‘What about me?’ said Dempsey. ‘Would you kill me in your dreams? Do you kill me in your dreams?’
Ryan had come this far. There was no point in turning back now.
‘I’ve thought about it.’
‘Not dreamed it, but thought it?’
‘Yes.’
And Dempsey saw that Ryan’s hand was within striking distance of whatever was lodged in his waistband, and the reality of all that Ryan had said hung in the air between them like a white handkerchief waiting to be dropped on a dueling field.
‘It’s all right, Francis,’ said Dempsey. ‘I know you have. I’ve seen it in your eyes.’ He moved the shoebox slightly with his left hand, shielding his right from view. ‘But I’m not the enemy here. Whatever you might think of me, I’m not the one you have to fear. If we turn against each other now, we’ll do their work for them. We have to trust each other, because we have nobody else.’
Ryan took in his words, still uncertain. ‘You frighten me sometimes, Martin. You take it too far. That woman the other night, she didn’t deserve what you did to her. No woman deserves that.’
‘But you didn’t try to stop it.’
‘I should have. I was weak.’
‘No, you’re not weak. It’s not weakness to avoid the battle that you can’t win. That’s just common sense. And what was she to you? Nothing. Nobody. You look out for your own, and let the others swim or die.’
Ryan’s right hand was still hidden.
‘So where does that leave us, Francis?’ said Dempsey. ‘Where do we stand?’
The cigarette bounced in Ryan’s fingers. A clump of ash fell to the carpet. It distracted Ryan from his thoughts. Instinctively, he moved, extending one foot to stamp on it. Dempsey glimpsed his right hand. There was no gun. Dempsey’s eyes flicked to the side and glimpsed Ryan’s gun by the sink, left there when he went to clean the glasses that they’d used earlier.
Now Ryan glanced his way. He saw the gun, and Dempsey’s fingers brushing its burnished steel, and the cold light in Dempsey’s eyes.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘It was nothing personal, Francis. You were just sounding a bit strange.’
Ryan let out a long, straggly breath. ‘I was only talking.’
‘I couldn’t see your hand.’
‘You were going to kill me.’
‘If I was going to, then I would have. I don’t want to kill you, Francis. I like you. And I told you, we have to stick together, for our sakes and for Tommy’s. If we don’t do this, they’ll pounce. Don’t think you’ll be able to cut a deal with them, because you won’t. We’ve stayed with Tommy too long. They’d never be able to rest or turn their backs on us. They’d always be wondering, doubting, and in time they’d put an end to their concerns because it would be easier that way. It’s all or nothing now. If we send out a strong enough message, we can make them reconsider. We take out Oweny, take out his crew, and suddenly the tables are turned.’
‘They’ll want revenge,’ said Ryan.
‘No, not if it’s just Oweny and his people who suffer. They’ll understand that they made a mistake, that they should have backed Tommy and not him. It’s about a show of strength. It has to be brutal, and it has to be final.’
Ryan walked to the table and looked down at the device. He picked up a carpet tack and held it to the light, examining it the way an entomologist might examine an unfamiliar yet clearly dangerous insect.
‘Joey Tuna offered me a way out,’ said Martin. ‘This morning, when we were talking, he asked me to rat on Tommy. He told me I could walk away if I made the call and let them know where Tommy could be found.’
‘And me?’
‘He didn’t mention you, Francis.’
Ryan nodded. He understood. They would have killed him just to be sure.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Nothing. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m with Tommy, and I’m with you. We’re different, you and I, but we need to stick together on this. And remember, you’re not killing anyone. I made this, and I’ll put it in position. The blood will be on my hands, the mark on my soul.’
Ryan twisted the tack one last time, then dropped it in the shoebox.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’ll be on my soul too.’
And now here they were, the rain pattering on the roof of the car, no lights within to expose them, the device on the floor at Dempsey’s feet. Ryan couldn’t help but think of it as a living creature, a monster in the box waiting to be unleashed. They should have bored air holes in it so it could breathe. He could almost hear the beating of its heart.
In an ideal situation Dempsey would have planted the device earlier, but the bar was Oweny’s place, and there was no way that he could gain access to it in advance. The bar was small, and it would contain the blast. In the confined space, the device’s effects would be catastrophic. The problem was getting it in there. He’d told Ryan that he planned to take the simple approach. In one hand was a brick, in the other the device. The brick would take out the window, and the device would follow.
‘What’s the delay on it?’ Ryan had asked, causing Dempsey to pause.
‘Where did you learn about delays?’
‘Same place I learned about everything else – from television.’
‘Five or six seconds.’
‘It’s not much. You’d better not trip or wait for the light once it’s set.’
‘I wasn’t planning on helping anyone across the road.’
Even through the rain-spattered windshield, Ryan could see Oweny Farrell’s big head from where they sat. He recognized some of the others as well. There were a couple of women too. He hoped they would leave to go to the bathroom before Dempsey started walking. It might make what was to come easier to live with.
‘You just start the engine as soon as I get out,’ said Dempsey. ‘Be prepared for the blast, let it come, then move. Don’t look at it, and don’t stare once it’s happened. You won’t want to see the aftermath, and I don’t want you freezing.’
‘I understand, Martin.’
‘Okay.’
Dempsey picked up the box and the brick, resting them in the crook of his arm. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt under his coat, and he raised the hood to hide his face as he left the car. Ryan was about to wish him good luck, then didn’t. One of the girls in the bar was laughing, her mouth wide and her head thrown back. She was pretty, and not in the hard way of most of the women who hung around with Oweny and his boys. There was a pale fragility to her features. Her hair was very dark. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. In most bars in Boston, they’d have asked for ID and given her the bum’s rush, but not there, not in Oweny’s place.
He saw Dempsey lift the edge of the shoebox to arm the device as he stepped into the cold night air. Most of the box was wrapped in tape, but Dempsey had left one corner torn and unsealed so that he could easily access the fuse that would ignite the detonating agent. Dempsey started toward the bar, his fingers poised over the gap in the box, and then there were lights in Ryan’s rearview mirror, and he heard sirens, and Dempsey was walking quickly back to the car, the device still in his arms, the brick discarded on the street. Ryan started the engine, and they pulled out behind a beverage truck just as the first of the patrol cars screeched to a halt outside the bar, more coming behind it, and the big black van of the SWAT team in the middle of them all like the queen bug among its subjects.
‘Man,’ said Ryan. ‘This is bad. This is so bad.’
‘Just drive. They’re not looking for us. They couldn’t have known.’
Ryan just kept going straight until they hit the rotary by the water. There he turned left, past the statue of Farragut, past the Francis Murphy ice skating rink. It was only when they reached the empty Castle Island parking lot that Ryan realized he had brought them to a dead end. He swore and began to reverse awkwardly, but Dempsey calmed him down.
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Take a breath. We’re okay.’
Ryan did as he was told. He breathed deeply once, twice. He felt the monster twitch in the box at Dempsey’s feet. Perhaps Dempsey felt it too, because he opened the car door and walked to the edge of the lot, then tossed the box into the water. They drove back to the rotary and took First Street out of Southie.
‘Why were they there?’ asked Ryan. ‘Why did they come?’
But they didn’t get the answer until later, when Dempsey took the call from Tommy and learned that Joey Tuna was dead.