Whiskey Island (5 page)

Niccolo didn’t park in the saloon lot, which was more crowded than it had been. He passed and parked down the block, walking back along the sidewalk he had taken earlier, to stop in the same place, just at the entrance. He stayed there a long time, gazing across the asphalt. There was no carjacking in progress, no negotiator needed. He would not be a hero again this night—for which he was profoundly grateful.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he did know better than to rush the process. He remained on the sidewalk, visualizing the scene he’d lived through earlier, placing the supporting cast in their proper positions, replaying dialogue. When he was satisfied that he’d plumbed the depths of his memory, he moved forward between the two rows of parked cars, searching the ground with the help of his flashlight, although he didn’t know what he was looking for.

Six cigarette butts, two saloon receipts and one empty paper bag later, he had made his way to the parking space where Casey Donaghue’s car was still parked. Niccolo trained his flashlight on the ground, sweeping it slowly back and forth on all sides of the car. When nothing out of the ordinary presented itself, he got on his hands and knees and peered underneath.

He heard a door slam and voices on the street, but the voices passed and died away as he remained in position, examining the first odd thing he had found. He lowered himself to his chest and reached for it, brushing past the front tire to grasp what seemed to be the sole of a shoe. He was getting to his feet when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“You know, it’s a good thing I recognized that rump. I was about to kick you silly.”

Niccolo turned, the sole in his hand. “I didn’t know my rump was that distinctive.”

Megan was watching him carefully, but she didn’t ask for an explanation. She waited.

“I ought to be home asleep,” he admitted.

She tilted her head to one side, as if in agreement, but she didn’t speak.

“I love a good mystery. I have this incurable urge to find answers to all of life’s questions.”

“What answers can you find under my sister’s car?”

“I’m trying to find out if the accumulated effects of fear and a bullet wound can give a man visions.”

“So what’s your conclusion?”

He noted that she wasn’t wearing a coat. She was dressed in a short-sleeved white polo shirt, khaki trousers and a green scarf knotted at her throat. The outfit was appropriate for June or waiting on tables indoors. “You’re not dressed for an extended conversation.”

“I was emptying garbage.” She nodded to the Dumpster.

“I can wait.” He expected her to tell him it wasn’t important enough to come back for, but she disappeared without a word.

He was examining the sole when she returned, this time bundled in a saffron-colored ski jacket. “What exactly did you find?”

He held out the sole. “Maybe nothing.”

She took it gingerly and with a certain amount of distaste.

He spoke while she examined it. “Not an ordinary shoe, that one. Do you see how worn it is? Three holes, and one’s still stuffed with newspaper.”

She handed it back, as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of it. “So?”

“I didn’t see anybody inside tonight who’d be wearing a shoe like this one, did you? It belongs to somebody—a man, obviously—who’s down on his luck, a man without the cash he’d need for a pint of Guinness.”

“I don’t see the point of this.”

“The man I thought I saw tonight, the man who probably knocked out the carjacker, was swaddled in clothing. From a distance he almost looked like a mummy. Let’s say there really was such a man, and let’s say he was down on his luck. Maybe he was wearing a week’s worth of shirts and sweaters to keep out the cold. Maybe he doesn’t have a real coat, or he wears his whole wardrobe because it’s easier than carrying it in a shopping bag.”

“Casey told you there wasn’t anybody there.”

“Casey was busy trying to protect your sister and the little girl. She didn’t have her eye on the car every second.”

“Seems to me you were pretty busy yourself.”

“I just caught a glimpse.”

“Was that before, during or after you passed out?”

He thought, as he had earlier, that there was a lot of energy going into proving him wrong on this. First from Casey and now from her sister.

He changed tactics. “There’s a Dumpster right there. You serve food, don’t you?”

“The best pub food in town.”

“Do you have people rummaging through the Dumpster? Looking for leftovers?”

“At the night’s end, anyone who’s hungry can come to the back door for leftovers. It’s a well-known fact around here. A tradition. If anyone had shown up tonight, we had potato soup waiting for them.”

He was surprised and just the slightest bit deflated. “How long has that been going on?”

She smiled and seemed to drop her guard a little. “Want a history lesson?”

“Until the temperature drops another degree.”

She started toward the end of the lot, past the Dumpster, and he trailed her. She came to a halt on a tuft of ice-encrusted grass under a smattering of scrawny cottonwoods and willows. They were standing on a hill of sorts, rare enough on Cleveland’s west side, but a hill made sense on an avenue named Lookout.

“Okay, listen up. Do you know what this is?” Megan said.

He gazed out over an urban vista reminiscent of others in the Great Lakes states. To their extreme east was downtown Cleveland, a galaxy of artificial light and a skyline that never got the credit it deserved. The new football stadium was visible from here, as were a number of the city’s historic bridges and buildings.

Closer in, below them and north beyond six lanes of interstate, was an industrial area. He could make out a high tower with a sign proclaiming Halite Salt, pyramids of ore, something that looked like railroad track, then Lake Erie, glistening under the winter-diminished starlight.

“It’s better in the daytime.” Megan folded her arms across her chest and tucked her hands under her jacket sleeves. “You can see two lighthouses from this spot, and the Huletts.”

“Huletts?”

“Cranes. Bigger than most buildings. They used them to unload ore from Great Lakes ships after about 1912. Faster and cheaper than killing off another generation of Irishmen.”

“Your ancestors?”

“So I’m told. The Irishmen, not the cranes.”

Niccolo was always interested in history, but he wondered what this had to do with the man in the saloon’s parking lot. “What exactly did you want to show me?”

“Do you know what they call that?” She gestured to the land stretching out to the lake beyond the interstate, the land piled high with ore and interlaced with railroad tracks.

“Not a clue.”

“Whiskey Island.”

For the first time he understood the name of the saloon. “Why?”

“Well, it was the home of the first still in northeast Ohio, back in the early 1800s, when Cleveland was nothing more than swampland and murderous winters. Then later in the century the Irish settled there because nobody else would have it. Suddenly everyone in Cleveland thought the land was well named.”

He was enjoying this. “Isn’t that a shameful stereotype?”

She faced him. “In its heyday, there were fourteen saloons on Whiskey Island. Stereotype or not.”

He whistled softly.

“It’s not an island, although it probably was at one time. Technically, now, it’s a peninsula. But you asked how long we’ve been giving away food here at the saloon? In the thirties there was a thriving Hooverville out there. And my ancestors just got into the habit. They’d been doing it for years—informally, of course. Every man with a sad story got a bowl of soup, no questions asked. But during the Depression, food was served right here in the parking lot every single night. Men scrabbled up the hill at closing time, and whatever was left belonged to them. I’m told my family made sure there was always something left.”

“The saloon’s been in your family that long?”

“Since the foundation was dug at the end of the nineteenth century. And before that, we lived down there ourselves. When it came time to move up in the world, my ancestors refused to move out of sight. I’m told they wanted to remember where we’d come from. And none of us ever forgot.”

He thought how unusual this was, and yet how easily his own family would understand the Donaghues’ attachment to what at first glance was nothing more than a slice of urban wasteland.

“So you’re telling me you have a history of helping those in need? And one of them might have left the sole of his shoe under your sister’s car?”

“More likely that sole was there when Casey parked tonight. Maybe it’s been there for weeks. Who knows?”

He watched the cars on the Shoreway below them. The hill leading down to it was steep but accessible. And the highway was not crowded at this time of night. A man on foot could disappear down the hillside and cross without incident. He could do it before anyone had the presence of mind to look for him, which in this case had been several hours.

Niccolo made up his mind to cross the Shoreway tomorrow and have a look around Whiskey Island. “Maybe the man I saw tonight was looking for a handout.”

“Well, he would have found one if he’d stayed around. He didn’t need to run away.”

“It’s possible he thought he’d get in trouble for what he’d done.”

“For stopping a carjacking?”

“You seem determined to prove I imagined him.”

She didn’t answer for a moment. When she did, she sounded nonchalant. “We’ll never know. I just thought you might enjoy a little history. It’s a good background for snooping.”

“Was I snooping?”

“A figure of speech.”

He rested a hand on her shoulder, a casual, easy gesture. “So while I’m snooping, just one more thing?”

“If I can help…”

He dropped his hand. “Earlier tonight, when the carjacker tried to make your sister get out of the car…”

“Casey?”

He gave a short nod. “Casey seemed to be worried that the men wanted Ashley.”

“Well, they did try to take her, didn’t they? They were going to use her as a hostage.”

“No, I mean well before that. When there was no reason to think they wanted anything but the car. And the little girl seemed worried about the same thing.”

“She’s a little kid. She was scared to death. Kids personalize everything, don’t they?” Megan sounded genuinely puzzled.

“It seemed odd at the time. That’s what stuck out for me.”

She was silent; then she turned and started back across the parking lot. “I don’t know what that’s about, Nick. Heck, I haven’t even had time to find out much of anything about Ashley. But why are you so interested? It seems like such a little thing.”

He surprised himself with a self-deprecating laugh. “Nothing seems little after you’ve just gone head-to-head with a gun-toting sociopath. Maybe I’m making too much of the whole thing, trying to find meaning where there’s absolutely none.”

But he knew better. He knew where his interest in the “imaginary” man sprang from. For reasons he had no intention of sharing, he could not,
would
not, banish that image of a man swaddled in layers of clothing from his mind.

She stopped near the back door of the saloon. “Aren’t you too old for this? Don’t you know that most of the things that happen to us are completely arbitrary and senseless?”

Her cheeks were dusted with snowflakes. He realized for the first time that the snow Casey had predicted earlier was falling. He watched it settle in Megan’s short curls and catch on her eyelashes. He had the oddest need to reach out and capture a flake at the tip of her nose.

He kept his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know you, Megan, but I don’t think you really believe that.”

“You’d lose money if you bet your hunch.”

“I’d take those odds.”

She bristled. “You happened to walk by here tonight. You could just as easily have walked down the next street or the next. Now, I’m glad you didn’t, of course, but I don’t think it was part of some divine plan that you were here to help out tonight.”

He grinned at the barely controlled ferocity of her response. “I can hear your Whiskey Island ancestors spinning in their graves, Megan Donaghue. You’ll make the sign of the cross the minute my back’s turned.”

“It would be the first time in a decade.”

“A lapsed Catholic…”

“Is still a Catholic? Not likely. Only when the Holy See starts a parish for atheists.”

It was time to let her go back inside. Niccolo realized he’d been baiting her simply because he wasn’t ready for this contact to end. He wasn’t used to that feeling, hadn’t even recognized it at first. For a moment he didn’t know what to do.

Then reality asserted itself. “Maybe I’ll be able to sleep now. I guess I’d better go and try.”

“That’s what this was about? Insomnia?”

“Unanswered questions keep me awake.”

“So apparently you got the answers you needed?”

Again, as before, he thought a lot of energy was going into this conversation, even though she seemed pointedly nonchalant. “Not really.”

“I’m sorry you hit a dead end. But I suspect there really wasn’t anything to learn.”

Two things occurred to him. The first was that Megan was absolutely determined to convince him he’d been seeing things tonight. The second was that she was too smart not to know that the more she protested, the more interested he would become.

He wondered if, on some level, Megan Donaghue wanted him to discover more. Even if she hadn’t admitted it to herself.

She opened the back door, nodded one final time, then closed it behind her.

The parking lot was silent again, and as he moved away, the first flakes of snow melted under his feet. He swung the flashlight carelessly back and forth as he moved toward the lot entrance, stopping one last time at Casey’s car for a final sweep of the ground.

He almost missed the cuff link. It lay just behind her left front tire, and had his light not revealed an unexpected glimmer, he never would have seen it. He moved forward and stooped to retrieve it, holding it in his palm.

The cuff link was gold, large and surprisingly ornate. The glimmer he’d noted came from diamonds, rows of them entwining in two
S
’s.