Black Irish

by Stephan Talty

  “Home.”

  He nodded.

  “You?”

  “Couple of biker bars.”

  “Oh, right, the Outlaws massacre.”

  “No, I just like to hang out in biker bars. Care to join me?”

  “Are you asking me out on a date, Detective Mills?”

  “Call it anything you like. Just come have a beer with me.”

  Abbie smiled. “I’d only talk shop and bore you half to death.”

  “It’s you or my asshole partner. Have a heart, Kearney.”

  “Another time. You have a good night, Detective.”

  She got in the car, started it up, and began to pull out of the lot. Mills came walking toward the car. She lowered the passenger window and he leaned his arms on the sill.

  “I know you know this already, but you don’t want this guy taking a personal interest in you.”

  “I’m a big girl, Mills. But thanks.”

  He looked like he wanted to say more, but only nodded and stood up.

  In the rearview, she saw him watching her until she turned a corner three blocks down.

  The ride home took her along the Niagara River, high now as it surged toward the Falls, powering the lights of Buffalo from the enormous power stations built into the banks farther up. This was where the daredevils and the hapless boaters who went over the Falls in barrels would first become aware of the power of the Niagara, the jetting bursts of white water erupting across it above the boulders that dotted the riverbed like teeth. Now the water’s surface was only a few feet from the level of the road, and the river threw lashes of spray across her windshield as it surged past.

  The windshield wipers worked back and forth as she reviewed each piece of evidence, returning obsessively to a few relevant facts. The pieces didn’t fit and Abbie knew it. Jimmy Ryan and Gerald Decatur, if they were setting up some kind of drug deal, were so far out of the majors that the deal couldn’t have been worth more than a few thousand dollars. Neither had the contacts or the money to shift more product than that. And what kind of a drug connect works his victims over for what is walking-around money for even a medium-sized distributor? And then comes back to leave a souvenir to taunt the lead detective?

  Abbie had the feeling that she hated most as an investigator: of walking along a path, feeling that she was getting closer to the truth but slowly realizing that her trail of small clues and inferences isn’t leading her to the killer, but running parallel to his path. The gnawing sense that the killer wasn’t walking ahead of her, running for his life, but was actually right beside her, just over her shoulder, watching, confident of outwitting her.

  Maybe the County has intimidated me without knowing it, she thought. Maybe I’m being too nice. I’m respecting the old neighborhood too much. I’ve been approaching this case like I owe the County something.

  “I don’t owe it a goddamn thing,” she thought, then realized she’d muttered the words into the humming silence of the car.

  Someone had carved up two human beings, and the source of that rage lay within the two-mile-square radius of the County. She was sure of it. But the residents had been strangely silent. Where were the phone calls demanding progress on the case? Patty Ryan refused to answer her calls. Where were the other cops hanging by her desk, asking for tidbits they could feed the grieving widow?

  “Patty, they have someone they like. Just be patient.”

  Or:

  “Patty, I spoke to Kearney and this one is going to be solved. I can’t say anything more, but trust me.”

  No one had called, no one had come by. The County had buried Jimmy Ryan in some corner of its ancient memory, in an unmarked plot, or a plot known only to a select few, and Abbie didn’t even know why.

  And where did the Gaelic Club fit? The little murder wave could have its roots in the back-room stuff that Billy Carney had gotten a glimpse of. But they could have been cooking up anything: political deals, corrupt business schemes, new drug routes. Untangling the lines would be like cutting wires on a bomb. You never knew which one would blow the whole County wide open.

  She checked the speedometer—92 mph—and eased her foot off the pedal. The black, light-spangled arch of the Peace Bridge passed by on her right, the steel struts black against a gray-black sky. She pushed the button for the passenger window and let some of the water-choked air that swept across the river blow through the car. The spray—beaten to a near-mist by the rocks and the surge of the river—woke her up. Abbie breathed in a gulp of the cold northern air and then hit the button again. Soon she was sealed tight in the car as it headed south, listening to Depeche Mode sing about love and silence.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE NEXT MORNING, AS ABBIE WALKED INTO ROBBERY-HOMICIDE, PERELLI looked at her from under his thick black eyebrows like she’d stolen his kids’ lunch money.

  “You have anything you want to tell me?” he said.

  “I left you a report on the Decatur case. There’s a connection.”

  “Drugs?”

  “We don’t know yet. I’m not ready to call it a drug deal yet.”

  “Well, get ready to call it something. It sounds like the killer is practically begging you to catch him. These guys in the County aren’t international arms dealers with Lear jets and three passports. They have limited means, limited connections. They’ve barely been out of Buffalo their whole lives. The list of suspects has got to be a short one.”

  Abbie took a deep breath, clenched her right hand and released it. “I know that. When I have the guy, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”

  He looked at her, his lips pursed. “I’d better be.”

  As she walked to her cubicle, she could feel Z examining her from behind.

  “You look exhausted,” he said. “Did you sleep?”

  “I slept fine.”

  “I hate it when you lie to me. Hurts my feelings.”

  “Then don’t ask stupid questions.”

  “Listen, Linda wants you to come over for dinner. The kids miss you.”

  Abbie felt herself soften a bit.

  “How are they? Is Junior walking?”

  “No, but he’s eating. I think he’s going to roll before he walks.”

  “He is the cutest.”

  “Come by and see. Tomorrow night. Pasta and Molson Golden ale.”

  “Tell Linda thanks. But I just don’t have time right now.”

  She felt the needles in the back of her brain, like a series of wires had broken and the ends were sticking into her nerves.

  Abbie parked near her house and walked down Elmwood Avenue toward her favorite taco spot. The street was dotted with old Victorians, and years ago as part of an urban revitalization project they’d been painted in wild, bold colors: lavender and hunter green, pistachio and lime. Just walking down the street made you feel like you’d entered a fairy tale, though some of the paint was now peeling around the corners and doors. A few of the Victorians had been turned into boardinghouses by owners unable to meet the mortgage payments; one had even become a halfway house for heroin addicts. That was the one with the men smoking on the porch all day long.

  It was Abbie’s dream to buy one of the big Victorians and bring it back to its glory, refurbishing it painstakingly by hand, putting down the new polyurethane herself, choosing the new and unfashionable wallpaper, scouring church sales and yard sales for the right dining room table. Every time she walked down Elmwood, she would debate which was her current favorite, what she would buy if a hundred thousand dollars fell into her lap. Right now it was 182, a rambling gray and white beautiful monstrosity with a widow’s walk and two tall spires that were topped in black tiles that made them look like pinecones.

  She stopped in front of the house, feeling the late afternoon sunshine across her face, and imagined herself two years from now, in spring, painting the porch with old overalls on, waving to her neighbors and complaining about the weather. She felt a little stab of happiness for the first time in weeks.

/>   At Mighty Taco, she ordered a taco salad and a loganberry drink—a local specialty—and sat in one of the booths close to the window that looked out on Elmwood. Something about the plastic monkeys had been bothering her, lurking in the back of her thoughts but refusing to be nailed down. She stared out the window, trying to coax the thought from the back of her brain. She let her eyes unfocus. The edges of the passing cars and the steel-and-glass lawyer’s office across the street blurred, and Abbie listened to her own breathing, in and out, in and out.

  She visualized the first monkey. The paint—and it was paint, not a dye in the plastic itself—of the eyes and the red collar around the neck was worn down, even chipped. These toys were old, heavily used. The killer hadn’t gone out and bought a new set to leave behind. Assuming they belonged to the killer, he must have been saving them for years. Why?

  How many people save their favorite toys, she thought, and what does it mean if they do? Souvenirs of a happy childhood, or mementos of a howling nightmare, the beginning of his urges to kill? I have to track down the manufacturer. Find out when these things were last produced. Maybe that can give us a maximum age for the suspect. Assuming his parents bought them for him new.

  She was finishing the last bite of the taco salad when her phone rang.

  “Kearney.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Billy fucking Carney.”

  The flesh between her eyebrows creased. Billy sounded wide open.

  “I didn’t talk to anyone. What happened?”

  “I’ve been getting phone calls. Someone whispering and then laughing this evil little laugh.”

  “How many times?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Four or five. Always at night. I hung up once and a second later my cell phone rang, same bullshit.”

  Abbie told herself to think. Had she mentioned Billy to anyone? No, she hadn’t.

  “And there’s a car I’ve seen around my house three times since you dropped by. Next time I see it I’m gonna put a brick through its window.”

  “Slow down, Billy. I need details. What kind of car?”

  “Like you don’t know, Ab.”

  “Billy, Billy, listen to me. What … kind … of … car?”

  “A Taurus. A fucking green Taurus.”

  Abbie grabbed her jacket and slipped into it as she walked, fast, toward her Saab.

  “Okay. Tell me where you are. I need to talk to you if you want me to help you.”

  “I’m on top of City Hall with a fucking sniper rifle, okay? Aiming at police headquarters. Tell that to the fucks who’ve been tailing me. Or are they listening in right now?”

  Abbie got to her car, slipped into the driver’s seat, and started it up.

  “Tell me where you are, Billy. You need to talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to help you, and if there was anyone else who could, you’d have called them already.”

  Silence. She could hear traffic in the background. He was out in the open somewhere.

  “Tell me now, where—”

  “I’m in the Bowl.”

  “In the what?”

  “The Bowl, the baseball diamonds, Caz Park. Remember? Where I won the state title, Ab. Jesus Christ, doesn’t anybody remember anything about my fucking life?”

  Abbie began to drive down Elmwood.

  “Okay, I’m coming. Just stay there until I come. Don’t go anywhere, you hear me?”

  The line went dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE BOWL WAS A SUNKEN CIRCLE IN THE MIDDLE OF CAZENOVIA PARK, BETWEEN Seneca and Potters Road, where three baseball diamonds faced toward the center, one diamond tucked into each corner. The park itself was a huge, wild tangle of creeks, running trails, secret haunts for Abbott Road kids desperate to escape the eyes of their parents.

  When she got to the Bowl, she couldn’t see Billy. Plows had piled up mounds of snow and ice, scraped off the streets and dumped on the lip of the circle. And the dusk was coming down fast, sharp shadows stretching out across the snow from the line of trees that ringed the park, the light beginning to turn blue-black.

  But once she walked around them, she saw Billy. He was slumped on one of the bleachers, back to her, humped over, his arms folded across his knees and his head lying on his arms.

  “Billy,” she called.

  No movement. There was no steam from his breath rising above. The air in the Bowl was strangely motionless, the breeze passing above the sunken circle.

  “Billy!” she called, snapping back the edge of her jacket and pulling out her Glock. She swept the perimeter of the Bowl. But there was nothing, just an unbroken crust of white snow and shadows coming on fast.

  She dropped down the incline into the Bowl and began running. Billy still hadn’t moved. When she was ten feet away, he turned his head.

  “Christ, Billy,” she said, exhaling a cloud of steam into the cold air.

  He nodded but said nothing.

  Abbie climbed up on the cold plastic bleachers and sat next to him, holstering her gun before he could see it. Billy looked terrible. His hair was greasy and frozen into place. He looked like he’d slept in his jeans and the tan Carhartt jacket he was wearing. His boots were unlaced.

  “I still have the trophy,” he said.

  “The tro—? Oh.” Her brown eyes softened. “State championship.”

  “Yep. I pitched a three-hitter. That must have been the game that got me all the scholarship offers.”

  Abbie frowned sympathetically.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot,” Billy said. “I didn’t get any of those.”

  “Bad grades.”

  “Yep.” He looked out onto the field, the pitcher’s mound a hump under the snow, and nodded.

  “Tell me about the phone calls,” she said.

  “Just breathing, like I said. In the background, I could her music playing and once I thought I recognized the song. And then, the last one, a voice said, ‘Shut your mouth, Carney.’ ”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “I said, ‘Tell me who you are and I’ll shut yours, permanently.’ ”

  He turned to look at her.

  “Nice, right?”

  It was good to see he had recovered some of his fighting spirit. The Billy on the phone had sounded pretty far gone, a paranoid wreck. Then she saw the bottle of Molson Golden in his hands and realized that he’d been drinking to keep down the jitters.

  “I’m going to have someone check your cell phone records. I’m guessing a name didn’t come up?”

  He shook his head, took a sip from the Molson. Then he turned to her, and his face was ashen.

  “Why’d you turn me in, Ab?”

  “I didn’t turn you in, Billy. This has nothing to do with the feds or the Rez or anything like that.”

  “Sure it doesn’t.”

  “Billy, look at me.”

  He stared off at the row of trees, their trunks going from dark green to black as dusk settled over the Bowl.

  “Look at me, Billy.”

  He turned.

  “If there are people watching you, it’s because of what you told me in the Gaelic Club the other day.”

  Billy’s forehead creased and his eyes opened wide. He crouched over and his face came close to Abbie’s. His breath was sharp with alcohol and Abbie turned away.

  “That shit about Jimmy Ryan?”

  She nodded. “Yes. But it’s more than just Ryan now. We found another body and it’s the same killer.”

  “Who?”

  “Gerald Decatur.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “It’s the same killer. Believe me, okay?”

  Billy’s eyes wobbled. “It couldn’t be,” he said.

  Coiled and tense, he began to look around the wide circle, at the mounds of snow enclosing them.

  “What else do you know, Billy?”

  “What?!” he said, stopping his scan of the ho
rizon long enough to stare at her. “Like I haven’t told you enough already!”

  “There’s no one else here. I did a circuit around the Bowl before I came down and found you.”

  He looked at her, and nodded. “That’s good. That’s good. But they have all kinds of surveillance equipment. They can trace you by … what are those things called, up in the sky?”

  “This isn’t about satellites! Or men in trench coats or black helicopters or whatever else you have in your brain right now.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  It was growing colder. Abbie shifted to look him straight in the eye.

  “Whoever killed Jimmy Ryan and whoever is tracking you is probably someone you went to high school with. They grew up right here in the County. They’ve been to the bar, they’ve bought you drinks, they know the nickname you got when you were eight. And that’s how they’re going to get to you, Jimmy. Because you think they’re your friends.”

  He shook his head and took a long pull on the bottle.

  “It’s impossible, Ab.”

  “If you want them to stop tailing you, tell me what you know about what happened in that back room at the Gaelic Club.”

  Billy’s head dropped and he was still for a moment.

  “If this really is about them—”

  He stopped and stared at Abbie. His eyes looked exhausted, sick.

  “About who?” said Abbie.

  Billy closed his eyes.

  “The Clan.”

  “The Klan?”

  He smiled for the first time, but his eyes looked spooked when he opened them.

  “Not the one you’re thinking of,” he said quietly.

  “You’re telling me there’s another one?”

  “I gotta go, Ab,” he said.

  Abbie grabbed his arm. “Don’t make me shoot you, Billy.”

  He looked at her bare hand, small against the rough sleeve of his XXL Carhartt, then into her eyes. Then, gently, he pulled her hand away.

  The sun had gone down and the shadows were creeping out from the treeline. Billy shivered, and then slid down to the ground, his boots making a loud noise as they broke through the crust of ice.

  “Billy?”

  He turned to look at her. His face, she thought, had gone from fearful and defiant to haunted.