“I’m sorry.” That self-effacing chuckle. “Some priest I am, huh?”
Hardy shrugged. “Shit happens,” he said.
Cavanaugh hadn’t heard that one before. He laughed, looser now. “Well,” he said, “now you know why I didn’t want to go to regular confession.”
“So what was it Eddie had to know about?” They were walking again, turning down now through lengthening shadows onto the paved road again.
“You know about the troubles at Ed’s work?”
“The distribution thing? A little.”
“Well, that’s not all. I mean, it was bad for the company, all right, but Eddie thought they could just tighten belts and build up again within a year or so. He was talking to this new company -some other newspaper…”
“El Dia?”
“Yeah, El Dia, I think. Anyway, he was also trying to get back in touch with the guy who’d cut them off.” Cruz, Hardy thought.
The priest continued. “To make a long story short, it was just a matter of time before they were rolling again. At least that was Eddie’s opinion.”
“So what’s the moral dilemma there?”
“That’s not it. That’s background. The problem was that Eddie’s boss-Polk, I think his name is-he was having a hard time dealing with the long-term approach.”
“He didn’t want to rebuild the business?”
“Essentially, that’s right. He’d recently married a younger -woman-very much younger, evidently very beautiful.”
“She is.”
“You’ve seen her?”
Hardy nodded. “So have you. They were at the funeral.”
That stopped Cavanaugh. “Son of a bitch,” he said. Hardy was again surprised at the man’s flair for Anglo-Saxon.
“What?”
“I think if I’d known that, I might have… I don’t think I could’ve done the service.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think we’re going on the assumption that somebody killed Eddie, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t think he killed himself.”
“Well, if somebody did kill him, I’d just about bet my breviary that Polk was involved.”
“Don’t tell me Ed was sleeping with Polk’s wife.”
Dusk was catching up with them. They came out of the park halfway down to the ocean and turned back up toward the Shamrock.
Clearly the thought had never occurred to the priest. “I was Eddie’s confessor, Dismas, and I’m not abusing the secrecy of the confessional when I tell you that he was faithful to Frannie. Completely. He was madly in love with her.”
Hardy thought he knew that, but it was still nice to hear it. “Okay,” he said, “so what about Polk’s wife?” Cavanaugh was grappling with something. “All this, you understand, is just trying to get at the truth,” he said. “I don’t want to be saying things that may be scandalous if they’re irrelevant to what you’re do-ing.”
Jesus, Hardy thought, suddenly remembering all too clearly why he had left the Church. If you took it all seriously, as Jim Cavanaugh certainly did, the rules could bind you up ’til you couldn’t even think, much less take any action.
“Why don’t you let me decide? This is confession, remember. It ain’t going anywhere else.”
The priest considered a moment, then nodded. “Eddie thinks -thought-that Polk’s wife was in it for the money. And after the drop in business, when the company started losing money, suddenly maybe Mr. Polk wasn’t so attractive anymore.”
“Did he know this, or was it just a feeling?”
“He found out…” Again that hesitation, that slow decision to continue. “He found out something.”
Hardy couldn’t help himself. He stopped walking and laid a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “I said I’d tell you if you’re boring me.”
Cavanaugh grinned back, self-conscious. “It’s like I can’t just keep talking. Every single further step seems like a separate decision.”
“In high school,” Hardy said, “I’d make out with somebody and wonder if the kissing and petting were all separate sins. Finally I decided no. If it was a sin, it was just one of ’em. Same thing here. You’ve made the commitment, so let’s get it out.”
Cavanaugh grinned his movie-star grin. “Maybe you would have made a good priest, after all.”
“I think my past was a little too checkered.”
The priest got a kick out of that. “You’d be surprised. Quite a lot of priests have, as you put it, checkered pasts. I didn’t find my vocation ’til after high school myself.”
That was interesting, Hardy thought, but it didn’t get any closer to Nika Polk.
“So Mrs. Polk… what did Eddie find out?”
“Polk was in a hurry for money. He laid off a lot of guys Eddie would have kept, and kept a couple Eddie would’ve let go. The staff was down to a few marginal workers. Anyway, one of those guys figured Eddie was in on it, too, and let it out that Polk was planning some drug deal.”
They’d arrived back at the Shamrock. Behind them an orange and pink dusk was settling onto the Pacific. The Friday-night traffic here on Lincoln was kicking into gear. The bar was hopping, juke-box blaring, Moses working the bar like the artist he was. He had Hardy’s Guinness and Cavanaugh’s Bushmills in front of them so fast he might have seen them coming up the street four blocks away.
The couch against the back wall was flanked by entrances to the bathrooms. Over it, a dirty stained-glass window let in a bit of the day’s last light. Patrons kept up a steady stream going by. In all, it was as private as any confessional Hardy could remember.
Cavanaugh had removed his collar. He sat hunched forward, shirt open, startlingly handsome, sipping slowly at the Irish. His reticence was gone. It had to come out.
“So here I am listening to a boy I could easily feel-hell, I do feel!-is my son, and he’s just burning, I tell you, Dismas, burning to do the right thing. He wants to confront Polk, somehow convince him that it can all work out with his wife, then go back to the publisher, take ’em all on one at a time and win them over just by the force of the argument. He really saw it so clearly. If everybody involved was fair and upstanding, it would all work out. The company would be saved, Polk could keep his wife happy, the whole magilla.”
Hardy sipped his Guinness. “That’s Eddie. Sure as shit, excuse me.” Although apologizing for swearing in front of this man was, upon reflection, unnecessary. “He really thought that way, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“And you tried to point out a little, uh, reality?”
Cavanaugh sat back now, the broad shoulders sagging. “There’s my sin, Dismas. That’s what I’ve been getting at.” The eyes lowered, matching the voice. “We talked a long time, Eddie and me. He was the most wonderful speaker, even one on one. Passionate, elegant, really convincing. He was the kind of kid could flatter you that he wanted your opinion.” He drained his drink. “So here I am, Father Cavanaugh, and I send this fine man off to slay the dragon. Do I think about the reality of it, about his pregnant wife, his real duties, whether he’s the man for the job? No way. Not me. The good holy Father Cavanaugh thinks about how right he is, what a wonderful notion it is, how everyone will be so proud.”
His eyes came up. “Pride, Dismas. My pride killed Eddie Cochran.”
Chapter Fifteen
SAM POLK stood in the upstairs bathroom, combing his hair. Out the window in the warm night he heard the bubble of the hot tub’s jets, the soft music his wife was listening to.
It was nice having a beautiful naked woman in your hot tub. Hell, it’s nice having a hot tub.