Goodnight, Irene (9 page)

I was feeling more and more like a heel. “Kevin,” I said, “I have a very difficult request to make of you. I need an extended leave of absence.”

“Oh.”

I thought he was going to say more, but he waited for me to go on.

“The police think O’Connor was probably killed because of some story he was working on or had written in the past. And yesterday someone tried to murder his son.”

“I heard about it at Calhoun’s,” he said, referring to a bar that’s the current hot spot for the staff of the
Express
. That saved me a lot of explaining, because that meant he already had heard any news in more detail than was printed in the late edition. Doubtless in more detail than would ever be printed. Most people don’t like to read that stuff over breakfast.

“Did you ever meet a guy in Homicide named Frank Harriman?” I asked.

Kevin thought a moment. “Yes, in fact, Mark Baker introduced us down at Calhoun’s a few months ago, when he was working on that double homicide at the Legs.”

“The Legs,” or, in Spanish, “Las Piernas,” were two tall, rounded cliffs above the beach. From out on the ocean, they did indeed look like two long legs, and were so named from the time the Spaniards first sailed past them.

“Well, he’s on the O’Connor case now. The only way he’s going to get anywhere is if somebody who knew O’Connor, knew his notation system, knew how he worked — if somebody like that gets back on the paper and digs up whatever dirt is making this bastard kill people.”

“And you think it should be you.”

Long silence.

He studied me again. “I’ll be honest with you, Irene. I knew the minute I heard about O’Connor that you would go after this guy. I’ve known you too long. I’ve also known that you haven’t been happy here…”

I started to object, but he cut me off.

“Hear me out. It’s true. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you and more, and I’ve asked a lot. O’Connor used to take me out to Banyon’s or Calhoun’s and tell me how I was never going to take the black ink out of your veins. He’d kid me about how I was trying to harness a racehorse to the plow, and while a racehorse might pull steady, it would always be looking over the fence at the track, longing for a good run for the money. ‘One day, she’ll bolt the harness,’ he’d say.

“Well, he was right and I knew it. I hope you don’t mind my extending the analogy, but I told him you at least were making hay, more hay than the
Express
offered. But, to my advantage, this day took longer to get here than even O’Connor imagined.”

“Kevin, I know I’m leaving you in the lurch now, but it’s not because I’m not grateful to you. I always will be. I could be slinging hash if it weren’t for you.”

“You underrate yourself. And don’t feel guilty. There never would be a good time to leave, and we both know it.”

“You’re being very understanding.”

“I can’t keep you here if you want to go. Your work would suffer, you’d resent me, and I’d probably end up resenting you. Not worth it. O’Connor would haunt me to no end.”

“I owe you, Kevin.”

“Well, leave that sort of thing to people who keep such accounts. Anyway, before you go, there’s something else you should know. Someone has been very curious as to when you’ll be coming back to work here. I was just talking to Clarissa about it. I don’t like it at all. The caller won’t leave a name or number, but he called several times yesterday and he’s already called twice today. What would you like me to have her tell him?”

“Tell him I’ve gone back to work for the paper.”

“You in a hurry to have someone harm you?”

“Look, they’re going to find out the first time I have a byline, the first time they call the paper, or the first time they bend an ear to conversations at Banyon’s or Calhoun’s. The
Express
staff loves to talk about nothing so much as the
Express
staff. This won’t be a secret for long.”

“Okay, Irene. But keep in mind that you’re worried after. It’s okay to help, but let the professionals go after the criminals.”

“Don’t worry, I’m cooperating with the police on this. I’m not as crazy as I sometimes seem.”

“One other thing — speaking of crazy people — how the hell did you ever get Wrigley to ask you back?”

“Kevin, if she ever gets tired of the newsroom, hire a woman named Lydia Ames. I’ve never seen so great a PR job done on anybody.”

“She’s your school chum, isn’t she? Well, I’ll keep that in mind. And don’t forget, there’s always room for you here if you want to come back.”

We shook hands warmly. On my way out, I said good-bye to Clarissa and Don, and then left for the grand old offices of the
Express
. As I drove along, I had a feeling that O’Connor was watching over me. He might not be the only one, but together he and I had the luck of the Irish.

C
OMING WITHIN SIGHT
of the newspaper meant coming within sight of the hospital, and I wondered how Kenny and Barbara were doing. I decided I would stop by there after I had done some work at the paper.

As I walked up to the double glass doors and went into the marble-and-brass entry of the
Express,
a great sense of anticipation filled me. I hadn’t been inside those doors since I marched out two years before.

I couldn’t take in enough of the place. In the center of the room sat Geoff, the reedy gentleman who served as our security man. Geoff was so old and had been with the paper so long, we used to say he was put into the foyer by the architect and greeted the original Wrigley when he first came through the door. A big smile lit his face.

“Welcome back, Miss Kelly! You’re a sight for sore eyes!”

“And you are, too, Geoff. It feels good to be back. Are they running now?”

Geoff laughed his wheezy laugh and said, “I told myself this morning, when Mr. Wrigley said to send you right upstairs when you came in, I said to myself, ‘Miss Kelly is going to want to go downstairs before she goes upstairs.’” He wheezed and shook in glee. “And I was right, wasn’t I? Yes, ma’am, they are most certainly running. Special sections right now, I believe. So you go right on down, and if anybody asks, I ain’t seen hide nor hair of you yet.”

“Thanks, Geoff.”

I went down the stairwell and through a maze of doorless hallways. The building was laid out by someone whose previous work was in rabbit warrens. But through the ancient walls I could already hear the rumble of running presses. A sound I loved almost as much as the smell that permeated this basement area — ink and newsprint.

Overhead the open ceiling was crisscrossed with wires and rollers which would later carry finished papers to the machines that would bundle them for distribution. I turned a corner and stepped into the main press room. I grabbed a pair of “visitor’s” ear protectors and listened through them to the magnificent roar of rolling paper and press. Coburn and Parker, two of the operators, saw me and waved, grinning from ear to ear.

Straight ahead was the tall black housing of the Motters, our newest presses, which had color-printing capabilities. The older, green Goss presses surrounded the two Motters. Newsprint rolled into them and streamed from them in a blur of speeding print. Eight pages at a time, cut, rolled, turned, folded, and moving, moving, moving in a web of fantastic design. I stood and watched for a while.

Coburn walked over and shouted, “Good to see you back!” It was a greeting I would hear again and again as I made my way upstairs.

Wrigley was smoking a cigar in his glass-paneled office. We called this his “God office,” which was one of two he had in the building. The God office was the one he sat in when he wanted to watch what was going on in the newsroom, or hold conferences with the editors. He had another one upstairs that he spent most of his time in; that one commanded the much more attractive view of the skyline and was more impressive to visitors.

I knew that he had watched as I made my way over to the office, stopped every few feet by an old, familiar face, or to be introduced to someone new. When I stepped into his God office, it was as if we were in a glass cage — I realized that every face was watching from the other side. I also realized that Wrigley had orchestrated our first reunion as employee and employer in this manner to make a point to the staff. Bygones were going to be bygones.

“Irene, dear!” he beamed and stretched out a hand. “Come in, come in.”

What the hell, I thought, and shook it. He glanced out the windows behind me and the staff went back to work. He didn’t say anything for a while, just sat there grinning like a fool. It was a scary sight.

Finally, he said, “Well! I guess you’ll want to get going. Your, ah, old desk—” He floundered, circling the cigar in the air as if it would help him speak. “Your old desk is in use. But I want you to take O’Connor’s desk. I think it’s — it’s appropriate. It’s just the way he left it — well, except for what the police took.”

I had wanted to work with whatever O’Connor had left here, but I guess I hadn’t considered the possibility of being given his desk as my work station. It was crazy, of course, to think that no one would be using my desk over a two-year absence — after all, I had quit and refused to come back. But so much at the paper had seemed to stand still in time, I suppose I had figured that would too; now I saw the nonsense of it.

Wrigley handed me a small brass desk key and shook my hand again, and once more all eyes seemed to be on me as I stood up and walked toward O’Connor’s desk. Except for the crackle of the scanners, the room was as quiet as I ever remembered it being.

As close as O’Connor and I were, as I approached his desk I felt like an intruder. And as curious as I was about what secrets I might learn there, I couldn’t make myself sit down in his chair. So many, many times I had seen him there. I walked around the outside of the desk, running my fingers along it. I could feel my co-workers staring at my back. Suddenly I heard a booming voice say, “Haven’t you rubberneckers got some work to do?”

It was John Walters, the news editor. John was a great old gruff bear of a man, about seventy pounds overweight and all of it cantankerous. The room was startled back into motion at his command, as if a stern teacher had walked back into a schoolroom. We got along famously. In John’s book, I was “a feisty broad.”

“Welcome back, Irene,” he said to me in his low, growling voice. “Have a seat. He’s not going to put an Irish curse on you for sitting in his chair.”

Reluctantly, I sat.

John laughed. “You’ll get used to it. That chair was lonely until just this minute.” He winked, an incredible gesture on his stern face, and strolled off to harass somebody.

For a few moments, I simply sat there, thinking of O’Connor. Finally, I reached over and turned on the monitor at his computer terminal. It glowed to life, the bright cursor pulsing on and off below the words “Sign-off completed.”

Not yet. I thought. Not yet.

I
NEEDED A PASSWORD
to get into O’Connor’s files. Unlocking the desk and looking through its drawers, I realized that the detectives who had searched it had been thorough. No loose papers, no calendar, no notebooks. I was going to have to spend some time down at police headquarters if I wanted to go through anything handwritten.

Just as I was about to give up, Lydia stopped by the desk and handed me a small piece of paper with what looked like a license plate number on it. “It’s a new password,” she said. “You’ll need it to access O’Connor’s computer files. They had to override the old one so that the cops could copy the files onto a disk.”

“Thanks.”

I entered the password in the terminal. There was the usual delay while the computer looked for the files. Just as O’Connor’s notes were coming up on the screen, the phone rang.

“Kelly,” I said, picking it up.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was trying to reach Mr. O’Connor. Is he in?”

Now what should I do? I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Mr. O’Connor is dead,” or “He won’t be in today,” or “Not at the moment.” I settled on “May I ask who is calling?”

“This is Dr. MacPherson at the Los Angeles College of Dentistry.”

“Mac teeth,” I said half-aloud. It had to be the man referred to in O’Connor’s notes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, excuse me. This is Irene Kelly. May I help you with something?”

“Well, I’m not sure that he would want me to talk about this with anyone else, so maybe you could have him give me a call when he gets in.”

“Dr. MacPherson, I’m sorry to say that Mr. O’Connor was killed this past Sunday.”

“Killed!”

“Yes, someone delivered a package bomb to his home.”

“A bomb!”

The conversation wasn’t going at all like I wanted it to. I tried to get it back under control. “Dr. MacPherson, I think you can be of help. I’m a friend of Mr. O’Connor’s, and I’ve worked with him on many of his stories. I think I saw a reference to your name in his notes.”

“This is all so shocking! I just talked to the man last week.” He paused. “If he’s been murdered, I suppose I should talk to the police.”

I could tell he was going to be a tough nut, and that he was scared out of his pants by what I had blabbed to him so far. I could try to badger him into talking to me, but I doubted it would do any good. I thought it might be better if I could see him face to face. “I’ll be happy to have someone contact you. Where can you be reached?”

“I have classes to teach this morning, but I’ll be in my office this afternoon.”

“I’ll contact the Las Piernas Police and let them know you may have some information. If I can arrange to have someone from the police with me, could I talk to you at your office this afternoon? Say, about one o’clock?”

“Well, if someone from the police is with you, I suppose it would be all right.” He gave me directions to the campus in San Pedro.

I
CALLED
F
RANK
. He was as curious as I about what the good doctor might have to say, and we decided to meet for lunch before going over to the college. He told me he would pick me up at the paper at about eleven-thirty.