable beyond alertness.
“Figured I’d save you having to walk over to me to make your apology,” I said extending my arm so he could see the bruise on my wrist. “I’ve been asked about it three times tonight.”
All color, as well as his habitual composure, drained from his face. He swallowed.
“I ... Jesus. I don’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t near adequate. I was.... May God strike me now if I’ve ever done anything like that to a woman before!”
I felt guiltier than I had in a good long time. No one had even noticed the bruise and I’d had to bang the back of my wrist on a bedpost a couple of times to produce the purple mark where he’d grabbed me during our angry exchange here on Saturday. To set it off, I’d worn my best blouse, delicate silk with lace at the cuff. I let the sleeve glide into place and shrugged.
“I’ve been told I get hot headed too. What you said that afternoon about Billy and Seamus, I know you meant well. So maybe we should bury the hatchet. There’s something I forgot to tell Freeze about Muley – the guy that got shot. Maybe I chose to forget, to tell you the truth. May not amount to
a hill of beans, but sometimes when you pull at a thread....”
He was silent, recovering his balance. “And you want a favor back,” he said after a minute. His voice had hardened.
“An address. And not if it bothers your conscience.”
He glanced at the door. “I’m on duty. Just ducked in to wish Seamus the best.”
“I’ll get to it, then. You might want to check whether Benny Norris bought an insurance policy shortly before he got killed.”
Connelly’s interest sharpened. “Insurance? Why?”
“When Muley called me he said Norris mentioned insurance last time they met. Norris let on like he’d just gotten it; said it would help him if he ever got in a tight spot.”
He crossed his arms. I could see his mind working.
“A small time crook like Norris?”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought too. Could be it’s not that kind of insurance. Could be it’s something he had on someone, or thought he had. Anyway, he was bragging about it.”
Connelly glanced at the door again. “I better get going.” He sent Seamus a farewell lift of the chin and the two of us walked toward the front. “What’s the address? What’s it got to do with any of this?”
I shook my head. “Only thing I know the address is connected to is the case I told you and Billy about the morning I found my office turned upside down. And that case is starting to look like sour grapes by a jilted lover.” Mentally, I crossed my fingers, even though in a manner of speaking Peter Stowe had jilted Al once he wised up to Al’s phony bait about being in pictures. “Address is for a guy named Al, maybe christened Albert Sikes. He’s rumored to work for Woody Beale.”
“That’s not someone to get mixed up with.”
“Clients don’t hire me to play social secretary.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He stopped, just short of the front door at Finn’s. His face had regained its discipline but one corner of his mouth twitched.
“For the record,” he said, “did I just hear the sound of snowballs melting?”
Thirty
My nose was buried in The Journal and I was eating my oatmeal when I felt someone slide onto the seat next to mine at McCrory’s next morning. Someone whose presence hummed like an engine and who smelled of shaving soap.
“Maybe there’s some true Irish girl left in you after all, eating porridge,” Connelly observed. “I’d have guessed you for toast and coffee.” He was wearing regular clothes, a sweater and jacket. He couldn’t have had much sleep but he looked chipper.
Izzy was right there to fill his cup and take his order for sausage and beans. Her eyes slid from him to me and she sent me a shy smile as she turned away.
“The name was right,” Connelly said quietly. He slid a folded scrap of paper toward me.
I opened it, glanced at the address, and nodded. “Thanks.”
“Fellow’s bad news,” he said in the same muted tone.
“I guessed as much by the man he works for.”
Our conversation was strangely private, lost in the sounds of clattering crockery, shoes clicking over the wooden floor behind us, rustling papers, the back and forth of louder voices. I ate some oatmeal. Connelly drank some coffee. The stool on the other side of me cleared and the woman who claimed it lighted a cigarette. I swivelled away from the smoke.
“Let’s switch,” said Connelly sliding my bowl across and leaving his stool before I could protest. When we were settled he leaned on one elbow blocking part of the smoke. “Figure it’s what killed your dad, do you?”
“Yeah.” I figured Billy had told him. “Go ahead, though, if you’ve a mind.” I was almost finished and one more addition to the cloud at the lunch counter wouldn’t make much difference.
“Gave it up.” Cutting an inch from the sausage Izzy had just delivered he chewed efficiently. “Saw I’d have more in my pocket to send back to Ma every month.”
I had my address. There was no reason for me to stick around. Safer not to. I could start to like Connelly, and that would lead to too many complications.
I took a final spoonful of oatmeal, left money for Izzy and scooted off. Now was my chance to keep an eye on Al, and I didn’t want Connelly or Beale’s boys either one keeping an eye on me.
* * *
Before Connelly sat down next to me at McCrory’s I’d been following crumbs like Hansel and Gretel. The address he gave me that morning led straight to the witch’s house.
From time to time a neighbor let me use his car for a couple of bucks. It was a blue Ford like a million others and my backside was going to sleep from sitting in it when Al, resplendent in his dove gray topcoat and custom-made Uhrig hat came lightly down the steps of his small brick house an hour shy of noon. I couldn’t judge his cufflinks or gun or brass knuckles. Ten minutes later his Buick Century was headed north on Main with me trailing. When it looked more and more like The Owl was his destination, I took my own route and was settled cozily behind a delivery van across from the club by the time he turned into the parking lot.
He spent under twenty minutes at Beale’s place, which by day seemed unlikely to offer much enticement beyond conferring with Beale himself. When he came out he went all the way down to Kettering and spent a full hour parked in front of an office building. Then he went to the Biltmore where he probably had some lunch and where I couldn’t risk trying to see if he met anyone. Then he got a haircut at Ollie’s, or at least was inside long enough. Then he went home.
I was brooding some over whether he’d spotted me and was leading me on a goose chase, and wondering if I should give up for the day, when he came out again. If he headed north he’d likely be bound for The Owl, in which case I’d give it up for the day, but instead he went south.
By now it was after five, getting on toward quitting time. Traffic made my tango down Main with him tricky, and I almost lost him once when the light at Third changed against me. The reward came when he pulled to the curb in front of the same building where he’d sat for an hour at noontime. Was Al watching the place? Was this a stop I’d forgotten from Peter’s list of deliveries? Or could Al be waiting for someone?
Whichever it might be, he wasn’t using the paved parking lot in front of the building. That suggested he didn’t want to be noticed. So I sailed into the lot and parked near the door, just another good little wife picking hubby up at the end of the day.
The building in front of me didn’t look like a candidate for the sort of break-ins that had been in the news. It was an office building, not a factory or warehouse whose inventory could be shoved quickly into trucks. It was modern, three stories, wide more than tall with a skinny portico tacked across the tan brick to gussy it up. Al had to be watching for someone. Maybe somebody who was avoiding him. Or maybe they just didn’t want to be seen together inside.
People started to trickle out, swelling quickly into a steady stream. Girls from the typing pool made for the street and the trolley line a few blocks away. Bosses savored stogies as they strolled toward cars with big fenders and polished chrome. Managers got into lesser models where the little missus waited behind the wheel. Those a little lower joined the parade of clerks and such whose paychecks didn’t yet cover an automobile. I watched movement rather than individuals, hoping I’d spot it if someone noted Al and gave it away.
Someone did.
He was in his late thirties, medium build. Straw colored hair deepened to brown at his temples and the brown won entirely on his mustache. He was walking with an older man. By their suits and their confident gaits I placed them as bosses. The older guy offered the towhead a stogie. They were just lighting up when the towhead glanced toward the street and saw Al’s Buick. He froze for a second before snapping his lighter shut and resuming the conversation at hand. Another minute elapsed. He said something that made the other man laugh. The towhead turned and began to saunter back toward the building. The older man got in his glossy car. As soon as it rolled clear of the parking lot, the man I was w
atching turned and made for the street.
In my side mirror I could see Al lowering the curbside window. The towhead leaned down and they talked. A periodic gesture and toss of his head suggested anger. He crossed his arms and kept on talking, stabbing his finger once for emphasis. He acted more belligerent than afraid. I wondered if that was smart.
Bits of information had started popping inside my brain. Something Mae had said about Benny ... Kettering.... A fancy building. That was it: “He wasn’t going to be a patsy just because some muckety-muck in a fancy building in Kettering got cold feet.”
And the manicurist from Ollie’s– .
My chain of thought broke as the Buick door opened and the towhead got in. Was he going voluntarily? My hand hovered at the ignition. But I’d followed Al all day. I was on the edge of making sense of things now. If he spotted me he’d close down and out wait me. Or worse. Peter would still be in danger, and I’d bear the black mark of not delivering for my client.
Instead I scooted into the building. They’d be locking the door soon, and I wanted a peek at the building directory.
It didn’t dish out the big plate of help I was hoping to get. None of the business names on the board suggested they peddled insurance. A third gave no hint at all what they did. From the floor above I heard the sound of the elevator descending. Since I meant to come back tomorrow, I didn’t want to be seen. I hurried out.
* * *
Back at the office I propped my legs on the desk and picked up the phone.
“Officer Connelly there?” I asked when the desk sarge at H.Q. answered.
“Think so – about to head out.”
I could hear curiosity.
“Tell him Eve needs a fast word.”
Finding another place as nice as Mrs. Z’s for what I could afford would be hard, if not impossible. I didn’t want to abuse the new arrangement she’d made with the key, and I’d had all the sitting I wanted for one day. Besides, the place the thugs in the pickup had been eyeing yesterday was one which Flora Throckmorton had marked “big” on her list of customers Peter had visited with Al. If I repaid Connelly’s favor, I might coax another one out of him somewhere down the line.
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