On another memo pad was a name and telephone number. Alvin Cromwell (601) 682-2423. Jack copied this, too, wondering about the Mississippi area code. In a file folder were a dozen or more sheets stapled together that listed names of individuals and companies, most of the addresses in New Orleans, Lafayette, and Morgan City. R. W. Nichols, Nichols Enterprises, was one of the names that had a check mark after it. There were a lot of check marks… And a sheet of stationery in the file folder that Jack picked up and began to read, because at the top of the sheet was printed The White House, Washington, D.C.
It was a letter to the fundraiser from… Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan. It said:
Dear Colonel Godoy:
To assist you in delivering your message of freedom to all my good friends in Louisiana, I have written to each one personally to verify your credentials as a true representative of the Nicaraguan people, and to help affirm your determination to win a big one for democracy. Because I know you have the “stuff” heroes are made of, I have a hunch that modesty might not permit you to describe, personally, the extreme importance of your leadership role in this fight to the death with the Marxists who now have a stranglehold on your beloved country.
I have requested my friends in the Pelican State to give you a generous leg up, that you may ride to victory over communism. I have asked them to help you carry the fight through their support, and come to realize in their hearts, no es pesado, es mí hermano.
And there, under “Sincerely,” was the president’s signature.
Amazing. He wrote the way he spoke. Or he spoke the way one of his aides, who believed all this or could do it out of either side of his mouth or with either hand, spoke or wrote. They all sounded the same, presidents; presidents of anything. But look at that, his autograph. Jack wet a finger with his tongue, touched “Ronald Reagan” and saw it smudge, but not much.
He began to read the letter again, bent over the desk, got as far as “win a big one for democracy,” and heard the TV set in the sitting room go on.
Voices. A man and woman talking almost at the same time, snapping one-liners at each other, fast, without letup, the voices hyper, irritating. What was the show? A guy and a girl private eyes…
He pictured the sitting room. From the bedroom doorway the door out was close on the left, within ten feet. The TV set was to the right in there, in the corner past the desk. He listened. There were no voices other than the nonstop television voices. Maybe it was the maid. Turned on the TV while she cleaned up. Jack said, Sure, it’s the maid. And walked around the bed to the doorway and looked into the sitting room.
It wasn’t the maid.
It wasn’t a Nicaraguan either. It was a guy in profile with slicked-back dark hair, seedy-looking in an old gray tweed sport coat that reminded Jack of Lucy’s soup kitchen and told him the guy didn’t belong here. The guy stood within a few feet of the TV set looking down at the lady private eye and her partner snarling at each other in fun, acting wacky. The guy in the herringbone sport coat chuckled, rubbed one of his eyes.
In that moment Jack would bet ten bucks the guy had served time; twenty bucks he wasn’t with the Nicaraguans. Except that he seemed to know where he was.
So Jack stepped over to the dresser and dug out the fundraiser’s pistol, the same model Beretta as the ones they’d picked up last night. He didn’t check to see if it was loaded; he wasn’t going to shoot the guy. He wouldn’t mind popping the TV set, the annoying sounds, but not the guy. For some reason he felt sorry for him. Jack moved into the doorway again and stood with the Beretta down at his side. The guy appeared to be in his forties; all dressed up in the ratty sport coat, dark pants that dragged on the floor and nearly covered his worn-out tan shoes. A commercial came on before he looked around.
Paused and said, “Oh, my. I have the wrong room, don’t I?”
Buddy Jeannette had said he bet he had the wrong room. This guy’s line was close enough and either way it took an awful lot of poise. “Oh, I have the wrong room…” The guy crossing to the door now in his raggedy outfit, trying to pull it off. Look at that. Jack watched the guy hesitate, his hand on the knob, then look over his shoulder with a frown, a question on his face.
He said, “Or do I? Or might we both have the wrong room.” With an accent from some British isle.
What was it, Irish?
Jack said, “Step away from the door and turn around.”
The man opened his arms wide to show a belly beneath the awful tie. “Please yourself, but trust me, I don’t go about your city armed.”
It was Irish. Jack said, “Take off your coat.”
“I’m happy to oblige you.” He pulled it off to show a soiled and wrinkled white shirt, a red-and-gray patterned tie, and dropped the coat on the floor as he did a turn all the way around to face Jack again. “There. Tell me you’re not a cop, please. It’s all I ask.”
“Do I look like a cop?” He watched the man’s expression relax, begin to smile.
“Not now you don’t, no. You have a sense of play about you, a soft quality to your voice. It indicates to me you’re a man of reason, not a dumb brute, and I say this from experience. The last copper I spoke to was in Belfast, an RUC thug what he was. He asked me my name, I answered him in Irish. The fucker said, ‘Speak the Queen’s English,’ and beat me with a stick. I’ll show you the marks.”
Jack said, “What’s your name?”
And drew a smile. “You say it different to what he did. First I’m beaten, then lifted for disorderly behavior. My name’s Jerry Boylan. Will you tell me yours?”
Jack was waiting to tell him. From the moment the man opened his mouth Jack could feel something between them, because the man was familiar to him. Not as someone he knew, but someone from an old photograph brought to life: snapshots from a family picnic at Bayou Barataria in the 1920s, before he was born; the women wearing straw hats their faces peeked out of, dresses that looked like slips; but it was the men he remembered now, the men with slick-combed hair like Jerry Boylan’s, the men posing in white shirts without collars, their Irish Channel mugs grinning at the camera on a sunny day, his dad’s dad or an uncle holding Spanish moss to his face to make a beard. This one, Jerry Boylan, could be one of them now, come to life in the St. Louis Hotel.
He said, “Jack Delaney.”
And saw the familiar slit-mouth grin from the photographs, eyes beaming for a moment, then turned to low as the man said, “How serious a Delaney are you? Where you come from?”
“I think Kilkenny, my dad’s grandfather.”
“Of course you do,” Boylan said. “Castlecomer in North Kilkenny. There was a Ben Delaney played horn in the Castlecomer Brass Band… Oh, but wait now, it could be Ballylinan. Sure, Michael Delaney was from there, my God, second in command of the North Kilkenny Brigade, IRA from 1918 to ’21, before the truce, when they were giving the crown bloody hell. Made land mines out of iron skillets packed with gelignite. Before plastique and pipe bombs”-his voice drifting-“and rocket launchers you can stick under your coat…”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m from there. Swan, a stop in the road, if you’ve heard of it.”
“I mean what happened a long time ago. How do you know about a Delaney and that IRA stuff?”
“How do I know? It’s my fucking life. Ask me where I’ve been the past month, since I wasn’t dodging Brit patrols and getting the stick from the bloody peelers.” Boylan frowned. “You know what I’m talking about? The Belfast coppers, Jack, the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Their idea of great crack is cornering one such as myself, alone. But you say that IRA stuff a long time ago, like you don’t know any of this. It still is, Jack, more than ever. My God, don’t you read the newspapers?”