Mystic River

by Dennis Lehane

  “What’s that?” Whitey said.

  “Snoop Dogg.”

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “That’s Tupac.”

  “Hard to keep up.”

  Sean placed the tape in the recorder on the corner of his desk and pressed play.

  “Nine-one-one, police services. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  Whitey stretched a rubber band over his finger and fired it at the ceiling fan.

  “There’s like this car with blood in it and, ah, the door’s open, and, ah—”

  “What’s the location of the car?”

  “In the Flats. By Pen Park. Me and my friend found it.”

  “Is there a street address?”

  Whitey yawned into his fist and reached for another rubber band. Sean stood up and stretched, wondered what he had in the fridge for dinner.

  “Sydney Street. There’s blood in there and the door’s open.”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “He wants to know her name. Called me ‘son.’”

  “Son? I said your name. What’s your name?”

  “We’re so fucking outta here, man. Good luck.”

  The connection broke and then the operator placed his call to Central Dispatch, and Sean shut the recorder off.

  “I always thought Tupac had more of a rhythm section,” Whitey said.

  “It was Snoop. I told you.”

  Whitey yawned again. “Go home, kid. Okay?”

  Sean nodded and popped the tape out of the recorder. He slid it back into its case and tossed it over Whitey’s head into the box. He took his Glock and holster out of his top drawer and snapped the holster onto his belt.

  “Her,” he said.

  “What?” Whitey looked over at him.

  “The kid on the tape. He said, ‘her name.’ ‘He wants to know her name.’ Talking about the Marcus girl.”

  “Right,” Whitey said. “Dead girl, you refer to her as a ‘she.’”

  “But how the hell’s he know that?”

  “Who?”

  “The kid who made the call. How’s he know the blood in that car came from a woman?”

  Whitey’s foot came off the desk and he looked at the box. He reached in and took out the tape. He flicked his wrist and Sean caught the tape in his hand.

  “Play it again,” Whitey said.

  26

  LOST IN SPACE

  DAVE AND VAL passed through the city and drove over the Mystic River to this dive bar in Chelsea where the beer was cheap and cold and there wasn’t much of a crowd, just a few old-timers who looked like they’d worked the waterfront their whole lives and four construction workers who were having an argument about someone named Betty who apparently had great tits but a bad attitude. The bar was tucked under the Tobin Bridge with its back against the Mystic, and it looked like it had been there going back several decades. Everyone knew Val and said their hellos. The owner, a skeletal guy with the blackest hair and the whitest skin, was named Huey. He worked the bar and gave them their first two rounds on the house.

  Dave and Val shot pool for a while, and then settled into a booth with a pitcher and two shots. The small square windows fronting the street had turned from gold to indigo, the night having dropped in so quickly, Dave felt almost bullied by it. Val was actually a pretty easygoing guy when you got to know him. He told stories about prison and thefts that had gone awry, and they were all kind of scary, actually, but somehow Val made them funny, too. Dave found himself wondering what it must be like to be a guy like Val, utterly fearless and confident, and yet so damn small.

  “This one time, back in the day, right? Jimmy’s been sent up and we’re still trying to hold our crew together. We haven’t figured out yet that the only reason any of us are thieves is because Jimmy planned everything for us. All we had to do was listen to him and follow his orders and we’d be fine. But without him, we were morons. So, this one time, we take off this stamp collector. He’s tied up in his office and me and my brother Nick and this kid Carson Leverett, who couldn’t tie his own fucking shoes you didn’t show him, we’re going down in this elevator. And we’re cool. We’re wearing suits, looking like we fit in. This lady gets on the elevator and she gasps. Loud, too. And we don’t know what’s going on. We’re looking respectable, right? I turn to Nick and he’s looking at Carson Leverett because the fucking bonehead’s still wearing his mask.” Val slapped the table, laughing. “You believe that? He’s got a Ronald Reagan mask, the big smiley one they used to sell? And he’s wearing it.”

  “And you guys hadn’t noticed?”

  “No. That’s the point,” Val said. “We walked out of the office, and me and Nick took ours off, just assumed Carson did, too. Little shit happens like that on jobs all the time. ’Cause you’re jumpy and you’re stupid and you just want to get in the clear, and sometimes you miss the most obvious detail. It’s staring you in the face, you can’t see it.” He chuckled again and threw back his shot. “That’s why Jimmy was so missed. He thought of every detail. Like the way they say a good quarterback sees the whole field? Jimmy saw the whole field on a job. He saw everything that could possibly go wrong. Guy was a fucking genius.”

  “But he went straight.”

  “Sure,” Val said, lighting a cigarette. “For Katie. And then for Annabeth. I don’t think his heart’s ever been in it, between you and me, but there you go. Sometimes, people grow up. My first wife said that was my problem—I couldn’t grow up. I like the night too much. Day’s just something you sleep through.”

  “I always thought it would be different,” Dave said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Being grown-up. You’d feel different, right? You’d feel grown-up. A man.”

  “You don’t feel that way?”

  Dave smiled. “Sometimes maybe. In glimpses. But most of the time I don’t feel much different than I did when I was eighteen. I wake up a lot going, ‘I got a kid? I got a wife?’ How’d that happen?” Dave could feel his tongue thickening with the booze, his head getting that floating feel because he never had gotten that bite to eat. He felt a need to explain. To make Val see the guy he was and to like that guy. “I think I always figured one day it would be permanent. You know? One day you’d just wake up and feel grown-up. Feel like you had a handle on things the way fathers always did in those old TV shows.”

  “Ward Cleaver, like?” Val said.

  “Yeah. Or even like those sheriffs, you know, James Arness, guys like that. They were men. Permanently.”

  Val nodded and sipped some beer. “Guy in prison says to me once, he says, ‘Happiness comes in moments, and then it’s gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness’”—Val winked—“‘sadness settles in.’” He stubbed out his cigarette. “I liked that guy. He was always saying cool shit. I’m going to get another shot. You?” Val stood.

  Dave shook his head. “Still working on this one.”

  “Come on,” Val said. “Live it up.”

  Dave looked into his scrunched, smiling face and said, “Okay, fine.”

  “Good man.” Val slapped his shoulder and walked up to the bar.

  Dave watched him standing up at the bar, chatting with one of the old dockworkers as he waited for his drinks, Dave thinking the guys in here knew what it was to be men. Men without doubts, men who never questioned the rightness of their own actions, men who weren’t confused by the world or what was expected of them in it.

  It was fear, he guessed. That’s what he’d always had that they didn’t. Fear had settled into him at such an early age—permanently, the way Val’s prison friend had claimed sadness did. Fear had found a place in Dave and never left, and so he feared doing wrong and he feared fucking up and he feared not being intelligent and he feared not being a good husband or a good father or much of a man. Fear had been in him so long, he wasn’t sure he could remember what it had felt like to live without it.

  A passing headlight bounced off the front door and flashed whi
te directly in his face as the door opened and Dave blinked several times, caught only the silhouette of the man who came through the door. He had a bulky frame and what could have been a leather jacket on. He looked a bit like Jimmy, actually, but bigger, wider at the shoulders.

  In fact it was Jimmy, Dave realized as the door shut again and his eyes began to clear. Jimmy, wearing a black leather jacket over a dark turtleneck and khakis, nodding at Dave as he stepped up to Val at the bar. He said something in Val’s ear and Val looked back over his shoulder at Dave and then said something to Jimmy.

  Dave started to feel woozy. It was all the booze on an empty stomach, he was sure. But it was also something about Jimmy, something about the way he’d nodded to him, his face blank and yet somehow determined. And why the hell did he look bulked up, as if he’d gained ten pounds since yesterday? And what was he doing over here in Chelsea, the night before his daughter’s wake?

  Jimmy came over and slid into Val’s seat, across from Dave. He said, “How’s it going?”

  “Little drunk,” Dave admitted. “You gain some weight?”

  Jimmy gave him a quizzical smile. “No.”

  “You look bigger.”

  Jimmy shrugged.

  “What’re you doing around here?” Dave asked.

  “I come here a lot. Me and Val have known Huey for years. I mean, going way back. Why don’t you drink that shot, Dave?”

  Dave picked up the shot glass. “I’m feeling a bit hammered already.”

  “Who’s it hurt?” Jimmy said, and Dave realized Jimmy held a shot of his own. He raised it and met Dave’s glass. “To our children,” Jimmy said.

  “To our children,” Dave managed, really feeling out of sorts now, as if he’d slid out of the day, through the night, and into a dream, a dream in which all the faces were too close, but their voices sounded like they were coming from the bottom of a sewer.

  Dave downed the shot, grimacing against the burn, and Val slid into the booth beside him. Val put his arm around him and took a drink of beer directly from the pitcher. “I always liked this place.”

  “It’s a good bar,” Jimmy said. “No one bothers you.”

  “That’s important,” Val said, “no one bothering you in this life. No one fucking with you or your loved ones or your friends. Right, Dave?”

  Dave said, “Absolutely.”

  “This guy’s a hoot,” Val said. “He can get you going.”

  Jimmy said, “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Val said, and squeezed Dave’s shoulder. “M’ man, Dave.”

  CELESTE SAT on the edge of the motel bed as Michael watched TV. She had the phone in her lap, her palm flexing over the receiver.

  During the late afternoon hours she’d spent with Michael by the tiny swimming pool in rusted chairs, she’d gradually begun to feel tiny and hollow, as if she could be seen from above and she looked discarded and silly and, worse, unfaithful.

  Her husband. She’d betrayed her husband.

  Maybe Dave had killed Katie. Maybe so. But what had she been thinking when she told Jimmy, of all people? Why hadn’t she waited, thought some more on it? Why hadn’t she considered every other conceivable alternative? Because she was afraid of Dave?

  But this new Dave she’d seen in the last few days was an aberration, a Dave produced by stress.

  Maybe he hadn’t killed Katie. Maybe.

  The point was, she needed to at least give him the benefit of the doubt until the matter was ironed out. She wasn’t sure she could live with him and put Michael at risk, but she knew now she should have gone to the police, not to Jimmy Marcus.

  Had she wanted to hurt Dave? Had she expected something more to come from looking into Jimmy’s eyes and telling him her suspicions? And if so, what? Of all the people in the world, why had she told Jimmy?

  There were a lot of possible answers to that question, and she didn’t like any of them. She picked up the receiver and dialed Jimmy’s home. She did so with tremors in her wrists, thinking, Please, someone, answer. Just answer. Please.

  THE SMILE on Jimmy’s face was sliding now, back and forth, up one side, back down, and then up the other, and Dave tried to focus on the bar, but that was sliding, too, as if the bar were on a boat and the sea was getting pissed.

  “’Member we took Ray Harris here that one time?” Val said.

  “Sure,” Jimmy said. “Good old Ray.”

  “Now Ray,” Val said, and slapped the table in front of Dave, “was one hilarious son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said softly, “Ray was funny. He could make you laugh.”

  “Most people called him Just Ray,” Val said as Dave tried to concentrate on just who the fuck they were talking about. “But I called him Ray Jingles.”

  Jimmy snapped his fingers, pointed at Val. “That’s right. ’Cause of all the change.”

  Val leaned into Dave, spoke into his ear. “This guy, right? He carried like ten bucks in change in his pocket on any given day. No one knew why. He just liked having a lot of change in his pocket, case he had to make a phone call to Libya or some fucking place, I guess. Who knows? But he’d walk around with his hands in his pockets and just jingle that change all day long. I mean, the guy was a thief, and it was like, ‘Who wouldn’t hear you coming, Ray?’ But apparently, he left the change at home during jobs.” Val sighed. “Funny guy.”

  Val took his arm off Dave’s shoulder and lit another cigarette. The smoke climbed up into Dave’s face, and he felt it crawl all over his cheeks and burrow through his hair. Through the smoke, he could see Jimmy watching him with that flat, determined expression, something in Jimmy’s eyes he didn’t like, something familiar.

  It was the cop’s look, he realized. Sergeant Powers. The sense that he was peeking directly into Dave’s mind. The smile returned to Jimmy’s face, riding up and down like a dinghy, and Dave felt his stomach go with it, bouncing as if riding a wave.

  He swallowed several times, and took a deep suck of the air.

  “You all right?” Val said.

  Dave held up a hand. If everyone would just shut up, he’d be fine. “Yeah.”

  “You sure?” Jimmy said. “You’re looking green, man.”

  It surged up inside of him and he felt his windpipe close like a fist and then pop back open and beads of sweat explode across his brow. “Oh, shit.”

  “Dave.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” he said, feeling it beginning to surge again. “Really.”

  Val said, “Okay, okay,” and slid out of the booth fast. “Use the back door. Huey don’t like cleaning it off toilet rims. Got it?”

  Dave pushed out of the booth and Val gripped his shoulders and turned them so that Dave could see the door at the far end of the bar past the pool table.

  Dave walked toward the door, trying to keep his steps straight, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, but the door listing a bit anyway. It was a dark door and small, the oak painted black and scarred and chipped over the years. Dave could feel the heat in this place suddenly. It was clammy and thick and it blew on him as he lurched toward the door, reaching out for the brass knob, grateful for how cool it felt in his hand as he turned it and pushed the door open.

  The first thing he saw were weeds. Then water. He stumbled out, surprised at how dark it got back here, and as if on cue, a light over the door snapped on and bathed the cracked tar directly in front of him. He could hear the traffic honking and banging away on the bridge above him, and suddenly he felt the wave of nausea pass. He might be all right after all. He took a deep gulp of the night. On his left someone had piled stacks of rotting wooden pallets and rusted lobster traps, some of them with ragged holes as if they’d been attacked by sharks. Dave wondered what the hell lobster traps were doing so far inland and on a river, then decided he was too drunk to figure out the answer anyway. Beyond the piles was a chain-link fence, as rusty as the lobster traps and strangled in weeds. A field of weeds taller than most men stood to the right o
f him, going back through the torn and cracked gravel for a good twenty yards.

  Dave’s stomach lurched again, and the new surge was the strongest yet, punching its way up through his body. He stumbled to the water’s edge and got his head down just as the fear and the Sprite and the beer poured out of him into the oily Mystic. It was pure liquid. There was nothing else in him. He couldn’t honestly remember the last time he’d eaten. But the moment it cleared his mouth and hit the water, he felt better. He felt the cool of the dusk in his hair. A slight breeze rose up off the river. He waited, on his knees, to see if he’d heave up any more, though he doubted it. It was as if he’d been cleansed.

  He looked up at the underside of the bridge, everyone battling to either get into the city or out of it, everyone in an irritated rush, probably half aware that they wouldn’t feel any better once they got home. Half of them would go right back out again—to the market for something they’d forgotten, to a bar, to the video store, to a restaurant where they’d wait in line again. And for what? What did we line up for? Where did we expect to go? And why were we never as happy as we thought we’d be once we got there?

  Dave noticed a small boat with an outboard to his right. It was tied up to a flat plank so tiny and sagging you couldn’t justifiably call it a dock. Huey’s boat, he figured, and smiled at an image of the deathly looking stick of a guy rolling out into these greasy waters, the wind in his pitch-black hair.

  He turned his head and looked around at the pallets and weeds. No wonder people came out here to puke. It was completely isolated. Unless you were on the other side of the river with binoculars, you couldn’t see this spot. It was blocked on three sides, and it was so quiet, the sound of the cars overhead having a muffled distance to them, the weeds blocking out everything but the caws of the gulls and the lap of the water. If Huey was smart, he’d clear the weeds and pallets, build a deck out here, attract some of the yuppies moving into Admiral Hill and trying to turn Chelsea into the next battleground for gentrification once they got done with East Bucky.