My Brother's Keeper (7 page)

‘You were going to tell me about that baggage you've been carrying around.'

‘Was I?'

‘I thought maybe you wanted to.'

‘You're wrong. I assumed you knew it all already, heard it from one of my brothers or from one of your cop friends at Fortunato's.'

‘I'd prefer to hear it from you.'

‘I told you, Lou. I've been married and divorced once already. Now it looks like it's going to happen again.'

‘It's not a crime, Franny. Relationships are a funny thing. Sometimes we don't get it right. I'm divorced.'

‘You don't understand, Lou. You don't understand how it makes me feel, how it makes me look. People look at me differently. They start to think something's wrong with me.' She fumbled in her purse for the pack of cigarettes. Her hand came up with a crumpled pack of Newports and a plastic lighter. She tapped one out and lit it with a trembling hand. She might have singed her eyebrows with the dancing flame. ‘It's so much easier for men. You remind me of my first husband; he had all the answers.'

‘I never said I had all the answers, Franny.'

‘But you act like you do. And that smug look. It gets me so angry I'd like to wipe it right off your face.'

‘I don't mean to be smug and I'm not judging you, so there's no reason to get defensive. Do you know what I think the truth is? If you didn't think I could help you, you wouldn't be here.'

‘How do you know I'm not using you? I have a reputation for using men, you know.'

She sucked hard on the cigarette, letting the smoke drift heavily from her open mouth. Her eyes lowered to black slits and her smile regained its confidence.

‘Stop it.'

‘You never were any fun.'

‘Is that how you avoid the subject, Franny? Bat your eyes and let your skirt ride a little higher on your leg? What happens when that doesn't work?'

‘I guess you'll just have to find out.'

She stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, tapping it repeatedly against the brown glass and then absently pushing around the cold, gray ash. She rubbed her fingers together as though she were sprinkling salt into a pot of soup on the stove and then examined her painted fingernails and the tobacco stains underneath.

‘I'm not the woman you think I am, Lou. I'm sorry.'

‘Then who are you?'

‘You want to know the truth? I don't know anymore. My husband wants to get rid of me because I can't have children. He became possessed with the idea of producing an heir to the Haggerty throne and since I wasn't up to the task he's decided to trade me in on a newer model. How does that sound? Any more believable a story for you? Probably his mother's idea. How is it that some women can pump out kids like they're nothing and not give two shits about them? And some women, who really want children, can't have them. Why is that?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You know, I actually thought about a surrogate. Only I don't think Brian is the artificial-insemination type. He'd want to hand-pick the girl and do it himself. I think he might have had a few ready to go. Knowing him, he skipped the application process and went right to the oral interview.'

‘I'm sorry, Franny.'

‘Please don't say that again, Lou.'

‘I don't remember saying it before.'

‘Yeah, but I can hear it in your voice. Poor Franny Patterson. In another twenty years I'll be just another miserable old woman, just like Eleanor Haggerty, only she has her money to keep her warm.'

She reached for the purse again and the cigarettes inside but Lou abruptly pulled it away. Franny's fading smile was instantly replaced with an animal fear as she tried to snatch it back. Lou held it out of reach, fending her off with one hand, the other thrust inside the purse feeling for the cigarettes. His hand came out of the purse holding a gun.

It was a thirty-eight, a snub-nose revolver of blued steel with a bull-barrel and a checkered wooden grip. It looked like it had seen better days. It had been meticulously polished and oiled as if someone was trying in vain to hide the wear, the scratches along the frame, the worn metal around the hammer from years of sliding in and out of a leather holster, the thumb-brake snapping shut. Lou snapped it open and spun the cylinder, watched it spin like a roulette wheel, the silver, hollow-point bullets loaded like torpedoes. Lou put his nose to the barrel and smelled gunpowder.

‘Cigarettes and guns, Franny? A bad combination. If one doesn't kill you the other certainly will.'

‘Put that back!'

Lou dropped the purse on the table. Franny almost caught it in mid-air but it landed with a hard thud. Lou walked toward the window once more, examining the gun in the light. It was a belly gun, the kind of gun someone could stick in your ribs and blow out your insides, the kind of gun cops liked for a backup. But it was also small and light, the kind of gun a woman might use, getting in tight, snuggling against your shoulder and whispering in your ear before she pulled the trigger.

‘Why the gun, Franny?'

‘None of your damn business.'

‘We're back to that, huh?'

‘You just don't give up, do you, Lou?'

‘You know me better than that.'

‘There was a time when I thought I did; thought I knew you pretty well. And no, I didn't think you were the kind of guy to give up. Come to think of it, I believed just about every word you said.'

‘That was a long time ago, Franny.'

‘Really? I don't think so. You haven't changed a bit, Lou. What would you have me believe? When I don't want to talk about my past, you call me evasive. And when I do bring it up, you make light of it, like it's so much water under the bridge. So which is it? What do I call you when you don't want to talk about the past?'

‘Call me a fool for chasing you around all those years, dodging your brothers and thinking I was something more than practice. You can call me whatever you damn well please. And you can have your gun back.'

She took it and for a split second before she stashed it in her purse, Lou got a glimpse at what Franny Patterson looked like with a gun in her hand. It wasn't a pretty sight. There wasn't anything appealing about a woman wielding a thirty-eight special except if she was in her underwear and the gun wasn't loaded and she didn't happen to be your sister or your daughter or your wife. It wasn't that he'd felt threatened. Franny had managed to intimidate most men without a gun in her hand. But guns did have a tendency to go off. And Lou was beginning to feel like he didn't want to be around when Franny found a reason to use it.

‘It was my father's gun, you know. Jimmy said it was his off-duty gun.'

‘Does he know you have it?'

‘Jimmy doesn't think girls and guns mix. He always said I'd either shoot myself or someone would take it away from me.'

‘He's probably right. Do you think that gun is going to protect you from Brian Haggerty?'

‘He knows I have it and he doesn't seem threatened by it in the least. He doesn't have a problem with the idea of a woman wanting to protect herself.'

‘Most men will tell you just what you want to hear with a gun pointed at their gut.'

‘Not all men. Not you. Not my brother.'

Lou lit a cigarette. He lit one for Franny and passed it to her.

‘Do you know about Haggerty's first wife? Do you know what happened to her?'

‘You must think I'm a very stupid woman, Lou. If Brian keeps anything from me, it's because I allow him to. I give him that because he needs it. He needs to have his little secrets. But they're harmless secrets. They can't hurt me or anyone else. I know about Brian's past. I know about his father and his business. I'm not as much in the dark as you think.'

‘The gun proves that.'

‘For your information, I'm not scared of Brian either.'

‘Then what are you scared of? Jimmy said there's been a lot of tension between you and your mother-in-law, that you've had your share of disagreements. He seemed to imply that she controlled the money in the family and used that to control her son.'

‘Brian might be afraid of her but I'm not. She's a cruel, vindictive woman, Lou. The fact that I'm not afraid of her is the very reason she hates me.'

She leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs and blew a couple of smoke rings toward the ceiling. She twirled a loose strand of hair in her finger and her eyes seemed to be somewhere else, looking into the past or into herself. He realized now that what he'd seen in her face had been a facade, her stage face. And what he was seeing now was a child's face, lost in orbit around a world she could no longer control, a family where she never really belonged and now threatened to squeeze her out. Her false confidence dripped with contempt and Lou was beginning to feel sorry for her. For all her beauty and feigned strength she still needed approval, still wanted to be something she wasn't and the thought of not having it scared the hell out of her.

‘Jimmy also mentioned that Mrs Haggerty might be on her last legs.'

‘Jimmy's got a lot to say. You know how many times Brian has called to tell me his mother was on her death bed? That she could go anytime? But miraculously she always pulls through. You'd think God would get sick of wasting so many miracles on one person.'

‘If it's so bad why don't you get out?'

‘And do what? Start working on husband number three? Are you applying for the job? It's not exactly steady work.'

Lou smiled but there was little sympathy in it, just a row of well-capped white teeth to go with a hesitant nod.

Franny got up to leave, pushing the strand of hair she'd been playing with behind one ear. Her purse was locked around her left arm. Her heels clicked furiously on the floor as she stepped off the faded rug and moved toward the door. She stood for a second, her hand on the knob and the smooth muscular line of her calves flexing beneath the dark stockings. She turned and faced him as if she had something more to say, a last word.

‘Can I drop you somewhere, Franny? I can take you home. It's no problem.'

‘No, thanks. But there is maybe something you can do for me.'

‘Name it.'

‘First of all, you have to promise to leave Jimmy out of it. You know what he's like, Lou. He thinks he's invincible but he's not.'

‘I can't make a promise like that. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you what I'm willing to do.'

‘Brian's taken some things from me and he won't give them back. He won't even let me back in the house. He's selfish in the same way his mother is. They both figure if they bought it, I don't deserve to have it. If nothing else, maybe you can get some of my stuff back?'

‘What kind of stuff?'

‘Clothes, mostly. Some furniture. And jewelry. He's given me a lot of valuable jewelry in the short time we've been together. It's my wedding ring I really want back. I think I deserve at least that.'

‘Does Brian have it?'

‘He must. He took it back as if it had always belonged to him and I was only borrowing it for a while.' Lou saw the tear that had been hanging around run down her cheek. Her eyes had grown bloodshot and swollen. He wondered if an infinite supply of salt water flowed through the veins of all women, dredging it up on demand from some bottomless sea, an endless desert of shifting sand along with it, replenishing the hour glass they forever turned in their hands. ‘I rarely took it off. Almost never. It disappeared from the bureau in my room. I know he's got it, Lou.'

Lou rubbed the knuckles on his left hand, his fingers clenched into a loose fist. The hair on his neck bristled as he listened to her become suddenly plaintive, realizing now that maybe he was being used. What the hell, he thought, being taken advantage of went with the territory. And who better to be taken advantage of than by Franny Patterson? He reached into his breast pocket and passed her a business card with his number on it.

‘I'll see what I can do. Call me if there's trouble.'

‘If you plan on looking for him, you might not find him at the house. He spends most of his time down at the Arramingo Club. It's on Oregon Avenue. He owns it.'

SIX

L
ou followed her down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. Traffic was building on Lancaster Avenue. Cars were backed up all the way to Penn Street where a gray Mercedes sedan sat with its blinker on, waiting to make the left turn. It was a difficult maneuver at any time of day. Now, it was nearly impossible. It sat there with its orange blinker throbbing, waiting for traffic to clear or for some kind soul to slow down and wave him on. A long line of cars had filed in closely behind. A few drivers punched angrily at their horns, their faces hard and tight in the midday sun. The right lane was barely squeezing by and Lou couldn't help but smile, seeing this drama play itself out at that intersection every day. Franny must have thought he was laughing at her.

He walked her to her car, keeping a few paces behind, allowing her the luxury of ignoring him if that's what she preferred. She'd seemed intent on keeping their meeting a secret, though it wouldn't remain a secret for very long, not if he was going to saddle up a stool at the Arramingo Club and start asking a lot of stupid questions.

The light at the corner changed from green to red and the old man behind the wheel still sat there confused, his hat tilted back on his head, the nose of his Mercedes blocking the freshly painted crosswalk. The drivers behind him became infuriated. With no room to go around, all they could do was wait for him to figure it out: either shoot through the light as soon as it turned green or just after it turned red. Those were his only choices.

The old cop in Lou was tempted to step out into all that congestion and start directing traffic but instead he watched from the sidewalk as Franny jumped into a black Audi and started it up. It purred like a cougar sunning itself on a rock. Franny put on a pair of dark sunglasses. He tried to help her with the door as she swung it open and it almost caught him in the knee. He straightened up and pushed the door gently closed.