The Drop

by Dennis Lehane

  “That picture just went out,” she said from the darkness. “To Father Pete and six other people.”

  Bob stared into the darkness, said nothing.

  “Nadia,” the girl said and stepped back into the light. “Bring him up here, Bob.”

  THEY WASHED IT IN Nadia’s sink, dried it off, and brought it to her kitchen table.

  Nadia was small. A bumpy rope of a scar ran across the base of her throat. It was dark red, the smile of a drunk circus clown. She had a tiny moon of a face, savaged by pockmarks, and small, heart-pendant eyes. Shoulders that didn’t cut so much as dissolve at the arms. Elbows like flattened beer cans. A yellow bob of hair curled on either side of her oval face. “It’s not a boxer.” Her eyes glanced off Bob’s face before dropping the puppy back onto her kitchen table. “It’s an American Staffordshire terrier.”

  Bob knew he was supposed to understand something in her tone, but he didn’t know what that thing was, so he remained silent.

  She glanced back up at him after the quiet lasted too long. “A pit bull.”

  “That’s a pit bull?”

  She nodded and swabbed the puppy’s head wound again. Someone had pummeled it, she’d told Bob. Probably knocked it unconscious, assumed it was dead, and dumped it.

  “Why?” Bob said.

  She looked at him, her round eyes getting rounder, wider. “Just because.” She shrugged, went back to examining the dog. “I worked at Animal Rescue once. You know the place on Shawmut? As a vet tech? Before I decided it wasn’t my thing. They’re so hard, this breed . . .”

  “What?”

  “To adopt out,” she said. “It’s very hard to find them a home.”

  “I don’t know about dogs. I never had a dog. I live alone. I just was walking by the barrel.” Bob found himself beset by a desperate need to explain himself, explain his life. “I’m just not . . .” He could hear the wind outside, black and rattling. Rain or bits of hail spit against the windows. Nadia lifted the puppy’s back left paw—the other three paws were brown, but this one was white with peach spots. She dropped the paw as if it were contagious. She went back to the head wound, took a closer look at the right ear, a piece missing from the tip that Bob hadn’t noticed until now.

  “Well,” she said, “he’ll live. You’re gonna need a crate and food and all sorts of stuff.”

  “No,” Bob said. “You don’t understand.”

  She cocked her head, gave him a look that said she understood perfectly.

  “I can’t. I just found him. I was gonna give him back.”

  “To whoever beat him, left him for dead?”

  “No, no, like, the authorities.”

  “That would be Animal Rescue,” she said. “After they give the owner seven days to reclaim him, they’ll—”

  “The guy who beat him? He gets a second chance?”

  She gave him a half frown and a nod. “If he doesn’t take it”—she lifted the puppy’s ear, peered in—“chances are this little fella’ll be put up for adoption. But it’s hard. To find them a home. Pit bulls. More often than not?” She looked at Bob. “More often than not, they’re put down.”

  Bob felt a wave of sadness roll out from her that immediately shamed him. He didn’t know how, but he’d caused pain. He’d put some out into the world. He’d let this girl down. “I . . .” he started. “It’s just . . .”

  She glanced up at him. “I’m sorry?”

  Bob looked at the puppy. Its eyes were droopy from a long day in a barrel and whoever gave it that wound. It had stopped shivering, though.

  “You can take it,” Bob said. “You used to work there, like you said. You—”

  She shook her head. “I can’t even take care of myself.” She shook her head again. “And I work too much. Crazy hours, too. Unpredictable.”

  “Can you give me ’til Sunday morning?” Bob wasn’t sure how it was the words left his mouth, since he couldn’t remember formulating them or even thinking them.

  The girl eyed him carefully. “You’re not just saying it? ’Cause, I shit you not, he ain’t picked up by Sunday noon, he’s back out that door.”

  “Sunday, then.” Bob said the words with a conviction he actually felt. “Sunday definitely.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Bob felt crazed. He felt light as a communion wafer. “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Infinite

  THE DAILY 7:00 AM mass at Saint Dominic’s hadn’t drawn a crowd since before Bob was born. But now the numbers, always grim, dwindled by the month.

  The morning after he found the dog, he could hear the hem of Father Regan’s cassock brush the marble floor of the altar from the tenth row. The only people in attendance that morning—a bitter one, to be sure, black ice all over the streets, wind so cold you could nearly see it—were Bob; Widow Malone; Theresa Coe, once the principal of Saint Dom’s School, when there was a Saint Dom’s School; Old Man Williams; and the Puerto Rican cop, whose name, Bob was pretty sure, was Torres.

  Torres didn’t look like a cop—his eyes were kind, sometimes even playful—so it could be surprising to notice the holster on his hip when he turned into his pew after Communion. Bob, himself, never took Communion, a fact not lost on Father Regan, who’d tried several times to convince him that the damage done by not taking the Eucharist, if he were, in fact, in a state of mortal sin, was far worse, in the good priest’s opinion, than the damage that could be wrought by partaking of the sacrament. Bob, however, had been raised old school Catholic, back when you heard a lot about Limbo and even more about Purgatory, back when nuns reigned with punitive rulers. So even though Bob, theologically speaking, leaned left on most Church teachings, he remained a traditionalist.

  Saint Dom’s was an older church. Dated back to the late 1800s. A beautiful building—dark mahogany and off-white marble, towering stained glass windows dedicated to various sad-eyed saints. It looked the way a church should look. The newer churches—Bob didn’t know what to do with them. The pews were too blond, the skylights too numerous. They made him feel like he was there to revel in his life, not ruminate on his sins.

  But in an old church, a church of mahogany and marble and dark wainscoting, a church of quiet majesty and implacable history, he could properly reflect on both his hopes and his transgressions.

  The other parishioners lined up to receive the host while Bob remained kneeling in his pew. There was no one around him. He was an island.

  The cop Torres was up there now, a good-looking guy in his early forties, going a bit doughy. He took the host on his tongue, not in a cupped palm. A traditionalist too.

  He turned, blessing himself, and his eyes skipped across Bob’s before he reached his pew.

  “All rise.”

  Bob blessed himself and stood. He lifted the kneeler back into place with his foot.

  Father Regan raised his hand above the throng and closed his eyes. “May the Lord bless you and keep you all the days of your lives. May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His face upon you and give you peace. This mass has ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen.”

  Bob exited his pew and walked down the aisle. At the holy water font by the exit, he dipped his fingers and blessed himself. At the next font over, Torres did the same. Torres nodded hello, one familiar stranger to another. Bob returned the nod and they took separate exits out into the cold.

  BOB WENT INTO WORK at Cousin Marv’s around noon because he liked it when it was quiet. Gave him time to think over this puppy proposition he was facing.

  Most people called Marv Cousin Marv out of habit, something that went back to grade school, though no one could remember why, but Marv actually was Bob’s cousin. On their mothers’ side.

  Cousin Marv had run a crew in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It had been primarily comprised of guys with interests in the loaning and subsequent debt-repayment side of things, though Marv never turned his nose down at any paying proposition because
he believed, to the core of his soul, that those who failed to diversify were always the first to collapse when the wind turned. Like the dinosaurs, he’d say to Bob, when the cavemen came along and invented arrows. Picture the cavemen, he’d say, firing away, and the tyrannosauruses all gucked up in the oil puddles. A tragedy so easily averted.

  Marv’s crew hadn’t been the toughest crew or the smartest or the most successful operating in the neighborhood—not even close—but for a while they got by. Other crews kept nipping at their heels, though, and except for one glaring exception, they’d never been ones to favor violence. Pretty soon, they had to make the decision to yield to crews a lot meaner than they were or duke it out. They took Door Number One.

  Marv was a fence now, one of the best in the city, but a fence in their world was like a mailroom clerk in the straight world—if you were still doing it after thirty, it was all you’d ever do. Marv also took some bets, but only for Chovka’s father and the rest of the Chechens who really owned this bar. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge, though it was no secret, that Cousin Marv hadn’t owned Cousin Marv’s outright for years.

  For Bob, it was a relief—he liked being a bartender and he’d hated that one time they’d had to come heavy. Marv, though, Marv still waited for the diamond-crusted train to arrive on the eighteen-karat tracks, take him away from all this. Most times, he pretended to be happy. But Bob knew that the things that haunted Marv were the same things that haunted Bob—the shitty things you did to get ahead. Those things laughed at you if your ambitions failed to amount to much; a successful man could hide his past, but an unsuccessful man spent the rest of his life trying not to drown in his.

  That afternoon, Marv was looking a hair on the mournful side, so Bob tried to cheer him up by telling him about his adventure with the dog. Marv didn’t seem too interested, but Bob kept trying as he spread ice melt in the alley and Marv smoked by the back door.

  “Make sure you get it everywhere,” Marv said. “All I need, one of those Cape Verdeans slips on the way to the Dumpster.”

  “What Cape Verdeans?”

  “The ones in the hair place.”

  “The nail place? They’re Vietnamese.”

  “Well, I don’t want ’em slipping.”

  Bob said, “You know a Nadia Dunn?”

  Marv shook his head.

  “She’s the one holding the dog.”

  Marv said, “This dog again.”

  Bob said, “Training a dog, you know? Housebreaking? It’s a lot of responsibility.”

  Cousin Marv flicked his cigarette into the alley. “It’s not like some long-lost retard relative, shows up at your door in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag, says he’s yours now. It’s a dog.”

  Bob said, “Yeah, but . . .” and couldn’t find the words to express something he’d felt since he’d first lifted the puppy out of the barrel and stared into its eyes, that for the first time he could ever recall, he felt like he was starring in the movie of his own life, not just sitting in the back row of a noisy theater watching it.

  Cousin Marv patted his shoulder, leaned in reeking of smoke, and repeated himself. “It’s. A. Dog.” And then he walked back into the bar.

  AROUND THREE, ANWAR, ONE of Chovka’s guys, came in through the back for last night’s book. Chovka’s guys were running late on pickups all over the city because the BPD had dropped a little harassment raid down on the Chechen social club last night, put half the runners and bagmen in jail for the night. Anwar took the bag Marv handed over and helped himself to a Stella. He drank it in one long, slow pull as he eye-fucked Marv and Bob. When he finished, he burped, put the bottle back on the bar, and left without a word, the bag of money under his arm.

  “No respect.” Marv dumped the bottle and wiped up the ring it had left on the bar. “You notice?”

  Bob shrugged. Of course he noticed, but what were you going to do?

  “This puppy, right?” he said to lighten the mood. “He’s got paws the size of his head. Three are brown but one’s white with these little peach-colored spots over the white. And—”

  “This thing cook?” Marv said. “Clean the house? I mean, it’s a fucking dog.”

  “Yeah, but it was—” Bob dropped his hands. He didn’t know how to explain. “You know that feeling you get sometimes on a really great day? Like, like, the Pats dominate and you took the ‘over,’ or they cook your steak just right up the Blarney or, or, you just feel good? Like”—Bob found himself waving his hands again—“good?”

  Marv gave him a nod and a tight smile. Went back to his racing sheet.

  Bob alternated between taking down the Christmas decorations and working the bar, but the place started to fill after five, and pretty soon it was all bartending all the time. By this point, Rardy, the other bartender, should have been pitching in, but he was late.

  Bob made two trips to run a round over to a dozen guys by the dartboards who laid fiber-optic cable in all the hotels springing up down the Seaport. He came back behind the bar, found Marv leaning against a beer cooler, reading the Herald, but the customers blamed Bob for the slowdown, one guy asking if his Buds were coming by fucking Clydesdales.

  Bob nudged Marv aside, reached in the cooler, and mentioned Rardy was late. Again. Bob, who’d never been late in his life, suspected there was something hostile at the core of people who always were.

  Marv said, “No, he’s here,” and gestured with his head. Bob could see the kid now, Rardy about thirty but still getting carded at the door to a club. Rardy, chatting up customers as he worked his way through the crowd in his faded hoodie and battered jeans, porkpie hat resting on the crown of his head, always looking like he was on his way to open mic night for either poetry or stand-up. Bob had known him for five years now, though, and he knew Rardy didn’t possess an ounce of sensitivity and couldn’t tell a joke for shit.

  “Yo,” the kid said when he got behind the bar. He took his time removing his jacket. “Cavalry’s here.” He slapped Bob on the back. “Lucky for you, right?”

  OUTSIDE IN THE COLD, two brothers drove past the bar for the third time that day, looping around back through the alley, and then out onto Main, where they headed away from the bar so they could find a parking lot to do another couple of lines.

  Their names were Ed and Brian Fitzgerald. Ed was older and overweight and everyone called him Fitz. Brian was thinner than a tongue depressor and everyone called him Bri. Except when they were referred to as a pair, in which case some folks called them “10” because that’s pretty much what they looked like when they stood side by side.

  Fitz had the ski masks in the backseat and the guns in the trunk. He kept the blow in the console between the two seats. Bri needed the blow. Otherwise, he’d never go near a fucking gun.

  They found an isolated spot under the expressway. From there they could see Penitentiary Park, covered in crusts of ice and rags of snow. From where they were sitting, they could even see the spot where the drive-in screen had once stood. A few years before it was torn down, a girl had been found beaten to death there, probably the neighborhood’s most famous murder. Fitz cut their lines on a glass square he’d popped out of the side-view mirror of a junker. He snorted the first bump, handed the mirror and the rolled-up fin to his brother.

  Bri snorted his bump and then didn’t even ask before he snorted the one next to it.

  “I don’t know,” Bri said, which he’d been saying so much this week Fitz was going to fucking strangle him if he kept it up. “I don’t know.”

  Fitz took the rolled-up fin and the mirror back. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  “No,” Bri said. He fiddled with his watch, which had stopped keeping time a year ago. A parting gift from their father the day he decided he didn’t want to be a father anymore. “It’s a bad fucking idea. Just bad. We should hit them for everything or not at all.”

  “My guy,” Fitz explained for maybe the fiftieth time, “wants to see we can handle our shit. Says we do it in steps. See how the o
wners react the first time.”

  Bri’s eyes grew wide. “They could respond real fucking bad, you nut. That’s a fucking gangsta bar. A drop bar.”

  Fitz gave him a tight smile. “That’s kinda the point. If it wasn’t a drop bar, it would never be worth the risk.”

  “No. All right?” Bri kicked the underside of the glove compartment. A child throwing a tantrum. He fiddled with the watch again, turning the band so that the face of the watch found the inside of his wrist. “No, no, no.”

  Fitz said, “No? Little brother, you got Ashley, the kids, and a fucking habit. Your car’s been nursing the same tank of gas since Thanksgiving and your watch still don’t fucking work.” He leaned across the car until his forehead touched his little brother’s. He put his hand on the back of his neck. “Say ‘no’ again.”

  Bri didn’t, of course. Instead, he did another line.

  IT WAS A BIG night, lots of Buds and lots of bets going down. Bob and Rardy handled the former. Marv took care of the itchy, and always slightly bewildered, bettors and dropped the bets into the slot in the cabinet below the register. At some point, he disappeared into the back to tally it all up, came out after the crowd had thinned considerably.

  Bob was skimming the foam off two pints of Guinness when two Chechens came through the door with their close-cropped hair, two days’ beard growth, wearing silk warm-up jackets under woolen topcoats. Marv passed them and handed off the manila envelope without breaking stride, and by the time Bob had skimmed the rest of the foam off the pints, the Chechens were gone. In and out. Like they were never there.

  An hour later, the place was empty. Bob mopped up behind the bar, Marv counted the revenue. Rardy dragged the trash out the back door into the alley. Bob squeezed the mop out in the bucket, and when he looked up there was a guy standing in the rear doorway pointing a shotgun at him.