A Drink Before the War (25 page)

I shook my head. “Doesn't work that way.”

He kicked at another hunk of cinder block. “No,” he said, “I suppose it don't.” He looked off beyond the weeds and the tenements on the other side of the lot, past the torn brick blocks with coils of soldered metal sticking out of them like flags.

His empire.

He said, “You two go on home. We forget about each other.”

I said, “Deal,” but I had a feeling I'd never forget Roland, even after I read his obituary.

He nodded, more to himself than us, and started to walk off. He'd crested a small slope of industrial waste, when he stopped, his back to us. Somewhere, not far away, a siren rang hollowly. He said, “My mother, she was all right. Decent.”

I took Angie's hand in mine. “She was,” I said. “But she was never needed.”

His shoulders moved slightly, possibly a shrug, possibly something else. “Can't say that she was,” he said and started walking again. He crossed the lot as we watched him, shrinking slowly as he neared the tenements. A lone prince on his way to the throne, wondering why it didn't feel as sweet as it should.

We watched him disappear through a dark doorway as a breeze—cool for this time of summer—came off the ocean and swept north past the tenement, past us with chilled fingers that mussed our hair and widened our eyes, moving on into the heart of the city. Angie's warm hand tightened around mine as we turned and sidestepped the rubble, following the breeze back to our part of town.

The reviews are in and the response is unanimous. Dennis Lehane is one of today's most exciting writers. His first five novels feature Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, a team of private investigators who regularly find themselves embroiled in cases, each more perilous than the last. With the dark and moody streets of Boston as their home, Kenzie and Gennaro keep the action moving and the suspense high.

 

In Lehane's latest
New York Times
bestselling novel,
Mystic River
, three childhood friends, now grown, must confront the sins of the past. The pages that follow provide a quick glimpse into these fascinating worlds.

F
AT
F
REDDY LOOKED
like a walrus without the mustache. He was immense and smoke gray and he wore several layers of dark clothing, so that his square chopping-block head on top of all that darkness looked like something that had erupted from the folds of the collar and spilled toward the shoulders. His almond eyes were warm and liquid, paternal, and he smiled a lot. Smiled at strangers on the street, at reporters as he came down courtroom steps, presumably at his victims before his men kneecapped them.

He said, “Please, sit down.”

Except for Freddy and ourselves, there was only one other person in the coffee shop. He sat about twenty feet back at a table beside a support beam, one hand on the table, legs crossed at the ankles. He wore light khakis and a white shirt and gray scarf under an amber canvas jacket with a leather collar. He didn't quite look at us, but I couldn't swear he was looking away either. His name was Pine, no first name that I ever heard, and he was a legend in his circles, the man who'd survived four different bosses, three family wars, and whose enemies had a habit of disappearing so completely people soon forgot they'd ever lived. Sitting at the table, he seemed a perfectly normal, almost bland guy: handsome,
possibly, but not in any way that stuck in the memory; he was probably five eleven or six feet with dirty blond hair and green eyes and an average build.

Just being in the same room with him made my skull tingle.

Angie and I sat down and Fat Freddy said, “Prostates.”

“Excuse me?” Angie said.

“Prostates,” Freddy repeated. He poured coffee from a pewter pot into a cup, handed it to Angie. “Not something your gender has to worry about half as much as ours.” He nodded at me as he handed me my cup, then nudged the cream and sugar in our direction. “I'll tell you,” he said, “I've reached the height of my profession, my daughter just got accepted to Harvard, and financially, I want for little.” He shifted in his chair, grimaced enough so that his huge jowls rolled in toward the center of his face and completely obscured his lips for a moment. “But, I swear, I'd trade it all in tomorrow for a healthy prostate.” He sighed. “You?”

As Freddy leaned back to pour himself another cup of coffee, I heard one of the bodyguards out front say, “Go right on in, Mr. Rouse,” and Angie's eyes widened slightly as Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy came through the door.

Jack Rouse controlled Southie, Charlestown, and everything between Savin Hill and the Neponset River in Dorchester. He was thin, hard, and his eyes matched the gunmetal of his close-cropped hair. He didn't look particularly threatening, but he didn't have to—he had Kevin for that.

I've known Kevin since we were six, and nothing that lives in his brain or his bloodstream has ever been stained by a humane impulse. He walked through the door, avoided looking at Pine or even acknowledging him, and I knew Pine was who Kevin aspired to be. But Pine was all stillness and economy, while Kevin was a walking exposed nerve, his pupils lit with a battery charge, the kind of guy who might shoot everyone in the place simply because the idea occurred to him. Pine was scary because killing was a job to him, no different than a thousand others. Kevin was scary
because killing was the only job he wanted, and he'd do it for free.

The first thing he did after shaking Freddy's hand was sit down beside me and put his cigarette out in my coffee cup. Then he ran a hand through his coarse, thick hair and stared at me.

Freddy said, “Jack, Kevin, you know Mr. Kenzie and Ms. Gennaro, don't you?”

“Old friends, sure,” Jack said as he took the seat beside Angie. “Neighborhood kids like Kevin.” Rouse shrugged off an old blue Members' Only jacket and hung it behind him on his chair. “Ain't that the God's truth, Kev?”

Kevin was too busy staring at me to comment.

Fat Freddy said, “I like everything to be above board. Rogowski says you two are okay, and maybe you got a problem I can help you with—so be it. But you two come from Jack's neighborhood, so I ask Jack if he'd like to sit in. You see what I'm saying?”

We nodded.

Kevin lit another cigarette, blew the smoke into my hair.

Freddy turned his palms up on the table. “We're all agreed, then. So, tell me what you need, Mr. Kenzie.”

“We've been hired by a client,” I said, “who—”

“How's your coffee, Jack?” Freddy said. “Enough cream?”

“It's fine, Mr. Constantine. Very good.”

“Who,” I repeated, “is under the impression she annoyed one of Jack's men.”

“Men?” Freddy said and raised his eyebrows, looked at Jack, then back at me. “We're small businessmen, Mr. Kenzie. We have employees, but their loyalties stop with their paychecks.” He looked at Jack again. “Men?” he said and they both chuckled.

Angie sighed.

Kevin blew some more smoke into my hair.

I was tired, and the last vestiges of Bubba's vodka were chewing at the base of my brain, so I really wasn't in the mood to play cute with a bunch of cut-rate psychopaths
who'd seen
The Godfather
too many times and thought they were respectable. But I reminded myself that Freddy, at least, was a very powerful psychopath who could be dining on my spleen tomorrow night if he wanted to.

“Mr. Constantine, one of Mr. Rouse's…associates, then, has expressed anger at our client, made certain threats—”

“Threats?” Freddy said. “Threats?”

“Threats?” Jack said, smiled at Freddy.

“Threats,” Angie said. “Seems our client had the misfortune of speaking with your associate's girlfriend, who claimed to know of her boyfriend's criminal activities, including the—how can I put it?” She met Freddy's eyes. “The waste management of some formerly animate tissue?”

It took him a minute to get it, but then his small eyes narrowed and he threw back his massive head and laughed, booming it up into the ceiling, sending it halfway down Prince Street. Jack looked confused. Kevin looked pissed off, but that's the only way Kevin's ever looked.

“Pine,” Freddy said. “You hear that?”

Pine made no indication he'd heard anything. He made no indication he was breathing. He sat there, immobile, simultaneously looking and not looking in our direction.

“‘Waste management of formerly animate tissue,'” Freddy repeated, gasping. He looked at Jack, realized he hadn't gotten the joke yet. “Fuck, Jack, go out and pick up a brain, huh?”

Jack blinked and Kevin leaned forward on the table, and Pine's head turned slightly to look at him, and Freddy acted like he hadn't noticed any of it.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin, shook his head slowly at Angie. “Wait'll I tell the guys at the club that one. I swear. You might have taken your father's name, Angela, but you're a Patriso. No question.”

Jack said, “Patriso?”

“Yeah,” Freddy said. “This is Mr. Patriso's granddaughter. You didn't know?”

Jack hadn't known. It seemed to annoy him. He said, “Give me a cigarette, Kev.”

Kevin leaned across the table, lit the cigarette for him, his elbow about a quarter inch from my eye.

“Mr. Constantine,” Angie said, “our client doesn't wish to make the list of what your associate considers disposable.”

Freddy held up a meaty hand. “We're talking about what here exactly?”

“Our client believes she may have angered Mr. Hurlihy.”

“What?” Jack said.

“Explain,” Freddy said. “Quickly.”

Without using Diandra's name, we did.

“So, what,” Freddy said, “some cooze Kevin's bumping tells this psychiatrist some bullshit about—I got this?—a body or something, and Kevin gets a little hot and calls her and makes some noise.” He shook his head. “Kevin, you want to tell me about this?”

Kevin looked at Jack.

“Kevin,” Freddy said.

Kevin's head turned.

“You got a girlfriend?”

Kevin's voice sounded like ground glass running through a car engine. “No, Mr. Constantine.”

Freddy looked at Jack and they both laughed.

Kevin looked like he'd been caught buying pornography by a nun.

A
PIECE OF ADVICE:
If you ever follow someone in my neighborhood, don't wear pink.

The first day Angie and I picked up the little round guy on our tail, he wore a pink shirt under a gray suit and a black topcoat. The suit was double-breasted, Italian, and too nice for my part of town by several hundred dollars. The topcoat was cashmere. People in my neighborhood could afford cashmere, I suppose, but usually they spend so much on the duct tape that keeps their tail pipes attached to their '82 Chevys, that they don't have much left over for anything but that trip to Aruba.

The second day, the little round guy replaced the pink shirt with a more subdued white, lost the cashmere and the Italian suit, but still stuck out like Michael Jackson in a day care center by wearing a hat. Nobody in my neighborhood—or any of Boston's inner-city neighborhoods that I know of—wears anything on their head but a baseball cap or the occasional tweed Scally. And our friend, the Weeble, as we'd come to call him, wore a bowler. A fine-looking bowler, don't get me wrong, but a bowler just the same.

“He could be an alien,” Angie said.

I looked out the window of the Avenue Coffee Shop. The
Weeble's head jerked and then he bent to fiddle with his shoelaces.

“An alien,” I said. “From where exactly? France?”

She frowned at me and lathered cream cheese over a bagel so strong with onions my eyes watered just looking at it. “No, stupid. From the future. Didn't you ever see that old
Star Trek
where Kirk and Spock ended up on earth in the thirties and were hopelessly out of step?”

“I hate
Star Trek
.”

“But you're familiar with the concept.”

I nodded, then yawned. The Weeble studied a telephone pole as if he'd never seen one before. Maybe Angie was right.

“How can you not like
Star Trek
?” Angie said.

“Easy. I watch it, it annoys me, I turn it off.”

“Even
Next Generation
?”

“What's that?” I said.

“When you were born,” she said, “I bet your father held you up to your mother and said, ‘Look, hon, you just gave birth to a beautiful crabby old man.'”

“What's your point?” I said.

 

T
HE THIRD DAY
, we decided to have a little fun. When we got up in the morning and left my house, Angie went north and I went south.

And the Weeble followed her.

But Lurch followed me.

I'd never seen Lurch before, and it's possible I never would have if the Weeble hadn't given me reason to look for him.

Before we left the house, I'd dug through a box of summer stuff and found a pair of sunglasses I use when the weather's nice enough to ride my bicycle. The glasses had a small mirror attached to the left side of the frame that could be swung up and out so that you could see behind you. Not quite as cool as the equipment Q gave Bond, but it would do, and I didn't have to flirt with Ms. Moneypenny to get it.

An eye in the back of my head, and I bet I was the first kid on my block to have one, too.

I saw Lurch when I stopped abruptly at the entrance of Patty's Pantry for my morning cup of coffee. I stared at the door as if it held a menu and swung the mirror out and rotated my head until I noticed the guy who looked like a mortician on the other side of the avenue by Pat Jay's Pharmacy. He stood with his arms crossed over his sparrow's chest, watching the back of my head openly. Furrows were cut like rivers in his sunken cheeks, and a widow's peak began halfway up his forehead.

In Patty's, I swung the mirror back against the frame and ordered my coffee.

“You go blind all a sudden, Patrick?”

I looked up at Johnny Deegan as he poured cream into my coffee. “What?”

“The sunglasses,” he said. “I mean, it's, what, middle of March and no one's seen the sun since Thanksgiving. You go blind, or you just trying to look hipper'n shit?”

“Just trying to look hipper'n shit, Johnny.”

He slid my coffee across the counter, took my money.

“It ain't working,” he said.

 

O
UT ON THE AVENUE
, I stared through my sunglasses at Lurch as he brushed some lint off his knee then bent to tie his shoelaces just like the Weeble had the day before.

I took off my sunglasses, thinking of Johnny Deegan. Bond was cool, sure, but he never had to walk into Patty's Pantry. Hell, just try and order a vodka martini in this neighborhood. Shaken or stirred, your ass was going out a window.

I crossed the avenue as Lurch concentrated on his shoelace.

“Hi,” I said.

He straightened, looked around as if someone had called his name from down the block.

“Hi,” I said again and offered my hand.

He looked at it, looked down the avenue again.

“Wow,” I said, “you can't tail someone for shit but at least your social skills are honed to the quick.”

His head turned as slowly as the earth on its axis until his dark pebble eyes met mine. He had to look down to do it, too, the shadow of his skeletal head puddling down my face and spreading across my shoulders. And I'm not a short guy.

“Are we acquainted, sir?” His voice sounded as if it were due back at the coffin any moment.

“Sure, we're acquainted,” I said. “You're Lurch.” I looked up and down the avenue. “Where's Cousin It, Lurch?”

“You're not nearly as amusing as you think you are, sir.”

I held up my coffee cup. “Wait till I've had some caffeine, Lurch. I'm a certified bust-out fifteen minutes from now.”

He smiled down at me and the furrows in his cheeks turned to canyons. “You should be less predictable, Mr. Kenzie.”

“How so, Lurch?”

A crane swung a cement post into the small of my back and something with sharp tiny teeth bit into the skin over the right side of my neck and Lurch lurched past my field of vision as the sidewalk lifted off itself and rolled toward my ear.

“Love the sunglasses, Mr. Kenzie,” the Weeble said as his rubbery face floated past me. “They're a real nice touch.”

“Very high-tech,” Lurch said.

And someone laughed and someone else started a car engine, and I felt very stupid.

Q would have been appalled.

 

“M
Y HEAD HURTS
,” Angie said.

She sat beside me on a black leather couch, and her hands were bound behind her back, too.

“How about you, Mr. Kenzie?” a voice asked. “How's your head?”

“Shaken,” I said. “Not stirred.”

I turned my head in the direction of the voice, and my eyes met only a hard yellow light fringed by a soft brown. I blinked, felt the room slide a bit.

“Sorry about the narcotics,” the voice said. “If there had been any other way…”

“No regrets, sir,” a voice I recognized as Lurch's said. “There was no other way.”

“Julian, please give Ms. Gennaro and Mr. Kenzie some aspirin.” The voice sighed behind the hard yellow light. “And untie them, please.”

“If they move?” The Weeble's voice.

“See that they don't, Mr. Clifton.”

“Yes, sir. I'd be happy to.”