McMichael and his son walked into Spellacy's at six, collected Gabriel off his stool and got a booth. The place was already busy, Friday night- darts and billiards in the back, the bar three deep and loud, waitresses squeezing through the crowds with serving trays while Celtic-rock-fusion music whinnied through the loudspeakers. Hugh wasn't tending the bar tonight, McMichael noticed, but his brother Clancy seemed to be handling things just fine.
McMichael sat across from his father and son and was momentarily lifted from his dark mood by the sight of them together. With Johnny, Gabriel was far lighter than McMichael ever remembered him. His father listened, which was nearly absent from McMichael's memories of boyhood. The two talked and joked and Gabriel gave Johnny liberties that McMichael rarely did- indulging some pretty bad manners, rolling with Johnny's puerile insults, encouraging Johnny's jokes: Under the Toilet Seat by Seymor Butts! Yellow River by I. P. Freeley! Brown Trail by Squat and Leavitt!
Another little boy came over and challenged Johnny to darts. McMichael watched them hustle to the bar to get darts from Clancy Spellacy, then edge through the crowd to an open board.
Gabriel waved a waitress over for another shot and a Guinness. McMichael stuck with his barely touched half-pint.
"We arrested the nurse," he said. "We're not sure exactly how she figures in, but somehow."
Gabriel blinked his clear blue eyes. "His caretaker, Tommy! Lots of that in the news these days- the younger generation preying on the older."
"Yeah."
"Drink up. You've got a whole weekend to forget about it and be with your boy. What you shouldn't forget is that Pete was shown the same mercy he showed your grandfather."
"I'll remember, Pop."
"Who was trying to feed a family."
"I know."
Gabriel eyed him with slightly drunken affection.
Tim Keller pulled up a chair while they ate dinner, tried to enlist McMichael in a Sons of Ireland pancake breakfast on Sunday after church. He said Irish cops always made the best breakfast chefs- Rourke and O'Grady from the sheriff's would be there. He studied McMichael with his cheerful, delinquent eyes.
After dinner McMichael and his son walked down to the waterfront, then south toward Broadway. They stopped in the Harbor Cruise coffeeshop for hot chocolate then fell in with the light foot traffic on the boardwalk.
Victor Braga shuffled along a hundred feet ahead of them, headphones on, carrying a heavy plastic bag in each hand.
"There's Victor Braga," said Johnny. "But Grandpa didn't do it."
The story- with Gabriel as the guilty attacker- had found Johnny's ears on his first-grade playground one day. Johnny had come home, excited that his grandfather was the star of a legend. McMichael and Stephanie had told him their agreed-upon version: Johnny's great-grandfather, Franklin, had been cheated out of money by a boat captain, and the captain had killed him. Someone-no one knows who- had beaten up the captain's son a little while later. Victor, the son, was never the same after the beating. Some people blamed the beating on Grandpa Gabriel. Others said he didn't do it. Tim Keller said he was with Grandpa that night and Grandpa didn't do it. Grandpa always said he was innocent, and we believe him. In this country you are innocent until proven guilty.
"How retarded is he?" asked Johnny, spooning the whipped cream into his mouth.
"Keep your voice down. Age ten, I heard."
"What grade is that?" whispered Johnny.
"Fifth, say."
"Fifth-graders get to walk around at night?"
"Not usually."
"How old is he, really?"
"Grandpa's age- sixty-three or so."
"How old is that in dog years?"
"About nine."
"I wish I had a dog."
"We'll get you one someday. That's a promise, John."
They turned up Broadway to the car, Johnny slopping the hot chocolate on his jacket while McMichael watched Victor trudge patiently southward toward Tuna Harbor.
After Johnny went to bed, McMichael poured an illogically large glass of tequila, added some ice and sank down into his couch. He turned on the local news, volume low. The tequila did nothing to clarify his thoughts so he drank more. All it really did was make him want to go back to the night he'd driven to Sally Rainwater's house to tell her that her prints weren't on the fish club and that her story checked and that she was, what, beautiful and he just wanted to look at her?- to go back to that drive down Silver Strand Boulevard, turn the damned Crown Vic around and drive it home. He leaned his head against the sofa, shaking it slowly. Too late. Too late for that. Too late for everything. Too late for him and Steffy. Too late for Gabe and Victor and Patricia and Garland. Too late for everybody, like we're all gears notched just wrong into the gears next to us- one giant clock, always off, too late, too late, too late.
In local news today, an Imperial Beach woman was detained in connection with the bludgeon murder of car dealer and former San Diego mayor Pete Braga. Sally Rainwater, twenty-eight, was taken into custody early this afternoon at her waterfront home. Police captain Don Rawlings said only that the woman- who was employed as a caretaker in the home of Braga – was arrested at her home and later charged with possession of stolen property. Braga, a former commercial tuna boat captain and a longtime fixture on San Diego's political scene, was found savagely beaten in his Point Loma home last Wednesday night. Police still have no motive for the killing. Braga was eighty-four. In other news…
McMichael still didn't know exactly what the district attorney would charge her with. They would take the weekend to decide. He was pleased that there was no mention of the caretaker's romantic involvement with the lead detective on the case. Yet. Just wait until her lawyer hears about that one, he thought. Bad cop. Bad arrest. Bad case.
He took another drink, clicked off the TV. He washed his face in the bathroom sink, looking at himself while he dried. He noted the red-brown curly hair, the dull blue eyes, the thick County Cork ears. He wondered how he could look like a regular mick on the outside, but on the inside feel like the African mask he'd seen earlier. Feel like hell.
It took him a long time to fall asleep. He lay there feeling that he'd sinned in doing his job. That he'd betrayed innocence. He couldn't fully believe that Sally Rainwater had been involved in Pete's death, though he thought it was possible. It was absolutely possible. Wasn't it?
The physical evidence was there, concealed in her house. They were lucky to have it. You base your decisions on the evidence. The evidence leads you to form opinions, not the other way around. A frame was possible, sure, but so were visitors from other galaxies and Bigfoot.
Get a grip, he thought. The evidence was pointing at her. Live with it. She's going to have to.
They spent part of Saturday in bird stores. McMichael had included Johnny in basic detective work before, and Johnny enjoyed it. He told his son about the yellow feather at the crime scene, making him promise to tell no one about it. Johnny listened intently and nodded gravely. McMichael had noticed very early on that Johnny could keep a secret. He had bought him a small notebook- same black cover as his own- and a decent pen.
At Urban Rainforest they were told that owl parrots were available by special order only. It could take up to two months and the cost would be five hundred dollars per bird. The store manager did not recommend them as pets because they were large and noisy at night. No, he could not remember selling one recently. The last one was maybe six months ago or more. He was kind enough to consult his computer and come up with the buyer's name- Peggy Harvey, who lived at 624 Conejo in El Cajon. He had sold a pair back in February of last year to Gary Deetz of San Diego. McMichael wrote down the information, as did Johnny.
Some fathers surf with their sons, he thought. Some interview witnesses.
The girl at Bird Brains told them much the same thing, but her price was three hundred and fifty dollars, delivery time two weeks, maybe less. She had a stainless steel stud implanted along one eyebrow, and a ring in the other, which made McMichael wince.
"God bless America!" squawked a green parrot who was loose in the store and was now walking up and down the sales counter.
"That's Ernie," said the girl. She smiled at Johnny. "Why do you want an owlie?"
"I don't. Dad's a detective and we're working a case."
"Cool. What are you, a sergeant?"
"Just a kid," he said shyly.
"Ever caught a bad guy?"
"No," he said, looking down.
"I'm a ladies' man!" shrieked Ernie.
She told them that she sold a pair of owlies about six months ago to a collector in San Diego. She was willing to dig through her receipts in the back if Johnny could watch the store. She winked at McMichael, who smiled and winced inwardly again as the stud winked too.
McMichael and Johnny looked at the macaws and cockatoos, the cockatiels and Amazons, the mynahs and toucans and finches and doves. When Johnny approached Ernie, who now sat atop the cash register, the bird cocked his head with exaggerated curiosity.
"Show me the money!" he called out.
Johnny wrote in his notebook while the bird continued to eye him.
"Carry on. Carry on."
Johnny laughed and wrote and for a moment McMichael's heart felt light and free and he wanted to stay in this moment for hours.
Ten minutes later the girl came out, shaking her head. "Sorry, he paid cash, so I've got no check or card number or anything."
"Describe him."
"Whew, that was a while back. A guy. White guy. Middle-aged, maybe fifty. Good-looking, kind of athletic. Tall and fit… you know, slender. Short hair, blond I think."
"Glasses?"
"I can't remember."
"What was he wearing?"
"I can't remember that either."
"Did he say anything that stuck in your head?"
"No worries. No worries," said Ernie.
"I'm sorry," she said. "He just seemed like a regular guy who wanted a couple of owl parrots. Oh, I remember something. When I told him that the owl parrots stay up all night he said that wouldn't bother him, because his aviary was outside. He used the word 'aviary.' When a customer says that word, I always picture a big collection, with lights and screens and heat lamps and tropical plants and all. A real jungle."
"Got that, son?"
Johnny nodded, finishing up his entry in the black notebook. They both thanked her and headed to the door.
"Ya'll come back now, hear? Hear? Hear?"
At Birds of a Feather, a tall, storklike Englishman told them that he'd sold "perhaps a dozen" owl parrots since he opened three years ago. "Most of them go to collectors, you know? The serious fanciers."
"Any recent sales?"
"Yes. A woman purchased a pair- male and female- sometime last autumn. October, I believe."
He described the buyer as thirtyish, white, with blonde hair. Medium height. "If I remember right, she said it was a gift. Her husband was a fancier of the parrot in all its many forms, and he wanted this rather difficult bird for his collection."
"Do you have a way to look up her name?"
The man smiled and shook his head. "I don't keep track of that kind of information. Privacy, you know."
On Sunday they stopped by the Sons of Ireland Pancake Breakfast in Mission Bay. The syrup and salt air smelled good together and Johnny had a lightness about him that McMichael hadn't seen in months.
McMichael donated twenty dollars to the scholarship fund but told Hugh Spellacy he couldn't stay to help out with the cooking.
"My two days with Johnny," he said.
"It's okay, Tom," said Spellacy. "We've got things under control here. But Tom, can I have a word with you?"
McMichael followed Hugh down a walkway toward the bay, Hugh wiping his hands on the apron tied to his waist. They stopped and Hugh shook out a smoke and lit it, arching the match into a trash can. "Just about that gag the other night- I don't know where it was going."
"The gag?"
"Gabe and Tim and that game about them being in my pub the night before. They weren't. I figured you knew that, but given that Pete was killed and Gabriel's got this history…"
"What did he tell you to say?"
"He said to cover for him is what he said. Same with Tim. I mean, it's none of my business, Tom. But a man did die that night."
McMichael nodded but said nothing, suddenly angry at his father. Then the anger turned to something heavier as he seriously pondered the possibility of Gabriel and Tim being mixed up in the murder of Pete Braga. He looked back to find Johnny eyeing him, paper plate raised almost to his face.
"Tim and Gabe, you know," said Hugh Spellacy. "They've missed a few Wednesdays. They blame it on the meat pie special, but I don't think that's the truth of it."
"Thanks, Hugh."
An hour later they walked into the table tennis room at the Balboa Activity Center. They'd stumbled upon the games a year ago, and had been back almost every week since.
McMichael played a few games with Johnny, then retired to let the boy find some real competition. Johnny was only a mid-level seven-year-old but he easily cleaned McMichael's clock. There were twenty tables set up on Sundays, and players from all over the county.
McMichael stood back and watched Johnny square off with a young Chinese-American boy. He saw the focus come into his son's face, saw the way his concentration took him out of himself and into the game. McMichael loved the wide-eyed innocence with which Johnny tracked the rapid flight of the balls, loved his determination and his nascent grace, loved the sound of the paddles and the rhythm of the rallies, loved Johnny's smile when he'd made a good shot or had one made against him. What a feeling, to watch your son lose a close one and still shake hands when it was over.
He pictured Sally Rainwater, sitting in her cell in the women's jail. What could he have done differently in the beginning, except to ignore the voice that told him she was rare and good? What do you do with that voice, just say go away, I can't trust you?
Then he imagined Stephanie, sitting on the deck of her home, maybe reading a novel or talking with her new husband. Difficult to imagine her without all the ugliness that they became, and even more difficult now, with her body toned and her weight gone and a glow about her that he hadn't seen in years.
Strange, he thought, that the product of so much desire and heartache and disappointment could be the skinny little boy with the big eyes now rapping forehands back at his opponent with such an uncluttered, casual joy.