Goodnight, Irene

7

THE PLACE WAS PACKED and humming with the tension of people who only have forty-five minutes left for lunch. I was just getting fidgety again when Sam walked back, and told me I had a phone call.

We hurried our way through the tables into the hot and steamy kitchen, where Roselynn waved to me from a counter where she was cutting fresh vegetables. Sam handed the receiver to me.

“Frank?”

“Irene? They found Kenny. Somebody’s worked him over pretty good. I’m at St. Anne’s Hospital. Can you meet me here? If not, I’ll meet you later at Lydia’s.”

I told Frank I would meet him in the ER waiting room and hung up. When I turned around, Sam was holding a white grocery-store bag with two Styrofoam containers in it.

“You’ve got to have lunch. Lucky for me, you always order the same thing every time.”

I couldn’t turn him down, and when he adamantly refused payment, I promised to bring Frank in to meet him someday soon.

St. Anne’s is in downtown Las Piernas, not far from the old Wrigley Building, the gargoyle roost that houses the Express. It’s run by the Sisters of Mercy. Like the Wrigley Building, one part of St. Anne’s was built in the late 1920s, but some Las Piernas millionaire that no one had ever heard of before died and left a large part of his fortune to the place, so they had added new wings. They were not only very up-to-date in facilities and equipment, but they were known as one of the best trauma centers in the area. That and the nun factor gave it a good reputation. It also made its emergency room one of the busiest for miles around.

Despite traffic and my tendency to check the rearview mirror a lot, I got to St. Anne’s fairly quickly. Frank was standing outside the ER entrance, waiting for me.

“Hi,” he said, when I got nearer. “They’re working on him, not much we can learn right now. Your sister’s in there, too. She found him. My partner, Pete Baird, was two steps behind her and was able to radio for help or I don’t think Kenny would have made it. Still not sure he will. Whoever it was really beat the living hell out of him.”

“How’s Barbara?” I asked, anxious to find her.

“Your sister has seen something that would be pretty disturbing to anybody. It’s even worse when somebody you care about gets messed up like this. The doctor gave her a sedative; she was…well, she was really upset. Had a little difficulty getting her to leave the ER so they could work on Kenny.” He paused and asked, “What’s in the bag?”

“Lunch,” I said, feeling more than a little bit foolish. “I didn’t want to leave it in the car. It’s a gift of the restaurant owner, who was a great fan of O’Connor’s. He insisted.”

“Sorry about keeping you waiting there. You know how it is. Why don’t you try to coax your sister into coming outside? I’d like to ask her some questions, and I think it would be easier if we were away from all the other people in the waiting room.”

I handed him the bag and went into the waiting room. There wasn’t the crowd that would be there on a Friday or Saturday night, but every chair was taken. Barbara was leaning against a wall near a doorway, twisting a Kleenex to shreds. She looked up at me and I could see she had been crying hard. Fresh tears started as I approached. I put my arms around her. She leaned on my shoulder and I felt her heaving with quiet sobs. I heard myself softly comforting her with the same singsong-“shh, shh, shh”-sound our mother used to make as she held us when we cried as children. I reached into my purse and brought out a fresh packet of Kleenex. She nodded her thanks and straightened up and blew her nose.

“Let’s go outside for a minute, Barbara. There’s someone who needs to talk to you out there.”

“I…can’t…leave…him,” she said, sharp breaths between each word.

I put my arm around her and walked her over to an elderly nun who was at the admitting counter.

“Excuse me, Sister?”

“Yes?” She had gentle, knowing eyes that took in the situation in a glance.

“This is Mrs. Kenneth O’Connor, whose husband was just admitted a little while ago. I’m her sister and I’d like to take her out to the courtyard for a while. Would it be possible to have someone let her know when her husband comes out of the emergency room?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling gently at Barbara. “I promise to come out there myself just as soon as there’s word on his condition. I’m Sister Theresa. Just ask for me if you need anything.”

The Sisters of Mercy had lived up to their name.

Barbara allowed me to lead her out into the courtyard, but as we got to the double glass doors, she stopped me.

“You shouldn’t have lied to that nun.”

“I didn’t lie to that nun.”

“Yes, you did. You told her I was Mrs. Kenneth O’Connor.”

“In the eyes of the Church, you still are.”

It made me feel good that she’d hassle me over anything; it was a sign she was capable of being distracted, however momentarily, from the problems at hand. And here I was, leading her out to talk with a cop who would make her rehash it all. I could feel her tense up when she saw Frank. She stared down at the ground the rest of the way over to the concrete table and bench where he sat waiting for us. As we approached, he stood up and said, “Mrs. O’Connor, we haven’t really been introduced. I’m Frank Harriman.”

Barbara nodded her head without making any eye contact.

“I know. You’re Irene’s detective.”

I made a sign to Frank not to pursue it for a moment.

“Why don’t we sit down for a while?” he said. “Are you hungry? Your sister has brought some lunch.”

She looked up and glared at me. “You went out and bought lunch before coming here?”

“No, Barbara,” I said, wondering when the sedative was going to kick in. “I was at a restaurant when Detective Harriman-Frank-was kind enough to call and let me know you needed me.” Not the exact truth, but she didn’t seem to question it-or how Frank would know I was at a particular restaurant. In any case, this story of Frank’s searching for her sister for her at least got her to look up at his face.

“That was very kind of you,” she said to Frank.

“No problem.”

No one was going to make a move toward the food. Frank was the only possible candidate for an appetite at that moment, and he wasn’t diving in.

The courtyard was private and serene. It was bordered by carefully tended beds of bright-colored flowers and tall trees. A hedge with an opening into a walkway to the front entrance shielded the yard from the parking lot. We sat there listening to birds and smelling the now chilled satay and pad Thai.

Barbara seemed to be growing calmer. Frank asked me if he had ever told me the story of the time he was called out to rescue a lady who was stuck in a dog door. I said no.

“It was out in Bakersfield, oh, about midnight one night. The owner of the house was this lady’s former boyfriend. He had tried to break up with her for two weeks. She refused to let go, as they say, and on four other occasions within these two weeks she had shown up drunk on his doorstep. He’d open the door and she’d try to shove her way in, calling him every name in the book, then crying on his shoulder and telling him she couldn’t live without him. At first he felt so guilty about hurting her that he put up with it. But this particular night he just got tired of it, so he didn’t open the door. She went around back.”

“And tried to get in through the dog door?”

“Right. And, well, let’s just say she was a little more fully developed than the dog. The guy only had a beagle. Anyway, she was stuck between her hips and bra-line.”

He looked over to see if this was offensive to Barbara, but to my amazement she was sitting there with a little grin on her face.

“How’d you get her out?” I asked.

“Well, by the time I got there, she’d sobered up quite a bit, and felt more than a little embarrassed. I asked the guy if he had any mineral oil or petroleum jelly and a sheet. He brought in a bottle of baby oil and a sheet. I told her I’d need her to take off her blouse, and we’d put the sheet over her for the sake of modesty. She said she was past worrying about modesty, her back and knees were killing her and would we please hurry up and get her the hell out of the dog door.

“So we stripped her from the waist up, and lubricated her skin and as much of the door liner as we could. I went out and around through the backyard gate so that I could pull from the other side. I’m sure it didn’t feel great, but eventually she slid right out. She thanked me, took her blouse and bra and told the guy she never wanted to see him again.”

“I’ll never feel like the most desperate woman in the world again,” Barbara said.

“Frank and I knew each other when I worked in Bakersfield,” I said.

“Oh,” said Barbara, “I didn’t know you were such old friends.”

“We haven’t been in touch in a long time.”

Barbara looked between us. “Oh.”

“I know you’ve really had a shock today, Mrs. O’Connor,” Frank said gently.

She nodded. Tears welled up in her eyes and she looked back over toward the glass doors, but she stayed put.

“Did Mr. O’Connor call you today?”

She turned back to Frank. “You mean Kenny? Yes, he called. He said he needed me to give him a ride to a new hiding place. Someone was trying to kill him.”

Frank waited.

“He said he couldn’t tell me more over the phone because the cops-I mean, the police-might have the phone tapped.”

“Why was he afraid of the police?”

“I don’t know. I think he was afraid of everybody. He was just so scared. Anyway, he asked me to come and give him a ride, since he didn’t have his car-” She looked at me and reddened. She turned back to Frank. “I guess you already know that.”

“Did he mention the names of anyone who might be causing him trouble?”

She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about that. He said he couldn’t tell me what his problems were or who was after him, just that they were very powerful people who could get away with anything. But when we dropped the Corvette off at your house, Irene, he said something like, ‘All because of Hannah.’ I thought that might have been the young girl he was trying to impress when he bought the Corvette. Do you think she could be behind this?”

Frank and I looked at one another.

“Well, maybe that’s crazy,” she added quickly. “I don’t know. But who is Hannah?”

“‘Who Is Hannah?’…” I repeated slowly. “O’Connor’s column.”

“Oh, for pity’s sakes, Irene, that Hannah died almost forty years ago. And there’s more than one Hannah in the world. She probably wasn’t even a Hannah. Who knows what her name really was.”

“That’s what I want to know, Barbara. Who is it that might know her real name?”

Frank shot me a look that clearly said he wished I would shut my big mouth. Barbara saw it and went into a pout. “No one tells me anything!”

“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I just think your sister is doing a lot of speculating on slim evidence and I don’t want her to worry you.”

“Worry me! After today?” She turned to me. “Do you know what happened to me today?”

The shrill edge in her tone made me realize Barbara was a powder keg and I was playing with matches. I shook my head “no” and looked at Frank, who was now looking down at his hands. He was rubbing his right thumb over the knuckles of his left hand.

“That’s right,” she went on, “you don’t. When Kenny called he said he’d be ready to go in an hour. Just one hour. I was ready to go get him then, but he wanted me to come down in an hour. He was down at the beach house. The front door was open. Just wide open.”

“Barbara…”

She was white as a sheet. Her voice scared me-it had become mechanical, as if she were describing a scene in a movie. “There was blood everywhere. Everywhere. I walked in and I called out, ‘Kenny!’ But I already knew he wouldn’t answer. There was so much blood. It was sprayed on the walls. And there was a trail of it on the carpet leading to the back door. I got some of it on my shoes.”

She stopped and looked down at her shoes, and then back up at me. She started to cry.

“Barbara-” I reached out and she recoiled from me. I looked to Frank for help.

He said, very quietly, “Let her tell it.”

She started to speak again, tears rolling down her face.

“When I looked out into the backyard, I saw this red baseball bat stuck in the sand. I wondered why it was sticking up there in the sand, right where this trail of blood stopped. And then there was Kenny’s hand, just barely showing. He was moving his fingers. He was trying to dig himself out. They had buried him alive.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Barbara…”

“That’s when I started screaming. I just screamed and I screamed. I was screaming the whole time I was digging him out. At first I couldn’t find his nose. I wanted to make it so he could breathe, you see. I guess I got his mouth free, because he made these gulping and wheezing and then coughing noises. Then there was Detective Baird. I don’t know when he got there, but he helped me dig Kenny out. He pulled me away from Kenny and made me sit in the sand. He called some help somehow, and he tried to help Kenny breathe, but it was hard because…well, they had smashed his face. His teeth were all broken on one side and I could see…bone. And his nose was broken. His eyes were swollen shut and he had sand in all his cuts. The blood made everything stick. Detective Baird got some of the bleeding to stop. And then there were lots of people and Detective Baird drove me here, right behind the ambulance. Detective Baird had Kenny’s blood all over him.”

She looked at Frank, and took his hands. “You sent Detective Baird to look after me, didn’t you?”

“You might put it that way,” he said.

“I want to thank you for that.” She started sobbing again, but she wouldn’t let go of Frank’s hands. He didn’t try to take them away.

I thought of how often I misjudged her, thought of all she had been through just this morning. I stood up and took the bag of Thai food over to the trash can. A shame to waste it, but I didn’t expect to be hungry again for about five years.

As I turned to go back to the table, I noticed Sister Theresa walking toward us. I prayed a prayer I never thought I’d pray-I prayed to God that Kenny was still alive.