Goodnight, Irene (16 page)

Someone came out of a nearby café and gave me a glass of water. It was one of those little kindnesses that make a person feel human again. I washed the taste of being sick out of my mouth, pulled out a Kleenex and blew my nose. I was getting there.

In no time at all, police pulled up, sirens howling. One of the officers gently took me from Guy and sat me down in a patrol car. I asked him to contact Pete Baird. He turned his head to one side and took a longer look at me. “You the lady who was with Frank Harriman yesterday?”

I nodded through a stream of tears.

“Sister, you better think about getting out of town for a few days.”

I had thought about it. I thought about Gila Bend. I thought about running away to some place not even connected to all of this, just long enough to feel sane again. But how could I feel in control of my own life if all I did was run? I had to face this head on; even if I got scared or cried or whatever — I had to deal with it.

I thought about Miss Ralston, and how sarcastic and mean all my thoughts of her had been, when she was just a busybody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she hadn’t knocked me down, she wouldn’t be dead. If I hadn’t been walking around in a suspicious manner, she wouldn’t have come over to talk to me. If only I hadn’t looked up and seen the BLP on the building — if, if, if, if.

I thought of something O’Connor once told me. He had read an article somewhere that made an impression on him, and as was his wont, he repeated its salient points for my benefit.

“Irene, “ he said, “do you know what the two saddest words in the English language are?”

“Boo and hoo?” I had guessed.

“No, wise-ass. The two saddest words in the English language are ‘if only.’”

I used to hate it when he’d get into going on and on with all of his quotes and proverbs and old saws, but somehow they always came back to me in times of trouble. And so I left off with the ifs.

By the time Pete got there, I was much calmer; still a little shaky, but calmer.

He sighed. “Hell. I was hoping these jokers would need a little while to regroup. You know, give you a day off.” He turned to one of the uniformed men and asked him to go over and double check on the guard for Frank’s room, and to ask the hospital about tightening security around Kenny as well.

“Have you heard back from the sheriff in Gila Bend yet?” I asked.

“Yeah. They said they had been trying to dig up something for O’Connor since early last week. They think they might have something.”

“I’m thinking of going there.”

“By yourself?”

“My traveling companions aren’t faring too well these days.”

“Don’t start thinking like that, Irene. It’ll make you crazy.”

“That’s what I was just telling myself.”

“Let me run this by Bredloe. Maybe I can work it out so that I can go along. I don’t like the idea of you going somewhere connected with Mr. O’Connor on your own.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“About three o’clock.”

“Criminy. They’re going to think I quit again. I’ve got to get back to the paper.”

“Let one of these guys make sure you get to work okay,” he said, motioning to one of the patrolmen.

The officer walked over and introduced himself as Mike Sorenson. It seemed silly to get in a car for a two-block ride, but I didn’t feel like walking over near the sidewalk where Miss Ralston’s body was still lying.

“You’re Frank Harriman’s friend, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You know him?”

“Oh, sure. Great guy, Frank. I saw him earlier — he didn’t look so hot, but they said he’ll be one hundred percent before too long. I don’t know, seeing him there just made me boil — -really got to me. We all want to nail these bastards. Frank’s a good cop. And he says you’re okay. No offense, but I don’t usually get along so hot with reporters. But if Frank says you’re okay, then you’re okay.”

“Thanks. I wondered if — if people might blame me for what happened to him.”

“Naw, are you crazy? We know who’s who in this mess. Hell, lady, you’re damned lucky to be alive, and you know it.”

“You’re right.”

We pulled up at the newspaper and he got out and walked me in. I could hear the presses rolling. Snap out of it, I told myself, you’re lucky to be alive. I thanked Officer Sorenson, waved hello to Geoff, then made my way upstairs.

I talked to Lydia — she had been worried. Someone was already covering the hit-and-run.

I went over my progress on the funding story with John Walters and then I asked if we could go into his office. He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow, then motioned me inside the little glass cubicle he called home and shut the door on the nosiest people in the world.

I told him that I wanted to go to Gila Bend, and that I’d probably be taking a cop along with me, both for protection and for entrée to any business I might need to do with the Gila Bend cops. I told him that there really wasn’t any way for me to do this story on the sly from the cops, and if that bothered him, he ought to can me or get somebody else to cover it.

He started laughing. Not the reaction I expected.

“You are so damned ethical, Irene. I love it. You haven’t been here forty-eight hours and you’ve got the news editor in his office, giving him ultimatums so you can work with a clean conscience. Brother.”

I waited.

“God save me from girls who went to Catholic school. Guilt just eats them alive.”

I still waited.

“Irene, you know what the dangers are of getting too chummy with the people you may have to write some story about later. You’re a professional. I’m not going to give you advance absolution for any sins you are about to commit against the paper, I’ll just trust you to use your best judgment. Just between the two of us, I’m happy as hell that you’re not going out there alone.”

“I know, John, I know. Don’t think I’m not frightened. You should have seen me fall apart out there today. I even puked on the street.”

“What the hell do you expect? You see someone you were talking to five minutes earlier get their head cracked open and die. Are you supposed to just stand there and say, ‘Gee, that reminds me, I didn’t have lunch today’?”

“I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“I didn’t have lunch today.”

This broke him up again.

“Hell, John, I don’t ever remember making you laugh like this before. Either I ought to go onstage or you’re becoming a raving lunatic.”

“The latter, I assure you, my dear, the latter. Now call it a day. Go home and make travel arrangements.”

On the way home, I bought a couple of steaks. By the time Lydia came in, I had a small feast waiting; Cody serenaded us with loud noises of anticipation for the leftovers.

P
ETE CALLED
to say Bredloe had okayed the trip, and I told him I’d take care of the reservations. I called Fred back and cancelled O’Connor’s arrangements. Fred worked it out so that Pete and I could get on a flight to Phoenix the next morning and reserved a rental car. He needed to ask Pete some questions about seating preferences and so on, so I gave him Pete’s number and said goodnight.

At about seven-thirty, over Lydia’s protests, I headed back to the hospital. I hated the drive there, hated the walk in. But when I got to Frank’s room, all of that changed. He was awake and seemed fairly alert, and I realized I was damned glad to see him.

“You did come back,” he said.

“Sure. You remember my visit this afternoon?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“You look better tonight.”

“Thanks.”

I sat down and reached for his hand. We were quiet for a while. I was debating whether or not to tell him what had happened that afternoon. I decided not to. It would probably just worry him; besides, I reminded myself, I was there to comfort
him.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Hospitals scare me, I guess.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Hmm. That all?”

“No, that’s only part of it. I’m not going to be able to see you tomorrow. I’m going to Phoenix for the day with Pete. We’re going to check something out there.”

“Glad Pete’s going, too. I’ll be okay.”

I stayed a little longer, and he seemed to be wearing down again. He tried to stay awake, but I could tell he was feeling drowsy. I didn’t want to push it. I started to leave and he roused himself enough to say, “Take care.”

“You too,” I said.

When I got back to Lydia’s I took a hot bath for my sore muscles’ sake and climbed into bed. Cody wasn’t ready to turn in and so he hung out with Lydia. I’d given the little bastard steak and he still snubbed me.

I
WOKE UP
before sunup, about 4
A.M.
, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I dressed as quietly as I could, so as not to wake Lydia. I was a lot less sore than the day before. I felt restless, and I still had a few hours before the flight to Phoenix, so I decided to take a drive down to the beach. I grabbed a sweatshirt and eased the front door open, holding the knob to keep the latch quiet. Outside, the streetlights reflected softly in the cloudy June sky, and the air was damp and cool. Crickets sang. The car was covered with dew.

I started the car, and in the quiet of the neighborhood the sound seemed incredibly loud. As quickly as I could, I put it into gear and headed down to the water.

I reached the shore just as the pre-dawn light was filtering above the horizon. I parked and walked out to the end of the pier, passing only a few avid fishermen silently standing along its sides. Without the traffic and beach crowd to distract from it, the Pacific roared in an endless, uneven rhythm of waves.

“Peaceful,” her name meant, and though I had seen her storms and wrath, I always felt restored when I saw her. She stretched to the horizon, a reminder of the power of nature at the doorstep of southern California’s posturing artifice. All my worries seemed so small before her.

I watched a terrific sunrise, one full of gentle color and changing hues in water and sky. The gulls were beginning their day noisily, their
cree, cree
echoing off the cliffs. I went down the stairs to the beach, took my shoes off and chilled the bottoms of my feet in the soft, cold sand. They soon felt numb. I plodded along, letting the wind pull my hair across my face, taking deep breaths of salt-sea air.

I walked until I reached the Las Piernas cliffs. Above them the sun was glinting off the windows of the upper sundeck of the enormous Sheffield Estate. Here, for as many generations as Las Piernas had been a city, the Sheffield family had reigned. The earliest Sheffields had started a general store, then a bank, then a pharmacy, and so on and on; they bought and sold real estate in and around Las Piernas to amass the original fortune, and added to it when one of the Sheffield grandchildren developed a knack for making ice cream. Sheffield Ice Cream stores were everywhere, and always seemed to be one step ahead of the latest ice cream craze. The last of the Sheffields was Elinor Sheffield Hollingsworth, who had married a handsome young Harvard law graduate who was now the district attorney of Las Piernas.

The Hollingsworths spent most of their time in one of the other family mansions, one up in the hills above the city, where they could socialize more easily with the other members of the upper crust. And so it was that today, like most other days, the cliffside estate looked vacant and lonely. Completely isolated, no other houses for two miles on either side, it stood sheltered on three sides by deep stands of trees that stretched from shore to road.

I turned and walked away from the twin cliffs and headed back to the pier. I watched a fisherman reel in and toss back a small perch. I thought about how strange an experience that must be for the fish, imagined the act of eating breakfast leading to a yank up into outer space and then a sudden fall back to earth.

I padded barefoot back to the car, the asphalt of the parking lot much warmer than the sand. I brushed the sand off my feet and pant cuffs. I put my shoes back on, then sat looking out at the water a little while longer. On this side of the pier, surfers had been riding waves since just before daybreak. I checked my rearview mirror and looked around. No one watching, as far as I could tell. I started up the car. No bomb under the hood. Whoever was trying to kill me had missed a golden opportunity. Not even that kind of thinking could disturb me much as I drove back to Lydia’s.

P
ETE CAME BY
to pick me up just after Lydia had left for work. It was only about a fifteen-minute drive from Lydia’s place to the Las Piernas Airport. The airport was built in the late 1930s and it has a certain appeal because of it. The architecture has the curving chrome, brass, and green-glass look of the time. It’s small, just six gates. Only three major carriers use the Las Piernas Airport, but between them and the smaller airlines we get pretty good service and a hell of a lot less hassle than LAX. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen a Hare Krishna recruiter there.

Our flight was on American Southwest Airlines. We pulled out our plastic and paid for our tickets. Pete checked his gun in with security; they put it in a special box for the flight. We walked about forty feet to the gate and had a seat. Pete offered me a piece of gum.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“I gotta have gum before a flight. I quit smoking fifteen years ago, but every time I get near an airplane I want to light up so bad, I can’t stand it.”

“Gum’s easier on your lungs.”

“Yeah, no kidding. You ever been a smoker?”

“Never really was a smoker. As a kid I tried it a couple of times — never really learned how to inhale. Thought I looked pretty cool just carrying one around, but the charm of that wore off fairly quickly.”

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky. Took longer for the charm to wear off for me. Now I’ve got what they call the zeal of the convert — I hate being around it, you know? But not when I’m in an airport — then it’s all I can do not to go into the bar and buy a pack of cigarettes. It’s crazy.”