Darkness, Take My Hand

by Dennis Lehane

  The first thing he did after shaking Freddy’s hand was sit down beside me and put his cigarette out in my coffee cup. Then he ran a hand through his coarse, thick hair and stared at me.

  Freddy said, “Jack, Kevin, you know Mr. Kenzie and Ms. Gennaro, don’t you?”

  “Old friends, sure,” Jack said as he took the seat beside Angie. “Neighborhood kids like Kevin.” Rouse shrugged off an old blue Members’ Only jacket and hung it behind him on his chair. “Ain’t that the God’s truth, Kev?”

  Kevin was too busy staring at me to comment.

  Far Freddy said, “I like everything to be above board. Rogowski says you two are okay, and maybe you got a problem I can help you with—so be it. But you two come from Jack’s neighborhood, so I ask Jack if he’d like to sit in. You see what I’m saying?”

  We nodded.

  Kevin lit another cigarette, blew the smoke into my hair.

  Freddy turned his palms up on the table. “We’re all agreed, then. So, tell me what you need, Mr. Kenzie.”

  “We’ve been hired by a client,” I said, “who—”

  “How’s your coffee, Jack?” Freddy said. “Enough cream?”

  “It’s fine, Mr. Constantine. Very good.”

  “Who,” I repeated, “is under the impression she annoyed one of Jack’s men.”

  “Men?” Freddy said and raised his eyebrows, looked at Jack, then back at me. “We’re small businessmen, Mr. Kenzie. We have employees, but their loyalties stop with their paychecks.” He looked at Jack again. “Men?” he said and they both chuckled.

  Angie sighed.

  Kevin blew some more smoke into my hair.

  I was tired, and the last vestiges of Bubba’s vodka were chewing at the base of my brain, so I really wasn’t in the mood to play cute with a bunch of cut-rate psychopaths who’d seen The Godfather too many times and thought they were respectable. But I reminded myself that Freddy, at least, was a very powerful psychopath who could be dining on my spleen tomorrow night if he wanted to.

  “Mr. Constantine, one of Mr. Rouse’s…associates, then, has expressed anger at our client, made certain threats—”

  “Threats?” Freddy said. “Threats?”

  “Threats?” Jack said, smiled at Freddy.

  “Threats,” Angie said. “Seems our client had the misfortune of speaking with your associate’s girlfriend, who claimed to know of her boyfriend’s criminal activities, including the—how can I put it?” She met Freddy’s eyes. “The waste management of some formerly animate tissue?”

  It took him a minute to get it, but then his small eyes narrowed and he threw back his massive head and laughed, booming it up into the ceiling, sending it halfway down Prince Street. Jack looked confused. Kevin looked pissed off, but that’s the only way Kevin’s ever looked.

  “Pine,” Freddy said. “You hear that?”

  Pine made no indication he’d heard anything. He made no indication he was breathing. He sat there, immobile, simultaneously looking and not looking in our direction.

  “’Waste management of formerly animate tissue,’” Freddy repeated, gasping. He looked at Jack, realized he hadn’t gotten the joke yet. “Fuck, Jack, go out and pick up a brain, huh?”

  Jack blinked and Kevin leaned forward on the table, and Pine’s head turned slightly to look at him, and Freddy acted like he hadn’t noticed any of it.

  He wiped the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin, shook his head slowly at Angie. “Wait’ll I tell the guys at the club that one. I swear. You might have taken your father’s name, Angela, but you’re a Patriso. No question.”

  Jack said, “Patriso?”

  “Yeah,” Freddy said. “This is Mr. Patriso’s granddaughter. You didn’t know?”

  Jack hadn’t known. It seemed to annoy him. He said, “Give me a cigarette, Kev.”

  Kevin leaned across the table, lit the cigarette for him, his elbow about a quarter inch from my eye.

  “Mr. Constantine,” Angie said, “our client doesn’t wish to make the list of what your associate considers disposable.”

  Freddy held up a meaty hand. “We’re talking about what here exactly?”

  “Our client believes she may have angered Mr. Hurlihy.”

  “What?” Jack said.

  “Explain,” Freddy said. “Quickly.”

  Without using Diandra’s name, we did.

  “So, what,” Freddy said, “some cooze Kevin’s bumping tells this psychiatrist some bullshit about—I got this?—a body or something, and Kevin gets a little hot and calls her and makes some noise.” He shook his head. “Kevin, you want to tell me about this?”

  Kevin looked at Jack.

  “Kevin,” Freddy said.

  Kevin’s head turned.

  “You got a girlfriend?”

  Kevin’s voice sounded like ground glass running through a car engine. “No, Mr. Constantine.”

  Freddy looked at Jack and they both laughed.

  Kevin looked like he’d been caught buying pornography by a nun.

  Freddy turned toward us. “You kidding me with this?” He laughed harder. “With all due respect to Kevin, he ain’t exactly a ladies’ man, if you understand me.”

  Angie said, “Mr. Constantine, please see our position—this isn’t something we made up.”

  He leaned in, patted her hand. “Angela, I’m not saying you did. But you’ve been duped. Some broad claims she was threatened by Kevin because of his girlfriend? Come now.”

  “This,” Jack said, “is what I left a card game for? This shit?” He snorted and started to stand up.

  “Sit down, Jack,” Freddy said.

  Jack froze half in, half out of his chair.

  Freddy looked at Kevin. “Sit, Jack.”

  Jack sat.

  Freddy smiled at us. “Have we cleared up your problem?”

  I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket for the photo of Jason Warren, and Kevin’s hand dove into his jacket and Jack leaned back in his chair and Pine shifted slightly in his seat. Freddy’s eyes never left my hand. Very slowly, I withdrew the photo and placed it on the table.

  “Our client received this in the mail the other day.”

  One of the mustaches above Freddy’s eyes arched. “So?”

  “So,” Angie said, “we’d thought it might be a message from Kevin letting our client know that he knew her weaknesses. Now, we assume it isn’t, but we’re confused.”

  Jack nodded at Kevin and Kevin’s hand came out of his jacket.

  If Freddy noticed, he gave no indication. He looked down at the photo of Jason Warren and sipped his coffee. “This kid, he your client’s son?”

  “He’s not mine,” I said.

  Freddy raised his huge head slowly, looked at me. “Someone know you, asshole?” Those once warm eyes of his seemed about as comforting as ice picks. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that. Understood?”

  My mouth suddenly felt like I’d swallowed a wool sweater.

  Kevin chuckled softly under his breath.

  Freddy reached into the folds of his jacket, his eyes never leaving my face as he produced a leather-bound notepad. He opened it, leafed through a few pages, found the one he was looking for.

  “Patrick Kenzie,” he read. “Age, thirty-three. Mother and father deceased. One sibling, Erin Margolis, aged thirty-six, lives in Seattle, Washington. Last year you grossed forty-eight thousand dollars as part of your partnership with Miss Gennaro here. Divorced seven years. Ex-wife currently resides in parts unknown.” He smiled at me. “But we’re working on it, believe me.” He turned a page, pursed his fat lips. “Last year, you shot a pimp in cold blood under an expressway overpass.” He winked, reached out and patted my hand. “Yes, Kenzie, we know about that. You kill someone again, here’s simple advice: Don’t leave a witness.” He looked back at the notebook. “Where were we? Oh, right. Favorite color is blue. Favorite beer is St. Pauli Girl, favorite food is Mexican.” He turned another page, glanced up at us. “How’m I doing so far?”<
br />
  “Boy,” Angie said, “are we impressed.”

  He turned toward her. “Angela Gennaro. Currently estranged from husband, Phillip Dimassi. Father deceased. Mother, Antonia, lives with second husband in Flagstaff, Arizona. Also involved in killing of pimp last year. Currently residing on Howes Street in a first-floor apartment with a weak deadbolt on the back door.” He closed the notebook, looked at us benignly. “Me and my friends can come up with information like this, why the fuck would we need to mail someone a photograph?”

  My right hand was pressed against my thigh, the fingers digging into the flesh, telling me to stay calm. I cleared my throat. “Seems unlikely.”

  “Fucking right, it is,” Jack Rouse said.

  “We don’t send photographs, Mr. Kenzie,” Freddy said. “We send our messages a bit more directly.”

  Jack and Freddy stared at us with predatory humor in their eyes, and Kevin Hurlihy had a shit-eating grin on his face the size of a canyon.

  Angie said, “I have a weak deadbolt on my back door?”

  Freddy shrugged. “So I hear.”

  Jack Rouse’s fingers rose to the tweed scally cap on his head and he tipped it in her direction.

  She smiled, looked at me, then at Freddy. You’d have to have known her for a while to realize exactly how irate she was. She’s one of those people whose anger you can gauge by her reduction in movement. By the statue’s position she’d taken at the table, I was pretty sure she’d cruised past the extremely pissed-off point about five minutes ago.

  “Freddy,” she said and he blinked. “You answer to the Imbruglia Family in New York. Correct?”

  Freddy stared at her.

  Pine uncrossed his legs.

  “And the Imbruglia Family,” she said, leaning into the table slightly, “they answer to the Moliach Family, who in turn are still considered glorified caporegimes to the Patriso Family. Correct?”

  Freddy’s eyes were still and flat, and Jack’s left hand was frozen halfway between the edge of the table and his coffee cup, and beside me I could hear Kevin taking long deep breaths through his nose.

  “And you—do I have this right?—sent men to find security weaknesses in the apartment of Mr. Patriso’s only granddaughter? Freddy,” she said and reached across the table and touched his hand, “do you think Mr. Patriso would consider these actions respectful or disrespectful?”

  Freddy said, “Angela—”

  She patted his hand and stood. “Thanks for your time.”

  I stood. “Nice seeing you guys.”

  Kevin’s chair made a loud scraping noise on the tile as he stepped in my path, looked at me with those depth-charge eyes of his.

  Freddy said, “Sit the fuck down.”

  “You heard him, Kev,” I said. “Sit the fuck down.”

  Kevin smiled, ran his palm across his mouth.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pine cross his legs at the ankles again.

  “Kevin,” Jack Rouse said.

  In Kevin’s face I could see years of howling class rage and the bright sheen of true psychosis. I could see the little, pissed-off kid whose brain had been stunted and blighted sometime during the first or second grade and had never grown beyond that point. I could see murder.

  “Angela,” Freddy said, “Mr. Kenzie. Please sit down.”

  “Kevin,” Jack Rouse said again.

  Kevin placed the hand that had wiped the smile off his face on my shoulder. Whatever passed between us in the second or two it lay there wasn’t pleasant or comfortable or clean. Then he nodded once, as if answering a question I’d asked, and stepped back by his chair.

  “Angela,” Freddy said, “could we—?”

  “Have a nice day, Freddy.” She came around behind me and we walked out onto Prince Street.

  We reached the car on Commercial, a block from Diandra Warren’s apartment, and Angie said, “I got some things to do, so I’m going to cab it home from here.”

  “You sure?”

  She looked at me like a woman who’d just backed down a room full of Mafioso and wasn’t in the mood to take any shit. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Talk to Diandra, I guess. See if I can find out any more about this Moira Kenzie.”

  “You need me?”

  “Nope.”

  She looked back up Prince Street. “I believe him.”

  “Kevin?”

  She nodded.

  “Me too,” I said. “He has no reason to lie, really.”

  She turned her head, looked over at Lewis Wharf, at the single yellow light glowing in Diandra Warren’s apartment. “So where’s that leave her? If Kevin didn’t send that photograph, who did?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Some detectives,” she said.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said. “It’s what we’re good at.” I looked up Prince and saw two men walking down toward us. One was short and thin and hard and wore a scally cap. The other was tall and thin and probably giggled when he killed people. They reached the end of the street and stopped at a gold Diamante directly across from us. As Kevin opened the passenger door for Jack, he stared at us.

  “That guy,” a voice said, “doesn’t like you two much.”

  I turned my head, saw Pine sitting on the hood of my car. he flicked his wrist and my wallet hit me in the chest.

  “No,” I said.

  Kevin came around the driver’s side of the car, still looking at us, then climbed in and they pulled out onto Commercial, drove up around Waterfront Park, and disappeared at the curve of Atlantic Ave.

  “Miss Gennaro,” Pine said, leaning forward and handing her her wallet.

  Angie took it.

  “That was a very nice performance in there. Bravo.”

  “Thank you,” Angie said.

  “I wouldn’t try it twice, though.”

  “No?”

  “That would be stupid.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “That guy,” Pine said, looking off to where the Diamante had disappeared and then back at me, “is going to cause you some grief.”

  “Not much I can do about it,” I said.

  He came off the car hood fluidly, as if he were incapable of an awkward gesture or the embarrassment of a stumble.

  “It was me,” he said, “and he looked at me like that, he wouldn’t have made his car alive.” He shrugged. “That’s me, though.”

  Angie said, “We’re used to Kevin. We’ve known him since kindergarten.”

  Pine nodded. “Probably should have killed him back then.” He passed between us and I felt ice melting in the center of my chest. “Good night.” He crossed Commercial and went up Prince, and a crisp breeze swept the street.

  Angie shivered in her coat. “I don’t like this case, Patrick.”

  “Me either,” I said. “Don’t like it at all.”

  5

  Except for a single white track light in the kitchen where we sat, Diandra Warren’s loft was dark, the furniture rising out of the empty spaces in hulking shadows. Lights from neighboring buildings glazed her windows but barely penetrated the interior, and across the harbor Charlestown’s lights checkered the black sky in hard squares of yellow and white.

  It was a relatively warm night, but it seemed cold from Diandra’s loft.

  Diandra placed a second bottle of Brooklyn Lager on the butcher-block table in front of me, then sat down and idly fingered her wine glass.

  “You’re saying you believe these Mafioso?” Eric said.

  I nodded. I’d just spent fifteen minutes telling them about my meeting at Fat Freddy’s place, omitting only Angie’s relationship with Vincent Patriso.

  I said, “They don’t gain much by lying.”

  “They’re criminals.” Eric’s eyes widened at me. “Lying is second nature to them.”

  I sipped my beer. “This is true. But criminals usually lie out of fear or to maintain an edge.”

  “Okay…”

  “And these guys, believe m
e, have no reason to fear me. I’m nothing to them. If they were threatening you, Doctor Warren, and I came around on your behalf, their response would have been, ‘Fine, we’re threatening her. Now mind your own business or we’ll kill you. End of discussion.’”

  “But they didn’t say that.” She nodded to herself.

  “No. Add to this that Kevin just isn’t the type to have a steady girlfriend, and it seems unlikelier by the second.”

  “But—” Eric started.

  I held up a hand, looked at Diandra. “I should have asked this at our first meeting, but it never occurred to me that this could be a hoax. This guy who called claiming to be Kevin—was there anything odd about his voice?”

  “Odd? How?”

  I shook my head. “Think.”

  “It was a deep voice, husky, I guess.”

  “That’s it?”

  She took a sip of wine, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then it wasn’t Kevin.”

  “How do you—?”

  “Kevin’s voice is ruined, Doctor Warren. Has been since he was a kid. It sounds like it’s perpetually cracking, like the voice of a teenager going through puberty.”

  “That wasn’t the voice I heard on the phone.”

  “No.”

  Eric rubbed his face. “So, if Kevin didn’t make the call, who did?”

  “And why?” Diandra said.

  I looked at both of them and held out my hands. “Frankly, I have no idea. Either of you have any enemies?”

  Diandra shook her head.

  Eric said, “How do you define enemies?”

  “Enemies,” I said. “As in people who call up to threaten you at four A.M., or send you pictures of your child without a note of explanation or generally wish you dead. Enemies.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

  “You’re sure?”

  He grimaced. “I have professional competitors, I guess, and detractors, people who disagree with me—”

  “In what sense?”

  He smiled, somewhat ruefully. “Patrick, you took my courses. You know that I don’t agree with a lot of the experts in the field and that people disagree with my disagreements. But I doubt such people wish me physical harm. Besides, wouldn’t my enemies come after me, not Diandra and her son?”