The Drop (17 page)

He said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Like you fucking weren’t already.” She indicated the file. “It help?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It sure answered one hell of a question.”

“That’s good, right?”

He shrugged. “Answered one question, yeah, but opened a big can of other ones.” Torres closed the file, his blood the cold of the Atlantic. “I need a drink. Buy you one?”

Romsey gave him a look of disbelief. She gestured at her clothes, her hair, her makeup. “Other plans, Evandro.”

Torres said, “Rain check then.”

And Detective Lisa Romsey gave him a slow, sad shake of her head. “This special guy? I’ve known him most of my life,” she said. “He’s been my friend, you know? A long time. He moved away for years but we stayed in touch. His marriage didn’t work out either, he moved back. One day, a couple weeks back? I’m having coffee with him and I realize that when he looks at me, he sees me.”

“I see you.”

She shook her head. “You only see the part of me that looks like you. Which ain’t the best part, Evandro. Sorry. But my friend—my
friend
? He looks at me and sees the best me.” She smacked her lips. “And just like that?” She shrugged. “Love.”

He looked at her for a bit. There it was, without warning—the end of them. Whatever “them” was. It was no longer. He handed her the file.

He got out of her unmarked and she drove off before he even reached his car.

T
HE BAGMEN CAME AND
went. In and out, all night long. Bob dropped so much money through the slot, he knew he’d hear the sound of it in his dreams for days.

Three deep at the bar through the whole game; he looked through a sudden gap in the crowd just after halftime and saw Eric Deeds sitting at the wobbly table under the Narragansett mirror. He had one arm stretched across the table and Bob followed it, saw that it connected with someone’s arm. Bob had to move down the bar to get a better angle around a clump of drunks, and he immediately wished he hadn’t. Wished he’d never come to work. Wished he’d never gotten up any day since Christmas. Wished he could turn back the clock on his whole life, just reset it to the day before he walked down that block and found Rocco outside her house.

Nadia’s house.

It was Nadia’s arm Deeds touched, Nadia’s face staring back at Eric, unreadable.

Bob, filling a glass with ice, felt like he was shoveling the cubes into his own chest, pouring them into his stomach and against the base of his spine. What did he know about Nadia, after all? He knew that he’d found a near-dead dog in the trash outside her house. He knew that she had a history—of some kind—with Eric Deeds and that Eric Deeds only came into his life after Bob had met her. He knew that her middle name, thus far, could be Lies of Omission. Maybe that scar on her throat hadn’t come from her own hand, maybe it had come from the last guy she’d scammed.

When he was twenty-eight, Bob had come into his mother’s bedroom to wake her for Sunday mass. He’d given her a shake and she hadn’t batted at his hand as she normally did. So he rolled her toward him and her face was scrunched tight, her eyes too, and her skin was curbstone gray. Sometime in the night, after
The Commish
and the
Eleven O’Clock News,
she’d gone to bed and woke to God’s fist clenched around her heart. Probably hadn’t been enough air left in her lungs to cry out. Alone in the dark, clutching the sheets, the fist clenching, her face clenching, her eyes scrunching, the terrible knowledge dawning that, even for you and right now, it all ends.

Standing over her that morning, imagining the last tick of her heart, the last lonely wish her brain had been able to form, Bob felt a loss unlike any he expected to know again.

Until tonight. Until now. Until he knew what that look on Nadia’s face meant.

MIDWAY THROUGH THE THIRD
quarter, Bob came down the bar to a group of guys. One of them had his back to him and there was something really familiar about the back of his head, Bob about to put his finger on it when Rardy turned and gave him a big smile.

Rardy said, “How you doing there, Bobby boy?”

“We, we,” Bob said, “we were worried about you.”

Rardy gave that comical scowl. “You, you, you were? We’ll have seven beers and seven shots of Cuervo by the way.”

Bob said, “We thought you were dead.”

Rardy said, “Why would I be dead? I just didn’t feel like working in a place almost got me killed. Tell Marv he’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

Bob saw Eric Deeds working his way through the crowd toward the other side of the bar, and it put something in the center of Bob, something heartless. He said to Rardy, “Maybe I’ll tell Chovka about your complaints. Pass that up the ladder. Whatta ya think? Good idea?”

Rardy laughed bitterly at that, trying for contempt but not getting anywhere close. He shook his head several times, like Bob just didn’t get something, didn’t get anything.

“Give us the beers and the shots.”

Bob leaned into the bar, got real close, close enough to smell the tequila on Rardy’s breath. “You want a drink? Flag down a bartender who doesn’t know you’re a bag of shit.”

Rardy blinked but Bob was already walking away.

He crossed behind a couple of the BarTemps and stood at the other corner and watched Eric Deeds come.

When he reached him, Eric said, “Stoli rocks, my man. House Chard’ for the lady.”

Bob made the drink. “Didn’t see you this morning.”

“No? Well . . .”

“So, you don’t want the money.”

Eric said, “You bring it with you?”

“Bring what?”

“You did. You’re that type.”

Bob said, “What type?”

“Type would bring the money with him.”

Bob delivered the Stoli, poured a glass of Chardonnay. “Why’s she here?”

“She’s my girl. Always-n-f’eva and shit.”

Bob slid the wineglass in front of Eric. He leaned into the bar. Eric leaned in to meet him.

Bob said, “You give me that piece of paper and you leave with the money.”

“What piece of paper?”

“The microchip piece. You sign over that and the license to me.”

“Why would I do that?”

Bob said, “Because I’m paying you. Isn’t that the deal?”

Eric said, “That’s
a
deal.”

Eric’s cell phone rang. He looked at it, held up a finger to Bob. He took the drinks and walked back into the crowd.

ADD PEYTON MANNING TO
the list of people who had fucked Cousin Marv up the ass in his life. Motherfucker went out there with his billion-dollar arm and his billion-dollar contract and wet-shit all over the field against the Seahawks defense. There were two kinds of Bronco-busting going on right now—what Seattle was doing to Denver and what Denver was doing to every bettor in the country who’d put their faith in them. Marv, one of those bettors—because what was the point of continuing to abstain from bad habits if you were insane enough to rip off the Chechen Mafia for a few million dollars?—was gonna lose fifty grand on this fucking game. Not that he was gonna stick around to pay the debt. And if that pissed off Leo Coogan and his Upham Corner boys, well, they could just get in line. Take a fucking number.

From the kitchen phone, Marv called the Deeds kid to see when he planned to head over to the bar and was shocked and sickened to hear that he was already there and had been for an hour.

“The fuck are you doing?” he said.

“Where else am I going to be?” Deeds said.

“Home. So nobody gets a good look at you until you, you know, rob the fucking place.”

“No one ever notices me,” Eric said, “so don’t worry about it.”

“I just don’t get it,” Marv said.

“Get what?”

“This was so simple—you show up at the designated time, do the thing, and leave. Why can’t anyone just stick to a fucking plan in this world anymore? Your generation, you all pack your assholes with ADD before you leave the house every morning?”

Marv went to the fridge for another beer.

Deeds said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m in his head.”

“Whose head?”

“Bob’s.”

“If you were in that guy’s head you’d be screaming, and you’re not screaming.” Marv cracked the beer. He softened his voice a bit. Better to have a chilled-out partner than one who thought you were pissed at him. “Look, I know what he seems like, but I shit you not, do not fuck with that man. Just leave him alone and don’t call attention to yourself.”

“Oh,” Eric said, “so what am I supposed to do for the next couple hours?”

“You’re in a bar. Don’t drink too fucking much, stay frosty, and I’ll see you at two in the alley. That sound like a plan?”

Eric’s laughter came through the receiver strained and girlish at the same time, like he was laughing at a joke no one else could hear and no one else would get if they could.

“Sounds like
a
plan,” he said and hung up.

Marv stared at his phone. Kids these days. It was like on that day in school when they taught personal responsibility, this entire fucking generation had banged in sick.

ONCE THE GAME ENDED
, the crowd grew a lot thinner, though those that stayed were louder, drunker, and left bigger messes in the bathroom.

After a while, even they started to fade. Rardy passed out by the pool table and his friends dragged him out of there, one of them shooting Bob apologetic looks the whole way.

Bob glanced over at Eric and Nadia from time to time, still sitting at the same cocktail table, talking. Every time he did, Bob felt more and more diminished. If he glanced over there enough times, he’d vanish.

After four Stolis, Eric finally went to the bathroom, and Nadia walked up to the bar.

Bob leaned on the bartop. “Are you with him?”

Nadia said, “
What?
”

Bob said, “Are you? Just tell me.”

Nadia, “Good God, what? No. No, I’m not with him. No, no, no. Bob? I show up at my house this afternoon, he’s waiting in my kitchen with a gun in his waistband like it’s
Silverado
. Says I gotta come with him to see you.”

Bob wanted to believe her. Wanted to believe her so hard it could shatter his teeth; they’d shoot out of his mouth, spray all over the bar. He got a good look in her eyes finally, saw something he still couldn’t fully identify—but it definitely wasn’t excitement or smugness or the bitter smile of a victor. Maybe something worse than all of that—despair.

Bob said, “I can’t do this alone.”

Nadia said, “Do what?”

Bob said, “It’s too hard, you know? I’ve been serving this . . . sentence for ten years—every fucking
day
—because I thought somehow it’d square me when I got to the other side, ya know? I’d get to see my ma and my old man, stuff like that? But I don’t think I’ll be forgiven. I don’t think I should be. But, but I’m supposed to be alone on the other side
and
on this one too?”

“No one’s supposed to be alone. Bob?” She put her hand on his. Just a second, but it was enough. It was enough. “No one.”

Eric came out of the bathroom and worked his way up to the bar. He jerked a thumb at Nadia. “Be a hot shit and grab our drinks off the table, would ya?”

Bob walked off to settle a tab.

BY ONE-FORTY-FIVE, THE CROWD
was gone, just Eric, Nadia, and Millie, who’d amble off to the assisted-living place up on Edison Green by one-fifty-five on the dot. She asked for her ashtray and Bob slid it down to her and she nursed her drink and her cigarette in equal measure, the ash curling off the end of her cigarette like a talon.

Eric gave Bob an all-teeth smile and spoke through it, softly. “When’s the old biddy pack it in?”

“A couple minutes.” Bob said, “Why’d you bring her?”

Eric looked over at Nadia hunched on the stool beside him. He leaned into the bar. “You should know how serious I am, Bob.”

“I know how serious you are.”

“You
think
you do, but you don’t. If you fuck with me—even in the slightest—it doesn’t matter how long it takes me, I’ll rape the shit out of her. And if you got any plans, like Eric-doesn’t-walk-back-out-of-here plans? You got any ideas in that vein, Bob, my partner on the Richie Whelan hit, he’ll take care of you both.”

Eric sat back as Millie left the same tip she’d been leaving since Sputnik—a quarter—and slid off her stool. She gave Bob a rasp that was 10 percent vocal cords and 90 percent Virginia Slim Ultra Light 100s. “Yeah, I’m off.”

“You take care, Millie.”

She waved it away with a “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and pushed open the door.

Bob locked it behind her and came back behind the bar. He wiped down the bar top. When he reached Eric’s elbows, he said, “Excuse me.”

“Go around.”

Bob wiped the rag in a half circle around Eric’s elbows.

“Who’s your partner?” Bob said.

“Wouldn’t be much of a threat if you knew who he was, would he, Bob?”

“But he helped you kill Richie Whelan?”

Eric said, “That’s the rumor, Bob.”

“More than a rumor.” Bob wiped in front of Nadia, saw red marks on her wrists where Eric had yanked them. He wondered if there were other marks he couldn’t see.

“Well then it’s more than a rumor, Bob. So there you go.”

“There you go what?”

“There you
go
.” Eric scowled. “What time is it, Bob?”

Bob reached under the bar. He came back out with the ten thousand dollars wrapped in the bag. He unwrapped the bag, pulled the money out, and put it on the bar in front of Eric.

Eric glanced down. “What’s this?”

Bob said, “The ten grand you wanted.”

“For what, again?”

“The dog.”

“The dog. Right, right, right,” Eric whispered. He looked up. “How much for Nadia, though?”

Bob said, “So it’s like that.”

“Appears to be,” Eric said. “Let’s just all chill a couple more minutes, then get a look in the safe at two.”

Bob turned and selected a bottle of Polish vodka. Picked the best one actually—the Orkisz. Poured himself a drink. Drank it down. Thought of Marv and poured himself another, a double this time.

He said to Eric Deeds, “You know Marv used to have a problem with the blow about ten years ago?”