Grief Street

your
    crying?”
    “Fuck you!”
    “Yeah, fuck you!”
    I been sitting here waiting patiently for you all to cry your little eyes out over the rough stuff. Now that you done it, I’m having my say. How’s that with you ladies?”
    “Fuck you!”
    “Okay, you’re scared. I can respect that. What I don’t understand, though, is why you’re forgetting what we talked about the last time.”
    “Talk about what?”
    “The sure way out of being scared of big bad Neil Hockaday. You want to neutralize the guy, you go at him through his wife. Remember?”
    “By any chance, are you talking pregnant ladies having accidents?”
    “Right on the nose, Sherlock.”

    I was no more than ten miles off. Not so far really—and there was no traffic, so I was sailing along ahead of schedule—but still I did not want to wait until reaching the village.
    I had to telephone Ruby right then and there. I told myself, If a detective does not trust his own intuition, which is something he works to develop all through his career, then he is stone lost. Not wanting to be lost, I pulled off the roadway into a Mobil gasoline station and found the public phone.
    Ruby answered after a dozen rings, just as I was about to hang up.
    “It’s me, Ruby. The phone rang so long. Are you all right?”
    “Well, I’m glad I finally heard the bell. I was running the vacuum in the other room—”
    “I said, are you all right?”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “I don’t know. I guess your condition and all.”
    “Last night, after we talked, you didn’t seem to think I was too delicate to handle.”
    Ruby laughed at me. As usual, she made me like it.
    “I want you to do me a favor today,” I said. “You can pull it off better than any cop I know.”
    “Pull off what?”
    “There’s a bar on West Forty-first, just east of Ninth Avenue. It’s called the Savoy—”
    “The one Johnny Kay was talking about? You want me to hang out at a gay bar?”
    “Yes.“
    “Well—better me than you I suppose.”
    “Ruby, what I’m asking, it’s not easy.”
    “Dangerous?”
    “No, that’s not what I mean. Here’s the thing—Joe Kowalski and Johnny Kay, they’re father and son.”
    “No! You asked them?”
    “I didn’t have to. I saw them together. It connects.”
    “Not to mention it’s pathological.”
    “That, too, maybe.”
    “Small wonder John-boy shortened his name. God—so that’s why this King Kong Kowalski is a homophobic beast. He's all torn up over having a gay son. He’s obese, he’s brutal—”
    “Too easy, Ruby. There’s something more, a lot more. But I don’t know what.”
    “And I’m supposed to find out?”
    “There are things I’m not noticing, even though I’ve seen them all my life. Things I’m not hearing for that matter. I don’t understand it, which is why I’m up here in the mountains. So, please—I need you on this with me, Ruby.”

    I was sadly unsurprised by the news waiting for me in the village.
    A white-haired man wearing a grim face greeted me as I stepped into the general store. According to Father Declan’s instructions, this would be the proprietor—the man who Would take me up the mountain in his Jeep to Creepy Morrisson’s hermitage. The proprietor took one look at me and asked, “You’re the detective fellow up from the city?”
    “Neil Hockaday.”
    “Well, you found your way all right. I’m Charlie.”
    “I’ve got my car parked out of the way and locked. Is the car ready, Charlie?”
    “Sure it is. Who you think’s going to steal it?” Charlie sneezed, but otherwise did not move. “Mr. Hockaday, I sure te to spoil your visit up to Father Morrison, but I got to gIve you this.”
    Charlie handed over a sheet of fax paper and I read it.

URGENT—PLEASE TELEPHONE.
Dearest Neil:
Peace of Christ!
I’m sorry to inform you that our dear Sister Roberta Lowther passed this morning. She stopped breathing shortly past nine o’clock. You were the last to see her alive, Neil. I’m sure it was a comfort to her in some way that’s a mystery to us. In any case, there was nothing more that any of us could do for Sister.
Please call me soon as you receive this message, Neil.
Most likely, I’ll not be in my office. But I’m about just the same. Have somebody fetch me to the phone.
—Yrs in Christ’s Love,
Fr. Declan Byrne

    As he expected the case to be, I waited on the line while a secretary—Mrs. Hamill, a parish widow volunteer with her hair in a bun, the sort of