Memorial Bridge (17 page)

"If you please, sir," the lawyer said, "my client is entitled to this hearing now, at least to the extent of answering the slanderous charges that have been made against him."

"This is an inquest, counselor. Not an arraignment, and not a trial. Our concern is limited to the cause of death of one Michael J. Foley. The Cook County state's attorney is unable to bring forth testimony pertaining to that cause, therefore we have no further—"

"But charges have been made, sir, and spread abroad. Those charges are efficiently answered. Mr. Buckley would like an opportunity to do so. We don't want this hearing postponed. We want it terminated."

"Your witnesses are present?"

"Most assuredly. Four of them, including Mr. Buckley himself."

The coroner nodded and shifted slightly in his chair. Cass was certain his eyes made brief contact with Buckley's; a quick glint of the man's subservience.

Buckley went to the witness chair first, was sworn, took his seat and, prompted by his smooth lawyer, identified himself.

"And your occupation?"

"I am an iron dealer. I own the Shamrock Scrap Iron Company on South Bryant Avenue, back of the yards." Now, as he spoke up across the room, Buckley's slurred sibilants seemed a full-blown speech impediment. It was possible to imagine his playmates teasing him as a child. Cass pushed that thought aside, though. She would not sympathize with him in any way.

"And where did the injury to your ear occur?"

The question, put so directly, shocked Cass. Wasn't that the one question he wanted to avoid? She leaned forward to hear.

"There, at my place, at the Shamrock."

"Would you describe how it happened?"

"Sure." Buckley touched his bandaged ear lightly and began to address himself to the jury.

Cass wanted him to look at her, but he wouldn't.

"I have a diesel hunker at my yard, for hauling heavy loads like, say, an industrial radiator, or for pulling the engine up out of a wrecked car. You know what I mean, a hoist operation." He waited until a juror or two nodded. "I don't work the thing myself like I used to. It's not work for an Irishman." He grinned. "It takes brains." He waited for a laugh. "I have some Bohemian fellows who help me."

The lawyer interrupted. "Isn't it so, Mr. Buckley, that since your business began to prosper you have given more and more of your time to charitable work?"

"I try to pitch in."

"You are a past chairman of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of your parish."

"That's right."

"You serve as the Democratic ward committeeman for your precinct?"

A spectator snorted, a Republican's contempt for the lawyer's linking of a party job with charity.

Buckley, glancing toward where the sound had come from, said, "Yes, I do. And I serve for nothing."

"Go ahead about your ear."

"Anyway, I guess I got rusty on the hunker, because one day last week, when I go to add in my shoulder, my fellows were having a deuce of a time getting the engine out of an old brown Packard, a twelve-cylinder job, a monster, I've done it a hundred times, but I make a big mistake. I lean down over the engine to adjust the hauling chains, it's here, see?" Buckley hunched out of his chair to demonstrate, eyeing the jury with the air of a man who knows his story is good. "I should of leaned over from this side, because over here, opposite, is where the pulley and gears are. Those gears are vicious and you have to keep clear of them. Two sets of gears, up here and down here, primary, secondary. These are the ones to watch for because they're shoulder high, they can snag your clothes easy."

"You had a man lose his fingers in those gears once?"

"That's right. His thumb and two fingers."

"And what happened to you?"

Buckley startled everyone in the room by smiling broadly. "Like I say, I got rusty. I was leaning over on the wrong side. We get the engine up. I'm down on the thing to keep the chains in sync. The engine tilts
unexpectedly, and oil gushes out of the block and shoots all over my legs and down onto my shoes."

"And the oil made the floor slippery."

Buckley nodded. "My feet went right out from under me. I would have been fine except for that oil. I fell."

"Where did you fall?"

"I fell into the open gearbox. That is, I hit it with my head, the side of my head."

"Your ear?"

"Yes, sir. My goddamned ear." Buckley's hand went gingerly to his bandage. He looked at the coroner with mock sheepishness. "Forgive my French, your honor."

There was such open intimacy in the glances they exchanged that Cass expected someone to point it out as proof, right then. She looked at Courtney, who was idling a pencil on a pad, and at Dillon, who was staring gravely across at Buckley. Well? Well? She wanted to shake Dillon. It's all lies! Outright lies and deceit! What hunker? What gear?

The jurors were staring at Buckley with a kind of sad fondness, and Cass grasped that they were believing him. But it's fake! she wanted to shout. His tale of homey clumsiness is fake, like his condolences to my aunt. How can a man be sorry for the family of someone he stuffed into a pit? Her eyes burned into Dillon's neck. Why aren't you saying something?

But Dillon didn't even know she was looking at him.

"And then what happened?"

"Nothing. I mean not at first. I couldn't move. The gearbox had me. They shut the hunker down. I was stuck."

"By your ear?"

"Yes. My ear was stuck in the gear."

"And then?"

"One of my boys ran to get the doctor. Another one held a rag to my head, to stop the blood. Oil all over my bottom half, blood all over my top. I was a mess."

"Are your workers able to verify this story?"

"Sure." Buckley pointed across the room. "Schevsky and Karlov. They saw the whole thing."

"And one of them returned with the doctor?"

"Yes."

"Who then freed you?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"By cutting the top of my ear off. It was pretty much gone anyway."

"So the cut was clean? With scissors?"

"He used a doctor's knife, but the cut wasn't near clean. The thing was half chopped through already by the gear."

"So there were teeth marks on your ear?"

"From the gear, yes. Plus, his hand shook so bad he sliced right into my skull. I would never have let that lush touch me with a knife, but he was the closest doctor."

"Can you identify the doctor for us?"

"Doc Riley."

The lawyer swung around to see the jury's reaction to this revelation. "Dr. Richard Riley?"

"Yes."

The eyes of the jurors had gone to Courtney and Dillon for
their
reaction. Courtney was perspiring visibly, leaning over his table, apparently reading what was printed on the side of his yellow pencil. Dillon's face had grown vacant. He was staring at Buckley, but Cass sensed that he had gone inside himself. Say something, she thought. Stop this.

"And then what?"

"Doc Riley took me down to the dispensary, to put medicine on me."

"And presumably he saved the severed piece of your ear."

"I guess he did. I never gave the thing a thought. Who would?"

The lawyer walked away from Buckley, toward the jurors. "Mr. Buckley, why would Dr. Riley make up the story about finding that piece of your ear in Michael Foley's throat?"

"Because he saw it as a way out of the money he owes me."

The only sound was the
whir-whir
of the ceiling fans. Everyone was staring at Buckley except his lawyer, who was staring at the jury. "Dr. Riley owes you money?"

"Yes. Eleven hundred dollars."

"Can you prove that?"

As the lawyer turned and crossed back to him, Buckley calmly reached into his pocket. "Here are his IOUs." He held a packet out to the lawyer just as the lawyer reached him. The lawyer passed it over to the
coroner in one motion, an act almost of choreography.

Even the coroner, Cass thought, has been part of the rehearsal.

"That's all."

"Thank you, Mr. Buckley," the coroner said.

While Buckley returned to his place, and the coroner flicked through the IOUs, Courtney glared at Dillon and hissed, "Did you know Riley owed him money?"

"Never mind that. Demand to cross-examine."

"There's no cross here. Forget it."

"Move to postpone again."

Cass had joined them. "Yes, postpone it," she said too loudly. "Doc Riley will show what lies these are."

But when Dillon looked at her, it was with a futility so abject it jolted her. "It
is
lies, isn't it?" she said.

Dillon nodded. "But Riley's gone. Everything they just did depends on his being gone."

"Gone?"

Dillon said nothing. When she grasped that Buckley had done to Doc Riley what he had done to her uncle, she thought unaccountably of Poland. "Why are you letting them do this?"

Before Dillon could answer, the coroner struck his gavel one last time. "This inquest is hereby—"

Cass whipped away from Courtney and Dillon to do what Poland had done. "No!" she cried, hurling herself into the open area in front of the coroner's table. "You can't stop yet! Ask him—"

The coroner banged his gavel. "You sit down, whoever you are. You are out of order."

"Ask him what he did to Doc Riley!"

They were all looking at her as if she were hysterical, but inside she had turned to ice. The outburst was an ax she was taking to the jam of feelings that had clogged her for days now. "Ask him!" she screamed. "Ask him what he did to Doc Riley!"

The silence that rushed in after her came dangerously close to being a silence of recognition. One by one, each person turned toward Buckley, but Buckley had fixed his stare on the coroner.

The coroner shook his head, but tentatively. "Obviously, Dr. Riley knew his testimony was going to be impugned. That's why he failed to show up."

"Not 'failed to show up,'" Cass said with crisp exactitude. "He
disappeared!
He disappeared because he is dead." Her hand shot out at Buckley. "You killed him, just like you killed my Uncle Mike!"

"Someone get her out of here!" the coroner ordered. Officials began moving from the corners. Jurors were up and backing away, but their eyes remained fast on her.

Now she wheeled on the coroner. "And tell us who else owes Buckley money! Do you? Is that why you are doing this? And what about the mayor?"

He banged his gavel twice more. "This inquest is adjourned!" he cried, then made quickly for the door.

Cass moved toward the jurors, but they scattered. The officers were about to grab her when Dillon put his arms around her, turning her so that he was between her and the burly men. "I have her," she heard him say. "I'll take care of her."

Dillon welcomed it when Cass went to the women's room. Once she'd turned the corner, he went quickly down the crowded hallway to the coroner's office, and he was there when Raymond Buckley and his lawyer came out, grinning like businessmen. A few steps brought Dillon into their path. They stopped abruptly.

"Mr. Buckley, I want to tell you something."

"What's that?"

Together the three men automatically retreated to the wall. Dillon was not making a speech—he differed from Cass in this—and it would not serve his purpose any more than Buckley's to be overheard.

The lawyer put his arm between Dillon and his client. Dillon swatted it away. "You aren't finished with this yet. That's all I mean to say. Don't think you are finished with this."

In fact, Dillon had no conscious idea what such a statement could mean, but he knew it embodied the core of his own truth now. He was not, however, simply putting his determination on display, a self-indulgent defiance. He was instinctively moving to draw Buckley out.

"And who the hell are you?"

"Leave it," the lawyer said.

But now it was Buckley who swatted the lawyer's arm, as he closed on Dillon. "Who the fuck are you?"

"I was a friend of Mike Foley's." Dillon had forgotten that this was untrue. "I was a friend of Doc Riley's."

"If you are the prick who brought that old fool into this, you did him
no favor. I wouldn't wait by the phone for his call, if I was you."

"In your testimony, you referred to him in the present tense, as if he were still alive."

Buckley laughed and winked at his lawyer, who'd coached him, obviously. "I did very well, didn't I?" The ingratiating self-deprecator of the witness chair was gone.

"Ray—" The lawyer took Buckley's arm, but Buckley shook him off and grabbed Dillon's shirt. The man's wiry strength jolted Dillon as he felt himself lifted free of most of his weight.

"And I'll fucking kill you too, if I ever see you again."

Dillon now had his moral certitude, and he saw all of his important choices sweep into line. "That is what I wanted to hear you say."

Buckley laughed. "My saying that won't mean shit. Don't you get it, Mac? When I go into court I deny, deny, deny! That's all. The law works for me. Jesus, don't you get it yet?"

"The law works for a lot of us, Mr. Buckley." The law was Dillon's church now. He took Buckley's wrists and forced them apart, like freeing a rusted pipe joint. He squeezed until he saw Buckley wince. "I made a mistake with you," he said quietly. "I told Doc Riley I'd take care of him, and I didn't. I trusted the wrong people. I feel very bad about that, and one of these days you will too. I owe Doc Riley, see?" He dropped Buckley's arms abruptly.

Despite himself, Buckley began to back away.

But Dillon wasn't finished. He thought of it as flogging when he said, his voice at a whisper, "I owe Doc Riley as long as I live. I owe him you."

"That's it," Buckley's lawyer said. Now when he took Buckley's arm to lead him around Dillon, Buckley did not resist. The lawyer said over his shoulder, "Not a chance, Mister."

Dillon remembered Father Ferrick's claim to have a contact at Lambert, Rowe, and he realized he could be a lawyer like this man, professionally unintimidated by all that frightens clients, unoffended by all that clients do, regretful at what winning for clients may require. At Lambert, Rowe, Dillon would be a credit to Loyola, and he would be free of the yards, and his name would be John.