The jukebox was playing a Spanish song, whole damn world was going Hispanic, more of them up there in Castleview than you could flush out of a field of sugarcane. The spic behind the bar was humming along with the tune, polishing a glass, tossing his head in time to the Latin rhythms. The bar was empty otherwise. Halloran took a stool near the bartender and asked him for a beer. The bartender seemed annoyed that somebody was interrupting his little spic jam session. Scowling, he put down the glass he’d been polishing, and went to draw the beer.
“Thanks,” Halloran said.
“De nada,” the bartender said.
“You live in this neighborhood?”
“Why? You police?”
Halloran thought that was very funny. He smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m not police.”
“You look like police,” the bartender said, and shrugged.
“My name’s Jack Halloran, I’m up here looking for my daughter.”
“Your daughter, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Halloran, huh?” the bartender shook his head. “Nobody name Halloran come in here. Your daughter, huh?”
“My daughter. Blonde girl, eighteen years old. Moira Halloran.”
“I don’ know nobody by that name. You want to pay for the beer, please?”
“I’m not a cop, and she’s not in any trouble,” Halloran said, reaching for his wallet. “I’m just trying to find her, is all.”
“I don’ care if she’s in trouble or what she is,” the bartender said. “I don’ know her. Tha’s seventy-fi’ cents.”
Halloran paid for the beer without touching a drop of it, and then went out onto the Avenue again. The elevated tracks overhead cast a shadow on this side of the street, and he was grateful for the respite from the sun. Otherwise, there wasn’t a breeze, not a breath of fresh air in this damn suffocating heat. He went from bar to bar asking if anybody knew his daughter, Moira Halloran. He did not hit pay dirt until the fifth bar. The bartender there, like all the other bartenders, was a Puerto Rican with an accent you could slice with a machete.
“Moira Halloran?” he said. “No Moira Halloran. Only Moira Johnson.”
“Johnson?”
“Johnson, sí. Tall blon’ girl, dee age you say, eighteen, nineteen, like that.”
“Johnson, huh?”
“Johnson. She’s marry to Henry Johnson, they live on Marien Stree, you know Marien?”
“I’m familiar with it, yes.”
“So tha’s where,” the bartender said.
He remembered the mailboxes in front of the old house, the names Johnson and García on them. Had his daughter come back to live again in that house? His lawyer had told him the place was up for sale, but Jesus, had his daughter and her husband bought it? Were they maybe living in the same apartment the family had lived in twelve years ago, the downstairs apartment, renting the smaller upstairs one to the spic Garcia, the one he’d seen weeding in the front yard, some of these spics were blacker than African niggers.
Halloran paid for the beer and walked out. It was hotter in the street now, and suddenly he was sweating. Now that he was closer to finding her, now that it was proving easier than he’d ever dreamed it could be, he found himself sweating, and a little short of breath, his heart pounding in his chest as he made the familiar turn onto Marien, and walked past half a dozen little Puerto Rican girls skipping rope, and then stopped in front of the clapboard-and-brick house he’d once lived in with Josie and the kids before he’d had to kill her, the same house — his, daughter Moira was living here in the same house he’d shared with Josie for seven years. The black African spic, García, was still out front, weeding.
“Hey!” Halloran called.
The man looked up.
“You speak English?” Halloran asked.
“You talking to me?” the man said. He looked to be in his early twenties, a thin guy wearing a tank-top undershirt and cutoff blue jeans. He was holding a claw-shaped gardening tool in his right hand.
“Yes, I’m talking to you,” Halloran said. “I’m looking for Moira Johnson, do you know her?”
“I know her,” the man said. “What do you want with her?”
“She’s my daughter,” Halloran said.
“Well, well,” the man said.
“What’s that mean, ‘Well, well’?”
“They decided to let you out, huh?”
“Who the hell are you?” Halloran asked.
“Henry Johnson,” the man said. “Moira’s husband. Why don’t you get lost? Moira don’t want nothin’ to do with you, man.”
“Look, punk,” Halloran said, and opened the gate in the picket fence, and hesitated when he saw Johnson’s hand tighten on the claw tool.
Locked up in prison, you learned to sense when it was wise to shout a man down, and when it was best to leave him alone. You saw it in the eyes. D’Annunzio should’ve seen it in his eyes the night he started in about a big nose, he should’ve seen Halloran’s eyes narrowing and should’ve known right then that his face was going to be hamburger. There was something in this nigger’s eyes now (Moira married to a nigger, his daughter married to a nigger!) that told Halloran he could be dangerous. He hesitated just inside the gate, and then tried a tentative smile, and then said, “I’ve come a long way to see her, son.”
“Don’t give me no ‘son’ bullshit,” Johnson said. “I’m no more your son than she’s your daughter anymore.”
“I’d like to see her,” Halloran said quietly.
“She ain’t home. Take off, before I call the cops.”
“She’s my daughter, and I want to see her,” Halloran said in a steady monotone. “I want to see what my daughter looks like now that she’s grown up, I’m not leaving here till I see her, I’ve waited twelve years to see her, and I’m going to see her, have you got that, I’m going to see her, son.”
There must have been in his eyes the same look D’Annunzio should have seen there an instant before the fork plunged into his face, the same look Halloran thought he’d detected in young Johnson’s eyes just a few minutes ago. He saw the grip on the gardening tool loosen, saw Johnson taking his measure, a veteran street fighter the way all the niggers up at Castleview were, a badass cat who could recognize trouble when it was coming down the pike, and who wanted no part of it when the man’s eyes were signaling mayhem.
“She still ain’t home,” Johnson said, but all the bluster had gone out of his voice.
“When will she be home?” Halloran asked.
“She’s out marketing,” Johnson said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“What is it, Hank?” a woman’s voice behind him said.
He turned.
She was standing just outside the picket fence, a tall slender blonde wearing sandals, white slacks, and a tomato-red tube top, clutching a brown paper bag in each arm, holding them close to her breasts. Even from this distance, he could see the startlingly blue eyes, and for a moment he thought he was looking at Josie, thought he was looking at his dead wife, and told himself that this beautiful woman was his daughter, his—
“Moira?” he said.
She must have recognized him, she remembered him, Jesus, she remembered him! She kept staring at him over the low picket fence, and then she said, “What do you want here?”
“I came to see you.”