“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.

TWO 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 depended on him to see the right thing was done. Word got out to the Publisher’s Board, which could still outvote Wrigley, and was starting to do so more and more frequently. Some pressure was brought to bear, and Wrigley fired the assistant city editor.

I, of course, for all the personal satisfaction that had given me, was out of a job, finding myself in the position of many a person who has told the boss to shove it. The bills came anyway.

O’Connor tried to get me to swallow my pride and come back, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Kevin Malloy heard what was no doubt a richly embellished version of this story one night when he was down at one of the local newshounds’ watering holes; he called me up the next day and gave me a job. Although he was a demanding boss, he had been nothing but good to me since. Trouble was, my heart wasn’t in the work.

So when I went into Malloy Marlowe that Tuesday morning, it was with the lousy taste you get in your mouth from biting the hand that feeds you. Kevin was talking to Clarissa, his back to me. Clarissa’s eyes widened in surprise and she called out, “Irene, you aren’t supposed to be in for another week!”

Kevin turned around. I asked if I could talk to him for a minute. He stood there looking as if he were making his mind up about something, and then invited me back.

I sat in one of the four chairs surrounding what we jokingly referred to as the “Aircraft Carrier Malloy,” Kevin’s gigantic marble-topped, dark cherry-wood desk. Kevin opted for a chair close to my own instead of the one behind the desk.

He was a sandy-haired man with boyish but not foolish looks, and a smile that could melt the world’s hardest heart. “We’ve both lost a very good friend,” he said, and halted, a sadness so sudden and complete coming over his face that when I saw it I felt a tightening in my chest. Tears began welling up in his eyes, and in no time flat we were both crying quietly, neither of us able to speak. Eventually, we both went digging for our handkerchiefs.

“God, I loved that man,” he said, unbashedly weeping now. “He was one of the best. I can’t believe it. I can’t.”

“He thought a lot of you, Kevin. You were one of his favorites. He didn’t have many real favorites.”

He just wept.

After a while he sat up straight and said, “I’m sorry,” giving me that strange apology we Americans make for our grief. Between the two of us, there was a lot of nose-blowing for a few minutes. We both sighed and tried to pull ourselves together.

“How are things going here?” I asked.

“Hectic as usual. We miss having you around, even though you’ve only been gone for a day. The Kensington project and the various campaign work going on is keeping me from sitting around using up boxes of Kleenex. It’s a busy time of year.”

I was feeling more and more like a heel. “Kevin,” I said, “I have a very difficult request to make of you. I need an extended leave of absence.”

“Oh.”

I thought he was going to say more, but he waited for me to go on.

“The police think O’Connor was probably killed because of some story he was working on or had written in the past. And yesterday someone tried to murder his son.”

“I heard about it at Calhoun’s,” he said, referring to a bar that’s the current hot spot for the staff of the Express. That saved me a lot of explaining, because that meant he already had heard any news in more detail than was printed in the late edition. Doubtless in more detail than would ever be printed. Most people don’t like to read that stuff over breakfast.

“Did you ever meet a guy in Homicide named Frank Harriman?” I asked.

Kevin thought a moment. “Yes, in fact, Mark Baker introduced us down at Calhoun’s a few months ago, when he was working on that double homicide at the Legs.”

“The Legs,” or, in Spanish, “Las Piernas,” were two tall, rounded cliffs above the beach. From out on the ocean, they did indeed look like two long legs, and were so named from the time the Spaniards first sailed past them.

“Well, he’s on the O’Connor case now. The only way he’s going to get anywhere is if somebody who knew O’Connor, knew his notation system, knew how he worked-if somebody like that gets back on the paper and digs up whatever dirt is making this bastard kill people.”

“And you think it should be you.”

Long silence.

He studied me again. “I’ll be honest with you, Irene. I knew the minute I heard about O’Connor that you would go after this guy. I’ve known you too long. I’ve also known that you haven’t been happy here…”

I started to object, but he cut me off.

“Hear me out. It’s true. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you and more, and I’ve asked a lot. O’Connor used to take me out to Banyon’s or Calhoun’s and tell me how I was never going to take the black ink out of your veins. He’d kid me about how I was trying to harness a racehorse to the plow, and while a racehorse might pull steady, it would always be looking over the fence at the track, longing for a good run for the money. ‘One day, she’ll bolt the harness,’ he’d say.