John Lescroart: Dead Irish

“I got a potential ID.”

“Yeah, us too.”

Glitsky turned. “Diz?” he said.

Another man stepped out of the shadows. He and Glitsky walked over to the tarp. They both went down to a knee and Abe pulled up a corner of it. The guy put his hand to his eyes. Something seemed to go out of his shoulders.

Glitsky said something, got a nod, patted the man’s back as he stood up. He walked heavily back to Griffin and Giometti. “We got a positive,” he said. “Mind if I look at the gun a minute?”

Griffin handed it over by the pencil.

“It’s been fired,” Giometti said.

Glitsky, missing the joke, glanced at him blankly, then sighted down the barrel, backward, into the chambers. “Yeah, twice,” he said.

Hardy and Glitsky sat in the Plymouth in the parking lot. The heater made a lot of noise, but didn’t do much for the temperature or the fog on the windows. The only thing left to be done in the lot was towing Ed Cochran’s car, and the tow guy was here now seeing to it.

Glitsky rolled his window down and watched without much enthusiasm. It was better than looking at his friend. These guys had worked together, partied some, got along, but most of it was on the flip side. When part of the work got to somebody, it made Glitsky nervous.

He glanced across at his ex-partner. Hardy was leaning against his door, arm up along the window jamb, bent at the elbow, his hand rubbing at his temples. His eyes were closed.

The tow guy came over and asked Glitsky if there would be anything else.

They sat in the car, hearing the sound of the tow truck dissipate into the still night. Then there was only the heater, which wasn’t doing any good anyway. Glitsky turned the engine off.

Hardy let out a long breath, opening his eyes. “Just can’t hide, can you?” he asked. “It comes back and gets you.”

Sometimes Hardy would say things like that. If you stuck with him, Glitsky knew, he’d get around to saying it in English. But this time Hardy said fuck it, it was nothing.

Glitsky rolled up his window.

“You want a lift home?”

Hardy motioned with his head. “I got my car, Abe.”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe you want company.”

Hardy stared into the fogged-up windshield. “After Michael…” He stopped. He rubbed a hand over an eye. Glitsky looked away again, giving him the space. Michael had been Hardy’s son who’d died in his infancy. “Anyway, I told myself I wouldn’t feel this shit anymore.” He shook his head as though clearing it. “Who’d want to kill Eddie?” he asked.

Glitsky just nodded. That was always the question. And it was easier talking about cases than trying to find some reason for the deaths of people you cared about. So Glitsky followed that line. “You see him recently, this guy Eddie? He say anything?”

“Anything like what? I saw him a couple of weeks ago, up at his place. He said a lot of things.”

“I mean, anything to indicate troubles? Somebody pissed off at him? Maybe depressed himself?”

Hardy looked away from the dashboard. “What are you talking about, depressed?”

Glitsky shrugged into his coat. “Guy’s dead alone in a parking lot with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand. Possible he did himself.”

Hardy took it in, said, “No, it isn’t.”

“Okay, just a thought. It’ll occur to Griffin.”

“What? Is he two weeks on the force?” He rolled the window down and looked across the lot. “Nobody comes out a place like this to kill themselves. People take people here and kill them. Or meet here and kill them.”

There was no moon. The fog hung still. A streetlight behind them caught the lot in its muted, garish, yellowing pool. Hardy was right, Glitsky thought. This was an execution spot.

“Besides,” Hardy continued, “Eddie wouldn’t kill himself. He wasn’t, as they say, the type.”

He rolled the window back up.

“All right,” Glitsky said, “you knew him.”

“Put it out of your mind, Abe. It flat didn’t happen.”

“I’m not arguing.”

But Hardy was staring into the middle distance again, unhear-ing. He abruptly jerked open the car door. “I better get going.” He turned to Abe. “I’ll probably be in touch.”

Hardy came up to the doors where he worked and pushed his way through. Moses, who hadn’t been home, was at the bar. Six closers-four at the rail and two at one table-were passing the time until last call. Willie Nelson was singing “Stardust” on the jukebox. No one was throwing darts. Hardy stood a minute, taking it in. Home, as much as anything could be.

“Hey, Diz.” Moses automatically started a Guinness for him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sent Lynne home early. Felt like tending some bar.”

Hardy pulled up a stool in front of the spigots. Reaching over, he stopped the flow of the stout. The glass had gotten about two-thirds full.

“What am I supposed to do with that now?” Moses asked, his weathered face creased with laugh lines that Hardy knew wouldn’t get much use in the next weeks. “You losing weight again? You stop drinking Guinness, my business goes to hell.”

Hardy couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He cleared his throat, took off his hat and put it on the bar. “You hear anything from Frannie tonight?”

Moses started to answer. “You know, it’s funny, she called here maybe-” Stopping short. “What happened?”

Hardy held up a hand. “She’s okay.”

Moses let out a breath. Frannie was about ninety percent of everything he cared about. “What, then?”

Hardy met his eyes. Okay, just say it, he told himself. But Moses asked. “Eddie okay? She called to see if he was here.”

“We gotta go up there, Mose. Eddie’s dead.”

Moses didn’t move. He squinted for a beat. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Dead?”

Hardy turned on his stool. He slapped the bar. “Okay, guys, let’s suck ’em up,” he said. “We’re closing early.” He got up, went behind the bar and sat Moses down on the stool back there. He was hearing the beginnings of the usual drunks’ stupid moanings about how they needed last call and it wasn’t fair. He lifted the shillelagh, an end-knotted, two-foot length of dense Kentucky ash, from its hook under the counter and ducked back out front of the bar.

He tapped the bar a couple of times, hard. Making sure he had their attention. “Don’t even suck ’em, then. We’re closed and you’re all outside. Now.”

Everybody moved. Hardy had wielded the stick before, and most of them had seen it. He glanced at Moses. “Let’s go, buddy,” he said quietly. “Let’s go tell Frannie.”

ALL TWELVE trucks were parked in their spots behind the squat building that was the office of Army Distributing.

At a backboard against the building, a tall black man named Alphonse Page shot hoops. He was a rangy semi-youth, with a hair net wrapped around his head, his shirt off revealing a hairless and flat chest, and high-topped generic tennis shoes. His fatigue pants were doubled up at the cuffs, showing six or seven inches of shiny thoroughbred leg between his white socks and his knees.

The backboard was set flush against the building, making lay-ups all but impossible, although if you swished the basket just right you could get a reasonable bounce back into the key and follow up with maybe an inside hook.

A fading orange Datsun 510 pulled into the lot, around the trucks, then behind the building back by the wrapping shed. Alphonse stopped shooting and began dribbling, all his weight on his right foot, bouncing the ball slowly, about once a second, and waited for Linda Polk to appear from around the building, which she did in under a minute.