The Drop (13 page)

He came out from behind the bar.

“Marv.”

Cousin Marv waved it off, started walking toward the door.

Bob said, “I can’t work a Thursday night alone.”

“Call BarTemps.”

“Marv!”

Marv raised his arms in a “Whatta ya gonna do?” gesture and pushed the door open on the day. The door closed behind him and Bob stood behind the bar, the old-timers looking at him from over by the pool table before they went back to their drinks.

AT THE END OF
a long night, Bob came up the street to find Nadia standing on his front porch, smoking. Bob could feel his own face light up like the Fourth of July.

Bob said, “You’ll freeze out here.”

She shook her head. “I just came out to smoke. I’ve been in with Rocco.”

Bob said, “I don’t care if you knew him. I don’t care. He told me to say hi to you, like it meant something.”

Nadia said, “What else he say?”

Bob said, “He said Rocco is his.”

She flicked her cigarette into the street. Bob held the door open for her and she entered the house.

In the kitchen, he let Rocco out of his crate and plopped him on his lap at the table. Nadia took two beers out of the fridge, slid one to Bob.

They drank for a while in silence.

Nadia said, “So, Eric’s cute, right? One night that was enough. I mean, I knew all the stories about him being fucked in the head, but then he left town for a while and when he came back he seemed calmer, like he’d pocketed his demons, you know? Boxed them up. For a while it seemed like he was different. Then when the crazy bus came to town, I was already in for a penny.”

Bob said, “That’s why your barrel.”

Nadia looked at Rocco and shook her head. “No. We haven’t been . . . together in, like, a year.” She shook her head some more, trying to convince herself. Then: “So he beat Rocco, thinks he’s dead, and he throws him into my trash, so I’ll what?”

Bob said, “Think about him? I dunno.”

Nadia processed that. “That does sound like Eric. Christ, I’m sorry.”

Bob said, “You didn’t know.”

Nadia knelt in front of Bob and Rocco. She took the dog’s head in her hand.

Nadia said, “Rocco. I’m not up on my saints. What’s Rocco the saint of?”

Bob said, “Dogs. Patron saint of dogs.”

Nadia said, “Well, yeah.”

Bob said, “And pharmacists, bachelors, and the falsely accused.”

Nadia said, “Dude has a full plate.” She raised her beer in toast. “Well, shit, here’s to Saint Rocco.”

They toasted.

She took her seat again and ran the edge of her thumb along her scar. “You ever think some things you do are beyond, I dunno, forgiveness?”

Bob said, “From who?”

Nadia pointed up. “You know.”

Bob said, “I get days, yeah, I think some sins you can’t come back from. No matter how much good you do after, the devil’s just waiting for your body to quit ’cause he already owns your soul. Or maybe there’s no devil but you die and God says, ‘Sorry, you can’t come in. You did an unforgivable; you gotta be alone now. Forever.’”

Nadia said, “I’d take the devil.”

“Right?” Bob said, “Other times? I don’t think God’s the problem. It’s us, you know?”

She shook her head.

Bob said, “We don’t let ourselves out of our own cages.”

He wagged Rocco’s paw at her. She smiled, drank her beer.

“I heard Cousin Marv doesn’t own the bar. But some hard guys do. But you’re not a hard guy. So why do you work there?”

Bob said, “Me and Cousin Marv go way back. He’s actually my cousin. Him and his sister, Dottie. My mother and their father were sisters.”

Nadia laughed. “Did they share makeup?”

“What’d I say? No, I meant, you know what I meant.” He laughed. It was a real laugh and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one of those. “Why you giving me shit?”

Nadia said, “It’s fun.”

The silence was beautiful.

Bob broke it eventually. “Marv thought he was a hard guy once. He had a crew for a while and we made some money, you know.”

Nadia said, “But you don’t have a crew anymore?”

Bob said, “You gotta be mean. Tough ain’t enough. These mean crews started coming around. And we blinked.”

Nadia said, “But you’re still in the life.”

Bob shook his head. “I just tend bar.”

She looked at him carefully over her beer and let him see that she didn’t really believe him but she wouldn’t press.

Nadia said, “You think he’ll just go away?”

“Eric?” he said. “Doesn’t strike me as the type.”

“He’s not. He killed a kid named Glory Days. Well, that wasn’t his—”

Bob said, “Richie Whelan, yeah.”

Nadia nodded. “Eric killed him.”

Bob said, “Why?”

“I dunno. He’s not a big fan of why, Eric.” She stood. “Another beer?”

Bob hesitated.

“Come on, Bob, let your hair down.”

Bob beamed. “Why not?”

Nadia put another beer in front of him. She ruffled Rocco’s head. She sat and they drank.

BOB WALKED NADIA TO
her front stoop. “’Night.”

“’Night, Bob. Thanks.”

“For what?”

She shrugged. She put her hand on his shoulder and gave his cheek a quick peck. Then she was gone.

BOB WALKED HOME
.
THE
streets were silent. He came upon a long patch of ice on the sidewalk. Instead of walking around it, he slid on it, arms out for balance. Like a little kid. When he reached the end of the patch, he smiled up at the stars.

BACK AT HOME
,
HE
cleared the beer cans from the table. He rinsed them and placed them in a plastic bag hanging from a drawer handle. He smiled at Rocco, who was curled up and sleeping in the corner of his crate. He shut off the kitchen light.

He turned the kitchen light back on. He opened the crate. Rocco opened his eyes, stared at him. Bob considered the new addition to Rocco’s crate:

The umbrella Eric Deeds took from the house.

Bob removed it from the crate and sat with it for a long time.

E
RIC DEEDS SAT IN
the back of Hi-Fi Pizza with a couple slices late on Friday morning. Eric always sat near the back of anyplace he ate or drank. He liked to always be no more than ten feet from an exit. In case, he’d told a girl once.

“In case what?”

“In case they come for me.”

“Who’s they?”

“There’s always a they,” Eric had said, looking in her eyes—this was Jeannie Madden he was dating at the time—and he thought he saw real understanding looking back at him. Finally—fucking
finally
—someone who got him.

She caressed his hand. “There is always a ‘they,’ isn’t there?”

“Yes,” Eric said. “Yes.”

She dumped him three hours later. Left a message on the clunky old answering machine Eric’s father kept in the front hall of their house on Parker Hill. On the message, she started out nice, talking about it being her, not him, and how people just drifted apart, they did, and someday she hoped they’d be friends but if he tried any of his crazy shit with her, if he fucking so much as
thought
of doing it, her four brothers would pile out of a car while he was walking Bucky Ave., and they would beat the motherfucking shit out of his crazy fucking ass. Get some help, Eric. Get some serious fucking help. But leave me alone.

He left her alone. She married Paul Giraldi, the electrician, just six months later. Had three kids now.

And Eric was still watching the exit in the back of the same pizza place. Alone.

He thought of using it that morning when the fat guy, Cousin Marv, came over to his table, but he didn’t want to make a scene, lose his privileges here again. He’d once been banned for six months in 2005 after the incident with the Sprite and the green peppers and they’d been six of the longest months of his life because Hi-Fi made the best fucking pizza in the history of pizza.

So he stayed where he was as Cousin Marv removed his coat and took the seat across from him.

Cousin Marv said, “I still don’t have any Zima.”

Eric continued to eat, not sure what the play could be.

Cousin Marv moved the salt and the Parmesan cheese shaker out of their way, stared across the table. “Why don’t you like my cousin?”

“He took my dog.” Eric slid the Parm shaker back his way.

Cousin Marv said, “I heard you beat it.”

“Felt bad about it after.” Eric took a small sip of Coke. “That count?”

Cousin Marv looked at him the way a lot of people did—like they could see his thoughts and they found them pitiable.

I’ll make you pity yourself someday,
Eric thought.
Make you cry and bleed and beg.

Cousin Marv said, “You even want the dog back?”

Eric said, “I don’t know. I don’t want your cousin there walking around thinking he’s the shit, though. He needs to learn.”

Cousin Marv said, “Learn what?”

Eric said, “That he shouldn’t have fucked with me. And now you’re fucking with me. Think I’m going to put up with that?”

“Relax. I come in peace.”

Eric chewed some pizza.

Cousin Marv said, “You ever do time?”

“Time?”

“Yeah,” Marv said. “In a prison.”

Eric finished his first slice, slapped some crumbs off his hands. “I did time.”

“Yeah?” Marv raised his eyebrows. “Where?”

“Broad River.”

Marv shook his head. “I don’t know it.”

“It’s in South Carolina.”

“Shit,” Marv said, “how’d you end up down there?”

Eric shrugged.

“So you did your bid—what, a couple years—and you came back?”

“Yup.”

“What was time in South Carolina like?”

Eric lifted his second slice. Looked over it at Cousin Marv. “Like no time at all.”

ALL THE TIME TORRES
spent looking into the disappearance of Richie Whelan ten years ago yielded pretty much nothing. Kid just up and vanished one night. Left Cousin Marv’s Bar, said he’d be back in fifteen, soon as he scored some pot up the block. It had been freezing that night. A lot worse than freezing actually—kind of night made people invest in land they’d never seen in Florida. Six degrees when Richie Whelan left the bar at eleven-forty-five. Torres did a little more digging, found out the wind chill factor that night made that six degrees feel like negative ten. So there’s Richie Whelan hustling along the sidewalk in ten-below weather, kind of cold he would have felt burning in his lungs and in the spaces between his lower teeth. No one else on the street that night because only a pothead who’d run out of pot or a cokehead who’d run out of coke would brave that kind of weather for a midnight stroll. Even though the stroll was only three blocks, which was the exact distance between Cousin Marv’s Bar and the place where Whelan went to score.

Whelan’s alleged dealers that night were two knuckleheads named Eric Deeds and Tim Brennan. Brennan had given a statement to the police a few days later, said Richie Whelan had never made it to his apartment that night. When asked what his relationship was with Whelan, Tim Brennan had said in his statement, “Sometimes he scored weed off me.” Eric Deeds had never given a statement; his name only came up in the statements provided by the friends Richie Whelan had left behind in the bar that night.

So, if Torres accepted that Brennan had no reason to lie, since he’d been reasonably forthcoming about dealing drugs to the missing Richie Whelan, then it was possible to believe Richie Whelan had disappeared within three blocks of Cousin Marv’s Bar.

And Torres couldn’t shake the suspicion that this little detail carried more weight than any of the prior detectives who’d worked the Whelan disappearance had conferred on it before.

Why
? his Loo, Mark Adeline, would have asked (if Torres had been dumb enough to admit he was looking into someone else’s cold case).

Because that motherfucker doesn’t take Communion
, Torres would have said.

In the movie of Torres’s life, Mark Adeline would have leaned back in his chair, the mist of wisdom dawning in his eyes, and said, “Huh. You could be onto something there. I’ll give you three days.”

In reality, Adeline was up his ass to get his fucking Robbery clearance rate up.
Way
up. A new class of recruits was coming out of the Academy. That meant a bunch of patrolmen were about to get bumped up into plainclothes. Robbery, Major Crimes, Homicide, Vice—they’d all be looking for new blood. And the old blood? The ones who chased down other cops’ cold cases while their own cases gathered mold and fuzz? They got shipped to the property room or over to the Hackney Carriage Unit, Media Relations, or, worse, the Harbor Unit, enforcing maritime codes in four fucking degrees Fahrenheit. Evandro Torres had case files stacked on his desk and clogging up his hard drive. He had statements he should be taking on a liquor store stickup in Allston, a street rip on Newbury Street, and a smash-n-grab gang working pharmacies all over the city. Plus the stickup of Cousin Marv’s. Plus those houses kept getting hit midday in the South End. Plus the delivery trucks down the Seaport kept losing fresh seafood and frozen meat.

Plus, plus, plus. Shit stacked up and then kept stacking higher while the bottom slid out toward a man. Before he knew it he’d been consumed by the stack.

Torres walked to his car, telling himself he was driving to the Seaport to brace that driver he liked for the thefts, the one who was too chummy last time they’d chatted, chewed gum like a squirrel chewed nuts.

But instead he drove over to the electric plant in Southie, the sun coming up just as the night shift was letting out, and had the foreman point out Sean McGrath to him. McGrath was one of Whelan’s old buddies and, according to anyone Torres had already chatted up, the leader of the pack of guys who paid tribute to Glory Days once a year on the anniversary of the night he vanished.

Torres introduced himself and started to explain why he’d dropped by, but McGrath held up a hand and called to one of the other guys. “Yo, Jimmy.”

“S’up?”

“Where we going?”

“Up the place.”