Goodnight, Irene

38

IWOKE UP with the lousy awareness that exactly one week ago, my whole world had blown apart. O’Connor dead a week. I lay in bed, feeling the spike of painful, hopeless longing for his company run through me. I wanted so much to hear his voice, his laugh, his lousy Irish jokes. I wanted him to come back, to be alive again. I knew I wasn’t going to get what I wanted, but I wanted it anyway.

I made myself get up and get dressed. It didn’t help. Lydia was scheduled to work a half-day at the paper; I asked if I could ride in with her.

“Sure,” she said, studying me. “What’s wrong?”

I shrugged, not wanting to open a Pandora’s box of emotion by talking about how much I missed O’Connor. I was afraid I’d spend the morning blubbering into my breakfast cereal. I tried to make an effort at light conversation; when I failed to carry that off, I settled for being quiet.

Throughout breakfast and the drive to work, Lydia didn’t try to force me to confess my mood or the cause of it. If I had been on better emotional footing, I would have been grateful for it; as it was, I felt bad about not talking to her. I wondered if she regretted taking in such a brooding boarder.

“Lydia,” I said as she pulled into a parking space at the newspaper, “I don’t know how long all of this will go on. Maybe I should try to figure out some long-term arrangements.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to put a strain on our friendship. Maybe I should look for a place of my own.”

“Irene,” she said, giving me the exact same look that Sister Joseph used to give me when I had misbehaved in third grade, “relax. We’ve been friends over a long period of time. We survived both Catholic school and being roommates in college, and we’re still friends. So we’ll be okay. Not another word on the subject.”

“But if I start to bother you-”

“Irene.”

Even Sister Joseph was never so exasperated with me. “Yes?” I asked meekly.

“I know what’s wrong with you this morning. I don’t like thinking back on it either. But there are fifty-two Sundays every year and we can’t just fall apart on every one of them. So let’s deal with it like good little workaholics. Get out of the car.”

So I shut up and we walked into the building together. Once there, we went our separate ways; Lydia went to work at the City Desk, I went to the morgue. I checked out the same roll I had looked over before, and threaded it through the machine.

A little bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, I tried to concentrate on the microfilm images on the small screen before me. I found the June 18, 1955, issue again, with its story of Jennifer Owens’s murder. It struck me that I was reading the article on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the night she was murdered.

The June 21, 1955, issue had the story of Blanche Woolsey’s accident. Finally I came to the June 26 issue, with its coverage of the Sheffield-Hollingsworth wedding.

I paid closer attention to it now. Elinor wore an ornate wedding gown; the young woman in the photos looked as self-assured at twenty-two as she did today. The years had not done much to change her. Was it my imagination, or did Andrew Hollingsworth look nervous? Of course, many bridegrooms do.

The article talked of family, friends, and attendees. The guest list read like the blue book of Las Piernas. The groom’s family had arrived from Boston, Massachusetts. So Andrew had merely chosen a warm climate for his undergraduate work, and returned to his local neighborhood for his law degree.

Suddenly, I came across a paragraph that riveted my attention. It told of how the bride and groom had met. “Richard Longren, Las Piernas City Councilman, proudly took credit for introducing the happy couple to one another.” Apparently, Longren and Hollingsworth had been fraternity brothers at ASU. Longren was three years ahead of Hollingsworth, but they had been good friends. Hollingsworth came out to visit Longren in Las Piernas one summer vacation before law school.

I combined what I read on the microfilm with stories I had heard from O’Connor over the years, or knew from growing up in Las Piernas. The Longrens were in the same social circles as the Sheffields, at least on the outer orbits, since the Sheffields were a circle of their own. I remembered hearing that Richard Longren had all but ruined his father’s once very successful lumber business. Evidently his political ambitions had taken precedence.

The gist of the microfilm story was that Longren had taken his old pal Andrew Hollingsworth out to some fancy to-do at the Sheffield place. Andrew met Elinor, and, as they say, the rest is history. She waited for his graduation from Harvard, but persuaded Daddy Sheffield to make sure Andrew could clerk wherever he wanted to during summer breaks. Andrew knew a good deal when he saw one.

I returned the microfilm. I walked upstairs to the newsroom and sat at O’Connor’s desk. I needed time to think.

Both Richard Longren and Andrew Hollingsworth had gone to ASU. I wondered if Elaine Owens Tannehill had attended ASU as well. If she had, then that might provide some kind of connection between one or both of the two men and Jennifer Owens. I picked up the phone and called Arizona information. I asked for the number for the Owenses, but it was unlisted. I hung up and thought for a while. I called information again, with success this time, when I asked for the numbers of Rachel Giocopazzi and the Phoenix Police.

I tried Rachel at home first. She answered on the second ring with a terse “Giocopazzi.”

“Rachel? Irene Kelly.”

“Oh, Irene! For a minute I thought those bastards were gonna call me in on a Sunday. First day off I’ve had in the last nine days. So how are you doing, kid?”

“I’m doing a lot better than the last time you saw me. I guess you know the guy who killed Elaine Tannehill is dead.”

“Yeah, your pal Pete is coming out here again to tie up some loose ends on that one.”

I found myself grinning into the phone. So old wily Pete had finagled at least one more trip to see Rachel. Good for him.

“You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry-got distracted here for a minute. I’m at the paper. I was looking at some old microfilm and started wondering about something, and I thought you might be willing to help me out.”

“Sure, if I can.”

“Any chance I could talk to Elaine Tannehill’s mother? There are a couple of people here who might have known Elaine when she was younger.”

“You have some idea on who hired Hawkeyes?”

“Too early to call it an idea. Just some pretty loose speculation.”

“Hmm. Will you let me know if you turn up anything solid?”

“No problem. I just don’t want to open a can of worms by guessing aloud at this point.”

“Well, I tell you what. Even though it is a Sunday and my day off, I’ll call in and get a number for old lady Owens. I’ll ask her if she’s willing to talk to you; if she is, I’ll have her call you. I couldn’t get much out of her this week-she’s been pretty upset-so no guarantees. But I’ll try. That good enough?”

“That would be great. I really appreciate it, Rachel, and I’m sorry to bother you on your day off.”

“Ah, I make noise about it, but what else do I have to do?”

“Well, I still appreciate it.” I gave her the numbers for the paper and Lydia’s house.

I hung up and sat there brooding over the bits and pieces of information I had. I reached over and turned the computer terminal on, and went back to the sections of O’Connor’s notes on the mayor’s race. The election would be held in November. The primary had just been held during the first week of June, and for the first time in years, Longren had failed to take enough of a majority to avoid a runoff.

I looked over the two pieces of code that had caught my eye the last time I went through the files:

RCC-DA + MYR =o=. LDY? $ VS $ BLP AM W/C.

»MYR PD FR DA RCC $? CK W/AM @ BLP

Ann Marchenko and the Bank of Las Piernas. Now that I had talked to Guy about her job in the safe-deposit area of the bank, maybe I could see a new way of reading the messages on the screen.

In the first line of code, a question had come up in O’Connor’s mind about fund-raising moneys that concerned the district attorney and the mayor. After the rat nose, “LDY?” might stand for “laundry” or “laundering.” “$ VS $” might mean that the moneys accounted for in the campaign funding report didn’t match what one or both of the candidates had received. Somewhere, something didn’t balance out.

The second line of code was easier to figure out. “Mayor paid from district attorney’s fund-raiser money? Check with Ann Marchenko at the Bank of Las Piernas.”

Together, the two lines suggested that the district attorney might be laundering funds he raised and feeding them to the mayor through some kind of system that used the Bank of Las Piernas’s safe-deposit boxes.

I looked at a section of the screen just below the second line of code and saw a group of initials I hadn’t paid much attention to before:

A H

R M

E N

R L

I had originally thought them to be names of people O’Connor planned to call or interview. They weren’t phrases or anything I could make sense of. He would often put a person’s initials here or there. But it was uncommon for him to put four sets in a row without some kind of intervening commentary.

AH might be Andrew Hollingsworth, and RL, Richard Longren. But who the heck were RM and EN? I stared at this list of initials until I had a headache that was pulsing in time with the cursor on the screen.

“Patience,” I could hear O’Connor say. I snapped a pencil in half with my patience and shut the terminal down.

I walked over to Lydia. “I’ve got to get some air,” I said testily.

“I’m off in an hour,” she said. “Should I meet you somewhere for lunch?”

“Okay, how about the Tandoori?”

“Great. I haven’t had Indian food in a long time.”

By the time I stepped outside I was in a better mood. I decided that I would go by Kenny’s room and see how he was doing; maybe say hello to Barbara if she was there.

It was getting to be a little easier to walk into St. Anne’s. I strolled down the hall, but when I got to Kenny’s room, it was empty. I felt my knees buckle. Had Kenny died? I shook myself as if I were trying to throw off a chill. Nonsense, I told myself. His condition was improving. Barbara would have called if he had taken a turn for the worse.

One of the nurses who had seen me come by before told me that Kenny had been moved out of ICU and into another room. She told me how to find it. I thanked her, and she looked at me curiously. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look a little pale.”

I told her I was fine, thanked her again and made my way to Kenny’s new room.

When I got there, he was alone. “Barbara?” he called out.

“No, Kenny, it’s Irene.”

He didn’t hide the disappointment. “Oh,” he said.

“How are you feeling?”

No answer.

“Look, Kenny, I know you and I haven’t always been bosom buddies, but maybe for Barbara’s sake we could try to be civil to each other.”

He looked over at me. “I feel lousy. What would you expect?”

“That you’d feel lousy, I guess.”

“Well, I do.”

I thought for a moment. Should I just leave? I decided I would at least give it one more try.

“Kenny, I know it’s a really hard time for you. You’ve been through a lot. I’m very sorry about your dad.”

“I’m not.”

“What!” I felt myself go into a cold shock.

“I said, ‘I’m not,’ as in, ‘I’m not sorry my father is dead.’”

The cold shock began to turn into a slow burn. I wanted to break a couple more of his lousy bones.

“You heartless, selfish little son of a bitch!”

“I’m just telling you the truth. You never could accept the truth about Dad. You idolized him. You worshiped him like some kind of god. You made him into something he wasn’t.”

“Oh, really.” I was trying very hard to get back into control of my temper.

“Really. The truth is, my father was an alcoholic who never gave a tinker’s damn about me because I couldn’t and wouldn’t be a newspaperman.”

“That is pure bullshit.”

“Is it?”

“He loved you, Kenny. You were his only son-his only child.”

“I was a responsibility to fulfill. An obligation. You were his only son, Irene. You were the one he adopted as his child. You were the son I could never be.”

“You are really one fucked-up individual.”

“You even talk like a man. You were tougher than I was. You still are.”

I held my tongue. My head was pounding. I took a lot of long slow breaths.

“You know, Kenny, maybe if I lived your life, I’d be as bitter as you are-but I doubt it.”

This was met with stony silence.

“I can accept the fact that your dad drank too much. You’re right. He did. But there was more to him than that, and you know it.”

“Go away, Irene.”

“He loved you, Kenny. He told me more than once how glad he was that you came to live with him. How a piece of him had been missing until you came back.”

“I said, go away.”

“He loved you. And if you don’t know it, that is about the saddest thing I can think of-that he died unaware that you didn’t believe in his love, and that you didn’t love him back.”

“I did love him,” he said quietly, and shut his eyes to me.

I walked out, my face a big mess, tears rolling down my cheeks. People stared at me as I went by, then turned away in embarrassment if I caught them looking.

Out on the sidewalk I was given a wide berth. I stopped and I got out my handy Kleenex packet, which up until recently was only used when other people started crying or sneezing, and tried to get myself together. After a few minutes I was okay again. I allowed myself a king-sized sigh. I couldn’t help Kenny. The old feeling I always had in connection with him.

As for my own sadness, I resolved that my love for O’Connor was not going to be my burden, but rather my strength.