Black Irish (8 page)

As Abbie walked into the small foyer, where old notices advertising folk singers or protest marches for the IRA were fluttering on a bulletin board, it was as if her mind was running on two parallel tracks. Now and 1989. In those days, she’d come to the Club on a Saturday afternoon to find her dad, the bar as loud as a carnival, packed with men and women in wool coats, the drapery of the brown and black and checked wool swaying like a theater curtain as people moved. That’s all you saw, this curtain of coats, and at the center of it, always, his right foot in a black leather loafer perched on a three-rung barstool and a Seven-and-Seven in his hand, her father, holding court.

He would see her, order her a Shirley Temple, and the crowd would move back and allow her in. But her father would never take her up on his lap the way the other fathers did their daughters, or feed her the cherry from the Shirley Temple and stick the tiny pink paper umbrella in her hair after wiping it carefully with a napkin, the way that Mr. O’Neill did with his girl Siobhan. And she would sit there waiting for his eyes to fall on hers, but after that first look, it was as if she’d become someone else’s child. Another listener, another hanger-on.

She pushed open the glass door. There were three people in the bar: two of them as old as her father, sitting at a small table, and a young bartender. A down-market flat-screen TV was up on the wall, showing a game of Gaelic football—she recognized it at a glance—and the heavy brogues of the announcers called the action. As she walked in, the bartender froze and watched her approach.

“Hi, Billy,” she said.

Billy Carney smiled.

“No fucking
way,”
he said, placing his hands on the bar rail and leaning against it. “Abbie Kearney.”

Billy had been the quarterback of the Timon varsity team in high school. She’d liked him. All the girls had liked him.

“You really are back.”

“I’ve been back for a year,” she said, climbing onto one of the rickety stools.

“Back in Buffalo, maybe. But not here.”

He pointed straight down at the wooden bar. Back in the County, he meant.

They shook hands and the touch started a third rail of memory. Weekend nights in Cazenovia Park. A shiver ran down her back.

“You always keep this place so cold?” she said to cover it up.

“If I didn’t, the old ones would pass out,” he said, nodding to the two men whispering over amber-colored drinks. Both had heavy wool coats on, even in the bar, and one had some kind of blanket across his lap.

“And I’m always hot,” he added. “Why pay the gas company?”

“You were always cheap.”

He laughed and the sound boomed in the near-empty room. Then he said, “So, how are ya?”

“I’m a Buffalo cop. What else can I say? My dreams have finally come true.”

“And I’m a bartender. What a couple of County clichés we are. Only jobs left in this goddamn town. What’re ya having? On the house.”

“A Diet Coke. Is this payback for junior prom?”

“What happened at junior prom?” Billy poured the drink, set it in front of her, picked up a pint glass from a dishwasher rack in front of him and began polishing it with a rag. His chin had slid back as if he were expecting a punch, the mouth grinning, the well-known dimples appearing under his cheeks.
God
, Abbie thought,
he’s still a good-looking man
.

“You blew me off. Left me to go in the single girls’ limo, with the ugly ones with braces and Anne Muidy. You remember, the really
fat
one?”

“I did that?”

“Yeah, you did that.”

“I have no recoll—”

“Shut up, Billy.”

He shook his head, laughing.

“I was an asshole. Sorry, Ab.”

“Not forgiven,” she said, and took a sip of the soda. No, pop. That’s what they called it in Buffalo. Pop.

It felt good to be here, near him. She felt like a teenage girl again, but now she had leverage. She’d been places in the world and had a Glock on her hip. Things were a bit more even.

Abbie looked around. The walls seemed to vibrate with memories. The paintings of Irish martyrs, the scarves with D
UBLIN
and B
ELFAST
scrawled across them tacked up to the wall, the smell of fresh sawdust and beer—they seemed to have some latent power that pulsed in the air.

“It’s sad,” she said. “This place always felt like it was the center of the world to me. We’re going to the
Gaelic Club
. I was all excited. Can you imagine?”

Billy laughed.

“But it still has something about it, doesn’t it?” she said.

Billy looked around the room, and it was as if his eyes were pinched against the sun. “Because it’s dying. Anything that’s dying’s beautiful for a while.”

“I was shocked when I came back,” she said. “Remember the Last Chance Bar on Seneca Street?”

“Did I get thrown through the front window of that one?”

“If not, it would have been the only one on Seneca that you didn’t.”

He laughed.

“I went by there yesterday. There’s a hand-lettered sign in the window saying, ‘We sell rabbits and other snake food.’
Snake
food.”

Billy nodded, the grin gone from his face. “Yeah, I saw that.”

“Half the words misspelled.”

Billy grimaced. “You know what a few of us are calling this place?”

“What?”

“We call it the Rez. Short for ‘reservation.’ ”

Abbie studied him thoughtfully. “I heard that from some skel on South Park. What’s it mean?”

Billy looked at the two old men, then leaned in to her. “The County is becoming one big Indian reservation, except with whites trapped inside this time. Businesses have pulled out, the government is MIA, they just left a bunch of poor people here, brought some liquor and junk food in and left us to … I don’t know what.”

She felt a line of heat across her throat.

“You mean, like on the East Side? And every other ghetto in America?”

Billy didn’t quite catch her tone.

“Yeah. You’re right. Maybe we’re getting a taste of what they did to blacks. Now they want to see if they can do the same to white people.”

From inside the County, Billy’s theory made perfect sense. At the turn of the twentieth century, Buffalo had more millionaires per capita than any city in the country. It had mansions, it produced luxury cars like the Pierce Arrow, it had power and momentum, it was going to be the next New York City.

Now parts of it looked like some bombed-out alien planet.

Watching the place you loved go back to weeds and wasteland could wound you, Abbie thought. She didn’t have the same problem. She’d never quite loved the County. She’d feared it.

“Well, the apocalypse aside, I’m here on business.”

Small nod from Billy.

“Jimmy Ryan,” she said. “You knew him?”

“Everyone did. He was in and out of this place like he owned it.”

“What did he do here?”

Billy picked up a pint glass and began to polish it, watching the rag as it swooped around.

“The regular stuff. Came in and drank. Helped with the fund-raisers, brought some musicians in.”

“Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“Every time you polish a glass, you start lying to me. Have you realized that?”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Lying? That’s a strong word.”

She eyed him. Her ex-husband used to call it “the look that can break rocks,” but she was unaware of its intensity.

“Jesus, Ab. I’m telling you what I know.”

“Correction. You’re telling me
some
of what you know.”

Billy put down the glass. He glanced at the two old men, then searched under the bar. He came up with the TV remote control and thumbed the volume up. The sound of the announcer’s voice filled the room.

“Come on, Clare,” Billy called as a man on the screen ran, tapping the hurling ball with the end of his stick. One of the old men looked up, then went back to his whispered conversation.

“Okay,” Billy said. “A long time ago, Jimmy and a few other guys used to get together in the office and shut the door. They’d be in there for an hour or two. Everyone wondered what they were up to.”

“What did people think was going on back there?”

Billy looked at her, then down.

“If you pick up a glass and start to shine it,” Abbie said, “I’m coming over this bar.”

“Maybe I’d like that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Trust me.”

“I don’t know. They said Jimmy made a lot of trips after those meetings.”

“Trips where?”

Billy made the County face, a kind of inscrutable half grin, half grimace. It meant yes/no. East/west. It was all in how you read it.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you do that.”

He picked up a glass, began to shine it, just looking at her, his eyelids half closed.

“Like the man said, this is where I leave you,” he said. “As bad as this job is, it’s all I got.”

“Who were the other guys in these meetings?”

“One was an older guy named Marty. A lawyer. The other two I didn’t know.”

“That’s funny. Because you know everyone in the County.”

“Not these two. They came in the back way. You couldn’t go near the office until they were finished.”

“What’s Marty’s last name?”

“Don’t know.”

“Billy.”

“Swear.”

Abbie studied him. He looked back, his eyes wary but friendly, and he flashed his quarterback smile. It carried about half the impact it once did, but that was enough.

She breathed out, finished her Diet Coke, and picked up her notebook.

“That’s what I hate about this place,” she said.

“What?”

“Even when people are telling you the truth, it
seems
like they’re lying.”

Billy shrugged his shoulders, put the polished glass down.

“Bye, Billy.”

She hopped off the seat and began to walk toward the door, waving once over her shoulder.

“What’re you doing on prom night?” he called after her.

“Sleeping with my gun,” she called back.

As she walked through the foyer, she glanced back and saw the old men had turned to stare at Billy.

As she got in the car, her cell phone vibrated in her lapel pocket. She pulled it out.

“Kearney.”

“It’s Z. Don’t worry, but your father reported a prowler. Units are heading over.”

A surge of fear rolled through her.

“How long ago?”

“Two minutes.”

She turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine, shot it into reverse.

“En route.”

“Gotcha.”

W
HEN SHE WALKED IN THE DOOR, HER FATHER SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE
with two young cops, one black, one white. The black cop half stood as she entered; the white one turned his head and nodded.

“Detective Kearney, everything’s fine,” said the black cop. She saw “Jackson” written on his nameplate.

Out of breath, Abbie laid her keys on the table and looked at her father.

“Someone was jimmying with the door,” he said. “My memory’s slipping but my hearing’s as sharp as a Kilkenny cat.”

Abbie nodded. Her racing heart began to beat slower. However painful the relationship with her father, the thought of losing him had brought on nothing less than terror.

“Did you find anything?” she asked Jackson.

“Well,” he said. “One thing.”

The white cop stood up and turned toward her. She saw his nameplate: Bianchi.

“I found this hanging on the doorknob as we came up.”

In a plastic baggie he held up, Abbie saw a small child’s toy. She took it in her hand and it sent arrows of fear through her.

A plastic monkey.

They hadn’t announced that a toy had been found at the Ryan
killing. Nobody knew. Nobody except the Homicide Division, the three cops on scene, and one caretaker.

She felt the men watching her.

“It’s from a game called Evil,” Jackson said. “I had one when I was a kid.”

She nodded. “No note, no anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Neighbors?”

“Didn’t hear a sound.”

She looked at her father. “You all right, Dad?”

He was better than all right. He’d spruced himself up for the visitors. He was wearing a white dress shirt from the back of his closet, gray wool slacks, and the new cardigan she’d bought him for Christmas. And his black leather slippers.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Now sit down again, lads, finish your coffee.”

The black cop, Jackson, smiled at her. “Your dad was telling stories.”

“You don’t say,” she said.

They took their seats again and Abbie nodded at them, then went down the hall to her bedroom. She unbuckled the Glock holster and put it on the second shelf in her closet, took off her shoes, and sat on the bed. From the kitchen she could hear her father’s fine tenor voice.

Abbie took the monkey and stared at it. Its left arm was straight down by its side, the other raised to its face. The right hand was covering the eyes. See No Evil.

Who sent this
, she thought—
the killer or another cop? Is the County telling me to leave the investigation to them? If so, they can go to hell
. The very thought sent her blood boiling.
But if it’s the killer …

Her father’s voice boomed from the kitchen. He was a great storyteller. It was the one thing that—though she wasn’t his flesh and blood—she always wished he’d passed on to her, by osmosis.

“Now, there were two of us standing over the body,” she heard him say.

She listened for a moment. It was the First Ward story, or one of them. She recognized it from those nights in the Gaelic Club when she would stand by his side, not hoisted onto his lap but still claiming him by her nearness.

Abbie drifted back to the kitchen and leaned on the doorframe.
They’ll think it’s strange if I disappear after seeing the monkey
, she thought.
If it is a message, I can’t let them see it hit home
.

Her father’s face was lit from within, his cheeks flushed red.

“I said to my partner, Jameson, ‘Now, just what the hell caused you to fire your gun at this innocent man?’ ”

Her father saved the story—all of his stories—for company or for rare nights out. Not for her. For Detective John Kearney, charm was lost on family.