John Lescroart - Dead Irish

“Oh no, nothing like that. It wasn’t him being at the funeral.” She still couldn’t seem to find it. Hardy put his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the wall of pictures. Surrounding what looked like a college graduation picture of Eddie were plaques, diplomas, honors. He turned back to the young women. “Phi Beta Kappa?” he asked.

“Eddie was really smart,” Jodie said. “He just didn’t like showing off, but he was the smartest of us, except for maybe Steven, if he’d work at it.”

“I just met Steven again. We had a nice talk.”

“He’s okay,” Jodie said. “He just plays tough.”

Hardy shrugged. “We got along…”

“I remember.”

Hardy sat down on the end of the couch.

“It was Mr. Polk. I was just surprised to see him. Eddie said he hadn’t been at work all last week until Friday, and then he’d been all distracted.”

Hardy waited for her to continue.

“That’s all,” she said at last. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s nothing, but you said…”

“No, Frannie,” he said, “anything might be important.” He didn’t push her. He could find out more about that when he interviewed at Army.

“It’s probably nothing,” Frannie repeated.

“You thought it was worth telling me about. It’s like when you took tests in school and your teacher always told you to go with your first answer. It can’t hurt to say it.”

Frannie looked over again at the photo wall. Jodie, next to her, stood up and spoke with a strained brightness. “Maybe we should go outside for a while, you think?”

“In a minute, okay.”

The girl was gone, closing the door behind her. Hardy slid over on the couch, closer to Frannie. “You know,” he said, “the fainting might have had something to do with being pregnant.”

A nod. “I thought of that just before Jodie came in. You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

“I said I wouldn’t.”

“I know, but…”

“No buts. No is no.”

She smiled. “All right. Thank you.”

Her head started to turn to look at the pictures again. Hardy spoke up. “You feel up to going out yet? It does get close in here.”

She glanced toward the wall. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Hardy crossed over to her and lifted her gently by the shoulder. She leaned into him. “Let’s go,” she said, forcing a smile, “I can handle it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“In your state, that is small wonder.”

Moses McGuire turned his baleful gaze onto Hardy, who was negotiating traffic on Lincoln Boulevard. He had rolled the canvas top back on his car. “You took my keys, didn’t you?”

Hardy’s eyes shifted. “I’ve often warned you of the perils of leaving things in your coat pockets. Myself, I keep my valuables in my pants.”

“I keep my valuables in my pants,” McGuire echoed. “I try to get my valuable out of my pants as often as possible.”

Hardy dug into his pocket, produced McGuire’s key ring, and tossed it onto his lap. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

McGuire tried to whistle, but it came out wrong-his mouth wasn’t at a hundred percent. “That’s good. You just make that up? And I’m not drunk.”

“You want to run that whistle by me again?”

“Cause I miss a whistle doesn’t mean I’m drunk.”

“Say ‘miss a whistle’ three times.”

McGuire tried it once, then, “What are you, my mother?” He settled back in the seat. “Miss-a-fucking-whistle,” he said.

Hardy pulled the car up at a light and turned toward his friend. “So what don’t you get?”

McGuire took a minute to answer. Hardy reminded him. “You said you don’t get it. What?”

“True love,” he said finally.

“You mean Frannie and Ed?”

“Nope.” McGuire faded out for a minute, then came back. “I mean Ed’s parents. Tell me you didn’t notice her, Erin?”

“I noticed her, Mose.”

McGuire tried a whistle that came out better. “I don’t care how old she is, she’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

Hardy nodded. Even burying her son, Erin Cochran was something far beyond reasonably attractive.

“And with Big Ed for going on thirty years. How do you figure that, if not true love?”

“I didn’t really meet the guy. He was just at the door. Nice enough, broken up, trying to keep it under control.”

“But Erin and him?”

“Why not?”

“Hardy, the guy’s been a gardener at the Park for his whole life. Okay, he works for the city, probably a good gig, but where’s the romance? I mean, the guy’s gotta live in horse manure.”

“Who needs romance?”

“Wouldn’t you think Erin would?”

Hardy shrugged. “Interesting question. I don’t know.”

“Gotta be true love, and I don’t get it.”

Hardy pulled the car up a block before the Shamrock. The day was hot and still. McGuire had put his head back against the seat. He looked beat, breathing heavily, regularly. “You sleeping, McGuire?”

His friend grunted.

“You sure you want to open the bar?”

McGuire lifted his head. “That priest… he’s the kind of guy she ought to go for. Don’t laugh, it happens.” His eyes were bleary and red, the muscles in his face slack.

“You can’t buy true love, huh?”

“It’s a beautiful thing for a night or two.” McGuire leaned his head back again, sighed. He spoke with his eyes closed, slumped down, his head resting on the back of the car seat. “You think Frannie’s okay? She seem okay to you?”

“She’ll make it, Mose. She’s a tough one. You going to open or not?”

McGuire covered his eyes, noting where the car had stopped. “I don’t think I’m up to the fast-lane glamor of the bar business today, you know?”

Hardy nodded, turned the key, started his car up again. As he pulled into traffic heading toward McGuire’s apartment in the Haight-Ashbury, Moses said, “How do they do it, Diz?”

“What’s that?”

“Hold together. All that family stuff.”

“You and Frannie do it.”

“We had to do it.”

Hardy looked over at his friend, head back, mouth open, eyes shut. He looked strange in dark pants, a tan dress shirt, his tie loose. Normally Moses was a jeans-and-workshirt guy. Hardy noticed for the first time that his black hair was beginning to be shot with gray.

“Maybe they have to do it, too,” Hardy said, “for some reason.”

“Not like me and Frannie did.”

Hardy knew he was right. Moses had raised his younger sister from the time he was sixteen and she was four. When he’d gone to Vietnam, which was where Moses and Hardy had met, she had just been starting high school and Moses was paying to have her board at Dominican up in Marin County.

“And ’sides,” Moses slurred, “I’m talking sex. Not brothers and sisters. Ed and Erin. How do you keep that going thirty years?”

Hardy found a place to park in front of Moses’s building. He pulled into it. “Practice, I guess.”

LINDA POLK got up from her desk and walked the twenty feet down the hallway to the women’s room. At Army Distributing, the women’s room was Linda’s exclusive domain-she was the only female employee, and guests were few and far between, especially lately. Alphonse coming in, hassling her about where her daddy was, had been the only person who’d been in the whole day. And he’d gone long before noon.

She flicked the light switch and walked in front of the mirror to look at herself. Not too bad. Rings under the eyes were covered pretty well. The blondish bleach job was holding up okay. She liked the purplish tint to the eyeshadow. Maybe a touch-up on the mascara, not that it really mattered here.