Dead Irish

Chapter Sixteen

HARDY HAD never heard of the town of Gonzalez. His first inclination after he got the call was to think that for some reason Cruz had wanted him out of Dodge and had asked one of his workers to call him.

But that would have made no sense coming from Cruz. After he hung up, Hardy went to his map and found the place-south of Salinas on 101. It was a real place.

On the way down, he thought he should have made some calls before getting in his car. He almost pulled over in Redwood City, but then thought it would be better not to worry anybody needlessly. What if it wasn’t what he thought it was?

Also, he was reasonably certain that someone-possibly Cavanaugh, especially after their heart-to-heart yesterday-would have tried to reach him earlier.

He hadn’t been down the Peninsula in nearly a year, and it hadn’t changed. What was left to change? The whole thing had been developed so the only possibility of something new was aface-lift on a business park, a Tastee Freeze turning into a Burger King, Astro-turfing a gas station.

Around Palo Alto, the Bay and the flats struggled for the natural look for a few miles along the freeway before widening out into Moftett Field, with its airplane hangars so big that it rained inside them, and then the other Santa Clara fun parks-the mini-golf courses, batting cages, go-kart tracks.

Hardy kept his eyes on the road. His head hurt just slightly from too much beer. Really from getting up too early, he had told himself. Really from too much beer. The old not-enough-sleep routine as the reason for his hangovers was wearing thin, even to himself.

South of San Jose the countryside began to open up, the foothills still green from the spring rains, the scrub oaks starting to bud. Man, he thought, when California doesn’t screw with itself, it is some kind of beautiful place.

He was speeding and knew it, but didn’t care. The road was all but empty, and he had always had a knack for spotting the Highway Patrol. Besides, he would say he was on a summons from Sheriff Muñoz of Gonzalez and probably get off with a warning anyway.

But for some reason-maybe the thickness in his head-he found he couldn’t concentrate for long on the reason for the trip. It made his headache worse.

Getting into Steinbeck country, he rolled down the car window to Gilroy and the smell of garlic. The sun was higher now, though there were still wisps of mist over the occasional patch of water. It was getting on toward ten o’clock.

A sign at the town limits told Hardy that Gonzalez was the home of the Tigers. “They sure kept the move from Detroit a secret,” he thought as he passed the one-story high school with its faded billboard.

His destination was a square concrete emergency clinic painted an institutional yellow, set two streets back behind what passed for downtown.

Sheriff Muñoz greeted him at the door. With a head of balding gray hair and a deep soft-spoken voice, he had all the authority of the small-town cop with, apparently, none of the arrogance. Maybe he’d been in the job a long time. His uniform was lived in, his body solid and big but with no flab. The face was square, clean-shaven and worried. “Is this your card?”

Hardy nodded.

“It’s the only thing we had tying him to anything.”

“No wallet?”

Muñoz just looked at Hardy-not glared, looked-but his eyes were saying that they’d already covered that.

“Is he still alive?”

“Physically. He hasn’t come up yet. He’ll come around. Now he’s sedated.”

There were only two rooms behind the open reception area. Steven Cochran was in the second one.

Hardy swallowed hard, remembering the vision of the brother, Eddie, less than a week ago, on a similar gurney. Jesus, they look alike, he thought. He hadn’t noticed it before-Steven had initially struck him as much thinner. He forced himself to look. Maybe because the damage appeared so similar. The right side of Steven’s face was covered with bandage, his right arm in a sling with a bandaged hand sticking out of it.

“What happened?”

“Do you recognize him?”

First things first. Muñoz was right. “We gotta call his folks,” Hardy said.

“If you don’t mind, sir, what’s your connection to this boy?”

They were in the other empty examination room, drinking 7-Eleven coffee brought in by the nurse receptionist. Hardy’s headache was gone. He explained how Steven had come to get his card.

“Funny that’s all he had.” It was a statement, not meant to be accusatory.

“Where was it?”

“Front pocket.”

“Maybe he lost his wallet.”

The sheriff nodded. “Maybe.”

“Listen,” Hardy said, “I’m not any kind of official, but you mind if we talk about it? I’ve got a reference you might…”

Muñoz struck Hardy as a thorough cop, so it didn’t surprise him much when he got up to make the call to Glitsky’s home number. When the sheriff returned, he seemed satisfied. “Okay,” he said, “you think this is related to what you’re working on?”

Hardy drank some coffee and asked him what exactly had happened.

Muñoz had his elbows on his knees, hands out in front of him holding the nearly full Styrofoam cup. His black sunken eyes focused unblinking on the wall over Hardy’s head. Hardy thought they were about the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.

The sheriff said, “Lady named Hafner grows ’chokes maybe six miles south. She and the family were on their way up to the farmer’s market in Salinas. They usually leave before dawn and try to get a good place, you know. So they’re turning onto 101 and one of the kids sees what he thinks might be a deer by the road. Anyway, that’s food, you know, so Momma stops and it’s… Steven’s the name, huh?”

“Steven.”

“So she got here and the doc called me.” There was a long pause, as though Muñoz was trying to fathom how things like this could happen. “I figure-and the doc says it makes sense- he was thrown from the vehicle already unconscious. That’s probably why he lived, he was so loose. Just pretty much peeled the right side of his body, broke his arm, collarbone, couple of foot bones.”

“Could he have just fallen? Bounced out of the back of an open pickup maybe?”

“Yeah, he could’ve. He didn’t, though.”

Hardy waited.

“He was,” Muñoz paused, “sexually molested. Maybe the rest of the injuries-that look a hell of a lot like a beating-maybe they could have come from the impact hitting the ground at sixty, but the one…”

“Got it,” Hardy said.

“Just once I’d like to catch up with somebody does something like this. Not after a trial or anything, but catch ’em red-handed.”

“It would be a great joy,” Hardy agreed.

“Your friend Glitsky in the city, he gonna call missing persons, you think? Let ’em know?”

Hardy thought that he probably would-Glitsky believed in following through, but Hardy didn’t feel right making the commitment for him. After all, Glitsky dealt in homicides. Lost and found children were not his problem, and if somebody in San Francisco had the bad grace to get killed on this fine Saturday morning, it’s possible he might forget.

“It wouldn’t hurt if we called,” he said, though he let Muñoz do it officially.

Warm and drowsy. Smell of fresh linen. Had Mom finally made his bed?

Steven tried to open his eyes. They didn’t seem to work. The eyelids were too heavy, his whole body too weak.

Well, just a few more hours’ sleep. Can’t hurt. It’s the summer, after all.

But that jarred some memory. Leaving the house, striking out on his own, riding in the truck with those two guys heading for L.A., but in no real hurry. Mostly, they’d said, into partying, into cruising. That sounded okay.

It began to come flooding back, and involuntarily he groaned. They’d accepted him right away, including him when they stopped for a few road beers before they’d left the city. The beers didn’t taste very good, but Steven wasn’t about to let on. This was part of being an adult, and he was tired of being treated like a kid, or, worse, a nothing. So he’d act like an adult, go along, be cool.

He got a little more worried when the joints came out, but knew he was just being uptight. Lots of guys in school smoked dope all the time. It just hadn’t been his thing. But it wasn’t as though it was any big deal, or really wrong. It did make him cough, though, and the guys had laughed at him a little, but he could tell it was all in fun. They coughed, too, only not so much.

After that, in this blurry haze, they’d stopped for something to eat-maybe in Gilroy?-some really fantastic burgers that they took to this “special spot” for a picnic. And then things got scary kind of, with the two guys starting to tickle him and other stuff. Then really rough.

If he hadn’t been so dizzy and messed up, he probably could have outrun them, but when he pulled loose and tried that, his coordination was gone. And after they caught him, he thought he remembered other things, but the drowsiness was still there, and it was too hard to think about.

And where was Mom, then, if the bed was made? Just in the other room probably. God, it’d be great to see Mom. He called out for her.

That was a sound. Hardy, waiting for Muñoz to return from his phone call, ran around the corner to Steven’s room.

The boy lay, still unmoving. This was the hostility kid, he remembered-switchblade, fuzzed-out television and all. He shook his head. Talk about a bad week for the Cochrans.

Had Ed’s death somehow precipitated this, driven him over the edge of his own despair? Or was there some more immediate link? Like, might Steven have known something he shouldn’t have?

Hell, he’d find out when Steven came to if he had known his assailants. Or, more particularly, if Hardy knew them.

Big Ed looked anything but big.

Staring down at his bandaged youngest son, he was a shell of the man in the old but elegant suit Hardy had met at the funeral reception. Now a very worn green USF sweatshirt hung loosely over work pants and boots. Everything hung too loose. One bootlace wasn’t tied.

He stared as long as he could, then squeezed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes.

Muñoz stood next to him. “Are you all right, sir?”

Big Ed nodded. “Long night,” he said. “We thought, we thought…”

“Sure. But he’s not. Not even close.”

“He’s not close,” he repeated. And suddenly a shudder went through him and he was crying.

Hardy went out to the reception area, where a small boy with the beginnings of a shiner and a large red knot on his forehead sat stoically as his mother explained to the receptionist how he’d stepped on the tines of a rake and the handle had popped up and hit him in the face.

Hardy walked outside into the bright sun. He was hungry. The place on Gonzalez’s main street sold burritos the size of a suitcase for $2.49, and Hardy bought three, chewing on one while he carried the other two, wrapped, back to the clinic.

Muñoz and Ed, talking by the sheriff’s car, took the food. Big Ed seemed a little better.

“Sorry I didn’t recognize you in there,” he said to Hardy.

“How’s the boy?”

“Still sleeping. You have any idea who did this?”

“I wish,” Hardy said. “You reported him missing. Did he run away, or what?”

“What’s the other option?” Muñoz asked.

Hardy shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but he might have been kidnapped.”

“That’s crazy,” Ed said. “We don’t have any money.”

“It might have been to keep him quiet. Maybe he knew something.” The two men chewed their burritos. “About Ed, I mean.”

That stopped Big Ed. “What do you mean? They say Eddie killed himself.” He swallowed hard.

“I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

“Well, then, what…”

Hardy could see it was almost too much for the man. His hand went up to his eyes again. He shook his head as though trying to clear it.

The receptionist came to the door. “The boy’s awake,” she said.

At least he wants to be home, Big Ed was thinking. That’s something. Being back home. He’d said it. Daddy, take me home. Daddy. Nobody’d called him that in ten years. It was always either Dad, Pop or Ed. Well, if Steven wanted Daddy now, Daddy was taking him home. There he and Erin might be able to figure out if and where they’d screwed up so he wouldn’t want to run away again.

He looked around to the back seat where Steven lay, sleeping again, strapped down by the seat belts.

“He okay?” Hardy asked.

Ed nodded.

Muñoz and Hardy had thought it’d be better if Ed didn’t have to drive back alone with his son, so they arranged that the sheriff’s one deputy would drive Hardy’s car back to the city later.

Ed again glanced into the back seat. He couldn’t look enough at his son, couldn’t really believe yet-after the fears of last night sitting up with Erin, his daughter Jodie and Frannie-that Steven, along with Eddie, wasn’t dead and gone forever. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d been through, at least he was still with them, breathing. He must’ve sighed with relief, because Hardy looked over at him.

This guy Hardy was driving well-slow and careful. No bumps on the kid. And it was a good thing he was driving-Ed was pretty sure he couldn’t have kept his mind on the road.

They were up to San Mateo. The sun was behind the mountains already. Where had the hours gone to? In another half hour they’d be home.

Maybe sometime today Erin had gotten some sleep. He hoped so. She hadn’t slept now in almost a week.

Erin. His thoughts, as always, were never far from his wife. He didn’t know how they were ever going to get over this time, though something told him they would. Well, almost. They’d never be the same, of course. The wound-losing Eddie-was too deep to ever heal completely, but there would be something- some new challenge that would get things into a new perspective. At least, he hoped so.

Why had his boy run away?

“You have any proof somebody killed Eddie?” he asked suddenly.

“Nope.” But then Hardy told him what Cavanaugh had said about Sam Polk-the drug thing.

“That’s something,” Ed said. “I knew something was going on with Polk. Eddie and I kind of argued about it.”

“That’s what Cavanaugh said-that Eddie wanted another opinion.”

“When did you talk to Jim?”

“Yesterday. Last night. He thought he might have something of a lead. I was going to check around a little today, but then this morning…” He ticked his head toward the back seat.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but thanks.”

Hardy kept his eyes on the road. “I knew Ed and Frannie pretty well. Her brother’s my best friend.”

Turning west up the 380 now as dusk deepened, passing the huge cemetery with its thousands of white squares, gridding the grassy fields, marking the graves of military dead.

Ed reached behind the seat and rested a hand on his son’s leg, feeling the warmth of it through the blanket. Steven stirred and moaned softly, but didn’t open his eyes.

“Almost there,” Hardy said.

He’d made a dumb turn coming up this way, even though it was the most direct route. The cemetery was closing Ed up, and Hardy swore at himself-he should have remembered it. Maybe he could distract him a little, get his mind off it. “Your friend Father Cavanaugh is some kind of character.”

“Jim? Yeah. He’s a great guy.”

“Only thing I can’t figure is why he’s not a cardinal or something-at least a bishop.”

Ed smiled. “I know. He’s got that flair, don’t he?” He paused. “But if he were a bishop, he’d have to leave Erin, and I don’t think he’d like to do that.”

That remark surprised Hardy. He must have shown it. “It’s no secret he’s in love with my wife,” Ed said, but then held up a hand. “No, no, not like that. He’s one of us. Erin’s his best friend. He’s hers. Except maybe for me.” He smiled again. “Except sometimes I’m not sure of that either.”

“I think that’d make me nervous,” Hardy said.

“Well, after thirty years, I figure Erin’s my gal. We’ve talked about it, but she says the physical thing just never was there with Jim.” He shook his head. “How do you figure that? She prefers a galumpf like me, she says. I figure it’s her one flaw, but believe me, I’ll take it.”

Hardy glanced over at him. He said it in such a self-effacing way, you almost missed the serene confidence. This man knew, without a trace of doubt, that he knocked his wife out.

“It’s good to know they don’t always go for the movie stars, not being one myself,” Hardy said, relieved they had finally gotten by the cemeteries, into Daly City and all the little boxes on the hillsides.

“I don’t think they’d let Jim be a bishop anyway.”

“Why not?”

Ed shrugged. “He’s not political enough. Done a few unusual things. For a priest.”

Such as coming to me for his confession, Hardy thought, but asked, “Like what?”

“Oh, nothing serious. Just stuff.”

Okay, they weren’t going to talk about it. But then… “It took him about twice as long as anyone to get out of the seminary. They kicked him out twice.”

“Kicked him out?”

Ed shrugged. “Well, it was the fifties, early sixties. The Church thought it had a lock on these guys. Any little thing, they’d say you didn’t have a true vocation and boot you. Not like now, where if you’ve got a history as a gunrunner to Nicaragua you still got a pretty good chance, they need priests so bad.”

“So what did he do?”

“Jim?” Ed laughed, remembering. “I should know. I went with him. He got about two weekends off a year, and so this one time we got plastered and took in some strip shows-Erin was at school so the two of us were ripe for some hijinks. But the problem was, the next day he showed up back at the seminary hung over and confessed everything. Bad scene. They put him out for a semester to rethink his vocation.”

“What was the other time?”

“That was different. I don’t know I ever got the story right. Erin and I were on our honeymoon. It was maybe a month before his ordination. We’d already received the invitation. Anyway, Jim had decided he wasn’t worthy, or something like that. He wanted to be a priest, but didn’t feel he was holy enough. Can you imagine that? If Jim wasn’t holy enough, there was no hope for anybody else. I mean, where it counted.”

Hardy looked across the front seat. By now it was nearly dark. The streetlights in the lower Avenues had come on.

“See, they tried to tell him everybody had those doubts. Priests weren’t supposed to be saints-they were humans like the rest of us. They weren’t about to let him drop out. He was the president of his class, was going to be the speaker at the ordination. They’d invested too much in him.”

“So? What happened?”

“So he stole the dean’s car, crashed out through the front gate and disappeared for three days.”

“Cavanaugh did that?”

“And then showed up looking like a bum, and without the car. He never talks about those three days, except to say it was his time in the desert. Whatever that meant. Anyway, he pissed everybody off pretty good. Now those same guys, his classmates, are becoming the bishops, and they all like Jim, probably, but think he’s a flake. Or at least a little bit of a flake. For sure too unstable to move up in the hierarchy.”

“But he did finally get ordained?”

“Yeah, two years later, he’d done his penance. But he wasn’t valedictorian.”

They turned onto Taraval. In the back seat, Steven moaned gently.

“Almost home, son,” Ed said. “Almost home.”

Frannie looked much better, Erin much worse. Hardy sat drinking his second scotch, waiting for the opportune moment to make an exit. Everybody here was tired-hell, exhausted. Jodie was already asleep, her gangly frame draped over the love seat. Erin and Ed, sitting together like statues, holding hands, kept looking at each other as if wondering what was going to happen next. But there was a toughness Hardy noticed in Ed.

Here was a man who’d lost a son only a week before. Just that morning, Hardy had seen him break down into tears. But here, now, sitting next to his wife, he was hanging in there for her, in spite of his own hurt. Hardy thought he might be the bravest man he’d ever met.

“Thanks for the drink,” he said. “I think it’s time I called a cab.”

Frannie walked with him outside. “How are you making out?” he asked her. “Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure.” Her red hair gleamed in the porch light. She looked like she’d finally eaten something. Her eyes were clear.

“You said Eddie left right after dinner?”

She nodded.

“Do you have any idea what time that was?”

He hated to ask, to see her eyes cloud over again, but he had to know.

“It was still light out. Pretty early, I guess, sevenish. Why?”

The cab pulled up. “Because it shouldn’t take two and a half hours to drive from your place out to China Basin.”

“No, it’s only like fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He admired the way when her shoulders started to sag she tightened up her jaw. He leaned down and pecked her on the cheek. “I’m checking this stuff out, Frannie. You keep hanging in there.”

She put her arms up around him and held tight for a moment. The cabbie honked. She let go.

When the cab got to the corner, Hardy looked back. Frannie was still standing out by the curb. Hanging in there, Hardy thought.

“Nope.”

“Abe, come on.”

“You said yourself he’d never seen the guys before. How can there be a connection?”

“It’s too big a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think.”

“But that plus the drug thing with Ed’s boss?”

“Possible drug thing. What’s the matter with you, Hardy, you taking drugs yourself?”

After another minute, Hardy hung up. What more did Glitsky need? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? And there was enough smoke here to cure meat.

It was ten o’clock Saturday night. The deputy hadn’t yet arrived back from Gonzalez with his car.

Not for the first time, Hardy wished he didn’t have a rule about keeping hard liquor in his house. He went into his bedroom, fed the fish, walked back to his office. He picked the six darts from the board by the fireplace and stood by his desk, just at the tape line he’d put down there, and threw methodically, trying to let his mind clear.

Frannie was positive that Ed had left the house around seven. Cruz said that he had left work around eight-thirty and nobody had been either in the building or the lot at that time. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from Ed’s to Cruz’s.

Hell of a lot of time to kill, and that was the minimum. He might not’ve gotten to Cruz’s until ten. Nobody knew.

Damn Glitsky. There was something here, Hardy was sure of it. A little manpower and they could at least get a fix on the whereabouts of all the principals. Where, for example, had Cruz gone at eight-thirty? Maybe he’d just sat in the lot, waiting for a meeting. And Polk-what had Polk been doing Monday night?

Maybe Ed’s meddling in his private business was going to cut into Nika’s lifestyle, and he couldn’t allow that.

All right. He had the background. It was beginning to look as if he’d have to do some old-fashioned police work, and he didn’t relish the thought. That’s why they have police departments, he thought. Because the legwork is awesome. It’s why they have rookies, and he hadn’t been a rookie in nearly twenty years. But if Abe wouldn’t help…

He reached again for the phone, intending to give it one more try, even if it was a Saturday night and Glitsky was at home relaxing with his wife. He turned off the answering machine in the office and plugged the phone into the jack.

The doorbell.

Oh, my God! Jane!

He dropped the darts on his desk and sprinted around the corner, through his bedroom and kitchen, and down the hall. It wasn’t Jane.

“Mr. Hardy?”

Hardy nodded.

“Your keys, sir, and the sheriff says thanks again.”

Hardy remembered his manners. “You want a cup of coffee? How you getting back down?”

He had stood up Jane. There was no way she was still waiting for him.

“Highway Patrol will pick me up if I could borrow your phone? The sheriff-he got it okayed.”

Hardy made a pot and the two men talked baseball for most of an hour while they waited for the Highway Patrol.

After the deputy had gone, Hardy stood outside on his front lawn. The fog had come in, though it wasn’t heavy. It presaged a return to normal weather. Without a coat on, he walked up to the corner and saw the restaurant where he was to have met Jane. The lights were still on.

He stood outside its front window looking in. Jane wasn’t there. Cold now, he jogged back to his house. Coming up the steps, he heard the telephone ringing, but it stopped when he was inside, running back to the office. Maybe if it was Jane he could meet her for a nightcap, explain what had happened. Maybe she’d even believe him.

But there was no message on the answering machine, because he had unplugged it.

Somebody’s trying to tell me something, he thought, picking up his darts again. He hit every number from twenty down to the bull’s-eye in thirty-four throws.