A Drink Before the War (23 page)

Socia leaned forward slightly. Eugene's right hand was still scratching at his back and his left foot tapped up and down on the cement. I handed the envelope to Socia, and Eugene's foot picked up speed.

Socia opened the clasp and stepped back under the streetlight to survey his handiwork. “Copies,” he said.

“Very good. I keep the originals.”

He looked at me, saw it wasn't negotiable, and shrugged.
He looked at them one by one, taking his time, as if they were old postcards. A couple of times, he chuckled softly.

I said, “Socia, there's something I don't get.”

He smiled, a ghostly one. “Lot you don't get, white boy.”

“Well, at this particular moment in time, then.”

“What is it?”

“Did you transfer the original photos from videocassette?”

He shook his head. “Eight millimeter home movie camera.”

“So, if you have the original film, why are all these people dying?”

He smiled. “Don't have the original.” He shrugged. “First house Roland's boys hit was a place I keep on Warren. Firebombed it, hoping I was in it. I wasn't.”

“But the film is?”

He nodded, then looked back down at the Xeroxed photos.

Eugene was leaning forward, craning his head to get a look over Socia's shoulder. His right hand was buried behind his back now and his left scratched furiously along his hip. His small body rippled, and I could hear a hum coming from his mouth, a low buzzing sound I doubt he knew he was making. Whatever it was that he was getting ready to do, it was coming soon.

I took a step forward, my breathing shallow.

Socia said, “Well, how about all this? Boy could have been a movie star. Eh, Eugene?”

Eugene made his move. He bounced forward, a stumble almost, and his hand cleared his back with a pistol in it. He jerked his arm up but it glanced off Socia's elbow. Socia was turning away as I stepped forward, pivoting as I grasped Eugene's wrist, turning my back in toward his chest. Socia's ankle turned against the pavement. He tipped toward the ground and the gun boomed twice in the still
humid air. I snapped my elbow back into Eugene's face and heard bone crack.

Socia bounced off the pavement and rolled into the salt cone, the photocopies exploding in a flurry. Eugene dropped the gun. I let go of his slick wrist and he fell straight back to the pavement, a soft pop as his head hit cement.

I picked up the gun and looked at Angie. She stood in a target shooter's stance, her arm steady as it swung the .38 back and forth between Socia and Eugene.

Eugene sat up, hands on his legs, blood flowing from a broken nose.

Socia lay against the salt pile, his body slack in the dark shadow of the expressway. I waited, but he didn't move.

Angie stepped over to him and looked down. She reached out for his wrist and he rolled over on his back. He looked at us and laughed, a rich, explosive bellow. We watched as he tried to get control of it, but it was beyond him. He tried to sit up straight against the cone, but the movement loosened the salt above him and it cascaded down inside his shirt. This made him laugh even harder. He slid back down into the salt like a drunk on a waterbed, slapping it with his hand, the laughter rippling into the atmosphere and momentarily overpowering the din of cars passing overhead.

Eventually he sat forward, holding his stomach. “Hoo boy. Ain't there no one to trust in this world no more?” He giggled and looked at the boy. “Hey, Eugene, how much Roland pay you to Judas me?”

Eugene didn't seem to hear him. The color of his skin had taken on the unhealthy hue of someone fighting back nausea. He took deep breaths and held a hand to his heart. He seemed oblivious to the broken nose, but his eyes were wide with the enormity of what he'd just attempted and what it had gotten him. Unfathomable terror swam in his irises, and I could tell his brain was scrambling to get past
it, searching his soul for the courage necessary to achieve resignation.

Socia stood and brushed some salt from his suit. He shook his head slowly, then bent to pick up the scattered photocopies. “My, my. Ain't going to be a hole deep enough or a country wide enough to hide your ass in, child. Roland or no Roland, you dead.”

Eugene looked at his shattered sunglasses lying on the ground beside him and threw up on his lap.

Socia said, “Do that all you want. Won't help you none.”

The back of my neck and the lower half of my ears felt sickly warm, the blood boiling in a whirlpool just below the skin. Above us, the metal expressway extension rattled as a convoy of semis roared over in a screaming cacophony.

I looked down at the boy and I felt tired—horrendously tired—of all the death and petty hate and ignorance and complete and utter carelessness that had assaulted me in a maelstrom this last week. I was tired of all the brick-wall debating—the black versus white, the rich versus poor, the mean versus innocent. Tired of spite and senselessness and Marion Socia and his offhand cruelty. Too tired to care about moral implications or politics or anything except the glass eyes of this boy on the ground who didn't seem to know how to cry anymore. I was exhausted by the Socias and the Paulsons, the Rolands and the Mulkerns of this world, the ghosts of all their victims whispering a growling wind of pleas into my ear to make someone accountable. To end it.

Socia was searching the shadows between the cones. “Kenzie, how many of these pictures were there?”

I pulled back the hammer on the .45 as the truck tires overhead slapped the heavy metal with relentless fury, roaring onward to a destination that could have been a thousand miles away or right next door.

I looked at the nose I'd broken. When did he forget how to cry?

“Kenzie. How many fucking pictures you give me?”

Angie was staring at me, and I knew the sounds that howled from above raged in her head too.

Socia scooped up another photocopy. “Fuck, man, this better be all of it.”

The last of the trucks rattled past, but the wail continued, pounding at a fever pitch against my eardrums.

Eugene groaned and touched his nose.

Angie looked over at Socia as he searched the ground in a crablike walk. She looked back at me and nodded.

Socia straightened and stepped under the light, holding the photocopies in his hand.

I said, “How many more will it take, Socia?”

He said, “What?” shuffling the edges of the photocopies into a neat stack.

“How many more people are you going to chew up before it's finally enough? Before even
you
get sick of it?”

Angie said, “Do it, Patrick. Now.”

Socia glanced at her, then over to me, his eyes a blank. I don't think he understood the concept of my question. He stared at me, waiting for me to elaborate. After a minute or so, he held up the photocopies. His thumb rose up the front one, pressing between Roland's bare thighs. He said, “Kenzie, is this all of it or not?”

“Yeah, Socia,” I said, “this is all of it.” I raised the gun and shot him in the chest.

He dropped the photocopies and raised a hand to the hole, stumbling back but staying on his feet. He looked at the hole, at the blood on his hand. He seemed surprised, and for a brief moment, terribly afraid. “The fuck you do that for?” He coughed.

I pulled back on the hammer again.

He stared at me, and the fear left his eyes. The irises peppered over with a cold satisfaction, a dark knowledge. He smiled.

I shot him in the head and Angie's gun went off at the same time. The bullets hammered him back into the salt
pile, and he rolled onto his back and slid to the cement.

Angie's body was shaking a bit, but her voice was steady. “Guess Devin was right.”

I looked down at Socia. “How's that?”

“Some people, you either kill them or leave them be, because you'll never change their minds.”

I bent down and began picking up the photocopies.

Angie knelt by Eugene and cleaned his nose and face with a handkerchief. He didn't seem surprised or elated or disturbed by what had happened. His eyes were glazed, somewhat off-center. Angie said, “Can you walk?”

“Yes.” He stood up unsteadily, closed his eyes for a few seconds, then exhaled slowly.

I found the photocopy I was looking for, wiped it off with some gravel, and placed it in Socia's jacket. Eugene stood firmly now. I looked at him. “Go home,” I said.

He nodded and walked off without a word. He climbed the incline and disappeared on the other side of the shrubs.

Angie and I took the same route a minute later, and as we walked toward my apartment, I slipped my arm around her waist and tried not to think about it.

His last week
alive, my father's six-foot two-inch frame weighed 112 pounds
.

In his hospital room at three in the morning, I listened to his chest rattle like shards of broken glass boiling in a pot. His exhalations sounded as if they were forcing their way out through layers of gauze. Dried spittle whitened the corners of his mouth
.

When he opened his eyes, the green irises seemed to swim, anchorless amid the white. He turned his head in my direction. “Patrick.”

I leaned in toward the bed, the child in me still cautious, still watching his hands, ready to bolt if they moved too suddenly
.

He smiled. “Your mother loves me.”

I nodded
.

“That's something to—” He coughed and the force of it bowed his chest, brought his head off the pillow. He grimaced, swallowed. “That's something to take with me. Over there,” he said and rolled his eyes back into his head as if they could catch a glimpse of where he was going
.

I said, “That's nice, Edgar.”

His feeble hand slapped my arm. “You still hate me, do you?”

I looked in those unhinged irises and nodded
.

“What about all that shit the nuns taught you? What about forgiveness?” He raised a tired, amused eyebrow
.

“You used it all up, Edgar. A long time ago.”

The feeble hand reached out again, grazed my abdomen. “Still mad about that little scar?”

I stared at him, giving him nothing, telling him there was nothing left to take anymore, even if he were strong enough
.

He waved the hand in a dismissive gesture. “Fuck ya, then.” He closed his eyes. “What'd you come for?”

I sat back, looked at the wasted body, waiting for it to stop having an effect on me, for that poisonous sludge of love and hate to quit sluicing through my body. “To watch you die,” I said
.

He smiled, eyes still closed. “Ah,” he said, “a vulture. So you are your father's son, after all.”

He slept for a while after that, and I watched him, listening to the broken glass rattling through his chest. I knew then that whatever explanation I'd been waiting for my whole life was sealed in that wasted frame, in that rotted brain, and it was never coming out. It was going to ride with my father on his black journey to that place he saw when he rolled his eyes back into his skull. All that dark knowledge was his alone, and he was taking it with him so he'd have something to chuckle about during the trip
.

At five-thirty, my father opened his eyes and pointed at me. He said, “Something's burning. Something's burning.” His eyes widened and his mouth opened as if he were about to howl
.

And he died
.

And I watched him, still waiting
.

It was one-thirty
in the morning on the fifth of July when we met Sterling Mulkern and Jim Vurnan at the Hyatt Regency bar in Cambridge. The bar is one of those revolving lounges, and as we flowed around in a slow circle, the city glittered and the red stone footbridges on the Charles seemed old and good and even the ivy-covered brick of Harvard didn't annoy me.

Mulkern was wearing a gray suit over a white shirt, no tie. Jim was wearing an angora crewneck sweater and tan cotton pants. Neither of them looked pleased.

Angie and I wore the usual and neither of us cared.

Mulkern said, “I hope you have a good reason for calling us out at this hour, lad.”

I said, “Of course. If you wouldn't mind, please tell me what our deal was.”

Mulkern said, “Come now. What's this?”

I said, “Repeat the terms of the contract we made.”

Mulkern looked at Jim and shrugged. Jim said, “Patrick, you know damn well we agreed to your daily fee plus expenses.”

“Plus?”

“Plus a seven thousand dollar bonus if you produced the documents that Jenna Angeline stole.” Jim was irritable; maybe his blond Vassar wife with the Dorothy Hamill do was making him sleep on the couch again. Or maybe I'd interrupted their bimonthly tryst.

I said, “You advanced me two thousand dollars. I've
worked on this for seven days. Actually, if I wanted to be technical, this is the morning of the eighth, but I'll give you a break. Here's the bill.” I handed it to Mulkern.

He barely glanced at it. “Ludicrously exorbitant, but we hired you because you allegedly justify your fees.”

I sat back. “Who put Curtis Moore on to me? You or Paulson?”

Jim said, “What in the hell are you talking about? Curtis Moore worked for Socia.”

“But he managed to begin tailing me about five minutes after our first meeting.” I looked at Mulkern. “How convenient.”

Mulkern's eyes showed nothing, a man who could withstand a thousand suppositions, no matter how logical, as long as there was no proof to back them up. And if there was proof, he could just say, “I don't recall.”

I sipped my beer. “How well did you know my father?”

“I knew your father well, lad, now get on with it.” He looked at his watch.

“You knew he beat his wife, abused his children.”

Mulkern shrugged. “Not my concern.”

“Patrick,” Jim said, “your personal life is irrelevant here.”

“Somebody has to have a concern here,” I said. I looked at Mulkern. “If you knew about my father, Senator, as a public servant, why didn't you do something about it?”

“I just told you, lad—not my concern.”

“What is your
concern
, Senator?”

“The documents, Pat.”

“What is your concern, Senator?” I asked again.

“The Commonwealth of course.” He chuckled. “I'd love to sit here and explain the utilitarian concept to you, Pat, but I haven't the time. A few cuffs on the side of the head from your old man is not a call for action, boy.”

A few cuffs. Two hospital stays in the first twelve years of my life.

I said, “Did you know about Paulson? I mean, everything?”

“Come now, boy. Complete your contract and let's go about our separate ways.” His upper lip was slick with perspiration.

“How much did you know? Did you know he was fucking little boys?”

“There's no need for that sort of language here,” Mulkern said and smiled, looking around the room.

Angie said, “Tell us what sort of language fits your sense of propriety and we'll see if it applies to child molestation and prostitution and extortion and murder.”

“What're you talking about now?” Mulkern said. “Crazy talk is what I'm hearing. Crazy talk. Give me the documents, Pat.”

“Senator?”

“Yes, Pat?”

“Don't call me ‘Pat.' It's something you do to a dog, not something you call a person.”

Mulkern sat back and rolled his eyes. I obviously had no grip on this edge of the planet. He said, “Lad, you—”

“How much did you know, Senator? How much? Your aide-de-camp is doing little kids and people end up dying all over the place because he and Socia took a couple of home movies for themselves and things got out of hand. Didn't they? What'd Socia blackmail Paulson so he'd change the nature of his pressure on the street terrorism bill? And Paulson, what'd he have a few too many drinks mourning his lost innocence, and Jenna found them? Found photos of her son being molested by the man she worked for? Maybe even voted for? How much did you know, Senator?”

He stared at me.

“And I was the magnet,” I said. “Wasn't I?” I looked at Jim and he stared back, blank-faced. “I was supposed to lead Socia and Paulson to Jenna, help them clean up the mess. Is that it, Senator?”

He met my anger and indignation, and he smiled. He knew I had nothing on him, just questions and suppositions. He knew that's all anyone ever had, and his eyes hardened in victory. The more I asked, the less I'd get. The way of things.

He said, “Give me the documents, Pat.”

I said, “Let me see the check, Sterl.”

He held out his hand and Jim put a check in it. Jim was looking at me as if we'd been playing the same game together for years, yet only now was he realizing that I had no grasp of the rules. He shook his head slowly, a den mother's motion. Jim would've made some fine convent a good nun.

Mulkern filled in the “pay to the order of” part of the check but left the amount blank. He said, “The documents, Pat.”

I reached down to the seat and handed him the manila envelope. He opened it, took the photos out, held them on his lap. He said, “No copies this time? I'm proud of you, Pat.”

I said, “Sign the check, Senator.”

He leafed through the rest of the photos, smiled sadly at one, put them back in the envelope. He picked up the pen again, tapped it against the tabletop lightly. He said, “Pat, I think you need an attitude adjustment. Yes. So I'm going to cut your bonus in half. How about that?”

“I made copies.”

“Copies don't mean a thing in court.”

“They can make a hell of a stink though.”

He looked at me, sized me up in a second, and shook his head. He bent toward the check.

I said, “Call Paulson. Ask him which one's missing.”

The pen stopped. He said, “Missing?”

Jim said, “Missing?”

Angie said, “Missing?” just to be a smart-ass.

I nodded. “Missing. Paulson can tell you there were twenty-two in all. You got twenty-one in that envelope.”

“And where would it be?” Mulkern asked.

“Sign the check and find out, dickhead.”

I don't think Mulkern had ever been called a “dickhead” in his life. He didn't seem too fond of it either, but maybe it would grow on him. He said, “Give it to me.”

I said, “Sign that check, no ‘attitude adjustments,' and I'll tell you where it is.”

Jim said, “Don't sign it, Senator.”

Mulkern said, “Shut up, Jim.”

I said, “Yeah, shut up, Jim. Go fetch the senator a bone or something.”

Mulkern stared at me. It seemed to be his main method of intimidation and it was lost on someone who'd just spent the past few days getting shot at. It took him a few minutes, but I think he got it. He said, “Whatever happens, I'll ruin you.” He signed the check with the proper amount and handed it over.

“Shucks,” I said.

“Hand over the photograph.”

“I told you I'd tell you where it was, Senator. I never said I'd hand it over to you.”

Mulkern closed his eyes for a moment and breathed heavily through his nostrils. “Fine. Where is it?”

“Right over there,” Angie said and pointed across the bar.

Richie Colgan stuck his head out from behind a fern. He waved to us, then looked at Mulkern and smiled. A big smile. The corners of his mouth damn near reached his eyelids.

Mulkern said, “No.”

Angie said, “Yes,” and patted his arm.

I said, “Look on the bright side, Sterl—you didn't have to write Richie a check. He fucked you over for free.” We stood up from the table.

Mulkern said, “You're done in this town. You won't even be able to get welfare.”

I said, “No kidding? Hell then, I might as well just go
over to Richie and tell him you gave me this check for my help in covering up your involvement in this whole affair.”

Mulkern said, “And what would you have then?”

“I'd have you in the same position you're ready to put me in. And hell if it wouldn't make my day.” I reached down, picked up my beer, finished it. “Still want to wreck my name, Sterl?”

Mulkern held the envelope in his hand. He said, “Brian Paulson's a good man. A good politician. And these photos are almost seven years old. Why bring this to the surface now? It's old news.”

I smiled and quoted him: “‘Everything but yesterday seems young,' Senator.” I nudged Jim with my elbow. “Ain't that always the way?”