Irish Eyes (29 page)

“He’s out in the kitchen,” the bartender said. “You need to see him?”

“Yeah, if it’s not too much trouble.”

He turned around, pushed open a swinging door with his foot.

“Earl,” he bellowed. “Lady here needs to see you.”

The door swung open again and a short bowlegged man in a pearl-buttoned shirt, blue jeans, and high-heeled cowboy boots emerged. He was in his early sixties, ruddy-faced, with bright blue eyes that took in the length of the bar.

I held my hand out to him. “Mr., uh, Earl?”

“Earl Witherspoon,” he said, grasping my hand. “And I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m Callahan Garrity. This is my, uh, fiance. Mac Mac-Auliffe.”

“Good to meet you,” Witherspoon said, shaking hands with Mac. “Now what can I do you for?”

I looked around the bar. Things were pretty quiet, and the regulars were openly staring at us.

“Uh, is there somewhere private we could talk?” I asked.

Witherspoon nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Bunch of damn busybodies in here. Y’all come on in the kitchen, if you don’t mind the heat.”

“I’ll just sit here and sip my beer,” Mac said.

I flashed him a grateful smile.

Earl was right about the kitchen. It was tiny and dominated by a huge griddle, where half a dozen hamburger patties sizzled.

“Now, what’s this all about?” he asked.

“It’s about an armed robbery,” I began.

His easy smile evaporated. “What the hell are you talking about? Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m a private detective,” I explained. “You met one of my, uh, associates last week, on St. Patrick’s Day. At the jail. The night after you were held up at an ATM machine. You told her all about what happened that night.”

The mention of Neva Jean seemed to relax him a little. “Ought to have kept my big mouth shut,” Witherspoon grumbled. “Always was a sucker for a full-figured gal like that Neva Jean.”

“I’m interested in what happened to you because I think it
might be connected to a series of armed robberies around Atlanta,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know nothin’ about any other robberies,” Witherspoon said. “The police down here in Hapeville never mentioned nothin’ about no other robberies.”

“The other crimes were all in different jurisdictions; Cobb County, Fulton County, and City of Atlanta. But all of them happened at ATM machines. And all the victims were people like you, businessmen about to make large cash deposits, when they were approached by a masked gunman.”

“That part sounds about right,” Witherspoon allowed. “Be damned if I know where that sumbitch came from that stuck me up. All of a sudden, he was just there, cool as you please, telling me to hand over my money.”

“And you decided not to make it that easy, from what I hear.”

“How the hell did I know there was two of ‘em? Hit me from behind, the sumbitch. Doc said I had a concussion, sure enough.”

“The man who robbed you, was he masked?”

“What’s your interest in all of this?” Witherspoon asked. “You say you’re a lady P.I., but why do you care about some two-bit saloonkeeper way down here in the boonies losing a couple hundred bucks? The cops down here sure aren’t as interested as you are.”

“I used to be a cop myself,” I said. “My former partner was shot in an armed robbery at a liquor store in Atlanta the night after you were robbed. The sumbitch who shot him put the gun right to his ear and pulled the trigger. Twice. He’s up in Grady Hospital, hooked up to a bunch of machines. The doctors don’t expect him to live. I’m wondering if the same people might be responsible for both crimes.”

“And you’d like to catch the sumbitch who did all this,” Witherspoon said. “No offense, but what can a little bitty gal like you do to catch these thieves? I mean, why don’t you leave it to the cops? That’s their job, ain’t it?”

“Because,” I said, “I think it was a cop who shot my friend. And a cop who tried to split your skull in two.”

“By damn,” Witherspoon said. “By damn.”

He fixed us both a couple of cheeseburgers and sent one out to Mac. Then he dragged a couple of barstools over to a counter at the far end of the kitchen.

“I wondered if there wasn’t more to all of this than met the eye,” he said, dumping ketchup on his hamburger. “I mean, I been making deposits at that machine for six or eight years. And I never made it on the same night or the same time, just in case anybody was watching. And this was the first time I made such a large deposit. The thing was, we had a pool tournament in here the weekend before that, and I was getting a little uneasy about all that cash.”

“I thought you told Neva Jean it was about eleven hundred,” I said.

He grinned. “I told you, I’m a careful man, Miss Garrity.”

“It’s Callahan. Just how much did you have on you that night—just between the two of us?”

“Four thousand, eight hundred.” His expression was pained. “There mighta been a little side wagerin’ going on during the tournament—just between the two of us.”

“Let me ask you something, Earl. Have you ever hired off-duty cops to work security here? Like as a bouncer or something?”

“Sure,” he said. “Mostly we got a bunch of peaceful drunks in here. They drink, they get drunk, I call their old lady and say, ‘Come get Bubba, he’s bad drunk.’ But here lately, we been getting a different kind of clientele. Mexicans, Yankees, transients. I started hiring guys to stand around and look mean. Worked, too.”

“Did you have a bouncer during the pool tournament?”

“Oh, yeah,” Earl said. “You get some sore losers with that kind of a thing.”

“Was the guy a cop?”

“Now that you mention it, he was a cop. Young fella. Seemed all right.”

“Did he see how much cash you had?”

“Reckon so,” Earl said. “He stayed around most nights and helped me lock up.”

“What was his name?”

He went blank. “We was so busy, I can’t recall it right now. Sorry.”

“How about a check stub?”

He shook his head. “I paid him in cash. That’s the way it works with these jokers. They don’t want to have to pay income tax. Not like us regular stiffs, anyway.”

Witherspoon pushed open the kitchen door. “Hey, B. J.,” he hollered. “You remember the name of that fella who worked as a bouncer for us here last weekend?”

B.J. stuck his head in the kitchen. “Christ, Earl. You don’t remember? It was that guy that got shot Saturday night. Sean. Sean Ragan.”

W
itherspoon snapped his fingers. “Ragan. That’s right. I ast him if he was related to old Ronnie Reagan, and he said his name was spelled different.”

“You didn’t know he’d been killed?”

“Hell, I don’t pay no attention to what goes on up there in Atlanta,” Witherspoon said. “But I hate to hear that boy was kilt. What happened?”

“He was killed in the line of duty. Shot by a burglar.” I gave it some thought. “Allegedly.”

“By damn,” Earl said. “This is a hell of a crime streak we got going.”

“Tell me what happened the night you were robbed,” I said.

“Wasn’t much to it,” Earl said. “We’re slow Mondays. That’s my day off. Tuesday night was slow, too, so I decided to leave early and make the bank run.”

“Was Ragan here that night?”

“He come in at eight, but since it was so slow, I told him we didn’t need him. I had B. J. to stay and finish and lock the place up.”

“What time did you leave here?”

“Prob’ly before midnight.”

“And you didn’t notice anybody following you?”

“Hell, who thinks of a thing like that? I got to the shopping center where the bank branch is. I had the car doors locked. Nobody was around that I could see. I had the bank bag, and I had my little pistol stuck down in my boot. I got out of the car and got my ATM card out, and I was writing out my deposit slip, when this fella sticks a gun in the back of my neck and tells me to hand over the bank bag. That’s when I got the idea to act like I was having a heart attack. Only I was closer to it than I like to admit. I throwed myself down on the ground and started carrying on and—”

“Did you get a look at the guy’s face?”

“He had on a mask,” Earl said. “Like a black wool ski mask, with the eyes and the mouth cut out.”

“White or black?”

“Only saw him a second. White, I’d say, now that you ask.”

“Did you notice the gunman’s hand? Was he wearing a ring?”

“He had a gun,” Witherspoon said. “My eyeballs didn’t go no further than that.”

“How about the voice? Did you recognize the voice?”

“Hell, no,” Earl retorted. “That mask kinda muffled his voice. I could barely make out what he was sayin’. Anyway, the gun told me all I needed to know. And like I was tellin’ you, I was concentrating on getting my gun outta my boot without his noticing it. That’s why I was rolling around, had my knees cinched up against my chest, so I could get my hand down into my boot. Just when I brought the gun out, don’t you know, somebody tried to split my head right in two. The next thing you know, I come to and my money and my pistol was gone. Hated to lose that pistol. My ex-wife got me that for my birthday a few years ago. Fit right in my boot. I loved that little booger,” Earl said mournfully.

“Did you report the gun stolen?”

“Well … see, I didn’t actually have a carry permit for it, you see. So I didn’t feel like it was all that germane to the robbery.”

“What kind of gun was it?” I knew, but wanted to hear it from him.

“Just a little twenty-two. Cheap, but right handy.”

“My friend was shot with a twenty-two,” I said slowly. “What kind was yours?”

“Just a little Saturday-night special, really,” he said. “Marlena got it at a flea market over there in South Carolina.”

“It’s the same gun,” I said. “It has to be.”

“By damn,” Earl said.

I got up slowly, finished my beer to be polite. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Witherspoon.”

“Earl,” he said. “It’s Earl, remember? And the beer and burgers are on the house. Say. About that associate of yours, that Neva Jean. She ain’t married or nothin’, is she?”

“W
as it worth the trip?” Mac asked when we were back in the Blazer, headed toward home.

“I think I know who shot Bucky.”

“Who?”

“Sean Ragan.”

“The cop who was killed Saturday night? What makes you think he’s connected to Bucky?”

I told him what Earl Witherspoon had said, about hiring Ragan as a bouncer, how Ragan had known that Witherspoon had an unusually large amount of cash on hand, and even where he made his bank deposits.

“There were two men involved in Witherspoon’s robbery,” I said. “He didn’t get a look at the guy who hit him on the head. I’m betting that was Ragan. No telling who the guy in the mask was.”

“Could it have been Ragan’s partner?”

“Witherspoon’s impression was that the gunman was white. But he wasn’t positive.”

“Seems pretty slim evidence,” Mac said. “Witherspoon
seems like a pretty rowdy character. A lot of people in that bar could have known the stuff you say Ragan knew.”

“Yeah, but listen to this. Witherspoon’s pistol—a twenty-two—was taken after he was robbed. A Saturday-night special. I think it could be the same twenty-two used to shoot Bucky. It was left behind at the liquor store.”

Mac nodded. He drove for a while before he had another question.

“We still don’t know why. I mean, why would Ragan shoot Bucky? Did he even know Bucky? And why would a cop leave a weapon behind?”

“I don’t have all the answers,” I admitted. “All I have so far is some ideas. Bucky would have known Ragan, because they were both members of the Shamrock Society. And they were both part of John Boylan’s ad hoc employment agency. Maybe Bucky saw something he shouldn’t have seen—the night he got shot. Ragan, Boylan, Viatkos, could have been any of ‘em. We know Bucky went in that back room to get that six-pack from the walk-in cooler. Maybe that’s what got him killed. Maybe Ragan knew he had to keep Bucky from talking. He used the twenty-two he’d stolen the night before from Witherspoon. I doubt any of this was planned in advance. It just happened, and that’s why Ragan made such a stupid blunder by leaving the gun behind.”

“What makes you think Pete Viatkos was there too?” Mac asked. “Not that I think the guy’s an angel or anything, but I can’t see why he’d be connected with any of this.”

“Deecie told me she saw Viatkos’s truck, parked out there in the alley,” I said. “It was gone by the time the cops arrived. And I talked to Viatkos. He’s lying about something, I know it. And now Deecie’s disappeared. She was the only witness, Mac. And she took the videotape of the robbery. She told me the robbery didn’t go down the way she told the cops. That’s why she was so scared. Because she knew she’d seen too much.”

“You think Ragan wasn’t killed by a burglar?”

“I’m not sure. He messed up by leaving the twenty-two behind. After all, if somebody put all the pieces together, it could
connect Ragan to at least one other armed robbery. And these guys couldn’t afford a blunder like that.”

“I heard on the news that Ragan’s partner is under investigation,” Mac said. “You think he was involved in Ragan’s murder?”

“No telling. He’s refusing to cooperate with the internal affairs investigators, so that means something is funny. And he’s hired David Kohn to represent him. Kohn doesn’t come cheap. That makes me think somebody is helping Antjuan Wayne. Who? The Shamrocks? Wayne certainly wasn’t a member. He’s black. And according to C.W., these guys are all just one step up from the Ku Klux Klan.”

Mac yawned loudly, and I did the same. Long day.

“Seems to me you’re overlooking one piece of the puzzle,” he said.

“Probably I’m overlooking lots of pieces. I’m on the outside looking in,” I said. “Which piece are you talking about?”

“How does Bucky fit into all this? Babe, I know he’s your friend, but look at what you’ve told me about this outfit he was in. These Shamrocks.

“You say they were involved in some kind of robbery ring, getting inside information on likely victims because they worked as security guards or bouncers. Bucky worked at that liquor store. He worked other jobs, too. How do you know he wasn’t in on some of those holdups? For that matter, how do you know he wasn’t the other guy who helped Ragan rob Earl Witherspoon? Maybe that’s why Ragan shot Bucky. Because of something that happened the night before. Maybe Bucky was trying to screw Ragan out of the money from the robbery.”