4

Dave Boyle had ended up in McGills that night, sitting with Stanley the Giant at the corner of the bar, watching a baseball game.

Dave Boyle, former star for the baseball teams of '78 to '82, was watching it, thinking: Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives. Win for me. Win. Win. Win.

But when the team lost, when your team had failed you, it was only to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. All you could do was to get in your car and drive back to your home.

“You see these chicks?” Stanley the Giant said, and Dave looked up and saw two girls standing on the bar, dancing, as a third friend sang. The one on the right… Dave had known her since she was a little girl – Katie Marcus, Jimmy and poor dead Marita's daughter, now the stepdaughter of his wife's cousin Annabeth, but looking all grown up. Watching her dance and laugh, her blond hair over her face, Dave felt a black hope, and it didn't come from nowhere. It came from her. It was radiated from her body to his, from the sudden recognition when her eyes met his and she smiled and gave him a little wave that brushed against his heart.

Dave watched Katie, remembering his glory days. Dave Boyle. Baseball star. Pride of the Flats for three short years. No one thinking of him as that kid who'd been abducted when he was ten anymore. No, he was a local hero. Pretty girls in his bed. Fate on his side.

Dave Boyle. Not knowing then how short futures could be. How quickly they could disappear, leaving you with nothing, with no surprises, with no reason for hope, nothing but dull days.

I will not dream anymore, you said. No more pain. But then you saw a dancing girl who looked like a woman you'd dated in high school – a woman you'd loved and lost – and you said. To hell with it, let's dream just one more time.

* * *

When Celeste Boyle had been a teenager, she'd been sure someone would come and take her away from the problems they had in her family. She wasn't bad-looking. She had a good personality, knew how to laugh. She thought it should happen. Problem was, even though she met a few men, they weren't good enough for her. Mostly they were from Buckingham, Point or Flat punks, and one guy from uptown. Her ill mother's health insurance was out, and quite soon Celeste started working simply to try and pay the monstrous medical bills for her mother's monstrous diseases.

It had been Dave who Celeste had chosen. He was goodlooking and funny and calm. When they'd married, he'd had a good job, running the mail room, and later he got another on the loading docks of a downtown hotel and never complained about it. Dave, in fact, never complained about anything and almost never talked about his childhood before high school, which had only begun to seem strange to her in the year since her mother had died. It had been a stroke that had finally done the job, Celeste coming home from the supermarket to find her mother dead.

In the months after the funeral, Celeste comforted herself with the thoughts that at least things would be easier now. But it hadn't worked out that way. Dave's job paid about the same as Celeste's and she would look sadly at the financial crisis in their lives – the bills they'd be paying off for years, the lack of money coming in, the new mountain of bills for schooling Michael, and the destroyed credit.

Sometimes, Celeste found herself sitting on the toilet, trying not to cry and wondering how her life had gotten here. That's what she was doing at three in the morning, early Sunday, when Dave came in with blood all over him.

He seemed shocked to find her there. He jumped back when she stood up.

She gasped, “Honey, what happened?”

“I got cut.”

“Dave, Jesus Christ. What happened?”

He lifted the shirt and Celeste stared at a long cut along his ribs that was bloody red.

“Jesus, you have to go to the hospital.”

“No, no,” he said. “Look, it's not that deep. It's just bleeding like hell.”

He was right. On a second look, she noticed it wasn't that bad. But it was long. And it was bloody. Though not enough to explain all the blood on his shirt and neck.

“Who did this?”

“Some junkie psycho,” he said, and took off the shirt. “The guy tried to mug me. That's when he cut me, and then…” He paused to drink some tap water. “I freaked.^[22] I mean, I freaked seriously, babe. I think I might've killed this guy.”

“You what…?”

“I just went crazy when I felt the knife in my side. You know? I knocked him down, got on top of him, and, baby, I exploded.”

“So it was self-defense?”

“I don't think the court would see it that way, tell you the truth.”

“I can't believe this. Honey, tell me exactly what happened.”

“I'm walking to my car,” he said, and Celeste sat back on the closed toilet as he knelt in front of her, “and this guy comes up to me, asks me for a light. I say I don't smoke.”

Celeste nodded.

“So, my heart starts beating fast right then. Because there's no one around but me and him. And that's when I see the knife and he says, 'Your wallet or your life. I'm leaving with one of them.'”

“That's what he said?”

Dave leaned back. “Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing.” Celeste was thinking it just sounded funny for some reason, too clever maybe, like in the movies.

“So… so then,” Dave said, “I'm like, 'Come on, man. Just let me get in my car and go home,' which was dumb because now he wants my car keys, too. And I just, I don't know, honey, I get mad instead of scared. And I try to get past him and that's when he pushes and cuts me.” He kissed her hand. “So, uh, he pushes me against the car and cuts me, and I feel the knife going through my skin and I, I just go crazy. I hit him in the side of the head with my fist, and I hit again, like the side of his neck. And he falls. And I jump on him, and, and, and…”

Dave stared into space, his mouth still open.

“What?” Celeste asked, still trying to see the whole picture. “What did you do?”

Dave looked at her knees. “I went nuts on him, babe. I might've killed him for all I know. I was so mad and so scared and all I could think about was you and Michael and how I might not have come home alive, like I could've died in some parking lot.” He looked in her eyes and said it again: “I might've killed him, honey.”

Dave needs me now, Celeste thought. And at that moment she realized why she was bothered: he never complained. When you complained to someone, you were, in a way, asking for help, asking for that person to fix what troubled you. But Dave had never needed her before, so he'd never complained, not after lost jobs. But now, kneeling before her, saying that he may have killed a man, he was asking her to tell him it was all right. And it was. Wasn't it? You tried to mug an honest man, and if it didn't go the way you planned, then too bad you might have died.

She kissed her husband's forehead. “Baby,” she whispered, “you take a shower. I'll take care of your clothes.” “What are you going to do with them?”

She had no idea. Burn them? Sure, but where? Not in the apartment. So maybe in the backyard. But someone would notice her burning clothes in the backyard at 3 A.M. Or at any time, really.

“I'll wash them.” She said it as the idea came to her. “I'll wash them well and then I'll put them in a trash bag and we'll bury it.”

“Bury it?”

“Take it to the dump, then. Or we'll hide the bag till Tuesday morning. Trash day, right?”

“Right.”

“I know when they come. Seven-fifteen, every week…”

“Okay. Look. I might have killed someone, honey. Jesus.

You all right with this?”

She wanted to touch him. She wanted to get out of the room. She wanted to tell him it would be okay. She wanted to run away.

She stayed where she was. “Yeah. I'll wash the clothes.”

She found some plastic gloves under the sink and she put them on. Then she took his shirt and his jeans from the floor. The jeans were dark with blood, too.

“How did you get the blood on your jeans?”

He shrugged. “I was kneeling over him.”

She took the clothes to the kitchen where she put them in the sink and ran the water, watching the blood and pieces of flesh and, oh Christ, maybe pieces of brain, wash down the drain. It amazed her how much the human body could bleed. And all this blood was from one head. She poured dishwashing liquid all over the T-shirt, then squeezed it out and went through the whole process again until the water was clear. She did the same with the jeans, and by that time Dave was out of the shower and sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, watching her.

“Why aren't you using the washing machine?” he asked.

She looked at him, smiled nervously and said, “Evidence, honey.”

“Damn, babe,” he said. “You're a genius.”

Four in the morning, and she was more awake than she'd been in years. Her blood was caffeine. Your whole life you wished for something like this. You told yourself you didn't, but you did. To be involved in a drama. And not the drama of unpaid bills and quarrels. No. This was real life, but bigger than real life. Her husband may have killed a bad man. And if that bad man really was dead, the police would want to find out who did it. And if they did, they'd need evidence.

She could see them sitting at the kitchen table, asking her and Dave questions. They'd be polite. And she and Dave would be polite back and calm. Because all they ever need is evidence. And she'd just washed the evidence into the kitchen sink drain. In the morning, she'd take the drain pipe from under the sink and wash that too with bleach and put it back in place. She'd put the shirt and jeans into a plastic trash bag and hide it until Tuesday morning and then throw it into the back of the garbage truck where it would be lost. She'd do this and feel good.

5

On Sunday morning, right before his daughter Nadine's First Communion^[23], Jimmy Marcus got a call from Pete Gilibiowski, who was working at the store, telling him he needed help.

“Help?” Jimmy sat up in bed and looked at the clock. “Pete, since when you and Katie can't handle it?”

“That's the thing, Jim. Katie isn't here.”

“She isn't what?” Jimmy got out of bed and walked down the hallway toward Katie's room. He pushed the door open after a quick knock. Her bed was empty and, worse, made, which meant she hadn't slept there last night. “I'm coming,” Jimmy said to Pete, then hung up and walked back to the bedroom.

Annabeth was sitting up in bed, yawning. “The store?” she asked.

Jimmy nodded. “Katie did not show up.”^[24]

“Today,” Annabeth said. “Day of Nadine's First Communion, she didn't show up for work. What if she doesn't come to the church either?”

“I'm sure she'll come.”

“I don't know, Jimmy. If she got so drunk last night. Do you even know where she could be?”

“Diane or Eve's,” Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe a boyfriend's.”

There was no talking to Annabeth when it came to Katie. Annabeth – the love of his life, no question – had no idea how cold she could be sometimes. Normally, she was either annoyed with her stepdaughter or happy that they were best friends. Katie was seven when she lost her mother. She was deeply wounded by her mother's death.

“Yeah? Who's she seeing these days?” Annabeth asked.

“I thought you knew better than me.”

“She stopped seeing Bobby O'Donnell in November. That was good enough for me.”

Jimmy, putting his clothes on, smiled. When Katie had begun seeing him last summer, the Savage brothers told Jimmy they'd sort it out^[25], if it became necessary. But Katie had broken up with him herself, though, and quite painlessly.

Annabeth hated Bobby O'Donnell not only because he had slept with her stepdaughter, but also because he was something of a lousy criminal, and not like the pros she thought her brothers were and her husband had been in the years before Marita died.

Marita had died fourteen years ago, while Jimmy was in prison. One Saturday, during visitation hours, Marita told Jimmy a mole on her arm had been growing lately, and she was going to see a doctor. Just to be safe, she said. Four Saturdays later she was doing chemo. Six months later she was dead.