Sweet Dreams, Irene ik-2

by Jan Burke

  “Frank punched somebody? Another detective?” I was having trouble getting all of this to sink in. Frank is not someone who goes around punching people.

  “Yeah,” said Pete, more subdued.

  “You said Thompson made a crack. What kind of crack did he make?”

  “A wisecrack.”

  “Pete. Don’t.”

  “Okay, okay. The guy made a crack about you. Satisfied? Some stupid remark about the paper not getting to bed on time.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes. And Frank would probably have let it pass any other day, but I’m telling you, since this Fremont thing, he’s been impossible. Impossible. He’s a powder keg. That’s why Bredloe suspended him.”

  “Pete, why was Bredloe so angry down at the harbor?”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Shit, Irene, don’t tell me you were there.”

  “I was there.”

  “You poor kid. Damn, that shook me up. Bredloe wasn’t really angry, just concerned. He knows Frank isn’t happy with Carlson, but he keeps hoping they’ll work things out. Besides, Frank hasn’t been himself lately.”

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  “You can’t really blame him. It would be too much for anybody. He’s been bothered by the Gillespie case; he’s let it get to him. I don’t know if he told you, but he’s done almost all the contact with the little girl’s parents. Kid’s father just sits in front of the TV, watching videotapes of her, crying. Hit Frank hard, I guess.

  “And back on Halloween night, when Mrs. Fremont died, he was losing it — Carlson picked up on it and told Frank he knew her too well to work on the case, and that he had enough on his plate with the Gillespie case. So that was bad, but Frank seemed to take it okay.”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, he seemed like he took it okay at the time. The next morning he was a wreck. That’s when the call came in about Tanner. He moved a little fast on that, but I understood — no telling how long Tanner was going to hang around. Besides, at that point, we just thought we were going to be questioning someone who had been in the park; we didn’t have much at all on the guy. We didn’t expect him to be armed, but you always kind of have that in the back of your mind. The guy started shooting before we got anywhere near him. Carlson thought we had put a bunch of civilians in danger.

  “Anyway, I told Carlson off about that. There wasn’t anybody else in the room — Tanner took off running, pulled out a gun, and everybody else ran outside. We didn’t fire on him until he fired on us, and we were the only ones in the building by then. Frank did pull a stunt so that I could get out, but I’ll be damned if I was going to tell that to Carlson. I’m telling you, Irene, Frank scared the living hell out of me in there.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  “Sorry — I shouldn’t be telling you all of this.” He sighed. “The job might not even be what’s eating at him. It’s November, and that’s Frank’s bad month anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Pete! Would I ask you if I did?”

  “No need to get nasty, Irene.”

  “Sorry. Just tell me why November is a bad month.”

  “His dad died in November. Thanksgiving.”

  I thought back to what Frank had told me about his dad’s death. I knew he had died about three years ago, from a heart attack.

  “Frank has been upset every year in November for the last three years?”

  “Well, it’s always hard on him, but this year is the worst I’ve seen him. Maybe just too many other things happening. I don’t know. I think he blames himself for his dad’s death.”

  “What? I thought his dad had a heart attack.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess Frank had been talking to his dad, then he went outside to play with his sister’s kid. He was only out there a minute when his mom started screaming. Frank ran in, and his dad was on the floor, clutching his chest. Frank did CPR, but his dad died anyway.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You know how many times I’ve told him there was nothing he could have done if he had stayed in that room talking to his dad?”

  I sat there, suddenly not caring a damn about the election, the newspaper, or anything else. Except Frank.

  “Where is he now, Pete?”

  “Home, I guess. He won’t talk to me. Could you try?”

  “Sure. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I’ll try. Thanks for telling me all of this.”

  I found Lydia and asked her to call me at Frank’s if anybody needed me. Then I located Stacee.

  “Something’s come up, Stacee, and I have to leave. Lydia knows how to get in touch with me.” I listed some of the things I had planned to do that morning; she was excited to take on the responsibility. I was a little afraid to give her so much, but that Monday night would be busier than the day, with the last of election eve to deal with. The next night would be endless.

  I raced down to Frank’s house. He didn’t answer the doorbell, but his car was in the driveway, so I pulled out my key and let myself in. I called to him as I opened the door, but there was no response. I kept calling all the way through the house, then saw he was sitting out on the back patio. A bottle of scotch sat next to him.

  “A little early in the day, isn’t it?” I said as I walked out into the backyard.

  He didn’t answer me or look at me.

  I moved around to where I could see his face. He looked like hell.

  I sat down next to him.

  “If you’re gong to defend my questionable honor with your bare knuckles, the least you can do is look me in the eye.”

  “Pete has a goddamned big mouth,” he spat, but at least he looked at me.

  “How long do you think this would have been a secret, anyway?”

  “With that bunch of hens, not long.”

  “Pete’s just worried about you. So am I.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Silence.

  “Look,” he said angrily, “I don’t need you to hold my hand every time I have a problem at work. Don’t you have an election to cover?”

  “A problem at work? Is that what this is? Face it, Frank. Something’s really wrong and you know it.”

  “It’s my problem.”

  “Our problem.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamn it, Irene, do you always have to have the last fucking word!?”

  “When it matters, yes.”

  More silence.

  “Go back to work.”

  “Talk to me.”

  He threw his glass against the wall of the house. I jumped, but I wasn’t going to back down.

  “Break every last piece of glass in the house if it makes you feel better. But talk to me, Frank.”

  “I told you, I can’t.”

  “Bullshit. You won’t.”

  He got up and walked into the house. I followed.

  “Give me my key back,” he shouted.

  “No way.”

  “I don’t want to be with you anymore, Irene. It’s not working. Go on, get out.”

  “You are a lousy liar, Harriman. And I don’t take orders from you.”

  “Goddamn it, get out of my house.”

  “Like I said, I don’t take orders.”

  He drew his hand back and took a step toward me, but the action seemed to startle even Frank. He backed down immediately and sank to the couch, as if defeated. I sat next to him.

  I lowered my voice, trying to ease things down a notch. “Wednesday morning, when I saw Mrs. Fremont, I told her you had invited me to Thanksgiving.”

  He put his head back and looked up at the ceiling. His jaw flexed with tension. I hated seeing him feeling like this, but not enough to let things stay as they were.

  “I was worried about meeting your mother, feeling afraid that she wouldn’t like me. Mrs. Fremont asked me if we loved each other.”

/>   He swallowed, but didn’t say anything.

  “You know, even though we’ve never said it to one another, I told her yes. Maybe I presumed something. Anyway, she said that if we did, then we had everything we needed in life, with or without your mother’s approval.”

  I took his hand. He didn’t pull back, but he let it lie lifelessly in my own, not responding.

  “Was I wrong, Frank?”

  He looked at me then, and after a moment he whispered, “No.”

  “Then let me hold you.”

  He did. I held his head against my shoulder, stroking his hair, not talking. He seemed to relax, and after a while I wondered if he was falling asleep.

  “If I had listened to you, she wouldn’t be dead,” he said in a low voice.

  “What?”

  “You wanted to come here that night. I insisted on going out.”

  “And you think she wouldn’t have been killed anyway?”

  “I would have been here. I would have heard her.”

  “Frank, three other neighbors were home, they didn’t hear a thing. And if we had been here, we probably wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong until the next morning. Because we went out, you were able to get an investigation started within a couple of hours of the murder.”

  “Lot of good it did her to live next to a cop.”

  “You’re not God, Frank. You can’t be everywhere, watching over everybody. And besides, it did do her a lot of good to live next to you. She was crazy about you. Bragged on you all the time. I saw her earlier that same day, and she showed me what you did for the shelter. She told me you were a ‘keeper.’”

  “A what?”

  “A keeper, you know, a fish you don’t want to throw back.”

  Unbelievably, a small, fleeting grin crossed his face. But in the next moment, his eyes clouded up. “She was one of a kind.”

  I laughed. “I’ll never forget the first day she asked me to go running with her. Here I am expecting to jog-walk, and I end up winded before she’s even warmed up.”

  In spite of himself, he laughed, too. We sat quietly for a while, remembering Mrs. Fremont.

  “God, I’m tired,” Frank said. Maybe he was commenting on his life in general.

  “Come on, I’ll tuck you in.”

  That earned another small smile. He washed his face, then met me in the bedroom. I undressed him and pulled back the covers. He crawled in, then turned and reached up, taking the nape of my neck in his hand and pulling me to him gently. He kissed me, then said, “What, no bedtime story?”

  What the hell. My ass was in a sling at work anyway. I undressed and lay down beside him.

  Like Mrs. Fremont said, we had everything we needed in life.

  14

  “WELL, WELL, WELL — I can guess what kind of emergency you had at home.” Lydia’s comment made me blush to my roots.

  She laughed and said, “The gods must be watching over you, Irene. No one noticed you were gone. John’s been tied up in meetings about the Montgomery fiasco all morning, and Brady Scott called to say there would be a press conference this afternoon. Otherwise, all’s quiet.”

  I allowed myself a sigh of relief. “I was sure this was going to be the day City Hall caught on fire.”

  We talked for a moment and then I walked back over to my desk. I looked over some notes that Stacee had left for me. I didn’t like admitting that she was doing a good job, but she was. I wondered why someone with her brains and abilities would ever get next to Wrigley. She had talent, why use her skirts? I grinned to myself, thinking maybe that was a talent in itself.

  I never have been much of a flirter. I don’t consider myself an ugly duckling, but I’m not Miss America, either. I’m not the kind of woman who gets her way by batting her eyelashes. If I did bat my eyelashes, someone would probably hand me a bottle of eyewash. For a moment, I wondered if I might be jealous of the Stacees of this world.

  Another moment’s thought, and I knew I didn’t envy her. She was going to have to put up with the attentions of the likes of Wrigley. When I had talked to her a few days ago, she had said something about Wrigley making a fool out of her. She would have to live not only with his whims, but with the kind of lack of respect from her coworkers that had made her run from the newsroom that day.

  I sat back in my chair and looked up at the holes in the ceiling, imagining a self-help group called “Flirters Anonymous.” “Hi, my name’s Buffy and I’m a flirter. I once whored my way to the top of a large corporation, and woke up in the gutter.” Murmurs of sympathy in the group. Flirters are featured on afternoon talk shows. Pretty soon, offshoot groups start — Adult Children of Flirters.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I sat up so suddenly, I nearly rolled the chair out from under me.

  Stacee was standing next to me, puzzled by my suddenly crimson cheeks.

  “Nothing, nothing. How’s it going?”

  “Fine. I got some of those quotes you wanted on various people’s predictions of the election outcome. Did everything go okay at home?”

  Her obvious concern further shamed me. “Things are much better. I appreciate your taking over for me. Want to go to the Montgomery press conference with me?”

  “Sure.”

  As further penance for my daydream, I asked her to join me for lunch as well. We drove down to the Galley and ordered a couple of sandwiches.

  “This sure is better than the deli downtown,” she said, delicately biting into a chicken salad sandwich.

  “Yeah, Frank turned me on to this place. Someday you’ll have to try the pastrami. Out of this world.”

  “Is Frank your boyfriend?”

  I cringed. I’ve never liked the term “boyfriend.”

  “He’s the man I’m seeing now, yes,” I answered coolly.

  She was unfazed. “He’s a cop?”

  “He’s a homicide detective.” Don’t ask me why I felt like I had to keep refining her vocabulary on the matter.

  Her eyes grew wider. “Homicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “That must be exciting!”

  Good grief, she was starting to squeal. I was regretting my decision to bring her along. But you can’t go back on your penance. Against Catholic Hoyle.

  “I suppose sometimes it is exciting,” I replied. “But it can also be pretty hard on a person. They see the handiwork of some very cruel people. Frank just finished working on the Gillespie case.”

  Her face fell, all the silliness of a moment ago leaving her. She swallowed hard and said, “The little girl?”

  I nodded, and somehow, my appetite was gone. I pushed a dollop of potato salad around on my plate for a while, then gave up.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve upset you, haven’t I?”

  “No, no — I just feel badly for the family. Crazy, really — I never met them, just read about them. And I could tell that this case really bothered Frank.”

  “I can see why. It must be awful, having to investigate something like that.”

  I didn’t answer, just thought about Frank, how lost he seemed lately.

  “Irene?”

  I focused back on Stacee. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think you’re being treated very fairly at the paper.”

  I had to laugh. “You don’t, huh?”

  She blushed. “I mean, the way people talk. And being taken off crime stories. It doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “I can handle it. A friend of mine once told me that having people talk about you is an indication of how much more exciting your life is than theirs.” I smiled, thinking of O’Connor, who didn’t hesitate to outrage the newsroom every now and then.

  “Not necessarily,” she said glumly, obviously aware that she was as much — if not more — the focus of newsroom gossip.

  I wasn’t going to pursue it. She had, so to speak, made her own bed.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and we made our way to the press conference.

  The room was crowded. The accusations a
bout Satanism and the high drama of the last twenty-four hours had attracted press from outside of Las Piernas, and many L.A. radio, TV, and newspaper reporters had shown up. I saw one of the photographers from the Express, and nodded to her. Brady Scott walked out and said that Mr. Montgomery and his daughter would be with us in a moment to read prepared statements. Following the statements, Brady would be available for questions, but Mr. Montgomery and his daughter would not. Mr. Montgomery had a very busy schedule to meet, on this the last day of campaigning, and he appreciated our understanding.

  This sent a rumble of commentary through the room. Although I knew she had been released, I hadn’t expected Montgomery to put Julie up to a public recanting of her confession. Apparently, my cohorts were equally surprised.

  The room was suddenly filled with flashes and the sound of camera motors as Monty Montgomery and Julie walked into the room. Monty was all smiles. Julie, on the other hand, was solemn. She carried herself proudly, but she was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes to attest to what must have been a long night.

  Montgomery spoke briefly, saying he regretted that the public had been given a false impression by an unfortunate childish prank on the part of his daughter. “The police have never charged her with any crime, and there is absolutely no reason to believe she was in any way involved in any cases under investigation by the Las Piernas Police. It would indeed be a travesty if the premature publication of a scurrilous report in the Las Piernas News Express influenced the outcome of the election.”

  He sat down, and Julie slowly made her way to the podium. She cast a quick look at me, then began to speak, reading from a text. “I apologize to the Las Piernas Police for misdirecting their time and energy, and appreciate their understanding.” She stopped, and looked back at me. “I also owe an apology to certain people at the Las Piernas News Express, who became unwittingly involved in my — escapade.” I could see Monty Montgomery and Brady Scott grow nervous at her departure from the text. Scott stood up and watched her anxiously.

  “The text Mr. Scott has given me says that I’m to tell you that this was merely a prank on my part, of which I am ashamed. I do regret the pain it has caused my father. However, I could not condone my father’s own prank, his lie that Brian Henderson’s son is a Satanist. I wanted to even things out…” By now Brady Scott had made his way over to the podium and turned off the microphone. Montgomery was right behind him, looking for all the world like a snake oil salesman who has had to swallow his own merchandise. Shouts and questions went up from the reporters, making it impossible to distinguish anything anyone said. Julie was ushered out by her father, and Brady Scott returned to the podium. He turned the microphone back on and motioned to everyone to sit back down.