They drove in silence toward Cambridge. Eventually Dempsey let his head rest against the window, his eyes fixed on distant lights. Ryan smoked a cigarette, and thought about a boy he once knew, Josh Tyler, who died in a lake at some summer camp in New Hampshire when his canoe capsized. Josh could swim, but the kid in the canoe with him couldn’t, or not well enough. He panicked, and dragged Josh under the water. The kid was kicking, and one of the kicks caught Josh in the side of the head and knocked him unconscious. Somehow the kid made it to the canoe and managed to hold on to it, but by then Josh Tyler was dead. Drowning men will drag you down if you let them, thought Ryan. Sometimes, to survive, you have to let them sink.
They found a spot not far from the entrance to the Brattle Street Theater, and sat back to wait.
‘What’s on there?’ asked Ryan.
‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle,’ said Dempsey. ‘I read about it in the paper.’
‘I don’t know it.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know it?’
‘I said I don’t know it. I’ve never seen it, never even heard of it. It must be new.’
‘No, it’s not new. It’s old. Nineteen seventy-three. Robert Mitchum and that guy, the one from Everybody Loves Raymond. Boyle, Peter Boyle. He’s dead now. Real good in that movie. I can’t believe you never heard of it, you growing up in Boston and all.’
‘I didn’t go to movies much as a kid.’
‘Still, you should know it.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘A snitch.’
Dempsey didn’t say anything else. Ryan felt him looking at him, but didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue. Eventually, Dempsey did.
‘Eddie – that’s Mitchum – decides to rat out his buddies to avoid doing time. He’s old. He doesn’t want to go back in the can.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘How does it end?’
‘I’m not going to tell you how it ends. Go rent it sometime.’
‘I’m not going to rent it.’
‘Well, I’m not going to tell you how it ends.’
‘Fine.’
‘Yeah, fine. You’re some asshole, you know that?’
‘You’re the asshole, not telling me how it ends.’
‘You want to know how it ends?’
‘No, I don’t care now.’
‘You want to know?’
‘No.’