Free Goodnight, Irene by Jan Burke Page B

actually in the process of writing or ones he had already filed, it’s this same gobbledygook. Without the help of arrows or whiskers.” He sat leaning on the counter with his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes. He suddenly looked tired again. I watched him for a moment.
    “You’d better get some sleep,” I said, standing up.
    I straightened out the papers and put them back in the envelope, trying to keep my idle hands from temptation. “Can I keep these?”
    “Yeah, sure,” he said. “If you can manage to keep going over them, I think we’re bound to get a better handle on this.”
    “When I get into his computer files tomorrow I’ll have more to work with.”
    “I guess you were right about working at the paper,” he said, looking down. “Sorry if I got a little hot under the collar this afternoon, I just…” He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he shrugged and said, “Well, be careful anyway, okay, Irene? For my sake?” Quickly he added, “I’d hate for you to get killed before I learned what the hell ‘Mac teeth’ means.”
    “Gee, thanks.”
    He laughed and said goodnight.
    That night I dreamed again and again that I was buried under sand, suffocating. I couldn’t move my hands or mouth, but somehow I was crying out. The sand muffled the cries. Frank was walking right over the place I was buried, and I couldn’t get him to hear my screams. Sometimes O’Connor would be there, and he’d tell Frank, “She’s here,” and Frank would dig me free. Other times O’Connor wasn’t in the dream, and Frank kept walking on down the beach. I’d wake up drenched in sweat either way, afraid to fall back to sleep.
    I had a hell of a time making the bed the next morning.
     

11
     
    T WO NIGHTS without much sleep threatened to make me a cranky baby, so I had to talk myself into getting going the next morning. I was excited about digging into O’Connor’s files, but first I had to face Kevin.
    Kevin was the Malloy of Malloy & Marlowe, the public-relations firm I had been working for since I quit the
Express
. He had worked at the paper at one time as well, but left just after old man Wrigley died. Kevin had the foresight to see what was coming with Son of Wrigley. He had left amicably, hooked up with Don Marlowe, who was another former reporter, and formed a very successful firm. Always able to smooth-talk if need be, Kevin had also been a real go-getter, and the energy had paid off. He wasn’t the writer Don was, but the combination of the copy Don turned out and Kevin’s ability to work with people made for lots of happy clients.
    Kevin had been a great friend of O’Connor’s. They often went drinking together, and O’Connor used to say that Kevin made him feel like a true Irishman. They would tell stories all night, and Kevin was one of the few who were a match for O’Connor’s silver tongue. As one of the members of the circle that revolved around O’Connor, Kevin embraced me as a friend, but I’ve no doubt it was his love of the old man which led to his hiring me after the great brouhaha at the paper.
    I had gone into the newsroom pissed as hell one day after learning that Wrigley was not going to take any disciplinary action against an assistant city editor who had all but raped one of the women working as a night-shift GA. It was part of a whole atmosphere that had festered under Wrigley’s inability to keep his hands to himself. He never touched me, but he made sexually provocative comments to me and other women staff members on a nauseatingly recurrent basis.
    I made a lot of unflattering references to his ancestors and his own person, told him I was through working for an ass-pinching sleazeball and stomped off. I got a loud cheer and some hoots from my longtime companions in the newsroom. Lydia told me later that as the applause died down, O’Connor stood up and told Wrigley that he wasn’t going to have much of a staff left if he didn’t take better care of people who