He tossed a beer can to the fat man and took one for himself, then sat down at the table and held the can firmly against the side of his face. “Got a real bad headache,” he said, smiling. “I’ve been out all night and day looking for that sonofabitch. Just got home a half hour ago. I was going to take a quick nap and go out again tonight.”
“Rough day,” Pig Dornich agreed.
DiGrazia still had the beer can pressed against the side of his face. His eyes were half closed and dropping fast. He shrugged.
“You find anything?”
DiGrazia slowly opened his eyes. He stared silently at the fat man for a few seconds, his face hardening. “What the hell do you think?” he said at last. “If I found anything, you think Susie would’ve wasted her money hiring you?”
“I was hoping maybe you found something.”
“That’s not what you meant,” DiGrazia said. “Don’t try and be a wise guy with me. You got something in your throat, spit it out. Otherwise, in the mood I’m in I’d be more than happy to do the fucking Heimlich on you.”
“I was hoping you could tell me about his girlfriend,” Pig Dornich said defensively.
“What do you mean girlfriend?”
“Just what I said. Who’s he with now?”
DiGrazia stared long and hard at Dornich before shaking his head slowly. “Susie knows better than that,” he said. “Where the hell you get that idea?”
“I don’t have to tell the wife any of it. I just want to find him and bring him home. If his party ends a few days earlier than expected, that’s too bad.”
DiGrazia stared at the fat detective incredulously and then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “There’s no girlfriend,” he said in a tired voice. “What did you think, that the two of us had a couple of hookers and some coke and were partying it up?”
“No.” Pig Dornich hesitated. “I was just asking-”
“Yeah, sure. Let me tell you something. Bill does this every goddamn year. Completely flips out for a couple of weeks. Right now he’s out there without a clue. You don’t believe me, you can talk to his therapist. I’m sure Susie can get you her name and number.”
Pig Dornich fidgeted uncomfortably. He knew he screwed up, that he could’ve played his hand much better, but that wasn’t what was bothering him. Doubt was beginning to work on him. “What have you been doing to find him?”
“Barhopped all over the goddamn place showing Bill’s picture. Didn’t get anywhere. I thought it might help if I knew where he’d been drinking last. That’s the way it always works. He loses it while drinking. After last call I drove around places in Boston, Revere, and Charlestown where he’s ended up in the past. Nothing there, either. But there probably wasn’t any chance of there being anything. I don’t think there’s any pattern to what he does after he flips.”
The phone rang. DiGrazia reached for it. “What is it? Ah, shit, I’m beat… No kidding? In the mouth? Yeah, does sound similar. Doesn’t make sense, though. We got our guy locked away… Okay, sure, I better check it out… Thanks.”
He put the receiver down and stared expressionlessly at Pig Dornich. “I have to go,” he said, his voice dead tired. “Police work. Give me a call in a few hours. Maybe I’ll drive around with you and fill you in some more. Maybe we can even find the sonofabitch.”
Chapter 16
February 12. Midday.
The first thing he felt was the throbbing in his fingers; next he felt the cold. Shannon lifted his head and found himself squinting against the sunlight. As his eyes adjusted to the light he realized he was lying in a basement of what was probably an abandoned building. The sunlight he was squinting against was coming through a broken window.
The overall effect was disorienting. After all, one second Shannon had been in the Black Rose working on a bottle of bourbon the slow way, shot by shot, and the next he was lying on a hard, cold floor in some foreign basement.
He knew what had happened. That he had been gone since that second at the Black Rose. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked over his hands, making sure there were no gashes or cuts. He quickly checked his fingers, feeling for frostbite and then felt over his body probing for any injuries or broken bones. It brought to mind a story he once read about a leper who was constantly checking himself for cuts, always worried about gangrene setting in. That was what it had come to for Shannon also, being unaware of what damage, if any, he had been doing to his body. For all he knew he could’ve been sitting there bleeding to death.
But he wasn’t. His skin felt cold and raw but there were no cuts or broken bones. He ran a hand over his face and felt that his skin was intact; a few day’s growth but no damage. His nose and ears felt numb but they didn’t feel frostbitten.
He pulled himself to his feet. Other than the throbbing in the fingers of his right hand, he didn’t feel that bad. Kind of dry in the mouth and his legs a little wobbly, but other than that, not that bad.
He was still wearing the same clothes as when he was drinking at the Black Rose. They were pretty much a mess. With some relief he found his wallet and badge were still in his pockets. He pulled out his wallet. There was still money in it.
The basement had a dank, musty smell. It was, for the most part, empty; a few broken bottles and some bags of garbage but not much else. He walked over to the broken window. There were pieces of glass lying along the floor underneath it.
Shannon walked up a small flight of stairs and found the door nailed shut. The wood, though, was rotting. He braced himself and then kicked it down. A couple of crack heads were sitting in the hallway smoking some stone. One of them was completely oblivious to him, the other one looked up from his pipe, kind of surprised.
“Hey, man,” he asked, “what were you doing down there?”
“Hell if I know,” Shannon said. He walked over them. The oblivious crack head never looked up. The other crack head started swearing.
“That’s right,” he sputtered out, indignant. “Just walk over us like we’re trash.”
Shannon ignored him. He heard some more crack heads upstairs arguing about who owed who for what they were smoking. The front entranceway had been boarded up but some of the boards had been pulled loose. As Shannon was squeezing through the opening, he heard the indignant crack head yelling at him.
“Just kick down other people’s doors like they’re your own,” he was yelling. “No respect for other people’s property. No goddamn respect.”
It turned out he wasn’t that far from home. The abandoned building was in Roxbury, a section of Boston located only a few miles from Cambridge. He bought a newspaper and was relieved to see that he’d only been gone five days. Five days was better than a week. Still, it was five days that were lost to him. Five days of doing God knows what. A chill ran through him. Like usual, whatever he was doing, he wasn’t eating a hell of a lot. His clothes felt loose on him. At least this time, though, he wasn’t sick. At least he made it past February tenth in one piece. He had to be thankful for little favors. When he tried hailing down a cab, the driver attempted to swerve past him, but Shannon stepped out in front of the cab and held out his police badge. The driver pulled over and Shannon climbed in and gave him his address.
As they approached the triple-decker that his apartment was in, Shannon saw the squad cars lining the street. DiGrazia was standing in front of the house next to his talking with a uniformed cop. Their eyes locked on each other. DiGrazia started moving in a trot towards the cab. He was at the door as Shannon stepped from it.
DiGrazia was breathing hard from his run. “Well, well,” he grinned. “The prodigal son has returned. And looking kind of ripe at that.”
Shannon couldn’t help returning the grin. DiGrazia was looking worse than him. Along with the dark circles under his partner’s eyes, the little hair DiGrazia had left was streaked with dirt and his clothes looked like they had been slept in.