He went behind the bar. He pulled the bag with the ten thousand dollars from his coat and placed it on the shelf beside the same 9mm semiautomatic Cousin Marv had wisely opted not to use during the robbery. He pushed the money and the handgun back into the shadows of the shelf using a shrink-wrapped deck of coasters. He added another deck in front of the first one.
He watched Rocco run around and sniff everywhere—time of his life—and without Marv in here like he should be, on this of all days, Bob saw every inch of the world as quicksand. There was no firm purchase. There was no safe place on which to place his feet.
How had it come to this?
You let the world in, Bobby, a voice that sounded an awful lot like his mother’s said. You let this sin-dripping world in. And the only thing under its cloak is darkness.
But, Mother?
Yes, Bobby.
It was time. I can’t just live for the other world. I need to live in this one now.
So say the fallen. So they’ve said since time began.
THEY BROUGHT AN EMACIATED Tim Brennan into the visiting room at Concord Prison and sat him across from Torres.
Torres said, “Mr. Brennan, thanks for meeting me.”
Tim Brennan said, “Game’ll be starting soon. I don’t want to lose my seat.”
Torres said, “No worries. I’ll be in and out of here in no time. What can you tell me about Richie Whelan? Anything?”
Brennan launched into a sudden and violent coughing fit. It sounded like he was drowning in phlegm and razors. When he finally got a handle on it, he spent another minute clutching his chest and wheezing. When he looked across the table at Torres again, he did so with the eyes of a man who’d already glimpsed the other side.
Tim Brennan said, “I tell my kids I got a stomach virus. Me and the wife don’t know how to tell ’em I got AIDS in here. So we go with a story until they’re ready for the truth. Which do you want?”
“Excuse me?” Torres said.
“You want the story about the night Richie Whelan died? Or you want the truth?”
Torres’s scalp itched the way it did whenever a case was about to break wide open, but he kept his face a blank, his eyes pleasant and accepting. “Whichever one you’re giving today, Tim.”
ERIC DEEDS LET HIMSELF into Nadia’s house with a credit card and the kind of tiny screwdriver usually used on eyeglass arms. It took fourteen tries, but there was no one out on the street so no one saw him up on the porch in the first place. Everyone had done their shopping—got their beer and chips, their artichoke dip and onion dip and salsa, their chicken wings and spare ribs, their popcorn—and now they were hunkered down, waiting for kickoff, which was still over three hours away but, hey, who gave a shit about time when you’d started drinking at noon?
Once he was inside, he paused and listened to the house as he pocketed the screwdriver and the credit card, which had gotten pretty banged up in the process. But, fuck it, they’d canceled it on Eric months ago anyway.
Eric walked down the hall and pushed open the doors on the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, and the kitchen.
Then he went upstairs to Nadia’s bedroom.
He went right to the closet. He looked through her clothes. He sniffed a few. And they smelled like her—a faint mix of orange, cherry, and chocolate. That’s what Nadia smelled like.
Eric sat on the bed.
Eric stood in front of her mirror, finger-combed his hair.
Eric pulled back the covers on her bed. He removed his shoes. He curled on the bed in a fetal position, pulled the covers over himself. He closed his eyes. He smiled. He felt the smile find his blood and ride it through his entire body. He felt safe. Like he’d crawled back into the womb. Like he could breathe water again.
AFTER HIS ASSHOLE FUCKING cousin left, Marv got to work at the kitchen table. He lay several green plastic trash bags on it and carefully taped them together with electrical tape. He got a beer from the fridge and drained half of it, staring at the bags on the table. As if there was any turning back.
There was no turning back. There never had been.
Sucked in some ways because Marv realized, standing in his shitty kitchen, how much he’d miss it. Miss his sister, miss this house, even miss the bar and his cousin Bob.
But there was no fixing it. Life was regret, after all. And some regrets—those you indulged on a beach in Thailand, for example, over those you indulged in a New England graveyard—were more easily swallowed than others.
To Thailand. He raised his beer to the empty kitchen and then he drained it.
ERIC SAT ON THE sofa in Nadia’s living room. He drank a Coke he’d found in her fridge—well, their fridge, it would be their fridge soon enough—and stared at the faded wallpaper that had probably been here since before Nadia was born. That would be the first thing that had to go, that old 1970s wallpaper. Wasn’t the ’70s no more, wasn’t even the twentieth century. It was a new day.
When he finished the Coke, he took it into the kitchen and made a sandwich from some deli meat he found in the fridge.
He heard a noise and looked up at the doorway and there she stood. Nadia. Looking at him. Curious, of course, but not afraid. A kindness in her eyes. A warm grace.
Eric said, “Oh, hey. How you doing? Been a while. Come on in, take a seat.”
She stayed where she was.
Eric said, “Yeah, no, sit. Sit. I want to tell you some things. I got some plans. Yeah. Plans. Right? Whole new life waiting out there for the, for the, for the bold.”
Eric shook his head. He didn’t like that delivery. He lowered his head, looked up at the doorway again. It was empty. He stared at it until she materialized, and she was no longer wearing jeans and a faded plaid work shirt. She was wearing a dark dress with very small polka dots, and her skin . . . her skin shined.
“Oh, hey,” Eric said happily. “How’s it going, girl? Come on in. Take a—”
He stopped at the sound of a key turning the lock on the front door. The door opened. Closed. He heard a handbag being hung on a hook. Keys dropped on a table. The thud of boots being kicked off.
He adjusted himself in the chair to look comfortable, casual. He lightly slapped the bread crumbs off his hands and touched his hair to make sure it was in place.
Nadia entered. The real Nadia. Hoodie and T-shirt over camo cargo pants. Eric would have preferred a slightly less dykey getup but he’d talk it out with her.
She saw him and opened her mouth.
“Don’t scream,” he said.
THINGS BEGAN TO REALLY pick up about four hours before the game. Which was good timing because that’s when the BarTemps crew showed up. They were already getting to it, putting on their aprons, stacking glasses, when Bob met with their supervisor, a red-haired guy with one of those moon faces that never aged. He said to Bob, “They’re contracted till midnight. Anything later’n that, we gotta charge. I gave you two barbacks. They do all the lifting, trash removal, all the ice runs. You ask one of the ’tenders to do it? They’ll start quoting you union bylaws like it’s the Book of Ezekiel.”
He handed Bob the clipboard and Bob signed off.
By the time he walked back into the bar, the first bagman was coming through the door. He dropped a newspaper on the bar, a manila envelope peeking out between the folds, and Bob swiped it off the bar, dropped the envelope down the chute. When he turned around the bagman was gone. All work, no play. That kind of night.
COUSIN MARV WALKED OUT of his house to his car. He popped the trunk. He took the taped-together trash bags and lay them across the inside of the empty trunk. He used more electrical tape to seal all the edges against the sides.
He walked back into the house, grabbed the quilt from the mudroom. He lay the quilt over the plastic. He studied his handiwork for a few seconds. Then he shut the trunk, put the suitcase behind the driver’s seat, and closed the door.
He went back inside to print out the plane tickets.
THIS TIME WHEN TORRES pu
lled up beside Romsey’s unmarked at Pen’ Park, she was alone. It got him wondering if they could go all old school in the backseat, pretend they were at the drive-in that used to be here, pretend they were stupid kids and a whole lifetime—two of them—lay waiting to unfurl before them, as yet smooth and untouched by the pockmarks of poor decisions and the divots of habitual failures, large and small.
He and Romsey had slipped up again last week. Alcohol had, of course, been a factor. After, she’d said, “Is this all I am?”
“To me? No, chica, you’re—”
“To me,” she said. “Is this all I am to me?”
He didn’t know what the fuck that meant but he knew it wasn’t good, so he’d laid low until she called him this morning, told him to get his ass over to Pen’ Park.
He’d composed a speech on the way over, in case she got that look in her eyes after they did it, that hopeless, self-hating look, the one looking down the rabbit hole in the center of herself.
“Baby,” he’d say, “we’re each other’s true selves. That’s why we can’t quit each other. We look at each other and we don’t judge. We don’t condemn. We just accept.”
It had sounded better when he came up with it the other night at the bar, sitting alone, doodling. But he knew, if he was looking in her eyes, feeding off them, he’d believe it in that moment, believe every word. And he’d sell it.
When he opened the door and slid into the passenger side, he noticed she was nicely dressed up—dark green silk dress, black pumps, black coat looked to be cashmere.
Torres said, “You’re looking fucking yummy. Shit.”
Romsey rolled her eyes. She reached down between the seats, came back with a file, and tossed it on his lap. “Eric Deeds’s psych file. You’ve got three minutes to read it and better not be no grease on those fingers.”
Torres held up his hands, wiggled the fingers. Romsey pulled a compact out of her purse, started applying blush to her face, eyes on the visor mirror.
“Better get reading,” she said.
Torres opened the file and noticed the name stamped up top—DEEDS, ERIC—and started skimming through it.
Romsey pulled out some lipstick, went to apply it.
Torres, eyes on the file, said to her, “Don’t. Chica, you got lips redder than a Jamaican sunset and thicker than a Burmese python. Don’t fuck with flawless.”
She looked at him. She seemed touched. Then she applied the lipstick anyway. Torres sighed.
Torres said, “Like using house paint on a Ferrari. Who you going out with anyway?”
“A guy.”
He turned a page. “A guy. What guy?”
“Special guy,” she said and something in her tone made him look up. He noticed for the first time that in addition to looking hot, she looked healthy. Like she was lit from within. It was a light that filled the car so completely he couldn’t understand how he’d missed it.
“Where’d you meet this special guy?”
She pointed at the file. “Get reading. Clock’s ticking.”
He did.
“I’m serious,” he said. “This special guy. He . . .”
His voice trailed off. He scanned back up the page to the list of Deeds’s incarcerations and institutionalizations. He thought maybe he’d read a date wrong. He flipped a page, then another.
He said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Like you fucking weren’t already.” She indicated the file. “It help?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It sure answered one hell of a question.”
“That’s good, right?”
He shrugged. “Answered one question, yeah, but opened a big can of other ones.” Torres closed the file, his blood the cold of the Atlantic. “I need a drink. Buy you one?”
Romsey gave him a look of disbelief. She gestured at her clothes, her hair, her makeup. “Other plans, Evandro.”
Torres said, “Rain check then.”
And Detective Lisa Romsey gave him a slow, sad shake of her head. “This special guy? I’ve known him most of my life,” she said. “He’s been my friend, you know? A long time. He moved away for years but we stayed in touch. His marriage didn’t work out either, he moved back. One day, a couple weeks back? I’m having coffee with him and I realize that when he looks at me, he sees me.”
“I see you.”
She shook her head. “You only see the part of me that looks like you. Which ain’t the best part, Evandro. Sorry. But my friend—my friend? He looks at me and sees the best me.” She smacked her lips. “And just like that?” She shrugged. “Love.”
He looked at her for a bit. There it was, without warning—the end of them. Whatever “them” was. It was no longer. He handed her the file.
He got out of her unmarked and she drove off before he even reached his car.
CHAPTER 15
Closing Time
THE BAGMEN CAME AND went. In and out, all night long. Bob dropped so much money through the slot, he knew he’d hear the sound of it in his dreams for days.
Three deep at the bar through the whole game; he looked through a sudden gap in the crowd just after halftime and saw Eric Deeds sitting at the wobbly table under the Narragansett mirror. He had one arm stretched across the table and Bob followed it, saw that it connected with someone’s arm. Bob had to move down the bar to get a better angle around a clump of drunks, and he immediately wished he hadn’t. Wished he’d never come to work. Wished he’d never gotten up any day since Christmas. Wished he could turn back the clock on his whole life, just reset it to the day before he walked down that block and found Rocco outside her house.
Nadia’s house.
It was Nadia’s arm Deeds touched, Nadia’s face staring back at Eric, unreadable.
Bob, filling a glass with ice, felt like he was shoveling the cubes into his own chest, pouring them into his stomach and against the base of his spine. What did he know about Nadia, after all? He knew that he’d found a near-dead dog in the trash outside her house. He knew that she had a history—of some kind—with Eric Deeds and that Eric Deeds only came into his life after Bob had met her. He knew that her middle name, thus far, could be Lies of Omission. Maybe that scar on her throat hadn’t come from her own hand, maybe it had come from the last guy she’d scammed.
When he was twenty-eight, Bob had come into his mother’s bedroom to wake her for Sunday mass. He’d given her a shake and she hadn’t batted at his hand as she normally did. So he rolled her toward him and her face was scrunched tight, her eyes too, and her skin was curbstone gray. Sometime in the night, after The Commish and the Eleven O’Clock News, she’d gone to bed and woke to God’s fist clenched around her heart. Probably hadn’t been enough air left in her lungs to cry out. Alone in the dark, clutching the sheets, the fist clenching, her face clenching, her eyes scrunching, the terrible knowledge dawning that, even for you and right now, it all ends.
Standing over her that morning, imagining the last tick of her heart, the last lonely wish her brain had been able to form, Bob felt a loss unlike any he expected to know again.
Until tonight. Until now. Until he knew what that look on Nadia’s face meant.
MIDWAY THROUGH THE THIRD quarter, Bob came down the bar to a group of guys. One of them had his back to him and there was something really familiar about the back of his head, Bob about to put his finger on it when Rardy turned and gave him a big smile.
Rardy said, “How you doing there, Bobby boy?”
“We, we,” Bob said, “we were worried about you.”
Rardy gave that comical scowl. “You, you, you were? We’ll have seven beers and seven shots of Cuervo by the way.”
Bob said, “We thought you were dead.”
Rardy said, “Why would I be dead? I just didn’t feel like working in a place almost got me killed. Tell Marv he’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
Bob saw Eric Deeds working his way through the crowd toward the other side of the bar, and it put something in the center of Bob, somet
hing heartless. He said to Rardy, “Maybe I’ll tell Chovka about your complaints. Pass that up the ladder. Whatta ya think? Good idea?”
Rardy laughed bitterly at that, trying for contempt but not getting anywhere close. He shook his head several times, like Bob just didn’t get something, didn’t get anything.
“Give us the beers and the shots.”
Bob leaned into the bar, got real close, close enough to smell the tequila on Rardy’s breath. “You want a drink? Flag down a bartender who doesn’t know you’re a bag of shit.”
Rardy blinked but Bob was already walking away.
He crossed behind a couple of the BarTemps and stood at the other corner and watched Eric Deeds come.
When he reached him, Eric said, “Stoli rocks, my man. House Chard’ for the lady.”
Bob made the drink. “Didn’t see you this morning.”
“No? Well . . .”
“So, you don’t want the money.”
Eric said, “You bring it with you?”
“Bring what?”
“You did. You’re that type.”
Bob said, “What type?”
“Type would bring the money with him.”
Bob delivered the Stoli, poured a glass of Chardonnay. “Why’s she here?”
“She’s my girl. Always-n-f’eva and shit.”
Bob slid the wineglass in front of Eric. He leaned into the bar. Eric leaned in to meet him.
Bob said, “You give me that piece of paper and you leave with the money.”
“What piece of paper?”
“The microchip piece. You sign over that and the license to me.”
“Why would I do that?”
Bob said, “Because I’m paying you. Isn’t that the deal?”
Eric said, “That’s a deal.”
Eric’s cell phone rang. He looked at it, held up a finger to Bob. He took the drinks and walked back into the crowd.
ADD PEYTON MANNING TO the list of people who had fucked Cousin Marv up the ass in his life. Motherfucker went out there with his billion-dollar arm and his billion-dollar contract and wet-shit all over the field against the Seahawks defense. There were two kinds of Bronco-busting going on right now—what Seattle was doing to Denver and what Denver was doing to every bettor in the country who’d put their faith in them. Marv, one of those bettors—because what was the point of continuing to abstain from bad habits if you were insane enough to rip off the Chechen Mafia for a few million dollars?—was gonna lose fifty grand on this fucking game. Not that he was gonna stick around to pay the debt. And if that pissed off Leo Coogan and his Upham Corner boys, well, they could just get in line. Take a fucking number.
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