Goodnight, Irene

“Frank?”

His tone was abrupt. “Where are you calling from?”

“A pay phone in Little Thailand.”

He relaxed. “I was going to call you in a minute anyway. Are you getting antsy?”

“A little. Frank, are you having Barbara followed?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Good. I don’t think Kenny’s with her now, but I’m almost certain she’ll be in touch with him later today.”

“You’ve talked to her?”

“Yes. Can you meet me for lunch at the Thai Royal over on Broadway and Pacific?”

“Give me about twenty minutes.”

I WAS FAIRLY SURE I wasn’t followed to the restaurant. It was about eleven-thirty, and Sam, the owner, was just setting up in preparation for the noon crowd.

“Miss Kelly!” he greeted me. Then his face fell. “We were very sorry to hear about Mr. O’Connor. We liked him very much. I know you have lost a good companion.”

“Thanks, Sam. Can you get me one of your private booths? And when a tall gentleman with scratch marks on the right side of his face comes in, will you please show him to my table?”

Sam beamed at the thought of my meeting a gentleman, scratches or no, and happily showed me to a booth behind a curtain made of wooden beads. He and Roselynn, his wife, had been concerned about my single status for years.

We talked for a while, then he brought me a Tsingtao beer. As I drank it, I watched the restaurant start to fill up.

Frank was late.

7

THE PLACE WAS PACKED and humming with the tension of people who only have forty-five minutes left for lunch. I was just getting fidgety again when Sam walked back, and told me I had a phone call.

We hurried our way through the tables into the hot and steamy kitchen, where Roselynn waved to me from a counter where she was cutting fresh vegetables. Sam handed the receiver to me.

“Frank?”

“Irene? They found Kenny. Somebody’s worked him over pretty good. I’m at St. Anne’s Hospital. Can you meet me here? If not, I’ll meet you later at Lydia’s.”

I told Frank I would meet him in the ER waiting room and hung up. When I turned around, Sam was holding a white grocery-store bag with two Styrofoam containers in it.

“You’ve got to have lunch. Lucky for me, you always order the same thing every time.”

I couldn’t turn him down, and when he adamantly refused payment, I promised to bring Frank in to meet him someday soon.

St. Anne’s is in downtown Las Piernas, not far from the old Wrigley Building, the gargoyle roost that houses the Express. It’s run by the Sisters of Mercy. Like the Wrigley Building, one part of St. Anne’s was built in the late 1920s, but some Las Piernas millionaire that no one had ever heard of before died and left a large part of his fortune to the place, so they had added new wings. They were not only very up-to-date in facilities and equipment, but they were known as one of the best trauma centers in the area. That and the nun factor gave it a good reputation. It also made its emergency room one of the busiest for miles around.

Despite traffic and my tendency to check the rearview mirror a lot, I got to St. Anne’s fairly quickly. Frank was standing outside the ER entrance, waiting for me.

“Hi,” he said, when I got nearer. “They’re working on him, not much we can learn right now. Your sister’s in there, too. She found him. My partner, Pete Baird, was two steps behind her and was able to radio for help or I don’t think Kenny would have made it. Still not sure he will. Whoever it was really beat the living hell out of him.”

“How’s Barbara?” I asked, anxious to find her.

“Your sister has seen something that would be pretty disturbing to anybody. It’s even worse when somebody you care about gets messed up like this. The doctor gave her a sedative; she was… well, she was really upset. Had a little difficulty getting her to leave the ER so they could work on Kenny.” He paused and asked, “What’s in the bag?”

“Lunch,” I said, feeling more than a little bit foolish. “I didn’t want to leave it in the car. It’s a gift of the restaurant owner, who was a great fan of O’Connor’s. He insisted.”

“Sorry about keeping you waiting there. You know how it is. Why don’t you try to coax your sister into coming outside? I’d like to ask her some questions, and I think it would be easier if we were away from all the other people in the waiting room.”

I handed him the bag and went into the waiting room. There wasn’t the crowd that would be there on a Friday or Saturday night, but every chair was taken. Barbara was leaning against a wall near a doorway, twisting a Kleenex to shreds. She looked up at me and I could see she had been crying hard. Fresh tears started as I approached. I put my arms around her. She leaned on my shoulder and I felt her heaving with quiet sobs. I heard myself softly comforting her with the same singsong — “shh, shh, shh” — sound our mother used to make as she held us when we cried as children. I reached into my purse and brought out a fresh packet of Kleenex. She nodded her thanks and straightened up and blew her nose.

“Let’s go outside for a minute, Barbara. There’s someone who needs to talk to you out there.”

“I… can’t… leave… him,” she said, sharp breaths between each word.

I put my arm around her and walked her over to an elderly nun who was at the admitting counter.