Dead Irish (21 page)

“I didn’t look at it that way. I changed careers, that’s all, killed off that romantic idiot. You can’t have things be that important. You lose things. That’s life. You gotta be able to deal with it.”

She ran a hand over the stomach of the man who’d been her first husband. He was smiling at her, in spite of what he was saying. Still a wonderful smile. She kissed him on the cheek, the ear, the neck. His arms came around her.

“So have you been happy?” she asked.

“I haven’t been unhappy. I haven’t thought much about it.”

“Except developed your theory of love the attitude, the love-without-pain theory.”

He shrugged. “It’s a good theory. Have you been happy? Who’s happy, anyway? It’s a dumb concept.”

“I’m happy right now,” she said. “I don’t need to think about what it all might mean tomorrow.”

“Another difference between us.”

But really, saying it all as if it were suddenly a pose, his lips curving up a little, eyes twinkling. “But this isn’t bad.”

“Thank you so much.”

The kiss now slow, deep, hands moving. Feeling his breath soft over her body. “This isn’t bad either. Or this. Or . . .”

“Diz?”

“Huh?”

“Shhh.”

It wasn’t often Rose couldn’t sleep.

The last time had been when they’d had the Paulist missionary for that week, and that had been in February, she thought, or March, she couldn’t really remember. She did know that when the diocese sent around the missionaries, she was more nervous about her cooking, her housekeeping. It was, she felt, a reflection on the fathers, and she didn’t want to do anything to embarrass them, so she tended to stay awake, going over things she might have forgotten or that she could do better.

But on the other, regular nights, like tonight was, normally she’d finish the dinner dishes for the fathers and whatever guests they might have had, then watch television doing her needlework in her room until nine or so, then turn out the light. The days started early at the rectory and she knew she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore—she had to get her sleep.

But the thing with Father Cavanaugh just wouldn’t get out of her mind. And it probably wasn’t even important. She could bring it up to him in the morning, and that would be that. But her body just wouldn’t listen to her, and she lay awake, waiting for him to get back from seeing how Steven was progressing over to the Cochrans’.

She looked at the clock glowing on her nightstand. It was after eleven. She’d be sore tired tomorrow. “Come on, you old woman,” she said to herself, disgusted, “it’ll keep.”

But she kept returning to it, and it might really be something Father would have to act on right away. Even if they had a suspect already, it might make a difference. He’d want her to bring it to his attention, even if she turned out not to be right. If he’d told her once, he’d told her a thousand times, “Rose, nobody’s infallible but the pope.”

So if he’d just made that little mistake—and she wasn’t even sure it was a mistake (Lord knows, his memory was so much better than hers)—then she thought he’d want to know, especially since it concerned Eddie’s death, to say nothing of the official police investigation.

And it had been gnawing at her ever since morning when Tibbs and Renko (that’s what she called them—wouldn’t that be a good show if they put those two together?) had had that discussion where she’d poured the coffee. She’d gone over it in her mind about fifty times since then, the question of whether it had been Sunday or Monday that Father had gone out with Eddie, and she was pretty sure it was Monday.

The only reason she was sure—or thought she was sure—was that Sunday, a week ago yesterday, they had had Bishop Wright over from Oakland and she’d made a prime rib for the dinner and everybody had commented on how good the Yorkshire pudding was, and the au jus sauce. They’d invited her to eat with them, even, which was special for when they had guests.

She thought she remembered Father Dietrick opening a second bottle of wine, and the three of them retiring into the library after dinner while she cleaned up. But, of course, she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, since she’d gone to her room after washing up and she hadn’t seen either His Excellency or the fathers again that night.

And she knew it had been an early Sunday dinner—she had timed the roast to be done at three-thirty, so she must have served at around four—so it was possible that their “party” had broken up early and that Eddie had come by after that.

The thing was, she remembered somebody ringing the doorbell on Monday night after dinner, but again she hadn’t seen whether or not it was Eddie. Father Cavanaugh had answered the door himself, sensitive to interrupting her, and that had been the last she’d seen of him. He hadn’t come back until after she’d gone to bed, and unlike tonight, she had slept soundly.

But it was her memory of Sunday, of Bishop Wright being there, that made her believe it hadn’t been Sunday that Eddie had come by. His Excellency had never gone home early before. Usually Father Cavanaugh and he would “burn the midnight oil” over some cognac (and nothing wrong with that—the men need to be allowed some release) while they discussed philosophy or theology or politics. She knew what they talked about because Father Cavanaugh would often share with her some of what they’d said the next morning.

She sighed, turning on her side. Eleven-twenty. Maybe she should just wake up Father Dietrick and ask him if he remembered what time their discussion had broken up that night. But no, he’d . . .

There it was! The back door opening and closing quietly. She swung her feet to the floor and grabbed her robe from where she’d hung it neatly on the chair next to her bed. She wanted to move quickly before Father had had a chance to get to bed—it wouldn’t do to disturb him after that—but she wasn’t about to go out with pins in her white, thin and brittle hair either, even in the middle of the night. She stopped by the bathroom and took them out. She stepped into her slippers.

Father stood in front of the open refrigerator, peering inside. Seeing him, bless him, she knocked softly on the wall by the kitchen door.

“Rose,” he said, smiling. “Caught me, I’m afraid.” She made some gesture. “What are you doing still awake?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” No point in rushing right into it now. It probably wasn’t that important. She moved into the kitchen. “Can I make you something?”

He stepped back, acknowledging the kitchen as her domain. She knew what they had left over. He leaned over and pecked her on the cheek, which made her blush with pleasure. Father loved her, and it was a wonderful feeling, as comfortable as being married.

“I’ll just sit at the table and you surprise me,” he said. “But do you think a beer while I wait would be sinful?”

He opened a Mexican beer while she took out the plate with the chicken on it. (See! It paid to take the extra minutes to slice the meat from the carcass.) Then the Best Foods (nothing but) and Clausen’s pickles. She saw the Swiss cheese. Swiss cheese? Why not. And the potato bread that came in such big slices.

“How is Steven?” she asked, assembling. Without turning around, she could see Father shaking his head. “That poor boy.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s been through a lot, but he’s all right. I’d say it’ll be a couple of months before he’s really over it.” Now sipping his beer. It really was amazing, she thought, that she knew his rhythms so well. She didn’t even have to be looking at him to know what he was doing. “Youth is really something, isn’t it, Rose?”

“That it is, Father, though I’m not the expert on it I once was.”

Father chuckled at her jokes, that was another thing. “None of us is, Rose, none of us is.”

Lettuce? No, not with the pickles. One green was enough. “Frankly,” Father said, “I’m almost more concerned about Erin and Big Ed.”

Well, of course you are, she thought. But she kept it to herself. How he felt about Erin was a secret. At least he thought it was. But anyone who knew him like she did could tell without any effort.

She brought the sandwich over, along with another beer. It was a good big one, and she knew he’d finish the first beer right in the middle of it.

“Are they all right?” she asked.

He dug into the sandwich, chewed carefully, swallowed, then drank some beer. “Oh, Ed’s a rock, you know. It’s mostly Erin.”

She nodded.

“She feels like she’s neglected Steven, drove him to running away, so everything that happened because of that is her fault.”

“How has she neglected Steven?”

“That’s what I tried to tell her. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe she had other things she was doing, but I really don’t think it was at Steven’s expense. Look at the other kids.” He took another bite of the sandwich. “Besides, Erin’s always been very active.”

“Could it be Steven just needed more attention?”

“But how do you tell that, Rose? And how do you blame yourself for it?”

She nodded again. Nothing in the universe would convince Father that Erin Cochran had done something wrong. “Great sandwich, by the way.”

She beamed.

“But you know what I think it is, really? I think—no, I’m sure—it’s still Eddie. How do people bear with all that in one week?” He closed his fist on the table and pounded it. “Dear God, if I could just change one thing . . .”

She reached over and covered his hand. “Now, don’t you go blaming yourself, Father. You’ve said it yourself—sometimes God takes the cream of the crop early, back to Himself. He took Eddie, and nothing you or anybody else does is going to change that. You’ve just to pick up and go on from there. Erin’s strong, and Ed will help her.”

“Go on from there?”

“That’s all you can do, isn’t it?”

His eyes softened. The pain visibly left his face. “Thank you, Rose. You’re a gem.”

She blushed again, looking down. “Finish your sandwich,” she said. Now, she thought, would be a good time. “You know, Father, while we’re talking about Eddie . . . What I mean is, the reason I couldn’t sleep is I was wondering if you’d made a mistake.”

Father swallowed and smiled. “No one’s infallible but the Pope, Rose. What did I do this time?”

“Well, I don’t know you did, but . . .” She outlined it all for him, everything she remembered or thought she did. It took only a couple of minutes, but sure enough, that must have been what had been keeping her up, because suddenly she was exhausted.

Father had left the second half of the sandwich (had she made it too big?), and didn’t open the other beer. Maybe what she was telling him was important.

“You might be right, Rose,” he said when she’d finished. His lips were tight, the wide forehead creased in concentration. “I’d better call the sergeant in the morning.”

“I’m sorry, I just thought.”

He patted her hand. “Nothing to be sorry about. You did the right thing. Exactly. I’m sorry I cost you some sleep.”

She sat back in her chair, relieved, but only for a moment, then reached for the dish. Father held her hand again.

“I’ll get the dishes, Rose. You get some sleep.”

26

INSPECTOR SERGEANT GLITSKY answered the telephone on the first ring, his adrenaline pumping. Calls in the middle of the night meant one thing—one of his cases had come in.

He kissed Flo, who didn’t even stir anymore when the phone rang after midnight, and looked in on the three kids, two in bunk beds and one in a crib all in the same twelve-by-fourteen room (and they did have to get moving on a new house, even if they couldn’t afford it, if he didn’t make lieutenant). In the kitchen, sucking a quick microwaved cup of mud, he called Dismas Hardy as a courtesy. The phone rang four times and then the machine clicked on and Abe said, “Hardy, Glitsky. They got Alphonse.” Then he hung up.

Now he was looking through the small hole in the door of the interrogation room at the Hall of Justice. It was, by his watch, exactly three-eleven a.m.

A familiar and therefore not ominous silence prevailed all around him. The silence was familiar, in this place normally strafed by obscenities and bedlam, because Glitsky had done this many times since becoming a homicide inspector—come down in the middle of the night to interrogate a suspect still without his lawyer and therefore perhaps likely to talk if, as was also likely, his IQ didn’t hover much above room temperature.

If he waited until the morning, even a rookie court-appointed defense attorney would tell Alphonse to say nothing, and that would be that until the trial. This was the prosecution’s one big chance to break something in any case, and if an inspector wasn’t willing to forego a night’s sleep for it, he was in the wrong job.

Alphonse slumped, maybe sleeping, at the small table. His hands were not visible—it was likely they were cuffed to the chair behind him. A deputy, hands folded, also perhaps dozing, sat at one end of the table. Glitsky knocked.

“Alphonse, my man, how you doin’?”

Abe’s voice boomed in the small room. Everybody was awake now. Alphonse even managed a more or less welcome look, possibly relieved that he was getting questioned by one of his brothers, a notion Glitsky was not above using but that, all in all, he found pretty funny.

“Hey, we got you, huh?”

Alphonse shrugged. He had abrasions on his forehead and cheek, a swollen mouth, a little clotted blood under his nose. “You get caught in a door or something?” Abe asked.

“Airport cops hurt me,” he muttered. Glitsky glanced at the deputy, making a clucking sound. “We’ve got to do something about those airport cops. He been Mirandized?”

The deputy nodded. “ ’Bout five times.”

“Does he want to talk?”

“Ask him.”

“Alphonse, you want to talk to me?”

“Yeah. You wanna do something about them beating me up?”

He flipped on the tape recorder, an old, squeaking reel-to-reel. Glitsky turned back to Alphonse. “Says in the report you resisted arrest and necessary force was used to restrain you.”

Alphonse rolled his eyes. He had a way of saying “shit” that took about two seconds and didn’t end in “t.”

“Shi . . .”

“So why’d you run?”

“I knew you was after me.”

“Saw your picture in the paper, huh? Hey, you got your hair cut. Looks bad, man.”

Alphonse bobbed his head at the compliment.

“So why’d you have to kill her?”

“I didn’t kill nobody.”

Glitsky smiled, warm and inviting. “Oh, that’s right. Somebody planted your knife there, smeared her blood on the pants we got out of the hamper in your mother’s house.” Glitsky raised his eyebrows.

Alphonse’s brain squeaking made almost as much noise as the reel-to-reel. Finally he said, “What if I don’t wanna talk to nobody? What if I wanna see my lawyer first?”

“Then absolutely it’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna stop right now and get you a lawyer in here.”

There was a long pause. Abe waited it out. Finally Alphonse said, “I got rights.”

“No question.”

“I don’t like one lawyer, I can get another.”

“Righteous. Right on!” Glitsky gave him a sarcastic black-power fist, then folded his hands on the table and just sat there.

After about thirty seconds Alphonse said, “What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“What you just starin’ at?”

“I’m just waiting. I thought you were thinking about it.” Alphonse strained, stretching against the cuffs. Glitsky, Mr. Nice Guy, turned to the deputy. “Can’t you undo those?”

Alphonse rubbed his hands together when the cuffs were off. He gingerly touched the bump on his forehead. “Thinking about what?” he asked.

Abe thought he ought to get his attention again. “You know Sam Polk’s dead, too.”

“Sam ain’t dead.”

“He ain’t breathin’.”

Abe grinned now, the tight-lipped grin that showed his scar. His eyes didn’t grin. His hands were still folded, calm, in front of him. He twiddled his thumbs, slowly, finally resting his eyes on them, his thumbs.

“Hey, I didn’t kill any Sam Polk. You not layin’ that on me, too.”

Glitsky shrugged. “I didn’t say that.”

“Who killed him?”

“I didn’t say he was killed. What made you think he was killed?”

“You just said . . .”

Glitsky shook his head. “Uh-uh. I didn’t say anything about him being killed. You did.”

Glitsky had him on the ropes. It was almost depressing, how dumb these guys were. Alphonse didn’t even know what was happening, but Glitsky knew that Alphonse understood one thing—he was in deep shit.

“Alphonse, talk to me, man. If you didn’t kill him, I’m the only friend you got.”

“Shi . . .”

“No shit, for real.”

Alphonse put his hands back up to his face, rubbing his eyes, craning his neck. “I didn’t kill no Sam Polk.”

“Okay.”

Abe sat there. Sometimes sitting was the best technique in the world. He looked somewhere midway between them with no expression at all on his face. He kept twiddling his thumbs. Alphonse fidgeted as though he had a hemorrhoid. “How we work something out?” he asked at last.

“We trade.”

“Trade what?”

“You tell me what happened. You didn’t kill him, I prove it and you don’t go to the gas chamber. That sound fair?” Glitsky kept smiling. It was good, he knew, to drop the old gas chamber in there. Keep the intensity at the proper level. “You know we got a new court now, Alphonse. We got judges now believe in the death penalty.”

Alphonse swallowed hard, touched his forehead again. He was beginning to sweat. Glitsky was, if anything, cool. The tape recorder spun around and around, squeaking, a little like the steady drip of Chinese water torture. It was the first time Abe remembered having a squeaky reel-to-reel in an interrogation, but he thought he might request one in the future. He wondered, waiting for Alphonse, whether there might be something like WD-40 in reverse—make things squeak. That made him smile again. He ran with it, the humor. “Alphonse, I got to draw you a picture or what?”

“What? What you want? I don’t know nothin’.”

Truer words, Abe thought, were never spoken, “See, the thing is, when we got multiple murders in the course of a crime, like we do here, it’s the death penalty. Special circumstances, they call it, like if you kill a cop, that kind of thing.” His eyes crinkled up. “You hear me? They find you guilty and you could fry. If you’re lucky, you go to the joint and you never get out. They don’t even talk about it.”

It was shaking him, Glitsky could tell. Whatever passed for logic in the brain of this poor sorry son of a bitch was being whacked out of kilter. “But I tole you I didn’t kill Sam Polk. An’ what crime?”

“Hey, Alphonse,” said Abe, his close personal friend. “You had a bag with, like, a hundred grand in it. You sell Girl Scout cookies for that? Sam give it to you?”

“Linda got it out.”

Abe shook his head. “Nobody’s gonna believe that. To a jury it’s gonna look like you stole it. You killed Linda for it, then you slammed the safe.”

“I didn’t mean to kill Linda! I mean, that was an accident.”

“You cut her throat by accident?”

Alphonse paused, maybe catching up to the fact that he’d just confessed to a killing. He shrugged as if to say “Hey, it happens.”

“So the thing is,” Abe continued, pressing his advantage, “that much money around, you’re dealing, right? You know it, I know it, so why argue about it. You didn’t kill Polk, maybe somebody else did, but it was about the dope. That’s what we want to know.”

What the hell, Abe thought, might as well go for it. They had him cold for Linda’s murder. Might as well collect some bonus points for DEA if he could, then work it around to the Cochran thing. He looked at his watch, then at Alphonse. “And I don’t got all night, okay?”

Alphonse was wrestling with the problem. The sweat was now pouring off him—Abe could smell it across the table—and his nose was running slightly. He sniffed and ran the back of his hand over his upper lip.

“I know what you’re thinking, Alphonse,” Abe said in his most gentle voice. “You’re thinking you talk and your friends find out, they’ll kill you, right?” The eyes across the table told him that’s what he was thinking. “Okay, that might happen. It might, you understand. But you
don’t
talk, and I guarantee—guar-an-tee—that you’re going down. No maybe, no if. You go down. We don’t get you for Sam Polk’s death, we definitely hit you for Eddie Cochran’s.”

Alphonse’s mouth just hung open.

“Now you’re going to tell me you didn’t kill Eddie. I know, Alphonse, you didn’t mean to kill anybody. Save it, though, huh. I’m tired.” Glitsky looked at his watch again. He wasn’t particularly tired, but it was closing in on four a.m. and he had his confession. He ought to go home. He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.

“Where you goin’?”

“I said I’m tired. If you’re not gonna talk, I’m going home.”

Alphonse reached his hand out across the table. “Hey, I mean it. I didn’t kill Eddie. Sam mighta kilt him, but I didn’t.”

Abe pulled the chair around backward and straddled it. “We got your hairs in his car, Alphonse, the same ones we found on Linda. So don’t give me any more of this shit.”

“Hey, I swear to God.”

How many times had he heard this? Everybody was innocent of everything. Unknown was the man who said, “Yeah, I did that, and I did it because . . .” No, it was always an accident, or a mistake, or somebody else’s fault. Often, the denial got so vehement that the perp actually came to believe he hadn’t done it. And since more than four out of five were either drunk or on some controlled substance when the crime occurred, it wasn’t surprising that it might all seem like a hallucination or dream, that it hadn’t really happened.

“You swear to God,” Abe replied wearily. “But you got a better chance of talking yourself out of Sam Polk. We got you at the scene of Eddie’s murder.” Almost, he added to himself.

“I wasn’t there!” His eyes had widened. Abe found himself forced to look closely at him. There was something about this denial that was different. “Look, I rode in Eddie’s car most days, maybe even that day. I don’t know. But you gotta believe me. I liked Eddie. I didn’t kill him.”

Abe wasn’t about to get suckered by sincerity. He shook his head, made a production out of checking his watch. “You sure as fuck did.” Then he stood up, motioning to the deputy to turn off the recorder. “Take him upstairs,” he said.

He got his hand on the doorknob before Alphonse called out again. “Hey!”

Slowly, acting frustrated and exhausted (though his adrenaline was still pumping away—he wouldn’t need any sleep the rest of the night), Glitsky turned back.

“Look, I’ll talk, okay, but I didn’t kill nobody.”

“You killed Linda.”

He waved that off. “I just thought—I got people saw me that night Eddie got killed. Like all night.”

“Yeah? Who, your mother?”

“No, man. I play basketball, City League. That was a Monday, right?”

Abe nodded.

Alphonse rolled his eyes up again, straining for the memory. “Finals were that night. We played four games. Came in second.”

“Good for you.”

“Yeah, good for me. Who came in first?”

Abe glared at him, lips drawn tight.

Alphonse smiled. “Bunch of cops,” he said, “whole team full of cops.”