by G. M. Ford
“My accounting firm,” she said.
“Ah,” Mickey said. “That’s what I figured.”
“So, if you’re not here to arrest me, how come you’re standing around in the pouring rain?”
He shrugged. “You’re a hard person to find, Miss Pressman. What with the big rush to get the kid into the ground and all, I figured—you know, since it was the only chance anybody was going to get to say their goodbyes to Joseph Reeves, it made sense that you might show up here.”
She turned away. Dolan skated over closer to her. From the side it was difficult to tell whether the rain had found her face or if she was crying.
“Can you . . . ?” Dolan started.
She turned her liquid eyes his way.
“Can you—you know, the whole Silver Angel thing,” Dolan said. “Can you really wake people from comas?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She thought it over and said, “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes you can?”
“Yes,” she said, and then looked down at the grave. An air of profound sadness settled around her shoulders like a shawl. “But . . .” she began and then stopped.
“But what?” Mickey pressed. “But you’re beginning to have doubts about whether it’s such a good idea?”
Her eyes lingered on him this time. Taking him in from head to toe.
“This isn’t going away,” Mickey said. “They’re going to keep pressing on this Royster family thing until something cracks.”
“I’m going now,” she announced.
“You got any idea what’s going on with Joseph’s mother?” Mickey tried.
She pinned him with a glare. “Do you?” she demanded.
Dolan said he didn’t have a clue.
She turned and walked away, short stepping it down the embankment, out onto level ground, headed for the dark stand of trees at the south end of the graveyard.
Dolan began to follow. Or, at least, that was the plan. The second his feet hit the incline, however, they went shooting out from beneath him. He landed flat on his back in the mud and then slowly slid to the bottom of the hill. As he collected his wits, he heard the sound of laughter.
He rolled over and pushed himself up to one knee. He looked down at the sodden mess he’d become. “Shit,” he said out loud.
Halfway to his feet, he slipped again and went down heavily onto his chest.
By the time he’d steadied himself on his hands and knees, wiped the big glob of mud from his chin and crawled over to solid ground, Grace Pressman was little more than a shimmering shadow in the distance.
“I met the new cop today,” Grace said.
Eve looked up from her seat at the dining room table, genuinely surprised. “You’re kidding. Where?”
“At Joseph’s funeral.”
“He came to the funeral?”
“Sort of,” Grace hedged. “Actually, he was looking for me.”
“Regarding the confrontation with Joseph’s mother?”
Grace shook her head. “No,” she said. “He’d already talked to Joseph. He knew what really happened.”
“What did he want then?”
“He wanted to know if I could really wake people from comas.”
“And you said?”
“I said I could do it sometimes.”
“That all?”
Grace thought about it. “He also wanted to know how come Mrs. Reeves didn’t seem glad to have her son back.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I didn’t have a clue.”
A quiet moment passed. Eve went back to pecking at her laptop. Grace wandered over to the window. Across the river, traffic was at a standstill. Taillights blinked on and off as a solid line of cars wound along the rain-slicked streets in super slow-mo.
“He’s looking for Cassie and the kids.”
“So he informed me,” Eve said. “With Gus to watch over them, they should be alright, for the time being.”
Grace pressed her nose against the glass. The warmth of her breath fogged up the area in front of her face. “Indra was right,” she said after a minute.
“About what?” Eve asked, without looking up from the screen.
“He’s very handsome,” Grace said.
“And very dangerous,” Eve added quickly. “Think of how many people have tried to find you over the past several years.” She paused for effect. “Took him all of a day and a half.” Eve sat back in her chair and wagged a stiff finger in Grace’s direction. “We’re going to have to be careful with Sergeant . . .”
“Dolan,” Grace prompted. “Sergeant Michael Dolan.”
“This isn’t Officer Quinton. This is a whole different kettle of fish,” Eve warned.
“Yes,” Grace whispered. “It certainly is.”
“You know who he used to be married to?” Eve asked.
“Who?”
“Jennifer McCade.”
“From the marriage equality TV ads?”
“That’s the one. She left him for Joanna Bloom.”
“No kidding.”
“Woman leaves you for another woman, must put one hell of a crimp in your . . .” Eve smiled like a wolf and let it go at that.
Grace made a dubious face. “He felt kind of lost, to me,” she said.
Joan hid a grin behind a hand. “I’m not going to ask,” she said.
“Thanks,” Mickey said.
Every head in the building had turned as Mickey made his way upstairs to the C of D’s office. Looked like he’d been dragged behind a tractor. His clothes, front and back, were completely coated with mud, but it was his shoes that had taken the worst of it. He’d done what he could to knock off the mud, but his feet were still little more than round globs of compacted soil.
“You got a bag?” Dolan asked Joan.
“What kind of bag?” she asked.
“You know, like a shopping bag.” He held his mud-crusted hands a couple of feet apart. “Big enough for all this crap on my desk.”
She rummaged around in her desk for a moment before producing a white plastic Macy’s bag about two feet square. “That’d be great,” Dolan said.
She passed it over, using only the very tips of her fingers.
She watched from a distance as Mickey swept all the files IT had put together on Grace Pressman’s awakenings into the bag. All that remained was a purple Post-it note stuck to his desk lamp. “A Miss Prentiss from over at Memorial Hospital called asking about where to send that young man’s effects.”
Dolan thanked her and pocketed the Post-it.
“Just as well you get that stuff out of here,” Joan said. “The painters are coming to paint the office tomorrow.”
Mickey Dolan heaved a big sigh and threw it all into the Macy’s bag with the rest of the stuff. “I’m going home to clean up a little,” he deadpanned.
Joan laughed out loud. “You look like a breaded veal cutlet.”
“Mickey,” boomed from the far side of the room.
Marcus Nilsson was standing in his office doorway. He beckoned with his head. Mickey gathered up the Macy’s bag and walked in that direction. The Chief disappeared inside. By the time Mickey closed the door behind himself, Nilsson was seated behind his desk with a silver remote control in his hand.
“No need to sit,” he said with a smirk. “Thing’s pretty short, anyway.” He thumbed the remote. The wall-mounted TV rolled into a view of Wentworth Street. The gray Lexus was right where it had been earlier in the day.
“Watch this,” Nilsson said.
The view was from the front of the car. Way up high. You could tell it was windy. Bits of paper and other trash swirled around like a swarm of bees, occasionally ticking against the closed-circuit camera’s lens.<
br />
That’s when the pair of black-clad figures entered the frame from the bottom. Nuns. Dominicans. Two of them. What with all the airborne crap floating around, it didn’t seem the least bit unreasonable that they were protecting their faces with their sleeves.
Once they split up and headed for opposite sides of the car, things got hairy in a hurry. The driver rolled down his window at just about the same instant the other sister pushed a black long-barreled revolver out of the sleeve of her robe.
Sister Silencer shot the passenger through the window about two seconds before the other nun stuck her gun inside the car and took out the driver.
Nilsson stopped the tape. “Watch this,” he said. “Passenger side.” And then thumbed it on again. Dolan watched as the nun made the sign of the cross.
“Those are the best images we’ve got,” Nilsson said. “We’re sure not getting any kind of an ID out of that crap.”
“Could be anybody,” Dolan agreed.
“Didn’t that—what’s his name? The guy lost his front teeth down there on Tremont Street. Didn’t he—”
“Yeah,” Mickey said. “That Donnely Kimble character. Told me it was a couple of nuns who kicked his ass.”
“Probably the Smith & Wesson sisters right there,” Nilsson said.
“So why?” Mickey asked. “Why whack a couple of private peepers?”
“Maybe they saw something they shouldn’t have.”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe they were moving something on or off the island, and they didn’t want those guys to see it go down.”
“Could be,” Mickey allowed.
Nilsson’s eyes narrowed. “Like the Royster family, you’re thinking.”
“Social Services is stone convinced, Chief. As far as they’re concerned, the Pressmans are running their own private little underground railroad.”
“And you still think they’re doing it from Coaltown.”
“Sure would explain why nobody can ever put the finger on them. They hide them out on the island someplace. Then truck ’em off to wherever they’re gonna go.”
Nilsson shook his big head. “Couldn’t any of that happen without Vince Keenan’s approval,” he said. “I know he’s gone mostly legit, but legit or no legit, you go sneaking around on Vince Keenan’s turf without his say-so and they’ll find your ass floating out in the bay.”
“And don’t forget the cab driver,” Mickey said. “He told me he left her on Crow Street. Says she just got out and walked off down the street.”
Marcus Nilsson leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his vest. “Okay. Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re right and they’re using the island. What’s in it for Vince? Charity’s never been big with the Keenan family. If Vince’s letting this go on, there must be something in it for him.”
“No idea,” Mickey Dolan said. “Howsabout maybe I ask him?”
Nilsson made a skeptical face. “And why would Vince Keenan talk to you?” he wanted to know.
“We went to grammar school together.”
“And he’s gonna spill his guts ’cause you two were locker buddies?”
“We weren’t exactly tight, and he sure as hell isn’t going to cough up anything incriminating, but we did know each other. He was on my Little League team when I was twelve. After that they sent him back East to private school—you know, but I saw him once in a while on vacations and stuff like that.”
“And you think he’d be willing to have a chat with you.”
“Can’t hurt to try,” Mickey said.
Marcus Nilsson thought it over. “Real polite,” he cautioned. “Real polite.” He waggled a finger. “Anything goes wrong, we’ll both be flipping burgers.”
“The very soul of discretion,” Mickey assured him.
The C of D was working up to a full sneer when the phone rang. Nilsson raised his eyes. Joan was holding the receiver tight against her chest and frowning.
“It’s the damn Mayor,” Nilsson said.
“I can’t do this,” Grace said. “Not with everything that’s happened.”
“Mr. Thurmond came a long way to see you,” Eve said.
“It’s too soon,” Grace said. “My mind hasn’t made any sense of Joseph yet. You had no right to tell this Thurmond guy to come here.”
“I was just trying to—”
“You were just trying to drum up a million bucks.”
“The work we do—”
“We don’t do the work! The work does us! Don’t you get it? Look at us, for pity sake. A pair of biddies living on a godforsaken island with a bunch of criminals. Can’t go anywhere without protection.” She waved a disgusted hand in the air. “We don’t have a life. All we have is the goddamn work. I feel like I’ve turned into an idea.”
Eve opened her mouth to protest, but Grace raised her voice and kept talking. “There’s got to be more to life than this. If this is all there is—”
Eve’s phone began to blink. “Your ride is here,” she said.
Grace swept her coffee cup from the counter. The cup seemed to hover in the air for a moment and then shattered all over the tile floor, sending pottery shards and coffee dregs fanning out over the stony surface.
“I’m not sure about any of this anymore Mom,” she said. “I’m starting to feel like maybe—like maybe I’m doing more harm than good. I’m—” She stopped herself. “I’ll go speak with Mr. Thurmond, but I’m not promising anybody anything.”
Grace stepped over the mess on the floor and walked quickly from the room.
The house was a light blue, mid-century modern and about the size of your average junior high school. Not a neighbor in sight. Maybe ten acres of lakefront for a yard. Mickey ran his hand through his hair and then rang the bell.
Strangest of strange: Vince’s mother answered the door. He remembered her from Parents’ Night at Saint Ignatius. She always showed up. Her old man Sean, the gangster, not so much.
She looked Mickey over like a lunch menu. “You’re Emma Dolan’s boy,” she announced.
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
“I understand you turned out to be a cop like your old man.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“What can we do for you?”
“I called Vince’s office at Biosystems. They said he was working from home today. I’d like to have a word with him, if that’s possible.”
This was a woman who, back in the day, got a lot of practice dealing with cops. Mickey could feel it. Most people started to dissolve when pressured by serious authority figures. Not her. She just got harder and more likely to tell you to stick it.
“Is this an official visit?” she asked.
“No,” Mickey said. “Just wanted to have a chat.”
Her faced softened. “Michael, isn’t it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She pulled the door open. “Well, come in Michael. I’ll see what Vincent is doing.”
She left Mickey Dolan standing on the polished marble floor and disappeared around the corner to the right. When the click of her stubby heels had faded to silence, Mickey looked around. “Open concept” was what they called it these days. Most of the house one big room, so everybody could stay connected during galas. Sort of the opposite of the way Mickey was raised, in those little houses, with those little, self-contained rooms—places for the women to go after dinner and talk about what assholes the men were, and down in the basement with the cigar guys, bending elbows and breaking wind.
Looked like the whole back wall of the house was a single sheet of tempered glass, looking out over the windswept lake, over toward the arched eyebrow of trees lining the far shore. Surveying the domain, Mickey mused.
And then Vince Keenan was standing beside him. Looking just like he’d always looked, except richer. Shirt and t
ie. No jacket. Nary a wrinkle in sight. He stuck out a hand. Mickey took it.
“Mickey,” Vince said with a mini-grin. “Been a while.”
“Too long,” Mickey said.
“What brings you out to our humble abode?” he asked.
Mickey couldn’t help himself. He laughed out loud.
“I remember when we both lived on Wallace Street,” Mickey said, evoking images of their childhood roots among the littered streets south of downtown.
Vince laughed at the memory and took Mickey by the elbow.
“Come on back to my office,” he said.
Mickey followed him down the long hall. Best word for Vince Keenan was compact. Tight and springy, but not very big. Didn’t play sports or anything. The kind of kid who normally would have been a target for bullies back in school. Except he wasn’t. Even the kids who didn’t speak English knew who Sean Keenan was. Didn’t want their parents finding them nailed to a garage door in Coaltown. No. Nobody fucked with Vince Keenan. Ever. Life was too precious for that.
The office was a space Mickey could relate to. Tucked in the middle of the house, with no view of the lake. Coffin-dark, with the kind of furniture you could put your feet up on. Just like home. Vince beckoned for him to sit wherever he wanted, and then stationed himself behind the big wooden desk.
“So?” he said.
“I got a problem I was hoping you could help me with.”
“For old times’ sake?”
“That’s as good as anything, I suppose.”
“What’s your problem?”
“Edwin Royster.”
Vince showed him the courtesy of not pretending he didn’t know what Mickey was talking about. “Not sure I can help you there,” he said with an unrepentant shrug. “That ship’s already sailed.”
Mickey ran it by him. Who was yelling at who, and why. Took a full five minutes. Vince listened politely. “Royster’s a child-molesting piece of shit,” he said when Mickey finished. “Only reason he’s still on the street is because he owns a superior court judge.”
“Nalbandian,” Mickey offered.
Vince nodded. He leaned back in his chair. “You know, Mickey. Back when my old man was alive . . .” Mickey watched as Vince considered not speaking ill of the dead, but decided to make an exception in Sean Keenan’s case. “If my old man so much as reached up to take off his hat, my mother would cover her head and hurry out of the room.”
