Dead Irish (24 page)

“You saying sex doesn’t bother you guys?”

“What do you think? We cut our nuts off? I’m just saying that it’s not always the hardest thing.” He grabbed at his glass, swirled the ice and drained it.

As if by magic, Hardy thought, the waitress came around for last call. Cavanaugh ordered the round: “Give us a couple doubles.”

Hardy didn’t fight it. It was get-down time for him, too, that old “since we’ve already passed propriety time, let’s hang it out and see where it goes.”

“There’s just no release ever,” Cavanaugh was saying. “It’s not a job where some guy goes to work and gets off at five and then gets drunk or fights somebody. It’s like you can never ever”—he stabbed at the table—“ever do anything that really lets the valve loose. That’s the hardest part.”

“Hey, Jim, that’s just adulthood. Who ever really gets to blow it out anymore? And you think you’ve got it tough, try being a cop.”

Cavanaugh shook his head. The girl came back with the drinks. “Priests can make cops look like Boy Scouts.”

Hardy paid for the round. “Cops can’t let out a thing, Jim. They gotta keep it in control.”

“Yeah, but they also let out a lot. You get the adrenaline pumped up pretty good and you’re allowed—hell, you’re
supposed
—to do something, direct it to something. Shoot a guy, make an arrest, get in somebody’s way. I mean, there’s something there. You don’t go walking off—Mr. Mellow—and read your breviary.”

Hardy took a good swig of his own Irish. “Cops don’t let out near enough,” Hardy said, defensive. “Why you think you got drinking cops? You got cops on drugs? You got just plain mean motherfuckers?”

“What I’m saying is just multiply that by about twenty for priests.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It isn’t. Maybe that’s where the sex comes in. Your cop at least has that option.”

“So why do you do it? Why do you guys keep at it?”

Cavanaugh drank again. “I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know at all. You believe in the theory, I guess. You believe that the suffering is worth it.”

“You believe in God?”

“You had better do that. You sin and you sin and you sin again and you keep thinking maybe it’s going to get easier someday and you won’t have to feel like breaking out so often, that maybe God’s gonna give you a break. Take a doctor with a headache, he knows fifty ways it can be terminal. You, it’s a headache, it’ll probably go away. A doctor knows it could be a tumor, cancer, the beginning of a stroke, or whatever. Same with priests. We can’t even allow ourselves to think we’re going to be okay. If we do, that’s pride! The number-one sin. But if I think I’m a totally worthless piece of shit, then that’s false modesty, another sin. Everything’s a sin, Dismas. And if it’s not, it’s a near occasion. Being a little loaded right now—sure it’s a release, but it’s also one of the seven deadlies. Drunkenness. There’s no escape ever,” he concluded, reaching for his glass again, putting down half of what remained. “None. Ever.”

Hardy sat back, shaking his head. “All this from the perfect priest.”

“Who thinks that?”

“Erin Cochran.”

Cavanaugh sucked in a breath. “What does she know?”

“One would think she knows you.”

Cavanaugh sighed. “She’s God’s reminder to me that I’m not perfectible, much less perfect.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means, you’d think after twenty, thirty years, the old spell she throws would wear out.” He started to lift his glass, then put it back down carefully, as though afraid he might break it somehow, maybe squeezing it too hard. “Sometimes I still . . . I think I’ve been in love with her since the day I met her. And I wasn’t close to being a priest back then.”

Hardy wanted to ask, but Cavanaugh answered before he could get it out. “You don’t think I haven’t wanted to make love with her like any other man . . . ?”

Hardy lifted his own glass and took a drink. He thought about Jane, about getting back with her, their hurried and aching coupling after the years apart. He said, “That must be very tough.”

The priest made some noise, like a laugh, but he wasn’t laughing. “They say love and hate are so close. Sometimes, I don’t know, I hate her, I hate ’em all. . . .”

And there he was, unbidden, that old panhandler again, reaching out his hand. Hardy looked at the hand a minute, then flipped a quarter that fell into the middle of his palm.

“Yeah, I’ve been tempted to wipe out all the happiness I see there. Why should they get it all? You think that seems fair?” He stared at Hardy, not seeing him, looking inside himself. “There was a moment, God help me, when I was almost happy about it, about Eddie being dead. Let them feel what it’s like to have things go wrong, to have your love lost, the sum of your life reduced to zero. Erin thinks I’m perfect, huh?

“Not close, Dismas. Not even close. If I could feel like that, even for a second, when the boy was like my son, my only son . . .” He put a hand up to his face. “Going back to the Cochrans’, burying Eddie”—he shook his head again—“after feeling that, as a penance. You believe in a good God, you believe you’re doing something worthwhile, that being around someone you love, denying it, is strengthening you, making you a better priest, a better person. Your reward is in heaven, after all.” He tipped up his glass. “You go back. You keep going back. It’s like the old Augustine monks who slept in the same bed with their women every night to test their celibacy. The roots go way back. Deny, conquer, deny again, sin, conquer it again. That’s the road to salvation, right? Ain’t it a piece of cake?”

Hardy sat in the lengthening silence, sipping at his drink, shaken somewhere even through the booze. Cavanaugh was in such obvious pain he couldn’t believe he’d been blind to it before.

“Hey,” Hardy said. “Let’s quit bullshitting around and talk about something we really care about.”

Gradually, Cavanaugh’s face softened. He laughed quietly. “You’re okay, Dismas.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Jim.”

Another pause, then Cavanaugh saying, “So how ’bout them Giants, huh?”

“Humm baby,” Hardy said.

Hardy switched on the light in his hallway, shivering slightly from driving home with the windows open in the light fog. He hadn’t worn a jacket. On the way home, really cold with the Seppuku’s top down, he’d bounced along singing a dirty country song about rodeos. A good song. Kept up his good mood.

Imagine feeling that a priest could be a regular friend of his, maybe even a close one. It was surprising, the charge Hardy got out of Cavanaugh’s company. Jim’s conversation was a soup, a stew, a goulash of politics, sports and what he called the “cheap m’s” of popular culture—music and movies—all seasoned—peppered more like it—with roughly equal parts vulgarity and poetry. Like, who else but Cavanaugh would have known off the top of his head that Linda Polk wasn’t, couldn’t have been, descended from James K. Polk, eleventh President of the United States? Because Polk had been childless.

He was also fun to hang with because you met a lot of women. Though the guy had to be close to sixty, he had three times Hardy’s hair, and all of it looked better. While they talked and drank (Cavanaugh in some baggy khakis and a loose blousy light-green thing with an open neck), three women had joked with them, butting in, leaving openings you could drive a truck through. But he’d closed the door on them all with a practiced grace that told Hardy this happened all the time.

Another reason they probably got along, he told himself, was that they still had Eddie Cochran in common. Except for Jane, it was pretty much the only thing on Hardy’s mind, and once he’d started talking, Cavanaugh had seemed as obsessed with it as Hardy was himself. It didn’t get boring—at least going over it with Jim, who still leaned toward the late Sam Polk as the murderer even after Hardy said that he’d been visible that whole night at a party his wife had thrown.

That was the bitch of the whole thing—none of the suspects could have done it unless one of them had at least one accomplice. And there was no indication of that at all.

Back in his office, undressed for bed, Hardy saw the three darts stuck on either side of the 20. About five drinks (and one double) unsteady (which he thought wasn’t very), he pulled them from the board and went back to the line in front of his desk.

He took a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly. He shook his head once quickly, then let fly the first dart, nodded as it plocked into the 20.

“Okay,” he said.

One thing was certain—neither he nor Cavanaugh accepted Ed’s death as a suicide, although Jim’s feeling seemed to be more visceral than Hardy’s. To Hardy, even forgetting the suspects and their alibis, the facts simply didn’t support that finding. With Jim it was more an article of faith. Eddie Cochran wouldn’t have done it—not that way, not any way.

Hardy’s second dart hit the tiny slice of triple 20, a good shot by any standards. He put the last dart down on the desk. Tonight, for a change of pace, he’d quit winners.

The wooden chair was cold against the skin of his butt and back, but he forced himself down into it. There were scraps of paper on the desk—dribs and drabs of ideas he’d entertained over the last week or so, and he wanted to clear the decks for the morning. He was damned glad he hadn’t seen Moses this afternoon. He probably wouldn’t have been able to have stopped himself from bragging that the case was solved, which it pretty emphatically was not.

Suddenly the drink-and-talk-inspired euphoria faded. Hardy looked at the scraps of paper in his hand and wondered what the hell any of them meant. Fancy theories and clever words.

Absently, he reached over to his phone machine. He wanted to hear Jane’s voice again, and he didn’t think he’d erased the messages. The last thing had been Jim’s phone number. There it was, in fact, on one of the pieces of paper.

He flicked the machine.

“Thank you,” he heard. The end of Jim’s earlier message.

Then Jane’s voice again. “I’m just thinking about . . .”

But then he stopped listening. Something jangled deep in his brain, and the hairs on his arms and legs stood up over the chicken flesh. He switched the machine back to reverse.

“. . . 5081. Thank you.”

He closed his eyes, rewound again, listened. “Thank you.” He played it over in his mind, hearing it fresh.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

He had put the police tape into the drawer down to his right. He held his breath, irrationally terrified that it wouldn’t be there anymore, but it was. He spun around on the chair and carefully placed the tape into the machine. It was short enough. “There is a body in the parking lot of the Cruz Publishing Company.” A tiny, strained pause, perhaps trying to think of something to add. Nope. Then just, “Thank you.”

Back at his desk, he lifted the phone machine and brought it over next to the tape recorder. He played the two “Thank you”s one after the other, first one then the other, both ways.

Cavanaugh’s message of earlier that night. The formal, cultured, unaccented voice without a personality, a smile, an attitude to color it.

Put it together, Diz, he said to himself. That’s why the call had come from halfway across the city. Cavanaugh had been driving home. Or took a bus or a cab. Or got home and went out again, not wanting to call from the rectory, and maybe not knowing they had automatic tracing on 911 calls.

He played the police tape another time, hearing the voice he’d been listening to most of the night. The voice that had been telling him more than he’d been hearing. Jesus.

There was a safe in the room where he kept some papers and his guns. He opened it, took both tapes from their machines and put them inside, closing it then and spinning the combination.

Going back to his bedroom, he picked up the last dart. He put his weight on his left foot, feeling the tape with his toes. “Double bull’s-eye,” he said out loud. He threw the dart.

Sure enough.

31

“DOMINUS
. . .
,”
HE BEGAN, his arms spread wide. Immediately he caught himself. “The Lord be with you.”

Slipping back into Latin. His mind must really be miles away. Raising his eyes to the tiny congregation, he realized that no one, not even the altar boys, had noticed the slip.

He had to concentrate. He was, after all, saying a Mass, and even a sinful priest loses none of his powers. Believing otherwise was formal heresy.

But it was difficult to pay attention. He had the altar boy pour quite a lot of wine into the chalice hoping a little hair of the dog would help the nagging headache. Still, he knew it wasn’t his throbbing temples that were distracting him.

He had so hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but last night with Dismas it was pretty clear that the police weren’t going to be satisfied with their suspects. And that meant the search was still on. If there was no new evidence, though, they would be forced to leave it a suicide, or give up, and his horrible . . . mistake would never be known.

And he couldn’t let it be known, ever. It would do irreparable harm to the Church, to say nothing of the further pain it would cause all those close to him.

All right, he’d made his peace with God now. He’d confessed, and that ought to be the end of it until he went before St. Peter.

Could God forgive him? He had to believe He could. Could he ever forgive himself? No. He knew that now. Killing Eddie had been far, far beyond the worst peccadilloes he’d indulged in over the years to ease the terrible burden of living a holy life, the unending boredom of sinlessness. He thought he’d grown inured to the twinges of conscience that the occasional sin, the moments of temporary weakness, had driven him to. But killing Eddie had been, if there was such a thing, unforgivable.

When Eddie had come to the rectory that night—Erin’s first son, the son
they
should have had together—with that special fire that only he possessed, and told him he and Frannie were going to have a baby, he finally could stand it no longer.

How did one boy deserve all he had been given? Surely he, Jim Cavanaugh, who had spent his whole life denying, denying, being denied, should have been given a chance, one brief moment, for this boy’s happiness?

But that had never happened.

And now the son of the love of his life—God forgive him, but it was true—now Eddie would have it all. Everything he had ever really wanted, and now, clearly, would never have. It was too much to bear. He couldn’t let him have it, couldn’t let the privileged happiness go on for still another generation.

So that night, with Eddie’s newfound strength and hope and confidence, he had suggested, since he was planning to meet Cruz anyway, that he go down with him, bring the whole weight of the moral argument to bear. Surely two such charming, persuasive, wonderful people could not help but succeed. In the heady flush of expectant fatherhood, Eddie had lapped up those oily words, believing as only he could that everything was possible.

And Jim Cavanaugh was convincing, wasn’t he? Eddie could save Army, save Polk from himself, save the whole goddamn world. Why shouldn’t he feel that? He was young, strong, his manhood verified! He, Eddie Cochran, could do it all!

Yes, it had just been too much to take. But now, now, living with it, Cavanaugh could see that the light, even the dim reflected light he’d lived for, had gone from Erin’s eyes.

Still, he had to believe that God had forgiven him, though it was beyond his power to fathom such forgiveness. He would have to put his faith in the Lord. The greatest sin, after all, was despair—despair that God would abandon any, even the most unworthy, of his sheep. Despair was loss of hope, a graver sin even than murder. That was what he was fighting now, the temptation to despair.

Because he knew he had to kill again.

He was walking out to the garage with Dietrick, the sun bright in a deep blue sky.

“Are you really worried about her?” the young priest asked.

Cavanaugh shook his head. “Ever since”—he stopped—“the Cochran boy—Eddie—died. You haven’t noticed the change?”

Dietrick stopped halfway across the asphalt, trying to remember. “I guess I take Rose too much for granted. Another of my failings.”

Cavanaugh laid a gentle arm on Dietrick’s arm. “She confides in me. That’s all. It’s no reflection on you.”

“Still . . .”

“I think”—Cavanaugh paused, wanting to phrase it right—“I think my reaction to Eddie’s death, taking it so hard—” Dietrick started to interrupt, but Cavanaugh pressed on. “No, I know it’s understandable, but maybe I should have hidden it from her a little better. It got Rose thinking about her . . . her own loneliness, I guess. Her husband. All that she’s missed over the years.”

They were walking again. “You think it’s serious?” Dietrick asked.

“I think it’s very serious,” he answered quickly. But then he brought himself up short. “I don’t mean to panic you. I don’t know. She was up when I got in late a few times the past week, couldn’t sleep. Sometimes that’s an indication.”

They got to the garage. Dietrick had parked his car beside it, not wanting to cram his new Honda into the smallish space next to Cavanaugh’s. “Should we get her some help, do you think? Beyond ourselves, I mean.”

“I think it’s worth thinking about. She hides it well, but I believe she really has been very depressed.”

Dietrick got in the car and rolled the window down, thinking about it. “I ought to pay more attention. It’s good you noticed, Jim.”

Cavanaugh waved it off. “I’ve got to be out all this morning, but maybe this afternoon when you get back . . . ?”

“Definitely, we’ll get her straightened out.”

Cavanaugh waited a minute, standing by the garage, watching the car disappear around the front of the rectory. All right, he thought. Dietrick was convinced, he was reasonably sure, that Rose has been badly depressed lately, would swear to it on a stack of Bibles.

Bless Father, always thinking of others, Rose thought.

Father Dietrick had gone down to the airport to pick up one of the Maryknoll missionaries who would be spending the rest of the week at the rectory and preaching next Sunday. Father Cavanaugh, after saying early Mass and having breakfast, had of course offered to make the drive himself to the airport. He always offered, and he would have done it, too, but the younger priest thought it was his duty.

After they’d said good-bye to Father Dietrick, he’d given her his devil-may-care grin and said: “Well, Rose, m’dear, what are your plans on this fine day?”

Naturally, he knew that she’d have to get the rectory especially clean for their guest, so he was teasing and she told him so.

“Now, Rose, have you made the bed?”

“Of course, Father.”

“And you’ve dusted and swept.”

“Yes, but there’s still the flowers and towels to lay out, and . . .”

He held up a hand. “Have you any idea what a treasure you are?” he asked. She felt herself flushing.

“Look at this day! God’s glory shines down on us!”

“It is nice,” she said, wishing she could string together a flowery phrase as he did so effortlessly and knowing she never could.

“It’s more than nice,” he said. “Here I’ve been drowning in depression, taking no advantage of these precious days of sunshine, when the Talmud tells us that man shall be called to account for every permitted pleasure he failed to enjoy. Do I want to be called to account for that?”

The Father was such a caution. He wouldn’t be called to account for anything. She smiled at him. “No, Father, certainly not.”

“Then how about if we go on a picnic together and celebrate this day? You’ve done enough for our guest’s room. I’m sure he’ll be very happy.”

She tried to object, but he overrode her. “Rose, the man’s been living in a hut with no floor in western Brazil for three years. I think our guest room will be fine.”

“What about the fathers’ lunches?” she asked, although a picnic sounded like her idea of heaven.

Father rolled his eyes as he sometimes did, too polite to laugh at her. “We’ll write a note,” he said. “They’ll make do, I’m sure.”

So now the sandwiches were made—mortadella and Swiss with the hot peppers Father liked on fresh sourdough rolls. She made two for him and one for herself, though she didn’t think she could eat the whole thing. She put several dills in a big Ziploc bag with some of the brine, and there was leftover potato salad in the fridge. They’d pick up some cold beer for Father on the way out to the park—that’s where he thought they’d go, rowing out on Stow Lake—and a soft drink for herself.

Through the kitchen window, she saw Father coming from the garage, far out across the asphalt at the back edge of the wide parking lot. He still walked heavily, as though he carried the cares of the world with him on his shoulders. And in a sense, she thought, he probably did. The picnic would do him good, would get his mind off the Cochrans and the sadness of the past couple of weeks.

And she wouldn’t be an old stick-in-the-mud, either. She could tease him along and get him laughing, and that’s what he needed now—a dose of the carefree, a couple of beers, a day in the sunshine.

She turned back to pack the basket.

“So how’re we coming?”

Lord, he had come in so quietly. It startled her.

“I’m sorry, Rose. Did I scare you?”

She was too jumpy, turning into an old woman. Well, today she wouldn’t be—it wouldn’t be fair to Father, and that was that.

“You never mind me,” she said. “Can you think of anything else?”

He raised his eyebrows in anticipation, going over the items in the basket. Then, remembering something, he snapped his fingers. “The note.”

Rose opened the drawer nearest the sink and got out her yellow pad, but Father shook his head. “Let’s use some real paper.” He winked at her. “Give our guest the right impression.” With that he disappeared into the back of the house, reappearing a moment later rubbing his eyes.

“Rose, I’ve got something in my eye. Would you mind writing it? I’ll dictate.”

Rose sat at the table, taking the nice piece of white bond that Father offered. “Fathers,” he said, and she began writing in her big round hand. “I’m sorry I’ll miss you. Rose and I are going on a hot date—”

“Father,” she said, clucking with pleasure.

“We’ll be back in time for dinner,” he continued, “but you’ll have to make do for lunch. Father Paul, welcome to San Francisco.” He looked over her shoulder. “Perfect, Rose. Now, just let me sign it.”

He took the pen and quickly scribbled his name at the bottom.

It was an old two-car garage. In the seventies they’d put up drywall, redone the old pockmarked benches and insulated the roof. Since kids from the school had taken to using the garage as a place to sneak cigarettes (and who knew what else), they had replaced the old side door with a new, solid one that locked with a dead bolt. They had never gone for the electric garage-door opener. Cavanaugh had joked that he couldn’t see Jesus using it.

But now the old garage door, while sealing completely enough when it was closed, sagged badly when it was open and occasionally would slam of its own accord after being opened because of its weakened springs.

Father and Rose strolled out across the parking lot. On the other side of the school building children were laughing. They could hear them in their next-to-last day of school taking their morning recess, and Father flashed Rose the slightly guilty smile of a kid playing hooky. He carried the basket and opened the car door for Rose.

“Whew!” he said, fanning himself with his hand. “A little sticky, isn’t it?”

He crossed behind the car and got in the driver’s seat. “Let’s get some air in here.” He rolled down all the car’s windows with the automatic button. “All right,” he said, and smiled across at his housekeeper. “Ready?”

He turned on the engine.

“Oh, look at that, would you?”

He wheeled halfway around in his seat.

“What’s that, Father?”

“Look at the sag on that door.”

“Oh, it’s always that way.”

“I know, but I’d just hate to have it come down on the car’s roof while we’re pulling out.”

He pulled the keys from the ignition, leaving the car running. “Let me just make sure.”

He went outside behind the car and pulled on the door, letting it slam to the ground. The springs resonated inside. He lifted the door slightly, slamming it down again, and again. As the springs rang out, he threw the bolt that locked the door, then pulled against it a couple of times for the effect.

“Rose!” he called out.

“Yes, Father.”

“The door seems to be stuck. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“All right. Now, just don’t panic. I’ve got the keys to the dead bolt just back in the rectory, and I’ll be right back.”

He turned and began walking slowly across the parking lot. Recess had ended. The kids were back in class.

Father had said not to panic, and she’d resolved she was not going to be an old woman, not today when Father so badly needed some surcease from his cares.

Still, it was a little scary sitting here in the darkened garage, the car’s motor running. But she would not panic. There was nothing to do anyway except wait, and Father would be back within a couple of minutes. She knew where the dead bolt key was, hanging by the back door of the rectory. It shouldn’t take him long.

Well, it must seem like it’s taking longer than it should, because I’m jumpy, she thought. She talked out loud to herself. “Just calm down, Rose. Father said not to panic. . . .”

She forced herself to take deep breaths. There, that was better. Big, deep breaths. She was getting so calm, it was almost silly. She supposed she should be worried a little. But there was no need to worry. Father would be back in just another second, and they’d go on their picnic. It would be a wonderful day, one they both needed.

She closed her eyes.

He really hadn’t any choice. With the other suspects eliminated, he couldn’t have taken the risk that she would have mentioned Monday night to anyone. She was the only one who could tie him in any way to Eddie’s death, and now, or—he looked at his watch—certainly within another ten minutes . . .