Prayer (34 page)

Standing, Nick ignored him and turned to Angelo. “Get him started on the blow here. You and Frank do the rest at the hotel. Marlon is waiting with her.”

Angelo nodded and went to the duffel. From it he pulled an innocuous white bottle, like nasal spray. He went to the still-screaming Calhoun and, while Frank held his head, shoved the bottle into Calhoun’s nostril and squeezed. Then he did the other one.

The effect of the cocaine was immediate. Calhoun stopped fighting, stopped screaming, and went stock-still, his eyes rolling up in his head. After a few seconds, a thin trickle of blood oozed from his left nostril.

“Shit’s pure, don,” Angelo said. “He’s going over big time.”

“I want him dying in that hotel room, not here. So get moving, and get it done, and do it clean.” As Angelo nodded and turned to get to work, Nick grabbed him back. “Go as easy on her as you can. Her take is heavy—that’s intentional. Every penny is for her.”

J.J. spoke up. “My guys don’t need that reminder, don. They won’t even open her bag.”

“Good. Get it done, and call me when it is.”

While Nick’s men unbound Calhoun and dragged him from the room, John, sitting again on the loveseat in the corner, ignored and in shock, feeling sick and desperate, tried to pray again, this time an Act of Contrition.
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry
for having offended Thee
,
and I detest all my sins…

He stopped. The words meant nothing. In this room, in these events, there was no meaning.

When it was only Nick, John, and Sam in the room, Nick dragged his metal chair over and sat facing John the way he’d sat facing Calhoun. “Sam, give us a minute.”

“Right outside, don.”

“Thank you.”

Sam went out and closed the door, and then it was only the two cousins. John grabbed his knees to keep his hands from shaking. “Why did I have to see that? Why did I have to be part of it?”

“You owed me. Only you could have gotten him out of that library alone. You or Katrynn, and I wouldn’t ask that of her. Would you have wanted me to?”

“Of
course
not.”

“Of course not. Here’s why you had to see it: Trey came to my office last week. Rode his bike over after school, walked up to the reception desk and asked to see Don Pagano. He wanted to know how to be made.”

John gave up his sick shock at the events of the night for a new, electric kind of shock. “Please?”

Nick nodded. “I know how your father feels about my business. I know how Trey’s father feels about my business. How you feel about it. I know it, and I understand it. But as our sides of the family have gotten closer, maybe our children don’t understand it. I don’t want to lose the way things are now among us all. Beverly and our children love their family. I love my family. But if Trey wants to be made, that’s going to create a schism somewhere, now or later.”

“You could just tell him no.”

That earned John a humorless smile. “Do you know why Uncle Ben didn’t tell Joey no? Because Joey was a grown man and a Pagano. He made his choice, and Ben accepted it. I wouldn’t have done the same, but not because of how your father feels. I wouldn’t have signed Joey on because I could see that he didn’t have it in him. Ben thought he could be shaped, but he was wrong. Joey wasn’t serious enough for what we do. But Trey is not Joey. Trey is sharp, and he’s thoughtful. If he comes to me as a man, I’ll make that call between him and me and no one else. I told him as much last week. If you want him to stay away from the Pagano Brothers, then figure out now why he’s leaning toward my side and turn him in another direction.”

“I’m not Trey’s father. Why tell me?” Carlo was the one who should know. If Nick wasn’t going to tell Trey’s father, then John would have to.

“Because you owed me. You’re the one I could show this to, and I know Trey talks to you.”

It finally dawned on John that Nick was using the past tense. “Owed? Am I clear?”

“You’re clear.” He stood. “Let’s go home. My boys have the rest of the night handled.”

John stood, too, feeling a strong and guilty sense of relief. Then he remembered one especially striking fact amongst the riot of facts in his head. “You’re not really going to hurt a woman in this, are you?”

Nick sighed. “I don’t want that bag of rancid piss getting famous posthumously. Read that fucking story and see how he shat all over me, all over our whole family. I want his reputation destroyed. You know that he likes leaving women bruised up. So a friend of the family has agreed to be very well compensated to take a couple of carefully placed punches and to be choked to the point of bruising.”

“You’re hurting a woman for this.”

“Let’s go home, John. Your debt is paid, and your part in my business is over.” Nick left the room, not waiting for a response.

John followed. He damn sure didn’t want to get left behind.

~oOo~

On the ride back to the Cove, leaning in the corner of the back seat of Nick’s SUV, letting his mind churn over the events of the day, from Ren’s baptism and Katrynn’s talk of conversion, to his desperate, fruitless prayers in that bleak Boston warehouse, a point of fact occurred to John, and he had to force his body not to react and draw the attention of the mobsters in the front seat.

Katrynn had that damn issue of
The New Yorker
. He’d seen it next to her bed. She went through those fuckers cover to cover.

She had read that story. She had known about it.

She had known, and she had said nothing.

~ 22 ~

Katrynn returned to John’s house—no, it was her house, too, now—alone after baby Ren’s party. All three cats sat in a row just inside the door when she let herself in.

Three cats because Lady Catterley lived with them now. After several hundred dollars’ worth of tests, the vet had posited that her shedding was a reaction to stress and suggested that she was lonely. Despite Cat having lived at the shop for years and seeming to be the least stressed-out cat on the planet, Katrynn had folded her into the Big Move. All three cats were fixed, so there was no worry about a population explosion.

There had been some light hissing at first, but they seemed to bond together against the, well,
stress
of moving. For a few days, all three had hidden under the sofa together. They’d all come out as a group occasionally to eat or use their boxes, and then they’d slunk together back to the dark.

Katrynn had worried that she’d fucked them all up, but then she’d come…home…from work and found John sitting on the sofa, surrounded by purring, stretched out cats. And Cat wasn’t shedding anymore. She’d been lonely.

John was not thrilled that there were three litter boxes in the little house, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. Katrynn had briefly considered moving George and Lennie to Cat at the bookshop instead of the other way around, but she wanted them home with her at night. So two people and three cats were now living in this cute but tiny house on the beach.

“Hey, butts,” she said as she came in and set her bag on the small dining table. George and Lennie did their usual loud greeting until they got some love. Cat was far too dignified to make a fuss, but she was, as always, willing to rub her head on Katrynn’s hand.

As she went to the kitchen and prepared their dinner, Katrynn wondered if she should call John. He’d left so mysteriously, with Nick and some of Nick’s men, and that had her worried. But he’d smiled and told her everything was cool, and Bev had told her to trust that, so she was trying to trust that. Besides, what did she think? That John had randomly run off with Nick to go kill somebody? Right.

Once the cats were feasting, Katrynn went into the little room next to the living room, the room that was the only true bedroom in the house. John had used it as not much more than storage: several guitars hung on a wall, and a few big boxes—some opened and combed through, some still sealed from his own move several years back—were stacked next to the closet door. Other random items had been scattered around, as if John had stuck them in here and closed the door and called it ‘put away.’ Those items were actually put away now, and her bookcases and packed boxes were in here.

John had offered to haul the bookcases upstairs, so that they could leave this room more or less empty until they were ready to make it a nursery, but Katrynn liked the idea of their baby having lots of books in his or her room. So she wanted the cases in here.

She was still in the process of unpacking the books to fill them. It took her a while to move in anywhere; she had to psych herself up to deal with every box. She knew that she’d feel better once the flux was over and she was actually moved in, and yet she could not spend more than an hour or so at a time on the work of unpacking—or packing, for that matter; John had finally done most of the packing up of the apartment himself, because she’d procrastinated more than he could tolerate. She was glad.

Moving was just so damn hard. And now half her things were languishing in a storage locker with half of his things, because all of their things wouldn’t fit into this little house.

She shivered and stopped that train of stress in its tracks. She wouldn’t do any unpacking tonight. Instead, she’d go upstairs and get in bed and read until John got home. It was getting late; he’d be home soon.

“Come on, butts. Let’s go get comfy.”

She fell asleep pinned under the comforter by snuggly cats. Alone.

~oOo~

What woke her up she couldn’t be sure, but it wasn’t John getting into bed. She was still alone. Light glowed up from below the loft, though. She recognized it as the light from the floor lamp in the corner of the living room. That lamp had a mica shade, so the glow had a reddish cast. She hadn’t turned that lamp on.

Then she heard the sound of glass touching glass, like a toast, or the neck of a bottle touching a glass during pouring.

“John?”

No answer. The cats still had her pinned, so she lifted George away and got up. She went to the half-wall of the loft and leaned over. That light was on, but the sofa was empty. “John?”

Still no answer. But someone was in the house. Was it not John? Had she just announced to a thief or someone even worse that she was home?

Her heart pounding, she tiptoed back to the bed and picked her phone up from the nightstand. She dialed John—and heard his phone ring below her.

But he didn’t answer.

Had someone hurt him and taken his phone and then come to the house?

Looking around the loft for a weapon, she found none. She eyed his favorite guitar, leaning against his nightstand, but even now, she couldn’t imagine doing anything that might damage it.

She leaned over the loft wall again. “John! Is that you?!”

“Yeah,” he said. And nothing more.

Her knees weak with relief—and yet some fear—Katrynn wended her way down the spiral staircase.

He stood at the kitchen island, a bottle of Jack Daniels on the granite before him, and a glass in his hand. Finishing what was in his hand, he set the glass down and refilled it, and Katrynn saw that a lot of booze had left that bottle since the last time she’d seen it. Which had been the night before. He drank the refill as if the liquor had no more kick than water.

Fear overtook her relief. Something was very, very wrong. Walking to the island, across from him, she said his name again, forming it into a question. “John?”

Even with her standing right there, he didn’t answer. But he did meet her eyes, and at what she saw in them, Katrynn nearly ran. Misery and guilt. And anger.

He was angry. He was
furious
.

At her.

“What’s wrong?” Fear had stolen her voice, and the words were barely whispers, but he heard her.

“Where is it?” His voice was almost inaudible as well, but it wasn’t fear that had dampened it.

“Where’s what?”

He made a sound that might have been a kind of laugh. “You knew.”

“I don’t understand, John. What’s wrong? What did I do?”

That chilling, stunted laugh again. He poured more Jack into the glass. This time, Katrynn saw the way the bottle shook in his hand. He was drunk and enraged.

She thought she might be in real trouble. Actual danger. Looking behind her, she considered grabbing her bag, which was still on the dining room table, and running away. She was wearing a pair of boxers and a camisole, but being seen in public in underwear did not seem to be her most pressing concern.

But this was
John
. He wouldn’t hurt her.

“Please tell me what’s wrong.”

He slammed the empty glass back on the counter, and it broke in his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice. “WHERE IS IT?”

“I don’t know what you’re looking for. Please, John. I’m scared.”

When he punched the counter, his fist landed right in the broken glass, and Katrynn saw it stab into his skin, but he still didn’t notice. “Do you know what I did tonight? What I saw? And you
knew
.
You fucking knew
!”

She had no earthly idea what he was talking about, and her brain was now so full of abject terror she couldn’t have made anything like a deductive guess. He came around the island, and Katrynn ran backward, stumbling over a chair, but he wasn’t after her. He stormed around the corner and into the little room that they wanted to be a nursery someday.

Feeling quite sure that she should be leaving the house, and that she absolutely should not get closer to him, she followed and stopped in the doorway.

He was tearing into her boxes, casting aside her treasured books as if they were trash. They thumped and bounced, falling open around him, their corners crushing, their spines breaking, jackets tearing, pages folding.

“John, please. What are you looking for? The boxes are labeled. Let me help.”

He didn’t answer, and, too afraid to come any closer, Katrynn stood witness as he tore apart her books. Then he stopped. Staring into a box, he put his hands in and pulled up a stack of
New Yorker
s.

That was all it took for the scramble of confused pieces to align in her mind and turn all this horror into sense. She knew what he was looking for. But he wouldn’t find it in that stack. She had shredded that issue.

“John. What happened?”

He finally looked up at her, and she saw that misery was dulling his anger. “Where is it?”

“I don’t have it.”

He tossed the stack of magazines away and fell back on his ass. “You knew.”

Understanding that doing so might reignite that terrifying fury in his eyes, she nodded. “Yes.”

“You didn’t tell me.” He raked his hands through his hair. “You knew and didn’t say. Do you know what I did tonight? What I saw? And you
knew
.”

Not everything he said made sense yet, but Katrynn’s understanding had deepened and darkened. He knew about Atticus’s story. He had left the party with Nick, and he was now distraught over something he’d done. These facts were related.

Atticus had been hurt. John had been involved.

“Oh, God. John, what did you do? What happened?”

He dropped his head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She had to break through this loop he was stuck in, and she was fairly certain that his mood had shifted so that he wouldn’t lash out at her, so she dropped to her knees and crawled to his side. Picking up his hand, she saw that a piece of glass was embedded in the side of his palm. She plucked it gently out and set it aside, then kissed the small wound, tasting his blood.

“I’m sorry. I was afraid people would get hurt, and I thought if I didn’t say anything, there was a chance it would fly under the radar and not do any harm.”

He laughed bitterly and pulled his hand away. “You were wrong.”

Katrynn swallowed down the lump of horror in her throat. “What happened to Atticus?”

“He’s dead.”

They sat in silence for a few beats, with those words hanging in the air like a miasma, and then John whipped to the side and puked all over the cast-aside
New Yorkers
.

“Oh fuck,” he muttered, propped on his hands over his mess. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”

Her own shock too great to explore, she focused instead on John’s need. She laid a tentative hand on his back. “Did…did you…”

He shook his head and sat back, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “I was there. I brought him there.”

Katrynn felt tons of weight lift away at that shake of his head. John hadn’t killed him. But she didn’t understand why he’d been involved at all. “Why? What did that have to do with you?”

“I owed Nick a debt, and that was my repayment.”

“You owed…why?”

“For tearing up the shop. Because what I did put Calhoun in Nick’s way.”

Katrynn sat back, her hand over her mouth. In a way, then, everything that had happened was about her. John’s enmity for Atticus, the reason he’d punched him and started that fight, was her. And everything else fell from that. Atticus was dead because of her. John was racked with guilt because of her.