The whole time I was getting dressed and driving over to O’Connor’s, I kept telling myself that Lydia was pretty hysterical and that I didn’t really know that anything had happened to O’Connor. Maybe just his house, maybe not O’Connor but someone else, maybe some other house.
That all started to change when I saw the rising smoke from half a mile away. A slow, cold numbing started in my throat and eventually froze me in place on the sidewalk across the street from his house. Clusters of firemen formed tense huddles with cops. The place was surrounded by fire trucks, police cars, the bomb-squad van, the coroner’s ambulance. The house was smashed as if it were nothing more than an egg; a yolk of mud and debris was spilling out of its broken shell. I wanted to find O’Connor. I felt certain that if they would just let me look, just let someone who had cared about him look, I’d find him.
I sometimes hear about people knowing right away that someone they loved has died, that they feel the dead person’s spirit leave or something. O’Connor stuck around.
I heard someone yell “Kelly!” and turned to see a tall black man walking toward me. It was Mark Baker, the reporter sent out by the
Frank and I had met when he was a rookie cop in Bakersfield and I was on my first crime beat as a fledgling reporter. Now he was a homicide detective with the Las Piernas Police Department. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, since before I quit the paper, but this wasn’t the time to renew old acquaintances.
As I stood to one side, Frank noticed me and gave me one of those very protective “are-you-okay?” looks. I tried to avoid his eyes, and turned away from him, but to my horror looked up to see a coroner’s assistant bagging a little piece of something soft.
Thank God I’m not a fainter. I must have looked bad, though, because Frank took me gently by the elbow and said, “Go home, Irene.” I just stared at him.
“You still live in the same place?” he asked.
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. I was also busy with a tug-of-war — one minute I was trying to take it all in, the next, trying to shut it all out. I heard Frank say something about wanting to ask me some questions, later. I figured Mrs. Keene had told him about the previous night’s serenade, but I was past caring. I heard the camera shutters of the forensic team, and out of the corner of my eye kept seeing the coroner’s assistants with their goddamned plastic bags and forceps. I felt sick and weird… disconnected.
Frank was quiet for a minute; then he asked a cop to drive me home, but I shook it off and told him I could manage. I made sure he had my address, then left. I could feel him watching me as I walked to my car. I didn’t look back at Frank or the house as I drove off.
As I rounded the corner I saw Kenny’s red Corvette heading toward the house. For the one-millionth time, I felt sorry for him. He wasn’t equipped for everyday life, let alone something like this. And for the two-millionth time, I knew I couldn’t do anything about it.
IT WAS A LONG TIME before I asked myself what had made Kenny get up and at ’em so early on a Sunday morning.
2
FRANK ALMOST WAITED too long to come over. I was damned restless by late that afternoon.
Most of the time from when I left O’Connor’s house until Frank came over I spent stewing and pacing. I’m not good at sitting around, and it was a hot day. As the afternoon wore on, the Santa Ana winds began to blow, making my house a regular oven. Like most Southern Californians, I can only take so much of those desert winds before I go a little nuts anyway. I live a couple of miles from the beach in Las Piernas, which is on the coast, just south of L.A. Usually by late afternoon, there’s cool air off the ocean. But even with nothing but the front and back screen doors to slow down any little breeze that might come along, the old house was hot. It’s a little 1930s bungalow down in a section of town that can’t decide how to gentrify.
So I paced around, sat and tried to cry, but couldn’t. Got up and paced around again. Cody sat watching me, twitching his fat tail nervously. At one point I felt so wound up, I took off my shoes and hurled them as hard as I could against the wall. I didn’t pitch them anywhere near Cody, but he decided he’d had enough and took off through his cat door — converted from an old ice-delivery slot in the kitchen.
It was hard to find anything worth thinking about. If I thought about the past, I mourned the end of days with O’Connor. If I thought about the future, it was to cancel plans. Nothingness, sharp as a knife. I paced barefooted.
I knew that the time would come when I could really indulge in this feeling-sorry-for-myself stuff, but now wasn’t the time. If I could just get myself pointed in some direction, maybe I could find whoever did this to O’Connor. And kill them. Slowly.
In the midst of these thoughts I heard someone on the front porch. The silhouetted figure of a tall man stood looking in at me from my front door, shading his eyes with his hand against the screen.
“Irene?”
“Jesus, Frank. You startled me. How long have you been out there?”
“How about letting me in? It’s hotter than hell out here.”
I took off the latch and opened the door for him. I flopped down on the couch and gestured toward my big old- fashioned armchair, but he waved it off and leaned up against a table instead.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’ll get there. You know me.”
He smiled a little and said, “Yeah, I guess I do.” He was quiet for a minute, then he stood up straight. He was studying me, and I felt uncomfortable. I decided to watch my toes for a while.
He started over. “Look, I know you’re tough, but I also have some idea of what O’Connor meant to you. Nobody could see what you saw today and walk off whistling. So you don’t have to talk about this now if you don’t want to.”
I glanced up at him. He had a funny kind of concerned look on his face. It scared me or I probably would have started crying after all. Something in his sympathy moved my feelings to the surface. There he was, big, handsome, and a mere four feet away, looking concerned. But there was no room in me at that moment for old history or rekindled anything.
