things.'
'Are we finished?' Rozier asked.
'We are,' said Hanrahan, looking around the tastefully antiqued bedroom. 'Just one more question.'
'Ask your question, Detective. And then go find Dana's killer.'
'You didn't find a box, something about this wide and mis long, on the floor in the kitchen before the police got here?' Hanrahan said, moving his hands to show the approximate size of the object that had been outlined in Dana Rozier's blood. 'I mean after your wife died and before the police came.'
The puzzled look came almost instantly but not quite fast enough. Hanrahan was sure he saw a tic of something, maybe fear, in the face of Harvey Rozier.
'No,' he said. 'Why?'
Hanrahan shrugged and didn't answer. He turned away from Rozier, looked around the room, and then walked slowly out with Rozier behind him.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Franklin was standing in the hallway, nervously smoking as she waited.
'Well?' she asked.
'We found the ipecac,' said Harvey Rozier, coming down the stairs. 'Did you know that Dana had this? Or why?'
'No,' said Betty Franklin.
'Sorry to have bothered you,' Hanrahan said, meeting Rozier's eyes and extending a hand.
They both knew that Hanrahan was not in the least sorry.
They shook like gentlemen and the policeman let himself out 'I'm going to ask Kenneth to complain about mat man,' Betty Franklin said, putting out her cigarette and glaring at the door. 'You should be getting rest, not harassment'
'He's doing his job,' said Rozier, stepping toward her.
'He could do it more politely,' she said. 'They can't find Dana's killer so they intrude on you. I think you've had enough for one day. Harvey, you should go to bed.'
'I agree,' he said with a yawn, 'but on one condition.'
'Yes?'
'That you come to bed with me,' he said.
Betty Franklin moved into his arms and opened her mouth to his kiss.
Hanrahan drove and listened to the radio. Late-night meaningless talk. All-night meaningless talk. A voice in the night as he drove. He couldn't bring himself to turn on the radio at home, but in the car he would listen to almost any voice in the night.
It was still early, not much past eleven, and there were thoughts, feelings that didn't want to be named, that wanted to swim in the numb of amber Scotch.
Ten minutes later he stood in front of the Blue Parrot Lounge on Broadway, no more than five blocks from the Rogers Park Station. Hanrahan didn't know where the sweat began and the rain took over. He stood in the near cover of the overhang before the entrance, a soothing neon-red-and-gold rinse on his skin, the smell of ribs from Wesley's across the street and in front of him, beyond the familiar door, the sound of rhythm vibrating without melody from the jukebox.
Bill Hanrahan rubbed his eyes. The neighborhood stank and was getting worse, but only one ignorant hold-up man had made the mistake of stepping through the double doors and pulling a third-rate piece from his pocket. That was four years ago. It had taken the gunman only a second look to realize that he had screwed up royally. The place was stacked with cops, all of them looking like cops, a few of them in open-collared uniforms. By then it was too late and the gunman, whose name was Robert Jefferson Davis Jointz, had taken three bullets in the leg and one in the right chest, taking out his lung. Jointz was now breathing heavy and doing time in Stateville.
Memories of the Blue Parrot, its smell, its soothing brown lights with promises of Silver Bullets over the bar, returned fast and sharp. Hanrahan pushed open the doors and stepped inside.
The music sounded no better inside, some raspy-voiced wailer from the sixties. Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Cree-dence Clearwater, and early Johnny Cash would be along in a minute or an hour.
In the booth near the jukebox, Applegate and Acardo, Black and White, were arguing. Applegate's finger was in his partner's face. Both held partly filled glasses protectively.
Ernie Cadwell was at the bar talking to a woman from Vice whose name Hanrahan couldn't remember.
'William,' a voice called over the whant-waink-thud of the guitar and drum from the glowing jukebox.
Nestor Briggs was in the booth beyond the arguing Acardo and Applegate. Nestor was holding up a stein of beer and waving at Hanrahan. Hanrahan made his way past three full tables of people, most of whom were cops, almost all of whom he recognized. Nothing had changed.
Nestor was alone. Hanrahan slid in across from him and a woman with enormous breasts, frizzy blond hair, and the serious look of a priestess appeared almost immediately.
'What'll it be tonight, Irish?' Ramona asked.
As if he hadn't been gone for almost half a year. She hadn't noticed the six months that had seemed a life sentence to hard time.
Hanrahan looked at the table.
'You want a beer, William?' asked Nestor Briggs, leaning toward him. 'A beer ain't drinking.'
Hanrahan nodded and Ramona drifted toward the bar.
'Reminds me of an old Irish story,' Hanrahan said, looking around the familiar room, the photographs of dead cops on die wall, the autographed photograph of Jim McMahon on the wall over the jukebox, and the other autographed photo of old Bill Nicholson over die bar, complete with the old Cubs uniform and a loopy grin.
'It seems that Doyle Murphy left the town of Galway when he was a poor boy of seventeen determined to make his fortune in Australia and return to Galway in triumph. The years passed and Doyle worked his way up from dock hand to shore boss to union steward to labor to minister of labor and the boards of four major shipping companies. He was rich and, hi the right circles in Sydney and Perth, famous.'
'A success story,' said Nestor, rubbing his sweating bald brow. 'Here's to him.'
Nestor raised his glass of Scotch and melted rocks and toasted Doyle Murphy of Galway.
'More to the story,' Hanrahan said as the pause between jukebox records was filled with Applegate at the next table bellowing, '… and I say he was holding two full Ks if he had an ounce.' Then Elvis, familiar, sad, belted, 'It's now or never.'
'Doyle took the boat home and then a train, and on a summer's night almost fifty years after he had left Galway,' said Hanrahan, nodding to Ramona, who had returned to place a full, cool stein before him, 'he stepped off the train, set down his suitcase, and looked down the platform, where an old man was moving slowly toward him. When the old man was half a dozen feet from Doyle, Doyle recognized him as his boyhood friend Conan Frazier. 'Doyle,' says Conan, 'is mat you?' 'It is,' said Doyle, standing tall in his handmade silk suit. 'Well,' said Conan, 'I see you got your suitcase. Where are you off to then?' '
Nestor Briggs took his drink from his lips and looked puzzled. Hanrahan looked down at his beer and put his big hands around it.
'I think I'm back in Galway,' he said.
'I heard you were riding the wagon, William,' Briggs said.
'Well… I tell you, Nestor, it's hard to go home to an empty house. It's hard to be a saint. It's hard to lie to yourself and not believe your lies.'
'… our love won't wait,' Elvis belted.
'I know,' said Briggs, shoving an almost empty blue bowl of nachos in front of Hanrahan. 'Truth is,' he went on, lowering his voice and biting his lower lip, 'I live right around the corner, you know, and the only thing waiting up for me is my dog. You know why I'm whispering? You a Catholic?'
'Yeah,' said Hanrahan.
'I hate the fucking dog, hate him,' Nestor Briggs confessed. 'I pretend I like him and maybe some ways I do, but he's old and he farts and I have to walk him and feed him and be home with him. When my wife died I figured I needed companionship. Everyone thought I should have a dog. Old Nestor should have a dog. So I got a dog. Now I hate to go home and take care of him. You want a dog?'
'You make it sound tempting, Nestor my friend, but I'm going to have to control my boyish urge and say no thanks.'
