"Honey," she said, "that's crap. He would have come back at us anyway. This way it took him twelve years instead of a couple of months. And killing the son of a bitch pretty much guarantees he won't cause any more trouble. Not in this world, anyway, and that's the only world I'm going to worry about right now."
Around the middle of January Mick and I had a long night together, but after we closed the bar we didn't go to the butchers' mass. It had snowed a few days earlier, and he wanted to show me how pretty his place upstate looked with snow covering the hills. We drove up there and I stayed over and rode back with him the following afternoon. It was peaceful up there, and as beautiful as he'd said it was.
On the way up I told him how Motley's life had ended. It didn't come as a surprise to him. After all, he knew I had the address, and he knew too that I'd had to handle my business with Motley on my own.
I called Tom Havlicek after Motley's body was discovered, but I didn't give him anything beyond the official version. At that point, of course, they reopened the case in Massillon— now that it didn't make any difference. It did clear Sturdevant's name, however, which I suppose was of value to his friends and relatives. At the same time it sullied Connie's, because the local paper came up with the fact that she'd been a hooker years back and shared this tidbit with their readers.
Tom said I ought to come out and he'd take me hunting, and I said that really sounded nice, but I think we both knew how unlikely I was to take him up on it. He called the other day when the Bengals got beaten in the Super Bowl and said he might be getting down to New York one of these days. I told him to make damn sure he gets in touch with me when he does, and he said I could count on it, that he'd make a point of it. And perhaps he will.
I haven't told Jim Faber yet.
We have dinner at least once a week, and I've come close to telling him a couple of times. I suppose I'll get around to it one of these days.
I'm not sure what's stopped me so far. Maybe I'm afraid of his disapproval, or that he'll do what he so often does and put me face-to-face with my own conscience, a sleeping dog I let lie as much as I possibly can.
Oh, I'll get it off my chest sooner or later. After a particularly meaningful meeting, say, when I'm just overflowing with enough spirituality to drown a saint in.
But in the meantime the only people I've told are a career criminal and a call girl, and they seem to be the two people in the world to whom I'm closest. I don't doubt that says something about them, and I should think it would say even more about me.
It's been a cold winter, and they say we've got a lot more of the same coming. It's hard on the street people, and a couple of them died last week when it went down below zero. But for most of us it's not that bad. You just dress warm and walk through it, that's all.
The End