I sometimes hear about people knowing right away that someone they loved has died, that they feel the dead person’s spirit leave or something. O’Connor stuck around.
I heard someone yell “Kelly!” and turned to see a tall black man walking toward me. It was Mark Baker, the reporter sent out by the Express. “Oh, God, Irene, I’m so sorry,” he said in a shaky voice. I wasn’t ready for sympathy, and looked away. He understood and stopped talking, just put one of his burly arms around my shoulders and guided me away from the crowd. Mark took me over to where Frank Harriman was trying to get some sense out of Mrs. Keene, then left to talk to one of the guys from the bomb squad.
Frank and I had met when he was a rookie cop in Bakersfield and I was on my first crime beat as a fledgling reporter. Now he was a homicide detective with the Las Piernas Police Department. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, since before I quit the paper, but this wasn’t the time to renew old acquaintances.
As I stood to one side, Frank noticed me and gave me one of those very protective “are-you-okay?” looks. I tried to avoid his eyes, and turned away from him, but to my horror looked up to see a coroner’s assistant bagging a little piece of something soft.
Thank God I’m not a fainter. I must have looked bad, though, because Frank took me gently by the elbow and said, “Go home, Irene.” I just stared at him.
“You still live in the same place?” he asked.
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. I was also busy with a tug-of-war-one minute I was trying to take it all in, the next, trying to shut it all out. I heard Frank say something about wanting to ask me some questions, later. I figured Mrs. Keene had told him about the previous night’s serenade, but I was past caring. I heard the camera shutters of the forensic team, and out of the corner of my eye kept seeing the coroner’s assistants with their goddamned plastic bags and forceps. I felt sick and weird…disconnected.
Frank was quiet for a minute; then he asked a cop to drive me home, but I shook it off and told him I could manage. I made sure he had my address, then left. I could feel him watching me as I walked to my car. I didn’t look back at Frank or the house as I drove off.
As I rounded the corner I saw Kenny’s red Corvette heading toward the house. For the one-millionth time, I felt sorry for him. He wasn’t equipped for everyday life, let alone something like this. And for the two-millionth time, I knew I couldn’t do anything about it.
IT WAS A LONG TIME before I asked myself what had made Kenny get up and at ’em so early on a Sunday morning.
2
FRANK ALMOST WAITED too long to come over. I was damned restless by late that afternoon.
Most of the time from when I left O’Connor’s house until Frank came over I spent stewing and pacing. I’m not good at sitting around, and it was a hot day. As the afternoon wore on, the Santa Ana winds began to blow, making my house a regular oven. Like most Southern Californians, I can only take so much of those desert winds before I go a little nuts anyway. I live a couple of miles from the beach in Las Piernas, which is on the coast, just south of L.A. Usually by late afternoon, there’s cool air off the ocean. But even with nothing but the front and back screen doors to slow down any little breeze that might come along, the old house was hot. It’s a little 1930s bungalow down in a section of town that can’t decide how to gentrify.
So I paced around, sat and tried to cry, but couldn’t. Got up and paced around again. Cody sat watching me, twitching his fat tail nervously. At one point I felt so wound up, I took off my shoes and hurled them as hard as I could against the wall. I didn’t pitch them anywhere near Cody, but he decided he’d had enough and took off through his cat door-converted from an old ice-delivery slot in the kitchen.
It was hard to find anything worth thinking about. If I thought about the past, I mourned the end of days with O’Connor. If I thought about the future, it was to cancel plans. Nothingness, sharp as a knife. I paced barefooted.
I knew that the time would come when I could really indulge in this feeling-sorry-for-myself stuff, but now wasn’t the time. If I could just get myself pointed in some direction, maybe I could find whoever did this to O’Connor. And kill them. Slowly.
In the midst of these thoughts I heard someone on the front porch. The silhouetted figure of a tall man stood looking in at me from my front door, shading his eyes with his hand against the screen.
“Irene?”
“Jesus, Frank. You startled me. How long have you been out there?”
“How about letting me in? It’s hotter than hell out here.”
I took off the latch and opened the door for him. I flopped down on the couch and gestured toward my big old-fashioned armchair, but he waved it off and leaned up against a table instead.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’ll get there. You know me.”
He smiled a little and said, “Yeah, I guess I do.” He was quiet for a minute, then he stood up straight. He was studying me, and I felt uncomfortable. I decided to watch my toes for a while.
He started over. “Look, I know you’re tough, but I also have some idea of what O’Connor meant to you. Nobody could see what you saw today and walk off whistling. So you don’t have to talk about this now if you don’t want to.”
I glanced up at him. He had a funny kind of concerned look on his face. It scared me or I probably would have started crying after all. Something in his sympathy moved my feelings to the surface. There he was, big, handsome, and a mere four feet away, looking concerned. But there was no room in me at that moment for old history or rekindled anything.
“Have a seat, Frank.”
He sat down. Tall as he is-somewhere in the neighborhood of six-three or six-four, I’d guess-the back of the chair was still taller. I love that big old chair. Nobody since my grandfather had looked that good in it.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “Take out your notebook. Ask questions. It’ll be good for me. At least I’ll be doing something. Maybe I can help somehow.”
He just sat there for a minute, still quiet, as if undecided. Then he reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a notebook.
“Why don’t you take that jacket off? I’m not so formal here with my shoes off.”
“Thanks,” he said, standing up again for a moment. He took off his suit jacket and folded it neatly over the back of the chair. Even in the long-sleeved shirt and shoulder holster, he looked a lot more comfortable. He sat back down, loosened his tie and flipped his notebook open to a clean page. I felt nervous again.
“Look, how about something cold to drink?”
He gave me that questioning look again. “Sure,” he said.
Hell’s bells, I thought. I’ve got to stop acting like an idiot. I realized that every time one of us was on the verge of discussing what had happened to O’Connor, we fumbled around and stalled.
I poured a couple of glasses of iced tea and brought them into the living room.
Outside the big picture window, the heat waves made the street look like a river. A big dark-blue car ferried its way past the window. I could see Cody stretched out in the sun on the lawn.
I handed Frank his iced tea and sat down again. “Sorry-I should have thought of offering you something sooner. I’m a little distracted, I guess. What do you want to know?”
“It’s okay. I guess I’m distracted too. Anyway, you saw O’Connor last night?”
“Yeah, we went out to Banyon’s. He was in a festive mood, you might say. He did quite a bit of drinking, but I was driving, so I quit after a Guinness. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.” I thought about O’Connor and the dancers. I stopped the story for a minute and looked outside. Cody had moved into the shade. I took a deep breath and went on.