Dead Irish

Hardy thought a moment, did not meet her eyes.

“It’s inconceivable he even owned a gun,” she said. “What use would he have for it?”

“The gun is definitely one of my questions.”

She stopped. She didn’t want to press, didn’t know why it was so important to make this point to this man. Eddie was gone. What difference could it make?

“I’m sorry,” she said, walking again toward the grave. “I’m afraid I’m not being myself, but he didn’t own the gun. I know that.”

“Do you know where it came from? Where he might have gotten it?”

“No.”

She stopped again and touched his arm, not knowing exactly what she wanted to say. But they had begun moving the coffin to the gravesite-the coffin that held Eddie’s body-and her emotion choked her so she couldn’t speak.

Steven didn’t realize the coffin would be so heavy. His brother hadn’t been that big a guy, but with the wood and the handles and all it was a lot of weight, and his arms started hurting as soon as they got it out of the car.

He wasn’t going to show it, though, give anybody the satisfaction. It was only about a hundred feet, he guessed, over to the gravesite. Beside him at the back of the coffin was his brother Mick, two-letter jock, to whom the weight of the coffin would be nothing. But to him, little wimpy brother Steve, just standing here holding the thing was a challenge.

“Who’s talking to Mom?” Mick whispered. Mick was a junior at USF, there on an ROTC scholarship. As far as Steven was concerned, they lived on different planets.

Steven just shrugged. He’d seen the guy with his mother and was sure he’d met him somewhere, maybe over at Eddie’s one time, but it didn’t matter, he didn’t know who he was. No big deal, it wasn’t his business. He wasn’t going to waste breath speculating to Mick about it.

Father Jim motioned from the gravesite, and they started moving. The priest was okay when he wasn’t acting holy, when he was just being a regular guy, having a drink at the house, or joyriding out along Highway One at the beach.

Yeah, the priest could be okay, he guessed. At least everybody else liked him. Grown-ups were a bunch of sheep that way anyway, herding up and following along. You want to be honest, the guy could be a little much, flipping between holy and fu

Like now, there he was being official holy, standing next to Fra

His mom now was going over to the hole in the ground, the dug-up earth covered with green tarp. What, did they think they could take your mind off the dirt, off Ed being buried under it, if they camouflaged it?

Finally his arms got to relax as they put the coffin on the stand that would lower it. The last half of the walk had been real tough. Maybe he should work out once in a while, he thought, except he didn’t want to wind up in ROTC like Mick.

His mom was standing now next to his dad. The other guy she’d been talking to was a little behind her, almost like a bodyguard. He’d seemed to be watching everything at once, but not being obvious about it.

Steven checked around. Eddie had taken him down to his work a couple of times-making sure Steven was included in his life- and introduced him to some of the people there. He was surprised to see Ed’s boss, Mr. Polk, big ears bookending the saddest face in the crowd, standing behind Fra

Overhead, birds kept chirping in the trees. He focused on that, rather than on Father Jim’s words, which were bullshit. If Eddie had really killed himself, which Father Jim seemed to have reason to believe, then he was in hell.

Steven didn’t think Ed was in hell. He thought he was nowhere, the same place everybody was going-in fact, many of the living were already there. He looked up, trying not to think about where Ed might be. Eddie and he had been friends, even with the age thing, in spite of being brothers.

Then, all of a sudden, the guy behind his mother was pushing at the crowd, nearly jumping over the coffin. He got to Fra

Fra

Moses was at Hardy’s side. He touched Fra

Hardy nodded. “Just fainted.”

The priest came and knelt between them. He felt for a pulse in her neck, seemed satisfied, stood up. “She’ll be all right,” he a

The color in Fra

Hardy heard a muffled sob into Moses’s shoulder, suddenly couldn’t deal with it anymore, put his hands in his pockets and moved out of vision, out of earshot, down the drive back toward the entrance gate. Finally, he stopped and cleared a space under a eucalyptus tree, then sat down, trying to face away from any tombstones, which in Colma is not an easy thing to do.

Chapter Nine

THE COCHRANS’ house was in a familiar neighborhood, near Hardy’s own, on 28th Avenue between Taraval and Ulloa. They shared the same fog most days, but Hardy lived north of the park -south of it was about as close to suburban as San Francisco got.

Big Ed greeted him at the door and introduced himself. He was dressed in a shiny black suit that looked as though it hadn’t seen much wear in the past ten years. The lapels were too thin, the black tie was too thin. The white shirt was brand new.

Hardy had the feeling that he’d caught him out of uniform, like ru

The eyes, though puffed, were clear and piercing. The solid man’s face was startlingly controlled. His strong chin and flat fighter’s nose conveyed an impression of suppressed power, reinforced by the handshake, which made no effort to crush or intim-idate. The meaty vice gripped, shook, let go, but the strength was there.

His hand gently touched Hardy’s back as he ushered him into the foyer. His wife Erin had used her hand the same way-to guide-at the cemetery. A family ma

And here was the priest again, by the bar near the sliding doors that led out to the redwood deck. Good-looking man, another powerhouse, but in a more subtle way than Ed Cochran. Drink in hand, he turned just as Hardy and Ed arrived.

“Good, so you’ve come. I was hoping to meet you.”