Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  “We’d be fine with that,” Lissa replied.

  Sally looked at each of them in turn, a prizefighter sizing up opponents. “How old are you?” she asked Finn.

  “Forty-four,” Finn replied.

  “And you’re a lawyer who lives alone in a nice apartment in Charlestown?”

  “Yeah.” Finn took a sip of his wine. He was more of a beer drinker, but as long as Lissa was paying, he didn’t mind having a glass of a nice cabernet. It relaxed him.

  “So you’re gay.”

  Finn almost spat out a ten-dollar sip of the wine. Whatever relaxation he’d achieved vanished. “What?” he choked out.

  “I’ve seen your apartment,” she said. “No curtains, no pictures, no pillows on the couch. The refrigerator’s empty and there’s one toothbrush in the bathroom. There’s nothing that looks like a girl’s ever been there ever. You’re not ugly, so I assume you’re a fag.”

  “I’m not gay,” Finn replied. He tried to keep the defensiveness out of his voice.

  “Gay,” Sally said, nodding her head.

  “I am not gay!”

  “Hey,” she said, “I got no problem with it. Probably make me sleep better at night.”

  “I don’t have a problem with it either,” Finn said. “I’m just not gay.”

  “Are you dating anyone?”

  “No,” Finn admitted.

  “Gay.”

  Finn looked over at Lissa. She looked amused. “What’s so funny?”

  “This is,” Lissa said. “In fact, it pretty much defines funny.”

  Finn turned to Sally. “I was dating someone. We lived together and it didn’t work out. That was a while ago, and I just haven’t found anyone else since then, okay?”

  “Who was she? Did she have a penis, or was she like, an imaginary girlfriend?”

  “No,” Finn said. “She was Koz’s partner when he was on the police force.”

  Sally looked over at Kozlowski, who nodded. “Huh,” she said, clearly shocked that she was wrong. “So if you’re not gay, then why don’t you have a new girlfriend?”

  Lissa laughed. “She’s got you nailed, Finn. That’s a question I’ve asked over and over,” Lissa said. “I’d kinda like to hear the answer.”

  She wasn’t going to hear the answer, though, because before Finn could even begin to formulate a response, Sally turned on Lissa. “You two are dating, right?” she asked, nodding at Kozlowski. He’d been silent for most of the dinner, and now he squirmed at the notion of being drawn into the conversation. Lissa took the bait, though.

  “We are,” she said, nodding. Kozlowski shot her a look, but she waved him off. She clearly wasn’t about to back down.

  “For how long?”

  “A year or so,” Lissa replied. “Maybe a little longer.”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  Finn had to admire the girl; she played rough. Lissa was now squirming as much as Kozlowski was.

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  “Why?” Sally asked. “You don’t love him?”

  “No, I love him.”

  “He doesn’t love you?”

  Everyone at the table looked at Kozlowski. He looked at the cutlery. Finn had the impression he was contemplating picking up the steak knife and gouging his own eyes out.

  “No, I’m sure he loves me, too,” Lissa said, answering for him. Sally kept looking at Kozlowski for a moment, though, until he gave a slight nod.

  “Okay, you love him and he loves you,” Sally said. “You both seem normal, so what’s the deal?”

  “We’ve talked about it,” Lissa said hesitantly.

  Finn, who had been enjoying the show, was shocked by the pronouncement. “Really?” he said.

  Lissa looked back and forth between Finn and Kozlowski. Kozlowski shook his head and raised his hand, signaling that she was on her own. Then Lissa settled her gaze on Finn. “This isn’t how we wanted to tell you this,” she began.

  Finn felt his eyes widen. “You’re kidding, right? You two? Married?” The expression on Lissa’s face turned like the sky during a sudden, violent summer storm. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds,” Finn stammered. “I mean why not you two, right?” Lissa’s eyes darkened further. “I mean, that’s great. I really do, it’s great. What brought this on?”

  “Are you pregnant?” Sally asked. She wasn’t letting up on the attack.

  “No!” Lissa said. Her voice was loud and sharp, and cut through the clamor of the restaurant. She shook her head and took a deep breath and said in a more reasonable voice, “No.”

  Finn looked at the two of them, not sure what to say. “Holy crap, can you imagine that? The two of you as parents?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Lissa replied.

  “Why not?” Sally asked. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  Kozlowski leaned in toward Sally and said quietly, “You know, Huckleberry Finn nearly got himself killed a whole bunch of times traveling down the river. The story could’ve gone another way.”

  “No sweat,” Sally said. “I feel like I know you guys a lot better already. How about you guys? Can we put the twenty questions game on hold for a little while?”

  Finn took another sip of his wine. Then he raised his glass. “To getting to know each other—a little more slowly,” he said. Everyone around the table raised their glasses.

  It took a moment before anyone said anything else. Finally Sally spoke. “So,” she said. “What’s the deal with my father? Is he getting out anytime soon, or am I going to have to play Trivial Pursuit with you guys for the rest of my childhood?”

  Finn took a deep breath. “It’s complicated.”

  “Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

  “No, this is genuinely complicated. I’ll get your father a new bail hearing. It may take a little time.”

  “Why did he freak out today?”

  “I don’t know,” Finn replied. He didn’t like lying, but he could think of no better option.

  “Maybe he wanted to get away from me.”

  “You’re smarter than that,” Lissa said.

  “Am I? What would you do if you found out you had a kid you never wanted? Would you run?”

  Lissa considered the question. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe you’re a better person than my parents.”

  Finn said nothing. There was nothing to say. He could have tried to persuade her that he knew how she felt. After all, his own parents had abandoned him. He’d had to grow up quickly and learn to fend for himself, just as she had. There was a difference, though, and he knew it. He’d never known his parents. To him, they were specters in the mist. On his good days, growing up, he’d convinced himself that there was a reason beyond selfishness for their absence. He’d invent myths—romantic tales of intrigue that had forced his parents to leave him. The story of Moses in the bulrushes, told to the children in the orphanages by stern nuns, had always appealed to him. Perhaps, like some biblical king, he’d been set adrift for a purpose, and his mother and father lived their lives watching over him until the day when they could reveal themselves to him.

  They were childish dreams, but he’d clung to them. Deep down, he still did. And that was what set Sally apart. She could hold no such illusions. She knew who her parents were, and they knew her. Her abandonment was personal. He could never convince her otherwise, because he didn’t believe it.

  It took a few moments for them to finish their coffee and for Lissa to pick up the tab. They left quietly; there was a melancholy feeling they all shared in their silence. Outside, the weather matched their mood. The rain had let up enough to allow them to walk without getting drenched, but a light sprinkling continued. The air was warm and humid again. Finn could feel the barometric pressure in his ears, and it made it seem as though something in the atmosphere was getting ready to explode.

  As the door closed behind them, they didn’t look back. If they had, they might have not
iced the man settling his check at the table near the window, two over from their table. He was of average height and build, and the only things that stuck out about him were his black hair and eyes against his fair skin. He’d arrived just after them, and sat at the table by himself, casually listening in on every word of their conversation.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Thursday morning was a total loss for Finn. It was as though he were swimming in a pool filled with mud. It would be easier if he could go to the police and enlist their help. That wasn’t an option for him, though. His client wouldn’t allow it, and he was bound to obey

  Devon’s wishes. Sometimes it seemed as though the canons of legal ethics were drawn with an eye toward creating as many dilemmas as possible for lawyers, blind to the difficult realities faced by those who paced the courthouse halls.

  He started the day by dropping Sally off for school in the morning. She seemed in mildly better spirits after a decent night’s sleep. She was still quiet, but regarded him without animosity. Perhaps, he thought, she was coming around.

  He let her out in front of the school. “One of us will be here to pick you up when school ends,” he said. “Probably me or Lissa.”

  She nodded and said, “Thanks.” Then she slammed the door and headed up the stairs to the main entrance and Finn pulled away.

  Thanks. It was such a simple little word, said millions upon millions of times every day without thought or reflection. To the woman at the Dunkin’ Donuts counter who poured your coffee. To the man who held the elevator door for just a second longer to let you on. To the kid who bagged your groceries at the store for a summer job. It was said over and over and over, to the point where it almost lost meaning and became a part of the blur of modern reality. Said but never felt; heard but never acknowledged.

  That was not the case with Sally. For her, common courtesy was a luxury—one that she clearly had rarely been afforded, and was hesitant to bestow on others. And so when she said the word to Finn—thanks—it made him feel as though, just perhaps, he was doing a good thing.

  That feeling of accomplishment lasted only a moment, however, and as he swung the car around and headed for the office, he confronted reality. He would spend part of the morning putting together a motion for a new bail hearing. It made sense: he couldn’t get Devon out of jail until a new hearing was set. He would file the motion and then convince Devon that he was better off out of jail. Accomplishing that seemed a long shot. The man’s fear had been evident at their last meeting, when Devon explained the situation to him. He seemed determined to remain in jail, where he believed he was safe. Even if Finn could convince his client, though, there were no guarantees that bail would be set after Devon’s behavior at the last hearing.

  In the meantime, Finn felt helpless. It seemed as though there was nothing he could do to move the matter along, and he was stuck playing inadequate surrogate father to Devon’s daughter.

  By the time he pulled up to the office he’d worked himself into a sweat, just wrestling with his options. That, in turn, made him angry with himself. Lissa was right after all. Devon was his client, not his family, and this wasn’t, in the end, Finn’s problem. There was no rational reason he should treat it as though it were.

  He opened the car door and stood up. Arching his back to stretch out, he looked around him. The weather was warming, little by little, and the buds were beginning to appear on the trees along the street in Charlestown. It was a beautiful place in so many ways; it retained much of the charm of the Old World. He’d built a good life for himself, he thought. Or, if not a life, at least a good professional reputation. He was far better off than he would have been if he’d stayed on the path of his youth. Few others were so fortunate. If he could, he was determined to give Sally the best chance she could have at a normal life. Right now, that meant working to get her father out of jail.

  Liam Kilbranish was no longer watching the lawyer. He would return to that soon enough; for the moment he had other things to do.

  He took his time. He was careful. He made sure that he knew the layout of the neighborhood well. One of the things that made planning difficult in this city was the layout. It had grown in fits and starts, without any semblance of the urban planning that one might find in a more modern city. Streets followed the original cow paths of premodern times, and neighborhoods had sprouted up, grown, died, and sprouted up again in a whimsical manner. As a result, the streets had few patterns and twisted and turned in an illogical stitching of one-way lanes and dead ends. Knowing the streets was paramount. The likelihood that a chase would ensue was low, but he had to account for the possibility. If it happened and he was unprepared, it would be over in moments.

  Once he was sure that he had memorized the area, he went back to the safe house in Quincy. He had to make preparations there, too, if his plan was going to work. The place had a basement, which made things easier. It was a shallow space, with a low ceiling and walls that blended cement with the natural bedrock that had been blasted away to hollow out the ground underneath the little house. There was a furnace that looked as if it had been replaced within the past decade, and a water heater that was smaller than he would have chosen. There were no windows, which was a blessing, and the only way in or out was a staircase leading up to a kitchen. With a little work it would be perfect for his purposes.

  Broadark was sitting on the couch, and he watched as Liam went up and down through the doorway in the kitchen, getting the place ready. The television was off; the man had given up his channel-surfing habit. Instead, he was watching Liam intently, and Liam could tell that he wanted to say something, though he held his tongue for a while.

  It took less than an hour, and then he was ready. He sat at the table at the kitchen, checking over his weapons.

  “Are you sure?” Broadark asked at last.

  “I am,” Liam replied.

  “This was never part of the plan.”

  “Plans change.”

  “They do,” Broadark agreed. “It’s not always a good thing when they do. If this goes badly, there will be questions. No one wants us to put the organization in this kind of light.”

  “It won’t go badly.”

  Broadark had nothing to say to that. To question any further would have brought the two men into a confrontation from which there was no backing down, and both of them knew it. He stood and walked over to the window, looking out into the cement yard. “When?” he asked.

  Liam was strapping the knife to his ankle. He checked his pistol and slipped a fully loaded clip into the handle. He wouldn’t need the automatic. Not for this task. “Soon,” he said.

  Finn worked through the morning. He drafted the motion for a new bail hearing in Devon’s case, taking extra care to make it a work of his finest advocacy. Once he finished with the motion, he moved on to get some work done on other cases. He could feel Lissa looking up at him on occasion, studying his demeanor. Normally they would talk to each other periodically, and he generally showed her his work so that she could look it over. Not that day, however. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts, and he didn’t feel like sharing them at the moment.

  At one point Lissa got up and walked over to him. “You all right, boss?”

  “Fine.”

  “You sure?”

  He looked up at her. “There’s nothing more I can do,” he said. “I can write the briefs, I can make the arguments, but that’s it.”

  She nodded. “That’s true.”

  “It pisses me off,” he said. “I should be able to do more.”

  She flashed him an understanding smile. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “But at least it’s nice bullshit. It’s what makes you who you are.”

  “My bullshit makes me who I am?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It does. True of everybody else, too, so don’t feel bad. Your bullshit is better than most.” She leaned in close to him. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t bullshit all the same,” she said softly.

 
; He took in a deep breath and exhaled; returned her smile weakly. “Is that all you wanted to say to me? You had to walk across the room to tell me that? I’m full of shit?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not all.”

  “What else, then?”

  “It’s almost one-thirty.”

  “So?”

  “So, Sally gets out of school at one-thirty. You’re already going to be late.”

  He looked at his watch and sighed again. “Damn, I almost forgot.”

  “Almost?”

  “Fine, I forgot.” He looked at the papers strewn across his desk. “I have no idea when I’m gonna get the rest of this work done.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. He could sense a change in her recently. Something he was having trouble putting his finger on. She had always been one of the harder people he’d known. She didn’t let people in easily, and life seemed to roll around her without making a dent. But she seemed softer now, somehow. Perhaps it was just his imagination.

  She walked back to her desk and picked up her car keys. “I’ll get her,” she said.

  “You don’t have to,” Finn replied. He stood up and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, feeling in the pockets for his own keys.

  “I don’t mind,” Lissa said.

  “I appreciate it, but she’s my responsibility.” He was moving toward the door, but she stepped in front of him.

  “Finn,” she said, “she’s not your responsibility. You do understand that, right?”

  “We can’t just leave her at the school.”

  “I don’t mean right now. She’s not your responsibility long-term.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She looked at him. “Do you?”

  “I do. I just want to do what I can to try and keep her father out of jail.”

  “A lot of it’s out of your control, though. Even if you get Devon out on bail, you know he’s gonna go back in after the trial. You’re a good lawyer, but you can’t change the fact that you have a guilty client. Not just guilty; dead to rights.”