Bloodlines

56

B Y MONDAY, I WAS READY TO CONCEDE THAT MY WISH HAD NOT COME true. Ethan somehow managed to get in to talk to Harmon, and when I saw his story, which would run in Tuesday’s paper, I had to admit he had done a fine job with it. Word was, Wrigley went bananas over it, and decided to give it big play. Lydia assigned supporting pieces to several other staff members. She didn’t make eye contact with me during that process.

I thought I ought to mend fences with her, so I invited her to go to lunch with me. She gave me a look that made me uneasy, but accepted. We didn’t talk much on the way out of the building, or even as we made our way to a café that was currently known as Lucky Dragon Burger, but which changed names a lot. The food was consistently good, though. “Think dragons have been the secret ingredient all along?” I asked her.

It was a weak joke and it won a weak smile.

We ordered, and I said, “Congratulations on being able to see that Ethan could handle that story. I guess that’s why you’re such a great city editor. You know the staff and what they are capable of.”

She studied me for a moment. While she did this, she crossed her arms- a signal of fury that few others would recognize for what it was, but which startled me. Lydia’s maiden name is Pastorini. A good Italian Catholic girl. She needs her hands to talk. If she confined her hands, I knew she felt the need to exercise control over what she had to say. I was trying to figure out what I could have done to make her so angry, when she said, “You believe that I am the one who sent Ethan up to Folsom?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No. I never would have sent him up there. That was Wrigley’s decision.”

“Oh.” I suddenly recalled Ethan’s words. He never mentioned Lydia. “I jumped to a conclusion, Lydia. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head.

“Look, I can see why that makes you angry, but-”

“Can you?”

“Yes. I thought you were championing him, and now that I think back on it, you didn’t actually do that.”

“That’s the symptom. Not the problem. I may not treat a first-year reporter the way you and the Old Boys Club do, but I can see his faults. I’m not completely stupid just because I’m not on the street, you know. I am not incapable of seeing when a twenty-two-year-old is full of himself.”

This was so close to what I had thought of her, I turned red. Worse, she had known me so long, I knew she was reading that blush for the guilt signal it was. “Like I said, I’m sorry. Really sorry. I mean it.”

Silence. The food arrived. Nobody made a move to touch it. As the minutes passed, I went from feeling contrite to feeling injured by her refusal to at least give some token acknowledgment of my apology. Did she want me to grovel?

“Lydia, please. Let’s not let a little creep fuck up our friendship, okay?”

She looked me right in the eye and said, “He’s not the one messing it up.”

“You know what? You’re right about that.”

I stood up, threw a twenty on the table-much more than I owed, but I wasn’t going to be accused of sticking her with the bill on top of everything else-and though I knew I was letting my Irish temper get the best of me, I left.

I needed to cool off, and sitting in the newsroom with Lydia would not accomplish that. I glanced at my watch. I thought of my options, used my cell phone to call John Walters and tell him where I’d be, and walked around the block to the newspaper’s parking lot. I got into the Jeep and drove home.

Cody and the dogs were delighted. The friend and neighbor who usually spent time with them during the day was out of town, so I got an especially enthusiastic welcome. My mood of righteous indignation couldn’t withstand that. I played with them for a while-tossing a catnip toy for Cody, stuffed squeaky toys for the dogs. That worked off some tension for everyone involved.

I went back to reading O’Connor’s stories and diary. One of the best stories was from April 1936 and was called “What I Saw in the Court.” He told about sneaking into a courtroom to watch Mitch Yeager’s trial, and later telling Corrigan about what amounted to jury tampering.

Mitch Yeager had been on trial for something? O’Connor, boy reporter, hadn’t provided details. I made a note to look it up.

Max might know about it. I called him and had the good fortune to catch him at home. “I’m leaving to go see Lillian in a little while,” he said. “Do you have my cell phone number?” He gave it to me.

“Are you in a rush? I could call you back later.”

“I can talk now for a few minutes. What can I do for you?”

“I hope you won’t mind my asking, but do you know if Mitch Yeager was ever arrested?”

“Mitch? Not that I know of. He wouldn’t have told me about it if he was, though-he was really hung up on being thought of as respectable. Which, come to think of it, argues for a shady past, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, wait-are you sure you heard something about Mitch and not Adam Yeager?”

“Adam Yeager…why is that name familiar?”

“He was Mitch’s brother. Ian’s and Eric’s dad. In fact, my former name- Kyle-was his middle name.”

“Did you know him?”

“No, he was dead long before I was born. My mom always said Eric and Ian were going to grow up to be just like their father-jailbirds.”

He suddenly broke off, then started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking that she was right.”

“Yes, although she probably didn’t predict the part about life on a tropical island.”

“No. I wouldn’t mind that, if they’d stay there.”

“So you’ve heard the rumors, too.”

“Oh, it isn’t rumor. They come back to the States on a fairly regular basis.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely certain. I have them watched, Irene. If I thought for a moment that they were going to harm you, I’d…I’d make sure it didn’t happen.”

I was stunned.

“You’re angry,” he said.

“No-not angry. It’s just weird. I mean, I wish you had told me sooner.”

“I’ve thought about it, even came close to telling you a couple of times. But two things stopped me. One was that you’ve been through some horrible experiences in the time since they’ve been released, and it just happened that whenever I’d come back into town, certain that I was going to tell you, the timing was always wrong-I didn’t want to upset you with talk of people who might not ever come near either one of us again.”

“What was the other reason you didn’t tell me? That they’re too old?”

“No. Evil does not retire.”

“No pension plan.”

He laughed. “I guess that’s it. Besides, they both keep in good shape, so I wouldn’t feel safer from them because of age. No, the other reason I didn’t tell you was Frank. If I told you, you might tell him, and…I didn’t want Frank to feel obligated to mention my surveillance of them to his department.”

“I understand,” I said. “But it won’t be a problem.”

“Good.”

“I know you’re running out of time, but can you give me a little more information about Adam Yeager, the jailbird uncle?”

“Oh-not much, really. Mom was upset that she always had to say that he died in the war, because he died during the Depression, in prison. She said something about how he didn’t live more than a year in prison. That’s why Eric and Ian were raised by Mitch. I remember Mitch always kept a photo of him on his desk. I know that’s not much information, but you might say that by the time I was old enough to ask about him, I had learned not to ask about him.”

“What do you mean?”

He took so long to answer, I thought we might have lost the connection. But then he said, “Not long after Mom told me that Adam had died in prison, I asked Mitch to tell me the truth about him, since I had to go around with his name. A mistake I’ll never forgive myself for. That’s when I got packed off to military school. Mitch told me my mom wasn’t feeling well, so she couldn’t say good-bye.”

“Oh, Max…”

“I never saw her alive again. She died two years later. She fell down some stairs.” After another silence, in a much quieter voice, he added, “Or so I was told.”