Shadow Season (30 page)

The shrink is saying, I think we need to explore that.

He has no idea why he’s here. He should be able to handle what’s coming down the line for him. The rage has only increased. He tries to burn it off in the gym. Except for a nagging in his shoulder he’s in the best shape of his life. When he finishes his reps he runs twenty on the treadmill. In his exhaustion he doesn’t often think of Dani or Roz, he thinks of Vi. He still thinks of her every day, trapped somewhere between being his daughter and his lover. The guy down the hall is still talking, still chuckling, the fucking nut. The earrings jangle. The blood covers his teeth. The shrink says, Time’s up, and Finn thinks, Right, I have to kill Ray now.

THE MORNING TRAIN UP TO OSSINING
is filled with attorneys, guards, frantic parents, and angry wives with weeping kids who’ve never even been touched by their jailbird daddies. The mood is savage hopelessness, which appeals to him.

Finn moves his concentration around the car, seat by seat, listening in on different conversations. The bits he catches are by turns poignant, scathing, and boring. One seething woman snarls,
“I told him not to do it. I told him!”
Maybe she’s talking to herself, or a friend, or to anyone who might listen. She spits and pounds the seat beside her. A child runs up the aisle, takes a header, and skins a knee. His braying is as loud as a siren wailing down Sixth Avenue.

The Metro-North commuter rail line slices right through the prison, past the umbrella-roofed gun towers and the abandoned death house. Finn’s only been to Sing Sing once before, checking a lead that went nowhere during a murder investigation.

The front entrance is at the end of a tree-shaded residential street. Beyond that are over two thousand men pacing under twenty-four-hour regimented surveillance
on fifty acres of cement and steel in hangar-sized cell blocks.

Finn disembarks with the other passengers. No one offers to lend a hand. He follows along with the crowd until he hears them getting to the checkpoint, everybody pulling their IDs. If memory serves, there’s a bench around here someplace. He swings his cane, walks around for a minute, finds it, and sits.

The chill air is bracing but he doesn’t think he’s capable of ever feeling cold again.

An hour passes and the wind rises. Finn doesn’t move. His thoughts are full of gentle warmth lifting through him.

The front gates open and he hears an odd shuffling walk. Ray’s limp has gotten much more prominent. The prosthetic’s seen some wear after five years and Ray’s in need of a new fitting. He’s practically dragging the leg now.

Then laughter. It’s a familiar sound that, despite himself, makes Finn smile. He stands and waits for Ray to step up.

When Finn sees Ray he sees Ray. And he sees himself. And sees his shadow. His head is full of vision. He has to suppress the mad notion that he is no longer blind.

Everybody’s got a right to be as much of an outlaw as they want to be, so long as they don’t cry foul if they get nabbed for it.

“Hey there,” Ray says. “Goddamn, it’s cold. Figured you’d meet me.”

“Yeah?” Finn asks. “Why?”

“It’s the way you are.”

“I guess it is.”

“So, you here to kill me?”

Laying it out like that, still so full of cool.

“Would it surprise you if I was?”

“No,” Ray says. “You packing?”

“I’ve got a pocketknife.”

“So you’re not planning to shoot me in the head.”

There is one question that’s been bugging him. “How much have you got stashed? Just wondering what the number is, considering how much it cost.” Finn figures it’s got to be half a mil at least that Ray’s socked away.

“Let’s not bother with that. I have enough.”

“So why’d you burn Roz for the nine g’s?”

“You going to ask a lot of stupid questions?”

Finn figures no. “You were surprised that Carlyle never iced me, weren’t you.” It’s not a question.

“Actually, I thought maybe you’d do him instead.”

“I thought about it.”

“You think about a lot of things, but you never do shit.”

It’s the truth. Even when he had eyes he was blind, always letting Ray lead. “You should think about what you owe.”

“What I owe?”

“That’s right.”

“What do you mean?”

Finn says, “Your house isn’t in order.”

“My house?”

“You’ve had an ill will thinking on you. My ill will.”

“What the hell are you talking about now?”

It’s not enough. It will never be enough. Finn will
never be able to explain that moment when Dani lay down in his arms and the world came to its sudden end.

Finn waits for some reaction from his shadow, watching for it to break into a run or throw a fist. He waits for Ray to admit his betrayal, show some real heart, fear, or anger of his own. But he won’t, that’s the way Ray’s built. It’s why he’s always been in charge.

“Well, we could always walk up the street a ways and just unload on each other,” Ray says. “You know, beat the crap out of each other like the two feistiest little kids on the block. Sometimes, after that, they’re friends for life.”

“We’ve never fought.”

“No, we haven’t. You can pull that Bruce Lee shit. I’ve learned a few dirty moves in the joint that I didn’t already know, if you can believe it. We can find a quiet place, a nice park. Maybe it’ll get the poison out of our systems. Maybe afterward, we’ll be able to talk. And do some business. All we need is a good slugfest. You want to?”

Ray’s voice is full of the same staggering weariness that Finn feels. Each year and mile of their lost friendship is in his timbre, as well as all the offenses he’s endured over the five years in prison.

They walk together. This is the culmination of more than two decades of friendship, partnership, deception, blood, agony, heartbreak, darkness, and betrayal, and Finn just doesn’t feel all that much. Another man would look for answers. Another man would want to know his own reasons for partnering up with a guy like this. But Finn knows there aren’t any. They were meant to be partners from the start, no more or less than he and
Dani were. Than he and Rack were meant to meet each other in the hall.

Finn’s withdrawn beyond hope and even hate. Standing beside him are his many ghosts, all his mistakes and lost loves, the dead and the nearly dead and the missing. Maybe Ray can feel the same weight on his back as he hobbles along. Finn tilts his chin into the wind. When Ray lets out another little laugh, childish and sincere, Finn knows the next move is coming. In the darkness he’s aware. His hands are trembling so badly with the need to do something that they nearly hum. Ray slows and then stops to lean over. He puts a hand to Finn’s shoulder to help him balance while he checks his fake leg. Finn thinks, There it is. There’s Ray’s new dirty move. Jailhouse guards aren’t going to check a man’s prosthetic four times a day. That’s where he’s got whatever he needs hidden. His drug money and his shank. He’s going for the blade. He’s going to raise it up and stick it in.

Finn thinks, His hand will tighten on my shoulder and haul me down to meet the honed point, entering low and going deep, the pain devastating but not unbearable. Not until he starts to drag upwards. Whatever else it will be, it will be a beautiful and perfectly timed maneuver. Perhaps Finn will block the move and make his own. You want to? He can have his pocketknife out in an instant. Fighting with Rack was a time of hands. This will be the time of knives. He can take the lead. He’s ready to kill or die in the middle of the street. There’s a faint flicker of promise. It’s his job to protect the innocent. You want to? Dani’s eyes are wet, Vi’s are full of need, Roz’s are flat with a kind of dreariness. Ray’s hand
tightens on Finn’s bad shoulder. This is how the battle against evil has gone today. Over here, over here. Your time is up.

“Let’s,” Finn says, and waits for the world to grow hot with heaving light, love, and color.