"Peter Mahr please report to the Aer Lingus ticket counter. Peter Mahr to the Aer Lingus counter please."
Danielle searched for her brother in the throng meeting the plane. Anxious, expectant faces glanced back and moved on, searching for their own travellers, changing into smiles and calls when the travellers were found. Her own smile felt plastic as she wrapped the earphones around the Walkman and the Bunttu's Cainte tapes
--Dia Duit, Dia's Muire Duit, Sla'n agat, Sla'n leat, . . .
Hello, Hello; Good-bye, Good-bye . . .--
She'd heard the language tapes so many times that the Irish on them seemed to flow like a chant or like a song, putting her to sleep with the familiarity of it and doing nothing for the comprehension of it. But Peter had said, when she had asked, that he "was functional in it," in Irish.
"And what does that mean?" she had asked.
"Why," he laughed, "it means we can catch the gist of a story and laugh at a joke in the Gaeltacht." So not to worry, he'd take care of it.
But Peter wasn't here. Mentally she practiced "Dia Duit, Dia's Muire Duit, Sla'n agat, Sla'n leat."
She was carried by the surge to the baggage belt and tried to look like an experienced traveller. The crowd fragmented into chattering groups of two's and three's, as they dragged their bags across the terrazzo and out to where cars waited in the dark.
"Peter Mahr please report to the Aer Lingus ticket counter. Peter Mahr to the Aer Lingus counter please."
The airport was nearly deserted. A few men loitered in the fluorescent glare, one hunched over a phone in the corner. A woman in a yellow and black uniform was doing her nails under the Hertz sign. The other car rental booths were empty. The Aer Lingus clerk and a thin man leaning across the counter interrupted their conversation to look in her direction. The clerk said "I could call his flat again for you Miss, but he isn't answerin' his page."
She shook her head and smiled to hide her unease. "I called. He must have been delayed in traffic."
"No traffic here, Miss. Not at this hour, not with the season about over. What with the storms taking on so, and the troubles, you'll be havin' the country to yourself. It's the best time of year, since you ask me. The weather is still beautiful, once it stops raining, and the tourist hoards have migrated. Excepting yourself, of course. Your brother's been delayed, or the man forgot."
"He wouldn't forget."
"Sure, he wouldn't. Do let me call you a cab then."
"I'll just leave him a note, in case he shows up after I've left."
"Grand idea." He gave her a pen and paper and read while she wrote and handed it back to him.
"Miss Mahr?"
She turned to face a wizened man in rumpled tweeds. The smell of wet wool, tobacco smoke and liquor enveloped him. Drops of rain jiggled on his shoulders, and his beard lay like mildew on his jowls. He didn't look directly at her, but squinted and twitched to the left and right, while he mauled his cap with both hands. His lips pursed and pouted in alternating wrinkles over his nearly toothless gums.
"Yes?" she said uncertainly.
"I'm Walter Tween," he rattled and grabbed her suitcase. "Mr. Mahr sent me to find you. I'm a bit late, so we had best be on our way." He slapped the cap on his head and lurched for the exit.
"Since when are you in the taxi business, Walter?" The thin man moved to the counter beside her with his quiet question. He tapped a cigarette on its pack and lit it and squinted through the smoke at Walter.
Walter spun around, dropped the suitcase, and whipped his greasy cap off his head in one spastic motion. "Kelley," he whined. "When did you . . . I'm here to pick up . . . Mr. Garg, he said . . . I'm only . . ."
The man watched Walter crumple the cap. "You'd be better getting that cab, Miss," he said softly.
"Yes, I think I will." She pulled the suitcase back to the safety of the counter. "Thank you anyway, Mr. Tween," she said.
"Listen Kelley, I'm supposed to pick up Miss Mahr here."
"She's taking the cab, Walter." His arm rested on the counter, as if he were too tired to support himself without leaning on it.
"Garg won't like it. Not one bit, he won't, I tell you. You boys ought to get together if anything is to be done around here. And your brother will be upset too, Miss. I won't be the one to tell him. Not on your life. It's your head Kelley, not mine. I only do what I'm told." He slapped the cap on his head and took it off again.
"It's your head, Kelley, not mine," he said again. He was still muttering when the doors closed behind him. The man leaned against the counter and drew on his cigarette as he watched Walter disappear into the dark and rain.
"Thank you," she said, "and what was that all about?"
It took a long time for him to respond. He cleared his throat and studied her through cigarette smoke.
"Walter wouldn't be counted among our better drivers. You'd be safer in a regular cab. We wouldn't want you to get the right impression of our motoring too early." He smiled for the first time. His teeth were white and even, except a front one had a sharp chip missing. Dark hair and beard were shot with grey, grey eyes and face looked haggard.
"I still don't understand why my brother would send him."
He straightened up and shook his head. "Mitch here will have a cab at the door in a few minutes. Have a nice vacation, Miss Mahr." He turned to the clerk behind the counter.
The man in the phone booth watched them. Finally he released the hook, and when the tone sounded, he began to dial.
"It's Carson. I'm at the airport."
"Peter Mahr has a sister. She's here. Arrived tonight. And who does she appear with? It could have been Michael Kelley; the guy called him 'Kelley.' Christ! Pierce talked about him; I thought Michael Kelley was a myth, or long dead. I never knew him.
An old guy recognized him, called him by name, mentioned Garg too. I guess maybe he could fit the description, but I'll need a photograph to confirm it. I was cleaning my glasses when I heard the name, and by the time I got them on again, he had his back toward me."
"Well, a five-year-old photograph is better than nothing. Send it along."
"Nothing that I could see. Nothing was passed anyway. Check out that Mahr woman, would you?"
"I suppose she's mid-twenties, five-seven or so, nice looking if you like very slim. Blond hair cut straight across at the shoulders. Expensive haircut, expensive clothes - kind of conservative - not real flashy, and not a lot of make-up, for all I know about it."
"Christ! That's the best description I can give you. I was halfway across the airport from them. I didn't see the color of her eyes. She's just normal-looking-nice and well-dressed, that's all."
"Well, by the time she left here, she looked REAL tense, I tell you, though she was covering it pretty good."
"Well, I don't know. It wouldn't be like Mahr to drag her into it, but she talked to the two of them, Kelley and the old guy, right here in the airport, bold as you please. Maybe she does take after her brother after all. Whatever the arrangement, evidently she expected him to be here, and she was one very unhappy lady when she left alone. Sounded like she knew where his flat was, though. She'll be disappointed that he's not there either, won't she? Does anybody know where he is?"
"There was an argument. The old guy staggers out and the woman catches a cab. Kelley disappears. Mahr, Peter Mahr, never did show up. We're still looking."
"Yeah, I know time is running out. The rumors are thick. Christ. We're doing our best. Pierce didn't leave us much, you know."
"O.K. O.K. You'll get back to me with that information on her and the photo of him by tomorrow?"
He slammed the receiver down and pushed his new hat back on his head. He took thick glasses off and rubbed the indentations on the bridge of his nose and sighed at the deserted Aer Lingus counter.
The taxi took Danielle to a neat white house surrounded by flowers. She told the driver to wait while she stood on the porch in the rain and rang the bell. A television drama blared through the closed door. Through the window she could see a woman in a bathrobe and curlers reluctantly put down her needlework and rise to answer the door, walking backward, her attention focused on the TV.
The woman pulled open the door and tilted her head back and frowned at her through frameless half-glasses. "Yes?" she said sharply.
"Mrs. Marion Hurley?" Danielle asked.
"Yes.--Why Danielle!--Where's Peter?" She lowered her head to let the glasses slide down her nose. She squinted over them to focus through the rain at the taxi, then tilted her head back to look at Danielle through the bottom half of the glasses. "You look just like your picture," she said. "But where's Peter?"
"I don't know. I--"
"Well never mind. Get rid of that cab or he'll be up here asking for more money."
Danielle turned around to wave the cab on. When she turned back, Marion was watching the TV again. "See, the wife is accused of murdering her mother-in-law to get control of the estate, because she and the husband's best friend are having an affair. Filthy rich they are. The husband himself is a fop, I don't blame her, I'd have murdered him." She turned back to Danielle. "Peter never met your flight?" she asked skeptically.
"No, I--"
Marion clicked her tongue and shook her head. "That's not like him," she said. "That's not like him at all. Never mind," she said, "The flat's all ready, of course. It's right around back. I'll just get my raincoat and the key." She turned and stood focusing over the half-glasses at the drama on the TV.
"I could let myself in, couldn't I?"
Marion turned to face her again. "I bet it was the husband himself that did it," she said. She stood for a second as if she were trying to remember why Danielle stood in her doorway, and what it was she just said.
"If I had the key, couldn't I let myself in?" Danielle asked.
With something like relief, Marion nodded her head sharply. "You certainly could. Tell Peter that two gentlemen were here to see him--yesterday--or was it the day before? Tell him that they didn't get one bit of information from me. No sir. They wanted to see the flat, but no sir. They didn't leave their names. Follow the drive around back. The stairs are on the outside of the building, to the right of the garage doors." She tilted her head back and looked through the glasses at a row of keys dangling from shoelaces by the door. She thrust a key at Danielle.
"It's all ready for you," she said. "He had me put in groceries and everything, and of course I cleaned it up, just like I do every two weeks, whether it needs it or not." She pressed the key and its shoelace in Danielle's hand. Her voice faded as she turned back to the TV and the door closed between them. ". . . so you see he didn't forget after all--not that I'd ever think he would, not him--everything is all ready for you. He was expecting you."
Peter's flat was the second floor of a carriage house-turned three car garage. She unlocked the door, pulled her suitcase in, and locked the door behind her. Two bedrooms, one of them set up as a study, a bathroom, a galley kitchen and a sitting area were decorated in no particular style. The furnishings looked used, worn even, without being shabby. A floor lamp and a pile of books stood next to a large creased leather chair and ottoman in the sitting room.