“It’s the only thing that relaxes her now…now that…”
“Your son has died.” I finished for him, taking the cornflakes and placing it in the basket. “Well, that’s good for her.”
“She took up arts. I took up the job of protecting the people of Boston. To make sure no one else would lose their child to drugs—”
“Spare me the speech, Mayor,” I cut him off, looking between the chicken and chunky tomato soups. “I already voted for you…I mean, I got the votes for you. Chunky tomato or chicken?”
He didn’t reply or even bother looking at the cans.
“To hell with it. I’ll live a little and get them both,” I answered, throwing them into the basket also.
“And in return for that vote I’ve made sure your business has run smoothly in and out of the city,” he shot back. I paused in the middle of the aisle. “However, whatever is going on is starting to cause the bodies to pile up far too quickly.”
“Mayor.” I did my best to keep calm. “You were brought into the fold to spread the usual bullshit, not for you to start eating it too.”
“This new drug, Ethan, it—”
“IT IS MR. CALLAHAN!” I snapped, turning back to him. “Everyone has forgotten their place, Mayor, and I will take the blame for that. I’ve allowed you all to take credit for my achievements, my family’s achievements, for so long you’ve all begun to believe they are yours. Before me you were nothing but a detective, so in debt you would roll over and play dead for a few grand, with an unfaithful manic-depressive wife and a junkie for a son. I picked you out of the gutter, I dusted you off, I gave you that shiny pedestal you now stand so proudly on. You didn’t allow my business to do anything, it supersedes you! Whatever happens here, you are to do as you are told—”
“I will not let people die—”
Dropping the cart, I grabbed him by the neck, shoving him up against the glass doors and squeezing.
“Never interrupt me, Mr. Takahashi. I’m up to my neck in disrespect and I won’t take it from you too. You will go back to your office, you will sit in that nice big chair of yours, you will remember who bought you that chair, and you will wait as patiently as I am being with you until you get your orders. Am I being clear?” I squeezed tighter, forcing his chin up. “Am. I. Being. Clear?”
“Y...es…”
Letting go, he coughed and gasped for air, bending to the side as I moved back to my cart. “People like your son will always die. You didn’t lose your child to drugs. Yoshiro lost to himself. People like you always come around, always saying they will clean up the cities and will choke the drug supply, forgetting that it is the very same people in those cities who are letting the filth get in. Why?” I asked, bending down to reach for the jelly. “Because they cannot cope. Whether the pain is physical or mental it doesn’t matter. They want to escape so badly they’ll take anything. You cannot stop drugs from coming in until you stop the pain. And pain never stops. I thought you understood that. I thought you understood that we supply the safest poison and therefore respected your role. But I thought wrong. You, too, think that the evil begins and ends with the Callahans. So watch well and see how this city, the city I gave you, changes when I’m not the gatekeeper.”
I walked to the front counter, placing my basket on the counter and ringing the bell. I turned back when I heard him walking toward the door, adjusting his neck tie. “When this is over I just might have to get a ring so you can kneel down to kiss it out of gratitude.”
Pushing the door open, he said, “Have a good day, Mr. Callahan.”
“I always do.”
He turned back to me once more before getting inside the town car, the black door closing behind him.
“The moment I heard you were in town I sent Kitty and the girls to my sister’s in Florida.”
“You mean she’s not in the back helping you find the newspaper app?” I replied, turning back around to him as he shuffled in behind the back of the counter.
“Thankfully not. I told them, look, if the Ceann na Conairte is coming here himself, that means some people are going to lose their heads, and I don’t need them in the crosshairs. No, sir.” He chuckled, ringing up the items in the basket. “It’s $41.97.”
“$41.97? You’re killing me, McNardy.”
“Girls, three of them, Callahan, do you know how much tuition costs nowadays? And of course they all got to go to the expensive ones.” He groaned, lifting a thick purse and placing it on the table, sliding it to me.
“I think you mean Ivy League,” I said, opening it to count the cash quickly before pulling out a few twenties and placing them on the counter.
“I mean bloody expensive. Couldn’t one of them have the decency to only care about makeup and boys like everyone else?” he grumbled, giving me change, and I just threw it back into the purse, sliding it back to him.
“Keep it and anything else trickling. Spread it among the boys too. Things will be slow for a while. I’m sure it will help with your girls too.”
He smiled like he’d been resurrected from the dead. “You’re too kind, Callahan.”
“Aren’t I!” I agreed, moving to the doors. “If everyone thought like you I would still be in Chicago, blissfully ignorant to the ridiculously high cost of jelly.”
“I got it from the Amish. Everyone loves that stuff. Can’t get it anywhere but McNardy’s.”
“I’ll let you know, then, if it was worth it.” I stepped back into the light breeze, tossing the bag over my shoulder as I walked back.
IVY
“Oh my God, what is this?” I said, taking a bite of the bagel in front of me, reaching over to get more of the jelly.
“Amish gold, apparently,” he replied, reading through the messages on his phone, lying almost naked, nothing but a towel around his waist, beside me on the bed. He’d come in with breakfast for me before taking a quick shower only a few minutes ago. “Give me some.”
He titled his head to me, and I broke off a piece of the bagel to put in his mouth. Watching as he chewed, I waited for a reaction, but all he did was nod. “Good, but still not worth the price.”
“Shh.” I gasped, putting my hands over the jelly. “It will hear you.”
He finally glanced up at me and then at my hands before snickering. He tossed his phone on the bedside table, sitting up, and grabbed the knife to spread the jelly onto my lips before licking them off with his tongue.