Marigolds, Ch 11

11

Johnna dropped me in Chelsea Sunday evening. She stayed only long enough to meet and greet Mislava and Michael, respectively. I walked her to her car.

“Drive carefully,” she said. “Call me when you can.” She slid into the driver’s seat and lowered the window. “I must say I am dying to know what she’s going to say.”

“So am I,” I said. “And to whom she’s going to say it.”

“Yeah. Just don’t lose track of the fact that there’s already somebody dead in this thing, Finn.”

“Jeez Spark, somebody? We’re talking about Croatia…the former Yugoslavia, for Christ’s sakes.”

“I know, but this one was close to home.”

Johnna was involved in an interesting case of her own. She couldn’t tell me much other than two brothers “from a nearby state” turned themselves in for tax evasion. Just walked with their attorneys into the Federal building in Springfield and said, “hey, we did it.” No warrant had been issued. No one in any agency was even looking into these guys. A week later one of them is dead and the other’s missing. That’s all she was able to tell me.

Her job, to head up the inter-agency forensic accounting part of the investigation, excited her. She was as mystified as everyone else, but excited. It was her first chance to run a team. I watched her taillights shrink and blink out in the evening’s settling darkness. Maybe I’ll go due north from New York, to Springfield, when my work down there is done.

“Michael…” Mislava said. When she said it all its charm was gone. Her accent removed whatever lilt the name possessed. “…you are crazy…”

Michael and my new roommate were giggling next to each other on the futon, a bowl of popcorn between them, watching the Sox play the Orioles. They were drinking El Presidente from long-necked bottles. The ones on which they were working were not the first. There were a number dead Presidentes scattered around.

“No, my good woman, I am not. I’m telling you, it is a special play…” Michael’s brogue and his tongue had both thickened. “…and it is called the hit and run play.” Hit sounded more like hith.

“Of course it is hit and run play you crazy big Irish bear man…” Mislava was bending back and forth at the waist in a shallow arc as she yelled to Michael, two feet away, and all the ships at sea. “They are all hit and run play. Man hits…” she paused and spread her hands. “…and man runs. No special play. Is always hit and run play.”

The contrasting tracks of the two European accents were striking. When Mislava spoke her words tumbled out as if being chased downhill. Start high and finish low. Michael’s pattern was up and down, up and down, sometimes within a single word. If she paused at all it was only to translate in her head from Croatian to English. Michael paused regularly to catch his breath and for effect. They both gestured, though, as if taught by the same master.

“Fintan, I know how you love it, so tell this poor deprived eastern European what the hit and run play is. Enlighten her, my friend, to one of the most beautiful subtleties of the most subtle of games.”

Michael was in full trans-Gaelic poetic flower, pointing with both hands to Mislava. His large, mostly unkempt body rested in counterpoint next to this tiny woman. It looked as if an old quarter were sitting next to a new dime. An old quarter that needed a haircut.

“Go on now, Finn, pull her up from her continental ignorance as once you did for my own self.”

“She’s right. They are all hit and run plays. It is the foundation of the game. I have no idea what you mean, Michael. Good night.”

“Aye, you bastard!” Michael grunted both before the sentence and after. He tried to stand, tried again, and abandoned the idea.

“Hah! See, Michael Devlin? You are very crazy Irish man.” His couch companion said. “Now, a run and hit would be special play.”

The ex-pats on my couch were play fighting and laughing. I had become irrelevant if not invisible.

“Oh, kids…?” I had to be tired: I was doing Jack Benny. “I need to get some sleep. I’ll see at least one of you in the morning. Don’t open the door to a stranger, don’t play with matches, and be sure and shut off the lights.”