9
Ryan didn’t like sitting in the car alone. This was the kind of neighborhood where somebody might just take it into his head to call the cops because a lone man was waiting in a strange car on a quiet street where unfamiliar cars stood out; that, or this same somebody might decide that the cops didn’t need to be involved, and a tap on the window to inquire whether there was a problem might serve just as well to clear matters up, maybe with a couple of buddies hanging in the background to make sure nobody got the wrong idea.
He tried to remember the last time he’d eaten: not a grabbed slice of pizza on the run, or some greasy fries in a bar whose name he couldn’t remember an hour later, but a proper meal, either eaten alone or among friends. It was a week at least. He wasn’t even sure that he had friends anymore. The best of them wouldn’t want to see him, because if he stayed out of their way they couldn’t talk about what they didn’t know if curious souls came calling, while the rest of them would drop a dime on him without a second thought. He could walk away, of course. There was always that option. But he had a role to play in what was happening, and he wanted to see it out to the end. In a strange way, Dempsey was now the closest thing he had to a friend. They weren’t particularly close, and they didn’t even like each other much, but they were dependent on each other. Need bound them together, but for how long? Sands were spilling through the hourglass, and Ryan didn’t know how many grains were left.
He looked toward the Napier house. The drapes were drawn and he could see no sign of movement inside. He slammed the palm of his hand against the dashboard, then repeated the action over and over until the car started to rock and his hand smarted. He shouldn’t have left the woman alone. He knew what Dempsey was going to do, but he’d turned his back on it and closed the door behind him, letting Dempsey make him his bitch as assuredly as Dempsey was making Mrs. Napier his bitch over in the house. He leaned down and lifted his trouser leg. The little revolver sat snugly in its holster. He slipped it out and stared at it, letting it rest on his thigh. He’d begun carrying it recently, even though he already had another gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. Nobody knew about the revolver, and certainly not Dempsey. In fact, Dempsey was the reason Ryan had begun carrying the revolver in the first place. Dempsey’s behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. Ryan had previously only ever encountered junkies and alcoholics who behaved in that way, veering from friendly to threatening in an instant, the only thing predictable about them being their unpredictability, but Dempsey was neither an addict nor a drunk. He stuck to a couple of beers when he hit a bar, and Ryan had never seen him take so much as a single hit on a doobie. Maybe he needed to be medicated, but Ryan wasn’t about to suggest that he see a shrink. Ryan shut his eyes, then opened them quickly as the vision of a muzzle filled his consciousness. In the instant he’d looked into that black, unblinking eye, he had felt the limits of his own existence, and the fact of his mortality was impressed upon him. He wondered if he would see the bullet that killed him, if, in that final split second, the eye would turn from black to silver-gray, filling then emptying, entering and then exiting, taking his life with it.
‘I’m just kidding with you.’ That’s what Dempsey had said, but he hadn’t been, not really. It was as though Dempsey had looked deep into Ryan’s heart and seen his potential for treachery. The gun was a warning.
See, Frankie, I’m older than you – older, and harder, and wiser. I know how you think because I was like you, once upon a time. That’s the difference between us: I was like you once, but you were never like me. It’s the small advantage that age bestows, the consolation prize for the loss of speed, the diminished reaction time. You know how the young think, but they don’t know how you think. For men like us that’s important. You stay a couple of steps ahead of the young all the time, so that when they turn on you, when they go for that gun, you already have yours in your hand because you’ve been expecting what’s coming.
I know you, Frankie.
I know you.
Ryan shivered. The voice had sounded so clear to him, as if Dempsey were sitting there next to him, the gun in his hand. But Dempsey wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, and Ryan wasn’t as young and callow as Dempsey had adjudged him to be. If Dempsey kept pulling shit like that gun trick earlier in the evening, Ryan would be forced to provide his own solution to whatever psychological difficulties Dempsey was enduring. He thought about going back into the house, pressing the revolver against the back of Dempsey’s neck while he was buried in the Napier woman, and pulling the trigger. The image was so inviting that he felt his finger slipping over the guard and fastening on the trigger, instinctively applying the pressure required.
When the cell phone rang, he almost pulled the trigger in shock.
He didn’t need to look at the caller ID. Just like Dempsey, Ryan carried two cell phones: one for personal use, along with a little general business that was always conducted discreetly, and another that was changed weekly. Calls to the second phone only came from one destination. Ryan answered on the second ring.
‘Where are you?’
That voice with its distinctive rasp, the voice of the man who had brought them to this pass, who had lowered them to the status of prey. Their fates were linked to his, and they were still waiting for him to find a way to make it all good again. Neither Ryan nor Dempsey had spoken the thought aloud, but they had both begun to suspect that they might die waiting for that to happen.
‘The cab thing. He still hasn’t shown. We found cash, though.’
‘Cash? Good.’ That was what they’d been reduced to: foraging for enough cash to enable them to keep moving and stay alive. ‘Forget about the guy. We’ll deal with him another time. You know the Brattle Street Theater?’
‘The movie place? Sure.’
‘Find somewhere to park, close as you can get to it.’
‘Now?’
‘No, next month. Put Dempsey on.’
‘He’s not here. I’m in the car. He’s inside.’
‘Why?’
‘In case, you know, the guy comes back.’
‘Who’s in there with him.’
‘A woman. The guy’s wife.’
There was silence on the other end of the line, and Ryan knew that the man was connecting the dots. He had always been good at figuring people out, or so it had seemed. He’d just lost that gift when it came to his enemies.
‘Get him out of there. This is important.’
He hung up. Ryan now had the gun in one hand and the cell phone in the other. He slipped the gun back in its ankle holster, the cell phone into his pocket, then made his way quickly across the street. A man passed, a newspaper under his arm and a beer can in one hand, concealed in a brown paper bag. The man nodded at him, and Ryan nodded back. He kept his eye on the guy all the way to the Napier house, but the man didn’t look back. Ryan had left the front door unlocked when he stepped outside. It banged against the wall when he opened it too quickly, and he called out from the hallway just in case Dempsey panicked and came out waving a gun or a knife.
‘It’s me! We have to go.’
He knocked on the living-room door before entering. He saw Dempsey buckling his jeans. Helen Napier was kneeling on the couch. Stockings and panties were lying coiled together on the floor. She was adjusting her dress, pulling it down to cover her thighs while keeping her back to the door. Her shoulders were shaking. She did not turn to look at him.
‘Is she okay?’ asked Ryan.
‘What do you think? If it’s any consolation to you, I was gentle with her. Your timing is good, though, I’ll give you that. A few minutes earlier, and I might have been annoyed at the intrusion.’
Dempsey checked the room to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything, then spoke to Mrs. Napier.
‘Helen,’ he said.
She stiffened but still did not turn her head.
‘You have a choice,’ he continued. ‘You can tell your husband what happened tonight. From what I hear, he’s the kind who could get all hot under the collar about a thing like this, and it might lead him to come looking for me. If he does, I’ll kill him. He brought this on you by his own actions, but he won’t see it that way. And, you know, it won’t help you anyway. I knew a man once whose girlfriend was raped. He could never look at her the same way again. Could be he thought that she was soiled goods. Whatever the reason, they broke up. End of story. Think about that before you go shooting your mouth off to your husband. I was you, I’d just tell him that we called, that we put the fear of God into you, and he should sort out his affairs before we come calling again.’ Dempsey picked up the shoebox of cash. ‘In the meantime, I’ll take the money as an interim payment on what was lost. We’ll be on our way now. Go fix yourself up. You don’t want him seeing you like that when he gets home.’
He brushed past Ryan on his way out the door.
‘You coming?’
Ryan was still staring at Mrs. Napier.
‘You want to apologize to her again?’ asked Dempsey. ‘You can, if you think it will help.’
But Ryan just shook his head. There was something wrong about what he was seeing: not just the act that had been committed, but the aftermath. He tried to put his finger on it but couldn’t, and then Dempsey was pulling him away, and they were walking to the car, and the assault was forced from his mind for a time as he told Dempsey about the call.
‘Regular nine-one-one,’ said Dempsey. He was counting the money in the shoebox, flipping his finger through the bound bills. Dempsey separated four hundred in twenties, split the stack evenly in two, then stuffed two hundred into his wallet and two hundred into Ryan’s coat pocket.
‘Walking-around money. If he gives you more, just take it and keep your mouth shut.’
‘How much was in there?’ asked Ryan.
‘Two-five now, plus change.’
Ryan laughed. It was that or pull over by the side of the road and beat his fists against the sidewalk in frustration.
‘All that for a lousy three grand?’
‘Hey, I had a good time.’
Now Ryan did pull over, causing the driver behind them to honk his disapproval. He turned in his seat, ready to release his belt and tear Dempsey’s throat out, but Dempsey already had his hand on the butt of the gun. His left hand was raised, one finger extended in warning.
‘What? You going to kill me?’ asked Ryan. ‘You going to pull the trigger this time?’
‘No, but I’ll break your nose with it, and I’ll go further if you make me. You want to make me do that to you?’
‘You raped a woman, just for three grand.’
‘No, I didn’t. I had the three grand anyway.’
Ryan almost lost it again, but the sight of the gun revealing itself to him brought him back to his senses. His shoulders collapsed, and he laid his forehead against the steering wheel. He felt ill. His face was bathed in warm, clammy sweat.
‘Three grand,’ he whispered. ‘Three grand and change.’
‘Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with developments, Frankie, but Mr. Morris is hurting. Two grand here, a grand there, a couple of hundred from the junkies – it all adds up. It keeps him in business, and keeps us in a job. More to the point, it’s keeping us alive. Our credit isn’t so good right now, and the bank of goodwill has closed its doors.’
‘He’s drowning,’ said Ryan. ‘He’s going down.’
‘That’s not what I said, and if I was you I wouldn’t be saying things like that out loud either. It might get taken as disloyalty. It’s swings and roundabouts. Everybody’s hurting in this economy. He’ll come good again. He just needs time.’
Ryan raised his head. Dempsey’s face was expressionless. It gave no clue to whether he believed a word that he was saying.
‘You’re going to start driving now, Frankie, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘We good?’
Ryan nodded.
‘Let me hear you say it.’
‘We’re good.’
‘Right. Now let’s go see what he wants.’