Irish Eyes (3 page)

John Boylan in those days was quite the stud. He had the early Burt Reynolds look down pat—big dark handlebar mustache, hair that tickled his open shirt collar, skin-tight blue jeans, high-heeled cowboy boots, and an ever-present cigarette.

Boylan bought me a beer, then another beer. He suggested we go somewhere for a quiet dinner. I was thrilled, of course. I needed a shower first, so we went back to my apartment, which was in one of those singles complexes that had sprung up all over Atlanta in the seventies and eighties. The only thing that makes me proud about that evening was that I didn’t sleep with the guy. Oh sure, there was a lot of heavy necking and heavy breathing, but Boylan’s beeper went off before we got around to actually doing the deed.

It wasn’t until the next day, when my girlfriend Paula asked me where I’d gone after Manuel’s, that I discovered my new boyfriend was married with three little kids.

Later that day, when Boylan got into his unmarked city unit, he was displeased to find a steaming-ripe dog turd carefully
placed on the driver’s seat, alongside a note from me. Funny—he never called again.

Funny, too, how Boylan’s star status had dimmed over the years. He’d had two divorces that I knew of, and no particular success since the Bathtub Murders. The blue jeans had been replaced with one-size-fits-all sweat pants and the handlebar mustache was gone, as was most of the rest of the hair on his head.

“We had some good times back in the old days, didn’t we?” he said now, winking broadly.

“Did we?” I said. “I honestly don’t remember.”

“Sure you do,” he said, stroking my shoulder.

Bucky walked up then, holding a beer in each hand. “Boylan!” he said, his face lighting up. “Great party, man.”

“Thanks, buddy. Where’s your lady?”

“Working a case,” Bucky said. “A Jane Doe in an abandoned car. She said she’d meet me here, but it’s getting kind of late.”

“Really late,” I said, standing up, as though he’d given me my cue. “And I’ve got a long day tomorrow. Bucky, you think you could give me a ride home?”

Bucky frowned. “Right now? Everything’s just getting hopping. The band’ll be back from their break any minute now. And Lisa still might make it.”

“I could give you a ride,” Boylan offered. “I was just saying my good-byes to everybody.”

I gave Bucky the signal, tugging on my left earlobe. After all the years, he knew it well. He shrugged, took a long swig of his beer, put them both down on the table.

“Nah,” he said. “It’s late. I’ll take her home.”

I was fuming by the time we got to the car.

“Thanks a lot for making me beg,” I told him.

“What? What’d I do?” Bucky said.

“Boylan. You know I can’t stand the guy. You saw him standing there, his hands all over me. And yet you did nothing. Jeez.”

He started the car, muttering under his breath. “What?” I said sharply.

Bucky shook his head. “What’d you want me to do? Draw down on him? Challenge him to a duel? He was just being friendly. Boylan’s not a bad guy. Loosen up, for Christ’s sake.”

He revved the Miata’s engine and spun out of the parking lot doing at least forty miles per hour. When he ran the red light at the next intersection it dawned on me that I’d seen Bucky down at least five beers within the past hour.

I glanced over at him. “Are you sober enough to drive?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “You wanna nag me about that, too? Christ. No wonder you’re still single.”

“Just let me off at the corner,” I said, doing a slow burn. “If you want to get stopped for DUI, maybe hit and kill somebody, be my guest. Only let me out of the car first.”

“Christ,” he said again, taking the next corner at an even higher speed. “I told you, I’m fine. I didn’t even finish most of those beers. Kept setting them down, and when I went to pick ‘em back up, they were empty.”

“Yeah, that happens when you suck it down like water,” I said. “Slow down, Bucky. I mean it.”

“Fuck you very much,” Bucky said, again under his breath.

I made a show of checking my seat belt to make sure it was buckled tightly, but there was nothing else to do. I sat very straight and quiet, and when I looked down at my lap, I noticed my hands were clasped so tightly both knuckles were white.

A mile from home Bucky took a sharp left into a small strip shopping center on Ponce de Leon. He parked in front of a liquor store. The neon sign in the window said it was the Budget Bottle Shop. The windows were covered with beer and liquor signs. He cut the engine. “Be right back,” he said.

“What the hell?” I asked. “The last thing you need is more booze. Take me home, dammit. Right now.”

“Just hold your water,” Bucky said. “Gotta pick something up in here. Be right back. Swear to God.”

He slammed the door and I reached over and pushed the power lock button. The parking lot was dimly lit, and the only business that looked open was the liquor store.

I sat and fumed. Should have stayed home, I told myself. By now, Mac would have called from Nashville. He’d gone up there at the first of the week for a job interview. I was both dreading and anticipating hearing from him. He’d been dissatisfied
with his job for more than a year, and I hated it that he was hating his work, but on the other hand, I couldn’t contemplate his moving to Nashville. Us moving to Nashville. He wanted me to go too.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. My temples were throbbing. I wanted a hot bath and some aspirin and my bed and my house. My house. Not some fancy new house in a subdivision in Nashville, Tennessee. My wood-frame Craftsman bungalow on Oakdale suited me just fine. My life suited me too. Why couldn’t it suit Mac?

And where the hell was Bucky? I sat up and peered at the front of the liquor store. It was impossible to see inside with all the posters and beer signs in the store’s window. Damn him. I wondered what his new girlfriend would think about his coming home with a snootful of beer. Things had changed in Atlanta. In the old days, a cop wouldn’t ticket another cop. If you got stopped for running a red light or weaving from lane to lane, all you had to do was flash your badge, and all was forgiven. But not anymore. The new chief of police was a woman full of reformist’s zeal—a real ball-buster. If Bucky—or any other cop—got stopped for DUI, he could be in deep shit with the bosses.

I thought about tapping on the car horn. Piss him off royally. Like I was pissed off. Thought better of it. My head hurt. I leaned back and closed my eyes again. Come on, dammit.

The Miata’s clock ticked off a couple minutes. I opened my eyes when I heard the pops. They were faint. Two of them. Pop. Pop. I sat up, blinked, looked around the parking lot. There was one other car in the lot, a rusty white Buick LeSabre. Traffic on Ponce was what you’d expect for that time of night—busy. The pops could have been a car backfiring, maybe.

Just then the front door of the liquor store was flung open. A woman—young, thin, black—ran onto the sidewalk. She had pink sponge rollers in her hair, and her mouth was twisted wide open. She was screaming. “Jesus! They done shot him. Jesus, Jesus. Somebody help.” And then the screaming turned into sirens, sirens from every direction, shrieking through the cold, thin night air.

S
he was crouched down, screaming her lungs out, clutching her head as though it might break apart. I raced past her into the liquor store.

Bucky was on the floor, facedown, facing the door. A cardboard six-pack carrier lay on the floor beside him. Harp. Three of the bottles were smashed. Bits of glass were splattered all over the floor. A foaming yellow puddle spread around Bucky’s outstretched hand. Blood trickled from a damp place on the side of his head.

I knelt down beside him. My ears were buzzing. Screams. The woman wouldn’t quit screaming. I put my fingers below Bucky’s carotid artery, felt a thin, thready beat.

“Call nine-one-one,” I yelled, turning around to look at her. “Tell them it’s a code three. Signal sixty-three, you hear? Officer down. Tell them it’s an officer down. We need an ambulance.”

The crying was high-pitched, not real. The girl squatted down behind the counter, stood up. Now she was holding a largish bundle, wrapped in a blue-and-yellow-striped blanket. The child kicked a bare foot, screamed louder. He had a thick
halo of dark fuzzy hair, and angry tears streamed down the fat little face. How old? Maybe nine months?

“He coulda killed my baby,” she cried, rocking the child to and fro. “I was holding my baby and he looked at me, pointed the gun, then run out.”

“Call nine-one-one, damn you,” I screamed. “Right now.”

I rolled Bucky over as gently as I could. A thin stream of blood trickled down his neck. His eyelids were barely open. I pried one open, bent close to see. “Bucky?”

He blinked, coughed a little. I put my head to his chest. He was breathing, but the breaths were uneven, fluttery.

Christ. What to do? It had been fifteen years since I learned CPR at the academy. Where to start? Hurry, dammit. He was dying. Dying on a dirty linoleum floor in a pool of blood and beer.

I closed my eyes, tried to find a pocket of calm.

ABC. I could hear the instructor, hear the cadets parroting her. ABC. Airway, breathing, circulation.

Assess first. Okay. He was breathing on his own, but that could stop at any time, I knew. His heart was beating. What about his airway? I wiped my hands on my shirt, inserted two fingers in his mouth. He gagged, weakly. His throat was clear.

Behind me, the girl was still babbling. “I done hit the panic button. Like Pete said. I hit it soon as he run in. Jesus. We wasn’t doin’ nothin’. He just shot him. Put the gun up to his head. Click. Pow. Click. Pow.”

I got up and ran over to the counter, but it was surrounded with a yellowed Plexiglas shield.

“Give me the phone,” I ordered her.

She pushed the receiver through a slot in the shield. “Now dial nine-one-one.”

I took a deep breath, started talking as soon as the dispatcher acknowledged me.” This is Callahan Garrity. We have a signal sixty-three at the Budget Bottle Shop on Ponce de Leon.” I looked over at the clerk, who was jiggling the crying baby on her hip. “What’s the street number here?”

“Huh?”

“Address, dammit. What’s the address?”

“Sixty-seven eleven.”

I repeated it to the operator. “Gunshot wounds to the head,” I said. “We need an ambulance right now.”

I hung up the phone. The police station was only a few blocks away; Grady Memorial Hospital with the biggest trauma center in the South was less than three miles. Hurry, I prayed. Dear God, hurry.

The sirens were getting closer. Police cruisers. Four or five, impossible to tell how many.

“They just shot him,” the clerk whimpered, starting to cry again.

I whipped off my parka, balled it up, and knelt down on the floor, pressing the fabric to the side of Bucky’s head to stop the flow of blood. Something in my mind registered how small the bullet hole was. With the fingers of my left hand, I pinched his nostrils closed. Put my mouth over his and exhaled hard. And again, and again. I sat back on my knees. Still breathing.

“Bucky? Can you hear me?”

His eyelids fluttered. He seemed to look right at me. “W’as up?” His voice was weak but, by God, he was alive.

The sirens were right outside. The door flew open and a wave of cops rolled through. Eight of them. Outside, more sirens.

“He’s a cop,” I shouted as they moved toward us. “He’s been shot in the head at least twice. Right side, behind his ear. He’s breathing on his own. We’ve called for an ambulance.”

“What happened here?” The cop was thin, with acnescarred mocha-colored skin and a penciled-looking mustache. The nameplate under the badge said Durrence. He knelt down on the floor beside me, put his hands on Bucky’s chest, and started to push. “Who shot him?”

“Some dude,” the cashier volunteered. “The dude just walked in out of the stockroom and shot Bucky in the head. Shot him twice and run out through the door he come in through.”

Durrence leaned down and looked in Bucky’s eyes. “Christ! I know this guy. It’s Deavers. Parini—get on the radio.
Tell ‘em we need the route to Grady cleared. Then call Grady and tell ‘em we got GSW to the head. Have ‘em page Doc Solomon.

“Who are you?” Durrence asked.

“Callahan Garrity. I’m a friend of Bucky’s. I used to be on the force.”

“You know what you’re doing here?”

“Not really,” I said. “Let me.”

I scooted over to give him better access to Bucky.

Parini took his radio off his belt and started speaking into it. More cops crowded into the store. The two cops who’d followed the first one in moved toward the door. “What’s back there?”

“Storeroom,” the clerk said. “Pete’s office. The dude must have gone out the alley.”

The cops drew their 9-mm service weapons and inched through the doorway. “Police!” one of them called, but the voice echoed against the concrete walls.

“The dude that shot him. What did he look like?” Parini asked.

“He had on a mask,” the girl reported. “Like one of those ski masks with the holes for eyes and mouth. I ain’t seen nothin’ else but that mask.”

“What about you?” Parini said, looking at me.

“I don’t know,” I said, biting my lip to keep from crying. My legs and hands were twitching uncontrollably. I clutched Bucky’s hand in mine. It seemed cool. I needed to do something, cover him with something, do something besides hold my jacket to the hole in his skull.

“I was outside in the car. We were here maybe five minutes. I heard the gunshots, and she came running out saying he’d been shot. God. What’s taking so long for that ambulance?”

“He coulda killed Faheem,” the clerk cried. “I was holding him up, showing him to Bucky, when the dude ran in. But he acted like we wasn’t even here. Didn’t say nothin’. Just put this little bitty gun up beside Bucky’s ear and shot. Bam. Bucky fell down and Faheem, he started screaming. I was screaming too.
And the dude leaned over, bam, shot Bucky again. And then he ran out. I hit the panic button like Pete said.”

Outside, over the din of the other sirens and Faheem’s angry wails, I heard the deep
whoop-whoop
of an approaching ambulance.