Dan O'Shea - Penance

Liz walked straight to him, hugged him, held him. “I’m sorry I’m so late, I came as soon as I could.”

“It’s OK,” he said. “Lot of people aren’t coming at all. I didn’t expect you to drive all the way back up for this.”

Liz pulled back, still holding Lynch’s hand, as he introduced her to his sister. “Liz, this is my sister, Collie, and her husband Brad.” They all shook, the usual nice-to-meet-yous and I’m-so-sorrys. Lynch pulled his nephew up, Tommy sort of hanging back. “And this is my nephew, Tommy.”

“Tom,” the boy said, correcting Lynch, putting his hand out, and Lynch realized the boy was what, thirteen now, as tall as his mother, all that time gone.

Liz shook his hand.

“You’re really a reporter?” Tom asked.

Liz nodded. “I work for the Tribune .”

“I like to write,” Tom said. “But my teachers say there may not even be newspapers in a few years.”

“Not like there are now, probably,” Liz said. “Most of it will be online. But we’ll always need writers. Maybe you’d like to come down to the newsroom sometime? See how it works?”

Tom smiled at her. “That would be cool.”

Tommy retreated back to the wall, trying to find a space to ride out the wake, Lynch realizing there wasn’t another kid in the room, not one. Tommy caught Lynch’s eye for a second, raised his eyebrows a little, stuck his thumb up, and Lynch realized again that his nephew was thirteen, and that, even not taking any time to pull herself together, Liz was pretty damn hot. Lynch gave his nephew a quick thumbs up back.

Liz leaned over and whispered in his ear. “I’ll pretend I didn’t see that.”

“What are you gonna do?” Lynch said “Kid’s a teenager, hormones.”

Starshak, Bernstein, McCord, and Cunningham had staked out a corner. Lynch went back to join them.

“Thanks for coming guys, means a lot. I know the word’s gone out.” He turned to Cunningham. “You especially, Darius. We got no history.”

Cunningham shook Lynch’s hand. “Fuck that shit.”

“I’m not here for you, Lynch,” said Bernstein. “Just trying to get some intel on this whole Catholic thing so I can report back to the international Jewish conspiracy.” That got a laugh.

“I just thought there’d be booze,” said Starshak. “Irish wake and no booze?”

McCord pulled a leather-wrapped flask from his pocket and handed it to Starshak. “Of course there’s booze.”

Starshak looked Lynch straight in the eye, serious suddenly. “I’m taking names, Lynch. You find out which side people are on, you mark that down.”

“Amen to that, brother,” said Cunningham.

Lynch sitting with his sister, maybe an hour left.

“Lot of cheeseheads here,” he said. “Lot of people made the drive down.”

“Don’t be too impressed. Half of them probably report to me at work, just racking up brownie points.”

Lynch smiled. “Save your hard-ass act, Collie. I think they actually like you.”

Collie shrugged. “Tom’s in love with your girlfriend, by the way. Just thought you should know you have a rival.”

Lynch had seen Liz sitting with his nephew for quite a while.

“Yeah, well, you know what? I’m in love with her, too. Tell the kid to back off. Remind him I got a gun.”

She laughed. “John Lynch in love. My, my. It was nice of Father Hughes to come. He’s the one saying the funeral?”

“Yeah.” Father Hughes was talking to a few of his mom’s old neighbors, up by the casket.

“Kind of sad, Mom dies, and you have to recruit a priest from one of your cases.”

“Yeah,” said Lynch.

“We should have him say a rosary,” Collie said.

Lynch turned and looked at her. “Really? You even remember how?”

She shrugged. “It’s like falling off a bike, I guess. I’ll go talk to him.”

Collie went up and talked to the priest, and he made the announcement, the staff from the funeral home walking around, handing out plastic rosaries. Lynch passed Bernstein on his way up to join his sister at the kneeler in front of the casket.

An hour later, everything over, Lynch and Johnson were in the hallway by the front door.

“Listen, John, I’d come over but I still owe the Trib a thousand words on this pension mess and I’m running on about two hours sleep,” Johnson said.

“It’s OK,” Lynch said. “I’m kinda washed out myself. We gotta talk though. A lot’s changed. A lot’s changed since yesterday.”

“I thought so. Last night, Hurley’s acting like he’s got a man crush on you, then I get down to the capital and Harrigan’s giving me a hard time about an interview, telling me I need to be careful about my friends, telling me I keep swapping spit with John Lynch, I’m going to find a lot of doors that won’t open for me. I guess you can be bad for a girl’s career.”

Harrigan was the speaker of the Illinois house, the top Democratic gun down in Springfield.

Lynch nodded, thought for a minute about how and what to tell Johnson. Not a trust thing anymore. He knew he could trust her. Just this whole thing had spun off into an entire new universe for him. A universe where it didn’t matter where you were, who you were, what you’d done, there were guys with guns ready to take you off the board just for a little edge. The old school part of him was saying you don’t throw your woman in the deep end of that pool. But he knew that wasn’t his call. Johnson was a big girl. And this was her game, too. Maybe the biggest story out of this town since, well, ever. She got to decide what pools to jump into all on her own. And he needed the press on this, needed to get some pressure on the other team.

“The Harrigan thing, here’s the deal. We’re off the case,” Lynch said. “The whole Chicago PD. Feds have bogarted it, which means Clarke is calling the tune, because there’s no way Hurley shows his ass to the Feds on his own.”

“Clarke as in President of the United States Clarke?”

Lynch nodded. “And the Feds have got the whole thing hermetically sealed. Got it in cover-up mode. Listen, I got a whole mess of new shit the last couple days, got to catch you up. Not tonight, though. I still got some dots to connect. But breakfast?”

Johnson nodded. “Sounds like you might be good for a girl’s career after all.”

“I don’t get you killed, yeah,” Lynch said.

A commotion came from down at the far end of the hall, somebody staggering out from the viewing room, knocking over one of the floral displays, lurching across the hallway into the men’s room. Rusty.

He’d kept to his corner all night. Collie’d gone over on her way out with the family, said her goodbyes. She was headed back up to Milwaukee. Holy Thursday tomorrow, so they couldn’t have the funeral until Monday. Catholic rules.

Rusty’d had a bottle of Jameson’s and a few glasses out on the table next to his chair all night, the ring kissers taking a slug here and there, but Rusty working his way through most of it, and he’d been pretty well lit when he came in.

One of the guys from the funeral home pushed in to the men’s room behind Rusty, some noises coming out, not happy noises. The guy came out, walked down the hall.

“Detective,” he said, “we may need some help with your uncle. He’s a little, eh, distraught.”

“OK,” Lynch said. He hugged Johnson. She pulled back, put a hand to his face for a long moment, something passing between them, something he didn’t have words for, didn’t need words for.

“Breakfast,” she said.

Lynch nodded.

Rusty was sitting on the floor of the men’s room when Lynch walked in, pants half open, a puddle of urine under his legs. He looked up, his eyes red, his face washed in tears.