Goodnight, Irene by Jan Burke

complaining that turns about-face if you agree with the complainer.
    I had never thought Kenny treated her well, and though I couldn’t help being softened in my attitude toward him by his current condition, I wondered what would come of it — for Barbara’s sake. Could I have been wrong about him? Like any other couple, they had a life of their own together, a private one that I could not learn of from family gatherings and the like.
    Truth be told, somewhere inside me a voice that would like to be mistaken for my conscience said, “You wished this on him.” All those times Barbara had cried to me on the phone about him, all those times I’d said, “Don’t worry, Barbara, someday Kenny will get his. It’s only a matter of time before he crosses someone who’ll teach him some manners.”
    Of course, I hadn’t expected Amy Vanderbilt to be carrying a baseball bat, but I hadn’t exactly wished him well, either. So now he lay half-dead, while my sister spun a web of fragile hope around him.
     
14
     
    T HIS KIND OF THINKING is not good for one’s optimistic outlook in life, so I was a little down when I reached the door of the Wrigley Building. As I opened it, I saw Frank politely signing in for Geoff, who took no one at his word. As he pushed the clipboard back across the counter, I realized how happy I was to see him. He gave me a smile. Just what the doctor ordered. “Sign him back out, Geoff, I’m making him take me to lunch.”
    Geoff, another member of the “Coalition of Those Who Are Terribly Concerned About Irene Still Being Single,” gave me a knowing look.
    Frank walked me out to his car, a battered, old gray Volvo. “Is this thing going to make it to L.A.?” I asked, trying not to laugh out loud. “What’d you do, steal it from Columbo?”
    “Well, excuse me, Princess Di. Here I am, being a nice guy and offering to take you to lunch, and you give me grief about my car. I’m not a glutton for freeway driving — I’ll let you take us in your car, if you prefer, your highness.”
    “I love to hear men talk that way. No, you can drive, and I promise to try not to make jokes about your car.”
    “I just drive this thing to make the taxpayers feel good, anyway.”
    Despite its external appearance, the car was very comfortable and clean on the inside.
    “So where are we going for lunch?” I asked, as we pulled out of the parking lot.
    “You’ll see,” he said. “By the way, I got in touch with Hernandez.”
    “And?”
    “He talked to O’Connor twice last month, once in person, once on the phone. O’Connor had come down to the morgue about the middle of May, to start gathering information for his Hannah article. The anniversary of the day they found her is next weekend — June seventeenth — and I guess that’s the day he does the write-up on the John Does. Hernandez told me it was the first time he’d met O’Connor, and he took a real liking to him. He wasn’t too happy when I told him what had happened.”
    “So what happened in May?”
    “Not much, I guess, except that Hernandez had never heard the Hannah story, so O’Connor told him all about it and about the annual articles. Hernandez talked to him about a couple of stiffs they haven’t been able to identify, and they shook hands like pals and said so long.”
    Frank broke off long enough to negotiate getting on the 405 Freeway going north. Traffic was, as usual, ridiculously heavy. Where could all of these people be going at noon? We hunkered down for some “slow and go,” and Frank took up the conversation again.
    “I guess O’Connor managed to spark his interest. He just took a real liking to the guy. Talked to each other for a couple of hours. They’re starved for the company of folks that can still breathe down there in the coroner’s office anyway — not too many people just go down there for a chat — and he said O’Connor was quite a talker.”
    “That he was.”
    “So after O’Connor left, Hernandez