Деннис Лихэйн
Mystic River / Таинственная река

© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2022

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2022

Part I

1

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at a candy plant and brought the smell of warm chocolate back home with them. It stayed on their clothes, their car seats, the beds they slept in. By the age of eleven, Sean and Jimmy had already developed a hatred of sweets. For the rest of their lives they drank only black coffee and never ate dessert.

On Saturdays, Jimmy's father often visited the Devines to have a beer with Sean's father. He brought Jimmy with him so that he and Sean could play in the backyard. Sometimes there was also Dave Boyle, a kid with thin arms and weak eyes, who was always telling jokes he'd learned from his uncles.

Sean's father, a foreman, had the better job. He was tall and fair, with an easy smile that calmed his mother's anger. Jimmy's father loaded the trucks. He was small, his hair was dark, and he moved too quickly. Dave Boyle didn't have a father, just a lot of uncles, and the only reason he was usually there on those Saturdays was because he was clinging to Jimmy like lint. When he saw Jimmy leaving his house with his father, he showed up beside their car, asking “What's up, Jimmy?” with a sad hopefulness.

They all lived in East Buckingham, west of downtown, in a neighborhood of small corner stores and small playgrounds. The bars had Irish names. Women wore scarves around their heads and carried cigarettes in their purses. Until a couple of years ago, older boys had been taken from the streets and sent to war. They came back a year or so later, or they didn't come back at all. Days, the mothers looked for coupons in the newspapers. Nights, the fathers went to the bars. You knew everyone; nobody except those older boys ever left the place.

Jimmy and Dave came from the Flats, by the Penitentiary Channel, south of Buckingham Avenue. It was not so far from Sean's street, but the Devines lived in the Point, north of the Avenue, and the Point and the Flats didn't mix much.

People in the Point owned their places. People in the Flats rented. Point families went to church and stayed together. The Flats people were living like animals sometimes, ten in one apartment, trash in their streets, sending their kids to public schools, divorcing.

So while Sean went to his school in black pants, a black tie, and a blue shirt, Jimmy and Dave went to their school wearing street clothes, which was cool, but they usually wore the same ones three out of five days, which wasn't cool at all. They had greasy hair, greasy skin, greasy clothes.

So they probably would've never been friends if it wasn't for their fathers[1]. During the week, they never hung out, but they had those Saturdays, and there was something to those days, whether they hung out in the backyard, or wandered through the dumps, or rode the subway downtown, that felt exciting to Sean. Anything could happen, especially when you were with Jimmy.

Once they were at South Station, kicking an orange ball on the platform, and Jimmy missed, and the ball fell down onto the tracks. Quickly, Jimmy jumped off the platform, down there where the rats and the third rail were.

People on the platform went crazy, screaming at Jimmy. They waved their arms, looking for the subway police. Sean heard a rumble that could have been a train in the tunnel or just trucks in the street above, and the people on the platform heard it, too.

But Jimmy ignored the people. He was looking for the ball in the darkness under the platform, and he found it. As he was walking back, along the center of the tracks toward the stairs at the far end of the platform where the tunnel opened, a heavier rumble shook the station, and people almost jumped. Jimmy was taking his time now[2], walking slowly, then he looked back over his shoulder at Sean and Dave, and grinned.

“He's smiling. He's just nuts. You know?” Dave whispered.

When Jimmy reached the first step of the stairs, several hands grabbed him and pulled him up. People got Jimmy onto the platform and held him, looking around for someone to tell them what to do next. The train went through the tunnel, and someone screamed, but then someone laughed because the train went on the other side of the station, moving north, and Jimmy looked up into the faces of the people holding him as if to say, See?

* * *

That night Sean's father sat him down in the basement tool room. Sean's father, who often worked as a handyman around the neighborhood, came down there to build his birdhouses that were piled in a corner and the window boxes for his wife's flowers. He came down there when he wanted peace and quiet, and sometimes when he was angry, angry at Sean or Sean's mother or his job.

Sean sat quietly on an old red chair until his father said, “Sean, I know you like Jimmy Marcus, but if you two want to play together, from now on[3], you'll have to do it in view of the house. Yours, not his.”

Sean nodded. Arguing with his father was useless when he spoke as quietly and slowly as he was doing it now.

“We understand each other?” His father looked down at Sean.

Sean nodded. “For how long?”

“Oh, for a long time, I'd say. And don't be thinking about going to your mother about it. She never wants you to see Jimmy again after that stunt today.”

“He's not that bad. He's…”

“Didn't say he was bad. He's just wild, and your mother had enough of the wild.”

Sean saw something in his father's face when he said “wild,” and he knew it was the other Billy Devine he was seeing for a moment – the one that had disappeared sometime before Sean was born, and then came back, a careful man with thick fingers who built too many birdhouses.

“Remember what we talked about,” his father said and patted Sean's shoulder.

Sean left the tool room and walked through the cool basement wondering if he enjoyed Jimmy's company for the same reason his father enj oyed hanging out with Mr. Marcus, drinking on Saturdays, laughing too hard and too suddenly, and if that was what his mother was afraid of.

* * *

A few Saturdays later, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle came to the Devines' house without Jimmy's father. They knocked on the back door when Sean was finishing his breakfast, and Sean heard his mother open the door and say, “Morning, Jimmy. Morning, Dave,” in that polite voice she used with people she didn't really want to see.

Jimmy was quiet that day. All that crazy energy was gone, and he seemed smaller and darker. Sean had seen this happen before. Jimmy had always been a little moody. Still, Sean wondered if Jimmy had any control over these moods. When Jimmy was like this, Dave Boyle seemed to think now it was his job to make sure[4] everyone was happy.

As Sean and Dave stood outside, trying to decide what to do, Jimmy walked over to the edge of the sidewalk and sat on the curb. “My dad doesn't work with yours anymore,” he said.

“How come?”[5] Sean sat down by Jimmy. He wanted to do what Jimmy did, even if he didn't know why.

“He was smarter than them. He scared them because he knew so much stuff.” Jimmy shrugged.

“Smart stuff!” Dave Boyle said. “Right, Jimmy?”

“What kind of stuff?” Sean wondered how much anyone could know about candy.

“How to run the place better.” Jimmy didn't sound sure and then shrugged again. “Stuff, anyway. Important stuff.”

“How to run the place. Right, Jimmy?” Dave repeated.

Dave was like a parrot some days. Right, Jimmy? Right, Jimmy?

“Know what would be cool?”[6] Jimmy's idea of cool usually differed from anyone else's.

“What?”

“Driving a car, you know,” Jimmy continued, “just around the block.”

“Just around the block,” Dave said.

“Yeah,” Sean said slowly. He could already feel the big wheel in his hand. “It would be cool.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Jimmy grinned and punched Sean's shoulder. He looked around. “You know anyone on this street who leaves their keys in their car?”

Sean did. But as he thought about the cars that held keys, Sean could feel the weight of the street, its homes, the whole Point and its expectations for him. He was not a kid who stole cars. He was a kid who would go to college someday, make something of himself that was bigger and better than a foreman or a truck loader. That was the plan.

He almost said this to Jimmy, but Jimmy was already walking down the street, looking in car windows, and Dave was running behind him.

“How about this one?” Jimmy asked loudly, stopping and putting his hand on one car.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Sean walked toward him. “Maybe some other time?”

“What do you mean? We'll do it. It'll be fun. So cool. Remember?”

“So cool,” Dave said. “Yeah!”

For a moment, Sean had even forgotten Dave was there. That happened a lot with Dave. Sean didn't know why.

“No. Come on.” Sean shook his head.

Jimmy's smile died. He looked at Sean angrily. “Why won't you just do something for fun. Huh?”

Dave looked at Jimmy, then turned and suddenly hit Sean in the shoulder. “Yeah, how come you don't want to do fun things?”

Sean had no idea how this had happened. Later he couldn't even remember what had made Jimmy mad or why Dave had hit him. Sean just couldn't believe Dave had hit him. Dave? He pushed Dave in the chest, and Dave sat down.

At that moment Jimmy pushed Sean. “What the hell[7] are you doing?”

Now they were in the middle of the street and Jimmy was pushing him, his eyes black and small, and Dave was starting to join in.

Jimmy was about to[8] push him again when he stopped and looked past Sean at something coming up the street.

It was a long dark brown car, like the kind police detectives drove. It stopped by their legs, and the two cops looked through the windshield at them. The driver got out. He looked like a cop – blond short hair, red face, white shirt, black-and-gold tie, his big belly hanging over his belt. The other one looked sick. He was skinny and tired-looking and stayed in his seat, staring into the side-view mirror as the three boys came near the driver's door.

The big man beckoned them with his finger until they stood in front of him. “Let me ask you something, okay?” He bent down. “You guys think it's okay to fight in the middle of the street?”

Sean noticed a gold badge on the big man's belt.

“No, sir.”

“You're punks, huh? That's what you are?” He pointed at the man in the passenger seat. “Me and my partner, we've had enough of you punks scaring people off the street. You know?”

Sean and Jimmy didn't say anything.

“We're sorry,” Dave Boyle said, and looked like he was about to cry.

“You kids from this street?” the big cop asked. His eyes scanned the homes on the left side of the street.

“Yes,” Jimmy said, and looked back at Sean's house.

“Yes, sir,” Sean said.

Dave didn't say anything.

The cop looked down at him. “Huh? You say something, kid?”

“What?” Dave looked at Jimmy.

“Don't look at him. Look at me. You live here, kid?”

“No.”

“No?” The cop bent over Dave. “Where you live, son?”

“In the Flats.”

“Your mother's home?”

“Yes, sir.” A tear fell down Dave's cheek and Sean and Jimmy looked away.

“Well, we're going to have a talk with her, tell her what her punk kid has been doing.”

“I don't… I don't…” Dave whispered.

“Get in.” The cop opened the back door of the car, and Sean thought the car interior smelled of apples. An autumn smell.

Dave looked at Jimmy.

“Get in,” the cop said. “Or you want me to put the cuffs on you?”

Dave climbed into the backseat, crying.

The cop pointed a finger at Jimmy and Sean. “And don't let me catch you on my streets again.”

Jimmy and Sean stepped back as the cop got in his car and drove off. They watched the car turn right at the corner, Dave looking back at them. And then the street was empty again.

Jimmy and Sean stood where the car had been, looking at their feet, up and down the street, anywhere, but not at each other.

Then Jimmy said, “You started it.”

“I didn't start it. He started it.”

“You did. Now he's screwed.[9] You know his mom is nuts!”

Jimmy pushed him, and Sean pushed back. This time they were on the ground, rolling around, punching each other.

“Hey!”

Sean got off Jimmy and they both stood up, expecting to see the two cops again but it was Mr. Devine instead, coming toward them.

“What the hell you two are doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Get out of the middle of the street.” Sean's father frowned as he looked up and down the street. “Weren't there three of you? Where's Dave? Wasn't he with you?”

“We were fighting in the street and the cops came…”

“When was this?”

“Like[10] five minutes ago.”

“Okay. So, the cops came and..?”

“And they took Dave.”

Sean's father looked up and down the street again. “They what? They took him away?”

“Took him home. I lied and said I lived here, but Dave said he lived in the Flats, and they…”

“What are you talking about? Sean, what did the cops look like? Were they wearing uniforms?”

“No. No, they…”

“Then how did you know they were cops?”

“One had a gold badge,” Jimmy said. “On his belt.”

“Okay. But what did it say on it?”

“I don't know.”

“Billy?”

They all turned and looked at Sean's mother, standing on the porch, her face curious.

“Hey, honey, call the police station, all right? See if any detectives picked up a kid for fighting on this street.”

“What kid?”

“Dave Boyle.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Let's just see what the police say. Right?”

Sean's mother went back inside. Sean looked at his father. He didn't seem to know where to put his hands. He put them in his pockets, then he pulled them out.

“It was brown,” Jimmy said. “The car was dark brown.”

“Anything else?”

Sean tried to picture it too, but he couldn't.

“It smelled like apples,” he finally said. “The car smelled like apples.”

* * *

An hour later, in Sean's kitchen, two other cops asked Sean and Jimmy questions, and then a third guy came and drew sketches of the men in the brown car based on what Jimmy and Sean told them. The big blond cop looked meaner on the picture, his face even bigger, but otherwise it was him. The second guy, the one who'd kept his eyes on the side-view mirror, didn't look like anything at all because Sean and Jimmy couldn't remember him well.

Jimmy's father arrived and stood in the corner of the kitchen looking mad. He didn't speak to Sean's father, and no one spoke to him. He seemed smaller to Sean, less real.

After they'd repeated their story four or five times, everyone left – the cops, Jimmy and his father. Sean's mother went into her bedroom and shut the door, and Sean could hear her crying a few minutes later.

He sat outside on the porch and his father told him he hadn't done anything wrong, that he and Jimmy were smart not to have gotten in that car. His father patted his shoulder and said things would be fine. Dave will be home tonight. You'll see.

Sean looked at the rows of cars on the street. He told himself that this – all of this – was part of some plan that made sense. He just couldn't see it yet. He would see it someday, though. He saw the place where he, Jimmy, and Dave Boyle had fought and he waited. He waited for the plan to form and make sense. He waited and watched the street, and waited some more until his father stood up and they went back inside.

* * *

Jimmy walked back to the Flats behind his old man. The old man smoked his cigarettes and talked to himself. When they got home, his father might give him a beating, or might not. After he'd lost his job, he'd told Jimmy never to go to the Devines' house again, and Jimmy thought he'd have to pay for breaking that rule. But maybe not today.

Jimmy walked a few steps behind his father, just in case[11]. He threw the ball up into the air and caught it in the baseball glove he'd stolen from Sean's house while the cops had been saying their good-byes to the Devines. Nobody had even said a word to Jimmy and his father as they'd walked toward the front door. Sean's bedroom door had been open, and Jimmy had seen the glove lying on the floor with the ball inside, and he'd picked it up, and then he and his father were out.

As they were crossing Buckingham Avenue, he'd felt that familiar shame and embarrassment that came whenever he stole something. Then a little later, as they walked into the Flats, he felt proud as he looked at the glove in his hand.

He had no idea why he'd stolen the glove. Maybe it had something to do[12] with Sean hitting Dave Boyle, and not stealing the car, and some other things that had happened over the year they'd been friends. Jimmy hated Sean, and he'd been dumb to think they could've been friends, and he knew he'd keep this glove for the rest of his life, never show it to anyone and never use the goddamn thing.

Jimmy looked at the Flats before him as he and the old man walked past the Penitentiary Channel, and he knew – he knew that they'd never see Dave Boyle again. Where Jimmy lived, things got stolen all the time. That's how he felt about Dave – he was stolen. Maybe Sean was feeling that way about his baseball glove now, knowing that it was never, ever, coming back.

Too bad, because Jimmy had liked Dave, although mostly he couldn't see why. Just something about the kid, maybe the way he'd always been there, even if you didn't notice him.

2

Jimmy was wrong.

Dave Boyle returned home four days after he'd disappeared. He rode back in the front seat of a police car. When the two cops brought him home, to his mother's house, reporters from the papers and TV were already there.

There was a whole crowd there that day – parents, kids, a mailman, two shop owners, and even Miss Powell, Dave and Jimmy's fifth-grade teacher. Jimmy stood with his mother and felt jealous as the cops and Dave were laughing like old friends, and pretty Miss Powell clapped her hands. I almost got in that car, too, Jimmy wanted to tell someone. He wanted to tell Miss Powell more than anyone. She was so beautiful and clean. Jimmy wanted to tell her he'd almost gotten in that car and see if she gave him the look she was giving Dave now. Miss Powell was uncomfortable there, Jimmy could tell. After she'd said a few words to Dave and touched his face and kissed his cheek, other people moved in. Jimmy was watching the crowd surround Dave, and he wished he'd gotten in that car, so he could see all those eyes looking at him like he was something special.

It all turned into a big party, everyone running from camera to camera, hoping they'd get on TV or see themselves in the morning papers – Yeah, I know Dave, he's my best friend, grew up with him, you know, great kid, thank God he's okay. Even later, when the reporters had all gone home, and the sun was starting to set, no one was going inside. Except for Dave. Dave was gone.

Dave's party was in full swing[13], but Dave must have gone back into his house, his mother, too, and when Jimmy looked at their windows, the shades were drawn. Then suddenly, one of the shades rolled up and he saw Dave standing in the window, staring down at him. Jimmy held up his hand, but Dave didn't move, even when he tried a second time. Dave just stared. He stared at Jimmy, and even though Jimmy couldn't see his eyes, he could sense blankness in them. Blankness, and blame.

Jimmy's mother came up to him, and Dave stepped away from the window. She put her hand on Jimmy's shoulder and said, “How you doing, Jimmy? You didn't say anything to Dave.”

He shrugged. “I'll see him tomorrow in school.”

His mother lit a cigarette. “I don't think he'll be going in tomorrow.”

“Well, soon, then. Right?”

Jimmy's mother nodded and blew some smoke out of her mouth. She was looking at him now.

“What?” he asked, and smiled.

She smiled back at him. “Hey, Jim,” she said. “You got a great smile, boy. You're going to be a heartbreaker.”

“Uh, okay,” Jimmy said, and they both laughed. He loved it when she called him “Jim.” It made him feel like they were in on something[14] together.

“I'm really glad you didn't get in that car, baby.” She kissed his forehead, and then she stood up and walked over to some of the other mothers.

Jimmy looked up and saw Dave in the window staring down at him again, a soft yellow light in the room behind him now.

Damaged goods. That's what Jimmy's father had said to his mother last night: “Even if they find him alive, the kid's damaged goods. Never be the same.”

Dave raised a hand. He held it up and didn't move it for a long time, and as Jimmy waved back, he felt sad. Jimmy was just eleven years old, but he didn't feel it anymore. He felt old. Old as his parents, old as this street.

Damaged goods, Jimmy thought. He watched Dave nod at him and then pull down the shade to go back inside his quiet apartment with its brown walls and ticking clocks.

Jimmy was glad, too, that he hadn't gotten in that car.

* * *

For a few days, Dave Boyle became a celebrity, and not just in the neighborhood, but also in the state. The headline the next morning read LITTLE BOY LOST/LITTLE BOY FOUND. The photograph showed Dave, his mother, and some smiling kids from the Flats, everyone looking just happy, except for Dave's mother, who looked like she'd just missed her bus on a cold day.

The same kids who'd been with him on the front page started calling him “freak boy” within a week at school. Dave would look in their faces and see anger he didn't understand. Dave's mother said they probably got it from their parents, and they'll soon get bored and forget all about it and be his friends next year.

Dave would nod and wonder if there was something about him – some mark on his face that he couldn't see – which made everyone want to hurt him. Like those guys in the car. Why had they picked him? How had they known he'd get in that car, and that Jimmy and Sean wouldn't? Looking back, that's how it seemed to Dave. Those men (and he knew their names, or at least the names they'd called each other, but he couldn't make himself use them) had known Sean and Jimmy wouldn't have gotten into that car without a fight. Sean would have run for his house, screaming, probably, and Jimmy – they'd have had to fight with Jimmy to get him inside. The Big Wolfhad even said later: “You saw that kid in the white T-shirt? The way he looked at me, with no real fear? Kid's going to kill someone someday, and not lose a night of sleep over it.”

It helped to give those men silly names: Big Wolf and Greasy Wolf. It helped Dave to see them as creatures, wolves, and Dave himself as a character in a story: the Boy Taken by Wolves. The Boy Who Escaped and found his way through the woods to a gas station. The Boy Who'd Stayed Calm, always looking for a way out.

In school, though, he was just the Boy Who Got Stolen, and everyone wondered what had happened during those four lost days. In the bathroom one morning, a seventhgrader stopped beside Dave and said, “Did you do it?” and all his seventh-grader friends started laughing and making funny noises.

Dave turned to face the older boy, but he suddenly hit him in the face.

“You got something to say, freak? Huh? You want me to hit you again?”

“He's crying,” someone said, and Dave's tears fell harder. It wasn't the pain that bothered him. Pain had never bothered him much, and he'd never cried from it, not even when he'd fallen off his bike. It was the emotions he could feel coming from the boys in the bathroom: hatred, disgust, anger, contempt. All directed at him. He didn't understand why. He'd never bothered anyone his whole life. Yet they hated him. And the hate made him feel dirty and guilty and small, and he cried because he didn't want to feel that way.

They all laughed at his tears, and Dave dropped his head, but the older boy was walking away with his friends, all of them laughing as they left the bathroom.

Dave sat down on the bathroom floor and wished he had the will to kill someone in himself. He'd start with that older boy, he supposed, and move on to Big Wolf and Greasy Wolf, if he ever saw them again. But, truth was, he just didn't think he could. He didn't know why people were mean to other people. He didn't understand. He didn't understand.

Dave found that even the few classmates who'd been his friends after he'd first returned to school started to ignore him. If they ran into each other[15] as they left their houses, Jimmy Marcus would sometimes walk silently together with him to school because it would have been strange not to, and he'd say, “Hey,” when he passed him in the hall on the way to class. Dave could see some mix of pity and embarrassment in Jimmy's face, as if Jimmy wanted to say something but couldn't put it into words. But it felt to Dave as if their friendship had died when Dave got in that car and Jimmy had stayed on the street.

Jimmy, as it happened, wouldn't be in school with Dave much longer, so even those walks together soon ended. At school, Jimmy had always hung out with Val Savage, a small, psycho boy. They finally stole a car – almost a year after their fight on Sean's street – and it got Jimmy and Val expelled from the school. They were allowed to finish sixth grade, since there were only a few days left in the year, and then their families were told they had to look elsewhere for the boys' schooling. They found a place for them in a mostly black school where the two of them, Dave heard, soon became the local terror – two white kids so crazy they didn't know how to be scared.

Dave hardly saw Jimmy after that, maybe once or twice a year. Dave's mother didn't let him leave the house anymore, except to go to school. She was sure those men were still out there, waiting, driving that car that smelled of apples, looking for Dave.

Dave knew they weren't. They were just wolves. But they visited his mind more often now – the Big Wolf and the Greasy Wolf, and what they'd done to him. They came, and Dave closed his eyes, trying not to remember that Big Wolf's name had been Henry and Greasy Wolf's name had been George.

And Dave would tell himself that he was the Boy Who'd Escaped from the Wolves. And sometimes he replayed his escape in his head: the crack by the hinge he'd noticed in the door, the sound of their car driving away, the screw he'd used to open the crack wider and wider until the old hinge fell off. He'd come out of the cellar, this Boy Who Was Smart, and he'd run straight into the woods and followed the late afternoon sun to the gas station a mile away. It was a shock to see it – that neon sign already lit for the night. It made Dave drop to his knees at the edge of the woods. That's how the owner of the station found him: on his knees and staring up at the sign.

* * *

In Sean's dream, he looked into the open door of the car that smelled like apples, and the street held his feet. Dave was already inside the car. All Sean could see in the dream was that open door and the backseat. He couldn't see the guy who'd looked like a cop. He couldn't see his partner who'd sat in the front passenger seat. He couldn't see Jimmy, though Jimmy had been right beside him the whole time. He could just see that seat and Dave and the door and the trash on the floor. That, he realized, had been the alarm – there had been trash on the floor. He hadn't remembered the trash until now. Even when the cops had been in his house and asked him to think – really think – about any detail he might have forgotten to tell them, it hadn't occurred to him that the back of the car had been dirty, because he hadn't remembered it. But in his dream, it had come back to him, and he'd realized, without realizing it, somehow, that something was wrong about the “cop,” his “partner,” and their car. Sean had never seen a cop car in real life, but a part of him knew that it wouldn't be filled with trash. Maybe under all that trash had lain half-eaten apples, and that's why the car smelled as it had.

A year after Dave's abduction Sean's father came into his bedroom to tell him two things. The first was that Sean had been accepted to Latin School, and would begin seventh grade there in September. His father said he and Sean's mother were really proud. Latin was where you went if you wanted to make something out of yourself.

The second thing he said to Sean was: “They caught one of them. One of the guys who took Dave. They caught him. He's dead. Suicide in his cell.”

“Yeah?”

His father looked at him. “Yeah. You can stop having nightmares now.”

But Sean said, “What about the other one?”

“The guy who got caught,” his father said, “told the police the other one was dead, too. Died in a car accident last year.”

Sean hoped he'd been driving the car that had smelled of apples, and that he'd driven it off a cliff, and took that car straight to hell with him.

Part II

3

Brendan Harris loved Katie Marcus like crazy. He loved her waking up, going to bed, loved her all day and every second in between. Brendan Harris would love Katie Marcus fat and ugly. He'd love her toothless. He'd love her bald.

Katie. Brendan Harris loved everyone now because he loved Katie and Katie loved him. Brendan loved traffic and smog. He loved his old man who hadn't sent him a birthday or Christmas card since he'd left Brendan and his mother when Brendan was six. He loved Monday mornings and standing in line. He even loved his job, though he wouldn't be going back ever again.

Brendan was leaving this house tomorrow morning, leaving his mother, walking out that door and down those steps, and into the heart of Buckingham to take his Katie's hand, and then they were leaving it all behind for good[16], hopping on that plane and going to Vegas and getting married – and then, forget about it all, they were married and they were gone and they were never coming back, no way, just him and Katie, and the rest of their lives.

He looked around his bedroom. Clothes packed, toiletries packed. Pictures of him and Katie packed. He looked at what he was leaving behind. Posters on the walls. His CDs. A pair of speakers he bought last summer, working for Bobby O'Donnell, when he'd first come close enough to Katie to start a conversation. Jesus. Just a year ago. Sometimes it felt like a decade, in a good way, and other times it felt like a minute. Katie Marcus. He'd known of her, of course; everyone in the neighborhood knew of Katie. She was so beautiful, but few people really knew her.

But Katie, from that very first day, she was so basic, so normal. She knew his name, and she said, “How come a guy as nice as you, Brendan, is working for Bobby O'Donnell?”

And tomorrow, as soon as she called, they would be gone. Gone together. Gone forever. Brendan lay back on his bed and pictured her face. He knew he'd never sleep.

* * *

After work that night Jimmy Marcus had a beer with his brother-in-law, Kevin Savage, at the pub, the two of them sitting at the window and watching some kids playing outside. Kevin was good company because he didn't talk much and neither did Jimmy.

At thirty-six, Jimmy Marcus had come to love[17] the quiet of his Saturday nights. He had no use for loud, crowded bars and drunken conversations. Thirteen years since he'd walked out of prison, and he owned a corner store, had a wife and three daughters at home. He was a changed man now, a man who enjoyed his life – a Saturday beer, a morning stroll, a baseball game on the radio.

He looked out onto the street at the playing kids. He could feel their youthful energy. When Jimmy was a kid that energy had ruled over him. And then… then you just learned how to keep it someplace. You hid it away.

His eldest daughter, Katie, was nineteen years old and so, so beautiful. At the store this afternoon, as she was leaving, she'd kissed Jimmy's cheek and said, “Later, Daddy,” and five minutes afterward Jimmy realized he could still feel her voice in his chest. It was her mother's voice, he realized. Her mother, almost fourteen years dead now, and coming back to Jimmy through their daughter. Saying: She's a woman now, Jim. She's all grown up.

A woman. Wow. How did that happen?

* * *

Dave Boyle hadn't even planned on going out that night.

It was a Saturday night, after a long week of work, but he'd reached an age where Saturday didn't feel much different than Tuesday, and drinking at a bar didn't seem much more enjoyable than drinking at home.

So he'd tell himself later, after it was all over and done, that Fate had played with him. Fate had played with Dave Boyle's life before.

So Dave knew Fate when he saw it. Because it hadn't been planned. It hadn't. Dave, alone late at night in the days afterward, would say softly to the empty kitchen: You have to understand. It wasn't planned.

That night, he'd just come down the stairs after kissing his son, Michael, good night and was opening the fridge for a beer when his wife, Celeste, reminded him that it was Girls' Night.

“Again?” Dave said.

“It's been four weeks,” Celeste said.

Once a month, Celeste and three of her coworkers got together at Dave and Celeste Boyle's apartment to watch a movie, play cards, drink a lot of wine, and cook something they'd never tried before. Dave had three options on Girls' Night: he could sit in Michael's room and watch his son sleep, hide in the back bedroom and watch TV, or go out and find someplace where he wouldn't have to listen to four women chatting. Dave usually chose number 3.

And tonight was no different. He finished his beer, kissed Celeste, and then he walked out the door and down the stairs past Mr. McAllister's apartment and out through the front door into Saturday night in the Flats. He thought about walking down to a bar, but then decided to drive instead. Maybe go to the Point, take a look at the college girls.

As Dave's car drove into the Point, he tried to remember if he knew anyone his age or younger who lived there anymore.

He stopped at a red light. Ever since a man had tried to jack his car while he was in it with Michael, Dave kept a.221 under the seat. He'd never fired it, but he held it a lot.

Just last week, Mr. McAllister, Dave's landlord, had told Dave that housing values[18][19] were going up. “Where would I go?” Dave was thinking. He wondered where the hell they were going to live. On what he and Celeste made together, they'd be lucky to get a two-bedroom in a place where stairs smelled like piss, rats ran behind the walls, and junkies walked through the halls, waiting for you to fall asleep.

The light had turned green, and Dave went through the intersection.

* * *

That night Katie Marcus went out with her two best friends, Diane Cestra and Eve Pigeon, to celebrate Katie's last night in the Flats, last night, probably, in Buckingham.

They sat down at a table in the back of Spires Pub, and drank shots, and shrieked every time a good-looking guy gave one of them a look. They'd eaten a big meal at the East Coast Grill an hour before, then drove back into Buckingham and smoked a joint in the parking lot before walking into the bar. Everything was hilarious now.

Once the place got crowded, they moved to Curley's Folly in the Point, smoking another joint in the car.

“That car's following us,” Katie said. “It's been behind us since we left the bar.”

Eve looked at the lights in the rearview mirror. “Oh, come on, Katie, that was, like, thirty seconds ago!”

“Hello? It's your paranoia again,” Diane said and started laughing.

“Bitches,” Katie said, annoyed. She fell onto the backseat, feeling all dreamy, thinking this was it, this was what you lived for, to giggle like a fool with your giggling-fool best friends on the night before you'd marry the man you loved.

* * *

Four bars, three shots, and a couple of phone numbers on napkins later, Katie and Diane were so drunk they got up on the bar at McGills and danced even though the jukebox was silent. Eve sang, and Katie and Diane were dancing and shaking their hair until it covered their faces.

Which is where they were when Roman Fallow showed up with his latest girlfriend. Bad news for Katie, because Roman was friends with Bobby O'Donnell.

Roman said, “You're a bit drunk there, Katie?”

Katie smiled because Roman scared her. Roman scared almost everyone. A good-looking guy, and smart, he could be funny as hell when he felt like it, but there was a strange hole, an emptiness in Roman.

“Yeah, I'm a bit,” she said.

That amused Roman. “A bit, huh? Yeah, okay, Katie. Let me ask you something,” he said gently. “You think Bobby would like hearing you were drunk at McGills tonight? You think he'd like hearing that?”

“No.”

“I don't like it either, Katie. You see what I'm saying?”

“Right. I'll go home right now,” Katie said. “I've had enough.”

Roman smiled and put his arm around his girlfriend. “Shall I call you a cab?”

“No, no. We'll get one, no problem.”

“All right then, Katie, we'll be seeing you.”

Eve and Diane were already at the door. Outside, Diane said, “Jesus. You think he'll call Bobby?”

Katie shook her head, though she wasn't sure.

In the parking lot, Eve threw up[20]. When she was finished, she asked Katie, “You going to be okay to drive?”

Katie nodded. “I'll be fine.”

As they drove out of the parking lot, Katie said, “Just one more reason to leave. One more reason to get the hell out of this town.”

They drove carefully through the Flats, heading for Eve's house, Katie staying in the right lane, concentrating. Suddenly, Diane had decided to stay at Eve's place instead of going to her boyfriend's house, so she and Eve got out together. It had begun to rain, but Diane and Eve didn't seem to notice.

They both turned and looked back through the open passenger window at Katie.

“You going to be okay?” Diane asked.

Katie smiled, “Yeah. Of course. I'll call you from Vegas. You'll come visit.”

“Flights are cheap,” Eve said. She and Diane put their hands in through the window and Katie shook each of them, and then they stepped back from the car.

“Okay,” Katie said, finally. “I'm going to go before someone cries.”

They waved. Katie waved back and drove off.

They stayed on the pavement, watching, long after Katie's car had disappeared in the distance. They could smell the rain and the Penitentiary Channel on the other side of the park. They felt there were other things still left to say.

For the rest of her life, Diane would wish she'd stayed in that car. She would give birth to a son in less than a year and she'd tell him when he was young that she believed she had to stay in that car, and that by getting suddenly out, she'd changed something.

Eve would marry an electrician and move to a ranch house. Sometimes, late at night, she'd tell him about Katie, about that night, and he'd listen, but he wouldn't say much because he knew there was nothing to say. Sometimes Eve just needed to say her friend's name, to hear it, to feel it on her tongue.

But that night they were just two drunken girls, and Katie watched them disappear in her rearview mirror as she turned the corner and drove home.

It was dead[21] there at night, most of the homes opposite the Pen Channel Park had burned down in a fire four years before and stood empty. Katie just wanted to get home, get into bed, get up in the morning, and be long gone before Bobby or her father ever thought to look for her. She wanted to leave this place, never look back at it.

And she remembered something she hadn't thought about in years. She remembered walking to the zoo with her mother when she was five years old. Her mother had held her hand. She looked up at her mother's thin face and big eyes. And Katie, five and curious and sad, said, “How come you're tired all the time?” Her mother put both palms on her cheeks and stared at her with red eyes. Katie thought she was mad, but then her mother smiled and said, “Oh, baby,” and pulled Katie closer to her, and then Katie felt her tears in her hair.

She was trying to remember the color of her mother's eyes when she saw the body lying in the middle of the street. It lay like a sack just in front of her tires and she swerved to the right, feeling something bump under her left tire, thinking, Oh Jesus, oh God, no, tell me I didn't hit it, please, Jesus God no.

She stopped on the right side of the street, and someone called to her. “Hey, you okay?”

Katie saw him coming toward her, and she started to relax because he looked familiar and harmless until she noticed the gun in his hand.

* * *

At three in the morning, Brendan Harris finally fell asleep. He did so smiling, Katie on his mind, telling him she loved him, whispering his name, her soft breath like a kiss in his ear.

4

Dave Boyle had ended up in McGills that night, sitting with Stanley the Giant at the corner of the bar, watching a baseball game.

Dave Boyle, former star for the baseball teams of '78 to '82, was watching it, thinking: Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives. Win for me. Win. Win. Win.

But when the team lost, when your team had failed you, it was only to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. All you could do was to get in your car and drive back to your home.

“You see these chicks?” Stanley the Giant said, and Dave looked up and saw two girls standing on the bar, dancing, as a third friend sang. The one on the right… Dave had known her since she was a little girl – Katie Marcus, Jimmy and poor dead Marita's daughter, now the stepdaughter of his wife's cousin Annabeth, but looking all grown up. Watching her dance and laugh, her blond hair over her face, Dave felt a black hope, and it didn't come from nowhere. It came from her. It was radiated from her body to his, from the sudden recognition when her eyes met his and she smiled and gave him a little wave that brushed against his heart.

Dave watched Katie, remembering his glory days. Dave Boyle. Baseball star. Pride of the Flats for three short years. No one thinking of him as that kid who'd been abducted when he was ten anymore. No, he was a local hero. Pretty girls in his bed. Fate on his side.

Dave Boyle. Not knowing then how short futures could be. How quickly they could disappear, leaving you with nothing, with no surprises, with no reason for hope, nothing but dull days.

I will not dream anymore, you said. No more pain. But then you saw a dancing girl who looked like a woman you'd dated in high school – a woman you'd loved and lost – and you said. To hell with it, let's dream just one more time.

* * *

When Celeste Boyle had been a teenager, she'd been sure someone would come and take her away from the problems they had in her family. She wasn't bad-looking. She had a good personality, knew how to laugh. She thought it should happen. Problem was, even though she met a few men, they weren't good enough for her. Mostly they were from Buckingham, Point or Flat punks, and one guy from uptown. Her ill mother's health insurance was out, and quite soon Celeste started working simply to try and pay the monstrous medical bills for her mother's monstrous diseases.

It had been Dave who Celeste had chosen. He was goodlooking and funny and calm. When they'd married, he'd had a good job, running the mail room, and later he got another on the loading docks of a downtown hotel and never complained about it. Dave, in fact, never complained about anything and almost never talked about his childhood before high school, which had only begun to seem strange to her in the year since her mother had died. It had been a stroke that had finally done the job, Celeste coming home from the supermarket to find her mother dead.

In the months after the funeral, Celeste comforted herself with the thoughts that at least things would be easier now. But it hadn't worked out that way. Dave's job paid about the same as Celeste's and she would look sadly at the financial crisis in their lives – the bills they'd be paying off for years, the lack of money coming in, the new mountain of bills for schooling Michael, and the destroyed credit.

Sometimes, Celeste found herself sitting on the toilet, trying not to cry and wondering how her life had gotten here. That's what she was doing at three in the morning, early Sunday, when Dave came in with blood all over him.

He seemed shocked to find her there. He jumped back when she stood up.

She gasped, “Honey, what happened?”

“I got cut.”

“Dave, Jesus Christ. What happened?”

He lifted the shirt and Celeste stared at a long cut along his ribs that was bloody red.

“Jesus, you have to go to the hospital.”

“No, no,” he said. “Look, it's not that deep. It's just bleeding like hell.”

He was right. On a second look, she noticed it wasn't that bad. But it was long. And it was bloody. Though not enough to explain all the blood on his shirt and neck.

“Who did this?”

“Some junkie psycho,” he said, and took off the shirt. “The guy tried to mug me. That's when he cut me, and then…” He paused to drink some tap water. “I freaked.[22] I mean, I freaked seriously, babe. I think I might've killed this guy.”

“You what…?”

“I just went crazy when I felt the knife in my side. You know? I knocked him down, got on top of him, and, baby, I exploded.”

“So it was self-defense?”

“I don't think the court would see it that way, tell you the truth.”

“I can't believe this. Honey, tell me exactly what happened.”

“I'm walking to my car,” he said, and Celeste sat back on the closed toilet as he knelt in front of her, “and this guy comes up to me, asks me for a light. I say I don't smoke.”

Celeste nodded.

“So, my heart starts beating fast right then. Because there's no one around but me and him. And that's when I see the knife and he says, 'Your wallet or your life. I'm leaving with one of them.'”

“That's what he said?”

Dave leaned back. “Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing.” Celeste was thinking it just sounded funny for some reason, too clever maybe, like in the movies.

“So… so then,” Dave said, “I'm like, 'Come on, man. Just let me get in my car and go home,' which was dumb because now he wants my car keys, too. And I just, I don't know, honey, I get mad instead of scared. And I try to get past him and that's when he pushes and cuts me.” He kissed her hand. “So, uh, he pushes me against the car and cuts me, and I feel the knife going through my skin and I, I just go crazy. I hit him in the side of the head with my fist, and I hit again, like the side of his neck. And he falls. And I jump on him, and, and, and…”

Dave stared into space, his mouth still open.

“What?” Celeste asked, still trying to see the whole picture. “What did you do?”

Dave looked at her knees. “I went nuts on him, babe. I might've killed him for all I know. I was so mad and so scared and all I could think about was you and Michael and how I might not have come home alive, like I could've died in some parking lot.” He looked in her eyes and said it again: “I might've killed him, honey.”

Dave needs me now, Celeste thought. And at that moment she realized why she was bothered: he never complained. When you complained to someone, you were, in a way, asking for help, asking for that person to fix what troubled you. But Dave had never needed her before, so he'd never complained, not after lost jobs. But now, kneeling before her, saying that he may have killed a man, he was asking her to tell him it was all right. And it was. Wasn't it? You tried to mug an honest man, and if it didn't go the way you planned, then too bad you might have died.

She kissed her husband's forehead. “Baby,” she whispered, “you take a shower. I'll take care of your clothes.” “What are you going to do with them?”

She had no idea. Burn them? Sure, but where? Not in the apartment. So maybe in the backyard. But someone would notice her burning clothes in the backyard at 3 A.M. Or at any time, really.

“I'll wash them.” She said it as the idea came to her. “I'll wash them well and then I'll put them in a trash bag and we'll bury it.”

“Bury it?”

“Take it to the dump, then. Or we'll hide the bag till Tuesday morning. Trash day, right?”

“Right.”

“I know when they come. Seven-fifteen, every week…”

“Okay. Look. I might have killed someone, honey. Jesus.

You all right with this?”

She wanted to touch him. She wanted to get out of the room. She wanted to tell him it would be okay. She wanted to run away.

She stayed where she was. “Yeah. I'll wash the clothes.”

She found some plastic gloves under the sink and she put them on. Then she took his shirt and his jeans from the floor. The jeans were dark with blood, too.

“How did you get the blood on your jeans?”

He shrugged. “I was kneeling over him.”

She took the clothes to the kitchen where she put them in the sink and ran the water, watching the blood and pieces of flesh and, oh Christ, maybe pieces of brain, wash down the drain. It amazed her how much the human body could bleed. And all this blood was from one head. She poured dishwashing liquid all over the T-shirt, then squeezed it out and went through the whole process again until the water was clear. She did the same with the jeans, and by that time Dave was out of the shower and sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, watching her.

“Why aren't you using the washing machine?” he asked.

She looked at him, smiled nervously and said, “Evidence, honey.”

“Damn, babe,” he said. “You're a genius.”

Four in the morning, and she was more awake than she'd been in years. Her blood was caffeine. Your whole life you wished for something like this. You told yourself you didn't, but you did. To be involved in a drama. And not the drama of unpaid bills and quarrels. No. This was real life, but bigger than real life. Her husband may have killed a bad man. And if that bad man really was dead, the police would want to find out who did it. And if they did, they'd need evidence.

She could see them sitting at the kitchen table, asking her and Dave questions. They'd be polite. And she and Dave would be polite back and calm. Because all they ever need is evidence. And she'd just washed the evidence into the kitchen sink drain. In the morning, she'd take the drain pipe from under the sink and wash that too with bleach and put it back in place. She'd put the shirt and jeans into a plastic trash bag and hide it until Tuesday morning and then throw it into the back of the garbage truck where it would be lost. She'd do this and feel good.

5

On Sunday morning, right before his daughter Nadine's First Communion[23], Jimmy Marcus got a call from Pete Gilibiowski, who was working at the store, telling him he needed help.

“Help?” Jimmy sat up in bed and looked at the clock. “Pete, since when you and Katie can't handle it?”

“That's the thing, Jim. Katie isn't here.”

“She isn't what?” Jimmy got out of bed and walked down the hallway toward Katie's room. He pushed the door open after a quick knock. Her bed was empty and, worse, made, which meant she hadn't slept there last night. “I'm coming,” Jimmy said to Pete, then hung up and walked back to the bedroom.

Annabeth was sitting up in bed, yawning. “The store?” she asked.

Jimmy nodded. “Katie did not show up.”[24]

“Today,” Annabeth said. “Day of Nadine's First Communion, she didn't show up for work. What if she doesn't come to the church either?”

“I'm sure she'll come.”

“I don't know, Jimmy. If she got so drunk last night. Do you even know where she could be?”

“Diane or Eve's,” Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe a boyfriend's.”

There was no talking to Annabeth when it came to Katie. Annabeth – the love of his life, no question – had no idea how cold she could be sometimes. Normally, she was either annoyed with her stepdaughter or happy that they were best friends. Katie was seven when she lost her mother. She was deeply wounded by her mother's death.

“Yeah? Who's she seeing these days?” Annabeth asked.

“I thought you knew better than me.”

“She stopped seeing Bobby O'Donnell in November. That was good enough for me.”

Jimmy, putting his clothes on, smiled. When Katie had begun seeing him last summer, the Savage brothers told Jimmy they'd sort it out[25], if it became necessary. But Katie had broken up with him herself, though, and quite painlessly.

Annabeth hated Bobby O'Donnell not only because he had slept with her stepdaughter, but also because he was something of a lousy criminal, and not like the pros she thought her brothers were and her husband had been in the years before Marita died.

Marita had died fourteen years ago, while Jimmy was in prison. One Saturday, during visitation hours, Marita told Jimmy a mole on her arm had been growing lately, and she was going to see a doctor. Just to be safe, she said. Four Saturdays later she was doing chemo. Six months later she was dead.

Jimmy, who got out of prison two months after the funeral, stood in his kitchen in the same clothes he'd left it in, smiling at his child. He remembered her first four years, but she didn't. She only remembered the last two, maybe some fragments of the man he'd been in this house, before she was allowed to see him only on Saturdays from the other side of an old table. Standing in his kitchen, watching her, Jimmy had never felt more useless. He had never felt as alone or frightened as when he took Katie's small hands in his.

Marita had died and left them together, not knowing what the hell they were going to do next.

“Your mom's smiling down at us from heaven,” Jimmy told Katie. “She's proud of us.”

Katie said, “Do you have to go back to that place again?” “No. Never again,” Jimmy promised her.

* * *

Jimmy got to Cottage Market, the corner store he owned and worked the cash register while Pete worked the coffee counter.

During a five-minute rest before the early church mass crowd, Jimmy called Drew Pigeon and asked him if he'd seen Katie. Jimmy asked the question and only then realized that he'd been very anxious.

“I think she's here, yeah,” Drew said. “Let me go check.”

Jimmy listened to Drew's heavy footsteps in the hallway. Then he heard Drew coming back toward the phone.

“Jimmy, sorry. It was Diane Cestra who slept over. She's in there on the floor of Eve's bedroom, but no Katie. Eve said Katie dropped them off around one A.M. Didn't say where she was going.”

“Hey, no problem, man,” Jimmy put a false brightness into his tone. “I'll find her.”

“She's seeing anyone, maybe?”

“Nineteen-year-old girl? Who knows?”

Jimmy hung up and looked down at the cash register as if it could tell him something. This wasn't the first time Katie had stayed out all night. And it wasn't even the first time she hadn't showed up at work, but she usually called.

The bell hanging at the top of the door rang, and Jimmy looked up to see Brendan Harris and his little brother, Silent Ray, walk past the counter and head for the aisles where the breads and cookies and teas were. Jimmy noticed Brendan looking at the cash registers like he was hoping to see someone. Who was he looking for? Could he be stupid enough to be thinking about robbing the store? Jimmy had known Brendan's father, Just Ray Harris, so he knew that some dumb ran in the genes, but no one was so dumb as to try to rob a store with his thirteen-year-old mute brother. Plus, if anyone got some brains in the family, Jimmy thought, it was Brendan. A shy kid, but good-looking, and Jimmy had long ago learned the difference between someone who was quiet because he didn't know anything and someone who just stayed inside himself, watching, listening, taking it all in. Brendan had that quality.

He turned toward Jimmy and their eyes met, and the kid gave Jimmy a nervous, friendly smile.

Jimmy said, “Help you, Brendan?”

“Uh, no, Mr. Marcus, just picking up some, uh, some tea my mom likes.”

Jimmy watched Brendan and Silent Ray communicate in sign language, standing in the middle of the center aisle. The hands went flying, the two of them going so fast it would have been hard for Jimmy to keep up even if they were making sounds. Silent Ray had always been a strange little kid, in Jimmy's opinion, more like the mother than the father.

Brendan and Silent Ray had reached the counter and Jimmy saw something in Brendan's face.

“So, uh, I thought Katie worked Sundays,” Brendan said as he handed the money.

Pete, standing nearby, raised his eyebrows and asked, “You're interested in my man's daughter, Brendan?”

Brendan wouldn't look at Jimmy. “No, no, no.” He laughed, and it died as soon as it left his mouth. “I was just wondering, you know, because usually I see her here.”

“Her little sister's having her First Communion today,” Jimmy said.

“Oh, Nadine?” Brendan looked at Jimmy, eyes too wide, smile too big.

“Nadine,” Jimmy said, curious as to how the name had come to Brendan so fast. “Yeah.”

“Well, tell her congrats from me and Ray.”

“Sure, Brendan.”

Ray hadn't been looking at his brother when he spoke, but he moved anyway, and Jimmy remembered once again the thing that people usually forgot about Ray: he wasn't deaf, just mute.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Pete said when the brothers had gone, “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you hate that kid so much?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I don't know if it's hate, man. It's just.

That mute is just a little spooky.”

“Oh, him?” Pete said. “Yeah. He's weird, always staring like he sees something in your face. You know? But I wasn't talking about him. I was talking about Brendan. I mean, the kid seems nice. Shy but nice, you know? You notice how he uses sign language with his brother even though he doesn't have to? Like he just wants the kid to feel he isn't alone. It's nice.”

6

Brendan Harris looked at the phone. He looked at his watch. Two hours late. Not a surprise, since Katie was often late, but today of all days? Brendan just wanted to go. And where was she, if she wasn't at work? The plan had been that she'd call Brendan from the store, go to her half sister's First Communion, and then meet him afterward. But she hadn't gone to work. And she hadn't called.

He couldn't call her. Katie was usually at one of three places – at Bobby O'Donnell's place, in the apartment with her father, stepmother, and two half sisters, or in the apartment above, where her crazy uncles, Nick and Val, lived. Her father, Jimmy Marcus, hated Brendan for no logical reason. It made no sense. Brendan had never done anything to Mr. Marcus. Over the years Katie's father had told her to stay away from the Harrises.

“So how did it happen then – you and me?” Brendan once asked Katie.

She smiled sadly at him. “You don't know?”

“No, I don't know.” Frankly, Brendan didn't have any idea. Katie was everything. A Goddess. But Brendan was just, well, Brendan.

“You're kind. I see you with Ray or your mother and even everyday people on the street, and you're just so kind, Brendan.”

And Brendan, thinking about it, had to admit that his whole life he'd never met anyone who didn't like him. He'd never had enemies, hadn't been in a fight since school, and couldn't remember the last time he'd heard a harsh word. Maybe it was because he was kind. And maybe that was rare. Or maybe he just wasn't the type of guy who made people mad. Well, except for Katie's father.

Just half an hour ago, Brendan had felt it in Mr. Marcus's corner store – that quiet hatred. He'd stammered because of it. He couldn't look at Ray the whole way home because of how that hatred had made him feel – dirty.

Brendan couldn't call Katie at one of her two numbers and risk somebody wondering what the hated Brendan Harris was doing, calling their Katie. He'd almost done it a million times, but just the thought of Mr. Marcus or Bobby O'Donnell or one of those psycho Savage brothers answering the phone always stopped him.

He looked at the phone again. Call, please. Call.

* * *

A couple of kids found her car. They called 911.

“There's like this car with blood in it and, uh, the door's open, and, uh.”

The 911 operator asked, “What's the location of the car?”

“In the Flats,” the kid said. “By Pen Park. Me and my friend found it.”

“Is there a street address?”

“Sydney Street,” the kid said into the phone. “There's blood in there and the door's open.”

“What's your name, son?”

“He wants to know her name,” the kid said to his friend.

“Son?” the operator said. “I said your name. What's your name?”

“We're out of here[26], man,” the kid said. “Good luck.”

The kid hung up and the operator saw on his computer screen that the call had come from a pay phone on the street corner about half a mile from the Sydney Street entrance to Penitentiary Park. He forwarded the information to send a unit out.

One of the patrolmen called back and requested more units, a Crime Scene tech or two, and a couple of Homicides.

“Have you found a body?”

“Uh, negative.”

“Why the request for Homicide if there's no body?”

“This car… I feel like we're going to find one around here sooner or later.”

* * *

Sean Devine's Sunday started when he was woken up from a dream by the alarm clock.

His wife, Lauren, had been in that dream. Nowadays, she was often in his dreams.

When did that start happening?he wondered. That's all he wanted to know, really. He closed his eyes. When Lauren left him. That's when it started.

Sean began his first day at work by parking his car and walking to the corner of Sydney Street. The car, as he understood it, had been found on Sydney Street, but the blood trail led into Penitentiary Park. Sean walked along the edge of the park, and the first thing he noticed was a parked Crime Scene Services van.

As he got closer, he saw Sergeant Whitey Powers standing by his car. Detectives Souza and Connolly were searching the weeds outside the park entrance. The Crime Scene Services crew were going over the car.

“Hey,” Whitey Powers said in surprise. “Someone called you already?”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “I don't have a partner, though. Adolph's out.”

Whitey Powers nodded, “You're with me, kid. For now.” He turned Sean toward the car with the open door, then pointed at the weeds and the park beyond. “I guess we'll find her over there somewhere. But, you know, we just started looking, and Friel says we call it a Missing Person till we find a body. Want to look at the car?”

“You said 'her,'” Sean said as they went under yellow crime scene tape and headed for the car.

“The CSS found her registration. Car's owner is a Katherine Marcus.”

“Damn,” Sean said.

“Know her?”

“Might be the daughter of a guy I know.”

“You guys are close?”

Sean shook his head. “No, not anymore.”

They reached the car and Whitey pointed at the open driver's door as a CSS tech stepped back from it. “Just don't touch anything, guys.”

Sean took one look at the weeds leading up to the park and knew if they found a body, they'd find it in there. “What do we have?”

“Door was open when we found it. Keys were in the ignition, headlights were on,” the tech reported.

Sean noticed a bloodstain over the speaker on the driver's door. Then he saw another spot of blood on top of the steering wheel. A third stain, longer and wider than the other two, was around the edges of a bullet hole in the driver's seat at shoulder level. Sean was looking past the door at the weeds to the left of the car, then he looked at the outside of the driver's door and saw a fresh dent there.

He looked at Whitey, and Whitey nodded. “Someone probably stood outside the car. The Marcus girl – if that's who was driving – hits him with the door. He shoots her, uh, I don't know, in the shoulder, maybe? The girl starts running anyway.” He pointed at some weeds flattened by running feet. “They head for the park. Her wound couldn't have been too bad, because we've only found a few bloodstains in the weeds.”

Sean said, “We got units over there in the park?”

“Two.”

Sean stepped back. “You found any ID besides the car registration?”

“Yeah. Wallet under the seat, driver's license of Katherine Marcus. There was a backpack behind the passenger seat. Billy's checking the contents now.”

Sean looked at the guy on his knees in front of the car, a dark blue backpack in front of him.

“How old did her license say she was?” Sean asked.

“Nineteen,” Whitey said. “And you know the father? The poor man probably has no idea.”

Sean turned his head, watched the sun cut through the clouds, and remembered that wild aloneness he'd seen in eleven-year-old Jimmy Marcus's face when they'd almost stolen that car. Sean could feel that aloneness now, standing by the weeds leading to Penitentiary Park.

He thought of Lauren who'd been in his dream this morning. He thought of Lauren and wished he could just get back into that dream and disappear.

7

Nadine Marcus, Jimmy and Annabeth's younger daughter, had her Holy Communion for the first time on Sunday morning at Saint Cecilia's church in the Flats. Her hands pressed together, white veil and white dress making her look like a baby bride or snow angel, she walked up the aisle with forty other children.

Jimmy put his arm around Annabeth, and she leaned to him and whispered: “Our baby. My God, Jimmy, our baby.”

Jimmy and Annabeth were crazy about their girls. They worked hard to keep them happy, and the girls knew they were loved. Jimmy, who'd hated his old man, preferred the old ways of raising children. A kid knew the parents loved him but were still the bosses, rules existed for a reason, no really meant no, and just because you were cute didn't mean you could do what you wanted.

Of course, Jimmy thought, you could raise a good kid, and later have troubles anyway. Like with Katie today. Not only had she never showed up for work, but now it looked like she has missed her younger half sister's First Communion. What the hell was going on?

Katie was nineteen, okay, so the world of her younger half sisters probably couldn't compare to guys and clothes and bars. Jimmy understood this, but missing this event, especially after all Jimmy had done when Katie was younger to mark the events in her life, was so wrong. That's why it made Jimmy angry.

By the time Nadine and the other kids walked out through the back door of the church, Jimmy started feeling less angry but more and more worried about Katie. She wasn't one to let her half sisters down. They worshipped her, and she loved them – taking them to movies, out for ice cream.

So why would she miss Nadine's First Communion?

Maybe she had met a handsome new guy. Maybe she'd just forgotten.

Annabeth touched his hand and, as if reading his mind, said, “I'm sure she's fine. With a hangover, probably. But fine.”

Jimmy smiled and nodded. Annabeth was Jimmy's foundation, plain and simple. She was his wife, mother, best friend, sister, lover, and priest. When Jimmy had gotten out of prison, at first the things were tough, and he had to choose between a car payment and Katie's Christmas present. People said it was in his blood – stealing, crime. But then, when he'd met Annabeth a year after, Jimmy bought Al DeMarco's corner store and became a shopkeeper – all for his little girl. She couldn't go through another two years if he went to prison again. So he stayed straight.

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Примечания

1

если бы не отцы

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2

Теперь Джимми не торопился / не спешил

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3

отныне

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4

сделать так, чтобы; удостовериться, убедиться

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5

Почему? (разг.)

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6

Здесь и далее в своей речи персонажи используют упрощённые грамматические структуры (прим. сост.)

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7

Какого чёрта

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8

собирался

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9

Теперь ему влетит.

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10

типа (разг.)

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11

на всякий случай

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12

было как-то связано с

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13

в разгаре

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14

были посвящены во что-то

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15

если они случайно сталкивались

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16

навсегда

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17

полюбил

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18

пистолет 22-го калибра

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19

цены на жильё

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20

Ив стошнило

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21

пустынно / безжизненно

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22

Я психанул.

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23

первое причастие

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24

Кэти не явилась.

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25

они с этим разберутся

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26

Нам надо идти

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