Dead Irish

“Two o’clock,” Hardy yelled, holding up two fingers. Tommy nodded and shuffled on by, past the front window.

Hardy went back to ringing out. He looked at his watch. 12:20.

“Slow down,” he told himself.

But he didn’t. In five more minutes he was ready to open.

He sat at the stool behind the bar, time weighing a ton and not getting lighter. He didn’t want to have that time to think. About the unaccustomed restlessness inside him. About ambition, where love had gone. Especially, he didn’t want to think about the ridiculous idealist Eddie Cochran and his wife Fra

The inside pocket of his pea coat, hanging on its peg at the end of the rail, held his darts. The leather case, velvet-lined, worked on him like worry beads as he rubbed it gently, passed it from hand to hand. Finally he opened it on the bar.

The three 20 gram tungsten beauties sat in their slots, awaiting their flights, the pale-blue, dart-embossed bits of plastic that Hardy had made himself, and that in turn made those hunks of metal fly true. Carefully, he emptied the case and fitted the flights to the darts.

Over at the board, he threw some rounds, not really aiming. Not really shooting. Just throwing. Three darts. Walk to the board and remove them. Walk back to the chalk line. Do it again. Sometimes stop for a sip of Gui

Hardy, in the bar by himself, throwing darts.

Hardy, behind the bar, looked at the lined face of his friend, the oft-broken nose, the mountain man’s beard. McGuire’s eyes were shot with red. Moses had gotten his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cal Berkeley when his deferment had run out. He hadn’t viewed being drafted as the tragedy many others had-he was a philosopher and believed that one of life’s seminal experiences was war. As it turned out, the war tempered both his philosophical bent and his intellectual appreciation of men killing each other and anything else that moved.

He was two years older than Hardy and, back then, only two steps slower, which, Hardy had told him six hundred times, explained his getting hit in both legs at Chi Leng while Hardy made it to cover, only to turn around and carry Moses back out, picking up some lead in his own shoulder in the process.

So, tritely, Moses felt he owed Hardy his life. When Hardy had changed careers, Moses had been there with the Shamrock and, owing him his life, had made a place for Hardy in the rotation, something he would have done for no one else with the possible exception of his sister Fra

“So?” Hardy asked finally.

McGuire looked into his glass, found it empty, twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. The bar still hadn’t opened.

Hardy reached to the top shelf behind him and brought down a bottle of The Macallan, the best scotch in the house, if not the world. He refilled Moses’s glass.

“This afternoon I gotta go see about getting the body taken care of. Fra

Hardy the ex-cop said, “Reports, bureaucracy, bullshit.”

Someone came and pounded at the door to the bar, still locked. “Let’s go where they can’t see us,” Hardy suggested.

They went back to the storeroom. Cases of bottled beer lined two of the walls. On a third, wooden shelves held assorted bottles of liquor, napkins, peanuts, dart flights, other bar paraphernalia. Against the back wall was the stainless-steel freezer for the perishables that more than once had held the fish Hardy would bring by after a successful trip. McGuire lifted himself onto it.

“The thing is, there doesn’t seem to have been any reason for it. I mean specific. Here’s a kid got the world on a string. What the hell? Why’d he want to kill himself?”

“Who said that? That Eddie’d killed himself?”

“Well, nobody exactly, but…”

“But what?”

“Shit, Diz, you know. They find him in a lot with a gun in his own hand. What do you think happened?”

Hardy leaned against the back wall. “I don’t think anything. It’s not my job.”

“You’re a warm human being, you know that, Diz?”

“Come on, Mose. You know, or maybe you don’t, that the police really do a number on any death, especially violent death.

They don’t just call something a suicide out of the blue. They check into it-motives, opportunity, all that. They really do. I mean, even an old man they find who died in his sleep they check out.“

“So what do you think happened? You think somebody killed Eddie? You think he killed himself? You knew Eddie.”

Hardy kicked at some debris on the floor. “Yeah, I knew him. I’m sure not saying he killed himself. But the cops aren’t either, are they?”

“Not yet.”

“Believe me, they won’t.”

“Why won’t they? It could be, it could have been, right?”

Hardy scratched at nothing on his leg. “Mose, I’ve been a cop, right? Takes more than a gun in somebody’s hand.”

“Maybe there was more.”

Hardy felt a chill somewhere behind him. Was Moses hiding something? “What do you know?”

“I don’t know anything.” But Moses was looking down.

“It’s bad luck to lie to your friends,” Hardy said. “What do you know?”

Moses fidgeted, his heels hitting against the freezer. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Probably, but what anyway?”

“Just that Eddie has been a little down. Been in the bar a little more than normal, that kind of thing.” Hardy waited. “You know, they pla

“And you think Eddie might have killed himself over a little money? Come on, Mose, not the Eddie we knew.”

“Yeah, I know, but the cops might think it. I mean, with that and the possible note…”

“Abe-Glitsky-told me the note was bullshit. Just some old trash in the car.”

“I don’t know. It might be. I’m just thinking that the note along with the other stuff…”

“Well, if they do, it doesn’t really matter, does it? It isn’t going to bring him back.”

“Yeah, but it matters. It matters they don’t call it a suicide.”

Hardy suddenly felt very tired. “Why, Mose?” Thinking he knew what his friend was going to say next.

“Fra

“If what?”

“If they come up with suicide. I mean, think about Fra

Hardy cocked his head to one side.

“Insurance policy doesn’t pay on a suicide, though there’s double indemnity on violent or accidental death. The policy was for a hundred grand, Diz, and I don’t want to see Fra

“Well,” Hardy said, “then let’s hope he didn’t kill himself.”

“He didn’t.”

Hardy said nothing.

“I just want to… I don’t know. Protect Fra

Hardy figured Moses had been reading his mail. “I don’t know what you can do. Be there for her. What else?”

“I thought I’d ask you if you’d watch what the police do. Make it your job for a week or two. Take a few weeks off here and just check it out.”