Dead Irish Read Online Free PDF

did in under a minute.
    He fell in next to her, dribbling, as she crossed the court.
    “Nobody much around,” he said.
    “Daddy’s not in?” A note of desperation, of hope long since abandoned.
    “Shi . . .”
    “But where’s Eddie?”
    “No-show. He ain’t here by six, everybody went home.”
    She seemed to take in the information like someone who was almost certain they had a terminal disease finding out for sure. She stopped walking. The sun, atypically strong this early morning, was behind them, glaring off the building. “You mean nobody’s here? Nobody at all?”
    Alphonse, the basketball held easily against his hip with one hand, pointed his other hand in toward himself. “Hey, what am I?” he said.
    “No offense.”
    Alphonse offered her his white teeth. Except for some acne, his long, smooth face was not unattractive. His skin was very black, his nose was thin. His lips were sensually thick. There was a light sheen of sweat from the workout, and his longish hair, which Linda thought his worst feature, was held in by the net.
    “No offense,” Alphonse repeated.
    Linda sighed. “So what happened to the papers?”
    Alphonse began dribbling again, walking next to her. The papers weren’t his problem. “Ain’t too many anyway.”
    They rounded the building. In front of the warehouse, Linda could see the morning newspapers, still wrapped from their publishers. Without La Hora, they made a pitifully poor pile in front of the corrugated iron door.
    Linda drew up again and sighed. “So I guess that’s really it,” she said. She threw her head back, looking to the sky for help, and finding none, she moaned, “I wish Daddy’d come in.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I’m waiting for.”
    “And Eddie didn’t come in at all? Did he call?”
    Alphonse smiled again. “I don’t do the phones, sugar.”
    They had come to the glass front doors. Linda got out her keys and let them in. Alphonse followed her across the small entryway into her office, which was in front of her father’s. She went behind the desk and sat down.
    Alphonse dribbled on the linoleum floor. The sound of the ball bouncing, flat and harsh, was interrupted by the telephone ringing.
    “Maybe that’s Daddy,” Linda said.
    She answered with a hopeful “Army Distributing” and then said “Yes” a couple of times. When she hung up, the terminal illness had progressed.
    “That was the police,” she said, and Alphonse felt an emptiness suddenly appear in his stomach. “They want to come by here and ask some questions.”
    Alphonse plumped heavily, quickly, onto the arm of the leatherette sofa. “What about?”
    “They said Eddie . . .” She stopped.
    “What about Eddie?”
    “They said he’s, like, dead.” She fumbled at the desk for a couple of seconds, then reached into her purse for a cigarette. “I’d better call Daddy,” she said, mostly to herself.
    The cigarette was misshapen and half burned down. Alphonse nodded knowingly to himself as she lit the end and inhaled deeply, holding it in. He got up, crossed to the desk, and held out his hand.
    “Cops be comin’. They better not smell that.”
    Linda still held her breath in, handing him the joint. She let out a long slow stream of smoke. “So we’ll open the windows.”
    “You callin’ your daddy?”
    “I’d better,” she said.
    “Yeah, you better,” Alphonse said. “I gotta talk to him, too.”
     
    The police had already arrived at Frannie’s—one black-and-white and another supposedly unmarked Plymouth parked closely behind it. The light over the doorway was on. Hardy and Moses could see shadows moving in the corner window. Hardy had decided he wouldn’t go in. He left Moses and drove on home.
    He let himself into his house, pushing hard, swearing, against the stuck front door. The house had been cold. The only light came from the muted glow of the aquarium in his bedroom.
    He must have stared at the fish awhile, sitting on his bed, his Greek sailor’s