Free Twice Dying by Neil McMahon Page A

between a sweet kiss and a bite. He took drink and bottle to the shower, and later poured a second while he toweled dry. He dressed in a worn flannel shirt and jeans and refilled his glass.
    The rain was drifting through the trees in sheets now. He started a fire in the wood stove. Then he flipped through the San Francisco phone directory until he found the number for Tierney’s Pub on Taylor Street.
    A voice heavy with brogue answered.
    Monks said, “Dennis O’Dwyer, if he’s in.”
    The background noise brought him a vivid picture of the long, copper-covered bar lined with men drinking pints of Guinness, reading newspapers, playing darts, arguing politics, conspiring for the IRA. Whatever they did for a living, it was their real business to know what was going on. Dennis’s specialty was the insurance end of medicine. He had been a claims adjusterwith ASCLEP for more than thirty years.
    “It’s Carroll Monks,” he said when Dennis’s whiskey voice came on.
    “How are you, me boy?” It came out sounding like
buy.
At Tierney’s, Dennis became more Irish with the hours. He was white-haired, thick-bodied, with a purplish nose, cheeks mottled with broken veins, and a vast lexicon of memory for people and events.
    “I need to chat a minute,” Monks said. “Is this a good time?”
    “None better.”
    “Do you remember a big case, maybe twelve years ago? The Vandenard heir, they called him Robby, shot a man.”
    “Indeed I do.”
    “I’m interested in the psychiatrist who evaluated Robby. His name’s Jephson.”
    “A Brit, isn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    Dennis coughed expressively.
    “He got Robby ruled mentally incompetent,” Monks said. “There’s reason to think the proceedings weren’t straight. Did you hear anything like that?”
    “It was no secret that Robby got preferential treatment. Like anything else with that kind of money, Carroll. A whiff of trouble, and there’s experts flying in from all over the world, with price tags on them.”
    “Like Bernard Capaldi?”
    “Like Bernard. He’s retired now. Not in good health, I hear.”
    “Was there any suggestion that Jephson was bought too?”
    “I’m trying to remember the context I heard his name in. There was a lot of buzz in the insurance game about that incident.”
    “There’s a gold mine in your head, Den.”
    “More like a peat bog these days. Defense liability exposure, that was it. Fear of a wrongful death suit. But it never materialized.”
    “The Vandenards bought off the victim’s widow.”
    “Say what you like, it’s a good way to turn a witness friendly. I can’t recall anything specific about Jephson. I’ll nose around first thing tomorrow.”
    “Den, she, the widow, told us Robby was suspected of murdering his sister.”
    “There was speculation. People who knew the family. It was kept very quiet, of course. He was only a child.”
    “What about the rest of the family?”
    “A grim story, lad. Robert Senior, Robby’s father, had a stroke not long after. His wife died in the mid-eighties. It was given out as heart failure, but the rumor was an overdose of drugs and alcohol. She’d been in treatment centers. Heart-
break,
more likely.
    “And that was the end of them, the main-line Vandenards. They were the darlings of the citywhen those children were young. There’s a branch, cousins I believe, who’ve inherited the interests.”
    Monks was silent.
    “This Jephson,” Dennis said. “Is he in trouble with ASCLEP?”
    “No.”
    “Shame. You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
    Monks rang oft, then got out his address book and called Alison Chapley, his fingers seeming to remember her number as he punched the buttons. Her machine answered.
    He said, “I have news. Give me a call.”
    He refilled his glass, noting that the bottle was approaching a quarter empty: filtering through the microscopic labyrinths of liver and kidneys, alcohol molecules separated