The Drop (16 page)

Dottie and Bob exchanged kisses on the cheek and then she was gone.

Bob walked down the hall to the den, found Cousin Marv sitting in a Barcalounger staring at the TV. A pregame show on there now, Dan Marino and Bill Cowher doing
X
’s and
O
’s on a board in their four-thousand-dollar suits.

Bob said, “Dottie says you need to eat.”

Cousin Marv said, “Dottie says a lot of things. At tip-top fucking volume too.”

Bob said, “She might have to, get you to listen.”

Cousin Marv said, “And that means what exactly? ’Cause I’m slow.”

Bob said, “Biggest day of the year today and I can’t get you on the phone.”

Cousin Marv said, “I’m not coming in. Call BarTemps.”

“‘Call BarTemps.’” Bob said, “Jesus. I already did. It’s Super Bowl.”

Cousin Marv said, “So why do you need me?”

Bob sat in the other Barcalounger. As a kid, he’d liked this room, but as the years passed and it stayed exactly the same except for a new TV every five years, it felt like heartbreak to him. Like a calendar page no one bothered to turn anymore.

Bob said, “I don’t need you. But you’re blowing off the biggest tip day of the year?”

“Oh, I work for tips now.” Cousin Marv stared at the screen, wearing a ridiculous red, white, and blue Patriots jersey and matching sweats. “You ever see the name on the bar? It’s mine. Know why? ’Cause I owned it once.”

Bob said, “You nurse that loss like it was your one good lung.”

Cousin Marv whipped his head around, glared at him, “You’ve been getting awful fucking fresh since you picked up that dog you confuse with a kid.”

Bob said, “You can’t redo it. They pressed, you blinked, it’s over. It’s been over.”

Cousin Marv reached for the lever on the side of the chair. “I’m not the one wasted my whole life waiting for it to start.”

Bob said, “That’s what I did?”

Cousin Marv pulled the lever, let his feet down to the floor. “Yeah. So fuck you and your eeney-weeny fucking dreams. I was feared once. That fucking barstool where you let that old biddy sit? That was my barstool. And no one sat there because it was Cousin Marv’s seat. That meant something.”

“No, Marv,” Bob said, “it was just a chair.”

Cousin Marv’s eyes returned to the TV. Boomer and JB on there now, yucking it up.

Bob leaned in, spoke very softly but very clearly. “You doing something desperate again? Marv, listen to me. Hear me. Are you doing something we won’t be able to clean up this time?”

Cousin Marv leaned back in the chair until the footrest rose under his legs again. He wouldn’t look at Bob. He lit a cigarette. “Get the fuck out. Really.”

IN THE BACK OF
the bar, Bob set up the crate, laid the blanket in it, and tossed in the chew toys, but he let Rocco run around for a while. Worst that would happen is the puppy would take a shit somewhere, and they had cleaning supplies and a hose for that.

He went behind the bar. He pulled the bag with the ten thousand dollars from his coat and placed it on the shelf beside the same 9mm semiautomatic Cousin Marv had wisely opted not to use during the robbery. He pushed the money and the handgun back into the shadows of the shelf using a shrink-wrapped deck of coasters. He added another deck in front of the first one.

He watched Rocco run around and sniff everywhere—time of his life—and without Marv in here like he should be, on this of all days, Bob saw every inch of the world as quicksand. There was no firm purchase. There was no safe place on which to place his feet.

How had it come to this?

You let the world in, Bobby, a voice that sounded an awful lot like his mother’s said. You let this sin-dripping world in. And the only thing under its cloak is darkness.

But, Mother?

Yes, Bobby.

It was time. I can’t just live for the other world. I need to live in this one now.

So say the fallen. So they’ve said since time began.

THEY BROUGHT AN EMACIATED
Tim Brennan into the visiting room at Concord Prison and sat him across from Torres.

Torres said, “Mr. Brennan, thanks for meeting me.”

Tim Brennan said, “Game’ll be starting soon. I don’t want to lose my seat.”

Torres said, “No worries. I’ll be in and out of here in no time. What can you tell me about Richie Whelan? Anything?”

Brennan launched into a sudden and violent coughing fit. It sounded like he was drowning in phlegm and razors. When he finally got a handle on it, he spent another minute clutching his chest and wheezing. When he looked across the table at Torres again, he did so with the eyes of a man who’d already glimpsed the other side.

Tim Brennan said, “I tell my kids I got a stomach virus. Me and the wife don’t know how to tell ’em I got AIDS in here. So we go with a story until they’re ready for the truth. Which do you want?”

“Excuse me?” Torres said.

“You want the story about the night Richie Whelan died? Or you want the truth?”

Torres’s scalp itched the way it did whenever a case was about to break wide open, but he kept his face a blank, his eyes pleasant and accepting. “Whichever one you’re giving today, Tim.”

ERIC DEEDS LET HIMSELF
into Nadia’s house with a credit card and the kind of tiny screwdriver usually used on eyeglass arms. It took fourteen tries, but there was no one out on the street so no one saw him up on the porch in the first place. Everyone had done their shopping—got their beer and chips, their artichoke dip and onion dip and salsa, their chicken wings and spare ribs, their popcorn—and now they were hunkered down, waiting for kickoff, which was still over three hours away but, hey, who gave a shit about time when you’d started drinking at noon?

Once he was inside, he paused and listened to the house as he pocketed the screwdriver and the credit card, which had gotten pretty banged up in the process. But, fuck it, they’d canceled it on Eric months ago anyway.

Eric walked down the hall and pushed open the doors on the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, and the kitchen.

Then he went upstairs to Nadia’s bedroom.

He went right to the closet. He looked through her clothes. He sniffed a few. And they smelled like her—a faint mix of orange, cherry, and chocolate. That’s what Nadia smelled like.

Eric sat on the bed.

Eric stood in front of her mirror, finger-combed his hair.

Eric pulled back the covers on her bed. He removed his shoes. He curled on the bed in a fetal position, pulled the covers over himself. He closed his eyes. He smiled. He felt the smile find his blood and ride it through his entire body. He felt safe. Like he’d crawled back into the womb. Like he could breathe water again.

AFTER HIS ASSHOLE FUCKING
cousin left, Marv got to work at the kitchen table. He lay several green plastic trash bags on it and carefully taped them together with electrical tape. He got a beer from the fridge and drained half of it, staring at the bags on the table. As if there was any turning back.

There was no turning back. There never had been.

Sucked in some ways because Marv realized, standing in his shitty kitchen, how much he’d miss it. Miss his sister, miss this house, even miss the bar and his cousin Bob.

But there was no fixing it. Life was regret, after all. And some regrets—those you indulged on a beach in Thailand, for example, over those you indulged in a New England graveyard—were more easily swallowed than others.

To Thailand. He raised his beer to the empty kitchen and then he drained it.

ERIC SAT ON THE
sofa in Nadia’s living room. He drank a Coke he’d found in her fridge—well,
their
fridge, it would be their fridge soon enough—and stared at the faded wallpaper that had probably been here since before Nadia was born. That would be the first thing that had to go, that old 1970s wallpaper. Wasn’t the ’70s no more, wasn’t even the twentieth century. It was a new day.

When he finished the Coke, he took it into the kitchen and made a sandwich from some deli meat he found in the fridge.

He heard a noise and looked up at the doorway and there she stood. Nadia. Looking at him. Curious, of course, but not afraid. A kindness in her eyes. A warm grace.

Eric said, “Oh, hey. How you doing? Been a while. Come on in, take a seat.”

She stayed where she was.

Eric said, “Yeah, no, sit. Sit. I want to tell you some things. I got some plans. Yeah. Plans. Right? Whole new life waiting out there for the, for the, for the bold.”

Eric shook his head. He didn’t like that delivery. He lowered his head, looked up at the doorway again. It was empty. He stared at it until she materialized, and she was no longer wearing jeans and a faded plaid work shirt. She was wearing a dark dress with very small polka dots, and her skin . . . her skin shined.

“Oh,
hey
,” Eric said happily. “How’s it going, girl? Come on in. Take a—”

He stopped at the sound of a key turning the lock on the front door. The door opened. Closed. He heard a handbag being hung on a hook. Keys dropped on a table. The thud of boots being kicked off.

He adjusted himself in the chair to look comfortable, casual. He lightly slapped the bread crumbs off his hands and touched his hair to make sure it was in place.

Nadia entered. The real Nadia. Hoodie and T-shirt over camo cargo pants. Eric would have preferred a slightly less dykey getup but he’d talk it out with her.

She saw him and opened her mouth.

“Don’t scream,” he said.

THINGS BEGAN TO REALLY
pick up about four hours before the game. Which was good timing because that’s when the BarTemps crew showed up. They were already getting to it, putting on their aprons, stacking glasses, when Bob met with their supervisor, a red-haired guy with one of those moon faces that never aged. He said to Bob, “They’re contracted till midnight. Anything later’n that, we gotta charge. I gave you two barbacks. They do all the lifting, trash removal, all the ice runs. You ask one of the ’tenders to do it? They’ll start quoting you union bylaws like it’s the Book of Ezekiel.”

He handed Bob the clipboard and Bob signed off.

By the time he walked back into the bar, the first bagman was coming through the door. He dropped a newspaper on the bar, a manila envelope peeking out between the folds, and Bob swiped it off the bar, dropped the envelope down the chute. When he turned around the bagman was gone. All work, no play. That kind of night.

COUSIN MARV WALKED OUT
of his house to his car. He popped the trunk. He took the taped-together trash bags and lay them across the inside of the empty trunk. He used more electrical tape to seal all the edges against the sides.

He walked back into the house, grabbed the quilt from the mudroom. He lay the quilt over the plastic. He studied his handiwork for a few seconds. Then he shut the trunk, put the suitcase behind the driver’s seat, and closed the door.

He went back inside to print out the plane tickets.

THIS TIME WHEN TORRES
pulled up beside Romsey’s unmarked at Pen’ Park, she was alone. It got him wondering if they could go all old school in the backseat, pretend they were at the drive-in that used to be here, pretend they were stupid kids and a whole lifetime—two of them—lay waiting to unfurl before them, as yet smooth and untouched by the pockmarks of poor decisions and the divots of habitual failures, large and small.

He and Romsey had slipped up again last week. Alcohol had, of course, been a factor. After, she’d said, “Is this all I am?”

“To me? No, chica, you’re—”

“To me,” she said. “Is this all I am to me?”

He didn’t know what the fuck that meant but he knew it wasn’t good, so he’d laid low until she called him this morning, told him to get his ass over to Pen’ Park.

He’d composed a speech on the way over, in case she got that look in her eyes after they did it, that hopeless, self-hating look, the one looking down the rabbit hole in the center of herself.

“Baby,” he’d say, “we’re each other’s true selves. That’s why we can’t quit each other. We look at each other and we don’t judge. We don’t condemn. We just accept.”

It had sounded better when he came up with it the other night at the bar, sitting alone, doodling. But he knew, if he was looking in her eyes, feeding off them, he’d believe it in that moment, believe every word. And he’d sell it.

When he opened the door and slid into the passenger side, he noticed she was nicely dressed up—dark green silk dress, black pumps, black coat looked to be cashmere.

Torres said, “You’re looking fucking yummy. Shit.”

Romsey rolled her eyes. She reached down between the seats, came back with a file, and tossed it on his lap. “Eric Deeds’s psych file. You’ve got three minutes to read it and better not be no grease on those fingers.”

Torres held up his hands, wiggled the fingers. Romsey pulled a compact out of her purse, started applying blush to her face, eyes on the visor mirror.

“Better get reading,” she said.

Torres opened the file and noticed the name stamped up top—
DEEDS
,
ERIC
—and started skimming through it.

Romsey pulled out some lipstick, went to apply it.

Torres, eyes on the file, said to her, “Don’t. Chica, you got lips redder than a Jamaican sunset and thicker than a Burmese python. Don’t fuck with flawless.”

She looked at him. She seemed touched. Then she applied the lipstick anyway. Torres sighed.

Torres said, “Like using house paint on a Ferrari. Who you going out with anyway?”

“A guy.”

He turned a page. “A guy. What guy?”

“Special guy,” she said and something in her tone made him look up. He noticed for the first time that in addition to looking hot, she looked healthy. Like she was lit from within. It was a light that filled the car so completely he couldn’t understand how he’d missed it.

“Where’d you meet this special guy?”

She pointed at the file. “Get reading. Clock’s ticking.”

He did.

“I’m serious,” he said. “This special guy. He . . .”

His voice trailed off. He scanned back up the page to the list of Deeds’s incarcerations and institutionalizations. He thought maybe he’d read a date wrong. He flipped a page, then another.